An Invitation

By A. Schwarz
"Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,
for you are with me; you rod and your staff, they comfort me."

I wish I could forever remain engulfed within a mountain top experience with God; where I can feel His touch and hear His heart speak; where I am struck with the realization of His overwhelming glory. Those high moments with God are what I desire to experience day-in and day-out. They are where we can feel His presence and where we feel at home.

It is there that I want to stay and rest.

But most of the time, I am either scaling the mountain reaching for the summit, slipping and falling back down the cliffs, or left in their shadow within the valleys. It is during these times where there seems to be a distance between God and I, an endless canyon that I cannot cross. These places and times tend to feel like a punishment, as if God has turned His back. But our feelings are as human as our minds and emotions, they are so flawed that even while Christ is walking alongside us, we cannot hear Him.

But He is there. He is with you. Even in the darkest valley, he will never leave.

Recently, I heard someone say that it is in these times in life where God is inviting us to pursue a more intimate relationship with Him. It is an invitation. An invitation given to us by the Creator of the universe, our Saviour, our Father, our God. An invitation to seek after Him.

"Even though I walk through the darkest valley… surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever."

Even in the valleys, He is there. "He leads me besides quiet waters, he restores my soul." It is in the valley where the waters are the calmest and where He quietly draws you in to pursue His heart and find rest in Him.

While I've usually seen these places as dark and lonely, they are really a voice in the stillness beckoning to come closer to Him.

Pope Lies In Speech, Proves He Is The Antichrist

Does that title shock you?  I know of some Christian leaders who might have used such a title, for the article I posted here yesterday, and might have written a very different article, to boot.  The unfortunate truth is, if you read many Christian blogs, that title probably does not shock you.  In fact, if you are a Christian, you might get emails from time to time with titles like this, asking you to forward them to everyone you know.  Is this good?  Is this right?

We are studying the book of James in our Thursday night Bible Study.  Last night, we studied the destructive power of the tongue.  For any follower of Christ, the largest amount of damage we will do in our lives will be with our figurative tongue.  I say "figurative" because email, social media, and any other form of communication would fit within what James calls our "tongue."

James uses powerful, huge, scary language, to describe the dangers of what we say.  He tells us that the tongue is "a restless evil, and full of deadly poison" (3:8).  How could James have stated the dangers of our communication in a stronger way?  You might be able to argue that what he says in verse 6 is stronger.  Our tongue, if not controlled, "defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell."

And strangely, most of the time, the damage we do is largely unintended.  When it comes from our mouth, or our "pen," it is usually a small comment that we don't realize will hurt, or we hope will tweak someone a little, but it ends up offending greatly.  This sometimes happens verbally, but is more common with text or email.

This also has significant implications for parents.  It is very easy for parents to focus on the negatives.  While correction is a necessary and important part of parenting, a good check is, what percentage of what you say to your kids is negative, and what percentage is positive?  Are you speaking to your child or children like Christ would have you?  Are your negative comments really just for their correction, or largely because they are bugging you?

Another common example today of the misuse of the tongue relates to our electronic communication.  Christians often receive emails that slander others, or cut at reputations, usually with little or no verifiable evidence, and then ask us to forward to everyone we know.  The thing to remember is this.  When you forward an email, you are now responsible for that content, the same as if you wrote that email personally, and sent it to all those people.  If an email claims something about someone (something they said, something they believe, something they did) you are responsible for the truth of those statements.  The same is true of articles you "like," or "share" on your Facebook page.  Far too often, when Christians are confronted with inaccuracies or lies in something they have forwarded or shared, they default to, "I didn't write it.  I just passed it on..."  Yep.  You passed on slander and lies.  Guess what.  You're responsible for those words.

The conclusion that we came to at our Bible Study was that we need to dwell in the positive, in our communication.  We need to think before we speak.  Every time we speak, we need to realize that this mouth of ours is to be blessing, worshipping the Lord. 

So continue to ask yourself:  Am I building up, or tearing down?  Is what I am going to say or write or forward part of worshipping the Lord, or tearing down to make you feel better about yourself?

Jesus Was NOT Born Homeless: A Bad Argument For A Good Thing

Public speaking has been part of my job for many years now.  One thing all those sermons and teachings have taught me is, sometimes your mouth says something your mind doesn't intend.  It is so easy to accidentally swap words in a sentence, or to insert the wrong word, which means something different than you intended.  And on an occasion or two, I have been criticized for such slips of the tongue.  I'm not sure that is what this was, though.

This morning, when I flipped the radio on, I caught a segment of the Pope, giving a public address.  I assume he was talking to Congress, as I knew he was going to talk to them this morning.  As I was doing other things, something caught my attention.  The Pope made the statement that Jesus was born to homeless parents.  I believe the point that he was making was that Jesus understands what it is like to be homeless, because He was born homeless. 

The biggest problem with this (among many) is that the statement is flatly incorrect, in the context it was meant.  While Jesus was born in a barn, not a home, this was not because His parents were "homeless," as that word in understood.  What you COULD say about Joseph and Mary, is that they were "hotel-less."  In fact, Joseph and Mary had a home, which they left to take a trip, in order to register in a census that had been ordered.  They had a home, but happened to be traveling at the time.  They were not people who were experiencing the hardship of not being able to make enough money to live in any type of home.  In their situation, they did not experience what it was like to actually LIVE on "the streets."  What they experienced was being travelers who found only "no vacancy" signs, at seemingly the worst possible time.  I believe the pressures of true homelessness to be far greater than this.

So, is this an important distinction, or a minor, insignificant one?  Well, that depends on whether you think it is okay to generate false impressions in order to make your point, or gain a particular reaction.  The plight of not having a hotel room to stay in, such as it would be in those days, even when delivering a child, is very different than having to live on the streets because you can't afford housing.  Joseph and Mary were NOT homeless, in the way that this word is understood to mean.  It is just plain incorrect to make a statement like this.  And reaching for things like this really hurts the credibility of the person trying to persuade.  Truth matters.  Especially when making Biblical arguments.  When I see that you are misleading me in order to impact my behavior, I will likely reject what you are trying to get me to do, even if I SHOULD be doing these very things.

And this is the most frustrating thing about this spinning of the truth.  It is completely unnecessary.  Jesus spoke many times about caring for the poor and the needy.  He even tied helping or neglecting the hungry and thirsty to helping and neglecting Himself (Matthew 25:31-46).  And, if you want to make the point that Jesus understands what it feels like to not have the stability of a home, you could point to the fact that during His ministry, He regularly relied on the help of others for a place to stay.  This is not an argument I would make for a variety of reasons, most significantly that there are much more powerful passages about helping the poor (like the one above), but this point could be made.

Jesus commands His followers to help the poor and needy.  And we don't get off THIS hook by just giving a couple of dollars to a homeless shelter, or advocating for another government program.  In the case that Jesus makes in Matthew 25, He is speaking directly to His people, and tells us that, "When you neglect those in need, I view it the same as if you are neglecting Me in need."  It is an absolute command of Jesus, and a good thing to challenge us all with.

Just don't misrepresent truth to do it.

Knowing and Understanding

My son is learning to multiply and divide mixed numbers (whole numbers and fractions).  As I listen to his mother explain the process, I keep wanting to jump in and help him understand what he is learning.  "What is 6 divided by 1/3?"  As the boy reaches for answers, I want to jump in with an illustration that will make this easy.  "Look, let's say there's 3 of you boys playing.  Off in the distance, you see some bigger kids coming your way.  These kids throw rocks at you, and you guys quickly decide you want to have some rocks to defend yourself.  You find 6 rocks.  Each of you wants as many rocks as he can have, so you have to divide the 6 rocks, so that each of you get 1/3 of them..."  "Now, what if you found 7 rocks?  Each kid could get two, and one would get another, or you could break that extra rock up..."

What I've found over time is, it IS sometimes helpful for my son to understand in the middle of learning.  However, many times it does NOT help his learning, and it interrupts the learning process.  Sometimes the understanding part comes best after he has learned how to work the equation.  Now, I can remember hating this as a kid.  I didn't like being forced to learn things I didn't understand.  To this day, it seems to me that learning/knowing things without understanding them have little value.  However, as far as the process goes, we are finding that there are many times that you have to learn and know a pile of things, before you can begin to understand them.

Stepping back, I'm realizing that this is significantly true of spiritual things, as well.  Many times I see things happening in my life, or the lives of others, that I don't understand.  And yet, God tells us to trust Him, to walk with Him, to follow Him in many situations in life that I have no understanding of.  In those cases, knowing TO follow Him, to trust Him, and knowing HOW to follow Him matters far more than understanding the nature of what we are going through, or why things are happening, or how they will turn out.  Even if we never really understand the workings of things we have gone through in this life, it is knowing to trust Him, and how to stay close to Him that matters the most.

Spiritual Intensity, Revisited

In the beginning, when we first felt compelled to start Golden Community Church, "Spiritual Intensity" was a fairly regular topic of conversation for the leadership.  We liked the fact that light has an "intensity" that can be measured.  It gives us several interesting parallels to our spiritual life.  The idea of intensity captures a concept that is very important to us.  Over time, this desire for spiritual intensity has not left us.  However, we haven't specifically talked about it for a while, so I thought we would revisit it here.

The Bible tells us that God is light, that God is love, God is perfect, God is righteous, God is holy, and that God is a whole bunch of other things.  If you have been a Christian for any length of time, these words can become sounds without meaning.  The truth, the reality of any one of these descriptions of God is overwhelming and awe-inspiring, if you really internalize it. 

Likewise, the Bible tells us that God sent His very Son to earth, to live in the form of a man, and to die to open the door for us to have a relationship with Him.  For YOU to have a relationship with Him.  He then rose from the dead, which verified His power over sin and death, and assured all who receive Him that we will have life with Him forever.  Not just living forever, but living in close relationship with Him forever. 

These truths about God are themselves issues of intensity.  Can you think of any more intense truths than these?  And what reaction should this elicit from children of God?

These realities, and many others about God, should motivate us to the most intense reactions we could have in life.  Intensity in how we seek Him, intensity in how we get to know Him.  Intensity in how we strive to stay in His presence.  An intensity that never allows anything to get in the way of our relationship with Him.  Ever.

And yet, within the reality of our lives, this appropriate level of intensity seems impossible.  I have too many other things that I give attention to, that pull at me, that I WANT to be distracted with.  How do we do what we should do?  Does God provide a way?

These are the things we are talking about, on these pages, at our worship services at Golden Community, at Bible Study, and within our relationships. 

Join us, read on, and engage the conversation.

Back Online

After a blogging hiatus, we are back up and running.  Check back from time to time, and see what is going on.