March 23, 2009

A Letter to My Peers

To my friends, my fellow classmates who graduated in 2007,

It has been nearly two years since we finished up classes and graduated Lakeside. It might be helpful for us to take a minute and look back on where we were and where we are and where we are heading. I invite you to do that with me.

I know that many of us, not all, but many, would have openly confessed to one another that Jesus Christ is Lord and that we had committed our lives to Him. This is the common ground from which we began. And for those who may have hesitated to do so, you at least knew the truth about Christ and the gospel. But nearly all of us would have said, and indeed did say that we were Christians.

I'm not sure that the same group who made that confession then would make it now. But that is not the point. The point is this: What should we be living our lives for? How should we live in light of what we know? What are our passions, and what do they say about us?

After graduation, we moved into the world with a freedom of sorts that we never had before. This presented us with new challenges and new opportunities. I have, along with many of you, felt the challenges of being in some sense an "independent citizen" (or whatever you may call it). My aim here is to share encouragement through the challenges so that we may take hold of the opportunities.

Perhaps more intensely than ever before, we now have the pressure of a world that says, "Live for your entertainment, your appeasement, your pleasures." To put it in biblical terms, I'd like to call it the "Eat, drink, and be merry" mentality. In other words, the sum total of all my actions and attitudes right now amounts to no more than a striving for a moment's happiness. This can take many forms, and it is almost certain that we've all embraced it at some time or another, to some extent.

This sounds like really shrewd advice to most ears. Live for your enjoyment! Even as I write it, there is the inner questioning, "Do I really disagree?" Eat, drink and be merry! How bad of an idea could that be? Bad enough to rob you of all joy forever. You may disagree with that last statement. It is a hard statement to accept, so I'll show you the root of "Eat, drink and be merry" and hope that you disagree more with that.

We find the idea of "Eat drink and be merry" in 1 Cor 15:32. What is the reasoning behind it? "Tomorrow we die" -and that's all there is. Our hearts should rebel against that line of reasoning. We know the truth, we believe that there is life after death, don't we? We were together in Apologetics class, we know that this truth makes sense. How then will we live as if there is no higher purpose? How will we live as if death brings the end of us? When we live purely for our entertainment, whether that means wasting hours on video games, frequenting clubs and parties to find some social enjoyment, or working hour after hour so that school or work becomes our god, we proclaim our fundamental agreement that the world is a purposeless accident that has no ultimate meaning.

Yet we know there is hope. There is a higher purpose. There is another "eating and drinking" that Paul speaks about. It's in 1 Cor 10:31, where Paul says we should do all to the glory of God. This is our higher purpose. And we have an opportunity to use our new freedom to pursue His glory like never before. Why would we look for joy anywhere else? Who can give joy like our God?(Ps 16:11) Is there any thing this world has for us that can rise above what God can give? Of course not, God created the world. He makes us rejoice in our hope(Rom 5:2), rejoice in our suffering(Rom 5:3) and rejoice in Him(Rom 5:11). Our trust is in Him, what can man do to us?(Ps 56:11) All things work together those who trust Him. There is no one who can be against us when God is for us. (Rom 8:28, 31)

This is my prayer for us. Let us call on God, and then watch Him come through for us and for his glory(Ps 50:15). Let us pursue a tasting, and a sight of God's goodness(Ps 34:8). Let us hope in Him, for when we do our hope will not disappoint us (Rom 5:5 NIV).

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." (Rom 15:13)

-Trevor

March 9, 2009

Faith Moves From God to Our Hearts (Defining Faith Pt 2)

Last time, I tried to illustrate the concept the word "faith" carries with it. To sum up what I said: Faith has two aspects, a future hope and a present reality in our lives. For example, think of a chair. Faith looks at that chair, has a future hope in it that it will provide rest and will not fold under its weight, and then flowing out of that hope, produces the action of sitting in it. Faith will not only mentally acknowledge the worthiness of a chair. Faith also has the present element of sitting in the chair. But you won't rest in it until you hope in it.

But Christianity is not about sitting in chairs. What then is faith for the Christian? One way to define something is to describe what it does. To see what faith does, we'll look at how it moves, that is where it is coming from, and where it is going.

First, faith is coming from God to our hearts. Paul connects a raising of the dead that happens in the moment of salvation with faith. In Ephesians 2:4-5, 8 Paul says that when we were dead in trespasses, God made us alive with Christ, by grace through faith. This salvation by grace through faith is none of our doing, but a gift from God. Paul uses this illustration of life from death in the case of Abraham's faith in Romans 4:17, 19. In these verses, when Paul says God is one who "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" he is making a reference to the birth of Isaac. Isaac was a walking impossibility. But Abraham believed the promise of God, who is able to do these impossible things in light of what we know about Him as Creator. Isaac is a picture of every believer (Gal 4:28, 31). In other words, just like God, acting on his own, was able to create something out of nothing, just like he created light out of nothing, just like he gave Isaac life out of death, so it is with all God's people, the "children of the free woman." Paul makes this clear in 2 Cor 4:5-6. When talking about the message he preaches, (which is the same message he believes, 2 Cor 4:13) he says the reason he preaches Christ as Lord and not himself, but himself as a servant is because "God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. "

I highlighted the "gifts" and the "gives" so that you could see the main point running through all those verses. Faith has moved in the form of a gift from God to the people to which he gives it. Where did this faith arise from? God created it out of nothing. And he has put it in our hearts, that is, he has made it real to us. Or as Paul says in 2 Cor 4:6, he has given us "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Remember we said faith was a present grasp of some reality. Here that grasp has been created by God. And the reality is the glory of God. Notice how we know the glory of God: through the face of Jesus Christ.

What are some of the implications of this? First this emphasizes what I said in the very first post "The Fight for Faith." Faith is created by and comes from God. Therefore to get faith we should go nowhere else but straight to God. There is no creating faith on your own. We cannot raise the dead. We cannot create something out of nothing. Only the Creator can do that. We must go to him for faith.

Second, it highlights how Jesus should be seen. He is not merely a historical figure to the believer. He is a present reality, and through His face as we see it in the gospel, we see the glory of God. Or to put it more simply: Christians love Jesus. Paul calls the believers at Ephesus those who "love our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 6:24). Jesus says that if we are of God we will love him (Jn 8:42). That's what it means to have this light shine in your heart. The heart responds with desire and emotion. There is no such thing as an emotionless Christian. A Christian is someone who is enraptured by the glory of God. Take Psalm 47:6-8 as an example of a normal Christian response to God. There are hundreds more, and I can't list them all here.

This response comes from the faith, so it too must be given by God. Ask him for it. If you don't have that joy in Christ and love for Him, ask God for it. If you do have it, ask Him to keep you in it and to give you more.

There may be some who are thinking, "But Christianity is not all emotion." And if you are thinking that, you are right. It's not all emotion. This look at faith is incomplete. So I'll talk about where faith goes from our hearts in a later post. And hopefully that will help clear up things. But some of what was said here should give you a good idea of where it's heading.

March 3, 2009

The Substance of Things Hoped For (Defining Faith Pt 1)

I realized that in my last post I threw around the word, "faith" a good bit. I think this is ok, because the Bible throws the word faith around a lot, too (it occurs 278 times in the ESV). But assuming everyone knows what faith means is not going to be helpful. I called my last post "The Fight for Faith." The person who doesn't know quite what faith is would be left scratching their head thinking, "The Fight for What?". And you can't fight if you don't know what you're fighting for, at least not in this battle.

There is a place where the Bible clearly defines faith, and I think that would be the best place to start for a good understanding of what faith is. Many probably already know what verse I'm talking about, so go to Hebrews 11:1. It says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." I also like the NKJV that says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

The first part of the verse "Now faith is" shows that the author is about to provide a definition of faith. He uses two phrases in this verse that describe faith. First "the assurance (or substance) of things hoped for" and second "the conviction (or evidence) of things not seen." We can see that these are two different ways of saying the same thing. So lets take the two halves of each phrase and put them together. Faith is:

"the assurance and conviction (or the substance and evidence)"

of

"things hoped for and not seen"

So lets take each part and try to understand it. What does the author mean by "assurance and conviction"? I think the words "substance" and "evidence" are helpful in understanding this. I like these words cause it puts us in a scenario we understand: a court-room. In a court-room, people are trying to prove things. And the best way to prove things is with evidence. Not just any evidence, but substantial evidence. Like for example: Whereas the testimony of "that man killed my husband" is less than substantial, a pistol, covered in the suspects fingerprints, registered to the suspect, that has been proven by ballistics tests to be the weapon from which the fatal bullet came, would be a very substantial piece of evidence. Especially if there is surveillance video evidence that the subject fled the scene with said pistol. Those things taken together would be concrete and real. Such evidence would likely be the pillars of the prosecution's case.

In other words, substance and evidence are real. "Assurance" and "conviction" then, are the personal apprehension of the real. When you take hold of what is real, that becomes assurance. When the Jury sees those real factual concrete manifestations(i.e. evidence) of the claim "that man killed my husband" they will be assured of their conviction: Guilty. Or, to put it another way, assurance and conviction are a present reality. As real as the computer I'm typing on. It's substantial, almost as if you could touch it. So that's the first part: Faith is "the present reality" of "...something." Let's look at the second part now.

"things hoped for and not seen." This one is a lot easier. Most everyone can clearly get the idea of "hope." First of all, hope is future. This is where the "not seen" part comes in. Paul puts it this way in Romans 8:24: "Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?" In other words, no one says, "Gee, I hope I have enough gas to drive home from work tonight" as they park their car in the driveway from coming home from work that night. That makes no sense. You don't hope for what you already see exists. The word "expectation" comes to mind as a synonym of hope. So put together this synonym with the "not seen" part and you get: "future expectation." Now we can put the whole thing together.

Faith is "the present reality" of "future expectation." And in a later post I'll talk about what that "present reality" and "future expectation" is for a Christian.