Our Lighted Path

I listened as best I could to a recording of a discussion for theology students. The discussion is posted on a web site . It was difficult to listen at first, because the main speaker talks so hurridly, and because I was coping with a headache and other interruptions. It was hours before I heard the whole discussion. I started listening time and again until I had caught every word. And, by the time I finished, I was in awe, but also a little in disagreement. It's awesome that God has given anyone living some keys to understanding the most important parts of ancient history. I've read some Christian Apologetics notes that make for confusion, that would have us believe some things that are not true, and that make it seem like scriptures were traditionally translated by people foolishly looking at texts instead of by well-studied people honestly seeking and being led "in the Spirit." I knew that, at some point, rabbis had silenced the use of one of God's true names, ...

   A carving in a pharaoh's tomb depicts his kingdom's conquest of a people. (Wikimedia.org photo) The Persian diaspora is not God's gift to the world. We do not know what ethnic appearance Heaven gave Himself, living among peoples in Egypt as a baby and walking as an older child and adult among the Hebrew people (people chosen for longsuffering with faithfulness among them).  But we do know the Hebrew people were taken into slavery more than once, as were people of the African diaspora for longer than anyone may ever know. And we know that "fruit of the Spirit" includes our capacity to endure suffering with patience, or includes our longsuffering. We know that we as peoples who have long endured a world that leans to its own understanding, are peoples who have grown in faith. And we know that we, in Jesus today, have not had trouble-free lives, and that we are not in agreement with peoples who sacrifice children, who disparage or corrupt elders, who deny home as...

  We are compromised. The body of Jesus, His church, is compromised. We haven't only begun to treat Holy Spirit-led scriptures like the world is supposed to understand without the leading of the Holy Spirit, and without the leading of a good shepherd, but we've also begun to give many a good shepherd over to the world's leading. Instead of remaining more than conquerors in the Spirit, we've begun to acquiesce to countless ways the world is viewing the Bible, and we're ignoring how we're supposed to be saving persons out of the world, not giving ourselves over to the world's will. One pitfall in all this, is divisiveness IN the church, in the body of Jesus. Some of our world has a view of different parts of the church as like different religions, because we do differ or have unsettled leadings toward some of God's word, from one demonimation to another, one flock to another, even one person to another. But it's when we stop listening to one another, ...

  This is going to be a mashed-together post. This will not be a post that makes everything crystal clear. This will be a thorny post that rebukes but leaves it up to someone out there to seek, ask, and find. This also is with prayer that someone is going to go to a mature Christian church, at least for a little while, to study the Bible, to listen, to learn, and then to sometimes ask questions, especially if there is a mid-week Bible study. This post comes at a truly troubled time in the life of our nation, in the life of the church, in many of our lives as individuals and families. When we look at a Bible book like Judges, a book that chronicles a time when everyone among the Hebrew people had begun to do as seemed right in his or her own estimation, we see a time of struggle: struggle, at that time, because ancient Israel, beginning to turn to their own understanding, was less attentive to the prophets, and, more importantly, less attentive to God alone. Israel was beginning to ...

I have never been to Fishers, Indiana, the home of Heartland Church.  But, oh my goodness, they're a church congregation who seem so free ! Their baptismal feelings are popular, in that many congregations feel baptism is public confession that we've been saved in Christ. But that popular feeling forgets the day the Ethiopian man wanted his baptism right in the middle of nowhere, in a roadside lake or pond, where the only witness we know of was the Holy Spirit in the person of Philip. But then, how great the Father's love for us, that Heartland Church has free will in the Spirit, and can make baptism part of public witness. When a Bible study group, a group of church elders, hit a snag in discussion, one elder turned to an old way of resolving questions. The elder said that some things about God are a mystery to us. Indeed, the apostle Paul said, in effect, "Now, we see as through a glass darkly, but, then," in the heavenly realm, we will know more fully. And yet ...

  When David wrote the 23rd Psalm, he could not have been a young shepherd. He had to have been up in years, possibly at the time he was running from a son who was trying to kill him. (David, and some of those loyal to him, ran from a son of David, rather than kill the son.) David's psalm is rich with an older man's wisdom in God, especially when he is saying that God's rod and staff pretty much support him. When various Bible translations say, "Your rod and staff, they comfort me," I think something spiritual and well learned is lost in translation. I think it helps to look at some of the root meanings of the translation "comfort," using Bible concordances. Clues in concordances are a little strange, aren't they? Concordances bring forward feelings of sorrow, repentance, but also compassion or support. So as an older man, possibly isolated in a wilderness, David is telling God that His  rod and staff (in the unseen) have helped guide David's lif...

In no way, not under any circumstance, has God's sacrifice of His own body meant no more covenant law or no more of the ten commands Heaven gave us through Moses. With His own life in earth, with Jesus, God paid the penalties for people breaking the ten commands. Yet, He still says today, "If you love me, keep my commands." That is a choice: a choice to accept true life, in Jesus, or a choice to live and die in hard ways; a choice to accept that Jesus paid a hard penalty for whoever will accept Him, or a choice to try paying for mankind's sins oneself, to no good end, or to outright perish for lack of faith in Him. He lived God's plan to pay the written penalties for man's sins. That's why His body, the church, suffered beginning on the cross, continued suffering with the stoning of Stephen, and continues to suffer today. But the truth, the consequences, remain. God's commands are a firm anchor: You will not enter a place of residence or a workplace ou...

I will not hop a plane to far away. And, my, has God helped me grow to know He didn't mean for me to marry but to testify for good. I just wish problems would soon end, that ungodly pressure would go away, and that, like most of us probably feel right now, every day could be a peaceful drive to and from home to home, to and from sanctuary.

  We never talk about this as Christians, but many churches hold to the Catholic confession that Jesus descended into hell before God raised Him bodily from death. There is no singular  scripture that tells us so, but we know, from Jesus' grief over Lazarus' death, that experiencing death without Jesus was was difficult to bear. We also know that death before Jesus made the way to  Heaven (before He ascended to Heaven), was grievous in more than one way. In some cases, the grave itself was a horror,  with souls like the demon-possessed  man dwelling there, among remains buried in deep caves. Having established all of the above, let's talk about something we never discuss; and that's what Jesus meant by "paradise." Although we know the spirit of a soul who is committed to Jesus today is present in Heaven as soon as the spirit leaves its bodily home, that wasn't so when Jesus himself died in body. Jesus agonized even before He was crucified, knowing not only...

  In the Easter season*, I remember all the more how Jesus compares His body, or His words, to unleaven slabs of bread, the kind of bread we don't see anymore, really anywhere. Modern flatbreads are made with bleached flour, instead of with whole wheat or other brown-colored edible grass seeds. Modern flatbreads also are made a lot smaller than in the ancient Middle East. Modern flatbreads don't really remind us of how Isarael's painful history, and of how God's own words (different from Solomon's words as part of Israel's teaching itself and learning lessons the hard way), began to be written: on leather, on skins of cattle that had been killed. Remembering and still suffering the near constant turmoil of all of the Christmas season, makes it difficult to cherish and look forward to the lament and great joy of Easter this year. For me, it's hard to believe the Lenten passage to Easter is beginning. Monday, I ate the last of chicken I had in store, keeping i...

I didn't think I would regain strength of faith after true hell this Christmas season. But this Sunday morning, following Christmas day, I've gotten up again to hear faith. And while I feel unwell, I'm not destroyed. I feel set back, but not lost; unsure, but somewhat prepared for tomorrow. I can do all things within God's will. With God , all things He intends, are possible. This morning, partly before dawn, I was able to listen to three messages. Each message was not perfect, but breathed a kind of revival into my heart. The same goes for New Years Eve morning. In each message, I've also heard bits of what MEN err in feeling, right in the midst of God speaking! So while this day has yielded revival, I want to correct, in gentleness, two errors - while others care enough to correct me. The following are two of three revival messages, joy in the morning sermons I'm thanking the God of Heaven for holding in store as medicine; but also simple corrections, from my ...

  For anyone Jesus saves, newness in Spirit is born from within. (2 Corinthians 5:17, paraphrase) Elders used to say, "God sits high and looks low." It's true, His insight is in every place, light and dark, all over this world (Proverbs 15:3; Psalm 139:8). So it shouldn't be surprising to have found this cry of heart from a pastor in modern Bethlehem, which he may wrongly feel is an oppressive ghetto today instead of seeing the little town as the modern tourist site it is. Also different from how the pastor feels, we don't have anyway if knowing what ancient people group was most closely related to Mary as the Savior's birth mother. We only know that in believing Jesus, we each are saved. *** Although I feel differently than this author and his illustrator when it comes to cattle and even mice (Mice could perhaps have been warded off with strong herbs in ancient times!); although I'm weary of us today trying to paint Jesus' birth as dirty and even dis...

    I can agree with one thing I've seen this morning: that God's "sovereign will" takes into account men's mistakes and uses both those evils and any good for our good in Jesus. I believe a lot in our walk of faith is learning from mankind's mistakes. God allows some people to do the evil they want to do - and to believe the lies they want to believe. But through even the gravest of problems, some of us want to learn and overcome. And in learning, it's not about, "Well, God willed that this happen and so it is." No, instead, it's God allowed this evil that His children may stand corrected. God disciplines (diciples) who He loves, while allowing others to deal destructively in matters of eternal life and death. Often, He allows who He loves, who He foreknew as destined to live in Him, to make godless mistakes - but not to reach a point of no return.

Transliteration happens when someone looks at a foreign text  and pronounces words using phonetics from his or her own mother language. Early Latin (old Spanish) speakers are who probably began using their "hey" J sound in place of the "yay" Y sound in sacred texts. Then we, speaking English, turned the "hey" to "jeh." But the wonderful thing about that is that God knows who we all mean. God knows every heart, which is one reason we don't need to worry about the fate of Ya-AH-kohv (Jacob), who was favored, versus Ay-sow (Esau), who only understood in the flesh (Romans 10:6). Instead, all we need do is trust in the same God who used the old English, and to some extent the French, to break bonds of slavery by defying unjust prison and death in translating the sacred texts that eventully were stood upon in breaking the sin of slavery off of countless backs. ... While some scholars may look at Esau as an early example of eternal doom, ignoring th...