A Single Man in Possession of a Good Fortune...

"“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Thus begins the famous work Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It would seem through the scope of the story that the situation is just a tad bit backwards that every single woman is in want of a husband of a good fortune, but that is the irony, isn't it?

Dissecting Jane Austen's works is not my strong suit, so I will not go deeper into that analysis, but isn't it crazy how many Christians today fit into this mold? It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged that every Christian young male and every Christian young female ought to get married. And it seems fitting to tackle this subject after Valentine's Day.. 

Now I really really want to get married myself. I want to have a wonderful wife one day with whom I can serve the Lord. We should have somewhere between 1 and 100 little children running around our house (no, I would not really expect it possible to get a hundred children, the number is just supposed to show that I have no preference for the number as long as it is greater than 0).

But in today's Christian culture, it would seem that we think it is necessary for us to be married to serve the Lord (and if I'm real with you, the pressure seems much greater on the lady than on the gentleman and that's also just wrong). That however is just sad. The only thing necessary to serve the Lord is willingness.

Of course, no one is explicitly saying that we have to get married to serve the Lord; all would know such a claim to be ridiculous. But the way we have set up our culture is implying it to be true.

Perhaps our Christian culture has forgotten the entirety of Paul's admonition in I Corinthians 7. Here Paul develops a very key theme - both marriage and non-marriage can be honoring to God. Paul himself is partial to non-marriage, and it's easy to see how this fails to effect his ability to serve the church.

As I aforementioned, I am partial to the concept of marriage. I love families, not gonna lie. And that shouldn't have to effect my ability to serve either. Noah didn't have difficulty serving the Lord because of his wife. 

Paul however does highlight some challenges, such as having to put a high priority in your life upon your family, and then having difficulty ensuring that high priority doesn't just become too high.

But the main takeaway is that marriage and non-marriage can both please God. So keep that in mind, y'all, and don't coerce young ladies and gentlemen to get married. It's not for everyone. (I do still hope it's for me though.)



The following was the obligatory relationship post. It was about time that it was written. It started because Ryan had no idea of what to write about, and found himself writing the beginning words to Jane Austen's novel. Then suddenly an idea! 

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God, but...

Many are familiar with the text we have for today. It is the time in which Peter confesses that Jesus if the Christ.

I have decided to look at Matthew 16 because that's where the events of the story became sensitive to my life (because Matthew is the book I'm reading through for my Spiritual Formations class). The events unfolded more specifically in verses 13-18, 

"When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

It is hard not to admit that Peter has made an excellent proclamation here. Obviously, Peter is correct when he asserts that Jesus is the Son of God. It is clear that Peter isn't just saying this, but actively believes it, as Jesus validates what Peter has said by explaining that it was revealed to him by God.

So we must understand as we follow this passage onward that Peter truly holds to the correct belief that Jesus is indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Thus, it seems odd that immediately after these events, Matthew tells us (as does Mark), that Peter rebukes Jesus for explaining that He must die for salvation to occur before all men. In verses 21-23,

"From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."

It seems that while Peter knows who Jesus is, he hasn't quite acknowledged the importance of that fact. While Peter knows that Jesus has ultimate authority on earth, he somehow still thinks he knows enough to be able to rebuke the Son of the living God.

I wouldn't be too quick to judge here; after all, God had revealed to Peter who Jesus is. I also wouldn't be too quick to judge Peter here because I think I struggle with much of the same tendency. I know who Christ is, but I don't seem to acknowledge the importance of the fact.

 I may not necessarily rebuke the Lord for his actions, but I do spend far too much time looking for my own support rather the Lord's in troublesome situations. I do spend far too much time "savoring the things that be of men," rather than those that are of God.

I wonder how many Christians go around, knowing God and yet not living as though that should have any effect on their life. As if they were self-sufficient without God in their lives to begin with. But that's absurd.

Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. We should probably trust His power and authority in our life.

Oh How the Mighty have Fallen!

Last week, we examined the life of Job and how he had a proper perspective on the suffering that had been placed in his life. By understanding that he is not entitled to the blessings that God has given Him, we see clearly why Job was called, "a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil."

But Job's excellent perspective doesn't last forever. After his wonderful friends (read in a sarcastic tone) tell him that he is being punished for his iniquity before God, Job's response indicates a troublesome perspective on what God should be doing in his life.

It starts innocently enough. Job is going through so much struggle in his life that he begins to wish that he had never been born in the first place. Everything has been taken away from him, and his health is now deteriorating. He feels miserable, and as everyone knows, men take sickness in wimpier ways than do women, so that's probably happening here too.

It is not in vain that he states in Job 3:3-5,

"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it."

But of course, his suffering will soon leave him in a little bit more interesting position. Let's just stop with me boringly narrating and get to the point. In Job 7, Job replies to his friends by saying that the Lord brings suffering both to the just and the unjust (the most common theme taken from the book of Job), but then he goes on to say that if God were indeed correcting his actions, he'd rather be left in sin, than go through this discomfort.

But let's not take my word for it. Let's look to Job's exact words in Job 7:17-21,

 "What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment? How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle? I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself? And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be."

Oh, Lord, you just really shouldn't care about lowly man to convict him of his sin. To convict him of his sin is to put a burden upon that man, and why should you care to make him better?

But it quickly seems to deteriorate to a much worse position. In his next reply, Job mentions how God has sovereignty over all events of man. At which point, he begins to say, it doesn't matter how he interacts with the Lord, as the Lord will do what He will regardless.

Indeed, according to Job here, even prayer is not helpful in any of these situations. Listen in on Job 9:16, 

"If I had called, and he had answered me; yet would I not believe that he had hearkened unto my voice."

Ouchey-ouch. That's really all there is to say, And Job 10:2-3 makes an even more compelling case against God,

 "I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me. Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?"

But my goal today was not exclusively to write a hit piece on Job, condemning him to the pits of hell. Job would later repent of much wrongdoing done in the book of Job, and I was reading through the book to see what that wrongdoing specifically looked like over these last few days. This is how far I have gotten.

But to share this particular endeavor of Job's frailties is still more than an intellectual exercise. I believe it can be instructive to us to see how this mighty man - this man who was "perfect and upright, one that feareth God and escheweth evil" - could fall to such a perspective.

No matter who we are, we must be cautious and know that we are not above being tempted and brought down. We must not give into a prideful feeling of how solid our relationship with the Lord is. As soon as we do, we might find ourselves like Job falling into sin.

But we can learn even more specific lessons from the life of Job as presented here. To begin with, one should never desire comfort over conviction of sin. Yes, the Lord's correction can be painful. The Bible does not say for naught (Twice!) that the Lord "Chastens" whom He loves.

It won't be a pleasant experience, but it will be a worthwhile experience that presents true opportunities to rest greater in a relationship with the Lord. It is as the Bible says,

"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 

Second, we must not ever use the sovereignty of God as an excuse for sin in our lives. We don't need to witness to those around us because God is in control and will make them come to know Him as He directs anyway. The Lord's sovereignty is not an excuse for our laziness. He still wants us to support and serve Him.

But if we get too wrapped up in us, we might find ourselves falling into a sinful. We might, like Job, fall into disarray. Let's not be mighty men (and women) of faith who fall. But let's actually be mighty men (and women) of faith. That part sounds pretty snazzy.

Worship is God

As Christians, we often focus a lot of our time on worshipping God and ensuring that we do not make idols in our life.

Let's just be honest though, when we use that term, we are using it more metaphorically than literally. We aren't as likely to find ourselves building stone images and bowing down to them in our day as we are to put things in our life ahead of Christ.

Now we all automatically know these things. There are things that while innocuous of themselves can be sinful if we put them too high in our lives. In fact, anything despite how innocuous it is in and of itself becomes sinful and becomes idolatrous when we treat it as a higher priority than we do Christ.

While we typically think of cultural things like television, music, and books as being things that we have to watch to keep within their proper sphere to avoid idolatry. We tend to forget that all things are actually like this.

Have you ever stopped to consider whether the way you worship God had become more important to you than actually worshipping God? Have you ever found yourself in a position where you find your ministry within a church to be an end within itself, and not a means to please God?

If you said, yes, then I'm sorry, my friend, but you're an idolater. Yes, you are in love with the process that you use to worship God. Yes, you are in love with the ministry that you have been placed in. Yes, you are in love with the things of God. Yes, there is nothing wrong with that.

But there is something wrong with displacing your love for God with this love. Burk Parsons explains in Assured by God, 

"Some Christians have studied the Word of God for many years. They know their Bible backward and forward, and they know every doctrinal "i" that should be dotted, and every systematic 't' that should be crossed. The love the theology of the word of God, but their love for God Himself has been displaced... Whether it is our love of spending time studying things about God or whether it is our love of spending time serving God, such things can too easily replace our love for God Himself who is our great reward and inheritance... We must be consumed with the understanding that all of our service o God and all of our understanding about God should lead us to love God more and more."

 When I read these words two weeks ago, the Holy Spirit much convicted me that this was what I was doing in my Christian life. I had begun to enjoy the study of the Bible, not because it corrected me, or brought me closer to God, but rather because it gave me an intellectual footstool to find a greater knowledge about God. But all that knowledge was on a more abstract and less personal basis.

But of course that doesn't mean I should stop studying the Bible! That would be a horrendous move on my part. What it does mean is I need to pray and work on my mindset during such activity to ensure I have dedicated it to the Lord and not my intellectual benefit.

Perhaps the same should be done in churches across America, where I believe ministry, church attendance, and probably yes, even intellectual knowledge about God has displaced the love that Christians feel for God Himself.

Modes of worship are not God, but we certainly can't treat them so at times. When we do, no matter how beneficial and amazing the act is in and of itself, it has become our idolatry. We just can't have that.

The Here and Now

Last week, I mentioned that Wednesday 7-post series would be no more. I expressed a desire that it would be the first and only casualty of my soon to be less flexible (though not necessarily busier) schedule upcoming my college career. What I said and what I meant were not entirely the same principle.

You see, I had more information about what this particular change meant, and despite all my communication experience, I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting that the audience may not (in this case definitely did not) know the information you do.

This particular change isn't just an end of Wednesday series posts, but a end of Wednesday posts altogether. This post (which will involve substance more than planning shortly) will be the final Wednesday blog post for a long while.

But that is only the half of it. I created Wednesday posts to be a more intellectual, abstract type of Christian teaching in contrast to the simpler, practical-based devotional posts that herald the Friday chain. I am not willing to eliminate these types of discussions.

So there has been a change to Monday posts as well. Instead of heralding a new political post every Monday, I will alternate between politics and Christian ethics.

Ethics is defined by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, as,

"The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior."

What I specifically mean by ethics is systematizing, defending, and recommending correct behaviour for Christians here and now in this world. This can include stewardship (as we will briefly discuss today), the purpose of man, whether it is always wrong to lie (I kinda snuck this into a couple of devotional posts. Shhhh...), and how elements of Old Testament law apply to us today.

I hope you will stick with me in the coming weeks as we evaluate these areas of ethics. Of course, some may question with as much as I had been presenting that our focus needs to be on eternity, what exactly are we to be responsible for in this world? (This is my smooth transition into that stewardship discussion I promised you.)

Well, for starters, that indicates that we as Christians have a responsibility and are stewards of lost souls and trying to prepare them for eternity and advance the cause of Christ in eternity.

But that's not the end of the story. Indeed we as Christians are not just called to work with problems of eternity. That is to be our focus, but we are not to turn a blind eye to the problems that exist in our world today.

James 1:27 specifically explains,

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

We are called to care for and visit the sick, poor, and destitute. We have a responsibility to provide for the material and temporal needs of others.

But that of course is not the end of our stewardship obligations. We also must work strongly to care for the environment that has been placed under our care (this doesn't mean we need to stop using the environment altogether).

And of course, I believe that we as Christians have an obligation to be good citizens of our nation, and watch our government to ensure that our freedoms (especially the freedom of religion) are not threatened by the ever-growing governmental bureaucracy.

Let us try our best not to be too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good. After all, we are in this world with specific areas of stewardship available to us. Let us remember well the parable of the talents. 

In this oft-cited parable, we learn of a master who gives talents to his three servants, fully expecting that when he returns to them, they will have increased his possessions. All three knew he was returning and they all were focused upon that fact.

Two of them of course used this knowledge to be good stewards of that which had been presented to them. One decided he would just make sure that he didn't lose his talent. Simply not losing a talent was not enough for this master. He punished the servant greatly for his irresponsibility.

Similarly in our days, we all know that Jesus is returning, but that knowledge and that focus isn't enough to make sure we make the right decisions. We have been given things we need to be stewards of in the current world, and we need not be so concerned with Jesus' return that we don't adequately prepare for it.

That is why we must worry about the stewardship responsibilities that God has placed upon us in the here and now.

Trials and Persecution 4: Proper Focus

Last Thursday night, I heard an elementary-age child preach a short sermon to our church's congregation. If you can believe it, he actually presented a truth that I think many Christians desperately need to hear. As he preached on faith, he proclaimed simply,

"Does faith have a reward? Yes you can please God." 

It is not everyday that we consider the very act of pleasing God a reward in and of itself. Typically we think of pleasing the Lord as a means to an end. We consider it a prerequisite for receiving blessings in this life and the next.

Now indeed there is nothing wrong with desiring blessings in your lives, but why is that the sole reason we serve God? Shouldn't pleasing the Lord truly be a reward unto itself?

After all, when we make our friends or spouses laugh, we accept that smile as a reward for our efforts. We take joy in pleasing those that we care about and that are important to us. Indeed we will go to great lengths to ensure that we please those close to us, not for some ulterior motive, but just for the purpose of seeing them happy.

But who in our lives should we care about the most or be the closest to, but the Lord? We all know that the Lord has made many wonderful provisions for us whether in suffering or not. He with no obligation to whatsoever, has gone out of his way to make our lives worthwhile while we are basically nothing in comparison to him.

I John 4:10 states simply,

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

God loving us is not a trivial matter. It's not what one would expect in such a situation. It's not the norm for someone so magnificent to condescend to love someone so below his station.

At risk of belittling this love, look at class divisions today. It can be hard for a pastor to respect a prostitute, but it is usually not difficult for a prostitute to respect a pastor. Amplify that by infinity, and you have Jesus and us.

It should be very easy for us to love the Lord for what he has done for us. In so doing, we would have no other purpose than to sit and think about living entirely for him. As the banner I've mentioned previously states,

"He died for me. The least I can do is live for Him." 

If we truly understand these principles when we are in a trial in our lives, the trial begins to be inconsequential. It becomes rather light in comparison to the goal that is dominating our lives to serve and please the Lord, no matter the cost.

And that should be our focus, whether we're in a trial or not.

Continue to Trials and Persecution 5: Surviving Suffering