ignorant of his design

How important is grace to you? How important is love? Forgiveness?

Would you forfeit God's love and grace to you because you can't afford such kindness to others?

There is something that we present day Christians ignore: Satan has a strategic, intelligent, subtle and long-term plan as well. The Apostle Paul in his Second Letter to the Churches in Corinth talks about this issue, chapter 2 verse 11. Paul is very aware of the Devil and evil. He and the Apostle Peter talk at length about the ways in which evil maneuvers and schemes; how pervasive the plans of the Evil one are played out in day-to-day life with the subtly of a slight breeze. This is not the evil of Paranormal Activity, ghost stories or any of the exorcism movies or accounts, but a bigger and eternal end, which is meant to leave as many possible foreign to the love of God.

While we may well be reminded that God, in his eternal wisdom, power and love has a grandiose design for all things, we cannot forget that the Devil, in his keen, observant and endless desire to ruin all that is and can become good, also has an end game. I think that we quietly ignore the craft of Satan when we relegate him to scarry movies and abandoned buildings. The Devil is active. The Devil is real. The Devil is not "out to get you" but to defame God and unsettle and make shipwreck people's faith in God.

In 2 Corinthians 2.5-11 we see Paul's specific concern regarding this area. In Paul's First Letter to these churches he brought about many deeply wicked and harmful issues that were fostered in the churches. He gave warning and instruction. Paul taught that some in the church could only be dealt with by excommunication, taking away the hand of fellowship. This is a hard word from Paul, but Paul always knew, and he stated it in his Letter, that this was so that the wayward one, the one stuck in his sin, might be returned to the faith: restored! And though it took more words from Paul the people obeyed his teaching, the teaching from the Lord. This is where the Devil came in--taking something good and turning it on its head all over again. While the people of Corinth were obediently following God's way they were becoming bitter of heart and cold to those who were outcast. The particular evil design of Satan that Paul is here shining light on is the Church not forgiving the repentant believers, denying community and fellowship.  

God has shown time and time again that he will do what is necessary to bring his children's hearts and affections back to himself. Love is not known by its niceties, rather its tenacity for that which it loves! God has darkened my own connection with himself in order that I may long for him anew; his heart all the while loving with a love whose breadth I could never chart.

But the Corinthians, it seems, have forgotten the reason for putting this brother out of fellowship. And when he repents they are not accepting him back! Paul jumps on the Corinthians: "the punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I beg you to reaffirm your love for him." These are not suggestions by Paul but desperate command/pleas. Surely it may be unkind to not forgive such a one, but why such a BIG deal Paul? I mean, he did some bad stuff you know.

Here it is: if the people would not forgive and bring back in the ones who they formerly put out of the church, then they don't have the love of Christ; they would be denying the very power they are wanting; forfeiting the forgiveness that they need and rely on. Do you see it? Jesus said it, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:15). If the Corinthians did not want to forgive and bring back in their once lost brother than they had no business being a part of God's people, for we are all wrapped up in the same story.

"The church is a cosmic relationship" one preacher said. We don't have the authority or luxury of choosing our blood-bought kin. God commands us to love and to forgive.

Obedience is tough.

Discipline is tough.

Forgiveness is tough.

So which will prevail in your own heart: the design of God or the designs of Satan?

Embracing you

I was recently listening to my paster preach a sermon in which he brought up the current culture's fascination with and determination to "be who you are." My mind went racing as this is a prevalent and predominant idea that has taken its place in the West's mind as certainty. The idea is that you should be who you are; wear your cloths how you want; laugh at what makes you laugh; pursue whatever is in your heart. Is that right thinking? Should a Christian, a follower of Jesus agree or disagree with this idea?

Initially, there seems there is a dichotomy, if we wrangle particular verses from the Bible's New Testament. A particular verse that would say "no" to societies belief is 2 Corinthians 5.17: "Therefore, if any one else is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come." We see the dominant and very clear teaching of Jesus and his followers of repentance, which many would explain as a turning from what you once pursued and followed to what God desires his children to follow and pursue. Also, there is the New Testament belief that the Holy Spirit indwells in the life of the believer; this meaning that the very Spirit of God teaches our own spirits what it is, through the reading of God's Words, prayer and fellowship with other believers, that God desires of his people, his children.

So how do these ideas fit in with our culture's idea of being yourself?

I think part of our culture's thought of self-recognition and fruition is rooted in selfishness. This selfishness most clearly plays itself out in the fact that we are told to be who we are and to pursue our dreams is spite of anyone else. Sacrifice is a no-no with this ideology. To pursue all that you want or desire fully means that you can only be thinking of yourself as primary: if your pursuit is supreme all other pursuits not wholly your own are secondary. Sacrifice says I will take the desires of others, including God, and make them my own supreme or primary goal. This is part of repentance and God's Spirit indwelling in the believer: God's desires become the believers chief desire. 

But there is also a sense in which the thought of our day hits a beautiful Biblical nerve: God made us and he made each individual to be a reflection of His own glory. There is a sense of individuality that God crafted into each person to be who He made them to be. We are all made to reflect and display different things through a vast array of mediums for one purpose: glorify God, help all the world to see God for who He is. 

Paul speaks of this when he says that each believer is is a piece making the whole of the Body of Christ. There is no need for a body to be all eyes or feet or hands but all must come together--arms, mouth, ear, eyes, etc.--to form the whole oneness that best and most truthfully and clearly displays Christ's body. So in this we see that tapping into, recognizing our uniqueness as an individual is glorifying to God if we utilize our gifts and desires and concerns and dreams as art of what God is doing in our world. God's Spirit does not only change us--by shaking and shaping us into the reality of God and the world and seeing and believing like we were formally incapable of doing--but God's Spirit also enlightens us and makes us realize in the truest sense our own self. We who were formed and fashioned by God cannot know who we completely and wholly are without God. 

I conclude, therefore, that the Christian may take this supreme cultural thought in portion. We cannot in our pursuit of being who God made us to be, step outside the bounds of God's decrees nor His wisdom which is established by many practical modes. We must use ourselves for the glory of God in the manor God has assigned us, which requires wisdom of our own and above all patience and humility. But we cannot know who God intended us to be unless we follow God and abide by Him. We cannot glorify God rightly with our gifts and abilities and pursuits unless we are doing so in conformity with His plans and timing. We are all God's but only those who trust in God will be, in the most truest sense, who they are. When God calls one to Himself, to follow and trust Him, he takes the individual and, as it were, brings to fruition what they were to become, in part. The "in part" will vanish though when the believer  steps into eternity, for the believer will then fully become all that that God intended for that person to be in Christ Jesus' full and clear and perfect and holy and unhindered presence.