Today in my initial computer science class, the teacher described the syllabus as "a contract between you and the professor" and said that it details what the professor expects from you as a student. I think that often we treat the Bible like it's literature, or just something filled with some nice words. If the Bible is essentially the syllabus that God wrote us as we enter the "class" of life, shouldn't we treat it differently?
The syllabus isn't designed to make you feel good, the syllabus isn't designed to give you a win button at life. The syllabus is designed so that you as a student understand exactly what is expected of you in the class, and where to go for help and how to seek that help. The Bible is the same - through the Bible God explains exactly what he expects of us, and explains where to go for help and how to get it. Also, a syllabus is intended to be read through until you comprehend it - until you understand the information in it. Same with the Bible. We shouldn't read the Bible when we feel like it, we should read it like it's necessary for us to succeed (and what do you know, it actually is).
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
God is the King
I find the Bible's portrayal of God as King is amazing, but I feel that we (or, if you prefer, I) don't always realize the implications of that portrayal. First, if a king tells you to do something and you disobey, what happens? Typically, the king teaches you that you're expendable and then you get a first-hand anatomy lesson about how easily the head can be severed from the body. The amazing thing about this is that God doesn't just kill us or punish us for what we do wrong. He pursues us, certainly, but not with hunting dogs and rifles or a posse to come string us up on the nearest tree. Instead of taking our lives, God loved us enough to take His own in our place. God is pursuing us to tell us that we are forgiven and that we should come home with Him!
Second, a king by definition is in control of everything in his domain. God's domain is the entire universe - along with every other possible universe. A king also exercises control over his subjects - that'd be us.
Third, a king deserves our respect, obedience, tribute, and in some cases our very lives, just because he's the king. Since God is the King, He deserves all these things and more - our worship, for example. People that say "God owes me an explanation!" or "Why would God do THAT?!" are ignoring a fundamental fact: God is the King and therefore He most certainly does not owe you an explanation, He has the power and authority to make decisions that we disagree with. And really, we should be glad that He can make decisions like that, because He knows better what we need than we do, since He knows everything.
Finally, if God is the King, then why do we worry? God knows everything and can do anything, and He's everywhere at once. He is in complete control of the world, and if we follow Him, what could really go wrong? Sure, we might have troubles, but God is still King and everything will turn out to further His kingdom in the end.
Second, a king by definition is in control of everything in his domain. God's domain is the entire universe - along with every other possible universe. A king also exercises control over his subjects - that'd be us.
Third, a king deserves our respect, obedience, tribute, and in some cases our very lives, just because he's the king. Since God is the King, He deserves all these things and more - our worship, for example. People that say "God owes me an explanation!" or "Why would God do THAT?!" are ignoring a fundamental fact: God is the King and therefore He most certainly does not owe you an explanation, He has the power and authority to make decisions that we disagree with. And really, we should be glad that He can make decisions like that, because He knows better what we need than we do, since He knows everything.
Finally, if God is the King, then why do we worry? God knows everything and can do anything, and He's everywhere at once. He is in complete control of the world, and if we follow Him, what could really go wrong? Sure, we might have troubles, but God is still King and everything will turn out to further His kingdom in the end.
Monday, June 20, 2011
God of the Beautiful
"You make everything glorious - so what does that make me?" Everything Glorious by David Crowder Band
God is the creator of everything - from the sunset to the night sky. He arranged the stars so that we could see constellations, and he set up the color spectrum so that when we look to the west around 6-7 PM we'd see amazing colors. Anytime you've looked at anyone or anything and was blown away by the beauty, you have God to thank - either directly or indirectly.
However, if you read Ecclesiastes 3, it says that "God makes everything beautiful"[emphasis mine] - note the word 'everything'. That doesn't mean everything but this one thing or this one situation. And it certainly doesn't mean everyone but you. It includes you - whether or not you believe it, whether or not the world sees it, you are beautiful. It also means that your life, your circumstances, even your mistakes are made beautiful by God.
That is one of the main ideas that keeps me going. All the stuff I've gone through in life, all the pain and all the times I've failed, God can (and will) take it ALL and make it beautiful. 50 years down the road, I'm going to be able to look back at my first 18 years of existence, and marvel at what God's done with my life. And He can do the same for you.
God is the creator of everything - from the sunset to the night sky. He arranged the stars so that we could see constellations, and he set up the color spectrum so that when we look to the west around 6-7 PM we'd see amazing colors. Anytime you've looked at anyone or anything and was blown away by the beauty, you have God to thank - either directly or indirectly.
However, if you read Ecclesiastes 3, it says that "God makes everything beautiful"[emphasis mine] - note the word 'everything'. That doesn't mean everything but this one thing or this one situation. And it certainly doesn't mean everyone but you. It includes you - whether or not you believe it, whether or not the world sees it, you are beautiful. It also means that your life, your circumstances, even your mistakes are made beautiful by God.
That is one of the main ideas that keeps me going. All the stuff I've gone through in life, all the pain and all the times I've failed, God can (and will) take it ALL and make it beautiful. 50 years down the road, I'm going to be able to look back at my first 18 years of existence, and marvel at what God's done with my life. And He can do the same for you.
Sidebar: God's presence during worship
"We've come to be with You, come to bring You our attention, our affection." - Aaron Gillespie, We Were Made For You
How often do we walk into church with the idea that we came to be with God? Not just to worship, not just to learn, but just to be WITH Him? I'll go ahead and be honest: I don't know if that was ever my motivation. Jesus says that when we meet to worship, He is with us. How often do we consider that? I mean sure, it’s a nice thing when the worship leader says that God is with us or God’s presence is in the building; but just the thought of the almighty GOD in the room, actually there, boggles my mind.
I don’t know what else to really say on this subject – when you walk into your church on a Sunday morning, know that God is there. The entire time. When you’re standing there, singing to God, God is there listening to you worship Him. For some of us – myself included – that may mean we need to re-evaluate how we worship. For others, it may just be an awesome reminder of how personal our God really is.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
God gives meaning to the meaningless
This morning, my pastor was preaching out of Ecclesiastes 2. One of his final points, amidst Solomon proclaiming everything to be meaningless, was "God gives meaning to the meaningless."
I put forth one Tony Nolan. His mother was a mentally insane prostitute, had no father. He was adopted out of the orphanage he was placed in, and abused by his adopted parents. Tony literally had no future - until he found God. Now, he's an accomplished writer and speaker - and has a very powerful testimony.
My next piece of evidence is Peter, James, and John. Three poor, ordinary fishermen. Day after day they would go out onto the Sea of Galilee, catch fish. Eat what they needed in order to live and sell the rest - if there was any left. Then, Jesus came along. Three years later, they were leaders in the church - Peter even (according to tradition) founded the Catholic Church. Pretty hard to make more of an impact than that, huh?
Even Jesus was born into a poor family, in a region that was actually referred to with scorn by the rest of Israel at the time. People back then would say (with the appropriate scorn in their voices), "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" No one expected the son of a carpenter from Nazareth to be the Messiah.
Now, to bring it back to Solomon: he experienced all the worldly things that are supposed to bring pleasure, and experienced them much more fully than most people have the opportunity to. At the end, he said it was all meaningless, and like chasing the wind. However, the things he said were meaningless are only meaningless apart from God. If you amass wealth for yourself, what's the point? You'll die, and somebody else will get control of the money. But God can take that money, and use it to bring eternal good to others, and to bring Himself glory.
Solomon also tried sex, and apparently lots of it. Which you can do, when you're the richest guy in the world and have 300 concubines and 700 wives. Having 1000 women willing to sleep with him, he still said it was meaningless. But God can take sex - within the proper confines of marriage - and turn it into something beautiful that brings the husband and wife closer to each other and God.
For those of you who don't know, Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. However, perhaps most surprisingly, he said that even wisdom was meaningless, since both the wise man and the fool will eventually die and be forgotten. But God can take a person's wisdom and use it to impact the world forever. Look at Descartes, or Newton - two very famous people, one in the field of philosophy ("I think therefore I am") and one in the sciences, and both were devout Christians. In fact, Descartes' famous statement is only the very beginning of a philosophical proof of the existence of God; and Newton wrote more theology than he did math or science.
God has always worked in the small things, in the people who were (or thought they were) meaningless. Just because we think we're normal doesn't mean God doesn't have a purpose for us. Don't ever think that you're meaningless, because God gives you meaning.
I put forth one Tony Nolan. His mother was a mentally insane prostitute, had no father. He was adopted out of the orphanage he was placed in, and abused by his adopted parents. Tony literally had no future - until he found God. Now, he's an accomplished writer and speaker - and has a very powerful testimony.
My next piece of evidence is Peter, James, and John. Three poor, ordinary fishermen. Day after day they would go out onto the Sea of Galilee, catch fish. Eat what they needed in order to live and sell the rest - if there was any left. Then, Jesus came along. Three years later, they were leaders in the church - Peter even (according to tradition) founded the Catholic Church. Pretty hard to make more of an impact than that, huh?
Even Jesus was born into a poor family, in a region that was actually referred to with scorn by the rest of Israel at the time. People back then would say (with the appropriate scorn in their voices), "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" No one expected the son of a carpenter from Nazareth to be the Messiah.
Now, to bring it back to Solomon: he experienced all the worldly things that are supposed to bring pleasure, and experienced them much more fully than most people have the opportunity to. At the end, he said it was all meaningless, and like chasing the wind. However, the things he said were meaningless are only meaningless apart from God. If you amass wealth for yourself, what's the point? You'll die, and somebody else will get control of the money. But God can take that money, and use it to bring eternal good to others, and to bring Himself glory.
Solomon also tried sex, and apparently lots of it. Which you can do, when you're the richest guy in the world and have 300 concubines and 700 wives. Having 1000 women willing to sleep with him, he still said it was meaningless. But God can take sex - within the proper confines of marriage - and turn it into something beautiful that brings the husband and wife closer to each other and God.
For those of you who don't know, Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. However, perhaps most surprisingly, he said that even wisdom was meaningless, since both the wise man and the fool will eventually die and be forgotten. But God can take a person's wisdom and use it to impact the world forever. Look at Descartes, or Newton - two very famous people, one in the field of philosophy ("I think therefore I am") and one in the sciences, and both were devout Christians. In fact, Descartes' famous statement is only the very beginning of a philosophical proof of the existence of God; and Newton wrote more theology than he did math or science.
God has always worked in the small things, in the people who were (or thought they were) meaningless. Just because we think we're normal doesn't mean God doesn't have a purpose for us. Don't ever think that you're meaningless, because God gives you meaning.
Friday, May 27, 2011
God's Personhood
"...Moses rediscovered a fundamental fact about God forgotten during the four hundred years of silence: God is a person." - Philip Yancey
Sometimes I have trouble comprehending God's personhood. I mean, God isn't just this impersonal force or the "great watchmaker" that set the natural laws in order and then leaves us alone. And He doesn't just sit up in Heaven and watch us, or carry out his plans with no regard for us. God has many of the same characteristics that we, as humans, have - which makes sense, since we were made in God's image.
For one thing, God feels emotion. The Bible shows God getting angry at people that sinned, being sad for the people who don't believe, he felt satisfaction and (presumably) pleasure when he created the world - "and God saw that it was good".
But not only does he feel emotion, but humans have actually influenced God's decisions! Abraham went back and forth with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah - "if there's 100 righteous people, will you destroy it then? what about 50? or 10? or even 1?". Moses pleaded with God not to wipe out the Israelites after they worshiped a golden calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai, even to the point where Moses said "Look God, take me instead, but don't wipe out these people!"
Several of these characteristics of God's personhood are blog posts - or several blog posts - by themselves, so I will come back to many of them. But for now, I have one final point: God's main desire isn't for service, or our money, or our time. He desires a relationship with us. He loves us and wants us to love him back and know Him better. Isn't that a distinctly personal trait? I still marvel at how the God of the universe actually wants to know me, a screwed up and distinctly normal teenager.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Footprints in the snow
"We're more than carbon, than chemicals - we are the image of the Invisible! So we sing out this, our canticle: we are the image of the Invisible!" - Dustin Kensrue
One of God's attributes - and one that trips people up quite a bit - is that He is invisible. However, if you've ever seen a movie where someone wears an invisibility cloak or some other thing rendering them invisible, you'll know that they are still present and still make a visible mark on the world. For example, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry's feet still leave tracks in the snow.
Just like those tracks in the snow, God still leaves visible evidence of his existence - the remarkable beauty of a sunset, the irreducible complexity of the cell, the amazing odds necessary for our universe to come together just right all on its own. Or, in a more tangible example, people have had their lives directly touched by God - some people have experienced miraculous healing, or a sudden change of desire (specifically relating to addiction). These are all God's "footprints in the snow".
Sometimes I wish God weren't invisible. I wish he'd sit up there in the sky and show himself for all the world to see. You couldn't claim God didn't exist if someone else could just point to Him. And it would be so much easier to remain faithful to God if we could see Him watching us.
Or would it? Jesus' disciples had "the visible image of the invisible God" and they still didn't believe, which is something I don't understand at all. But since God is invisible, we have to seek Him. You have to want to learn more about Him and His nature. And if you seek, He reveals Himself.
For now, I'm going to continue seeking and continue looking for more of His footprints.
One of God's attributes - and one that trips people up quite a bit - is that He is invisible. However, if you've ever seen a movie where someone wears an invisibility cloak or some other thing rendering them invisible, you'll know that they are still present and still make a visible mark on the world. For example, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry's feet still leave tracks in the snow.
Just like those tracks in the snow, God still leaves visible evidence of his existence - the remarkable beauty of a sunset, the irreducible complexity of the cell, the amazing odds necessary for our universe to come together just right all on its own. Or, in a more tangible example, people have had their lives directly touched by God - some people have experienced miraculous healing, or a sudden change of desire (specifically relating to addiction). These are all God's "footprints in the snow".
Sometimes I wish God weren't invisible. I wish he'd sit up there in the sky and show himself for all the world to see. You couldn't claim God didn't exist if someone else could just point to Him. And it would be so much easier to remain faithful to God if we could see Him watching us.
Or would it? Jesus' disciples had "the visible image of the invisible God" and they still didn't believe, which is something I don't understand at all. But since God is invisible, we have to seek Him. You have to want to learn more about Him and His nature. And if you seek, He reveals Himself.
For now, I'm going to continue seeking and continue looking for more of His footprints.
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