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“How can I stop being nervous about praying publicly?”
I have been praying in church meetings going on fifty years now, and I cannot remember a single time I ever stood up to try to express the corporate desires, praise or worship of the people of God when I was not at least just a little bit nervous.
That’s probably discouraging. Sorry.
“But [Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die.”
Elijah was done. Many of us have had “mountaintop” spiritual experiences that bit the dust only days later. Elijah’s was unusual in that it was literal. The mount was Carmel, and the glorious moment he experienced atop it was the complete and utter vindication of Israel’s God and his solitary public voice (Elijah) before the entire nation, abruptly followed by the summary execution of 450 false prophets claiming to speak for YHWH’s rival.
It was a good day. A really good day. Everything Elijah asked God did, and he did it in spades.
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Last week, we looked at the historical circumstances in which God called Gideon to serve as his judge and deliverer of Israel. The Holy Spirit has given us ten verses of explanation to set up the situation, and I felt I would be unwise to ignore them.
This week, we look at Gideon’s call to service. Othniel judged because the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. Ehud judged because the Lord “raised him up” and Shamgar did his bit with the ox goad for reasons the writer of Judges does not disclose. Deborah judged because she was in touch with heaven and there was nobody else willing to do the job. The people came to her for guidance.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Last week in this space we were discussing a recent report sponsored by Wycliffe College’s Institute of Evangelism entitled Finding Faith in Canada Today, which surveyed Canadian Christians to find out how they got saved. One of the more significant takeaways from the report was the conclusion that, statistically speaking, the vast majority of new converts do not come to the Lord at evangelical rallies, traditional outreach programs, through websites or online church. A full 40% of new believers came to Christ because of the testimony of Christian friends, far more than any other reason given for converting. The report concluded that friendship is the single most effective environment for evangelism.
Tom: How about that? So tell me, IC, why don’t Christians make more unbelieving friends?
“Everybody’s looking for something …”
So sang Annie Lennox of The Eurythmics.
And she’s right: everybody’s looking — for something.
Back in the ’80s, there was a huge push in evangelical churches to become what they called “seeker sensitive”. Essentially, it meant building churches that were larger and accommodated more people — less like liturgical spaces, and more like shopping malls or movie theatres. Soft seats, big screens, stages, lights and sound systems … slicker programs, incorporating drama, visual displays and various other marketing tools, a more polished and professional administrative staff, special programs for counseling, grief care, visitation … and more elaborate programs for children and youth, too.
“Suffering produces endurance.”
The doctor’s diagnosis was wrong, and the steroids he prescribed have puffed your face up like a chipmunk for two weeks and accomplished nothing. The car had to go to the mechanic again, and you’re pretty sure it’s for the same thing you just got “fixed” three months ago. You spent more time stuck on the highway in heavy traffic today listening to the clatter from your wheel well than you spent on the job.
You are somewhat less than amused.
A man who claimed to be a witness on behalf of Jehovah disturbed my brother this morning in the middle of coffee and cheese. He didn’t disturb me. I kept right on eating and drinking and conversing with my son and an old friend gathered around the dining room table. My brother definitely got the worst of the deal in that he had to get up and answer the doorbell, but it didn’t take him long to send the would-be witness on his way.
Why? Because he already has something far better than anything this fellow was offering, and he knows it with certainty.
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“Why is King Ahab so prominent in the Bible?”
Before we ask why Ahab figures so significantly in the annals of the kings of Israel, we had best determine exactly how prominent he really is.
With all or parts of eight chapters of Kings and Chronicles devoted to his reign, to my surprise (and perhaps yours) Ahab finishes a solid fifth among the kings of Israel and Judah in historical content, behind David (63), Saul (25), Solomon (19) and Hezekiah (11). No other king even comes close. Even Hezekiah only squeaks in ahead of him because the story of Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem is told thrice, in Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah.
When certain Christians speak of the Spirit’s witness (usually citing Romans 8), this sort of understanding of the expression is fairly common:
“God’s primary method of leading us in matters the Bible does not specifically address (such as which job to take or which person to marry), is the inner witness, which is a knowing communicated by the Holy Spirit to our spirit. It is not a voice, but an inner knowing.”
I am left with the obvious question: how is an “inner knowing” any more reliable or less subjective than hearing voices in my head? Is this really what the New Testament writers mean by the Spirit “witnessing”?
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Today’s chapter begins with sad, familiar words: “The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” The writer does not specify the nature of this evil immediately, though we could surely guess by now, but God shortly sends his prophet to declare it. Our narrator will also tell us that the first instruction God gave Gideon, his next appointed deliverer of Israel, was to tear down his own father’s altar to Baal, then chop down his Asherah pole and use it for firewood.
This also would be a clue.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
A new report sponsored by Wycliffe College’s Institute of Evangelism called Finding Faith in Canada Today offers (in their words) a “particularly Canadian take” on how adults are coming to know Jesus Christ these days.
Tom: I haven’t spent much time thinking about whether there is anything unique about the process of getting saved in Canada as opposed to getting saved anywhere else, but I am prepared to be schooled if necessary. Immanuel Can, what interested you about this report?
Immanuel Can: Someone sent it to me. She and her husband are heavily involved in outreach, so it’s not surprising she found it. What interests me is that it claims to explain something very, very important: how and when people are getting saved today. That should be of interest to any Christian, no?
“Words, words, words,” says Hamlet.
He’s not enthused. And rightly so. Sometimes there are just too many words.
The Bible says, “God is in heaven, and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few.” It’s talking about prayer, of course, but the point carries more generally: even the smartest of us is pretty limited in knowledge. The Lord can use as many words as he wants, and every one of them will be right; but when we human beings talk too much, we make mistakes. Sometimes, we even roll right into sin.
So we’re encouraged to be careful, talk only about what we know, use our words precisely, and not to multiply them without due attention to what we’re really doing. After all, teachers receive a more serious condemnation if they do a bad job.
Granny says she’s depressed.
Okay, she’s not my granny, and she’s probably not actually depressed either. There’s a chance she is, but in all likelihood she’s grieving, not depressed.
There is a difference.
You see, her husband of many decades went to be with the Lord earlier this year. Her ongoing grief is natural and appropriate; in fact, if at this stage she were said to be feeling fine and spending her time internet shopping for a new partner, the gossips among us would be even more troubled.
But I point this out because where sadness is concerned, our thinking is very muddled these days.
Three rather obvious lessons from a fairly obscure passage of scripture.
Ezekiel the prophet is sitting at home with a group of Judah’s elders around him when he has one of those very intense visionary experiences that seemed to characterize his relationship with the God of Israel. Some prophets heard voices and others dreamed, but Ezekiel saw overwhelming heavenly splendor — in the middle of his own living room, one assumes.
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“Was Jesus a refugee?”
The question arises out of Matthew 2, the only gospel that tells the story of how Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt on angelic instruction for some indeterminate period (scholarly estimates range from four months to a few years) after the birth of the Lord. Joseph’s objective was to protect his wife’s newborn child from King Herod’s attempt to kill off any potential competition for the throne. The flight to Egypt took place immediately after the visit of the wise men and lasted until after Herod died.
Had the family remained in Bethlehem, the four gospels may well have been a lot shorter. But God was at work, so Herod’s scheme was unsuccessful, and the Lord returned in good time in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
According to Wikipedia, homiletics is “the application of the general principles of rhetoric to the specific art of public preaching”. For those who have not studied rhetoric, its general principles are usually broken down as follows: ethos (the establishment of trust and credibility), pathos (appealing to the emotions) and logos (appealing to reason and logic). So then, homiletics has to do not so much with the content of the message, but rather with its composition and delivery. It is about taking a proposition and making it persuasive.
For Christian preachers, the starting point is the truth of God. Homiletics is about adorning it rather than veiling it, undermining it or otherwise sabotaging the attempt to communicate it.
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If we were looking at chapter 5 of Judges purely from a literary standpoint, we might call it largely redundant. While it contains a few interesting bits of information we will comment on here, for the most part it simply recapitulates much of the historical narrative from the previous chapter in the form of a Hebrew song of praise to God. A secular editor might be inclined to cut to the chase and move us right on to Gideon’s storyline.
Thankfully, our Editor had a better idea.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
In Islam, the word tawbah refers to the process of asking Allah for forgiveness. The ritual is comprised of three stages:
Western culture, on the other hand, has largely dispensed with the practice of seeking forgiveness, not least because a public confession of wrongdoing may create liability issues. So you get bafflegab like, “I regret if anyone was offended by ...” instead of a sincere apology.
Tom: Immanuel Can, can you recall the last time someone unsaved asked you to forgive them?
I was chatting with a young man yesterday.
He considers himself a Christian. And maybe he is. I hope he is. But he’s certainly confused about something very basic to salvation; and maybe it will surprise you what it is.
He doesn’t really understand sin.
Now, understanding what it is we are saved from is pretty necessary to salvation, so I’m concerned. I want him to have a correct grasp of how sin relates to the holiness of God. And I’m troubled that his teachers have not taught him this.
So I’m going to try to do a short explanation for you. And I’m going to start with this question:
How bad is sin?
God is sovereign, and may accomplish his purposes through whomever he chooses, often including men and women whose actions are not consistently in harmony with his Spirit. That is to say, there is a vast difference between being used by the Holy Spirit of God from time to time and being a spiritual person. Obviously, the second state is preferable to the first by orders of magnitude, and the Christian who aspires to anything less than being a spiritual person is selling him- or herself short.
The writers of the New Testament use the adjective “spiritual” in a couple of slightly different senses.
The first sense is obvious and common. A spiritual gift is a gift given and empowered for use by the Holy Spirit. The gift itself is spiritual in terms of its origin and energy, but the presence of such gift tells us nothing about the spiritual state of the person using it. The Christians in Corinth were “not lacking in any gift”, yet Paul says to them, “I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.”