Peter, a man of Contradictions

Jesus called the Apostle Peter his rock.  Peter contributed several books of writing to the New Testament canon.  He preached powerful sermons, documented in the historical book of Acts.  But was Peter a rock?  

Do you recall the late night, that very dark night when Jesus told his twelve disciples that he would be betrayed and killed by a close friend?  And indeed it quickly happened.  Police showed up and arrested Jesus, Judas the friend of Jesus helped the police find him.  Peter pulls a sword to defend his friend, but ended up hitting a slave in the ear.  You know that sounds like something I would do.  I mean with soldiers, temple police walking up to arrest his BFF, he probably wasn't going for the slave guy's ear. 

I often end a day in the Christian life very worried.  Thinking... I mean I know I'm saved thanks to Jesus Christ.  It's about what he did on the cross!  But man, I'm such an incredible screw up sometimes.  Just way out in left field, loud mouth, emotional, just a mess and-a-half.  I sin, I repent, I sin again, repent, oops, sinned again, and on and on.  And I get worried.  Because the scriptures, especially the words of Jesus in the Bible are stern.

John 3:3 Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."

Mark 10:25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Matthew 10:21-22 ²¹ “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. ²² You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

See what I mean?  I think man, I'm nobody.  I'm so depressed and emotional all the time.  I hurt inside!  I can barely stand up straight I'm so tired sometimes.  How can I do this?  I've got so many issues, so many problems.  

But I'm reminded of Peter and who he was.  A man that was headed in the wrong direction, and then he encountered a new friend.  Then a man headed in two directions, way to the left, then way to the right, always falling off the road and missing the mark.  

I listened to a talk by A.W. Tozer on 1 Peter and he told it well, how Peter was so often double minded, a great apostle one moment, another moment rebuking his own Lord, pulling a sword defiantly at one moment, denying he even knew Jesus to several different people out of fear.  After Jesus' death on the cross he returned to his boat and gave up; started fishing again.  Jesus Christ came to him there as well. 

A rock?  Peter was all over the place, emotional, confusing, riddled with contradiction.  Just like me.  And just like you.  

When Peter screwed up once, did Jesus tell him to get lost?  No he didn't.  How about when Peter denied him three times?  Nope.  He still came to him again.  How about when Peter rebuked his own master, or when Peter abandoned the ministry, or when Peter failed to walk upon the water?  

Jesus Christ never gave up on him.  And Peter kept returning to his mission, he made so many mistakes yet he always came back renewed in the truth, determined to do better.  And the Lord was always there to welcome him into his arms, to guide him once again, to send him into ministry and to the nations.

Peter is me, and Peter is you.  We're flawed people, flawed Christians seeking a God we can hardly obey for a few moments.  Yet we keep trying, and he doesn't give up on us, or abandon us when we make mistakes.  

The Twelve Steps and Christianity

Today is an anniversary, I've been clean and sober 20 months.  That's a wonderful gift from the Lord Jesus Christ.  I don't claim to be a member of any fellowship, but I will say that I love the twelve steps.  They are very powerful.  And they're very important to me.  The steps are an incredibly powerful process of transformation.

The steps originated in the Bible.  How do I know that?  The process originated with something called the Oxford Groups.  These were Christians trying to return to the roots of Christianity because they felt Christianity was getting off track.  Eventually a man named Bill Wilson, a hopeless alcoholic was attending these Oxford groups to try to stay sober, and from there Mr. Wilson wrote the 12 steps.  In the 1940s the steps were adapted for people with Gambling problems.  In the 1950s the steps were adapted for people with Narcotics problems, and then Over eaters, Cocaine, Nicotine, Meth, Depression, and Codependency.  

The steps are entirely founded in Biblical principles, providing a Christian with a great road map for the "how to" of living the daily Christian life.  Allow me to illustrate just briefly, and I'm just scratching the surface here.

The first step is really about surrender.  I admit I'm not God.  And without a higher power I can't seem to live a decent life.  I'm out of control, things are unmanageable and I can't get it right on my own.  Surrender ought to be a daily practice of the Christian.  How can I submit myself to God?  I know of myself I make bad decisions much of the time, admitting that is key.

The second step is about coming to believe that God exists and he can help.  That can take a moment or a century.  It's all up to me, and how much effort I want to place on the process of coming to believe.  There are a billion books, scientific evidence, history, audio books, Bibles on every corner, and YouTube for thousands of hours of lectures and talks by great minds.  Am I seeking honestly?  Am I looking for what I want to find?  The second part is.. assuming God exists, then I must also believe that he can indeed help me.  He has direct upon, he can fundamentally change me.

Step three, I turn my life over to God.  I try to do it God's way.  I ask for his guidance every morning and thank him for it at night.  I Give my life to Jesus Christ the savior.

Step four, I make an inventory of my decisions and actions.  I clear out the garbage within the soul.  

Step five means I tell the inventory to someone, I speak it out, and let it out, the full truth.  And by doing that, my soul is cleared of so much garbage and suddenly, I start to sense the presence of God.  It's not that he wasn't there, it's that I was so backed up I couldn't sense him.

Step six and seven means looking at the defects of character that showed up in step 4, and I face them.  I acknowledge them.  Then I ask God for the willingness to have them removed, one by one over time.

Step eight and nine is all about getting right with the people around me.  Have I hurt family or friends?  We all have.  We go to those people, apologize, and ask how we can make amends.  We get right with people.

Step ten, eleven, twelve are the progression of the journey.  Step 10 says I continue to work 4 through 9 on a daily basis.  I keep up with the process, I make it a lifestyle.  It becomes my design for living.  Step 11 means I seek after God.  I work on improving my contact with him.  I sense him more and more.  I pray to him, and I meditate on his word, which means just read the Bible, and think about what it says.  And of course step 12, is that I share the message, evangelism, I take the message to others about the good news of Jesus Christ!

Not so complicated is it? 

These are the steps as written, the 1st step and 12th step may change slightly depending on if a person is dealing with stress, drugs, sexual addiction, or spiritual emptiness.  But all in all it looks like this:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our existence —that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

If you would like to try working through the steps read through this piece that goes through the process: Practical Process for Inner Transformation 

And I'd also strongly recommend purchasing a book on the topic of the twelve steps.  There are many, many books that apply the 12 steps to all manner of problems.  The 12 steps have really revolutionized treatment of so many problems by applying a simple spiritual solution.  Go on Amazon or something and just search for "the 12 steps" or something of that nature.  I don't know what your concern is, anything from drugs, alcohol, or depression to simply wanting to live a richer Christian life.  

Good luck on your quest ;) 

Hope for the Hopeless

 
Always doing what feels good has never resulted in happiness.  In fact pain seems necessary in life to the point that we can't imagine good without bad, light without dark.  But there is love that requires no hate, I believe, and even if it can't be imagined here, it can be experienced in brightness in latter times.  

Hope is like an arrow that strikes through the darkest depth of night.  It lights fires with no kindling, and it flows like honey from the mind of God.  

If what feels immediately good doesn't lead to happiness, then I must have some misconceptions in my head about how life ought to be lived.  

But why is it so hard to do the right thing?  Why does the right thing feel so yucky?  It seems a thankless task.

Some come back singed by their own choices, the whirlwind of this world, others come back burned, and some like myself come back brutally burned and devastated beyond recognition.  And coming out of that, trudging step after trudging step is a long, arduous journey.  

But some never come out at all.  Which is a puzzling question indeed!  Romans 9:21 (NIV) says "²¹ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?"

I've meditated on that verse in some length, in Romans chapter 9 Paul is writing about the goodness of God, the sovereignty of God over what he creates.  It makes me wonder, that maybe some people aren't really immortal human beings as we understand it.  Maybe some people are actors, set up to play a certain part in God's plans, but they don't really have existence or a soul.  Just a theory.  

And what about John 15:22?  "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin." These are the words of Jesus.  It raises an interesting question: So if someone doesn't hear the gospel, they are not guilty of sin?  From this passage of scripture I would have to assume the answer to that question would be: "yes."  A lot of scripture doesn't fit into the conventional theology of the evangelical church.

Anyway. 

I think tonight must be an anniversary of sorts.  You ever have that feeling, like the cold sensation on a given day is a reminder of some anniversary of some terrible event that can't even be recalled consciously?  

I used to wonder at predestination, before I knew a thing about Calvinism.  I figured I was predestined before the foundations of the world to die of slow drug death and join club 27 with all the great artists I so enjoyed.

In fact it lined up in an interesting way.  I had been hoping that the world would end in December 2012, you know the thing with the Mayan calendar.  Of course the world didn't end.  But December 2012 was when I was born again into the family of Jesus Christ.  See, God does have a sense of humor.

You wonder at the memories, and how to catalog the data, and what position to take on the things that happened.  It was good, it was bad, could it have been avoided, was it necessary at the divorce of my family.  What caused it, could it have ended sooner?  The only thing for certain is, at the beginning, God was there, all throughout he was also there, and at the end he was also there.  And he knew the entire time, from the first moment of the march downward, that I would one day call upon the name of Jesus Christ and be reborn as a result.  

I'm looking forward to praying tonight.  Have you ever felt the presence of God?  Throughout your day acknowledge his presence, in the car, at work, at home, wherever you happen to be.. I'll whisper, Jesus Christ is here.  God is here.  And I can feel it a bit more, and a bit more, sometimes less, sometimes more.  The presence of God floods into the room when I say a few simple words addressed to the throne of God: "Dear and loving heavenly Father, please hear my prayer." 

It's just that simple.  Sometimes we can't feel it though, we can't sense God because we're so backed up with self pity, depression, remorse, resentments, and self hatred... and those things have to be dealt with.  I've found the 12 steps used by many recovery groups to be absolutely invaluable in the process of coming to the conscious present recognition of the always present God of the Bible.

Old Earth Evolution vs. Young Earth Creation | A lopsided debate

I've certainly learned a great deal about the ongoing debate between young earth creationism and old earth evolution.  I'm just finishing up a semester of study on the topic, at Liberty University. I've also learned some about old earth creationism in independent study.  

My first question directed toward this complex issue would be, "Can I get a balanced view from an unbiased observer?"  

Unfortunately there don't seem to be any.  Christians are influenced by the Bible and God, and it's good and right that we are.  On the other side you have men and women claiming to be unbiased, but in fact they are either directly and consciously or unconsciously influenced by a philosophy prior to the conclusion, that of secular humanism, materialism or outright atheism.  Or what the late Christopher Hitchens called his anti-god view.  At least Hitchens was honest, and Hitchens also said that the one thing that gave his atheism a certain amount of pause was the anthropic principle.  Scientists tend to find it very difficult to ignore the fine tuning in the universe.  

But they find ways to ignore fine tuning.  Somehow they do.  They postulate multiple universes, multiple big bangs, and we just happen to be in the one universe that happens to be ideal.  It's like there's a giant arrow the size of the universe pointing to a giant billboard with flashing lights marked "GOD." And they see the sign, and then draw a little squiggly line into infinite darkness covering their eyes in willful ignorance.  It's entirely intellectually dishonest.  Einstein didn't want it, but in the end he had to accept the idea of intelligent design, though he did refuse the idea of a personal god instead favoring a pantheistic view.

On a side note, I've been meaning to contact the Institute for Creation Research because there are some things on the internet that deeply concern me.  Mainly my concern is with the articles on Wikipedia for "Young Earth Creationism" and "Objections to Evolution."  Both articles are harshly biased, obviously written by staunch atheists.  It's disturbing because so many millions of young people use Wikipedia as their fact source.  I'm wondering if some Christians who also interact on Wikipedia might be willing to go in and edit those two articles.  Anyone can edit articles on Wikipedia, but I'm not sure how personally.  

That brings up another issue: If atheists are so sure God doesn't exist then why are they so hostile toward adherents of Christianity and our supposedly invisible God?  I don't think I'll ever get a good answer to that one.  I guess what I'm trying to point out is just how polarizing the debate is.

I can't say I've firmly come down on either side of the debate.  I've recently read The Young Earth by John Morris.  It was an excellent text book on scientific evidence behind the young earth view. Regarding the dating of rocks I felt like Morris could've gone into further detail.  He showed how the tests are highly inaccurate, but never gave a clear explanation of why it should instead just be thousands of years.  Even if the various dating methods show a range between 1 million years and 2.2 billion years, still it's coming up as at least 1 million years.  So why is that?  Are dating tests all entirely inaccurate?  Morris has made a great impact on my view of the age of the Earth.  

But I have many other influences, deeply reputable Christian men who believe in an old earth.  Mainly who comes to mind are people like Frank Turek and William Lane Craig.  Should I discount those views as wrong?  I'm not sure.  The topic needs more study. Youtube is a great source for video presentations on just such topics.  I intend to pursue the topic by watching speakers like Ken Ham, Frank Turek, Ravi Zacharias, Norman Geisler, JP Moreland, Os Guiness, and Francis Collins.  I'm sure I'll learn a great deal.  I'm always grabbing good books on Amazon, so I'll look there for more books on these topics.  I intend to keep the Morris book and use it to teach my children the view for their consideration.

Recently teaching of creationism was outlawed in the United Kingdom in their public school system.  Another question I have is this: Given that intelligent design is an entirely plausible conclusion based on scientific data alone, without any need for the Bible or religious views, then why can't it be taught in public schools?

How can we get the creation view back in public schools?  Evolution and materialist philosophy being taught to 95% of the young people of the United States is absolutely decimating Christianity, it's slaughtering it in the country. It's also leading to all kinds of problems, the most noticeable being the economic problems which at their root seem to be caused by deceptive business practices in big business and banking.

Only materialistic evolution in public schools today.  That's the locked gate that must, must, must be opened!  If at least to see intelligent design taught, that would be something.  It's intellectually dishonest to exclude intelligent design along with the Bible.  It reveals a crooked and terrible plot to turn this nation into a depraved atheist hell hole.  That's what's happening.  And I'm not overstating anything, turn on the television, listen to some MTV music, and you'll realize it's much worse than most are willing to admit. 

The next area to breach is the college campuses.  Ironically most top colleges in the country were started by Christians, as Christian universities.  Harvard, Yale, and Princeton just to name a few.  Oh, but the evils of organized religion and on and on they rant..

The problem isn't that there is a debate between the young earth and the old earth.  The problem is that there isn't much of a debate.  One view is ejected and openly mocked, the other is taught as undisputed fact.  There is a word for such a practice, it's called propaganda.  In my view it will take dedicated Christian truth warriors to take it upon themselves to be called to ministries of changing these terrible dynamics in the United States.  Otherwise all will be lost.  

Is that you?

I hope so.  Someone has to take up these tasks.  So why not you?  

As I've written recently, we need dedicated uncompromising, incorruptible Christians in vital areas of influence in the United States and the West overall if we're going to stem the tide of atheism and depravity destroying the fabric of sustainable culture in the world.  

I hope it's you who begins a mission today to change things.  It only takes one.  I'm just one man.  But this blog your reading has been read by over 23,000 in over 100 countries.  One person can change the entire course of history.  God uses the most unlikely people to change the course of the world.  Maybe he's calling you to be one of his world changers, today. 

Old earth, new earth?  I couldn't say with one hundred percent certainty.  What I can say with 100% certainly is that in the beginning God created.  

I will continue my diligent studies.  I will continue working tirelessly to see Christianity grow, and as a result; that as many as possible might meet and know Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, the rebirth of their bankrupt souls, and the eternal life I so richly have been given; that I might bring as many as possible with me to the next phase of existence in intimate communion with the God of the Bible. 

May our God be with you, go in peace.