Category: Faith (Page 7 of 11)

Love creating love

June 20, 2009 / soulthoughts

In my sermon ‘Free to Love!’ I said that I believe one of the roots of our problems as humans stems from the fact that, deep down, we don’t believe that we are really loved that much. In this piece below, Selwyn Hughes says it much more eloquently that I ever could:

Carrying His own cross, He went out to what is called Skull Place….There they crucified Him – John 19:17-18

Although the love of God is clearly laid out in the Old Testament, why did humankind have to wait so long to have the message spelled out in such clear terms as John uses: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8)? People could not see this sufficiently clearly until they had looked into the face of Jesus. In the life of Jesus is the clearest revelation that God is love.

So few of us open ourselves to the love of God. We have more fear of Him than we have love for Him. There is, of course, a godly fear (or reverence), but that is not what I mean. If we fail to comprehend how much we are loved by God, then there will be no energy to turn the machinery of our lives in the way they were meant to turn.

Whenever I doubted the love of God as a young Christian, I was told I should go to Calvary. I never quite understood what that meant until one day I complained to God that He could not really love me; if He did, He wouldn’t let such things happen as were befalling me. He gave me no answer but showed me the Cross.

And as I saw His Son dying there for me, the scales fell from my eyes and I found love for Him flowing out of His love for me. I discovered what 1 John 4:19 means: “We love because He first loved us.”

Love for God is not the fruit of labor but the response of our hearts to being loved. It is not something we manufacture; it is something we receive.

Is the universe a friendly place?

June 18, 2009 / soulthoughts

I receive daily emails from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. Most of the time they’re very good, and occasionally one just hits me with a force that I cannot ignore. This is one of them:

It is all a matter of learning how to be more and more deeply connected. And of course we don’t do this unless we trust that after all is said and done, it is a benevolent universe. Even Einstein said at the end, “The only important question is this: Is the universe friendly or not?” Can it all be trusted? Is the final chapter of history victory and resurrection or a dying whimper?

If we can fall down low enough and stop upholding ourselves, so only God could be upholding us, then we know it is a friendly universe, and we are safe (“saved”?). It is then radically okay, despite the temporary interruptions, because then we have experienced that the foundation of all things is Love!

From Creating Christian Community

Much of everyday life screams at us with the message that the universe is an indifferent, uncaring place where we have to make the best of life we can and hope things go our way. While it takes faith to believe in anything, it can sometimes take a lot more faith to believe in a loving Creator when we just take a look at the news each night. Doubts can creep in and we can suddenly find ourselves wondering if this God stuff is all true.

I think there is a healthy balance between trust and reason – some call it a reasonable faith. This is not blind faith, as I have mentioned previously, but it is about working things through when doubts start to nag. We can either give in to the anxiety that doubt can create, or we can work it through and be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Rowland Croucher has said that the best way to deal with doubt is to go on committed to Christ while you are struggling. Don’t suspend your belief. Doubt is different to unbelief. Doubt is wondering, unbelief is a choice to not believe. Just like C.S. Lewis, who said that his faith causes him to see more clearly, as we go on committed to Christ despite our doubt, we realise that the things we choose to believe are true as we gain insights on the journey. As I said at my recent 40th, life is not so much about getting there as about the journey. Walk on!

John Smith on the Gospels

June 17, 2009 / soulthoughts

Over the next 4 weeks at St Martin’s Community Church in Collingwood, John Smith will be presenting a series on each of the 4 Gospels. While time restricts even John from going through the Gospels from start to finish, his presentation will look at some of the following issues:

Why do we have the current 4 Gospels?
What about all the other ‘Gospels’?
What about the apparent contradictions between the Gospels that we have?
The context in which the 4 Gospels were written
The intended audience of the Gospels

John is one of Australia’s foremost preachers, and some years ago completed his doctoral dissertation on church revitalisation movements at Asbury in the United States. Over the last 40 years, John has been known for his gift of making the Gospel come alive and reveal its relevance for living today. John was the first preacher I ever heard who preached the Gospel in a way that made sense for how I should live, not just for giving me assurance that I was going to heaven.

During his studies, John had the privilege of being taught by Ben Witherington III, a noted New Testament scholar, and author of the widely acclaimed ‘The Gospel Code’. For those not in Melbourne, I would recommend this book for an excellent analysis of the questions above. It was originally written as a response to the claims of Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code.

For those of you in Melbourne though, come along over the next 4 Sundays to hear John talk about the Gospels. The service starts at around 10am.

Connecting

May 29, 2009 / soulthoughts

I was moved the other night to go back and have a look at Larry Crabb’s excellent book, Connecting. This is the book that had the potential to cost Crabb his career as a counselor. In it, he talks about the power of emotional healing that takes place when people relate to each other as Christ relates to us. And the best place for this to happen is in safe community with other like-minded people. The counseling relationship, while extremely valuable, cannot substitute for a community of people loving each other and speaking into each other’s lives.

The reason I mention this is because I was with a group of friends the other night, and as we shared deep parts of our lives, I came to see how much I was able to relate to particular aspects of what they were sharing. Why is it that just one small sentence that someone shares about their life can stay with us for years? When I have listened to some sermons over the years, there is often one line that will stay with me, that will resonate with me, even though I couldn’t tell you what the subject of the sermon was.

The reason that such relating touches us so deeply is because we connect; we relate, we nod with a knowing when we hear what that person is saying. We can say “that’s exactly my experience”. That’s why Jesus told stories of everyday life to explain the kingdom of God. He never actually defined what the kingdom is, he just always said “it is like…”.

Connecting is the essence of life. When we connect with someone, or something that someone says, we know we have touched something of what life is really all about; something that goes deeper than all the everyday stuff that we think is hugely important. I think I might go back and read through Crabb’s book again. I suspect there will be a few lines that stay with me for years.

More on humility

May 24, 2009 / soulthoughts

Some years ago, I wrote an article on the essence of humility. I talked about the fact that humility is a matter of facing reality – the reality that, left to our own devices, we don’t do life very well. Hence the need for a higher power, or a saviour, to get us out of our mess.

To me, humility is about being self-forgetful. How hard is that? I find that the more I think about it, it is an issue of trust. When I don’t forget myself in the sense that Jesus meant, I am clinging on to my way of doing things and therefore not trusting. This elusive thing called humility is about not focusing on yourself.

Becoming Christlike has nothing to do with navel-gazing and everything to do with gazing on Christ and seeing reality through the fog of life. The irony though, and what catches many of us out, is that, as soon as you think you’re becoming more humble, you’re not, because you’re focusing on yourself again.

Humility really is about denying yourself. Humble people never think of themselves as humble. A friend once said to me that the closer you are to God, often the more you will be aware of your imperfections. Christian psychologist Larry Crabb says that if you ask a mature person when they last sinned they will smile the smile of a broken but healing person.

Everyday faith

May 21, 2009 / soulthoughts

I was talking to a friend last night about faith. We touched on different aspects related to faith, including doubt, atheism, and agnosticism. On my way home I got to thinking about it a bit more and I realised again that everyone of us lives by faith every day of our lives. Faith is not something that believers in God live by; that’s just a different aspect of faith. As I sit on my chair writing this post, I’m exercising faith that the chair won’t collapse under me. When you eat your cereal tomorrow morning, you will be exercising faith that there is nothing poisonous in it and that it won’t kill you. And so it goes on. Everything we do in life requires the exercise of faith. We are not consciously aware that all of what we do is done by faith, but it most definitely is.

In thinking about this and how it relates to what we normally call faith, that is, faith in God and its manifestation in our lives, I soon realised that a position of agnosticism is not enough. Someone told me years ago that agnosticism is not just sitting on the fence, it is taking a position. I believe life is to be lived to its full. I believe that life was actually designed to be lived to its full, and that means to go further in our exercise of faith than we have previously.

To that end, I believe that faith in a God I cannot see is the ultimate act of faith. It is not blind faith. That would be superstition. It is a reasonable faith, a rational faith if you like. It is a faith that is based on what someone has deduced as the evidence. It is thought through and then, having made a decision about it, it is lived out. We become more human the more we live by faith. As St Paul said long ago, ‘this life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God’.

The more we live by faith, the more we jump into the arms of a loving God, the more like Christ we become. It is said that we become like that which we worship. Our lives are a worship of something. When our lives are a worship of Jesus, we become more like him. It was Irenaeus who said “the glory of God is a human being fully alive”. When we exercise faith in Christ, when we live this out in our lives each day, we love more. We live out what St Paul called ‘the most excellent way’.

Faith allows us to become more human. It is a risk, it can be frightening, but it is life. We either move forward into it or we retreat into our cocoons. C.S Lewis said it brilliantly:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

This is what living by faith is. This is the adventure, not just of a lifetime, but of an eternity.

True repentance

May 19, 2009 / soulthoughts

In my sermon, ‘Free to Love!’, I talked about the issue of repentance and how that word has such negative connotations. If you’re like me, you probably immediately think of someone yelling from a pulpit with his finger pointed straight at you shouting “Repent!”

Unfortunately the attitude that that image represents is quite accurate of many Christians. And, I have to admit, it has been true of me on too many occasions.

Fuzz Kitto has reminded people a few times that real repentance is not about repenting ‘from’ but it is about repenting ‘to’. The following story of the legend of Odysseus and the Sirens illustrates it better than I ever could:

Odysseus and his crew needed to get somewhere in their boat, but they needed to sail past an island which no one had ever passed before. The reason that everyone had floundered on this island was because of the beautiful seductive voices of the sirens on this island. When they would sing of their promises of wisdom and knowledge, no man could resist and they would turn their ship toward the island and be wrecked on the rocks. So Odysseus needed a way to get around this. He was advised to have his crew lash him tight to the mast of his ship, and then to plug their ears with beeswax so they couldn’t hear the sirens’ song. Odysseus was determined that they were not going to be seduced. He told his crew that when he heard the singing, even though he would be desperate for them to unleash him and let him be lured over to the sirens, they were not to let him. And so they made it through. But Odysseus was exhausted from his efforts at resisting the sirens’ song.

Odysseus then realised there must be a better way. So he took with him Orpheus, who had the sweetest voice in all the land. And when they were approaching the island from where the sirens’ song could be heard, they heard the sirens starting to sing, luring them over. But then Orpheus started to sing, and Orpheus’ voice was more beautiful than that of the sirens, and Odysseus and his crew made it through unscathed.

2,000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth walked the dusty roads of the Middle East living out the same message. The common people heard him gladly because in him they found not condemnation but acceptance. In him they heard words of life, words spoken for them. And in him they saw a life lived in sacrifice and service of others. After his resurrection, his followers became so enamored by his message that they turned the might of the Roman Empire upside down. They no longer had to try to prove themselves. They knew that something new had happened, and they devoted their lives to sharing this love with everyone around them.

The message of Jesus is about finding a better way. It is about repenting ‘to’. It is coming to see how attractive following him is that everything else fades into insignificance. God help me to be more like that.

Hitchens v. Craig debate

May 17, 2009 / soulthoughts

A recent debate on the existence of God between atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian apologist William Lane Craig is reported with glee in Lee Strobel’s latest newsletter with the headline ‘Hitchens gets spanked!’. I don’t mind Strobel. I have been impressed with the books of his I have read, books such as The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith. He makes his case well by asking questions that a reasonable skeptic and/or seeker would ask. However it comes across as pretty severe gloating to me to say that Hitchens got ‘spanked’. Whilst I acknowledge that an atheist website that reported on the debate also used these terms in describing the debate, I still see a strong sense of gloating on the part of Strobel.

As long as there remains a sense of gloating each time one side wins a battle in this war of beliefs, each side will remain entrenched in its beliefs, and probably become more entrenched. If the Christian side of a debate like this is to show people that God exists and therefore you are invited into a relationship of life with God, I don’t think gloating over winning another debate is going to impress anyone. I am reminded of what Rikk Watts has said about this. He has made the point that some of the early Christians were actually not able to answer some of the philosophical attacks thrown at them by pagans. Yet still they turned the Roman Empire upside down and drew millions into faith in Christ. They did not win the empire by arguments; they won the empire through the quality of their lives. If I won an argument against an atheist and I gloated about it, other atheists would be fully justified in being repelled by the faith that I proclaim. They would be justified in saying “well, he had some great arguments but I sure wouldn’t want to be like him”.

As I stated in my previous post about debates over climate change, it is crucial that we listen with respect to those we disagree with. As St Peter says, let us respond with gentleness and respect to the allegations of people we disagree with. May this be so in our debates with our atheist friends.

Website Review – The BioLogos Foundation

May 16, 2009 / soulthoughts

If you are one of those believers with a fascination for science and how God put the universe together, but at the same time you are sick of the constant bickering between Christians and atheists, this website provides welcome relief.

The BioLogos Foundation has been set up by Francis Collins, former Director of the Human Genome project and author of the bestselling The Language of God. |more…|

Category: Faith (Page 7 of 11)

Love creating love

Is the universe a friendly place?

John Smith on the Gospels

Connecting

More on humility

Everyday faith

True repentance

Hitchens v. Craig debate

Website Review – The BioLogos Foundation

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