I was interviewed about my book today, May 15, on the morning Kurt and Kate show. You can listen to the interview at the link
Listen Kurt and Kate
Interview on Moody Radio Florida
Reply
Category Archives: Uncategorized
My Dark Secret
I have a confession to make. It’s a very dark secret that few, except my wife, have known about.
Until now, of course.
Okay, here goesI am a hoarder.
No, not the kind featured on the television show, “Hoarders.” That’s the program featuring hapless people with a compulsive hoarding disorder, living in homes they can no longer traverse due to piles of old newspapers and magazines or boxes of gadgets that they will never use again.
I’m not one of them. In fact, if anything, I may lean more to the side of tossing things or giving things away that I later regret when I discover I could use them again. I delete emails with a passion and clean out the trash can in my computer.
I am not a neat freak, but I confess I am a hoarder. My treasure of choice, the one thing I tend to hoard, is dark chocolate. Mary keeps a well-stocked candy dish for our guests, especially grandkids and neighbor kids. Taking pride in my self-discipline as I do, I can walk casually past the candy dish hundreds of times, weeks in succession, and not feel a twinge of temptation. Occasionally, perhaps, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup tweaks my curiosity. But dark chocolate! It hasn’t got a chance of survival. I don’t eat it all in one setting. Of course not, it’s too valuable. Too precious to gorge in one passionate moment. No! Dark chocolate was meant to savor. Slowly savor each small bite one at a time.
As a result, I simply clean out the candy dish of the forbidden treat and store it safely in my small office in the master bedroom. (I can’t believe I’m confessing this.) There it will be safe from hungry eyes of every passerby until I choose to imbibe from my secret cache.
I realize, of course, that hoarding dark chocolate breaks no laws. It is not listed in Scripture among the forbidden fruits that tend to destroy one’s character. Dark chocolate is one of the “gifts” that God has created for our pleasure. I am convinced that to eat dark chocolate is to sense the pleasure of God. To taste of His goodness.
Yes, I admit I may be a bit selfish to hide dark chocolate in my desk. But I am not guilty of ignoring the hungry and homeless. I donate to charities that care for vulnerable people. So what is the problem with hoarding a few small bars of dark chocolate? None, in my way of thinking. I am not risking my health. Somewhere, I vaguely recall an article stating that chocolate was Nature’s health food. Dark chocolate with less sugar and milk is even better. (Who knows? It may be better for you than kale, tofu, or broccoli.)
So what is the moral of this dark story?
It’s a metaphor for something much more vital and a warning against something that truly does come with eternal risks. Imagine a universe-sized candy dish filled (pardon any apparent foolishness, but I am not trying to dishonor the Creator) with God’s attributes. Sweet tasting characteristics such as grace, mercy, love, patience, kindness, forgiveness and scores more lie there for us to enjoy and to experience in their fullness. We all love each of these attributes. We sing about them. Pray and give thanks for them. Sometimes we may even try to gorge ourselves with them. But we can never empty the bowl. Not in a trillion years.
But do we sometimes deliberately ignore, or worse yet, deny the more severe attributes such as His wrath, justice or His jealous love that is offended when we share our love with lesser deities?
God’s attributes are not all sweet, succulent flavors. Scattered among them are attributes that are harsher, even bitter to swallow. Paul said it this way in Romans 11:22: “Behold, the kindness and the severity of God!”
We cannot pick and choose between kindness and severity. To do so dishonors God. In fact, it results in creating a lesser deity, an idol of our own creation. It is not YAHWEH. Our idol god may not be carved out of a block of wood or chiseled from stone and gilded with gold, but it is not the One, true, living God of Scripture. It is an insult against God’s character and nature. It is also dangerous.
I wonder, are we in our politically-correct and culturally-acceptable worship services picking and choosing our favorite flavor of God? Do we even talk about His wrath? Impending judgment? Hell? Are we telling “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” about God? (As if we in our feebleness could ever comprehend the whole truth about such a One as God.)
Turning my original story about hoarding dark chocolate around, are we deliberately hoarding by simply hiding the uncomfortable truths about God today? To do so not only cheapens grace, it dilutes it beyond recognition. It becomes little more than a five-letter word (rhyming with face and place) we like to sing about.
Here’s the truth: No wrath and no justice equals no grace. No mercy.
It doesn’t get any darker than that.
It’s Not What the Preacher Said
This week, after a very busy couple of weeks with radio interviews for the book and with our granddaughter Faith’s high school graduation and the party that followed in our home, I am drained.
I have composed another blog and sent it to my friend, Larry Libby, who peruses each blog and turns mediocrity into the something much better. He is a very busy free-lance editor for well known and best-selling authors, but he shares his skills with me as a friend. I am so grateful for his input into the book, God in His Own Image, before Moody Publishers had even received the manuscript. In fact, I suspect, Moody would have rejected the book had Larry not masterfully helped me improve my writing skills.
I wrote an article a few weeks ago that was published in Pastor Resources Magazine and posted on pastorresources.com.
This week on The Front Porch Swing, I would like to share a link to the article. The original article was intended for pastors. Over a million pastors receive Pastor Resources as a tool to assist them in their ministry. Moody Publishers first asked me to write the article and to submit it to Pastor Resources to help provide exposure to me, an unknown author. To be honest, I was surprised when the article was accepted and published.
I cannot reproduce the article in its entirety so the link must suffice. Before you open the link to read the article a few comments are appropriate:
- First, my apologies to my missionary friend mentioned in the article just in case he reads it and recognizes himself in the article. To my friend, not to be identified, you are loved and valued deeply for your skills on and off the global mission field. You have been a godly roll model of what it means to leave father and mother and follow Jesus Christ.
- Secondly, the article points out the struggle pastors face when we use terms such as “heavenly Father.” People hear through a grid of their life experiences and previous religious training. Church attendees may not hear what we pastors meant to say. That is the point of the article. Perhaps you will discover yourself somewhere among the listeners in the imaginary congregation. Perhaps your view of God has been skewed or better yet, affirmed, by your life experiences and traianing.
Thanks for exploring the article.
Syd
“Too Much with Us”
Many of my best ideas for these blog posts come from reading what others have said, and I always seek to give them credit.
In the May 21st edition of Christianity Today’s, The Exchange, Mark Galli introduced Sam Kim, co-founder of 180 Church in NYC, who warns against materialism among “celebrity preachers.” (I have stated in a previous blog that those two words, “celebrity preachers” are incompatible.) Kim calls out some of these preachers who flaunt expensive Adidas Yeezy shoes in their effort to appear cool. Frankly, where I live on the economic ladder, I have never even heard of Yeezys.
Kim also refers to Christian apologist Os Guinness, who asserts that “when we look at evangelicalism today, it is the world and the spirit of the age that are dominant, not the Word and Spirit. The church in the U.S. is strong numerically, but weak because it is worldly. The church in America is in the world and of the world; and as a result, it is in profound cultural captivity.”
Those are very harsh words, wouldn’t you agree?
William Wordsworth, Romantic English poet, offered a similar lament in 1802:
This world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our power; – …
Wordsworth was not lamenting materialism within the church but was challenging his culture to not ignore the joy and refreshment of spending time in Nature. If those words were relevant in 18th century England, what would Wordsworth say about 21st century American culture?
I understand Wordsworth’s lament. That’s why I choose to climb a butte several miles from town, rather than the more popular Pilot Butte in the center of our city. I am refreshed by the solitude when I am in Nature.
Let us enjoy all these good gifts that God has provided for just that purpose—to be gratefully enjoyed. Hoarding wealth, however—or wasting God-given resources on personal pleasure or image-building—runs contrary to the teaching and the personal model of Jesus in whose steps we profess to follow. Consider these comparisons: Jesus would never wear Yeezy sandals, even if they had been available in the marketplace. He would more closely resemble a homeless person. Jesus didn’t even have an address. Unlike the foxes Continue reading
“Do You Love Me?”
“How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways:
I love Thee to the depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach….”
–From Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barret Browning, nineteenth century English romantic poet, composed those lines to express her love for Robert, her husband. I believe her poem rose spontaneously from her heart. After all, we can’t command love from another.
Or can we?
Consider these commands that God told Moses to share with Israel: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6: 4, 5, niv)
Those words, beginning with the word “hear,” were the bedrock of ancient Judaism. The passage is often called The Shema, because the first word, “hear,” is the Hebrew word shema. The Israelites were reminded that Yahweh, their God, was the one and only legitimate God. There were no competitors, except in the imagination of surrounding cultures. I believe the Shema is still foundational truth for us today. Jesus Himself declared that the Shema was the first and the greatest commandment.
So what do we learn about God from the Shema? We discover that He is the one and only God, and that we are to love Him with all that we are and have. There is no need to debate the distinction between heart, soul and might. Those three words, welded together, are a way to emphatically describe everything that we are—our totality as a person. To love God with all that I am demands passion—foot to the metal passionate love with total and absolute voluntary submission. In the word all, I see whole-hearted service lived out with gut-busting energy because of our love for God.
My mind is drawn back to a breakfast scene on the shores of Galilee after Jesus’ resurrection and before His glorious ascension. I imagine Jesus handing Peter another grilled Tilapia and looking deeply into Peter eyes asking, “Peter, do you love me?”
Peter responds almost mechanically, “Yes, I love you.”
Three times the same script is repeated. Jesus is asking Peter to take inventory of his heart. “Do you really, really love me, Peter? With all your heart do you love me?”
It is easy for me to criticize Peter and assume his problem was half-hearted love and anemic loyalty. It is also painful, because that describes me more often than not. How many times, I wonder, would Jesus need to ask me before I “fessed” up about my shallow love for Him?
I know that I am not alone. In the May 15, 2019 Christianity Today blog by Mark Galli, I was shaken out my complacency. Galli, with over 50 years of significant Christian ministry confessed:
I do remember when I became aware of a personal crisis that gave me insight into the challenge we all face. I cannot remember the time and place, but I do remember my reaction.
It may have been as the result of hearing a sermon, or perhaps reading a book. But I distinctly remember thinking that my Christian life was sorely lacking in the love of God. I didn’t have any affection for or yearning to know and love God. I wasn’t angry with him. I didn’t doubt his existence. I wasn’t wrestling with the problem of evil. I was being a faithful Christian as best I knew how. But it occurred to me that I didn’t feel any love for God.
As for myself, I have preached, taught and studied my way through Scripture. I have visited the sick and comforted the grieving for 50 plus years. From time to time I have “met God on a mountain” and felt renewed passion and love for Him. But, far too often it been business as usual.
I believe life’s greatest challenge and privilege is to know and to enjoy God as He is.
Knowledge about God, however, doesn’t build bridges or transform lives. I hear in the crevices of my mind and sense in my heart a perceptive voice asking, “Syd, do you really love Me? With ALL your heart, soul and strength do you love me?”
I wonder, is Jesus also knocking on the doors of our churches asking to be treated as the special guest He is? Might He be saying, if we care to listen, “You have left your first love! Your love is lukewarm; I want passion. I want all you heart!”
Listen with me for just a moment….. I think He is saying that right now.
Taste and See
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Psalm 34:8 (ESV)
I love pie. All pies, with perhaps the exception of mincemeat. Those of you who know me best may have heard me respond to the question, “What is your favorite pie?” with a simple, “yes.”
At this moment, our home is filled with the aroma of two rhubarb custard pies baking in the oven. Mary and I agree that rhubarb custard is one of our favorites.
I can hear somebody responding, “Ugh, I hate rhubarb pie!” My response is, “Have you ever tasted rhubarb custard pie?” The sweet custard blends with the beautiful red blush and tartness of the rhubarb. You have to taste it to see for yourself.
“Taste and see!” That was David’s invitation to seek God.
That is also the title of the seventh and final chapter of my newly released book, God in His Own Image: Loving God for who He is not what we want Him to be.
What can we expect if we accept the invitation to taste and see if God really is good? To actually discover God as revealed in the Bible? I believe it will be the most transforming experience anyone can make. That was also Jeremiah’s conviction.
This is what the Lord says:
“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
Or the strong man boast of his strength
Or the rich man boast of his riches,
But let him who boasts boast about this:
That he understands and knows me,
That I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
Justice and righteousness on earth,
For in these I delight.”
(Jeremiah 9:23,24)
Jeremiah declares that the highest calling—the noblest pursuit in life—is to know God as He truly is. Every other pursuit is a dead-end street. Our culture considers wealth, educational achievements and athletic prowess to be success. We often challenge our youth to discover their identity in these pursuits. (Some wealthy parents have even paid exorbitant amounts of money to bribe their children’s entrance into a more prestigious university.) Truth be told, money, intellectual or athletic achievements are nothing more than ladders leaning on empty space—destined to disappoint those who clamor to reach the top rung and discover no true satisfaction.
Jeremiah’s culture was no different. That is why he wrote the above challenge to the people of Judah. Because they had chosen to pursue lesser deities, they were facing imminent invasion of hoards of Babylonian troops. Then exile for the survivors.
The question we are considering today on the Front Porch Swing is “What’s the endgame if I ignore the challenge to know God as He is?”
First, we would miss the incomparable experience of enjoying eternal life. On the eve of His crucifixion Jesus linked the concept of knowing God with eternal life. Listen to an excerpt from His prayer recorded in John 17:3, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Can it be stated any more clearly? To know the one true God, as He has been revealed, is to experience eternal life! When we ignore Jeremiah’s clarion call to find our identity and our greatest passion in knowing God, we miss out on experiencing an incomparable life that never, ever ends. That is as serious as it is meant to sound.
Eternal life is more than simply living forever. I believe Scripture teaches that everyone will live forever. Obviously, we will not live forever in our decaying bodies but in another dimension of life than we know today. Eternal life is not only about the location where we will ultimately spend eternity, but it is also about experiencing eternal life here and now. Eternal life is quality life, not simply quantity. To know God is to love Him and to enjoy a relationship with Him. I realize that may sound a little too theoretical or mystical. How can I, the sinner and mortal that I am, even dream of experiencing a relationship with the holy and transcendent God? After all, who do I think I am?
Consider the first and greatest of all the commandments; it was an invitation as much as a command to love (to know experientially) God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. That sounds very intimate, doesn’t it? Jeremiah didn’t call for us to simply know about God. Instead he said, “understands and knows me, that I am the Lord.” Created, as we have been, in God’s image, we have an inherent passion to know our Creator. Our soul is hungry for God. Nothing less will satisfy.
With so much at risk how did we ever get into this rat race of trying to fill our soul hunger with wealth, fame or any number of substitutes? Paul described it in the first two chapters of Romans. They had the truth about God but suppressed it. They enjoyed all of the Creator’s benefits but forgot to be thankful. The fall, having begun in the heart, has affected their intellect and will. To fill the void, after voting God out, they created gods of their own choosing. The rest is history.
Listen to Paul ‘s description in Ephesians 4:19: “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” (Emphasis mine.)
Can you imagine any more tragic, more haunting words than being “separated from the life of God…?” What began in their hearts and minds became a lifestyle resulting in a death sentence, and not just physical death but what the Bible calls the “second death”—to be separated from God forever. To know God is the greatest challenge and most fulfilling experience in life.
That is why I have written the book.
Syd Brestel on Pastor resources
Kissing My Cosmic Cop Goodbye
In our attempts to understand or explain God, we naturally tend to re-create Him into something familiar. He becomes like us.
A God like me? I don’t know about you, but that prospect doesn’t appeal to me at all. A God created in my image is only semi-competent in some things, and highly incompetent in many other things. A-God-like-me will have changing moods; some days He might be loving and kind, but on other days…not so much.
In my soon to be released book, God in His Own Image, I share about the false image of God I feared and dreaded as a youth. I describe Him as the Cosmic Cop. Being a PK (pastor’s kid) in a very strict church, I heard lots of sermons about God’s severe wrath. God was both the Law-giver and the chief Law-enforcer. I knew about Law Enforcement Officers, since Dad was bi-vocational: he wore a police badge at night and a preacher’s tie on Sundays.
As a result, every police officer in Cheyenne County knew me. If I burnt rubber in my Dad’s 60-Ford Starliner while dragging Main Street, it seemed like every cop on the force would see it, and tell my father the next morning. On the plus side, I never received a traffic violation or warning. They must have figured my dad would set me straight. (Perhaps there was an advantage to being the son of a cop.)
My relationship with my Cosmic Cop, if you could call it a relationship, was a love/hate affair. When I was in danger, perhaps facing the final exam in Algebra, I wanted Him close enough to provide the correct answers. I also wanted Him to hear my Sunday prayers, especially when I recited the same list of sins each week.
But when I wanted to prove I was just a normal teen-ager and not a PK, I didn’t want the Cosmic Cop messing with my plans. In my book, I share a humorous story about the first time I took my date to a drive-in-theater. Movies were forbidden fruit in those days, and I couldn’t wait to taste the apple. But sure enough, the Cosmic Cop caught me red-handed. He always did. Lying in bed at night I often had my own personal (Protestant) confessional booth. Just in case Jesus might return before sunrise, I wanted to be certain I wouldn’t be left behind, so I apologized for everything I might have done wrong that day. It was tough—no, make that impossible—to keep the record straight.
My perverted view of the Cosmic-Cop-kind-of-God prevented me from knowing and enjoying the true and living God. I would try to manipulate Him, but I could never experience His grace and mercy. I could read about God loving the world in John 3:16, even inserting my name in place of “whosoever believes,” but somehow, I never felt that love. Since my God was a cop, I wanted Him to come on the run when I dialed His number, but I kept Him at arms-length the rest of the time.
My story may be yours. Perhaps at one time, even today, you struggle with loving or feeling loved by God. Perhaps your “God” is that cop who seems to be bent on denying you any pleasure.
Perhaps you struggle even believing there is a God.
Whatever it be, anything and anyone less than the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture, will never satisfy our hunger.
Today, I have experienced and worship the God who has revealed Himself as both holy and severe as well as kind, loving and full of grace. Over and over again, even when facing some very difficult challenges, I have felt God’s presence and seen Him provide in inexplicable, clearly-supernatural ways. A few of these incidents are shared in the book to be released May 7th.
I have tasted and discovered God is good. He alone can satisfy the hunger in my soul.
He can do the same for you.
If you have struggled with a similar corrupted view of God, why not reply by sharing your experience?
I am still reading The Storm Tossed Family.
What is Our Problem?
For all its beauty and wonders and opportunities, life is filled with problems. Some seem so trivial they’re hardly worth mentioning.
But I’m going to mention one, anyway.
Recently I had a problem with our local newspaper. Some days it never arrives at all. As I wrote these words, it had been three days without a paper laying in my driveway.
Okay, so it’s not an earthshaking dilemma. But I am of that generation that enjoys opening a (real) paper to the sports pages to catch up on the Blazers and Seahawks and our local high school teams.
But that’s not really a problem compared to the greatest of all challenges in life. How are we to have a relationship with a mysterious, invisible, all-powerful Creator? That is why I wrote God in His Own Image.
Last week, here on the Front Porch Swing, I shared about the innate desire within every human being to know God. Having been created in God’s image to enjoy a relationship with Him, we have a deep hunger to know God. As Augustine discovered, after first running away from God and then encountering Him later in life: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
Those are more than just poetic sounding words. I believe they reflect the heartbeat of every person who is willing to stop and reflect on who they are and why they exist. Augustine’s words are my words. Your words.
Since God has created us in His image to know Him and enjoy a relationship with Him, there is no higher calling or more important pursuit in life.
But here’s our problem: Unless God reveals Himself to us; we are left to try to “figure” Him out by ourselves. That is what many have tried to do throughout history. That is, in fact, the subtitle to my book: “Loving God for who He is not what we would like Him to be.”
Driven by our innate hunger to know if there is “anybody out there” in this vast universe, we try to fill this soul-hunger by imagining who this God might be. Here’s a spoiler alert: Finding God through the imagination is not only a foolish endeavor, it is impossible. If a creator or creators exist, we cannot see them. They are part of a unique, other-worldly realm. We are blind people trying to imagine and paint a picture of a snow-covered mountain that we have never seen and cannot see! Whatever picture I try to paint on the easel canvas will be wrong. It won’t resemble that mountain.
I can only describe what I have seen or what I have experienced. I have never seen an atom, but I have been told it consists of protons, electrons and neutrons. I answered all the questions on the science quizzes, but the atom is beyond my ability to understand. Even so, I know very well that they exist, even in my own body.
I like to imagine the apostle Paul as a physician, or perhaps a great philosopher, diagnosing our problem. It’s not that God has neglected to reveal Himself to us, but rather that we have suppressed the evidence that exists all around us. Every atom and every galaxy in our vast universe is a witness to the Creator’s wisdom, skill and power. And, might I add, His mystery?
Having rejected God’s rule over our lives, there remains a vacuum in our soul that only God can fill. There’s a hunger to know the unknowable and invisible God.
Let’s cut to the chase. God has revealed Himself in several ways or, of if you will, in different venues.
Paul wrote that there is enough evidence in Creation itself to convince any person truly seeking to know God. We call this natural or general revelation. David’s words in Psalm 19 absolutely ring with it:
The Heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
(Psalm 19:1-3, esv)
Evidence for God is on display 24/7 everywhere we look.
Later in the same psalm, David shifts his focus from seeing God in creation to seeing God as He is revealed in His Word. We call this The Bible, the book that reveals who God is and what He has done to enable us to know and enjoy Him.
Finally, Jesus Christ came to reveal the Father. That is the point of Hebrews 1:1-4. The rest of the book of Hebrews displays Jesus’ superiority over every other “competitor” and over everything that exists, whether visible or invisible.
So what is our problem? If God has pealed back layers of mystery to display His glory in the creation and has revealed Himself in Scripture and through Jesus Christ, why would I write a book, God in His Own Image? After all, don’t we have all the evidence we need?
I didn’t write the book to convince atheists, whether real or wannabees. I have written to people who attend, or at one time attended, church services. Their view of God may have been skewed as a result of life experiences or as the result of a lack of good biblical teaching.
Unless we understand and accept God as revealed in Scripture, we tend to create God in our image. Someone we can manipulate. Someone safe. Someone who adapts to the changing culture and “moves with the times.” But here’s the problem: If God resembles me, He will be capricious, unpredictable, and severely limited in power and understanding.
Sadly today, even in our churches, we find people trying to recreate God in their own image, according to their own tastes. And they may end up with an artificial deity who is so loving, kind, and careful that He would never punish anyone. He will be a God who doesn’t control the future, and has to learn as He goes along, just like we do.
But of course that is no God at all. It’s just another man-made idol.
If God has created us to know Him and to enjoy Him forever, it is imperative we understand Him as He truly is. It is not ours to reshape God into our image. In fact, it is a deadly mistake with eternal consequences.
I much prefer to know and to love God as He is: Great, powerful, just and yet, loving and full of grace.
That is reality. He is reality.
So, here on the front porch swing, I ask if you know this God that can satisfy the hunger in the human soul?
Why not purchase the book, God in His Own Image? I believe you will come to love and appreciate God through reading the book.
What am I reading?
I am finishing The Storm Tossed Family and will return to The Essential Jonathan Edwards. I think I may also read God in His Own Image when I receive my first copy in a few weeks. Recently I commented that waiting to hold the first copy in my hands is kind of like waiting for the arrival of a new baby.
Thanks for the support and encouragement I have received from several of you.
Syd
Hungry?
“I’m hungry!”
Mary and I often heard these familiar words as our two boys burst into the house after a day at school. For added effect it sometimes came out as “I’m hownnnngry!” Teenagers tend to resemble bottomless pits.
For that matter, newborn infants seem to arrive the same way—refusing to be silenced until warm milk from a mother’s breast or a bottle fills their little mouths. To live, whether animal or human, is to be hungry—to desire nourishment.
Human beings, however, experience another kind of hunger just as real as a baby’s desire for milk. In fact, that is how the apostle Peter described it: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 1:2-3).
I believe spiritual hunger is part of our human DNA because our Creator designed us that way. Created in His image, we have an inherent desire to know God. Every culture and every tribal group, no matter where or when they have lived, share a common pursuit of some kind of Deity. Someone or something greater than ourselves. Why is this so? Why this curiosity about the supernatural?
Study animals in their natural environment or visit your local zoo, and I guarantee you will discover no evidence that any animal displays an awareness of or interest in things spiritual or religious. They build no temples or idols to worship. Yet visit any country or study any culture (even sifting through the remains of those buried in the past) and you will discover places of worship and images to reflect a Deity. Sadly, you may also discover evidence of human sacrifice among the pottery chards.
I have witnessed this hunger in India. Everywhere you look you see evidence of a religion—with enough deities to fill a football stadium. Hindu shrines and temples abound. Sacred cows wander on congested city streets bustling with smog producing cars and motorbikes. Grotesque images personify the Hindu concept of the gods.
Mosques and churches dot the landscape in Europe and America. The airwaves are filled with religious teaching on television and radio. Religious books proliferate, both questioning and confirming the existence of God.
Before the first white European planted a flag on the beaches of the Americas, Native American civilizations displayed the concept of a Great Spirit or spirits. Animism and other native religions betray our inherent belief in and search to know God or gods.
Belief in some kind of other world—a spiritual world—and in a supernatural being is part of our human DNA.
I believe this reflects the fact that God, the God of Scripture, has created us in His image so that we can know and enjoy Him. Augustine said it something like this, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
Throughout history there have been concerted—even political and military—attempts to stamp out and eradicate religious belief in God. All such efforts have failed, whether it be Communism in China and the Soviet Union or the Nazis in Germany. The Christian Church has survived and often thrived under persecution, as it continues to do today in China. Guns may silence the tongue from praising God or sharing the gospel, but bullets and bombs cannot resist the Church of God.
Jesus promised that. The very gates of hell will not prevail against it.
Attempts to rationalize belief in a Deity have also failed. Atheism is an empty pursuit. People may argue against the existence of God, but no one can remove the hunger in the human heart to know the Creator.
So-called theologians have dismissed God as dead or irrelevant. Some contemporary preaching offers a watered-down gospel that only talks about love and grace. These are important words, good words, but apart from a holy God who stands in judgment of sin, the terms lose their meaning.
That is the primary reason I have written the book, God in His Own Image: Loving God for who He is, not who we would like Him to be. I have written to the average church goer as well as to the person who has almost discarded faith altogether. If that describes you or one of your friends. I am writing to you. Are you hungry to know more about God—to experience His reality and nearness in your life? I envision a reader, perhaps you, who is hungry to know God as He really is, especially in this age when some religious leaders have tended to diminish some of His attributes, in order to present a safer, more politically correct, Deity.
I have written this blog and the book for each of you whose whose heart is hungry and can only be satisfied when you truly meet the living God, discovering that His arms of welcome have been wide open to you all along.
I can’t imagine writing anything more exciting than that.
Agree/disagree? Trying to create God in our mage or to fit our desires is both dangerous and will leave us spiritually hungry?
What I am reading: The Storm Tossed Family by Russell Moore.
If you recently read a book that you have enjoyed and been challenged by, why not share it with the rest of us?
I Should Have Missed It All
In the next few months, our calendar will be spilling over with exciting events. Some are first time happenings. One, at least, is a once-in-a-life-time kind of event. God permitting, I plan to enjoy each one.
Here is what I anticipate when I look at the calendar:
- On April 27, I will officiate the wedding of our oldest granddaughter, Keyara.
- On May 7 my book, God in His Own Image: Loving God for Who He is Not What We Would Like Him to Be, is slated for release from Moody Publishers.
- On June 8, Faith, our youngest granddaughter, graduates from Bend Senior High School.
- On July 23, I celebrate my three-quarters-of-a century birthday.
- On September 7, our youngest grandson, Kordell, will be married.
- Meanwhile, we anticipate the birth of our first great grandchild. Kendra, our middle granddaughter, recently announced that she and Jacob, her husband, are expecting a baby in October. I can hardly wait.
Frankly, any one of these happy events would be enough to make 2019 a very special year. But what makes all this even more exceptional is that I could have—possibly should have—missed all of them.
When the scaffolding collapsed at Powellhurst Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon on August 25, 1984 and I fell approximately 30 feet, I could have been killed—or at the least permanently paralyzed. Six weeks in the hospital, several surgeries, and months of therapy followed.
It was a life-changing experience on several levels. I have been reminded of that event literally every day of my life since 1984. After 35 years, I continue experiencing physical problems as a result of the fall. In fact, that is why I had another spinal surgery a few weeks ago.
Although less obvious than the physical complications from the accident, I was also deeply impacted emotionally. Being more of a stoic temperament—a “just do it” kind of guy—I was always able to control my emotions. Especially the more tender ones.
I first realized how deeply the accident had also affected me emotionally when we were attending our oldest son’s high school graduation. As I watched Dan cross the platform to receive his diploma, tears slipped down my cheeks at the thought I could have missed this precious moment.
The birth of Keyara, our first grandchild, was another one of those events that gutted my strong exterior to expose deeply tender emotions. After her birth I went home from the hospital to compose a poem about my new granddaughter. The birth of one’s first grandchild is, and ought to be, one of life’s greatest moments. It is as if life has come full circle with the emergence of the next generation. It’s as if this was what marriage and life was meant to be.
Looking back, I realize I would have (should have) also missed the birth of each of our grandchildren as well as seven graduation ceremonies, counting our two sons and five grandchildren. Then there are the marriages—and now the birth of our first great grandchild.
When I shared a rough draft of this blog with my son, Dan, he commented that had I not survived the accident almost everything listed above would not have happened. It was during my six month recovery that a friend visited me while I was still in a full body cast; Jim brought one of his friends, David, with him to meet me. The result was that David began to attend Powellhurst Baptist Church along with his wife and daughter, Tammy. Short story is that Tammy met Dan in the youth group; they dated and eventually married. Their four children probably would not exist today had I died in the accident so scratch the all the births and the weddings and the future great-grandchild. Had I died, we would not have moved to Bend and Faith would not be graduating in June because she would not exist.
Back in 1984 gravity thrust me to the floor near the spot where I had once stood to preach. It would be six months before I would again preach from that spot, but this time in a wheelchair.
My accident wasn’t anything as dramatic as the blinding light that dismounted and blinded Saul of Tarsus, but it certainly changed the course of my life. Looking back, I see events as Before and After. By the kind and gracious will of God I survived the fall. Just a few weeks afterwards, I read how a man had fallen ten feet off of a loading dock, killing him. I realize that every breath, every day, every year and every special family event has been a gift to enjoy to the glory of God. Graduations, weddings and childbirths are always special, but for me they have been extra special because I could have missed them.
My story may not be your story. You may never have dived off a scaffold or been severely injured in a tragic accident, but we are all facing the same event. Unless Jesus returns first, we will face death. The challenge is learning how to live life in the interim. How to experience every precious moment in this brief journey called life.
Moses, having ground out 120 years (most of them rather lonely and difficult), composed a song about the brevity of life. We know it as Psalm 90. Moses presents a beautiful and mind-stretching contrast between our eternally existing God and His mortal creatures. God is more enduring than the mountains; we are as fragile as wildflowers that wilt under the summer sun.
Listen to Moses’ song:
All our days pass away under your wrath;
We finish our years with a moan.
The length of our days is seventy years-
Or eighty, if we have strength;
Yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,
For they quickly pass, and we fly away.
What a realistic description of our fragile human lives. Another wonderful poem about life, death and aging can be found in Ecclesiastes 12.
Both Psalm 90 and Ecclesiastes conclude with a similar reminder. Life is brief. Death is certain. Judgment follows life, so live wisely. Invest every moment, enjoying it to the glory of God, because someday the fragile crystal plate will break. Someday, the soul, like a bird, will fly away to meet its Maker.
That is why Moses prayed (and I pray), “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
I don’t profess to have aced the exam on living life wisely. I still fritter away opportunities to glorify God. I can still treat something very special as mundane. I can still allow Midwest stoicism to overrule the emotions that I could and should express. But each of the events I mentioned at the outset call me back to express thanks to God, because I could have, even should have, missed them all.
Come to think of it, the book, God in His Own Image, would never have been written. I would not be anticipating May 7, nor would this blog have ever seen the light of the day.
But God, in His sovereignty and great kindness, has allowed those events to be.
I intend to make the most of them.
By the way, I am still reading The Essential Jonathan Edwards and The Storm Tossed Family. Both are good reads, the latter is easier and very relevant. I have just concluded reading Ezra and have begun Nehemiah today. What amazing men these were! Their prayers of confession on behalf of their nations is a model for us today.
Why not share what you are reading with rest of us on the front porch?
Also, have you an experience that has influenced your perspective on life?