Personal Application
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. For some, the fatherhood of God elicits negative associations with an earthly father or parent. What aspect of God's character do you most need to believe?
His faithfulness, His love, His protection, His compassion?
2. Consider how the answer to Who are You, God? responds to the deepest needs of your heart and mind. Ask God to reveal Himself today in your place of need.
A TASTE OF WORSHIP
Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them cali the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the ñame of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
JAMES 5:13-16
ears ago, I read a deñnition of worship that to this day rings with clear and magniñcent ternas. The deñnition comes from the famed archbishop William
Temple: "Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose—all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable."
The more I have thought of that deñnition, the more I am convinced that if worship is practiced with integrity in the community of God's people, worship may be the most powerful evangel for this postmodern culture of ours. It is imperative that in planning the worship Services, the pastor and church leaders give careful attention to every element and make sure that the worship retains both integrity and purpose. People come to church generally beaten down by the world of deceit, distraction, and demand. There is an extraction of emotional and spiritual energy that brings them "on empty" into the community. The minister and worship leaders' tasks are to so prepare during the week that they will be instruments of replenishment and fresh energy of soul.
Of course, even being in the presence of fellow believers in worship is a restorer of spiritual hope. We so underestimate the power of a people in one mind and with one commitment. Likewise, as I have suggested before, prayer can so touch
a hungry heart that it can rescue a sliding foot in a treacherous time.
A few years ago, a few of my colleagues and I were in a country dominated for decades by Marxism. Before we began our meetings, we were invited to a dinner hosted by some common friends, all of whom were skeptics and, for all practical purposes, atheists. The evening was full of questions, posed principally by a notable theoretical physicist. There were also others who represented different elements of power within that society. As the night wore on, we got the feeling that the questions had gone on long enough and we were possibly going in circles.
At that point, I asked if we could have a word of prayer with them, for them, and for the country before we bade them good-bye. There was a silence of consternation, an obvious hesitancy, and then one said, "Of course."
So, we did just that—we prayed. In this large dining room of historie import to them, with all the memories of secular power plastered within those walls, the prayer brought a sobering silence that we were all in the presence of Someone greater than us. When we finished, every eye was moist and nothing was said.
They hugged us and thanked us, with emotion written all over their faces.
The next day when we met them, one of them said to me, "We did not go back to our rooms last night till it was early morning. In fact, I stayed in my hotel lobby most of the night talking further. Then I went back to my room and gave my life to Jesús Christ."
I firmly believe that it was prayer that gave them a hint of the taste of what worship is all about. Their hearts had never experienced it.
Over the years I have discovered that praying with people can sometimes do more for them than preaching to them. Prayer draws the heart away from one's own dependence to leaning on the sovereign God. The burden is often lifted instantly, especially when one hears someone pray who firmly believes in the love and abiding presence of God. To a person in need, pat answers don't change the mind; prayer does.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. According to William Temple (and Scripture), what is worship?
2. Consider the ways we might respond to prayer and preaching when we are on the receiving end, listening.
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. Prayer is a taste of worship, drawing us into intimacy with God. Give thanks to God for the gift of prayer and the privilege to enjoy His fellowship.
2. Is there a burden you might help lighten today by interceding for someone?
Can you ask someone to do the same for you?
LIVING TEMPLES
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.
Therefore honor God with your bodies.
1 CORINTHIANS 6:18-20
n the late 1970s, sociologist Daniel Bell defined culture as "the effort to provide a coherent set of answers to the existential predicaments that confront all human beings in the passage of their lives."- From what we cherish to what we abhor, from how we live to how we die, from what is sacred to what is profane, in each decisión we try to make sense out of our lives. And culture is that sort of glue that holds our common valúes together.
Strangely, nowadays to understand culture even in those terms may well be outdated. I recall, for example, lecturing at a university when a student stormed up to the microphone and bellowed, "Who told you culture is a search for coherence? Where do you get that idea from? This idea of coherence is a Western idea."
Rather surprised, I replied by reminding her that all I had done was present a sociologist's definition. "Ah! Words! Just words!" she shouted back.
"Let me ask you this then," I said. "Do you want my answer to be coherent?"
At that moment, laughter rippled through the auditorium. She herself was stymied for a few moments. "But that's language, isn't it?" she retorted.
So I asked her if language had anything to do with reality. "Don't words refer to something? If you are seeking an intelligible answer from me, mustn't there be correspondence between my words and reality? How then can this basic requirement be met in our culture?"
Of course, this student is only reflecting the spirit of thought among us today— no truth, no meaning, no certainty. We now hear that language is detached from reality and truth is detached from meaning. What we are left with is a way of thinking basically shaped by our appetites and by our proclivities, which is how life has become defined by our untamed passions. Henee, incoherence is now normal.
In a staggering contrast, Scripture pleads that our lives were meant to be temples of the living God: "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy
Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" (1 Corinthians 6:19).
Only when we understand what it means for our bodies to be the temple of God can we understand what living means and how coherence is born. For you see, life is not made sacred by going to a place of worship; life already is sacred and that is why it moves us to a place of worship. In this sense, wherever you are, you cannot leave without the temple. Profane it and reap incoherence; keep it sacred and harmony ensues.
Even Jesús spoke of His body as the temple of God (see John 2:19-21). If we are in Christ, we are not our own. We have been bought with His precious blood and called as His church "the body of Christ": "Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" (1 Corinthians 12:27). What a stunning and precious truth! May our whole selves reflect God's purpose for our lives. In this truth we will find true coherence and peace.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
í. What is the function of a temple? What descriptions come to mind when you think of a temple?
2. Read 1 Corinthians 1. In what ways is the church understood to be the body of Christ?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. What thoughts and feelings are evoked by the truth that our bodies are the very temples of God, where His Spirit resides? How might you live in light of this awareness today?
2. "You are not your own; you were bought at a price." You belong to God — you are a child of God! Take time to praise God for "his indescribable gift" (2
Corinthians 9:15).
A BE ACON OF HOPE
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe ñlled the temple. Above him were seraphim . .. calling to one another:
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was ñlled with smoke. "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips ... and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."
ISAIAH 6:1-5
he story is told of a cynic sitting under a nut tree, carrying on a jesting monologue with God. His grounds for complaint lay in what he considered to be an obvious failure on the part of God to go by the book on structural design.
"Lord," he said, "how is it that you made such a large and sturdy tree to hold such tiny, almost weightless nuts? And yet you made small, tender plants to hold such large and weighty watermelons!"
As he chuckled at the folly of such disproportion in God's mindless universe, a nut suddenly fell on his head. After a stunned pause, he muttered, "Thank God that wasn't a watermelon!"
Justifiable worldviews must have explanatory power of the undeniable realities of life. As Christians who affirm the existence of a loving and allwise God, we long to be a beacon of hope in our world and to see the light of God's Word soften the cynic and atheist alike. Yet if we are honest, sometimes we too struggle to come to terms with God's world and His sovereign design; this is especially true in seasons of suffering and confusión.
Remember Job? He had become weary of his pain and sought a just answer for
it. He built his argument to God on the fact that he needed to know what was going on, because only on the basis of that knowledge could his confusión and suffering be dissipated. But God then broke His silence, challenging Job's very assumptions and reminding him that there was an awful lot he did not know but had just accepted and believed by inference. Notwithstanding the proverbial cynic under a nut tree, the argument from design is the very approach God used with Job. He reminded Job as a first step, and only that, that there were a thousand and one things he did not fully understand but had just taken for granted. In the light of God's presence, Job was dumbfounded and confessed, "I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? . . . Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know" (Job 40:4, 42:3).
Likewise, the prophet Isaiah described his awestricken State when God revealed Himself to him. Isaiah, a morally good man, nevertheless fell on his face and immediately sensed that he was unfit to be in God's presence. He was not just in the presence of someone better than he was. He was in the presence of the One by whom and because of whom all purity ñnds its point of reference. That is why he was speechless.
God is not merely good. God is holy. He is the transcendent Source of goodness: not merely "better" in a hierarchy of choices but rather the very basis from which all differences are made. He dwells in ineffable light. Moral categories, for us, often move in comparisons and hierarchies. We talk in terms of judging or feeling that one thing is better than another. Our culture is more advanced morally than someone else's culture, at least so we may think. However, God's existence changes those categories and moves us to recognize the very essence of what the word goodness is based upon.
This difference is what makes the argument almost impossible for a skeptic to grasp. Holiness is not merely goodness. "Why did God not create us to choose only good?" "Why do bad things happen to good people?" The reality is that the opposite of evil, in degree, may be goodness. But the opposite of absolute evil, in kind, is absolute holiness. In the biblical context, the idea of holiness is the tremendous otherness of God Himself. God does not just reveal Himself as good; He reveáis Himself as holy.
There is no contradiction in Him. He can never self-destruct. He can never not be. He exists eternally and in a sublime purity that transcends a hierarchy of categories. As human beings we love the concept of holiness when we are in the
right, but we are often reticent to apply it when we are wrong and brought under the stark scrutiny of its light.
You see, the problem of evil begins with me. The darkness is within.
Yet Jesús' answer, for instance, to the question of the blind man in John 9 brings us extraordinary power and hope. People wanted to know, why was he born this way? Jesús responded that the man's blindness was due neither to the sin of the man ñor of his parents, but so that the glory of God might be displayed. The lesson is drastic, the message profound. Physical darkness has physical consequences and leaves a person bereft of seeing physical reality. It is a tragedy
—but nowhere near the tragic devastation of spiritual blindness. The healing of that man's blindness by Jesús was intended to draw those spiritually blind to seek His healing of their souls.
When Beethoven, though deaf, could see the exhilarating response of the people to his composition, he outwardly resonated with what his inner being prompted.
He could not hear his music, but he sensed the harmony for which he longed in expression. So it is with us. We know on the inside how impoverished we are and for what we long. That ought to prompt us to the riches that only God in Christ is able to give to us.
Only when we surrender to the light of God's truth in our own lives are we enabled to truly see and then be a beacon of hope and healing in our dark world.
Truthfulness in the heart precedes truth in the objective realm. The problem of evil has ultimately one source: it is the resistance to God's holiness that enshrouds all of creation. And there is ultimately only one hope for life: that is through the glorious display of God at work within a human soul. That transformation tenderizes the heart to become part of the solution and not part of the problem. Such transformation begins at the foot of the cross.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. God is not merely good, and His holiness is not merely goodness. Explain.
2. How does Scripture define holiness ? What is meant by otherness ?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. Read Isaiah 6 and/or Revelation 4. How is God's holiness linked with worship and intimacy with Him?
2. How can you be a beacon of God's hope in your sphere of influence this week?
THE BOOKS WE READ
As for you, continué in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesús. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 TIMOTHY 3:14-17
My father-in-law and I often spoke wistfully about fine used bookstores that we had visited. He told one story, however, that has all the others soundly beaten.
He was in a sophisticated bookstore in Toronto that caters to the academic community, a bookstore rich in classical tradition. Suddenly, in carne a roughshod man in greasy overalls, who bellowed to the owner, "How much does it cost to buy 128 feet of books?"
Obviously bewildered by this request, for never before had he sold scholarly works by the foot, the owner replied, "Uh . . . what exactly did you have in mind?" Meanwhile every customer within earshot had paused from reading, ears pinned for some new enlightenment.
It turns out the buyer had been sent by a group of trade unión leaders who were hosting their educated counterparts in management in an effort to break a deadlock in some highly voladle negotiations. So, the unión leaders decided to decórate their offices with the length of books. Why? To convey the intimidating air of being ideological heavyweights, and to terrify the opposition!
Amusing story, is it not?
Solomon reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun, and so I suspect that this was not the first such scenario in history. After all, jockeying for literary superiority is as oíd as the printed page. No doubt many of us have had occasion
to purchase classics that have served ulterior purposes—giving the appearance that we are wise.
It is said that a lady once wrote to the famed writer A. W. Tozer and thanked him for his Christian journal, commenting that it perfectly fit her birdcage! Groucho
Marx once responded to an author, "From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it."
I suspect there are books like that in your own experience that, while not provoking laughter, have never entered the mind. One critic said of the late
Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which shattered all records on the bestseller list in the United Kingdom, that it would be the most-bought and leastread book in recent memory.
And yet who of us has not entered another world or gained a lifechanging insight just from reading a book? Friends, don't take the power of reading for granted. I am absolutely convinced that the books you and I read possibly help mold our lives more purposefully—and eternally, I might add
—than we ever realize.
As King Solomon said, "Of making many books there is no end," but ñnding wisdom "preserves the lives of its possessors" (Ecclesiastes 12:12 nkjv; 7:12 nasb). And to that I would say only the book of all books, the Bible, stands above all others, "for the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thonghts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). The regenerative power of the Word is why the Bible will outlive its pallbearers and continué to transform hearts and minds in every culture and every generation.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
í. Consider the ways being well read—or having an office filled with books — can be intimidating. How might it be less so?
2. How does culture, especially in a social media era, encourage us to misuse knowledge and literacy to gain an edge or promote a certain image of ourselves?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. Which books have made the most impact on you? How and why do you think they have been so life-deñning?
2. What do the passages from 2 Timothy 3 and Hebrews 4 tell you about the Word of God and its effects? How has reading Scripture changed you?
RIGHT WHERE WE ARE
WRONG Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. ... Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
1 TIMOTHY 4:12, 15-16
lato once remarked that he was grateful to be born a Greek and not a barbarían, a free man and not a slave, a man and not a woman, and most of all, to have been born in the age of Sócrates.
Do you feel, like I, a twinge of discomfort in hearing this? For his sentiment reveáis two of our perennial struggles: to ñnd a philosophy by which to live and to correct the prejudices with which we live. One would think the connection between the two is too obvious to miss and the fact that one informs the other ought to stare each of us in the face. Yet if history has taught us anything, it is that we learn very little from the past, and we do not pause either to justify what we believe or to make sure that doctrine and conduct have a life-giving connection. That which God has joined together let no person put asunder.
I was once asked to speak at a conference on ethics at a certain university IT1 leave unnamed. I dared to present the bankruptcy of humanistic theories both rationally and practically and contrasted them with the biblical basis for ethics.
After the presentation, there was silence for a long while. Then one professor said to me, "All this theory sounds good, but the real question is, how do I get my students to be ethical, to not cheat on their exams, to tell the truth?"
I was thrilled at the question for, in fact, that was the point of the whole talk. But I was not prepared for what followed.
After the question-and-answer session, a student carne up and presented me with a real dilemma. Here's what she said: "I was asked to come to your lecture today by my professor. The expectation was that I would disagree with you and so write a paper saying that. But after listening to your talk, I found myself agreeing with you and now have a serious problem. If I write in defense of your position,
I will probably be given a very low grade, if not failed. On the other hand, she said if I disagree with you I am sure to get a high grade. My problem is the challenge to tell the truth and risk failure."
Rather puzzled, I looked at her and I said, "Did your professor come to the forum?"
There was silence and then carne the answer. "Yes," she said, rather softly.
"Who was it?" I asked.
"The one who asked you the question about getting away from the theory to the bottom line of how to get students to not cheat and to tell the truth."
Do you believe that? I was dumbfounded. Is there any doubt why many a college student has failed to link thought with life and lives as a bundle of contradictions when taught by ethicists who have severed the heart from the head and still hope to live?
To this end Paul warned Timothy to cherish the Scripture, for it made him "wise unto salvation" (2 Timothy 3:15 kjv) and to "watch [his] life and doctrine closely" (1 Timothy 4:16). The Scriptures are meaningful and personal because they are trae, and not trae just because we can wrest them to advantage or manipúlate them into personal meaning. Meaning and application can be prostituted at the altar of self-gratification, but truth will stand in history when all human dissenters have said their last.
G. K. Chesterton said it well: "We do not really want a religión that is right where we are right. What we want is a religión that is right where we are wrong."- Only the Word of God pro vides that corrective. That warning comes to both skeptic and believer alike.
You see, God corrects us not because of appearances but because of His character. Goodness points us not to theory but to the purpose of life.