Letting Go

If I was to say in my wife’s presence that I have trouble letting go, she would tell you that is a huge understatement. I don’t mean to say that I am a control freak; I’m saying I have trouble letting God be God and take what comes from His hand without stressing out or complaining. Our current life situation has made me think about this again as things have not gone as we had planned for the summer. (That too is an understatement.) Then my Bible reading program led me to Psalm 131 this morning:

¹ O Yahweh, my heart is not haughty nor my eyes arrogant.

And I do not concern myself with things too great and difficult for me.

² Rather I have soothed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother,

like the weaned child is my soul with me.

 

I cannot honestly repeat the first couple lines as my own, especially the part about not concerning myself with things. I am often concerned with way too many things. And my inability to speak the second verse honestly is what really struck me this morning. Rather than soothing my soul lately, I have been obsessing over things I cannot change. David’s analogy hit me: “Like a weaned child is my soul within me.” The Faithlife Study Bible says of this verse: “The psalmist uses a description that describes increasing maturity; the child no longer needs the mother’s milk and shows maturity in its ability to wait.” The ability to wait is what escapes me. It is humbling to realize that at my age I still lack maturity.

For several months my daily prayer has been from Colossians 3:12: “Lord help me to be compassionate and humble and to be kind, gentle and patient with others.” I think what I need most right now is to be patient with myself. That weaned child maturity that I am lacking should cause me to rest in God’s care: let go and let God. I certainly have reason to trust Him. A couple other Psalms from today’s reading reminded me of this. “And to me, how precious are your thoughts, O God; how vast is their sum.” (139:17) And another: “The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness.” (145:17) The word “kindness” is often translated mercy or love; it is the Hebrew word that signifies God’s covenant love for His people. His precious, loving thoughts for me should cause me to relax, or as another psalm says, “Be still and know that I am God.” (46:10)

The fact that I cannot seem to be still reveals my subconscious belief that God is not “righteous in everything He does.” To be righteous means to do the right thing. Surely, I am not doubting that what God does is always the right thing. Or am I? Some time ago I wrote that the often-quoted phrase in Romans 8:28, “all things work together for good,” does not mean everything that happens to me will seem good at the time. The good to which the verse refers to is God’s good plan for His creation which includes me as a tiny part of the larger whole. The Bible is full of examples of not-good things happening to people that ultimately had good results. Joseph a slave in Egypt, David hiding in a cave, Paul imprisoned in Rome, these things were not happy times for the participants, but they resulted in the accomplishment of God’s good plan.

In Psalm 139, David invites God to search his heart to see, “if there be any hurtful way in me.” (139:24 NASV) In my case, I am hurting myself needlessly by failing to trust God’s goodness to me. I know I am not alone in this kind of thinking. David said, “For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground. He has made me dwell in dark places like those long dead. And so, my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is desolate.” (143:3-4) He may have been thinking about King Saul’s pursuit, but I’m quite sure that David knew the real enemy was not Saul but Satan. Notice it was his spirit and heart that was affected. Yet somehow David managed to overcome the enemy’s pursuit of his soul.

Peter reminds us that the enemy of our souls prowls around looking for someone to devour. (1Pet. 5:8) Jesus said the evil one comes to kill, steal, and destroy. (Jn. 10:10) In my case he is killing my joy, stealing my peace, and destroying my faith in God’s goodness. I need to find that place that David found when he wrote, “Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; For I trust in You; Teach me the way in which I should walk; For to You I lift up my soul. Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; I take refuge in You.” (143:7-9) As James said: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (4:7) I need to resist and take refuge. I need to let go. Can you feel me?

David Stayed in Jerusalem

This may be one of the saddest verses in the Bible. Instead of doing what kings are supposed to do in the spring – go to war with his troops – David stayed behind. He must have had a good reason to remain in Jerusalem, especially since the battle was against the Ammonites who had rejected David’s peace envoy. It would seem that he could have had a personal stake in the outcome of the battle. There may have been other royal duties that caused him to stay home, but one thing is sure: he found something to do that ruined his life.

Because David wasn’t out avenging his shamed emissaries, he had occasion to be on his rooftop one night when his neighbor’s wife, Bathsheba, was bathing on her roof. This is when the second saddest verse comes to play: “He saw a woman bathing.” Actually, it wasn’t what he saw that got him in trouble; it was what followed his look: lust. James puts it like this: “Each one is tempted when he is dragged away and enticed by his own desires. Then desire, after it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is brought to completion, gives birth to death.”

If you know the story, you remember that literal death soon followed as David arranged for the murder of Bathsheba’s husband when the king’s attempt to cover her pregnancy with a conjugal visit by her husband failed. A few months later, the child of the illicit affair died. More death visited David’s family when his second-born, Amnon committed incest with his half-sister and her brother Absolom had him killed. Several years later, Absolom was tragically killed during his attempt to usurp his father’s throne. This was all predicted by the prophet, Nathan, after he confronted David with his adultery. The Lord said, “Because you have despised me and taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife, …I am going to raise up evil against you from within your own house.”

There is an important lesson to be learned by watching what happens after Nathan confronts David. Two things are worth noting. First, David immediately admitted that he had sinned, and he begged for forgiveness from God. Read Psalm 51; David penned the psalm in the aftermath of his affair. He expresses repentance and contrition, and he asks God to purify him – maybe to help him handle his lustful thoughts. David’s attitude is exactly what God requires when we sin. The word confess means to agree with God concerning our sinfulness; David did that, “Against Thee only have I sinned.” Uriah might have felt differently had he lived, but David was correct in placing the focus on his relationship with God.

The second thing that happened, or perhaps I should say didn’t happen, is that God’s promise to David concerning his royal dynasty was not revoked. Our human sense of justice might cause us to expect that God would have punished David by passing the throne to someone else. That is what He did with King Saul, because he failed to do what David did: Saul did not repent; he pretended righteousness with Samuel and made excuses for his indiscretion. His attitude cost him the throne. God’s covenant with David was secure though, and we now understand why. God planned to bring salvation to the whole earth through the ultimate Son of David, Jesus Christ.

It should give us comfort to know that God doesn’t remove His grace when we sin. Quite the opposite: His grace covers our sin – even sin as grievous as David’s adultery and murder. This is not to say God doesn’t care how we act. He certainly does. What it says is that our salvation is not based on what we do; it’s based on Who we know. Know Jesus; know peace. No Jesus; no peace. Seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness sets us in good standing with the Giver of all good and perfect gifts. But as we see with David, it doesn’t relieve us of the consequences of our bad behavior.

There is a side issue that I think is worth mentioning. David fell prey to an almost universal weakness of human flesh: lust of the eyes. This is particularly damaging when it involves sexual attraction. Because marriage and its sexual component is elemental to God’s plan for humankind, the enemy loves to play on our weakness. (I have written about this previously.) We can fall into the same trap David did if we stay home in front of the TV or computer instead of going out to do whatever it is God would have us do. We may slip into a bad place if we linger longer than we should in that glance at the attractive person at the next table. Modern society has abandoned many of the conventions that used to help guard against temptation.

We need to listen to the Proverb and keep our hearts with all vigilance and look straight forward with our eyes. As Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore, if your eye is sincere, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark. Therefore, if the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” The word Jesus used, sincere, means simple, single, or clear. Looking as David did when he stayed in Jerusalem was anything but “simple.” His life became complicated in the most painful way. Let me rephrase the KISS principle: Keep it simple, servant.

 

Related posts: Christian Cleavage; Women’s Attire Again; What About Men’s Attire; How to Watch TV Part 4; Creating Chaos

Can You Praise God?

We all know someone who is likely to say, “Praise God!” when something good happens. For some it may be a meaningless expression, but for many it is a genuine attribution of praise because they know Who is responsible for all good things. If our minds are set on things above as they should be, thanking and praising the One who rules things above and things below is the correct response. Praise should be our default reaction to the many good things that God provides.

But do we praise God when bad things happen? Here is the true test of where our worldview is rooted. A perfect example is found in the response of Job when his wife and friends recommended that he curse God for what was happening. He wondered why he should accept good from God and not bad. He went so far as to say, “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.” Job’s speeches prove that he did not understand why his circumstances were so dreadful, but he refused to abandon his trust in God.

David provides another prime example of praising God in the hard times. After God rejected King Saul for his disobedience, David was anointed king. But it was 15 years before Saul was deposed and David declared king. During the interim, Saul repeatedly tried to kill David, forcing him to run for his life and hide in caves and foreign countries. David had every reason to doubt God at that point, but he did not. Read his Psalms. Many were written between his anointing and his coronation. Yes, he complained and railed against the unfairness of his circumstances, but without fail, David’s closing remarks give praise to God for His enduring faithfulness. In the bad times!

We have no better example of a New Testament saint serving God with all his might than the Apostle Paul. What were Paul’s circumstances after he began his mission as the apostle to the Gentiles? Not always that good. He gives the Corinthians a list of his troublesome experiences: shipwrecked, flogged, stoned to death (nearly), chased by wild beasts (and humans too) and more. How did Paul respond? He told the Philippians that he had learned to be content in whatever circumstances befell him. The Thessalonians were encouraged to follow his example and, “Give thanks in all circumstances.”

In the midst of the COVID outbreak, many Christians had reason to doubt God’s goodness. Many lost elderly family members or dear friends, sickness struck otherwise healthy individuals often with lasting consequences. Businesses that had been in the family for generations were shuttered never to reopen throwing families into financial ruin. The restrictions against public gatherings including church meetings were a source of serious consternation. Did you hear anyone say, “Praise God for COVID? As I wrote in “Finding God in COVID 19,” our human sense of fairness often conflicts with God’s sense of justice. The Psalmist reminds us that God executes His justice perfectly. Like it or not, that is reason to praise Him.

Another of our human weaknesses is to rely too heavily on our feelings. We don’t always “feel like” praising God. Bound as we are to our human frailty, we tend to base our feelings on our circumstances. As I have written previously, happenings produce happiness; faith produces joy as a fruit of the Spirit. The two are not the same despite what some people teach. This being said, faith should lead us to praise God whether we feel like it or not. If we believe that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him, we don’t need to feel good to praise God for His goodness.

I think what we really need is to believe God is present in our circumstances. We have to remember that He promised to be with us in the flood and through the fire. I once wrote, “I need to believe God is present whether I feel something or don’t. If I rely on my feelings, I am falling prey to a soulish religion that lacks the power to save anyone. My faith can lead to feelings; it is wonderful when it does.” But we cannot rely on our feelings to experience the presence of God. Scripture says we are one with Christ. That is not a feeling; it is a fact. That is something we can praise God for no matter what.

Related posts: Happiness and Joy; Working All Things for Good; The Presence of God; The Goodness of God in the Bad Times;

The Flight to Endor

I realize my title sounds like a scene from Star Wars. My readers who know their Old Testament well might recognize something else in the name. I will get to Star Wars eventually, but my inspiration for this piece is from the book of 1 Samuel. Samuel was the last in the line of judges who ruled Israel until God gave in to their whining and granted their wish for a king like everyone else. God advised Samuel not to take it personally because they had rejected Him not Samuel.

Enter Saul, Israel’s first human king. And my oh my, was he ever human. From his first appearance, or rather non-appearance, he proved to be anything but regal and certainly not godly. He hid from the crowd when Samuel came to anoint him, and his weakness and insecurity only became more evident as he took on the role of Israel’s king. The pivotal point in his short reign came when he became frightened while waiting for Samuel to bless his military efforts against the Philistines. Afraid his troops would abandon him before Samuel’s appointed arrival, Saul assumed Samuel’s priestly role and offered an illegitimate sacrifice. Before the ritual smoke cleared, Samuel arrived and rebuked Saul for his indiscretion. Because he disobeyed God and tried to write his own rules, the throne was taken from him and his descendants.

You might think Saul would have been chastened by his punishment, but he repeated his blunder almost immediately by disobeying God’s command to utterly destroy the Amalekites. Whether through greed or simple stupidity, Saul decided to keep some of the plunder from the defeated people, and he brought their king back to his camp alive. Again, Samuel arrives too late to stop Saul’s foolishness and confronts him. Saul tries to paint his disobedience as righteousness, pretending he was saving the spoils to offer them to God. Samuel is not fooled and delivers an even more devastating prediction of Saul’s demise.

At this point in the narrative, God instructs Samuel to anoint a replacement for Saul, none other than David, the shepherd-poet son of Jesse. The ceremony of anointing with oil by God’s prophet is intended to represent the spiritual anointing of the king by God. Saul had that anointing briefly, but at this point it was transferred to David. Saul on the other hand, in one of the most curious turns in the Old Testament, was visited by an evil spirit from God as a consequence of his disobedience. The rest of Saul’s reign is characterized by fits of rage and constant attempts to murder David. By contrast, David spends the next few years following God’s leading and respecting the chosen king, Saul, even though he is trying to kill him.

Now we come to Endor the city, not a planet in a galaxy far, far away. After Samuel died, Saul was desperate to know God’s will. He again broke a command of God and sought help from a medium, the witch of Endor. Things become curiouser and curiouser when Samuel actually does return from the grave to speak to Saul. The prophet’s message is not a happy one: “The Lord has done accordingly as He spoke through me; for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David As you did not obey the Lord and did not execute His fierce wrath on Amalek, so the Lord has done this thing to you this day.”

This begins my Star Wars comparison. Saul lost his connection with the true Force, God, and sought help from the dark side. George Lucas was wrong to portray dark and light as equally powerful, but he was correct in his depiction of a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil. Ever since Adam relinquished his regency of Earth to the Devil, humans have been caught in the crossfire of the heavenly battle. David astutely recognized who is the supreme force in the cosmic war, and he pledged his allegiance to God. Saul through his disobedience chose the other side.

We are given the same choice today and every day. Our options are both simple and difficult: simple because the only thing required of us is obedience; difficult because our human nature still rebels against the rule of God in our lives. If I were to translate Obi Wan’s advice it would be, “Use the Spirit, Luke.” The New Testament repeatedly tells us to walk in the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, pray in the Spirit, sing in the Spirit. Paul told the Ephesians that our real battle is in the spirit realm. The alternative to living in the Spirit is to live in the flesh, which doesn’t sound as ominous as Darth Vader or the Sith Lord, but the consequences of choosing the dark side are hellish – literally. The Apostle Paul warned the Romans that living in the flesh brings death and makes God our enemy. Living in the Spirit brings peace and avails us of the very power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Saul’s flight to Endor is repeated regularly by Christians who seek worldly wisdom instead of the wisdom that comes from above. James goes so far as to call worldly wisdom demonic. Pair that with Peter’s depiction of the Devil as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour and you have your Darth Vader. If we don’t set our minds on things above as Paul directed, we leave ourselves open for the enemy’s attack. Yoda was right to tell Luke that the Force is all around us; he was also right to tell him to choose wisely. Believers have an advantage Luke didn’t: the true Force, the Spirit of God lives in us. Turn from the dark world and access the force within you, then victory is assured. I know that is true – I’ve read the end of the Book: we win.

 

Related posts: Judge me by my size, do you?; Look in the Mirror; Friendship With the World

Happy Birthday to Me

On April 21, 1963, I met Jesus in the waters of baptism. Let me Clair-ify that. The church tradition I was raised in taught that a person did not get regenerated (aka saved) until the Holy Spirit did the job during the act of immersion into Christ. They did not teach that the water saved but that the water of baptism was the vehicle through which the Spirit saved. So, in my former way of thinking, I was saved when I got baptized.

I have since come to the realization that the Spirit does not always wait for a believer to “get wet” to perform the regeneration. The Bible makes it clear to me that repentance and confession causing one to place faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice is sufficient unto salvation. In other words, I now believe that baptism is something that takes place after one has made a profession of faith. Baptism is an important, perhaps I would say necessary step of obedience, but I don’t believe failure to be baptized would keep a person from being saved. However, if someone refuses baptism after being told it is an important step of obedience, I would have to ask if that person has truly given his or her life to Christ. Why would one not obey a clear command of Scripture?

That said, I cannot give an exact date for when I became a Christian. I now believe that at some point prior to April 21, 1963, I understood my need for redemption and made a childlike submission to Christ. I know this because when I went forward on that fateful Sunday to be baptized, I already knew that Jesus was my Savior. The other thing that leads me to believe I had already been regenerated is that fact that I wanted to complete the steps my parents believed were required for salvation. I remember thinking that if I did not get baptized, I would not be following their prescription for salvation; I did not want to miss out on seeing them in Heaven one day. According to Paul, none of this would have been true for me had I not already been regenerated.

So, as I approach my sixtieth re-birthday, I am reminiscing about my life in Christ so far. I will say that I did not experience a dramatic conversion the way some people do. I was never a really bad boy, although I had my naughty moments. The worst thing I remember about my behavior is that I was a kleptomaniac. I realize that came from the sin of materialism (wanting, wanting, wanting things). I still battle materialism to a degree, although I haven’t stolen anything in decades. It wasn’t so much my coming to Christ that cured me as it was my father’s belt and my knowing I had failed him when he learned I had stolen from a classmate at school. My father’s words, “This hurts me more than it will hurt you,” made a life-long impression on me.

About ten years after I made a public profession of Jesus as my Savior, I learned that He was also supposed to be my Lord. This came about through the influence of two of my older sisters (I had four sisters). They became involved in the charismatic movement in a big way. They sent me tapes and took me to meetings when I visited them. I was skeptical of their radical claims concerning physical health and wealth (the prosperity gospel), and I remain so to this day. However, the thing that really struck me about my sisters’ faith was how seriously they took what the Bible has to say. They believed they were supposed to expect things in the Book to have an effect on our daily lives. Imagine that!

I had begun attending Bible college during my introduction to the charismatics, so I poured myself into study and prayer about its validity. I determined that their focus on miracles and material prosperity did not fit with the overall message of the Scripture. However, I did become convinced that the average Christian church was ignoring the power and provision of the Holy Spirit. (See Despising the Downpayment)  Along with my understanding of Jesus as Lord I began to practice the presence of the Holy Spirit as a guide and companion (the biblical term is paraclete). I was unsure what God wanted me to do with my life, so I fasted and prayed for guidance. On the second day of my fast, I heard a voice (it seemed real) saying, “You are a teacher.” That was reasonable since I had earned a teaching degree, but there were no job offers from the public schools.

It was at that time that I began my career as a Christian school teacher. Over the next twenty years I taught at several schools and went back to school myself and earned two master’s degrees with the intent of continuing to a doctorate. However, I became disenchanted with the way Christian education was being handled and suffered ministry burn-out. By that time, I had begun writing a Bible-based historical fiction novel, Wings of Mentridar, so I decided to become a long-haul trucker thinking in my downtime I could finish the book. I was planning a two-year sabbatical.

As it happened, I found I loved driving for a living, so my two-year break became twelve. I did finish the novel, but could not find a publisher, so I self-published. I continued writing and that became my ministry focus. I have since self-published several books, and my blog is approaching five hundred articles. My teaching is limited to Sunday school and Bible studies. When the economy caused my trucking business to collapse, I went back to teaching for my last few years before retirement. I ended my teaching career doing what I had always dreamed of: teaching teachers to teach English.

I have been “retired” for seven years now. I use the quotes on retired because during those years I worked part-time at Home Depot for three years, and I regularly do projects for people who sometimes pay me for the work. The park where we spend the winter in Arizona has seemingly selected me as the go-to handyman. We have several widows and divorcees, and I realized recently that I have helped most of them with one project or another. It seems that I have stumbled into fulfilling the biblical command to care for widows and orphans.

Near the end of his life, the Apostle Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have completed the race, I have kept the faith.” I have certainly fought – not always in a good fight. Sometimes I have fought against people who were trying to get something good through my thick skull; sometimes I have even fought against the Holy Spirit. As I finish my sixtieth year in Christ, I am asking myself if I have finished the race. I can also say with Paul, “I am hard pressed between the two options, having the desire to depart and to be with Christ, for this is very much better. But to stay on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.” I have no death wish, but I do have an increasingly strong desire to be with Christ. However, as long as He has things for me to do here, I will stay in the race until I complete it. The one thing I can say is that through sixty years of mistakes, missteps, and misunderstandings I have kept the faith. I am looking forward to that glorious word, “Well done good and faithful servant….  Enter into the joy of your master!”

 

The Best Version of the Bible

I am often asked which Bible version I believe to be the best. As with most things having to do with Christianity, there is not a simple answer. Before recommending anything, I usually ask what purpose the reader has in mind. I believe devotional reading of the Bible and in-depth Bible study involve different approaches. The best study Bibles are sometimes awkward to read while a good devotional Bible may not provide the accuracy necessary for serious study.

When choosing a Bible for any purpose, the first thing to notice is what method of translation was used. There are four basic categories: word-for-word, meaning-for-meaning, thought-for-thought, and paraphrase. These categories fall into a scale of equivalence with the original languages from strictly equivalent to loosely related. The chart below shows where some of today’s popular versions fall on the equivalence scale. The versions on the far right would be the easiest to read and most like modern English. Those to the left may be more difficult to read, but they are closer to the original text and thus more suitable for in-depth study.

The strictest translations try to replace each word in the original text with a corresponding word in the target language. This can present problems since the target language may not have a word that matches the original precisely. A perfect demonstration of this is found in the Amplified Bible published by the Lockman Foundation. Their stated goal in Bible translation is four-fold: 1. These publications shall be true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. 2. They shall be grammatically correct. 3. They shall be understandable. 4. They shall give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place. The Amplified Bible provides a best-choice word (word-for-word) which is followed in many cases by a list of English synonyms that may also carry some of the original meaning. Lockman’s New American Standard Bible (NASB) is a good example of a best-choice word-for-word translation. Its major drawback is the translators’ attempt to keep the original grammatical structure wherever possible; this leads to awkward English syntax in some passages.

I believe God inspired the Scripture in a word-for-word format; by this I mean that the words written by the original authors were the exact words God wanted to be written. I do not believe God used a slavish robotic method; rather I think He orchestrated the lives and thinking of every Bible author so that the words they chose were the words God intended. That is my version of sovereign inspiration. For this reason, if I am going to study the Bible closely, I want to get as close to the original text as possible. Because I have studied the koine Greek in which the New Testament was written, I can go behind the translators and make my own decisions as to the meaning of the text. There are several good resources available today that make it possible for a serious Bible student to explore the Greek without having studied the language. The same is true for biblical Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament (of which I am not a scholar). Using this approach is my recommendation for the most rewarding in-depth study.

All that said, I have to admit that there is another “version” of the Bible that is superior to all others. I am referring to that personal version that every believer has available through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Jesus told His disciples, “The Spirit is the one who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” As I said in my last post, the life Jesus refers to is that special quality of life that comes only through union with Christ. His words take on special, life-giving meaning of infinite value when they are empowered by the Holy Spirit. If we read them without the light of the Spirit, they are of the flesh which “profits nothing.”

This tracks perfectly with what Paul told the Corinthians. He said that the natural man, the soulish man, the man counting on the flesh cannot grasp the things of God because they are spiritually discerned. This explains why some people can read the Bible for a lifetime and never be converted. It also reveals why so much that masquerades as church programming has no lasting value. This too is mentioned by Paul when he calls the actions of the carnal Corinthians wood, hay, and stubble as opposed to gold, silver, and precious stones. Only that which is done in the spirit has eternal value. This was put poetically by C.T Studd years ago: “Only one life, ’twill soon be past / Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

I am often asked what version I read. My first Bible was the American Standard Version, a 1911 translation that was almost as arcane as the KJV. I switched to the New American Standard When it came out in the 1960’s, which I read for years before discovering the New King James. Both were very suitable for study and devotional reading. When the ESV was introduced, I found it to be both accurate and easy to read. A few years ago, I began using a Bible study program on my computer called Logos produced by Faithlife. They sponsored a new digital translation called the Lexham English Bible which I have been using for study ever since. For the last several years, I have read through the Bible every year, choosing a different translation each year. I have found that a number of the newer versions are true to the original text and accessible to the average reader.

Bible study is an essential discipline of proper Christian living. Choosing the right Bible is a matter of personal preference given the parameters I mentioned above. The most important factor in Bible reading is not the version, it is the attitude. Any version can be quickened by the Holy Spirit; the ink and paper are only a vehicle for the Spirit words on the page. The Bible is a supernatural book. Reading the Bible without seeking the Holy Spirit’s help is a waste of precious time. Not reading the Bible at all is a waste of life.

Choose Life

In my last post, I mentioned some of the blessings of obedience that we have as Christians. While all the Old Testament promises don’t transfer directly to us, we can learn an important lesson from Moses’ last words to Israel: “I invoke as a witness against you _⌊today_⌋ the heaven and the earth: life and death I have set _⌊before you_⌋, blessing and curse. So choose life, so that you may live, you and your offspring, by loving Yahweh your God by listening to his voice and by clinging to him, for he is your life and the length of your days.” Break this out: “Choose life so that you may live… by loving God and listening to His voice… for He is your life.”

Lest you think this too is uniquely an Old Testament truth, hear the words of Jesus, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Whereas Moses may have brought up images of literal, physical death (which the Israelites suffered repeatedly), the Apostle Paul carried the message into the New Testament by using death as a symbolic state of being – symbolic, yet just as dire in its consequences. He says time and again that all of us were dead in trespasses and sins before we were made alive in Christ. He also uses the metaphor to encourage Christians to put to death the things of the world that remain part of our nature after we have been redeemed. Like Moses, the Apostle sets before us life and death.

Here is a blessing of obedience I failed to mention in my last post: life. I don’t mean brain waving, heart beating warm flesh type of life. The Greek language of the New Testament has several words that can be translated life. The one most often used for life in Christ, indeed, the one Jesus used in John 17:3 is the word zoe (ζωή). In our English versions, this word is often preceded by the word “eternal” to indicate its unique characteristics. While the eternal nature of zoe is part of its meaning, we miss an important aspect of zoe-life if that’s as far as we take it. It has immediate benefits for those who choose it.

When Paul was explaining to the Romans why they should abandon their former lives of sin, despite the fact that grace covered those sins, he used the picture of baptism to make his point. “Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we may live a new way of life.” The life he referred to was zoe, and he qualified it with the word “new.” Greek has two words for new; one refers to time – new as in not old. The other one, the one Paul used here, speaks of new as a different quality. The life we have after being rescued from death (after baptism into Christ) is a different kind of life. Zoe life.

There are several aspects to this new life we have. One I have so often repeated that my regular readers may be tired of hearing it, but it is so essential I must say it again. It’s found in Jesus’ statement: “This is life (zoe): that they may know You.” Knowing God is essential to new life. When we were dead, we couldn’t know God. Paul made this clear when chastising the Corinthians for being too unspiritual (Soulish is the word he used.). He told them the things of God are spiritually discerned, and the human mind – the dead mind, the soulish mind – is unable to grasp them. So, one indispensable blessing of life in Christ is the ability to hear and know the truth – the spiritual truth contained in Scripture as well as the whispered truth in our inner being (our spirit).

The benefits of this blessing cannot be overstated. Without the ability to hear from God we are left saddled with the results of our own devices. Paul details these consequences for the Corinthian believers in the next chapter. The Apostle tells them that soulish works – things done in the flesh (aka not Spirit led) – would not earn any eternal reward. In fact, he uses the imagery of the fires of judgment which everyone must go through, even Christians, to picture soulish works being burned up while works done in the Spirit are purified like gold, silver, and precious stones.

Thankfully, Paul does not say that believers who work in unspiritual ways will perish. He says that their misguided efforts will be burned up, but that they will enter eternity smelling of smoke. I would much rather soar into eternity on the wings of a Dove than to scrape by with singed tail feathers. Notice also that the unspiritual actions Paul referred to were not wicked; the Corinthians behavior may even have seemed righteous. They were arguing over relative status of the preachers they knew. It almost sounds like typical church disagreements today: what color carpet in the auditorium, what type of music in the services, stained glass or plain windows, are the people in the church down the road truly our brothers? I like the way J.B. Phillips words Paul’s rebuke: “For you are still unspiritual… you are living just like men of the world.”

Paul said elsewhere that believers are all baptized into one Spirit. If we are all listening to that one Spirit, there can be no dissention. Agreement to disagree maybe, but that is done in a loving way without rancor. And the other blessings of zoe-life come into play. Paul listed some for the Ephesians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self control. The fruit of the Spirit is a benefit of life in the Spirit –zoe-life. The next time you are about to make a decision, whether it is in the church or in the grocery store, pause to consider its backdrop. Does it flow from the Spirit, or does it come from things of this world; are the results likely to be gold, silver, and precious stones or wood, hay, and stubble? Remember: things of this world lead to death; things of the Spirit are life – zoe-life.