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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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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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| Chatting Up The Kids... |
I try and spend 90 minutes each weekday morning with my two eldest children. Roughly two thirds of that time is spent reading then discussing a chapter of scripture, and the other third in studying biblical Greek. During our time together this morning, we were examining 2 Samuel 12, the chapter where [1] Nathan confronts David about his illicit affair with Bathsheba, and of course the cover up of that sin through the premeditated murder of Uriah, and [2] the God afflicts the child of that adulterous union with an illness that eventually (on the seventh day) kills the child.
As we sat down we rehearsed again the way in which two passages in scripture affect our time in God's word. The first passage being found in the second chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: the natural man cannot comprehend spiritual things. We rehearsed again how if we understand anything spiritual it is not because we are so smart, but because God in His grace has deigned to allow us to comprehend a spiritual truth, thus our attitude is one of thankful dependence upon God's Spirit to teach. The other passage is found in the second chapter of James' epistle wherein we are reminded that God gives understanding liberally to those who ask him for it without doubting.
Because I wanted to make sure the children weren't simply aping what I was doing, we briefly discussed the difference between seeking God in prayer, and running from God in prayer. A man can very well ask God all the right things - please open my understanding, please keep me from error - but in his heart he doesn't want to know the Lord in what he is doing, rather he has been trained that this is what you ask, and if you don't perhaps God will punish you, or fail to bless you. This sort of heart is trying to "do the right thing" for the wrong reason - either to avoid God's disappointment, or to appease some requirement. Instead one must come to God because one wants to be with God - that is the purpose of the prayer. I used as an example the way my children rush to meet me each night when I come home from work. The did so because they love me, and they take joy in my coming home. But what if they believe that they had to run up and greet me? That if they failed to do so I would love them less, or maybe punish them - or perhaps withhold from them some privilege they presently enjoyed? Would running up to greet me be the same? In the same way, or so I explained, you can come to God in prayer and not really be "seeking" Him, but rather seeking something for yourself, that is, seeking to satisfy some requirement that you believe with either benefit you or at least keep you from something unfortunate.
We then prayed, and began to read the text previously mentioned.
The illicit affair was easily explained to the children - we focused first on how wrong David's conduct had been, secondly on how David reacted when Nathan confronted with his sin - that David did not continue trying to hide it, but confessed immediately. We noted how immediate and complete God's forgiveness had been, and mused by extension how God forgives our sin just as thoroughly and quickly.
But the discussion about the death of that child who was born of David and Bathsheba's adulterous union took some time. The text plainly says that God made the child sick, and that the child died on account of that sickness. I asked - does God ever take a man's life? They weren't sure so we looked at the last plague in Egypt, and again at the plagues that filled the wilderness with the corpses of disobedient Israel, and even Nadab and Abihu, and Uzzah, and lest we imagine God was any less holy in the NT I could mention Annanias and Saphira. The point was, God most certainly took life.
My question at that point was, "Is God evil for taking life?" The knee-jerk reaction (of course) is to reason that God is not wicked in ending the life of a sinner, since every sinner's life is forfeit on account of sin. The trouble with that however is that David sinned, not the baby - and God's word is very clear about putting to death the son for the sins of the father - God will not do that. So we are left with the idea that God put the child to death for its own sin - even though reason tells us that the babe was by no means capable of sin.
After some discussion, I brought the matter into perspective by asking whether God is required to give life to anyone, and if having given it - is God required to sustain it? Although we find ourselves on the receiving end of an unpleasant truth - yet the truth is that God is not morally obligated to give us life, nor is he morally obligated to sustain our life. The only reason murder is murder is, after all, because we are taking away something that isn't ours to take. If God takes away life, He is only taking back what has always been His.
This fundamental difference between ourselves and God is a very important lesson for us all to learn if we are to understand grace with any depth. If we cannot fathom how God can take any life and every life and still be righteous - we neither understand who God is, nor do we understand who we are, and having such a crippled understanding of these things - our religion is going to be very person-o-centric.Labels: devotionals, God |
posted by Daniel @
5:49 PM
10 comment(s)
 
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| When Did The Manna Fall? |
 I start my day, alternately at anywhere between 4:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. depending on how late I went to bed the night before. My preference is to rise earlier. The first thing I do, even before my feet are out of bed, is pray. Then I get up and do all the morning stuff you do - go to the washroom, get dressed, etc. Then I go and pray again - this time however it is far more focused - I pray for my struggles and for my family, for my church, and for all those temporal things that change week to week. It is this prayer time that usually sets the pace for the rest of the day. If I give it short shrift, I pay for it later in the same way a runner can run a race without warming up - they just aren't as "on their game" as if they warm up.
When my prayer time is over, I begin to read through the bible - starting at Genesis, and ending at Revelation, and starting all over again when I am done. I do that usually for about half an hour, moving my bookmark at the end of it. The next hour or so I like to read more topically - either studying one section, or perhaps reading from a variety of sources - prophets, psalms, proverbs, gospels, epistles, etc. If I am not finished this by 6:30 a.m. I wrap it up, because that is the time I spend in a bible study with my two older children (aged 7 and 9). I wake them up for the study and we read one chapter of scripture together, stopping pretty much everywhere to explain what is being said. We start by rehearsing what we read the day before, so as not to lose the context of what we read today - and we ask questions along the way and answer them. That usually lasts about half an hour. When we are finished our bible study, we break out our Biblical Greek assignments and for the next hour we study biblical Greek together, memorizing NT verses in Greek, working out grammar, and working on flashcards to keep our vocabulary sharp. The last 15 minutes or so are all used up by flashcards - so I use that time to take a quick shower, and change into my cycling clothes. At 8:00 a.m., or as close to that as I can manage - I get on my bike and cycle ten urban miles into work.
The Hebrews whom God had called out of bondage in Egypt - these he provided sustenance for by way of manna. Each morning God would provide, alongside the morning dew, manna from heaven to be gathered before the dew evaporated. The manna didn't hang around all day, it disappeared shortly after the rising of the sun (when the dew was gone, so too was the manna). Such that the whole camp rose every morning, early, to take in the manna that would feed them throughout that day. Each day they collected enough for that day, and no more - with the exception of Friday mornings, where they collected enough to provide for both Friday and Saturday (the Sabbath).
I see in this a good argument for being fed spiritually in the morning (as opposed to any other time). It strikes me as wise to make God our first priority, and let the rest of the day work itself out around -that- rather than the other way around. I feel so strongly about this, that I would not hesitate to leave a job that couldn't work around my schedule.
What say you? When do you feed on the Lord? I know we, all of us, throughout the day spend time in prayer, and perhaps we read Christian literature in the evening etc. I am not talking about the stuff that we all do, I am talking about when you give God your greatest time. For me, I am a manna, er, I mean morning man.Labels: devotionals, manna |
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posted by Daniel @
12:29 PM
5 comment(s)
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