It's so quiet today. It's funny how a snow storm just keeps people at home....ah someday I'll be able to do that.
This is one of those posts that's like a paper that doesn't have connected paragraphs ala Xaris's free writing style. FREEDOM!
I've been reading Hebrews and I've been wrestling with some thoughts. I like how Tim Keller always says everyone needs to take the Bible as a whole, you can't just leave stuff out and create your own religion. If you want to believe the part about Jesus loving you and dying for you, then you can't just ignore the parts where God tells you your money is not yours and that sex is sacred within the confines of marriage between a man and a woman. Wrestling with it, Job style, and coming to a sense of God's awesomeness is the point. Anyway...
"It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whim it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.
Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case - things that accompany salvation. God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them." -Hebrews 6:4-10
This is scary to me. Below is from the Christian Happiness sermon I keep talking about:
"Indeed, Christianity is now so low in the world, and there is such a want of the lively and vigorous actings of grace, even in those that are godly, that one, upon a cursory view, would think there was no such a tendency in religion as we talk of; but however the case is now in this degenerate age, yet there has been a time in the first ages of the church when the Christian religion had so great an influence on the minds of almost all that professed the name of Christ, that they did not regard all the worst the world could do to them. They slighted and despised all the tortures and pains that could be invented against them, and even the very women and children disregarded them and triumphed over them, and showed themselves to be happy, and were joyful in the midst of flames or on a gridiron, and enjoyed much more pleasure and satisfaction there than the wicked man does in the greatest affluence of the highest sensual delights: so that we see this certainly is the nature and tendency of Christianity. However, for want of due exercise it fails, and it is always either for want of a sufficiency of it, for want of the exercise of it, or from the natural imbecility and weakness of human nature, that it cloth not always produce those effects."
Also just read this on Calvinism.
First of all, I look at the Hebrew passage and think about why the writer is being so harsh. And it's because it was a pretty harsh time for the young Christian church. I remember Tim Keller's series on Hebrews called "Christ our Treasury" I think, and he just said this everytime about the epistle's audience. So in a sense, I can understand the sentiment. But man, it's so hard to think that people who fall away were never really Christians (1 John 2:19), but also that they're crucifying Jesus all over again. I can think of so many people in my life who have "fallen away" and it breaks my heart. It's just troubling though considering my own stupidity and depravity, how it is that I'm "chosen". One can never really figure out why and no answer in this world will satisfy. It isn't to say that everyone who seems like they've fallen away really has the fallen away. Whatever, I guess my point is this is really hard to live out. Hard to realize the real consequences of believing and unbelief, especially when it comes to people I actually know and love. All I can do is thank and praise God and trust in His wisdom.
"You will keep in perfect peace,
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in You." - Isaiah 26:3
This is one of those posts that's like a paper that doesn't have connected paragraphs ala Xaris's free writing style. FREEDOM!
I've been reading Hebrews and I've been wrestling with some thoughts. I like how Tim Keller always says everyone needs to take the Bible as a whole, you can't just leave stuff out and create your own religion. If you want to believe the part about Jesus loving you and dying for you, then you can't just ignore the parts where God tells you your money is not yours and that sex is sacred within the confines of marriage between a man and a woman. Wrestling with it, Job style, and coming to a sense of God's awesomeness is the point. Anyway...
"It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whim it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.
Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case - things that accompany salvation. God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them." -Hebrews 6:4-10
This is scary to me. Below is from the Christian Happiness sermon I keep talking about:
"Indeed, Christianity is now so low in the world, and there is such a want of the lively and vigorous actings of grace, even in those that are godly, that one, upon a cursory view, would think there was no such a tendency in religion as we talk of; but however the case is now in this degenerate age, yet there has been a time in the first ages of the church when the Christian religion had so great an influence on the minds of almost all that professed the name of Christ, that they did not regard all the worst the world could do to them. They slighted and despised all the tortures and pains that could be invented against them, and even the very women and children disregarded them and triumphed over them, and showed themselves to be happy, and were joyful in the midst of flames or on a gridiron, and enjoyed much more pleasure and satisfaction there than the wicked man does in the greatest affluence of the highest sensual delights: so that we see this certainly is the nature and tendency of Christianity. However, for want of due exercise it fails, and it is always either for want of a sufficiency of it, for want of the exercise of it, or from the natural imbecility and weakness of human nature, that it cloth not always produce those effects."
Also just read this on Calvinism.
First of all, I look at the Hebrew passage and think about why the writer is being so harsh. And it's because it was a pretty harsh time for the young Christian church. I remember Tim Keller's series on Hebrews called "Christ our Treasury" I think, and he just said this everytime about the epistle's audience. So in a sense, I can understand the sentiment. But man, it's so hard to think that people who fall away were never really Christians (1 John 2:19), but also that they're crucifying Jesus all over again. I can think of so many people in my life who have "fallen away" and it breaks my heart. It's just troubling though considering my own stupidity and depravity, how it is that I'm "chosen". One can never really figure out why and no answer in this world will satisfy. It isn't to say that everyone who seems like they've fallen away really has the fallen away. Whatever, I guess my point is this is really hard to live out. Hard to realize the real consequences of believing and unbelief, especially when it comes to people I actually know and love. All I can do is thank and praise God and trust in His wisdom.
"You will keep in perfect peace,
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in You." - Isaiah 26:3
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