An acquaintance of mine, a follower of Jesus, recently took his own life, apparently in the midst of a bad bout of depression.  This is the second time a Christian I have known has killed himself in the past 10 years.  Aside from grief and anger over the situation, I have another reason to hate suicide.  The story below happened to me about 6-7 years ago. 

I am convinced that every suicide – especially of believers – is a victory for Satan and a victory of deception over truth.  This is not to say that I believe that Christians who commit suicide go to Hell.  I’m not the Judge, and I don’t know their hearts, but I have reason to believe that both Paul and Ed had sincerely trusted Jesus for salvation and that they are in His presence today.  But to give up hope is to forget or ignore Jesus and the Gospel, and to believe a lie.

 

I was driving home one night under a heavy burden of depression. I had just given into temptation and yielded yet again in an area of habitual sin which had hindered my life and my calling in God at every turn. As I was driving home, familiar feelings of shame and hopelessness assailed me. “You are a failure. You’ve done nothing with your life. You’re pathetic…” And so on. All of this seemed to be my own mind, and certainly at the time I agreed with most of the sentiments. I felt pathetic. I felt like a loser. I felt like I was accomplishing nothing and I was in a dead-end job. I felt my sin disqualified me from any possible destiny in God.

These thoughts began to take a particularly nasty turn that night, however. I began to feel that life was not worth living any more. Depression began to harden into despair. Suicidal thoughts began to float through my mind. I looked at a bridge I was driving past and had thoughts of driving my car into a concrete abutment or off of a cliff. For a few moments I wallowed in these feelings, and they began to crystallize into a suggestion. “Why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you just end it now?” I continued in my self-pity and depression another moment, but the suggestion became more insistent. Suddenly a new thought crossed my mind.

This isn’t me.

Nearly automatically, I said out loud in the car, “Spirit, I rebuke you in Jesus’ name!”

And it stopped. The voice stopped instantly and completely. Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking suicidal thoughts. I wasn’t pitying myself for my pathetic life. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t even feeling shame anymore. Instead, I felt like I was waking up from a dream. What had I just been listening to for the past 15 minutes?

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, I urge you to get help.  Tell someone.  Call 911 if you need to.  But above all, believe the Gospel.  Jesus Christ has paid the price for the redemption of the entire earth – for your freedom as well as your forgiveness.  Repent of your sins, trust Jesus Christ for salvation, and then take hold of the authority that is yours as a child of God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Suicidal thoughts are not your portion as a believer in Jesus.  Find people to pray for you, ask the Holy Spirit to help, and renounce the lie that you are destined to be depressed and suicidal your whole life.  DO NOT GIVE UP.  There is always hope.  Jesus has set many people free before you.  There are thousands of people all around the world who wanted to kill themselves before Jesus rescued them.

One place you can find dozens of testimonies of people who have been freed from suicidal thoughts is the IHOPU Student Awakening.  Watch the video testimonies and believe that what Jesus did for those people He can – and will – do for you!  It’s not about IHOP, it’s about Jesus.  This is what He’s like.  He’s the Savior, and so He saves.  He’s the Deliverer, and so He sets people free.  He will set you free IF YOU DON’T GIVE UP.

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Heaven's not a vapor
And God's not a cloud
He's in a physical temple
On the top of a mount
(Chorus from the IHOP-KC Prayer Room, June 2010)

One of the criticisms occasionally leveled against "charismatic" teachers and groups¹ is that they are anthropomorphites (e.g. Catholic Answers). That is, they believe that God the Father - in addition to God the Son - has a human form.

At first glance, the topic may appear to be as straightforward as Catholic Answers suggests - people are merely taking imagery like "The right hand of YHWH" (Ps 118:15-16) literally and coming to overly simplistic conclusions. But on closer inspection, there is a case to be made for the anthropomorphism even of the Father. Abraham apparently had YHWH to his tent for dinner and then talked with Him about Isaac and the fate of Sodom (Gen 18). Moses and seventy elders of Israel "saw the God of Israel" and He had feet (Ex 24:10). Isaiah saw YHWH sitting on a throne and wearing a robe (Is 6:1,5). Ezekiel saw "the glory of YHWH" and he had "a likeness with human appearance." (Ezek 1:26,28, see also Ezek 3:23; 8:4; 9:3; 10:4, 18).

The standard theological response to these verses has been to regard them as Old Testament Christophanies (pre-Incarnate appearances of the Second Person of the Trinity). Various New Testament scriptures do provide legitimacy for that view (e.g. Jn 1:18, 1 Jn 4:12; and Jn 12:41, which states clearly that Isaiah saw a Christophany). But it must be noted that with the exception of John 12:41, Scripture itself is silent on Old Testament Christophanies.

The early church fathers are helpful to a degree (see the extensive selection of quotes at the Catholic Answers link above), but it must be recognized that the apologists and early theologians of the Church virtually all imported a large number of Hellenistic assumptions into their theological works. These ideas were alien to the Hebrew worldview in which the Torah was received and into which the Messiah and all His apostles were born. This can be seen clearly in some of the earliest quotes on the topic, where the church fathers go beyond scripture and import propositions from Greek philosophy, e.g.:

Athenagoras

"I have sufficiently demonstrated that we are not atheists, since we acknowledge one God, unbegotten, eternal, invisible, incapable of being acted upon, incomprehensible, unbounded, who is known only by understanding and reason, who is encompassed by light and beauty and spirit and indescribable power, by whom all things, through his Word, have been produced and set in order and are kept in existence" (Plea for the Christians 10 [A.D. 177]).
(http://www.catholic.com/library/God_Has_No_Body.asp)

You will not find the idea that God is "incapable of being acted upon" in the Bible. In fact, it's hard not to get the impression that He is very much affected by our choices - not least our sins. (e.g. Jer 12:7-8) Or try telling Abraham that God is "known only through understanding and reason." His answer might be, "No, He talked with me and He visited my tent." (Gen 18)

But aside from throwing Bible verses back and forth, there is actually an important pastoral issue involved. I recently finished reading Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, by C.S. Lewis, and I found Lewis' thoughts on anthropomorphisms in scripture to be the best I've heard:

This talk of “meeting" is, no doubt, anthropomorphic; as if God and I could be face to face, like two fellow-creatures, when in reality He is above me and within me and below me and all about me. That is why it must be balanced by all manner of metaphysical and theological abstractions. But never, here or anywhere else, let us think that while anthropomorphic images are a concession to our weakness, the abstractions are the literal truth. Both are equally concessions - each singly misleading, and the two together mutually corrective. Unless you sit to it very tightly, continually murmuring “Not thus, not thus, neither is this Thou,” the abstraction is fatal. It will make the life of lives inanimate and the love of loves impersonal. The naïf image is mischievous chiefly in so far as it holds unbelievers back from conversion. It does believers, even at its crudest, no harm. what soul ever perished for believing that God the Father really has a beard? (Pg 22)

Scripture doesn't take the slightest pain to guard the doctrine of Divine Impassibility. We are constantly represented as exciting the Divine wrath or pity - even as "grieving" God. I know this language is analogical. But when we say that, we must not smuggle in the idea that we can throw the analogy away and, as it were, get in behind it to a purely literal truth. All we can really substitute for the analogical expression is some theological abstraction. And the abstraction's value is almost entirely negative. It warns us against drawing absurd consequences from the analogical expression by prosaic extrapolations. By itself, the abstraction "impassible"can get us nowhere. It might even suggest something far more misleading than the most naïf Old Testament picture of a stormily emotional Jehovah. Either something inert, or something which was “Pure Act” in such a sense that it could take no account of events within the universe it had created.

I suggest two rules for exegetics: 1) Never take the images literally. 2) When the purport of the images—what they say to our fear and hope and will and affections—seems to conflict with the theological abstractions, trust the purport of the images every time. For our abstract thinking is itself a tissue of analogies: a continual modelling of spiritual reality in legal or chemical or mechanical terms. Are these likely to be more adequate than the sensuous, organic, and personal images of Scripture—light and darkness, river and well, seed and harvest, master and servant, hen and chickens, father and child? The footprints of the Divine are more visible in that rich soil than across rocks or slag-heaps. Hence what they now call “demythologising” Christianity can easily be “re-mythologising” it—and substituting a poorer mythology for a richer. (Pg 51-52)

In essence, Lewis is saying that anthropomorphism is far less dangerous than mechanomorphism (imagining God to be like a machine), which is all we have left if we think that words like "omnipresent," "omnipotent," and "impassible" are literal truth that doesn't need to be qualified or explained.

God's impassibility is probably the weakest of the "attributes of God" discussed by theologians - the least Biblically supported and the most liable to dangerous misunderstanding. There are some Biblical reasons to support it (e.g. "God is not a man that He should lie or a son of man that He should change His mind…" Num 23:19, and the very fact that the Lake of Fire is a place of everlasting wrath - everlasting wrath is an impossible emotion for human beings). But we are much safer to think of God's emotions as analogous to ours than to think of them as something abstract and static. If we focus on the idea that God's emotions are utterly unlike ours, we will ruin our emotional relationship with Him, and we will actually make void the many things that He tells us about His emotions through scripture.

We run into a similar problem when we think about God's relationship to time. It is all but unthinkable that God could experience time in the same way as us, as a slave of the future, not knowing with certainty what will happen. To think of God like that reduces His promises from certainties to probabilities, and His sovereignty from utterly trustworthy rule to the best bet among uncertain options. Further, if the theory of relativity is correct in that time and space are inextricably linked - to the point that travel through space at speeds approaching the speed of light actually affects time - then to make God subject to time is to make God subject to space, and therefore to His own creation. It would be a self-contradiction.

However, when we consider the alternative - of declaring God to be "outside time" or "timeless," the distortion that enters in is again far more spiritually dangerous than the intellectual difficulty of picturing God within time. When we think of "timelessness," we inevitably think of something static. And in fact, that was precisely how Plato pictured the First Cause - the "Unmoved Mover", the "Ultimate Form" from which all else was derived. It reduces the personal and deeply involved YHWH of Israel to a pretty statue and renders the Incarnation an irreconcilable contradiction in terms.

So, as Lewis wrote, we are far safer to approach God using the imagery and language that He has given us, even recognizing that the Bible itself warns us against taking the images rigidly (e.g. we are told "He does not change His mind," and yet on several occasions, the story records that He did precisely that). It is much better to cry with Moses, "Turn from Your burning anger," (Ex 32:12) than to sit back with the false piety of Ahaz saying, "I will not ask, and I will not put YHWH to the test." (Is 7:12)

 

¹ Note that I am using the word "Charismatic" loosely to refer to a broad spectrum of groups and denominations who believe in the present operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

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In the news today, another well-known Christian singer has come out as a homosexual. I found what Jennifer Knapp had to say about her story to be interesting:

The Signal - Christian singer Jennifer Knapp comes out as a lesbian
“I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.”

I will not attempt to say that I fully understand what she has experienced in the tension between sexual attraction to her own gender and what the Bible says. I have no first-hand experience of same-sex attraction, so I will frankly say that I don't "get it." But I do have first-hand experience of powerful and overwhelming urges to do things which our society considers normal, but which the Bible condemns as sin. In fact, for a large part of my life, I have felt trapped in a habit (or even an addiction) which I cannot seem to escape, despite trying virtually everything that has been recommended to me. Over and over again, I have felt how much easier it would be to give up the struggle, quit fighting it, and simply live the way it seems most Americans do.

But when I look at the Bible, I find that rather than "being a whole human being" who is free from internal struggle, what the New Testament urges is much closer to my experience of constant internal battle.

The writer of Hebrews described this life as a footrace, and suggested that we should do whatever it takes to be free of encumbrance so that we can run this race to the finish line. (Heb 12:1-2) The finish line, it is clear from the context, is the end of this life. (Heb 11:39) So the Christian life can be compared to running a marathon which lasts your entire life. There may be glory in a marathon, but it not comfortable or easy.

Peter and Paul both take comparison up a notch and equate this life to a war. Peter urges Christians to abstain from the lusts of our flesh, because they wage war against our souls. (1 Peter 2:11) Paul encourages Timothy to "share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2 Tim 2:3-4), and writes to the Ephesians that they are to put on a full suit of spiritual armor to withstand every attack of demonic forces against them. (Eph 6:10-20)

Most disturbingly of all, from the very lips of the Master Himself, we are told that this life is a voluntary process of self-execution. He calls us to live in such a way that it is like giving ourselves up to humiliation, torture, and a slow, agonizing death by one of the most horrific means of execution ever devised. That is what "Take up your cross" means, after all. And of all the great leaders in history, this Man is the only One who can with absolute unquestionable authority call us to that voluntary self-destruction.  He is not asking us to do anything He did not do first! (Mt 16:24-25, Lk 9:23-24, Mk 8:34-35)

Today we are constantly hearing that it is too hard and too unkind for Christians to insist that those with same-sex attraction resist it just because the Bible says so.  In light of the strong – and even ruthless – words we have just surveyed from the Founder and the fathers of our faith, such arguments seem anemic and pathetic.

The reason that anemic and pathetic arguments carry so much weight today, however, is because the contemporary American Church is by and large anemic and pathetic. Gay activists are very nearly right in saying that Jesus never talked about homosexuality (though note His restatement of God's intention for male and female in Mt 19:3-9 and parallels). The issues to which He did apply His call to violent holiness have a much broader application:

• We have to die to religious pride. (Lk 18:9-14, Mt 7:1-4)
  
• We have to die to love of money. (Lk 16:10-15)
  
• We have to die to idle and unprofitable speech. (Mt 12:36-37)
  
• We have to die to our right to be angry. (Mt 5:21-26)
  
• We have to die to even looking lustfully at another human being (of either gender). (Mt 5:27-30)
  
• We have to die to getting what is due to us. (Mt 5:38-42)
  
• We may well have to suffer persecution and even die physically. (Mt 5:10-12, Rev 2:10)

Internal struggle - even internal warfare unto continual death to self - is what Jesus calls us to. Let us forget our ignorant dream of being comfortable and happy in this life and instead do whatever it takes to be holy. What we will find is that there is a better joy, a better peace, and a better comfort - a comfort beyond imagination - coming in the age to come for those who refuse to give up. 

And even in this age there is a downpayment of that joy to be had. People really do find freedom from all kinds of besetting sins, including same-sex attraction.  People really can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live with an increasing measure of holiness in this life. I really do have hope that in this life I will have consistent and lasting victory over sinful habits.

But victory only comes to those who fight.

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I found this blog post today, after observing that there has been at least one headlines-worthy earthquake every month in 2010 so far...

City Brights: Zennie Abraham : More big earthquakes projected for 2010 than 2009, 2008, and 2007: "One reason for this increase in number may be improved earthquake sensing technology. Indeed, the USGS reports that this is the case. But there's a problem in the basic logic presented by the USGS, a large earthquake has damaging impacts such that more sensitive technology would make no difference, a large quake is just that: big. People know when an earthquake larger than 6 on the Richter Scale strikes. Moreover the USGS points to improved technology between 1931 and today, not within the last decade."

Matthew 24:6–8 (ESV)
6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

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This is the song (lyrics below) that American snowboarder Kelly Clark was singing along with on her iPod when she won the bronze medal at the Olympics this week.

I won't pretend that I have a clue of what it must feel like to be competing in the Olympics with the eyes of the millions watching you. But I will say that singing about what Jesus did on the cross to define love for us, in order that we would love Him back with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength, is probably the best possible way to act in that situation. Most likely only trivia buffs will remember Kelly Clark's name and what she won 20 years from now - but the love in her heart for Jesus Christ is going to be honored before the throne of God forever and ever.

If you found this page out of curiosity, I urge you to actually read the lyrics below and think about the implications. God Himself - the Creator of heaven and earth and everything in them - became a human being and showed us what a human life was always supposed to look like. And then He submitted Himself voluntarily to a gross mockery of justice, to torture, to public shame, and to death, in order to bear the penalty that we deserved for our rebellion against God. And then three days later, He rose from the dead, and is never going to die again.

He did all of that because He loves you, and He wants you to fulfill the purpose for which He made you. God demonstrated His love for us in this: while we were still in rebellion against Him, Jesus died for us. And now Jesus has been given authority over everything that He made and is co-ruling with His Father in heaven. But He isn't going to stay there forever. There is a day coming - sooner than you think! - when He will come back to the earth and every human being who has ever lived will give an account to Him for how they lived their life. I urge you, if you do not know Jesus the Messiah personally, make your peace with Him now while you still have time!

Arms Wide Open – Misty Edwards

“What does love look like?” is the question I’ve been pondering
“What does love look like?”
“What does love look like?” is the question I’ve been asking of You

I once believed that love was romance, just a chance
I even thought that love was for the lucky and the beautiful
I once believed that love was a momentary bliss
But love is more than this
All You ever wanted was my attention
All You ever wanted was love from me
All You ever wanted was my affections, to sit here at Your feet

Then I sat down, a little frustrated and confused
If all of life comes down to love
Then love has to be more than sentiment
More than selfishness and selfish gain

And then I saw Him there, hanging on a tree, looking at me
I saw Him there, hanging on a tree, looking at me
He was looking at me, looking at Him, staring through me
I could not escape those beautiful eyes
And I began to weep and weep

He had arms wide open, a heart exposed
Arms wide open; He was bleeding, bleeding

Love’s definition, love’s definition was looking at me
Looking at Him, hanging on a tree
I began to weep and weep and weep and weep

This is how I know what love is, this is how I know what love is

And as I sat there weeping, crying
Those beautiful eyes, full of desire and love

He said to me, “You shall love Me, You shall love Me
You shall love Me, You shall love Me”

With arms wide open, a heart exposed
With arms wide open, bleeding, sometimes bleeding

If anybody’s looking for love in all the wrong places
If you’ve been searching for love, come to Me, come to Me
Take up your cross, deny yourself
Forget your father’s house and run, run with Me
You were made for abandonment, wholeheartedness
You were made for someone greater, someone bigger, so follow Me
And You’ll come alive when you learn to die

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I've started a discussion group in my Biblical Studies class to read through Finney's Revivals of Religion together and to pray through what he taught. This week, the following quote caught our attention. Surely, when heresy is growing in the Church, when those giving up on the Church are increasing, and when sin is being justified, promoted, and boasted of all around, we are living in times of "outrageous wickedness."

If so, then let us repent of our "carnal policies that only make things worse," follow God's prescription, and humble ourselves and pray!

Charles Finney: Lectures on Revivals of Religion, "II. When a Revival is to be Expected":
But sometimes the conduct of the wicked drives Christians to prayer, and breaks them down, and makes them sorrowful and tender-hearted, so that they can weep day and night, and instead of scolding and reproaching them, they pray earnestly for them. Then you may expect a revival. Indeed this is a revival begun already. Sometimes the wicked will get up an opposition to religion. And when this drives Christians to their knees in prayer to God, with strong crying and tears, you may be certain there is going to be a revival. The prevalence of wickedness is no evidence at all that there is not going to be a revival. That is often God’s time to work. When the enemy cometh in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord lifts up a standard against him. Often the first indication of a revival, is the devil’s getting up something new in opposition. It will invariably have one of two effects. It will either drive Christians to God, or it will drive them farther away from God, to some carnal policy or other that will only make things worse. Frequently the most outrageous wickedness of the ungodly is followed by a revival. If Christians are made to feel that they have no hope but in God, and if they have sufficient feeling left to care for the honor of God and the salvation of the souls of the impenitent, there will certainly be a revival. Let hell boil over if it will, and spew out as many devils as there are stones in the pavements, if it only drives Christians to God in prayer—they cannot hinder a revival. Let Satan get up a row, and sound his horn as loud as he pleases; if Christians will only be humbled and pray, they shall soon see God’s naked arm in a revival of religion.

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After hearing Lou Engle speak at IHOPU chapel last night I started reading Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion.  There is a lot of wisdom rooted in experience in Finney’s talks.  I was particularly struck by two points in the first talk:

1. Many Christians – and I think Christian leaders in particular – would rather see the Church make progress steadily and grow over time instead of going through all the confusion and disruption – and excess and error – that comes with revival.  Finney answers the argument squarely.  If the Church were who she is supposed to be most of the time, revival would not be necessary.  But in this age, with the deceitfulness of sin and the influence of the world which is “under the sway of the wicked one,” (1 Jn 5:19), we need revival.  The Church continually backslides without regular injections of God’s power in revival.
2. Revival, when it is the real thing, is so clearly the work of God and beyond what human beings could work up, that people often conclude that it is entirely a work of God’s sovereignty and human beings have nothing to do with it.  In fact, the history of revival shows the opposite.  It is the praying Church, consecrated and committed to seeing God’s will done on earth as in heaven, that opens the door for God’s power to be manifested.

Lectures on Revivals of Religion by Charles Finney
There is so little principle in the church, so little firmness and stability of purpose, that unless the religious feelings are awakened and kept excited, counter worldly feeling and excitement will prevail, and men will not obey God. They have so little knowledge, and their principles are so weak, that unless they are excited, they will go back from the path of duty, and do nothing to promote the glory of God. The state of the world is still such, and probably will be till the millennium is fully come, that religion must be mainly promoted by means of revivals. How long and how often has the experiment been tried, to bring the church to act steadily for God, without these periodical excitements. Many good men have supposed, and still suppose, that the best way to promote religion, is to go along uniformly, and gather in the ungodly gradually, and without excitement. But however sound such reasoning 11may appear in the abstract, facts demonstrate its futility. If the church were far enough advanced in knowledge, and had stability of principle enough to keep awake, such a course would do; but the church is so little enlightened, and there are so many counteracting causes, that she will not go steadily to work without a special interest being awakened.
....
I wish this idea to be impressed on all your minds, for there has long been an idea prevalent that promoting religion has something very peculiar in it, not to be judged of by the ordinary rules of cause and effect; in short, that there is no connection of the means with the result, and no tendency in the means to produce the effect. No doctrine is more dangerous than this to the prosperity of the church, and nothing more absurd.

Suppose a man were to go and preach this doctrine among farmers, about their sowing grain. Let him tell them that God is a sovereign, and will give them a crop only when it pleases him, and that for them to plow and plant and labor as if they expected to raise a crop is very wrong, and taking the work out of the hands of God, that it interferes with his sovereignty, and is going on in their own strength: and that 14there is no connection between the means and the result on which they can depend. And now, suppose the farmers should believe such doctrine. Why, they would starve the world to death.

Just such results will follow from the church’s being persuaded that promoting religion is somehow so mysteriously a subject of Divine sovereignty, that there is no natural connection between the means and the end. What are the results? Why, generation after generation has gone down to hell. No doubt more than five thousand millions have gone down to hell, while the church has been dreaming, and waiting for God to save them without the use of means. It has been the devil’s most successful means of destroying souls. The connection is as clear in religion as it is when the farmer sows his grain. (pp 12-14)

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