truth – Page 3 – Dare Greatly

Let’s problem-solve for a bit. If you’re Satan, lashing out against God by trying to rob Him of the joy of humans receiving salvation, how do you go about doing it?

Well, it might help to take a look at the process God uses to bring the lost to faith, then use whatever means are necessary to interrupt or counter any of the steps in that process.

Let’s establish a few assumptions. First, ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, we all live with something called “original sin.” That means we’re born with a sinful nature, and our default setting when we die is to spend eternity separated from God. (The good news is we’re given the option to be rescued from that fate through acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice, but in reality, few choose it.) In that sense, when it comes to the fate of any given soul, Satan doesn’t need to play to win, he just needs to play to not lose.

Also, it’s important to understand that for Satan, the death of any human being is beneficial. A death for the unsaved is like taking that soul to the bank. It’s over. That soul no longer has the opportunity to embrace Christ. God’s possible joy over that soul’s salvation will forever go unrealized. On the flip side, the enemy rejoices in the death of Christians because they can no longer rob from his fiefdom after that. Either way, he’s happy to see death occur. He may not be able to inflict death on people directly, but he can attempt to persuade some to inflict it on others or themselves. Although I’m unsure of what his capabilities might be, I imagine he does what he can to instigate famines, disease outbreaks, and other types of natural disasters, all in the hopes of raising the death toll.

He’s got a split focus; his goal has to be keeping unsaved people unsaved while minimizing the evangelical effectiveness of those he loses to Christ. Hamstringing Christians reduces the glory brought to God, and if that means some people get saved later in life than they otherwise would have, it collectively reduces the amount of lifetime that Christians spend as effective doers of God’s will. We’ll cover more on how Satan might approach Christians next time, but for now let’s take a look at how he might aim to keep unbelievers from believing.

At a simplistic level, we’ll define God’s process of bringing the unsaved to faith in Him by way of the three W’s: He takes a wanderer who is searching but does not have a saving relationship with Him, He wakens them by revealing Himself to them, at which point they begin their walk with God. Again, very simplified here. There are countless ways through which these steps can occur, and I doubt if any two stories of salvation are exactly alike, but these are the basic steps in the process.

What do you do if you want to disrupt that three-step process? To counter any or all of the three Ws, you might use the three F’s: You fulfill the longings of the wanderer through other means, you fight the wakening by inciting chaos in the person’s life, and you try to flatten their walk if it turns out they’re serious about following Christ.

Let’s start with the “fulfill” step. God created humans with a longing, a hunger, for something more in this life. I’ve heard it said that people are created with a God-shaped hole in their heart. Satan’s goal is to fill that hole with anything other than God. One tactic is straightforward and easy: use other religions to fill the void. Christ said “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me.” If that’s true, no other religions are valid means of entering Heaven after death. What simpler way to throw people off a Heavenly course than by providing impotent facsimiles where people still get to believe in a god? Even if a religion’s founder completely believes that he or she witnessed a supernatural being delivering a special message that doesn’t jive with what God says, there’s a reason for that, found in 2 Corinthians 11:14-15: And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Satan and his minions can assume a beautiful or supernatural form and employ that showmanship to start entire new religions meant to distract from the real thing.

There are numerous other ways to fill that hole in the heart. Christ created us to know that there’s something bigger than us out there, so we have a need to fill a sense of belonging. What’s the counter? Come up with ways to fill that need without addressing the deeper yearning. The focus could be good things, like family, pride in your nation or occupation, or volunteer work at shelters. Maybe it’s something neutral, like being a fanatical sports fan, or, depending on the cause, being a dedicated activist for a cause you believe in. They could be things that turn bad too, like alcoholism, destructive relationships, or doing things to feed your greed. The enemy wants to see unbelievers get caught up in something that fulfills the longing in their heart at least enough to stop searching for something lasting to fill the void. (This is why Communist nations ban or tightly control religion. Those governments want the people to seek fulfillment through the State and its success, not turn to any other entity for hope and morality.)

Try this additional method on for size. Some people have an exceptional thirst for the supernatural. Well, if you’re Satan or one of his minions and can assume numerous forms and do things a human being can’t, it’s probably a piece of cake to inspire ghost and alien sightings. People want to believe in the supernatural, and Satan long ago invented ways that allow them to do it without embracing Christ.

Let’s move on to the “fighting” step. Sometimes God will work on a person’s heart for years before they accept Him as Savior; for others the timeline is much shorter. As Satan recognizes that a person is about to come to faith in Christ, many times he tries to ensure their life becomes chaotic. He plants seeds in their minds. The person’s head is flooded with thoughts like “What will your family say?” “You’ll lose your position or status if you join them!” “You mean you want to be one of those nuts that think the earth was created in 7 days and an old man went out and gathered two of every kind of animal on the planet and put them in an ark to survive a flood that covered the whole earth?” “Are you crazy?! Think about the shame you’ll bring to the people that care about you!” “You’ll lose everything you’ve worked for!” “YOU?! You think God could ever love or forgive you after all the things YOU’VE done?!”

These planted thoughts are meant to inspire fear, make you rationalize away the things you’ve been experiencing, and get you to turn your back on the idea of embracing Christ as your Savior. It’s like pulling a transplanted sapling out of the dirt before the sapling has a chance to take root. (If you want a closer look at the rational side of the faith, see this blog’s “This would make Spock raise an eyebrow and say ‘Curious’” category. There’s only one entry there right now, but more are on the way.)

Finally, Satan will try to “flatten” a new believer’s faith. Some people may very well lose friends or a good relationship with their family. In some sections of the world, they’ll forfeit their life if their faith becomes known.

I’ve been on youth retreats where people become Christians. They’re caught up in the emotion of it all, everybody’s singing songs, and there’s a great speaker. Telling a counselor or pastor of their decision brings happiness all around, and everyone is supportive of their decision to accept Christ. Then they go back to their normal life. Are they really supposed to turn their backs on the behaviors that have been a regular part of their life for so long? Are they supposed to read the whole Bible? That thing’s huge! “Do I have to stop hanging out with my friends?” They rationalize their decision away. “Well, I was sleep-deprived, the speaker was convincing…I kind of felt pressured to do it.” They talk themselves out of it, and turn their back on what they heard.

This is a simplified version of what happens to new Christians of any age (and is a good example of why your Christian walk should not be based on emotion and feelings…there will be low points, so building your faith using facts and reasoning is important too). Without a supportive network, many new Christians fizzle out, and isolated baby Christians are prime targets for the adversary to pick off. Preventing them from connecting with and being mentored by other Christians will go a long way toward getting them to fall away from their newfound faith.

Well there’s a lot to this, but people are going to stop reading if I keep going. To wrap up, Satan will use any means necessary to interfere with the process God uses to bring people to faith. God uses the three Ws: He takes a Wanderer, He Wakens them, and helps establish their Walk with Him. Looking to counter at least one of those steps, Satan uses the three Fs: he tries to Fulfill our innate desire for God by using other things, he Fights God’s process of wakening a lost soul, and if neither of those work, he’ll try to Flatten the new Christian’s belief.

Eternity is at stake, and the consequences are deadly serious. Today’s post addressed the non-Christian aspect of Satan’s war with humanity; come back next time for some of the ways he reduces the spiritual effectiveness of those who have embraced Christ as their savior. It might save your spiritual life, or help you be a part of saving someone else’s!

Part 1 | Part 3

July 23, 2020August 12, 2020

Red Teaming Humanity (Part 1 of 4: Intro)

Part 2 | Part 3

In the United States military there’s a tremendous amount of information that can be lost if our side isn’t careful about protecting it. We want information on our weaknesses or vulnerabilities, be they physical, cyber, medical, whatever they are…to be kept from adversaries. There’s a practice in the Department of Defense that encourages designated individuals or teams to look at themselves through the eyes of an adversary, with the intent to identify where information is leaking. The goal, of course, is to find and plug those leaks. This practice, that of looking at your own unit’s operation through the eyes of your adversary, is called “Red Teaming.”

Over the next several entries I’m going to Red Team Humanity from the perspective of our enemy, Satan.

Before we get into that, let’s take a step back to set the stage. It’s not a truth that people like to hear, but upon their death, humans by default are not on the path to Heaven. God made a way for us to reach Heaven along with an eternity in His presence, but there are some obstacles we need to overcome in this life. Although many people might think of him as a silly little red cartoon character, Satan is very real, and his tactics are simple but effective. His bitterness toward Christ at having already beaten him is beyond description, and he seethes with jealousy. I’m sure there has been some lashing out in rage, but he’s also not a mindless fool. He’s cunning, sophisticated, and intelligent. He was created as the greatest of all angels. Knowing that he cannot actually harm God or stop His plan, Satan’s best chance of hurting God now is to do everything in his power to rob God of the thing He loves the most…a loving relationship with us, the crown of God’s creation.

God gave us an amazing gift, and this time I’m not talking about salvation. Imagine creating us, giving us a free path to rescue us from our default path of destruction, but still leaving the door open for us to have the freedom to choose to accept it or reject it. This is a God that loves us so much that He won’t force us to love Him back because that would force us to be someone we’re not; the only souls in Heaven will be the people that chose willingly and genuinely to embrace Him as their savior.

So now put yourself in Satan’s place. You hate God, but you can’t beat him. The worst you can do to Him is to make Him sad. You recognize that God doesn’t mandate that people love Him, so if they have free will, there’s an opening for you to exploit. You can do anything within your power to prevent people from embracing Christ or sharing Him with others. Some things are off limits for Satan (he asked permission to sift Peter and the disciples “like wheat” in Luke 22:31-32 and had to seek permission to bring certain circumstances against Job). He may not be allowed to bring physical harm to some, but our minds are always fair game and are always open to attack. If you can consistently attack someone’s mind in an effective manner, you’ve got a great chance of getting the result you’re looking for.

How, then, do you attack someone’s mind?

I’m not going to give you an exhaustive list (I’d have to be pretty arrogant to claim to know all the tricks Satan uses), but using variations of only a handful of concepts has worked well for millennia against us humans. Even if we each live to be 100 years old, that’s still pretty short compared to the amount of time Satan’s had to hone his skills of trickery and deception. Hopefully it will help give you a better understanding of why the different pieces of the Armor of God referenced in Ephesians 6:10-18 are so vital to a Christian, and at the same time help give new urgency to why it’s so important to reach non-Christians.

In all things remember that God will be with us and He won’t desert us, but it’s up to us to believe it and not give up, even when our persistent prayers are met with silence. We are the ones that are most likely to come up short when it comes to the lifelong struggle we each face. Hanging in there and knowing God takes the long term over the short term is the way we’ll get through it.

There’s more going on out there than what we can see, and my prayer is that this series helps you think more in those terms so that you can recognize when you’re being influenced and can make good choices in times of high stress. God works through people to implement His will, and Satan will use any means to water down your effectiveness at glorifying God. Protect your mind. Take comfort in knowing that your helmet of salvation provides a great deal of protection, but don’t allow yourself to let your guard down.

Stick with me over the next few weeks, because these are going to be important. If you’re not a subscriber, check back every Thursday for a new entry in this four-part series, or sign up to receive new posts in your email.

Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. –Ephesians 6:11

Part 2 | Part 3

July 16, 2020July 15, 2020

I Used to Skinny Dip. Now I Chunky Dunk.

If you’ve read some of my previous posts and suspected that I’m crazy, you’ll be sure of it after this one. Stick with me though, it’s going somewhere.

For a few summers in high school and college, I worked at a Christian conference center. The summer staff, made up mostly of teenagers, lived on the campus and did a variety of jobs during the summer. “Summer staff” made for lots of fun memories. The days were long, but the weeks (and summers) were short.

I don’t know if this still happens today, but back then the girls had a tradition where, once a summer, they’d sneak out after curfew and hit the pool for some late-night skinny dipping. Every summer, the morning after the annual excursion happened, the guys would be disappointed because it had gone on right under our noses, while we were sleeping, and we hadn’t even been aware that it was happening. (We caught them in the act the previous summer, but I was on crutches, so I couldn’t play much of a role in it.) It was a huge morale boost for the ladies to get away with something so dangerous, and it would temporarily suck the morale right out of the guys’ side of the dorm.

Well, the following summer I was a counselor, so the curfew wasn’t an issue for me. It would have been fun to catch the girls in the act, but it would’ve been impossible to keep watch every night of the summer. Rather than have the guys stay up late trying to catch the girls (and making it tougher to stay healthy in the process), I decided I would instead try to deter the girls from sneaking out for their annual tradition. A few complete coincidences worked in my favor, and I probably went a little overboard further developing my “unhinged” persona. One time, by complete luck, while I was locking up the kitchen at night, I looked out the window and saw three of the summer staff girls running out of the dorm toward the kitchen, for what I can only guess was the need to raid the fridge. I couldn’t resist the opportunity. That night when I had entered the kitchen, I didn’t turn on any of the lights, so I was walking around in the dark. I hid and waited silently. Sure enough, the three came sneaking in without turning on the lights. As they drew near, I jumped out from wherever I was hiding and yelled “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN HERE!” They screamed in absolute terror and ran out with their hair standing straight up. Hopefully they got a snack somewhere else.

Now, you have to understand that back then, I had more enthusiasm and energy than direction. I got a little crazier and, in my exuberance, I dug up a camouflage military uniform that I would put on as it drew near the time for lights out. Sometimes the camo makeup went on, too. I’d let everyone see me in it, and the impression everyone got was that even as everyone was going to bed, I was heading outside into the dark to do Heaven-only-knows what. I wouldn’t do this every night, but I did it often enough to keep would-be curfew breakers guessing whether or not I was out there waiting for them. It was a page from Bruce Wayne’s book.

Another complete coincidence worked in my favor. Sometimes I really would head outside, all dressed in camo. My main purpose was merely to be seen heading out into the darkness, but since I didn’t want to be seen coming right back in again, I had to stay out for awhile. Most of the time I just found a comfy place to lay down in the grass, and in truth I enjoyed the quiet and stillness of the normally busy place while I was out there. Sometimes I fell asleep. One time, though, as I turned the corner of a building, I came across four of the staff girls, just sitting on the grass overlooking the pool, breaking curfew. At least one of them was someone that I had earlier caught sneaking into the kitchen. They weren’t doing anything wrong (other than being out after curfew), but to them it seemed like I just…knew when they were out there doing something they shouldn’t be doing.

This is the winter version; blowing my nose wiped off part of the makeup, but when I painted up it looked like this

The end result of all this was that I cultivated an impression that just wasn’t true, and it ended up influencing others’ behavior in a way that I wanted. There were countless nights where they could’ve made it to the pool without any problem at all, but it was the fear of some weirdo in camouflage hiding in the bushes that kept them from taking part in the adventure they wanted to be a part of. More often than not, I was actually asleep in my bed way before lights out, but without knowing that truth, late-night pool adventures got postponed.

Here’s where we “land the plane” on this entry. As Christians, we have an enemy that cultivates the same kind of image. If you’re a Jesus-follower, you have the unimaginable power of the Holy Spirit residing in you, but if your enemy can intimidate you into entertaining or giving in to your doubts, he’s effectively countered the power you have inside you. In military terms, he’s negated your will or capacity to fight, even though you’re equipped to dominate.

It’s all just clever tricks and deception. Remember the truth: as a Christian, you are more than a conqueror! Don’t be held captive by lies! Not only do you have defensive armor available to you, but you have the greatest offensive weapon there is…the Sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:10-18). Properly prepared, you can walk boldly and confidently into a spiritual battle and emerge victorious. Think of it this way: if you don’t have the will to fight, the enemy can use the resources he would have used on you…somewhere else. Make no mistake: he’s going to use them, if not on you, then on someone else. If you and the Holy Spirit combat those forces, you are fighting back against the darkness and tying up enemy forces, enabling relief elsewhere. (See Daniel 10:1-14 for an example where this happened to an angel.)

The Prince of Darkness excels in lying and deception. Do you believe the lies he wants you to believe, or are you willing to trust God’s truth? Don’t believe the lies. Get up and get in the fight.

In a couple of weeks I hope to start a series on some more of the tactics Satan uses against you. Subscribe today to be sure you don’t miss it!

June 25, 2020June 24, 2020

I Can’t Shake Him!

As a teenager there were a few summers where I worked on the summer staff of a Christian conference center. We’d work during the day, and then in the evening we usually had some kind of staff activity to hang out together.

One night after work, for our staff activity we headed off to one of the more remote sections of the campus. We were going to have some kind of get-messy fight. I forget exactly what it was, but the basic idea was to get everyone else messier than you, and I think the weapon of the day was either shaving cream or whipped cream.

I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it, so once we started, rather than get right in the thick of it I sort of hung out on the edge and let everyone else get messy. The cream went flying, there were shrieks, shouts, and general mayhem ruled the day. I tried moving around enough so that I didn’t really look like I was avoiding the mess, but eventually someone noticed I was still as clean as when we started.

There was a guy on staff named Dave. Dave was super fast. Someone noticed I wasn’t messy and yelled “Dave! Get Tim!”

Dave stopped and looked at me. Our eyes met, and that’s all it took. Man, I was gone. I took off sprinting away from him as fast as I possibly could. I didn’t hold anything back because I knew he was the only person that could catch me. All the lap-swimming and other training I did for lifeguarding helped me stay in shape and run pretty fast, but I wasn’t going to be fast enough to outrun Dave. My only hope was that he’d give up the chase before he caught me.

I sprinted for over a hundred yards, but he was still back there, with two hands’ worth of shaving cream, and he was closer than when we’d started. By the time we’d gone another 50 yards, it was clear that I wasn’t going to get away from him. He was relentless. It seemed like the closer he got, the more energized he became, invigorated at the prospect of running me down.

As he got within a few feet, I was done. I could’ve kept running, but I couldn’t sprint anymore. My half-hearted attempt at zigzagging only helped him close the distance faster. He caught up to me and I got a face full of shaving cream.

Spiritually, I don’t know where you stand. For all I know, you’re not really into that “god” thing, but you somehow came across this post. You’re open to the idea of some higher power being out there, but you don’t have a concrete idea of what that entails.

Let me tell you about this God. He’s not one that sits on a throne laughing maniacally while shooting lightning bolts at anyone who displeases him. This version is unlike any that you’ve heard of before. He’s watching you, yes, but He’s not “out to get” you. This is someone that loves you without remorse, and will pursue you with abandon. He will chase you relentlessly, even if you choose to ignore Him. He will love you until your dying breath, but cares too deeply about who you really are to force you to love Him back. His name is Jesus Christ.

If you’re even still reading, you can scoff at what I say, but my goal is to help plant a seed in your mind that will grow into something more. Watch as later today, maybe tomorrow, or maybe sometime much later down the road, something happens in your life that makes you think back to this story. You’ll remember that you heard about God loving you recklessly. Though you run, He will pursue you without mercy just for the mere possibility that you even think about being curious about Him, caring too much to give up the chase and not be there in the event you stop running and turn around.

The decision you have to make is how long you’ll keep on running. No matter how long or how far you run…He’s faster and can do it longer. Try having an open mind; why don’t you see what happens when you get caught?

June 4, 2020June 3, 2020

How Can a Rational Person be a Christian?

So you’re a Christian, huh? You seem like a pretty rational person other than the fact that you believe the universe and mankind were created in seven 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago, that a 500-year-old man built a huge boat and then went out and gathered two of every kind of animal in the world onto it, that a big fish swallowed a dude and swam around with him alive in its belly for three days before vomiting him up unharmed, and that a virgin gave birth to the Messiah, who was able to turn water into wine, walk on water, and raise himself from the dead. But yeah, other than that you seem pretty rational.

Why on earth would any reasonable person become a Christian?

It’s okay to have and explore questions like this, because if you can’t provide a response, how will skeptics in your life ever learn the truth? This is the “mind” part of when Christ stated the importance of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. I’ll share a little bit about one thing that helps assure me that God is out there and that He’s in charge of history.

People that aren’t familiar with the Bible usually don’t understand that it’s not a monolith. It’s not a huge book that was written by a single author. It consists of 66 books written by nearly 40 authors, spread out over the course of hundreds of years (with a big gap between the Old and New Testaments).

Aside from the events that took place in the Bible, there are a lot of “nonreligious” things that happened in history. Think about major international news events of the modern era. World War II took place; men landed on the moon; the Berlin Wall came down; 9/11 happened; Russia annexed Crimea; and the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series. In the same way that those events can all be verified outside of religion, there are plenty of other writers outside the Bible that captured some of the world’s major events that the Bible wrote about.

Can you imagine if someone predicted all those major events I just mentioned decades, or even hundreds of years before they happened, with a decent amount of specificity? It would surely raise a few eyebrows, and odds are you’d be curious to take a look at the other things the author wrote.

That’s exactly what happens in the book of Daniel. It predicted the rise and fall of several empires, and even described each of them to some degree. Daniel predicted the then-future (which is our history), and now in hindsight we are able to corroborate from non-biblical sources the accuracy of those predictions. That’s like Abraham Lincoln stating that Tom Brady would one day join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers…before the sport of football had even been invented. We can look in history books to verify that the Babylonian Empire was captured by the Persian Empire, who then fell to Alexander the Great, and upon his death the territory he’d conquered got split up into four different regions and was given to four of his generals. We hear of an unbelievably arrogant king that we learn from extra-biblical sources to be Antiochus IV Epiphenes. Daniel chapter 11 discusses some of the efforts at diplomacy and trickery between some of these four. Then the book describes events that are still in our future.

When you consider the magnitude of what this represents, you begin to understand that the book of Daniel is about much more than a story about a lion’s den. If you study the book of Daniel closely, you see that it laid out the future with a startling amount of detail. To anyone alive during the time Daniel’s prophecies came true, imagine the credibility his writings gained. Wouldn’t you want to learn more about what Daniel said and how he knew the future? Daniel pointed straight to God and gave Him the glory for being able to control and know the future.

This is only one case of how common sense and logical thought build a case for the idea that there’s more than what we can see. Put them together and the case starts to get pretty strong. How can a rational person be a Christian? How can you not at least consider it?

Mr. Spock: one of the most rational (half) people I know. Courtesy of Pinterest.

May 14, 2020May 13, 2020

Planned Obsolescence

Ever notice how you can say “they just don’t make it like they used to” about a lot of things?

For example, my parents have a clothes dryer that’s older than me. It’s complained a bit every now and then, but the thing is built like a tank and is still going after a few fixes. Modern ones seem to break if you look at them the wrong way.

Newer cars seem to fall apart much easier than the ones from, say, 30 years ago. What used to be fixed by a good hit with a ball peen hammer now requires more genteel computer diagnostics to figure anything out before you can start to make repairs.

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I heard that back in the 1940s and 50s, women’s pantyhose was of such high quality that the manufacturers worried they weren’t selling enough to sustain their businesses. Their product was so good that after a woman bought some, she didn’t need any more for a long time.

Enter the idea of planned obsolescence, or the intentional use of lower quality materials and construction to shorten the lifespan of a product in an effort to induce consumers to buy more of them. If it falls apart sooner, you’ll end up buying more units than you otherwise would have.

Here’s an odd thought: what if we are the lower-quality product? In 2017 the average life expectancy for Americans was 78.54 years. By comparison, at that point in Moses’ life, he hadn’t even stood before Pharaoh yet. Abraham didn’t have his first child until he was 86, and then he lived about 90 years beyond that. Noah was over 500 years old when he started building the ark, was 600 when the flood started, and he lived another 350 years beyond that until he was 950 years old! This was before antibiotics, nutritional supplements, and the medical knowledge we enjoy today. My friends, you and I are some of the best examples of planned obsolescence I can think of.

Even great figures of Biblical history are shuffled off the stage of God’s theater. Consider King David. Though flawed, he was one of the most genuine and passionate characters in the whole Bible. He’s the stuff legends are made of; as a youngster he vanquished a giant professional soldier with a sling and a rock, then went on to lead raids of enemy camps with ragtag mercenaries as his companions. Although defined as a man of war, his zeal for the Lord led him to set the stage for Solomon’s construction of the Temple by collecting an unbelievable amount of precious metals and other materials. Jesus came from the line of David, for goodness’ sake! At the end of his life, he was unquestionably recognized as a giant of the Faith. Yet even he was just a man, and was intended to play a small role in God’s overall plan. In spite of all his accomplishments, listen to how David is described in Acts 13:36:

“Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed.”

“Falling asleep” in the Bible is usually a euphemism for dying. That’s not the interesting thing though. There are a few different things we can take from this verse, but the two I want to focus on are 1. that he served God’s purpose “in his own generation,” and 2. when he had fulfilled God’s reason for putting him here on Earth, he moved on into eternity.

To the first point, can you imagine if you lived during a different time period? You could have lived 4,000 years ago, or you could have been placed on hold and not made your debut here on Earth for another 200 years. God put you in the here and now intentionally. You are a part of “your generation” because you are to fulfill God’s purpose within it. I don’t know what that purpose is and you might not either, but the fact that you’re reading this right now, today, means you probably weren’t born before 1940 or so. The “today” you see is not an accident or a random assignment, you belong here.

To the second point, you’re here on Earth to do whatever God put you here to do, and you might not be going anywhere until you do it. At some point after that He’ll escort you from this life, but it could be seconds or decades between when you “complete your mission” and you make your departure. To throw a curveball at the situation: almost none of us know with full certainty what our specific purpose is or when we’ll accomplish it.

Zooming back out to the big picture and our limited time on Earth, it seems we might be a little bit more like an aging toaster than we care to admit. We can tell when things are getting toward the end, but most of us can’t predict when we’re toasting our last bagel.

What are we to do then? I’ll summarize it as best I can:

Love God ferociously and use the talents, resources, and circumstances He’s matched you up with to make a positive difference in people’s lives, all the while giving the glory to Him. You will fall, you will have self doubts, and in many cases you will fail. There may be more bad days than good days, but you have been placed here, at this exact point in history, to make an eternal difference in some way.

There’s a song we’ve all heard a million times; it’s one we usually hear in December, but its message fits with the core of this post. If you were meeting the newborn King of Kings, and you simply couldn’t compete with the expensive gifts that others brought, one of the best things you could do is use the talents He’s given you to make Him smile. Isn’t that what we’re all after? (There’s a fun version of this song below.)

Do your best to serve God’s purpose in your generation.

March 12, 2020March 11, 2020

Meaning of Life

Imagine you’re at the top of your game and you are successful in everything you put your mind to. You have a great reputation, you have a great job, you have a great family, and your volunteer work makes a difference. Money isn’t a problem, and you lack nothing.

Does this give meaning to your life?

Long ago the world’s richest and wisest man took it upon himself to seek out the meaning of life. In the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon decided to investigate how to achieve fulfillment in life. First he tried living a life of pleasure, but learned that this wasn’t the answer. He studied the generalities of life and upon reflection was disappointed that death comes both to the wise man and the fool. He implemented public projects on an enormous scale, only to conclude that his lifetime of achievements could easily be wasted after his death if his successor squanders what he inherits.

Very aware of his own mortality, Solomon realizes that this life is short; it’s fleeting. We busy ourselves with many projects and endeavors, but in the end we all pass through and then move on from this life. Many times in the book of Ecclesiastes does Solomon exclaim “meaningless! It’s all a chasing after the wind!”

The book is almost depressing; he spends 12 chapters exploring different aspects of life in hopes of finding fulfillment, only to realize that even our most notable achievements will be forgotten after a few generations. Then at the very end of the book, almost as an afterthought, Solomon abruptly gives us his conclusion. These two verses, only two verses out of the whole book, provide us insight into what he’s learned. If you give up reading the book before the very end, you miss out on Solomon’s “secret of life:”

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. –Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

After years of experiencing everything life has to offer, Solomon concluded that your purpose is to please God and to live in such a way that you will not fear judgment.

I don’t have the time or space to go into all of God’s commandments here, but I’ll summarize them this way: love God and love people. Each of these topics can have books written about them. It’s a lifelong endeavor, though; there are always opportunities to keep getting better at it.

If you’ve got the “love God” portion down pat, it’s time to “love people.” There are people everywhere you go. You know what I’ve discovered? A lot of them are hard to get along with. It can be draining to interact with them! That’s probably why so much of the Bible talks about how to live and deal with others. Here’s the neat thing: you’re equipped to do it. You have everything you need to do what you’ve been called to do.

For many of us, that calling has to do with making someone’s life better somehow. That’s one exciting (yes, exciting) thing about the Coronavirus-dominated time we’re living through…there are new opportunities to love on people in ways that are not normally available. All you have to do is look for them; you’re in the best position to see them and act on them.

Fear God and keep His commandments, and remember that He’ll judge all of your works. This comes from a lifetime of reflection from the wisest man who ever lived. Just a little something to keep in mind if life gets a little too meaningless for you.

February 13, 2020February 12, 2020

Bride of Christ

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. It’s often viewed as a time to pause and reflect on the “special-ness” of the important people in your life.

While the celebration of love is nice, our culture seems to have adopted the idea that “anything goes” in the name of love, and that finding true love means everything after that point will be perfect. Love stories end with the main characters living “happily ever after.” The unfortunate fact is that taking two imperfect people and placing them in a relationship will always yield less-than-perfect results. Sadly, many committed relationships crumble despite the noble intentions of those involved.

People who have known great heartache can therefore best appreciate the idea of a love that will not fail.

In Bible times, weddings worked a little differently from the way they do today. Back then when a couple became engaged, the groom-to-be departed to make preparations for the wedding, their living arrangements, and their future together. The bride-to-be remained with her family while this took place, and she waited for the groom while he made preparations. Without texts, emails, or any other expedient form of communication, she would have to wait and be perpetually ready for her groom to show up and whisk her away to their wedding and new life together. Imagine not only having no input on the details of your own wedding, but also being left completely in the dark about when it would even take place!

This is the situation where we currently find ourselves. We’re waiting, and we don’t know for how long. In my last post I wrote a bit about the importance of the Church. The Church is sometimes referred to as the “Bride of Christ.” Jesus has gone on ahead to make preparations, but He fully intends to return for us, the Church:

…I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:2c-3.

Now that’s a kind of love we can celebrate.

Like in Bible times, we receive very little information about the details of when the Bridegroom is planning to come back. Even though we live in an era of instant gratification, lack of a specific date on the calendar actually changes very little about what’s important in this case. It’s important to remember that while waiting, we are to remain faithful and we are to remain ready, no matter how long it takes. It is imperative that we watch with expectation and with anticipation, ever on the lookout for when our Lord will make His return and escort us to a deeper phase of our relationship with Him.

The question is…have you stopped making yourself ready? You know in your mind that He’ll come someday, but it probably won’t be anytime soon, right? I mean, it’s been about 2,000 years since Christ walked the earth; what are the odds that He’ll come during this lifetime?

What you decide to do is up to you, but I’ll pose one last question to you today. Are you living faithfully for the one to whom you are betrothed?

February 6, 2020February 5, 2020

Ever Look at Bad News This Way?

Let’s be real for a moment.

If you’re a Christian, the world sometimes seems like it’s getting darker. The culture is becoming more and more godless. Today’s young adults are less and less interested in attending church. Many local churches are dead or dying, and many of those still around are consumed with arguments over what kind of music to play or what should or should not be present on the stage during the worship service, rather than reaching the lost.

This is exciting stuff.

You read that right. This is exciting. Why?

Because the Church (capital “c”) is God’s plan for reaching the world. Regardless of the current state of affairs, the Church is going to emerge triumphant. That’s a fact. If the times we’re living in are making today’s local church bodies less and less relevant in reaching the lost, that simply means that the Church we see today is not the version that’s going to be most effective in performing the mission. It means we’re in a time of transition to something new.

So what does that future version of the Church look like? I can’t tell you.

It’s not that I know and I’m withholding the information from you; I can’t tell you because I don’t yet know the manner in which you’re going to be a part of helping the church evolve. In other words, it’s exciting because the Church is going to be effective in new ways because you, as a Christ-follower and part of the Church, are going to change how the Church approaches the problem of delivering the Gospel to people who haven’t heard it before.

Don’t look at the current state of affairs and see despair; look at it and see that opportunities abound! At its core, Christianity is about two things: loving God and loving people (after all, only a handful of the 10 Commandments pertain to our relationship with God; the vast majority of them deal with our relationship with each other). In what way(s) are you able to develop a relationship with someone for the purpose of glorifying God?

Can’t think of anything? Start out with this: make friends with at least one person in every decade of life. Regardless of what decade of life you’re currently in, imagine the perspective you can gain by interacting with someone who has the black-and-white outlook of a child, the idealism of a teenager, the enthusiasm of a twenty-something, the ambition of someone in their thirties, the experience of a mid-lifer, the expertise of someone in their fifties, the hindsight of a sixty-something, the clarity of what’s important in life of someone in their seventies, and the wisdom and life experience of everyone else. Whether or not all those people are Christians, you’re going to learn something, and they might too.

The Church is changing, and that’s not a bad thing. If you see a spot where the Church should be doing something but isn’t, you may have just found your calling. The entire purpose of this blog is to come alongside you, put a hand on your shoulder, tell you that God is capable of doing amazing things through broken and imperfect people, and encourage and exhort you to use the resources and spiritual gifts God’s provided…all for the purpose of reaching the lost and glorifying God. You’re not only capable of helping the Church meet the world’s current needs, you were designed to.

The exciting part is that even though (and perhaps because) the Church will evolve, it’s going to reach people in ways it hasn’t before. So by all means, if you’ve been prompted to or are toying with the idea of doing something unconventional, yet purposeful…please…start pursuing that course and see where it goes.

I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. –Matthew 16:18b.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. –Ephesians 3:20-21

October 10, 2019October 9, 2019

Too Small To Make a Difference

We’ve got a fireplace at home, and we like having fires once it gets cold. Buying or collecting wood for the fireplace can be a hassle though, and this year we happened upon a different solution. Earlier this summer a nearby neighborhood cut down a lot of trees and sliced the trunks into slabs, leaving them to rot throughout the neighborhood. I actually enjoy splitting wood by hand (especially after aggravating days at work), so I went and picked up a bunch of them and brought them home for splitting and burning.

The problem is that I don’t have an efficient method of splitting the wood. Most people know what an ax is, but not everyone knows what a maul is. A maul is kind of like a sledgehammer with a wedge on one side. When I first started splitting wood earlier this summer though, I didn’t have a full-sized maul. The one I have is meant for splitting pieces of wood that have already been split, but are still a bit too big for the fireplace. It’s kind of a hand-held “mini-maul.”

This tool is great for splitting branches or small trunks that are, say, the diameter of a coffee-can. Once you get into dealing with slabs of trunk though, it becomes much more difficult.

I had a slab I was determined to split up, but it was so big I couldn’t even put my arms around it. Nonetheless, I put it on top of another piece and started looking at the natural grain of the wood, then started taking shots at it. At first the mini-maul just bounced off the wood. A few more shots, and each time the mini maul bounced. Each time the tool struck the wood, though, it left a pock mark. I started striking the slab in a way that the pock marks lined up to create a fault line across it. I didn’t really feel like I was making much progress, so I turned the slab and started doing the same thing in a different direction. Then I did it in yet another direction.

I struck the wood over and over and over again. Sometimes the tool bounced and other times it started penetrating into the wood. I was out there for a long time. My hands got sore and hot, like blisters were starting to form. I was tired, and eventually my shirt was so soaked with sweat that it had almost no dry spots, and I thought about packing it in. I must’ve left nearly a hundred pock marks before anything began happening.

Finally, the sound of the impact changed, and a crack emerged. When it did, it breathed new life into my effort.

Once the crack was established, it was easy to exploit into a split, and things moved quickly from there. After splitting it in two, it only took a few shots to make additional splits in one of the two sides. Those smaller chunks became infinitely easier to break into the size I wanted, often in a single blow.

In the end, this little tool was able to deliver enough targeted force to smash a strong, sturdy slab of oak into about 35 splinters that were shadows of what they once were. All of them were done in by the persistent strikes of a tool that was “too small” to do the job.

It’s an alarming spiritual analogy for those things we do that we know we shouldn’t be doing. It might not be anything major, but it happens again and again. Call it the straw that broke the camel’s back, or call it death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s something that doesn’t seem too bad, in and of itself. It’s not a crushing blow, but it’s something that delivers targeted strike after targeted strike against your Christian walk and, if it’s not stopped, has the ability to cause major damage to your spiritual health and relationships.

Maybe it’s gossip. It could be reading a certain kind of novel. Maybe it’s a glance that lingers longer than it should. Perhaps it’s tension in your marriage that goes unresolved and festers. Doing these things a single time is not something that’s devastating to your spiritual walk, but each of them is something that leaves a pock mark. You may have even told yourself “it’s not a big deal, it doesn’t hurt anybody.” Well, maybe doing it once isn’t a big deal, but have you only done it once? Consider whether your pock marks are aligning in a way that will lead to cracks and problems in the future, maybe soon.

Is there something you’re doing that you know you shouldn’t be doing? If you’re wrapped up in something that hinders your ministry or God-given purpose, even just a little bit, it can affect your ability to make your maximum impact for Christ’s kingdom. Like athletes that train hard to compete at a high level, cut yourself off from things you know aren’t helping you. Don’t run for third place, or for second place; run to win.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. –Hebrews 12:1-2

Tag: truth

Red Teaming Humanity: Keep the Unbelieving From Believing (Part 2 of 4)