by Jenny Quirino
For the director of music. With stringed instruments. Of David
Hear my cry, O God; Listen to my prayer
1.From the ends of the earth I call to You, I call as my heart grows
faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
2.For You have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe.
3.I long to dwell in Your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter
of Your wings SELAH
4.For You O God, have heard my vows; You have given me the heritage of
those who fear Your name.
5.Increase the days of the King’s life, his years for many
generations.
6.May he be enthroned in God’s presence forever; appoint Your love
and faithfulness to protect him
7.Then will I ever sing in praise of Your name forever and ever.
This is such a wonderful Psalm… the first four verses we find David
crying out to God… LISTEN to my prayer, an earnest plea. It is not the
prayer of a casual worshipper, but it is the cry of a man who has
learned to trust in the Lord. David obviously feels very far away. But you
get the sense that he is not going to leave this place until he knows
that he has the attention of heaven.
Spurgeon said… ’Pharisees may rest in their prayers, true believers
are eager for an answer to them, ritualists may be satisfied when they
have said or sung their litanies, but living children of God will
never rest till their supplications have entered the ears of the Lord
Himself.’
Most suggest that this psalm was written during David’s enforced
exile from the tabernacle, which was the visible home of God… so the
period where Absolom rebelled would probably be the time of authorship. In
these ancient times, to be absent from the place of divine worship was
like having your breath taken from you… an absolute disconnection to
anything that truly mattered. So David may have felt like he was
banished to the ends of the earth… but beautifully so the MAKER of heaven
and earth still reached down to find him.
The great thing about tribulation, is that if you let it, it will bring
you to God… and bring God to you. And David seems to be the master
allowing his situation to walk him toward his heavenly Father. LEAD ME
the word says… LEAD ME to the ROCK, that is higher than I… WHEN MY
HEART IS OVERWHELMED…
What do you do when your heart is overwhelmed?? The saying is…
’when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!!!’ You may laugh, but
many people reach for temporary emotional fixes, rather than ever
reaching out to God, OR, looking at some of the real issues going on. But
our lovely friend, the Holy Spirit, has the amazing ability to LEAD us to
the rock… that great towering Providential ROCK… that towers over
ANY situation going on in our world…..
Verse 4 finishes with a needful Selah as we contemplate the
faithfulness of God….
David is now in the land of ‘GOD HAS HEARD ME’. His language has
changed to a place of confidence, that God is with this banished King,
and will lead him back to where he needs to be. He starts to see again
generations… which in essence means he again is captivated by the
FUTURE… all that God had promised to him for that season, and to ALL
generations… which through Jesus Christ, we are part of that spiritual
lineage today.
Where at first David starts with a loud cry, a desperate plea before
God… he finishes with a song of praise… for the mercy and kindness of
God, daily bringing his service before the King as his love song to
God. I read today… ’Eternal love and immutable faithfulness are the
bodyguards of Jesus throne…’ Stunning!! So, to our God who continues
to wash us in His grace, may we perform our vows, and keep our hearts
pure and passionate in complete humility and service for now and
evermore…..
PSALM 61
The Da Vinci Code . . . and Beyond (Part 2)
by Rubel Shelly
By its very process of pseudoscholarship and skillful narrative, The Da Vinci Code becomes a stunning metaphor for modern theology as written, taught, and lived by those in many mainline liberal denominations at the beginning of the 21st century.
Anyone who has read the works of modernity’s reinterpreters of the gospel—ranging from Rudolf Bultmann to Marcus Borg, John Macquarrie to Sallie McFague, Hans Küng to John Dominic Crossan, or Edward Schillebeeckx to John Shelby Spong—knows, for example, that the resurrection as an event in history that happened to the physical body of Jesus has been reworked as a subjective event in the experience of the Christian community—and maybe much less than that.
So it is standard fare to distinguish the "Jesus of history" from the "Christ of faith." The theology of modernism is essentially secular, and postmodernism permits Jesus to be made into the image of his interpreter at a whim. Whole guilds of biblical scholarship are committed to freeing Christianity from the confining burden of historicity in order to let it soar in the ethereal realm of mythology.
Judgments Conceived Beforehand
Take the much-publicized Jesus Seminar as an example of the difference one’s theological worldview makes. It was founded by Robert Funk in 1985 to determine the authenticity of Jesus’ words as recorded in the four Gospels.
Among the a priori judgments of seminar members are such items as these: Q and possibly an early version of the Gospel of Thomas antedate Mark and constitute "strong documentary evidence" against which the canonical Gospels are to be critiqued; all the miracle stories are false; Jesus was a "traveling sage who traded in wisdom" rather than a would-be religious reformer; Jesus never claimed any distinctive role for himself in the consummation of God’s purposes, and he certainly never claimed to be Israel’s Messiah, much less divine.
By the use of preset criteria (see part 1), it comes as no shock that the Jesus Seminar dismisses 82 percent of the words attributed to the Nazarene in the four Gospels as inauthentic.1 So where does that leave us? The virgin birth becomes a fiction rooted in Greek mythology, and the bodily resurrection is a scientific impossibility. Jesus is nothing more than the proffered mouthpiece of a movement started by Peter and his cohorts in exploiting the memory of a dead man.
In other words, Scripture for the Jesus Seminar is the word of man rather than the Word of God, and Jesus couldn’t save you a seat on a crowded bus—much less at the table of the messianic kingdom of Heaven in which he never believed anyway.
There is certainly nothing about the scientifically acquired Jesus who emerges from this body of expurgated material that explains why either Jewish or Roman authorities would have been disturbed by him—certainly not enough to think he needed to be crucified.
A Nonlaughable Joke
Most professional biblical scholars find the Jesus Seminar a nonlaughable joke. Even though the little band of scholars comprising it offers its judgments as "the assured results of critical scholarship," such a claim is nothing more than culpable chicanery. Scholars from the major graduate institutions in the United States, England, and Europe are notable for their absence from the roster of 74 Fellows of the Jesus Seminar named in the appendix to its volume of findings summarized above.2
Even in terms of popular-level summaries of the seminar and its goals, writers have been pretty severe. So a national newsmagazine reported:
In his lectures and in a 1996 book, Honest to Jesus, Funk makes clear that he envisions a "reinvention of Christianity" that would supplant traditional Christian theology and practice. . . . This new Christianity, says Funk, would among other things emphasize Jesus as a teacher rather than as a divine being. It would replace the Eucharist with a common meal, emphasize forgiveness and freedom over punishment and piety, and endorse "protected recreational sex among consenting adults."3
"But that’s unfair!" cries someone. "That is just mudslinging and ad hominem argumentation to imply that the discrediting of Christian Scripture and its story of Jesus is going to lead to promiscuous sex and other forms of behavior the Bible calls ‘immoral.’ It’s like saying a fictional novel such as The Da Vinci Code is going to undermine somebody’s faith!"
My claim is precisely that—on both counts. A fictional novel has in fact hurt the faith of people because of its skillful weaving of false information into an engaging story; it does so with such subtlety that people who do not know history and Scripture are taken aback and their heads sent reeling. A collusion on the part of a few credentialed scholars with an agenda to promote seems to give credibility to those very points; at the very least, their work can be cited by more obvious proselytizers for spurious causes to give them a platform of authority before people who don’t know how to evaluate their conclusions.
A Spurious ProselytizerTake Bishop John Shelby Spong as an example. He lives and speaks within the walls of institutional Christianity, all the while declaring the fundamental unworthiness of practically all things Christian. He thinks the historic church is built on the false thesis of a personal God who never existed. "Theism was created by frightened self-aware humans to assist them in the task of banking the fires of hysteria brought on by the trauma of self-consciousness, the shock of nonbeing," he claims. "God, understood theistically, is thus quite clearly a human construct."4 Theism defined in terms of a personal God who has created all that exists other than himself, and who reveals himself to his creatures, is "a delusion that encourages worshipers to remain in a state of passive dependency" and deserves to die.5
Yet Spong wants to preserve a nontheistic "God-concept" or "God-experience" that he defines in two moves. First, "God is the ultimate source of life" whom one worships "by living fully, by sharing deeply."6 Second, "God is the ultimate source of love" whom one worships "by loving wastefully, by spreading love frivolously, by giving love away without stopping to count the cost."7
If this approach to God sounds vaguely familiar as Sigmund Freud’s "illusion" or Paul Tillich’s "Ground of Being," you are correct—and Spong admits as much.8 And if it sounds like this nontheistic God is nondistinctive enough that he can be embraced as easily as Buddha or Krishna as Jesus, you are correct again; Jesus may have been the name by which some came to experience God, "but there will be other doorways for other people."9
Tracing implications of his nontheistic view of God,10 Spong jettisons any belief in supernatural creation or miracles. He does not believe that Jesus is the earthly incarnation of a personal God whose existence he does not acknowledge. Neither did the historical person named Jesus perform nature miracles or miracles of healing. The virgin birth is myth. There was no physical resurrection on the third day following his death. He did not ascend into Heaven to his Father’s right hand.
Spong does not believe the Bible was produced as the activity of God in human thought and activity; it is the word of man and not the Word of God. Thus the ethical norms taught in the Bible are not matters of divine truth and fixed for all time. He is particularly concerned, as it turns out, to defend the legitimacy of homosexual behavior, and to dismiss the biblical statements against homosexuality by suggesting, among other things, that Paul "may have been a gay male."11
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1Even the popular press has had a field day poking fun at the colored beads used by seminar members to vote their (subjective) sentiments about the words of Jesus. A red bead meant the statement was "authentic," pink "probably authentic," gray "probably not authentic," and black "not authentic." By this method, only one sentence in the entire Gospel of Mark is granted as being from Jesus (12:17). Neither the Lord’s Prayer nor any of the sayings of Jesus on the cross survives as "authentic" or even "probably authentic." If the surviving 18 percent of things the seminar is willing to attribute to Jesus were confined to red beads, the percentage would be reduced considerably more. It is fascinating to discover, for example, that the "criterion of dissimilarity" is central to the group’s methodology for discovering sayings that might have been original with Jesus. This guideline holds that a saying should be judged authentic only when it is unlike (i.e., dissimilar to) both what we know to have been in antecedent Jewish tradition and what we find in later Christian teaching. Thus, for example, it is held that Jesus likely did not tell his disciples "Take it; this is my body" or "This is my blood of the covenant" (Mark 14:22, 24) for the simple reason that the Christian church uses that liturgical language and thus likely read it back into the Jesus story. Does it strike anyone other than persons with common sense that an artificial device has been created by the Jesus Seminar to insulate Jesus from the movement he founded?
2Robert W. Funk, ed., The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993). The list of "fellows" hardly represents a broad cross section of the leading critical scholars of the Bible. For example, there is not a single member of the New Testament faculty from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Union Theological Seminary, University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, or Catholic University involved in the project. Obviously there are no conservative scholars from any of the evangelical seminaries on the list. While it may even be true that there are individuals on some of the faculties named here who sympathize with or privately endorse the skeptical conclusions of the seminar, perhaps it is their concern for academic reputation that makes them wary of being signatories to its work. Although the introduction to The Five Gospels seeks to leave the impression that the book represents mainstream biblical scholarship that would be attacked only by conservative/fundamentalist Christian groups or individuals lacking academic credentials, as well as by certain "elitist academic critics who deplored the public face of the seminar," that is simply not true.
3Jeffery L. Sheler, "Bob Funk’s Radical Reformation Roadshow," U.S. News & World Report (August 4, 1997), 55, 56.
4John Shelby Spong, A New Christianity for a New World (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 45.
5Spong, New Christianity, 58, 59.
6Spong, New Christianity, 70.
7Spong, New Christianity, 72.
8Spong, New Christianity, 37ff.
9Spong, New Christianity, 137-138.
10The list of items enumerated as points of Christian theology which Spong rejects is taken directly from Spong, New Christianity, 3-7. Each is named after the formulaic introduction "I do not believe . . ."
11This point is pursued a bit in John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 116ff.
Rubel Shelly ministers with the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee.
Source: Christian Standard
PRAYER OF JABEZ...
by Jenny Quirino
For evryone who will read this, plsapply this prayer in ur life..this isvery effective!
We had a devotion with manong bri along time ago na sa church namon. wetalked about Jabez prayer. "Bless me ohLord indeed and enlarge my teritory",prayer yan ni Jabez. nong bri asked usto pray tht prayer kay he said it isvery effective guid daw.and since itrust manong bri guid,i tryd praying itfor many months na..i was about to giveup praying cause daw la man effect atall.but after the SK electon(i ran forthe position of SK chair butunfrtunatley i didnt won), i said tomyself that God hs really somethinggood instore for me.i continued prayingJabez prayer and WOW!! just this yearmany oprtunities came.. Let me enumerate:
1)To be the YACC president - my dad wasa former YACC president and i NEVERthot na iL folow his steps. im theyoungest YACC presidnt so far and ithank God for this BIG2 bLessing.
2)I'll be the Junior Youth Minister of rchurch(Green Plains) - ever since ihave the passion for the ministry and ireally want to be a youth minister(sana pastor hehehe).and now theresposibility was given to me natalaga..WOW!! i really praised God wheni rcvd d text from nong bri na tellimgme iL be a youth minister na.
3)Many pa guys but have no timena.basta many2 blesings gid came to mylife.
So for all of u, i encourage you tostart praying Jabez' prayer. God maynot give u the oprtunities ryt away butim sure u will hav it in His perfecttime. jsut have FAITH!! God hassomthing BIG instore for us.. "Bless usoh Lord indeed and enlarge our teritory"
Thank u guys for reading..hope u r allinspired.drop me a comment if u havered this..thnks! TO GOD BE THE GLORY!
jenny_addy09@yahoo.com
The Da Vinci Code . . . and Beyond (Part 1)
by Rubel Shelly
Have you read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code? If not, you’re one of the few who hasn’t since its publication in March 2003.
It has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and is scheduled to become a movie directed by Ron Howard, set for release in May 2006. Tom Hanks is to play the lead role of Robert Langdon, the professor who unravels the mystery of the Holy Grail. "We probably don’t need his status from a box office standpoint," says Howard, "but he gives Langdon instant legitimacy."
Ah, legitimacy! That’s the word. This fictional story of a murder in the Louvre claims "legitimacy" for its accounts of artwork, architecture, documents, and rituals. And it has had a significant negative impact on the opinions many hold about the Christian faith. Because so many people had asked me about The Da Vinci Code, I broke down and read it while traveling to Kenya in the spring of 2004—and could hardly put it down.
It is a fascinating and well-written novel, so I understand why it has been so popular. The reaction to the book also underscores how biblically illiterate and uninformed so many Christians are, how susceptible the general public is to negative and iconoclastic presentations of issues related to Christian orthodoxy, and how easy it is to pass off pseudoscholarship when it is being used to assault—for I do not think its anti-Catholic, anti-Christian views are either accidental or naïve—the Christian faith.
A Wonderful Opportunity
Having already tipped my hand to my negative opinion of The Da Vinci Code, I should address the book’s wonderful opportunity for teaching. If I were teaching a beginning class in either Christian apologetics or historical backgrounds to the New Testament anytime soon, I would seriously consider using it as a required text. In spite of a claim to convey factual information about the "documents" and "rituals" of Christianity, it contains very little reliable data. Yet it is a good stimulus to study, and most Christians need a good "shaking up" to study Scripture seriously.
Furthermore, The Da Vinci Code’s bad information is so skillfully woven into the text that tracking down the spurious and misrepresented facts could be an engaging way to keep students digging deeper. The danger arises when there is nobody in the room who has done that research. Then nobody knows what to believe. The better told story is likely the more believable story to the typical reader.
The novel relates how a conspiracy is uncovered through clues encoded in paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci. The conspiracy hides the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was married to Mary of Magdala. The Holy Grail (of medieval and Indiana Jones fame) is not the cup from which wine was drunk at the last supper, but Mary Magdalene herself—in whose chalice-womb the royal bloodline of Jesus was carried. Jesus wanted the future of his movement to rest with Mary Magdalene, but his crucifixion forced her to flee to France where their child, Sarah, was born—and from whom issued the Merovingian royalty of that country. As the book tells it, Magdalene’s diaries of her life with Jesus, the family tree of the Merovingians, and many other significant facts about the "Sacred Feminine" are hidden in her tomb.
According to the story line of The Da Vinci Code, these facts have been viciously suppressed by a female-denigrating religion that replaced the original vision of Christianity. Such a coup was pulled off only because Emperor Constantine dictated the canon of the New Testament and managed to suppress Gospels older and more reliable than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Some of these Gospels, it asserts, were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scholarly community, according to Brown, knows that Q and the Gospel of Thomas may well be more important for reconstructing the original shape of Christian thought than the familiar Gospels of the New Testament. (Note: Brown seems to be unaware of the contradiction between his desire to put Mary Magdalene and "the Sacred Feminine" in a position of primacy in early Christianity and the Gospel of Thomas to which he is attracted.1 But this is not the only internal inconsistency in his novel.) And, the book claims that Constantine’s Council of Nicea in ad 325 not only fixed our 27-book New Testament canon but also moved the day of Christian worship from Saturday to Sunday, initiated the worship of Jesus as divine, and set the church on a path of patriarchal bigotry.
What a fascinating—and complex—plot for a fictional novel. And what a reception it has received. But since it is sold in the "fiction" section of bookstores, it would be silly to get perturbed over these ideas. Right? Maybe not!
For one thing, The Da Vinci Code offers itself as a reliable source of information about the history of "true Christianity." Immediately after its title page and before the narrative begins is a page headed Fact that sonorously declares: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."2 Then, whenever one of the more farfetched ideas about the alleged fourth-century reconfiguration of Christianity is mentioned, one of the scholarly figures in the story says something like, "The marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record"3 or "The royal bloodline of Jesus Christ has been chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians."4
Authenticating FictionThe central assertion that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that a series of sinister churchmen suppressed critical documents that would totally recast Christianity is hardly new with Brown. He gets it straight from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a 1982 book that is cited by the pivotal scholarly figure of the book’s narrative. The book is described as overblown but important, whose "fundamental premise is sound" in tracing the bloodline of Jesus.5 There really was a 1980s book by the title Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Yet it was hardly hailed as a piece of scholarship whose "fundamental premise is sound." To the contrary, it is what a reviewer in The New York Times called a "notorious hoax."6
In the name of research, contemporary scholarship, and theological acumen, The Da Vinci Code puts conjecture on the level with fact, constructs pseudohistory for its text as historical narrative, and pulls assumptions out of the air as needed to make fiction convincing as written. Little tidbits of how this or that flight of fancy is "chronicled in detail by scores of historians" or "has been known by scholars for decades" appear throughout the text to authenticate the fictitious.
This can lead otherwise intelligent people who are not experts in church history, biblical text, or Christian theology to become confused. And there is real danger that they might recast their view of the origin and integrity of Scripture, of the person and activity of Jesus of Nazareth, or of the nature and legitimacy of all things Christian.
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1Neither the Gospel of Thomas nor any of the other Gnostic Gospels claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. The Gospel of Thomas even presents what could be called a "sexist" view of females generally and Magdalene in particular. For example, "Simon Peter says to them: ‘Let Mary go out from our midst, for women are not worthy of life!’ Jesus says: ‘See, I will draw her so as to make her male so that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who has become male will enter the kingdom of heaven’" (Saying 114).
2Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 1.
3Brown, Code, 245.
4Brown, Code, 253.
5Brown, Code, 253, 254.
6"Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a masterpiece of insinuation and supposition, employing all the techniques of pseudohistory to symphonic effect, justifying this sleight of hand as an innovative scholarly technique called ‘synthesis,’ previously considered too ‘speculative’ by those whose thinking has been unduly shaped by the ‘so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century.’ . . .
"[It concocts] an argument that is not so much factual as fact-ish. Dozens of credible details are heaped up in order to provide a legitimizing cushion for rank nonsense. Unremarkable legends . . . are characterized as suggestive clues or puzzles demanding solution. Highly contested interpretations . . . are presented as established truth. Sources–such as the New Testament–are qualified as ‘questionable’ and derivative when they contradict the conspiracy theory, then microscopically scrutinized for inconsistencies that might support it. The authors spin one gossamer strand of conjecture over another, forming a web dense enough to create the illusion of solidity. Though bogus, it’s an impressive piece of work." Laura Miller, "The Da Vinci Con," The New York Times (February 22, 2004), Sec. 7, p. 23; available online at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07E0DD103AF931A15751C0A9629C8B63.
Note: The same review gives a summary history of the Priory of Sion, a society identified on The Da Vinci Code’s Fact page in this ominous paragraph: "The Priory of Sion–a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975 Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli Victor Hugo, and Leonarda da Vinci." The actual Priory of Sion was founded in 1956. The documents found in the Bibliothèque Nationale are known to have been fabricated and planted by a man named Pierre Plantard in the 1970s. Miller writes: "Plantard’s hoax was debunked by a series of (as yet untranslated) French books and a 1996 BBC documentary, but curiously enough, this set of shocking revelations hasn’t proved as popular as the fantasia of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, or, for that matter, as The Da Vinci Code. The only thing more powerful than a worldwide conspiracy, it seems, is our desire to believe in one."
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Rubel Shelly ministers with the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee.
Source: Christian Standard
The Ultimate Worship Experience
by Ken Read
Many of us have spent our lives looking for the ultimate worship experience. We seek the presence of God, longing to see, touch, feel, or in some way sense his nearness. We need God’s love and acceptance, and cry out for intimacy. We want to be friends with the Almighty.
Can there be intimacy without sacrifice? Apparently not. Adam walked in unhindered fellowship with God, but since the fall, a restored relationship with a holy God has required sacrifice. Abel offered an animal, Moses threw down his staff, Aaron washed before entering the tabernacle, David paid for the threshing floor, and Jesus surrendered his will to the Father’s.
John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus the Christ, just as surely as the Old Testament Law precedes the New Testament Gospel, winter gives way to spring, and Lent leads into Easter. First, we repent, and then seasons of refreshing come (Acts 3:19).
Abraham and Laughter Boy
Abraham, the father of our faith, provides an example of the path to intimacy with the Lord. His is a strange story, but it makes perfect sense to God. After an impossibly long wait, God gives a promise that makes Abraham laugh. He is to have a son, and God tells him to name him Laughter Boy. A year later, Isaac is born!
God watched as the old man’s heart skipped a beat at his birth, and he heard Abraham’s laughter when he first held his newborn son. Father and son laughed through infancy, cherishing every new smile and every new word. “Did you hear that? He said, ‘Abba!’” Abraham laughed at Isaac’s first step, and all the way through toddlerhood.
I’m sure he was overprotective, doting over the boy at every childhood injury or cold. I imagine that well-meaning friends said, “Isaac, now that you are turning 5 years old, don’t you look forward to riding the bus to school this fall?” Well, Abraham walked Isaac to kindergarten that first day, and then just couldn’t let go of his little boy’s hand. He said, “Thanks a lot. Sorry. I think we will homeschool.” And he turned around and laughed all the way back home.
This was his only begotten son, and there certainly would be no more. Not at his age. The oldest man in the county, and he’s out there, laughing while he plays basketball in the backyard with his son. He shows his boy how to care for a sick lamb and how to run the family business that he will inherit.
God watched while Sarah called them to dinner, Abraham and Laughter Boy. Isaac is getting so tall, she notices, and now he’s the one reaching out to steady his father as they walk over the rough spots.
The Lord has watched all of this with pleasure, but the Lord knows what has happened in the heart of Abraham. This is Abraham, who without question was willing to leave his father’s household to follow God. He showed that he loved God more than his own family back then. What choice would he make now? Has he left his father’s idols and been granted a promise, only to have that very promise become an idol itself?
The Ultimate Worship Experience: Sacrifice
The Lord calls Abraham to the ultimate worship experience. He has sacrificed animals before, but this time God calls for Abraham to give his son—and notice how God words it: his only son, named Isaac, whom he loves. The Lord is very specific in pinpointing the difficulty of this sacrifice. Isaac is the one thing in the world that he would not, could not, give up. It seems to destroy the promise, more surely than Ishmael would have fulfilled it.
Abraham is the father of our faith because, without question or argument, he follows the Lord’s call. He was willing to lose the son of his laughter and the nation that he represented, all because God said it.
He leaves early in the morning (before he can change his mind), and he doesn’t bring an animal (there’s no backup plan on Abraham’s part). He only brings his son, whom he loves.
Laughter Boy, his old father, and a servant walk in silence. But inside Abraham’s head, plenty of conversation is taking place. Are you sure you want this, Lord? This is just a test, right? Maybe you meant something else, and I wasn’t hearing you right. You spoke to me clearly yesterday, but I don’t hear you today. Is there anything you’d like to say now, Lord? Because if there is, this would be a very good time for you to speak.
He goes on up alone with Isaac and the torch and the wood. Isaac asks his only question: “Where is the sacrifice?” And Abraham, against all hope, speaks by faith: “God will provide the sacrifice, my son.”
The two build an altar and arrange the wood in silence, but the inner argument continues between Abraham and his God.
God, I’m not sure this is fair. After all, you are God. You don’t know what it’s like to . . . to lose your only begotten son, to knowingly bind him up and place him on an altar and to have to kill your own self. This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. You don’t know what you are asking! Is the plan to bring him back from the dead? Is that what you will do, Lord? . . . Why don’t you speak? You are so silent, and I am so frightened! My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
He takes out the knife, and holds it aloft, to kill the boy as swiftly and painlessly as possible. He covers his son’s confused and trusting eyes. Tears are streaming down his contorted face. OK, let’s finish this.
Then (and not a moment sooner or later) an angel cries out from Heaven. “Abraham! Abraham!” In the greatest understatement of the Bible, Abraham says, “I’m listening!” And God does, in fact, spare Isaac, does bring him back from the dead, and provides a ram in Isaac’s place.
And now God—and Abraham—know that Abraham truly fears the Lord and would give him everything.
Giving Up Idols
The story of Abraham and of others is recounted in Hebrews. In chapter 12, the writer concludes the stories: “Therefore, . . . let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Imagine trying to run in a tunic, or trying to get traction with leather straps wrapped around your feet. All of that encumbered an athlete. So the writer says, “Throw it off! Set it aside! Give it up! Get rid of it!” It slows you down.
We can’t run a heavenly race while carrying an earthly idol. An idol is anything that we love more than we love God. The ultimate act of worship is to sacrifice what we love the most on this earth to the One we love even more. After all, we can’t be born again until we die.
Paul commended the Thessalonians because they turned to God from idols, to serve the living God. Jesus said we cannot serve two masters. The first commandment is to have no other gods before the Lord. Sacrifice is the only path to true worship, and surrender is the ultimate worship experience.
Jesus said the Father is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. He said we are to take up our cross daily and follow him. The hymnwriter has worded it for us: “All to Jesus I surrender! All to him I freely give.”
After all, God knows the cost of restored fellowship. He has already paid it in full.
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Ken Read is professor of music and worship at Cincinnati (Ohio) Christian University.
Source: Christian Standard
When Parents and Friends Clash
'Honor your father and mother,' which is the first commandment with promise." — Ephesians 6:2
by Larry W. Greider
Did you hear the one about the motorcyclist who was barreling down the highway with his jacket collar flapping in his face? To remedy the constant battering, he pulled over, removed his jacket and put it on backwards. Then he roared back onto the road at full throttle. It wasn't long before he collided violently with another vehicle.
Ambulances rushed to the scene. Paramedics began working on the victims. Shortly, a doctor arrived and stepped over to several attendants who were tending to the mangled motorcyclist. "How's he doing?" asked the physician.
One of the paramedics looked up with a grimace. "Not so good," he said, shaking his head. "He was breathing when we got here, but by the time we got his head turned around straight, he was dead."
Where are you headed? Jokes aside, do you know where you are headed? Sometimes parents are concerned about the friends their children choose and sometimes they can react a little too quickly. They may think your friends are headed in the wrong direction, and that they will drag you down with them.
Perhaps the most difficult area for many parents to understand is the pressures and pulls that many teenagers face. When your parents were in school, students didn't kill other students or faculty. Armed guards and surveillance cameras and metal detectors were not issues. While the world has changed in recent years, parents still want you to be safe and successful. So it is easy for them to overreact! The stakes are much higher these days and mistakes in judgment can be critical.
If you have friends that your parents don't like, let me give you some advice based on lots of experience. As a father of four (my youngest is an older teen), I have seen lots of schoolmates over the years. One young man actually lived on our deck for a few nights before we discovered him huddled in a corner! He felt he was safe on our property, but lacked the courage to ring the doorbell.
Another time, my daughter told a close friend to call me anytime she was in trouble. She did, while we were at the Feast of Tabernacles, hundreds of miles away. How she tracked me down is still a mystery.
I've intervened with school authorities and parents on more than one occasion. Perhaps that is because my son told the school counselor that I was always ready to help students in trouble. On another occasion, I remember having to settle an argument when one of my sons ran into the house with a young man I'd never met. My son said, "Dad, tell him I keep the Sabbath and that's why I can't go to the football game." I have no idea what that was all about, but my answer seemed to calm him down. The point is, the advice I want to share with you comes from real-life experience.
Talk to your parents My oldest daughter used to tell me that all her boyfriends were terrified of me. When I first heard that, I was shocked. How could a nice guy like me intimidate a starry-eyed young man who wanted to take my baby out on a date? I guess it must have something to do with body language! So what can you do if your parents seem intimidating to you?
The most important thing you as a teen can do is talk to your parents. Talk often and about many different things. Parents want to know what's going on in your head. If you develop the habit of expressing yourself to your mom or dad, it will pay off in many subtle ways. Meals eaten together as a family provide great opportunities to discuss things going on in your life. Sadly, with the frenetic pace of life, families hardly have time to eat a meal together and there is always something going on that makes parent/teen dialogue difficult. But get into the habit of talking to your parents. Search them out. Try the garage if Dad is working on the lawnmower or the kitchen while Mom is preparing dinner. If nothing else works, plop on your parents' bed at night and don't leave until you unload your burdens. Share your frustrations, joys, plans, stories and especially your friendships with them.
I remember one time interviewing a family whose teens had all grown up to be very successful adults with well-adjusted personalities and excellent relationships of their own. The secret, according to the mother, was that they had the habit of talking regularly about almost everything.
Tell your friends about your parents' strengths. All parents have some positive points. This will show that you respect and love them. Respect is a marvelous virtue and it works both ways. If you show respect for your parents, they are more eager to respect you and your decisions, including the friends that you choose.
Parental concern One reason some parents clash with friends is their concern that you are being influenced to reject the values that they are trying to teach you. When others perceive a negative influence in your life, you should be thankful that they are trying to save you from problems and heartache. But often first impressions are wrong. Again, talk it out!
Try to have friends over so that your parents can observe them in action. Perhaps the green hair, tattoo and pierced eyebrow were just too much to absorb in the first encounter. Fads today can mimic the worst in the culture by following those who disrespect God, parents, the law, etc. While fads in fashion have been around a long, long time, the attitudes that often go with them have also been around since the Garden of Eden.
Trust your parents' sense and appreciate their motives. One day you'll be a parent and realize that it is very difficult to steer through the troubled world of a rapidly declining culture whose value-neutral tendencies are creating conflicted people. Your parents have learned lessons, sometimes the hard way, and want to shelter you from making similar mistakes.
The Bible reveals that "Evil company corrupts good habits" (1 Corinthians 15:33). If you have friends that send shivers through your parents, step back and analyze their concern. They may see some character traits that might influence you. Every encounter with an individual leaves some impression on us. When your parents come down heavy, realize they love you and want to protect and guide you in a way that will bring you lasting happiness and joy.
Wide variety of friends In looking at the bigger picture of friendships, an important strategy is to have a wide variety of friends. To have friends, you must show yourself friendly (Proverbs 18:24). If you grow too dependent on one person, you might come to need his or her acceptance so much that you will compromise your convictions.
Strive to have church friends, school friends, relatives who are your friends and those in other age ranges who are also your friends. This will help broaden your perspective on life and give you a variety of approaches to observe and learn from.
The promise is real Obeying the Fifth Commandment to honor your father and mother does indeed bring a benefit. As the scripture says, "'Honor your father and mother,' which is the first commandment with promise: 'that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth'" (Ephesians 6:2-3). God is your heavenly Father and He also wants you to be happy and attain your incredible human potential.
God made us to need other people and wants us to have many friends. Just be sure that they are good for you and that you are good for them. Believe it or not, parents often do know best! YU
Praying with Tears
by: Jan Johnson
A frequent cause of traffic jams on highways in my area is the “Looky Lou” habit of drivers who slow down to examine accidents on the side of the road. Usually an ambulance has already arrived so it’s not as if people want to help. They just to want to look.
Similarly, when public tragedies occur, we find ourselves hooked on monitoring news coverage. At first, this helps us move through the shock phase of grief, but then it comes to resemble that morbid “Looky Lou” phenomenon. Perhaps we do this because we don’t know what else to do.
If obsessing on news reports isn’t the best response to tragedy, what is? While better responses include comforting the afflicted, joining a cleanup crew, or donating money, there’s another important response that off-site folks can participate in: the ongoing weeping with God whose heart throbs when humans suffer or wander off. Such weeping is, I believe, an ongoing way to “mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15).
THE DIVINE COMPANION
Weeping with those who weep invites us to become God’s weeping companions. God weeps—sobs might be a more fitting verb, for the tears stream down: “Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people” (Jeremiah 9:1).
Often, the object of God’s weeping is wayward Israel: “Let my eyes overflow with tears night and day without ceasing; for my virgin daughter—my people—has suffered a grievous wound, a crushing blow.” God also weeps over other nations: “O Virgin Daughter of Sidon, now crushed!” (modern-day Lebanon); “Virgin Daughter of Babylon” (modern-day Iraq); “O Virgin Daughter of Egypt!” (Jeremiah 14:17; Isaiah 23:12; 47:1; Jeremiah 46:11).
Even though God often weeps throughout Scripture (especially in the books of poetry and prophecy), our “don’t worry, be happy” culture may avoid these passages. Rarely are they taught or studied. But such weeping leads us to pray as part of our work in bringing healing to those who have suffered tragedies or wandered away from a life with God.
I stumbled into weeping with God after reading about the 2 million women and children held captive in the sex-trafficking industry each year—how they are lured, lied to, kidnapped, and coerced into bondage. I found myself unable to focus on much else for days. At the same time, my daily meditations moved to Psalm 56. As I read the passage, I pictured myself as a young girl of 12 trapped in a city unknown to me and beaten violently into submission to prostitution. The words of Psalm 56 fit my (her) situation (vv. 1-9):
Be merciful to me, O God, for men hotly pursue me; all day long they press their attack.My slanderers pursue me all day long; many are attacking me in their pride.When I am afraid, I will trust in you.In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?All day long they twist my words; they are always plotting to harm me.They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, eager to take my life.On no account let them escape; in your anger, O God, bring down the nations.Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll—are they not in your record?Then my enemies will turn back when I call for help. By this I will know that God is for me.
I soon found myself using the words of the psalm to pray for this 12-year-old:
When she is afraid, help her put her “trust in you” (v. 3). Help her believe, “in God I trust; I will not be afraid!” (v. 4). Help her to be courageous and declare, “What can mortal man do to me?” (v. 4) and “On no account let [her] enemies escape!” (v. 7). I also added prayers for certain organizations that assist these women and children.
Such praying is important because we keep company with God in the waiting room of time here on earth, crying over the tragic state of those exploited and oppressed and even those bent on exploiting and oppressing.
TRANSFORMING TEARS
Such prayers of lament also involve praying for those we perceive to be the “bad guys.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who within seven years of writing these words was imprisoned by the Nazis and executed, wrote: “Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God. We are doing vicariously for them what they cannot do for themselves.”1
So while we weep over the badness of the bad guys, we also join Christ in wanting the bad guys to be transformed. (Yes, we feel reluctance here, but recall Jonah wasn’t too keen on those awful Ninevites turning toward God.) Our tears nudge us closer to the eventual goal of wanting what’s best for them—and this is called love.
I struggled with not wanting to weep for the “bad guys” when I attempted to pray for the manager of one of my family members. The one I love reported being ridiculed in front of others when this manager was mistaken about the facts. No amount of friendly explanations, reasonable clarity, or confidential talks with personnel seemed to dissuade this person from continual yelling.
I knew I could benefit from weeping over this manager, but it wasn’t possible until I read Psalm 82. In its picture of God holding a divine council and assessing the nations’ performances regarding their injustices, the unjust people are said to “walk about in darkness” (v. 5). That phrase described this manager and created more mercy in me. He (like the sex traffickers) walked in darkness, thinking that yelling at people would improve their performance. He was imprisoned in a desire to control and a continuing habit of rage. I asked God to free from bondage this one walking about in darkness.
BUT WOULD THE AVERAGE PERSON DO THIS ?
Perhaps such prayer sounds too emotional. First, let me caution you that this type of prayer is for the very practical and down-to-earth. The suffering on this earth is real, and such prayer moves us away from the sentimentalism sometimes associated with prayer. A weeping heart is a tough one—one that has moved outside the world of me, myself, and I and into the reality of life that God observes every day.
Or perhaps you cry only at movies. Well, I’m not sure my eyes literally, physically cry when my soul weeps. Scripture speaks of the soul crying out (Psalm 84:2; 57:1, 2; 88:2, 3; Ezekiel 27:31). A weeping soul mirrors the weeping of God. It’s not emotionalism, but a will bent toward wanting God’s will to be accomplished on this earth. As we identify all that we are and do with God’s purposes in creating us and our world, we come closer to thinking as God thinks and behaving as God behaves.
You may wonder what causes God to weep today. God weeps as people turn away from him, as people prefer themselves to God and others.
Reading the daily newspaper is a way of learning about what might cause God to weep. Where are the poor, the needy, the hurting today? What new or continuing guerilla warfare or natural disaster has caused people just like me to become widowed or orphaned? Who has been left without a home? What is happening today in yesterday’s crisis locations: Rwanda? Vietnam?
Being present and attentive to traumatized others is part of how we co-labor with God as a light in the darkness. Reading the newspaper can be a prayer starter.
To weep with the suffering does not mean, however, that we have a good cry and move on to other things. It’s more that we have a good cry and we are never the same. Weeping with God gives us a place from which to speak and act. As we work and pray and give to causes, we do so with traces of tears that recall names and faces and places. We speak out about such situations not with the voice of a do-gooder but from a broken heart–one that has had a glimpse of what that merciful, compassionate heart of God goes through. It fuels our efforts to reach out and helps us love God all the more.
________
1Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1963), 166.
Jan Johnson is a retreat speaker and author of 16 books, including When the Soul Listens. www.janjohnson.org.
Source: Christian Standards
Living With One Parent
Single-parent households have increased dramatically in recent years. While God's intent was for young people to live with both parents, due to various factors, many don't have this luxury. What can young people do if they live with only one of their parents? What have teens and parents of single-parent households discovered?by Doug HorchakMany of you reading this article live in a home with only one parent. Others know many teens who have only one parent at home. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that about 30 percent of American families are headed by one parent.
Whether you have family or friends who live with only a mom or dad, or you yourself are a member of such a family—single-parent families are all around us. In this article we want to address some important issues to help you appreciate the varying family circumstances that some face. In an effort to focus on this growing phenomenon, Youth United e-magazine conducted a limited survey of single parents and their teens. Their responses to the following questions shed light on feelings and perceptions that, when understood, can help us all have a greater appreciation of how we can build more meaningful relationships.
Consider the following questions and the advice given by teens and parents in single-parent homes: What challenges do teens with one parent face?Most of the teens and parents surveyed focused on two issues that are challenges to them.
The fact that growing up in a home with only one parent does not give the teen the best chance to understand and really appreciate what the love between a committed mother and father should and can be like. While most of the teens expressed great love and added respect for the parent they are living with, some teens and parents said that having one parent limited the perspective with which decisions were made, views were developed, interests and experiences were shared. What misconceptions are there about single-parent households?
By far the greatest misperception that many of the teens and parents surveyed stated was that many people seem to view single-parent homes as dysfunctional and virtually doomed to failure. Teens of single-parent households, along with their single parents, often have numerous examples of times when other well-meaning people (family, neighbors, friends and even pastors) make references to single-parent families presuming the worst about the family's emotional health, personal development and prospects for the future.
As one single mother stated, "A misconception is often that we are not a whole family, that we are weakened and not part of things anymore. That we don't belong in the crowd anymore." While many parents and teens of single-parent homes readily admit that they often face special challenges, most of them agreed that the stability and love needed for a healthy family environment can still be met—even though there is only one parent.
What can a teen do to compensate (if needed) for such challenges?
Many commented that having clearly-defined roles within the household helps to compensate for some of the challenges that single-parent families face. Often the parent is more stressed due to having even greater responsibilities (without having a parent-partner to share these important duties). Both teens and parents in these circumstances need to be aware of the added stress that both are likely under. One teen made the comment, "Always be positive about things, still have fun and know that things will always get better."
What is the single most important piece of advice you would give a fellow teen in a single-parent household?
This question had varied responses. Many talked about learning to get on with life and make the very best of the circumstances and family that they do have. One parent mentioned that having one parent who loves you and is focused on doing his or her best is a great blessing when compared to having no parent or having parents who do not care.
One teen said, "I would tell a teen in a single-parent household to not treat the situation like it is very different from a two-parent home. There is still someone who loves you. I really appreciate the bond my mom and I have." Another teen stated that teens in single-parent homes should not become paralyzed in life, but be proactive and make the very best of their situation. They might be frustrated at times because of not having the blessing of two loving parents with whom to talk, but as she wisely advised, "don't forget that God is your Father too! So leave Him in the picture and let Him get you through things."
Reasons and circumstances vary While having only a mom or dad to come home to may be a common denominator in millions of families, the reasons vary widely. Some single-parent households have come about as a result of an untimely death of a parent and mate. These losses are often sudden and require a unique set of tools in order to cope.
The most common reason for single-parent homes is the dissolution of a marriage, otherwise known as divorce. Even in these cases, the reasons and causes of the failure of a marriage vary greatly. Such circumstances often make it hard for both the children in the families and friends outside of the family to adjust and cope. Too often those outside of the single-parent families are ignorant of the true circumstances that family has had to respond to and are prone to pre-judge the people involved and the causal factors.
Understanding is needed As is true in all aspects of human relationships, knowing what the other has gone through in life helps. A better understanding of the facts of single-parent households is needed by all of us. In the Church, we are all family and "brethren." That should never be forgotten.
God's Word tells us that the purest form of Christianity involves building lasting relationships with all members of the congregation. James taught that "pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27, King James Version).
While not all young people in single-parent homes are living in the kind of grief and loss indicated by James in this letter to the Church, our sincere efforts as friends and brethren to understand and build lasting and meaningful relationships with all in the Church (regardless of the makeup of their family) is the purest form of practicing the way of love and giving that Jesus Christ modeled for us all.
Source: Verticla Thought
Marriage Misconceptions
There's only one perfect true love for you, and you'll magically know it when you find him or her: It's not that simple or that hard. God doesn't say that there is only one possibility for you out there, but He does answer prayers. He wants us to prepare ourselves, learn about others, seek wise counsel and make the best possible choice of a husband or wife. Then He wants us to commit to making it work. No two people are perfectly compatible. Marriage is a learning process for two best friends to enjoy and work through together. You can fall into or out of love: You can't "fall into" the kind of committed, godly love required for a lasting marriage. One writer said you have to "climb up" to the kind of agape love described in 1 Corinthians 13. It involves the Spirit of God that comes through baptism and a conscious choice to keep loving even when the feelings of romantic love may be hidden by the trials of life or the actions of your mate. We do "fall into" romantic love though. "Once the experience of falling in love has run its natural course (remember, the average in-love experience lasts two years), we will return to the world of reality and begin to assert ourselves. He will express his desires, but his desires will be different from hers. "They fall out of love, and at that point either they will withdraw, separate, divorce or set off in search of a new in-love experience, or they begin the hard work of learning to love each other without the euphoria of the in-love obsession" (Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, 1995, pp. 32-33).
You've got to spend more than $25,000 to get married: Planning and budgeting for a wedding could be the first big test for a couple and the in-laws! If it's important to your parents and you—and if you won't have to go into debt to do it (or have little to eat in a one-room apartment for several years)—then you can easily spend the $27,000 to $28,000 that the average American couple spends on a wedding. (That's up 73 percent in the last 15 years.) But you don't have to. If you all feel that a lot of that money would be better spent on education or the down payment on a house, there are lots of choices for beautiful, memorable but less expensive weddings. Don't get so caught up in planning the perfect wedding that you forget to plan for your future life together! You've got to be realistic and plan for divorce in case it happens: How can you have a 100 percent commitment to making a marriage work if you already have an escape plan?
Source: Vertical Thought
