Pages

Thursday, December 31, 2009

2010 Goals

1-Become proficient in Biblical Greek

2-Get up at 6 AM every day (for devotion time followed by Greek study), with the exception of the mornings following those wonderful nights spent with great friends. This also means going to bed around 9 or 10. Which means getting tired, which means running and hiking.

3-Run and hike.

4-Do prison ministry; finally take my application in, get fingerprinted, and do prison ministry for the rest of my time in Arizona (5 months). Probably Wednesday evenings.

Monday, December 14, 2009

The Glory of God & Sanctification

"But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit." 2nd Corinthians 3:18
The work that God is doing in us is more than just helping us to sin less. In fact, it's also more than just helping us to do good things. The transforming work God is doing in us TRANSCENDS our behavior.
Have you ever attempted to set up some system of godliness in your life, to remove some particular sin, and found that you came up empty? Not just failing your system, but empty?
We're getting closer when we speak of and pursue God's changing work in our hearts. But the sad thing is that a lot of us stop there. We want God to make us a "good person" rather than a "bad person". How tame and uninspiring!
Here's the secret--not some underground tip, but what should never have left the forefront of our attention--The transformation God works in us is centered on His magnificent glory.
Of course you came up empty in your behavior-based pursuits of "holiness". Look at the passage above (2 Cor 3:18) and observe these truths about sanctification:
-Sanctification takes place while "beholding...the glory of the Lord"
-Sanctification transforms us into a particular image (the image of Christ)
-Sanctification is a process of increasing glory ("from glory to glory")
-Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit ("just as from the Lord, the Spirit")
Sanctification is not primarily the absence of something but primarily the greater presence of something. That "something" is the glory of God. The glory of God is the inspiring reality that spurs us on, it is the power from which transformation happens, and it shown in us as the result of sanctification. That is sanctification.
And sinning less? Of course. But how does that occur?
"For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." -Romans 8:13
Keep the glory of God at the center of everything; what you value, what you love, what you hate, what you pursue. We are not called to impersonal moralism but called, through the Gospel, to enjoy the God of glory.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Did you know...

That introverts and extraverts have different brains?

-Introverts have busier brains, bubbling with activity. This is why introverts require less external activity than extraverts do, and excessive external activity becomes exhausting and overwhelming eventually for the introvert, who was already brimming with internal stimulation.

-Introverts' and extraverts' blood flows in different paths through the brain. Introverts have a greater amount of blood flow in the brain, but it moves in longer and slower paths than those of the extravert. The blood also flows to different sections; for the introvert it flows mainly to the sections that are focused on internal things, whereas for the extravert the blood flows to areas used for processing sensory experiences and data (thus external things).

-The chemical balances are also different.


All of this is taken from the book "Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extraverted Culture" by Adam S. McHugh. And it's all information that he got from a journal article called "Cerebral Blood Flow and Personality: A Positron Emission Tomography Study", from the American Journal of Psychiatry #156, February 1999, pp. 252-257.

I recommend the book and would love to get my hands on this particular journal article. But then, I don't have access to it. But then again, I know some psych majors. Hmm...



Thursday, December 10, 2009

Understanding sin (and with it, the grace of God toward sinners)

One of the things God has made me attuned to when I am in His Word is the great disconnect (in different areas) between what I/we (in the Church) believe and what His word teaches, and between what He loves (and calls us to love) and then what we actually often times love.

The next thing for me to do when I am struck with a disconnect like this is to analyze it, analyze it, attempt to solve it in my brain from different directions, etc. and figure out what makes it so hard to fully believe and grasp certain things in the Word of God--so that we can finally align ourselves properly.

We can grasp theological facts and in a sense "agree" with the Bible, but what does that mean if we can't honestly see our theology worked out in everyday life? What good is our theology if we can't feel in our souls the weight of human sin and of the immense horror of hell, along with the glory of the Gospel, of the incredible value of being justified and the otherworldly hope of the resurrection of the dead and eternal life? And as a seal and affirmation and taste of those things, the powerful and glorious work of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

The following is not a comprehensive answer, but a list of some of the barriers I believe we must get past, and truths we must embrace, en route to reality. That reality is the grossness of sin; the fact that before Christ all people are "by nature objects of wrath", that God is incredibly serious and angry about sin (our generation tragically prefers not to be). This is the reality that we honestly have a hard time with, that makes us wonder if hell is really fair and softens up our pursuit of sanctification because we adopt our own 'progressive' definitions of sin.

-We believe we are more important than God. We believe His greatest concern is our happiness, when in fact it is His glory.

-We must recognize that God owns everything. He's not some god who decided to show up on the scene and reward the behavior He likes and punish the behavior He does not like. All things are about Him, and from Him, and to Him.

-We believe that stealing and adultery are wrong only because the Bible tells us not to do those things. Now, the Bible is inerrant and infallible and does tell us accurately what is true, BUT those things were wrong even before there was a Bible. Stealing, murder, lieing are all wrong because they violate the nature and character of the eternal and holy God. Which means that the worst possible offense (and the only offense) is to violate the character of God.

-We apply principles like the one above this one as we see fit, rather than agonizing over the sacred text and finding out from God what God finds offensive.

-We live in a self-exalting secular humanistic culture.

-We live in a basically prosperous nation where we go untested by many of the horrors of the world. Though, even in our great prosperity we (our country) are ungrateful and whiny.

-We probably aren't going to die anytime soon. So we often don't live with the sobering reality of death around us.

Feel free to add something or to contradict me.