Category: Christian Faith

Jun
17
2011

Many years ago, a book I least expected made a dra­matic impact on my life. Bob George’s book Clas­sic Chris­tian­ity, while seem­ingly sim­ple in con­cept, offered me some truths which I finally “inter­nal­ized” and made my own when I was in my late twen­ties. When I read it for the first time, in read­ing the quo­ta­tion below–that final line is what caught my atten­tion and began to change who I thought I was and who I thought God was.

But at no time is His accep­tance of me ever in question.

This under­stand­ing even­tu­ally had a tremen­dous impact on my life and to this day, I come back to these words to remem­ber who I am and who God is. Here is the full excerpt:

“If you are a true Chris­t­ian, then you are as right­eous and accept­able in the sight of God as Jesus Christ.”

What’s your reac­tion? If you are shocked…, then it may be that you just don’t know who you are in Christ. It may be that you know a great deal of doc­trine, but your daily Chris­t­ian life is still more a bur­den than a bless­ing. You may have tried and tried to change your life with­out suc­cess, in spite of all the sem­i­nars, books, and tapes you have searched. What­ever your sit­u­a­tion, I have great news to share with you.

Most Chris­tians, I find, under­stand the gen­eral idea behind for­give­ness: God took our sins and gave them to Jesus. But that’s only half the mes­sage. God also took Christ’s per­fect right­eous­ness and gave it to us! Sec­ond Corinthi­ans 5:21 says, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the right­eous­ness of God.” How could I stand up and declare that in the sight of God I am as right­eous and accept­able as Jesus Christ? Because of what I do? No way. It’s because of who I am in Christ.

The Bible goes to great lengths to declare that right­eous­ness is a free gift that a man receives by faith.

“For if, by the tres­pass of the one man (Adam), death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abun­dant pro­vi­sion of grace and of the gift of right­eous­ness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17)

Right­eous­ness (a right stand­ing of total accept­abil­ity before God) is a gift. You don’t work for it. You don’t earn it. You don’t deserve it. Like any gift, all you can do is accept it or reject it. And once you have it, it’s yours.

Gala­tians 3:27 says, “For all of you who were bap­tized into Christ have clothed your­selves with Christ. Because we are in Him we are totally accept­able to God!

Now real­ize that I am talk­ing about our­selves being accept­able to God, not nec­es­sar­ily our actions. In my iden­tity I am eter­nally accept­able to Him, but that doesn’t mean that every­thing I do is all right. He may put His arm around me, so to speak, and show me the truth about some­thing in my life that is out of line: an atti­tude, action, or habit. Why? So He can change my atti­tude that is out of line, result­ing in a change of action. But at no time is His accep­tance of me ever in question.

[amazon_enhanced asin=“0736926739” /]  [amazon_enhanced asin=“0736901396” /]  [amazon_enhanced asin=“B003NUSBTQ” /]

In: Christian Faith
Tags: , , ,
Jan
09
2011










For those new to this web­site, here are a hand­ful of facts about yours truly.

  1. While a col­lege stu­dent in Chicago, one day I went to go play ten­nis down­town with a friend. Once we got back, my car, which was a 1977 Chevy Caprice Clas­sic, had been stolen. The police found it 2 weeks later with most every­thing gone: the tires, rims, seats, all of my belong­ings, even most of the engine. I loved that car.
  2. In high school, I was an exchange stu­dent to Ger­many. I was the worst stu­dent when I left and came back the one who spoke Ger­man the best. How? My Ger­man teacher had me live with a fam­ily that spoke no English.
  3. I’ve seen many con­certs in my life­time: my favorites being U2 (Joshua Tree and No Line on the Hori­zon tours), Echo and the Bun­ny­men, Sufan Stevens (three times), Bobby McFer­rin, The Smiths, Gen­eral Public, Bro­ken Social Scene and some unknown  jazz quar­tet at the Green Mill in Chicago when I was in my early twenties.
  4. Eas­ily my worst job was sell­ing vac­u­ums door-to-door. I was 19 years old. The name of the vac­uum was The Pig and my boss was decep­tive, manip­u­la­tive and greedy. Fun times.
  5. I met my wife Julie through a week­end retreat through our church. We were camp­ing in Wis­con­sin and the name of the park where we camped was called Devil’s Lake State Park. Except for meet­ing Julie, it was a mis­er­able week­end, because I had to sleep in a wet sleep­ing bag, because it rained all week­end. I mar­ried her 11 months later. Sec­ond best deci­sion of my life (see below).
  6. Eerie: When I was in col­lege, a friend and I the night before spring break started were talk­ing late into the night. We were dis­cussing the peo­ple, if we lost them, would dev­as­tate our lives. She gave one name: her older brother who was her hero and best friend. He was killed in a bicy­cling acci­dent that week. This taught me for the first time an impor­tant les­son: life is fragile.
  7. Also while I was in col­lege, I worked with kids and adults with severe autism and other dis­abil­i­ties. Peter, a young man who had autism, also had a major metab­o­lism prob­lem and would eat any­thing in his sight and there­fore, all food had to be locked up at home. One day, we went for a walk and two high school girls were com­ing in our direc­tion. One of them was eat­ing a dough­nut. In a flash, Peter snatched it out of her hand and gob­bled it down. Not quite know­ing what to do, we just kept walking.
  8. Some things I love: Smart­wool socks, golf­ing with my sons on a sum­mer evening, sushi and raw oys­ters, World War II movies, my job, Arts & Craft fur­ni­ture, many dif­fer­ent HBO series, art muse­ums, hole-in-the-wall restau­rants, and Illi­nois Fight­ing Illini bas­ket­ball. I do not like roller coast­ers, lima beans, being cold, climb­ing up on a roof (i.e., heights), wear­ing con­tacts, and though this may sound sac­ri­le­gious, putting up Christ­mas stuff (e.g., the tree, orna­ment, lights, etc.).
  9. I love the ocean. I love stand­ing next to it. I love swim­ming in it. I love the sounds it makes. I love the smell. The oceans always reminds me that God exists and that he is good.
  10. I began to fol­low Jesus and became a Chris­t­ian in my sopho­more year of col­lege. I was really into U2 and a friend told me that Bono was a Chris­t­ian and said that my favorite song, “I Will Fol­low” was about fol­low­ing Jesus. At this time, I began to inves­ti­gate my faith from years past (I grew up Catholic) and through the books of C.S. Lewis books (Mere Chris­tian­ity, The Great Divorce, and Screw­tape Let­ters) I decided to begin “fol­low­ing” again. At that point, I had made a pretty big mess of my life, e.g., drink­ing a lot and the other stuff asso­ci­ated with that and was begin­ning to real­ize that there was more to life than how I was liv­ing it. It was the best deci­sion of my life.
In: Christian Faith
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jan
08
2011

The web­site has just been updated and trans­ferred. For all of the pre­vi­ous posts, you can check out The End of All Our Explor­ing.

In: Christian Faith
Tags: , ,
Jan
08
2011

We live in the age of the indi­vid­ual. Let’s face it, in our cul­ture we are encour­aged to be tremen­dously self-centered. With this self-focus comes com­pe­ti­tion. When a cul­ture has its only focus as the indi­vid­ual,  com­mu­nity inevitably becomes very dif­fi­cult to attain. The Amer­i­can church in many ways has bought into this indi­vid­u­al­is­tic notion; the Amer­i­can church has been held cap­tive to this aspect by the cul­ture. One can clearly see this by all of our denom­i­na­tions. Just open a tele­phone book and you will see plainly on those yel­low pages the indi­vid­u­al­ism of the Amer­i­can church: Roman Catholic, Pen­te­costal, Pres­by­ter­ian, Full Gospel, Assem­blies of God, Reformed, Lutheran, South­ern Bap­tist, Epis­co­palian, Wes­leyan, etc. etc etc. The list is nearly endless.

I recall of few years back being at a con­fer­ence in which the speaker was Mike Pilavachi. He pas­tors a church in Eng­land; he is a very engag­ing speaker, very light-hearted and was a joy to lis­ten to dur­ing those days I was in Nashville (if you have heard of Matt Red­man, Mike Pilavachi is the pas­tor of the church he serves). He said hard things at times, but again with a light­ness and humor to them. I had never heard him before and what he said really spoke to me.

When on the final night he came out to speak, his coun­te­nance was dif­fer­ent; he was not smil­ing as usual and his step was not as vig­or­ous. I will never for­get the words he spoke to us that night. He opened by say­ing that he really felt like the Lord wanted him to share some­thing with us. Again, his tone was very seri­ous. He acknowl­edged that he really did not want to give this message—he con­fided, it would be hard to speak.

Essen­tially, he said one thing; he said that God hated the denom­i­na­tion­al­ism in the Amer­i­can church. He spoke pas­sion­ately for a good 10–15 min­utes speak­ing to us on this issue. He was fiery and pas­sion­ate as any hell and brim­stone preacher. As a com­par­i­son, he explained that in Eng­land there are so few Chris­tians that as believ­ers they just don’t have the time to get enraged about doc­tri­nal dis­putes or legal ways of liv­ing that we typ­i­cally do. There, Chris­tians from all dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tions often work hand-in-hand in pro­claim­ing the gospel through word and deed, because they are so out-numbered. They typ­i­cally don’t get bogged down by issues such as bap­tism, ver­sions of the Bible, sacra­ments, etc.

That was all he had to say; when he left the stage, you could have heard a pin drop. With our jaws dropped open, I don’t think that there was any­one there that did not hear the seri­ous­ness of his words. It was deeply con­vict­ing. Since that time, over nine years ago, I have thought of lot about unity and dis­unity in the church. H. Richard Niebuhr calls the “evil of denom­i­na­tion­al­ism” the true “moral fail­ure of Chris­tian­ity.” In essence, denom­i­na­tion­al­ism, at its heart, is divi­sive­ness. But the church is called toward unity.

Since that talk nearly ten years ago, I don’t think much has changed in the Amer­i­can church with regards to rec­on­cil­ing our dif­fer­ences. The ques­tion then becomes, how can we as the Amer­i­can church be more uni­fied? What are the ways that we need to change?

In: Christian Faith
Tags: , , , ,
Dec
22
2010

For those new to this blog, it is inspired by the infa­mous words of T.S. Eliot’s poem Lit­tle Gid­ding. The poem ends beau­ti­fully by stating:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Eliot became a Chris­t­ian in his late thir­ties and his poetry and plays were infused with his beliefs about faith and how that faith should impact a per­son. This poem which I quote above is obvi­ously about a per­son find­ing a rela­tion­ship with Jesus, and there­fore, “in the end,” find­ing them­selves for the first time.

For me, Eliot’s poetry has a haunt­ing fea­ture about it, because every now and then he states some­thing in a sub­lime and thought­ful man­ner, which makes you…well…think about what he said. As Johan Bergstrom-Allen wrote, “Chris­t­ian artists and writ­ers have often had much to teach Chris­tians about the world around them. They express the mys­ter­ies of faith in a more con­cise and beau­ti­ful way than many tra­di­tional the­olo­gians.” For me, this defines T.S. Eliot as a writer and as a Christian.

Here are some selec­tions from “The Cho­ruses from the Rock” (you can google the title if you would like to read the entire poem); read some of these verses that speak in a prover­bial and pro­found way. In some ways, this selec­tion might remind you of the book of Ecclesiastes–verses that you need to read a cou­ple of times through to under­stand what he is attempt­ing to say. In this sense, you can also think of Jesus speak­ing in para­bles. He wants you to really lis­ten and not just quickly read over the words. He wants you to hear the mes­sage he is try­ing to speak. As the poem ends, a good ques­tion to ask your­self: Who do you think Eliot was refer­ring to as “the Stranger?” Who is this per­son who knows how to ask the best questions?

The end­less cycle of idea and action,

End­less inven­tion, end­less experiment,

Brings knowl­edge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowl­edge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowl­edge of words, and igno­rance of the Word.

All our knowl­edge brings us nearer to death,

But near­ness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wis­dom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowl­edge we have lost in information?

What life have you, if you have not life together?

There is not life that is not in community,

And no com­mu­nity not lived in praise of GOD.

And now you live dis­persed on rib­bon roads,

And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor

Unless his neigh­bor makes too much disturbance,

But all dash to and fro in motor cars,

Famil­iar with the roads and set­tled nowhere.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore

Oh my soul, be pre­pared for the com­ing of the Stranger.

Be pre­pared for him who knows how to ask questions.

There is one who remem­bers the way to your door:

Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

You shall not deny the Stranger.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
In: Christian Faith
Tags: , , , ,
UA-3459392