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I came across the following post at The Gospel Coalition.  I have taken exerpts that I feel give the thrust of the argument, but the whole post is great.

See  Strength Depending on Weakness – The Gospel Coalition Blog.

When we as a human race fell into sin, our affections changed, and we who once had the ability not to sin became a people who could not help but sin and even found pleasure in sin, albeit fleeting pleasure. Sin ravaged our hearts and minds, and, like Tolkien’s Gollum, we began to wallow in the mire of sin-dependent idolatry all the while maintaining our autonomy from God and our supreme, though perceived control over any and all our precious little idols, each of which possessed an uncanny resemblance to ourselves.

When trials and temptations come (and if we’re not spiritually calloused or overly cynical, we’ll notice their hourly arrival) we are faced with the decision as to whether we will depend on self or depend on God–whether we’ll depend on our own means of sustenance and satisfaction that leads to daily death independent of God or whether we’ll depend on God’s means of sustenance and ever-present satisfaction that leads to daily life abundant that is dependent on God….

Meanwhile, our Enemy is content simply to draw our affections to anything but the one true God, and thus to make us less dependent on God and increasingly dependent on ourselves and on our hearts’ precious idols, which will come alive and do our bidding.

While we do indeed become stronger and more mature as a result of life’s daily trials, ultimately, as the adopted children of God our Father, the trials he sovereignly sends our way are not intended to make us stronger but to make us weaker–less dependent on our own strength and more dependent on God and the power of his strength in which we can delightfully and eternally boast as does our brother Paul:

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then,I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor. 12:8–10).

Whatever doesn’t kill us, by God’s grace, makes us weaker in our self-dependence and more dependent on the strength of God. And this is all through the One who endured the trial of the Cross so that we might regain life dependent. By His grace we remain utterly dependent as we live justified from faith to faith at the foot of the Cross taking up our own crosses daily and dependently. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith in God, not faith in self.

In my own life this principle has been very important, and I’ll be sharing more about this later this week.  I hope you all enjoy this post as much as I did.

OK, one last post for the day.  My most prolific day ever!

I have been reading in Ephesians, lately, and today ventured into Philippians.  The following verses caught my attention:

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

27Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

Philippians 1:27

I wanted to revisit the Myth of a Christian Nation, as something I read recently correlates with something we talked about last  night at our fellowship gathering.  It also goes along the lines of a post by Arthur Sido at “the voice of one crying out in suburbia…”  First a quote from the book, still chapter 1.

“The sword is part of our common curse, yet God uses it to keep law and order in the world.  For this reason, followers of Jesus are to be obedient, as far as possible, to whatever government they find in power over them.”

He then goes on to quote Romans 13:1,3-4, and then gives a quote from John Howard Yoder:

“God is not said to create or…ordain the powers that be, but only to order them, to put them in order, sovereignly to tell them where they belong, what is their place….Likewise God does not take the responsibility for the existence of the rebellious ‘powers that be’ or for their shape or identity; they already are.  What the text says is that God orders them, brings them in line, providentially and permissively lines them up with divine purpose”.  (From John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, pg. 201-202).

Now, the purpose of this post is not to discuss the merits of the John Howard Yoder’s theology, as I really don’t know much about him.  The question is in regards to our interactions with our government, and how active we should be in our government.

During our discussion last night we got onto a discussion about politics, as it relates to the death penalty.  Now, from a purely worldly perspective I am not opposed to the death penalty.  I think if the world decides they want to institute that form of punishment I don’t think it is morally or ethically wrong.  My point was that, as a Christian, I don’t feel that I can involve myself in the politics of that, because my walk with God in His kingdom takes me above those arguments, and puts me in a position where I can not condemn another person to death, nor necessarily condone it.  I see an application here for the “let the dead bury their own dead” principle.  I would rather let the world govern themselves, without my input, as my input will have little effect in reality anyway, without staging a huge political battle.  I am just not interested in trying to politically win others over with my beliefs.  The question was then asked whether I was content to live by the rules made by others, with no say-so in the rules, and my response was “yes”.

Now, this is quite a departure for me.  In my former life I was as conservative as they come.  Although I didn’t watch a lot of news at that time, if i did it was Fox, and I loved the likes of Shawn Hannity, and other conservative voices.  To call myself an activist would have been an overstatement, but I was a “conservative of conservatives”.  Now, although my own personal beliefs line up more with the Republican party than the Democratic, and I still follow national politics with interest, I no longer have the desire to involve myself in these things.  Do I vote?  Yes.  Although for a time I quit.  I just don’t put much importance in worldly issues, as I feel that the Spirit has drawn me away from that, and towards Christ.

Having said all this, I am curious how others feel about this topic?  I can’t quote chapter and verse as to why I believe this way, and its really only been in the last week or so that I have felt this way.  So, I can not claim to have truth on this topic.  As such, again, I am interested in what everyone else thinks.

I am starting a new post-series today.  The fellowship that my wife and I gather with meets on Wednesday nights, and there were some great topics of conversation, which I wanted to share here.  We usually have good discussion, so I imagine there will be things to share each week.  I also want to take the opportunity to give my “best of” recommendations.

First to the “best of”.  I read the following posts in the past week, and thought they were excellent.

Douglas at The Lord’s Plowman had two posts that I thought were excellent.

Spiritually Homeless

Paneled Houses

Keith Giles at Subversive1 had a post “10 Things I’ll Do Different…”

Arthur Sido at The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia… had a post “The church on the margins”

Anthony Verderame at The Normal Christian wrote a post “We are alive!!! And Free???”

Dan Allen at The Ekklesia in Southern Maine wrote “Step by Step”

Here’s my song recommendation for the week, again from Hillsong United, this time from their newest album “The I Heart Revolution”.  The song is entitled “Take All of Me”

OK, so last night we started out reading Romans 8:1-4, and then went to Exodus 20, to actually read the 10 commandments.  The question posed was “why did God give the law?

Here are the answers I gave:

1.  Primarily to show man his true depravity, and his need for God’s grace.  Romans 7:13 supports this view.

2.  Secondarily to provide some sort of external framework to help show mankind in general what is right and wrong, so as to provide some aspect of behavior control for those that have yet to find God’s grace.

This discussion lead to a conversation on whether God INTENDED man to fail to meet his requirements (or knew beforehand that he would fail).  The belief expressed was that God foreknew, from the foundation of the world, that things would transpire just as they did, i.e., that God would create man, man would fall, God would give the law, man would fail to keep the law, and Christ would come as the Messiah to provide redemption for mankind.

3.  We discussed the Sabbath, and what it means for us today.  We all agreed that the concept of physical rest is important, that we need not work ourselves interminably, and not allow time for adequate rest.  I feel that the Sabbath goes deeper than this, however, to more of a spiritual rest.  My wife Tayleene shared how the Lord has helped her find rest in running her business.  In the past she would always be coming up with different things to do to increase business, drive in new customers, provide greater customer satisfaction, etc.  She would work herself to the bone, always with something new she could do to make things better.  The Lord taught her how to find her rest and trust in Him, with the knowledge that, even if she doesn’t do all those things, He will still prosper her business.

Hebrews 3 and 4 is pertinent here.

Hebrews 3:7-11 discusses the failure of the children of Israel to trust in God, to provide them victory over their enemies in Canaan, and thus their failure to find His rest.  Joshua, 40 years later, finally did lead the Israelites into Canaan, and thus into a type of “rest”.  Hebrews 4:1-11 then discusses this rest further, stating that a rest remains for the people of God, and that disobedience, same as before, will keep us out of that rest.  Lack of faith in God is the root of disobedience.  We disobey because we fail to trust.  That, to me, is what the Sabbath encompasses, us finding our rest, “ceasing from our labors”, in Christ.

Well, I better stop now.  I don’t want to get too verbose.

I just started reading “Myth of a  Christian Nation” by Gregory Boyd.  I have heard good things about it, and wanted to quickly share a quote that goes along with what has been said elsewhere in my part of the blogosphere (i.e., blogs in my blogroll).  In chapter 1, he discusses the “power over” kingdom, by saying:

“Wherever a person or group exercises power over others – or tries to – there is a version of the kingdom of the world.  While it comes in many forms, the kingdom of the world is in essence a “power over” kingdom.”  He later says “Laws, enforced by the sword, control behavior but cannot change hearts”.

How true is this?  There has been a lot of talk about leadership, and how the church should be, compared to how we see it today.  I think this book will give a very clear picture that the traditional church model, with its pastors and elder groups, is a “power over” kingdom, and thus not of the kingdom of God.  As discussed elsewhere, the function of an elder in the body is a life of service, or “power under”, a term he may use later, but I can’t swear to it.  I haven’t gotten that far into it.  I think it will be an interesting read.

Love seems to be a common theme in my life lately.  I have read multiple blog posts regarding the love of each member of the body for the other.  Anthony at The Normal Christian discussed this (in the post “Smell Ya Later”).  Norma at My Church Journey has chronicled how the Lord lead her into a very “unconventional” fellowship, with brothers and sisters on the street.

Now, I would like to think that my heart overflows with love for all my brothers and sisters.  Truth is, my heart yearns for true communion of the body, as described in the NT, and yearns for God’s people to emulate the humility and love of Christ.  The other truth is that, when the rubber meets the road, I don’t very closely emulate the love and humility of Christ.  I am working in the ER as I write this, and the ER has been a good “proving ground” for me, meaning the Lord has used my time in the ER in the last 2 plus years to grow me in many ways.  Lately he has used it, among other things, to enlarge my heart towards those that I don’t traditionally have a lot of love or patience for.   I find that my love lacks when the person I am dealing with is a drug seeker, or if I am tired, or if I am impatient, or for whatever reason.  I have really been challenged lately to let the love of Christ come forth through me.  it is a decision after all.  I get to WALK (a specific action, initiated by me) in love, towards ALL PEOPLE!!!  My tendency sometimes is to want to walk in love towards believers, and maybe  not so much towards the really, really lost among us.  There obviously is no example of this in scripture, and many instructions against this.  I also have the tendency to think more highly of myself than I ought, forgetting Ephesians 2, which reminds us that we were all at one time dead in our sins, and “there but by the grace of God go I”.

So, I am learning to love.  For real.  Learning to come outside of myself, outside of my comfort zone, and allow Christ to more fully live through me, as that is what He desires to do in the first place.  “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in  me.  And the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”

Father, continue to enlarge my heart.  Give me your love, your compassion and your patience.

Thanks for bearing with my rambling!

OK, Alan Knox gave the low-down on links.  I’ve got that down.

This seems silly to be worried about, but I’m a perfectionist so this bothers me:  how do you get your own picture to show up when you comment on your own blog, or on someone else’s blog?  I did something with Gravatar, and at one time thought my picture was showing up, but now its not.  Any ideas?

I just finished reading the post “Everyone” at The Ekklesia in Southern Maine, which I mentioned in my previous post.  After reading the post, and the subsequent comments, something really stood out to me, that I’ve come across briefly once before.  I think the tendency is to pattern ourselves after the NT church, and certainly this is better than the alternative.  I loved the comment by Dan, the post author:  “New testament church was doing it right as far as they emulated Christ’s example.”  I think the example of the NT church is a good place to start, but our focus has to be on Christ, and allowing Him to build His body.  Certainly even with the understanding we can gleam from the NT on how believers gathered, there are still a lot of “how’s” to be answered, and we only find those answers by seeking after Christ.  The second point I wanted to make, following after the first, is that there is no cookie cutter way to “do church” or “be church”.  I don’t think you can write a book with the 5 steps to creating ‘organic community’.  I think, as stated, that there are guidelines, but it may not always look exactly the same in each location, because each body has different personalities, gifts, etc.  I will be adding several new blogs to my blogroll, based on recent readings.  I’ll link to them now.

The Normal Christian – by Anthony Verderame.

My Church Journey – by Norma J Hill

The Ekklesia in Southern Maine – Dan Allen

The longer I live the more I see the beauty of the design of the Body of Christ.

I just finished reading a post by Norma Hill, at Pen and Paper Mama.  She wrote a post entitled “whole-body participation in our meetings“, that links to another post entitled “Everyone” at The Ekklesia in Southern Maine.  The discussion is concerning other ways, besides in our sit-down meetings, that the body functions AS the church, and doesn’t just GO to church.  The thing that struck me, about this post and this blog in general, is the great lengths Norma has gone to find fellowship and community.  In the grand scheme of things this probably isn’t really “great lengths”, but it seems so from my perspective, and its more than what many Christians, myself included, would’ve thought to do to find community.  Basically, Norma has found or created fellowship among “street level” people in her home town, and her fellowship is with them.  Read this post, for a description of what a typical meeting is like, and see if you are as intrigued as I am.  As I commented on her blog, the ultimate expression of the body would be for the wealthier among us to begin providing a hand-up for these individuals that have fallen on hard times.  I believe the time is coming when these types of things will happen, as we become unfettered by the financial drags of salaries and buildings.  Thank you, Norma, for a great post, and a wonderful heart.