Filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he said, "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!"
- Acts 7
I read this passage today, and maybe for the first time, it hit me:
Stephen actually saw Jesus, who had died, rose again, and ascended into Heaven.
What conditions were necessary for him to see Jesus? First, he had to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And next, perhaps . . . he had to be close to death.
But what is this faith that, when it is full and complete, actually enables people to see Jesus; not a vision, not a dream . . . but Jesus himself? Whatever it is, Stephen had it. He believed completely, without an ounce of doubt. His mind, heart, and soul had been so emptied out of worldliness and doubt, which enabled the Holy Spirit to fill him completely, so that he could see the eternal realm.
What do doubters think? They will insist it was a dream. Or maybe he saw what he wanted to see: The clouds were in a formation that made the sunlight brilliant, and as he looked up, in a state of emotional euphoria (brought on by too much oxygen), the branches of a tree, or bird flying overhead, looked for a moment like the silhouette of Christ. Or maybe he made it up. Maybe Stephen lied.
But what would be the point of that? When we finally get it right, or that is, when God finally reveals the true plan of salvation for humanity, you can expect this sort of thing to happen. These things happen because Stepehen's belief was powerful enough to make it so. We only know a slight fraction of the wonders of the Universe. Why do we make excuses when something comes along we can't explain?
Stephen believed . . . and saw. And we take it as true because . . . we believe.
And perhaps the Son of God will likewise reveal Himself to us, at a time we do not expect!
Monday, May 12, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
The Impossible Path to Success
. . . and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
- Acts 2
I want you to notice two inescapable realities of the Second Chapter of Acts. We celebrate this chapter, as the high point of Church history. The Church, as you know, was barely days, if not hours, old!
But like the birth of a new child, it was where life was at its fullest and most perfect. Everything functioning naturally, without assistance. It has not yet been soiled by the fulfillment of physical needs (no earthly food has entered its mouth yet). It has not involved itself with the world. No interactions with others. No exposure to evil, to pornography, to violence, to hate.
It is in a haven of full acceptance, and boldness. When the baby inhales deeply and lets out his or her first cry, it is most fully alive. And, while experiences, success, and happiness should follow, they do so with the attendant worry and angst.
So is the Church at its first day. It is growing like crazy, and roaring out its birth cries, drawing people to it like the miracle that it is.
And we think we can somehow get the modern Church back to that model!
First, we're not about to do the things that I did not quote above: make all things common. Meet every day. Not gonna happen.
But if we did that . . . truly did as Jesus would do . . . I have no doubt there would be miracles. Prove me wrong! You can't, because no Church would dare do that much. We're not about to share all of our possessions with one another.
But if we did . . . we would have the goodwill of all the people. Did you catch that? Wouldn't that be great? Isn't this what we crave? And if you want to know why we don't have that kind of goodwill, from everybody, then just read the rest of this chapter and notice what's missing.
The world knows our values. It knows our standard of perfection, to which we never reach. It knows we're supposed to be doing lots of charitable, loving, selfless deeds, and when we don't, it points its finger at us. It's like an overly-wise teenager pointing out his parents' own hypocrisy. You want to lash back in anger, but you know he's right.
Having the goodwill of everybody naturally leads to daily growth in the Church. If your Church grew every day, it would have at least 365 more members, one year from today.
The formula for such success is easy . . . simple.
- Acts 2
I want you to notice two inescapable realities of the Second Chapter of Acts. We celebrate this chapter, as the high point of Church history. The Church, as you know, was barely days, if not hours, old!
But like the birth of a new child, it was where life was at its fullest and most perfect. Everything functioning naturally, without assistance. It has not yet been soiled by the fulfillment of physical needs (no earthly food has entered its mouth yet). It has not involved itself with the world. No interactions with others. No exposure to evil, to pornography, to violence, to hate.
It is in a haven of full acceptance, and boldness. When the baby inhales deeply and lets out his or her first cry, it is most fully alive. And, while experiences, success, and happiness should follow, they do so with the attendant worry and angst.
So is the Church at its first day. It is growing like crazy, and roaring out its birth cries, drawing people to it like the miracle that it is.
And we think we can somehow get the modern Church back to that model!
First, we're not about to do the things that I did not quote above: make all things common. Meet every day. Not gonna happen.
But if we did that . . . truly did as Jesus would do . . . I have no doubt there would be miracles. Prove me wrong! You can't, because no Church would dare do that much. We're not about to share all of our possessions with one another.
But if we did . . . we would have the goodwill of all the people. Did you catch that? Wouldn't that be great? Isn't this what we crave? And if you want to know why we don't have that kind of goodwill, from everybody, then just read the rest of this chapter and notice what's missing.
The world knows our values. It knows our standard of perfection, to which we never reach. It knows we're supposed to be doing lots of charitable, loving, selfless deeds, and when we don't, it points its finger at us. It's like an overly-wise teenager pointing out his parents' own hypocrisy. You want to lash back in anger, but you know he's right.
Having the goodwill of everybody naturally leads to daily growth in the Church. If your Church grew every day, it would have at least 365 more members, one year from today.
The formula for such success is easy . . . simple.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Precious Death
Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his servants.
- Psalm 116
How can a loving God . . . ?
Well, that statement is always completed with some reference to death, or disease, famine, want. But really those problems only have resonance because they lead to death.
How can any kind of death be precious to the Lord? Isn't death the last enemy to be destroyed? Isn't death our punishment for sin?
Perhaps we need to take off our 21st Century understanding of "precious" as something cute, or cuddly, or adorable. Think of "precious," as in, a precious metal. It is something you want to protect, to keep, to save. You do not want harm to come to something precious.
When a servant of the Lord dies, God's interest piques. He goes into action. He engages the everlasting arms, and keeps you safe, away from all danger. You are home-free. His dead servants have His full attention. He can't wait to rouse you from sleep, back into life.
So then, the point is not to evade death (shame on you, narcissistic modern Americans!). Rather, make it your prime objective, to became a servant of the Lord! That way, when you die (for we will all die anyway), you will transform that horrible event into something the Lord considers precious.
- Psalm 116
How can a loving God . . . ?
Well, that statement is always completed with some reference to death, or disease, famine, want. But really those problems only have resonance because they lead to death.
How can any kind of death be precious to the Lord? Isn't death the last enemy to be destroyed? Isn't death our punishment for sin?
Perhaps we need to take off our 21st Century understanding of "precious" as something cute, or cuddly, or adorable. Think of "precious," as in, a precious metal. It is something you want to protect, to keep, to save. You do not want harm to come to something precious.
When a servant of the Lord dies, God's interest piques. He goes into action. He engages the everlasting arms, and keeps you safe, away from all danger. You are home-free. His dead servants have His full attention. He can't wait to rouse you from sleep, back into life.
So then, the point is not to evade death (shame on you, narcissistic modern Americans!). Rather, make it your prime objective, to became a servant of the Lord! That way, when you die (for we will all die anyway), you will transform that horrible event into something the Lord considers precious.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
This Corrupt Generation
Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.
- Acts 2
This is a really harsh thing for Peter to say. What might he be talking about? "Generation" is a pretty broad, sweeping term! But if I say anything about a "generation" I must be referring to traits that make a particular generation distinct.
If we discuss The Greatest Generation, I must take the good:
- Acts 2
This is a really harsh thing for Peter to say. What might he be talking about? "Generation" is a pretty broad, sweeping term! But if I say anything about a "generation" I must be referring to traits that make a particular generation distinct.
If we discuss The Greatest Generation, I must take the good:
- Defeat the Axis Powers
- Survive The Great Depression
- Build Post-War America into the greatest super power in history
With the bad:
- Racial segregation
- Pollution
- Harmful personal habits: drinking, smoking
And there will be a lot of moral practices that future generations will find repugnant.
The same would be true of the Baby Boomers, the Gen X-ers, the Civil War Generation. There is good and bad. But the person of God knows that there are distinctives in his or her generation, that have a great effect on him/her. You cannot escape the assumptions, for good or ill, of your generation. Its practices may become so ingrained that you can no longer see clearly enough to call evil evil, and good, good.
Generations will be evil, and not know it. They will be narcissistic, and not know it. They will be implementing reforms that, in fact, take society backward, without knowing it. When things go wrong, they will blame anyone, but themselves. A Generation is the worse form of stubborn, willful human. For, it has lots of support to stay down the wrong path.
By definition, setting yourself apart from your generation, will not be a popular thing to do. People will hate you. They will call you judgmental. They call you a "hater" because you do not accept their assumptions, nor their conclusions.
What's Peter's compelling case for why one must be saved? Well, among all the good reasons, is a hard one: Save yourself from this corrupt generation.
Friday, April 18, 2014
With Their Own Eyes
. . . but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses. . .
~ Acts 10
If I had to boil down the New Testament beginning with The Acts of the Apostles (that is, all of it except the four Gospels), it would have to be this:
"Jesus died, and lives again . . . and we saw Him."
The testimony is emphatic. To say "He is Risen," and "He's alive!" is one thing. But when it is replete with personal eye-witness testimonies: "I saw it with my own eyes. I sat down and ate with Him. I spoke to Him, and He to me. I touched Him, and He me," then it takes on a whole new meaning.
Read the Acts, and the Epistles, again, carefully. If the writers had not personally seen Jesus, alive, after He had died, then it all has pretty much no point.
The moral lessons would have no authority.
The promises (new life, our resurrection, eternal life, establishment of His eternal kingdom, abundant life, etc.) would be empty, and hollow.
The words of prophecy would be laughable.
The entire volume of the New Testament would be wasted time, for the writer, and the readers.
We put a lot of stock on believing the writers of the New Testament were reputable. And they put a lot on the line, in terms of their own reputations, and the well-being of their families. Had they not actually seen Him, and then turned around and insisted that they did, to others, then History would have to condemn them as at best fools, and at worst despicable liars.
But they insisted that they saw Him, and they put it in writing. The time to debunk it was while they yet lived. But nobody . . . NOBODY . . . was able to stop the spread of their accounts.
The story is inescapable. And the bold proclamations of these plain, simple fishermen have become the foundation that built the great world religion that continues to stir things up, millennia later.
~ Acts 10
If I had to boil down the New Testament beginning with The Acts of the Apostles (that is, all of it except the four Gospels), it would have to be this:
"Jesus died, and lives again . . . and we saw Him."
The testimony is emphatic. To say "He is Risen," and "He's alive!" is one thing. But when it is replete with personal eye-witness testimonies: "I saw it with my own eyes. I sat down and ate with Him. I spoke to Him, and He to me. I touched Him, and He me," then it takes on a whole new meaning.
Read the Acts, and the Epistles, again, carefully. If the writers had not personally seen Jesus, alive, after He had died, then it all has pretty much no point.
The moral lessons would have no authority.
The promises (new life, our resurrection, eternal life, establishment of His eternal kingdom, abundant life, etc.) would be empty, and hollow.
The words of prophecy would be laughable.
The entire volume of the New Testament would be wasted time, for the writer, and the readers.
We put a lot of stock on believing the writers of the New Testament were reputable. And they put a lot on the line, in terms of their own reputations, and the well-being of their families. Had they not actually seen Him, and then turned around and insisted that they did, to others, then History would have to condemn them as at best fools, and at worst despicable liars.
But they insisted that they saw Him, and they put it in writing. The time to debunk it was while they yet lived. But nobody . . . NOBODY . . . was able to stop the spread of their accounts.
The story is inescapable. And the bold proclamations of these plain, simple fishermen have become the foundation that built the great world religion that continues to stir things up, millennia later.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Yes, The Creator Can Do This
The dead man came out . . .
- John 11
This is the moment that carries the entire narrative. What good is Lazarus' sickness and his death; of what value is Christ'a lingering to get there; of them completing a formal funeral for the dead man, and burying him?
It all hinges on the dead man coming out, under his own power, breathing as he did so. His heart is now beating. He can feel the smooth and sharp rocks under his feet. His thoughts are activated. To him, the four or so days that have passed, since he was last conscious, are but an instant. One moment he's laying in bed, struggling to breathe. The next he's lying on a hard slab, with daylight coming through the entrance to the burial cave.
I read recently, a quote by Mark Twain, stating that the Bible is full of thousands of lies.
Is this one of them?
If there is no resurrection . . . if the Lord of all creation can't even re-activate a dead person, then what good is any of it?
This moment is one of the pinnacles of 66 Bible books. Is there a "Top five" most important and breathtaking scenes in the thousands of years of history contained in Scripture? This is one of them.
If the dead do not rise, then our hope is gone. Jesus proved everything when Lazarus was raised.
The dramatic moment informs everything we have been pondering during this season of Lent. Sin, death, decay. We are but dust. We're nothing!!!
But because of the Resurrection. Because our Father, who is able to create everything, can (logically) also restore life to anything. Thanks to him, thanks to life after death, we have become everything. And we are . . . we're everything to our Lord, God, and Savior.
- John 11
This is the moment that carries the entire narrative. What good is Lazarus' sickness and his death; of what value is Christ'a lingering to get there; of them completing a formal funeral for the dead man, and burying him?
It all hinges on the dead man coming out, under his own power, breathing as he did so. His heart is now beating. He can feel the smooth and sharp rocks under his feet. His thoughts are activated. To him, the four or so days that have passed, since he was last conscious, are but an instant. One moment he's laying in bed, struggling to breathe. The next he's lying on a hard slab, with daylight coming through the entrance to the burial cave.
I read recently, a quote by Mark Twain, stating that the Bible is full of thousands of lies.
Is this one of them?
If there is no resurrection . . . if the Lord of all creation can't even re-activate a dead person, then what good is any of it?
This moment is one of the pinnacles of 66 Bible books. Is there a "Top five" most important and breathtaking scenes in the thousands of years of history contained in Scripture? This is one of them.
If the dead do not rise, then our hope is gone. Jesus proved everything when Lazarus was raised.
The dramatic moment informs everything we have been pondering during this season of Lent. Sin, death, decay. We are but dust. We're nothing!!!
But because of the Resurrection. Because our Father, who is able to create everything, can (logically) also restore life to anything. Thanks to him, thanks to life after death, we have become everything. And we are . . . we're everything to our Lord, God, and Savior.
Friday, April 4, 2014
Flesh and Death
To set the mind on the flesh is death.
- Romans 8
This makes lots of sense. Flesh ages and decays. We feed the flesh, or we die. The flesh is our natural preoccupation. We make excuses for our behavior, because of what the flesh compels us to do. The more we focus on the flesh, if past a healthy point just to stay alive, the more we feed every little urge or hunger. We can no longer distinguish between survival and just "feeling good." Many contemporary Christian devotionals, even, suggest that "sexuality" is on a par with water, food, and shelter, in a list of human needs.
Jack Miles, in his two masterpieces "God - A Biography" and "Christ - A Crisis in the Life of God" suggests that the fact that we are sexual is proof that we are mortal. God cannot be a sexual being, for He does not die. How interesting! (But too big a topic to investigate here!)
But here in Romans, Paul makes essentially the same claim. The urges of the flesh, the hungers and the drives, are equivalent to death itself. This is why fasting from food is such a healthy spiritual practice. We want to live - it is our most primal, and eternal, motivator! But any time we feed more of our hungers than it takes to live, we are living according to the flesh. And this takes us away from God.
Christ went to the Cross, which was the ultimate denial of the flesh. His steps to cavalry were motivated by a desire not to live. He started His walk by fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. And He ended it by willingly offering up His own life. When He had breathed His last, they even pierced his side, so that what was left of the food and drink He had ingested, could empty out along with His blood.
In the end He had nothing at all, of this world, left.
The paradox is that life comes from a denial of the very things that make us feel good, and that even enable us to live on to the next day. When you deny the flesh, you are establishing your dominance over it.
And one cannot be holy if one cannot control one's hungers.
- Romans 8
This makes lots of sense. Flesh ages and decays. We feed the flesh, or we die. The flesh is our natural preoccupation. We make excuses for our behavior, because of what the flesh compels us to do. The more we focus on the flesh, if past a healthy point just to stay alive, the more we feed every little urge or hunger. We can no longer distinguish between survival and just "feeling good." Many contemporary Christian devotionals, even, suggest that "sexuality" is on a par with water, food, and shelter, in a list of human needs.
Jack Miles, in his two masterpieces "God - A Biography" and "Christ - A Crisis in the Life of God" suggests that the fact that we are sexual is proof that we are mortal. God cannot be a sexual being, for He does not die. How interesting! (But too big a topic to investigate here!)
But here in Romans, Paul makes essentially the same claim. The urges of the flesh, the hungers and the drives, are equivalent to death itself. This is why fasting from food is such a healthy spiritual practice. We want to live - it is our most primal, and eternal, motivator! But any time we feed more of our hungers than it takes to live, we are living according to the flesh. And this takes us away from God.
Christ went to the Cross, which was the ultimate denial of the flesh. His steps to cavalry were motivated by a desire not to live. He started His walk by fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. And He ended it by willingly offering up His own life. When He had breathed His last, they even pierced his side, so that what was left of the food and drink He had ingested, could empty out along with His blood.
In the end He had nothing at all, of this world, left.
The paradox is that life comes from a denial of the very things that make us feel good, and that even enable us to live on to the next day. When you deny the flesh, you are establishing your dominance over it.
And one cannot be holy if one cannot control one's hungers.
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