Quest For Worth & Significance

The search and venture for significance is one that is common to all of humanity.  Mankind seems to always be longing to carve out a meaning and importance for life.  The growth of the social network and the explosion of the reality television celebrity reveals the deep desire within humanity for substance, note, and worth.

All this being true, there truly is this deep, soul-wrenching odyssey that is familiar to nearly every average human being that has and that will ever live (save Christ).  And there are countless diversions and worldly perspectives that offer various ways of dealing with the stress of seeking significance.  However, Scripture paints a picture about seeking significance that is unique, both in its content but also in its execution.  The essence of this discussion can be found in two of the early chapters of the Bible: Genesis 11 and 12.

Genesis 11 chronicles the the Tower of Babel.  Briefly summarized: people are congregated together in a great city with one language and goal for the purpose of creating a great name and culture for themselves, writing their own destiny and attempting to claim significance for themselves.  God's response was to confuse human language and to disperse mankind across the globe.  Clearly, God's ideas about the search for identity are different than humanity's.

In Genesis 12, God calls Abram.  God promises to make him into the father of nations, to bless him with storehouses of wealth, and to give him a life of supreme significance.  God provides Abram's importance and worth not because of Abram's work or effort but solely because of Abram's faith and faithfulness.

Similarly, our significance is not based on our exertion or the strength of our will.  Rather, the only significant act that an individual human can do, the most important element of any single human is not his/her accomplishments, his/her wealth, or even his/her relationships.  No.  Faith in the Lord is the most significant and only truly important thing a human can do.  Let us then seek to be significant by drawing close to God in faith!

Short, Sweet, and Personal

On Sunday, my wife and I drove nearly three hours to attend a wedding.  The drive there was issue-free and we were set to go to the wedding, enjoy the reception, and be back home in time for a good night's sleep.  However, due to the frustrating and moody personalities of cars, particularly if they are driven by my wife on a regular basis, our plans were changed and we soon found ourselves worried if we would make it home at all.

The car was intensely overheating and going through coolant like proctologists go through rubber gloves.  And, similarly, I was frustrated and scared because it was cold and the lingering smells were a far cry from three-star restaurant quality.  As we left the reception, I poured two full jugs of coolant into the car in hopes of getting at least close to home.  We made it five miles before the car overheated to the point of missing shifts, etc.

Still over 100 miles away from home, panic began its slow creep.  My wife and I began a cycle of worry and comfort, in which she would worry and I would comfort until the roles switched.  This went on for a few more stops.  We stopped about every five miles to refill the radiator with a mixture of coolant and gas station water.  Things were not looking well.

However, amidst the worry, I remember that the Lord is always in control.  He is sovereign, good, and cares for those who earnestly seek Him.  I prayed and I prayed some more.  We made one more stop in which my sister called and reminded us our parents had gotten us AAA memberships and that they would tow us up to 100 miles for free.   Oh the joy!

God has a funny way of working.  Stuns me.  He had orchestrated the whole thing.  To be sure, there was no extravagant adventure to speak of, and no exceptional story of escapades and heros.  Just a God who holds all things in His hands and, for some mysterious purpose, has chosen to bestow grace on His children.  Today that grace came in the form of a great wedding, a AAA membership thanks to my parents, and a 100-mile conversation with David the tow-truck driver.  Thank you again Lord for being who You are and never leaving me out in the cold!  All in a day's being for an eternal Holy God...

Guard Your Heart

This last friday night I gave a wedding homily for some dear friends.  It was an absolute honor that I cherish with humility.  Because it was my first wedding sermon which I had spent quite a bit of time wording and rewording, not to mention I was beyond nervous, I did something I very rarely do: I actually read my message word for word.

In my preparations and carrying through my sermon, one of the reoccurring themes was the value of protecting your heart.  The idea of guarding your heart is an important theme of Scripture, but it comes through verbatim in Proverbs 4:23:

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

Guarding our hearts is a metaphor referring to protecting what we let in and what we let out.  It demands that we be vigilant in protecting and preserving that which has been given us by the grace of God.

In the end, protecting our heart from the onslaught  of the deadly arrows coming from the evil one and from the lovelessness of this world is about putting Christ at the center of our hearts. For he is our strength and our shield. It means that we will keep in right perspective that which is eternal, holy and beautiful. And we will only let in that which is worthy of admittance while refusing entry of anything that is ungodly and unrighteous. Let us then press on to keep Christ at the center as we strive to guard our hearts in the Lord God Almighty.

1 John 4:19 and Love

This is from 1 John, chapter 4, starting at verse 7-10 and skipping to verse 19:
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be propitiation for our sins…” Truly, “We love because He first loved us.”             

        That last verse is so simple, pithy even.  “We love because He first loved us.”  It’s not long, not complicated but we should not mistake that for plain or basic.  “We love because He first loved us.”  It is profound, full of theological import and significance that not only encourages us with its brevity but challenges us with its meaning.  “We love because He first loved us.”             

John, the writer of this, is saying two intensely difficult things: that Christ is to be both the reason we love, but, even more so, He is the manner with which we love, He is the why, but He is also the how.   “We love because He first loved us."

Now, through faith in Christ Jesus, confession that He is Lord and belief that God has raised Him from the dead, we may enter into right, redeemed relationship.  Our frailty is replaced with strength, our brokenness is mended, and our infirmities our healed by Christ, in Christ, and through Christ. The love that He first loved us with at the cross now lives within us, guiding us, and empowering us to live and love as as Christ.  “We love because He first loved us.”

It was Christ’s perfect work at the cross that has enabled us to love.  He has empowered us with the ability to love.  And this is not love like the world thinks, like some emotional whimsy, or daffodil capriciousness of "he loves me, he loves me not."  No.  This is the real, serious love that can only come from Him who is living within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Remember: “We love because He first loved us.”

This love is selfless, not self-seeking; it is pure, not tainted by our flippancy.  It is not an "I'll scratch your back you scratch mine," type of relationship.  No.  This love is altogether other, stemming from the deepest depths of our beings and welling up through our pores for us to lavish upon those we love.  Above all, it is a gift from God given through Christ to all those who call on Him as Lord and Savior.  This is a beautiful, easily memorable verse, but as we pull back the layers, as it unfurls, we begin to see the density behind it.  “We love because He first loved us.”

Christ’s love is not just an example for how we should love.  It is the very ability, the source within us to love.  In order for us to love as He has loved us, we must always keep our focus fixed, our gaze set upon the cross, which is the sole cornerstone of why and how we love.  It is at the cross that we see ourselves as we truly are.  And it is at the cross that we see who God is, and it is in this revelation that true love is made possible at all.  This is why "We love because He first loved us."

Love is rooted, ultimately, in God.  The why and the how of love is based in the life and work of Christ Jesus, who has set us free when He saved us at His cross.  At our cores, we are broken fragments and frail egoists as a result of sin’s pervasiveness in our lives.  Yet God, who is rich in mercy, condescended to us, emptying Himself through the incarnation of His Power into the human form of His Son, Christ Jesus, who lived a perfect, sinless life.  Yet He was tried for His innocence and found guilty of no punishable crime, though He did claim to be God’s only Son and, by that virtue, the rightful King of the World . 

For that, He was beaten, flogged, stripped, spat upon, and marched through the streets of Jerusalem carrying the cross of our shame and the instrument of His death.  He was then crucified naked alongside the main roads just outside the city gates.  He was murdered, not for anything He had done, but because it was God's will to bestow grace and love to humanity by taking on the sin of mankind in His own flesh and nailing it to the cross.  But three days after His death and burial, the stone that sealed His grave was moved and He was found risen.  He rose from the grave, confirming that He was and is the Messiah, the Son of God.  “We love because He first loved us.”

Now, through faith in Christ Jesus, confession that He is Lord and belief that God has raised Him from the dead, we may enter into right, redeemed relationship.  Our frailty is replaced with strength, our brokenness is mended, and our infirmities our healed by Christ, in Christ, and through Christ. The love that He first loved us with at the cross now lives within us, guiding us, and empowering us to live and love as as Christ.  “We love because He first loved us.”
           
It was Christ’s perfect work at the cross that has enabled us to love.  He has empowered us with the ability to love.  And this is not love like the world thinks, like some emotional whimsy, or daffodil capriciousness of "he loves me, he loves me not."  No.  This is the real, serious love that can only come from Him who is living within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Remember: “We love because He first loved us.”
            
This love is selfless, not self-seeking; it is pure, not tainted by our flippancy.  It is not an "I'll scratch your back you scratch mine," type of relationship.  No.  This love is altogether other, stemming from the deepest depths of our beings and welling up through our pores for us to lavish upon those we love.  Above all, it is a gift from God given through Christ to all those who call on Him as Lord and Savior.  This is a beautiful, easily memorable verse, but as we pull back the layers, as it unfurls, we begin to see the density behind it.  “We love because He first loved us.”
            
Christ’s love is not just an example for how we should love.  It is the very ability, the source within us to love.  In order for us to love as He has loved us, we must always keep our focus fixed, our gaze set upon the cross, which is the sole cornerstone of why and how we love.  It is at the cross that we see ourselves as we truly are.  And it is at the cross that we see who God is, and it is in this revelation that true love is made possible at all.  

God: Our Refuge

Throughout Scripture, God is described as our refuge.  The metaphor of God as our refuge is one of the primary descriptions of God, who He is and what He means to us.  It is this idea, that God is our refuge, that will be shortly discussed here.

A refuge can be described in two basic ways.  The first is a place.  In this sense, a refuge is a place of security, of stability, and of sanctuary.  In reference to God, He fulfills this purpose to us.  He is the place of our utmost security and safety.  When we come to Him, we know that we are held in the highest safety and enveloped completely in His love.  To say "we come to Him" is to say that we receive and seek Him in faith and humility.

The second meaning of God as our refuge, is as a source of healing.  In this sense, to say that God is our refuge is to acknowledge that He is the ultimate fountain of our healing.  God, being our Creator and Sustainer, heals us perfectly.  This healing is not limited to the spiritual as the countless medical miracles that occur attest.

If we keep these two conjoined concepts in mind when we read Scripture, when we come across those passages that speak of God as our refuge, it will stir in us a remembrance that God is both the place of our greatest security as well as our greatest healing.  Let us then always run to God who is our present refuge in all rimes of trouble and strain!

The Quest for Identity

We live in a world that values self-made identity.  The virtues of paving one's own way are heralded as the supreme exalted purpose of humanity.  At the core of this ideology is a deep vacuous longing in every human for identity, and an even deeper truth that compels us to create one: we each know, at the core of our beings, that there is some sense inside of us that our "true" identity is in some way broken or damaged in need of mending.

The world tells us that sees who we are as a blank slate, an empty page that is waiting for us to write upon it whatever we may desire or wish.  Again, the impetus for this thought stems from the basic truth that all humans recognize that our identity is some way damaged.  Unfortunately, how the world and the natural man deals with this discrepancy avoids the issue at hand, ignoring the original cause of the problem of distorted ideas of identity: sin.

In the Garden of Eden, before the Fall of humanity, Adam and Eve received all of their identity in God.  All that they had, all that they did, all that they were was given them by God.  Their very identity, who they were was found in God.  God created them and interpreted them too.  This is to say that God defined their identity just as much as He created them.

All this being true, the Fall so pervasively marred humanity that their identity, which was ultimately and truly found in Christ, was also marred.  And, as every human was in Adam, every human's identity is damaged and in dire need of repair.

Fortunately, God has provided us grace in His Son.  Now, through faith in Jesus, our original and true identity is repaired, regenerated, and reborn in Christ.  Therefore, the search for identity must begin not with an intense introspection but with worship and faith in the Lord.  For only in seeing the Holy Lord can we truly see ourselves as we actually are.  This is the true essence of true identity.  And any attempt to establish identity apart from God will ultimately be found to be insufficient for it is based on an insufficient finite instead of an all-sufficient Infinite.

Discussing God's Will

Much of the Christian life is devoted to God's Will.  In fact, most of our language, the very way that we relate to one another in words confirms that God's Will is vital to our lives.  How we deal with tragedy or blessing, how we make choices on an individual and a community level is full of the language of will, e.g. "it is/was God's will for..."

However, despite the lingo, the theology behind the Will of God can be easily ignored or replaced with assumptions that do not jibe with the theology of Scripture.  Because this matters in real, practical ways, an attempt at a two paragraph, blitzkrieg teaching on the Will of God will be put forth here.  The point, obviously, will not be for an exhaustive, comprehensive discourse on God's Will.  Rather, just a brief snapshot to spark some thought on this important issue.

First of all, God's Will is grounded in and arises from His nature.  This is to say that His Will starts from within God and is carried forward in space and time.  Get this: everything that happens is God's Will.  Because God creates and sustains everything by the power of His Word, there is not a single thing that has ever occurred or that ever will occur that is outside of His Will.  There are no "free-acting" agents that live, move, or have their being apart from His creating and sustaining Will.  Everything that happens in space/time is His Will.  We are not speaking of hypotheticals but of what does transpire in the unfolding of space and time.

Secondly, God's Will can be basically broken down into two forms: His Decretive Will and His Prescriptive Will.  His Decretive Will is all that comes to pass, it is history unfurling, it is space and time running its course.  This is God's decreed Will, in that, because events occur and He creates and sustains all that occurs by the power of His Word, all that occurs has been decreed to occur by Him.  His Prescriptive Will is God's prescribing of action and life for humanity through the revelation of His  Word, particularly in Christ.  His Prescriptive Will is what He wants of us and for us.

In the end, there are other things that deal with God's Will: salvation, predestination, foreknowledge, etc.  However, understanding that everything that occurs is God's Will is the starting point, while the second component is found in the prescriptions of God's Word compel us to think, believe, and live a certain way that pleases God.  Every person that lives and that has ever lived intimately interacts with the Will of God, both His decretive and His prescriptive.

The real issue is God not man, and His sovereignty not ours.  Every person must reckon that our life has been created and is sustained by the Will of God, and our response should be obedience to His Will.  He is sovereign and omniscient.  Our understanding of His Will must being with who He is.  In this we, we can always find ourselves in His Will.  The goal, always, is to find ourselves on the right side, which is found in obedience to His Prescriptive Will.