|
|
| |
 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
|
| |
| The Nashville Statement
|
| |
|
|
| |
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...
|
| |
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
|
| |
|
email
|
|
| Not Like A Glass Of Water... |
Have you ever known a genuine conspiracy theory buff? You know the sort I mean right? The ones who believe the government is covering up something - maybe aliens at area 51, or maybe the moon landing was a hoax, etc. For the sake of this illustration it doesn't really matter what their particular poison is, it only matters that you recognize a few things about such a person.
First of all no matter what you talk about, their particular fixation always enters into it. Did you buy milk this morning? Yeah, well listen man, I never drink milk from the store because the government is putting stuff in the milk. Lotta snow this morning? Yeah man, the Republicans are cloud seeding the U.S. in order to hinder the Obama administration. Okay, maybe that's a bit far fetched for most, but my point will ride on it even if it were more subdued, my point being: these people are so full of their conspiracy theories that these theories end up influencing everything they think and do.
We can, with tongue in cheek, pronounce the classic double entendre upon them when we say, "They are full of it."
We mean by that that they are at once "full of bunk" and again, that they are overly abounding in conspiracy theory stuff.
To use another illustration, the father loves his only child who was born blind, and cares for him, and always looks out for him, only to one day reach back into the car to get something, and fail to see his little one walk into the street, and you know the rest - the grief that grips this man's heart can only be described in terms like "overwhelming" or "incapacitating" - there is no balm stout enough to sooth this man's grief and remorse - he is, as we say, filled with grief, or filled with remorse.
When we use the word "fill" here - we are not suggesting that the conspiracy theory dude's life was like a cup that had to be emptied of normal things in order to be filled with conspiracy theories. We are not saying that the grieving father could not grieve until he first emptied himself of everything else. We are just using the expression as a way of painting the level of saturation - it is an entirely saturated situation.
I am using "fill" then in the same way that I might say that wind "fills" a sail, I mean that the wind exerts itself on every part of the sail, so that the sail conforms, as much as it is able, to the pressure the wind is putting on it.
The word the scripture uses to translate "fill" is πληρoω. It is pronounced: Play-raw'-oh, and it is the word that scripture uses (or derivatives of this word) when it is commonly describing being full of or being filled with/by the Holy Spirit.
When I first read the scriptures and learned that I was commanded by God to be being kept filled by/with the Holy Spirit (c.f. Ephesians 5:18) I sort of pictured that as a command to become a Spirit controlled zombie, and that I would enter into this state of pious zombification by "emptying myself of me" at which point I was certain I would receive some sort of mystical experience where by I felt in some tangible way, the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit.
I mention that because I know that my readership is wide enough (and thanks to Blogger™) random enough that some will be reading this who are trying to be filled with the Spirit, but haven't the first clue what that really means, or how to go about doing it.
I will explain it this way: Being filled with the Spirit simply means allow the conviction that comes from the Holy Spirit to saturate the choices you make. If you know a thing is sinful, you obey the conviction that to pursue that would be sin, and you instead pursue what is righteous. If you know that failure to do something would be likewise sinful, you obey the same conviction and do it.
Now when I say conviction I don't mean that you receive some kind of mystical impression, or any such nonsense. I mean that you simply are convicted that this one thing is sinful in the same way you are convicted that the sky is blue. You don't get zapped by some sort of "sky is blue" impression, nor do you go about like an open antenna trying to pick up "spiritual" signals. As you become familiar with God's word (through the reading of it) you become more and more familiar with what God expects from you. The Holy Spirit convicts your conscience that you should or should not do something, and so long as (and is as much as) your conscience is biblically informed, all you need to do to "walk in the Spirit" is walk without transgressing, or suppressing, your conscience. Being "filled" with the Holy Spirit means only that you are consciously examining your actions in light of your biblically informed, and Spirit provoked, conscience. You don't have to "empty" yourself of anything in order to be filled by the Spirit, but you do need to be obedient. When you resist the Holy Spirit's conviction, the bible calls that quenching the Holy Spirit - like dousing a fire; or more pictorially, like dousing the Holy Spirit's conviction by justifying yourself in what you do that is contrary to what you ought to do. When you quench the Holy Spirit, you are grieving the Holy Spirit, and we are told not to do that.
I know, I know. Some people really, really want an experience. They look to the passages in scripture where there was a present and experientially measurable manifestation of the Holy Spirit (the building shook! etc.), and using these passages from the book of Acts they teach that the Holy Spirit always works, or at least prefers to work, through manifesting Himself in some profound way. It can happen that something unusual will happen in your life, perhaps more than once, but again, perhaps not at all. But such phenomenon has nothing whatsoever to do with the command to be being kept filled by the Holy Spirit.
So if you every find yourself wondering what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, it just means to keep your affections such that you are always obeying the convictions of a biblically informed, and Spiritually provoked, conscience.
Note: One of the flakiest things I see some Christians doing is interpreting their own stray thoughts as promptings from the Holy Spirit. I blame it on the sad habit many exercise when they talk with other Christians about "spiritual" things. Pretend that you overhear this side of a phone conversation:
"Yeah, Marge? Hi, it's me Pam. I was just sitting here and I suddenly felt pressure from the Lord that I should call you..."
Here is what is really happening, Pam has become convinced that everything and anything that happens in her life might be a sign from God. She is daydreaming, or whatever, and suddenly a stray thought about Marge comes into her head. She then interprets this to mean that God wants her to call Marge.
Do you see the problem with that? God sent an angel to tell John the Apostle what the vision he had seen (c.f. the book of revelation) meant, but when God impressed something just as "God ordained" on Pam, He decided to leave it open to interpretation so that Pam has to rely upon her best, subjective, guess. Follow that kind of reasoning to its abusrd conclusion (God "told" me to marry you, or alternately (why not?) divorce you!) Once we set our own subjectivity as the traffic cop that decides what "impressions" are from God and which are just stray thoughts - we embark upon a road that leads to chaos.
God doesn't speak to me in stray thoughts and questionable impressions. He speaks to me through His word, and through conviction that is provoked by knowledge of His word. To be filled with God's Spirit then is not to be filled with my own stray thoughts that I think God is sending me, nor is it to be waiting on, or being led by some sort of mystical experience or experiences - it is simply this: you determine to do what you know God intends for you to do, and you know what God intends for you to do by informing your mind and your conscience through reading (and correctly undertanding) scripture.Labels: Holy Spirit, mysticism, walking in the Spirit |
posted by Daniel @
12:38 PM
1 comment(s)
 
|
|
|
|
| The Servant Of The Lord... |
I installed Mac OS X, version 10.6 yesterday, just after I got home from work.
The install was flawless, especially given that my daughter blew a breaker elsewhere in the house while overloading a circuit with both the tea kettle and the vacuum cleaner. I was in the bathroom at the time as the lights went out, and my heart nearly froze in my chest (having a power failure in the middle of an OS update is not good). We shared a meal with a wonderful couple from our church, and their equally wonderful grandchild, who got along splendidly with our younger ones.
All in all the night was great, we ended the visit in prayer, our guests left, and the children were given to reading until bedtime. I on the other hand was given to making sure the "Snow Leopard" install was as tweaked as humanly possible.
After setting up one of the new screen savers, I looked into my network preferences and noticed that the update had not removed two virtual network adapters that "Parallels" had installed when I installed a demo after first moving to a Mac. That annoyed me, so I tried (once again) to delete them. and once again they were removed from my network list, but I suspected that they would be there again next time I rebooted the computer. To Test my theory, I rebooted, and sure as sunshine, there they were again. I had removed the program long ago, but these two stubs remained, and since they were sowing up as "connected" I was more than a little annoyed to have them chewing up resources. So I began a near fruitless search on how to rid myself of them. It seemed from the Parallels software forums that this was a very, very common problem, and the solution given was a very, very, useless solution, for it did not solve the problem, and many people said as much, and their observations were apparently left unanswered.
After much snooping, I found the file where the network configurations were stored, and I went in using "VI" (a unix text editor I hadn't used in a decade or more) and removed the offending entries. That worked on next boot - but for some reason my wireless connection through my Mac Mini's Airport card now had an amber colored icon to its left rather than the normative green one. We all know how traffic lights work - red means the connection is broken, green means it is fine, but amber meant that something was working, but some other thing was not. So I looked into it and discovered that my iphone could no longer talk to my Mac Mini via the Mac's wireless Airport card.
Now, previously I had a profoundly fruitless time trying to get my iPhone talking to my wireless router, given that for some reason, one day I was suddenly no longer able to see the admin page on my router. I was planning on getting a new router when I realized my Mac Mini came with an Airport Wireless adapter card built in. So I configured it instead, and managed to connect wirelessly to it via my iPhone. Which was where I had left it.
So when the changes I made to the under belly of the OS suddenly hindered my wireless set up - it was not a good thing, nor an easily rendered fix. I am quite familiar with the Windows™ paradigm, but am still a Mac newbie - and this non-standard set up was pretty much than my meagre chops could handle right out of the box, as it were. So I was spending a great deal of time using the internet to inform myself enough to affect a positive outcome.
I was successful, but not until about an hour before I was supposed to get up for work. Somewhere in my mono-focused effort the clock ticked on - and though I was yawning often, and glancing up, and even pondering in little snatches of sobriety, the consequences of my folly, yet I was convinced I could solve the problem before my wife ever had an opportunity to tell me her email wasn't working.
I went down to bed then, and made a rather foolish and sinful decision. I decided that I would call in sick today.
So instead of a mere hour's rest, I slept for a few hours, and rose this a.m. only to call in and let my supervisor know that I was not going to make it in today. But somewhere in between dragging myself out of bed, and holding the phone in my hand, the Holy Spirit reminded me that this would grieve Him. I had one of those struggles in the flesh that someone who has been in the Lord as long as I have, ought not to have any more - but at the end of it, I knew I would be going in, and not making that phone call.
Here is where the point that I began this post about comes to the fore front. As I surrendered to the will of the Lord, I began to pray, thanking the Lord for the victory, but some part of me actually felt that because this was a particularly difficult struggle, that God ought to be thankful that I chose to obey Him rather than myself in the matter. Can you believe that? Right on the heels of such grace, I had the smug wherewithal to imagine that I deserved a reward for my great act of faith, and this thought penetrated even my prayer of thanks.
How gently the truth came to me as this through lingered for a moment - I was aware of the wrongness of it at once - and immediately recalled where the Lord tells the parable of the servant who works all day in the fields, then comes into his master's home, and is made to serve him a mean and in doing so has done nothing worthy of praise - for he is a servant, and when he performs what his role requires, it is not something to praise him over, but is instead the barest minimum that is expected in a servant.
What a profound fool I am sometimes! To waste all night on some folly that could have waited, to give into the weakness of my flesh before I lay myself down to rest, planning on sin in the morning, and then, when grace finds me the next day, I puff myself up thinking that I am worthy of some kind of honour having done the very least of what is expected of me - and that not in my own strength, but in the strength of my Lord's grace which came on the wings of His conviction!
Listen: My God didn't whisper in my ear this morning audibly, but He was with me, patiently leading me out of sin, and restoring me - even the word of God says: He shall save His people from their sin. Ask me how I know I am saved, and I will tell you - I know I am saved because I see it each day - the Holy Spirit witnesses to my spirit that I am His child. Not always with words of comfort, but often with chastisement, with conviction, and then in the wake of obedience - with a profound joy in the glory of God and His righteousness that is found in me only because He has left me a Comforter - One who empowers my obedience.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him you creatures here below
Praise Him above ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Spirit).
Amen.Labels: Holy Spirit, obedience |
|
posted by Daniel @
8:14 AM
6 comment(s)
|
|
|
|
| What hinders you from loving God with all your heart? |
Did you ever wonder (Christian), why it is that you have difficulty loving the Lord your God with all your heart?
The answer is in scripture, and I will quickly point you to it. In Ecclesiastes 9 we read:...the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. I know - you thought I was going to jump to Jeremiah 17 first, but I fooled you, I am quoting it second:The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Seriously, this is describing everyone's heart - Christian, and non-Christian. But you object, right? Isn't the new covenant promise that God will give each one of us a brand spanking new heart? I mean, don't these verses talk about the old heart that we had, and now that we are believers, that heart disappears and we get a new heart?
Well, if you read the bible a little more closely, you would have noticed that the promise of a new heart (c.f. Ezekiel 36:26) was made to Israel as a nation - the old heart was the law, and the new Heart was going to be Christ, when the prophet says that God is going to take the old heart out of Israel and give Israel a new heart, he means that God is going to remove the law as the hub around which the religion of Israel revolves, and replace it with the Messiah - a heart of stone tablets being replaced with a heart of flesh. When we make this promise about us as individuals, it fuddles the whole thing in a way that isn't very helpful.
We make the distinction because when you are joined to Christ through faith, His heart is made available to you through that union and through the indwelling presence of God in the person of the Holy Spirit. In that sense you do have a "new" heart, but not in the sense that it displaces your old one. When you are saved something happens: suddenly, alongside all your old and remaining lusts and sinful desires, you find new and compelling desires - some part of you suddenly want to live a life that is pleasing to God, and you suddenly find yourself aware of, and made guilty over, your sin. This does not come from your "old heart", but from your union with Christ. That is something that the law couldn't do - it (being nothing more than a set of commandments) couldn't produce in you the desire to obey, but when God began to live in you He began to produce a real desire to obey Him. But that desire lives right alongside a desire to indulge yourself in the same old sin you always have indulged yourself in. The flesh and the Spirit are contrary to one another, so that you cannot please one without displeasing the other.
So when we talk about your heart being full of evil and insanity and remaining so all your life, we should not be assuming that because we have come to faith that heart suddenly is vaporized and replaced with a new one. Hardly! Our heart (the core "us") is still more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick, so that when we obey it we cannot please God.
You see, that heart cannot love God at all, and when we try to coax it into loving God, the best we can do is to try and muster up enough guilt or gratitude and hope that doing so will make our old heart suddenly love God. But it can't, and it won't. Love is not something we can coax ourselves into feeling, much less when we realize that our heart is still insane, deceitful and entirely wicked.
How then are we to love the Lord with all our heart?
We do it in Christ, silly!
You see, what we cannot do, God can do. God loves God, and the Holy Spirit within us loves Christ and Loves God, and we can partake of that love - in fact we do partake of that love because it was poured out in us through the Holy Spirit as the scriptures say. Thus instead of trying to muster up a loving feeling towards from your insanely wicked heart, you need to look to God by faith through the Holy Spirit to partake of a love that already is there. It is not being produced by you, but rather it is present with and produced by the Holy Spirit who is in you if you're in Christ. You partake of that love in surrender - thus, you cannot love God unless you surrender to God.
So that's what hinders you from loving God with all your heart.Labels: Holy Spirit, love, union with christ, walking in the Spirit |
|
posted by Daniel @
7:11 AM
7 comment(s)
|
|
|
|
|
|
