Psalms 51

I can be honest. I’m a skeptic of miracles and people “feeling the presence of God”. The Benny Hinn movement is partially responsible for my cynicism. I’ve heard the stories of people opening the bible and ‘randomly’ reading what they needed to hear, often I’ve wondered if they were reading into things they wanted to hear. I've always wondered if they were turning to parts of scripture that they knew already, then claiming 'divine revelation'.

Despite my criticism, last summer I experienced such a serendipitous experience. I’ve had a bookmark residing in the same spot in my bible ever since.
I felt weighed down by guilt and thrashed around by Satan during my wanderings in the spiritual wilderness of last summer. “Who am I really”, I wrote. “How could I ever be a spiritual leader when I hardly fight my sin? When I fail to struggle and give in to the silent voices bidding me to relax and wallow in my sin… I FEEL FAKE… Why am I not crushed by the weight of my sin? Why don’t I feel guilty?”

For one of the the first times in my life, God grabbed a chunk of scripture and slapped me in the face with it. Desperate, I opened my bible in search for something. I didn’t know what. BAM! The pages of my haggard old bible opened themselves to a passage I had never read before: Psalms 51. Words cannot express the feeling of reading that psalm, penned thousands of years ago by another man, another sinner, a fellow adulterer.

Psalms 51:1-4, 12-17

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
________

v.12-17
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you.
Save me from bloodguilt, O God,
the God who saves me,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.

In the hour when I was looking into the dark cellar of my soul, I felt strangely closer to God than I do now. In my stagnant Christianity, I find the fleeting experience in chapel enough. I find my selfishness inoffensive, my pride enjoyable, and the worst of all: my apathy acceptable. I'm tired. Tired of the stress. Tired of being the example, the inglorious and unwanted authority, the pesky and ominous yet necessary evil. Despite this, I retreat. I enjoy the imagined sweetness of my broken cistern and not the true water.

I've been quite aware of my tenancy to draw from the mire rather than the water since I was saved. The last two years of my life have been some of the least enjoyable I've experienced thus far. I'm not complaining. I would much rather have the tormenting screams of the Holy Spirit rather than complacency, or even a dose of bliss brought on by ignorance. But really? I know God doesn't promise a lack of pain or some substantive regret, but why is it that now that I'm at a place where I have every reason to be running headlong yet I feel less close and less convicted than when I was in the wilderness?

USO

My 12^th day of Christmas break is being spent in a USO lounge in Atlanta, rather than being spent at my home in Washington as was planned. [another passenger is a Marine Corps Lieutenant, so he got me into the USO] The unexpected, although typically annoying, has been oddly refreshing this time around. I'm missing my family's Christmas celebration tonight. I'm unsure why I'm not overly bothered by this extreme inconvenience, perhaps the monotony of the expected has warn ruts in my life.. However, after sitting around for 2 days I'm definitely ready to get to Seattle. I want to see mountains, rain, trees, and God forgive me: Hippies and all their pot smoking tree-hugger friends. It would make my day to get in a debate right now with a Green Peace volunteer at Pike Place Market. If I am unable to procure a victim to my politically uncorrect views on the “dwindling” polar bear populations when I get home; I will go cut a tree down and shoot guns. Ahhh, Washington. Your taxes are ridiculous, your people are cracked out on weed and caffeine, and your politician's wallets are about as loaded as a scooter ridden by Rosie O'Donnell; but regardless, I miss you.

See you soon.

Merry Christmas

Monday, December 21st

My flight was uneventful. The flight plan was from Dayton to Atlanta to Milwaukee to Seattle. I got a deal at the Airtran desk for a business/first class seat on my Dayton to Atlanta flight for a mere $9. I was heading home in comfort. About 20 minutes after boarding the plane in Atlanta the intercom crackled overhead. It was the stewardess informing the passengers that they needed to grab their baggage and get off the plane. There was no flight crew. After sitting around for an hour and a half finally a flight crew was procured.

So like good little passengers we were herded like cattle once again upon the Boeing 737 (assembled in Washington by the way. Woot.). After 20 minutes the intercom crackled overhead once again. “Will all passengers heading to Seattle please grab their baggage and disembark, I repeat, will all Seatt....” Wait. What!? Doesn't the world understand we gave them Starbucks, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Snowboarding, and Bing Crosby? HA! That's What I thought.

Unfortunately I am only kidding about Seattle being superior to the rest of the world and not about the delays. They let us know we wouldn't be flying that night after letting us sit on the floor for 5 hours at the terminal. We weren't really told why, but we speculate that there wasn't a flight crew to take us from Milwaukee to Seattle. Luckily, the airline put me up in a very nice Sheraton Hotel right near the airport for two nights, gave me two free round trip tickets anywhere in the lower 48, and meal vouchers. Essentially all Seattle bound passengers can't leave until 6pm on the 23^rd at the earliest. Somehow however our luggage made it to Seattle which seems strange to me... So we are all here for 2 days with only the clothes on our backs and our carry-ons. On top of this, the airline has overbooked the flight on the 23rd too, so people will be bumped off the flight. Pandemonium will erupt at the terminal. Blood will be shed. This is what happens when you get a mob of caffeine addicts angry.

The point is: Please, do yourself a favor and don't fly Airtran.

[My anger is facetious. I actually don't really mind too much. Its obviously irritating, but what can we do about it? Also, the fact I got nearly $1000 in free flights makes things better, providing those flights don't do this same thing...]

-Sleepless in Atlanta

Book Shopping

Occasionally I find the urge, typically after a cup or two of late-night coffee, to peruse online stores. Tonight my mission was a search for books. It is an understatement to say I am not an avid reader. On my recent trip to New Orleans, I finished Don’t Waste Your Life after attempting to read it for a mere two years. Yes, I understand the irony. Despite my extreme lack of attention to scholarly pursuits, I found myself searching for additions to my library from authors like C.S. Lewis, Spurgeon, Piper, and others. Among books by these authors I value, I found a considerable amount of what I am now dubbing ‘Christian Crap’. I found that there are far too many “Christian” titles display and throw forth a disgusting humanist approach to Christianity. I’m mainly speaking of the self help genre of ‘Christian’ books. I can’t criticize all these titles as I obviously haven’t read them all; however I still find myself discouraged by the mass of Christian literature that places man as the center of God’s plan. These books turn Christianity into a mere religion rather than the Christ centered relationship that a true Christian experiences. In his song, Much of You, Steven Curtis Chapman says, “How could I stand here…And think for a moment, the point of it all was to make much of me?”.

I agree with Mr. Chapman. I don’t care about my best life now. I don’t care about 3 easy steps to solving men’s problems. It seems to me that anything less that placing Christ as the center of our living is wrong and hypocritical if we call ourselves Christians. If we live like it or not, we are here for his glorification. Therefore, all these books negating the transforming work of the Holy Spirit is heretical. Christians, please use discernment! Good Grief. The fact that these books are published and are on best seller lists concerns me greatly.

I’m not saying you should only read a KJV bible. I believe our 66 book love letter we have from God should be read along with solid books. Don’t Waste Your Life is an excellent example. The book doesn’t outline how YOU can live an amazing life through your power, rather it encourages the believer to not fall into worship of materialism and the American dream. It encourages the believer to pursue God with reckless abandon, much like Paul and the early believers did. Christ remains in his place of glory while the author challenges the believer to be counter cultural. To be Christian. These are the books we need because somehow we miss to interpret and live out the bible for ourselves .

I’m sorry for my caffeine induced ranting, however tonight I was reminded of all the ‘Christian Crap’ out there. Christians, please read with discernment.

August 1, 1953

August 1, 1953 marked a life changing event for many. Nearly a year previously Charley Brown had approached Betty Clement and requested that she marry him. They had never dated. They had merely worked together for 7 months. Yet, somehow this Rhode Island native summoned the courage to ask. The rest as they say is history.

August 1, 1953 was the beginning of a marriage, the beginning of a grand adventure, and the beginning of a friendship. “God has been good. He has taken care of us”, my grandmother says. She then shares the story of how the two of them met, worked together in M.R.A, and then abruptly married. My grandfather, now being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, grins with a twinkle in his eye at the all but lost memories of love and faithfulness. It has been 56 years now and despite my grandfather’s illness he still remembers to say “I love you” every night before they fall asleep.

I know very little. What I do know is that love can’t just be the feeling of a quickened heart beat when the other is near, not your needs being met, nor should love be fleeting. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 also has much to say about love. However, when I think of love I think of that wrinkled and scarred old couple hand in hand, confessing how God has been good to them through the entirety of their 85 years on earth. It has been the grace of God and a choice to love Him and each other that has pulled them through. My grandfather had a stroke a few days ago. One out of maybe a handful of times he has been in the hospital. As my grandfather’s health declines, my grandmother continues to fight on for the both of them. I have no doubt they lay hand in hand, vows upheld, ready to meet their father. This my friends, is love. In 65 years, I hope to be so fortunate.

-DB

Spurgeon.. again.

I happened to read both of these right after witnessing some baptisms this morning. Both pertaining to faith and atonement, they struck me due particularly to my own baptism taking place soon.

“I do not think anyone ever knows the preciousness of the blood of Christ till he has had a full sight and sense of his sin, his uncleanliness, and his ill-desert. Is there any such thing as really and truly coming to the cross of Christ until you first of all have seen what your sin really deserves? A little light into that dark cellar; sir; a little light into that hole within the soul; a little light cast into that infernal den of your humanity, and you would soon discern what sin is, and, seeing it, you would discover that there was no hope of being washed from it, except by a sacrifice far greater than you could ever render. Then the atonement of Christ would become fair and lustrous in your eyes, and you would rejoice with joy unspeakable in that boundless love which led the savior to give himself a ransom, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. May the Lord teach us, thundering at us, if need be, what sin means. May he teach it to us so that the lesson shall be burned into our souls, and we shall never forget it."

“Is there a grander verse in the whole Bible, is there anything in the compass of scripture, that ever glorified God more than that notable expression of David when he had been sinning with Bathsheba and made himself as foul and as filthy as the very swine of Hell? And yet he cries, “Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Ah! “wash me,” that is the cry, “wash me, the most scarlet and the blackest of hell-deserving sinners, do thou but wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Believe in the omnipotent power of the atonement. Still believe thou, and hold fast to Christ. Cling to his skirts, and if he even seem to frown upon thee, hold to him… Do not believe that which thou thinkest thou dost hear him say, for he cannot say otherwise than this, that whosoever believeth in him is not condemned; and he that believeth in him, though he were dead yet shall he live. Out of thy very death believe him; from thy hell of sin believe him. Wherever thou mayst be, still believe him. Never doubt him, for the just shall live by faith.”

- C.H. Spurgeon

How often does growing up in the church dampen our view of atonement? I obviously understand the Sunday school answer: atonement is sweet to me. Wait, Does it actually change how I live? How often I do not view atonement for the lustrous sweet work of Christ that it is but also feel the atonement could never be enough. I am reminded that I'm "the blackest of hell-deserving sinners", yet atonement was more than enough. He tells me, " Yes, absolutely you deserve Hell! Never ever cheapen the work of Christ by thinking any sin is too much for him."

Thank you sir.

The Drifter

I’ve written about apathy in the past. It’s been something that I have grown increasingly aware of in the past year or so, both in my own life and others. I have seen so many people this school year and last that are simply drifting through. They’re the people going to a Christian college merely because their parents made a promise to pay, or merely because it was the path of least resistance. It was the next logical step to keep their façade intact. The tormented screams of the Holy Spirit have all but been stifled in their lives. I am talking about the lukewarm and the spiritually dead/
Nate Pfeil said in his video “The Fire”, that “most professing Christians have never realized their actual need for Christ… they’ve never been told that the very first level of Christianity is a complete denial of all of your desires and everything you’ve ever been… They don’t understand that being a Christian means that they are crucified to the world and that the world is crucified to them.”
The truth of the matter is that there many professing believers today who wake up every morning without a consideration to the sacrifice Christ made for them. They live their lives opposed to God, delving into every sin that is “permissible”, living in habitual unrepentant sin. I was one of these people. I first prayed the sinner’s prayer at the ripe age of 4 years old. I fooled my way through elementary school, junior high, and high school. I professed with my mouth repentance and faith in the Gospel, while I had a condemned heart rotting within my chest. I lived the typical ‘Christian kid’ life. I went to the same solid church for 18 years. I participated in Awana. I could articulate TULIP and argue the 5 points of Calvinism; I even wrote a capstone paper in a public high school on the same topic. I even drank black coffee like a good Baptist. However, I struggled with addictions and knew for sure that if I were to die any moment I would be in hell. Unsaved. Apart from Christ. Tormented for eternity. Yet, I lived with my white washed façade, imagining my life was perfect. Pretending I had accepted Christ’s redemption.
I share that to simply say that, I’m not some cynical critique of other Christians. So please don’t dismiss my thoughts because you think I’m being judgmental. I have lived the hidden life. I know what it is like to know the truth, reject it, and yet still pretend and try to convince myself I was saved. I came to Cedarville as a drifter, and now seeing others that have absolutely every reason to be in love with God but aren’t seems right now to be more than I can bear.
We are told that when we graduate we will have an understanding of God and theology that 85% of Christians do not possess. It scares me how some of the most fervent of believers are those in foreign countries, where they know a mere fraction of the theology and doctrinal understanding that we know. Those who have grown up in the church have an understanding of God that gives them no excuse to not love God with every fiber of their being yet daily disregard Christ.

As a church we have “become callous, have given [ourselves] over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness”. Ephesians 4:19. I have “The American Church” written next to the verse in my bible. This verse is the end of a description of the gentile world. As a church and as a people we are becoming more and more like our world than like our savior. Many a ‘good’ Christian flocked to watch The Passion of the Christ, saw their savior have the skin ripped off his body and gruesomely nailed to a tree, and yet they live their lives without a consideration to him whatsoever. They have been lulled into the idea that they can be apart of the world. They’ve heard Paul’s famous dissertation in Romans Chapter 12 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2
Yet, somehow the message is lost. For some reason it’s forgotten that the world we live in, no matter how much we want it to be friendly to our cause isn’t. Christians pretend to be ignorant to the fact that we have a severely radical belief, one that cannot co-exist with the world around us.

When addressing the church in Laodicea in Revelations 3:14-17 Christ said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.”

My conclusion is short and simple. If you are living with a façade, stop playing the whore. Stop professing with your lips that you love the master and creator of the universe and live your life with lukewarm and at best apathetic devotion to him. You could fool everyone here but it won’t save your soul. Heed Jesus’ words. Know that apart from Christ, you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. Don’t realize it too late.

“Since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for out God is a consuming fire.”
Hebrews 12:28-29

A Short Response...

A quick response to a few observations I've made:

“Oh! I would that some Christians would pay a little attention to their legs, instead of paying it all to their heads. When children’s heads grow too fast it is a sign of disease... So, there are some very sound brethren, who seem to me to have got some kind of disease, and when they try to walk, they straightway make a tumble of it, because they have paid so much attention to perplexing doctrinal views, instead of looking, as they ought to have done, to the practical part of Christianity. By all means let us have doctrine, but by all means let us have precept too… true Christians can say, with the apostle Paul, “We walk.” Oh that we may ever be able to say it too! Here then is the activity of the Christian life.” – C.H. Spurgeon, 1000 devotional thoughts of C.H. Spurgeon No. 4

Therefore, what matters more, knowing doctrine or walking with God? The hope is you never have to make that decision. Doctrine’s purpose is to define God and our relationship to him, not substitute that relationship. Go ahead and debate doctrinal differences. The real question is not are you Calvinist, but do you love God and do you truly follow him? If an unbiased source viewed your life, who/what would he say you love? If you love God, debates of doctrine would not become yelling brawls where, for personal pride you spew forth your view. They would rather be a time where you assertively present truth for His name sake, not for personal dominance or pride, rather for the mutual understanding of all present. Yelling and brow beating will not and never have accomplished anything.

I feel Like more could be said, however I'm not about to comment on how exactly correction and doctrinal debates should play out. I just know that I have rarely seen self-control exhibited in such an argument as Absolute Predestination vs Absolute Free Will. Often times I have seen people with an eroding spiritual life fighting the most ardently; I think that is who Spurgeon is talking to. Doctrine matters, don't get me wrong. However, couldn't the same time be spent finding out how you need to be living your life for Christ rather than trying to convince someone of a doctrinal issue that you yourself don't understand?

Summer 2009- Part 2 - Evangelism

7-15-09

I had a chance to evangelize to a coworker recently.

My boss is 50, lives in a trailer park, has never even been on a single date with anyone, and expressed her despair today. She typically accepts the mundane and normality of her life with little complaining. Not that she enjoys her life tremendously, but she also doesn’t hate it. She is apathetic to it.

Recent drama and juvenile behavior has swept quietly through work. Causing even my self to want to quit. What she expressed today was a call for help. She has no idea of the spiritual battle going on for her soul right now. In short, she said she is not suicidal, however really wishes life would stop. Her only hope for not dealing with all the sin and corruption is death.

I had the perfect opportunity to tell her that there was a savior that died, one that loves her, one apart from ''religion''. She describes herself a ''backsliding luthren with pagan tendencies''. We’ve talked alot about her past (more missed opportunities). Although I’m still unsure how to tell her that who Christ is has nothing to do with the people that have lacked love and only judged her. Christ isn’t who she thinks he is. She thinks all the religions of the world are attempting to approach the same God and that one religion isn’t elevated over another. She's partially right. There is God shaped hole that he put in every soul.

Evangelizing sounds so cut and dry on paper. It seems nerve wrackingly simple and easy to me to approach a complete stranger and share the gospel.
However I’m realizing its challenging to your walk to be confronted with the need to evangelize to someone who sees you daily. Someone who sees the best and worst in you.
Even if God successfully used me as a tool to evangelize to her, how do I explain to a new convert that there is no guarantee that 'Christians' will accept her? How do I explain why some of the greatest acts of love (aside from my parents) have come from unbelievers? How do I explain that the same corruption and juvenile drama that she is experiencing in the world is in the church amongst so called “believers”. How do I explain the lack of godliness and embitterment amongst believers?

These questions were nagging me, as her past experience with Christians gave her the impression that many were judgmental and unloving. So have mine.

I have no idea what the answers are.

Summer 2009- Part 1- The IV

The sub title of the blog is very applicable to this and several of the preceding posts. This summer has been one of many random thoughts and experiences. I first wrote them down so I would remember them and remember what the summer was like, but Ive now decided to share these few and simple thoughts with the rest of cyberspace..

- - - - - -

When We Get back to the 'Ville...

I sometimes find it is so much easier to encourage others in their walk than to take care of my own. This thought solidified itself in my mind when a mere acquaintance tried to hold me accountable in my spiritual life.

I sometimes tend to turn what is a good thing into a mere checklist. The love I claim to have for the Lord is suppressed -or substituted- for this checklist. It is used to ease my mind, as the conscience and the holy spirit scream for me to draw back into communion with God, I find myself content sending texts and emails reaching out to others.
Although the action isn't wrong, the motivation turns what would otherwise be seen as fruit into a vomitable substance that God disavows.

In hindsight there have been times when I ignored my spiritual health to help others. Not out of service, but out of a pathetic guilt that drove me to check that item off the list. Oh, I didn't go to church this week.. Better write a blog about an epiphany I had at chapel. Although those aren’t my exact thoughts, I find it a humorous coincidence that my being compelled to share with others often comes at times where I was in a spiritual slump.

This summer has making me realize how easy it is to be a Christian at Cedarville. It is simple to continue the trends you have had your whole life. Be moral, go to church, minister to others Etc.
Is it out of habit? Am I reaching out to further the kingdom or is it a response to a compartmentalized problem?

Chapel many times turns into a crutch, perhaps even a spiritual IV. We naturally live our lives not realizing the sacrifice of Christ. Chapel seems to be a time that guides and re-focuses us, yet it is sad that it is needed. It is sad that without chapel, without Cedarville, without all the fellow believers; when all is stripped away and it is just us and God; that we very seldom choose him.


I know this because of how bad the summer has went. I told myself to start off strong. And yet I didn't. While away from a strong Christian environment you truly see who you are. In the end who you are away from the spotlight, when it is you and God in the wilderness, is the person God sees. That is the person I am the most afraid of.

I am realizing more and more the truth of Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”. Anyone who believes in Christian Liberties obviously doesn't believe this. You MUST be proactive in battling sin. Go so far away from that fine line between sin and righteousness that people think you're insane. One small seemingly insignificant sin will take over your life. Satan is content to hold a small part of you for awhile if he knows he can work his way in and take the rest.

The Bottom Line

When we go back to school please remember this summer. Remember who you are while you are away. Remember who God sees. While we are at Cedarville please don't merely float through the year. Aggressively attack your spiritual life while you have the strength of your Christian Family behind you. Ask the tough questions. Answer them honestly when asked.