Prayer and Self-Control (PrayerLife)

One of the things I pray for is self-control. Being self-controlled is part of a flourishing, fruitful life. Self-control is good; lack of it is bad.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Paul writes:

⁶So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. ⁷For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night....  ⁸But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled...

Here we see that "drunk" is bad because it is "of the night/darkness" and leads to out-of-control-ness. Paul tells us in Galatians 5:22-23 that a person under the influence of the Holy Spirit is self-controlled. That is, "self-control" is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. When people are attached to the Spirit self-control results.

Such fruit is important in today's addiction culture. An addict is someone who is "attached" to something that controls him. (The French word for 'addiction' is, as Gerald May has told us, attache.) The addict, being attached to sexual urges, drugs, food, even 'control,' is non-self-controlled. The addict cannot, meaningfully, say 'Yes' to the good and 'No' to the bad. 

Self-control seems as valuable today as it has ever been. 

Self-control is freedom.

Pray for self-control today.

Worship In the New Year at Redeemer! (+ chess tournament...)

New Year's Eve at Redeemer - Begins at 8 PM. 

Games, food, and fellowship in the gym. Bring a snack and drink to share. 

9:00 - I'm challenging all comers (kids & adults) to chess and checkers. Bring your own chess or checkers set. I'll play 5, 10, 20, 50 people at a time.     :)

We'll end by singing in the New Year with worship, prayer, and celebration! (Worship starts at 11)

Deeper Bible Study

I've involved 100 adults in my church in something I call Deeper Bible Study. On Monday mornings I send them the verses I preach on the following Sunday, sometimes with some notes. My goal is to lead them into a study of the Bible; to give them tools to more effectively study Scripture.

Here is what I just emailed them.

This coming Sunday I'm preaching out of 1 John 5:1-5.

I print the verses out and carry them with me.

I pull them out during the day and read them. If God speaks to me through them I write it down.

After familiarizing myself with the verses I then begin to turn to commentaries to deepen my understanding of the verses. I choose commentaries I trust. For 1 John I especially use Robert Yarbrough's commentary. When there is something in a commentary I find helpful I write it down in a file.

All throughout this week I will be praying these verses, studying these verses, and meditating on these verses. Then Sunday morning I will preach and teach what God has given me.

January 4, 2015

1 John 5:1-5

5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. ² This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. ³ In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,⁴ for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. ⁵ Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Unbelief in Free Will Increases Bad Behavior

One of my love languages is reading books. One book I received for Christmas is Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free Will. it's written by Florida State University philosopher Alfred Mele. Mele received a 4.4 million dollar grant to pursue the questions about free will. This book contains his findings. 

Mele believes free will exists, and when people believe they have free will this promotes human welfare. Conversely, when people believe free will does not exist it increases bad behavior. Mele writes:

"There’s evidence that lowering people’s confidence in the existence of free will increases bad behavior. In one study ( Vohs and Schooler 2008 ), people who read passages in which scientists deny that free will exists are more likely to cheat on a subsequent task. In another experiment ( Baumeister et al. 2009 ), college students presented with a series of sentences denying the existence of free will proceeded to behave more aggressively than a control group: they served larger amounts of spicy salsa to people who said they dislike spicy food, despite being told these people had to eat everything on their plates." (Mele, pp. 4-5)

One possible reason for this is that the nonexistence of free will is perceived to remove human responsibility. "If you’re not responsible, you really don’t deserve to be blamed for your unseemly actions. And believing that you can’t be blamed for acting on your dishonest or aggressive urges reduces your incentive to control them. So you cheat or dish out unpleasantness. We can imagine a student who is piling on the hot salsa thinking, “Hey, you can’t blame me for the heartburn you’re about to get; I’m not responsible for what I do.”" (Ib., 5)

31 Days With the Real Jesus - Day 30 - Jesus Instructed His Followers to Abide in Him

Church of the Nativity, Jerusalem

Day 30 - Jesus Instructed His Followers to Abide in Him 

A dying man's last words are said to be important.

I was in India, riding in the back seat of a car on a 5-hour ride from Hyderabad to Kurnool along one of India's major highways. I could not sleep, even though I was jet-lag tired. India, by their own admission, leads the world in road deaths. I thought I was gong to die a hundred times or more on that trip. My driver was a crazed man in a land of psycho-drivers. He would routinely pass cars while going up a hill, or going around a curve. Occasionally he played "chicken" with an ongoing car, and sometimes with an oncoming truck. The game was to see who would "chicken out" first and swerve aside. This is beyond ridiculous, I thought, as my Indian friend and host slept soundly next to me through it all.

One time we passed a car going round a curve and came face to face with a truck. My driver swerved at the last moment. When I saw the truck coming at us I said the following profound, almost-last-words-of-a-dead-man: "Oh no!" Had I died whoever would do my funeral would have to say: "John the theologian's last words were, "Oh no!""

Jesus's Final Words, aka his "Final Discourse," were profound and continue to guide my life to this moment. We hear them in John chapters 14-16. The disciples are wondering what they will do when Jesus is gone. Jesus instructs them, and us.

He does not say "form some committees and think of strategies to keep this thing going." He tells them: "Abide in me." Jesus says:  Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. (John 14:19-20) 

Call this "reciprocal abiding." God comes to make his home in the heart of every Jesus-follower. Every Jesus-follower is to tend this inner fire by connecting to Jesus like a branch connects to a Vine.

As we abide in Christ we...

•  do the kind of things Jesus has been doing (John 14:12)
• do greater things than Jesus has been doing (John 14:12)
• are taught and led by God himself (John 14:26)
• are immersed in Trinitarian peace (John 14:27)
• live lives that will bear much fruit (John 15:5) 
• live lives of true, God-love (John 15:9)
• are flooded with the kind of joy Jesus experiences (John 15:11)
• receive the Father's wisdom (John 15:15)
• bear fruit that will last (John 15:16)

Jesus's last teaching was, simply: 

Connect. 

Dwell. 

Remain. 

Abide. 

To Him. 

In Him. 

The result is that He lives, in and through you. 

A few years ago some film students at the University of Michigan were making a movie about Southeast Michigan. They interviewed me as part of their project. I remember two of their questions. 

They asked: "What is the #1 problem you see in Southeast Michigan?"

I answered: "Me."

They asked again: "What is the #1 thing you need to do, as a pastor, for your people?"

I answered: "The #1 thing I need to do for my people is to stay attached to Jesus, to continually abide in Christ." Because what my people need is Jesus, not me. Jesus is all they need. Jesus is all any church needs.

Therefore shall we sing, today, these words:

O holy Child of Bethlehem

Descend to us, we pray

Cast out our sin and enter in

Be born in us today

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell:

O, come to us

Abide with us

Our Lord, Emmanuel

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

31 Days With the Real Jesus - Day 29 - Jesus Is Alive

Jerusalem

Day 29 - Jesus Is Alive

I know it's Christmas Day. Merry Christmas!

For me this is also a good day to think about Easter, since the child born to redeem humanity would ultimately accomplish this via a cross and an empty tomb. On that day when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us God took the first baby steps on the road connecting the manger with the resurrection. The Christ of Christmas was born to save us.

I celebrated my first Easter in the spring of 1971. I was 22 years old. I don't remember the details; I do remember it being different. It was a different Easter for me because I believed. I believed Jesus was who he said he was. I believed Jesus died on a cross, for us, and "us" now included me. I believed Jesus was raised from the dead. He was..., no, he is..., alive! Christ lives!

When Linda and I were in Israel we saw the Damascus Road the apostle Paul walked on. We stood on a mountain in the Golan Heights looking north into Syria from where we could see the road heading towards Damascus. It was on that road that Saul had his life-changing encounter with the postmortem, post-resurrection Jesus. 

After his encounter Paul began to speak of a great mystery. This mystery has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27) For Paul, the Jesus-encounter continued. The living Christ, by his Spirit, came to make his home in his heart. Sam Storms writes:

"The mystery is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, is now in you, that is, [all] who believe in him. He lives and abides in you, not merely with you or beside you or above and below you, but in you!" (Storms, The Hope of Glory, 128)

One Sunday morning at Redeemer I said, "I will give a gold star to whoever can correctly answer this question: What is the main theme of the letters of Paul?" The correct answer is: What it means to be "in Christ," and the living reality this is for every follower of Jesus. New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass writes:

""In Christ"and related expressions are among the most important components of Paul's theology, especially in Ephesians." (Snodgrass, Ephesians )

Referring to Ephesians 1 Ben Witherington notes: "The key to understanding what Paul means by "chose us" and "predestined us" is the phrase "in Christ." (Witherington, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles) 

Paul uses the term "in Christ" and variations of it 200 times in his letters. He uses it 37 times in Ephesians, and 8 times in the first 10 verses. Christ is not only alive, he indwells us by his Spirit. 

When I was 22 and a new Jesus-follower there was a Christian coffee house in Rockford, Illinois, that Linda and I regularly went to. There were many young, radical Jesus-followers there. And one old man. His name was Peter Potter. Peter had just lost his wife of many years. I will always remember sitting with others listening to Peter talk about his loss, his life, and his hope. His favorite verse was Colossians 1:27 - "Christ in me, the hope of glory.". He repeated it over and over and over as he spoke. This little verse was carving out a new neural pathway in my physical brain. This pathway is still there, today. It runs, in me, deep and wide and long. Its waters course through my being as surely as I breathe. Christ, in me, the hope of glory. Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Christ in me, the hope of glory!

He lives. In Me. In the hearts and minds of all who have chosen Jesus, and thus are now "in him."

Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman" as Paradigmatic for Western Culture

What I really enjoy as a Christmas gift is a(nother) book. Thanks to my family for recognizing this need in me and responding to it (again) with amazon gift cards.

I used the cards last night, turning to my "Wish List" on amazon. Today I am reading. One of my longed-for books was Mary Eberstadt's How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization. Eberstadt just confirmed my approach to teaching philosophy of religion. I teach Nietzsche's "parable of the madman" as seminal to understanding Western secularism. Eberstadt writes:

"Friedrich Nietzsche['s]... parable of the madman in the marketplace foretelling the death of God remains the paradigm through which many sophisticated people understand secularization right down to this day." (Eberstadt, 3)

Eberstadt's stated "purpose is to offer an alternative account of what Nietzsche’s madman really saw in what he called the “tombs” (read, the churches and cathedrals) of Europe." (5)

Christmas Eve at Redeemer - 6 - 7 PM - Communion and Candlelight Service

Redeemer Fellowship Church

5305 Evergreen

Monroe

Tonight - 6-7 PM

Bring gifts for our missionaries and our general fund from 5:30-6.

Linda Piippo, pianist

John Collins, violinist

Ann Pitts, vocalist

31 Days with the Real Jesus - Day 28 - Jesus Will Return to Restore Heaven and Earth

Jerusalem

Day 28 - Jesus Will Return to Restore Heaven and Earth

As a new Jesus-follower way, way back in the early 1970s, I was taken by a book called The Late, Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey. Lindsey talked about a "rapturing" of Jesus-followers who would be taken away to heaven when Jesus comes again. Some, unfortunately, will be "left behind." Now, 44 years later, I no longer believe in "the rapture" (because it's not biblical). But I do believe Christ is coming again to restore these heavens and this earth. Scripture affirms this.

The Jewish hope was for THIS created world to be reclaimed.

Genesis 1 – God created…and saw that it was good.

Isaiah 65:17

“See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
¹⁹ I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
²⁰ “Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundredwill be thought a mere child;

When Jesus comes again there will be a new heavens and a new earth. Scripture supports this.

a. Eph. 1:8-10 - "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment— to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ."

b. Col. 1:19-20 - "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."

c. 2 Peter 3:11-13 -"Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells."

d. Rom. 8:18-21 - I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

e. On Rev. 21-22 N.T. Wright says: – “When we come to the picture of the actual end in Revelation 21-22, we find not ransomed souls making their way to a disembodied heaven but rather the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, to earth, uniting the two in a lasting embrace." (N.T. Wright)

i. Rev. 21:1-4 - Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death^] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

But what about 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17? 

“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God. The dead in Christ will rise first; then we, who are left alive, will be snatched up with them on clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

Wright writes: “When Paul speaks of "meeting" the Lord "in the air," the point is precisely not—as in the popular rapture theology—that the saved believers would then stay up in the air somewhere, away from earth. The point is that, having gone out to meet their returning Lord, they will escort him royally into his domain, that is, back to the place they have come from. (p. 133)

This is Jewish wedding language. We will go to meet the coming Bridegroom, and escort him onto the new earth to be with his Bride.

Ben Witherington says that, in ancient Roman culture, when a royal person arrived to their city, a greeting committee would go out and escort him back into the city. In Jewish culture, when the bridegroom approached towards where the bride was, a welcoming group went out with their lamps and escorted the groom into the wedding place. “The classic texts thought to refer to the rapture, especially 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, say nothing about saints being taken suddenly into heaven. Rather, they go forth to meet Christ in the sky when he is returning, and then they return with him to the earth to reign.” (BW, Revelation, 261)

Paul’s image of the people “meeting the Lord in the air” should be read with the assumption that the people will immediately turn around and lead the Lord back to the newly remade world. (NTW)

Further, we read in Matthew 24: That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.⁴⁰ 

Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. ⁴¹ Two women will be

grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Rapture theory assumes being “taken away” is a good thing. It is not. (Being "taken" is not necessarily a good thing, right?)

So, God made heaven and earth; at the last he will remake both and join them together forever. We, the Bride of Christ, will go forth to meet him when he appears, and lead the celebratory parade of the Bridegroom to his transformed earth. 

A few years ago, at our summer conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin, YWAM's Dean Sherman was preaching about these things. Speaking of life after this life he said, "I don't want heaven to have streets of gold. I want heaven to look like Green Lake." Me too. Paul said, "the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." (Romans 8:19) As beautiful as Green Lake, Wisconsin, is, how much more shall it be when Christ returns and the kingdom of heaven is established in all its fullness!

***

N.T. Wright quotes from: Surprised by Hope.

Ben Witherington quotes from: Revelation.

The Lie of Ontological Uniqueness (and the Real Meaning of Christmas)

Two snowflakes make the shape of a heart,
on MCCC's campus

Several years ago I met occasionally with a young man who said he was a Jesus-follower. I think he was, and anyway I'm not the ultimate judge of such things.

He struggled deeply. He would talk with me, smiling, and say "The reason people can't deal with me is because they've never met anyone like me before." 

I told him I've met many people like him. This upset him. He insisted on his ontological uniqueness. This was the heart of his problem; viz., believing he was different, in essence, from anyone else on the planet.

His false sense of ontological uniqueness isolated him. If there's no one else on earth that is like you, then you are alone. You are an alien, one of the X-men, and everyone else is a stranger. This is the lie, or myth, of ontological uniqueness. It was this young man's prison.

Ontological uniqueness is not the same as saying "No two snowflakes are alike." But of course. And of course they are alike in that they are both snowflakes. My young friend saw all of humanity as snowflakes, except for his own self. If that were true, then community (koinonia) would be impossible. No wonder he felt isolated. No wonder others could not get near to him.

The truth is, the deeper we go inside persons the more we are all the same. I refer to the elements of our ultimate same-ness as "ontological dualities." Everyone, e.g., as they have the chance, struggles with things like Life vs. Death and Trust vs. Control, 

One of Satan's strategies is to persuade us that our sin, our failure, is so horrible that no one could ever relate to it, thus no one could understand or have compassion towards us. Or, oppositionally, the enemy could persuade us of having an other-worldly giftedness so that we would think we are above all the rest of failing humanity.

The truth is that, in a deep, ontological way, we are "Everyman." Christ died for us all. God became one of us.

That is the cure for our isolation. And, BTW, it points to the real meaning of Christmas.