Do we really want to know God?
Yes, we call ourselves followers of Christ. We (mostly) attend church on Sundays. We (usually) try to confront the sin in our lives. We (claim to) love other believers. But what do we do with God?
In the day to day, is He the center? Do we arrange our days around knowing Him and pursuing His presence? Do we really want to know all of Him, or only the parts that make us comfortable?
"Yes, God is a loving Father, but he is also a wrathful Judge. In his wrath he hates sin. Habakkuk prayed to God, 'Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.' And in some sense, God also hates sinners... Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms we see... descriptions of God's hatred toward sinners, his wrath toward liars, and so on... The gospel reveals eternal realities about God that we would sometimes rather not face... We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him (page 29)."
These are hard words. But they are true. Often, we construct our view of God from Christian culture and our (distorted) personal experience, rather than from Scripture. When the church or our hearts fail us, we find ourselves lost, confused, and distraught. Or worse, we may be so distracted that we don't even notice the depth of our lostness. Many purported believers are mostly defined by these traits: lost, confused, distraught, clueless. This is not the Gospel.
Gospel means "good news", and describes the prodigious love of a God who left perfection to live among His people. Not simply to receive worship (because He mostly didn't while He was on earth). Not to gain perspective (because He already had it). But to lay down His life for unworthy, oblivious people. And this was no easy task. Jesus didn't sweat blood because He was afraid of dying (notably, other martyrs more cheerfully went to their deaths -- and certainly they were not above Christ), but because He was preparing to face the full wrath of God's hatred towards sin and sinners ("stored up since the beginning of the world", page 35).
Implicit in the good news of God's redemptive work is the claim that we are inherently sinful. We cannot accept forgiveness when we feel we've already arrived at perfection. We haven't. Though I am sure you have noticed, I will point out the obvious: our flesh wars against our spirit. We often say things like, "I am an awful person", hoping those who love us will disagree and soothe our egos. But the Truth is this: we are awful people. Awful people who God can redeem, and is working to redeem as we turn our eyes and hearts towards Him.
A few questions for you, dear sisters (please respond in the comments section):
1. Where did you derive the majority of your view of God? Your family? Your church? Your friends? Your emotions and experiences?
2. What is your initial response to hearing that God hates sinners? And that every inclination of our heart is evil from childhood (Genesis 8:21)? What is the truth about these statements?
3. Respond to this quote: "We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept him (page 37)."
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Friday, August 8, 2014
Radical, Chapter 1: Someone Worth Losing Everything For (Liz)
We all want to be right. We will argue and defend our decisions and viewpoints, even and often if they do not align with Scripture.
A wise family member once told me: people don't change until the cost (or pain) of change is less than the cost (or pain) of staying the same.
She was right. But another dimension must be considered: we may not truly understand the cost of staying as we currently are, because we do not always maintain an eternal perspective. What we perceive as a small price to pay for the pursuit of life/liberty/happiness may, in fact, have enormous consequences for us, for those we love, and for those we should have loved (if we weren't too busy pursuing our own plans).
But God.
God, who gave us Himself, also gave us a means of knowing His will in the Word become flesh. He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Everything. Yet how often we try to find truth elsewhere, only to find ourselves disappointed! Perhaps this is because we are not actually looking for truth, but for permission to continue behaving and believing as we do.
Sisters. There is a better way. Christ came to show it to us.
The passage in Luke 9 titled "The Cost of Following Jesus" presents us with three men who desire to follow Christ, but perhaps not fully. It is easy to identify with them. Who wouldn't want a place to lay his or her head at the end of the day? A chance to bury his or her father? A chance to say goodbye to loved ones? But Jesus had a response for each of their hesitations, as He does for ours today. First, we are told to follow Him. He gives us strength to follow as we obey. Then, we are told to keep our hand on the plow, and not to look back. Catch that -- not. to. look. back. There is no room for comparison, bitterness, or discontent in the heart of the Kingdom seeker. He calls us to move unabashedly forward -- to invest in the soil of the lives around us, and to plant seeds of Truth (God's word) wherever we go.
All around us, we see messages of dissatisfaction. Marketing is the science of generating and inflaming human discontent. Buy this! Sign up for this! Look like this! If you do, you will be satisfied.
Yet whenever we look to an imperfect source -- ourselves, our relationships, our possessions -- we end up dissatisfied. But when we look to Jesus, the perfect Author of every good story, there we find all we need.
1. "He was calling them to abandon their careers... to abandon their possessions... to abandon their family and their friends... Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation. In a world that prizes promoting oneself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves."
What about the above paragraph is most threatening to you (i.e. what would you LEAST like to turn over to God)?
2. " 'Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.' If we are not careful, we can misconstrue these radical statements from Jesus in the Gospels and begin to think that He does not want the best for us. But He does. Jesus was not trying to strip this man of all his pleasure. Instead he was offering him the satisfaction of eternal treasure. Jesus was saying, 'It will be better, not just for the poor, but for you too, when you abandon the stuff you are holding on to.' "
What does the phrase "treasure in heaven" conjure up? How do you think abandoning stuff could bring you ultimate joy?
Let's commit to praying over these truths this week, and asking God to show us what in our lives we are holding onto more tightly than Him. He is sufficient.
A wise family member once told me: people don't change until the cost (or pain) of change is less than the cost (or pain) of staying the same.
She was right. But another dimension must be considered: we may not truly understand the cost of staying as we currently are, because we do not always maintain an eternal perspective. What we perceive as a small price to pay for the pursuit of life/liberty/happiness may, in fact, have enormous consequences for us, for those we love, and for those we should have loved (if we weren't too busy pursuing our own plans).
But God.
God, who gave us Himself, also gave us a means of knowing His will in the Word become flesh. He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Everything. Yet how often we try to find truth elsewhere, only to find ourselves disappointed! Perhaps this is because we are not actually looking for truth, but for permission to continue behaving and believing as we do.
Sisters. There is a better way. Christ came to show it to us.
The passage in Luke 9 titled "The Cost of Following Jesus" presents us with three men who desire to follow Christ, but perhaps not fully. It is easy to identify with them. Who wouldn't want a place to lay his or her head at the end of the day? A chance to bury his or her father? A chance to say goodbye to loved ones? But Jesus had a response for each of their hesitations, as He does for ours today. First, we are told to follow Him. He gives us strength to follow as we obey. Then, we are told to keep our hand on the plow, and not to look back. Catch that -- not. to. look. back. There is no room for comparison, bitterness, or discontent in the heart of the Kingdom seeker. He calls us to move unabashedly forward -- to invest in the soil of the lives around us, and to plant seeds of Truth (God's word) wherever we go.
All around us, we see messages of dissatisfaction. Marketing is the science of generating and inflaming human discontent. Buy this! Sign up for this! Look like this! If you do, you will be satisfied.
Yet whenever we look to an imperfect source -- ourselves, our relationships, our possessions -- we end up dissatisfied. But when we look to Jesus, the perfect Author of every good story, there we find all we need.
---------------------------------------------------------------
And now a couple of questions for you, dear sisters, based on quotes from the first chapter of Radical (please answer in the comments)...1. "He was calling them to abandon their careers... to abandon their possessions... to abandon their family and their friends... Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation. In a world that prizes promoting oneself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves."
What about the above paragraph is most threatening to you (i.e. what would you LEAST like to turn over to God)?
2. " 'Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.' If we are not careful, we can misconstrue these radical statements from Jesus in the Gospels and begin to think that He does not want the best for us. But He does. Jesus was not trying to strip this man of all his pleasure. Instead he was offering him the satisfaction of eternal treasure. Jesus was saying, 'It will be better, not just for the poor, but for you too, when you abandon the stuff you are holding on to.' "
What does the phrase "treasure in heaven" conjure up? How do you think abandoning stuff could bring you ultimate joy?
Let's commit to praying over these truths this week, and asking God to show us what in our lives we are holding onto more tightly than Him. He is sufficient.
Chapter One Thoughts (Shanti)
I feel I should be completely honest about my initial feelings/thoughts about this book. When Liz suggested it and I read the short description I had this defensive reaction swell up in me. Then while reading the first chapter I had to pray that God would help me to read it from a place of openness and not defensive justification of my current lifestyle.
So let me start with what I really liked in the first chapter. I like David Platt's aggressiveness. He is bold about challenging the reader right from the start. Challenging what we have accepted as appropriate lifestlyes and acceptable goals and aspirations.
On page 13 he writes in reference to the American Dream:
"But do you and I realize what we are doing at this point? We are molding Jesus into our image. He is beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is whom we are most comfortable with. And the danger now is that when we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worhsip, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead we may be worshiping ourselves."
Ouch! When you frame it like that is caused me to meditate on the idea of self-worship.
I also liked his thoughts on the cost of nondiscipleship. "the call to abandon the attachments of this world." And "the price of our nondiscipleship is high for those without Christ. It is high also for the poor of this world." Also the "Call to Treasure" was thought provoking. I think for many Americans, (myself included) we view things, stuff as a huge part of our goals and aspirations in life. We want that dream home, car, job etc, but if asked the question "What would your ideal life look like?" why don't any of us say "to see as many people's lives changed through the power of Christ and to be a light to a dark world?" (Again I'm speaking to myself here).
Speaking about the story of the rich young ruler, "Instead he was offering him the satisfaction of eternal treasure. Jesus was saying, "it will be better, not just for the poor, but for you too, when you abandon the stuff you are holding on to."
Ok so several things I like. The one thing I didn't like, and this may evolve as I read the book or it may just be conviction, but I felt like the opening tone was a little ungrateful. Let me explain. Here is a pastor of a large "megachurch" who is making a livelihood from preaching the Word in the US and yet it's as if he is looking down his nose at it and glorifying overseas missions and suffering as the gold standard. Now don't get me wrong more mission work needs to happen overseas to reach those who have never heard the name of Jesus. I guess I was just rubbed the wrong way.
So that's what I thought about Chapter 1. Looking forward to the rest of the book!!
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