The Crushing Vengeance of God

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'” Romans 12:19

“We forget that man stands alone before an ultimate authority and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternal law and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will eventually crush him.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

History is not on the side of Planned Parenthood, just as history was not on the side of the Third Reich, and the Gulag, and the Armenian genocide. Tyrants will fall. History has proven this. Justice will prevail. 

It is not our place to bomb abortion clinics, to burn them, or, as happened in my hometown of Wichita, KS., murder abortion providers in their churches. 

Vengeance is God’s.

Bonhoeffer speaks truth when he says the, “Superhuman authority… will eventually crush him.” Under the weight of convincing a population they have the right to choose who can live and who can die, Planned Parenthood will fall under the crushing weight of true justice. 

By no means is this a post to persuade anyone from speaking out against Planned Parenthood. Rather this is a post to both have pity and speak warning while speaking out.

Vengeance is God’s and either real people fall under his eternal just wrath, or real people receive God’s forgiving mercy in Jesus. 

Yes, fight for the abolishment of abortion with all your being. But do not wish God’s vengeance on those murdering and then selling a baby and his/her parts. Never wish damnation on anyone.

Language that speaks of Planned Parenthood workers being below human is precisely the same logic being used to determine what lives matter and what lives don’t. People are people and are made in the image of God whether they’re in the womb or work at Planned Parenthood. 

Our goal is to abolish abortion Christianly.   

The goal to see the institution abolished, and the people within the institution redeemed.

What are we saying?

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your very eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Galatians 3:1-3

As we sat yesterday discussing Mormonism and Christianity at an LDS Institute of Religion these verses kept coming into play.

For a time I was agnostic, there was little to sway me to believe any religion was more true than another. In my ignorance I obeyed the rules to be, "Accepted by whatever god was real." Yet, I wanted answers.

Not answers that were pre-written, pre-memorized, or pre-scripted, but real factual answers. 

As I read more about the Bible I found evidence to support it's authenticity, this helped lead me to read the Bible and in so reading come to faith. But a large part of what helped was having real discussions when people used their own words to describe what we believe.

Sitting here in these discussion between Mormons and Christians has brought out an interesting tie between the two.

Most christians can speak the language but don't believe it. Most Mormons speak the language, believe it, but never think about it.

There is nothing more saddening to me than a Christian who only uses cliche to describe their heart-understanding of God. There's nothing more odd than a Mormon who says what they believe, believes what they say, but never think about the implications of the script.

As the Bride of Christ should we not aim to be unified? Should we not aim to speak openly about difficulty, pain and struggle in our small groups? A Mormon would never confess their issues because that means they wouldn't be able to go to Temple. But most Christians treat their local church the same. We are not Mormon! We are Christian, Christ as redeemed us from the curse of the law and seated us in the heavenlies, by grace you have been saved. Therefore we are completely free to love unconditionally, to speak unreservedly and to serve unflinchingly. 

We are not Mormon, we are Christ's. We ought to speak and act like it.

What are we saying?

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your very eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Galatians 3:1-3

As we sat yesterday discussing Mormonism and Christianity at an LDS Institute of Religion these verses kept coming into play.

For a time I was agnostic, there was little to sway me to believe any religion was more true than another. In my ignorance I obeyed the rules to be, "Accepted by whatever god was real." Yet, I wanted answers.

Not answers that were pre-written, pre-memorized, or pre-scripted, but real factual answers. 

As I read more about the Bible I found evidence to support it's authenticity, this helped lead me to read the Bible and in so reading come to faith. But a large part of what helped was having real discussions when people used their own words to describe what we believe.

Sitting here in these discussion between Mormons and Christians has brought out an interesting tie between the two.

Most christians can speak the language but don't believe it. Most Mormons speak the language, believe it, but never think about it.

There is nothing more saddening to me than a Christian who only uses cliche to describe their heart-understanding of God. There's nothing more odd than a Mormon who says what they believe, believes what they say, but never think about the implications of the script.

As the Bride of Christ should we not aim to be unified? Should we not aim to speak openly about difficulty, pain and struggle in our small groups? A Mormon would never confess their issues because that means they wouldn't be able to go to Temple. But most Christians treat their local church the same. We are not Mormon! We are Christian, Christ as redeemed us from the curse of the law and seated us in the heavenlies, by grace you have been saved. Therefore we are completely free to love unconditionally, to speak unreservedly and to serve unflinchingly. 

We are not Mormon, we are Christ's. We ought to speak and act like it.

How is prayer different on the mission field?

I arrived in Salt Lake City last night for our week-long mission trip. As I drifted off to sleep I began to pray for God to protect me. But it hit me. The culture that I'm now surrounded by most likely prays similar prayers, but to a completely different god than the God I worship. So my prayers altered, to a much more Trinitarian version of the same prayer I just prayed. 

Yes, I know the intent of my heart was to pray to the God who inspired our inerrant Scriptures by his breath, but praying rightly isn't just about the intent, is it?

This morning I read Matthew 3:13-17, the baptism of Jesus, a wholly Trinitarian passage. Then, Dr. Mickinions Theology 1 class kicked in, I looked up the Athanasian Creed (I think I'll sit in these all week), and read, "The Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.

So back to the above question, how is prayer different on the mission field? Well, it's not, but it is.

It's not different because at all times we should be strikingly aware of the words we are using to pray to the Maker of All. But it is different because I know I've been wrenched from the normal routine and stuck in a place where 2.8% of the people are affiliated with an evangelical church. Out of nearly 1.8 million people that's about 50,000 people who regularly hear the gospel proclaimed in an evangelical church. (statistics taken from NAMB). 

What's It Mean That God is Father?

What does it mean that God is Father? Aside from the obvious answer that it means God is our Father, there are many characteristics of God that are encapsulated in the description of God as “father.” The providing aspect of God, his Kingship and, well you know, that whole “Him” thing. Books like "The Shack" like to present God as the all-mother or some such nonsense and dispense with the clearly written words of the Bible for some gender inclusive (or just as exclusive as calling him father, but that’s neither here nor there) shtick. But we, as Christians, call God Father.

The aspects of God, his love, greatness, goodness, gentleness, awesomeness, graciousness etc. are not qualities that we would necessarily look at and think that God’s a dude, rather we’d think these cool qualities. But when coupled with his providence, Kingship, leadership and general fatherly-ness we would need to assume upon his fatherly nature because, well, he is our Father. As the Provider we his children are given an old picture of a man bringing home what is needed to give health, home and happiness to his family. As King we see a God fierce in battle and mighty to save from the onslaught of demonic hosts and our own sin. As Leader we see a God who is willing to do what is necessary to take his people where he wants them go.

But something interesting occurs when you strip God of his fatherly-ness. He becomes it and it becomes impersonal and impersonal becomes impartial and impartial becomes careless and careless becomes graceless and graceless becomes meaningless - meaningless to the point of irreverence and disregard. So much so that culture uses his name as a byword and a curse.

Culture has steadily and slowly attempted at removing God’s personal qualities, namely that he is father. And we are now, yes, even now, seeing the outcomes of those slow and steady cultural modifications to cultural Christian understandings. The modern day fight of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered (LGBT) movement for cultural standing and inclusion is part and portion of the degenderization of the society at large which is an outcome of removing God’s fatherly-ness from his personality. It is also, I believe, part of the reason we see such drastic issues with out of wedlock pregnancies and fatherless children, as well as the astounding 56 million abortions that have legally happened since Roe V Wade.

Removing God’s Fatherly nature from the written word, from our modern understanding of God and our cultural understand of Christianity has done nothing in the way of help for our economy, our children or our future. It is safe to argue that homosexuality is not an economically sound decision because economics is based on buying units, of which, homosexuals do not produce because they cannot reproduce. The same can be said for abortion; on an economic point 56 million buying units have been lost thus far, those are both dollars not being used but also jobs not being created or sustained by one, if not all, of those 56 million. And statistically speaking a child born out of wedlock is more likely to live life on welfare than one born in a married family and is , therefore, a burden on the economy because a non-producing unit is only consuming.

But father God is and father he remains. He is father because he has revealed himself as such. He has spoken clearly of who he is in his word, therefore we see him not as impersonal, impartial and unimportant; no we see him as personal, partial and vastly important and this changes everything.

To read an expanded peice on this topic visit Parts, Portions & Pieces.

The Title Explained: Why my blog is called what it's called. (Pt 2)

Just after I became a Christian as a graduation gift from my brother-in-law I received a box full of books – just a box full of books, no fancy graduation wrapping or anything – just a box of books. As an 18-year-old kid this was, well to be honest, it was a little underwhelming. The names on the spines of the books read, “Spurgeon,” and it was a name I was hardly familiar with.

There were three sets of books some brown ones, green ones, and some that looked like they’d been printed in the sixties because of the cheesy cover art on the front. But there was something that kept drawing my mind and eye to these books among all the other gifts.

Little did I know that my world and view of the Christian tradition was about to be moved and transformed in such a way so as to never be the same and never to want look back. John Piper talks of Lewis as coming over the horizon of his life, and this is how I speak of Spurgeon, he walked over the horizon of my life and brought me into many green pastures of growth, guided me in long walks among quiet rivers and taught me the meaning of silence, prayer, words, and true eloquence. This under-shepherd of the true Shepherd herded my life along even though it was more than one hundred years after his final breath.

A shift happened for me here, I began to wonder about all these other names I’d heard about and the depth of insight they too might offer to a kid wanting to be a pastor. Names like Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Lewis, Stott, Packer, Augustine and many others became my teachers in those early days. And all of them echoed the glorious truth of the authority, inerrancy, and infallibility of Scripture – that it is, “Divine Writ.”

Spurgeon taught me what it is to be a pastor, more than any other man I’ve worked for or with he has taught me what it is to be a man in the Word. Discipleing me to follow God and no other, to let the times change and the Scripture remain unassailably the same; to preach incessantly and unapologetically the gospel; to speak with heart-burning conviction; to not let up, or back off, or give in until Christ himself welcomes me with, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

Therefore the title of the blog, “Aspiring Spurgeon,” might be simple to decode now. By the mercy and grace of God almighty I hope that words I write will someday impact the heart of one person in such a way that Spurgeon has impacted me. It’s a tall order to be sure, to desire to impact someone’s life for all eternity, but God has used men throughout all of history to impact and grow other men – that’s why we’re called ‘ambassadors’ – so I believe he can use the wretch that I am to impact one other person.

Follow the Leader

If I knew what to write at the beginning of this post then I'd write about it throughout, but I don't. India was wonderful, again. It was harder to leave this time than the first time (which I guess means this next time will be even more difficult). But it also let me remember things.

When I first became a Christian I wanted to be a missionary to anywhere. First I got to go to Israel with my senior class then to Egypt with some friends. Next was Uganda, but on the flight home from Uganda I remember distinctly being told - or lead - to know that my times of traveling had come to an end, that it was time to do work in Wichita.

And that's exactly what happened. As an intern I helped, by the sheer grace of God youth grasp the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. As a pastor at a church plant I saw God build his church and discipline me lovingly, growing me in my knowledge of people and my understanding of God.

But I'm not an intern anymore nor am I a pastor.

I can't deny he's leading me to something else. I can't fight the call on my life. I can't overlook the first desire of my heart, the one he had me set aside for a time.

My dad said it well, "Preach Jesus and him crucified and raised from the dead and ruling in grace and mercy."

Friday's Thoughts

1) Mumford & Sons "Holland Road" don't overspiritualize it, just listen to it:


2) It's going to be 85 degrees today in Wichita. It's Novemeber 2. Dumb. (Read that as a tiny rant.)

3) The Senior editor for The Wichita Eagle taught my class last night. We got out early.

4) Some of the kids who trick-or-treated at my house had costums that scared me.

5) Kat tried to climb the curtains to catch a moth just after she jumped on someone's stitches. She spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom - you know, in timeout.

6) Hey, creepy old fat guys talking about going to Twin Peaks - you're gross.

7) Taylor Swift's new CD was okay. Wasn't as enchanting as the last one (see what I did there?)

8) Cleaver and clever are dangerously similar in spelling... It's possible I didn't send a text because I couldn't figure out which was what.

9) Boil it all down and away and every Christian ever knows only two things - whether mature or immature, smart or stupid, strong or weak - we all know we are sinners and that Jesus is Savior. That's enough.

10) Name your blessing - count them one-by-one. Stupid cliche, but Oh so necessary.

Rumored Thought (Pt. 4)

Here are Part1, Part 2, and Part 3.

“And who knows who are the people of God, when throughout the whole world, from its origin, the state of the Church was always such, that those who were called the people and saints of God who were not so; while others among them, who were as a refuse, and were not called the people and saints of God, were the Peoples and the Saints of God? As is manifest in the histories of Cain and Abel, of Ishmael and Isaac, of Esau and Jacob.” (Luther. p 97-98. Bondage of the Will.)

Just because one carries the title ‘Pastor’ does not make them a part of the Church. The title, you see, doesn’t make the Christian, not at all, Jesus makes a person a Christian and his Spirit gifts them to be pastor.

But leaders abound in all the world, in every religion, and in business. So is it possible to be a leader in the Church and not be a Christian? Yes. To the destruction of hundreds of souls, yes, it is possible.

Possible to preach week in and week out on the beauties of true religion, but not know it. Possible to elaborate on the nuances of the gospel and the life it ought to produce, yet dead. Possible to expound on the light of glory in the face of Jesus Christ, yet be blind.

Yet more horrifying than this, it is possible to lead a congregation to the pits of hell and be greeted by their screams upon his own entrance…

(Let that sink in and ask yourself whom are you following? A boy with a vendetta to have a following, or a man seeking to glorify God by giving up all he is to preach for nothing else than the glory of God?)

How does this tie into mission? By the pastor knowing the condition of his own soul before attempting to proclaim the gospel to other souls.

He is to be the leader in mission, and therefore he must believe what he will proclaim, or he will prove to be more of a hindrance than a help in the fight of faith; because his fight will be in another sector (maybe even another country) rather than on the same field as the true Church.

So simply being a pastor doesn’t make one Christian (and simply calling yourself a Christian doesn’t make it true). And sadly, now, it doesn’t always inspire hope that all pastors are Christian. So as those on mission for the glory of God and the good of the Church in the redemption of souls we must carefully submit to godly leadership to lead us in mission.