This is also Thou; Neither is this Thou

The Way of Affirmation and the Way of Negation

Light as we commonly know it is the pure illumination of everything around us. The infinite vases of light pour onto everything we see. It is the word by which we know the world.

 Light is also known particularly as itself. In its most powerful and forceful forms, we cannot see or know it face to face, staring into its fullness, but we can know it in its beautiful parts. As in the rainbow, the refraction of light opens our eyes to the beautiful colors of light. Light contains within itself all the colors we know out in this world it illuminates for us. In a rainbow, light's beauty is known not as the overwhelming fullness of itself but in its sides and facets revealed in separation.

We can come to know light by its reflection and glimpses when the fullness of light is not represented in the form of the sun. The moon gives us a silvery gleam of pure light and many a heart have fallen in love with light looking at its silvery reflection. It softens light for us and removes the pure fierceness of the sun's light, and perhaps it makes pure light earthier, more human so that we can taste and know that it is truly good. The glimpses of light from the stars draw us in longing. It is the romantic within us that answers to the deep stirring call of the light from afar. For the light connoisseurs, the way light falls in shadows and shades through clouds or trees creates an even fuller hunger for light. These slight and infinite variations are always able to enflame within us a new and longing love for pure and holy light.

Whether in its absence or in its fullness or in its crescentness, the knowledge of light is always there. We only know the world because of light; therefore, whatever presence it has, we always know it. We can come to love the day and the light of day, the shadows of trees and clouds, rainbows, and light falling on water. Or we may love the light by night, the moon, the stars, the fire against the moon and the stars. Or, as I have come to love light, we can know and love it because of its coming or going, its waxing and waning, by the morning and evening, the moments of its crescentness. The last closing light of the setting sun is where I often find myself drawn into loving light.

The images of light in its glimpses, reflections, shades, and colors are how we come to love the actuality of light.

This is the way of affirmation. God is the Light. He has named Himself so because He is well known when light is understood as imaging God. The way of affirmation is the discovery and knowledge of God through his created images. Within the image of light, we come to love light by affirming and adoring the images light casts of itself, just so, we come to love and know God. He is the infinite light we cannot look at full, yet we can come to know and love (or reject) him through the images which are refractions, shades, and shadows, of Himself.

God is also love and also the living water. He is in the grass, He speaks in the wind, He laughs in the thunder, and He whispers in the willows . This is also Thou.

And yet, God is not light. He is none of these things. Neither is this Thou.

Just as light itself is not known fully through images, shades, reflections, and distillations created by it, we do not know God fully as Himself by just knowing His created world.

When we are little, we dare to look at the sun. We dare it, but we quickly learn we cannot hold our eyes upon it. Instead, we turn our head away from light to hopefully later find our love for it satisfied in less blinding ways. Yet, we never know its wholeness in its pieces. So we turn off the lights and blind the room of all light and sit alone in the dark. We wait in the absence of light to remind us that light is not the pale shine we see all about us but something holy and pure, and then, we turn on the single uncovered lamp in the middle of the pitch black room.

The light burns from within us but is not us.

So, we turn our face away from this world, we march into the desert (if God is the living water, we go were no water runs to know what true water is), we reject all things knowing that nothing in this world IS God. Here we discover the ultimate, terrifying truth: God is holy.

All men who know God have come to this place, the place that is not a place:

"I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about."
(from T. S. Eliot's, 'The Four Quartets: East Coker' Full text p 11)

A terrible good, a phrase Charles Williams uses often, is what we face when we meet God outside of everything we know. This is what every ascetic has sought for the entire history of the Church. This is what Paul found wandering those years in the desert before his true ministry began. This is the way by which the dead must pass to live.

The great knowledge of the via negativa is God's utterance to Moses: "I am who I am."

Amen. He is no other.

As Christians, we affirm the world in the bodily Incarnation of Christ, the creation itself, the knowledge of God in His created world ("The earth is the LORD's and all its fullness. The world and all those who dwell therein" Psalm 24:1), and the manifold images that are a witness of the Eternal Godhead. These are all God making himself known to us. Yet, we also deny the world, the flesh, the ever present masquerade of non-faces before us, because God is none of these things. We seek the backside of light, the absence of image, and the absolute otherness of God. We live within this great paradox: This is also thou; neither is this thou.

 

Here is a great article about Charles Williams' creative theology of The Two Ways from which this whole post is derived: http://theoddestinkling.mymiddleearth.com/2013/07/31/drunkards-or-monks-the-two-ways-as-a-major-cw-theme/

I can't say enough about how much Williams' writing has helped me see the world in a truly Christian way.

Indian Blankets

I walk among the Indian Blankets blooming bright on a spring day.
The day’s light it bears in an image from which I do not have to look away.
Fringed in yellow it turns to its father, and the holy face
Full of honor and obedience watches the sun’s trace.

The flower passes away in a summer and I know I have lost a brother
Yet in the earths loamy ground it waits to be exhumed by its father.
For each spring it is called to recount to me the deep truth of our race:
We are the other’s image to our Eternal Light which we cannot face.
We turn and see in each other His unbearable, beautiful Face.

A poem about the loss and renewal of the image

She is never too gone to write this wrong.
Somewhere she is freed from me strong
Enough to be another's immutable image,
A shared sight, but I no longer see its stage.

I was there with her once and always,
But here I am salted and sanded in this ground
Grinding my way into a buried haze.
Shroud of night, crowd of placeless thoughts
And spoke-less wheels, I feel this emptiness round
And through my shades of blurry, blaring sound.

Thy emptying leaves us dangling in dreaded ache and angst.

Tread in this night of ours and see the grey.
Creased with this fight, hours in a meaningless fray,
Leased plights, cried nights, being undone
From blackness and light, we are now none. 　

Into this blank world, speak us to life.
Whirled cup, wine and blood, leak rife
With sand that forms for us glass eyes,
New eyes that see through the crass sighs:
All are images that brew us into you.

She is Love's face shaped with a shy restraint.
Untie me from jealous eyes and chaste-less lies,
Uncensor me to feel the fragile, perfect sight
Of flesh's light in the bosom of a saint.

Explanation:

The idea for this poem came from Charles Williams' book The Image of Beatrice. Williams analyzes Dante's life work, mainly Dante's exposition of his romantic love for the Florentine woman Beatrice. Dante never married Beatrice nor did he ever consumate his love, instead he was rejected, Dante married another woman, and Beatrice died when she was 23. Yet this image of Beatrice remained for Dante so real that it in many ways called him to God as he depicts in the Divine Comedy. Beatrice is the theotokos (God bearer) to Dante. Beatrice and Dante's pure vision of romantic love for her are what bring Dante to God or God to Dante.

The poem is in two states, one the immediate, singular yet common feeling of refusal and departure of a love, the other a totally universal yet always singular feeling of abandonment. These two states in the poem are separated by the single line bewailing the emptying: The emptying of the image of the girl is paralleled with the emptying of the image of God in our sight. Often, when we see this world we see wrong in what was made as right and evil in that which was created as “good” by God. We cannot see with our coveting eyes the beauty of the world, instead we simply know it as things we do not miserly possess. We warp it with our lusts, and our lives are lived in the grey. We have nothing but our own barren struggles as we cannot see God in any of it because our eyes are shaded by our sinful hearts. In both the singular and universal experience, we dangle in the dreaded ache and angst of the departure of a love and the Love.

Then the poem moves to a call for renewal of the image, a prayer; more carefully said it calls for new eyes to see the images of God in the world. These images are everywhere, and while none of them are God, they all were made by God and bear Him forth in some way. Everything created and recreated in this world can be a means to call us to God and all have the possibility when seen with the right eyes to "brew us into you." The end is a retrieval of the singular experience of love and heart break in this new light. Even the romantic vision and the loss of it can call someone to God like it did Dante Alighieri so many years ago.

In the shadows and shades of Glory

When we see things face to face in this life, we often miss the beauty of what stands before us.  Too often we don't appreciate or love the object or being before us as much as we do the object in our peripheral vision. The oblique view often sharpens the single shades of things we didn't see as clear when we saw the object in its fullness.

When we tangentally see those we love from a place of loss, our hearts and minds delve deeper into their beauty. And as we see others, not so directly, maybe through the words of another, or in the light of another lense, we grow to respect, admire, and love them fuller.

This also is true with Christ. In the gospels we see Christ pass by those he means to call, longing for them to call after him, or he hides his true identity from us only to be known later by a kind of heart knowing, not the visual, mental, hard way of knowing. He does not always greet us face to face on the road, but instead walks by, catching our side gaze. We miss him as he passes, we know him for his passing, we see him better by our losing and we long for him fuller when we catch a hem of his garment as he scrapes by. He does not simply grab us and drag us down the road, he casts nets with his coyness and crescentness. He's revealed to us as a partial moon, a slimmer of glory. Not the full sun to our sodded eyes, but a window, an image that creeps solemnly by us and through us and around us. He is on all sides of us, but never in front, we see him pass in the grass, we feel him seep through when we try to grab handfulls of rain, and we know his voice only in the whispers of a fleeting wind.

 He is in all of this, but he is not any of it. Charles Williams constantly returns to this quote in his writings: "This also is Thou;  neither is this Thou." His revelation in creation is full of shapes, faces, and pieces that reflect and image his personality and power, but none of it is him.

His half-absence creates a truer longing, the half shades a deeper hunger. In this, he reveals his desire for our hearts, not just our minds.

God does not reveal himself fully to us in creation just as Christ did not trust himself to man in the gospels: He knows the heart of man and knows what is in it. We are selfish even when we know that our selfishness does not bring us happiness. We are dying paradoxes of self-loathing and self-love. God's desire for us is for our hearts to desire him, and instead of placing us in the fullness of his presence where we'd simply be forced to our knees in a mental capitulation with still recalcitrant hearts , he draws our hearts with shadows and shades of Glory.

As I breathe

Sometimes white isn't the purest color.

The dark spots on my shirt and the ink prints on my fingers as I left school on friday reminded me that I worked. I have a place to struggle.

Underneath a grey city bridge, the trash filled the lake with a rotten brown. My sister spoke words of life and joy while picking up the dank, dark, ruined things around us.

Dark faces and darker hair surrounds me as my spirit rises to a place I cannot speak of. I would, but I am not ready. Prepare me.

Open faces, spoken hearts, vulnerable admissions, and a reckless focus. Let today and tommorrow be enough- Lord- may my world not grow too big for my ability to love and may my love grow over and through all that I meet, face to face, life to life, here in the in between, in a spotted and speckled moment.

Rainfall on a Sunny Day

The grey light sheds misty drops on the motions of my weightless body. Falling drops tinge me with their bombardment and the sensuous smell of rain emanates a taste of life. The reigning clouds lift me out of the heavy weight of a Texas summer sun. The passing rain is not more than a breeze and a grey shadow, but swift, this business of life is acted and falls away and the life-filled grey above is parted.

There is a story about a blind man who when it rains can see the world by the pattering echoes of the rainfall. Its knocking on the sides of the world opens the eyes of his mind... Are we not blind souls unawake until we see and feel a knocking on the hard surfaces of the world? Is the poignant passing of pain and bitter tastes of life a rainfall into our world? Are true moments of sorrow and joy, the depths of human experience that mingle together in the heart of the universe, not the heavy beating of a life-giving rain?

I sit sedately in my comforted chair and would pass this world away, but a merciful God acts sorrow and joy into my heart with cauterizing nails to awaken me to the Cloud of His presence.

The thunder roams off in the distance admitting that it also is only a beggar at His feet.

You were a Miracle, why fear?

You were a miracle of conception, brought forth from nothing, an act, the energy of human will, wailing, and birth. Every work of your being was conformed to an unseen image, written forth as an unwinding thread, thinly drawn from the life that marches between all the order of celless atoms and formless voids. You walk the path paved by every father, daughter, mother and son before you, why fear?


Why do you cry at your death, fret and worry at this cloud?

This is what you are, a cloud, a margin forming out of nothing, vapor rising forth in trails of blood toe to head. This existence is the favor of perfect order in every threaded molecule. Nothingness is not far from you, yet you are here, screaming, beating against it with the same thin heart beat that you had six weeks from your conception...
This will pass, but will you know something more than this life?

What is it that holds you here, still, alive against the dark face of nothing?
Ask,
turn,
and face the question.

In the Evening, Remember

In the evening, the wild wideness of light's colors casts forth a last decree of the sun's beauty. Dark silhouettes of leafless trees leave hearts hungry for something they had missed when the trees stood in lights fullness. The dying light calls forth the worshipping side of man, and we wake up to the light and call after its going, aching for it to stay. We remember its true beauty just as we remember the true beauty of the elder who we love when we see them withered and dying, their life's past glory burning in our hearts in a way we had never known.

I stood in his light ungratefully. I saw him and knew him, saw him and did not esteem him. I did not praise nor beg nor ask nor listen, I went on with life as life was to be on with. But now I see him pass, and my heart cries out to him and praises the beauty I had forgotten. His last light casts itself on those around me leaving only the shapes of things previously known in full. These I knew, these true and beautiful ones I knew but never loved. All the shades of his light were known before, but undiluted I had never honored nor recalled them. The dying, suffering light sets, and my heart breaks and waits. Then I remember:

He has bound himself to his cross. And by his cross he binds himself to us like the sun has tethered itself to the earth. He will arise, and I will see his face and know his grace once more.


May Your dying and reviving always be in our hearts. May Your dawning and evening meet us new every day renewing our remembrance of who You are and what You have done.

An Honest Poem

The Lion and a Lamb

The rain fell for a fourth day
deluding the rhythm of cars and lights.
Driving from the church
my Camry rolled to a halt.
A Lexus was stopped alone against the curve.
"Just like mine only dressed in luxurious turns."

In it, Idling in the opposite flow,
A lonely lady hid in sheets of acidic rain.
She sat bent low
holding the steering wheel with withered arms.
Her hair shorn like a lamb before slaughter
and her head wrapped in blood red silk.
Her weeping cries bayed into the sobbing windows and
drowning rain.

My lion's heart felt her dread.
A lifeless life bearing
tumors in her womb
carrying her towards those four mourners
in a green field with grey stones.

But in the cage of plastic and glass
the lion held.
His burning brown eyes looking through mine
His tears I tried to blink away.
The light turned green and on I drove,
forever silent on a still rainy day.

We are jaded

Sometimes I have epiphany moments where life suddenly feels utterly vibrant. Every smell and sound becomes mystically relevant and every scene seems new and meaningful. I do not remember what my childhood was like, but in a way when I have these moments I feel I have become a child again. The world breathes mystery into my heart and I look around with curious eyes wondering what this really is. The rustle of a robin in the in low ivy makes me wonder at its story; the movement of my feet and the soft feeling of clover and grass begs me to see something more than just my inner thoughts. Instead of looking inward towards my wants and needs, the voices and styles of the world around me draw me away into a world that is all too real and wonderful.

My favorite word has for a while been the word 'jaded.' I love the odd flowiness of it and its root reference to a beautiful stone. But its meaning is what really gets me, Webster defines it 'as made dull, apathetic, or cynical by experience.' Most of us are jaded. We are thoughtlessly wasteful of the joy and wonder of being selflessly aware of the world and others in the world. Even if we are aware we are only aware of it in reference to what it has to say about us, who we are and how we are viewed. The weariness of our self life has made our eyelids too heavy to see the world we have been given; we were born heirs to a world of wonder and life yet our lives of self have borne us far away from the pleasure of being in this world and a part of its beauty.

Yet again Christ says: "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
For the burden we bear is ourselves and the yoke we take up is Christ's cross. How telling is it that Christ's cross is a lighter burden to bear than our own selfishness? Christ tells us elsewhere that to know him we must become like little children again. And in becoming children we cast aside our jaded perspective and renew a right view of the gift we have been given.

By Hearing with Faith

Gal. 3:2: "Let me ask you only this: Did you recieve the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?"

Our life in Christ does not begin with our action nor does it continue nor depend upon the working and doing of our hands and feets, but rather in the receiving and hearing in faith of the spirit and word of Christ. When we attend church or pick up our Bibles or kneel down in prayer or commune in fellowship with other Christians, it is not an act of obligation but the real gift of life. Any activity in Christ only begins when these things become joys, our bread of life. The consequence of our receiving of these gifts in faith is the fruits of true faith, the bearing forth the fruits of the Spirit of Christ.

The gospel is not meant as a one time rite of passage into the christian faith, but rather the message spoken to our hearts over and over again repeating the everlasting truth of the love and grace of Christ that quite literally breaks our hearts of stone and continually reminds us where to look when we struggle with our rusty, broken lives. Forgetting is our forte, remembering Christ daily is the beginning of our abiding life in Him.

Rare Life

Sewn, rooted, flung
Systematically Vibrant
Colorfully collected
Filling and overflowing, consuming and reproducing
Violently unique
All freckled and folded
It grasps, moves full of hope
Urging forward, outward
Then gives forth itself
Begetting again
Life

Life knows its own preciousness.
To Ends and Deeps it reaches out
And the Earth bears forth its abundance.
Sings, soothes, feeds, kills and destroys, and yet again is reborn
Life flows on

Tuning itself to an unknown melody
Bound and boxed in by nothing, eternally creative
Its vibrant voice calls forth:
Echoing hard knowledge even from its darkest forms,
Murmuring truths to captive minds
Life speaks on

Carefully hold it
Guard it and know it,
Use it, create with it
Speak of it and name it,
Open it and see
The Heart of Me

Since everyone else is commenting on Tebow...

From an article I read that comes from a secular perspective:
"The crux here, the issue driving this whole "Tebow Thing," is the matter of faith. It's the ongoing choice between embracing a warm feeling that makes no sense or a cold pragmatism that's probably true. And with Tebow, that illogical warm feeling keeps working out. It pays off. The upside to secular thinking is that — in theory — your skepticism will prove correct. Your rightness might be emotionally unsatisfying, but it confirms a stable understanding of the universe. Sports fans who love statistics fall into this camp. People who reject cognitive dissonance build this camp and find the firewood. But Tebow wrecks all that, because he makes blind faith a viable option. His faith in God, his followers' faith in him — it all defies modernity. This is why people care so much. He is making people wonder if they should try to believe things they don't actually believe."
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7319858/the-people-hate-tim-tebow

Oddly, I think this could be said about what Christ has done for us. What we thought foolishness has now become wise and what was holy, other, different and unknowable has become one in empathy with us. I hate to trivialize Christ by comparing him to a modern popular figure, but I do think there is some value in recognizing parts of who he is through applicable, modern realities. When Christ tells us "take up your cross and follow Me," doing so would have seemed foolish to us before, but by becoming human and going before us, he has made us believe in that thing we actually could not believe in or act on before.

My favorite Christmas hymn has a verse that speaks to this:

Filled with mercy for the broken man
Yes he walked my road, and He felt my pain,
Joys and sorrows that I know so well;
Yet His righteous steps, give me hope again -
I will follow my Immanuel!

From the Squalor of a Borrowed Stable

P.S.
I am one of those hard core stats people, but I think I know that like life, sports mean nothing unless they reach somewhere deeper than simply the logical. Life was never meant to be lived, expressed, and experienced with only an empty pragmatic mind, or God would never have been able to simply say to his disciples, "drop all your stuff and come follow me."

aliens and the alien

I used to always enjoy watching the History channel, but recently its been driving me pretty crazy. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the occasional episode of swamp people and modern marvels, but the name History implies that it should discuss history.

Instead, the only history that the history channel has been trying to explain to me is how aliens somehow were the cause of virtually everything in the ancient world. They helped the Incans build Machu Pichu, the Egyptians build the Pyramids; they gave them language, religion, art, and morality. Pretty incredible, who knew? Segments like "Ancient Aliens: Aliens and the Secret Code," "Ancient Aliens: Alien Devastation," "Ancient Aliens: Angels and Aliens," pop up as this week's alien flavor. Not surprisingly, there are plenty of eager historians to share there new 'facts' about aliens in the ancient world.

But the History Channel is probably one of our last cultural institutions to grab a hold of these aliens. I couldn't even begin to tell you the number of movies that have been made over the last couple decades with a plot involving alien influence, invasion, struggle or whatever. And if you walk into a Half-Price book store the section of Science Fiction is taking up more and more space.

But why is this? Maybe I could pass off this growing belief in science and history that aliens do exist as actualities of rationality, but I really don't think that's the whole truth, nor really anywhere close to the truth if I'm honest. We live in a culture dominated by materialism, rationalism, naturalism; even in post-modernism, even if science isn't the driving mind to our culture anymore (which I still think it is, just maybe more subtly and deeply than we know), the fundamental belief of most westerners is that the universe contains no other answers but material ones. Our place in it is simply a natural progression of it and we are nothing more than that. Even if I desperately disbelieve those principles, I find many of its tenets and conclusions stuck somewhere in me, ingrained in me by the world I live in.

But even in this world, we still search for meaning, purpose and beginnings, we still are looking for mysteries, we still look for the alien. The movie plot lines of alien invasion and encounter generally follow these basic lines:
1. Aliens are invading us because we are destroying the earth or we are incapable of being peaceful, we are inherently messed up and should be destroyed. Sometimes the heroes save the world and therefore redeem it by giving a new morality of courage to us. Sometimes there's an alien who comes to warn us before we are to be destroyed by other aliens because he sees 'potential' in humanity... he has an unwarranted love and compassion for us.
2. Aliens are coming to tell us something, share or show us some deep moral truth, some overarching principle of the universe. Or maybe they're some kind of moral judge over us, choosing the good and bad ones from among us, separating the wheat from the chaff if you will.
3. Aliens are something new and exciting to blow up or kill or just something mysterious to throw into a story to make it more attractive to the viewers. They are a new adventure if you will.

I think I covered the basics. I haven't read all the science fiction dealing with aliens and I'm sure its more complicated than that, but I would bet many of the same themes are presented. But what are these themes saying about us, from where are they emanating? Are they not essentially the same kinds of themes we deal with when we talk about religion or mythology? Could it be that we have simply replaced super natural mythology with naturalistic, extraterrestrial mythology?

A mythology that supports our need for a basis of morality (really a purpose for life), a hope for a salve to our wounded humanity or a salvation for it, and an alien otherness, a mysterious being to relate with but also be terrified by. All these things are instinctively mystical and outside of our rational way of viewing the world. Its as if we have projected our human mysticism into our deeply ingrained materialism even though it is constantly at war with this desire within us. This ideology was supposed to give us freedom from our irrationalities, yet if i may dare say it clearly hasn't. We are born with something that not even the most anti-mystical ideology can wipe from us. We need to have a purpose to live for and a principle to live by, even if it was given to us by some alien from a world called oz. We feel utterly messed up and out of place all the time. We seek a redemption for us and the world because we constantly feel our hearts both drifting from what is right and in the wrong place to begin with. And maybe most of all, we desperately seek that which is alien, holy, mysterious because we feel alien in this world and because we feel the need to be in awe of something.

The truth is that Christianity has always dealt with these questions and has always answered them.

The otherness of aliens is distinctly what attracts them to us. The description of God as well, his holiness, his absolute otherness is both supremely terrifying but yet awesome and desireable to us. The alien in God is part of the reason we desire him. The implanted desire for His holiness in many has been projected by people into the infinite material universe on some alien life form.

But maybe that's to simple for you. Argue the semantics of whether aliens exist or not all you want, but that's just not the point. Our hearts and minds often get mixed up more than we think. Our worldviews and desires for the world and universe create the history and science of the universe way more than we are willing to say, and the overwhelming feeling of our modern world desires aliens to exist. To me the why we desire them is the important question because it leads us back to the nature of humans and what, if anything, is already written into our hearts and minds at the inception of our consciousness.

Couple Poems

So, writing poetry seems like an odd thing to do, and I am really not all that sure if Im any good at it, but its honestly an easier way for me to get points and truths out of my head than simple writing. For some reason, right now at least, it has become a release valve for me to express stuff boiling over. I put this stuff on a blog or other places for people to read simply because I can't write anything that has value unless I know it might have value to someone else (its just the way I work)...

Anyhow, I'll probably post several more poems as they come to me, but here are two that I wrote in notes on Facebook and I figured I'd go ahead and leave them here.


Dogs, We Are, a Dog for Me

Dogs, we are, all in captivity
Many bark and bound to mistress vanity
Others of us heel to reasonable sanity
And a few still sniff for our lost divinity

Dogs, we are, coming to our masters
Heads bowed low begging for peace
"Give us, oh please, scraps from your dinners
Pity us in this short life we lease"

Dogs, He called us, for dogs we are
Wandering out in this dark street
Barred we were from His wedding bar
For from His table we ran like harlots in heat

Cast from Eden, we run and head east
Empty and hungy seeking our own feast
But, dogs we are and once again we sit
Returning to lick up our own sick vomit

Yet, while I, a dog, ran and ran
Down He came, a dog He became
And a dog He gave me, colored tan
A golden, white
A precious delight

She, a dog, loved this poor fool
Licked and cleaned me with warm drool
My golden sought me wherever my lost heart went
Down she'd lay her head by my seat
A living sign of eternal love at my feet

For love was her way until I could see
The Master who came as a dog for me.

To All That is Real

There is story beyond time and space
Telling a truth that is often effaced
To a heart that has stopped its race
Forgotten, but not false, a word not contrived

Tales and myths, old and jaded
Speak of a world unseen
But so often now left only to be decreed
As naught but fables of an escapist bein’

Night no longer frees the dreams
Of a World too true to be seen
Drowned are they by the jeering screams
Of medicine laced with an artificial sheen
That hides from us its plastic nicotine

Right, they may seem to rule the dark
But wrought in their governance
Is the seed that smothers our Spark
And all that light is unable to hark
Us back from this sorcerous trance

Woven, weaved out of the heart it springs
Splitting our minds into contrary themes
Concupiscent cravings to be our own kings
We forge a hell alone with no dreams

When will we hear again
The voice in the calm of the mighty wind
That, like the molten setting sun
Melts the stony hearts of men

If yet we be stilled,
Awed anew by the Deep night with no din
We will behold again the once killed
Fearsome Light given unto men.

The First poem, Dogs We Are, has multiple points. First, and foremost, it is about my golden retriever who died about year and half ago right after I think I came to know Christ for the first time in my life. In many ways, I feel like she was given to me as a symbol of His love until I came to know Him. When she died, I knew instinctively, her work was done and God had truly given her with the purpose to love me unconditionally as a sign of God's eternal love to those who He calls His own.

Second point, had more to do with the first part of the poem. We are dogs in a very real sense, and we act like dogs in comparison to the humanity and divinity God has given us (notice, I could have used the word humanity in the first stanza, but left it out). In fact, Jesus at one point in his ministry is begged to come heal the daughter of a gentile and Jesus replies that gentiles are like Dogs coming to His table.

Once I heard a preacher expounding upon this passage along these lines, but went further to say that not only are we like dogs, but Christ himself took the place of us, who are dogs. So in a very real sense, though we are gentiles, Christ came to take the place of us, who are dogs, cast from the covenant of God and long since unreconciled to him, so that we could be one with Him again. What a beautiful truth!

Second poem is a bit more complex and probably not written exactly expressing the thoughts I wanted to express, but hey, it was my first shot at it. Overall, I was trying to describe the state of humanity when we lose our ability to dwell and imagine upon the beauty of reality. Reality is not simply a machine of natural actions that most of our world seems to believe; it is full of things that go beyond simple naturalism and into the spiritual. We often divide the spiritual and that which can be physically known and we end up dividing our minds into two seperate themes. In many ways, we don't allow what are imagination and hearts know to be somehow, someway real into the realm of actual possibilities. Ultimately, we shut off the very incarnation of Christ by doing this, dissallowing us to see what Christ did in His coming as man yet still fully divine. He's proven that they are not seperate, we don't just live in a world of shadows of true reality and beauty or a world of only hard and fast reality, but one that is deeply physical and real yet also fully spiritual. Both our imagination and reason must be combined to see the world God has given us rightly.

Slavery, Culture, and the true Christian Church

So, I have been doing more than a little thinking about Jesus Christ and the last 2000 years of human history (probably my two favorite subjects), and something has become very real to me. When the true Gospel and truths of Jesus Christ are lived and breathed out in a society, the society itself tends to shifts its values, morality and productivity. The problem is, most of modern Christianity and the secular world has an impossible time understanding what the true Church of Jesus Christ is throughout history. Much of it gets blurred in the lines of history as what Christianity is to the eye of the historian is simply a name one group of people in one culture might label itself. Its the religion of this people group or that people group throughout history, or its that institution in that culture, or its that nations 'official' religion. What our modern world needs to know is that what the Christian religion is has nothing to do with what one person or groups of persons might call themselves or what one institution professes to be throughout history. No, no, no. This is such a terrible misconception. The true Church of Jesus Christ is the people who have been called by God at one point or another in history to do the will of God and by the grace of God are the living body of Jesus Christ on the earth. Now, does that body hate, kill, promote greed and idolatry? Does the New Testament allow for a church of luke-warm half-hearted people serving God only in word? Does the true church leave the world as they found it?

I find absolutely no room for such a Church in my Bible, do you? No, I think you will find throughout most of our history that there are many tares sowed into the wheat fields and often those tares have consumed the wheat field, leaving only threads of the true teaching of Christianity alive. I think if you really begin to look at history, there are very few times that the Church that looks most like the New Testament says it should look is not persecuted, even often persecuted by the professing church as a whole. This is just the truth of our history. Now, is this somehow surprising? Not at all if you have read the New Testament all the way through. Let us look at just a few of the many passages that speak directly to the falling away of the professing church:

Matthew 13:24Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: 25But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. 26But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.27So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? 28He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? 29But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
And continued:37He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; 38The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; 39The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. 40As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. 41The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; 42And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, 3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

2 Timothy 3:1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 6 For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

2 Tim. 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 5 But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Philippians 3:17 Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern. 18 For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things.

Virtually the entire book of Jude: Jude

Galatians 1:6 I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, 7 which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.



This is just the beginning of the passages I could point to about this, but there is little doubt that not only is there foretelling of what is to come in these latter times (and I think it can be relatively easily stated that by most references of 'latter times' in the New Testament it is meant the times after Christ) but also in the apostles letters, the direct rebuking of the very present falling away that is already occurring. And remember, that many who cry 'Lord, Lord' will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, no, its those who have made themselves as children before God and come to Him on bended knee and have been transformed into Christ's likeness and born the fruit of that in their lives. Unfortunately, while the New Testament explicitly lays these things out there, when asked about some of the things people might have done under the guise of the Christian religion, we quickly say, "well yea, the church has messed up in its history"... "Ya, we are saved, but we are still sinners." Yes, we are not perfect, but do you really think a man filled with the Holy Ghost ordered the burning of thousands of people who were actually trying to reform the Church? Do you really believe that the true church supported the terrible treatment of slaves and the institution of the so called "Middle Passage" once the information about these things became realized? Do you believe that the true church was responsible for the raping and pillaging that went on in misguided crusades? Did the Christ Jesus full of Love, mercy and grace dwell in the hearts of these men? Certainly not! I would use more forceful language in person.

No, the true Church members of the body of Christ were dying as missionaries in far off lands. Many of the true Church members of the early centuries were slaves in the Roman Empire as over 1/3 of the empires population were slaves; why do you think Paul spends several sections of his letters discussing this? Christianity has been and will always be a religion for the oppressed, even when the oppressors profess something of the Christian religion. The true Church was actually selling their bodies into slavery in the first several centuries so that they could buy others out of slavery and show the hands and feet of Christ to the those in bondage. The true Church was the driving force behind the emancipation of slavery in both England and in America. This is Christ's body, redeeming the world from the curse that it has been under since the beginning of human history. The curse that almost immediately manifested itself in what one old Christian has called "the combination of all human vices rolled up into one," slavery. I find it somewhat remarkable that this is one the greatest marks of the Church.

Now, today, you will find more slaves on this earth in many places where the gospel is not well known, and while Christ has redeemed and continues to redeem cultures throughout the world, turning people from the darkness of sin and death to the light of Christ (manifested in so many ways as cultures evolve under the gospel's influence), ee still face an incredible struggle not only out there, but back here as the glory of Christ's light dims in much of our culture. And what I desperately, desperately want the world to know and especially those who are apart of this Church, this Body, in this age, is that Jesus Christ has overcome the world. Do not retreat from it! Take this light out into the world! Put on the armor of Christ and stand in Him against all injustice, immorality, and all abominations to God that the world produces. The Bible gives us everything we need to know about what the Church is and is to do. Do not settle for less than what it has for us and calls us to be.

Acts 3:19Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

So, as we go, remember to call everyone to Christ, for in His resurrection, we find our regeneration and new life and as one man after another comes into the kingdom of God, Christ's body will become more and more complete until the full number of those who are called to Christ will come in. I find it very interesting and purposeful that we are called to pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Are you doing this with any purpose? It says in the book of Revelation that the prayers of the saints go up before God as an incense and at the time of God's ending of the days, it will be at the prayers of the Saints. I truly believe that while God has His appointed time that we do not know, it will certainly come about because the fervent prayers and activities of the saints present on earth. Is it under our control? No, but I believe with all my heart that when we as a body of Christ live out the great commision, we grow closer and closer to that day. Do you not long for this? Will you have faith? Will you pray that harvesters might be sent into the fields? Let us pray:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven...

My Testimony

Some may know me well, some may know me not so well, either way, I think my testimony speaks very heavily and directly to many a person who has been raised in a Christian home. I pray that I may state what the Lord has done in my life in a way that causes you to turn to the Lord Jesus in true repentance and faith.

I was born and raised in maybe the strongest christian home I know. Three siblings who all pretty much got along incredibly well; two parents totally dedicated to raising their children in the way of the Lord the best they knew how, always willing to sacrifice all for us and always willing to teach and correct us in love. When I was 6 I began to attend a very, very strong Christian school that was and still is the most Christian 'Christian' school you'll find for 1st through 8th graders. In it, we read the bible literally everyday and were consistently taught the great truths of the Word of God. Before Christmas of my 6th year of life, our family sat down for an advent meeting; my father read a passage from Luke, I can't point to what the passage was exactly, but I know I was scared for the first time in my life for my soul. I went by my parents bed and lead by my parents I prayed what I guess is known as the 'sinners prayer'... I was not saved that day, and I know that only know looking back after 16 years of thinking I was. The words were all right, the intentions of my parent were right (although maybe a little bit to impatient to see their first son brought into the redeeming love of their Savior), but my heart was not changed and I certainly did not know what it actually meant to be transformed in my heart to serve the Lord Jesus Christ at that age. There was no counting the cost in my life nor desire to follow after Christ with all my heart, picking up my cross to follow Him.

Throughout most of my younger years, I certainly was the picture of a good Christian kid in many ways on the outside. I wanted to always please those in superior to me, I always wanted the favor of everyone around me, and the best way to have favor with people in a Christian community is to be a respectful, nice kid. In third grade I won the character award for my grade; I couldn't have been any happier. I knew this award meant that everyone thought I was such a great kid, my parents were extremely pleased, and I was all ecstatic to have some visible relic of the thing I desired more than anything else, the favor of men. However, when I was handed the award, someone told me: "Character is who you are when no one is looking." This began to weigh heavily on my heart, and I don't think it ever stopped weighing on my heart. For the first time in my life, I think I was convicted of my sin. Being the good Christian kid I was, this sin lay in the secret place, this fatality was right in my heart. When no one was looking, I was not obedient to my parents. When no one was looking, I was addicted to playing video games when my parents told me I could not. When no one was looking, I was indulging myself in all the things I was told not to. But on the outside, I was just a good a Christian kid.

1Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees;for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

This was the ultimate reality of my life all the way up to my senior year in HS. I kept living and looking great to all those around me. I was smart, quick to understand God, and what He wanted and asks of us in the Bible, quick to assent to the belief in God in my mind, but none of it was in my heart. I suppressed the truth that my heart was as wicked as any murderer or adulterer, I suppressed the truth that I was entirely inclined to do none of the things God would have me do when I was out of sight of all other men. I served a god who I had created and formed in my head and in some crazy, blind way thought I served and lived for. I will tell you one thing I know about my human nature... My heart and mind are the greatest deceivers I have ever known. Satan has a hold on many a mind splitting the mind and heart, letting the mind believe God and serve Him, while keeping the heart utterly holding onto salvation in themselves, the love of the world and all that crucified Christ. What a terrible place to be in! Convinced thoroughly in your head that you have all that Christianity has to offer, but having a greater poverty of heart and soul than could ever be imagined.

Before my senior year in HS, I had one of the main idols in my heart rooted out. I loved playing sports, it was almost my entire identity in HS. I played 4 sports between my SO and JR year in HS, but before my SR year, I tore my acl in the third football practice of the year. All those things that I spent my time doing were taken away, and I was left to the loneliness and poverty of my heart for the first time. During those 6 months of recovery, the wretchedness of my sin-filled heart became more and more evident. Addiction to terrible things started to creep into my life, un-wanted and un-desired, but sin has a way of completely turning a man against himself... I believe without God and His sovereign grace, we are absolutely self-destructive, and I was certainly beginning to see this then. Half way into my senior year, I began for the first time in my life to actually search the Scriptures for myself. Starting in Proverbs 1, I began to actually read the bible for an answer. At Proverbs 23:26, I stopped: "My son, give me your heart and let your eyes follow my ways." That verse cut me to my heart, I wept several nights over reading that verse. I knew something was desperately wrong with my heart, but I had no idea how to give my heart to God. The truth was and is that most of the American 'church' has no idea what this means. I was duped into thinking I was as Christian as I possibly could be; no one told me that Christ required an entire repentance, turning from loving all the things that I love in this world to Christ. I thought slowly but surely I would just grow up in this Christian life as I slowly 'matured' in my walk. But not understanding and being blinded to the fact, that in Christ, I have my very life. Why are we so quick to gloss over Christ and His cross? This is everything. As a SR. in HS,I was convicted of my heart full of sin, but despite growing up in a bible-teaching church and home, no one was able to lead me to Christ. No one was willing to tell me that I actually needed to repent and be born of the Spirit, no one was willing to stand up and question my assurance of salvation despite the fact that the only assurance we are to have of Salvation is supposed to come from God and His Spirit testifying with our Spirit and our lives reflecting His work in us.

Why are we so quick to soften, yea even counter act the reproofs of the scriptures? I pray that we all look at the consequences of not hearing the reproofs of the word of God listed in Proverbs 1:24-33... "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you."(Proverbs 1:23-24) Read on! These are our eternal souls we are dealing with, it is foolish not to think and ponder over these things.

I went on, thinking that in being sincere about sin with others, sincere about who I was, maybe I could figure this out. My life did not change one bit, I slowly slipped back into my comfortable 'Christian' life. By the time I went to college, I was excited about the opportunity to serve my god in college. I had even gone to China and back to share this god of mine with others, I thought I was starting to discover and get closer to God, but when I got alone, I was still desperately alone. I was empty. I was in complete denial of God in my heart, even though my head believed otherwise. In college, sincerely I pursued this god I had known in my head. I tried to read my bible, I tried to go out and pray. All the time living in sin, living in addiction to some terrible things. Proclaiming and professing Christ, while holding on with all my heart to so many things that I loved in this world. I did not want to go out and get drunk, but I certainly was not seeking God with all my heart, which is a prerequisite to finding God according to Jeremiah. I was a walking hypocrite, calling myself a follower of Christ, but having no cross to carry.

By the beginning of my Sophomore year of college, I was again confronted with my hypocrisy. Again, thinking I was still a Christian, I said to myself: "well, I will follow God, but I still want to have a girlfriend, popularity, and success and honor in men's eyes." This is utterly contrary to what the word of God teaches a follower of Christ should be, but every voice I heard that was a part of Christianity absolutely affirmed me, maybe subtly, but definitely affirmed me in my 'balanced' approach to my walk in Christ. It was not a matter of doing things, giving stuff away, even praying or reading my bible, no it went much deeper. I did all those things, I went on the mission trips, went to a Bible-preaching church, even did alot to defend my faith, read books, gave money and time to help people out... But deep in my heart, I was desperately addicted to this world, sin, self-righteousness, Christ was far from my heart. Its amazing to me, looking back on it, that I could think so absolutely little about Jesus Christ and still call myself a Christian. If we are not completely enamoured with Him and Him alone, we have missed Him; He is our very life if we are actually in Christ, "For you have died and your life is hid in Christ."

After a year of seeking self-gratification while giving total mental assent to the Lordship of Jesus in my life, I came to crashing, face-planting, halt at the end of my sophomore year. Everything fell apart, I was lost, broken, everything that I had made my idol ahead of Jesus was rent out of my life in violent succession. Yet, still, I had absolutely no inclination that Christ was not the center of my life, I had no idea that I had absolutely missed Jesus somehow after 20 years of hearing Him preached and taught by everything I was around. How is this possible? I am certainly foolish, but I have a hard time believing that someone did not soften the sword of the Word of God along the way when telling me about it. I fear more than anything, that I was no different at that time in my life than literally everyone I found myself around. Some people lived differently than I did, but there was no one who I knew that consumed themselves with Christ. The biggest and deepest roots of my heart at this point in my life were very literally ripped out, my heart lay open, oozing with self-pity, depression, and all kinds of stuff. I am sure many have known the sorrow of the heart when you realize that many of the pillars and pleasure you built your life on in this world were swiftly and easily knocked out from under you; what a terrible stat many of us live in!

I spent the next 6 or 7 months in state of some depression and some anguish, still living in terrible sin but unaware of the consequences of it. Total depravity had not quite set into control my life, but I was teetering on the edge. Everyone has their own secret sins if they know not Christ in their heart, mine began with laziness and spread into all kinds of addiction and up until the second semester of my JR year, I actually thought they were not that big of a deal, mostly because no one knew about them, or at least how bad they were. Finally, after not turning at all the rebukes and convictions that the Lord had sent my way over 4 years, I fell extremely hard on my face into a terrible addiction to gambling my second semester of my JR year (Spring of 2008). It began in laziness, luke-warmness, but in God's good mercy, He let me fall, fall and fall.

I don't even wanna tell you the depths to which I fell, the shame and desperation of a wicked heart is unbelievable. I fell and fell until a year later, after spending a semester out of school because of this addiction and many other spawns from it, I met someone who literally for the first time in my life showed me a different way. Somehow, after all this, I still thought of myself as a Christian, do you see the deceitfulness of the human heart? We are not saved by grace through faith to live in continual addiction and self-destructive behaviour in complete defiance to God, but instead to do the good works that God has prepared for us in advance. Christmas of 2008 I met a man who not just in word, but maybe even more so in earnestness and passion of heart showed me that there was much, much more to the Christian faith than I had been living out in my heart. From that day, I began to question my own salvation, sometimes not really worried about it, but still it was in my mind. "What this person has and what I have are absolutely, completely different, yet I call myself a Christian just like him." I began to listen to some salty preaching that my sister had given me, and although I was not convicted of just how desperately I needed Christ, I definitely started to see that I had certainly missed something growing up in this 'Christian' world that I had grown up in.

For the next half year or so, God began to lead me to a place where He could meet me. I was no different in regards to my sin, but God put me in a place where I was somewhat insulated from the devastating, numbing reality of a completely tossed away life, around godly people who were pursuing the Lord. Slowly but surely, I felt my heart being tugged away from the desperate hole that I had dug myself into. The life of self-destruction and sin was becoming more and more vile to me, yet, I was still stuck desperately in it. I tried and tried to resist the addictive nature and the sin that so easily beset me, but no power in me could do anything to stop it... Just as no power in me could crucify myself on a cross, I could not rid myself of the dead and sin filled me. One week, I became desperate. I said I was sick, but I was simply just sick of my soul and self. I saw in the trueness of light maybe just a glimpse of my heart and saw how desperately sick I was, the incurable sickness of death and sin was completely filling my heart. The addiction and sin was there in abundance, and the realization came to me how much God hated it. I was doing terrible things right in front of His eyes. Have you ever realized this? His law is holy and just, yet we are all transgressors of it. He cannot take us as we are, we are wretched, sinful, haters of God. I became fearful of God that week...

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.

On that Sunday, I came home from church completely broken. Got on my computer and watched a sermon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiZkicY0qj8
Maybe one of the simplest sermons you will find, just one godly man quoting word for word the sermon on the mount. The sermon on the mount has a couple of purposes, but maybe more than anything else, it is there to expound on the law of God and make it so that every man is absolutely, unequivocally condemned under it. for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. I was killed that day, completely utterly cut off from any hope of overcoming and saving myself. There is no way to describe to you what happened to me that day, but I know, I died with Christ on the cross. God took me as I totally and utterly repented and put me in with Christ so that I died. I died so that I could be raised in the newness of life. I died so that Christ could live in me and through me. I died, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I died so that I could live!

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.


Faith in Jesus Christ puts us into Christ. If our life is not radically different, if we do not have a hatred for sin, if we are not new creatures, then I have to ask, have we actually be born again? Its a terrible thing to miss one of the very first things Christ tells us in the Gospel of John. I hope we actually understand what it means to come to true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, otherwise, all righteousness is as filthy rags before God, all our trying will get us no where and all the proclamations of preachers will do us no good. The Gospel is the be all and end all of our hope and life, if we have not really received and taken into our hearts, we have no life.

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (2 Corinthians 13:5) A great sermon on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky8dTyPpiAo

Do not trust in a prayer you prayed in 2nd grade. For: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)

Ask yourself this simple question: Is Jesus precious to you? Unto you therefore which believe He is precious
Do you look to Him for your life? Is your life filled with Him, desiring His will and His holiness in your life? I pray that we fail not to search our own soul and lives to see if we really are in Faith.

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)

In Christ

"We saw how prominent is the word 'I' throughout Romans 7, culminating in the agonized cry: 'O wretched man that I am!' Then followed the shout of deliverance: 'Thank God... Jesus Christ!' and it is clear that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a 'changed life' but it is not that. What God offers us is an 'exchanged life,' a 'substituted life,' and Christ is our Substitue within. 'I live; yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.' This life is not something which we ourselves have to produce. It is Christ's own life reproduced in us.

How many Christians believe in 'reproduction in this sense as something more than regeneration? Regeneration means that the life of Christ is planted in us by the Holy Spirit at our new birth. 'Reproduction' goes futher: it means that new life grows and becomes manifest progressively in us, until the very likeness of Christ begins to be reproduced in our lives. That is what Paul means when he speaks of his travail for the Galatians 'until Christ be formed in you' (Gal. 4:19)."

The above is an excerpt from Walkman Nee's The Normal Christian Life... Maybe the best book I've read besides the Bible. Anyways, I find it fascinating that after reading Romans 6, 7 and 8 at least 30 times since I was saved that I could not figure this passage out for what it really meant. I thought I knew what it meant to be 'In Christ' but I had no idea what that meant to me in everyday life.

When Paul says repeatedly "You have died" and with and in Christ to our old selves as sinners and risen again in the newness of life in Christ Jesus, he means just that. If you have accepted Christ as your saviour and been born of the Spirit, your baptism is a symbol of just that... You are dead! and now, your life is to be found altogether in Christ. The problem we all face is that we cannot ever seem to know this well enough, we constantly forget who we are really in Christ, we constantly forget Him, and we constantly make Him commonplace... He is everything, and He is the only thing we have to look to. Where He is, our life is to be found, in who He is, our life has its strength, in what He's done, we have God's grace, and in His Spirit, our lives constantly can have strength... The work of Christ on the Cross and our reception and believing in it, is more than just the blood of Christ to cover our sins, but the very crucifixion of our old selves into the body of Christ. We no longer live but in Christ. This is why it becomes such misery for a true Christian to backslide and turn to the world, absolute misery.

Also, the end of Romans 7, I believe, seems to point directly to our struggle as Christians when we know we have to live to Christ, but forget on who's strength we are to rely. It is such a common thing for us to look to 'I', thinking in us is the means for sanctification, holiness, and love, but by no means is this the case. When we recognize just how poor we are in terms of our ability to obey Christ and turn to Him, saying 'O, wretched man that I am!', and then look to Christ, we are in the Christian life. We must always know how completely incapapble this 'I' of ours is and we need always to look to Christ, to His life lived through us. Rest on Him and know that your life is not the life to be lived anymore, but Christ's life is to be lived through you, so look to Him, pray always, feed on Him, and abide in Him. This is our strength and hope, all good things are in Christ. Rejoice always, giving thanks for the truth that you are dead in Christ and alive in Him too! This is true. Now, let us know this and walk in this, the Spirit of life, knowing that we are bought to Him and it is no longer our own life that we live, but Christ's.

What the Lord calls to us who live in America

Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you— The sure mercies of David. Seek the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.

Pure Religion

"Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

It is weird when I look at this verse and then look at what most of the American Church has done to itself over the last 100 years: I wonder, how did two simple biblical concepts unseperated in a single verse in the Bible become completely seperated churches? I mean, completely, fundemantly opposed 'churches'...

Yes, I am speaking about what most people would call the more often than not liberal churches and the fundemental, bible-believing churches. I do not quite understand how we have to seperate social justice with personal holiness, or simple belief in the bible from being the hands and feet of Christ to the needy. I think it is simply one of those stunning, complex, yet ludicrous, politically and ideoligically driven twists you see throughout human history somehow invading the Church that is supposed to be driven only by the knowledge of God and His will.

Two quick broadsides to the divided church and their respective often politically divided camps... First, How can Christ be in you and you not have a desperate heart for the poor and needy? How can the pictures of the poor and broken souls we see all the time not drive the Heart of Christ in you to groan? Second, How does the love of Christ dwell in a body that is given over to the world? How can the love of Christ for the poor and broken souls be attached and indwelling in the body of a man that still loves the very things that cause that terrible brokeness in our world according to God? Do you see the ridiculous paradox's of these notions?

I will say, if you are not going to be firmly rooted in the Word of God, you are going to fail as a man who is supposed to be full of the Holy Spirit and God's divine love and will, but if you are going to call yourself a Bible-believing Christian, live like it and stop ignoring the texts about being rich and what kind of responsibility that puts on you if you really are indwelt by the Spirit of Christ.

Lastly, I just read a brief summary of Walter Rauschenbusch life and work and wanted to throw a quote out there by this father of the Social Gospel... And while I can not say I agree with everything the man believes, I do believe he was a sincere follower of Christ:

"If the new interest in social questions crowds out the old interest in evangelistic work, it is a reaction from an old one-sidedness into a new one-sidedness...Nothing can supersede that great experience when the soul of man conciously turns to God"

Now, the only way you are going to have regeneration and the life of Christ in a man is to preach the Gospel as it is told and presented in all its power from the Bible. So, I desperately ask, anyone who wishes to really advance the Kingdom of God on this earth, preach the Gospel in all its power and give and do all you can for those in need.