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December 30, 2004

Our Future Hope!

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Revelation 21:1-4, ESV)

There's something wrong with our planet. Seriously wrong. Devastatingly wrong. Hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, even ice ages. These are imperfections that resulted from the curse, when the Lord removed Adam and Eve from the garden in Genesis 3. But why did God do this? Why did he make the Earth a more dangerous place? Was it just to make us feel guilty about Original Sin? No! He did it to increase our desire for restoration with Him, and to increase our Hope for heaven!

Romans 8:22-23 (NKJV) says,

For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

The despair that we have with our current planet increases our hope for the New Heaven and the New Earth! The terrible imperfection now points to the great future perfection we long for! Creation, as well as our own bodily pains and weaknesses that we experience, cause our great longing for our future hope to grow more and more!

How does a Christian cope with such devastating loss? Through the hope he has that one day it won't be like this anymore. In verses 24-25, Paul points to this hope, this collective desire for something more, something better, something safe, as our reason for perseverance: "For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance."

To all those who have lost loved ones on the sea over the centuries, or those who lost everything in the tsunamis, our Lord has great news: "The sea was no more." (Rev. 21:1) There will be no more destructive waves, no more sharks, no more drowning, no more death by hypothermia. But it's not just the threat of a watery death that will be removed. The Lord is going to take away all of our pain, all of our sorrow. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Rev. 21:4)

Southeast Asia Tsunami Disaster Relief

I'm not even going to give you a number right now. If I did, it would be outdated by the time you read this, because the death toll is rising so quickly. But many, many, many people died on Sunday. Gospel for Asia, a missions organization which our fellowship supports, is one of several Christian groups who have taken up the call to provide emergency relief to the survivors of last Sunday's tragedy. Please pray for the relief efforts in Asia, and learn about how you can help.

Posted by aaronlord at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2004

"Weep with those who weep" (Rom. 12:15)

Author and pastor John Piper has responded to the disaster with an article at DesiringGod.org entitled "Tsunami, Sovereignty, and Mercy."

Another example is the curse that lies on this fallen earth. Those who do not believe in Christ experience it as judgment, but believers experience it as, merciful, though painful, preparation for glory. “The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope” (Romans 8:20). This is God’s subjection. This is why there are tsunamis.

Read the full text here. And be sure to follow the permalink to see my list of aid agencies and charities who are already active in the area, where you can donate online.

Posted by aaronlord at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

My Utmost...

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, p. 364:

Do not look at someone else and say--Well, if he can have those views and prosper, why cannot I? You have to walk in the light of the vision that has been given to you and not compare yourself with others or judge them, that is between them and God. When you find that a point of view in which you have been delighting clashes with the heavenly vision and you debate, certain things will begin to develop in you--a sense of property and a sense of personal right, things of which Jesus Christ made nothing. He was always against these things as being the root of everything alien to Himself. "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth."

Posted by aaronlord at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2004

Relief for Southeast Asia

Maddampegama, Sri LankaAs of 2:24 PM EST on January 5, 2005, CNN.com is reporting that the death toll from the earthquake-induced tsunamis in the Indian Ocean that hit on Sunday morning has topped 155,000. The organizations listed below are specifically communicating that they have people in the area already with relief efforts that are already underway:

I'm sure there are a lot of other worthy organizations out there, but seems like they're all on vacation and nobody's updating their websites. An official from USAID spoke in a news conference Monday morning along with Colin Powell. By that time they had the disaster listed on their website, but were slow in getting specific. But they are official, and they are helping.

Good stewardship requires us to make sure that the organizations we give to are actually putting the money to use in Asia and not just taking advantage of our renewed spirit of giving. Of these, World Vision looks like they're most on the ball, because they actually have people there in the area and are sending emergency survival kits to the areas affected.

During the month of January, Starbucks is donating $2 from every pound of Sumatra, Decaf Sumatra, and Aged Sumatra whole bean coffee that they sell. As a former barista, I'm convinced that some of the best coffee in the world comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which was one of the hardest hit.

And don't forget to pray for the people, too. I just saw a show on the History channel about how just because there are earthquakes it doesn't mean it's the end of the world and Jesus is coming back... What do they know? Imagine yourself in Sri Lanka or Phuket right now. How could you possibly help thinking it's the end of the world?

Updated 1/5/2005, 11:56 AM PST

Posted by aaronlord at 12:14 AM | Comments (2)

December 24, 2004

Wrestling with God

I'm studying a lot about the biblical Jacob and the practice of wrestling with God. But lately there's a big question I'm struggling with, and that is knowing when to go with the flow and trust that God in charge, and when to intervene because it depends on you.

Steve Stockman, in his book Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, relates Jacob's story to Bono's. When I read over the passage a second time, I noticed another dimension to the story I had never grasped before. When Jacob was wrestling with God, he didn't know who he was at first. Just some guy who comes up and starts wrestling with him. "The mysterious agressor eventually was understood to be God, and Jacob got a new name..." (p. 153-4). This is what I saw: here Jacob is, wrestling with him all night. By dawn he realizes the physical circumstance has spiritual significance and says, "I will not let you go until you bless me." He's seeking to find the spiritual answer to what's going on in the natural. And it's as if God's saying, "Do you not recognize me? Do you not see my hand at work in your life?" And this is the key: "Do you not see that when you're wrestling with your father, your brother, your father-in-law, you're wrestling against ME?"

God is all-powerful and sovereign, and while this doesn't mean that we just sit back and watch the world go by, it does mean that we need to look for His hand in situations and see what he might be doing or trying to teach us, rather than being like Jacob and manipulating everything around us to conform to our own selfish desires. It was God who was wrestling with Jacob his whole life, but from birth, Jacob was struggling to get his own way. We need to see God's hand in our circumstances. We need to hold on for his blessing in every circumstance. We need to hold on until he tells us, "This is who you are and this is what I made you for," rather than building our own castles (made of sand) and looking out for our own interests in every situation.

I think that life is like a huge choose-your-own-adventure book: "If you want to go through the door, turn to page 67. If you want to turn around and go back the way you came, go to page 36." God is still the author, but it's up to us to walk through the doors. It may take any number of doors, but he's going to keep putting doors in front of us until we learn, perhaps through painful experiences, how to pick His door. He will eventually get us where He wants us, and the ending will be what He intended all along.

I think there is another layer to this choose-your-own adventure thing, and that's realizing the difference between regret over the past and whining about things you can't change, versus standing up to change the things that you can. The same year I got dropped from the lineup of Lifehouse, we were getting ready for a trip to Scotland, and we were going to be hanging out in St. Andrews in the Kingdom of Fife, which was the same place where Tiger Woods was experiencing a rather hard time in his golf game that same year. My old pastor in Malibu compared me to him, swinging away over and over with the club, but getting nowhere because I'm stuck in the long grass by the beach. (Trying the same thing over again expecting a different result, isn't that the definition of insanity?) Brad's prayer in this situation was that I was actually going to find my place, and, like Eric Liddell on that same beach, experience God's pleasure.

It's taken me a long time to heal from bitterness over past things that were supposed to happen but didn't because the band was not in control, but the label and the producer were. I stumbled across the blog of a Christian drummer in a well-known secular band that's actually on the same label my former band was on. I dropped him an e-mail, and he wrote me back (blogging is so cool). He confirmed stuff I had learned about how band loyalty should be more important than label/producer/manager control, and helped solidify my position that sucky things happened to me that aren't cool at all.

But, getting back to choose-your-own-adventure and the God-wrestle, even though God engineers our circumstances, it's still up to us to choose what we're going to do in the circumstance and what kind of attitude we're going to have about the aftermath of our choice (or the thing that happens to us if it's out of our control). Chuck Swindoll puts it this way:

Life is like a menu in the Grace Restarurant. In this new establishment you are free to choose whatever you want. But whatever you choose will be served to you and you must eat it. If you choose the wrong food and realize later just how badly your body reacted to it, don't think that grace will protect you from getting sick. (The Grace Awakening, p. 145)

This year I was presented with a circumstance which I believed was engineered by God, and I followed my heart. But when we are seeking to follow God's plans for our lives, we need to realize that the right way of walking involves obedience. In the words of the ancient crusader in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I "chose poorly". The circumstance was engineered by God, but my response was the wrong one. I think God had equipped me with the discernment and scripture knowledge to know, but I still chose to go through a door that I wasn't supposed to go through.

We have to eat what we ordered and deal with the digestive consequences. There are times when someone else ordered a bad meal for the whole table, and you just have to have the "horizontal grace" to accept that person's choice and move on to the next thing God has for you. And there are times when you chose the wrong plate for your own self (and maybe for someone else as well), and you have to face the consequences. But the good news is the "vertical grace" that is there for us when we're ready to get back on track and ask the Head Chef which meal is best for us.

Whichever situation we find ourselves in, I'm learning that living with regret and wallowing in guilt will get us nowhere. As my new cyber-friend pointed out, hopefully we will learn from our mistakes. But I think we need to look to the future and live in hope of what God's going to do next rather than suffering from the wounds that He's already healed.

Reinhold Niebuhr, a German-American Confessing Church pastor and professor at Union Theological Seminary, prayed, "God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed; give me the courage to change things which must be changed; and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other."

Thanks: Brad, Pat, Sam, J.B., Zach.

Merry Christmas to all! May you, like Bono, find baby Jesus underneath the trash (wrapping paper).

Posted by aaronlord at 04:12 PM | Comments (1)

December 22, 2004

No Angel...

Okay, so he wasn't an angel. And it's a good thing, too, because this is part of what he wrote: "The life we live is not our own[,] for who's to say that we'll live to see tomorrow?" While it may be theologically correct, there's something a little foreboding about it when you're getting on a plane. Especially when the plane was delayed for two hours due to fog and then another two hours due to a "mechanical" (I know, mechanical is an adjective, and I didn't supply a noun, but neither did the announcer at the airport when he was telling us that the plane had a mechanical...), and you spent the whole weekend thinking about what Oswald Chambers said about believing that God engineers our circumstances.

"But does God cirumcise our engineers?" says my Dad (who's reading over my shoulder and holding my very cute youngest nephew Joseph).

He does engineer our circumstances! I wore my Delirious? trucker hat on Monday, so two young Christian guys who are going to the Bethel school of ministry in Redding came over and sat by me in the waiting area, and we had some really good talks during the 5 hours that we waited for our flight. They were a little more charismatic than the people I've been fellowshipping with at Calvary, but we shared common ground because of my experience of God's work in other places. The conversation centered around the idea that it's bad to bash your brothers and sisters, and how it's important to find balance through both having the Holy Spirit and being grounded in God's Word (one without the other gets you nowhere). It was a blessing meeting those guys, and I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that while traveling alone.

Posted by aaronlord at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2004

"The Test of Loyalty"

Someone has suggested that I should expect someone to look through my stuff if I set it down in a bookstore. I disagree. If it were for sale, my Bible would be in a little Bible box like all the others. My notebook wouldn't be the only notebook in the store, they wouldn't both have my name on the first page, and they would both have price tags on them. Furthermore, would you not realize, once you see writing in it, that it's not a blank journal for sale? And if you thought it was for sale, why would you start writing in it yourself? And it's not that I'm being ungracious. I'm just taking the opportunity to rant and to vent. I'm being honest, which is often a rare quality in the church today. If you know me, you would know that I don't actually intend harm to these people.

If God engineers our circumstances, then we have no right to be frustrated!

To be faithful in every circumstance means that we have only one loyalty, and that is to our Lord....If we learn to worship God in the trying circumstances, He will alter them in two seconds when He chooses. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec. 18)

There is no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason, and I cannot change what happened. Maybe this guy was an angel and he had a message from the Lord for me. I don't know. But all that I have, all that I am, is the Lord's. He can do to me what He wills.

Posted by aaronlord at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2004

HELLO, WERE YOU BORN IN A BARN?!?

Tonight after the service I went into the church bookstore to look something up. Pastor Sam was talking about Colossians 1, where Paul says he's trying to "fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ." I remembered from John Piper's Desiring God that there's a parallel verse in Philippians 2:30 where it talks about Epaphroditus "filling up what is lacking" in the Philippians' service to Paul, and he does that by acting as a messenger. But, of course, I couldn't remember where this was, so I had to go in the bookstore to look it up in Zodhiates' Word Studies.

So I sat my Bible and my notebook and my pen on the little table in the bookstore, and while I was looking it up, I turned around and saw a guy thumbing through my precious Moleskine notebook. I said, "Hello! That's personal!" and grabbed it from him. He said, "Sorry, I didn't know. It was just sitting there..." I suppose he must have thought it was a decoration. But I opened it up, and some other guy had actually written in it! Maybe he thought it was a guestbook like my Mom keeps in her guest room for people to leave nice notes in.

Who raises their kids like this?!?! And they were grown-ups, too! How could they have no concept of ownership?

So, since having "In case of loss, please return to:" along with my name and address on the front page apparently isn't enough to justify my ownership of my own notebook, I've had to add the following on the second page:

THIS IS NOT YOURS! PLEASE PUT IT BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT. DO NOT READ IT. IF THE NOTEBOOK APPEARS TO BE LOST, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT IT BE RETURNED TO ME. MY NAME AND ADDRESS ARE ON THE FIRST PAGE.
<---

Posted by aaronlord at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2004

So much for "The Glory of Christmas"...

AP The conductor of the Crystal Cathedral's unionized house orchestra killed himself at the church after a 9-hour standoff. (In the interest of full disclosure I have to mention that my grandparents go to the Crystal Cathedral, a fact which has embarrassed me for a long time.) The standoff began less than two hours before the scheduled start of their annual pageant, "The Glory of Christmas." The conductor, Johnnie Carl, had arranged the music for the show, but it was prerecorded, so it's not clear whether "the show must go on"...

Carl had expressed that not only was his job stressful, but there were also pressures just dealing with people around him. That's what happens when your religion is about slick performances rather than gospel authenticity. Pastor Robert Schuller said, "His music brought joy to the millions of viewers around the world who watch the Crystal Cathedral's 'Hour of Power' television program each week." I'd say what he brought wasn't true joy, but just the appearance of joy. Too bad he couldn't plug into the source and receive some of that joy for himself...

Posted by aaronlord at 11:10 AM | Comments (2)

December 16, 2004

Missions Update

© Company Magazine India

On Tuesday night they had a report on PBS about a Jesuit priest in India who heads up a missionary school where he teaches poor children how to play violin, and he only accepts those in the lowest castes (transcript).

It was so awesome! I want to go and help out in any way I can! I sent an e-mail to Twin Cities Public Television, who produced the original story. The next morning, they e-mailed me back and said they had forwarded my message to the journalist who did the report, Fred de Sam Lazaro. Please pray that, if it be God's will for me to do something in this area, he would enable the necessary connections, and also enable me to be more serious about my violin playing in order to be an effective teacher of large groups of eager students.

When I first began ministry in Scotland, I learned new fiddling styles and techniques in order to be more effective there. The school in India is classically-based and mostly does western music, like Mozart. But they also have a guy who arranges some traditional Indian tunes for strings.

India is still bogged down in karma and caste systems. As Bono says, grace "travels outside of karma." Grace is the opposite, and has a totally different affect on how people are treated socially. The Indian system has to be changed. They need Jesus. If villagers are open to sending their kids to a school run by a Canadian Jesuit to learn how to play western music on the violin, then that is an open door for the gospel!

Latin America

I got a praise report last weekend from Pastor Juan Domingo at Calvary Chapel Ensenada. It sounds like God's doing some awesome stuff there. They're broadcasting the Bible studies on TV, and it's become so popular that the TV station is actually paying to place large, full-color ads for the broadcast in the paper.

I've begun editing Pastor Sam's studies in the book of John for broadcast on the radio in Belize, and the first broadcast aired on Monday. Pastor Sam's idea is that when he returns to do a conference down there, people will know who he is because they will have heard him on the radio.

Tonight is the first ever weekly Spanish Bible study at Calvary Chapel Chico. We're really excited about it. I even translated the bulletin announcement into Spanish before I put it online (although Pastor Will had to make some corrections... I'm not that great at subjunctive tenses). I got my Biblia Versión Popular out and ready to go!

Scotland

My heart is still in Scotland. I have enough frequent flyer miles earned for a free flight to London, so theoretically, I could go to the UK any time. I want to go over during the summer for the CLAN gathering, but I really wanted to go over soon in order to actually spend some quality time with my Scottish friends like the Fyvies and the Espies in their own places of ministry. Unfortunately, I have been unable to get in touch with anybody over there about organizing such happenings, so I will probably just save my miles for the summer and go over with John Bergin.

Posted by aaronlord at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

December 15, 2004

Winter Intercession

I've been overhearing a lot of Chico State students talking about intercession lately. Actually, I'm kidding. They're really talking about winter intersession (before regular classes resume at the end of January). But wouldn't it be cool if it were the other kind of intercession that they were talking about--intercessory prayer?

C.S. Lewis said, "Prayer doesn't change God, it changes me." While this is true, it is not just us that prayer changes, but it also has the power to change the world around us. But if God is in charge, why do we need to pray?

We find in Genesis 3 and Psalm 8 expressions of God's assignment for mankind when he put us here, commonly referred to as the "Dominion Covenant". And Psalm 115:16 (NKJV) says,

The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's;
But the earth He has given to the children of men.

The Hebrew word nathan, here translated "given", means to "apply, appoint, ascribe, assign," etc. Our sovereign, omnipotent God has not abandoned the earth, but he has assigned to us a certain responsibility of governing it. In The Treasury of David, Charles H. Spurgeon says of this verse,

He hath left the world during the present dispensation in a great measure under the power and will of men, so that things are not here below in the same perfect order as the things which are above....The free agency which he gave to his creatures necessitated that in some degree he should restrain his power and suffer the children of men to follow their own devices; yet nevertheless, since he has not vacated heaven, he is still master of earth, and can at any time gather up all the reins into his own hands.

We are given a certain responsibility to govern what goes on here, and this is why it's our job to do God's will, as well as to pray for God to do his will. And at times we need to petition the Creator directly on behalf of his people. We find in Amos 7:1-6 a beautiful example of this kind of intercession, which is the core of what I want to talk about here.

Thus the Lord GOD showed me: Behold, He formed locust swarms at the beginning of the late crop; indeed it was the late crop after the king's mowings. And so it was, when they had finished eating the grass of the land, that I said:
    "O Lord GOD, forgive, I pray!
    Oh, that Jacob may stand,
    For he is small!"
    So the LORD relented concerning this.
    "It shall not be," said the LORD.

Thus the Lord GOD showed me: Behold, the Lord GOD called for conflict by fire, and it consumed the great deep and devoured the territory. Then I said:
    "O Lord GOD, cease, I pray!
    Oh, that Jacob may stand,
    For he is small!"
    So the LORD relented concerning this.
    "This also shall not be," said the Lord GOD.

Amos asks God to cease his judgments, and he does. First John 5:14-15 says, "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him." This means that when we pray for God to relent or to show mercy when he is in the process of passing judgment, we are not praying against his will, but we are praying for his will to come about, even though it might appear otherwise to our own finite minds.

There are parallel incidents in Genesis 18:16-33, where Abraham intercedes for Sodom, and in Numbers 14:11-25, where Moses intercedes for the people of Israel. Intercession in these passages about Abraham, Moses, and Amos, is all about relationship. The Lord says, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?" (Gen. 18:17). And adds, "For I have known him" (Gen. 18:19, emphasis mine). This word "known" is the Hebrew word, yada, as in the Yiddish expression, "Yada, yada, yada." But it is also the same word used in Genesis 4:1, where it says, "Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bore Cain..." When God said he knew Abraham, it was the kind of knowledge and intimacy that two people share in marriage. Our sovereign Lord, who declares the end from the beginning (see Isaiah 46:8-11), still chooses to partner with his people in a relational manner.

In each of these cases, the Lord uses the dialog of the situation--the conflict, if you want to think of it in literary terms--to bring a deeper revelation of himself to his people. He puts them to the test, to see how well they know his character, because it is through the challenge of our faith that our own faith becomes stronger. And these men do, in fact, know the Lord's character, and when they ask the Lord to cease and desist, they do it by reminding him of who he is. Abraham says, "Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25, emphasis mine). Moses asks God to "Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray, according to the greatness of Your mercy, just as You have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now" (Numbers 14:19, emphasis mine).

When God spoke through the burning bush to call Moses in the desert, Moses gave numerous excuses on why he wasn't the man for the job. But God told him, "I will be with you" (Exodus 3:12). When God gives you the call, don't be like a child asked to take out the garbage and pretend you didn't hear him. And don't just sit there and assume that someone else will come by and take care of it.

"So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one. Therefore I have poured out my indignation on them..." (Ezekiel 22:30-31) God has assigned the responsibility to us. Will you take up the call?

Posted by aaronlord at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2004

Cathedrals and Alleyways

vh1.com Did you know that U2's second album October was actually sold in "Bible bookstores"? (I just found out that Evanescence's second full-length album Fallen was actually intentionally distributed in the Christian market, too, until the band went and made a scene. Where have I been? That's okay, I don't like Evanescence anyway. Your sound and your music have to happen because it's what's inside you, not because it's what's trendy, marketable, and profitable. Not that I let the CD racks at the Christian bookstore dictate what I listen to...)

In a (11/14) New York Times interview before the new album's release, Bono said:

There's cathedrals and the alleyway in our music. I think the alleyway is usually on the way to the cathedral, where you can hear your own footsteps and you're slightly nervous and looking over your shoulder and wondering if there's somebody following you. And then you get there and you realize there was somebody following you: It's God.

If you ever get bored, you might try doing a search for U2 on ChristianityToday.com. It's a lot of fun. You'll find more than 200 hits, and right at the top is their review of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. There's Jesus all over that record.

Posted by aaronlord at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2004

Some still recognize a need for irrelevance...

Christians are so uncool. At least Rolling Stone thinks so. They were going to run a story about down & dirty street ministry on the Spanish island of Ibiza, but RS pulled the story, because apparently they're mad at Christians for getting Bush re-elected. In their response, the brothers and sisters at 24-7prayer.com said:

The good news is that 24-7 is now officially out of tune with the spirit of the age, (and Rolling Stone is about as Official as you can get on these things). THIS IS GREAT NEWS! It means that, while we are culturally present enough to be on the radar of mainstream interest, we remain culturally irrelevant enough to be considered alternative and subversive which is EXACTLY where we need to be. Culturally present but gloriously different, 'aliens in the world' as the apostle Peter put it. 'Out of sync with the American zeitgeist' according to Rolling Stone!

I've never seen anyone get so excited about getting cut from a magazine before... Praise the Lord!

(The irony of it is that if you go to Rolling Stone's website, one of the rotating Flash blurbs on the home page is a link to the video for U2's "Vertigo", the lyrics of which almost perfectly parallel the story about 24-7's mission in Ibiza that RS chose not to run.)

Posted by aaronlord at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2004

On Sunbathing

I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself,
that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.
Correct me, O LORD, but in justice;
not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing. (Jer 10:23-24, ESV)

Jonathan Edwards wrote that cold results from the sun going below the horizon, yet the sun is a source of heat and not of cold, of light and not of darkness. We do not blame the sun when we experience cold and darkness. In the same way, "sin is not the fruit of any positive agency or influence of the Most High, but on the contrary, arises from the withholding of his action and energy, and under certain circumstances, necessarily follows on the want of his influence" (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1).

A lot of people get tripped up and say, "How can God allow bad things to happen to good people?" Well, as Jesus said, "No one is good except God alone" (Mk 10:18, ESV), and if there is any goodness in us, it comes from the Lord shining his warmth on us through the power of the Holy Spirit and the life of Christ that is in us. "Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:4, NKJV). This newness of life cannot be obtained any other way than through Jesus' atoning sacrifice for our sins.

As Romans 8:28 (NKJV) says, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." We want him to call us according to his purpose. We want him to work all things together for his good. Since we are called according to his purpose, and since goodness results from exposure to God's warmth, then it should be our desire for him to shine down his light and heat on us, unravelling the sin in our lives and replacing it with his righteous energy!

Think of it as spiritual sunbathing...

(Except instead of getting wrinkles and skin cancer, the result is that we begin to look more and more like Jesus!)

Posted by aaronlord at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2004

Re:ality

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Rom 3:23 (ESV, NIV, NKJV, etc.)

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But I'm not used to looking like I need His grace so much. I'm used to looking like I pretty much have it all together. But I don't. None of us do.

"All the pleading which deliberately refuses to recognize the Cross is of no avail; it is battering at another door than the one which Jesus has opened. I don't want to come that way, it is too humiliating to be received as a sinner." (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec 8).

Good morning, welcome to reality!

Posted by aaronlord at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)

Not of This World...

I was saddened while reading about the Fourth Crusade yesterday. Crusaders were forced by Venetian extortionists to sack Christian lands like Zara and Constantinople. They never even went to the Holy Land. Pope Innocent said Satan was behind the whole thing. Well, yeah! In his wrap-up to the chapter on the Crusades, Bruce Shelley writes, "Christianity's highest satisfactions are not guaranteed by possession of special places, and the sword is never God's way to extend Christ's church" (Church History in Plain Language, 192). Amen! Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world. Christians in all eras and areas often forget this.

Posted by aaronlord at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2004

Merry Exmas, Acirema!

bbc.co.ukIn his essay, "Xmas and Christmas," C.S. Lewis impersonates a Roman historian analyzing British culture, and he describes two distinct winter festivals that occur at the same time, yet which have two different themes that are not related to one another at all. One is pagan and the other is Christian. One involves a mad rush in which people exhaust themselves in the marketplace, and the other involves reverent worship.

Lewis writes:

But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left. And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, It is, O Stranger, a racket; using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for a racket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game called tennis).

"Looking for baby Jesus under the trash" - U2.

This morning, Rush Limbaugh made fun of Maureen Dowd for saying, "If I hear 'Frosty the Snowman' one more time, I'll rip his frozen face off!" Rush called her a joyless liberal. But he neglected to mention that Maureen's grievances have nothing to do with the Reason for the season. I can't stand Frosty or Rudolph or Santa either! We should, in fact, grieve the overcommercialization of Christmas and mourn the terrible loss of perspective our nation has suffered.

I first found out about this Fox News story at Relevant, but then my dad forwarded a link to me as well. As the writer reports, "A December parade in Denver will feature everyone from Chinese lion dancers to gay and lesbian shamans, but not Christians who want to sing yuletide hymns or carry a Merry Christmas message." Ladies and gentlemen, it's getting worse...

Posted by aaronlord at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2004

Thoughts on the Film /Luther/

Luther I rented Luther this weekend and watched it twice. The opening credits proudly tout the name of the Lutheran bank that bankrolled the film (which I thought was kind of weird... you never see B of A or Wells Fargo logos come up with the studio logos at the beginning of a movie). The editing is poor and most of the actors have strange unidentifiable accents and deliver their lines in an awkward manner, with pauses in the wrong places (which is why I had to watch it twice and constantly rewind and use subtitles in order to catch much of the dialogue). And there are some terrible overdubs where the actors on film are clearly not saying anything remotely close to what you hear out of your speakers.

Also, the movie made it look like Luther died young, but he actually lived to the age of 62, which was a pretty descent lifespan in the 16th century. Furthermore, many people are familiar with what Luther actually looked like, because several portraits are in existence, and he was definitely much more portly than the young Joseph Fiennes. I don't understand why Renée Zellweger gains 30 pounds to play Bridget Jones and Martin Short dons a fat suit for Primetime Glick, but Joseph Fiennes won't do so much as stick a pillow under his shirt and put cotton balls in his cheeks.

But despite all this, and also despite the lack of DVD extras, the film is still well worth seeing. My favorite line is when the Augustinian abbot Johann von Staupitz tells Luther, "We preach best what we need to learn most." I totally identify with that. If the church newsletter makes an impression on anyone in a certain week, you can bet that I was preaching to myself when I wrote it.

The movie references Matthew 16:16-18 and gives the foundational Protestant interpretation of what Jesus meant when he said, "On this rock I will build my church." But other than that, this film about the great reformer who said, "Sola Scriptura!" is seriously lacking in Scripture. Probably the two most common things a Protestant lay churchgoer will hear about Luther deal with the book of Romans and the letter of James. Romans, because it changed Luther's life, and therefore the course of western civilization. And James, because it's the book that Luther wanted removed from the Canon of Scripture. The movie mentioned neither of these points.

They totally dropped the ball when it came to what at first glace appeared to be a fascinating cinematic portrayal of the scholar practicing Greek word studies. In the film, Luther is working on his German translation of the New Testament, and he says, "Take this verse in Saint Luke--'It is the Father's will that nothing be lost." Actually, this is John 6:39, and given the filmmakers' affinity for A.D.R., you think they would have fixed it. Joseph Fiennes goes on to describe the Greek word for 'will' as a "three-letter word" that "denotes passion, fire, inner organs", etc. In actuality, the Greek word used by our Lord Jesus in the passage is thelema, which, when spelled with the Greek letter theta, contains six letters. And he couldn't have meant that there are three letters in the German because the German word for 'will' contains five.

Das ist aber der Wille des Vaters, der mich gesandt hat, daß ich nichts verliere von allem, was er mir gegeben hat, sondern daß ich's auferwecke am Jüngsten Tage. - Luther's translation published 1545

So, if you're one of those people who gets excited when a famous Hollywood actor stars in a film with spiritual subject matter (like me), don't get too excited. Mel Gibson might be a papist, but he certainly treats the Holy Bible with a little more reverence and awe in The Passion.

Despite the scene I just described, the film does hold God's word in its proper place theologically when the actors are talking about it (just not when they quote it or reference it directly). It is Luther's exposure to Scripture that changes his life, not his monastic vows or his participation in Catholic rites. When he is on trial before the emperor, he says he will not recant unless he is shown that he is wrong through Scripture. Luther's efforts to provide a German translation are accurately treated. And when Prince Frederick the Wise--extremely well-played by the late Sir Peter Ustinov (who played Herod the Great in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth)-- receives his gift of a German New Testament from Luther, the scene is appropriately handled as the focal point, what the whole thing is all about. And what's great is that Frederick doesn't treat it like another sacred relic to add to his massive collection (which he wisely decided to pack up and put in storage after being impacted by Luther's preaching), but he handles it gently and opens it and begins reading it.

We go to a church that is all about getting people into God's Word. We go through it verse by verse on Sunday morning and Wednesday night, and we even have a Bible college that provides bachelor's degrees and school of ministry certificates as well as audit programs so that laypeople can study the Word more deeply. And there are churches all over the world where they do the same thing. But sadly, there are still so many Christians who do not experience the life-changing benefits that come from personal Bible study and daily Bible reading. Without a knowledge of history, it is easy for people to be ignorant of the fact that so many people gave their lives in order for you to have the right to read the Bible for yourself. Even today in Asia and the Middle East, people are losing their lives trying to give common people access to God's word. Please don't take God's word for granted. Treasure the Gospel!

Posted by aaronlord at 03:30 PM | Comments (1)

December 04, 2004

Kill Your IE!

More than a year ago I e-mailed Relevant and asked them to fix their website because it was always crashing my Netscape. (Now, don't misunderstand me--I'm not a hardcore Netscape user, but during this particular period I was testing out other browsers, and also using them to debug clients' sites.) When they responded to my e-mail, they said that it wasn't worth it to make sure the website worked for Netscape because 99.9% of web users were using Internet Explorer. I've since deleted the e-mail, and they've since changed their policy on crashing non-IE browsers...

Get Firefox! After years of toying with the idea of leaving Internet Explorer, I finally made the leap. When Firefox asked me so nicely if it could be my default browser, I clicked "OK".

Of course, this meant I had to fix my own site to make it cross-browser compatible (translate vbscript to javascript, delete the Microsoft gradient filters, etc.). While I was at it, I finally added a the long-awaited client list and updated my skillset as well.

The coolest thing to happen by far since switching to Firefox is that my Outlook Express loads a billion times faster. Who'd a' thunk it?

I highly recommend this article on Forbes.com about the Firefox browser, as well as this one about PC security on USATODAY.com. Oh, and one more on Slate.com (imagine that: a Microsoft employee rooting for the competition!).

Posted by aaronlord at 03:53 PM | Comments (1)

December 03, 2004

The Paradox of Honesty

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." - 1 Jn 1:5-10 (ESV)

There is an interesting paradox in the Gospel. I was thinking about the paradox last night, and then I opened my Bible to 1 John and saw it right there. The paradox is that you have to not be sinful: yet, you have to admit that you're sinful. If you're sinful, you can't be in His presence: but if you say you're not sinful, you're lying. You have to be good: but you have to admit that you're bad.

The good news is that our access to the King is based upon redemption and adoption. It's all about His grace, not about our own righteousness. This is why a religious practice that is based on pretending is so extremely dangerous. Practicing religion based on external appearance is hypocritical. In order to avoid hypocrisy, honesty should be the most important attribute of our daily Christian walk.

I don't have kids, but I grew up with a Dad who's a worship leader (and when I was a teenager I was mad at him a lot). So I like what Chuck Swindoll said about honesty in The Grace Awakening (p. 101):

When you blow it, say, "I blew it." If you don't know, admit the truth. It's okay not to know. And the next time your kids spot hypocrisy, even though you may feel embarrassed, agree with them, "You know what, kids? You're right. I was a first-class hypocrite. What you saw and pointed out is exactly right." Tell them that. It may sound embarrassing to you now, but they will admire and respect your admission. And they won't grow up damaged. Best of all, they will learn to model the same kind of vulnerability and honesty, even if you are in vocational Christian work . . . especially if you're in vocational Christian work. Nobody expects perfection, but they do and they should expect honesty.

(The principle goes beyond just parents and children and should apply to other relationships as well.)

Posted by aaronlord at 12:33 PM | Comments (3)

December 02, 2004

My great web hosts...

I just want to give a shout out to Millennium Systems, my web hosts to whom I refer all of my clients. They were extremely helpful in getting directory permissions and Perl modules set up in order for me to be able to run this blog. I must say, I've been doing web programming for 6 years, and their technical support is the best in the business! Thanks, guys!

Posted by aaronlord at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

What Oswald Said...

This is what got the wheels cranking in my mind to write that article about Choosing God's Will:

God never coerces us. In one mood we wish He would make us do the thing, and in another mood we wish He would leave us alone. Whenever God's will is in the ascendant, all compulsion is gone. When we choose deliberately to obey Him, then He will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to assist us with all His almighty power. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec. 1)

Posted by aaronlord at 09:58 AM | Comments (1)

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

John Piper I don't know Matt Hall. But my buddy Dave referred me to his article about the Desiring God conference at John Piper's church last fall. After reading Matt's article, I went to the conference website and downloaded John Piper's first session to my mp3 player and listened to it like 5 times. It was so good. The message totally kicked my butt! It was something I really needed to hear, and I wish somebody had prescribed it for me earlier.

I am doubly indebted to both Dave and Matt Hall for exposing me to this material, as well as for providing the inspiration I needed to get my own MovableType web app up and running!

Posted by aaronlord at 12:17 AM | Comments (1)

December 01, 2004

Choosing God's Will

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. (James 4:13-17, NKJV)
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24:15, NIV)

Some Christians can mistakenly get caught up in a view of God's sovereignty that says that, if God is in control, then His will is going to happen in my life, just by my continued existence, so I can sit back and relax and do what I want. But as justified, regenerated believers, He has bestowed upon us a free will. There are now two wills at work in us, the will of the old man (the flesh) and the will of the new man (led by the Spirit). We have to actively decide which of these we are going to let govern our lives. That is, God, as the Gentleman He is, will not force His will on us. His will is something we need to choose for ourselves.

God's word tells us over and over again that we need to do His will. In Matthew 7:21 (ESV), Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." See also Mt 12:50; Mk 3:35; Jn 4:34, 7:17, 9:31; Eph 6:6; Heb 10:36; 1 Jn 2:17. If it were not required of us to choose to do His will, then we would not have to be told.

We are also told to seek His will, to know His will, and to choose His will over our own. Jesus said, "I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me" (John 5:30, ESV). See also Mt 26:42; Lk 12:47, 22:42; Jn 6:38; Acts 22:14; Rom 12:2; Eph 5:17; Col 1:9; Heb 10:7; 1 Pe 4:2-3.

There are two imporant points here. First: His will is in fact knowable, and second: His will is EMPHATICALLY not the same as our will. If we believe that God's sovereignty means that, because He's in control, we can just follow our every whim and thereby produce God's will in our lives, we are wrong. And many of us have learned this the hard way (for Biblical examples of guys to do it the hard way, look at the life of Jacob in Genesis, and the life of Solomon in 2 Chronicles and Ecclesiastes).

Our will is bad; God's will is good. We have to actively choose to submit ourselves to God (James 4:1-10). So, how do we know what God's will is in order that we might choose it? Read the Bible and pray. Those are the two primary means through which God reveals His will to us: through His word, and through prayer.

Through His word, He tells us directly what His will is. First of all, it is His will for us to be saved: "Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish" (Mt 18:14, NKJV). See also John 6:39-40, Gal 1:4, Eph 1:5, 1:9-12, Heb 10:9-10. Scripture also tells us in several places that His will is for us to be sanctified, to abstain from sexual immorality (1 Th 4:3), to control our bodies and honor our spouses as well "in sanctification and honor" (1 Th 4:4), to not be a slave of your own desires like those who do not know God (1 Th 4:5, see also Eph 2:1-7), to be thankful in all things (1 Thess. 5:18), and to do good and silence the ignorant (1 Pe 2:15). Each of these verses contains the phrase, "This is the will of God." But we can be sure that wherever there is an imperative in the Scripture, and the context of the passage makes it applicable to all believers, that is God's will for us. We should always read God's Word in such a way that we're seeking how it can be applied in our lives.

As for the subject of prayer, the relationship between prayer and God's will is multifaceted. First of all, we pray for His will to be done: Mt 6:10, Luke 11:2. Also, we pray for His will to be revealed to us: Col 1:9, 4:12. And we can pray in the confidence "that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us" (1 John 5:14). Again, remember that His will is different from our will. We do not pray for our desires, we pray for His desires in us (see James 4:3). C.S. Lewis, as portrayed in the movie Shadowlands, says, "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me."

Prayer actually "bends our wills to God's will" (Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, 83). E. Stanley Jones said, "If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God" (A Song of Ascents, 383).

Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Heb 13:20-21, NKJV)

Posted by aaronlord at 04:00 PM | Comments (2)