From the Greatness of God Toward a Christlife

My girls and my brother's girls encountering the Cloud Gate,
the Chicago Bean, for the first time on their first trip to Chicago.

Kids being born.

An amazing sunset.

A majestic waterfall.

A towering mountain.

Each an opportunity to encounter God.

Sometimes people who live in the mountain become immune to the majesty right outside their window. Yet when those of us from the plains go and see the mountain, it's incredible. 

I remember taking Isaac to Detroit for the first time when he was younger, he was amazed with the city. He had seen it for the first time. But for someone who lives in Detroit, it is just another day in the city.  

When it comes to God, we live our ordinary lives with extraordinary God-things around us all the time.  And the extraordinary begins to be missed. And we forget the greatness of God because we are surrounded by it. God doesn't want to be confined to just the extraordinary things like sunsets, waterfall, and the birth of children. He wants to be part of your life in the ordinary things.

God wants to change the world. He grabs people's attention through wonderful, and sometimes tragic, things, but it is our responsibility to also live the countercultural Christlife that grabs people's attention. We love when others would hate. We live to serve others when others live for themselves. We bring selflessness into a world of selfishness. If those of us who claim to be Christians started living as Christians rather than just giving intellectual assent to the idea of Jesus, then we would start showing the world the equivalent of an amazing sunset rather than a dark, stormy sky. A beautiful waterfall rather than a raging, destructive flood.

This can't happen through our own efforts; it comes through tapping into the strength God provides. God wants to be glorified. God deserves to be glorified. It's not for His sake; it's for ours. When He is glorified and we see Him for who He really is, our lives will never be the same. We can overcome that addictive sin, love the unlovable person in our life, stop the destructive habits, and give sacrificially. These things will be easy to do if we encounter God, allow His Spirit to lead us, and continue in His strength.

None of these things will happen if we don't really encounter God. If we use church just for a place to raise up moral kids, we won't encounter God. If we go to church so we can feel like we have done our religious work for the week, we won't encounter God. If we do spiritual things to be seen by others, we won't encounter God.

We must seek God - passionately, desperately, wholeheartedly, and with every ounce of our being. When we seek, we will find. When we find, we will be changed.

Our change starts with God. Overcoming our struggles starts with God. Enduring hardship starts with God. We just have to get a glimpse of God, a real glimpse, and we will change. If you have something in your life that you feel that you can't change, which we all do if we are honest with our spiritual lives, then we should draw closer to God. He is wonderful. He is all-powerful. He is eternal. He is beautiful. His presence brings us to our knees and causes us to see our truly sinful state.

God is glorified through the beauty of His creation that He has called good. And He wants to be glorified in the greatest love of His creation, you. He loves you and wants others to see His glory through you.

The most important thing that can happen in our life is that we truly experience God. The real God. Not the imaginary God that we make up. It's not getting married, having a baby, or even being physical being born. It's encountering the life-changing God.

We are the biggest obstacle to the most important thing. We get in the way of us truly seeing God. We keep too busy to notice Him. We justify away His greatness. The fact is that we live in this modern world and can explain things. We can explain how the beauty of the colors in a sunset happen scientifically. We can explain the science behind a baby being conceived and born. We can explain how mountains were formed. But that doesn't mean that we still shouldn't be in awe of them. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be in awe of their Creator.

We look at the Sistine Chapel and can still say that Michelangelo was a great artist.

We can hear the Brandenburg Concerto and marvel at the talent of Bach.

Or let me put it in more modern terms.

We can watch an episode of Breaking Bad and really appreciate the fact that the writers, actors, and directors have mastered their craft.

We can play Minecraft and appreciate the talent and vision of Notch.

We can hear a song by our favorite artist - for me an Avett Brothers song - and appreciate their touching lyrics and creativity.

We can see an amazing car and know that there are great engineers that designed it.

We marvel at an amazingly designed building and appreciate the architects and craftsmen.

Most of us here can't duplicate these accomplishments. And that is why we appreciate them. We can explain how they are done, but that doesn't take away their marvel. Their beauty.

And when it comes to the creation of God, we may be able to explain how it is beautiful, how the rivers were shaped, and all that jazz. But that doesn't take away the Creator's beauty. His majesty. His glory.

God is indescriblable. I can't give you a definition that can encapsulate Him. I can't develop a theology that encloses Him. Too often, Christians contain God within the Bible. We turn the book that is supposed to unleash Him into this world into a cage. But God is greater than any man-made cage. He will not be contained. He's greater than any one song of praise we may sing. He is vast. He is majestic. And we can't completely describe Him. If we would really take time out of our day to worship God, to bask in His presence, to understand just a little bit of Who He is and what He wants from us, to silently bow in His presence, then we will experience a renewed sense of awe. We will be humbled, and we will be changed. Our lives will be changed. Our communities will be changed. Our families will be changed. Everything will be changed.

Zecharias encountered God and his lips were sealed until the birth of his son. Bringing about a changed life that brought incredible things.

Isaiah encountered God and went forth. Another changed life that brought incredible things.

Moses encountered God at the burning bush. Another changed life that brought incredible things.

Paul on the road to Damascus. Another changed life that brought incredible things.

When we encounter God, we will be changed. And maybe incredible things will follow. But if they don't, who cares? We just encountered God. And that's enough. More than enough.

The Soterian Gospel, Scot McKnight, Ben Witherington, and God

The Soterian Gospel as Selfish by Scot McKnight from February 1, 2012

The point I want to make is that the soterian gospel is too often an individualistic, even at times incredibly selfish and self-serving, reshaping of the Story. The Story of the Bible is about God directing all of history toward Jesus as King and toward the arrival of the New Jerusalem where God will be all in all. We join in on that, but we are not the Center of the Story. The soterian gospel makes us too much the center of the Story.

Any gospel that is not God- and Jesus- and Spirit-centered is not the full gospel and is not driven by the right categories. Any gospel that is soterian shaped is, to one degree or another, shaped by the liberal impulse to make life about good ol’ me!

"For God so loved Himself?" Is God a Narcissist? by Ben Witherington from November 20, 2007

I suppose we should not be surprised that in a culture and age of narcissism, we would recreate God in our own self-centered image, but it is surprising when we find orthodox Christians, and even careful scholars doing this.

McKnight, at least in this article, misses that God loves humanity, Jesus served humanity, and we're called to do likewise.

If we are supposed to be the image of God, and God is all about Himself, then shouldn't we then be all about ourselves? But what if we are supposed to be the image of God, and that image is one of creativity, love, and service to others? (Phil 2:5-11)

 God's kingdom is upside down and it is through service one toward another that people are exalted. (Mark 10:43)

Jesus is our King. He should receive glory. And we should join with Him in His work of loving others. It is about others because we love God through loving them. (Matt 25:40, 1 John 4:20)

 Many go too far in making the gospel only about the individual, but to go and make the gospel only about God also goes too far. When we talk about the emphasis being God's glory, we cannot remove that from how God goes about getting that glory. He gets it by serving us. Lowly, created, sinful humans. What a great God! Worthy of glory!

What Is He Thinking?

A few months back, Dooley Funeral Home in Antwerp started to destroy the nice stairway in front of their building, a stairway that they had just had refinished a few years back. Heck, I would say that it was the nicest stairway in Antwerp, yet Shawn Dooley had the audacity to destroy it.

I was asked by people, “Do you know why they are destroying the stairs?” “Didn’t they just get them redone?” “Those were nice stairs, why would he do that?”

This situation with the stairs reminds me of the way we interact with God. We are often on the outside of knowing the big plan. Things are going on, yet we are often left confused. What is God doing? Why is He allowing me to go through this bad health, these bad finances, this troubling situation, these distraught relationships?

A few years back, I had melanoma. I had to go to a plastic surgeon in Toledo to have it removed from my face. There is this period of extreme stress between having it removed and having further tests done to see if it has spread through my body. For melanoma, once it has moved beyond the skin and entered the system, is as deadly as the most deadliest forms of cancer. So I was worried. Something I shouldn’t have been. And I talked a lot with God. Something I should do much more, even during normal, sunshiny situations.

After all the testing was done, I was given the all clear. Thankfully, I have not had a recurrence of the melanoma. The thing that shocked me the most through the whole situation is that with my melanoma also came the greatest increase in my faith. Through the whole experience, my faith grew tremendously. Actually, I do not think I would be a pastor here in Antwerp if it was not for my melanoma. My melanoma was a blessing, for it was used by God to shape me who I am today. My melanoma changed me.

Do you let your hardships change you for the better? Our times of confusion—our valleys—are much more than just moments of disease. We struggle through broken relationships. We face tough finances. We despair at the loss of loved ones. Life is full of one hardship after another.

Here’s the thing though. With the stairs being destroyed, Shawn knew what he was doing. He had a plan for his nice, new steps that would have access on both sides to accommodate the people who would park in his new parking lot. The destruction of the nice stairway made since to him the whole time because he knew the end goal. Shawn had the whole picture. To many of the people watching, it made no sense. But then in the end, they could also look at the Dooley Funeral Home and see that what was confusing before makes perfect sense now.

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

That is what we have to remember. God is using our valleys to show us something that we would not be able to see without them. Are we willing to see? If we are not, then all that pain and suffering is for naught. But if we go in with our eyes, ears, and heart open, we will come out on the other side of every situation more of who God wants us to be.

Sadly, sometimes our valleys lead to death, but we must remember that for those in Jesus, death is only temporary. It is just a passing, fleeting moment. It is the time when our physical shell is broken and the spiritual seed inside can finally grow into who we are destined to be.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV).

We need to reach a point of trust. We need to be willing to be vulnerable with God. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways our not our ways. But they should be. The more we align ourselves to His way of thinking and His way of living, the more we will live the fulfilled life we were created for. We need to rest assured that no matter what happens, He has our back. What is going on now, even though we have no idea why how it will make things better, will be used to bring Him glory.