Worship While It’s Warm

In my last post, I indicated that I would be walking through my testimony as contemplate the subject of perseverance, about how God will not give up on those who are genuinely His.

Here is an excerpt of my conversion essay from my DTS application:

I was raised a catholic until my mother passed away in 1973, when I was 9 years old. After that I lived with my dad, who was involved with a missionary Baptist church. I sang in the youth choir and participated in youth events, it did not mean much to me. But even at a young age, I was a thinker and I began to ponder the purpose behind the weekly procession. In my junior year in high school I concluded that I did not need church to be a good person, and informed my father that I had no further interest in attending. He said “o.k.”

But that all changed shortly after I started college in fall 1982, when I met 2 christians. They did not talk to me about church…they told me about Jesus, about how I was dead in my sins and he was the only way to be connected to God. They invited me to a campus bible study and I checked it out. Immediately, I was struck by the joy and peace that the people there had, or seemed to anyway. It was clear to me that they had something I did not have. But I wanted it. So I went back the following week. To this day, I could not tell you what was said but I remember vividly how empty I felt. Soon after that second meeting, with the emptiness continually lingering, I dropped to my knees in my dorm room and told Jesus that I wanted him. That’s all I knew at the time. I was a changed person and told everyone I knew that Jesus died for their sins and they should accept him as Lord and Savior.

I said a prayer. Not through an altar call, which I think can create a false sense of security. But a genuine heart felt prayer that acknowledged I was a sinner and I needed Jesus and I wanted Him to come into my life.

I immediately began to read the bible, attend bible study, hang out with other christians and join a church. By all external accounts, it did appear that I was following Jesus.

The problem was that I also had a sinful pull in my heart, which juxtaposed with my new christian experience, created conflict, distraction and eventual departure. So here is what followed in the conversion essay.

I also knew that more than anything else, I wanted to be loved by a man. I wanted for someone to consider me special. While I strove to remain diligent and faithful to my Christian walk, my thirst for a human relationship began to vie with my thirst for my spiritual one. My need to be loved, slowly turned into a quest for marriage or any means of love I could obtain although what I settled for were poor substitutes. James 1:14,15 says “but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust, and when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death”. By the spring of 1986, my “own lust” won out and I fell out of fellowship with God. Greener pastures were out there and I was determined to find them.

That same year I got married for all the wrong reasons and began to live a lifestyle that was completely opposed to everything I professed as a Christ follower.  It was as though I had never made a profession of faith.  I basically wanted to do my own thing at that point.  My pleasure and desires were paramount and I no longer cared about what the bible said.

My journey continues next time

I recently started reading through the book of Hebrews and parked for awhile on this verse

But Christ was faithful as a Son over His house - whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end. (Heb 3:6)

It prompted a number of thoughts. I thought of what it means to hold fast. I thought of the fact there are people who don’t. People who had professed Christ but for whatever reason, didn’t hold on. At some point, something made them let go. Some would question if these folks were even genuine believers in the first place. Ah yes, the good old doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which says that if you really have genuine faith, then you will really hold on.

So this caused me to reflect on my own grip over the years, which has experienced varying degrees of loosening and tightening, including a 13 year period where I actually let go.  No, I have not always been faithful and I have not always walked with Jesus even after saying that I would.  Yet through periods of numbness, complacency, sinfulness and yes, even flat out rebellion,  I came back.  For there has been a pull and a peace that continues to lure me.

So as I explore this area of perseverance, I’d thought I’d start by laying out my own life.  For it is a life that in spite of me, God still continues to fill and to use.  It also provides a very practical application to scriptures that indeed support the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.  For I have personally discovered that it is not I who is able to stay on course.  I couldn’t or wouldn’t but for the grace of Him who continues to show Himself strong in my life and demonstrate Philippians 2:13 live and in action,

For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure 

So bear with me as I get a little personal and walk through my testimony.  For it is one that I hope with encourage that person who thinks that they’ve blown it too much, what’s the point and let’s just throw in the towel.

Stay tuned for Following Jesus - Part I

There is an interesting conversation going on over at the Parchment and Pen blog about sin what Jesus did not the cross. Some folks seem to reject the notion of penal substitution, that is Jesus being made a sacrifice for our sin, bearing the guilt, shame and penalty of that sin for us. One commenter suggested that what he did was set an example for us to live obediently, in a life surrendered to Him. And I will agree that that is what our life should be about as Romans 12:1 tells us…to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy acceptable to God, which is our spiritual act of worship.

Yes, we must live lives that are surrendered to God. But I have to step and think about what gives me the ability to do this in the first place. It is one thing to have this as our goal but quite another to actually live it out.

For I see in scripture that I am not naturally inclined to want to surrender to God’s will and ways. And especially, apart from Him I am dead in my trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1), a slave to sin (Romans 6:17-20), hostile towards God (Romans 8:7) and unable to comprehend a life of surrender to God (1 Cor 2:14).

So now I come to Christ and believe in Him. I am saved and am born-again. All is right and so my surrender should begin, right? Well, not so fast. Because if first begs the question of what am I coming to Christ for. I recognize that I am a sinner that everything in the previous paragraph applies to me. I cannot in my own efforts be right with God or be reconciled to Him giving me the ability to stand before Him. For God demands holiness, which I am unable to provide. And His righteousness demands payment for sins. But Jesus has made the way. He took on flesh, stepped down from glory to become a sacrifice and bear the penalty of my sin so I can be reconciled to God. Acts 16:21 says to “believe in the Lord Jesus”. When I believe in Him, I am trusting what He accomplished on the cross for me. This is why He is a Savior, because I was a sinking ship with an anchor called sin and needed rescuing. His example could not rescue me. Only the blood of His sacrifice, which provided the propitiation in that it satisfied the demands of God’s righteousness (Romans 3:25).

Yes, we are new creatures in Christ if you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior. But anyone reading this who has had to the desire to please God, to surrender to His will knows that often there is a struggle. There is a battle of the wills and to follow an example just doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Paul describes this as the sin principle in Romans 7:21-23.

But what follows in Romans 8:1-2 is that I am free from condemnation through the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which sets me free from the Law of sin and death. His payment for the penalty of my sin set me free from a system of “doing good” in my own effort. And this makes the following verses so powerful in Romans 8:3-4

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

So the example is fine but it is the sacrifice on the cross that gives me the ability to follow the example. Life in the Spirit is achieved through recognizing that that life is only made available because of what Jesus did on the cross. And this is at the heart of surrender that will allow me to have a life well lived.

I found this compelling by John Piper

The Sovereignty of God and Prayer
John Piper

I am often asked, “If you believe God works all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11) and that his knowledge of all things past, present, and future is infallible, then what is the point of praying that anything happen?” Usually this question is asked in relation to human decision: “If God has predestined some to be his sons and chosen them before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4,5), then what’s the point in praying for anyone’s conversion?”The implicit argument here is that if prayer is to be possible at all man must have the power of self-determination. That is, all man’s decisions must ultimately belong to himself, not God. For otherwise he is determined by God and all his decisions are really fixed in God’s eternal counsel. Let’s examine the reasonableness of this argument by reflecting on the example cited above.

1. “Why pray for anyone’s conversion if God has chosen before the foundation of the world who will be his sons?” A person in need of conversion is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1); he is “enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:17; John 8:34); “the god of this world has blinded his mind that he might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (II Corinthians. 4:4); his heart is hardened against God (Ephesians 4:18) so that he is hostile to God and in rebellion against God’s will (Romans 8:7).

Now I would like to turn the question back to my questioner: If you insist that this man must have the power of ultimate self-determination, what is the point of praying for him? What do you want God to do for Him? You can’t ask that God overcome the man’s rebellion, for rebellion is precisely what the man is now choosing, so that would mean God overcame his choice and took away his power of self-determination. But how can God save this man unless he act so as to change the man’s heart from hard hostility to tender trust?

Will you pray that God enlighten his mind so that he truly see the beauty of Christ and believe? If you pray this, you are in effect asking God no longer to leave the determination of the man’s will in his own power. You are asking God to do something within the man’s mind (or heart) so that he will surely see and believe. That is, you are conceding that the ultimate determination of the man’s decision to trust Christ is God’s, not merely his.

What I am saying is that it is not the doctrine of God’s sovereignty which thwarts prayer for the conversion of sinners. On the contrary, it is the unbiblical notion of self-determination which would consistently put an end to all prayers for the lost. Prayer is a request that God do something. But the only thing God can do to save a lost sinner is to overcome his resistance to God. If you insist that he retain his self-determination, then you are insisting that he remain without Christ. For “no one can come to Christ unless it is given him from the Father” (John 6:65,44).

Only the person who rejects human self-determination can consistently pray for God to save the lost. My prayer for unbelievers is that God will do for them what He did for Lydia: He opened her heart so that she gave heed to what Paul said (Acts 16:14). I will pray that God, who once said, “Let there be light!”, will by that same creative power “shine in their hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). I will pray that He will “take out their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). I will pray that they be born not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God (John 1:13). And with all my praying I will try to “be kind and to teach and correct with gentleness and patience, if perhaps God may grant them repentance and freedom from Satan’s snare” (2 Timothy 2:24-26).

In short, I do not ask God to sit back and wait for my neighbor to decide to change. I do not suggest to God that He keep his distance lest his beauty become irresistible and violate my neighbor’s power of self-determination. No! I pray that he ravish my unbelieving neighbor with his beauty, that he unshackle the enslaved will, that he make the dead alive and that he suffer no resistance to stop him lest my neighbor perish.

2. If someone now says, “O.K., granted that a person’s conversion is ultimately determined by God’ I still don’t see the point of your prayer. If God chose before the foundation of the world who would be converted, what function does your prayer have?” My answer is that it has a function like that of preaching: How shall the lost believe in whom they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach unless they are sent (Romans 10:14f.)? Belief in Christ is a gift of God (John 6:65; 2 Timothy 2:25; Ephesians 2:8), but God has ordained that the means by which men believe on Jesus is through the preaching of men. It is simply naive to say that if no one spread the gospel all those predestined to be sons of God (Ephesians 1:5) would be converted anyway. The reason this is naive is because it overlooks the fact that the preaching of the gospel is just as predestined as is the believing of the gospel: Paul was set apart for his preaching ministry before he was born (Galatians 1:15), as was Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5). Therefore, to ask, “If we don’t evangelize, will the elect be saved?” is like asking, “If there is no predestination, will the predestined be saved?” God knows those who are his and he will raise up messengers to win them. If someone refuses to be a part of that plan, because he dislikes the idea of being tampered with before he was born, then he will be the loser, not God and not the elect. “You will certainly carry out God’s purpose however you act but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.” (Problem of Pain chapter 7, Anthology, p 910, cf. p 80)

Prayer is like preaching in that it is a human act also. It is a human act that God has ordained and which he delights in because it reflects the dependence of his creatures upon Him. He has promised to respond to prayer, and his response is just as contingent upon our prayer as our prayer is in accordance with his will. “And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14). When we don’t know how to pray according to God’s will but desire it earnestly, “the Spirit of God intercedes for us according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27).

In other words, just as God will see to it that His Word is proclaimed as a means to saving the elect, so He will see to it that all those prayers are prayed which He has promised to respond to. I think Paul’s words in Romans 15:18 would apply equally well to his preaching and his praying ministry: “I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles.” Even our prayers are a gift from the one who “works in us that which is pleasing in his sight” (Hebrews 13:21). Oh, how grateful we should be that He has chosen us to be employed in this high service! How eager we should be to spend much time in prayer!

So what this communicates to me is this, whether you believe in conditional or unconditional election, the requirement is the same. No one can come to the Father unless the Spirit draw him. And so prayer is just as needed as the preaching of the Gospel.

I also think that Piper’s arguments dispel the misconception that unconditional election involves a robotic response to God’s calling.