Barton Jahn's Blog - Posts Tagged "religion"
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.
God Does Things His Way for our Benefit...Part 2
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
God doing things His way…displacing our way…is a uniquely biblical concept that will infuriate and enrage people committed to self-sovereign self-rulership according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This conflict between self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty is in part what got Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. The religious leaders in Jerusalem did not want to do faith God’s way. They wanted to do faith their way.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most emphatic demonstration of this chasm separating self-sovereignty from God-sovereignty.
We need at this point a few more biblical examples before moving on to explain why this is the case…and why this is an important commonsense apologetic argument for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity and the Bible.
Joseph in Egypt appears…towards the end of his 13-year, God-composed MBA program in management and leadership…to be at the point just before the revelation of Pharaoh’s dream that propels Joseph to the top of Egyptian society as governor…to take matters into his own hands…to again like Abraham and Sarah attempt on his own to help-out God…a God who seems at that point in time to be asleep in fulfilling the two earlier prophetic dreams given to Joseph as a teenager back in his homeland Canaan.
In attempting to enlist the help of the butler and baker to speak to Pharaoh upon their release…on behalf of Joseph to plead his innocence (Gen. 40:14-15)…Joseph is revealing at this late period in his preparation…unknowingly to Joseph…to soon become governor of Egypt…to help-along the fulfillment of his earlier prophetic dreams by doing things his way…by gaining control of the course of his life.
I do not know what plans Joseph may have had in mind after successfully obtaining his release from prison through the positive intervention of the butler or baker…but this action would have totally spoiled the life-script purpose…the outcome that his God-composed storyline honed-in on…to become governor of Egypt and save a large number of people from starvation during a widespread famine…but also to create a regionally catastrophic context big enough to bring his family into Egypt according to the long-range plans of God…outside of the narrowly focused contemplation of Joseph at the time.
Here again, the outcome of a God-composed journey of faith required a supernatural solution beyond the reach of Joseph to imagine, contrive, or actualize into being.
Skipping ahead to the New Testament, Peter had his own ideas about preventing the religious leaders in Jerusalem from harming Jesus…a mindset completely admirable and commendable according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…but as off-course and misguided as is imaginable concerning Jesus Christ the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world”…destined from time immemorial to be the Savior and Redeemer of mankind through the cross on Calvary Hill.
That Peter goes out from the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest during the night trial of Jesus…and weeps bitterly over his failure to stand courageously alongside Jesus during this ordeal…only points out the stark difference between our ways and God’s higher ways…higher ways in total contradiction to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking (Mt. 16:21-23).
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a clear evidence that God is going to do things His way…for the highest and best reasons…even if no one at the time understands what is happening (1 Pet. 1:3).
The calling and ministry of the apostle Paul has to be one of the most brilliant examples of this fork-in-the-road departure from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…validating by innovative originality and foresight its divine origin.
The entire conversion and subsequent ministry of Saul/Paul to become the Christian missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world…is based upon the most radical transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…possibly recorded in the human history of the world.
Paul is persecuting the early Christian church according to his way…his ideas for the purity and survival of his Jewish religious tradition…totally unaware until Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Messiah and Savior…the divine Son of God.
In a split-second of time…God instantaneously flips the highly educated yet culturally prejudiced, rabbinical Pharisee Saul/Paul into a new, different person now having the deepest personal humility in relation to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles he will soon be sent out to evangelize through the powerfully persuasive perspective of his own personal conversion experience.
By an ingenious stroke of God…Paul is now both perfectly suited and qualified to take the new gospel message of hope and deliverance…the real truth about Jesus Christ…both scholastically and experientially out to the larger Greco-Roman world.
From the time of Damascus onward Paul can no longer culturally look down his nose at…and reject along with many of his countrymen…these heathen Gentiles according to the social and religious prejudices of the time…because their false worship of dumb idols as Gentiles cannot possibly exceed Paul’s own, individually misguided persecution of Jesus and the early Christian church.
Paul sees the immense grace and forgiveness of God instantly applied to his own life…now available and being freely offered to the Gentiles through faith rather than the works of the law…like no other Jew of his time with the possible exception of Peter.
No human could or would invent this brilliantly original and innovative life-script for Paul…having the totally unconventional element of God doing things His way.
In this brief account, we have skipped over Joshua, Gideon, Hannah, Ruth, Job, Jonah, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, and Moses…to name only a few…who would probably have preferred at the time to do things their way according to worldly conventional thinking…rather than God’s more risky supernatural way…in their adventures of faith.
God doing things His way…displacing our way…is a uniquely biblical concept that will infuriate and enrage people committed to self-sovereign self-rulership according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This conflict between self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty is in part what got Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. The religious leaders in Jerusalem did not want to do faith God’s way. They wanted to do faith their way.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most emphatic demonstration of this chasm separating self-sovereignty from God-sovereignty.
We need at this point a few more biblical examples before moving on to explain why this is the case…and why this is an important commonsense apologetic argument for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity and the Bible.
Joseph in Egypt appears…towards the end of his 13-year, God-composed MBA program in management and leadership…to be at the point just before the revelation of Pharaoh’s dream that propels Joseph to the top of Egyptian society as governor…to take matters into his own hands…to again like Abraham and Sarah attempt on his own to help-out God…a God who seems at that point in time to be asleep in fulfilling the two earlier prophetic dreams given to Joseph as a teenager back in his homeland Canaan.
In attempting to enlist the help of the butler and baker to speak to Pharaoh upon their release…on behalf of Joseph to plead his innocence (Gen. 40:14-15)…Joseph is revealing at this late period in his preparation…unknowingly to Joseph…to soon become governor of Egypt…to help-along the fulfillment of his earlier prophetic dreams by doing things his way…by gaining control of the course of his life.
I do not know what plans Joseph may have had in mind after successfully obtaining his release from prison through the positive intervention of the butler or baker…but this action would have totally spoiled the life-script purpose…the outcome that his God-composed storyline honed-in on…to become governor of Egypt and save a large number of people from starvation during a widespread famine…but also to create a regionally catastrophic context big enough to bring his family into Egypt according to the long-range plans of God…outside of the narrowly focused contemplation of Joseph at the time.
Here again, the outcome of a God-composed journey of faith required a supernatural solution beyond the reach of Joseph to imagine, contrive, or actualize into being.
Skipping ahead to the New Testament, Peter had his own ideas about preventing the religious leaders in Jerusalem from harming Jesus…a mindset completely admirable and commendable according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…but as off-course and misguided as is imaginable concerning Jesus Christ the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world”…destined from time immemorial to be the Savior and Redeemer of mankind through the cross on Calvary Hill.
That Peter goes out from the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest during the night trial of Jesus…and weeps bitterly over his failure to stand courageously alongside Jesus during this ordeal…only points out the stark difference between our ways and God’s higher ways…higher ways in total contradiction to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking (Mt. 16:21-23).
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a clear evidence that God is going to do things His way…for the highest and best reasons…even if no one at the time understands what is happening (1 Pet. 1:3).
The calling and ministry of the apostle Paul has to be one of the most brilliant examples of this fork-in-the-road departure from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…validating by innovative originality and foresight its divine origin.
The entire conversion and subsequent ministry of Saul/Paul to become the Christian missionary evangelist to the first-century Greco-Roman world…is based upon the most radical transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…possibly recorded in the human history of the world.
Paul is persecuting the early Christian church according to his way…his ideas for the purity and survival of his Jewish religious tradition…totally unaware until Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Messiah and Savior…the divine Son of God.
In a split-second of time…God instantaneously flips the highly educated yet culturally prejudiced, rabbinical Pharisee Saul/Paul into a new, different person now having the deepest personal humility in relation to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles he will soon be sent out to evangelize through the powerfully persuasive perspective of his own personal conversion experience.
By an ingenious stroke of God…Paul is now both perfectly suited and qualified to take the new gospel message of hope and deliverance…the real truth about Jesus Christ…both scholastically and experientially out to the larger Greco-Roman world.
From the time of Damascus onward Paul can no longer culturally look down his nose at…and reject along with many of his countrymen…these heathen Gentiles according to the social and religious prejudices of the time…because their false worship of dumb idols as Gentiles cannot possibly exceed Paul’s own, individually misguided persecution of Jesus and the early Christian church.
Paul sees the immense grace and forgiveness of God instantly applied to his own life…now available and being freely offered to the Gentiles through faith rather than the works of the law…like no other Jew of his time with the possible exception of Peter.
No human could or would invent this brilliantly original and innovative life-script for Paul…having the totally unconventional element of God doing things His way.
In this brief account, we have skipped over Joshua, Gideon, Hannah, Ruth, Job, Jonah, David, Jeremiah, Elijah, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, and Moses…to name only a few…who would probably have preferred at the time to do things their way according to worldly conventional thinking…rather than God’s more risky supernatural way…in their adventures of faith.
God Does Things His Way for our Benefit...Part 3
From God Didn’t Create Robots: Commonsense Christian Apologetics
The hard truth I have discovered…along with tens or hundreds of millions of people experiencing biblical faith over the past centuries going back to Abraham…is that in the fulfillment of God’s promises to me in my own journey of faith…a part of me does not want God to do things His way within the elevated zone of the supernatural…I want things to progress more conventionally according to Bart’s way.
The cross of Jesus Christ applied to my life inserts a supernatural participation into the course of my life that brings with it goals and promises of God that are beyond my reach to self-fulfill…requiring all of the improvements of character…patience, trust, faith, surrender, flexibility, and giving God the benefit of the doubt (Heb. 11:1)…that in the process requires part of my way to die…to move aside…to make way for God’s higher ways.
But if we look hard enough…in these biblical stories of faith…God has a long-range plan that is above and outside of horizontally conventional thinking…above the aspirations and expectations…what we think we are entitled to…in terms of worldly conventional normalcy.
Yet the sacrifices made in every biblical narrative story of faith…the departures from normal aspirations and expectations…from Abraham onward…produces good for a large number of other people.
Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac his beloved son on Mount Moriah…stopped just in time by God with a shout out of heaven at the last moment…gives mankind a priceless and confirming foreglimpse of what God will do two thousand years later on Calvary Hill…God indeed providing a very special Lamb…His own Son…as a sacrifice for sin.
God’s higher ways for the life-script of Joseph…to prepare him to become governor of Egypt during the great famine…basically displaced 13 years of “normal” life according to horizontally conventional thinking…that Joseph might otherwise think he was entitled to.
Yet this divine insertion of God’s ways…removing altogether whatever alternative “normal” life Joseph might otherwise have lived…was and is a huge benefit to mankind in demonstrating not only the reality of the existence of God…but also the incredible ingenuity that accrues within a God-scripted adventure of faith when we choose God-sovereignty over self-sovereignty.
If we take this same model and apply it to every positive person of faith recorded in the Bible…we find the same overlay of the cross of Christ…God displacing our ways with His ways…for the benefit of ourselves and for a large number of other people.
This is the difficult part about true biblical faith…it involves the participation of the living God who wants to do things His way…for our benefit.
This may be the primary, fundamental explanation underlying the existence of our universe and our world.
If God can come through for me…and for you…in a clearly supernatural way involving fulfilled promises outside of our control…this confirms not only God’s existence beyond a shadow of a doubt…but also His competence in human life script-writing to match the brilliant design we see in the natural world all around us. This priceless discovery then becomes a reality that belongs to me…and to you…for all eternity.
This reality can only occur within the transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…inaccessible except through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and King (Mt. 4:17; Lk. 13:1-5; Jn. 8:24).
It does not exist anywhere else outside of the Bible.
This idea of God doing things His way in our lives…for our benefit…above and beyond our understanding at the time (Heb. 11:1)…according to a God-composed life-script individually crafted for us…is so far outside the bounds of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…so offensive and off-putting to the norms of sitting atop the thrones of our lives as autonomous, junior-gods “calling the shots”…that to ascribe this aspect of the biblical narrative stories of faith to be the product of human literary invention…is nonsensical.
The hard truth I have discovered…along with tens or hundreds of millions of people experiencing biblical faith over the past centuries going back to Abraham…is that in the fulfillment of God’s promises to me in my own journey of faith…a part of me does not want God to do things His way within the elevated zone of the supernatural…I want things to progress more conventionally according to Bart’s way.
The cross of Jesus Christ applied to my life inserts a supernatural participation into the course of my life that brings with it goals and promises of God that are beyond my reach to self-fulfill…requiring all of the improvements of character…patience, trust, faith, surrender, flexibility, and giving God the benefit of the doubt (Heb. 11:1)…that in the process requires part of my way to die…to move aside…to make way for God’s higher ways.
But if we look hard enough…in these biblical stories of faith…God has a long-range plan that is above and outside of horizontally conventional thinking…above the aspirations and expectations…what we think we are entitled to…in terms of worldly conventional normalcy.
Yet the sacrifices made in every biblical narrative story of faith…the departures from normal aspirations and expectations…from Abraham onward…produces good for a large number of other people.
Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac his beloved son on Mount Moriah…stopped just in time by God with a shout out of heaven at the last moment…gives mankind a priceless and confirming foreglimpse of what God will do two thousand years later on Calvary Hill…God indeed providing a very special Lamb…His own Son…as a sacrifice for sin.
God’s higher ways for the life-script of Joseph…to prepare him to become governor of Egypt during the great famine…basically displaced 13 years of “normal” life according to horizontally conventional thinking…that Joseph might otherwise think he was entitled to.
Yet this divine insertion of God’s ways…removing altogether whatever alternative “normal” life Joseph might otherwise have lived…was and is a huge benefit to mankind in demonstrating not only the reality of the existence of God…but also the incredible ingenuity that accrues within a God-scripted adventure of faith when we choose God-sovereignty over self-sovereignty.
If we take this same model and apply it to every positive person of faith recorded in the Bible…we find the same overlay of the cross of Christ…God displacing our ways with His ways…for the benefit of ourselves and for a large number of other people.
This is the difficult part about true biblical faith…it involves the participation of the living God who wants to do things His way…for our benefit.
This may be the primary, fundamental explanation underlying the existence of our universe and our world.
If God can come through for me…and for you…in a clearly supernatural way involving fulfilled promises outside of our control…this confirms not only God’s existence beyond a shadow of a doubt…but also His competence in human life script-writing to match the brilliant design we see in the natural world all around us. This priceless discovery then becomes a reality that belongs to me…and to you…for all eternity.
This reality can only occur within the transition from self-sovereignty to God-sovereignty…inaccessible except through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and King (Mt. 4:17; Lk. 13:1-5; Jn. 8:24).
It does not exist anywhere else outside of the Bible.
This idea of God doing things His way in our lives…for our benefit…above and beyond our understanding at the time (Heb. 11:1)…according to a God-composed life-script individually crafted for us…is so far outside the bounds of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…so offensive and off-putting to the norms of sitting atop the thrones of our lives as autonomous, junior-gods “calling the shots”…that to ascribe this aspect of the biblical narrative stories of faith to be the product of human literary invention…is nonsensical.
