Month: October 2014

Categories
Bible

Does Reading the Bible Have Any Value?

“Does Reading the Bible Have Any Value?”
  by brian rushing

“They tell us that the Bible is the Word of God… a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. They tell us that we shall find within it the knowledge of God and his will for our lives….

“So we take our Bibles and start to read them… because we really do want to know God. But as we read, we get more and more puzzled. Though fascinated, we are not being fed. Our reading is not helping us; it leaves us bewildered and, if the truth be told, somewhat depressed. We find ourselves wondering whether Bible reading is worth going on with.
photo of person reading the Bible symbolizing the question - does reading the Bible have any value? Is it important?
“It is all intensely interesting, but it all seems very far away. It all belongs to that ancient world, not to this world. We feel that we are, so to speak, on the outside of the Bible world, looking in. We are mere spectators, and that is all. Our unspoken thought is — “Yes, God did all that then, and very wonderful it was for the people involved, but how does it touch us now? We don’t live in the same world.

“How can the record of God’s words and deeds in Bible times, the record of his dealings with Abraham and Moses and David and the rest, help us, who have to live in modern times?”

Have you ever felt like this? Dr. Packer explains exactly how I have felt at times. That as I read God’s Word, I have certainly thought that there were portions of the Bible that were rich and wonderful, but there were also portions that were dry and tedious and puzzling. And many times it got me frustrated and discouraged and therefore I’d just stop reading the Bible.

But what I have learned is two-fold. 1st – Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, one of my favorite quotes about life is about the hard stuff in life: “”It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” (From the movie, “A League of Their Own”). So I’ve learned to press on even in the hard spots of reading God’s Word. And as I do so (with the help of Bible commentary to assist me in difficult spots), I find that it isn’t as hard as I once thought, and even the “puzzling parts” become less tedious.

2nd – I’ve learned that I should come back to the parts that I most enjoy when I start getting frustrated. The four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) tell us the story of Jesus. This is our “meat and potatoes” and anytime I start getting bogged down in the Old Testament, instead of allowing my Bible reading to become frustrating or discouraging, I simply stop reading that portion for a while and go back to the “meat and potatoes.” Then after a few days or weeks, I go back to where I left off in the difficult spot, and I have a new attitude about reading it.

The more we read God’s Word – and ALL of God’s Word – the more we understand that it all works together – it is all God’s revealing Himself and His story to us. It should amaze us. It should excite us. It should direct us. It is the most important book ever written. We should give serious attention to it. Yes, there are places where it might seem hard – but as we spend more time with it, we find that we even enjoy the hard parts, because as we study them, we learn more about who our great God is.

Dr. Packer summarizes our lack of attention to the Bible by saying: “It is feared that many today who profess to be Christ’s never learn wisdom, through failure to attend sufficiently to God’s written Word. . . . How long is it since you read right through the Bible? Do you spend as much time with the Bible each day as you do even with the newspaper? What fools some of us are! And we remain fools all our lives, simply because we will not take the trouble to do what has to be done to receive the wisdom which is God’s free gift.”

Take some time today to stop reading all the other stuff beside your chair, on your desk, or on your phone or tablet for a little while, so that you can pick up God’s Word. If you are not sure where to start, go to the gospel book of Mark. It is a fast-paced account of Jesus. Take time to start digesting the very Word of God to you. It truly is worth it!


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Jesus

The Freedom of Someone Else In Charge

“The Freedom of Someone Else In Charge”
brian rushing

In school, we were occasionally required to do group projects. Group projects were the worst.

At first it would seem that group projects would be great – more people sharing the burden to get the work done. But that was rarely the reality.

I love the t-shirt quote I recently encountered:
“When I die I want my group project members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.”

The reason group projects didn’t work well very often is that no one knew who was in charge and no one wanted to volunteer to be in charge. But as soon as someone did step into that “group leader” role, they became the responsible one to get the work done. It then seemed that everyone else then decided to become lazy or incompetent!

A person sleeping on a grassy hill symbolizing the Freedom of Someone Else being in Charge
i think this is one of my group project members

What we learn from such exercises is that: Being in charge requires responsibility.

When you have agreed to provide the leadership for an event or a project, the burden of responsibility can get heavy. That is why most of us would prefer to not be the group leader. If someone else gets assigned that role or voluntarily chooses it, then we feel much more relaxed and we often wash our hands of the consequences. We take the attitude of: “Well, he is in charge, so if it doesn’t go well… if it isn’t successful… the blame falls on him.”

And while most of us never wanted to take on that group leader role, Jesus is different. He says to us: “Give me your life. I want to be in charge of it.”

I like the idea that if I give Him that responsibility, I can wash my hands of the consequences. Others in the Bible found that same freedom. Take Daniel and his three friends as an example:

Those who know God show great boldness for God.

Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out. This was not foolhardiness. They knew what they were doing. They had counted the cost. They had measured the risk. They were well aware what the outcome of their actions would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact He did.

But these things did not move them. Once they were convinced that their stand was right, and that loyalty to their God required them to take it, then, in Oswald Chambers’s phrase, they “smilingly washed their hands of the consequences.”

“We must obey God rather than men!” said the apostles.

“I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course with joy,” said Paul.

I’m striving to do a better job of letting Jesus take the lead, so I can smilingly wash my hands of the consequences! I like the freedom of letting Him be in charge.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Christian Living

Joyless Christians

“Joyless Christians”
by brian rushing

The Word: Oxymoron.
It means: A combination of words that seemingly contradict each other.
There are some great ones we hear and use:

Jumbo shrimp.
Paid volunteers.
An Exact Estimate.
A Rolling Stop.
An Original Copy.
Seriously Funny.
Pretty Ugly.

But how about… Joyless Christian.

Too many people have indicated that they have no interest in Christianity because Christians seem negative and unkind and joyless. They wonder how we can call our God a good God if He turns His followers into such sour individuals.

“We need frankly to face ourselves at this point. We are, perhaps, orthodox evangelicals. We can state the gospel clearly; we can smell unsound doctrine a mile away. If asked how one may know God, we can at once produce the right formula: that we come to know God through Jesus Christ the Lord, in virtue of his cross and mediation, on the basis of his word of promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, via a personal exercise of faith. Yet the joy, goodness, and celebratory spirit which are the marks of those who have known God are rare among us.”

drawing of a smile on a brick wall to remind us to not be joyless ChristiansHow can this be?
How can we who have been given the greatest gift of all time ever be considered miserable?

Paul indicated that he had learned contentment in every circumstance. How could he have joy in the midst of the difficulties he encountered in life – including suffering and pain? Because he knew that he was loved… in spite of himself.

We all want love, and yet we all worry that if anyone knew the real me, that love would be taken away. But Jesus loved me at my worst. And so I do not have to have any fear that his love will ever be taken away. And that should fill me with such unbelievable joy that the world can never accuse me of being sour or joyless.

“There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.”

As you consider that you are loved immensely by the Great King of this Universe, let it fill you up with joy. Ask God to remind you of His love today.

How well are you doing at keeping people from labeling you as that oxymoron of a Joyless Christian?

Strive to wear a smile throughout the day. Be quick to laugh with others. Have an attitude of joy. It is the right attitude for a child of God.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Worship

The Ignorance of God

“The Ignorance of God”
  by brian rushing

Sorry about the lack of any posts the last two-and-a-half weeks. I took a short break off from posting due to having a bit too much on my plate! You’ve been there, I’m sure. It is similar to being at grandma’s house when you are already full, but grandma insists that you need another portion of mashed potatoes, and so she serves you a few extra scoops against all your protests. You look at that fluffy mountain in front of you and wonder how you will be able to swallow another bite, much less finish it all! But you keep eating one bite at a time, until it is all gone. So I kept eating one bite at a time, and now am back on track with what seem to be regular portions on my plate. (though sometimes looks can be deceiving!) That being said, here we go again….

What do you know about God?
When you look up in the sky and see the vastness of this creation, do you feel that maybe you do not know enough?
a starry sky symbolizing our search in knowing God and our ignorance of Him and His ways
J. I. Packer wrote a book called Knowing God, and his reason for writing it was that he believed that the “ignorance of God — ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with Him — lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today.”

God has given us His Word so that we can know Him. But how well do we know God? Maybe the question would be even stronger if each of us turned it upon ourselves: “How well do I know God?” Am I actually ignorant of Him and His ways? Ignorant might be too strong of a word, but certainly it makes me evaluate what I know about God.

And if I do know some things about God, “What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God, once I have it?”

Will I take that knowledge and become proud and conceited about how much I know? We need to know things about God, but if we are gaining that knowledge for the wrong purpose, it can make us less spiritually healthy than we were before.

Here’s an example – In high school I was fairly physically fit (as were many of us). But then something happened after high school… my fitness seemed to leave me! (as seemed to happen to many of us!) Of course, I had been fit, so I knew how to lose weight and get physically healthy again. I had read plenty about having the right kind of diet and the types and amounts of exercises I needed to do. But I didn’t eat right and I didn’t exercise. I could get into a intellectual discussion with you about those things, because I had the right knowledge. I just didn’t apply the knowledge in a way that changed my life in any measurable way.

So, back to the spiritual area of life – will I use my knowledge about God in the same way as I used my knowledge about fitness? Will I just have it up in my head and use it in discussions that puff up my pride so I feel good about what I know, or will I use it to change my life in a measurable way?

       One can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God. It depends on the sermons one hears, the books one reads, and the company one keeps. …there is no shortage of books or sermons on how to pray, how to witness, how to read our Bibles, how to tithe our money, how to be a young Christian, how to be an old Christian, how to be a happy Christian, how to lead people to Christ… and generally how to go through all the various motions associated with being a Christian believer.

…It certainly makes it possible to learn a great deal secondhand about the practice of Christianity. …One can have all this [knowledge] and hardly know God at all.

We come back, then, to where we started. The question is not whether we are good at theology…. The question is, can we say, simply, honestly, that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us?

If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about Him.

I want to know God intimately, deeply, and in a way that transforms my life. Don’t you?

So how can we get there? Stay tuned in the upcoming days for more thoughts on this with some assistance from Dr. Packer.

         (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)