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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| God is not lost...you are. |
I was just chatting up my old pastor. He stopped in for a visit and during the course of that visit we spoke briefly about a mutual friend who is struggling to know God. This person has followed teacher after teacher, trying to find the Lord by having God explained in the best way possible - as though God could be known more intimately if someone else could just paint Him more clearly for us.
We all have this struggle at times. We often pursue teaching and teacher because we convince ourselves that if we just understood a thing better, we would respond to God better. We tell ourselves that our rebellion is a product of our ignorance, that if we could just overcome our ignorance we would find the *real* means to obey. We look for God in teachings, and in teacher - we look for God as though God were elusive. My old pastor put it right when he said, "We seek for God as though God was the one that was lost, but it isn't God who is lost, it is we who are lost. When we try to find God it shows, it cuts God out of the loop, we put pressure on ourselves to learn how to make God real, when what we need to do is stop trying to find God, and simply repent.
That is what is happening when you are trying to find God - you are trying to find God in teaching and information rather than in faith and repentance. It's just that simple. Most of us want to have the fellowship and relationship up front - because we hope that if we have this nice, experiential relationship - it will cause us to repent. We want repentance to overcome us, ... to overwhelm us. We think if we can just get the right clue or hint, or message, or read the right book, or hear the right sermon, or hang with the right people, or join the right church - these things will cause us to know God, to find God; we want something to knock the fight out of us so that there is nothing left in us but repentance.
But that hasn't happened. It hasn't happened for me, it hasn't happened for you, and guess what? It hasn't happened for the authors of the books you want to read, it hasn't happened in the church you admire more than you own - wherever the grass is greener, brother, sister ... it hasn't happened there either.
It doesn't work that way. Repentance happens when grace finds you, and grace finds you when you step into Canaan in the strength of God's promise, with your sword drawn. In other words don't wait for the divine zap. The divine zap doesn't come to those who excuse their spiritual dormancy, i.e. excuse their lack of repentance (to keep it simple) by telling themselves that because God's grace initiates repentance, they should wait around until God grants them repentance, and in the mean time try and figure out why He never seems to be doing that no matter how hard they pray or cry out for it. God will provide sustenance to those who are willing to lift their hand from the bowl of his provision and put the food in their mouth - but the man who is so lazy that he expects God not only to provide, but to feed him too - this man doesn't get it.
So if you are wondering where God is, I will tell you - He is on the other side of repentance, where He has always been.Labels: repentance |
posted by Daniel @
9:41 PM
3 comment(s)
 
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| When Assyria was God's Rod... |
In Isaiah 10 our Lord spoke about the coming judgment of Israel through the prophet. He explained in vivid imagery that nothing remained for those who stood condemned, but the coming condemnation. In this case, God was going to rouse Assyria against Israel (Judah). To frame this judgment, the Lord says through Isaiah, that Assyria doesn't intend to be God's rod of correction; that they are merely another wicked nation and that this plundering of Israel is merely an expression of their own corruption. Once God has used the Assyrians to judge Israel, He will then judge Assyria.
Consider the walled corridor that connects a holding pen for cattle to a killing floor beyond. Once an animal begins to walk in that corridor the narrow walls keep it from turning around. It goes to the killing floor on its own initiative. The Assyrians were acting in accord with their corruption - God wasn't imposing some new corruption upon them in order to force them to come to Israel - rather God was directing their path towards Israel so that their corruption was spent serving God's purpose. It isn't that God was forcing them to be wicked, it is that God was directing their wickedness at Israel in order to judge Israel. In His mercy, He chose to prune Israel by the hand of the Assyrians, rather than wipe her out altogether.
How did Paul say it? All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Calamity, however, isn't always judgment. Job was the most righteous man on the earth (in his day) according to the Holy Spirit, and yet calamity befell him - not as an act of judgment or chastisement, rather as an appointed calamity through which God's sovereignty and man's depravity were put on display resulting in the glorification of God, and the rewarding of a humble servant who remained faithful throughout the trials that befell him.
Providentially, our Lord is working all things together for good for us - even if he does so by means that shake our understanding. Sometimes our pace slackens for so long, that unless the Lord prunes us, we would stop altogether. He doesn't have to bring a wicked nation against us, it could come through sickness or financial upheaval - but even if He does, we can rest knowing that whatever the Lord allows to happen in our lives, He does do so out of loving concern and not out of wrath or malice. The Lord chastens those whom He loves. I would hazard this guess, that He never "over" chastens. When He allowed Assyria to come down on Israel, I think it was because anything less would have meant losing Israel altogether. Just as we sometimes have to amputate limbs to save the body - so too chastisement, which is always intended to "save the body" (as it were) can be quite severe - but as I suggest, never more severe than is required.
My point in the post today however is that the Assyrians didn't have a clue they were acting in accord with God's will. They were simply acting according to their nature. Not that God desired them to be wicked - that is, it wasn't God's desire that they be corrupt and rebellious, but rather even though God allowed them to continue in a rebellion that was never His desire, yet this same rebellion could not hinder God's plan, and taking their rebellion and corruption, God used it to bring about good - that is God used it to chastise the nation of Israel in order to bring Israel again to a place of genuine repentance. In this we see the complexity and majesty of the divine will.
The Lord wasn't controlling the Assyrians like robots, but allowing their sin and corruption to be the means of bringing Israel out of rebellion and idolatry and into repentance. Not mind control - but simply a demonstration that: no matter what individuals or nations do (according to their own will) God can and does use them in spite of their personal rebellion, to bring about His will.
One might argue that because scripture says that God desires that all men everywhere repent - that there is some contradiction here. If God desires all men everywhere to repent, that includes the Assyrians. So how can God desire for the Assyrians to repent on the one hand, and use their impenitence on the other, to bring about His will? Wouldn't that require God to desire both repentance and impenitence from the same people?
The answer lies in understanding the difference between what God prefers, and what God allows. God really would prefer it if everyone repented, but God has chosen to allow sin in the world. Sin by definition is disobedience and rebellion. God has chosen to allow disobedience and rebellion. The point is, even after allowing disobedience and rebellion - God's plans cannot be thwarted,
I love that the Assyrians were clueless in that even though God was wielding them like a weapon against Israel, they thought they were just going around and plundering and pillaging. They would have denied that God was involved in their activities, they even denied that the notion that the God of Israel was the one and only God, and yet...Labels: sovereignty |
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posted by Daniel @
6:15 AM
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| I am not one to complain... but... |
On June 25th, 2009 I spoke over the phone with a representative from Rogers Canada, my wireless provider. I had been looking at the latest iPhone, the 3GS, and decided that I would upgrade my current handset - hence I was talking with a Rogers representative who informed me that the upgrade would go through and that I should expect to have the phone in my hands three to five days after it was shipped. He took my email address so that I could get a tracking number when it shipped.
My expectation, of course, was that in a week to ten days (tops!) I would have a new handset.
Well the first week went by, and no email came announcing an impending shipment, but I was still okay with that. I even ordered a few accessories - a dock, an extra charging cable for the office, and a Griffin™ Reveal™ case. I was a little put out when I learned that the case was sold out, and probably wouldn't even ship until the middle of July. "Oh well," I thought, "I will just have to be very careful with the handset for the first week or two."
When the second week came and went without a whisper, I began to wonder whether or not my order had actually gone through. Did I mention that Rogers is a wireless provider? I mean, they spam me now and again with text messages etc. Surely, if there was some sort of delay, someone would call or at the very least (however impersonal) send me a text message: "Sorry about the delay on your upgrade, please be patient, we are out of stock and backordered." I mean, they have my phone number in their billing system, and they send out mass marketing spams - as a programmer I know how little work it would be for them to type one message and send it to everyone who is affected by a shortage...
I am not one to be impatient, but I can have my patience tested. By week three, my patience was being tested.
My accessories came in two shipments, the first shipment arrived at the beginning of week three, the second (the case) came at the end of week three - but still no phone. Had I not seen the new 6 GB data plan tacked onto my account, I might have pursued the thought that my order had slipped through the cracks, but seeing the data plan on my statement meant that the order had gone through.
This marks the beginning of the fourth week after the order was placed. In that time I have had some opportunity to consider whether or not I should have even bothered with an upgrade. As the calendar flipped through the days, I began to ask myself why I wanted the iPhone in the first place. The data plan was good, sure, it would sync nice with the new Mac Mini at home, okay... my palm pilot is as good as dead, yeah... but really, on judgment day when all that is hidden is brought to light, did I want the phone because it was a practical necessity, or did I justify the indulgence because there were some practical benefits?
There is a passage in Isaiah (3:14) that reads, "The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of His people,'It is you who have devoured the vineyard; The plunder of the poor is in your houses.' " When I read, "the plunder of the poor is in your houses" - I don't picture these Judeans going around and mugging poor people, then returning home and adorning their houses with whatever paltry things they managed to pilfer from the poor. Rather I think it means that one of the ways that sin manifested itself in the Judeans - one of the ways they rebelled against God - is that rather than look after the poor with the abundance God gave them, they looked after themselves. They filled their houses - their lives - with the plunder of their own abundance, and when God says they were robbing the poor, He means that their abundance is not given for their own comfort and ease, but for the easing and comforting of those who lack.
This time of waiting has been fruitful for me, in that I have given the grace to reflect upon some of the choices I make without thinking. I have been reading on a few forums the angst and anger of many who, like myself, are waiting for their new iPhone from Rogers. Where is my phone? Why didn't they tell me they don't have any in stock when I ordered? Why don't they notify us telling us when we can expect the phone, etc. etc. Yet I find myself thinking only about the idols in my life, and whether or not I will ever be godly enough, and possess enough wisdom to see them for what they are. Is my house full of plunder? Will the Lord excuse excessive living simply because everyone who I know lives that way? Does the Lord judge on a sliding scale? Oh, you lived in an affluent land, so your decadence couldn't be helped...?
Anyway, those are my thoughts this morning. |
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posted by Daniel @
9:20 AM
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| A few on the burner... but... |
I would have posted a yesterday, and again the day before, and even something of greater substance today, but I wasn't able to articulate my point the way I would have preferred.
I had a post on the first chapter of Isaiah, that just got a litle too big, then a post explaining how the marketing has learned to use the pavlovian response to sell products by catering to our vices - and showing that the more liberal a society, the easier it becomes to sell things to them - the point being that the medium that controls advertising is going to flourish under liberalism far more than it could under conservatism, and that since the cultural norm is easily shaped by the media in a single generation, we can expect that where capitalism rejects objective moralism, liberalism will increase. But that got a little heady.
So I thought I would just post about nothing.
There. Done. |
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posted by Daniel @
10:50 AM
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| Worldly Wisdom.. |
I have posted several times on worldly wisdom. At the heart of all worldly wisdom is the idea that life is sacred, and the sustaining of it the greatest virtue. Hence anything that takes life away, or lessens the pleasure of it, is considered immoral, and anything that sweetens life or protects and sustains it is considered moral.
A friend sent me an email containing "50 life lessons" supposedly gleaned by some 90 year old newspaper columnist. Turns out the list really was from that columnist, but the columnist was by no means 90 years old (the article was written just prior to the columnist's 50th birthday).
I was going to write my buddy back with my thoughts on some of the "wisdom" found in the list, but I thought I would do that here instead.
I begin with a disclaimer: I am not 90 years old. In fact, I am not even 50. If I have wisdom it hasn't come to me through living a long life, but through God's word studied and believed. If I lack it, it is only because sin can make a person willfully blind.
My next disclaimer is that I understand that much of that list was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, and conversationally funny.
One item in the list read this way:You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree. I have heard this repeated many times in many places, and usually (at least in Christian circles) with a nod towards Paul's disagreement with Barnabas, (i.e.: Hey! the Apostle agreed to disagree, therefore disagreement is godly!)
The truth is that when two parties disagree it is because one or both of them is either wrong or failing to articulate themselves. But consider the wisdom offered in that item: what is really being exalted in the notion of agreeing to disagree? I will tell you: Tolerance (note the capital "T").
In a world where life itself is an idol, anything that upsets life is an act of desecration. Christ taught that truth -was- divisive. What He came to proclaim was going to be so divisive, it would divide even the closest relationships (family). His message was not that we should agree to disagree, but rather that those who follow Him, and therefore hold to an objective truth will find doing so costly. This is what it means to count the cost. If you are willing to compromise truth for the sake of a relationship then you are not ready to follow Christ; scripture says you are not worthy of Christ. Unless you love Christ more than every other relationship, you are not fit to follow Him. Our Lord anticipated where compromising the truth would be most evident, as those who refuse to compromise will feel it in their relationships. If you accomodate error for the sake of maintaining a pleasant relationship, you are a compromiser, and not worthy of Christ.
Yet that is a very harsh thing to a worldling.
The world teaches that harmony is more important than truth. It does so in language that speaks of right and wrong, rather than truth and error, in terms of good and bad rather than good and evil. Yet the notion is clear enough: getting along with one another is more important than upholding truth or correcting error. Why is that? Because no one cries or dies when we tolerate error - everyone just gets along.
You have to remember: life is sacred, and therefore the quality of life is also sacred. In the short term it is always more pleasant to get along than to disagree, and for that reason the shortsighted and morally bankrupt will reason that the moral highground is held by the one who just wants to get along.
Listen: Sincere Christians disagree with one another all the time. There is enough sin in my life to blind me in ways I cannot imagine. Sin insinuates itself in us in this way: we want to believe some things because it pleases us to think that way. We are typically oblivious when it happens, though when we are delivered from some error we can see how our own desires had obfuscated the truth. Do I feel justified in hating my father for the trainwreck of an upbringing I have had? Do I give everyone else forgiveness, but not him? Guess what? That kind of sin is going to cause me to justify certain behaviors, and in doing so, I will be unable to see some truth that another may see clearly. Maybe it is some other sin, or many sins - the point is that a sin that is justified is a sin that is embraced - and where we embrace sin we become blind. We -ALL- do it, and we all do it by default, that is, it isn't some malicious choice we make to be evil, rather it is deep in us, so much a part of who we are, that we cannot distinguish it from ourselves. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness, not because we are insincere, but because we are sinners. Christ sets us free from this, but because sanctification is a process, it means that not all of us are going to be on the same page, and that means that well meaning, sincere believers are going to have real disagreements over items of faith.
What is clear to my brother may be obfuscated to me, and vice versa. This doesn't mean that it is okay to disagree. Understanding why we do a thing doesn't justify doing it. Thus agreeing to disagree is like agreeing to continue in sin, it's short sighted, foolish, worldly, and (dare I say it!) sinful.
Rather what we should do is agree to pursue the truth together recognizing sin blinds us, and that we may never agree because of sin in one or both parties involved, but not to allow this truth to cause us to make peace with sin by agreeing to disagree, which is really agreeing to let sin have its way in one or both of us. There is no love in that.
Take again another item from the list:Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about. The proposition itself is wise, but the supporting reason is worldly. The reason we shouldn't compare our lives to other lives, according to this wisdom, is because we don't know enough about someone else's life.
Consider why one would reason this way. Why does this wisdom say it is wrong to compare? The reason given is because we don't have enough information to make a sound judgment. Think this through with me. That would mean that if we had enough information it would be okay... right? Yet, I don't think this "wisdom" is suggested that it is ever okay. I think what is being suggested is that no one ever has the right to compare themselves with anyone else. That being the case (IMO), the whole "walk a mile in my shoes" pitch is just a dog an pony show to meant to make the premise seem reasonable.
It -is- wrong to compare ourselves to anyone else - but not because we lack information. Rather because we understand the sovereignty of God. What do we have that we can say our own right arm has given us? If we have received all from God, then how can we boast? If I have received "x" from God, and someone else has received "y" from God, and neither of us has "caused" God to supply for us, then it is ridiculous to think I am better than someone else because I received "x" from God and they received "y".
Then there is this gem:It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it. Wow. Where do I start? Okay, let's be clear, it is not okay to be angry with God. That's like saying, "It's okay to sin, God can take it." Anger itself is not a sin, but the only way anger can be directed at God is if one charges God with wrong. Think that through. It is -not- okay to be angry with God, even if God can take it.
Here is another gem:All that truly matters in the end is that you loved. Isn't that the hope of very false religion in the world? I mean, who doesn't love their own? What matters is not that you loved, but Who you loved.
If you love the God of scripture, you will truly be able to love others through Christ in you, which is really Christ loving through you, and not something your flesh or will, or heart managed to produce on its own. If you do not love the God of scripture, you will only "love" those who reciprocate your love, or love others to put your love on display for your own honor and glory - either way, your "love" will be entirely self serving - an animal reflex, and hardly worthy of anything more than eternal damnation.
There were a lot of good things on that list, and when I say good, I mean biblical, but these were nestled alongside worldly wisdom, and when that happens, spiritually speaking, the purpose is to sell the error by yoking it to truth. The powers and principalities that are opposed to God's rule have learned long ago that a spoonful of suger helps the medicine go down.
Be discerning in all things.Labels: wisdom and discernment |
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posted by Daniel @
9:12 AM
3 comment(s)
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| 12:34:56 7/8/09.... |
Once every hundred years the clock and calender line up sequentially from one to nine.
For me that happens in half an hour (12:24:56 on July 8th, 2009).Labels: fluff |
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posted by Daniel @
12:04 PM
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| Struggling With Unbiblical Expectations... |
When an adult turns to Christ and away from the errors of this life, they come into saving faith with a lot of baggage, and (typically) a very confused image of what Christianity is supposed to look like.
Their understanding of what is "good" is all messed up by humanistic and secular moralism. Their understanding of God is colored by the things they have learned about God while under the (sole) influence of worldly thinking. How many times have you cringed when a Christian leader has a horrible public scandal? ...they immediately doubt the authenticity of their faith, rather than the authenticity of their supposition How many times have you heard the "golden rule"? How many times have you seen nominal Christians fight like cats and dogs over trivial things, and in doing so shaming that great name that they co-opt for themselves? Frankly, when a worldly comes in out of the rain, as it were, they are soaking wet, and there is a struggle in their faith at first as they have to unlearn all the bogus things that they have come to expect from Christianity and imagine Christianity to be.
What happens when a new Christian is expecting some sort of Christian experience to happen and it doesn't? Let me tell you what happens - they immediately doubt the authenticity of their faith, rather than the authenticity of their supposition. They assume that something is wrong with them because they pray that God heals the sick and raises the dead, and it doesn't happen. They think something is wrong with them because they can't understand foreign languages, or even hear a voice in their head like they assume others do.
When I first came to Christ I thought I could heal people if my faith was right. I was quite surprised, and a little ashamed when I couldn't do it, and I thought there must be something wrong with my faith. Maybe I am not a REAL™ Christian? Then I would toil of how I could be sure I was really, really saved... That is what immaturity looks like. It includes a lot of confusion about what Christianity is supposed to be like, and when our experience differs from our expectation, we immediately presume the problem in in our faith and not in our expectation.
You who are older in the Lord, it is good for you to remember how that worked, and how long it took (and still takes for some of you) to deal with that - to come to the place where you depend on the God of scripture rather than the pop culture version of God that is infiltrating every aspect of the media driven, Christian religion. Remember to gentle with those who are sensitive to their faith - it isn't meant to be a burden to you to help others who struggle, it is meant as a blessing, for in imparting what God has shown you, you are reminded again how far you have come, and how great your Master in heaven is to you.
Grace to you, little ones.Labels: expectations vs. experience |
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posted by Daniel @
12:35 PM
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| Happy 4th of July To All My Southren Friends. |
| As a Canadian, I feel obligated to wish you Americans well on your nation's celebration of the declaration of Independence. As the Australians are fond of saying, "Good on ya, Mate!" |
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posted by Daniel @
12:31 PM
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