Where did this man get these things?

Mark 6:2 And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Reading through Mark this morning and I had this thought? If you don't believe Jesus is the Messiah, God with us, then where do you think He came from? Apparently, the people in his hometown had the same question. When Jesus began to reveal himself they could not figure out where this power and wisdom came from. Jesus did not come from a place of earthly power and did not display nature power or wisdom. He sprang on to the scene from a backwater and came with a supernatural power and message. If He is not from God how would you explain Him? I am convinced that if someone will seriously consider the person of Jesus, then Jesus will reveal himself in power to them.

I read a Ricky Gervais' (an atheist comedian) quote where he said that Christians just want other to consider Jesus unique among thousands of other gods, and of course his point was that belief in any god was ridiculous. But that is exactly what the Bible proposes we do with Jesus, namely compare Him to other gods and see that that He is different. That He is real. We don't have to shy away from such challenges. Jesus invites people to consider who He is, but if you start with a closed mind like an atheist who is dismissive before he has considered the evidence or the people in Jesus' hometown who only saw Him as the local boy, then you will stay blind.

As CS Lewis and GK Chesterton suggested, if you who Jesus is, then you have to come to the conclusion that He is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. Many people in the modern day would add perhaps a legend, but the Biblical and historical evidence is just too compelling to believe that He is just a legend. He must have lived and taught and gathered a following to have have had such an impact within just a few years. So if He is real, then who is He? Where did He come from? I think the primary reason so many people don't want to examine Jesus closely is that if He is who he claims to be then their lives should change in response.

In reading the story of Jesus, He is so compelling that I cannot help but believe. I desire to know Him more, and to be know by Him.  

Love Your Neighbors

My friend, Luther, ministers in a poor neighborhood in Kansas City. He often needs extra resources to help people and sometimes he tries to get them from government sources. He has a problem though in that frequently government officials want to fund a building, as if bricks and mortar were the primary solution to poverty and homelessness. What he sees though is that people need more than just money and a building. He has had homeless people build fires in the middle of an apartment because that is the only way they know to cook and keep warm. Luther's ministry runs a couple of recovery houses where people can live around others who care for and help them, because he loves his neighbors and wants them to experience love in very practical ways.

God commands everyone to love their neighbor, and when Jesus was asked who our neighbor was, he responds with the story of a Good Samaritan who cares for a man that had been beaten and robbed. Jesus shows us that to love our neighbor we need to love those people right in front of us who we have the opportunity and capacity to love. 

What this means is that everyone has a neighbor to love. We should start with our physical neighbors. I remember living in a city apartment building for a year and not knowing a single other person in my apartment complex. It was hard because we all went inside, closed our doors and only came out to go somewhere else. Often we do the same thing even in our small town. You also have neighbors at work, at school, and even when going out to events in the community. How are you caring for those that God has put right in front of you? Do you see them? Do you see their needs? If you cannot identity a neighbor that you are called to love then I suggest you pray and ask God to give you His eyes to identify the neighbors He want you to love.

To obey Jesus' command, we will have to be intentional and take the first step of smiling, saying hi, and even (I know this is radical in our smart phone age) start an in person conversation with our neighbors. We can show love in very practical and personal ways like helping someone with car trouble or who needs help lifting something heavy. We can listen and pray for them when we see their heart is heavy with sorrow. In many very practical ways, we can love the neighbors that God puts in front of us.

But if you are really ready to love your neighbors like Jesus did and like He calls us to do, then be prepared for sacrifice. Real love means surrendering yourself for the sake of the other. This will likely mean giving up resources, but what all people really need more than money or things is relationship. Ultimately, we need to point people to a relationship with Christ, but they often first see Christ's love in and through us. Are you willing to not only buy someone a meal but ask them over for a meal? Are you willing to watch the single neighbors child so they can have time to go shopping? Some of you might be in a position to have someone live with you for a time or even to foster or adopt a child. This means opening up your life to the messiness of other people's lives, but Jesus came into our messy lives and He thought we were worth it. Likewise, if you will learn to love your neighbors for His sake, you will find your life enriched even if your neighbors never give love back to you. You will grow closer to Christ as you love like Him and become more like Him. 

We cannot keep the law.

Acts 15:10-11 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

I think we actually like rules to live by. It makes us feel safe when we can conform some set of rules and pretend that we are somehow good on our own. But we are not consistent, even with our own rules. We break them when it is convenient, and then we change them to suit our new desires.

The Jewish history is a good lesson for us in this. They often walked away from God, but kept a form of godliness. Worshipping Yahweh on the hilltops instead of the temple and worshipping idols in the temple of Yahweh. Then even after they stopped officially worshipping idols, they started to make up interpretations of the God's law that suited them. Many of the Pharisees and scribes in Jesus's day claimed to know God but were only self-righteous.

The truth is that we can never accomplish the law on our own. We will always need God's grace, and even to become more practically good we need to walk by the Spirit. This is harder because it means submitting our hearts and minds regularly to the Lord. We cannot rely on a set of defined rules.

Yes God's law helps give us boundaries, but the desire to live accordingly and the application of them in situations comes from the foundation of the law which is loving God and loving others. Unless we experience God's incredible grace and love for us, we will not desire to love Him and others well.

Lord, help me to know your love and grace. Help me to give it away today.

Loving the Family of God

In my last article, I pointed to Jesus's claim that loving God with all of our heart, soul, and mind is the most important commandment, but what does that look like in real life? Well another scripture points us to one way that people would know that we love God, 1 John 4:21 says, "And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." So showing love for our brother is one primary way that you love God well. But then we have to ask, who is my brother?

Jesus gives us a more clear definition in John 13:34-35 saying, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Here we learned that our brothers are fellow disciples of Jesus, so we can show our love for God by loving fellow Christians.

Why does God highlight the importance of loving brothers and sisters in the Lord? Ultimately it is because when we become Christians we are adopted into a new eternal family of God, and these people who also know and love Jesus will spend eternity with us. If we cannot learn to love those people with whom we have an eternal connection, then how could we expect to love anyone else? Furthermore, because the offer of salvation is open to anyone, the family of God is going to include lots of different types of people, many of whom may not share our interests and some of whom may rub us the wrong way. Just like in a natural family, we need to learn to love those people regardless of our differences.

This starts in our local churches, where we should make sincere efforts to take care of one another, to reconcile disputes, and to reach out to new people who join us so that they can feel welcomed. But it goes beyond the local church and includes all believers. Locally in Oakland we had a wonderful fellowship of churches, where we often join together in joint ministries that highlight our unity in Christ.

We also show God's universal love by loving those Christians from all cultures from all around the world. The picture of all the peoples of the world worshipping around the throne of God in Revelation 7:9 is something that we can start to live out now by recognizing our kinship with and love for all peoples.

By loving all of God's people we learn to break down barriers in our hearts. We don't just love those people that are easy to love, rather we even learn to deepen our understanding of love by reaching out to those who are hard to love. Furthermore, by loving those who are different from us, we break down barriers between cultures and nations and show that God's love is for everyone.

Sometimes in the past the church has been known as a place of judgment and infighting. Rather than the world seeing a safe place where people can come and find love, they experience it as a harsh place. Therefore, if we can learn to love the whole family of God well, others outside of the family will desire to get to know Him and experience His love as well. 

Love God

 

When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, he responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" Matthew 22:37. He was actually quoting part of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, which is a famous passage memorized by and quoted by Jewish people throughout the ages. God puts loving Him above every other duty, including loving others. Jesus is helping us to know what is important, but I believe we should also understand why loving God should be the foundational principle upon which we build our lives. In our world we have lots of other people and things vying for our attention and love, such as our spouse, our children, our sports, our careers, our community, our political party, our hobbies, and our physical desires. 

Now most of these things are good, and during regular times of life, some of them can even appear to provide our lives with enough to satisfy us. A great relationship with a spouse can provide deep joy and contentment. A ball team practicing hard and playing as a unit with a singular focus can be inspiring not only to those playing but the fans who follow them. Watching your children grow, accomplish new things, and then being released to become independent adults can alternate between exhilarating and terrifying (we are release another to college this year!). Finding a social cause to improve the world can bring incredible passion and meaning to our lives. 

But as good as all of these things can be, they are insecure as a foundation upon which to build our lives. A great marriage can be taken away in a car wreck, a heart attack, or an emotional and spiritual crisis of your partner. You can do everything right, and they can still be taken away. Ball teams eventually break up and our bodies age to the point where we simply cannot do what we used to be able to do. Kids do become independent and sometimes go exactly the opposite way we had hoped for them. Careers become drudgery, politics disappoint, hobbies become obsessions, desires become addictions, and social causes fail to create the promised utopia. Everything in the universe including ourselves is temporal and fleeting.

God created all of these things including us, and He wants what is best for us. He wants our lives to have a purpose that outlasts the world, and that can only happen if we love the eternal God. Loving God first, helps us to order correctly all the other loves of our life. We can freely love our spouse and not cling to them expecting them to fulfill our every need. We can love our kids and release them to God's good care, understanding that He loves them more than we do. We can work for God's glory and give Him the credit for successes. We can play sports with passion while caring more about our own teammates and our opponents than the accolades that come with winning. Hobbies can be fun but not consuming. Desires can be enjoyed inside of boundaries that bring thanks to God for His goodness instead of regret because we have over indulged.

Do you love God more than all these other loves? How would you know? Christians should regularly examine our hearts to see if our love of God has grown cold and if other loves have begun to take priority. You can spend time building up your love of God in worship, prayer, Christian fellowship, reading the Bible, and by serving others. If you love God with all of heart, soul, and mind, then you will experience His unbelievable love for you, and you will learn to love the rest of His creation with that same kind of love.

Losing Touch With Reality

Recently, I listen to this Breakpoint podcast, where John Stonestreet was talking about how Christians were the first ones to make the case against foot binding in China back in the late 1800s. The earliest opponents of foot binding didn't just make a Christian argument, but rather that they were able to make arguments based on the fact that binding is bad for the whole culture regardless of their beliefs. Christians can make such an argument because their beliefs are based in reality and that is why Christians can point others to the real world.

This reminded me of the fact that much of the modern age and scientific discovery came about because a Christian worldview began to dominate the western world. In the pre-Christian world there wasn't  a basis for believing that nature made sense, but the Christian understanding of the world was that God created and His creation makes sense, so we can discover truths about it using observation and logic. One early Christian scientist put it this way, "I'm thinking God's thoughts after him. "

Over the last couple of century, secular philosophers and scientists have been trying to jettison the idea of God, while at the same time trying to maintain a philosophy that the universe still makes sense. Unfortunately this is like trying to maintain a skyscraper while digging up its foundation. As time goes by the whole structure begins to crumble, and we are seeing the fruit of this godless philosophy in the postmodern age.

Here is how this works and why secular modernism cannot sustain the idea of a rational world. They start with the foundation that all evidence must be empirical or observable evidence that can be experienced and tested (This claim by the way cannot be tested empirically!) Second, because they cannot find that type of empirical evidence for God or anything supernatural (because their first test for evidence excludes evidence that might point to the supernatural by definition!) Then they claim that there's no rational reason to believe that God exists because there is no evidence for God. In other words, it is a circular argument that excludes the possibility of evidence of the supernatural, and then claims they cannot find any evidence or arguments for God.

The logical consequence of this is that there is no objective or larger reason for anything to exist or anything to happen because the physical world is all that could exist. In a purely physical world, every event is ultimately either random or determined by prior physical conditions. Things like meaning, purpose, morality, and destiny are not physical and are therefore ultimately not actually part of reality.

Now on this last point, many modernists are not actually very honest in public, although a few of them, such as Sam Harris in this podcast, admit the consequences of their belief system. Previous generations of atheistic philosophers, such as Nietzsche and Russell, have admitted the consequences of this view of the reality mean that there are no metanarratives that explain and give meaning to the universe.

If things like purpose, meaning, morality, and rationality itself are all ultimately random or determined, then how can we trust one idea to be "better than" any other idea. Thus modernism logically led to postmodernism, which makes the claim that all meaning is ultimately subjective coming from either individuals or groups. Ironically, this actually places a postmodern society back in the position of premodern societies, where truth was determined only by your group and most often by the authorities of your group such as the ruler or the priest. Meaning determined by which ever group or individual can hold power long enough to impose their definition on others.

Now we've gotten to the place where we can see how these ideas have practical effects on our culture. Here are three examples of the postmodern/relativistic view of truth in action. 

First, when someone makes a claim that they are transgender or a different gender than the physical body, they are making a claim that the physical reality of their body (chromosomes and physical characteristics) does not determine their gender. Instead, they claim that their internal experience can determine their gender. This works in the current culture because truth is not determined by physical realities, but by the individuals or groups. In the past, facts that were obvious to everyone's senses would have informed us that the physical reality is what should be believed rather than someone's experience, but now someone's internal experience is supposed to define not just their reality, but the reality of those who interact with them.

Another example is how we view race and any group that is deemed to be a minority or oppressed group. In critical theories, there is no meta narrative or overarching truth about the world, rather truth is determined by your exclusively by group identity. It is not just that you see the world through your particular set of lenses, but that in fact there is no way to get out of your particular set of circumstances and view the world objectively. From this perspective, logic and math can end up being tools of oppression used by a particular group to keep others down as described here. The claim that objectivity can be reached by a reasoned argument is refuted by the idea that even that is simply a culturally relative idea.

As a final example, I point to how various groups responded to the pandemic in this last year. For most people, we did not actually listen to competing scientific narratives and make a choice based upon who made the most compelling argument that best lined up with reality. No, rather most of us listened to the authorities we knew we could trust (likely who said the thing we already wanted to hear.) Therefore, if someone said hydroxychoriquine and zinc was the miracle cure for Covid, you either believed them or totally dismissed them based upon your and their political camp. Likewise, whether or not you believed masks were an effective means to significantly slow the spread also depended upon who you believed. Even when it comes to "scientific" knowledge, our beliefs have been broken down into groups and we believe our authorities, not your authorities. You might think this is just a problem with the regular guy and that the real scientists dispassionately look at all the relevant data, but as we have seen time and time again this last year, various authorities (even Dr. Fauci) have said something with great confidence only to have to walk back their comments or change their opinion. As a result, many of us have developed a jaded view of media and authorities and now make sure to only to listen to those people we "know" we can trust, not the bad ones like Fox News or NPR depending your perspective. 

These three examples illustrate how in our postmodern world we're not only losing touch with reality, but we are even losing the tools necessary to accurately assess what is real and what is not. This can be traced back to our loss of belief in God who grounds reality, and without whom we cannot be sure of what is real or even if there is a real truth to be found. If we are just blobs of carbon and water randomly found on one tiny spec of a much larger but still random universe, then how can we trust anyone, including ourselves. But if instead the universe and each one of us was created for a purpose and headed toward a conclusion, then we can have confidence that the universe makes sense and that we can make sense of it.

When Jesus was brought before Pilate, he asked Jesus, "What is truth?" In his pagan world filled with lots of different finite gods, Pilate could not find a firm place on which to ground truth. Ironically the man to whom he asked the question was the very one who claimed to be, "the way, the truth, and the life," and then backed up that claim by dying and rising again just days after Pilate had asked the question.

I believe that if we're going to be able to move forward as a society, we're going to have to go back and get in touch with the grounding of reality, namely a belief in a God who created it and therefore gives purpose and meaning to reality. 

Who is discipling you?

media, from social media, from friends, from work, from family, and sometimes even church or Christian friends. The point he was making was that if your Christian discipleship is only 1 hour a week while you're being influenced by other things hours and hours every day, then what is going to influence yourI was listening to this podcast the other day with Alisa Childers and a couple of guests Dave and Bobby. They were discussing how both Dave and Alisa had for a time fallen into some false beliefs about Christianity called progressive Christianity. Bobby is a pastor who helped lead Dave back to a biblical understanding of the faith. 

I got a couple of lessons out of this podcast that I'd like to share.

First, Bobby shared at one point the truth that we are all being discipled all the time, so the question is by what or by whom? What he meant was that we have all kinds of messages and influences coming at us all day long from  thinking more?

So Bobby second point was that what we need is intentional and authentic discipleship, which is more than just 1 hour a week but is really life on life throughout the week. This is in fact what he did with Dave and his wife, and it is how he helps not only explain the truth of the biblical gospel and help lead Dave back to those truths, but he also showed it through practically loving them. There doesn't have to be and shouldn't be a divide between truth and love, and that is what intentional, genuine, and relational discipleship looks like.

Of course this message resonated strongly with me as our new church mission statement is, intentionally connecting the disconnected to Jesus through authentic relationships. I was encouraged as I listened to revisit our mission statement both for the church and in my life personally. Am I intentionally engaging people in discipleship? Am I building authentic relationships with people?

The final challenge I had from this podcast was to be aware of who is discipling me and my family. Where am I spending my time? What shows am I watching? How much time in general am I spending in front of a screen? We have to be intentional in these areas as well. One of the ways that I'm trying to do this is to limit my time on devices, and set up boundaries for our family, primarily because I can see that I need them as much as anybody. Another way we can be intentional is to redeem our time by finding material such as Alisa's podcast and a number of other podcasts that I have that give good solid Christian and biblical thinking while still being entertaining.

Also there's more and more media becoming available such as the series The Chosen, that is presenting good christian and or family friendly entertainment options.

Here's a link to a list of media channels that I have found to be helpful.

The road less traveled

The other day I went biking out into the countryside around Oakland, and is typical for me when I came to a decision about where to go next I tried to choose a road that I hadn't traveled yet. Now these weren't roads but no one had traveled, rather they were established gravel roads or sometimes just minimum maintenance farm roads like in the picture above, but they were roads that I'd never taken.

For me this is the spice of life, mainly experiencing something new: a road to take, a new person to meet, a new task to undertake, a new food to eat, a new culture to experience. Often this involves taking risk, and sometimes it doesn't pan out and you spend 3 hours digging your vehicle out of a snow bank. But for the most part I have to say that all the new experiences have continued to help me grow. They help me to see the variety of God's creation, they help me to learn where the boundaries of my abilities are, they help me to expand my horizons about what is possible, and frankly they often help me to test my trust in God rather than to live in fear of what might happen. 

This morning I read John 16:33 "I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.” When I face moments of testing, trial, suffering, or fear, even if they are self induced, I can remember but God has conquered the world and that I can run back to him at any time. His grace and his goodness give me confidence. I'm like a little child who knows that his daddy loves him, and even when he's broken his own toy can bring it to Daddy. God doesn't always fix the problem in this world as we want him to, but he can always fix us. He can give us peace and joy no matter what the circumstance, because we can have hope that he has overcome the world and He is in the process of reconciling all things to himself.

I want to encourage you the next time you go out on a walk, or a drive, or have to do a new thing at work, or have to face a new challenge like an illness, or have to repent of something sinful that you've done, that you take the road less traveled and trust God as he walks with you through whatever new experience you're having.

 

Origin of Life: A Proof of God's Existence

I originally wrote this to a friend who does not believe there is any good evidence for the existence of God. He has many times also questioned various aspects of my faith and stories from the Bible I think it is legitimate for him to send me stories that question biblical stories like the exodus or the flood. I think it is perfectly fine to deal with objections to our understanding of the world, but I think it needs to go both ways. Often those people who think matter and energy are all there is do not honestly face the problems with their own understanding of the world. 

The origin of life is one area where I think the explanation of a creator is so much more reasonable than a natural explanation. The astronomical numbers involved in trying to think how material could organize on its own into such incredible complexity are mind-blowing and they simply defy belief. And it is not just one type of organization, there are many different chemical reactions, compounds, and then interactions between those compounds to get the simplest cell and at each step of the way, the "chance" of it happening naturally is virtually impossible. So impossible in fact that no one can even propose a possible realistic way for many of these steps. It seems impossible for chance or nature alone to "create" the organization needed for even the simplest of cells, and the only other option is that an intelligence was involved. Cells have many compounds and processes that look like engineered machines, and in any other field, we would simply say that intelligence must have been involved to get to this level of complexity. 

For me, the primary reason to deny the possibility of a creator being involved is philosophical and not scientific. The science clearly points to the fact that nature alone cannot and could not create such complexity. 

 Here is a video by Jim Tours, a world-class chemist who makes nanomachines, that explains the incredible/impossible odds of this happening naturally. 

 If you watch through it, you will notice that he never refers to his Christian faith or the Bible, rather he is a hard scientist who knows the field and numbers inside and out. As I listen to these types of numbers and odds the impossibility of a random/ chance/ exclusively natural explanation is evident, his words about needing faith (as you define faith, which is belief without or in spite of the evidence) that somehow science will discover how to overcome these odds through some supposed law, ring true to me. For me, this is one of the many areas where a much more reasonable and rational explanation of the data points to a creator.

Do You Want to Run Away?

 Over the last year as life has sometimes seemed crazy in light of Covid and the political climate in America, my wife, Traci, and I have often talked about just wanting to get away from it all. We want to buy some isolated tract of land in the mountain west, build our tiny home, and get away from all of the problems of the current world. 

While this solution seems like it might work for us personally, when we examine what God really wants us to do with our lives, we discover that one of the enduring truths about life is that we are not supposed to live just for ourselves. In this series of articles, I have examined some truths that endure even when things get tough. The truth of God’s sovereignty and goodness. The truth of our sinful nature and need for a savior. The truth that Jesus loves us in and through all circumstances. In this article, I want to focus on the truth that God created us to love Him and to love others, and that particularly when life is hard we are called to show His love to the world.

When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus responded that we are supposed to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and second to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). So if we are going to follow in Jesus’s footsteps, we are going to need to learn to love God and love others in all situations. In fact, one of the ways that Jesus’s type of love is different than our modern transactional view of love is that He loved people even when they did not love Him (Romans 5:8).

True godly love is the type that is revealed in the worst of times. Can you love by serving your family after a hard day of work when your body is sore and your mind is tired? Can you care about a person even when they treat you unjustly and say mean things about you that are not true? Can you show love when you are sick? Can you show love when you are grieving and someone says something inconsiderate? 

All of these times are when we want to run away and have some “me time.” Our world tells us that we deserve a break, and that we should ask the question “who cares about me?” The truth is that in this world, perhaps we will not find justice, love, rest, and care from others. Jesus, the best man to ever live, was abandoned by His friend and tortured and killed by His enemies, but He still loved them and died to make His enemies into His friends.

In these bad times we can only find the strength to sacrificially love others by experiencing His supernatural love for us. When we fill up on His love, we then become the instruments of His love. When we see someone in distress, we will sacrifice our time to stop and comfort them. We will sacrifice our money to help those in need, even when we know that their own behavior led to some of their problems. We will choose to listen and respond gently when someone brings a criticism that we think is unfair. We will fight to restore relationships that are broken by sin, even if it means we have to admit and ask forgiveness for our own sins.

When we build our lives on the solid foundation of a loving relationship with our Lord and Savior, we do not have to run away from the brokenness in the world. Instead, we are called to enter into the brokenness and show others the love that Jesus has for them, so that more people will desire to build their lives on a relationship with Him. The truth is that people need the Lord and we have the exciting job to run into the crisis where people are desperate for help and show them that Jesus is their ultimate hope. If we really know and understand these enduring truths about God, our world, and ourselves then our lives will continue to change to become more like Jesus, and others will see and feel His love coming through us.

The truth is . . . Jesus loves you.

I have a question for you, does your phone love you? Do the little words and pictures on the screen provide you with a sense of belonging? Do you find significance and purpose for your life on Instagram and Facebook? Are your Instagram followers going to be there when your life does not look like it has been put through a photo filter?

In this series of articles, I have wanted to remind us of some eternal truths in the middle of our uncertain and chaotic world. The first article reminded us about God’s good nature and sovereignty, while the second article reminded us that because of the fallen nature of man we cannot look to earthly solutions for lasting peace and joy. In this article, I want to remind you that Jesus loves you, so that when our Facebook and Instagram lives fall apart, we will know where we can turn.

Perhaps you are at the point where you feel worthless. You recognize that through your failures, sin, and lack of effort you have not lived up to your potential in the eyes of the world or God. Your life does not match the image that other people put out there, or perhaps you feel worthless because you know all to well that you are a sinner. Well, I have some great news for you!! Jesus came to save people just like you. He talks specifically to you saying, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10), and "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). When Jesus tells us that God loves the world (John 3:16), He is not talking about people who have it all together, but rather to His enemies (Romans 5:7-10).

Maybe though Jesus’ love is hard to experience right now just because this year has been hard. Perhaps you are simply depressed because you do not have hope that the pandemic will ever end or that we can really have peace in our world. Maybe you are sick or in grief because you have lost someone. How does Jesus’ love help in the middle of trouble that you did not cause and that you cannot fix? How can sickness, death, and war even be reconciled with the love of Jesus? Well, the Bible tells us that Jesus’ goal for us is not primarily to make us healthy, wealthy, and safe in this life, but rather to transform us into the type of people who can handle adversity by learning to truth Him in all circumstances. In fact, James 1:2-4 and Romans 5:3-5 make it clear that He brings trouble specifically to help us form character. Like a bodybuilder using heavy weights to build muscle, God uses trials to help us build better character. He says, that all things work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28), so we can see trouble as an opportunity to trust Jesus more. 

Jesus’ love is so solid that we can have hope that no matter what happens in this world, we can find real love and purpose. As the apostle Paul says at the end of Ephesian 3, nothing can separate us from the love of God. He knows you without the screen, without the filters, without the makeup, and without hitting the like button. He loves you right where you are. Will you come to Him just as you are and let Him love you in the good and bad? Will you let His love be the grounding of your life? Jesus loves you this I know, for the Bible tells me so!!

The Truth about God

Has this last year been been harder than other years for you? Has it seemed like things have been constantly changing? In this series of articles, I want to go remind you of some unchanging truths that you can build your life upon no matter what. In this article I will focus first on some of the aspects of God's nature. 

First, God does not change. Neither His character and nor His plans change, and therefore we can trust Him to stay the same and that His promises are true and that His prophecies will come true.

Hebrews 13:8 says,

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever, and 

Psalm 102:25-27 says,

Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.

When all the world around us seems uncertain and all of our plans for the future are in jeopardy, we can know where to run and where to stand firm. But it would do us no good to run to God unless we knew that He was also good. 

Fortunately, we can know that God is good by examining His world and His Works.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. 1 Chronicles 16:3

Good and upright is the Lord. Psalm 25:8

This last week I saw a number of people posting pictures of the beauty of the world, as frost had fallen on all the trees in our area. We had an incredible winter wonderland around us, and it caused me to break into song praising the creator. 

Whenever we examine the beauty of creation whether out in nature or in the faces of the people all around us, we should along with its creator declare, "It is good," and then remember that the creation is a reflection of its creator.

But where we see the ultimate goodness and love of God is at the cross. God came into a broken world to redeem a people die Himself. God's goodness is ultimately experienced in the redemption. When you experienced it yourself, you can't help but praise Him for his goodness and thank him for the good things that he has giving you.

Third, God is sovereign, so submit to Him.

Colossians 1:16–17

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

The Truth about Ourselves and the World

Everyday, the Auschwitz Museum posts pictures on social media of people who were killed at the Nazi death camp. I look at the pictures of men, women, and children, and imagine what their lives were like before they were so cruelly killed. I have also been reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book, The Gulag Archipelago, which details the horrors of the Soviet system of repression that killed millions and lasted for decades. While reading about the atrocities of the past is not pleasant, it is important for us to remember man's inhumanity to man. But we do not just have to read history books to detail this, rather all we need to do is turn on the news or go on social media to see modern examples of evil. In fact, all we really have to do is interact with people in everyday life, and we will experience evil in our world and in ourselves. 

Last week, I wrote about God's unchanging good and sovereign nature which helps us have a firm place to stand in our uncertain world. This week I want us to examine the truths about why our world is so broken. To do this we need to go to Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command, and as a consequence their relationship with Him was broken and the whole world was affected. The Apostle Paul declares in Romans 3:23, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," which tells us that the problems in the world are not just with those people over there (the democrats, the republicans, the boomers, the millennials, the foreigners, the racists, etc.), but with all people everywhere including ourselves. It's really easy to see the problems in the people or groups that we hate, but it's much harder to recognize that we are in the same category and liable to the same sins. But we tend to minimize sin in our own lives, and give ourselves and our group more credit for being able to fix the world. If we just gave power to the right president, the right party, the right scientists, the right judges, (you know people who think like me), then the whole world would be fixed.

A really good example of this in the past year has been how we have dealt with Covid, and who we blame for it. Over the last few months, the virus continues to break out no matter the policies which we have tried to implement in accordance with this expert or that expert opinion. It's hard to give total credit, and therefore hard to give total blame to any particular expert or system because it seems like so many places in the world with different policies and different ways of dealing with the pandemic have all had to face outbreaks. If it was not so tragic, it would be funny how many times someone has declared that they have figured it out only to be proven wrong a month or two later. Yet we all are still seeking the correct expert and the right science to try to save ourselves. 

I'm not saying that there aren't better and worse ways to handle issues in the world, but rather that we often make the assumption that some person if they did the right thing could simply fix the problems. This is a denial of the effects of the sin, namely that the world is broken in such a way that we cannot totally fix it. No matter who we put in charge, they will still be a sinner and they will still be limited in their abilities. The more they try to fix the problems on their own, the more clear it will be that they are not all-powerful, they are not inherently good, and that they do not hold the future in their hands. In other words they are not God, and so are not worthy of our complete trust and allegiance.

The biggest and scariest unfixable problem is that we are all going to die, and no human no matter how smart or powerful can fix that. Right in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve were told that the consequence of disobeying God was that they would surely die. So much of our modern life is set up to prolong life and ignore the possibility of death. Unfortunately, even with all of our intelligence, technology, and science, we haven't come up with a way to avoid death. Things like covid, cancer, and old age remind us of the limits of our control.

On a personal level, this was made clear to me in 2012 when my son Micah, who was only 11 years old, passed away. He had an autoimmune disease that affected his kidneys and also developed another disease that affected his blood vessels. Even though we were doctoring at Mayo Clinic with some of the best healthcare in the world, we could not save his life. 

We need someone bigger and better than ourselves to save us from our sin and it's consequence -- death. The truth is that there is only one who has lived a perfect life, died to pay the penalty of our sin, and rose again to show us that His sacrifice was acceptable to God and that death was defeated. We need to acknowledge the truth that we are broken, that our brokenness breaks the world, and that therefore we need a savior. Jesus is the only one that can save us and redeem the whole world (see Act 4:12 and John 14:6).

As you look around at the hurting in the world and perhaps the hurting in your own soul, remember to seek your help and salvation in the only one who has beaten both sin and death.