Joyce Meyer and False Confidence in Self

For starters, this post has been breaking my heart the past few weeks. For large amounts of time I had locked away a portion of my heart, convinced that people that listen to Joyce Meyer do not exist. The only people that listen to Joyce Meyer are ghosts and people

It confounds me that for all the advances of feminism and the empowerment of women in modern culture (which I’m all for), that we still have women that allow themselves to listen to this. I am honestly convinced that Joyce Meyer is an insult to the intelligence and theological brevity of all women in the world. She is evidence that we, as the human race, have not gone far enough in the elimination of inequality between sexes because people still listen to her mind-numbing ignorance.

I seriously believe that. The same goes for men, that we have sure a derelict of godliness and Berean spirit that we listen to Joseph Prince, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar e.t.c. It confounds me, that we as a human race, have catapulted technologically so far in the past century, but still follow these ritualistic, materialistic gods of wheat and rain. Never before in history have we had so much access to theological resources, but we seem to be in the greatest times bereft of seeking after God.

The Confidence in Self

Anyway, upon recommendation, I was listening to some Joyce Meyer the other day. The talk, I deign to describe it as a sermon, was on “Seven Secrets of a Confident Woman”.

I didn’t really understand the structure of the talk. The talk seems to be a lot of stories told in succession like a comedy routine. I guess it was entertaining, with chuckle or hint of laughter was merely another soul going to hell.

It was only thirty minutes in that the seven steps began. Of which, the first step toward becoming a confident woman was “knowing that God loves you”. She was very adamant on how important it was:

Individualism and the Prosperity Gospel

Photos of this nature are maddening.

This is, of course, excepting my presence in reading my facebook newsfeed, which is exceedingly more maddening. I am just a slave for slogans and the ilk.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s largely correct, as far as I can tell or what meaning I can infer from it: God is our healer through providential care and grace. We can put our faith on Him to bring us through this world, nothing can extend or shorten our allotted time on this earth. Admittedly, I’m not sure what “heart doctor” means exactly–perhaps they mean cardiologist. Moreover, when they refer to “energy booster”, I assume they aren’t referring to chugging down Red Bull energy drinks and mistaking angels for people with “wings”.

God is our portion, He fills our cup overflowing. But if that is all the post is about, it’s entirely incomplete–I would argue it’s blasphemously incomplete.

The problem of the post is not itself, but the underlying motivations of the post.

The intention behind the post is what is lacking as it is brazenly existential.

It assigns most of our hope on the current alleviation of suffering and none on the reward of faithfulness.

Dear Hipster Church,

So many thoughts I am likely not allowed to put on facebook. So, WordPress is in for a treat today! A early Christmas special as you would have it. ^__^

1. We Get It.

You love Jesus, we get it. You love others, we get it. However, it’s confusing when you treat Jesus and His words so flippantly.  It’s confusing when He’s merely “the man upstairs”, or “big bro in heaven”. I don’t really understand this Jesus you guys have placed your faith and hope, and ultimately laid down your life for. It’s confusing the obtuseness of your theology and lack of clarity in soteriology.

Comprehending Short Term Missions

In many things, I have learnt not to be too caustic towards other people. I often adopt this tone when I really dislike something–under the guise of sarcasm, I make very disparaging remarks, and the lines between where I’m being serious and joking blur. Unfortunately people get offended easily, especially when something as sacred as the modern pilgrimage to overseas countries, is questioned. It is certainly something that is important as being born again for many Christians today.

A lot time has to be spent at the beginning of any conversation exerting that I was generalising. I wasn’t talking about all missions trips, and I wasn’t judging any specific one. It was a general trend that I’ve been assessing and thinking about, not any specific trip I was thinking about.

Charles Spurgeon on Pride

An excerpt from a sermon delivered on August 17, 1856 by Charles Spurgeon at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark on the topic of “Pride and Humility”. I find paraphrasing a useful exercise for me, so I have done some editing, removing “thy” and “thou”s from the text, as well as some liberty in the substitution of archaic words and phrases. Nevertheless:

“In the first place, pride is a groundless thing. It stands on the sands; or worse than that, it puts its foot on the billows which yield beneath its tread; or worse still, it stands on bubbles, which soon must burst beneath its feet. Of all things pride has the worst foothold; it has no solid rock on earth on which to place itself. We have reasons for almost everything, but we have no reasons for pride. 

To Be Christian Is To Love Your Enemies

The Apostle John argues in his letter to Christians, that to love is the mark of a Christian.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1John 4v.7

In other words, essentially, the Spirit of God is a Spirit of love. The knowledge of God that is given to us when we are saved is essentially a knowledge of a loving God. All else would be in vain if we did not have the knowledge of the provision for sin through the love of a Saviour in us. Matthew Henry says that it is “love [that] oils the wheels of his affections”–and surely this is a sign of being born again: being compelled to love.

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.” 1John 4v.8

John then proceeds to explain what the application of this love is: in the image of Jesus. Jesus was God’s only Son, the manifestation of everything–there was no other son that God had left. What Jesus accomplished on this earth was that we would live through Him. What is love, if we do not continually relate it to Jesus? What life is there of the Christian, if we are not continually comparing ourselves against what standard Jesus set for us?

Too often, I think it is too simple to compare ourselves to other people and see how ‘good’ we are compared to them. I can look at the Pat Robertsons and Rick Warrens of this world and think I am better than them, superior in the faith perhaps, and that could be no further from the truth. I am continually needing grace when I see myself and how Jesus needed to die on the cross for all of my sin.

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4v.9-11 (English Standard Version)

In another reiteration from John to emphasize and expand his point, he describes specifically the work accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus. What John is describing is not a menial love, that cannot stretch far–but a love that goes till the death. That if we were to love with the love of God which has filled us, it should be a lot that sacrifices itself totally for one another.

The description that John gives a complexity beyond just loving those who deserve love, but those who do not deserve our love. The same applies to grace, that we not only are lavished with this unmerited favour, but we are so fallen beyond deserving or even seen as neutral before God. I like to think of it as a negative bank account balance, no bank would dare give us a loan. The reality is this: that we can only love, when we realise that we are loved undeservingly. We can only love if the love of God inhabits within us.

==

I was in church the other day, and there was a man who was struggling with addictions. He described how it would go in cycles, he would stop for a time and then when he thought he was victorious, it would come back with a vengeance. There was a certain doubt and defeatism that had entered this man’s heart, that he couldn’t believe in himself to fight this any longer. In an open conversation, my pastor gave two points:

1. The Holy Spirit in our hearts is the only thing that can truly change us. Him, entering our hearts will undoubtedly change us and conform us into what God would want us to be like. Freedom from alcoholism, freedom from drug abuse, and even greater–from sin and the eternal bondage to these depraved things.

2. I can guarantee you that everyone in this church would die for you. We all believe in the Holy Spirit’s power, and His love toward us–I think I am safe in saying that everyone here loves you so much that they would do anything for you.

It’s a monumental statement from my pastor to proclaim that anyone would die for him. He certainly knew his own worthlessness better than anyone else in the church, therefore, better than anyone else in the church should he know of what a love there is in the Church. Where there is a worthless feeling, surely this should be matched with love–that there is a value assigned to us in Christ. To be afraid of love, is to be afraid of God and who He essentially is. I am certainly reminded of what Saint Francis of Assisi said many years ago:

“Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith.”

I truly believe that to love others truly it demands everything of us, and this in turn, is a monumental task. I daily realise how far short I fail in this standard and where I don’t have enough faith, I doubt. What does love demand of you, and what ? Is your life different from before you knew Christ, are you loving more?

Prayers For The Wicked

I’ve been playing a bit of Mass Effect 2.

Okay, that’s a lie–a lot of Mass Effect 2. I am really enjoying it a lot, it really brings back the joy into playing video games where you play one which you connect with immediately. It’s just the right amount of fighting (not too much gore) and open-ended nature of the story line.

I’ve clocked in about 20 hours in the past 3 days or so, which is a lot considering that is probably the amount of video games I have played this whole year combined. The storyline is wonderful, being able to control every action of your player who is going around picking up soldiers to join his team. Going from planet to planet, there is an assembly of diverse creatures that you have to convince to join your team to fight a group that is threatening the existence of the universe as we know it.

One of these is Thane Krios–“a drell assassin, the most skilled in the galaxy. Unlike most assassins, who prefer to snipe their targets from a distance, Thane prefers to get up close and kill his target personally, utilizing a mixture of stealth, firearms, and hand-to-hand combat abilities. Despite his profession, Thane is a deeply spiritual man who prays for success in his missions, and asks for forgiveness after each kill, even going as far as to ignore those in his immediate vicinity until he is finished doing so.” (s)

The spirituality of Thane is what fascinates me. He is an assassin, yet he is deeply spiritual. Meeting him for the first time, he gives an interesting insight into what he does:

Shepard: Can we talk? I came a long way to talk to you.

Thane: One moment, prayers for the wicked must not be forsaken. 

Shepard: She certainly was wicked.

Thane: Not for her. For me.

It is a wise saying that he muses–if we take the vengeance of God within our own hands, do we become the judges, not God? Who then, is the wicked one if we judge with partiality?

The Cross Is The Perfect Statement

“The cross is the perfect statement both of God’s wrath against sin and of the depth of his love and mercy in the recovery of the damaged creation and its damagers.  God’s mercy, patience, and love must be fully preached in the church.  But they are not credible unless they are presented in tension with God’s infinite power, complete and sovereign control of the universe, holiness, and righteousness.  

And where God’s righteousness is clearly presented, compassionate warnings of his holy anger against sin must be given, and warnings also of the certainty of divine judgment in endless alienation from God which will be unimaginably worse than the literal descriptions of hell.  It is no wonder that the world and the church are not awakened when our leadership is either singing a lullaby concerning these matters or presenting them in a caricature which is so grotesque that it is unbelievable.

The tension between God’s holy righteousness and his compassionate mercy cannot be legitimately resolved by remolding his character into an image of pure benevolence as the church did in the nineteenth century.  There is only one way that this contradiction can be removed: through the cross of Christ which reveals the severity of God’s anger against sin and the depth of his compassion in paying its penalty through the vicarious sacrifice of his Son. 

In systems which resolve this tension by softening the character of God, Christ and his work become an addendum, and spiritual darkness becomes complete because the true God has been abandoned for the worship of a magnified image of human tolerance.” (1)

I think at every moment there is a tendency to rush towards one or the other. The cross is love poured out; the cross is wrath poured out. Binaries fight out in our mind, and we become ingrained on one side of the expanse. We have tried to create a dialogue between the two extremes, but it is impossible. And it is impossible except through what we have known. Then, we remember that Jesus’ sacrifice is sufficient for the sins of the whole world–great enough to cover the great expanse, and wash our doubts away.

Enough for my haughty heart, enough for my lifeless soul.

Great enough to cover my lack of love, and my lack of righteousness.

Is the cross meaningful if you remove the wrath of God away from it? Is the cross meaningful if you remove the love of God away from it?

(1) (Lovelace, Richard. Dynamics for Spiritual Life, 84-85) the irony is that both those buildings could readily be defined as modernist.

Gender Roles: Can a Helper be A Holy Calling?

In the waters of gender roles, I am dipping my metaphorical blogging toes.

There is a passage in Genesis that is somewhat controversial in how it assigns the role of women as a helper. The context was God had just created the whole earth and the heavens, He created man, and he lived within the Garden of Eden. He had just finished telling the man that he should not eat from the tree in the centre of the Garden–“then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”” Genesis 2:18 (English Standard Version)

On the surface, perhaps it is a bit misogynistic—a justification to belittle females and make them lesser than men. In fact, I am sure this mindset has been played a million times by atheists in an attempt to ridicule Christianity as men being power-hungry and seeking to control lives. In many ways, there is some truth in this claim looking at Christianity of ages past–but the problem has been the interpretation, not the actual Bible.

What I find fascinating is that the word used for “helper” is the word, “`ezer” which means according to Strong’s Dictionary, “to surround, to protect or aid” The reference of the Bible translators when they say, help is in context with being all encompassing in their aid.

In Maori culture (the indigenous of New Zealand), in iwi meetings where the whole tribe would meet in the central marae or town hall–women were and still are forced to sit at the back row while men sit at the front of the tribe meetings. Yet, this is not out of male domineering, but out of respect, that women are more valued than men in this context.

Moreover, the function of a helper is a Holy function because God is a helper. The 54^th Psalms was written by David when the Ziphites went and revealed his hiding place to Saul, saying that he was hiding in their land. David’s praise was to God:

“Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.” Psalms 54:4 (English Standard Version)

The word used for helper here is “`azar”, which is the variant on the root “`ezer”, and means exactly the same as before. So then, perhaps, if God is a helper then perhaps being a helper is not an undesirable aim in life? Therefore, the problem perhaps is not so much what is wrong with the functions of a bridegroom and bride—but what functions we have assigned to God. Perhaps, we have imposed an idea of what we expect God to be and creating a hierarchy of what His nature should be, instead of seeking to submit to what He is. Changing the God is often much easier and simpler than changing the natural closed nature of our hearts.

If I could posit the question: Is our idea of God a strong arm that swipes away all that defies Him, that we are struck with fear to obey Him? But also, do we believe a God that helps, that stoops down to help me, even the most stubborn of creatures?

One thing I am learning more and more, is that though there are many that find it difficult to stomach the vengenance of God in the Old Testament, but truly this one thing is sure: He truly did love Israel. Though, however many times He was disobeyed, he still loved Israel and continued to provide for them. There are perhaps two harsh opposites of the nature of God when we read the Old Testament, there is the holiness of God occurring, but there is also the loving hand of the Helper as well working in unison together in marriage together.

“The LORD is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.” Psalms 118:7 (English Standard Version)

Harold Camping Glorifies God

Harold Camping glorifies God.

I promised to myself that I would not mention him anymore, but he does glorify God in his foolishness. In fact, it is impossible for him to not glorify God because all things– they are servant of God’s. It is impossible for us to not glorify God.“By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants.” (Psalms 119v.91) We are all servants, whether we are turned towards God or away from him he continues to use us. I am beginning to realise how false the attitude is that thinks that if you do not believe in God, then, you are apart from God and away from his control, but you still are.

In light of this, I am reminded to think about how little I really am–how futile it is to disobey God, how little faith I have that I am not doing what God has chosen me to do. Jonah felt the same way, he ran away from God. And still, even in his disobedience, he glorified God.

He was called by God to go and preach to the inhabitants of Nineveh. “But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.” Jonah 1:3 (English Standard Version)

Even still while he was sleeping on the boat to run away from God, God brought a tempest.

He was glorifying God by sleeping.

His crew woke him up and they pleaded with him, to pray to his god. This was a ecumenical crew that resided on this boat–so much so that whoever would calm the storm, they were willing to listen to. Admittedly, because of the current situation at the present time, the storm was the focus of their attention, not any divine beings. All gathered on the top deck, they were all praying to their various gods filled with fear at this storm that threathened to capsize the boat at any moment.

Still God was glorified: he was sustaining the boat till Jonah came, and none of the other gods would listen.

Surely, Jonah was then tossed into the sea because it was apparent it was his disobedience that was causing the storm. After the casting of the lots, the blame fell on Jonah, and he was the one that was guilty of running away from the One True God. He was tossed into the sea, this was even after they had tried every way to get out of this predicament.

God was glorified, there was no other way but only one who was called by God to sacrifice his life for many. However disobedient he was in running away from God, He was not far from God who is in everything. On that ship, Jonah became sin for everyone on the ship in recognising his sin, and the necessity of putting His trust in God. Only when someone is born again can they seek to give their own life for many—even for these who worshipped their own gods—Jonah was the catalyst for repentance on that ship.

“So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.”Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.” Jonah 1:15-16 (English Standard Version)

God was glorified, in the spreading of the Gospel on that boat. No other way could the realness of God have come onto these men without the immediacy of the material calming of the storm. They were convinced this was the one true God, and this man they had tossed into the sea, He was a servant of this Most High God. Only through the sacrifice of Jonah could they have had knowledge of the One True God who made the sea and dry land. The God who created the storm and the peace afterwards–He was the reason for the storm, and also the calming of the storm.

Surely, Harold Camping glorifies God in his eternal plan in showing the folly of man without Scripture. Moreover, God is glorified in the many ways I fall short, and the times that I forget to shine the Light. I pray daily that He would continue to grant me the Holy Spirit that I may be an instrument of his grace more effectively.