My Refuge and Protector

Been rocked by some events the past couple weeks. My safety is in Christ. He is always with me.

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?...
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me, yet I will be confident….
For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock….
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living!
Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD .
(Psalm 27:1,3,5,8,13-14)

I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
(Psalm 18:1-2)

Conversational Apologetics

On Monday I searched the Sovereign Grace Ministries audio library for the word “apologetics” and found this excellent message called Conversational Apologetics by Michael Ramsden (connected with Ravi Zacharias) given at Covenant Life Church in MD. I’ve heard it before, but don’t know how long ago it’s been. It’s excellent (the British accent is always a plus!), and I took notes. Most of this is direct transcription. Listen to the 2 part audio here.  

“They say I’ve got to learn, but there’s no one here to teach me. If they don’t understand, then how can they reach me? I guess they can’t. I guess they won’t. I guess they front, that’s how I know my life is out of luck.”

-British rap artist

1 Peter 3:15-16:

“but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience”

The setting for the command to give an apologetic is, “how are you living your life?” Live your life as you should do. And the assumption is this, because your life is being lived a way which is different, people will ask you questions. So if people aren’t asking you questions, you have to ask yourself the question “how am I living my life?” In 2 Cor 3 it says we are living letters known and read by everybody. How does your life read? What does it say? Is it being lived in the way it should be?

“But in your heart set apart Christ as Lord.” The Greek word “heart” refers to the seat of your intellectual and emotional life. And it’s saying, “you’re about to enter into a spiritual battle. Giving an apologetic, giving an answer to those who don’t know why you believe what you believe, that’s entering into a spiritual battle. And before you do that, you’re told to make sure that Christ’s lordship is settled in your life. And the word “heart” is the seat over your emotional and your intellectual life. Over your thoughts and over your feelings. Over everything that you are, He is to be Lord. In James it talks about the double minded mind. It says the “double minded man is unstable in all that he does. It says he’s like a wave blown and tossed about by the winds. Whichever way the wind is blowing he gets carried with it. When the wind of opinion changes, he goes the other way. He’s unstable in everything he’s done. Even in prayer he’s ineffective. To be double minded doesn’t mean to be two faced. It’s not like pretending to be one thing to someone and pretending to be another thing to someone else. It means to be caught in two opinions. It means you don’t know what the truth is, which is why you’re always being carried about by whatever strange new teaching comes along. If you are to engage in this battle, you have to know what we believe, what is the truth, so that then you may be rooted in Christ. And then ready for the spiritual battle.

“And always be prepared” - the word “prepared” means in this text to get physically fit. In other words, Peter is giving us a command here, through the Holy Spirit, which he knows is going to be hard work. Getting fit is much harder (than getting a degree and then forgetting what you learned in college), because once you get fit you have to stay fit….this is not easy. If you came here tonight for just a quick fix in apologetics, then you’re going to be disappointed.

“Always be ready to give an answer”- “answer” and “defense” are not the best words. Giving an apologetic is not simply giving answers to other people’s questions. It’s also about asking questions of other people’s answers or even asking questions of the questions themselves [I like doing this! I find it much easier to slow things down to understand one another and make us think than to plough ahead with assumptions and miscommunications that could have been avoided by asking questions].

Things that asking questions does:

1 - Exposes the assumptions that exist within our culture. Matt 22

Jesus asks questions because it forces people to think. Giving the right answer to the wrong question is always wrong.
2  - Exposes faulty logic. Mark 12:18
3 – Defines words
4 – Exposes motives. People have reasons for believing what they believe. They have motives for them.
5 – Exposes contradictions. When someone tells you there is no such thing at truth, they are asking you not to believe them. So don’t. The culture we live in is so confused, that sometimes we have to ask questions just to bring clarity.
“How” is not “why”. If someone asks you why you are a Christian, don’t answer with how you became one. “Why” is not asking for a process; it’s asking for a reason.

Apologetics is not a philosophy driven discipline. It’s a Scriptural driven discipline. It’s driven by Scripture because it’s about Christ. So it informs everything we say and the direction in which everything flows. Apologetics and evangelism go hand in hand.

“but do this with gentleness and respect and keeping a clear conscience” – why do we give an apologetic? Because we love God and also because we love people. We treat them with gentleness. People are not an argument to be won. “Keeping a clear conscience,” in other words you don’t lie. When you don’t know, you say “I don’t know.”

Faith – putting your weight and trust in something because it is true. So how does faith grow? Well, the more sure you are as to God’s reality, that he is there, and the more convinced you are as to his truth (in other words his integrity, that you can trust him) the stronger your faith. Faith is the response to God’ s truth and reality.

Faith is not a mental psychological condition where you psych yourself up into believing something that isn’t there, or convince yourself that you should trust God even though you think that you shouldn’t. Real faith is knowing who God is and trusting truth and his reality. That’s ultimately what it’s about.

God loves people. When we are talking with someone and raising this question, there are two things that we are trying to do. One, we are trying to assure them as to God’s moral character: he is true, he is just, he is fair. No one brings a moral complaint against God on the day of judgment.  And two, God is doing things that we don’t even know about.  

actual, real, lasting substance

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. - 1 Cor. 15:58

Bryan Chapell (Holiness by Grace):
This side of heaven we will not see how most of our small acts of kindness, or even our great acts of courage that are unnoticed or misunderstood, fit into God’s eternal plan. But we walk and act in... the faith that such actions are eternal, because God promises this is so.…
Knowing the eternal implications of our actions enables us more and more to live for heaven’s effects rather than for earth’s approval.
A gentle touch offered to a crying child on the street, an angry word withheld, the willingness to lose a business deal for integrity’s sake, uncomplaining participation in the dreary routine of dishes and diapers, a smile offered to a harried clerk who has rung up the wrong bill – each unnoticed act of righteousness remains eternal and, as a result, is worthy of our efforts.
The Christian walks through the world with a hidden smile, knowing that by God’s grace each act of love and sacrifice is eternal though the world cannot see it. As we see our world through the eyes of Scripture we know that each day and every moment is lived for eternity and, thus, that no righteous act is fruitless and no sacrifice is vain. 

So good! There is actual, real, lasting substance behind that "hidden smile" experience of depending on the Lord & walking in the good works he has prepared for each day, even in the dreary unnoticed ones. This motivates me to keep looking up to Christ and pressing on with both contentment and anticipation. Sweetness here.

Thank you, dear Father, for how you continue to fill out more of the picture of what is meant by the here and now. Thank you for showing me more of the answer to why you delay our entrance into heaven, that there is actual purpose for life on earth now - the greatest of which is to get started on our quest of knowing and loving you even before we get to do so for eternity in heaven. Eternity starts now. This time does count. Love you, Lord. You are good. 
 

Hospitality to the Stranger

“Fellowship is having your church friends over, and that’s great, but hospitality is inviting the stranger in….Hospitality means meeting the stranger at the gate.”

“It does not matter that there’s cat hair on the couch,” [Rosaria Champagne Butterfield] says in the interview. “It does not matter that all you can serve right now is macaroni and cheese or cereal. It absolutely does not matter.” Why not? Because these small details fade to insignificance compared to the tremendous potential of hospitality on mission.

Quotes from a Desiring God Authors On The Line Audio Interview (here).

Although this has been a bit tough to practically facilitate, because I am not even at my own home often, it’s exciting for me to see how God has placed me right where I am at this precise time and with the exact neighbors I have. I pray for God to grace me to hold out friendship of acceptance, not necessarily approval, that witnesses to them of how God continually initiates with and draws me to the goodness of repentance and relationship with him through his Son. Grace me, O Lord, to be generously unselfish with interruptions to my schedule so that I may love others more than myself.

Shame & Gratefulness

I recognized discouragement and a sense of shame in myself today in a more poignant way than I have in a while. These CCEF articles helped to take that shame and turn it into a tool to push me nearer to Christ instead of following an inclination to turn inward and hide in a dark hole in myself. And now I’m freshly grateful for how nothing can separate me from the love of Christ and that he actually uses ugly things like shame, whether shallow or deep, to draw me nearer to knowing him. Afterall, no one experienced shame to the degree he did.

These articles, by Ed Welsh and based on his book Shame Interrupted, both met me and moved me to desire to grow in showing more compassion to others who may feel shame. I can identify with both sides, feeling shame and shaming others through my selfish inconsideration. Thankful for a merciful God.

 

"The King of the universe enters into his kingdom with signs that he is both the King and the outcast. Shamed people would recognize him, even at his birth, as one of their own....The interruption of shame comes at an historical moment when Jesus took both guilt and shame to the cross and disarmed shame of its power." 

"He knows your name and will also give you his."

"For them, to be truly known is synonymous with rejection...Know anyone who considers their very existence an interruption to the lives of others? Know someone who punctuates most of their sentences with “I’m sorry.”? They know they need help but to ask anything of another is to be an infuriating interruption in someone’s life."

 

"Jesus' simple actions said,

'You are not an interruption.'

'I'm not afraid to connect with you.'

'I care about you.'

 

"I don’t want to be so eager to identify sin in others that I miss the more immediate need of compassion and love. Locating sin and speculating about poor motives really is a lot easier than being patient, kind, and compassionate. I want to give others what they need in the moment, not what is easy for me."

"I don’t want the people in my life to feel like an interruption. May God have mercy on me, because I think sometimes they do.

"If you want to know how to love the shamed more wisely, the first step is to look around for those 'sneaking up on you' just hoping to steal a touch and give it to them. Notice them. Make time for them. Invite them to give voice to their suffering. Embody and point them to the love of Christ.

Christ Interrupts Shame; Shame Interrupted: Finding Words; Shame Interrupted: He Knows My Name; How Do You Respond to People Who Feel Shame

High Purpose of Perplexing Trial - To Know God

J.I. Packer in chapter 21 of Knowing God:

What is the purpose of grace? Primarily, to restore our relationship with God. When God lays the foundation of this restored relationship, by forgiving our sins as we trust his Son, he does so in order that henceforth we and he may live in fellowship. And what he does in renewing our nature is intended to make us capable of, and actually to lead us into, the exercise of love, trust, delight, hope and obedience Godward - those acts which, from our side, make up the reality of fellowship with God, who is constantly making himself known
to us. This is what all the work of grace aims at - an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself.
 How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstances, nor yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology; but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak, is that God spends so much of his time bringing home to us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find, or to follow, the right road.
When we walk along a clear road feeling fine, and someone takes our arm to help us, as likely as not we shall impatiently shake him off; but when we are caught in rough country in the dark, with a storm getting up and our strength spent, and someone takes our arm to help us, we shall thankfully lean on him. And God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing, so that we may learn thankfully to lean on him. Therefore he takes steps to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in himself - in the classical scriptural phrase for the secret of the godly life, to "wait on the Lord."...We need God to make us realists about both ourselves and him.

Perplexities and confusions fade when put in this perspective. Through these the Lord's simple call is to "be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46)

Outside of Christ there is nothing worth knowing, and all who by faith perceive what he is like have grasped all the immensity of heavenly benefits. - John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion)

photo: Hamburg, Germany 2007 

Guidance: More About His Glory Than Our Security

While dejunking/organizing on Monday night, I listened to a couple audio chapters of Knowing God by J.I. Packer. It's a great book to re-read (or listen). I'm doing the exact same thing tonight - it's great! This is from the end of chapter 20:

Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is. 
Thus it appears that the right context for discussing guidance is one of confidence in the God who will not let us ruin our souls. Our concern, therefore, in this discussion should be more for his glory than for our security - for that is already taken care of. And our self-distrust, while keeping us humble, must not cloud the joy with which we lean on "the Lord Protector" - our faithful covenant God. - J.I. Packer