Comfort in Sovereignty

Whenever something in life starts to go a little of what I consider off course, I have this little memory that creeps up and haunts me. Years ago I was sitting in a prayer meeting, a friend of mine, whom I to this day consider a mentor, prayed a prayer I thought sounded awesome but didn’t have a clue as to it’s meaning. He simply prayed that “those who are struggling would consider Your sovereignty a pillow of comfort to lay there heads on.” I thought that prayer sounded awesome, and right then and there asked what in the world it meant. It seemed so vague, how can God’s sovereignty be considered a comfort to those who were struggling?

Something to understand about me is I like conclusive, concrete answers. I like labels. So for me to understand what in the world my friend was talking about I asked the Lord in prayer to help me. Well, ever pray for patience? You know the minute you pray it the Lord begins to test it. That kinda thing happened to me, only with regards to His sovereignty being comforting.

To spare you the details I began having medical issues, all the tests were giving “inconclusive” results. Well to someone who likes things conclusive you can imagine how that felt. I got to the point after years of well it maybe this or it maybe that, I literally said to God that I would be ok with it if it were cancer, or some weird autoimmune disease. Why? Because then I would at least know what it is, and I find comfort in the label. Do I really want cancer or an autoimmune, of course not, but I like labels. “I” can do something about them then, it gives “me” something to fight.

In that moment I realized what my friend had prayed years earlier. Although I didn’t know what was happening, why I was sick, God did. I knew / know that I trust Him, that He loves me so much that He was willing to conquer sin and death by sending His son to live a life I could never live and die a death I should die, and rise again conquering sin. I know that no matter what happens He is in control. Nothing happens without His knowing it. These are statements I “knew” intellectually but had failed to link to the heart. For the first time in my life I understood what it felt like to find comfort, not in my knowing something, but in His knowing something.

Recently my husband and I have made a life changing move. We moved 1000 miles away from the church we loved and served at, away from the comfort of our christian friends and family, away from all that we had known. There we had goals, careers everything we thought we needed. And in one fail swoop, we were a thousand miles away. Again I picture, years ago, that small prayer meeting my friend praying that prayer.

This understanding doesn’t always change the day to day struggle of things. It does, however, change actions and outlooks on things. No longer am I controlled by my lack of understanding to spin and toil, worry or fret. Instead I am controlled by my knowledge that my Creator is intimately acquainted with what is going on, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters most.

Amazing Resource

Thanks to PJ for putting together all of these MP3′s of Dr. D.A Carson.

Enjoy!!!

Click Here for D.A Carson MP3

Wisdom is Found Through Humility

Proverbs 8: 13 “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverted mouth, I hate.” (NASB)

Wisdom is the antonym of pride. Therefore, we can safely come to the conclusion that wisdom is only found through humility. They say the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible. Well I know for me, when I read phrases like “fear the Lord” I want to know what that means and looks like. The answer is handed too me here in Proverbs 8, “The fear of the Lord is…” doesn’t get much more clear than that.

We fail as Christians if we do not hate what is evil and cling to what is good. It seems so simple, yet we are so prone to not do this. It is against our nature, in order to hate evil we must admit that there is evil and we are evil (Jeremiah 17:9). Only by the grace of God and the sacrifice of Christ can we even recognize what is good and evil. Only by Jesus’s victory on the cross over sin and death on our behalf can we cling to what is good. (http://realityla.com/teachings/parody-of-christian-love/)

The famous saying is “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is not thinking of yourself at all.”

As Christians we must humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God (1 Peter 5:6), or wisdom will forever and always remain elusive.

Excerpt from Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices

“Seriously to consider, that even those very sins that Satan paints, and puts new names and colors upon, cost the best blood, the noblest blood, the life-blood, the heart-blood of the Lord Jesus. That Christ should come from the eternal bosom of his Father to a region of sorrow and death; that God should be manifested in the flesh, the Creator made a creature; that he who was clothed with glory should be wrapped with rags of flesh; he who filled heaven and earth with his glory should be cradled in a manger; that the almighty God should flee from weak man-the God of Israel into Egypt; that the God of the law should be subject to the law, the God of the circumcision circumcised, the God who made the heavens working at Joseph’s homely trade; that he who binds the devils in chains should be tempted; that he, whose is the world, and the fullness thereof, should hunger and thirst; that the God of strength should be weary, the Judge of all flesh condemned, the God of life put to death; that he who is one with his Father should cry out of misery, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”(Matt 27:46); that he who had the keyes of hell and death at his belt should lie imprisoned in the sepulcher of another, having in his lifetime nowhere to lay his head, nor after death to lay his body; that that HEAD, before which the angels do cast down their crowns, should be crowned with thorns, and those EYES, purer than the sun, put out by darkness of death; those EARS, which hear nothing byt hallelujahs of saints and angels, to hear the blasphemies of the multitude; that FACE, which was fairer than the sons of men, to be spit on by those beastly wretched Jews; that MOUTH and TONGUE, which spoke as never man spoke, accused of blasphemy; those HANDS, which freely swayed the scepter of heaven, nailed to the cross; those FEET, “like unto fine brass,” nailed to the cross for man’s sins, each sense pained with a spear and nails; his SMELL, with stinking odor, being crucified on Golgotha, the place of the skulls; his TASTE, with vinegar and gall; his HEARING, with reproaches, and SIGHT of his mother and disciples bemoaning him; his SOUL, comfortless and forsaken; and all this for those very sins that Satan paints and puts fine colors upon! Oh! how should the consideration of this stir up the soul against sin, and work the soul to fly from it, and to use all holy means whereby sin may be subdued and destroyed.”

Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks, pg. 20

I am humbled, I know this isn’t my reaction to my sin being crucified on the cross.

Hebrews 5:8-10

[8] Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. [9] And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, [10] being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.(Hebrews 5:8-10 ESV)

“Suffering thus became a reality that He tasted and from it He can sympathize deeply with His followers.” – bible knowledge commentary pg.792

God came in the flesh, fully man fully God. Something that strikes me is Jesus does not cut corners. Being fully God, Jesus could have easily set all suffering aside and never felt a thing, after all, He knows all things. He doesn’t, however, He learns obedience through suffering. Not as if He was disobedient and needed to be whipped into shape, that would be us, but that we can truly say we have a God who loves us. Loves us so much He fully immersed Himself in all that humanity has to offer, so that when we come to Him with complaints about how hard it is we can not hide behind the notion that Jesus doesn’t understand what we are going thru. For He endured the cross despising the shame for the joy set before Him (Heb 12:2).

How does this practically apply to my life?

How does this affect how I interact with Jesus?

How does it affect my prayers?

How does it affect my attitude?

Sin vs. Sins

Martyn Lloyd Jones put it best when he said that “Sin (singular) is the disease that all mankind suffers from, Sins (plural) are the symptoms of that disease.” Throughout christian culture today we tend warp this. We focus simply on the symptoms, we tell people “fix this and then…”, or “you are doing such and such and that is a sin”, however we do not ever explain to them the underlying cause to all our sins, that which is sin. We are all unrighteous sinners, “there is none righteous no not one” (Romans 3:10).  Not because of our actions, but because of the fallen nature in which we are born with.

One of the most fascinating things to study when studying sin throughout both the New and Old Testament is the fact that, yes there are lists that display what “sins” look like, however when God speaks of judging our sins He doesn’t speak to the action He speaks to the heart. We are told in Jeremiah that “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” The heart is the center, our identity, our will, here all else springs forth, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” (Luke 6:45 NASB) God judges our intentions, motives, our heart, the symptoms are a consequence. Paul reveals this to us in Romans 1, though we find a list of sins we first find the sin at the heart of those sins, and that is the exchange of the truth for the lie. We rejected God, worshiped creation rather than creator and then, only then did He turn us over to ourselves.

Here is the gist. We are all guilty of both (Sin and Sins), although mine may look different than yours we are all in the same camp of sin. Jesus died for all humanity, for all sin. I wonder how often I forget that when I walk the streets of LA and step over bums, or cross the street when I see someone who appears to me to be sketchy? I wonder what would happen if I actually took an account and prayed for those people? Or the tourists who believe that LA has some special power that transforms a person?

What would happen if I looked beyond the symptoms and saw the disease? The Gospel, the cure. It isn’t a wonder drug that you take when all hell breaks loose in your life, and then you suddenly feel happy and better. No, it is the thing that cures us of the disease when it matters most, after we breathe our last, standing before God, our Creator. When He turns to Christ and asks Him a simple question, the answer to that question the most important of our existence, do you know them? Christ’s response, the most important we will ever hear. If we know Him (that is believed that He was God in the flesh, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died a sinners death on the cross, conquered sin and death by rising on the third day, and ascended to the right hand of God to intercede for us) God will say to us “well done my good and faithful servant” (we are neither good nor faithful but because Jesus was and is, and we are cleansed by Him we will receive this reception) Now come the most terrifying words in the Bible, and they are not hellfire and brimstone, instead it is the finality of a life of rejection to our Creator, He will say to those “depart from me for I never knew you.”  For hell is more than fire, the worm that never dies, it is a place where no joy, happiness, light, love, grace, mercy, exist. It is a place apart from God, a place not designed for any human soul to go, a place, however, the soul will go for those who spent a lifetime rejecting Him and His Son. For the Bible is black and white on the issues. You are either dead in your sins and trespasses or alive in Christ. Because both camps are occupied by people, there are sinners in both camps. The only difference is the one’s in the kingdom of light have been transferred there, not because of there actions, but because of there faith in Christ.

I wonder, if we thought in these terms, how many more family members, friends, people, would we spend on our knees in prayer for. Not the prayer of I want them to not do A, B, & C but the prayer that pleads for a soul trapped in the dark, a soul Jesus died for.

Sins (symptoms of the disease) can not be dealt with until the disease is properly diagnosed and dealt with. For it is only thru the power of Christ can we overcome the simplest of our sins, without whom we can not conquer even the most mundane strongholds in our life.

How Much Should We Study and Invest Into Other Religions?

LA has a vast array of different religions, everything from eastern mysticism, to Jewish mysticism, to roman catholicism, to cults, to islam. So as Christians how do we handle this kind of variety?  How much do we need to know about other religions?

First some questions we must ask ourselves in order to test our own motives in learning about other religions. 1) Are we reading, studying, and praying to God on a regular basis? 2) How often are we reading, studying, and praying? 3) Is our motivation to attempt to prove someone of a different religion wrong? 4) Do we want to see converts, or win an argument?

These seem very simple and straightforward, almost annoying questions, but overlooked we may find ourselves pissing people off more than educating them of the gospel.

1 & 2 – If we are not spending adequate time in our bibles, and in prayer we will be disconnected in our words, and in our conduct, and we will lack the power of the gospel. Prayer is the conduit in which we have access to the power of God, and we are told to be able to give a defense for the hope that lies with in us (1Peter 3:15). If we cannot accurately handle the word of truth, and articulate our own position, who will take us seriously?

3 – If our motivation is to “prove” someone wrong, in order to argue them into the kingdom we have a disconnect between us and scripture. Yes Paul in Athens spoke in a manner in which the educated understood, however, at no juncture did he sacrifice the word of God. (Acts 17) When we see Jesus get into a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well we see her ask some questions that in the end Jesus never directly answers, not because they were not good questions, but because they were the wrong questions. Essentially He answers questions that she is not directly asking, but are questions at the heart of the questioning of Him. At all times He is in complete control of the flow of conversation, and always brings it around to Himself.

4 – If you are simply seeking to win an argument you will loose the war. The war is over the soul, and the Lord wishes that none shall perish (2 Peter 3:9). The motivation behind seeking to win an argument is the sin of idolatry, you want to be seen as superior and you use the gospel to do that. That is simply counterproductive to what scripture teaches.

Studying other religions in it of itself is not a good or a bad thing. Like everything else if we are engaged on a regular basis with the Lord, and He gives us the desire to research other religions, not to prove them wrong, but to discern the lie and use the lie as a platform in which to speak of the gospel then go for it. The key is how connected we are with Jesus. Are we, like Jesus, in control of the conversation and continually bring the conversation around to HIm? For that is the goal. To speak about Jesus. Sometimes healthy debates are fun, and not as scary as presenting someone with the gospel, but unless they end with the gospel you have done nothing to further the kingdom. For we must remember if someone can be argued into the kingdom, they can, and will be argued out.