The writer of Psalm 119 declared, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105).
What a great illustration. A lamp to my feet and a light unto my path, but I don't know many of us who walk around with a lamp any more to show the way. It might not be as poetic but if the author of Psalm 119 was writing today, he would have said, “Your word is a flashlight that shows me the path to go on when it is dark.”
Do we let his word show us the way through the darkness?
When I was in junior high, we would often go out and toilet paper people’s houses. It was not a nice thing to do (although really, people appreciated being toilet papered as long as it was in good fun and not vindictive, which it always was for us – it showed we cared in a weird way). Anyway, part of TPing people’s houses was dressing up in dark clothes and running across town. Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever ran in the dark without a light. The roots in the ground will trip you. And that is pretty dangerous. I fell a few times from roots. You’ve got to be real careful in the dark. The most dangerous obstacle when running around town in the middle of the night is clotheslines. One time, I ran into a clothesline at top speed in the dark. It knocked me down and made a mark on my forehead that lasted a few weeks . Clothesline in the dark can be deadly.
Being out in the darkness and trying to get around makes you realize that light really does help out a lot. Life in the spiritual dark can be just as deadly. God’s word will help us navigate through this life by helping us develop our relationship with Him, a relationship through which He will transform us into the person he knows we should be so that we can live life to the fullest.
Showing posts with label word of God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label word of God. Show all posts
Restoring the Early Church, Reliance on Scripture, and Achieving Unity
Almost every individual who has had a significant impact on the kingdom since the time of Jesus has had a desire to restore the New Testament church; no group or individual has the corner on restoration although they might each use unique language to express this idea. We can look at the changes Luther made and notice that he did not go far enough. The same is true with every reformer. Even the people who planted the church you attend did not go far enough, and neither will we in our efforts to bring about God's will. What makes these church planters and reformers great was their ability to figure out how to live in the culture that surrounded them and share the good news of the kingdom in a relevant way. They did not isolate themselves from the culture, yet they refused to be conformed. In the end, we should be thankful that they allowed the Holy Spirit to transform them to impact their culture.
Unfortunately, our natural tendency as followers of Jesus and bodies of believers is to stray away from that simple church where the Jesus is the head. We seem to inevitably follow men, fall in love with methods that began with a purpose yet continue meaninglessly on, and develop doctrines that are viewed as essential but are not that significant. The upside to this is that we always have room to restore the early church practices and teachings in our generation. From our perspective, we have the advantage of building on and learning from two thousand years of reformers who have tried to move us in that direction. Unfortunately, we can see through a study of history that each generation have great omissions when it comes to restoring the early church. It is humbling to acknowledge that we will have great omissions of our own that are not obvious to us. But that does not mean we should give up on restoring the early church; it just means that we should not be prideful and believe we have established the perfect church without any useless methods or wrong doctrines. We need to serve Jesus to the best of our abilities, pass the church on to the next generation in a better state than when we joined it, and allow room for mistakes and grace along the way.
When looking at historical and modern-day reformers, we all too often have the tendency to copy a program, rip off a teaching, or model our lives after theirs. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we also need to realize that God made us the way we are to bring about his will in the time we are living. We need to mimic the reformers desire for unity and their passion, not their methods. They were made for and were living in a particular place and time. Their causes and efforts were significant, yet their methods are outdated because time has moved on and the conversation has changed.
We need to be willing to change yet hold firmly to a passion to have unity based on the authority of Scripture. That is easier to write than to actually implement because we frequently confuse our interpretations of Scripture with Scripture itself. We isolate ourselves with people who share our beliefs while ignoring and condemning those who disagree. This results in the development of pride and arrogance in our understanding of Scripture. It seems to be rare indeed to find a person that you can show Scripture to who will then go home, study that Scripture, and change their beliefs according to what the Bible said rather than what they had always been taught. But that is the type of people we need to be if we want to have any sort of unity. Whether you believe that God is still speaking today or whether he stopped interacting with us at the final swipe of the apostle John's quill, we can all agree that if the Bible says something, then we need to believe that teaching and change our lives to reflect it.
It seems amazingly easy to have unity with those who are loving and willing to transform their beliefs to the teachings of Scripture. It is impossible to have unity with those who base their beliefs on traditional doctrines, whether handed down through a written handbook or expressed through oral traditions. Even if we would agree with one another on every point at one time, we would be left with no no room for growth. In these types of situations, people will not be willing to reconsider their beliefs or examine an old thought that has been overlooked. They will go around believing what they were told and always read the Scripture in the light they were given.
The first thing to be tossed out the door in a system based on traditional doctrines is intellectual integrity. Intellectual integrity is thrown out for intellectual conformity. The end result becomes an environment of intellectual totalitarianism. God does not desire us to be identical twins; he wants us to be brothers and sisters. True spiritual unity happens when we are willing to submit ourselves to Jesus, the Spirit, and the written word of God to transform our minds and actions into who God intends for us to be. We don't need uniformity; we need unity!
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Some quotes that inspired this post:
Unfortunately, our natural tendency as followers of Jesus and bodies of believers is to stray away from that simple church where the Jesus is the head. We seem to inevitably follow men, fall in love with methods that began with a purpose yet continue meaninglessly on, and develop doctrines that are viewed as essential but are not that significant. The upside to this is that we always have room to restore the early church practices and teachings in our generation. From our perspective, we have the advantage of building on and learning from two thousand years of reformers who have tried to move us in that direction. Unfortunately, we can see through a study of history that each generation have great omissions when it comes to restoring the early church. It is humbling to acknowledge that we will have great omissions of our own that are not obvious to us. But that does not mean we should give up on restoring the early church; it just means that we should not be prideful and believe we have established the perfect church without any useless methods or wrong doctrines. We need to serve Jesus to the best of our abilities, pass the church on to the next generation in a better state than when we joined it, and allow room for mistakes and grace along the way.
When looking at historical and modern-day reformers, we all too often have the tendency to copy a program, rip off a teaching, or model our lives after theirs. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we also need to realize that God made us the way we are to bring about his will in the time we are living. We need to mimic the reformers desire for unity and their passion, not their methods. They were made for and were living in a particular place and time. Their causes and efforts were significant, yet their methods are outdated because time has moved on and the conversation has changed.
We need to be willing to change yet hold firmly to a passion to have unity based on the authority of Scripture. That is easier to write than to actually implement because we frequently confuse our interpretations of Scripture with Scripture itself. We isolate ourselves with people who share our beliefs while ignoring and condemning those who disagree. This results in the development of pride and arrogance in our understanding of Scripture. It seems to be rare indeed to find a person that you can show Scripture to who will then go home, study that Scripture, and change their beliefs according to what the Bible said rather than what they had always been taught. But that is the type of people we need to be if we want to have any sort of unity. Whether you believe that God is still speaking today or whether he stopped interacting with us at the final swipe of the apostle John's quill, we can all agree that if the Bible says something, then we need to believe that teaching and change our lives to reflect it.
It seems amazingly easy to have unity with those who are loving and willing to transform their beliefs to the teachings of Scripture. It is impossible to have unity with those who base their beliefs on traditional doctrines, whether handed down through a written handbook or expressed through oral traditions. Even if we would agree with one another on every point at one time, we would be left with no no room for growth. In these types of situations, people will not be willing to reconsider their beliefs or examine an old thought that has been overlooked. They will go around believing what they were told and always read the Scripture in the light they were given.
The first thing to be tossed out the door in a system based on traditional doctrines is intellectual integrity. Intellectual integrity is thrown out for intellectual conformity. The end result becomes an environment of intellectual totalitarianism. God does not desire us to be identical twins; he wants us to be brothers and sisters. True spiritual unity happens when we are willing to submit ourselves to Jesus, the Spirit, and the written word of God to transform our minds and actions into who God intends for us to be. We don't need uniformity; we need unity!
****
Some quotes that inspired this post:
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. Romans 8:9-11 (ESV).
Probably the greatest hurdle which Centrist and Rightists among the Disciples will have to take in this eventual confrontation with the 'denominational world' is admission of the fact that their traditional presentation of 'the plea' is outmoded and that they do not have all the answers to the present ecumenical situation. Many of them have become enmeshed in controversies involving outworn shibboleths which had meaning in the day they were created, but some of which are a 'foreign language' now (James Deforest Murch, Christians Only: A History of the Restoration Movement, 366).
There must be admission that the New Testament church has not yet been perfectly restored anywhere within the Restoration movement. The division into three bodies and the lack of complete unity within each of them are positive proof that the Disciples have yet much to learn about what it takes to realize the answer to Christ's prayer in John 17. Moderate persons are saying now that this situation calls for penitential prayer and the demonstration of sincere repentance. A new spirit of humilty must be born in those who would sit down with men in other communions and talk of the things of the kingdom. The guidance of the Holy Spirit must be sought in discovering a right approace to the modern ecumenical problem...Literally millions of Christians are willign to sit down in such mutuality of spirit today, but they will not tolerate a holier-than-thou attitude from a people who have manifestly fallen far short of perfection in their plea for and practice of unity (Murch, 366-367).
Love - What We Need to Change the World -- or at Least Our Neighbors
The reason most churches in America are struggling is not because the culture is hostile to the gospel but that we have yet to really live the gospel in their midst. We like to speak the gospel, but words are cheap. Most people reject intellectual propositions rather than Jesus Christ. We need to live the gospel, not just speak it.
The key to loving is that the change that Jesus brings has to have already happened in us. Love begins with us accepting Christ's love and reflecting it to others. We cannot love the unlovable unless our hearts are changed from a worldly, selfish state to a Christ-like, giving, sacrificial state.
When we see the hurt, the oppressed, the hopeless, are we hurt? Do we sympathize? Or do we echo the words of the Pharisee who prayed, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people" (Luke 18:11). Are we haughty in our position of wealth, education, or any other part of our life we hang our pride and success on? The tax collector prayed, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13). Jesus followed that up by saying, "I tell you, this man (the tax collector) went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted" (Luke 18:14).
A chart in the book UnChristian, which deals with what the younger generation thinks about the church and what the church has done to foster that thought, explains the call to a radical, sacrificial and loving life through the following verses.
Quote from unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters
by David Kinnaman (213-314).
The key to loving is that the change that Jesus brings has to have already happened in us. Love begins with us accepting Christ's love and reflecting it to others. We cannot love the unlovable unless our hearts are changed from a worldly, selfish state to a Christ-like, giving, sacrificial state.
When we see the hurt, the oppressed, the hopeless, are we hurt? Do we sympathize? Or do we echo the words of the Pharisee who prayed, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people" (Luke 18:11). Are we haughty in our position of wealth, education, or any other part of our life we hang our pride and success on? The tax collector prayed, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13). Jesus followed that up by saying, "I tell you, this man (the tax collector) went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted" (Luke 18:14).
A chart in the book UnChristian, which deals with what the younger generation thinks about the church and what the church has done to foster that thought, explains the call to a radical, sacrificial and loving life through the following verses.
Genesis 12:2-3—God wants the lives of his people to bless others.
Isaiah 58:10—God followers should spend themselves on behalf of the poor.
Micah 6:8—We should be known for living humbly and pursuing justice and offering mercy.
Matthew 5:44—Love people who seem to be ‘enemies’ and pray for them.
Matthew 25:35-40—Whatever people do for the ‘least of these’—forgotten and overlooked people in society—they do for Jesus.
Mark 9:35—The greatest role in life is to serve others.
Luke 4:18—Jesus’ ministry was first introduced as freeing captives, serving the oppressed, and healing the sick.
Luke 15:3-7—God pursues people like a shepherd would search for even one straying sheep.
Luke 15:11-32—God is described as a father who patiently waits for the return of his child.
John 3:17—Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save it.
John 15:13—You cannot love a person more than by giving your life up for him or her.
Galatians 5:13—Christians have freedom to love unconditionally as Christ loved people.
Philippians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:6; 1 John 3:16-19—Our lives are to be ‘poured out’ and spent to serve God’s purposes.
Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:21-22—Our attitude should be like that of Jesus, who loved and accepted humans even though they were ‘enemies’ of God. The he changed their status from enemies to friends, even sons and daughters of God, when they commit themselves to him.
1 Timothy 3:1-7—One of the qualifications of Christian leadership is to have ‘a good reputation with outsiders’ (v.7 NIV).
Titus 3:2—Christians should be peaceable and considerate, showing true humility toward everyone.
2 Peter 3:9—God wants everyone to repent and turn to him.
Would other people describe your life as a Christian in these terms? Do these principles guide your relationships with outsiders? Are you a Christ follower who seeks to live out this picture of Christianity as you interact with others?
Quote from unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters
by David Kinnaman (213-314).
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