He Is Faithful

There is a "Next Blog" link on top of my Blogspot page and because much of what I write includes spiritual themes and quotes from scripture the algorithms that work cyber space usually connect me when I click that spot with another blog that they determine I might have some "spiritual" connection to. Some of the time they actually get it right and I am (to use the term I've actually seen blasted on another blog) "blessed".

On the other hand those links have brought me to a mixture of the bizzar to the truly mundane with a hefty portion of Mormon sites in between. It seems that every lonely Mormon on mission must when they get back to their apartment dismount their bike, loosen their tie, take off their white shirt and black pants, grab some cold KFC and sit at the computer blogging about the kingdom so that Elder so and so who overseas their district will not suspect that it is actually party time tonight. This can all be an elaborate game because the Elders understand that Mormon mission usually serves the same purpose as the Amish "rumspringa"; Few outsiders get converted, wild oats are sown and the young men and woman eventually return to their close knit communities and settle down.

A side note to this is that there are also a ton of blogs written by married Mormon woman who give daily updates on their wonderful family activities. There is a huge audience for these blogs, mainly consisting of unchurched childless professional women living on the East Coast who adopt one or more of these sites and follow the families birthday parties, vacations and trips to the supermarket as if these were people they were related to.

From time to time I also run across sites where the author blogs about their atheistic beliefs. These sites usually have names like "Free Thinking Society" or "It IS all about me". An author of one such blog I came across this week proclaimed that since he had in the last 4 years covered about everything he could think of that this would be his last post. The post was very long and in it he highlighted all the various reasons that he had left the Catholic Church, examined with an open mind all the possibilities of the existence of God, and determined the folly of it all.

One such statement about a third of the way in seemed to me to jump off the page with flashing lights and peals of thunder and I knew that this was actually the crux of his problem with having faith in an unseen deity. He expressed anger that anyone would believe that god would make demands on us.

It's funny how different his path and thought process and mine would lead. I too was born and raised Catholic. Starting in high school and then college I became agnostic and then an atheist because I could not comprehend how God could be and could not say that I believed in something that was so far beyond my understanding. But I did have this thought that bothered me. To me it was only logical that IF there was God, and IF He knew who I was, then He Must have a will, a desire for the way I was to live my life. And If He had a desire for the way I was to live my life then logic said that things in my life would work out so much better if I knew what His will was.

The free thinker saw the will of God as a straight jacket. After I believed I understood the will of God as the source of all freedom.

Legendary musician Bob Dylan, in a song he wrote after his conversion experience, actually expressed the truth about how it is in this world for believer and non believer alike. We may think we are calling our own shots, but Dylan writes:

"You may be a state trooper, you might be a young turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, Yes
You're gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you're gonna have to serve somebody."

Here is a post I wrote for my II Timothy 2:2 blog seven years ago. It is about faith and hopefully witnesses to the difference between faith and religion.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11: 1)

Thus begins the great chapter on faith found in the Book of Hebrews. The word "now" brings us back to the theme found in the previous chapter. The people the author of Hebrews wrote to were enduring very difficult times. Jewish by birth or as converts they had come by faith to know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Now, instead of being led to the knowledge of the truth by Jewish customs, laws and sacrifices they had something much better; "And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us . . . saying, 'This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days says the Lord; I will put My laws upon their hearts, and upon their mind I will write them' " (Hebrews 10: 15-16)

The Jewish people had a temple which was patterned after the wilderness tabernacle, which itself was patterned after a tabernacle in Heaven. In the wilderness tabernacle there was a most holy place where the presence of God resided, the entrance blocked by a veil. Every year the Jewish high priest would enter through the veil into the most holy place to sprinkle the blood of a sacrifice as an offering for the sins of the nation. At the moment Jesus died on the cross the actual veil in the temple in Jerusalem, said to be two inches thick, tore from top to bottom. From then on all men, not just Jews, could come before the presence of God through the blood of Jesus; "by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh". (v. 20) Jesus offered His own blood in the original tabernacle in Heaven as an offering for our sins, and He becomes, for all who come to Him by faith, "a great high priest".

This high priest does not have to continually offer His blood as a sacrifice for our sins. It was offered, once for all; "But He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God". (v. 12) When we come to Him by faith the Holy Spirit, because of the shed blood of Jesus, can bring the Spirit of Christ into our hearts so that we can become a new creation. The blood of Christ is not applied each time we sin. Instead, at conversion, it has changed who we are. We now have relationship with Jesus brought about through our faith in His shed blood for us. Out of that relationship develops fellowship with Him. Sin and rebellion affect the closeness of our fellowship. Yet the Holy Spirit is able to cleanse our body and our soul to restore any lost fellowship. The Spirit calls, revealing to us who Jesus is. We answer by faith, receiving new life by having a changed spirit. Our spirit or heart has now become a temple for the Holy Spirit who will guide us and enable us to have fellowship with the Father.

God is now truly our Father and Jesus, the first born of creation, is not only our High Priest, our Lord and Savior, but in a real sense is also our brother. Although Jesus became man and lived among us in this physical world, experience the good things that the physical world has, He was also tempted as we are and endured suffering and sorrow. Jesus, with a resurrected physical body, resides in Heaven and although we still have a not yet resurrected physical body our true citizenship is no longer in this physical world. Jesus leads us by the gentle prodding of the Spirit to a life that can overcome the world.

There are different kinds of faith. One leads to our eternal salvation, a salvation which we will know and experience in our lives now. It begins with faith, changes who we are, and positions us to be a holy people before the Lord for eternity. We are a holy people, not by what we do but by what He has already done. Through the blood of Jesus we have already overcome the world. But being in the world still affects both our walk with Christ and the fellowship that He greatly desires with us now.

A second kind of faith gives us the ability to resist the compromises of this world. We are confronted by attacks that are physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, and each one is a type of persecution designed by the enemy to take something away from us and to thus rob us of our fellowship with the Father. The enemy wants us to focus on the pain and struggles at hand, or on the false promises of happiness and security that the world seems to provide. But God has provided for us another Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who will help us through the struggles of today and lead us toward the direction that God has planned for us. The Hebrew Christians, being in a time of great stress, wanted the comfort of familiar customs and ritual. They were looking at their lives from the lens of where they were and not from the perspective of where God was leading them.

Thus we see the context of the faith examples in Hebrews 11. Even though these are Old Testament examples they are testimonies that God will reward those who have to make difficult choices because they saw by faith a greater reality. Many did not see or experience the full evidence of the promises during their physical lives but their obedience to the word that God gave them made possible the plan that God desired for them and their offspring. Many had to wait until only a miracle of God could make happen His promise and although discouraged they still trusted, finally seeing in a physical sense what they had already through faith saw in their hearts.

We live in a culture that does not trust that God knows what is best for us. Instead of searching the scriptures with an open and humble heart to hear the Spirit and discover the heart of God for us, instead of confessing our sins before God and man and taking steps to change as the Spirit leads, and instead of carving out of our lives the time needed to fellowship with our Father, we would rather have the comforts of religious laws and customs with the option of disagreeing with the particular tenants that make us uncomfortable.

By faith we come to know God. By faith we begin to understand that His promises are just and true and that He can accomplish in and for us all that He promised.

"Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful". (v. 22-23)