God's Normal Way of Beating Me Upside The Head

 There's the old joke about the farmer and his wife going to town with a cart hitched to a mule. After a little while, the mule quit going, so the farmer had to call out "Giddyap!" The mule started on down the road.  After a little while longer, the same thing happens. When the mule quit the third time, the farmer gets down, picks up a 2 x 4 from the back of the cart, and goes up to the mule, popping him right on the top of the head.

The wife screams "WHY DID YOU DO THAT??!!" The farmer answered: "Sometimes my mule quits paying attention to my voice, and I have to catch his attention by beating him upside the head!"

My latest upside the head beating was a simple post by my close spiritual friend Stephanie Pittock. God has given this woman MUCH to be patient about in her much-shorter-than-mine life. [At least she does not, currently, have to put up with Buffalo blizzards, right Steph?] I routinely read In Touch ministries's daily devotional, because I have long loved the Word as explained by Charles Stanley. Dr. Stanley has 30 Life Principles, based on a simple concept, which is also listed as one of the principles (principle 2): Obey God and leave all the consequences to Him.

So, what Stephanie did was to post yesterday's daily devotional on Facebook and specifically tag me. One of the blessings of faith partners is that God and the Spirit use them to tickle your ears in the right way and pay deep attention to something you otherwise might be superficially reviewing. I took His lead by her hand and went over the devotionals on Following God's Schedule and Developing Patience word by word a couple of times each (well, maybe more times than that. When I get in the zone I'm in the zone, and only God knows how long I am in there and what I am doing). I have copied the verses for those devotionals here, taken from The Message translation posted on The Bible Gateway

James 1 The Message (MSG)

 I, James, am a slave of God and the Master Jesus, writing to the twelve tribes scattered to Kingdom Come: Hello! Faith Under Pressure
 ^2-4Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

Romans 11:33-36 The Message (MSG)

 ^33-36Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It's way over our heads. We'll never figure it out.

   Is there anyone around who can explain God?
   Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?
   Anyone who has done him such a huge favor
      that God has to ask his advice?

   Everything comes from him;
   Everything happens through him;
   Everything ends up in him.
   Always glory! Always praise!
      Yes. Yes. Yes.
FOR THIS BLOG: I think it's enough to present the verses and that introduction. Otherwise I will REALLY start rambling and go way too long. I will pick up from here, hopefully tomorrow.

Following God's Schedule - Dr. Stanley

Following God's Schedule

Read | Romans 11:33-36
Most of us enjoy feeling in control of our own schedule and grow frustrated when things don't go according to plan. Yet if we truly desire to walk in the center of God's perfect will, we must become willing to cooperate with His time frame.
Consider how you pray about situations in your life. Without realizing it, you may be demanding that God follow the schedule you've constructed according to your very limited human wisdom. Yet if we believe He is who He says He is, how can surrendering to His way not be to our benefit? Think about His unique, praiseworthy qualities:

• His all-encompassing knowledge. Unlike us, the Lord has complete awareness about our world and the details of every individual life--past, present, and future.
• His complete wisdom. God understands man's every motive, whereas none of us are able to accurately discern people's intentions. We make choices based on partial information, whereas He has the wisdom to take action based on truth.
• His unconditional love. Our Creator is always motivated by love and constantly has our best in mind. Unless we trust His heart, our view of reality will be distorted.
• His perfect sufficiency. At just the right time, God will provide us with everything we need to carry out His plan.

Submitting to God's timetable requires faith and courage. Believe in the goodness of His heart and His plans--and determine to wait until He gives the signal to move forward. Then, as you follow His schedule, you'll experience the joy of watching Him make all things beautiful in His timing.

Copyright 2012 In Touch Ministries, Inc. All rights reserved. www.intouch.org. In Touch grants permission to print for personal use only.

Patience - Dr. Stanley

Developing Patience

Read | James 1:1-4
When people confide to me that they are praying for patience, I often ask what else they're doing to acquire a calm and gentle heart. Patience isn't so much something believers receive as it is an attribute that they develop over time and through experience.
Think of patience as a muscle that you have to use in order to see it build. To that end, believers should recognize difficulty as an opportunity to flex their patience. The human instinct is to cry out to God in bewilderment when tribu-lation comes knocking. We blame. We resist. We complain. What we don't do is say, "Thank You, Father--it's time to grow in patience!" People aren't trained to think that way, but according to the Bible, that is exactly how Christians are to respond.
James tells us to consider trials a joy (1:2). But we often fail at this, don't we? Humanly speaking, praising the Lord for tribulation is unnatural. However, doing so begins to make sense to believers when they cling to God's promise that good comes from hardship (Rom. 8:28). We are not waiting on the Lord in vain. We can praise Him for the solution He will bring, the lives He will change, or the spiritual fruit He will develop in us.
Accepting hardship as a means of growth is a radical concept in this world. Even more extreme is the believer who praises the Lord for the storm. But God's followers have cause to rejoice. Tribulation increases our patience so that we can stand firm on His promises and await His good timing.

Copyright 2012 In Touch Ministries, Inc. All rights reserved. www.intouch.org. In Touch grants permission to print for personal use only.

Faith Formation

Well, folks, this is the first in what I hope to be an irregularly spaced in time series of blogs about faith formation. That's a big topic that is near and dear to my heart, and it is one that most Christians, and probably those of other religions, too, do not understand. But, it probably all starts with grace and dependence.

Grace is, in simple terms, God's unmerited favor. Much of what is preached on Sundays across the country in various Christian denominations deals with grace. Now, the technical details will spark many a theological debate, but the easiest way to look at grace, categorically, is that grace is your ticket to Paradise -- you have to be in a state of grace to get into Heaven {here is where the actual terms and definitions spread like a 10-gauge magnum loaded with #24 microshot or something - all over the place with great force, fury and conviction}.

Since I'm a Lutheran, my fundamental belief is that the means of grace is the Word and the Sacraments. In other Christian religions it's probably the same, but there are more or less sacraments in number and the importance and impact of the Word varies. All the theologically inclined may feel free to comment on this to the heart's content, just don't slam me for being a fool. Accept that I am a well-intended fool.

But when we have God's unmerited favor, we are then in a position that we "believe". Fundamental Christians may refer to this as being saved, which it really is even if we don't, in our particular denomination, call it that. Back when I was baptized in a Baptist church, we referred to the public confession/expression of faith and then the symbolic burial and resurrection of baptism. In Lutheran and Catholic confessions, infants are baptized with Godparents answering and standing for that infant, as proxies, to proclaim acceptance of the Christian faith. In some other Christian churches, baptism is somewhat optional, from what I have heard and have come to understand.

And all of this optional and varying understand is probably quite legitimate because of my fundamental position number one: whether you proclaim, somebody proclaims for you, you are baptized or sprinkled or whatever, it may make a big difference to the elders or deacons of your church and to your pastor and to your parents and grandparents, but I don't think it makes much difference to God. God's grace is freely given to all of us. Once someone accepts grace, a sticky wicket of its own, they're open for

FAITH FORMATION

and what I shall be talking about in succeeding blog posts is that God sends the Holy Spirit to form faith; it is ALL the work of the Holy Spirit and it happens not because of what we do but despite anything we do because formation parallels grace as an unmerited and, in that sense, freely given gift. But, nothing we do can make formation happen - the Spirit goes where and as It will and does pretty much whatever It wants to do. And one of those things It wants to do is to form our faith.

I hate all this silly religion,but you, God, I trust

" I hate all this silly religion,

but you, God, I trust." - Psalm 31:6 (The Message)

I have been using The Message for daily readings in the Psalms and Proverbs. I find it really refreshing, and I know that God will have one single passage of scripture mean different things to each person on different days. So, I was pondering a non-Believing (by her own categorization) friend's question:

"Why would God help Tim Tebow win a football game but let genocide occur? Just wondering."

She then added "I'm not a believer, but I just wonder how those who do believe can reconcile it."

God does not justify bad happening to good people, nor does He explain why some quarterbacks’s prayers seem to be answered over other quarterbacks’s prayers. It’s the way He works, which my Bible tells me we men are not capable of understanding. There’s a well quoted, often misapplied, verse that says “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” In a different translation, this becomes “That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” Here is a subtle, but significant difference in what is immediately apparent: “is worked into something good.” It may be bad to start with, but by the time God is through with it, it will be something good.

He just didn’t tell us how, what, when, why and where for everything.

Then I read: "I hate all this silly religion, but you, God, I trust."

Since this is now the 3rd time I have quoted it, you should feel, quite correctly, that I want the words to sink in. You see, this has to do with non-JudaoChristian perceptions of God, primarily with understanding faith. Faith is what let's me, no, MAKES me accept God's modus operandi. It has to do with grace. It has to do with David the Shepherd. It has to do with free will.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that "Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." Free will is one of the basic tenets of Christianity.

God made us with free will so that we would love him of our own volition, not because He made us love Him. The answer to L’s question is simple, as they usually are, to state, but difficult to comprehend. Since we are free to be good, we are free to be bad; since the world was given to Satan run around in, Satan’s free will causes good and bad both happen to bad people, bad and good both happen to good people. That is what it means to say “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”, but leave the emphasis on His purpose.

David did not go to that big church downtown. Even when he worshiped on mountaintops, he was not in a building. And, he wasn't with a group of fellow believers (although sometimes you or I may feel like we're just in a herd of sheep). But there is no denying that he had faith.

See (or choose not to), it's this way: we have nothing to do with our faith. Once the Holy Spirit is in us, it is the Spirit who forms our faith regardless of, no matter what, in spite of what we may do or think we are doing. Ritual, prayer, scripture - if they matter as far as how our faith is formed it is the Spirit working and not we ourselves.

David's faith developed strictly by his spending time with God, and in his "praying", far from the rote patterns of many churches today, he asked Him a few questions and then listened and observed. David knew that God would answer him, but that the answers were not always meant to be understood fully. But, the questions would be answered and God was always paying attention to David and his questions.

I have a son-in-law who is an ordained minister with a doctorate in post modern ecclesiology. He is maybe more liberal than I am conservative. At the core level, though, we share beliefs and wishes. He recently wrote on Twitter:

I wish that the church spoke to the younger generations...That the church was more interested in those outside the walls than inside the walls... That the church was an instrument of grace rather than rules and doctrine... That the church followed Jesus rather than parade him around... That the church could learn to love our neighbors as ourselves... That the church would truly love and worship God... That the church was less interested in buildings than people.

I heartily agree with him. We need to have churches that speak to the L’s of this world, those who sincerely question God in being and action. We need to answer her not by explaining that since she is Jewish she is underprivileged, not by saying that because we are CathoMethoPresbyLutheroEpiscopoEvangeloCharismoPentecostals we are better than anyone else, but by remembering the very simple pieces. God is love, He wants us to love Him, right is right, wrong is wrong, and, pretty much as Bill and Ted said, be excellent to each other.

This still does not give answers to the implied parts of the question of why God “allows” genocide. I can tell you why He does, but I can’t tell you what He is going to do with it that makes it good in the long run. That’s His purpose. I can tell you that part of His purpose is to love me, and to love you, and if that means He wants me to win a football game or to die without explanation at the hands of lunatics my faith says “so be it.”

Santorum on Marriage Laws

Turmoil and travail over Rick Santorum's answers about gay marriage. This is a situation where you can't win, can't break even, and can't get out of the game. Folks, we're being forced to deal with religion and politics simultaneously. Never going to be fun.

Historically, religion has defined marriage. Within any given group, traditional practices and concepts were followed and marriages were registered within the church. In the 1800's, governments realized they were passing up a chance to make money, so they instituted civil registration of marriage and required marrying couples to buy their license, etc. Since churches had previously controlled marriage, same sex marriages, plural marriages, and bestial marriages were allowed within the rules of the church body. When civic laws took over, restrictions were added.

So, my discussion and I infer Rick Santorum's discussion are simply addressing the legal points. For any one person, if your religion prohibits same-sex marriage, plural marriage or bestial marriage you will probably not go any of these directions if you consider yourself to be a "good" church member. If you belong to an alternative church you are subject to alternative marriage directions, or if no church at all, then you are limited by your internal moral compass ON THE RELIGION LEVEL. But, you are still subject to the law.

Like it or not, if someone wants to marry their dog in a state that allows same-sex marriage, such a bestial marriage should be legal. Likewise plural marriage (polygamy) should not be restricted in those states. For the fanatics who insist on the mythical "separation of church and state", this HAS to be the case -- a penumbra encompassing all marriage concepts.

So, I don't think the question is as simple as "do you approve of gay marriage?" The question that you are asking, from a legal perspective, is: "do you approve of rewriting laws and practices regarding marriage that have stood the way they are since the Code of Hammurabi?", or some such equally long time. The question you are asking, from a religious perspective, is: "does your religious denomination and/or personal set of beliefs acknowledge same-sex partnerships and, in that context, are you and your church willing to recognize such as marriage."

Logically, these are mutually exclusive. My answers are easy. My denomination and my personal religion are not willing to accept same-sex partnerships as marriage. Nor am I personally inclined to make changes to laws that have stood for years without a LOT of careful consideration and a full vote of ALL the people, not just the (Iowa) Supreme Court. Neither of these statements has to mean that I eschew LGBTs or that I am specifically discriminating against them.

So, Rick, you opened up a can of worm's. The only way to get rid of a can of worms is to get a bigger can. Good luck.

The Final Christmas Present

Well, although the actual day of Christmas is past and we have yet to have New Year's Day, this is when we Iowans look forward every four years to that final christmas present: the caucuses.

Honestly, these things are probably more watched by anyone else than they are by we who live in Iowa. I mean, being first is cool and all, but, come on, is it that big a deal? Oh, Barry surprised everyone in 2008 in the caucuses, but he surprised everyone everywhere, right Hil? And, who remembers Mike Huckabee as a serious politician (me, I still want Fred Thompson or Alan Keyes to come around, sentimentalist that I am).

This year, it stinks.

Few people have decent campaign ads. That is up this year from like almost no one. The pattern has been negative slam ads for so long that the presentation of a sincere and dedicated politician now shows up for the oxymoron that it is.

All of them are in Iowa. Them, in this case, includes every Republican and media representative conceivable plus a couple of wild cards. Local news even showed the Japanese news agency who moved a crew in a month ago for the duration. I almost never see them, which is probably just as good. The attitude on the air is mostly one of overly courteous condescension and patronization. I now know how disabled people feel when others yell at them, inferring that they are hard of hearing, and particular speak slowly using small words, again inferring that "disabled" always includes mentally challenged. {Hey, I'm disabled, but my hearing is as good as it could be after all of those Springsteen concerts and I got a 1540 combined on my SATs, for heaven's sake}.

It's kinda like Boise State feels when all the coastal conferences stick up their noses. Hey, we like it here people, and we are really pretty good at what we do. Can Diane Sawyer grow corn? Does Scott Pelley leave the evening news and cultivate his beans? David Letterman doesn't have hogs at his place in the country, does he?

So, a week from today, we will have the final Christmas present for this season. It will be that incredible vacuum toward Illinois and points east that is left as all of the politicos and pundits emigrate, en masse, to New Hampshire. That will be followed by a massive influx of quiet, fresh air.

Thanks for the present, folks.