Death is not the End of Life

Quote of the Day:

"For believing Christians, death...is never the end which the world thinks it is, which is why the symbol of the cross and crucifix is so powerful for Christians." 
Kent R. Hill, Executive Director of the Religious Freedom Institute, in his editorial, Will Christianity Survive in the Middle East? A Christian Perspective, appearing in the Winter 2017 edition of Providence. 

Keeping Oneself Out of Christ's Sheepfold

The three things pride does not want: humility and trust in and submission to God through Jesus Christ.

In both the secular and Christian world, a lack of these can manifest as self-righteousness, impatience and egotistical self-sufficiency.

These missing elements can play out in two ways (probably more, but these have been the most predominant in my experience) and can apply to those who don’t claim to be believers as well as those who do:

1). A philosophical intellectual stance of thinking we are “good to go” as far as Christ is concerned, so we’ll stand over here outside of the fold, separate and distanced from those needy “sheeples” who circle Christ in never-ending emotionalism, religious platitudes and theological ignorance. We are way too advanced in our understanding for that, and smirk at the idea of the Holy Spirit's guidance in daily life.

2). A narcissistic stance that keeps us outside Christ’s fold because we have obsessively focused on ourselves to the point that we’ve told ourselves that we are not good enough to even be one of Christ’s sheep, brought under his forgiveness and care.

We may even understand all the basic tenets of the faith, and have a very high grasp of correct Biblical doctrine; we just cannot apply it to ourselves out of a sense of vain self-loathing.

This is a roundabout way of gaining the confidence and esteem we crave. The only problem is that it is confidence in how unworthy we are, not a confidence in Christ and His ability to transform us (a sub set of this group is those who believe God could regenerate them and remove, for example, their addiction, but since the addiction remains, God must not want to or is not yet “ready” to. Therefore, they are off the hook until God performs His “miracle,” which is only another way of using the apparent lack of God’s action to justify sin that a person is not yet ready to give up).

These stances are quite self-aggrandizing because, in essence, a person is placing themselves outside of and above the power, authority and reach of God. The result of this isolation from Christ is that the person God made them to be is selfishly cheated from ever seeing the light of day.

I need to be clear that this is not about separating oneself from Christian community. It is about cutting one’s self off from Christ. Many of these people attend church regularly and participate in Christian groups and activities. The problem isn’t that they’ve cut themselves off physically from people or Christian community. It’s that they’ve elected to cut themselves off from Christ Himself.

I do not have the answer as to how to live with or influence a person caught in this trap. It’s been my experience that anything I say or do, or don’t say or do, has little to no effect. It requires a huge reliance on the Holy Spirit on my part when I am interacting with such individuals, and the same humility, trust and submission to God in my own life that these folks require in theirs.

Jesus once said, when his disciples asked Him why they could not cast a demon out from a man’s son,

“This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29).

Prayer is always the thing to do, and sometimes the only thing.

In addition, we can all trace the trajectory of our own walk with Christ, remembering how we kicked and screamed, resisted or otherwise delayed our finally opening the door of the sheep pen and walking in, fully committed (but not yet fully sanctified. That process of maturing in Christ is only just beginning).

Those of us who have been in the sheep pen for a while now can recall our early years filled with Peter-like moments of denying Christ, the Godly sorrow and repentance that ensued, and Christ’s always reliable and forthcoming forgiveness.

Through daily life, trials, victories, answered and yet un-answered prayer, we learned—and continue to learn—to walk with Christ.

It wasn’t always pretty: as Christians, we aren’t always pretty. But Christ was. And is. And always will be. He will teach us, conform us to His likeness and, through it all, love us. We know that is true for ourselves. We know it is true for all on the journey.

That is why we are—must be—deeply grateful for—seeking to grasp at all times—the beautiful lifeline of humility, trust and submission that Christ offers to Himself, through Himself. And make it our prayer for others, along with ourselves, to do the same.

copyright Barb Harwood

“I am the Good Shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one Shepherd. John 10:14-16

“rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer,” Romans 12:12

Suffering as a Path to be Walked

Quote for the day:

"...suffering is not an end unto itself but a means to an end of renewing a living hope. Suffering thus becomes a valuable experience of living both immanently and transcendently in, by, and through the God who is both with us and beyond us, and ironically becomes an antidote to the pervasive idolatry of the self on which contemporary American society is so fixated. Such a living hope--founded and exercised in Jesus Christ--thus transforms our suffering from a barrier to be overcome to a path to be walked."
Chaplain (Colonel) Timothy S. Mallard, US Army, writing in Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy

The Missing Gospels by Darrell L. Bock

I just finished reading The Missing Gospels by Darrell L. Bock, professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. 

Being a trained journalist, I applaud the measured, scholarly and objective telling-of-both-sides aspect of Bock's writing. 

He thoroughly explores--without hair-splitting irrelevancies--documents discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. These documents have often been co-opted to uphold the teachings of Gnosticism by participants in the New School of theological thought. 

Bock clearly and succinctly, after providing the back story as to the debate on whether Christianity needs a makeover, explores four key themes within that debate. He devotes individual chapters, each in their turn, to comparing and contrasting the New School with the Traditionalist view of each theme.

I am impressed with the respect with which Bock treats those whose conclusions go counter to his, and his reliance on studying and quoting original sources to reach his conclusions. 

Through the use of citing specific and generally agreed upon dating of all manuscripts, and giving credit where credit is due to the scholarship of the New School, Bock, I believe, provides a sincere and evenhanded apologetic for the traditional Gospel account being legit. 

This is an invaluable study for Christians who desire to have a reasoned understanding of and response to many aspects of Gnosticism and its current promotions. 



copyright Barb Harwood




"But examine everything carefully;..." 
1 Thessalonians 5:21a

Campus Intolerance

Appearing in today's Wall Street Journal:

"Campus intolerance is at root not a psychological phenomenon but an ideological one. At its center is a worldview that sees Western culture as endemically racist and sexist. The overriding goal of the educational establishment is to teach young people within the ever-growing list of official victim classifications to view themselves as existentially oppressed. One outcome of that teaching is the forceful silencing of contrarian speech." Heather Mac Donald, fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The War on Cops.

Living Vicariously Through Our Very Own Lip Service

One dangerous habit that defined me back in the day of my early adulthood was that of living via my spoken-word future.

I would talk incessantly about what I was going to do. The more I talked, the more “it” superficially took shape: avenues of study at higher institutions, environmental causes I would embrace, animals I would save, books I would read, adventures I would take, stories I would write. Plans and more plans.

I lived in the present within the mind’s eye of tomorrow: next Friday, next week, next month, next year. Always tomorrow.

And therein lies the danger. I wasn’t living in reality. The years went by and I wondered why, on January first of every year, I felt morosely let down. I realized I had missed, once again, the future-bound train to anywhere-but-here, because that train only existed in my words.

If ever I did actually accomplish even one of the things I had talked about doing, it was never as satisfying or fulfilling as I had conjured it. I was Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, to whom Ellen, his wife, laments, 

“It’s just that I know how you build things up in your mind, Sparky, you set standards that no family man can ever live up to.”

But instead of facing into—and accepting—that personal accomplishments (actual or fancied) are almost never internally life-changing or overly gratifying as imagined, I kept up the the verbal head tripping. And the more I spoke of goals and scenarios, the more the talking fashioned whatever identity I craved at the moment.

I could could temporarily fabricate just about any temperament, personality, and form of success merely through lip service. For a time, it worked to appease and bolster my inner esteem. I was a hamster on a wheel that I was sure would get me to my own personal Nirvana. But as we all know, those wheels don’t go anywhere but the place they’ve just been.

This pattern began to change only when I discovered my true identity: I didn’t have to create it, choose it, pose for it or act a part. It was there, in Christ, fleshed out in His Word.

Along with my newfound identity in Him came eventual affirmation in Him (I say eventual because it is a process of shedding a worldly need for people’s approval and compliments and allowing Christ alone to be our portion).

For the first time, I understood who and what I am: the positive and the negative. God through Christ’s Spirit showed me everything, and it was an honest assessment. Only then did I know what to do and when, and begin to actually do it. Only then did God begin to silence me.

The ability to take action in the transformation of one’s life when empowered by a sincere longing to please Christ is concrete and real. True regeneration and redemption is possible because Christ Himself is the transformer. 

We no longer have need of lip service; we live in Him and His Word, which is given to all who ask, seek and knock (Matthew 7:7). Our words now become inwardly transparent prayers to God.

That is how we get off the dead-end treadmill of talk and onto the active path of new life in Christ.

 copyright Barb Harwood

“For in many dreams and in many words there is emptiness. Rather, fear God.” Ecclesiastes 5:7

“Then Job replied to the LORD:

‘I know that you can do all things;

no plan of yours can be thwarted.

You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you shall answer me.’

My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I despise myself

and repent in dust and ashes.’” Job 42:1-6

“From the LORD comes deliverance...” Psalm 3:8a

Our Lord Will Not Let His Beloved Go

A wonderful truth, taken from Rebecca Manley Pippert's book, Out of the Salt-Shaker and Into the World, to ponder as we enter the Easter season:

   
    "We can learn a great deal of information, be full of zeal, master conversational skills, walk closely with God, participate in his community on earth and still blow it. That is one reason God told us so many stories of individuals in the Bible. He knew we would need the encouragement!
     Take Peter. He loved Christ, and yet he constantly made mistakes. His most grievous error came in the last moments of Jesus' life. Jesus had told Peter he would deny knowing him, but Peter staunchly rejected the idea. After Jesus was arrested, Peter denied three times ever knowing him. He even invoked a curse upon himself if he knew him. As the cock crowed, what Jesus said had come to pass, Peter had denied the Lord.
     Imagine how desolate Peter felt after Jesus' death. The last contact Peter had with Jesus was the scene of his own betrayal. In Jesus' most difficult moment when he needed support the most, Peter had turned against him. Then a few days later Peter was told that the Lord has risen. Jesus was alive; his friends had actually seen him. 
     How did Peter feel now? He probably had ambivalent feelings. On one level he would be ecstatic, but on another afraid and ashamed. Maybe the Lord had given up on him. Maybe Jesus would feel Peter had made one too many mistakes.
     But God knew how Peter felt. He had a messenger tell the women who first came to the tomb, 'Go tell his disciples and Peter' that he had risen (Mk. 16:7). 'And Peter' - two of the most beautiful words in the Bible. So the disciples went and said, 'Guess what? Jesus has risen! A messenger from God told us to go and tell you he's here. And, Peter, he said to tell you especially!' Only two words, but they brought a world of hope to a man.
     And what did Jesus say to Peter when he saw him (Jn. 21:15-17)? He asked, 'Peter, do you love me?'
     And Peter said, 'Yes, Lord, I do.'
     And so Jesus asked again, 'Peter, do you love me?'
     Peter perhaps hesitated a bit, and then said, 'Yes, Lord, you know I love you.'
     And then Jesus asked the third time, reminding Peter only too well  of his recent painful history of thrice rejecting Jesus. 
     'And Peter was grieved' and he said, 'Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.'
     Peter realized that Jesus knew who he was, his fallibility, his limits, his warts. And yet Peter loved Jesus. Jesus knew that too. He had known Peter's faults long before they ever dawned on Peter. And Jesus told him, 'Feed My Sheep.'
     Earlier Jesus had nicknamed Peter (Mt. 16:18). Of all the names to choose, Jesus picked the least likely: he called him Rock. We might have selected another, like Shifty or Quivery or To-and-Fro or Sandy. But Jesus chose Rock.
     Jesus is telling us something through this. First of all, he knows us - me, you. He knows your limits, your broken promises, your failures. But he also knows that beneath all of that, you have a heart of love for him. He knows that you care. And Jesus also has a name for you, a name you would have never picked for yourself, or dared to dream. He sees what he is making you into; he knows what he has in store for you. And he gives you a name that suits what you are going to become. We are people of hope and not despair because we have a future that has been secured by God. 
     More important than our wobbly love for him is his absolute unswerving love for us. When Peter told Jesus he would always remain faithful to him, Jesus knew his resolve would crumble. Nonetheless, he said, 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail' (Lk. 22:31). And he went on to say, 'When you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.' Our Lord would not let Peter go. His love is the absolute of the universe.
Rebecca Manley Pippert