Slaves and Masters

In twenty-first century America, the average citizen has more freedom than anyone, anywhere, at any time in history. We have the freedom to go just about anywhere, do just about anything (within certain legal limitations), and to be whatever we have the determination to be. I just completed a 2,000+ mile trip across the country, and there was not one border check, no language barrier, nobody questioning what I was doing. (OK, some of my friends thought it was crazy to drive that distance alone in three days.) I witnessed the freedom others expressed with their disdain for speed limits and simple traffic courtesy; I was exposed to a few music choices at extreme volume in the middle of the night at rest stops; I watched people leave their cars blocking the gas pumps while they dallied in the store. These were people doing what they wanted. Regardless.

Maybe they want to be rude, lawless, inconsiderate boors. There are few people who will stop them in twenty-first century America. Fortunately, there are also people who have decided to do something with their lives to improve the condition of their fellow citizens. I was reminded of this by a random post on my Facebook page. The post noted that President Trump has surrounded himself with an entourage of pretty regular folks. He didn’t choose the usual elite snobs and self-important pooh-bahs that most Presidents have surrounded themselves with in the past. They are everyday folks willing to step in and help a President whom they believe has the best interest of the American people at heart.

I may be more sensitive to this at the moment because of a series of novels I am reading written by Cap Daniels. On the surface the heroes appear to behave like every other shoot-em-up, black ops mercenary team. But Daniels lets his patriotism and Christian belief in giving help to those who cannot help themselves come through loud and clear. Bad guys get dead and good guys get rescued, but Daniels lets the psychological and spiritual struggle come through loud and clear. One of the main characters epitomizes this dichotomy: he is a Baptist preacher when he is not using his sniper rifle to rain judgment on the villains. Daniels writes in his afterward that he detests the evil that is everywhere in our world, but he also lauds the patriots who risk their lives to make our lives a little safer.

Heaven matters most in this because every human being is a slave to something or someone. Paul writes: “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.” (Rom. 6:16-18 NLT) We commonly think of this as referring to slaves to drugs, or sex, or money. Sinful things. Think again. Anything we do with our “freedom” that removes God from the center of our lives is sin.

Whenever we choose to fulfill our desires instead of seeking God’s desire for our lives, we become slaves to our desires. It could be a job, a hobby, or just plain laziness that enslaves us to something that is not God’s best for us. Paul says we choose to be enslaved to sin, or by choosing to give our lives to Christ, we become slaves to righteousness. We must not think of that too narrowly. It does not mean we have to give up everything and become a missionary. It does not mean we have to abandon a secular career and join the clergy. It may be those things for some, but for the vast majority of us, it is something far more mundane and, at the same time, more wonderful.

The “slave to righteous living” Paul applauds is someone who makes the effort to live according to God’s righteous principles. Jesus identified the sine qua non of His followers: that they love one another. If you have been a Christian for more than a minute, you know that the love Jesus recommended is a selfless, sacrificial love; it means caring for the other person more than for yourself. If you want to see it demonstrated, look at the Cross of Calvary. You could translate John 3:16 like this: “God loved the world in this way: He gave His Son so that anyone who believed in Him would be free from slavery to sin.”

Paul said slavery to sin leads to death; God said slavery to Christ leads to eternal life. Those of you who are as old as I am might remember a folk singer named Bob Dylan who came to Christ after a long career in secular music. One of my favorite songs of his post-conversion repertoire is “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” His lyrics list about every imaginable lifestyle and circumstance, and in every case, Dylan insists you are going to serve somebody. His theology is right there with the Apostle Paul. You may serve the devil, or you may serve the Lord, but you are going to serve somebody. And the truth is clear: there are only two choices.

The biblical concept of freedom is foreign to our modern way of thinking. N.T. Wright speaks of the paradox of Christian freedom. “We become more truly human, more genuinely free, when we are giving ourselves away. That, I think, is the clue to a whole new way of looking at the world, and perhaps at freedom itself….  Humans are made for a purpose. Only when we find and follow that purpose will we be ‘free’…. The gospel sets us free to love, to live to God’s glory, to be wise stewards of his creation and wise agents of his new creation. And at this point human freedom and divine enabling mysteriously come together.”

That is the truth, and Jesus said that the truth would set us free. He also said, “[God's]Word is truth.” For the last ten years or so I have had the blessing of “free time” every morning to read the Bible and pray. I could almost say I have become enslaved to that devotional time to the point that I am unwilling to start my day without it. Martin Luther famously said, "I have so much to do [each day] that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." Like Luther, I read to hear God’s will; then I pray for His assistance to accomplish it – whatever it is. He is my Master; I am His slave. And I am free.

 

Want What You Have

Delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. PS. 37:4 KJV

This verse is often quoted to support the idea that Christians can have whatever they want as long as they “delight in the Lord.” That idea always smacked of selfish materialism to me. It seems to fly in the face of the biblical concept of humble submission and acceptance of whatever God wants for us. I took a deep dive into the Greek translation* of Psalm 37:4 recently and learned that it may not be saying what the King James seems to imply. The result of my study led me to this very different interpretation: “If you chase after God, He will produce longings in your heart that are in line with your relationship to Him.” In other words, He will give you what He wants not necessarily what you want.

Someone wisely said that true peace comes from wanting what you have not having what you want. That sentiment seems to be more in line with what the Bible teaches. It was the Apostle Paul who said that he had learned to be content with what he had. The Hebrew writer said, “Your lifestyle must be free from the love of money, being content with what you have.” The Book of Proverbs is laced with warnings about the dangers of relying on material wealth. Paul called the love of money the root of all kinds of evil. Jesus warned that you cannot love both money and God.

None of this should be taken to mean that money/wealth is evil in itself. It is the attitude towards material possessions that must be guarded. “The wealth of the rich is his strong city, and like a wall, it is high in his imagination. (Pr. 18:11) Relying on wealth implies a displacement of God from the calculation. That is idolatry. Proverbs warns, “There is a way that seems upright to a man, but its end is the way of death.” There is no way to hide your true motivations from God. “A crucible is for the silver, and a furnace is for the gold, but Yahweh will test hearts.” (Pr. 17:3)

But maybe your desires are not for wealth. Maybe you desire some plan to succeed. What does the Bible say about that? “The mind of a person will plan his ways, and Yahweh will direct his steps.” (Pr. 16:9) Planning is a good thing; the Bible recommends it. But the plans must be laid before the Lord. “Commit your work to Yahweh, and your plans will be established.” (Pr. 16:3) This sounds very similar to the promise of Jesus that if we ask anything in His name, the Father will grant it. That too veers from the idea that we can have whatever we want. To ask in Jesus’ name implies aligning the request with the will of the Father.

One wonders what happens when we don’t know what God’s specific will is in a given situation. The wisdom of Proverbs covers that too: “The lot will be cast into the lap,

but all of its decisions are from Yahweh.” (Pr. 16:33) This idea comes from the Old Testament practice of asking for God’s will by casting lots. We don’t know exactly what was used, but it involved something similar to modern dice. Stones, bones, or pottery shards were chosen or painted with different colors. When tossed, the appearance of the items was interpreted as a yes or no answer.

I don’t think God wants us to use physical objects to discern His will today. Our modern phrase, “roll the dice” suggests that one takes a step or a position and waits for the outcome. The advantage we have over the OT Jews is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. When we face a decision that has a go/no go choice to be made, we should bathe it in prayer, search the Scriptures for direction, ask for godly advice, and then proceed unless something leads us to pull up short. In other words, roll the dice knowing the results are in the Lord’s hands.

I must say that this process does not guarantee smooth sailing every time. I can remember many times in my life when I thought I was doing what God would have me do, but the results were far from what I had hoped for. Years ago, I was called to an administration position at a Christian school in California. I detailed that Michigan to California trip in “God’s Little Coincidences.” All I will say here is that we have come to call it “The Ordeal.”

The reason God wanted us in California remains something of a mystery. After only a few weeks, the administrator who hired me as his assistant principal was fired. I was asked to take over the school. I did my best, but it soon became apparent that the board and I had different ideas about what a Christian school should be. They thought I was “too Christian.” I did stop the faculty from leaving in protest over the firing of the former administrator. I did save the school from imminent financial embarrassment. I did handle the day-to-day responsibilities of running a 330-student K-10 school with a faculty and staff of 35 without complaint. Despite all that, the board replaced me with a former public-school administrator after only three months. Needless to say, I did not return for a second year.

My wife and I have asked repeatedly if we were wrong to think the job in California was God’s will for me. Should I have realized sooner that my philosophy of Christian education was not in line with theirs? Or did God get exactly what He wanted from me even though I would never have chosen the experience had I know what was going to happen? With decades of hindsight, the answer seems clear: I didn’t get exactly what I wanted for my first school administration experience, but God got precisely He wanted for the school.

 I believe that anyone who attempts to have a genuine trust in God’s provision will face tough circumstances at some point. If we truly believe in a loving, sovereign God, we can rest peacefully with the knowledge that He will provide what is best for us. The life we live is in Christ, and His Spirit lives in us. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is peace. That’s what I have. That’s all I want.

* Between 250 and 132 BC, a group of 70 devout Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, set about to translate the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek because few people could read Hebrew. This translation gives us a peek into the minds of what those Jewish scholars believed was the true word of God. Their translation has become known as the Septuagint which means “the seventy.”

Dread Not!

                The Dread

He comes to me in the night,

That ancient enemy of my soul.

He whispers in my sleepy ear

That I’m not up to the fight.

 

I tell my heart not to fear

When I wake in the valley of shadow;

I remind myself of God’s promise

Always to be near.

 

In the dark of night, it is good to know

That God has promised to bless me.

 And when I rise with morning light

He’s with me wherever I go.

I wrote this poem because recently I have been waking in the wee hours with an unexplainable sense of dread. Occasionally, the feeling might stem from a dark dream I have awoken from, but not always. When I find myself cowering under the covers, it is a seriously unpleasant feeling. Once I remember the promises of God that He will always be near; His angels keep watch over me; no weapon formed against me shall prosper, then I begin to pray against the darkness, and it recedes – as it must. John said, “There is no fear in love,” and I know absolutely that God loves me. That means fear – the dread – comes from somewhere else.

The Old Testament is full of admonitions to fear God. Often, teachers will insist that “fear” in many contexts means “respect,” rather than dread. And yet, the Psalmist wrote, “My flesh quakes for dread of You, and I am afraid of Your judgments.” I think the OT saints had a better understanding of God’s judgment than we do. They knew that their standing before God was dependent on their obedience to His law, the Torah. Torah taught them there were blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Their history held many examples of both.

Under the OT law, they were not entirely without comfort. The Psalmist also wrote, “Trouble and anguish have found me, Yet Your commandments are my delight. This is not unlike my nighttime dread. There are things in my world that might cause me trouble and anguish. However, I must not dwell on them; I must delight in the Word of God and recall this: “My help comes from Yahweh, Who made heaven and earth.” The “help” the Psalmist refers to is found in this: “If you should keep track of iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you is forgiveness, so that you may be feared.” There is the “fear” again, but in this case, it is not a bad thing. Godly fear leads me to worship. Fear that causes me to dread is from my enemy, not God.

There is another aspect of our New Testament position that should help to relieve the dread. God had intended the nation of Israel to be, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Sadly, they failed in their duty to represent Yahweh God to the other nations. They became insular and self-important. Peter understood that the church is the priesthood God ordained, under the high priest Jesus, which has become what Israel was supposed to be. He wrote to believers, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s possession, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” This is affirmed by what John saw in his heavenly vision: “[The Lamb] made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth.”

There will be those who disagree with what I am about to say, but I believe it is true. I am not waiting for a future millennial kingdom to reign with Jesus. I am royalty now; I am a priest of the Most High God now; I am seated with Christ at the right hand of God now. There are those who read the future tense, “will reign,” in what John saw as still in our future. I disagree. Like the Greek language, we also use future tense to refer to a present reality that extends into the future. For example, President Trump will be in the White House next year; that does not mean he is not there now. I may not be in the position of royalty in the kingdom of this world, but in the kingdom of Heaven, which Jesus initiated during His earthly ministry, I am all that Jesus re-created me to be.

When I was buried with Christ in baptism, the old me died, and I rose from the water as a new creature. I may still live in the world for a time, but I am not of the world. I am of the Kingdom of God. My citizenship is in Heaven. Peter said that: I am called out of the kingdom of darkness into the light to proclaim the virtues of my King, Jesus. More than that, I am commanded to invite others to join me in the Kingdom of Heaven. We pray God’s will be done on earth now as it is in Heaven now. Jesus told Peter that things they prayed for on earth would already have been done in Heaven according to the Greek verb tenses He used. Present and future are one with God.

Even King David expressed fear in the light of God’s judgment but declared his delight in God’s law. In my royal position, I no longer need to have any fear – no dread. The washing of regeneration Paul mentions mirrors the washing the OT priests experienced to make them acceptable for God’s service. The blood I am washed in is not of bulls and goats but of the precious Lamb of God. The anointing of the Spirit echoes the anointing of God’s chosen kings. The sword I carry is the invincible Word of God. My King and Commander is the Lord of Hosts with ten thousand times ten thousand mighty angels at His side. Instead of being afraid when I wake up each morning, I should expect the devil to say, “Uh oh! Clair’s awake. Run for it!” If you belong to Jesus Christ, you should get the same reaction – and no dread!

Related Posts: On the other hand: Fear God Much?; The wrong fear: Scaredy-cat Christians; The greatest fear: I’m Not Afraid to Die

I Think I Love Jesus

This is going to be an autobiographical, philosophical ramble. If the thought of poking around inside my head is not a pleasant one for you, you are excused. My wife, Karen, regularly chides me for thinking too much. She is usually correct; when I imagine bad motives for someone’s action, or when I create a dilemma of my own making, I am probably overthinking. It is the latter case that I am going to sort through in this piece.

I want to start by defending philosophy. The word scares or bores some people because they picture dusty classrooms and boring lectures. That’s understandable but not fair. A philosophy is merely a way of seeing things. It is often called a world view. Everyone has one whether they know it or not. We all look at the world through a filter of some kind. If we didn’t, the jumble of unrelated data would drive us crazy. We make sense of things by choosing to see them through our world view – our philosophy. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. I recommend examination. Commenting on James 1:25 John MacArthur says, “If you desire to be like Christ… you must continually examine your life in the light of Scripture.” (Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993)

I am not going to categorize all the potential philosophies that people choose from. I will simply say that there are worldly world views and biblical world views. I choose the biblical. I attempt to make everything fit into a biblical framework. I hope to operate according to the truth as I understand it from God’s Word. This is how I sometimes stumble into a dilemma of my own making. Some things are easy to sort: murder is wrong, so abortion is wrong; hate is wrong, so homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, and a host of other things are clearly not biblical. Materialism places things above God, so that is idolatry – very wrong. Those are some of the easy ones.

There are many that are not so easy. For the last many months, perhaps years, I have been troubled by my lack of emotion when I consider my love for Jesus. I desire to love Jesus, but I find it difficult. I “feel” I am not worthy to love Jesus. I find it difficult to imagine Jesus wanting my love. If a cockroach expressed love to me, what would it mean? If that sounds outrageous, remember that in God’s Word humans are likened to worms. I love what Jesus did for me culminating in His horrible death on the cross. I understand what that means for me intellectually, but I don’t usually “feel” love when I consider it.

Here then is my dilemma. I put “feel” in quotes because my biblical world view places feelings in my soul. My relationship with Jesus is primarily spiritual, at least in my present state. If I love Jesus only for what He did for me, that is transactional love – love based on an exchange. He did something wonderful for me, so I love Him for it. It’s a trade. There are no feelings involved on my part; that worries me. I sense that something is missing because I believe the Bible teaches that humans consist of body, soul, and spirit. If my love for Jesus is merely transactional, I fear it is not genuine love.

Karen and I were discussing this the other day and she helped me to see that the love the Bible speaks of, agape love, is given to us by the Holy Spirit. It is even called a fruit of the Spirit. Paul says that kind of love is poured out in our hearts by the Spirit. That being the case, biblically, I might have genuine love flowing out of my spirit to Jesus and not necessarily “feel love” in my soul.

While I am comfortable with that thought, I still think I am missing something. I wrote “More Than a Feeling” some time ago to correct myself for thinking that agape love wasn’t supposed to “feel” like love. The Bible is full of examples of God’s pure agape love for His people that are fraught with feeling. Agape may not be primarily a feeling, but in its richest form, it is not devoid of feeling.

I remember reading years ago about Mother Theresa in her final years. She admitted that she had lost the feeling that drove her earlier ministry. Still, she persisted in her calling to the end. John of the Cross speaks of the dark night of the soul when one might wonder if God has abandoned him. What did Jonah feel in the belly of the fish; what did Paul think as his ship was dashed upon the rocks; what did Jesus Himself think in the Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross when He cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” I am beginning to think that one of our deepest human frailties is the imperfect interface of soul and spirit within us. One day, after our resurrection to eternal life, they will be perfectly united; until that day, philosophers like me will question the legitimacy of our love.

You don’t have to go there with me. Karen, bless her soul, does not. She is perfectly happy with her experience of loving Jesus without questions. I envy her. Jesus said unless I become like a little child, I will never see the kingdom of heaven. I parsed that through my biblical philosophy and came up with the idea that simplicity is the hallmark of true faith. I have a tendency to complicate things that are really quite simple. That’s the philosopher in me. Perhaps it is just as Karen keeps telling me: I have to stop thinking so much.

However, through this process, I have come up with another word that plays into the concept of loving Jesus: devotion. I believe devotion leans into the side of agape love that requires an act of our human will. Jesus didn’t shy away from it when He declared, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” In the same way that my devotion to my marriage vows demands sacrificial obedience on my part, my devotion to Jesus requires obedience driven by love.

John MacArthur, in his commentary on Jesus’ dismissal of those who claimed to serve Him but were rejected, says, “Matthew 7:21–23 records the tragic results of spiritual delusion…. Jesus made a clear distinction between those who merely claim to be Christians and those who truly are. The difference is, true believers do the will of the Father from a pure heart. In the words of James, they are doers of the Word, not merely hearers who delude themselves.” If my motivation to follow a biblical world view (aka to obey Jesus) is from a pure heart, I think I am safe within the fold. I think I really do love Jesus.

Related Posts: On transactional love: To Love Mercy; More on delusion: Are You Qualified? Also Weak-day Christians

You’re It!

The topic of the election of the saints is prickly to some people. As I have written previously, my view has evolved over the years. (See Related Posts.) Having been raised in the Restoration Movement and having attended one of their Bible colleges, I began my journey with an Arminian view, which is to say that human will plays a substantial role in salvation. Years of Bible study and exposure to other views caused me to gravitate toward a more Calvinistic understanding of election which elevates God’s sovereignty. (See Calvinist or Arminian)

I think part of the reason for people’s resistance to placing God’s will over human will is our innate desire for independence. Even though Paul makes it clear that salvation is a gift of God’s grace, through faith with no work on our own, some of us insist on taking credit. If the elect of God were chosen before the foundation of the world as Scripture declares, it is hard for me to see how my will had much to do with it. In addition, I think many Christians have a lopsided view of what salvation is. Salvation is not about going to Heaven when you die; it is all about bringing Heaven to earth while you live here.

I like the way Carmen Joy Imes put it in her book, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. “Too often we think of ‘election’ as a matter of ‘being picked to be saved.’ But in Scripture, election is more like a game of blob tag, where if I’m ‘it,’ and I tag you, then we’re both it. We run around together and try to tag as many others as we can, who join hands with us and continue tagging others until everyone has been tagged. In this game, the essence of ‘it-ness’ is to tag others. So, too, the essence of election, and therefore the essence of the believer’s vocation, is to represent God by mediating his blessing to others. Once we are ‘it’ we don’t lean back in our recliners, glad that someone picked us. No, to be ‘it’ is to tag others. And to be elect – to be His – is to bear His name among the nations, to demonstrate by our lives that He is king and to mediate His blessing to others. That is the whole point of being the elect.”

I said earlier that I have adopted a somewhat Calvinist view of election to salvation. The hardline view speaks of irresistible grace – I cannot not be saved if I am elect by God. I temper that thought with this: as God’s chosen one, I must surrender to His choosing. Like the game analogy Imes uses, many of us were running from God when He “tagged” us. I would like to say that once I was tagged, I joined hands with Jesus and ran with Him consistently. I cannot say that. I run; I fall; I get up to run again. Falling is okay in this analogy. If I trip involuntarily, God is there to give me a hand up.

If I purposely let go and run off on my own, a different set of rules apply. Either I was never really tagged in the first place, and I pretended to join the game. Or, and here is where I depart from pure Calvinism, I was tagged, but something caused me to tire of the game, or something bothered me so much that I rejected the whole idea of the game and walked away of my own “free will.” I don’t see a way to read the admonitions of Paul or Hebrews chapters six and ten without accepting that as a possibility. In the either scenario, going back to Bible language, I must assume that I was not “elect” at all. God will never lose one of His own.

I think the reason it is so hard for us to wrap our minds around this concept is because our minds are finite; God’s mind is infinite. I put “free will” in quotes before because I believe in a totally sovereign God: He numbers my days; He knit me together in my mother’s womb; He knows the end from the beginning. I only know what my five natural senses can tell me plus whatever the Holy Spirit shows me supernaturally. When I get up in the morning (if God grants me another day), I must decide what to wear, where to go, what to do, and that feels like I am exercising my “free will.”

But the Scripture says my steps are “ordered” by God. God allows me to make choices, but everything I “decide” is already programmed into His will for my life. This is how I can harmonize the total free will of humans with the total sovereignty of God. Back to the subject of election. The elect are revealed by their actions. “By their fruits you shall know them,” Jesus once said. The New Testament writers could speak to “the elect” because their fruit was obvious. In his first epistle, John said that some people had appeared to be elect, but their actions ultimately proved that they were not.

This makes being elect a matter of ethics; we reveal our ethos through our behavior. In his book, How Should I Live in This World?, R.C. Sproul reminds us that “The purpose of divine commandments is redemption. The law of the Old Testament and of the New Testament is fundamentally person-oriented. To isolate this law from its basic concern for people is to fall into the abyss of legalism. Christian ethics is built on the obedience of people to a personal God.” The elect will embrace that ethos and willingly choose to obey its demands. Those who are not among the elect will chafe at having anyone tell them what to do. This is how you can know whether or not you’re it.

Related Posts: Election: God’s Choice; God’s Choice or Man’s; More about Calvinism: Understanding the TULIP Doctrine; On sovereignty: Disrespecting God’s Sovereignty

What’s the Power For?

Years ago, when I was first introduced to the idea that our prayers were meant to exert power over circumstances, someone cautioned that we weren’t to use the power indiscriminately. The example he gave was that we should refrain from using it to blow out the tires of the car that just rudely cut us off in traffic. Hah! I should hope not. Yet, some of the prayer requests I remember from that time are equally frivolous. I remember someone praying that her kitchen blender would be miraculously repaired so she wouldn’t have to buy a new one. Another reported laying hands on his car when it refused to start. I don’ t recall if that prayer worked or not.

Let me be clear: I do believe that God is intimately involved in our day-to-day lives. I also believe that He is able to accomplish miraculous things with inanimate objects. Jesus turned water to wine; he stopped the wind and calmed the raging seas. However, when Paul said that the same power that rose Jesus from the grave gives life to our mortal flesh, I think he had something more significant than blenders or automobiles in mind. The word Paul uses to ascribe life to our flesh is zoe (ζωή); its New Testament use is almost always with reference to the life that comes from God: spiritual life. Paul told the Ephesians when they were, “Dead in trespasses, [God] made [them] alive together with Christ.” Same word: zoe.

Jesus said that He had come to provide abundant life to His followers. It’s that word again. There are those who would twist His words to mean Jesus promised an abundance of material possessions. If that were the case, Jesus would not have used zoe. When a man asked Jesus to intervene to provide his material wealth, Jesus remarked, “Not even when someone has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” Zoe is not about physical life. Nor is the power we are given through Christ about physical reality, though there may be instances of crossover because spiritual life is of a higher order than physical life.

So, what is the power for? The old hymn “Power in the Blood” spells it out nicely. The wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb, according to the hymnist, is so we, “would be free from the burden of sin,” and “Over evil the victory win.” Those two verses summarize what the Christian life is all about. Christ’s atoning death on the Cross of Calvary removed our guilt, the burden of sin. We are freed from the penalty of sin because Jesus paid the price for us. That same sacrifice also allows us to triumph over evil. “God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.” “Greater is He that is in you.” “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” That reminds me of another great hymn: “Victory in Jesus.”

Another aspect of our victory over evil is the call to spread the good news of our victory to all the lost souls around us. “Send the light, the blessed gospel light; let it shine from shore to shore.” There was a good measure of sound biblical teaching in those old hymns! They also taught us that our condition would not always be restful. “Onward Christian Soldiers Marching as to War.” The enemy of our souls will do whatever he can to thwart our efforts to announce his defeat at the Cross. We are not at a picnic; we are at war. The power Jesus grants will come in handy when we face the enemy.

There is a more subtle aspect to the power we have through Jesus: our forgiveness rests on His work on our behalf. Although we have the power to overcome temptation, the Bible clearly teaches that we will still sin occasionally. It has always confused me that while Calvary provides forgiveness of all our sin, we are still told to ask for forgiveness. John MacArthur explains that there are two types of forgiveness: judicial and parental. God the judge grants us judicial forgiveness on the basis of our union with Christ. God the Father requires us to ask for forgiveness to restore the parent/child fellowship that is hindered by our sin.

We can see this played out in our human relationships. When my son sins against me, by disobedience for example, he does not cease to be my son. However, our relationship is damaged. By asking my forgiveness, our healthy parent/child bond is restored. If I sin against my wife by failing to honor her as I should, she does not stop being my wife, but I can say from personal experience, she will not be happy with me unless I ask for her forgiveness. The power to forgive is an important part of the image of God’s grace that followers of Christ are called to.

If you are having trouble seeing forgiveness as an aspect of the power we have in Christ, look at what Paul said to the Galatians. He said that the spirit and our flesh are at odds with one another. After contrasting the works of the flesh with the fruit of the spirit, he says, “Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh together with its feelings and its desires.” Our union with Christ in His death, symbolized in our baptism, gives us the power to “follow the Spirit” as Paul advises.

When you sing the contemporary chorus that says, “The same power that rose Jesus from the grave lives in us,” it refers to spiritual power. Far from being less welcome than physical power, it represents the ultimate power in the universe: God’s power. I said before that spiritual power is of a higher order than physical power. That is because our physical universe is a subset of the spiritual “universe.” God stepped down from Heaven to create the world as we know it. Another old song says, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” As such, He has the ultimate power to accomplish His will here on earth as the Lord’s Prayer seeks.

When Paul wrote repeatedly that we are to live, walk, follow the Spirit, he was inviting us to make use of the power that God provides. Rather than trying to blow out the tires of the guy who crosses you, use your power to calm your own heart and offer forgiveness to the guy who offended you. That’s what the power is for: making us more like Christ.

Related Posts: Powerful Meekness

Pray Like You Mean It

In my last post, I suggested a way to add richness to your prayer life. In this post, I want to share what I do to give as much meaning as possible to my prayers. I am not saying this is the best way for everyone, but it is one way to build a habit of prayer. Jesus told His disciples that they should always pray; Paul told his readers to pray constantly. I don’t think they meant that we should be saying prayers every waking hour but that an attitude of prayer should undergird all our activities. Whatever happens in our daily lives, we must be aware that God is in it, and we should respond accordingly.

Along with an attitude of constant prayer, I believe Christians should have set times of prayer every day if possible. For the person who claims to have no time for prayer, I must ask if their relationship with God is genuine. Can anyone honestly say they love another deeply but refuse to communicate with them when the means are readily available? If the daily schedule truly is full, I suggest setting the alarm a little earlier; God will reward the effort far beyond the loss of a few minutes of sleep.

I will admit that being retired allows me the privilege of spending considerably more time in prayer than I could while working. However, anyone who really wants to can carve out a bit of time to attempt something like I am going to suggest. I am going to draw from my book, A Life of Prayer, for these suggestions. I adapted them from the well-known acronym ACTS for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. I added an “I” for intercession. I follow the ACTSI pattern every day with the people and circumstances currently on my heart.

“A” is for adoration. I have expanded this to include several more “A” words. I begin my prayer time expressing my adoration for God because of all He has done for me. I acclaim Him as my Lord. I admire Him for His excellence. I often use Scripture passages such as 1 Chronicles 29:11-14 or Revelation 5:12-13 or others to recite the glory due to God. I then turn inward to accept God’s grace and mercy I so badly need; I affirm His authority over my life and my family; I align myself with His will for my life. I often pray Scripture that supports each of those actions. That’s a bunch of “A” words to ground my prayers in God’s Word and His will for me.

The “C” in ACTS is for confession. I begin by agreeing with Scripture that I am not worthy to receive all the wonderful things God has granted me. I confess that without the robe of Jesus’ righteousness upon me, I am a needy, fallen creature. I try to recall any faulty actions or inactions that occur to me and ask for forgiveness. I confess that without the Spirit’s help, I am powerless to live as I am supposed to as Christ’s brother. This is the essence of confession: we tell God what He already knows about us. This act has a cleansing effect for me.

What follows naturally from confession is the “T” for thanksgiving. I thank Jesus that He bore my sin – paid the penalty that I owed. I thank the Lord for His time on earth demonstrating how I am supposed to live. I thank the Father for being willing to send His Son. I thank God for giving us the Word so we can get to know Him and learn what He expects of us. I thank God for the innumerable blessings He has bestowed throughout my life: my wife, my children and grandchildren, our financial security, our health (relative though it may be), my opportunities to serve Him, the air I breathe, the beauty of the earth, and even the trials He sends because I know they are designed to help me grow up into Christ.

The “S” in ACTS is for supplication. As you might imagine, by this point in my morning prayers I have already spent a bit of time. I believe this is important because I need to have the right attitude before I ask God for anything. The “A” and the “C” and the “T” should have put me in my place relative to my Heavenly Father: His humble servant expecting nothing but reveling in His incredible grace. I try to follow the advice of Graham Cooke who said we should seek God’s will concerning our requests before we begin to pray for them.

This practice should be used before praying for someone’s healing, I ask God several questions before I begin to pray for healing. Is He calling the person home to be with Him; healing would postpone that wonderful reality. Has He allowed the sickness to bring about growth in the person or someone around him. If you are praying for a person’s deliverance from another type of trial, the same approach would be appropriate. If you are asking for a material blessing – a car, a new home, or anything physical – you should wait to hear from God whether it is something He wishes you to have. If you truly believe prayer is a dialogue, you can wait for God’s response before you pray for anything specific.

While you are waiting for clarity about a request, you can still pray “generic” prayers such as God’s blessing or the person’s openness to whatever God is doing or for peace within the circle of the person’s family and friends. It is possible to pray that God’s will be done even when we don’t know what it is. That is how we align ourselves with whatever God wants to do in the situation. This underscores the need to be listening as well as speaking during our prayer time.

 I once had a dear friend who had terminal cancer. Our whole church prayed fervently that God would miraculously heal him. He did not. In the midst of those prayers though, we saw our friend’s witness grow immeasurably as he testified to God’s grace in his life, and we turned our prayers into thanksgiving. That man undoubtedly affected more people in his last couple years than in all the time before that. We still miss him, but we marvel at the living lesson of God’s grace that he showed everyone he came in contact with because of the cancer he ultimately succumbed to.

I have added an “I” to ACTS to emphasize the intercessory nature of many prayers. It is a form of supplication, but it involves asking on behalf of someone else. When someone else is undergoing a serious trial, I can intercede on their behalf by asking God to strengthen them. When someone is seeking God’s will about a life circumstance, I can ask God to make His plan known. When someone is undertaking a vital ministry task, I can pray for God’s special anointing on their work. As my prayer life has grown over the years, I find myself asking less for myself while increasingly interceding for others. There is nothing wrong with asking God for personal blessings. However, as the Spirit grows agape-love in your heart, you will find you are more concerned with the welfare of others than of your own.

There is another type of intercession that my sister introduced me to years ago. I think it perfectly fulfills the command to pray continually. My sister told me she prayed what she called prayer bombs. For example, when she hears a siren, she immediately prays that the blood of Jesus would cover the situation whatever it may be. When she sees people arguing or being difficult in public, she prays God’s peace upon them. I took the idea to heart, and as one example, every time I drove past an abortion clinic on my way to school, I prayed that the women inside would change their mind and keep their baby. I admit I also prayed that the whole place would go out of business. (No, I did not pray for a real bomber to make that happen.)

There is one other type of prayer that I occasionally use: warfare prayer. The Apostle Paul often uses warfare imagery to describe our lives as believers. One of the clearest examples is in Ephesians: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil, because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” We are in a cosmic battle against God’s arch enemy. There are times when rather than praying for something, I feel led to pray against something. Sometimes I must pray against the enemy’s efforts in my own life. Other times, often lately, I feel compelled to pray against the powers of darkness at work in our society either specifically or generally. These prayers are a necessary part of our work on behalf of the Kingdom of God.

That is how I make prayer meaningful in my life. I have a prayer prompter in my computer version of the Faithlife/Logos Bible study program that presents my list of prayer concerns daily, weekly, or on a custom schedule. I pray for each of them as they come up and add whatever else God lays on my heart. I am not suggesting you copy my practice exactly. However, I can testify that being intentional in my prayers and being disciplined to do something every day has been a blessing to me, and I trust that many others have also been blessed because I prayed. Whether you have only a few minutes each day or you have hours to give to prayer, doing so will make your life better, and the kingdom of God will advance if you pray like you mean it.

Related Posts: A Prayer Primer; In Jesus’ Name; Moving Mountains

Tri-Power God

I recently wrote an article mentioning that some people don’t believe in the three-fold nature of God. They correctly point out that the word “trinity” is not in the Bible. What they seem to ignore is the repeated mention either by name or by appearance of three entities represented also God. I asked in that article if refusing to believe in the trinity was sufficient cause to exclude one from God’s saving grace. I’m not sure, but I do know that there are some basic facts that must be accepted for salvation. (See How Wrong Can You Be )

I also know that denying what the Bible clearly describes as the three-fold nature of God hinders one’s ability to experience the fullness of the godhead. Understanding that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit provides three distinct avenues of access to the one God. We see glimpses of multiple approaches in the Old Testament. The Yahweh God of Israel declared Himself to be one; at the same time, He gave or withheld His Spirit at various times. There are also mentions of the Angel of the Yahweh which in context can be seen to be God Himself. The Psalms and the prophets often speak of the coming of a Servant or a Son who would have the attributes of God as well.

In the New Testament, the distinctiveness of each presentation of God becomes more easily understood. For example, Jesus, the self-declared Son of God, prayed often to His Father. He directed His disciples to ask nothing more of Him after He left, but they were to ask the Father in His name. James encourages asking for wisdom from God and a few verses later identifies “the Father of lights” as the one who gives “every good and every perfect gift.” In his epistles, Paul uses the phrase “God and Father” a dozen times; James, Peter, and John use the same phrase once each. If you search for “God and Father” in the New Testament, you will find numerous ways to bless and be blessed by your heavenly Father.

None of that is to say that you cannot pray to Jesus. When you remember all that He did as the Incarnate Son of God, you will find many things to say to Him. First and foremost is naturally to thank Him for His unbelievable willingness to go to the Cross to bear your sins. The shame and pain He endured was for the joy set before Him; that joy was knowing that the curse of Adam’s sin had been removed – the curse that you bore as Adam’s descendant. As if that isn’t enough, think of all the things He demonstrated by living a human life perfectly pleasing to God. As Paul says, we have a model to imitate to please God as Jesus did. Finally, you cannot forget the teachings recorded in God’s Word, without which we would have little guidance on the path of righteousness. Those things and more should lead you to speak to Jesus Himself with awe and thankfulness.

What I am about to suggest may sound foreign to some, but I believe it is part of experiencing the fullness of God: we should also pray to the Holy Spirit. First, He is a being with personhood – a person with mind, emotions, and a will. Most anti-trinitarians deny this aspect of the Holy Spirit; they consider the Spirit to be an “it,” a power or force. I will grant them that in the Greek of the New Testament the pronoun used for “Spirit” is neuter in gender. However, a deeper knowledge of the language reveals that pronouns must agree in gender and number with their antecedent. Because “spirit” is neuter, the pronoun referring to spirit must also be neuter.

But gender is only a linguistic matter; it has nothing to do with the reality the word represents. The truth is that the Holy Spirit is neither masculine nor feminine. Shockingly, neither is God the Father. We attach masculine attributes to “Father” because in our human mind, a father must be male. In truth, that is just another way that our infinite Yahweh God bows down to our level so that we might get a peek at who He is. (See God Made Small) In eternity prior to His incarnation, the Son was not masculine either, in my opinion. However, He now exists in eternity future as the exalted, glorified human Son. Whether He will appear masculine is unclear. His disciples certainly recognized the man they spent three years with when He returned after His resurrection. I don’t know if that will be the case when we join Him in Glory.

I hope I made the point that the Holy Spirit is a person. As such, we can speak to Him as we would speak to any other person. And we should have much to say. Jesus promised that the Spirit would guide us into truth; thank you, Spirit. Paul asserts that the Spirit grants us the fruit necessary to live a godly life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Thank you, Spirit. Paul also says several times that as Christians, we are all given supernatural gifts to do the work God requires of us in the body of Christ. Thank you, Spirit. We are told that the Holy Spirit confirms to our spirit that we are God’s children. Thank you, Spirit. The Holy Spirit in us is the down payment on our eventual glorification. Thank you, Spirit.

Because it is impossible to please God apart from the Holy Spirit’s presence in us, and because we are told time and again to walk in the spirit, pray in the spirit, be led by the Spirit, be filled with the Spirit, and more, asking the Spirit directly to help us is a legitimate request. I don’t mean to suggest that if we ask the Father for help from His Spirit or thank God for Jesus it won’t be accepted. I imagine you can pray a “generic” prayer, and Heaven will direct it to the correct person. What I am saying is that your prayer life can be enriched by a fuller understanding of to Whom you are praying. Our God is infinitely powerful to answer any prayer offered within His will. For me, imagining the tri-power of God adds another dimension to my prayers. Why not tri it?

 

Fear God Much?

The fear of God is absent from modern society for the most part. The reason is obvious: many people today are either atheistic or agnostic about the existence of a supreme being. The atheist denies God’s existence; the agnostic often imagines a god who is nothing like the one true God of the Bible. Either way, there is nothing to fear. Although Christians are frequently told that biblical fear of God is just another word for respect, one cannot ignore the element of shaking-in-your-boots fear that is revealed from cover to cover in the Word.

I am not aware of any Bible passage that records a face-to-face encounter with God or His holy ones that did not involve falling down or trying to run away in fear. True, Moses had a unique relationship with Yahweh; he spoke directly with God, and at one point was allowed to get a glimpse of God’s glory as He passed by. However, the Israelites displayed a more normal reaction to God’s presence. When God offered to speak directly to them, they begged Moses to run interference and spare them the frightening prospect. Admittedly, a smoking, flaming mountain would be a fearsome sight. It is no wonder that they begged for an intermediary.

I believe Moses understood the good things Yahweh had in store for His people. Delivering them from slavery in Egypt was certainly a good omen. Even the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai was intended for good. In her book, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, Carmen Joy Imes suggests that the Ten Words, as she correctly translates “Ten Commandments”, were intended to describe a correct relationship with God and with one another. They were the outline for living a good life under a good God.

 Imes remarks, “It seems contradictory to say that Yahweh is both good and dangerous. Yet both are facets of his character. Because he is loving, he cannot tolerate wickedness…. When we approach God humbly, repentant for our sin, he is gracious to forgive us. But if we enter his presence unaware of our sin or in a state of rebellion, his holiness demands purification.” (Carmen Joy Imes, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2019, p. 69.) As we see repeatedly in the Old Testament record of Israel’s failures, God’s “purification” can be fearsome indeed!

I wonder if we are missing something when we gloss over the dangerous side of Yahweh God. It is so much more comforting to focus on His love which moved Him to send His One-and-only Son to die on our behalf. Some popular preachers (ie. Rob Bell) go so far as to deny that God still has a dangerous side. They cannot fathom a loving God who is also a holy God who demands that unrighteousness be punished. That is a tough sell when you realize that the concept of God’s wrath is mentioned as many as forty-five times in the New Testament. Honestly, if God does not judge sin, our love and obedience lose most of their meaning. If the wicked get the same treatment as the righteous, what’s the point?

But the wrath of God is real. It has to be if we are going to see Him as the Bible pictures Him. Paul certainly saw Him that way: “The wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness,” he wrote to the Romans. Peter thought so too as he wrote: “The present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people.” Think of all the parables of Jesus that warned of the return of a king in judgment. The King is coming back, and it won’t be happy days for everyone.

So, where should we be, those of us who have trusted Christ, on the subject of fearing God. Fearing God, I would say. I don’t mean to say we preach Jonathon Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” every Sunday, but it wouldn’t hurt to ring that bell once in a while. My own testimony is one of fearing my eternal destiny if I did not follow Christ in believer’s baptism, proclaiming Him as my Lord and Savior. What is the point of trusting Christ if there is no downside to ignoring His grace? Fear of God is a legitimate motivational message.

But we don’t preach fear alone. As Imes said, there is goodness inherent in the dangerous God we worship. It is by His grace we are saved without question. However, we risk danger if we ignore the fact that true faith, saving faith must include repentance and obedience. Those who pluck “believe and be saved” out of the larger biblical context preach a truncated gospel. All we really need is to hear Jesus’ word, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Paul certainly heard that with his repeated calls for righteous living, not for our salvation, but for the working out of our salvation.

I must admit it was several years before I understood that the Jesus who saved me was seriously interested in my obedience to His Word. Some might ask if you can claim Jesus as Savior if you don’t recognize Him as Lord. I’m not sure. I am pretty sure I came up out of the water as a new creature; it just took a while for eleven-year-old me to realize what that creature was supposed to become. Once I grasped it, I never let go. I’m not saying I’m perfect – no way! I’m saying I’m being perfected: “The one began a good work in [me] will finish it.” For many years, I was that “living sacrifice” who kept crawling off the altar. It took some time for me to learn that God would have me only one way: humble and obedient.

Imes got it right in my opinion. We don’t need to fear God unless we are living in sin and rebellion. The Word is clear: “If we keep on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that is about to consume the adversaries.” The Hebrew writer closes the argument with this: “For you have need of endurance, in order that after you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.” Only those who persevere to the end will be saved. It is as Eugene Peterson said: the Christian walk is “a long obedience in the same direction.” Follow that advice, and you need not fear God.

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; Merely Christian; Who’s Your Daddy?

Be Careful How You Pray

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto thee. (Matthew 6:33)

In my last post, I drew from this well-known verse from the Sermon on the Mount saying that we must seek God above all else. My devotional reading by A. W. Tozer this morning has this cautionary note: “Whoever seeks other objects and not God is on his own; he may obtain those objects if he is able, but he will never have God…. The first and greatest commandment is to love God with every power of our entire being. Where love like that exists, there can be no place for a second object.” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings,Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015, 335.)

I might have titled this piece “Be Careful How You Preach.” There is a strain of evangelical Christianity sometimes called the prosperity gospel. These people preach that if you have enough faith or the right kind of faith you can receive all the things you pray for. I see a couple things wrong with this. First, it puts too much emphasis on material things. The kingdom of heaven is not about getting material possessions; it is about getting God (Luke 12:15). Second, this attitude focusses so much on faith that it becomes a matter of having faith in “faith.” Biblical faith always has an object: God Himself not what He can provide.

I have always thought this attitude is a bit presumptuous, treating God like a celestial vending machine. As Tozer says, “[God] will not aid men in their selfish striving after personal gain. He will not help men to attain ends which, when attained, usurp the place He by every right should hold in their interest and affection.” The message of Matthew 6:33 is that the material things we might pray for, at least the necessities, are the promised result of seeking God first. The true prosperity as taught in the gospel is that we are freed from our sins (like materialism) and adopted by God.

I titled this peace as I did because it occurred to me when I read Tozer that the error of the prosperity gospel can slip into my prayers if I am not careful. Many years ago, Jesus’ statement in Mark 11:24 was brought to my attention. In the King James it says, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them..” At the time, this was presented to me in the context of the prosperity gospel. It sounds pretty simple: pray for something and you will receive it as long as you believe. I struggled with that for years, especially when my prayers did not yield the desired result.

At some point in my study, I discovered that the KJV doesn’t properly translate the verb “receive.” A more accurate reading is, “Whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be done for you.” In the Greek text, the verb “receive” is in the aorist tense which should be translated as an action completed in the past. In other words, you must be so confident in your request that it is a done deal in your mind. I am reminded of Jesus telling His disciples that, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” A more accurate translation is, “Whatever you have bound (aorist tense) on earth will have been bound (perfect passive tense) in heaven.” This means the action of the disciple has already been accomplished in heaven. The disciple is simply bringing God’s will in heaven to earth. That sounds familiar: “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

That attitude implies an intimate knowledge of God’s will. I can always pray with confidence when I know I am asking God to accomplish His will on earth. I am reminded of what Graham Cooke said in Crafted Prayer; we often pray right out of the gate for something without first seeking to know God’s will in the situation. My wife, Karen, and I had a harsh lesson on this recently. She was struck suddenly with intense pain from sciatica. Naturally, we began to pray for relief; it didn’t come until the Spirit reminded me of this verse in Hebrews: “Now all discipline seems for the moment not to be joyful but painful, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those who are trained by it.”

I asked Karen what righteous fruit God might be wanting to grow in us. After prayerful consideration she realized that she was not fully trusting God to handle our present situation. She confessed her failure, leaned completely on God, and the pain relented. We also learned about a treatment for sciatica from our daughter, and Karen had her doctor prescribe it for her. We are thanking God for both the natural and supernatural healing He has brought. I wonder if we had thought about the principle from Hebrews earlier if Karen would not have had to suffer for twenty-one days.

I believe the key to effective prayer is very subtle. It is no surprise that our perfect example is found in Jesus’ prayer in the garden the night before He was to face incredible pain and disgrace: “Not my will but yours be done,” He said to His Father. He had prayed previously that the Father might find an alternative to His suffering, but He ultimately left the situation in God’s hands. We also have Job’s response to the test he endured: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” It is not wrong to pray for things; Jesus gives us license to pray for anything “in [His] name.” That is the same as saying “in the Father’s will.” The key is whether our prayer is for the thing or the Father’s will regarding the thing.

Prayers of solicitation and intercession are a wonderful privilege we have as followers of Jesus. While I believe God hears all our prayers, He is not obligated to answer any that fall outside of His sovereign will. If we are uncertain about God’s will in a situation, we have the blessed promise Paul records in Romans: “The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.” I believe this is part of what it means to “pray in the Spirit.” We may come to a point where all we can say echoes Ezekiel: “O Lord God, Thou knowest.” This is not an abandonment of our privilege to pray; it is the surrender of our will to God’s will in prayer. Truthfully, there is no more careful, effective way to pray.

 Related Posts: The Problem of Unanswered Prayer; In Jesus’ Name; A Prayer Primer

How Can We Bless God?

The concept of blessing is not a common one among modern people. Some phrases are used without a true understanding of what they should mean. “Bless my soul” as an expression of surprise. “Bless this food…” is a trite ritual at the dinner table. “Bless your heart” in the South is often meant sarcastically with the real meaning anything but blessing. Posters in curio shops often say, “Bless this house.” Christians ought to be very familiar with the concept of blessing since it is scattered throughout the Scripture, but I don’t think they are.

We sing, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name.” I wonder how many who sing that understand what it means. We understand the flip side of the coin: our being blessed by God. “Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” We may not fully understand the “heavenly places” reference (more on that later), but everyone knows what it means to say God blesses us. God gives His children good things from the simplest blue sky and sunshine to the greatest gift of all: our eternal salvation.

With our eternal destiny secure, the physical blessings God showers on us are the frosting on the cake. John MacArthur points out, “[God] has blessed us already with every spiritual blessing. Our resources in Christ are not simply promised to us; they are actually in our possession…. The believer’s need, therefore, is not to receive something more but to do something more with what he has.”  (John MacArthur, First Love, MacArthur Study Series, Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996, 33–34.) I believe a large part of that “something more” we need to do is to bless God.

The idea of the children blessing the Father God is foreign to many, so we need to discover what it means to bless. The Greek word for “bless” literally means to speak well of someone which develops into doing well for someone – blessing them. Paul told the Ephesians that God blessed us with spiritual blessings, “to the praise of the glory of His grace.” The word “praise” means fame or worthiness; “glory” means esteem or reputation. So, follow me: God blessed us to make the reputation of His grace famous. Ultimately, the blessing of God is intended to lead and empower us to return blessing to Him.

So, we are back to the question of how we can bless or glorify God. MacArthur says, “Because God has given us all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, we have an unlimited supply of divine resources. Be sure to use them to make your life fulfilling, to minister with the greatest amount of power, and fulfill the purpose of the church that Jesus purchased with His precious blood.” (John MacArthur, First Love, MacArthur Study Series, Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996, 40.) Speaking of spiritual gifts, Paul told both the Ephesians and the Corinthians that their gifts were intended to benefit the Body of Christ. This explains in part why our blessing is “in the heavenlies,” as Paul said. In the New Testament, the heavenlies or heavenly places refers to the spirit realm. Christ’s body, the church, is a spiritual reality with an earthly manifestation. Our spiritual gifts benefit the spiritual Body of Christ, and naturally that has physical ramifications.

In my life, for example, God called and gifted me as a teacher. I spent many years teaching in Christian schools as an expression of my blessing the Body of Christ. After I retired from teaching, I dove deeper into my writing ministry to continue the use of my teaching gift. This blog is one way I do that. One of my early writing projects was the novel, Wings of Mentridar. In it I imagined the difficulties Noah faced while building the ark, and I added my own fantasies of how God’s holy angels might have helped him. My goal was to “bless God” by helping people realize that the characters in the Old Testament were real people with real problems whom God cared for. I also wanted to suggest a way the angels might have helped Noah as the Scripture says they do for us.

Each believer has a unique set of gifts from God, and how they use them is a matter of personal prayer and determination. Sadly, there are many people who call themselves Christians who haven’t discovered their spiritual gift. What a shame it is to think that God has blessed people, yet they have done nothing to use that blessing for its intended purpose.

In “Many Called; Few Chosen” I used the analogy of a mailed invitation to the wedding feast God has planned for Jesus and His Bride, the church. The analogy fits here too. Imagine God mailed every believer a gift. “The person who doesn’t care what God wants might visit the mailbox, but he won’t open the envelope; he will toss it in the trash unopened like so many credit card offers and sale fliers. Some people will open and [see the gift], but decide they are too busy with their own lives to bother with a [gift they don’t need]. But some sensitive souls will feel a tug on their heart when they see the [gift]; they think [using it for God’s purpose] sounds like a great idea.”

Paul challenged the Corinthians to do everything to the glory of God. Certainly, making proper use of God’s gifts to us will bring God glory.  Again, glory refers to declaring the esteem or reputation of someone. So, our every action should elevate the reputation of God before all people – we should make God look good to the world. And by blessing the church, we do that as well, because the church is Christ’s body made visible to the world. That is how we bless God.

Related Posts: What’s Your Ministry