Feeling All Alone? (2)
August 30, 2010
by John ImlerJohn is an RVchurchesUSA Ambassador and author of It’s Never Too Late As I read through the Psalms, I see that I am not
the first or the last to have that depressing all alone feeling. David felt alone many times often crying out of his self imposed cave. In Psalms 43:2 he says “You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?”
The Bible is full of accounts of those who knew that all alone feeling. Jonah knew it as he rode in the belly of the whale (Jonah 1:17); Job knew it (Job 19); Naomi experienced it when she was alone in a strange land after the death of her husband and two son (Ruth 1:3-5); Sampson knew it after Delilah had his head shaved (Judges 16:20).
However, the most incomprehensible of all was that of a lonely Man hanging on a cross with His body bruised and bleeding when He cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:45).
This was not the first time Jesus felt this loneliness. He had experience it when He was first seized. In Matthew 26:56 we read, “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.” He felt it when Peter denied Him and when the disciples chose to sleep rather than watch and pray with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Why did Jesus endure all of this? It was that we might take shelter and comfort in His promises, knowing that He experienced a feeling of all aloneness far greater than we will ever be called to endure. His promises are true to those who believe. We can take courage in the words of Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in everyway, just as we are – yet without sin.”
So, if you are feeling all alone, look out of your cave and dare to look into the sunlight of God’s love and promises. No matter how fiercely the storm clouds are rolling, He has promised “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalms 23:4).
Join John next time when we seek to locate your “cave”.
John welcomes your comments either below or email him directly at john@faithrescued.com
Feeling All Alone? (1)
August 28, 2010
by John ImlerJohn is an RVchurchesUSA Ambassador and author of It’s Never Too Late In I Kings 19:14 we read of Prophet Elijah’s conversation
with God about his plight. This was even after Elijah had performed several miracles at God’s instruction and after he had been fed by ravens in the desert.
Elijah tells God that he is the only righteous one left in all of Israel and charges God with trying to kill him. He was feeling alone and forsaken by God. What a pity party it must have been.
Have you ever felt that way? I have. I have experienced that ‘me against the world’ loneliness. I’ve been hiding in my own cave, and it has taken me a while to hear God say, as He said to Elijah, “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18).
And where did I hear God’s voice to me? It was in a book shared by a friend entitled Hope Rising (crystalpeaksyouthranch.org). She did not know of my need but God did.
My cave was dark and cold. The storms were howling in my world. However, Hope Rising was the opening God provided so I could see the opening of the cave. I caught a glimpse of just a few of those “who had not bowed a knee to Baal.” It was enough—just as the raven’s food had been enough to sustain Elijah.
So when you are tucked away in a cave of your own making—having a private pity party, feeling all alone in a lonely uncaring world, and perhaps feeling that even God has forsaken you—remember to look out from your cave into God’s promises which proclaim “surely I am with your always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
Join John next week for part 2 of this series, when we will discover still others who felt all alone.
John welcomes your comments either below or email him directly at john@faithrescued.com
How Does the Bible Define “Justice”?
August 26, 2010
by Andyblogger for Cospel.com Justice has been on my mind this morning since
I read about the conviction of Khmer Rouge torturer/executioner, Kaing Guek Eav.
Is a 19-year prison sentence “just”? Does the extent of his crimes merit a harsher sentence, or should his regret and guilty plea earn him a lighter one?
Those are questions that will be much discussed in Cambodia over the next few months, you can be sure. But today’s Words of Hope devotional, about the Christian understanding of justice, seems timely. What does justice look like through the Bible’s eyes, and should a Christian’s definition of justice differ from a non-Christian’s?
There is a great debate in legal and philosophical circles about the nature of justice. The ancients defined justice as giving others their due. Modern theories of justice often talk about fairness and equality.
In Micah 6:8, God calls us to be agents of his justice on earth. But doing this requires deep, prayerful humility. Christian justice has no place for vengeance, self-righteousness, or “getting even.” Instead, justice requires us to seek the good of others, even those who have wronged us. And though that may still require us to take legal action against wrong-doing, we are called to do it in a spirit of love and mercy.
Read the full devotional at Words of Hope.
This quiet and humble approach is a far cry from the “justice” regularly presented in our popular entertainment and in the day-to-day news cycle. What do you think? Does your Christian concept of justice ever conflict with your instincts, and if so, how do you resolve that tension?
Originally published at Gospel.com. Reprinted with permission
Doctrine of The Trinity? (1)
August 22, 2010
By Matt Perman The doctrine of the Trinity is foundational to the Christian faith. It is
crucial for properly understanding what God is like, how He relates to us, and how we should relate to Him. But it also raises many difficult questions. How can God be both one and three? Is the Trinity a contradiction? If Jesus is God, why do the Gospels record instances where He prayed to God?
While we cannot fully understand everything about the Trinity (or anything else), it is possible to answer questions like these and come to a solid grasp of what it means for God to be three in one.
What Does it Mean That God is a Trinity?
The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons–the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Stated differently, God is one in essence and three in person. These definitions express three crucial truths: (1) The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons, (2) each Person is fully God, (3) there is only one God.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons. The Bible speaks of the Father as God (Phil. 1:2), Jesus as God (Titus 2:13), and the Holy Spirit as God (Acts 5:3-4). Are these just three different ways of looking at God, or simply ways of referring to three different roles that God plays?
The answer must be no, because the Bible also indicates that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons. For example, since the Father sent the Son into the world (John 3:16), He cannot be the same person as the Son. Likewise, after the Son returned to the Father (John 16:10), the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit into the world (John 14:26; Acts 2:33). Therefore, the Holy Spirit must be distinct from the Father and the Son.
In the baptism of Jesus, we see the Father speaking from heaven and the Spirit descending from heaven in the form of a dove as Jesus comes out of the water (Mark 1:10-11). In John 1:1 it is affirmed that Jesus is God and, at the same time, that He was “with God”-thereby indicating that Jesus is a distinct Person from God the Father (cf. also 1:18). And in John 16:13-15 we see that although there is a close unity between them all, the Holy Spirit is also distinct from the Father and the Son.
The fact that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons means, in other words, that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Jesus is God, but He is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, but He is not the Son or the Father. They are different Persons, not three different ways of looking at God.
The personhood of each member of the Trinity means that each Person has a distinct center of consciousness. Thus, they relate to each other personally–the Father regards Himself as “I,” while He regards the Son and Holy Spirit as “You.” Likewise the Son regards Himself as “I,” but the Father and the Holy Spirit as “You.”
Often it is objected that “If Jesus is God, then he must have prayed to himself while he was on earth.” But the answer to this objection lies in simply applying what we have already seen. While Jesus and the Father are both God, they are different Persons. Thus, Jesus prayed to God the Father without praying to Himself. In fact, it is precisely the continuing dialog between the Father and the Son (Matthew 3:17; 17:5; John 5:19; 11:41-42; 17:1ff) which furnishes the best evidence that they are distinct Persons with distinct centers of consciousness.
Sometimes the Personhood of the Father and Son is appreciated, but the Personhood of the Holy Spirit is neglected. Sometimes the Spirit is treated more like a “force” than a Person. But the Holy Spirit is not an it, but a He (see John 14:26; 16:7-15; Acts 8:16). The fact that the Holy Spirit is a Person, not an impersonal force (like gravity), is also shown by the fact that He speaks (Hebrews 3:7), reasons (Acts 15:28), thinks and understands (1 Corinthians 2:10-11), wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), feels (Ephesians 4:30), and gives personal fellowship (2 Corinthians 13:14). These are all qualities of personhood. In addition to these texts, the others we mentioned above make clear that the Personhood of the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Personhood of the Son and the Father. They are three real persons, not three roles God plays.
Another serious error people have made is to think that the Father became the Son, who then became the Holy Spirit. Contrary to this, the passages we have seen imply that God always was and always will be three Persons. There was never a time when one of the Persons of the Godhead did not exist. They are all eternal.
While the three members of the Trinity are distinct, this does not mean that any is inferior to the other. Instead, they are all identical in attributes. They are equal in power, love, mercy, justice, holiness, knowledge, and all other qualities.
Each Person is fully God. If God is three Persons, does this mean that each Person is “one-third” of God? Does the Trinity mean that God is divided into three parts?
The Trinity does not divide God into three parts. The Bible is clear that all three Persons are each one hundred percent God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all fully God. For example, it says of Christ that “in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). We should not think of God as like a “pie” cut into three pieces, each piece representing a Person. This would make each Person less than fully God and thus not God at all. Rather, “the being of each Person is equal to the whole being of God.”[1] The divine essence is not something that is divided between the three persons, but is fully in all three persons without being divided into “parts.”
Thus, the Son is not one-third of the being of God, He is all of the being of God. The Father is not one-third of the being of God, He is all of the being of God. And likewise with the Holy Spirit. Thus, as Wayne Grudem writes, “When we speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together we are not speaking of any greater being than when we speak of the Father alone, the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone.”[2]
There is only one God. If each Person of the Trinity is distinct and yet fully God, then should we conclude that there is more than one God? Obviously we cannot, for Scripture is clear that there is only one God: “There is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:21-22; see also 44:6-8; Exodus 15:11; Deuteronomy 4:35; 6:4-5; 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:2; 1 Kings 8:60).
Having seen that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct Persons, that they are each fully God, and that there is nonetheless only one God, we must conclude that all three Persons are the same God. In other words, there is one God who exists as three distinct Persons.
If there is one passage which most clearly brings all of this together, it is Matthew 28:19: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” First, notice that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinguished as distinct Persons. We baptize into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Second, notice that each Person must be deity because they are all placed on the same level. In fact, would Jesus have us baptize in the name of a mere creature? Surely not. Therefore each of the Persons into whose name we are to be baptized must be deity. Third, notice that although the three divine Persons are distinct, we are baptized into their name (singular), not names (plural). The three Persons are distinct, yet only constitute one name. This can only be if they share one essence.
…. read more in Part 2 of this series
John Piper. © Desiring God. www.desiringGod.org
Life is Soooo Daily!
August 18, 2010
by John Imler
John is an RVchurchesUSA Ambassador and author of It’s Never Too Late
been saying it often since she heard it. In fact, I got tired of hearing it and asked her to stop saying it. However, the more I think of it, the truer I realize it is. While we tend to think of our lives in terms of years, each year is lived day by day. Not only that, but I think God designed our lives to be lived daily.
The Scriptures are full of admonitions for us to do just that—to live in the now, to live today rather than tomorrow. Proverbs 27:1 says, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” Jesus himself admonished us not to be concerned about our tomorrows in Matthew 6 25. James adds to this in James 4:13-14.
Jesus gave His disciples some basic principles of prayer in Luke 11:2-4. It is most interesting to note that His instructions were to ask for our “daily bread” not tomorrow’s bread. Just as the Israelites had to trust God for their daily “manna” (Ex. 16:13-19), He has asked us to do the same.
I might add that Jesus’ instruction started with “When you pray” and included with “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us” (Lk.11:4). God’s forgiveness is linked to our own forgiveness of others (Matt. 6:14-15).
Yes, life is so daily, and the challenge is for us to live it that way. The older I get the more I realize the truth of a acronym by the great football coach Lou Holtz: the key to winning is deciding What’s Important Now.
To use the WIN principle, it seems logical that in our daily now we concentrate on seeking first the kingdom of God (Matt. 6:33) and laying up treasures in heaven (Matt. 6:20). In so doing, we will have less time to be concerned about our tomorrows or to worry about them, and we can trust fully in Romans 8:28.
John welcomes your comments either below or email him directly at john@faithrescued.com
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