New Year

Does any one else have trouble working though the Holiday season while everyone else is chillaxing it! Holiday envy I guess I've discovered another sin!

Keeping our bodies fat and warm.

I once read in a missionary letter that the above is all people in the western world care about. I think this true but I would add one more thing, being entertained. The first two are taken to be rights, the same as the right to draw breath, and are generally taken for granted.
That's right I was thinking about breathing today. Lying in bed with the wife and 11 month old babe listening to their various rates of respiration I again remembered that breathing keeps us alive. Its not something we always think about but it must take place constantly.
I'm currently studying livestock feeding and in the course of it we consider the animal concerned maintenance energy requirement. How much energy it requires to walk and breathe and digest food etc. When an animal is lame it requires more energy to move about in a limping fashion and fight the infection and cant compete in the herd so well and consequently loses weight. All these are the same for human life and considering my own breathing has been some what restricted with asthama and allergy etc as well as being slightly lame its no wounder I get alittle tired but I don't know if I've lost any weight but I doubt that I will fade away entirely just yet.

Any how breathing is sometimes spiritualized by Godless religons " Breathe in justice , mercy and truth and breathe out hatred and cruelty and envy .." etc
The bible says simply " Everything that has breath praise the Lord! "


Gen 2:7
And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

While it is called Today!

It is high time I did some bible reading and posting as well so I'm reading Hebrews which I think is a good book because It is drawing out a called people from out of a lifeless religious structure ( one that God had now abandoned) into a vibrant living personal faith in the person of Christ.

Hbr 1:1
Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets.
But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.

This is relevant because what is called church these days has largely settled into a man made and man worshiping system similar to the systems we see around us in the world and I believe that true believers are being called out of it. We are called to be in the world but not of it. The church was not instituted by man but by Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit its a work of God and as such can never be about the works of man that we might boast, and yet a whole lot of boasting goes on and the works or fruit produced are not of God. We must always take a hands off approach and allow God to work his wonders through us in so doing give credit where it is due, all Honor and Glory to the name of Jesus.

I see as I read a bit of church history a pattern emerging that every new movement or denomination sees clearly at least one aspect of the preceeding one that is falling short of the mark. The founders come out full of holy spirit power, fired up you might say, to reform the church and turn the world up side down and they do for a while, sweeping the globe until, they run out of steam or the founders pass on to there reward in glory. Those that remain are dependent on the strength of the vision and I guess the breath of Gods Spirit to keep the show on the road. Inevitably though the followers take their eyes off Christ and come back to earth as it were. As time passes we look around to what the world around us is doing and the narrow path seems unattractive by comparison so we allow the cutting edge to become dull, pull off the kings highway and camp in the bypass meadow with the other earth dwellers. Becoming settlers instead of
pilgrims making progress. Not only do we pause our own journey but we will begin to waylay any others who won't seek with us the passing pleasures of this world determining to stay the course.

Our hearts get hardened and proud and unwilling to give up the comforts we treasure we are then bound to them while failing to perceive that the earth and all thats in it is passing away and so to, all those whose hearts are bound to earthly things.

So the question is how can avoid this recurring calamity and here is the answer.



Hbr 3:12
Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters. Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You must warn each other every day, as long as it is called "today," so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ. But never forget the warning: "Today you must listen to his voice. Don't harden your hearts against him as Israel did when they rebelled."

Where does the search for freedom lead you ?

As you can see I haven't posted in a while, Why because of the new computer (problems) and the new baby and just life in general. Time is a precious thing and I feel very much as though I spend to much of it with out achieving my life's goals.
As you might pick up I value freedom highly. Freedom that is from the rule of man and the associated trappings. Ideally I'd just like to live in the world that God has made with as little man stuff as possible, just to enjoy God and work to bring Him glory a mitigate the effects of the curse of sin and lead others to the Lord of salvation.
But the rule of man and systems have there ways of tying you in like it or not.
I am presently concerned that in my bid to be free I might cast off authority structures that God has intended for me to submit to . I'm talking church here . I just haven't found a body of believers where the leaders don't Lord it over the flock. I'm not looking for another Lord, I have the Greatest already, but I do need a shepherd Why are there so few?

troubled by pacifism 2

God is not passive but active against those who break His law. He must be, because if He is not, then there is no justice, and if there is no justice then God is not good, And if God is not good then Who would make the free will choice to follow him or allow him to rule us. If this where the case then we may as well rule ourselves as God is no better than us.

So I hope you can see by this reverse logic that God can not be passive. This is the problem that I have with pacifism.

On the other hand we who are not good and are self confessed law breakers (sinners) must not raise ourselves up in judgment of others because we possess not the goodness to judge rightly, and therefore must rely on God's judgment and do his will. Obviously murder is not God's will. But it was his will to drive out the Canaanite nations who where possessing the promised land by the sword. why did God deem that the Israelites were more worthy of possessing the promised land and even just living we don't really know we could speculate but we don't really know so we must rest in the sure knowledge that God is Good and always Judges rightly and justly.

I believe pacifism is born of a false belief in the superiority of humanity or human rights. They that hold to this view are mortified that God should destroy a wicked man I am not. In some ways I don't believe we are as wonderful as we believe our selves to be in a lot of ways we really are just pots. God is the great potter and gives us our initial shape but as we age and harden we are total effected by what we choose to fill ourselves with. A man who habitually practices lawlessness becomes set in the image of sin and can not be changed. When we repent and are filled with the spirit it is like we don't set at all but are constantly being changed more and more to conform to the image of God. Just as the potter is within his rights to smash a bad pot so it is God's right to destroy the wicked and preserve the righteous. Pots have no rights. But they can expect the Good potter to forfill his promises to them, because if He doesn't He ceases to be good.

It really is a truth most wonderful to me that God is Good. He doesn't have to be. Nobody can make Him. He just is!

troubled by pacifism

Another blogger that I read often is writing about violence right now. http://www.getrad2.blogspot.com/ Ron obviously has pacifistic beliefs and that is great because of course we are followers of christ afterall who came ".. as a lamb before the slaughterers is silent..." as our perfect example of meekness . Outwardly weak but inwardly mighty.
He is trying to reconcile the new testaments 'turn the other cheek' with the old testaments 'eye for an eye'. And traveling the 'translaters got it wrong' route. I feel this is unnessasary and dangerous.

If you haven't read the blog, Ron highlight's the nonvoilence of our Lord Jesus and compares it to the 'total destruction' that the God of the Old testament commanded against the Canaanites and others.
Then finding these unreconcileable, procedes to explore the idea that the translators gave us 'total destruction' from a word which could could have meant something far milder. He also is saying that the Israelites misrepresented God by their violence when this was not what God intended.

The Old and New testaments work together for our benefit but they are very different.
OLD TESTAMENT
-Isarel Gods choosen people
-A physical people group, nation
-A physical temple where God's presence dwelt
-A physical priesthood
-under law written in stone
-visible
-in the flesh
NEW TESTAMENT
- the Church of Jesus Christ his choosen
- scattered in every nation
- Body of christ invisable Holy Spirit in us
- Priesthood of all believers
- Under grace written on our hearts
- invisable
- in the Spirit

The Old testament is not a failed attempt by God to bring about the salvation of the world it is a powerful demonstration of the futility of man's attempts to obey God and be reconciled to Him and saved from the penality of sin except by the perfect sacrifice by a sinless high priest. A work only possible and brought about by the power of the Holy Spirit. God himself has done it all. Man could not even meet God halfway the Old testament proved that forever.That throws us completely at the mercy of a God whom the Old testament teaches us to fear.

He's the same God in both testaments and his wrath against sin and those who harden themselves in it, is violent and righteously so.
He himeself totally destroyed the Pharaoh and the Egyptian army and those Israelites that disobeyed and rebelled against Him in the wilderness by his own mighty hand and outstreached arm.
But His violent anger is only shown to those who first have heard his will, sometimes many times, and had the oppotunity to sumbit to it or harden themselves against it.

McChurch 2

It all starts with a name. When a group of any description meet, also pertaining to christian groups of course, they begin to need to identify the group some way, an identity is created and a name is given to it.
" ...this group is about such and such and we the leaders or leader have democraticly (or autocraticly) decided to call it such and such..."

This is a natural and in some ways nessesasary development. However once an entity is created it begins to take on a 'life' of its own. When I say life I don't really mean life in the sense of a living thing because that is something men can not do. When we do create a work we must be careful and do so only in accordance with God's word so as that he who directed us will provide the life. This is because the works we do without from God are like us without God Dead. He is the life giver. Don't the scriptures tell us ..."its no longer I that liveth but christ that liveth in me.."

Christ Himself didn't come speaking His own words or do his own works but those taught to him by his Father.
And we must be like Christ in this way.

What I am trying to establish then is that Christ doing the work of is Father did not give a separate name to the church. Except his own. We are the people who serve His name. It is by his name alone that we are saved etc.

How then should we create or support a denomination. Do we serve christ or our denominaton?, is salvation found in christ alone or in our denomination alone? the answers may seem obvious but we must beware because it is so easy to break the first commandment. When we join with a denomination we join one we aggree with and suits our likes and tastes, we begin to prefer it and be exclusively loyal to it. we then may work to promote it and work towards its increase, constantly emphisizing the destintiveness and superiority over other groups to ourselves and others.

In other words we create a brand (or a franchise) and live for it.

All of which is plain simple idolatry to my mind. We create a god of our own making then procede to serve it and lift it up all the while supposedly worshiping the true God.
1 corinthians 1-4 deal well with this apostasy. Unforturnately the problem didn't end in corinth.