.

Many people think following God would be so much easier if only he would make his will more evident. A Google map with directions would be nice: “Take a right at this college, then a left at that career, then go straight until you hit marriage.” Even better would be if God served as a tour guide, personally taking you from one lifestage to the next: “Follow me this way through pregnancy and childbirth. But watch your step… your wife is going to snore like a trucker during her last trimester, and she won’t believe you when you tell her.” Wouldn’t guidance like that be great?

There’s a small problem with this idealization. God has already proven that spiritual maps and tour guides don’t work.

He provided a detailed map to the Israelites suffering in slavery in Egypt: “I have come down to deliver you out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring you up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites” (Ex. 3:8). He even acted as a tour guide: “The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.” (Ex. 13:21).

What was the response of the Israelites who were on God’s tour bus? It wasn’t greater faith and obedience. It was greater disbelief and complaining. They became a bunch of spoiled toddlers: “The people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled” (Num. 11:1).

When God leads his people in very obvious ways, it actually hinders our spiritual development. That’s why, most of the time, God guides us from behind, gently nudging and prompting us like a shepherd guides his sheep.

Later this week we’ll explore why and how he does it.

In 2 Peter 1:3, there’s this great promise: “God’s divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.”

God has given us power for all things in life, and it comes through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. Knowing God in the present tense – the here and now – is what gives us his power.

But experiencing God in the present can be tough. In our community group this week, Kyle shared the words of Screwtape, the senior demon in C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters:

Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time — for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.

Lots of us know God really well in the past tense. Maybe you know lots of facts and stories about the things God’s done in the past. Or maybe you know God’s power from a camp or a conference you went to, but that spiritual high just didn’t last, and you’re not sure you’ll ever experience it again in your lifetime.

Some of you know God really well in the future tense. You read Left Behind, or you went to a prophecy conference, and so you’re all about what God will do when this age is finally through. You can’t wait until Jesus comes back with eyes like a flame of fire, and voice like the roar of many waters. You’re saying, “Bring it!”

But you’re still kind of confused about the present-tense God. You’re not really sure what he’s doing in the world. You’re not even sure what he’s doing in your life! You know you’re supposed to have this power Peter promises from God, but most of the time you just don’t experience it.

Moses was in a similar place when God confronted him in the desert. That’s why God called himself Yahweh, “I Am.” The God of the present-tense. Here are a few more things we experience through this name:

3. God’s objectivity

When God calls himself I Am, he’s saying, “I am who I am, and everything else is measured by me.” If you want to know whether or not something is true, you just ask if it contradicts God. If something is good, or right, or beautiful, it’s only because it measures up well against God’s goodness and God’s beauty.

This kind of yardstick is crucial. Without it, you’ve got nothing to judge anything by but your own logic, senses and feelings. My own logic and senses can deceive me. Logically, I thought for sure that I would own a flying car by now. It’s 2010 for crying out loud! Where’s my flying car?

And feelings – feelings are even worse! My feelings change all the time. I used to think curling was lamest sport in the world – but last week I was watching it for hours at a time, transfixed in a zen state watching those granite blocks glide across the ice. I still don’t have any idea what the rules for curling are, but I love it!

We’re up and down, back and forth all the time. One minute we love something, the next minute we hate it. But God - I am – is the objective standard we can judge everything by.

4. God’s nearness

God said to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… and I am also the God who’s right here in front of you.” Theologians call it God’s immanence. He’s not only transcendent as the God of the universe, he’s also immanent. He’s close. He’s the God who lives inside of you through the Holy Spirit.

But it says in 1 Thessalonians 5 that it’s possible for you to quench the Spirit. Sometimes I do that. I spent three years in a church where people abused the power of the Holy Spirit. They treated him like a guy who makes balloon animals at a birthday party. … “Ooooh, can you make me poodle?” They loved God’s tricks more than they loved God.

I said to myself, “I’m never going to be like those people.” And so whenever the Spirit starts doing something a little funky in my life, I twitch a little. I resist a little. And I quench the Holy Spirit.

The question is, do you experience God in the present tense every day or not? Is he just the God who mostly stays in history? Or is he the God who’s ready to take action and deal with the stress at your work, and the conflict in your family, and the selfishness in your heart?

When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3, it was the first time he had spoken in 400 years. To Moses (along with the rest of the Israelites), God was a past-tense God. He was the God of history. Of legend.

They believed that God had done powerful things in the lives of their ancestors, but they weren’t so sure he worked the same way today. That’s why Moses questioned God’s plan for bringing Israel out of Egypt and demanded to know God’s name. And when God answered him, he spoke straight to this doubt. He said, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14). His name isn’t I was. It’s not I will be. It’s I Am. That’s what’s reflected in the name Yahweh.

There are four things this name implies. Four aspects of God that we experience through this name:

1. God’s Self-Existence

God has never not been. And his existence depends on nothing else.

Every 4-year-old wants to know, “Who made people? Who made trees? Who made our house? Who made Legos? Who made Transformers?” Every one of my 4-year-olds has asked that. And so I say, “God made us, and God made the trees, and then he used us to make the rest of that stuff.” The next question is predictable: “Well, who made God?”

And I say, “Nobody made God. God has always existed!” The look in their eyes is intense. It’s like they’re in the Matrix, and they just swallowed the red pill. “Whooaaahhh.”

God is… because he is. “I am who I am.” We’re trained to think in terms of cause and effect. If we see something, or experience something, it’s because something else caused it to happen. And God’s saying to us through this name, “If you keep tracing causes and effects as far back as you want to go, you’re going to get to the end and find me there. I’m the ultimate cause.”

Most of us don’t want to believe that. We want to believe that we control our own destiny. That we can make our own choices and create our own life. In the documentary Expelled, there’s an interview with the atheist Richard Dawkins. He’s asked if there was any possibility that some intelligent force had designed us as human beings.

And he says something like, “Well, if you pin me down, yes it is possible. But the only way that’s possible is if it was some aliens from another planet who did it, and they would have had to evolve through random natural selection.”

He would rather believe in little green aliens than in a God who might have something to say about how he lives his life. But that’s no different from the way all our hearts want to go. We want to be autonomous and free, and choose our own adventures. But Yahweh, I Am, confronts us with the authority that comes from being the ultimate cause for everything in the universe.

2. God’s Constancy

Theologians would call this the immutability of God. He doesn’t change! “I am who I am – I am the same God now as I was when I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I don’t change my character. I don’t change my mind, except to offer you grace that you don’t deserve.”

Some people read the Bible, and they think they see God changing in it. They think there’s a God of the Old Testament, and he’s mean and cruel and loves blood and war and genocide. And then there’s the God of the New Testament who’s just loving and kind and compassionate and forgiving. And they’ll think, “Isn’t that great, how God has grown so much? I don’t know how it happened – maybe he took an anger management class between the Old Testament and the New – but wouldn’t it be great if God just keeps on getting more and more loving over time?”

Actually, that wouldn’t be great at all. If God really did change over time, how do you know he wouldn’t change back? How do you know he wouldn’t become more evil and cruel than anyone else has ever been? What his power started going to his head, and he decided he just wanted to torture the people on earth for the rest of eternity?

The fact is that God never changes. He has always been just, and he’s always punished sin. But he’s always been merciful, and he’s always forgiven sin when people come to him in faith. That’s why God says to Israel in Malachi 3:6… “I, Yahweh, do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”

In other words, “If I did change, then I might decide to wipe you all out. But I am who I am, and so I will always be loving and patient with you.”

There are two more present-tense experiences of God we’ll explore later this week.

I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years. Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.

Al Mohler responds with this:

Buddhism teaches the aim of emptying the self of all desire. As Prothero observes, “Buddhists observe that suffering arises from a 12-fold chain of interlocking causes and effects. Among these causes is craving. We crave this woman or that car because we think that getting her or it will make us happy. But this craving only ties us into an unending cycle of misery, because even if we get what we want there is always something more to crave — another woman or another man, a faster car or a bigger house.”  …

Christianity speaks honestly of desire and affirms that wrongful desires can and do lead to sin, destruction, and death. Nevertheless, Christianity does not teach that all desire is wrong. Indeed, the Bible affirms that God made us to desire Him. Even in our sinful state, something within us cries out for our need — and desire — for divine forgiveness and redemption.

Christianity does not teach that we should (or could) empty ourselves of all desire, but rather that we should desire the salvation that Christ alone has accomplished for us — the salvation that leads to divine forgiveness and the restoration of relationship we should surely desire. Once we know that salvation, our desire for God is only increased and pointed to eternity.

I used to think the book of Job is in the Bible because it presents a rare and extreme case of human suffering.  “Look at this worst case scenario.  If you can see the truth here, then surely in your comparatively small problems . . . .”

Now I think the book of Job is in the Bible because the story is so common.  Many are thinking, “What on earth has happened to me?  I can’t see what I’ve done that explains this devastation.  Where is God in this?”

Enter Job’s three friends.  They were cautious at first.  But with their tidy notions threatened by his untidy realities, the moralism started pouring out of them: “Come on, Job, get real with us.  You must have some dirty secret that explains all this.  Admit it, and this misery will start going away.”  Their finger-pointing oversimplifications intensified Job’s sufferings, and this too is a common experience.

I don’t think the book of Job is about suffering as a theoretical problem — why do the righteous suffer?  I think it’s about suffering as a practical problem — when (not if) the righteous suffer, what does God expect of them?  And what he expects is trust.  When the righteous cannot connect the realities of their experience with the truths of God, then God is calling them to trust him that there is more to it than they can see.  As with Job, there is a battle being fought in the heavenlies.

Trust in God, not explanations from God, is the pathway through suffering.

What a great perspective. In addition to that, I think one of God’s purposes for Job’s suffering had nothing to do with Job at all. It was God’s unforgettable way of proving to us that once he calls someone into his family, there’s no person, situation, or circumstance that can snatch that person away:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

If you’re a child of God who’s going through suffering right now, it’s not only meant to build your trust, it’s also meant to show the world (like Job showed his friends) that God’s saving power is complete.

The world is watching. How will you respond when things go wrong?

Our Hawaii Kai community group leader, Kyle Van Houtan, writes this:

Lent is a season of preparation for the Christ’s Resurrection, Easter as we call it, when new Christians are historically baptized. In fellowship with those new believers, it is practice for the entire church body to go through a season of devotion and reflection of one’s own need for salvation, especially remembering one’s own mortality.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent with ashes, as a symbol of Genesis 3:19b “… you are dust, and you will return to dust.”

This is so crucially important as it remembers that we are creatures but at the same time anticipates the glory of the Resurrection.

John Piper offers some ideas on how to observe Lent:

1) Memorize Isaiah 52:11-53:12. Three verses a week will plant a tree of truth in your mind with soul fruit for years.

2) If you are reading through the New Testament, mark every reference to the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. Then during holy week (April 12-19) go back and meditate on these.

3) Resolve to write one letter each week of Lent to an unbelieving relative or acquaintance expressing the love of Christ. Tell them you will pray for them during this season. Suggest they read Isaiah 53 and think about its fulfillment in Christ.

4) Set aside a small block of time each week before Easter to step back and examine yourself and your life. Ask God if there are any major changes you should make. It could be exciting.

5) Try a weekly or daily fast for one or more meals, and devote the time to reading about the suffering of Christ. He fasted forty days to fit his soul for the “Calvary Road.”

6) Plan to make three special visits to people who are lonely or especially needy. Read them some good Scripture on the death and resurrection of Christ and tell them you just wanted to encourage their faith and hope in Christ.

7) Pick a good book and read for inspiration and insight. What did God do in the death and resurrection of Christ? I have listed some suggestions in the order of their difficulty—but not their worth!

• C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Macmillan, 1950.
• Roy Hession, The Calvary Road, Christian Literature Crusade, 1950.
• Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone?, Barnes and Noble, 1930.
• John R.W. Stott, The Cross, Inter-Varsity, 1987.
• James Denney, The Death of Christ, Inter-Varsity, 1951.
• H.E. Guillabaud, Why the Cross?, Inter-Varsity, 1946.
• Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, Eerdmans, 1955.
• John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, Eerdmans, 1955.
• John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (especially Packer’s introduction), Banner of Truth.

Marriage and the Mercy of God

This Valentines Day, why don’t you and your spouse commit to virtually attend this conference together?

(via)

When I was a youth pastor, I once had to bail one of my high schoolers out of jail for stealing a $70 pair of shoes he never would have worn. He said he was listening to a song in the car that made him want to do something rebellious. He pulled into the next store he passed, and lifted the first item he saw.

I was reminded of that experience when I read this story about a recent rash of murders in karaoke bars in the Philippines. They seem to occur mostly when Sinatra’s classic song “My Way” is sung:

Most of the “My Way” killings have reportedly occurred after the singer sang out of tune, causing other patrons to laugh or jeer.

“The trouble with ‘My Way,’ ” said Mr. Gregorio, “is that everyone knows it and everyone has an opinion.”

Others, noting that other equally popular tunes have not provoked killings, point to the song itself. The lyrics, written by Paul Anka for Mr. Sinatra as an unapologetic summing up of his career, are about a tough guy who “when there was doubt,” simply “ate it up and spit it out.” Butch Albarracin, the owner of Center for Pop, a Manila-based singing school that has propelled the careers of many famous singers, was partial to what he called the “existential explanation.”

“ ‘I did it my way’ — it’s so arrogant,” Mr. Albarracin said. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”

Music can be incredibly powerful, but not only to arouse evil in our hearts. It can also awaken our hearts to God’s glory and grace. I can still remember being swept up into the greatest awareness of God’s glory I’ve ever experienced, and it was in the middle of a pipe-organ postlude I heard after a church service in college. As a guy who had previously believed that nobody really knew how to worship until they brought guitars and drums into church, it was a humbling experience.

Throughout Scripture, God recognizes the unique power of music to influence us in a way nothing else could. Here’s just one example:

God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!
For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm!  (Psalm 47:5-7)

Music can make an impact for good or bad. What kind of music is influencing you?

I think one of the most spiritually dangerous practices today is encouraging people—in small groups or in front of the church or even in print—to talk about how God has transformed them. They are told to explain how they used to have a bad temper or a problem with porn or were stingy or had one bad habit or another—and through prayer, effort, and grace, they have been changed. The formal glory all goes to God, of course, but the focus unfortunately is often on the self—on how I have been changed.

Those who share such testimonies cannot but be tempted, as was the Pharisee in Jesus' parable: “Lord, I thank thee that I am transformed, that I am not like this untransformed fellow next to me.” And those who hear such testimonies find themselves praying, “Lord, why am I still struggling with this and that; why am I not like this transformed person?”

Granted, the point of the testimony is to encourage people, to remind them that God is great and that we can be transformed. In this respect, I am a great fan of testimonies—we publish them in Christianity Today whenever we find really good ones. But unless they are crafted and framed just so, they tend to have this deleterious effect: they encourage narcissism and anxiety. And they tend to prompt people to reach down to their bootstraps to pull themselves up.

What’s interesting about the classic biblical testimony—Paul’s conversion (Acts 9)—is that it spends little space on transformation as such and a lot of space on what happened: an encounter with the gracious and resurrected Lord. When Paul repeats his testimony (Acts 22 and 26), his speech assumes a transformation—from persecuting Christians to proclaiming the Christian gospel—but does not focus on it as such. He does not say, “Look at how I've been transformed by the grace of God!” He is simply explaining why he now preaches in the name of Christ. The narrative structure of his story is his transformation, but the real subject of his story is Jesus Christ.

Jesus has sent us to be missionaries to the world around us, and we are called to reflect all three of his roles: prophet, priest, and king.

Jesus is king over all creation, and in Philippians 2, it says that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. King. But Jesus wants to start exercising his reign right now, starting in the hearts of his people.

He demands complete allegiance. That’s what he asked for when some punk seminary student wanted to test him by asking him what the most important commandment was:

One of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

In the first commandment, Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 6, a passage that Jews recited each morning and evening. It was called the “Shema,” which means “to hear.” Everybody knew about heart, soul, and strength from Deuteronomy 6. But then Jesus added something that wasn’t in Deuteronomy.

When Jesus started reciting this commandment, the teacher of the law would have been mouthing the words with him… “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your… mind?  …  What?  That’s not what Moses said!”

So when he responded to Jesus, he tried to change it back:

And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding (soul) and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  (Mark 12:32-33)

But Jesus added that fourth aspect of our love for God for a reason. He was talking to a seminary student. So he’s dealing with theories and philosophies and intellectual arguments every day. Jesus knew that this guy’s mind was leading him away from his simple love for God, toward a more rational, legalistic religiosity.

He may have loved the Lord with all his heart, soul, and strength, but he was probably missing the mark with his mind. So Jesus the King was asking, “Is your love fractional or total?” Is your dedication to God something that has absolutely overtaken every nook and cranny of your life? Every waking moment of your day? Every activity you pursue? Every relationship you have? Or is there a point you reach where you say, “That’s enough Jesus for now.”

Is Jesus King or is he not? That’s the question Jesus is going to keep asking:

As Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? 36 David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” (Mark 12:35-37)

He’s saying, “We all know King David was the greatest of all Israel’s kings. But if he’s calling one of his descendents “Lord,” what does that mean about this guy? … It means there’s something extraordinary about him.”

Here’s an explicit claim of Jesus to be not only the Son of David, but also the very Son of God. The king of kings. And so our job is to make Jesus the king in our own hearts and influence other people to do the same thing.

Most people don’t want to let Jesus reign. They want to live their own lives and pursue their own desires, and if they can use Jesus to bless those things, then even better. You can get Jesus to approve your music listening habits by saying that he wants you to be in touch with the culture so you’re a better witness. You can get Jesus to approve your conspicuous consumption habits by saying that he wants you to live life to the full! You can get Jesus to approve the quick-temper you have with your kids by saying that he wants you to stand strong for righteousness.

But Jesus didn’t come to earth just to bless the life you already live, he came to earth to be king! To change your heart and transform your life. That’s the message we have to bring to the world.