Category Archives: Nature of God

Balaam: A Study of God’s Interaction with the “Un-Chosen”

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I find the story of Balaam (primarily in Numbers 22-24) to be insanely interesting.

If you’re not already familiar with the story, I’d recommend you read it before you continue with what I wrote.

Here’s what grabs me: Balaam is an outsider, yet he really is a prophet of the Lord. Not a false prophet. Not a diviner, using spiritually shady tactics. A prophet of the Lord.

God’s chosen people are the Israelites. He has given no promises or covenants or guarantees to the people who have not descended from Abraham, other than a vow not to flood the earth again. He doesn’t have any obligation to speak with somebody like Balaam, yet he does anyways.

Several times in this narrative, the scriptures clearly say that God comes to Balaam and talks to him. (22:9-12, 22:20, 22:32-35, 23:4, 23:16, 24:2)

And what’s more, Balaam is obedient to God. Until God gives him permission to go with the messengers, he won’t do it. He repeatedly says that he will only say the things that God puts in his mouth, and backs it up by doing exactly that.

Now, in the end, Balaam ends up working to bring destruction upon Israel. He tells the king of Moab to entice Israel to sin through idolatry and sexual immorality. It leads to a plague in Israel and the death of Balaam himself as repayment.

But in this story, we see that God is working outside of his chosen people. A guy with no connections to Israel at all is using his God given gifts to make a living, blessing and cursing people – and he’s successful, according to the king of Moab (v. 6)

I wonder – where and how is the Holy Spirit moving in the world today outside of Christianity?  Are there people who speak God’s truth without perhaps being fully aware of it?

Do some musicians and artists and poets and movie-makers create artistic expressions with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit despite only a desire to make a living?

Does God spread his truth and his life into places that we would least expect?

As Balaam himself comes to ruin through his self serving ways, perhaps God’s blessing does not guarantee that someone will lead a life that directly contributes to his kingdom, regardless of their gifts or calling.

The more we try to put boundaries around God, the more he seems to ignore them. The more we try to simplify him to a reliable formula, the more variables we find in him.

I wonder if we can find the places that God is moving in our schools, neighborhoods or workplaces and become a part of his work, rather than viewing ourselves as the only possible conduit for God’s ministry. Joining with a charity or outreach that isn’t “Christian”. Getting involved with an artistic collaborative (a band, or a play troupe, etc). Joining a discussion group centered on literature. These are just some possible ways we can place ourselves in areas that God may already be speaking – shockingly – without any outside help.

Perhaps that is what Jesus is talking about when he speaks of fields ripe for harvest. That God causes growth to occur, and we are simply called to point that out.

How To Be Emotionally Healthy

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We are emotional creatures, there are no two ways about that.

God created us in his image, and the scriptures frequently refer to how God feels: rejoicing, angry, frustrated, and grieved.

Look at Jesus: he wept, got angry, reacted with surprise, showed frustration, etc.

So as God created us with emotions, they are meant to be part of our lives. The goal of a healthy emotional state is not to become like Spock, with no emotional imput, only cold rational logic dictating our lives.

Think of your emotional state as a Rubik’s Cube.

When you are angry, or depressed, or lustful, or anxious, or any emotional state other than healthy, your emotional state is like a messed up Rubik’s Cube. No rhyme or reason, just total disarray.

Here’s the best way to not fix a Rubik’s Cube: ignore it. Toss it in the back of your sock drawer. It’s not going to get fixed that way, but at least you only have to see it every once in a while. It’s still a mess the whole time, but hey – fixing it would take time and effort. Who wants to spend that, am I right?!

There are underlying issues that are causing you to be depressed, or anxious, or lustful. You need to be willing to get alone, and spend some time exploring and examining your own thoughts and feelings. To pull out that Rubik’s Cube and start examining it, interacting with it, and adjusting it.  It’s going to be frustrating. At times you may feel that it will never be put together in the way it’s meant to exist, but one thing is for certain: you will never solve the puzzle without putting your hands on it.

Are you depressed because of your situation in life? Are you angry at your lack of control? Do you have doubts about God or his goodness that you’re suppressing instead of dealing with?

Are you lusting uncontrollably because of a need for acceptance? Are there actions that you are taking that you need to cut off in order to get healthy?

Until you go in search of these underlying issues that are causing your emotions, they will stay hidden and continue to cause your emotional state to be completely out of whack.

If you’re not the kind of person that can be impartially introspective, a trained counselor can help guide you in that process. Or maybe you have a friend who is willing and able to tell you things that you have a blind spot to.

Regardless, the fear of what you might find once you go digging in your own soul must be overcome. We cannot be so afraid of looking in a mirror that we never do it. How can we begin to correct problems if we refuse to really and truly see them?

As a Christian, I strongly believe the scriptures provide an excellent source of objective input and that the Holy Spirit himself wants to help us in such inner journeys of discovery. As I said in a previous post, I found the scriptures to be much more beneficial when I stopped reading them to be ‘right’, and I started reading them to be changed.

Introspection, in my opinion, is the most valuable tool in spiritual and emotional development.

Now, once you have spent the time necessary to arrange your Rubik’s Cube of emotions, it’s tempting to sit back and look at how nice and neat and organized it is.

But what you need to realize is that it isn’t going to simply remain that way.

As you go through life, your carry your emotional Rubik’s Cube with you everywhere you go.

People will often try (and sometimes succeed) to grab it and mess it up. You get cut off in traffic. A friend betrays you. You find out that your pastor has been stealing funds from the church. Your boss/teacher chews you out. There’s a death of a close friend or family member.

Suddenly, your cube is out of alignment again. After all the work you put in getting it in order, it could be tempting to say ‘enough!’ and throw it back into the sock drawer.

This won’t help. This puzzle, this cube – it will be with us for the rest of our lives. But just as handing a real Rubik’s Cube will get easier with experience, so too will handing your emotional health. Once you find the place that your emotional balance point exists, it will be easier to get back to it.

There will be times that everything falls apart. But you will be able to pick up the pieces and put it all back together, as long as you don’t quit on yourself.

Don’t depend on other people to do this for you. If every time you turn into a mess you look for somebody to pull you back together, you’ll never be able to handle your emotions. I’m not saying that you can never go to a friend for support – I absolutely think that’s good. But you can’t expect them to “make it all better”. After you get some comfort or encouragement, go be alone. Work through your feelings and thoughts.

And when somebody comes to you in an emotional mess, love them, listen to them; then encourage them to work through it themselves. (Note: if this person says or in any way indicates that will hurt themselves or somebody else, get them professional help immediately. It could be a ploy to manipulate you into babying them, but you don’t screw around with a situation like that. Don’t enable them by coddling them, but do not just cut them loose.)

The best way to become emotionally crippled is by letting other people determine your emotional health. We are social creatures, and we must work to build community, and that will be difficult on us emotionally, but we must learn to handle these challenges by growing and maturing – and being able to deal with our own emotions is an essential part of that.

Get alone with yourself. Delve into the tempest. Stare into the abyss of your soul, and don’t be afraid as it stares back, because you’re not alone. Jesus heals the broken hearted and frees the captive. You just have to be willing to open the door.

The Incomplete God

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I believe in an incomplete God. I pray to an incomplete God, sing praises to an incomplete God and read the scriptures of an incomplete God.

It’s not that God is incomplete, mind you. It’s that my understanding of God is incomplete. So I am left believing in a God who I only partially comprehend. I worship the tip of the iceberg, knowing that there is so much more which is beyond my perception.

I can’t tell you why one person dies of cancer while another recovers against all medical odds.

I can’t explain why one person wins the lottery while another struggles to feed their children.

I don’t know why some of my prayers yield amazing results while others seem to go unnoticed.

But the thing is, I’m a super analytical person.  I don’t like unsolved mysteries. I want a God that I can understand and explain. That way, everything makes sense. I don’t have to be confused or surprised in any situation.

So I fill in the blanks.

I take the God who in judgment destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the God who in mercy spared Nineveh and I draw connections to explain the differences.

I take the God who stuck Annanias and Sapphira dead and the God who forgave the adulterous woman and I color the spaces in between.

I take the God who killed almost everything on earth in the time of Noah and the God who came as a man and bore the guilt of the entire human race and I figure out a way to explain it simply and easily.

And I end up with something that isn’t God. Or rather, it’s a God created in my own image.

Because, despite vaguely understanding how feeble my mind is in comparison to the greatness of God’s existence, I prove over and over that I’d rather have a complete but false God than an incomplete/incomprehensible real God.

Only when things in my life occur which can’t be explained by my false God do I have to wake up to what I’ve done. And those are the times where I must do violence to the God I’ve created. Instead of having the ability to understand and explain what’s going on, I simply have to echo Ezekiel who, when asked something beyond his comprehension, answered “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” (Ezekiel 37:3)

I have to face the fact that most of the time, I don’t know why God does whatGod does when God does it.

It’s when I start trying to improve God in my own eyes that I get myself into this trouble. When I try to make better sense of him in my own understanding.

So I do my best to worship the God who I can’t fully see or understand, leaving the blank spaces free from my own conjecture and speculation. The places where he has clothed himself with shadows, I cannot force him to be revealed.

He is, for me, the incomplete God who is greater than I could ever imagine.

Theology: Knowing God

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I think that studying God, theology, the bible, etc, is like studying the moon.  If you buy the biggest telescope you can find and put it on maximum zoom, you’re going to learn a lot about the part of the moon you can see. You can also move the telescope around a see zoomed in pictures in different areas.

But there’s two things to keep in mind:

1. You’re not going to be able to scan the entire surface of the moon with that telescope (or if you do, it’ll be so fast you won’t really see anything)

2. Even if you did see the entire surface of the moon that way, you’d still have a lot to learn about the moon.

See, if we just focus on one area, we’re going to miss a lot. At some point, you need to step away from the telescope and look at the whole sky. To see how beautiful the moon is, suspended in the black with stars around it. To see how the moon affects the tides here on Earth.

Don’t miss the beauty in the midst of the study.

I could focus my telescope on one particular crater and learn everything there is to know about that crater. Then, when people talk about the moon, I could talk for hours about that one crater. And people would be interested for about 5 minutes, then they would want me to shut up. There’s more to the moon than the one crater I know all about.

We can get so fixated on one point that we miss out on what’s really happening.

Alot of evangelical theology is based on the message that people who don’t believe in Jesus are going to hell, and they need to be saved. So we hand out tracts and talk through bullhorns and try to force people to come to church with us where we use an altar call to try and get them to say they believe.

I’m not saying that people aren’t going to hell. And I’m certainly not suggesting that it’s a minor deal.  But God is bigger and greater and grander than ‘the being who sends people to hell.’

God created this world, where we find joy and sorrow; heights and depths; pain and pleasure. More than that, he became one of us. The infinite, in one man. He who holds the galaxies in the palm of his hand, using feet to walk from one town to the next.

People who are so locked into their own theology that they think they are the only one who really ‘gets’ God scare me. A lot.  Because I have totally been like that in my life. And I was so blinded by my ‘right answers’ to let God be who he is. I turned the bible into a book of answers and doctrine instead of what it is: The story of a God and the flawed people he loves.

In Christianity, we say that we don’t have a religion, but rather a relationship. Then we put so much structure and so many requirements on that relationship that it becomes a religion.

I have a feeling that there is a great deal of truth in this world that we refuse to acknowledge because we didn’t think of it.

I believe that everyone is looking for God, whether they know it or not. And I believe that God has left signposts that point to him in the most unlikely places. Signposts that reveal truth about him. People who are paying attention will pick up on these truths, and believe in them.

Nature speaks of a great creator.

Intimacy speaks of a need to be completed by somebody or something.

Dreams point to the existence of something greater just below the surface.

Mercy and compassion reveal that there is something within us that works against the primal urges we’re told that we consist of.

Art reveals a need to see more than just what our eyes can perceive.

I once thought that God needed me. That he needed me to tell people about what he is really like because I had so much insight. He couldn’t sideline me, because I was too clever and smart.

Now, I realize that I’m about as useful as asking an ant to explain a supercomputer. A know-it-all is about the last thing God needs representing him.

I don’t understand God. I can’t explain why he does the things he does most of the time. If I zoom in, I can probably start to explain small parts of him better, but I’d rather step back and see the vastness, the grandeur, the beauty of who he is. And I’m content to be amazed and surprised by what I can’t contain.

Two Kingdoms

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I believe that there are two kingdoms.

The Kingdom of God and the kingdom of his enemy.

I believe these kingdoms are at war on the earth today.

The Kingdom of God has already secured the ultimate victory, but his enemy is unwilling to lay down his arms and peacefully surrender. He wants to cause as much damage as he can before he is destroyed permanently.

The kingdom of his enemy does not require any oaths or commitments. Everyone is by default a citizen of this kingdom from birth.

The Kingdom of God requires one to commit their life to the service of the King and renounce their citizenship to the kingdom of the enemy. It requires one to lay down his or her plans, desires and purposes and instead work only at the command of the King.

It does not require effort to advance the kingdom of God’s enemy, because disunity and confusion advance his purposes. Everyone may set their own agenda: money, power, comfort, religiosity, sex; these are all common individual purposes in the kingdom of the enemy.

It is also the reason that the enemy’s kingdom will not stand. It has no unified purpose other than to consume all that it comes in contact with. It is at war with itself all the time.

As as the Kingdom of God unifies behind the King – not behind a particular denomination or doctrine – he leads us in a great campaign of sabotage against the enemy.  He sent his son to lead our campaign: “the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8)

Our purpose is two fold: to press back the advancing lines of the kingdom of the enemy from his attempts to rule over the people of this earth, and to rebuild what his army has destroyed. He uses a slash and burn campaign, destroying anything he cannot have.

We share the secret that anyone in the kingdom of the enemy is free to defect. The miserable existence they lead now under the oppression and infighting of the enemy can be left behind.  The Kingdom of God is exclusive in so far as it is only for those who will stand with the King.

I serve at and for the pleasure of the King. And by my life or my death, I will advance his kingdom on this battleground called earth.

I don’t do this in my own strength, but in his. For unlike the kingdom of the enemy, who only takes from his denizens, our great King actually puts his life into us. He doesn’t make us hired soldiers. He makes us sons and daughters. He adopts us.

I stand with the King.

Challenges

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Remember the blind guy that Jesus heals, then the disciples ask whether he was blind from his own sin or his parents sin?  Then Jesus says it was neither of those things, but rather that “this happened so the power of God could be seen in him”? Then Jesus heals him. (John 9)

And remember Job? How God allows the devil to do anything short of killing him to see whether Job will stay faithful to God in adversity? But instead Job insists that God is righteous and just, despite all that happens to him. Then God blesses Job with twice as much as he had before.

What if the challenges you face are in fact an opportunity for you to give God glory by having faith and trust in him even when there’s no evidence to support your actions? And God wants people to see you trusting in him when it seems stupid to do so, so that when he blesses you, everyone will say that God did it.

Maybe the challenges and trials in your life aren’t about you, but they’re about God. They’re about an opportunity for you to show that God is greater than the troubles we encounter on this earth.

The two men I talked about up top showed faith and trust in God and God honored them. Those events became scripture and have encouraged every believer who ever read them. Maybe God wants to make your life a living testimony to those around you. They may not read the bible, but in your life perhaps they can see it in action.

God deserves our devotion because of who he is. Period. Not because of what he does, but simply by being the God who made the universe and everything in it.  Worship God when logic says not to and see God respond and glorify his name in your life.

Faith and Politics

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I started reading ‘Bringing Up Girls’ by James Dobson yesterday, but I stopped after the first few chapters because I was getting annoyed with it. He keeps inserting political opinions into the text. That’s right, in a book about raising daughters, he wants me to hear all about his political leanings.

Why do we do that in Christianity? Politicize our faith?

I used to think it was important for Christians to be involved in politics.

Then I became adamantly anti-political party and anti-politician.

I’ve now arrived at the place where the politics of this planet do not matter to me.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t matter to Jesus, either.

The people following him wanted to make him a king, but he wouldn’t let them.  About the multitudes who were starting to follow him, the bible says, “but Jesus didn’t trust them, because he knew human nature. No one needed to tell him what mankind is really like.” (John 2:24-25)

That’s why, when he was entering Jerusalem and everyone is cheering and giving him a regal entrance, Jesus ends up crying for the city. (Luke 19:41) He knew that days later some of the same people shouting ‘Hosanna’ would be shouting ‘Crucify Him!’ (Luke 23:21)

When he had a great crowd, instead of fomenting a political movement, he gave the ‘eat my flesh, drink my blood’ talk and many left him. (John 6:22-66)

When Pilate questioned Jesus about his rule, Jesus said “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36)

Jesus didn’t come to win a seat on the Sanhedrin and enact new legislation. Heck, he didn’t even care about unseating the oppressive Roman government which was occupying Israel.  He commends the faith of a centurion (Matthew 8:10), and even advocates paying taxes to this government oppressing his people!! (Luke 20:25)

I’m not saying you shouldn’t vote or do your civic duty.  I’m just saying I don’t think political activism is what we are called to.  In Galatians 5, where Paul lists the fruit of the Holy Spirit, he talks about the fact that those fruit can never be outlawed.  He’s basically saying that the genuine Christian life is above and beyond earthly rules and regulations.

Some may disagree with me here, and I’m okay with that. I just think when Christians get into the political game, they cannot accomplish what they are called to accomplish.  Getting abortion outlawed won’t change the underlying problems that cause a girl to get pregnant in the first place, and won’t help her be a good mother to her child afterwards.

If the law could save, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus.

We’re called to bring heaven to earth and the way to do that is not through politics and laws.

Okay, I’m done with this soapbox now, if anybody needs to borrow it…

Solomon

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Solomon is one of my favorite characters in the scriptures.

1 Kings 3:12 indicates that he’s probably the wisest man who ever lived (with the exception of Jesus – Luke 11:31).

He wrote deeply and extensively of the very nature of all things. Proverbs, Song of Solomon and (probably) Ecclesiastes were written by him.

And yet, he screwed up.

That’s right. Wisest guy who ever lived, who was divinely given an unequaled amount of discernment, acted stupidly.

It gives me so much peace to know that. I’m no where near as smart as Solomon, but even still, when I do something dumb I’m relieved to know maybe he could have done it, too.

He totally could have locked his keys in the car. Or dropped his phone. Or forgot to return that Redbox DVD before 9pm.

Here’s what Solomon really did: he married a bunch of women that God said not to marry. Those women, over a thousand of them (!!!), led him to worship the idols of their homelands.

Yep. Solomon. Smartest dude ever. Starts worshiping fake gods. For those keeping score, that’s commandment #1. Probably a bad one to break.

So fulfilling God’s will doesn’t mean you have to be the smartest person in the room.

It means being obedient to him.

We learn so much through Solomon’s insights. Yet even with all his insight to the nature of everything, he still deceived himself.

He told himself that he could have all those wives even though God said not to and he would be fine. He was wrong.

It’s the garden of Eden all over again. God says ‘don’t’, but we find a way to believe he probably didn’t really mean it.

I am all for education, all for refining and improving on your brain – a wonderful gift from the Lord. But, like all else, it must remain in its proper place: obedience and service to God.

In the end, Solomon loved women and power more than faithful obedience to the Lord.

His wisdom and intelligence, as great as they were, still weren’t as great as God’s. Solomon decided to make his own path and in the end, it led him to lose the inheritance given to his father, David.

That’s why I like Solomon. He gives me hope. He shows me that even if I became the highest version of myself that could ever exist, I still wouldn’t have any hope without God actively helping me.

That even at my best, I’ll never be able to do it on my own.

I embrace this failure, this short-coming of mine. And that’s the place where I accept Jesus.

God’s Timing

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“During the reign of David, there was a famine for three successive years; so David sought the face of the LORD. The LORD said, “It is on account of Saul and his blood-stained house; it is because he put the Gibeonites to death.”” (2 Samuel 21:1 )

I found this story to be fascinating. First, because it gives some insight to God’s frequently unusual timing (at least from our perspective).

God deals with things when he wants to. Sometimes it’s immediate (as with Joshua and the Israelites at Ai). But sometimes it’s later, even much later.

So God wanted to deal with this thing Saul did. But it’s long after Saul is dead and buried that God brings it up.

We don’t know when in David’s reign this famine occured. It seems quite possible that it was a decade or more after David was first crowned King of Judah.

I don’t have a clue why God waiting so long before dealing with this issue that he clearly found to be of critical importance. And perhaps that’s the point of this story. There is no way we can know why God does what he does, when he does it.

He brings things up when he chooses to, and we must simply be ready to deal with what he sends our way. We make our plans, but he directs our steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

The second thing I wonder about this situation is this: Did David only ask God’s input after 3 years had gone by? Or did he ask sooner and have to wait for years for an answer?

From the text, it seems that David delayed asking God until 3 years had gone by.

It makes me wonder if there are situations in my life that God wants to bring about healing or deliverance, but I’m busy trying to endure them.

I had some minor health problem that I had been living with, but recently realized I didn’t have to. So I prayed for healing and God did it. I had some of those situations going on for years.

All the while God was just waiting for me to ask.

In the end, God’s timing is going to remain a mystery to me. My job is to ask and trust. And perhaps most importantly, to listen. Because if I can’t know God’s timing, at least perhaps I can know his purpose

The House Analogy

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In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis uses an analogy about being a Disciple of Jesus that I have found to be very meaningful lately.

Lewis says that our lives are like a house. Before we invite Jesus into our house, it is a filthy mess. A mess that we really aren’t able to do anything about. The plumbing and electricity don’t work properly, it’s dank and moldy, the whole thing is in a state of disrepair.

But when we invite Jesus in, he starts fixing the things that are broken. He starts cleaning up the place. We are ecstatic! This place that used to be so miserable and depressing is now becoming beautiful and joyful! We are so happy and thankful as Jesus makes the house livable.

Then, once he has finished repairing and cleaning up, we’re ready to enjoy living in the house with Jesus.

And that’s when he pulls out a sledge hammer and starts knocking down a wall. Then he rips the wallpaper off. Next he destroys the deck and starts pouring more foundation in its place so he can work on a new extension.

The thing is, God isn’t a housekeeper. He’s an architect. He’s not here to maintain the little house we’re in. He’s here to create the house he has in mind. And where the new house and the old house are not compatible, the old house has to go.

Early this year, God showed up in my life in a fresh and powerful way. He fixed several things that had worn down and broken. He cleaned the layer of dirt and dust that had covered everything, and I expected that with a clean house, it was time to start fulfilling my purpose.

But instead, he started renovations. I can’t get the party started while all this construction is going on. So I’ve had to wait, because demolition and construction takes time.

It’s easy to be excited when God is cleaning things up and making everything beautiful. It’s harder to keep your eyes on the goal when all the work he’s doing seems to be making a bigger mess.  But that’s what it takes for upgrades to occur.

So please, pardon my dust while God is working on me. Soon, I’ll be ready to fulfill the purpose that I’m being designed for by the ultimate builder.