Missionary Trust

The main difference between Mormon heaven and Christian heaven is that in Christian heaven you get God because of Jesus' finished work; while in Mormon heaven you get god because of your works.

As we sat and discussed this reality with a young lady you could see that she was getting it. It wasn't a notion Evangelicals hold which was falling on deaf ears, no it was falling on listening ears, and from what it appeared they longed to hear more of this workless, grace-full gospel.

But time was cut short and it was time to leave.

So what happens to a missionary when they are so close to seeing one convert to Christ, but won't see it happen?

Trust.

The missionary must trust that God is sovereignly in control. The missionary must trust that God will bring his people to himself. The missionary must trust that, that one will be cared for by the Good Shepherd and brought to the fold of God. The missionary leans not on his own prowess in speaking eloquently but on God's Spirit to save completely.

The missionary must trust that it is for God to save and for man to proclaim. 

Stars

Last night, after my last meeting and before a phone call, I sat on the porch and watched the clouds unveil the stars - all full of questions about time and such, but still thankful for the present, yet longing for the future. Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in what might be or what will be, so caught up that we miss the present.

Yet in some capacity this is a good thing – to be eternally minded people, so caught up in what’s to come that we are consistently aiming at seeing other people see the future we see.

In the end How Great Thou Art started playing in my head.

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder,

Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made;

I see the stars; I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,

How great Thou art, how great Thou art.”

My wonders weren’t answered, the future is still unknown, but beautifully so. Even still it’s God’s goodness, which leads me to repentance, and he is good. So until the future has become the past I must, I will, I need to trust He will be faithful to himself and that’s precisely what I (we) need.

Eyes Wide Open

Keep our eyes open.

Sometimes the way things were wanted is the way things weren’t meant to be.

Sometimes you’re talked to in a way, which never was before.

Sometimes you just begin to wonder what really might be the plan.

All in all the plan is still there and God is still King and you are just his creation used to shine forth his beauty. But if we walk with our eyes, spiritual and physical, closed then we miss the gorgeous reality of what’s all around us and supplant it with the faux reality of imagination.

But imagination will never be able to replace that which is real. The gaseous will never reform the solid.

No asymptote will intersect and no tornado is without trace.

But far too often we cling to the fake. We pine for the Hollywood effect rather than the wonder of what’s real. We want the asymptote to meet and the tornado to be clean. But it never will be.

So, to keeping our eyes open. Not to what we want, but to what is. That by grace we are saved and by mercy we are redeemed, while in the face of death there is salvation.

In work we are there for a purpose. In fun we are there for a purpose.

Not that every situation’s purpose must be sought out and journaled about, but rather we are to be where we are with the same boldness, which took Jesus to the cross.

Calmly we accept what is before us. Prayerfully we walk into where we are. Trustingly we look to the sovereign nature of our God. Boldly we know that Jesus is our only hope. Gently we lead those who follow. Courageously we see our own faults. Forcibly (and graciously) we keep our eyes wide open to soak in every smallest portion of the trip.

Free Will

“Love God and do what you want.”

It’s probably my most favorite Martin Luther quote.

Rather than getting hung up on the is-this-God’s-will-for-my-life question (like so many do) resting in the comfort of his downright all-around big-ness.

Sovereign.

This is not a pithy word. Something which means supreme ruler ought to catch us, shake us up a bit and toss our brains around to get the idea that the one this adjective describes is the supreme (i.e. better than everything) ruler (i.e. in charge).

“O but wait, I may choose the wrong person and end up messing up the will of God.”

…

There’s no nice way of pointing out the massive logical inconsistency wherein one confesses to believe in a 'sovereign' God whose will can be screwed up by his subjects. It’s just ignorant and amazingly prideful to think the creature can highjack the Creator.

“But free will…”

If an example can be given where a will is free then I’ll believe free will to be true. But until a will is not in reaction or precaution to any outside stimuli I cannot submit to the idea or ‘doctrine’ of man’s free will. (Even outside of Christianity I cannot see free will as true. We eat, beacue we need it, we sleep because we need it, we procreate because of biology. Outside stimuli crontrol us even outside of Christianity.)

Rather submission to the Sovereign God is a bit sounder than that of my own flimsy desires.

Love God and do what you want. It’s a twofold deal. First, love God. Second, do what you want.
You see a fundamental change within us is required for a dead sinner to love the Living Perfection, which is God (Eph 2:1-10). First there must be life given to the dead (John 3:1-21), and then the sinner must be washed clean of their unrighteousness (Ezekiel 36:24-27). But none of that is contingent on the will of man.

Love God… and do what you want. These two things are completely apart from the will of man. If I am free I will not love God (1 John 4:19). If I am free my wants are a slave to sin. God loves us, therefore we love him. God saved and now we are slaves to him (Eph 2:10).

“But I don’t like that.”

I don’t like that I don’t have an iPhone 4s, but that won’t change the reality of my having just a sad little iPhone 4. I don’t like that it’s cold outside but my not liking it won’t change it. I don’t like whinny people, but people whine (… I whine).

Are you catching my drift? What we like and don’t like won’t change reality.

It’s a trust deal in the end. Do we trust God to change our wants to be more in line with his own, or do we trust ourselves to see ourselves through our lives?

I’d submit if one fears messing up the plan of God, then one is trusting in themselves and not in God.

He is either the Soveriegn God (in complete control of your life) or he is not God.

Confession of a Restless Pastor

Some things I do well. Some things I do not do well at all. One of those things, which I cannot do to save my life, is rest. Taking naps is difficult, doing nothing is a strain for my mind and turning my phone off is maybe a yearly phenomenon.

But what is rest? Is it playing with friends or taking naps? Sure, physically speaking my body is rested in naps and friends encourage while we do things. But that’s the key; I’m still doing something.

Being rather than doing that is rest. Relying on a sovereign God to complete what he has begun. Trusting him to uphold me in the course of my focus on him. Having faith that God will do what he will do and being made humble by him to accept what he’s done as what I need.

I wrote a post called, “The Thinker’s Thoughts on Thinking,” and much of it has to do with rest, the necessity of turning off my brain. My proclivity is to burn both ends of the candle until I come to not simply a weary state of physical exhaustion but until I get to such a soul-tiredness that all I can do is weep…

It’s sin. Straight and simple, it is sin. To not trust the sustainer of the universe to sustain my being for a day is to tell the omnipotent God, “I got this, back off.” Essentially wanting to redeem my own soul by the sweat of my brow, the tears of my labor, and the blood of my heart. (Check out the personal pronouns in that sentence and try to tell me that’s not prideful.)

Pride is the root of unrest, prideful self-reliance. What must needs be learned is trust. Trust in God to do what he will do for his glory which is very much one with my good.