Trusting God Without Buts

Trust: a big word with mighty implications. The most devastating punishment I ever received from my parents was the following line: "You have lost our trust. It is going to take time to rebuild it." Their trust in me was eventually restored. However, I do not put it past myself to fail again and lose trust, not because I want to, but I recognize that I am human and fail daily.

BUT God is eternal and has never failed. He is the One to be trusted above all, not only that, trusted completely and without hesitation. Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. (Proverbs 30:5) Every thought, word and utterance of God is true and never fails.

God is Creator and Sustainer. We should have no choice but to trust Him completely. What other real choice is there? Before we would question God, we should take seriously God's character as Creator and Sustainer, pondering the same rhetorical questions God asks Job in chapter 38:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
and the wicked be shaken out of it?

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
for the day of battle and war?
What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,
or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?

“Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
and a way for the thunderbolt,
to bring rain on a land where no man is,
on the desert in which there is no man,
to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
and to make the ground sprout with grass?

“Has the rain a father,
or who has begotten the drops of dew?
From whose womb did the ice come forth,
and who has given birth to the frost of heaven?
The waters become hard like stone,
and the face of the deep is frozen.

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
or loose the cords of Orion?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth?...

So, when my mind utters-- or someone else utters-- "I trust God but...", I want to scream. Literally, sometimes. BUT what? What could you possibly fill in behind that BUT that compares to Yahweh? It's as if "but" is the fulcrum on the balancing scale of trusting God and trusting ourselves, except there is no scale. The scale does not exist because there is NO one or NO thing that compares to God.

I trust God. This is the most complete sentence you can utter in this context. Any added words turn that sentence into a dirty run-on.

When we do not trust God to deliver on His promises and Word, we are then relying on the wisdom of the world and our own pride. Therefore, consider Psalm 40.4:  Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie!

Those of the world trust in things of the world (chariots and horses, cars and houses and money), "...but we trust in the name of the Lord our God" (Psalm 20:7). We choose to trust God without buts. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you (Psalm 9:10).

Let's stop ourselves from saying "but" after "I trust God" and, as it comes up in our thought life, remember to "destroy that argument by taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5 paraphrase). Let us remember of whom we speak. Let us trust God without buts.

Our Hope

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus' Name

On Christ the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand


ALL other ground is sinking sand and seemingly sinking quickly these days. Woe to those whose hope is in money: sinking sand. Woe to those whose hope is in a democratic form of government: sinking sand. Woe to those whose hope is in President Obama, or former President Bush, or anyone less than Christ: sinking sand.


My hope is Jesus Christ. Therefore, I still have hope. I still have hope that this nation can be brought to its knees. By all standards, worldly and Biblical, it seems that the end of American prosperity and dominance is near. The falling of America could fit very well into Christian eschatology and we seem to be marching ever nearer to the point of no return (or, more correctly, of THE return). And, though I personally believe that the Tribulation is near (and therefore the Rapture), only God knows and determines when He gathers His Bride. I need to live in the urgency of Christ's return but in the longevity and perseverence of fulfilling Christ's Great Commission to us. I will not give up on revival. Perhaps, by God's grace, the end of American prosperity and dominance will be the very thing to trigger revival (it seems the only likely scenario at this time).   

My hope is Jesus Christ. I still have hope--and pray diligently for-- the humbling of President Obama before Almighty God. If the likes of Nebuchanezzar and Manasseh can be humbled, I have no doubt that Obama can do the same under the mighty hand of God. I pray that we can be in heaven together recalling the silliness of his power grab this past week. Though it very well could be that Obama's heart has already been hardened by God that He may fulfill HIS purposes through him, my job is to pray for Obama's salvation. It is not my job to declare him "unsaved". God does as He pleases: we are called to follow His will by loving "the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart, soul and mind....and love our neighbor as [ourselves]" (Matthew 22: 37-39). By the way, I still pray for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: " Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44).

May we all be a people of Hope-- the true hope of Jesus to the world. Spirit, manifest yourself through us that the world may call on the name of the Lord and be saved.

When darkness seems to hide His face
I rest on His unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil

His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood
When all around my soul gives way
He then is all my Hope and Stay

When He shall come with trumpet sound
Oh may I then in Him be found
Dressed in His righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before the throne

Oh Christ the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand

Hey! Baby baptism is Wrong

There, I wrote it. I am not tip-toeing around it. I don't condemn those who have been baptized as an infant nor do I condemn those who have baptized their infants. That is not my job-- I don't look down on you, I won't accuse you of heresy and I won't snub you the next time we meet. It's just that tolerating baby baptism is a dangerous road to travel.

I will dispense with the baby baptism equals salvation issue. It doesn't. Personal faith takes a personal relationship and a responsibility to come to God on His terms. Dropping tap water or "holy" water on a baby's head does not make up for the individual's death sentence and condemnation. Think about it: it is ludicrous. ONLY Jesus Christ by way of His loving sacrifice can atone for each person's sin. The "grace of baptism", as described in Luther's catechism is NOT the grace of Jesus Christ.

Is baby baptism some sort of insurance policy? Some people I have talked to think so, and believe their pastors think so. Therefore, I have always wanted to ask those pastors in certain churches that believe a baby MUST be baptized: "If an adult came into your church and asked, 'I don't believe in Jesus Christ, but will you baptize me, just in case?', would you baptize the unbelieving, unconfessing, unrepentant adult?" Truly, I would like to hear the answer.

So, my question was, what if an unbaptized baby dies? Will that baby go to heaven? "Well, I hope so. I hope that God, in His love and mercy, would take that child in." If you need to question God's love and mercy, we are not worshiping the same God.

But more discreet is how the belief in baby baptism could ultimately affect your faith in Jesus Christ. Baby baptism is works-based and religious: if we baptize this baby.... It's subtle, I know, but that's the point. If God is so little that He needs us to do something to ensure and secure our salvation or our trip to heaven, then He is not God, because He is not enough on His own. Jesus' sacrifice becomes muted and muddled as one of the ways we can get to the Father, not the only way, as Jesus proclaims. "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith [in Christ], and this not of yourselves, so that no one can boast". The grace of God has been poured out since the beginning of time and the faithful are rewarded but it is always His work, not our own.

And these are the convictions I had before I read The Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism. Please read for yourself; the claims are presumptuous and contradictory. I am thankful for Luther and the stand he took, but He is not God and, like the rest of us, is fallible and did not get everything right.

I know writing such things may anger many, even many of my friends. That is not my intent. Please know that truth needs to come in love and because I love you, I want you to seek the truth for yourselves. Like Luther, I may be passionate, but I am not always right. God is. Ask Him to reveal His Word to you on this and every topic.

God's Ridiculous Patience

In the past few weeks, I have remarked, "What are we still doing here? How can we NOT be raptured yet? Really? How much worse does it have to get?" These statement questions derive from my frustrations in seeing evil and depravity in the world and not wanting my kids living through the inevitable "worse".

Shame on me.

We are not raptured yet because of God's love and loving patience with the epitome of His creation, people. He desires that none should perish. None. "[God] desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth" (I Timothy 2:4). While the holy and just wrath of God is real, He "takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 18:23). Do I desire the same? or do I hope the wrath of God will fall on people sooner so I may be raptured out of this world and get on with my eternal life with Him? I look forward to the rapture of the Church, but my motivations sometimes overlook the lost that will endure never-ending hell.

Shame on me.

My patience is not God's patience: His patience is ridiculous. And, for that, I am grateful and humbled.

He was ridiculously patient when the world was so evil, He could only find one righteous man. Yet, God waited to pour out his judgment via worldwide flood so those wicked people would have a chance to repent. His mercy steadied His hand of wrath for 120 years (depending upon your interpretation).

Read the accounts of Ahab, king of Israel, in I Kings. Married to the most notoriously evil woman Jezebel, his exploits were ludicrous. Time and time again, God showed Ahab signs and wonders (including through Elijah and the spectacle on Mount Carmel), spared his life and offered a fresh start. As you are reading, you want to take the guy out yourself-- he's pathetic (aren't we all without Christ). Not God. No, he loved Ahab so much that rejections came and the Lord still tried to show his love, power and mercy to the king. God's "enough is enough" is much more than what I think is "enough".

The Bible records God's ridiculous patience with His people Israel and the rest of us, the Gentiles he longs to graft into His family tree as adopted heirs.

He has been and continues to be lovingly, longingly patient with me. Why would I not share the same patience and find God's mercy for those He is waiting to embrace as chosen sons and daughters?

Shame on my hypocrisy.

The challenge: figure out  for whom is God waiting. A neighbor, friend, family member, co-worker? God's ridiculous patience is waiting for those persons  to come to repentance and to the knowledge of truth that He may lavish His love on them eternally. So, if I ever complain about not being raptured yet, please ask me with whom I am sharing the gospel. Ask me to be ridiculously patient that more may be spared on the day of judgment and an eternity in hell.

Coming Soon to a Church Near You: Watch Out.

Google "labyrinth." Google "contemplative prayer." Google "centering prayer." Google "emergent church." Google "Brian Mclaren" (the lead figure in the emergent church). I have spent the last few days doing just that; googling (I assume this is a term that Webster has accepted by now) and finding blogs, articles, and resources on these topics from the proponents' perspective. I have read only one opposing viewpoint article.


Then I read the Bible-- quite the opposing viewpoint. I will let you do the legwork if you want, but the overall scheme I see in the aforementioned practices affiliated with the emergent movement is this: The powerful and exclusive gospel of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has been reduced to a loving God (too loving to crucify his Son on our behalf, by the way) that one can experience in a mind-emptying time of silence and reflection into ourselves and/or opening up to the Holy Spirit spirit world. 

To the emergent, what God says is enough is not enough. Flawed, distorted and deceptive in their theology, the practices of the emergent fall into a spirit world we are not meant to experience. They want to eat the forbidden fruit. And many people are unknowingly following them into divination and sorcery, into false teaching. Many people are not discerning that these teachers are false prophets, of whom Jesus said: "Watch out.... They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves" (Mt. 7:15).

Take a look at the most widespread and seemingly most innocent practice as a "for instance". The popular practice of contemplative prayer is rapidly gaining ground and taught to many in the church, especially the youth. The goal of contemplative prayer is to be "a teachable, spiritual process enabling the ordinary person to enter and receive a direct experience of union with God" (http://www.contemplativeprayer.net/). But, in Ephesians 3:16-17 Paul prays "that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." We cannot be more unified with God than we are through faith in Christ. The experience that contemplative prayer brings is for the sake of the emotional high, not to humble ourselves to draw close to God as the Bible instructs over and over again (James 4:5 and I Peter 5:6 to cite a couple).

The following is a how-to guide for contemplative prayer from Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/methodcp.htm:

1.       Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.

2.       Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.

3.       When engaged with your thoughts*, return ever-so gently to the sacred word.

4.       At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.

*Thoughts include body sensations, feelings, images, and reflections.”

The practice of contemplative prayer is superficial in the attempt to give more credence to an experience than to the instructions of the Living God. Not only superficial, but dangerous.  Prayingchurch.org (a website of the ELCA) asserts that "Contemplative prayer can develop our relationship with Jesus Christ so that we commune with God beyond words, thoughts, feelings, and actions." An opponent of the practice defines it as "a belief system that uses ancient mystical practices to induce altered states of consciousness (the silence) and is often wrapped in Christian terminology; the premise of contemplative spirituality is pantheistic (God is all) and panentheistic (God is in all). The purpose of contemplative prayer is to enter an Altered State Of Consciousness in order to find one's True Self, thus finding God" (http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/cp.htm). In the case of defining contemplative prayer, it seems that the proponents and opponents agree.


One can only guess what kind of spirits a contemplative prayer opens to in meditation. If the argument is by definition, "finding the true self, thus finding God", what kind of pride and arrogance is that? What difference is there between mystical Christian contemplative prayer, Buddhist nirvana or New Age oneness with the cosmos? I don't see any difference-- it is giving Satan a foothold.


In these and other practices of the emergent church, one's own experience trumps the Bible. The Bible becomes defined by us, interpreted in light of our experience, instead of our lives and experiences defined by the Bible. The leaders brag of their postmodern mindset and pridefully see themselves more enlightened than the rest of us, especially those of us who dare to be the f-word (fundamental, that is).

However, we must remember the Bible clearly declares that “Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)  We are to find our comfort and hope in the Scriptures and Bible-based prayer and fellowship with God. This doesn't mean that God cannot or does not use our personal experiences to draw us closer to Himself or to fulfill His will. But the truth in the Scriptures is enough-- there should be no manmade additions or subtractions. God can use our experiences to focus on the written Biblical principles, not give us new revelations. The very idea that we have a revelation that falls out of the realm of Scripture is arrogant, even blasphemous.  (a few of the ideas espoused in this paragraph are rooted in http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com)

Some of the ideas of the emergent church are enticing. These ideas are wrong. If we feel we have been compromised in some area, we need to get back into the very Word of God. Know it, study it, digest it. 

"Follow the pattern of sound words...in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you" (2 Timothy 2:13).

God is waiting to pour out His mercy on us as we humble ourselves before Him, the One True God. 

Elijah and the nuts on Mount Carmel

My favorite sundae topping is caramel. When I order a caramel sundae, I am tempted to add nuts as I am reminded of a children's sermon given by Rev. Don Fischer when I was 6 or 7. He told us the story of Elijah and the prophets' of Baal and Asherah showdown on the top of Mount Carmel. After describing the insane ways the false prophets tried to summon their gods, including drawing blood with their own swords while dancing, Pastor Fischer then told of the Living God's response to Elijah's plea: He showed up with a consuming fire and won the contest hands-down. My pastor then asked to remember this story the next and every time we had a caramel sundae with nuts on it: "Remember the nuts on Mount Car[a]mel." I have not forgotten, pastor, I think of it every time.

My daughter was eating a caramel sundae last week and I was able to pass the reminder along. As I read in I Kings 18, I was most struck by Elijah's prayer to God to send the fire:

O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again.  I Kings 18:36-37


That my every day would be that prayer. I would live in abundant faith and determined hope. I would witness the lost found all around me. I would experience the power of God to change lives, even my own.

Oh LORD God the Father, Jesus my Redeemer and indwelling Spirit, let it be known in my day that you are God and I am your servant. This is a focus on His glory; that He is first and I am to be a humble last. My very reason to live in this day is to proclaim that God is LORD of all. That needs to be my very reason for serving my God.

I long for my life, I desire my days to be so full of integrity that I can assert that I have done all in my day at His command. What a challenge! Not even an attainable one on my own but that cannot be my excuse to cover myself with Christ and let Him do the work through me, a willing vessel.

Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again. A heart cry for the lost should be motivating me more than what currently motivates me. Can a nation be saved? Can OUR nation be saved?

Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, THEY FELL PROSTRATE AND CRIED, "THE LORD-- HE IS GOD! THE LORD-- HE IS GOD!"


The Lord, He is God. May this be our motivation, our integrity, our reason.

And the next time you order a caramel sundae, spend the extra and add the nuts. Share with others the story of Elijah and the nuts on Mount Carmel.

The Heart of Stone

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.


-- Alvina Hall, "Jesus Paid it All"


For the few days before we sang this in church, God was working on my own heart regarding the lost of today. I have found myself believing that most people are too far gone and their hearts are too hard to turn back to the Living God. This thinking is of the devil and not of God. I came to the realization that it wasn't lost people that I was minimizing-- I was reducing God! Who I am to think that God cannot reach the hardest heart, the heart of stone?


Indeed, He reached mine. There was a significant time in my life in which I could actually feel my heart harden, layer upon layer. I remember consciously thinking, "I have become numb. I used to cry at [this or that]." This fact scared me at some level. Yet, I didn't care on every other level. I was hurt and apparently wanted to stay hurt. Hurt hardens hearts. Sin hardens hearts. 


So I bowed my head in conviction as we sang the aforementioned verse of "Jesus Paid it All." Melt MY heart of stone God; melt those of my neighbors, friends, family for You. Then I read Ezekiel 36.26:


I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will REMOVE from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.


This verse in the Bible went far beyond the verse of the hymn. My heart and my spirit was a sinner's heart and spirit. God couldn't melt my heart of stone and make it good. He had to remove the corrupt heart and place a new heart of flesh in me and a new spirit. 


"Jesus Paid it All" is one of my favorite hymns but I may alter the words a bit next time I sing it:

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And REPLACE the heart of stone.

I pray for heart replacements for the lost that need to be found. I pray, along with David, that God would "create in me a clean heart."