8 reasons not to share your faith

The Big O

Obedience is a word we don't care very much for, that is unless it is in reference to children obeying their parents. Somehow the role of obedience seems natural, after all, one is the adult, and one is the child. One has more knowledge and demands more respect, the other is limited in understanding and in some ways subservient to the other. We get this, we agree with this. Then comes obedience to God. Suddenly, though we wouldn't disagree with the truth that we need to be obedient to God, we search for wiggle room, interpretation, excuses. What's behind that? the desire to be obedient not to God, but to our own personal happiness. Self-centeredness chokes out a desire for obedience and robs God of his rightful position and replaces him with ourself.
I know a lot of people who fear God, genuinely fear God. They are obedient to God, for a season. It doesn't last very long. At first they are all for it, going the distance, but then it fades. You see, you can never sustain obedience to God simply out of fear of who He is. It's not enough. Should it be? Yep. Is it? Nope. I've only seen sustained obedience to God last when their remains that healthy reverent fear of who God is and what God demands of us. At the same time, the linch pin in love. Those who love, really deep down in their bones love Jesus are obedient to Him. Jesus said that if you love me you'll keep my commands. He didn't say that if you are scared of me, reverent of me, or even awed by me that you would keep my commands, but only if you love me. To take it a step further, obedience can be summed up in two ways, (they might sound familiar...Jesus came up with it first) Love God Love Others. So, how do you know you are walking in obedience...

• you are demonstrating an increased capacity to love God
• you are demonstrating an increased capcity to love others
• you do what you already know God wants you to do (for example, God has already said that we are to tithe the first 10% of what we earn to Him. If you know this and aren't doing it, then you aren't walking in obedience)
• you are willing to do whatever God wants you to do in the future

The desire for every believer should be to be obedient to God, after all, if we're not obedient to Him, then functionally we are making something else are real God. The King deserves our obedience, and our love for Him demands it.

Baby Got Book

Can I lose my salvation?

i recently had a conversation with a few people from the church on this topic and i thought i would post some of my thoughts on this subject. Let's interract together on these.

• If Christ came to seek and save that which was lost, and yet we can somehow become unsaved—and therefore undo what Christ came to do—would it not be wise for God to take us on to Heaven the moment we are saved in order to insure we make it?
  
• If our salvation is not secure, how could Jesus say about those to whom He gives eternal life, “and they shall never perish” (John 10:28)? If even one man or woman receives eternal life and then forfeits it through sin or apostasy, will they not perish? And by doing so, do they not make Jesus’ words a lie?
  
• In Jewish culture, adoption meant that a person could not be sent away, or abandoned, the adopting parents HAD to keep the child regardless of their actions. In Romans, Paul describes us as God’s adopted children. If salvation wasn’t permanent, why introduce the concept of adoption? Wouldn’t it have been better just to describe salvation in terms of a conditional legal contract between man and God?
  
• The authors of the New Testament left us with detailed explanations of how one becomes a child of God; if that process could be reversed, doesn’t it make sense that at least one of them would have gone into equal detail explaining that as well?
  
• The Bible teaches us that we are “sealed” with Him. What is the significance of a seal that can be continually removed and reapplied? What does it really seal?
  
• If a man or woman ends up in hell, who has at some point in life put his or her trust in Christ, doesn’t that make what Jesus said to Nicodemus a lie? Or at best half true?
  
• If my faith maintains my salvation, I must ask myself, “What must I do to maintain my faith?” For to neglect the cultivation of my faith is to run the risk of weakening or losing my faith and thus my salvation. I have discovered that my faith is maintained and strengthened by activities such as the following: prayer, bible study, Christian fellowship, church attendance, and evangelism. If these and similar activities are necessary to maintain my faith—and the maintenance of my faith is necessary for salvation—how can I avoid the conclusion that I am saved by my good works?
  
• If our salvation hinges on the consistency of our faith, by what standard are we to judge our consistency? Can we have any doubts at all? How long can we doubt? To what degree can we doubt? Is there a divine quota we dare not exceed?
  
• If God’s holiness compels Him to take back the gift of eternal life from certain believers because of their sin, one of two things is true: either God compromises His holiness for a time—through their small sins—or man’s good works can meet God’s requirements for holiness—at least for a short period of time. In that case, Christ died needlessly.
  
• If there is an unpardonable sin, Christ did not die for all sin. If He did not die for all sin, there are those to whom salvation is not available. If salvation is not available to all men, John 3:16 and a multitude of other New Testament verses are not true
  
• If Christ was the sacrifice for sin, and yet at the time of His death all your sins were yet to be committed, which of your sins did His blood cover? From the vantage point of the cross, was there really any difference between the sins you committed in the past and those you will commit in the future?
  
• A man does not drift into salvation, does it make sense that he can drift out of it?
  
  Does it make any sense to say that salvation is offered as a solution to our sin and then turn around and teach that salvation can be taken away because of our sin as well?
  
• Can joy and insecurity really coexist? How realistic is it to expect us to rejoice over a relationship that is only as secure as our behavior is consistent?

The Whole Deal in a Nutshell

In the beginning, God created all things good, but humans didn't live according to how God meant them to live. They rebelled against God, and we call this rebellion "sin." When sin entered the world, it began to grow, fracturing our relationships and communities, eventually building an empire of itself. But God did not abandon his creation to destruction and decay, and promised to restore this broken world. As part of this promise, God chose a people, Abraham and his descendants, to represent him in the world. He blessed them and instructed them to use that blessing to bless others. It is Abraham's descendants who we find enslaved in Egypt. One of the greatest events in this redemptive story is the Exodus, when God rescued the Israelites from their slavery under an Egyptian empire.

The Egyptians oppressed the Isrealites as slaves and ruled over them ruthlessly in order to protect the empire. The Egyptians placed slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor. This is a key example in the Biblical story of sin manifesting itself in the form of empire. God heard the cry of the Israelites and liberated them from their oppressor. He took them out of Egypt and into the desert. This liberation from oppression under Egypt is a central, defining moment in history where God inaugurated his plan for restoring the world.

God brought the Israelites to Mt. Sinai out in the wilderness, where he spoke to them and came to dwell among them as a husband dwells with his new bride. God chose this group of people to become his flesh and blood, calling them to become a kingdom of priest and a holy nation where they would use their blessings to bless others. He did this so the whole world might come to know the one true living God.

The Jewish people reached Jerusalem, the land which God had promised them, and built a temple to honor God. For a while, God dwelt in the temple, they lived out their mission to bless others with their wealth and influence, and they upheld justice and righteousness. The Jewish people eventually misconstrued their belssing with favortism. They misused their wealth to preserve their kingdom, allowed foreign gods into the land, overlooked the poor, and mistreated foreigners. God sent prophets to call the Jewish people to look at how they were treating the oppressed and marginalized as in indicator of how they were living out God's will while calling them to repentance for their sin of misusing their blessing. The Jewish people didn't listen.

Because of their sin, the Jewish people were attacked by foreign empires and were taken as exiles to Babylon. In Babylon, they were again oppressed by a foreign empire. While they were exiled in Babylon, the Jewish people started to imagine, "What would it be like if we could be given all our wealth and influence back? What if we actually used our priviledge to bless others as God intended? What if we could get it right?" They repented of their sin, and soon afterward they were given the chance to return to Israel. They returned to Israel and immediately went to work rebuilding the temple; however, they were still under the rule of foreign empires. During this time, their hopes began to center around a messiah who would lead a New Exodus, re-establishing their kindgom.

So the Old Testament comes to a sputtering stop with a group of people crying out for a messiah to come. But God didn't respond right away. He was silent. But that silence was filled with expectancy that God would send a messiah who would lead a New Exodus. That was what the Jewish people were expecting and hoping for during the time of Jesus. The New Testament then picks up with stories about the birth of Jesus. Then Jesus began his public ministry as a Jewish rabbi. And at the ouset of his ministry, Jesus' main message was that "the kingdom of God is here." This statement was obviously loaded for the Jewish people, and they heard him saying that he would liberate them from foreign rule, that he would lead a New Exodus. He promised that a New Jerusalem would someday come when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and restore all of creation. There will be no more crying out from oppression.

Today, Egypt can be seen as a picture of what we're all born into. We're all born into oppression by sin. We're born with a sinful nature that pulls us, distorts things and takes us in directions that are destructive to us. Every single human being is born into bondage to sin. God wants to liberate us from sin, and he has a plan to do this. In the same way that the Jewish people were called by God to use their wealth and influence to bless those who need it most, so God has called the Church to do the same, to be his flesh and blood - his body - in the world, so the Church is called the Body of Christ. When we begin to use our resources, energy and power to preserve our own comfort and empire, we are sinning. Eventually, our sin will cause us to lose our power, wealth and influence. And God's plan for blessing the world will be lost for a time.
The reason we study the Exodus is because we want to understand who Jesus is and what he's doing. He wants to liberate the world from physical, spiritual and cultural bondage. Most of us have been given great wealth, talent and energy. And God wants us to share it with others who don't have enough. What if the Church began to understand that God wants to fix this entire planet?