God's Consistent Nearness to the Christian

Those who have faith in Christ are adopted into his family for eternity, and they can now have a relationship with God. Prayer is something we can do at any time, and God listens because Jesus has paid the price to restore that relationship.

 So God is always present to listen to our prayers. God is always loving us. God is sovereign over everything. In so many ways God is near to us. Phrases like "the presence of God" meaning God only being present at certain times, such as only in prayer or only when we are doing something truly noble, may be harmful. The people who listen to or say these things may start to think or feel that they must meet a quota of good deeds to feel like God loves them or is present in their circumstances.

When we are not praying or doing very noble things, it's possible we may feel it harder to love God as much or see his beauty quit as clear at that moment. But that is about us, and not God being any farther away from us. As humans, we're sometimes limited on how many things we can focus on in one given moment.

 We should rejoice in what Christ has allowed for us and for how we are always loved. We shouldn't try to feel like we'll gain motivation to do good deeds if we say good deeds will get us into some new state with or closer to God. We are already as close as we can be. We can grow in more knowledge, and therefore that may help us grow in love for God (more things to know to marvel at or praise him for)--but that is about us moving closer to him, not him moving closer to us.

 Motivation to do good deeds can happen when we really believe that God is such a gracious God. Christ has saved us and anyone who is willing to come to him in faith. A natural response to being saved is to be grateful, and our appreciation and love for the person who saved us causes us to want to serve or honor that great person.

Grace which Moves

Grace should move us to live out our Christian faith. It is our union with Jesus through faith which transforms us.

It is often felt by many that the church needs practical teaching. Practical teaching is of use, but faith and the gospel will always naturally result in works.

Many times the failure of people to live out the practical parts of Christianity is a failure to grasp the significance of the grace they have received. Once we understand the grace we have received, slowly everything else will begin to fall into place.

The success or failure of Christian living in the church rests and falls on grace. It is not that practical teaching is not useful (because it is). But that practical teaching is only useful once grace is understood.

And too often grace is not understood and thus practical teaching falls on deaf ears. Many congregations with issues in their midst do not need practical teaching on Christian living, but rather to understand the gospel in a more significant way.

Often failures of living are not failures to grasp practical teaching but failure to grasp the significance of the grace we have received.

Post: Ethics as a Result of Faith

Christian Love Is Unconditional

Christian Love in the highest form is based on what Jesus has done. Often love in the world is transactional in nature. It is based upon mutual utility.

The love of God is different in that God loved us while we were his enemies. God's love is unconditional and despite reason.

God offers that all who come to Jesus in faith become part of his family. Christian love differs from that in the world in that in its highest for love exists dispute reason.

Truth and Passion

Truth and passion need to be linked in the Christian faith. Too often we find passion toward life without any firm basis in truth or truth without a firm passion behind the truth.

We need both truth and passion in our Christian walks working together. The Christian message is a message full of content. The content of the Christian message should motivate us to action.

The direction is that truth comes before the passion and the passion is based on the truth. But the truth of Christianity should always motivate some form of action.

That is not to say that every text in scripture has an immediate clear application to life. It is easy to attempt to force scriptural passages to have an application when we do not see one. Often if we read a text we will not always see its application in the moment, but if we study the text later a situation will come when the application will become apparent.

All scripture is useful for life. We may not always see the use and it is important to not try to force the use out of a scriptural text when we do not see the use in the moment. But we should always trust that when we read scripture God is speaking to us.

Sometimes we do not understand what he is saying. Sometimes he is saying something to us not for this moment but one many years down the road. But God is always speaking to us. We need to listen even when we do not understand what is being said.

Sometimes when we listen carefully even if we do not understand what a text means then we will understand later. But if we do not understand and thus fail to listen or stop reading then we will never understand the message in a text.

The Narrow Way

The bible always speaks of the path to God as narrow. The only way to the Father is to go through his Son Jesus.

Often the world demands that the way be broad. We do not like the narrowness of the Christian faith.

Always we want to have religion on our own terms. We do not like the terms which God presents.

But the terms are not ours to choose but Gods. And we sit in rebellion against God when we wish to tell him the terms on which we should be able to relate to him.

John Piper Quote on Forgiveness

A bit from a John Piper sermon I really liked:

Saving faith means believing that God's forgiveness is an awesome thing! Saving faith looks at the horror of sin and then looks at holiness of God and believes that God's forgiveness is a staggering beauty and unspeakably glorious. Faith in God's forgiveness does not merely mean confidence that I am off the hook. It means confidence that this is the most precious thing in the world. That's why I use the word cherish. Saving faith cherishes being forgiven by God.

And there's the link with the battle against bitterness. You can go on holding a grudge if your faith simply means you are off the hook. But if faith means standing in awe of being forgiven by God, then you can't go on holding a grudge. You have fallen in love with mercy. It's your life. So you battle bitterness by fighting for the faith that stands in awe of God's forgiveness of your sins.

What Is Christian Faith?

What is Christian faith?

It is a loving of God primarily.  There is no saving faith in God apart from a love for God.

Romans 8:28: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."

Notice the connection those who love God are the ones who are called according to his purpose.  Those aren’t two distinct categories.  If you are called by God (thus saved) you love God.

I would just like to urge everyone to ponder their faith.  We all need to test ourselves to see that our are love for God is true, not like the sad story in Matthew 7:20-23:

So then, you will know them by their fruits. "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'

How do we know this is not about us?  It is by our fruits, by our love for God that we can see our election.  If our fruit is scarce test it to see that it does not taste of self love for personal gratification in heaven, but that it longs for deeper satisfying union with the creator.  If we believe we all need to repent.  Even the best Christian’s do not savor God’s precious goodness enough.

As Psalm 63:3 puts it: "Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you."

Ponder that God's love is better than life.  Search deeply and diligently to see its truth.

Our Hearts Turned to God

I think most people will read this passage differently than I do. But, now days as I look around I see so many people who claim to be Christians (and they may well be) whose care about God is so superficial. If our hearts are not turned toward God on a regular basis I think we should ponder what we are doing. If there is an eternally important gift and we care for it not and instead we do what follows, "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for (a shadow) of an image made to look like mortal man..." (Romans 1:22-23), we should wonder if we really have faith. Faith without love is dead. It seems foolish to claim you love someone you only drag yourself to hear about once a week. So if we are not energized daily by Christ we need to look deep into our hearts for as it is written in Luke:

22 Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. 23 Someone asked him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?"
He said to them, 24 "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

"But he will answer, ‘I don't know you or where you come from.’

26 "Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

27 "But he will reply, ‘I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

28 "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. 29People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. 30Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last."

A Problem in Philosophy: Types of Knowledge

One of the biggest problems I find in philosophy is that far too many philosophers misunderstand knowledge. They often fall into the trap of thinking that there are only two types of knowledge: a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge.

A priori knowledge is knowledge that is gained by faith alone.

A posteriori knowledge is knowledge that is based off of experience.

This distinction seems to leave out the most important type of knowledge: faith knowledge.

Most people find my beliefs that the earth orbits the sun or that there is mostly empty space in desks, or that there is a war going on in Iraq to be reasonable ones. Now I really have no knowledge that the sun orbits the earth, there are atoms in desks, or there is a war going on by reason alone. I also have no real reason to believe from experience that what makes up desks is mostly empty space with atoms, or that the earth orbits the sun, or that there is a war going on. There could certainly be other plausible explanation for what I experience, namely that the sun orbits the earth, or that desks are tightly filled with atoms with little or no empty space, or that the war in Iraq really is really just being made up. The problem is too many philosophers forget that most of what we know we accept from RELIABLE sources. Because they don’t understand this they often reduce themselves to skepticism when they cannot find a priori or a posteriori knowledge. Even philosophers who aren’t skeptics often find ways to damage their philosophies by baseing them around a priori and a posteriori knowledge.