The rest of the story

When's the last time you heard the whole Story? Has your pastor preached through the biblical narrative lately. Please take my quick anonymous survey: I'm doing some research and would love your help. (Please click here to take the VERY short survey.)

Since the advent of Children's Church and the end of Sunday School, many children don't learn the Bible stories I grew up with. Oh, there's a Veggie Tale video and great crafts. But do they learn the story? Nope.

In one Christian university, a faculty member told me she orders Bible story books for students taking Old Testament survey. Most freshmen have very vague ideas about biblical characters. The students knew David and Goliath (as the little guy wins over a giant). They heard the names of Abraham and Moses, but knew little about their lives and spiritual legacy.

I'm plowing through scriptures like a starving person. My husband began reading great chunks of the Bible last spring. And my mom's on her fourth read-through this year. WHAT A STORY!!!

God with us. This Christmas we celebrate the coming of God among us. He clothed himself in the person of an unknown household. God chose a mom who would obey God's wishes and think deeply about raising her son. Chose a faithful husband who would provide for his family. Chose to be born in a village that overlooked a major trading route. To devoutly religious Jews.

The mystery of Good News fascinates me! God with us. Read all about it in your Bible!
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How to advance

On our trip to Israel, we traversed miles of desert (virtually no rainfall) and wilderness (minimal rainfall that permits scrub and some grasses to grow). Israel is dry. dry. and more dry.

Our tour guide explained, "Before the current irrigation, inhabitants were utterly dependent on God for rain. The farmer would sow precious seed from grain needed to feed his family. If the rains didn't come at the right time, he and his family would starve. Israelites plead with God and pagans performed their rituals at sowing and harvest seasons for sufficient rain."One year might be abundant. The next could be devastating. It all depended on rain.

Likewise, war-craft developed slowly and unevenly. The Philistines, relatives of the great Greek sailors, had metalworking skills long before Israel did, giving them an advantage in battle. Egypt and Babylon had well-developed armies and threatened to overrun Israel and Judah, time after time.

Asa begins well

This morning, I read the story of Asa (2 Chronicles 14-16). He started strong, depending on God for his country's survival. Even when the odds were overwhelming, he went to God for help. Except...

...when he was old and experienced.

Asa's country was besieged by Israel's army after he had ruled 36 years. For some inexplicable reason, he didn't ask God's intervention like he had in the past. With a history of miraculous provision, of overcoming annihilation by enemy troops, and a peaceful reign attributed to God's favor, Asa requested help from neighboring Damascus instead of from God.

God sent the prophet Hanani to ask what Asa was thinking. Instead of repenting, Asa got angry and punished the prophet. Thereafter, Asa also oppressed his people. He went from being a successful king who followed God to becoming an oppressor who followed himself and human wisdom and desires.

What I learned from Asa's story:

1. Our accomplishments are rooted in God's favor. Good seasons are cause for worship and thanksgiving to God.
2. God gives success to those who cry out to him when life seems impossible. God is strong enough when we cannot find a way forward. When the odds are against us, God knows how to direct life so we can survive and thrive.
3. God responds to our prayers. When we encounter opportunities and crises throughout life, God gives those who ask him wisdom and supernatural resources--in good times and bad.
4. God responds to our decisions with blessings for obedience and difficulties for idolatry. You may "have fun" sinning but you won't live an abundant life. You hurt those around you by aligning against God's love and justice: all of Judah suffered when Asa walked away from what he knew was right.
5. Though God warns us, he allows us to listen or reject his advice. All of us have suffered because of others' bad choices. 

Typical landscape in Israel

When we seek God, he promises to make our paths straight. It might be unclear to me whether to take one job or another, whether to move or stay put in a house, or whether or not to invest in one company or another.

Yet I can choose as best I can among such "minor details" of life. The principles of scripture demand integrity, allegiance to a holy God, and alignment with biblical principles. When I live that way, God can bless me in any job, house, or company.

So how to we advance through life? 

• We must choose to follow God with all our hearts, as best as we can understand. From START to FINISH and everywhere between.
• We listen to wise counsel and accept rebukes or commendations that God sends.
• And we constantly realign to do what is right rather than merely what is in our own interests.

Then--and only then--God promises we will finish as well as we started.

Read more:
*Thus far the Lord has helped us. 1 Samuel 7:12

*At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, “Because you have relied on the king of Aram and have not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army of the king of Aram has escaped out of your hand. Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim an immense army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this. Indeed, from now on you will surely have wars.”

Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him for this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at the same time. In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa became diseased in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians. 2 Chronicles 16:7-10, 12

*[God says] “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV

*The Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed. 2 Timothy 4:17

Moravian Prayer: You are with us always—guiding, comforting and challenging us to continue our journey with and to you. May our steps today bring us closer to you. We pause before you now in gratitude and supplication. Amen.

Round and round we go...

I don't often write theology and seldom publish what I write when I'm ticked off. Today I find myself very angry about ideas from a book circulating in the churches... again. Similar reoccurring heresies pop up every once in a while, deceiving believers with half-truths and outright lies. So here goes.

I recently was given Lew White's self-published "Fossilized Customs" as a go-to book on how to serve God better. "You'll love it. It will open your eyes." Well, it opened my eyes all right. I couldn't believe the nonsense I was reading. What goes around, comes around ... including heresies. What did I think? (Note: I checked my ideas with a few theologians before writing this.)

What rubbish. By the time I'd finished the second page, it was clear that this was a rant of legalism and church-bashing, not a scholarly work. Fanciful claims appear on photo captions as well as in the text. (For example, that archaeologists have discovered 3-4 meter skeletons, supposedly the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4, and hidden the evidence. Where are the studies to prove the claims? The photographic "evidence" is badly Photoshopped.) Most stridently, the book shouts that a Saturday Sabbath is commanded by God. Obviously the author gives no credibility to Galatians 5, Colossians 3, or Romans 14, where Paul forbids arguments over the day of the Sabbath.

When I got to page 7, deriding baptism as "dunking," church attendance, and tithes and offerings as "pay pay pay," I began to steam at the sarcasm. Then I read, "Arise, shine, for your light has come!" (i.e. "My book of exposes and facts is here!") The author adds: "Soon you'll know more than your denominational pastor does." I get nauseated by arrogance and anti-intellectualism that disrespects pastors who study scriptures and feed their flocks with solid biblical truth rather than sensationalism.

The pictures and choices of illustrations are aggressively offensive and insulting and some sketches look demonic (75). The book looks and reads like a National Enquirer mixture of fact and fiction: historical customs and traditions are viewed with a sick sexual bent. The Christmas tree or a civic memorial pillar? A phallic symbol of course. Santa Claus with kids on his lap? Clearly alluding to the idol Moleck and the custom of putting children "on his lap" to offer them as child sacrifices. A snapshot of a mayor cutting the ribbon for a new building? Symbolically cutting a hymen... OK, that's enough. But you get the picture. I was offended, grossed out, shocked, and mortified that evil syncretism caused by personal perversion was presented as God's caution for believers.

The author refuses to reference the scholars or studies he disses, making up some history or ignoring facts (i.e. the early NT church - including Paul - and second-century churches already celebrated "on the first day" or Sunday. That was not a new invention forced on Christians by Constantine, as White claims (7, 80, etc.)

God occasionally used rituals familiar to Israelites from surrounding contexts to help them understand worship. Building altars with burnt sacrifices, erecting memorial pillars, etc. are only a few. Missionaries today similarly contextualize the gospel into new settings. If the book's ideas were followed to their natural conclusions, we'd have to live in Israelite tents, worship at the temple on the Sabbath, and be bound up again in ceremonies that foreshadowed the Savior. I'm grateful that the apostles put no such burdens on Gentile believers (Jerusalem Council, Acts 15).

Eve's sin was trying to acquire "more knowledge" than God gave, discerning "good and evil" beyond God's instructions. She disobeyed God by going against his instructions to leave with God the "secret things." (Note the principle of Deuteronomy 29:29). When we warp our speculations and half-truths into "facts" and claim that God has spoken, we fall into original sin.

You've probably figured out that I really get mad when someone twists the truth and harms the flock of God. I say, "Stay away!" from ANY such pseudo-scholarship. May God have mercy on Lew White's soul and keep the unwary from falling into this snare of deception.

Read more:
*Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. Romans 14: 1, 5-9

*You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Galatians 3:26-29 NIV

*Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. Colossians 2:16-23

*I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.

For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God. Philippians 1:9-11 NLT

Everyone does what is right in their own eyes...

Stella McCartney

Two posts caught my eye on news feeds today. The first is how the "ethical" Stella McCartney (famed designer-daughter of Paul) shows her integrity: though she supports abortion and other so-called "human rights" she will not use leather or fur in her vegan fashion lines. Her values include environmentalism.

Sarah Catt

The second post featured Sarah Catt, a mother who poisoned her child at 39-week of pregnancy. She shows no remorse (has had other abortions, extra-marital affairs, etc.) and was sentenced to eight years in jail. Authorities haven't been able to find the baby. Her values include extreme selfishness.

The biblical history lessons in Judges (7th book of the Bible, if you're not familiar with it) tell how "everyone did what was right in their own eyes" whenever a strong leader died. With high cultural  "tolerance" for sin disguised as new morality, those who shout their values seem to get respect.

I'm not talking about Christians shouting that the world is wicked and going to hell. Those voices immediately get blasted as biased, unloving, and uncivilized. (When the gospel is presented with hostility rather than grace, I don't blame listeners for their defensive opposition.)

Many voices have become credible through intimidation.  Those include world religions that are fighting to destroy everyone else (extreme Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. ) as well as Western cultural groups (gays, abortion rights, and other activists) seeking to obliterate and replace Judao-Christian morality.

Extremists, anarchists, and political movers whip up frenzies among the violent and uninformed. They use mass hysteria and crowd dynamics to tear down established mores. It's interesting that Salman Rushdie says his "Satanic Verses" could not and "would not be published today." No publisher would dare provoke the anger of Islamists. I'm not in favor of Rushdie's work; its toxins aren't worth reading. But the fear invoked by those supposedly defending their religions pervades global media.

A related idea that crossed my tea table this week was how disconnected families are, especially in upwardly mobile and privileged sectors of the emerging world. An Asian friend told me, "The parents work all day, the maids raise the children, and the kids don't even know their parents." I got to thinking: what kind of world leader could rally a global "family" consisting of such grown children, who might still long for interaction with a caring mom or dad

The news reported widespread destruction this week by Islamists, ruining property of neighbors and governments, and harming innocent bystanders with the excuse of protesting "a film made in the USA." The actions showcase the powder-keg of emotion and instability fostered by those who hate peace and other humans. Under the guise of religious fervor, people spew a satanic immorality, hatred, and death - on themselves and those around them.

"Everyone does what is right in their own eyes." There's hardly a whisper of public repulsion allowed when unthinkable lifestyles are paraded in public in our cities. However, those who stand for morality, strong families where children grow in healthy security, and safe communities are publicly shunned and ridiculed for "narrowness" and "intolerance." Right is considered wrong, while wrong is popular.

God has blessed us with scriptural instructions and a call to pray for the nations and governments of this world. We are never told to insult leaders, to ridicule those in power with political satire, or to harangue those who think differently than we do. Instead we must pray, live morally, and love God and others in word and deed.

"You can't change anyone but yourself," therapists and influencers tell us. What changes do you need to make to improve the world around you? To spread God's peace and kindness to neighbors and comfort to those living "on the edge" emotionally and spiritually? Here are a few ideas:

1. Get your heart tuned up. Be sure you are aligned with scripture and that your first recourse to joy and danger is prayer.
2. Look for those who need a loving word or helping touch.
3. Be willing to go beyond your routines and comfort zone to be God's hand extended.
4. Be prepared for angry or hostile reactions when you don't fall in with the crowd but stand for what is right.
5. Take everything back to God and the spiritual community where you are accountable for ongoing perspective, balance, and renewal.

Read more:
*By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,
    their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
    he puts the deep into storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the Lord;
    let all the people of the world revere him.
For he spoke, and it came to be;
    he commanded, and it stood firm. Psalm 33:6-9 NIV

*God's way is the abundant way! (repost from Dayspring Devotions)
There's no rationing in heaven, no skimping from the throne, no shortage of supply from the treasures of His mercies. His life gushes forth from the well of salvation; His spiritual refreshing flows from rivers of living water; His constant and consistent goodness is poured out through downpours of blessings.

He is the God of
abundant mercy Numbers 14:18
abundant kindness Nehemiah 9:17
abundant justice Job 37:23
abundant truth Psalms 86:15
abundant redemption Psalms 130:7
abundant loving kindness Jonah 4:2
abundant grace 1 Timothy 1:14
abundant satisfaction Psalms 36:8
abundant blessing Psalms 132:15
abundant pardon Isaiah 55:7
abundant life John 10:10
abundant joy 2 Corinthians 8:2
abundant power Ephesians 3:20
abundant outpouring Titus 3:6
abundant revelation Hebrews 6:17
abundant provision Psalms 65:11
abundant peace Psalms 37:11

- Roy Lessin, from his blog Meet Me In The Meadow