Yes I am moving my blog site.  While Spaces offers some rich and accessable tools, some don't deliver as advertised.  Frustration is the goad to move one on.  I won't belaber the point though I am tempted.  At least there are no advertisements on the new site, for now. 

 

I also have a name change.  That won't change the focus much.  It is still my writing that reflects where I am coming from. 

 

I will leave this site up for a while.  Who knows things do change.  I am ever hopeful.

 

Please change your pointers to the new site called:

 

 

Christian Epignosis 

 

 http://christianepignosis.blogspot.com/

 

I want to thank all my readers for their patience.

 

in Christ

 

Dudely

What is your theology?  Do you just trust the Bible?  Do you depend on what you see and hear at Church to inform you about God and theology?  Does being a Christian depend on what you believe?  There are a vast number of systems of theology in this country.  Which one do you follow?  Do you know what it is and what influences it has over your view of life and the world around you?  What are the essentials of the Christian faith?  What are the non-essentials?  Is there any value in asking these questions in the first place?

Most of us don't pick our theology, we grow up in it.  Our theology is just with us and envelopes us.  It is a familiar blanket that keeps us warm and cozy.  The blanket might have some holes in it, but that's OK, it is old and well used so it is entitled.  How much of your theology is Christian and how much of it is simply the current philosophical trend of thought?  Is the world shaping your theology?  Are you comfortable with some of the conclusions that your theology draws? 

The average Christian would never think to ask these questions.  To many it would seem sacrilegious to do so.  Others will defend their theological system to the death while at the same time hardly knowing its roots and its implications. 

I have a love hate relationship with systematic theology.  At some points the systems seem to capture truth about God and about man that is vital to know.  At other times the theology comes to conclusions about us and God that simply don't line up with Scripture.  God will not allow Himself to be contained in some intellectual box that man constructs about Him. 

Jesus had a pretty simple approach.  Come follow me.  Who do you say I am?  I came to die for you?  I will pour out My Spirit upon you?  I come to bring you abundant life.  You will be one with me as I am one with the Father. 

God has revealed Himself in Scriptures and He continues to reveal Himself to those who would follow Him.  That reality for me stands above our systems of theology.  Our theology is ever changing.  God's truth does not change.  The more our understanding of God aligns with His Truth, the stronger will be our Christian witness and our walk with Him.  What we believe is important.  Who we believe in is infinitely more important. 

Truth is not of your own making.  Truth is not a product of your own efforts or actions.  Truth is not the product of consensus or community agreement.  The notion that your truth is right for you and my truth is right for me is a lie. Any view of truth that is derived from self is an illusion.  Such truth does not exist. 

Truth is transcendent and discoverable.  Truth exists. Truth is not of our making it is of God. 

Jesus tells us that He is the way the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father but by Him.  Simple truth.  God's truth. 

Is that a part of your theology?  Is this a part of your world view?  Do you live your life in total reliance on this being a statement of truth? 

If you reject this truth, what is your basis for doing so?  What is your standard?  What is your authority for doing so?  Ultimately a rejection of the truth is a rejection of Christ and an affirmation of self as the sole adjudicator of what is true. 

A lot of what you experience at Church today has it backwards.  The Church is often more a proponent of man's truth above God's truth.  The sad part is that the lambs are too docile to ask the hard questions that are required to challenge their leaders and teachers. 

During the Pope's visit I heard on several occasions form Catholic Fathers that there are many routs to God.  Over and over again I hear from the TV Protestant pastors a message of human potential and effort which is a direct teaching of existentialism.  We are so easily led astray.  Are you? 

Easter!  Easter is a celebration like no other.  Christianity is like no other religion.  We worship a risen, living God.  He died but He lives.  He is risen!.  He is risen indeed!

 

We owed a debt to God for our rejecting Him, but God sent His Son to walk this earth so that by faith in Him we could have our debt to God satisfied.  What we owed cost Him his life by hanging on a tree and suffering in our place for our sin.  Those of us who believe have died,  with Christ, when He died on that cross.  And our death and His would be for nothing if He had not risen on the third day and had not eventually ascended into heaven to present the blood of the cross to God our Father as payment for our sins.  When He rose, we rose with Him to a new life in Him.  We rose to a life that gives testimony to all that He is, Savior and Lord.

 

We live in a world where Christianity is cruelly distorted to the point that it truly is no longer Christian.  Currently one form of this distortion is on vivid display.  It is called Liberation Theology.  It is a theology that does not talk about what we owe God, but more about what God and man owe a certain portion of society.  In this theology Christ's love is turned into hate for an oppressor that often doesn't exist.  People are united around what is owed to them and not around a loving God who promised that we would suffer in His name in this world.  No true Christian would tolerate such a religion, and especially such hatred expressed explicitly in the name of Jesus by this religion.  They take Christ's name in vein. 

 

I fear for the Church.  It is adrift like most of society.  It is seriously open to a liberalism that distorts who Christ is, what truth is, and who we are before God.  We have become like the proverbial lobster who is swimming in a pot of cool refreshing water while beneath him the fires are stoked and his fate is sealed.  Truth exists.  It is Christ. and He has risen.  Will the church, can the church return to its roots of proclaiming such truth.  The truth of the cross and of a risen Lord?  Or has the church abdicated it role in the world allowing other voice to prevail.  Voices of hate and distortion.  Voices that lead ultimately to death, a death of no promise and no hope. 

 

Christ has risen.  Christ has risen indeed!

 

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.  Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,  who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:3-6)

We delude ourselves when we place our confidence in what we can do for God.  Indeed disciples in Christ learn to pray, they read their Bibles, they enjoy digging into what Scripture can teach them, they minister to others and they are generous with their money and their spiritual gifts.  But true disciples do not place any confidence in any of these activities, they place their confidence in Christ. They know that Christ will work in and through them in powerful ways and He will make them competent ministers of the new covenant. 

The verses above are so rich and profound.  As one commentator has said these verses are about life and death issues.  The letter kills while the Spirit gives life. The letter in this context is the Law, the Law of Moses, God's moral law.  Paul says that under the new covenant He is not a minister of the law (shockingly God's moral law), but of the Spirit.  He is a minister of life. 

When we impose expectations on ourselves for a certain standard of behavior we are subjecting ourselves to the law.  We strive to meet the standard.  If we succeed we become prideful, breaking God's moral law.  If we fail, we condemn ourselves and strive all the more, never reaching a place where we feel competent to meet our own standards  much less God's.  But Paul speaks of the "confidence we have through Christ towards God." This is a confidence that God changes hearts.  Verse three of this chapter in Corinthians reads: "And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. The Spirit of God is active in a believer changing their very character and motivation.  Out of those changes come actions that please God and meet in every way His standards (including His moral law).  Paul says that there is nothing coming from us that can please God, the only thing that pleases Him is what He produces in us.  God and God alone is sufficient. 

Are our churches ministers of the law or are they, like Paul, ministers of the Spirit.  The last verses of the chapter read: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."

Are you free.  We live in a land that values its freedom, land of the free and home of the brave.  Freedom is an illusion, a lie.  We are never free and we were never meant to be free.  Do I have your attention?  Do you think I have gone nuts?  Read on and let your heart go from the pits to pure joy. 

Man was never made to be like God.  He was made to be dependent and contingent upon God.  He was to derive all that he needed from God and what God had created.  Man was not created to be a free being.  He was created to be a dependent, contingent and derivative being. 

God is free to do what he wills and all that He wills is good.  God is an independent being.  He is not contingent on anyone or anything.  He can create something out of nothing.  Man is not a god, nor is he becoming a god. 

God made man to be under the influence of His spirit.  He also made man able to choose to abandon God's influence over him.  The temptation from Satan was that man could be like God.  Man could be an independent, creative being.  Man fell for the lie and in order to prevent man from being an eternal fallen being God withdrew his spiritual influence from man.  Man could no longer derive his character directly from God. 

Man soon found that he could not create as God had and that on his own he was naked and ashamed.  Man had made himself vulnerable to another spirit, Satan's.  Man was made by God to be under spiritual influence and in the absence of God's Spirit in came Satan's.  Scripture describes fallen men as sons of perdition.  Man under Satan's influence began to express Satan's evil character and attributes.  Man became dependent, contingent and derivative of Satan's being.  One of these attributes was death the very opposite of the attribute of God, life, that God had made available to man if he had remained in the garden of Eden.  The evil that you experience in the world is of Satan.  If you are not a Christian the evil that you do is because you are deriving your character from an evil being that has influence over you.  Fortunately, at least for now, God keeps Satan in check.  If He didn't this world would be far worse than what we have seen, and even that has been very bad indeed. 

A believer in Christ is reborn.  He has a new nature, a new heart for God, a new mind that comprehends all that God has for Him.  The believer in Christ has in him the very presence of God the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  God has restored those in Christ to being again under God's spiritual influence.  Christian's once again are able to fully derive their character and to act contingently on God.  They once again have access to that life that is only found in God. 

Man is free only when he is reborn in Christ.  Only there is he truly able to freely be all God made him to be.  The freedom mankind longs for is the freedom that is only found in Christ. 

If you are in Christ you are free indeed

Dr. Arthur Rouner's heads the Pilgrim Center which has a reconciliation ministry to African countries that have suffered genocide.  Dr. Rouner is a well known Congregational minister for over fifty years.  His last church was in The Colonial Church of Edina, Minnesota. He has published about twenty books over his career.  His latest book is titled "Spirit Leadership" published in 2006 by Iuniverse Inc. 

Using himself and his experiences as a minister and church leader Dr. Rouner defines what a church leader should be.  One of his key points that he gently presses is that a Pastor can not minister out of his own resources though many in today's churches are doing just that.  In one example he describes a hospital visit by a fictional Pastor who uses the latest counseling technique to help the patient deal with his painful and somewhat frightening situation.   After an hour of listening and asking proscribed questions with the appropriate "I hear what you are saying", "I believe this is what your are saying" the Pastor leaves with a quick prayer at the end hoping that the patient is better equipped to deal with his lonely and challenging situation. 

By contrast Dr. Rouner then describes the Pastor filled with and led by God's Spirit who comes to the patient's bedside ready and willing to hold a hand, and to pray a prayer empowered by the Holy Spirit that speaks to that person's deepest needs and ministers to the person God's healing power.  In this case the Pastor leaves in fifteen minutes assured that he has done all he could in his role as pastor. 

Dr. Rouner makes it clear that this presence of the Holy Spirit is Pentecostal in nature and goes beyond the presence of the Spirit that we all received when we come to Christ.  This Spiritual anointing comes when we seek it specifically and it is given to empower a wide variety of ministries within the Body of Christ.   

"Spirit Leadership" is a challenge to many pastor's who's theology has come to reject this special anointing of the Spirit for ministry.  Dr. Rouner's warning along with a very graphic example is that when God's Spirit is rejected then some other spirit will fill the void with devastating effects . 

If you are looking to serve the church as a lay leader or as a formally ordained pastor I highly recommend this book.  Listen to this man who has walked the walk and talked the talk in the Spirit for much of His ministerial career.  He speaks out of a heart for the Lord and a knowledge of the power that is available to lead the Body of Christ.   

Are you born again, not of the flesh but of the spirit?  The Christian experience is one of having a new heart, a new mind, a new life within us.  Are you living in this new reality.

Jesus promises us an abundant life.  In the Garden of Eden man had unlimited access to the tree of Life.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  When was the last time you heard a sermon about the reality of the life that is in you? 

Much of our religious experience is external.  We have rules to follow that assure us that we are good Christians growing in faith and in power.  Love God, love neighbor and spread the Gospel is our duty.  Of course the power to do these things never seems to be all that it should and we know deep within our spirit that we are really not following these rules as best we could.  We seek the "purpose driven" life and not the Christ empowered life.  We ask "what would Jesus do" rather than acting on the reality of Christ in us.  We spend more time worrying about our sin and our dying flesh than we do resting in the reality of what God has made us to be and the work that He is accomplishing in and through us. 

Go to any Christian seminar and most Bible studies and you will accumulate all kinds of tools for walking our Christian walk more powerfully, effectively, morally, etc.  We walk out determined to do all that we have learned and then those things fade.  We loose our passion and get frustrated with all the minutia.  There is no power in this kind of living, it is derived from law not life.  The law will give you all the rules to follow and then demonstrate to you that you can not keep those rules.  That is what the law does, it is God's design. 

We have chosen Christ. We no longer are slaves to the law.  We are free to be all that Christ has made us.  He has sent His Spirit as a guide, a councilor in walking in the reality of this new life.  You indeed have a new heart, a new mind, a new life within you that is totally sold out to God.  No rules, only life.  Take a breath, relax, and walk in what is more real than you know.  God will reveal Himself to you and you will experience a joy and freedom you have never known before. 

Christ in you the hope of glory.