Called Out In Kansas

OK, now that I’ve gotten everyone’s attention, let’s get on with the post.

First, this post is not intended to bring offense.  It is a point of discussion based on my own beliefs and observations, and is intended to be just that, a discussion.  There are two dear brothers whom I highly respect, although have never met, who openly profess “allegiance” (my word) to the tenets of the Reformed movement, Arthur at “Voice of One Crying Out…” and Eric at A Pilgrim’s Progress.  Both have been very open in discussing their observations of the shortcomings or mistakes of the Reformed movement, so by no means do I feel they are one-sided.  As such, I feel that my discussion on this topic will not be taken wrongly.  So, on to the discussion.

I have two points that I want to make, but before I do that I want to give a caveat.  I do not have the intellectual mind to discuss the finer points of Calvinism vs. Arminianism.  I can’t quote scripture in support of one or the other, and that is not really my point.  Minds much greater than mine have argued these points ad nauseum, so I can’t hope to offer anything new in that vein.  I also want to say that I don’t identify myself with either side.  I think both sides have merit, and I think, paradoxically, that both are right!  So, again, on to it.

1.  I am always amazed at the loyalty expressed by Reformed people for Reformed theology.  Although the brothers I mentioned above do not have a blind loyalty by any means, there is still a strong devotion to the “5 solas” and the 5 Points of Calvinism.  Now, I don’t condemn this loyalty.  I guess the question in my mind is one of unity.  If I identify myself as reformed, do I risk alienating my Arminian brethren?  Or, if I identify myself as Arminian do I risk alienating my Reformed brethren?  Is any one theological system anything, in light of the greater importance of Christ?  Or, put a different way, do I want to identify myself by any other identifier than a follower of Christ?  Now let me stress again, I do not write this to be offensive.  I am sure Eric, Arthur and other Reformed believers have responses to my questions, and that is why I ask these questions.  My interest lies in the fact that I’ve not come across many similar allegiances in those that are walking outside of traditional Christianity, and so I thought I’d bring it up.

2.  God, and thus the bible, is full of seeming paradoxes.  I say seeming because I am sure they are not paradoxes at all, but appear that way to me with my limited understanding of His nature, and limited understanding of eternity.  For example, on the one hand God commanded the Isrealites to kill every man, woman and child when the Isrealites crossed into and conquered Canaan.  Failure to comply had serious consequences.  On the other hand, “For God so loved the world….”.  My natural mind can not comprehend that this is one and the same God, but it is.  How can the same God be full of vengeance and full of supreme love at the same time?  Well, He just can!  Likewise, how do you make sense of the arguments for Calvinism and Arminianism?  Both can point to scriptures that support their view, and both can outline why the other side is interpreting their scriptures wrong.  Could it be that both are right?  Can it be that man has the ability to make a choice, but is only able to make that choice by the grace of God?  I know it sounds contradictory, but I believe that something akin to this is the truth.  Let me discuss why I say this (see next paragraph).

The longer I live the more I see that God has a purpose in the earth.  That purpose is more than to live together in eternal harmony, or to barely escape the end times until we get raptured.  The purpose of God is to build His city, His people, in the earth.  His purpose is to express His glory in the person of Christ, and he’s chosen to use us to accomplish that.  I also believe that He has chosen to use man to bring about the final and ultimate defeat of the enemy, or said differently, the final and ultimate reign of Christ on the earth.  “‘My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.'”  I believe His work is to establish Himself as the unquestioned God of this earth (I won’t go into more detail here, so as to not get bogged down too much).  So, if God has a specific purpose in the earth, and He chooses to use man to accomplish it, the fine points of Arminianism and Calvinism come into play, regarding man’s ability to make a choice in His service to God.  If Calvinism is right, God would have His plan, He would choose the people He wanted to accomplish it, He would call those people into service and they would accomplish the task at hand.  Would such a plan take 2000 years?  On the other hand, if God calls many, but we have the choice to follow or not, then we can see why the process has taken so long, because man often doesn’t do as God directs.  Here is what I believe:  I believe God calls men (men and women) to do tasks in His kingdom.  Man can choose to do those tasks or not do those tasks.  As long as man continues to miss the boat, so to speak, there is a continuous merry-go-round-type cycle that goes on, where man goes around and around on the same track, until he finally decides to follow the directions of God, and moves onto the next step, or season.  In this process God is supremely patient.  I also believe that, in the end, the will of God is irresistible.  He WILL accomplish His work.  The timeframe in which it is accomplished, however, is partially up to man, because God has chosen us to accomplish His will.  As a specific example, if God’s grace and will were completely irresistible then why did the New Testament church degenerate into what we see today?

Well, I’m going to cut this off before it gets any longer.  I invite my Reformed friends to respond, as once again all I seek here is an open discussion.  I want to reiterate that neither Arthur nor Eric has ever made their Reformed theology a quarreling point with others, as far as I have read.  I have never seen them make it a point of dissension or division, and neither do I seek to do this.  Again I would stress that I agree with much of Reformed theology, so my goal is not to slander or malign it, or those that hold to it.

I recently posted something on my facebook profile, and I thought it was important to post it here, because to me it is a major issue for Christians today.  In reality, it is probably not a black and white issue, but more like a scale, where we can tend towards one or the other, and move either way as we mature or digress.  Anyway, here is the statement:

We need a change in mindset. We need to allow God to shape and order our lives in accordance with His eternal purpose, instead of trying to incorporate God into our life as it is. He is calling us to so much more than we can even imagine, but we have to open our hearts to that greater calling, and be willing to go where the grass doesn’t appear green.

I want to give some background behind this statement, and how it has applied to my life:

Three years ago I was working as an employed doctor, in a hospital owned practice, employed by an organization that was more concerned about money than patient care.  I became frustrated, and finally tired of fighting the system and decided that something had to change.  I had multiple options, and at one point decided to quit Family Medicine altogether, and work full-time in the ER.  It would pay better, require less hours, and thus result in a better quality of life for me and my family.  There was a part of me that didn’t want to do that, because the thing I love most about medicine is the relational aspect of it, and you lose this in the Emergency Room.

During this time, my wife and I sought direction from the Lord.  I wanted my life to be in line with His plan, and this was obviously a major life decision.  One night, while we were lounging in our jacuzzi tub, the answer came.  I was to take part of the building we had just procured for our other business, and turn it into a clinic and practice out of that.  Doing this would mean I would have to work without call coverage, and basically be on call 24/7.  It would also require that I not only work full-time for the clinic, but that I would also have to work full-time in the ER, in order to pay the bills.  In November of 2007 I started working in the ER in Dodge City, KS, after not working in any ER for almost 2 1/2 years.  In January I quit my job and by late February my clinic was open.  It has been 2 1/2 years now since the opening.  I still do not draw a salary, I still work in the ER, but my clinic is growing and we are nearing the fruition of our hard work.  Now, the point here is not to brag about how hard I work, as I am only able to do it by His grace, and there were many other reasons He had me take this path (one of which was to reveal and overcome what turned out to be a pretty severe anxiety problem.  God is efficient in His working!).  The point I am making is that I could’ve taken the path that made sense from a natural perspective.  I could’ve made more money and had more time with my family by changing to ER work exclusively.  However, the Lord had other plans, and thus I embarked on what has been the greatest journey of my life.  During this time I learned a lot about myself, learned a lot about Him, and have learned more about faith than I ever thought I would.  I will, by the way, get to Part 2 on faith, hopefully soon.  The journey has been lonely to a certain extent, because the positions I have taken on issues in the community pertaining to healthcare have been unpopular, so we have been at odds with the powers that be, and even had lies spread about us in the community.  It turned out that the right path was the harder path, small surprise given what we see from Christ’s example.

So, this brings me to my statement.  The Lord brought me to a jump-off point in my walk with Him.  He brought me to a place where I had to make a decision to follow His direction, or to choose to follow conventional wisdom and do what seemed right to me.  By His grace I chose to follow Him, in a way radically different than I had ever followed Him before.  It required continued, implicit trust in His plan and provision, and it is the best decision I ever made, apart from my decision to follow Him in the first place.  Previously I had been comfortable in my life.  I lived it as I thought best, and although there was a general sense of wanting to follow His direction, I still, to a certain extent, incorporated Him into the life I had built.  I believe God is calling us to forsake everything for His calling.  This may result in job changes, or loss of friends (even Christian friends), but we HAVE to be willing to forsake all for the sake of Him, and His eternal purposes.  Since making the jump He has used my wife and I to build a foundation of the kingdom in our community, and I sense in my spirit that major changes are in store for us, and our community, all by His grace and working.

Like Paul stated, I do not count myself has having fully achieved the fullness of this idea.  There are still parts of my life that are not given over, and I have made some major mistakes in the past 3 years, some of which I will financially pay for for the next 4-5 years, and have paid for emotionally for the past 2 years.  These mistakes were made because I didn’t, in these areas, endeavor to seek His specific direction, and instead did what seemed right to me.  He is gracious, however, and has provided for me and my family in spite of these things.

I believe that life is cyclical.  The Lord has a direction He wants us to go, and if we miss it, He will cycle us back to give us a chance again, and again, and again!  He is so patient!  I encourage all of us to have our spiritual ears attuned to when He may be bringing us to a jumping off point, and have the courage to trust Him to take the jump.

Like I said in yesterday’s post, since attending the conference there is something stirring on the inside of me.  As stated, I haven’t fully processed all of it to know exactly where He is leading me or showing me.  What I do understand is that there is an even greater purpose than becoming like Christ.  We are certainly to grow into maturity in Christ, but as we do that, what changes?  Once we are matured in Christ, and have achieved the fulness of Him, what happens then?

I now more clearly understand that God has a purpose in the earth.  I have mentally assented this point for some time, and understood it in a limited fashion in my spirit for a shorter period of time.  Now, however, I more fully see that there is a grand plan.  On the cross Jesus secured His victory over the enemy.  The whole world legally belongs to Christ, but for whatever reason He has allowed Satan to maintain control.  I can not give chapter and verse at this point, but I believe He has done this, because he wants to work out that victory in the earth through us.  He has chosen to use us in His master plan, only we haven’t cooperated.  We’ve been too busy playing church to get busy with the work of the kingdom.  From Paul’s writing I believe he thought that the end of this age would come in his lifetime, or shortly after.  I do not think he anticipated it taking 2000 plus years, and I don’t think it needs to have taken this long.  Satan is cunning, however, and has consistently thwarted the plans of God, and we, God’s instrument on the earth, have let him.  I see through this how very patient God is.  He could’ve wrapped this thing up Himself, but he had chosen, from the foundation of the earth, to use us in His eternal purpose, to bring about the defeat of the enemy.  It is time for the church, the body of Christ, to get SERIOUS about our place in the kingdom.  It is time that we let the trappings of this life fall to the side, and focus our minds and hearts fully on Him.  2 Chronicles 16:9 says:

“For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.”

Psalm 149 says:

¹Praise the LORD!
Sing to the LORD a new song,
And His praise in the congregation of the godly ones.
²Let Israel be glad in his Maker;
Let the sons of Zion rejoice in their King.
³Let them praise His name with dancing;
Let them sing praises to Him with timbrel and lyre.
⁴For the LORD takes pleasure in His people;
He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.
⁵Let the godly ones exult in glory;
Let them sing for joy on their beds.
⁶Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
And a two-edged sword in their hand,
⁷To execute vengeance on the nations
And punishment on the peoples,
⁸To bind their kings with chains
And their nobles with fetters of iron,
⁹To execute on them the judgment written;
This is an honor for all His godly ones.
Praise the LORD!

I do not believe that the nations mentioned in this Psalm are physical nations.  Ephesians 6:10-12 makes it clear who our enemies are.  I think we need to see this more as a war, and in Ephesians 6 Paul seems to treat it as such.

I am speaking to myself in this post.  There is so much in Him that we don’t understand, and I think part of the problem is that we don’t see the big picture.  We need to understand that God has a purpose in the earth, and the ultimate purpose is to supplant the kingdom of Satan with the Kingdom of God.  The more I see the truth of His ultimate purpose, the less this world means to me, and the more willing I am to forsake all and follow Him.  It really is THAT simple, if we can just see it!

So, here’s the summary of all my thoughts for these two posts.  We need to practice a model of mutual edification in the body, as we’ve discussed before.  We have to go beyond that, however, and commit ourselves fully to His purposes, being willing to give up all we have to see that purpose accomplished.  I am not implying that I have arrived in this respect, because I have not.  However, I believe that the more we die to ourselves, and allow His purposes to reign in our lives, the more we will accomplish towards His purposes, and the closer we will be to the end of the age.  As one brother said at the end of the conference, “Let’s get this thing wrapped up!”  We can’t do it apart from Christ, but Christ has chosen NOT to do it apart from us!  The ball is in our court, I believe.

As always, I welcome comments or criticisms of my thoughts here.  I do not claim to have it all figured out, and I find definite value in what the Lord is showing others.  Thanks to Alan and Dan for their active questioning, as these two posts mentioned previously sparked some of this in my heart.

Peace to all of you

Mark

A lot has been going through my mind since attending the worship conference.  It is interesting to look back at the notes that I took, and the things that I learned, and realize that the impact of the experience goes way beyond the sum total of all I learned there.  There was a very specific impartation there, which has put my mind to thinking in a different manner.  I feel that in the next month or two I will come to some new understanding on things, compared to how I see now, and that is why I am putting a date on this post title.  I believe the impact of that will be far-reaching, and want to reserve the right to return to that at any point!

I want to give links to the first two posts regarding the conference.  For some reason the Day 2 post had a pretty high readership, but either no one, or virtually no one, read the first post, or at least as far as I can tell.  There were some thoughts in the first post that were ground-breaking for me, so I wanted to share both links again, in case anyone missed the first one.

Worship Is Death

In my last post I gave the history of my coming to Larned, KS, and what the Lord did through us after we moved here.  I left off with the Lord having brought us into fellowship with likeminded believers, each from different backgrounds and with different things to offer.  As I mentioned, there is a strong preponderance of business owners in our group, and one couple farms.  I find this interesting as I wonder if the Lord is beginning to lead His people into a “business as ministry” paradigm.  It certainly seems to be the case in Larned, anyway.

As stated, we have been meeting as a group for over a year.  In that time there have been people come and go, but the core group has remained.  The connection and bond that has grown between us is really hard to describe.  It is a deep brotherly/sisterly love, that I can say I have never experienced before, and to be honest there is a certain part of me that has to get used to that.  It really is a thing of beauty, if I haven’t said that already!

Recently we have found ourselves wondering what is next.  We have really caught a vision for the body of Christ, for the mutual caring that was exhibited in the New Testament, and that we have seen the Spirit building in us.  We have felt that there was something more out there for us, but didn’t really know what that was.  We now feel that the Lord has shown us what is coming.  I firmly believe that the Spirit is calling people into a “new thing”.  It is not actually new, as it was experienced in the early church, but it has largely been lost in the last 1900 years or so.  That new thing is an accurate expression of Christ on the earth, where His people walk together in unity in their pursuit of Him, where each person supplies physically, emotionally and spiritually to every other person, and where His people persevere with each other in spite of personal differences and hardships.  Christ alone serves as the head of this body, and all leadership from within the body is done in humility and in service to the Saints.  He is calling us to allow Him to build his body, something I think mankind has been hesitant to do, what with our propensity to need to be in control.  This body will truly be different, will truly be salt and light to a world that desperately needs it.  We don’t know how the Lord will build, but we know He is going to, and we have committed ourselves to allow Him to build.

As part of this process we felt the need to come up with a core belief statement, so to speak:  the things we found the Lord dealing with us on, and that we felt were integral truths to how He was working in our midst.  I want to share this here, as maybe it will be a help to someone else.

Core Beliefs

• God exists as an omnipotent, omniscient being, and has always existed.
• There is one God, but the person of God has 3 distinct expressions, the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit, all equal.

• Christ represents the fullness of God in bodily form (Colossians 2:9)
• God created all that is, seen and unseen.  He created Mankind in His image.
• Man lived sinless before God, until the Fall.  Because of the fall, man is born a slave to sin, and is dead in sin, dead to God.  (Romans 5:12-14, Romans 6:17, Ephesians 2:1)
• God sent His son, Jesus, to die for man, thus redeeming man back to Himself.  Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and thus further sacrifice is unnecessary.
• Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary (we do not impute any special value to the person of Mary.  She is not worthy of special honor or worship, nor do we pray to her.  Special emphasis on Mary detracts from the central importance of Christ).
• Jesus was at the same time fully God, and fully man. (Philippians 2:5-11)
• Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament Law, the written code.  The law is summed up in Christ, and we are now released from the written code.  (Romans 6:14, Romans 7:6)
• Having accepted the sacrifice of Christ for our sin, we have died with Him, and therefore we are free from sin.  We are now free to resist the power of sin, and are called on to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies (Romans 6:1-14)
• Salvation is by grace, through faith.  There is no amount of works we can do to obtain salvation, or gain further favor with God. (Ephesians 2:1-9)
• We believe that a follower of Christ will have fruit as evidence of the internal work of the Spirit.  Although in Christ we have been made perfect, in this life the inner-working of the Spirit results in a gradual transformation (sanctification), as described in 2 Corinthians 3:18.
• As Christians, our faith should be evidenced by our works, or by how we live our lives.  The works talked about in James 1 are not a basis of salvation, but more like evidence of the salvation we already have.
• Jesus is the head of his body, or church (called out ones), on the earth.(Ephesians 4:15, Colossians 1:18, Colossians 2:18-19, Romans 12:5 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-27)
• Each individual member of the body is responsible to function in his/her individual  pursuit of Christ, and the body matures as each individual expresses their graces or gifts to other members of the body.  The body grows by “that which each joint supplies”. (Ephesians 4:7-16, 1 Corinthians 12:7-27)
• Christ is the head of His church, and beyond that there is no other hierarchical authority given.  We are all priests, with Jesus as our High Priest. (1 Peter 2:5-9)
• Leadership in the body should be modeled after the example of Christ, who gave His life for His church.  There are those who function as elders in the body, who by their lives exemplify maturity in Christ.  These individuals lead by their example, and by their service to the Saints. (Hebrews 13:7,17)
• Eldership in the New Testament was always plural.  There is no example in scripture of a single individual being over a particular body (1 Peter 5:1-4, Hebrews 13:7, 17, 1 Timothy 5:17)
• Division among the body is not allowed.  The only reason to distinguish among different “churches” was based on geography.  Paul might talk about those who meet here or there, but the church was all-inclusive.  Paul stressed preserving that unity, as in the following scripture:

“1Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, 3being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”  (Ephesians 4:1-6)

Our unity should not be sacrificed because of differing beliefs on non-essential items.  Part of the beauty of the body, and part of what sets us apart from the world, is our persistent love one for another, in the midst of personal differences, hardships and trials

I welcome any comments on the above points.

I previously posted a comment to a post by Alan Knox on spiritual gifts.  I’d link to that post, but I don’t know how, and anybody that can tell me how to do that in WordPress would be a true friend.  Alan eventually turned that comment into a separate post, which can be found here .   As a follow up to my comment I wanted to begin offering further details on what the Lord has done in our lives in the last few years.  I appreciate the support of Alan Knox and Arthur Sido, both of whose thoughts I highly value, as well as my good friend Douglas Weaver, who has mentored me in Christ for the past 10 years or more.  Again, I would offer links to their respective blogs, but I don’t know how!  I’ll provide url’s below, but they are linked in the blogroll to the right.  (post-script:  Alan was kind enough to educate me on links, so I’ve changed the post accordingly)

Alan Knox – the assembling of the church

Arthur Sido – the voice of one crying out in suburbia…. and The Fo-Mo Chronicles

Douglas Weaver has two sites, Christ Life Community and his personal blog.  Christ Life Community is a community of believers in Wichita, KS, where the Lord has been doing a work similar to what I believe he is starting in my town.

OK, down to business.

My wife and I have lived in our town (Larned, KS) for almost 5 years.  We have been business owners for 3 years (started Scraps in 2007, and A Healthy Choice Clinic in 2008), each business started under the Lord’s direction.  We have felt from day one of being business owners that our businesses were the Lord’s.  This meant that the end goal of being in business wasn’t to make money (although that would be okay), but to serve as a ministry to those around us.  (With the clinic the imperative to be profitable is greater, as this will one day be our primary income.  For now I work in the Emergency Room to provide our income.)  Anyway, anyone that has owned their own business knows the difficulties involved.  The last 3 years have been filled with struggle after struggle, from fretting over finances, to dealing with opposition in the community, etc.  We felt at many times that the enemy was directly working against us.  Through all the hardships, we clung to our faith, that he had directed us in these endeavors, and determined to stand firm.  During this time two words were given to us, which helped us put things in perspective.  The first word was plowing.  The difficult work encountered in establishing ourselves and our businesses in town was like plowing hard ground that had never been worked.  We knew the businesses were His will, and we knew we were to establish them as a “beach head” of the kingdom, so to speak, but the plowing of the ground required to establish the businesses was hard, tiresome work.  The other word was a reference to Nehemiah, and how at one point in the rebuilding of the Jerusalem wall the builders had to fight with a sword in one hand and build with the other.  This was a great visual of our situation, as we really felt we were encountering strong opposition from the enemy.  At the time, I don’t know that we fully understood WHY we had been directed to do the things we did, but we KNEW that this was the direction to go, and through that time the Lord grew us in our faith tremendously.

In our first 4 years in Larned we had virtually no fellowship with other Christians.  As I shared in the “about” section, I had stopped “attending” church in 2000, and in Larned we had not found likeminded believers with which to fellowship.  We found no opportunity to fellowship with “churched” believers, either.  During this desert experience, we learned a lot about pure reliance on the Lord for our sustenance.  Although we knew the imperative to “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together”, we knew that opportunity had not been afforded us to fellowship regularly, so we continued on our path.  We did have the pleasure of occasional fellowship with friends in Wichita, but that was infrequent.  Overall my desert experience lasted about 10 years.  It is amazing that it took that long to rewire my thinking on church, relationships, faith, etc.  At the beginning I even questioned the very existence of God.  During that time I developed a hunger for the body, for communion with other believers, although I didn’t have much overall understanding of the issue.

The beginning of the end (of this season, anyway) came about a year ago, when we were invited to a “bible study” with some other couples in town.  Interestingly, the other members of the group are either business owners, farmers, or one sister works for one of the couples in the group.  The common thread was that all of these people had begun to be dissatisfied with church as they knew it.  Some didn’t attend at all, and hadn’t for some time.  Some still attended sporadically and I believe some still attended regularly.  The core members of the group had known each other for many, many years.  Over the next year the Lord knit us together, into a body.  I will go into more detail in my next post, but the love and care that has developed between us is amazing.  It is difficult to describe, really, but can best be described as supernatural.

I hope this post isn’t too long.  Bear with me if it is!  again I’ll post more in my next post.  for now work calls!