java soaked theological philosophy and associated blather from a spiritual nomad

Disclaimer

I am a man with a great love for my Lord, the church and her members, and for coffee, strong and black.
I also have a great love for writing.
Everything I say here is my own opinion. Why in the world would I hold someone else's opinion?

Showing posts with label fire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fire. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

i have come to set the world on fire, and i wish it were already burning!

I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! (Luke 12:49 NLT)
This is a side of Jesus we do not see often. We always think of Jesus as a peacemaker, ready to make people feel better.

In fact, the world’s view of Jesus is totally opposite this. The world’s picture of Jesus is a milktoast that allows people to do pretty much whatever they want.

The idea of a Jesus who is actually causing division is one we have trouble seeing.

The Bible talks enough about not causing division that we get to thinking that all division is wrong. It isn’t. Division in the body is wrong. Division in the body is never right.

But Jesus divides in a different way. You don’t have to look very hard to see this.

Hollywood is full of the division Jesus causes. He calls us to God, Hollywood calls us to glorification of self. He calls us to morality, Hollywood calls us to hedonism. He calls us to holiness, Hollywood calls us to debauchery.

You see that division in the world at large, too. Jesus calls us to God through himself. Islam calls people to a false god through a false prophet. The world becomes angry at the call of Jesus and tries its best to stamp it out. Countries all over the world outlaw Christianity only to find it growing even stronger.

In 1 Peter 2:8, the apostle Peter writes: He is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them. This means that just by being himself and carrying out his mandate from God, Jesus becomes divisive.

He is like a stone that sits in the road that people try to ignore and end up falling over. And then those who are too ignorant to see the stone and acknowledge it for what it is, get mad.

The mad takes several different forms. Some try to outlaw Jesus and all of his teachings. Some try to lessen what he had to say and put him in a category with a bunch of others they claim are like him. Some take him and try to make him into a poster boy for their cause. Some try to bend him to their wishes. Some ignore him altogether.

But they all trip over him because he is there no matter what anybody may say or do. His influence is all through the world and will continue to be until he comes again.

Jesus is real, and one day as Philippians 2:9-11 says, all will know it. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

He will be acknowledged by all the world one day, but for too many it will be too late.

The world is already burning for Jesus. Those who know it and accept it are purified by the fire. It makes them that much holier. Those who do not are burned up in the fire.

As Hebrews 12:29 says, our God is a devouring fire. And the fire that devours is Jesus, the Great Divider.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

daily java

Daily Java:
Our God approaches and he is not silent.
Fire devours everything in his way, and a great storm rages around him. (Psalm 50:2)
It is not always a good idea to go to the Psalms for your theology. They are poetry and as such take a lot of poetical license.

However, there are some pictures of God in the psalms that are very interesting.

Someone was telling me that God was a God of love. He would never do anything to harm and that he was a nice God. He was considerate and always kind. The one ho told me this did not know the God of the Universe.

God is a God of love, yes. And he is kind and compassionate. But he is not always nice, at least not as we count niceness. God is a God of power. And he is not afraid or slow to use it. He never has been and he never will be.

Hebrews tells us that God is a devouring fire (Hebrews 12:29). He is not a God who visits, who lives in us, who is very important in our lives. He is a God who overwhelms us. He consumes us. He fills us. He devours us.

If he does not do these things in our lives, the word says that he is not really part of us.

What people want is a nice old man who is extremely generous but otherwise just kind of leaves us along. Santa Claus as it were. Maybe one of the Greek gods on Mt Olympus that watches us and kind of takes care of us. If we need help, they will come and do good things for us. We can direct what they do and thank them for it.

But God is not like that. He is the One who made the universe appear at his command. He is the One who can change a personality radically. He is the One that can make light out of darkness.

And he is not a God to play around with. He makes it plain that he is holy, he is good, he is powerful. You can accept it or not accept it, but you cannot play with him. He is too other.
 Even though he made us in his image, he is not like we are. Even though we share many of the same attributes, we are not alike. He is eternal, he is infinite, he is never changing, he is holy to a degree that we cannot imagine.

This is a picture of God that many do not care for. It is too extreme for them. They like the idea of a god that they can manage, that they can handle, that they can manipulate for their own ends.

And they have one. it may be called America, or earth worship or veganism or civil rights or any other thing. But the God of the Universe, the Lord Almighty is none of these things. He is a God who is above these. He calls you to a better country, heaven. He gave us the earth he had created but he told us to use it.

He told us to be fair to each other but he also never condemned slavery or riches. He said in 1 Corinthians that if you can move from slavery, to do so. But otherwise just accept it. He told us riches were hard on people and that he loved the poor, but he told us to move from where we are if we can. He never condoned life-long poverty or exalting poor people as better.

He proclaimed sharing, but never socialism. He proclaimed love but never tolerance of sin. He proclaimed peace but was never anti-war.

He has never been who we have made him. Instead he is the dominant controlling force in our lives or he is not. He rules or he doesn’t. He never took middle grounds.

He consumes and devours. He is God.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

daily java

Daily Java:
For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:29)
For several years now, I have read a lot in the papers and on the internet about how people want you to leave your religion at home when you vote, or go to school, or work, or anything else.

They say that there is no place for strong religious convictions in the public sphere. All they do, they say, is muddle up things.

And besides, it is said, when you bring in your religious convictions, you run the risk of running counter to someone else’s convictions. Yours and theirs may not be the same and no one has the right to force what they believe on another. We do not have the right to tell someone else that they are wrong simply because we have read it in some book or think it ourselves. Everybody has the right to live their lives as they feel like and no one can tell them they are wrong.

It is said.

The problem is that verses like Hebrews 12:29 come up. Our God is a consuming fire.

Throw something into the fire and what happens? It is burned up.

When we are thrown into God, so to speak, we are burned up. As the apostle Paul said in Galatians 2:20 said, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

When we are in Jesus and through him in God, we are no longer who we were. We have been burned up in his presence, we have been crucified with Jesus and we have spiritually died. We are new creatures.

We can no more leave our Christianity at home that we can leave our sexuality or anything else that defines us physically.

Wherever I go, I am a man. I am male. Everything I look at is seen through that prism. I cannot see things any differently because that is who I am. I am also an American. Even though I lived in a foreign country for a year and a half, I still think as an American. I am a white guy. I think as one. Having never been black or Asian or anything else, I cannot imagine it. I am a tall and big man. I think as one. I cannot think as a short person because I am not and have not been for 50 years.

And I am a Christian, a child of God, a follower of Jesus Christ, immersed in his grace and participating in his love. I can no more leave that behind than I could my sex, nationality, race or height. They are all part of me.

And besides, the only one that will last is the Christianity. One day I will be changed to whatever I will be in heaven, and all of the physical differentiations will be gone. But, as 1 Corinthians 13 says, my love for him and his love for me will still be there.

When I vote, or go to school, or work, or anywhere – I am a Christ-follower. I have been crucified with him, I have been burned up in him. I am no longer just me, but me in him.

I still retain my abilities and my identity as a white American tall and big man. But I am one who is in Jesus and saved by his grace. Not only that but, as Paul also said, we are Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us (2 Corinthians 5:20).

How in the world can Jesus make any appeal through us if we leave him at home?

Not me. I love God too much. I will sing of his fire and let it consume me.