God is What He Wills, and you are what you eat…

Stanley Grenz in Theology for the Community of God speaks of God as the moral standard.  He says:

“Not only is God morally perfect, he is the standard of morality.  Rather than he himself being ruled by some moral concept, external to himself, God’s disposition toward creation is the standard by which we will be judged, and we are to judge all human conduct. John brings together the connection between God’s character and our conduct: ‘This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers’ (1 John 3:16).

  Ultimately the divine disposition and the divine being coalesce…God’s essence and God’s character are both love.  Consequently, there is no dichotomy between God’s own being and God’s will, for God wills what God is.  God wills what is right, and the “right” that God wills is nothing else but what characterizes God’s own being as the Triune One.”(Grenz, 95)

  This has challenged me to think through a couple of things.

1, God is not just the creator of a moral code, and he is not governed by a created moral code, but he himself is the moral code.  That means he cannot just be a god that exists outside his creation, but that he by nature is constantly interacting with and giving direction to it.

2, I have been thinking quite a bit lately about progressive sanctification.  I hold to the truth of Ephesians 2:8-9 that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone.  That said, I believe that verse 10 is extremely important in our process of salvation.  “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  While we are here, the way that we walk is of great importance.  God, being the standard for morality, and being active in the life of his creation, gives us direction in our lives.  I would say he does this for multiple reasons. First and foremost it is for his glory, that he might show the surpassing riches of his grace.  I also believe that God, in his power, sees that a life lived in Christ brings him glory, but it is also the best life we can live.

People who don’t have Christ’s salvation in their lives often see the good works prepared by God as a burdensome load given to tie Christians down and keep them from fun.  I submit that the good works God created for us are not just to bring him glory, but to allow us passageway into the most fulfilled life available while in the flesh. 

That said, maybe the old adage “You are what you eat” has more truth to it than we realize.  Not only is God morally perfect, but he is the standard of morality. As he told Moses, “I am, that I am.”  And we too, while being saved through Christ’s sacrifice, are very much defined by the way we walk, the character we display, and the good works we do. We can’t just put on Christ like those embarrasing Christian t-shirts and expect to be changed.  We must be transformed.

 

Believing, Hoping, Loving

Matt

 

 

 

 

 

Camping…the conclusion

Well I got to go camping this weekend.  As I reflected on it later, it occured to me that God makes a whole lot more sense to me when I am sitting by the camp fire looking up at the stars.  I wonder at how much mankind has done to push God out of the picture.  With all our technology and “advancement” we have tried to make our lives out shine the glory of God, and some would say we have succeeded.  The thing that is funny to me is that in the midst of our busy lives that are so self consumed, it only takes moments under the stars for me to be reminded what life is all about.  I am truly thankful for what God gave me this weekend.  He reminded me of what I am here for, to spread his love and bring glory to his name.

Camping

 It seems that in the complexity of the busy life I lead, I occasionally lose sight of true reality.  It is in moments such as these that I need to be reminded.  I am in fact in one of those moments right now, and so to escape this false reality that I have created…I shall camp.  Tonight I am headed out to lake caddo to find truth in solitude.  Hopefully the warm morning suncoming up over the lake will shock me back to reality.

with Hope

For the Sake of the Cause

  An interesting aspect of human nature is the desire to be competitive.  I for one am not extremely competitive, but I must admit that sometimes competition seems unavoidably present.  Christianity is one of those areas where competition is present, though not necessarily talked about.  The desire to compete is not bad in and of itself, but when it is turned in the wrong direction it can be very damaging.  For example, when 1st Church is competing for numbers with 2nd church, and as a result splits and becomes 3rd church…we have a problem.  The problem runs much deeper still.  I have just recently become involved in collegiate ministry at my church, and have found the pressure to produce very large.  Success is the name of the game, and what gauges success properly but growth?  So here I am feeling this pressure to appeal to the masses so that I might be successful and receive acclaim, and all the while I find myself asking, “What the heck am I doing?”  When did it really become about the numbers?  Rob Bell speaks about starting a church in his book “Velvet Elvis.”  He said that he knew it was time to go ahead and start it when he no longer cared if people came or not.  As I have been trying to acclimate into this position, I am slowly coming to a very difficult conclusion.  If I am going to do this, it has to be about the cause.  You see, if I focus on numbers, then what I am really doing is making it about me.  If I focus on the cause (living out Christ), then there is freedom for God to move.  As this began to occur, something strange happened.  I realized that all that pressure I was under…it all originated in me.

Sticks and Stones

Dave Barnes has a song that is pretty old now, but it recently reintroduced itself into my life.  The song is titled “Sticks and Stones,” and it deals with the pain of harmful words.  The chorus goes as follows:

“I’d rather have sticks and stones than the words you say to me,
Cause bruises heal and cuts will seal but your words beat the life from me.”

There are few things in my life that truly devastate me, but one is when a loved one says something hurtful.  “Cause bruises heal and cuts will seal but your words beat the life from me.”  It’s funny, because I don’t like to hold grudges, and I am happy to forgive, but the pain from sharp words has the ability to do damage that is not easily healed.  Is it possible that in some cases it never will?

pride or prejudice?

I had a conversation tonight with a gentleman of a different nationality, and it spurred my thinking. 

*You should note that this perspective is routed in the southern half of the U.S. so perspectives will likely differ due to location. 

  I was thinking about the idea of racism, and how certain people make a big deal about the extreme prejudice that exists toward their particular race.  I wonder if this is legitimate or often an overreaction?  Are a large percentage of people still plagued with prejudice, or is the separation created between people of different nationalities due to the desire to belong and feel comfortable with those who are like them.  Is race really the dividing line, or is it deeper than skin tones?  What role does differing cultures play in this debate?

I welcome your thoughts.

Convictions

  Here is some food for thought, because it is something that I stumbled into thinking about today and thought I would pass it on.  Where do we derive our convictions from?  Some immediate answers may be family, friends, religion, culture, tradition, or maybe even ourselves.  We all have convictions, but a lot of times do not recognize where they come from.  What about hot topics of the day, abortion, homosexuality, moral relativism, smoking, racism, war, drugs, proper age for sex education among children…  Most people have opinions about these topics, where did we come up with them? 

limited perspective on an unlimited God

Theos-greek for God, logos- word, referenced for study.  Theology-the study of God. 

The interesting thing about studying God is that we bring our perspective into the equation.  The Bible has just enough vague areas that it keeps us searching, keeps us struggling, keeps us questioning.  Since the beginning there have been people who have interpreted the words of God, and among them are those who misinterpret it (all of us have likely fallen into this category at times).  So how do we derive a “theology” that is truth.  How can humans come up with standards of beliefs for the gray areas of the Bible.  As humans we have a drive to seek answers, I believe God created us this way, but the study of the Bible often exposes more questions than it does answers.  This issue puzzles me, and I welcome thoughts and comments, but the true issue that I want to address is this.  How have we come to the point where people will blatantly disregard the Bible in exchange for their own personal theology.  It seems that the trend among many people is that my ability to think trumps the inspired word of God, that is if they even give it validity as inspired (which many do not).  It seems to me that our narcissistic desire to search out and derive our own conclusions has left us with a disregard for the sovereignty of God.  This scares me.  We need a reality check.  Man believes he has tamed the land and the seas, the air and the animals, and believes he is encroaching on God.  I wonder at the day when he is proved wrong on all accounts.

MattA

Who decides ‘08

It seems like the 08 election is all over the place.  Maybe this is just the first time that I have really cared much, or maybe there is something more to this election.  The proposed slate of candidates has a lot of people scratching their heads.  The Democrats are running a woman that some love and many love to hate, and a seemingly genuine, but relatively inexperienced guy that people know they will like, but aren’t sure they should follow.  In the Elephant’s corner, we have the New Yorker who some feel is not really a Republican candidate, a right wing extremest who is losing steam, a flip flop Mormon, and a T.V. Star.  Stereotypes aside, the collection of possible candidates has left many wondering, who on earth should I vote for?  Such talk has spurred on ideas of the creation of a more moderate 3rd party.  This may not be such a bad idea.  Many people feel that to give the democrats the Presidency would be dangerous because they already control the house and senate (power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely), and to keep a Republican in would further the frustration that many Americans have become accustomed to in the last 7 years.  Maybe a “neutral 3rd party” is the answer, if such a thing could ever really exist.  I’m still up in the air.  What are your thoughts?

Redemption, the true hope of the Gospel

Is the hope of the Gospel that mankind can be redeemed?

The premise of the argument is that the Church(as an institution, not a movement) is dying because the good people of the Church are giving up on her.  They leave because they have lost faith in her.  They leave because they believe she has lost her effectiveness.  They are right in their realization, but wrong in their abandonment.  I do not know who quoted this, but it has been said that, “She may be a whore, but she is still the bride.”  We are still called to be a part of her, to reside within the body, the church.  I do not intend to debate the difference between the church as a movement, and the institutional church.  What I intend to do is bring light to the need to maintain hope in the fact that although she is not perfect, the church is redeemable.  Along with this realization, although mankind is not perfect, it is redeemable.  One thing I have found in many of those who have been around the church a long time is that they have been hurt to the point that they have lost hope in the possibility of redemption of all.  They have given into the idea that, as things are, so they will always be.  Some things never change.  I think God gives hope to the young, and often years of dissapointment break down that hope until there is nothing left but old tired people ready to die dissapointed.  This is tragedy.  I submit that “Faith like a child” includes hope.  We must maintain hope.  Hope in our God, hope in our Savior, hope in our redemption, and hope in the redemption of our world.  Without hope, we have nothing to strive for.  When we lose hope, we lose the battle for the lost.  I submit that this battle is one that we were never meant to lose.  My question now is, what does it take to maintain this hope that Christ brought?  For those who have already lost it, how can they lay hold of that hope once again?