Barton Jahn's Blog - Posts Tagged "inspiration"
The Cost of Following Jesus
In Luke 22:33 Peter says to Jesus: “Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.” Jesus then famously answers: “I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shall thrice deny that thou knowest me” (Lk. 22:34).
But in addition Jesus could have answered Peter: “You will not in the long-term forsake me…but it will cost you something…it will cost you giving up doing things your way.”
Instead of prison and death for Peter at that time…the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were about to engineer the greatest event in all of human history…maybe the greatest in all of eternity…the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for the redemption of sinners willing to repent…that would procure for believers eternal life and liberation from the bondage to sin…far above any plans of Peter to protect Jesus from physical harm…no matter how commendable Peter’s intentions might be.
The higher plans of God simply displaced and swept away the contrary thinking of Peter regarding the humanly unacceptable disclosure of Jesus to the disciples that he would soon be arrested and killed…incomprehensible to Peter at the time…but clearly understood by Peter after his fall in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the crucifixion and resurrection, and Peter’s personal interview with the risen Christ.
God’s ways truly are higher than our ways (Isa. 55:8-9)…which is an affirmation within the life-scripts of the people of faith within scripture that the Bible has a divine origin…which as a spiritual reality cannot be duplicated as a counterfeit. Because the ways of God reside at the top-end of the vertical graph-line spectrum of goodness and light…the top part of absolute goodness and brilliant pure light that God exclusively owns…no humanistic writer could or would invent the huge gap between Peter’s lack of understanding that fateful night in the courtyard of Caiaphas…and God’s plans for the salvation for mankind.
On the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-16)…Jesus in essence says to Paul: “Yes, I will lead you into the all-truth of John 16:13 beyond what you could have imagined…but it will cost you something…it will cost giving up doing things your way.”
This is the narrow gate that the multitudes walk past and miss on their way to the destruction of unbelief and self-sovereignty.
This is the cross of Christ that people living within worldly conventional normalcy and thinking cannot see in the narrative stories of faith in the Bible.
This is another of the compelling arguments for the divine origin of the Bible.
But in addition Jesus could have answered Peter: “You will not in the long-term forsake me…but it will cost you something…it will cost you giving up doing things your way.”
Instead of prison and death for Peter at that time…the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were about to engineer the greatest event in all of human history…maybe the greatest in all of eternity…the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for the redemption of sinners willing to repent…that would procure for believers eternal life and liberation from the bondage to sin…far above any plans of Peter to protect Jesus from physical harm…no matter how commendable Peter’s intentions might be.
The higher plans of God simply displaced and swept away the contrary thinking of Peter regarding the humanly unacceptable disclosure of Jesus to the disciples that he would soon be arrested and killed…incomprehensible to Peter at the time…but clearly understood by Peter after his fall in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the crucifixion and resurrection, and Peter’s personal interview with the risen Christ.
God’s ways truly are higher than our ways (Isa. 55:8-9)…which is an affirmation within the life-scripts of the people of faith within scripture that the Bible has a divine origin…which as a spiritual reality cannot be duplicated as a counterfeit. Because the ways of God reside at the top-end of the vertical graph-line spectrum of goodness and light…the top part of absolute goodness and brilliant pure light that God exclusively owns…no humanistic writer could or would invent the huge gap between Peter’s lack of understanding that fateful night in the courtyard of Caiaphas…and God’s plans for the salvation for mankind.
On the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-16)…Jesus in essence says to Paul: “Yes, I will lead you into the all-truth of John 16:13 beyond what you could have imagined…but it will cost you something…it will cost giving up doing things your way.”
This is the narrow gate that the multitudes walk past and miss on their way to the destruction of unbelief and self-sovereignty.
This is the cross of Christ that people living within worldly conventional normalcy and thinking cannot see in the narrative stories of faith in the Bible.
This is another of the compelling arguments for the divine origin of the Bible.
Purpose and the Cross
The best example to illustrate the perfection of the purposes of God is the life-script of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. What is seamlessly perfect about the divinely composed life-plan of Jesus is that it is absolutely unselfish. Jesus is not leisurely sailing the Mediterranean Sea with people waiting upon Him to satisfy His every need. Everything that Jesus does is for us. Even though the suffering of the cross adds a new perspective to God’s reality that He never experienced before (Hebrews 5:7-9), there is no redemptive value for Jesus Christ on the cross, because Jesus does not need redemption from sin. Jesus is the perfect Lamb of God sacrifice for the sins of the world. The sacrifice on the cross is for us.
What is astounding is that God is so brilliantly creative that He can compose a life-script for the perfect Son of God Jesus Christ, which actually contains an element of challenging difficulty. God knew that we would have difficulty with the second half of the cross that requires our self-in-charge nature to be set aside so that God can effectively work with us. Jesus says in Luke 12:50 “But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am straightened till it be accomplished!” (KJV), not because, like us, Jesus is in need of character growth through adversity. Jesus is already divinely perfect.
In Luke 22:44, it is recorded that Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane went back a second time to “pray more earnestly.” This is beyond our comprehension. We would normally assume that everything Jesus did, especially prayer, was perfect the first time. In Luke 22:42 Jesus prays “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” How can God be so brilliantly creative to be able to write into the earthly experience of the divine Son of God Jesus, the element of difficult challenge which is totally foreign to the perfect nature of God, just so He could tell us He personally understands our own difficulty in picking up our cross in order to follow God? Even within the absolute perfection of the ways and purposes of God, the life-script of Jesus manages to contain God-challenging elements of difficulty written-in for our future consolation and encouragement. This touches me at the capacity of my intellect and the depth of my heart.
It is the precise and intricate ways and purposes of God that enlists our own in-built facility for purpose, which can be integrated by God into any set of current life circumstances and events. Whether we are a heart surgeon, congresswoman, appellate court judge, school teacher, auto mechanic, pastor of a small-town church, writer of Christian books, or housewife raising children, God can overlay and integrate His higher ways and purposes into our lives if we will surrender and yield our self-wills to Him in faith and trust. The deliverance and salvation of God within the challenges of life, expressed so beautifully throughout the Psalms, takes place within the plans of God, and not our own. Innate purpose translates into reality at the highest most glorious level when orchestrated and directed within the framework of a God-composed journey of faith.
Sometimes purpose and worldly conventional normalcy do not mix. Sometimes we cannot have both the risk-filled pursuit of truth and the security of conventional normalcy simultaneously within the dynamics of this broken world. Jesus, the Lamb-of-God sacrifice for the sins of the world can only die and be resurrected if His generation rejects and crucifies Him. Only God can knit together a meaningful and purposeful tapestry of the commendable aspects of the Protestant work ethic with the worldly incomprehensible, biblical journey of faith through the cross of Calvary.
All of the people of faith in the Bible gave up some measure of worldly conventional normalcy in following God’s life-script for them. This separates out and elevates the quality of purpose and meaning into a higher zone that only God can orchestrate. This highlights the wisdom of God in the area of purpose, and like the scriptural example of God composing a life-script for Jesus that contained challenging difficulty for our consolation, it reveals an imaginative creativity that is at the edge of perfection regarding brilliantly directed purpose. If even our hardships work an eternal glory in us that we cannot fully understand in the present moment, orchestrated, managed, and moderated by a loving and brilliantly wise God at the limits of perfection, this should bolster our faith and confidence when outward appearances seem close to hopeless.
The narrative stories of faith in the Bible tell us that God knows precisely what He is doing, dovetailed perfectly with the type and measure of purpose He has placed within us. Laws, rules, precepts, psalms of praise and encouragement, prophetic warnings, and historical events all occupy their place in the revelation of God to man. But the biblical narrative stories of faith demonstrate in action the will and ways of God within life-events to reveal His craftsmanship in the management of our journeys of faith and discovery.
What is astounding is that God is so brilliantly creative that He can compose a life-script for the perfect Son of God Jesus Christ, which actually contains an element of challenging difficulty. God knew that we would have difficulty with the second half of the cross that requires our self-in-charge nature to be set aside so that God can effectively work with us. Jesus says in Luke 12:50 “But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am straightened till it be accomplished!” (KJV), not because, like us, Jesus is in need of character growth through adversity. Jesus is already divinely perfect.
In Luke 22:44, it is recorded that Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane went back a second time to “pray more earnestly.” This is beyond our comprehension. We would normally assume that everything Jesus did, especially prayer, was perfect the first time. In Luke 22:42 Jesus prays “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” How can God be so brilliantly creative to be able to write into the earthly experience of the divine Son of God Jesus, the element of difficult challenge which is totally foreign to the perfect nature of God, just so He could tell us He personally understands our own difficulty in picking up our cross in order to follow God? Even within the absolute perfection of the ways and purposes of God, the life-script of Jesus manages to contain God-challenging elements of difficulty written-in for our future consolation and encouragement. This touches me at the capacity of my intellect and the depth of my heart.
It is the precise and intricate ways and purposes of God that enlists our own in-built facility for purpose, which can be integrated by God into any set of current life circumstances and events. Whether we are a heart surgeon, congresswoman, appellate court judge, school teacher, auto mechanic, pastor of a small-town church, writer of Christian books, or housewife raising children, God can overlay and integrate His higher ways and purposes into our lives if we will surrender and yield our self-wills to Him in faith and trust. The deliverance and salvation of God within the challenges of life, expressed so beautifully throughout the Psalms, takes place within the plans of God, and not our own. Innate purpose translates into reality at the highest most glorious level when orchestrated and directed within the framework of a God-composed journey of faith.
Sometimes purpose and worldly conventional normalcy do not mix. Sometimes we cannot have both the risk-filled pursuit of truth and the security of conventional normalcy simultaneously within the dynamics of this broken world. Jesus, the Lamb-of-God sacrifice for the sins of the world can only die and be resurrected if His generation rejects and crucifies Him. Only God can knit together a meaningful and purposeful tapestry of the commendable aspects of the Protestant work ethic with the worldly incomprehensible, biblical journey of faith through the cross of Calvary.
All of the people of faith in the Bible gave up some measure of worldly conventional normalcy in following God’s life-script for them. This separates out and elevates the quality of purpose and meaning into a higher zone that only God can orchestrate. This highlights the wisdom of God in the area of purpose, and like the scriptural example of God composing a life-script for Jesus that contained challenging difficulty for our consolation, it reveals an imaginative creativity that is at the edge of perfection regarding brilliantly directed purpose. If even our hardships work an eternal glory in us that we cannot fully understand in the present moment, orchestrated, managed, and moderated by a loving and brilliantly wise God at the limits of perfection, this should bolster our faith and confidence when outward appearances seem close to hopeless.
The narrative stories of faith in the Bible tell us that God knows precisely what He is doing, dovetailed perfectly with the type and measure of purpose He has placed within us. Laws, rules, precepts, psalms of praise and encouragement, prophetic warnings, and historical events all occupy their place in the revelation of God to man. But the biblical narrative stories of faith demonstrate in action the will and ways of God within life-events to reveal His craftsmanship in the management of our journeys of faith and discovery.
In This Book
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
In this book, I attempt to add some commonsense Christian apologetic arguments into the ongoing debate. Some such topics are:
First, is there a persuasive rationale to explain the humility of Jesus…above and outside of the standard and perfectly valid explanation that this is simply part of the divine character of God?
Is there an ingenious, underlying theme within the humility of Jesus that transcends far above the imagination of human literary invention…and at the same time serves as inspiration for Christians?
Does the humility component of the life-script of Jesus Christ surgically divide out and expose the negative aspect of rebellious self-sovereignty…resulting in the totally unjustified rejection and non-valuing of the Son of God Jesus…in a way that forever separates out the moral downside of: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6)…as demonstrated clearly through the cross of Christ at Calvary (Jn. 15:18-25)?
Second, how would anyone other than God compose a life-script for a perfect person Jesus Christ that gets Him to the cross? Is this idea far too original and innovative…as to fall clearly outside of human literary imagination…and therefore be divine in its origin?
What faulty, highlighted aspects of the human character would be accurately identified in this divine life-script composition…that would infuriate worldly conventional thinking to such a degree in first-century Israel…that would get a perfect person Jesus all the way to the cross…and not to mere house arrest, exile, or censure?
Third, how could anyone other than God compose a life-script complex enough for Jesus Christ the Son of God…that results in His broken heart on the cross (blood and water coming out of His pierced side…a modern medical description of a ruptured heart…John 19:34)?
How do you break the heart of God…as humanistically invented literary fiction…without at the same time violating the very thing that worldly conventional normalcy and thinking detests the most…that wants to sweep under the rug and ignore at all cost…the acknowledging of the existence of human sin and self-centeredness… heartbreakingly absorbed as a mass of evil and human wrongdoing…by Jesus on the cross as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin?
Fourth, where does the delicate balance of belief and unbelief come from? Why isn’t this balance overwhelmed in favor of one direction or the other?
Fifth, what explains the odd existence of the two main contrasting worldviews…self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty…for human beings alone?
This dichotomy clearly does not originate from nature. Lions display only one lifestyle habit…there are not two different competing approaches to being a lion. The same goes for every living creature in nature. For every living creature each lifestyle habit is distinctly unique…but uniform throughout that creature type…for lions, cheetahs, leopards, tigers, elephants, giraffes, alligators, and zebras, for example.
Yet humans have two optional worldviews to freely choose from…self-sovereignty or God-sovereignty…both radically different in the course and purpose of our lives. The complexity of the differences that divide these two worldviews is far beyond any plausible explanation of their origin by way of the naturalistic, gradual trial-and-error evolution of material particles and energy as asserted in the theoretical framework of Darwinism.
In this book, I attempt to add some commonsense Christian apologetic arguments into the ongoing debate. Some such topics are:
First, is there a persuasive rationale to explain the humility of Jesus…above and outside of the standard and perfectly valid explanation that this is simply part of the divine character of God?
Is there an ingenious, underlying theme within the humility of Jesus that transcends far above the imagination of human literary invention…and at the same time serves as inspiration for Christians?
Does the humility component of the life-script of Jesus Christ surgically divide out and expose the negative aspect of rebellious self-sovereignty…resulting in the totally unjustified rejection and non-valuing of the Son of God Jesus…in a way that forever separates out the moral downside of: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6)…as demonstrated clearly through the cross of Christ at Calvary (Jn. 15:18-25)?
Second, how would anyone other than God compose a life-script for a perfect person Jesus Christ that gets Him to the cross? Is this idea far too original and innovative…as to fall clearly outside of human literary imagination…and therefore be divine in its origin?
What faulty, highlighted aspects of the human character would be accurately identified in this divine life-script composition…that would infuriate worldly conventional thinking to such a degree in first-century Israel…that would get a perfect person Jesus all the way to the cross…and not to mere house arrest, exile, or censure?
Third, how could anyone other than God compose a life-script complex enough for Jesus Christ the Son of God…that results in His broken heart on the cross (blood and water coming out of His pierced side…a modern medical description of a ruptured heart…John 19:34)?
How do you break the heart of God…as humanistically invented literary fiction…without at the same time violating the very thing that worldly conventional normalcy and thinking detests the most…that wants to sweep under the rug and ignore at all cost…the acknowledging of the existence of human sin and self-centeredness… heartbreakingly absorbed as a mass of evil and human wrongdoing…by Jesus on the cross as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin?
Fourth, where does the delicate balance of belief and unbelief come from? Why isn’t this balance overwhelmed in favor of one direction or the other?
Fifth, what explains the odd existence of the two main contrasting worldviews…self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty…for human beings alone?
This dichotomy clearly does not originate from nature. Lions display only one lifestyle habit…there are not two different competing approaches to being a lion. The same goes for every living creature in nature. For every living creature each lifestyle habit is distinctly unique…but uniform throughout that creature type…for lions, cheetahs, leopards, tigers, elephants, giraffes, alligators, and zebras, for example.
Yet humans have two optional worldviews to freely choose from…self-sovereignty or God-sovereignty…both radically different in the course and purpose of our lives. The complexity of the differences that divide these two worldviews is far beyond any plausible explanation of their origin by way of the naturalistic, gradual trial-and-error evolution of material particles and energy as asserted in the theoretical framework of Darwinism.
Proof does not Produce Biblical-Quality Faith
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
Coming back to my discussion with the agnostic/atheist man insisting on objective, visual, foolproof evidence for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity…for Christians the answer to this issue is both easy and difficult.
If Jesus a few days after the resurrection walked down the middle of main street and right into the temple in Jerusalem…then like doubting Thomas all of the common people along with the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes could examine His wounds and observe His resurrected new body…and accept as proof that Jesus is the promised Messiah and the Son of God.
But accepting the visual evidence…producing absolute knowledge like two plus two equals four…or the existence of the noonday sun…accepting the evidence that Jesus is the divine Son of God is not the same as being willing to follow Him.
The Pharisees and scribes would have looked at the resurrected Jesus…talked with Him…examined His healed wounds…and then said: “Great…good for you…nothing has changed in our minds as a result of this newest miracle of yours…we still choose not to follow you…we will continue to go our own way”
For some unscrupulous and dishonest merchants selling their wares in the town marketplace…two-plus-two does not equal four…but five…a practice of “deceitful weights” denounced in the Old Testament in Proverbs and by the prophet Micah (Prov. 20:23; Mic. 6:11).
Having a system of standard, empirical weights does not prevent the willful and determined abandonment of integrity through the misuse of deceitful weights…a successful yet dishonest practice designed to work around…to circumvent…to ignore the real facts (standard weights) in business transactions.
Absolute knowledge by visual, empirical observation does not address the basic problem…does not displace, remove, or shift the mindset of self-sovereignty…over into God-sovereignty.
Jesus walking into the temple in Jerusalem after His resurrection…offering absolute proof of His divinity in physically rising from the dead…surprisingly does not change the inner man…does not equate to everyone freely choosing to make Him Lord and Master of their lives.
After the resurrection…revealing Himself to the Pharisees and scribes would not have produced biblical faith…defined as willingly allowing God to displace our ways with His higher ways…as ancient in Jewish history as the calling of Abraham to leave Haran and go to Canaan…as basic to Judaism as it gets…and fundamental to the Christian concept of picking up our cross to follow Jesus.
Choosing to follow God…by purposeful, intentionally creative design…will always be a free-will, take-it-or-leave-it option…in first-century Jerusalem, in the present-day, and for all eternity in heaven.
This is the remarkably sublime beauty of the free-will, free-thinking, moral reasoning, non-robots that God created humans to be…with or without absolute, visual, foolproof evidence of His existence (Jn. 20:29).
The spiritual mystery of autonomous rebellion is therefore one of the key moral issues under examination in this life and this broken world.
A person does not have to be a scholar to see in the Bible and to experience first-hand…that God initially takes people having hidden potential…yet at the start of their calling are broken, lost, and aimless in life (Mt. 9:10-13)…and through the divinely supportive respect and acceptance over time of salvation, redemption, and the life-altering insertion of a God-composed adventure of faith…aided and energized by the Holy Spirit…turns them into something vastly better than they could have previously imagined.
This is one of the main themes of the Bible. Some people will accept God’s lead and follow Him into their destinies…others will push God away and follow their own course.
This in itself should be a telling argument against the random-chance naturalism of self-sovereign worldly conventional thinking…by virtue of the sheer inexplicability of the origin of the concept of biblical faith and its persistent longevity.
Naturalism, if true should produce one monotonous, homogeneous human mindset…belief or unbelief…one lifestyle habit per creature type…like the rest of the living world.
This should tell us…that as human beings…we are different (Gen. 1:26-27).
The complexity of the information content, the innovative originality of the main concepts, and the utter crash and collision with worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…makes a compelling commonsense apologetic case in itself for the divine origin of the journeys of faith recorded in the Bible…above and beyond humanistic literary invention.
Coming back to my discussion with the agnostic/atheist man insisting on objective, visual, foolproof evidence for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity…for Christians the answer to this issue is both easy and difficult.
If Jesus a few days after the resurrection walked down the middle of main street and right into the temple in Jerusalem…then like doubting Thomas all of the common people along with the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes could examine His wounds and observe His resurrected new body…and accept as proof that Jesus is the promised Messiah and the Son of God.
But accepting the visual evidence…producing absolute knowledge like two plus two equals four…or the existence of the noonday sun…accepting the evidence that Jesus is the divine Son of God is not the same as being willing to follow Him.
The Pharisees and scribes would have looked at the resurrected Jesus…talked with Him…examined His healed wounds…and then said: “Great…good for you…nothing has changed in our minds as a result of this newest miracle of yours…we still choose not to follow you…we will continue to go our own way”
For some unscrupulous and dishonest merchants selling their wares in the town marketplace…two-plus-two does not equal four…but five…a practice of “deceitful weights” denounced in the Old Testament in Proverbs and by the prophet Micah (Prov. 20:23; Mic. 6:11).
Having a system of standard, empirical weights does not prevent the willful and determined abandonment of integrity through the misuse of deceitful weights…a successful yet dishonest practice designed to work around…to circumvent…to ignore the real facts (standard weights) in business transactions.
Absolute knowledge by visual, empirical observation does not address the basic problem…does not displace, remove, or shift the mindset of self-sovereignty…over into God-sovereignty.
Jesus walking into the temple in Jerusalem after His resurrection…offering absolute proof of His divinity in physically rising from the dead…surprisingly does not change the inner man…does not equate to everyone freely choosing to make Him Lord and Master of their lives.
After the resurrection…revealing Himself to the Pharisees and scribes would not have produced biblical faith…defined as willingly allowing God to displace our ways with His higher ways…as ancient in Jewish history as the calling of Abraham to leave Haran and go to Canaan…as basic to Judaism as it gets…and fundamental to the Christian concept of picking up our cross to follow Jesus.
Choosing to follow God…by purposeful, intentionally creative design…will always be a free-will, take-it-or-leave-it option…in first-century Jerusalem, in the present-day, and for all eternity in heaven.
This is the remarkably sublime beauty of the free-will, free-thinking, moral reasoning, non-robots that God created humans to be…with or without absolute, visual, foolproof evidence of His existence (Jn. 20:29).
The spiritual mystery of autonomous rebellion is therefore one of the key moral issues under examination in this life and this broken world.
A person does not have to be a scholar to see in the Bible and to experience first-hand…that God initially takes people having hidden potential…yet at the start of their calling are broken, lost, and aimless in life (Mt. 9:10-13)…and through the divinely supportive respect and acceptance over time of salvation, redemption, and the life-altering insertion of a God-composed adventure of faith…aided and energized by the Holy Spirit…turns them into something vastly better than they could have previously imagined.
This is one of the main themes of the Bible. Some people will accept God’s lead and follow Him into their destinies…others will push God away and follow their own course.
This in itself should be a telling argument against the random-chance naturalism of self-sovereign worldly conventional thinking…by virtue of the sheer inexplicability of the origin of the concept of biblical faith and its persistent longevity.
Naturalism, if true should produce one monotonous, homogeneous human mindset…belief or unbelief…one lifestyle habit per creature type…like the rest of the living world.
This should tell us…that as human beings…we are different (Gen. 1:26-27).
The complexity of the information content, the innovative originality of the main concepts, and the utter crash and collision with worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…makes a compelling commonsense apologetic case in itself for the divine origin of the journeys of faith recorded in the Bible…above and beyond humanistic literary invention.
Pushing Power Downward
From The Second Half of the Cross
The tragic irony in all of this, on a truly galactic scale, is that God does not mind sharing power. God is not only willing, but anxious to impart spiritual power to human beings (Lk. 9:1-2). It is God who created us with the capacity for abstract thought, logical reasoning, and moral judgment.
A walk of faith through a life-script of varied situations and circumstances, carefully designed and orchestrated by God, is a guided apprenticeship in the right use of personal freedom and power. The examples of the people of faith in the Bible are a demonstration of God’s enlightened management approach of pushing power downward into the lives of His faithful servants.
The management approach of pushing power downward, as a method of training, is an extraordinary trait to find within the character of God. The God who created our universe is an unequaled perfectionist. In our human experience, one of the most difficult things for a perfectionist to do is to delegate. Yet God works in partnership with Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Deborah, Gideon, David, Esther, Daniel, Peter, Paul, and others through unique and unusual story-lines in the Bible in order to give them the opportunity to experience the right use of power under direct apprenticeship to God.
God composes creatively different life-scripts, calls people by His Spirit, and orchestrates adventures of faith so that people can grow and stretch into the potentially Christ-like people that God intended us to be when He created us. The fact that God enlists people into all sorts of varied enterprises in the Bible, which He could undoubtedly do infinitely better solely by Himself, tells us there is a profound purpose behind God joining Himself with us along a walk of faith through life.
The writing of the Bible is a clear example of this concept of God pushing power downward. The Bible has nearly 40 different authors, writing over a span of 1,500 years. These writers were prophets, kings, shepherds, fishermen, a physician, and other common people with varied backgrounds. They wrote from different geographical locations, about different challenges and circumstances, and through the lens of different cultural settings. The fact that these men produced a consistent and cohesive message has enormously persuasive apologetic value in arguing for the divine inspiration of the Bible.
But it also demonstrates God’s willingness and ability to spiritually joint-venture with people to produce something as lofty as Holy Scripture. Jesus says in Matthew 5:18 that the scriptures are so precise that not one jot or one tittle (Hebrew punctuation marks) shall pass from the Law until all be fulfilled. Jesus says in John 10:35 that the scriptures cannot be broken.
That God can and would enlist human participation in the writing of the inspired word of God called the Bible, which mirrors accurately in written words the actual living expression of the Word of God embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, tells us plainly of God’s intention and ability to push power downward effectively into the hearts and minds of faithful men and women of God.
The fact that God created us with this “in-His-image” capacity is the clearest evidence of His loving desire to interact with us on the elevated plane of being able to responsibly, thoughtfully, and rightly use power.
At the outer limits of divine perfection self-centeredness goes away. One stereotype in the business world is of the manager who keeps information to themselves. In any organization knowledge is power. But the servant-leader approach informs, trains, and empowers others. The servant-leader creates business reports and sends out memos with the aim to share information.
The servant-leader approach is a management philosophy of proactive thoughtfulness intended to liberate subordinates from complete dependence upon the all-informed and all-knowing manager.
The servant-leader, who manages to get people involved in the goals of the enterprise through personal participation in decision-making through shared leadership based upon trust, when done wisely usually creates highly motivated, enthusiastic, and committed workers. The servant-leader approach is the exact opposite of the autocrat who keeps all of the information and knowledge, and therefore the power to themselves.
Lucifer wants to live out his dream of being god at the expense of others. Lucifer’s approach is egocentric and requires the sacrifice of others to achieve his goals. By contrast God wants to fulfill His will and way by enabling others to actualize their created potential through free-will participation, a personal relationship, and wise and prudent delegation of authority. God’s approach is based upon unselfish divine love that will sacrifice Himself on the cross for the benefit and well-being of others.
The Bible set into words, and the journeys-of-faith callings portrayed therein, are the epitome of perfect unselfishness pushing power downward. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is this expression in living form. The gift of the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us into all truth from within our born-again spirits is at the height of well-intentioned thoughtfulness in the deepest moral sense.
A God-composed biblical journey of faith is an individual one-on-one training mission. God’s program is to set-up the circumstances unique to each one of our lives, whereby we can learn through first-hand experience to reach the point in wisdom that we knowingly and willingly choose the right, the noble, and the commendable course of conduct as a natural response of our improving Christ-like characters.
God wants us to grow into mature sons and daughters of light, who can react in partnership with His Spirit to every situation in this fallen world environment with the quality of character that will produce joy and peace for ourselves, for others, and for God, now and for all eternity.
Lucifer’s classically deceptive temptation in the Garden, that people apart from God could become “as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5), was of the most destructive and diabolical nature. Lucifer had nothing to offer that was genuine on its own merits. Lucifer saw the good thing that God had intended for mankind, seized the opportunity, and actually stole God’s idea, corrupting it for his own purposes.
By preemptively stealing God’s creative idea of a journey of faith, before God could establish a solid relationship with Adam and Eve, Lucifer effectively short-circuited the beneficial intentions of God’s program.
By replacing God with “self” in the spiritual equation, Lucifer created a counterfeit “journey of self” to match his own fallen attitude of self-worship, that is completely out-of-sync with the original plan of God for mankind.
This is why the temptation in the Garden was a deception and a lie, rather than a commendably viable alternative approach to life. Lucifer stole and corrupted God’s idea of a joint-venture walk of faith with Him, making it into an autonomous and solitary “walk of self,” because Lucifer does not have a better plan of his own other than rebellious revolt fueled by pride-filled ambition. In reality there is no alternate plan for life in all of existence.
The “walk of self” is merely a lower, fallen, corrupted version of the higher walk-of-faith fellowship that God created us with the capacity to enjoy. The current, worldly conventional modern-day version of a “walk of self” displaces the walk of faith that God designed for us as the vehicle whereby we could get to know Him.
By getting the human race to depart from God through his upside-down deception of making rebellion as autonomous individuals appear as if it was commendably liberating, Lucifer effectively erased the apprenticeship training program that God had planned for us. By going-it-on-our-own apart from the Holy Spirit, we shortchange ourselves from the character lessons that would enable us to happily and responsibly exercise our God-given capacity to learn to use power rightly for the good of ourselves and others.
Lucifer wanted power for its own sake, without being accountable to God or anyone other than himself. By getting mankind to join his rebellion against God, Lucifer has instilled this same lust for power within the character of fallen mankind. This explains why there is so much push-back against the gospel message of repentance, spiritual rebirth, and surrendering our will and way to God.
Being broken upon the living Stone that is Christ (Mt. 21:44) means giving up power. But what is so sadly deceptive about sin, is that in willingly giving up self-sovereignty, the Spirit-led Christian is really only transferring power over to Jesus Christ, who intended all along to give back this self-same power to us, repackaged in a beneficially crafted individual journey of faith.
This ingenious creation of a walk of faith is a divinely guided set of life circumstances, originally designed to enable us to learn to use the power of our individual gifts and abilities properly.
The irony is that it is Jesus Christ who created mankind with the express capacity to be able to use spiritual power rightly and correctly. Sitting upon the throne of our lives in spiritual rebellion frustrates the loving intention of God to fulfill our created purpose.
The tragic irony in all of this, on a truly galactic scale, is that God does not mind sharing power. God is not only willing, but anxious to impart spiritual power to human beings (Lk. 9:1-2). It is God who created us with the capacity for abstract thought, logical reasoning, and moral judgment.
A walk of faith through a life-script of varied situations and circumstances, carefully designed and orchestrated by God, is a guided apprenticeship in the right use of personal freedom and power. The examples of the people of faith in the Bible are a demonstration of God’s enlightened management approach of pushing power downward into the lives of His faithful servants.
The management approach of pushing power downward, as a method of training, is an extraordinary trait to find within the character of God. The God who created our universe is an unequaled perfectionist. In our human experience, one of the most difficult things for a perfectionist to do is to delegate. Yet God works in partnership with Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Deborah, Gideon, David, Esther, Daniel, Peter, Paul, and others through unique and unusual story-lines in the Bible in order to give them the opportunity to experience the right use of power under direct apprenticeship to God.
God composes creatively different life-scripts, calls people by His Spirit, and orchestrates adventures of faith so that people can grow and stretch into the potentially Christ-like people that God intended us to be when He created us. The fact that God enlists people into all sorts of varied enterprises in the Bible, which He could undoubtedly do infinitely better solely by Himself, tells us there is a profound purpose behind God joining Himself with us along a walk of faith through life.
The writing of the Bible is a clear example of this concept of God pushing power downward. The Bible has nearly 40 different authors, writing over a span of 1,500 years. These writers were prophets, kings, shepherds, fishermen, a physician, and other common people with varied backgrounds. They wrote from different geographical locations, about different challenges and circumstances, and through the lens of different cultural settings. The fact that these men produced a consistent and cohesive message has enormously persuasive apologetic value in arguing for the divine inspiration of the Bible.
But it also demonstrates God’s willingness and ability to spiritually joint-venture with people to produce something as lofty as Holy Scripture. Jesus says in Matthew 5:18 that the scriptures are so precise that not one jot or one tittle (Hebrew punctuation marks) shall pass from the Law until all be fulfilled. Jesus says in John 10:35 that the scriptures cannot be broken.
That God can and would enlist human participation in the writing of the inspired word of God called the Bible, which mirrors accurately in written words the actual living expression of the Word of God embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, tells us plainly of God’s intention and ability to push power downward effectively into the hearts and minds of faithful men and women of God.
The fact that God created us with this “in-His-image” capacity is the clearest evidence of His loving desire to interact with us on the elevated plane of being able to responsibly, thoughtfully, and rightly use power.
At the outer limits of divine perfection self-centeredness goes away. One stereotype in the business world is of the manager who keeps information to themselves. In any organization knowledge is power. But the servant-leader approach informs, trains, and empowers others. The servant-leader creates business reports and sends out memos with the aim to share information.
The servant-leader approach is a management philosophy of proactive thoughtfulness intended to liberate subordinates from complete dependence upon the all-informed and all-knowing manager.
The servant-leader, who manages to get people involved in the goals of the enterprise through personal participation in decision-making through shared leadership based upon trust, when done wisely usually creates highly motivated, enthusiastic, and committed workers. The servant-leader approach is the exact opposite of the autocrat who keeps all of the information and knowledge, and therefore the power to themselves.
Lucifer wants to live out his dream of being god at the expense of others. Lucifer’s approach is egocentric and requires the sacrifice of others to achieve his goals. By contrast God wants to fulfill His will and way by enabling others to actualize their created potential through free-will participation, a personal relationship, and wise and prudent delegation of authority. God’s approach is based upon unselfish divine love that will sacrifice Himself on the cross for the benefit and well-being of others.
The Bible set into words, and the journeys-of-faith callings portrayed therein, are the epitome of perfect unselfishness pushing power downward. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is this expression in living form. The gift of the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us into all truth from within our born-again spirits is at the height of well-intentioned thoughtfulness in the deepest moral sense.
A God-composed biblical journey of faith is an individual one-on-one training mission. God’s program is to set-up the circumstances unique to each one of our lives, whereby we can learn through first-hand experience to reach the point in wisdom that we knowingly and willingly choose the right, the noble, and the commendable course of conduct as a natural response of our improving Christ-like characters.
God wants us to grow into mature sons and daughters of light, who can react in partnership with His Spirit to every situation in this fallen world environment with the quality of character that will produce joy and peace for ourselves, for others, and for God, now and for all eternity.
Lucifer’s classically deceptive temptation in the Garden, that people apart from God could become “as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5), was of the most destructive and diabolical nature. Lucifer had nothing to offer that was genuine on its own merits. Lucifer saw the good thing that God had intended for mankind, seized the opportunity, and actually stole God’s idea, corrupting it for his own purposes.
By preemptively stealing God’s creative idea of a journey of faith, before God could establish a solid relationship with Adam and Eve, Lucifer effectively short-circuited the beneficial intentions of God’s program.
By replacing God with “self” in the spiritual equation, Lucifer created a counterfeit “journey of self” to match his own fallen attitude of self-worship, that is completely out-of-sync with the original plan of God for mankind.
This is why the temptation in the Garden was a deception and a lie, rather than a commendably viable alternative approach to life. Lucifer stole and corrupted God’s idea of a joint-venture walk of faith with Him, making it into an autonomous and solitary “walk of self,” because Lucifer does not have a better plan of his own other than rebellious revolt fueled by pride-filled ambition. In reality there is no alternate plan for life in all of existence.
The “walk of self” is merely a lower, fallen, corrupted version of the higher walk-of-faith fellowship that God created us with the capacity to enjoy. The current, worldly conventional modern-day version of a “walk of self” displaces the walk of faith that God designed for us as the vehicle whereby we could get to know Him.
By getting the human race to depart from God through his upside-down deception of making rebellion as autonomous individuals appear as if it was commendably liberating, Lucifer effectively erased the apprenticeship training program that God had planned for us. By going-it-on-our-own apart from the Holy Spirit, we shortchange ourselves from the character lessons that would enable us to happily and responsibly exercise our God-given capacity to learn to use power rightly for the good of ourselves and others.
Lucifer wanted power for its own sake, without being accountable to God or anyone other than himself. By getting mankind to join his rebellion against God, Lucifer has instilled this same lust for power within the character of fallen mankind. This explains why there is so much push-back against the gospel message of repentance, spiritual rebirth, and surrendering our will and way to God.
Being broken upon the living Stone that is Christ (Mt. 21:44) means giving up power. But what is so sadly deceptive about sin, is that in willingly giving up self-sovereignty, the Spirit-led Christian is really only transferring power over to Jesus Christ, who intended all along to give back this self-same power to us, repackaged in a beneficially crafted individual journey of faith.
This ingenious creation of a walk of faith is a divinely guided set of life circumstances, originally designed to enable us to learn to use the power of our individual gifts and abilities properly.
The irony is that it is Jesus Christ who created mankind with the express capacity to be able to use spiritual power rightly and correctly. Sitting upon the throne of our lives in spiritual rebellion frustrates the loving intention of God to fulfill our created purpose.
