Interesting Bit...

When Hezekiah became king (the first good one in a good while) he reestablished the temple of the LORD and made offerings and set the people up to serve him yet again. He also invited all Israel and Judah to come to the temple to celebrate the passover, something which had probably not been done in a while. The king's couriers went all throughout the land with letters, telling all the people to come and please God by doing this. But you know what? The couriers were mostly just mocked by the people! The people had been distant from God for so long, that many of them weren't open to Him anymore. BUT some people humbled themselves and came to the temple for the feast.

All happy and good right? Not quite. If you remember, there were many rules and that went into the eating of the passover. The LORD was very particular about which hand they were to hold the staff in, what they were to wear, etc. Not to mention they had to go to Jerusalem for a ceremonial cleansing--otherwise they could not eat the passover. But in this case, the children of Israel were just creeping back to God, mostly unfamiliar with his commands. Listen to this!

Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, "May the LORD, who is good, pardon everyone who sets his heart on seeking God--the LORD, the God of his fathers--even if he is not clean according to the rules of the sanctuary." And the LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people.

~ 2 Chronicles 30:18-20

I read that a couple of times to let that sink in. A zillion things ran through my head of what all that actually meant! The LORD just cleansed the people who were set on serving him! The first thing I think of is that our God is the same yesterday and today and forever--he is always devising schemes and sacrificing and forgiving and cleansing so that we may be close to him. I also thought of Peter's vision. Where the sheet full of unclean animals keeps dropping down and the LORD says, "Do not call unclean what the LORD has made clean".

I also thought it interesting that God did it on nothing other than Hezekiah's simple request for their pardon. I have been wondering if, even today, we can pray for God to forgive others of sins they don't know they have commited. After all, Jesus asked the LORD to forgive those who were crucifying him, because they did not know what they were doing. It doesn't say clearly whether God did, but I guess I'm just curious to know the length of God's forgivespan ;)

Any thoughts? What popped into your head when you read that passage?

God is like a Indy Colts game...

I knew it before, and now I know it again! It is sooooo true that His ways are beyond understanding! Just when I am reconciled to the fact the God has chosen to be silent for the moment, He bursts out into something amazing. Not amazing to the general public, but not only did it make my day--it made up for my previous bad days. Our God is always up to something...at first you think He's not going to do something, then He does it. He'll keep you on the edge of your seat, then pull through for you at the last minute.

He is like a good Colts game.

"Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

~ Isaiah 41:10

It's awesome that God always keeps His promise, whether or not it looks like He will. Lord, thank you for pulling through even in the little things, and thank you for the people that you work through in this fallen world!

Be PREPARED!!!

I am taking an class called FOUNDATIONS OF APOLOGETICS done by Ravi Zecharias. It is soooooooooooooooooooo good. These past 4 lessons have been about what apologetics are, how and why we use them, establishing what a worldview is, etc. I thought I'd post some basic notes from the first lesson, which was really good and revealing.

Defining Apologetics

"But in your hearts honor Christ the LORD as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that you have that is in you; yet do this with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered by those who rebuke your good behavior in Christ, they may be put to shame." ~ 1 Peter 3:15-16

The word we translate as "apologetics" is the Greek word "apologia" which means "to give a defense".

• The command to be prepared to make a defense was given to the Church (not to a specialist)
• The goal of apologetics is not to introduce a dose of confusion into the gospel in order to make it sound more profound. It is about communicating the profundity of the gospel so as to remove any confusion surrounding it.
• This command was given to a church that was being persecuted. The command to give an apologetic was given in a context in which you could lose your life for obeying it.
• The context for this command is teaching about holiness. We preach a life-changing gospel.

1. "IN YOUR HEARTS HONOR CHRIST THE LORD"

• The Greek word for heart is the seat of the emotional and intellectual life.
• Before the command to give a defense is given, we're told that we have to be in the right spiritual place before Christ in order to engage in that spiritual battle.
• Apologetics is not only an academic exercise; it is a spiritual discipline.
• We have become spiritually ineffective because we don't know what we believe or why.

2. "ALWAYS BEING PREPARED"

• The Greek word for prepared carries the connotation of getting fit
• Just as physical fitness requires years of training, the command to be prepared anticipates continual hard work.

3. "TO MAKE A DEFENSE"

• Paul makes an apologetic before King Agrippa (acts 26).
• The apologetic is inherently tied up with evangelism.
• When you're giving a defense, you're not simply answering other people's questions. You're also questioning other people's answers or even questioning the questions themselves.

Why Should We Ask Questions?

1. Asking questions forces people to open up within their general assumptions

• In Luke 18:18, when the rich young ruler asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, instead of answering him, Jesus asks a question.
• Jesus's question undermined the assumption that we get to heaven by being good.

2. Asking questions forces people to open up within cultural assumptions.

• In Matthew 22:15, Jesus is asked a yes or no question. ("Should we pay our taxes?")
• The question is actually a trap
• By asking a question, Jesus forces them to open up within their cultural assumption that paying taxes makes one unholy.
• Giving the right answer to the wrong question is always wrong.

3. Asking questions exposes faulty logic

• In Matthew 22 the Sadducees pose to Jesus what is known as a faulty dilemma. Any option you choose to answer it will be wrong, similar to the question, "does your mother know you're stupid?"
• By exposing their faulty logic, Jesus forced them to question their own question!

4. Asking questions exposes motive

• In Matthew 21, after Jesus cleared the Temple, the chief priests asked him, "By whose authority are you doing these things?"
• Jesus answered by asking them where the authority of John the Baptist had come from.
• Jesus showed that they were not truly interested in hearing the answer.
• Although it is important to expose people's motives, we're going to have to remember to do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.

5. Asking questions exposes contradictions

• In Matthew 22, Jesus asks "Whose son is the Christ?" then shows them the contradiction in their thinking.
• As a contemporary parallel, there is an inherent contradiction in the claim, "There's no such thing as truth."
• Roger Scruton has pointed out that when people say there is no such thing as truth, they are effectively asking you not to believe them!

6. Asking questions insures a conversation

• People don't like to be talked at". They want to be "talked to".
• If you study the gospels, you'll see that Jesus did preach, he did perform miracles, but he spent an awful lot of time talking to people.

7. Asking questions makes people think

• The difference between an argument and a discussion is that a discussion makes people think.

4. "TO ANYONE WHO ASKS YOU"

• This assumes people are asking.
• The hallmark of a postmodern generation isn't the fact that people have lost sight of the answers, but that we've raised a generation of people who say it's not even worth asking the question.
• Most of the work is not in providing the solution; it's about getting them to ask the right question.
• Our lifestyle should be provoking questions.
• If people aren't asking us questions, the first thing we should do is not blame the society in which we live, but take a look inside our own heart and ask how we ourselves are living.

5. "FOR A REASON"

• The word for "reason is the Greek "logos" from which we get the word logic.
• It implies that the gospel is capable of being explained.
• "Good news that isn't explained not only isn't good, it isn't even news." (John Piper)
• If the answer to why you became a Christian is the same as how you became a Christian, you are not really giving a reason.
• JESUS should be the reason we are Christian.

6. "FOR THE HOPE THAT IS IN YOU"

• You cannot take the Christ out of Christian.
• Any answer that does not flow to or flow from the cross in ultimately a bankrupt apologetic.

7. "DO THIS WITH GENTLENESS AND RESPECT, HAVING A GOOD CONSCIENCE"

• We do this with gentleness so that our attitude doesn't crowd out the gospel.
• We keep a good conscience. We don't pretend to know things we don't know.

Apologetics is the evangelistic theology that is able to walk out into the marketplace and engage with you neighbors, with your friends, with those around you so that they may come to know Him."

The things God does.......

God is love.

He is the very incarnation of love.

Love wouldn't exist were it not for him.

He is incapable of evil.

His word proves all this.

He has never done anything wrong.

He has never made a bad decision.

None of his plans have ever been foiled.

He has good in mind for each of his children.

He doesn't plot harm to any of them.

Everything he does is part of his plan and glorious purpose.

He loved us enough to take the penalty for our sin.

After all this and more, it seems impossible that we wouldn't be able to trust everything he chose to do. It sounds silly to say that sometimes I wish God would do things differently.

The Modern Skeptic by GA Chesterton

The new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything.

He has no loyalty, therefore he can never be a true rebelutionist. And that fact that he doubts everything gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind, and the modern rebelutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it...

As a politician he cries out that war is a waste of life, then as a philosopher that life itself is a waste of time.

A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself.

A man denounces marriage as a lie, then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie.

A man goes first into a political meeting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts, then takes his hat and umbrella and goes into a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts.

In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mind.

In his book on politics, he attacks men for trampling on morality. In his book on ethics, he attacks morality for trampling on men.

Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything, he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

And THAT should give you enough to think about for the rest of the day :)

Thoughts of Freedom and Sin

All have sinned and fallen short (by a long way) of the glory of God. We as Christians know this better than anyone else. But when we come to the LORD, we know that he sets us free, cleanses us, and makes us new. An amazing thing.

I am not like some, who had a horrible life before they came to the LORD, but I know this is the case for many. I can't put myself in their shoes of course, but it seems like being free and cleansed in Christ would be a whole different experience than it has been for me. I can't remember any heinous sins I committed before the age of four when I accepted Christ--my relationship with God has always kind of been there and been growing as time goes on. So I can't remember ever a time when I sinned and I didn't get a talk about it with the Holy Spirit. There have been MANY of those times and will be many more. I still get upset over my sin and get frustrated that it's still there--after all, I've been disrespectful since I was four, why does it go on? You know what I mean?

All that to lead up to this: my experience with sin is different than some of those who come to Christ later in life. Some have done horrible things that were detestable to God even before they knew him, and now that they do know him they are very upset about them. Let's say there was a guy who spent every day of his life for 3 years killing one person per day. After the daily murder, let's say he went on to a bank and robbed a different bank of at least $50,000 every day. Then we'll say that every day after these things, he sold all kinds of drugs to school kids and spent the rest of his night causing fights in bars.

All this every day. And then he came to Christ.

After he came to Christ, I guess he'd turn himself in to the law and get sent to prison for...I'd guess that should be about the rest of his life :) But all the while in prison he spends the whole time studying the word, talking to pastors, listening to tapes, becomes a really nice guy, and starts a ministry in the prison that converts several other prisoners to Christ. Now this man LOVES the LORD like crazy, and now he feels as awfully about his life as you or I would. Or worse.

What should his attitude be?

God says his grace and mercy are limitless, and this man would be just as much his child as I am. This much I know. His sin would be rendered powerless against God. But he still did it. It was all still committed. He could bemoan his past and all the things he did, constantly saying what a horrible person he was, and suffer in his dreams every night because of his past sin. He could resolve not to get into deep relationships with anyone because he wouldn't want to involve them in who he had been. If he did these things, I would not blame him in the least--it almost seems that he SHOULD think this way after all that sin! I think I probably would!

But here is what I've been thinking about...is this mindset, even in these circumstances, honoring to God? If God's power and grace are more powerful than this sin, is it right to dwell on your past, now that you are clean? CAN you or SHOULD you behave as a cleansed and righteous one? My gut says that if the LORD has freed you, you are free indeed, and can tell all with a clear conscience that you are the child of God that you are and not different than any other of God's saved ones. My gut says that dwelling in the past is insulting the blood of the Lamb, who has got rid of this past.

But something else (maybe it's my head) thinks that still bemoaning your past and your sin makes sense and is ok...we ARE supposed to grieve about our sin, and maybe if you had THAT MUCH sin than this would be an ok measure to take. Maybe I just think it makes sense because this is probably what I would do in the circumstances.

This probably sounded completely random, but it's what I've been thinking :) Any thoughts?