The Fundamental Blog

“If anything is a mystery to you and is coming between you and God, never look for the explanation in your intellect, look for it in your disposition, it is that which is wrong.” (Oswald Chambers). The thought here is that God would love for there to be nothing in the way of perfect communion with us so whenever there is something in the way, it must be because of something in us, in our disposition, in the way we see things. This is also the case with a lot of the problems that non-believers have hearing and accepting the truth of God, their disposition gets in the way, their intellect has no explanation and they simply can not believe what makes no sense to them. When I am in discussions with non-believers, and even with believers who are struggling with difficult doctrines, the questions, comments and assaults generally form themselves around the same pattern; IF - THEN WHY?

IF God wants us all to be with Him in Heaven, THEN WHY doesn’t He just make it happen? IF God is a loving God, THEN WHY would He order the genocide of an entire people? IF God cares about us, THEN WHY would He kill children? IF God is perfect, THEN WHY do we have disease? IF blah, blah, blah, THEN WHY Yackity Smackity? In our study of the Bible we need to change the structure of the questions we ask to really appreciate what God is revealing to us. If the question starts with, “IF,” then we are already going the wrong direction. If the question has the word, “WHY,” in it then it will almost assuredly be an exercise in futility. God rarely ever answers the, “WHY,” questions and even were he to do it, we would never understand the answers. “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your, ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” Isaiah 55:8-9.

So let’s dispense with the wanting to know, “WHY,” all the time and accept that though He does occasionally give a reason, the Word of God is to be accepted like the answer from your mother when you were two years old and asked, “WHY?” “Because!” That’s your answer, OK? This becomes much easier to accept if we work on changing the word, “IF,” to, “SINCE?” Whenever we ask, “IF…,” we are phrasing things in a manner that says we doubt what God is saying. If we use, “SINCE,” instead, we are accepting what we have been given as truth, even though we don’t necessarily understand the implications surrounding the issue at hand.

“If God is holy and unchanging then why was it OK for incest in the earlier parts of Genesis but not after the law was given through Moses?” This questions the holiness of God, “Is He really?” and also fires an accusation at the nature of God; “It was OK then but not now huh? I thought God couldn’t change! If the Bible can’t contradict itself then why does it?” When we change the, “If’s,” to, “Since’s,” then instead of accusing God of being a liar, we are indicting ourselves for being unknowing. This is were I come up with, “It’s OK to be stupid!” I have no problem accepting that God is smarter than we are and that there will always be questions to which we will never get an answer. I’m OK with that and I laughingly refer to those questions as being on the list I want answered when I get to Heaven. I’m sure that when I get there I won’t care about the answers anyway, but why, if they won’t matter when we enter eternity, should we be so hung up on them here?

Christianity will continue to be a bag of never-ending questions as long as we demand to understand everything. We need to begin with the realization that we, with our finite little brains, will never be able to fully comprehend the infinite! We are human and that’s the way humans are, we have to deal with it. But once we are able to say, “I don’t care what this book tells me, and even though I may not understand the how’s and why’s to everything it says, I WILL believe that it is the truth because Jesus Christ tells me it is true and the Spirit convicts me to believe it is the truth of God.”, then the light will begin to shine. Will it clear up all of our questions? Absolutely not! What it will do though is show us where we are limited. The Holy Spirit will lead us into the truth of God in Christ Jesus and that has to be enough, because that’s all we get.

The Spirit knows what, and how much we are able to receive and He will give us that much. To give us more than we are able to hold would be like pouring 12 ounces of water into a 10 ounce glass, part would be wasted and it would make a mess in the process. Do I understand the prophesies in Isaiah, with the wheels and the eyes and the wings and the ups and downs and all that? NO! I accept that I must not need it right now though or else the Spirit would have opened my eyes to it. This is exactly the reason we need to stay in the word though; what is not revealed with the first read may come in the next, or the 12th, or the 100th read. What we must understand is that the truthfulness of God’s Word does not depend on whether or not we understand or believe it. If the fact that children are going to bed hungry is something that we do not believe, it doesn’t make it any less true because of our disbelief. And because we don’t understand how God was able to part the Red Sea so that Israel could escape from Pharaoh doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

“IF,” is a word that will keep us bound to an explanation when there is no explanation to be had, and it will hinder our progression toward a deeper faith. Faith is all about believing; “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1 Faith is not a blind leap though, nor is it one without a net. Faith is reasonable when we begin to exercise it, faith grows faith and the faith that is as small as a mustard seed can become the largest thing in our lives if we will allow it to grow. Whenever we don’t, “Get It,” we have to make ourselves understand that either we are not ready to receive it, we don’t need to know just yet, or it’s a shortcoming on our part, we’re not applying ourselves to the task. Our failure to understand is never because God made a mistake. That’s one thing He can not do!

“SINCE,” is the new, “IF,” Christian. So if you’re ready to get serious… I mean, SINCE this is the most important thing in our lives, it’s time to stop doubting God and simply accept that there are plenty of good reasons to believe that the Bible is truth. If we are the ambassadors of our Lord here on earth… wait… SINCE we have received the command to spread the Gospel and SINCE we are the property of Jesus, bought at a price and not our own, then it’s time to quit fooling around with arguments against God and get in step with the Creator of the universe. It is not a matter of, “If God will judge the world.” It’s, “SINCE.” It’s not, “If Jesus is the only way,” it’s, “SINCE.” It is not whether our actions and testimony matter, it’s SINCE we live…


All for the Glory of Christ

The proofs that would show that we live in a theocratic universe are more lengthy than I can go into here, but suffice to say that we do, indeed, exist within a theocratic framework; that means that there exists a governing God to whom all of creation must be attributed. This God is worthy of, and rightly owed the worship of His created beings and as we look around, we can see a multitude of religions and religious schools of thought from which to pattern this worship upon. So which is the right one? Is one substantially different from the others, or do they all amount to about the same thing with their minor distinctions being negligible? Does it matter if we choose a Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyers, Joel Osteen, Charles Stanley, Billy Graham or any other particular presentation style? Aren’t they all talking about the same God and the same path to salvation?

I am not even going to consider the outlying faiths of the eastern and mid-eastern peoples because for this discussion I am confident that we have more than enough to consider simply looking at the ideological splits within the Christian, (or supposedly Christian), communities. What I want to consider is the way we go about finding a worshipping congregation to be joined to, and whether or not our decision making is trustworthy. Do we find a congregation and then learn the tenets of faith, or do we find faith and then learn which denominational faction is the closest to it? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Theology is the study of religion, of faith and God’s relation to the world, a religious theory, school of thought, or system of belief or a course of religious training. Now God, being God, can not change; it is the character and workings of God that we, mere mortal created beings, are struggling to comprehend but it seems that the field of theology has split into two factions. On the one side we find those who are searching for the true characteristics of God in order to explain the workings of the environment in which we find ourselves, and the other side is searching for ways to fit the way we want to view ourselves into a theological system. The first sees the Bible as ancient writings given by God, through the Holy Spirit, to men who faithfully set down the words so that we might have, “The Word of God,” to use as the ultimate reference; the latter is willing to go so far as to, in some cases, alter the texts to express their own points of view.

Now comes the worldling. He is invited to attend a church with some of his contemporaries and as he does, he becomes convicted by something he hears. The more mature Christian would agree that this is the calling of God to faith in the Son because, as it is written, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…” John 6:44. But the worldling who has no learning, no knowledge of what the Scriptures say, has nothing on which to base the nature of that conviction. He is left to decide whether or not the message which convicts him feels like its right. The problem here is that none of us want to think of ourselves as being the wretched, sinful, deceitful creatures that the Bible tells us we are, we would much rather have our egos stroked and come out feeling better about ourselves than we did on the way in. This is one of the reasons that I repeatedly urge everyone to get into the Bible to see if the message, which too often only tickles our ears, is in fact the teachings of God.

It is not all that common that the seeking person feels the pangs to answer the big questions of life by realizing a creator God, and to learning the wisdom of His Word to see what his right relationship with God is, can and should be. More often, man takes his own, over inflated, impression of himself and looks for something that suits him. Instead of learning who we are and how we are to relate to God, we go out looking for a place that allows us to shape God to fit our needs, but as I said earlier; God does not change! Man is so stubborn that he insists on a faith that will tell him whatever it is that he wants to hear, even though it may have nothing to do with reality.

Take the charismatic faith healer as an example. Can God heal the cripple, give sight to the blind and raise the dead? Absolutely! Does He do it today through traveling tent shows? I don’t think so. I may get arguments about this but I have never seen anyone who was genuinely crippled be healed by some guy smacking him on the forehead and commanding the demon to come out. I firmly believe that in the Apostolic ministries of the first century, the Apostles were given this ability to prove the validity of their message through such displays, but I have never seen anyone who had the Apostolic sign-gifts in our time. The healer may have plants in the audience which, “appear,” to be miraculously restored but the fact is that when the genuinely afflicted person is not cured, they end up being told that their faith was not strong enough to be healed. The weakness of the afflicted prevented the healing from being effective. Rubbish! When Christ healed, (or Peter, or Paul…), He sometimes healed to show what faith could do independently of the afflicted person’s faith.

There are many times where we read, “your faith has healed you,” or, “because of their great faith He was merciful,” but not always. In Luke 7:11-17 is the account of Jesus raising the dead son of a widow in the town of Nain. No one asked Jesus to do this, He took pity on the woman and gave her back her son, but it was not dependent on the faith of the dead man, nor that of his mother. This was a miracle which was performed to glorify Christ by the power to raise the dead before a gathering in a public place. Likewise, the man who was born blind and had his eyes opened did not know who it was that had opened his eyes. How could he have been receiving a reward for his faith when he had no clue what was happening to him or who was doing it?

The point is this, it is too easy for us to look to the claims of those who appear to be preaching the Word of God but allow us to be comfortable in our current situations. If you get to go to be with the Lord when you leave this life and have only to claim to be a Christian while living the same life you always have, who wouldn’t want to be a Christian? But that isn’t Christianity. Christianity demands that we change. Not to gain our salvation, there is nothing we can, “DO,” to earn that, but once we have given ourselves to Christ, His Holy Spirit begins to do supernatural things with us that will change who we are. If we didn’t begin to change than we would be violating Scripture because it clearly says, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son…” Romans 8:29. The book of James is all about the outpouring of good works that are a result of the change being made in us, not for salvation, but as a result.

Real faith, faith that serves God’s desires, is transforming. It changes us. We do not have the right, or the ability, to mash God into a mold that allows us to like who we are at present. We must learn who God is and then believe what He tells us and when that happens we will discover that we will most assuredly not like the people we are. But then the changes start to happen and we begin to be transformed toward the likeness of Christ and we can praise God for each step along the way, (even the painful ones). He is doing something for our good and it is a beautiful thing. The chicken came before the egg and God, the One true God is before our faith. When we keep this in the right order then, and only then, our transformation is a thing which is…


All for the Glory of Christ