How I Feel About Ordination

I hope this'll describe me someday.

Re-defining Hope

A couple weeks ago I wrote about re-defining goodness, perhaps there’s a series of posts inside this “redefining” theme – or not. There’s at least this one.

"Hope," it meant something different to me as a kid than it does now.

You see, now I bank all I am on a hope. Then I would’ve hoped to go to Disney World, or whatever.

We hope for eating Oreo’s for dessert and having a good day. We hope for finding the one we love and marrying them. We hope for children who grow healthy and strong. We hope to see a good movie. Does that demonstrate the diversity of the word? Hope. (I’m not a big political guy, but I do know Obama used hope as a campaign slogan in 2008.)

Yet if we redefine it then it ought to be understood something like this, hope: an earnest expectation.

There’s a reason the symbol for hope is an anchor. Because our hope is the foundation of faith (perhaps), it will not be put to shame. It is the earnest expectation that God will do what he has promised to do and save our souls. It’s knowledge of the factual reality that God will make all things new. It’s the feeling persuasion of spiritual things. It’s what we bet all of life and all of love and all of all against that God will be God and we will be men and this is for our good.

My anchor holds within the veil.

So hope isn’t just a want or desire for something to happen or change – no – it’s an expectation that it will change and it will happen. And the expectation is of such a fervently firm nature that we are willing to plan the rest of today (cause that’s all we’re semi-sure of) and dare to plan 80 years of life upon.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

Waiting for Dinner

"For the hope beyond the blue."

I'm a cynic. We're all of sure of it (all three of you who read this blog & myself). Good things happen and I'm the fella in the back going, "Just wait, you'll see...."

This has been shown pretty clear the last two days.

Good things: meeting new people and nice conversations. Questionable things: why would they respond that way, or is-there-really-been-a-change types, of questions. In all of them I've sat, or at least seen, from the view of the cynic.

I'm not quite sure this is wrong. It may be.

I'm sure we're probably supposed to see from a middle point, sometimes cynic sometimes pessimist. Looking onto both sides of things and saying, while seeing, the intricacies of both sides. (Or, at least, the possibilities therein.)

But this is still hard for me. (I'm just writing as it comes....)

I know people to be broken, to be faulty, to be sin filled. I know myself to be the same way, most definitely. I know not to put my hope in anyone, ever. But that doesn't stop me. I still return to doing it again, and again, and again... etc.

I know my hope should be in Jesus Christ and none other ("My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness."). And I know that my biggest problem (sin/damnation/the just wrath of God) has already been taken care of by Jesus.

But I also know that the point I made before is still terribly true - I'm a sinner.

The middle ground is foggy, and the ditches seem to be homey. I'm stupidly comfortable in the broken vessel I inhabit. I like to talk about me more than God....

But this I know with all my heart... his wounds have paid my ransom.

O my God. Thank God.

So whie I wait for dinner to finishing cooking, I'll look to the bloody, gory, beautiful cross by the grace and mercy of God.

Innocent

“I am a whore I do confess, I put you on just like a wedding dress and run down the isle. I’m a prodigal with no way home I put you on just like a ring of gold and I run down the isle to you. So could you love this bastard child, though I don’t trust you to provide?” ~Derek Webb

Yes.

Writers write of the ‘loss of innocence.’ Singers sing of it. People speak of it to their friends. But we’ve never been innocent.

If we believe Scripture to be true and foundational, there was never a time in our lives when we were pure, when we were right, when we were good (Isa 64:6; Rom 3:9-18). We’ve always been deserving of hell.

I know, this is a happy Monday post, right?

But we have hope, that tiny yet beautiful word, hope. We can be expectant of our Savior to be enough. Clinging to this hope. We hope on hope that our hope will not be put to shame.

It’s faith really, faith in the unseen. For how can we hope in what we see? How can we have faith in the things we know break or fail?

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

The Doorless Closet

We never realize our weakness or meanness or baseness until there is something bigger or scarier or worse than we thought possible knocking down our closet door to devour us while we tremble under the covers. When the other side of things starts to become more real to us than it ever had been before.

As believers we shy away from the fact of spiritual warfare. Our Christian “Society” brands people “weird” for seeing or feeling or fighting the demonic - but it’s what we’re told we'll fight, not flesh and blood but rulers and principalities of this present darkness (Eph 6:12).

I don’t think everything the believer fights is demonic, nor do I think that there is a demon behind every problem, but I do think when the believer is believing but is still fighting with all their might there is a spiritual battle occurring.

You might know this feeling. When you believe that Jesus is your only hope, but still feel as though the ground is falling out from under your feet. When you say, “I believe, help my unbelief,” and you mean it with every fiber of your tiny being yet still feel your weakness more than his strength.

However, what must be remembered are these light and momentary afflictions; these struggles against the spiritual and the physical; these duel wars of treachery and weakness are preparing for us a glory which cannot be imagined in our baseness.

The serpent’s teeth are gone. The demonic forces – which are real -- have no lasting power. We, you and I dear believer, are to be fighting one fight from now until we’re called home or our King returns: Believe Jesus to be your only hope.

Hoping Against All Hope

Hope. It’s a word I love. Probably, it would be safe to say, this is my favorite word. It’s tossed around in political campaigns and desires for grandeur, fame, relationships, food and money. But hope is such an all-encompassing feeling like joy or love. Yet it’s much more than simply looking forward to something.

I would submit that most of what we feel as hope is something we would classify as nostalgia. Remembrances of our past, good things which cause us to hope for their return, C.S. Lewis hits it square in the face by saying, “These things-the beauty, the memory of our past-are good images of what we really desire… [But] they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

Our hope in so far as it is deemed to be true and solid hope is not simply in what we desire for the future, but what we know from the past, mostly Jesus’ finalized work on the cross and victory over death. For if we hope in the future there must be an understanding of this past accomplishment not simply as fact but as faith.

But to hope in things seen is to not hope at all for hope is in the unseen, the eternal rather than the transient. Sure it may be a desire of things to occur, but it is not hope. Hope is founded in faith. But faith in the transient is misplaced faith. For though I can have faith in a relationship working and hope for it to last, that faith and that hope will not change what will be. But faith in the Eternal and hope in the Lasting leads to not simply to momentary satisfaction but lasting joy in the love of God.

So hope is just as complex as joy or love. But rightly placed hope will never put one to shame. For rightly placed hope does not merely look to the future of what will be but simultaneously looks to the past of what has been finished in one’s place for one’s sins.