RE: Mike Adams - Searching for Bonhoeffer

I read a column by one of my favorite commentators this morning at Townhall.com -

http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2010/09/27/searching_for_bonhoeffer

"Searching for Bonhoeffer" by Mike Adams. (Be aware that most of Adams' stuff is sarcastic and he sometimes addresses topics that are not for the faint of heart - i.e., adult topics.)

I am a Deacon at my church. That translates as "Minister of Mercy". We get to dispense mercy to people with financial and/or physical needs.

The goal is to represent Christ to them.

One of the side-benefits is that we are doing (trying to do) for the occasional "seeker" what the seeker-friendly churches should be doing - providing them with proof that Christ is relevant...that Christianity is relevant.

Obvious successes (in the form of radical repentance / drastically changed lives) are few and far between. I hope this doesn't mean that we are doing it wrong, but rather that we won't hear the success stories until much later.

Be afraid, be very afraid

I have been reading in Jeremiah - chapters 26, 27, 28, 29. Some men were claiming to speak the Words of God to the people, but were instead speaking their own words. God told Jeremiah to tell them that they were dead men walking...and they were.

It struck me that if a man puts himself forward as giving the Words of God to His people, that man had best be quite sure that the words he speaks really are God's Words. Or else. Hence the title of this blog - Be afraid, be very afraid.

1 Timothy 5:17 says that pastors who do a good job teaching / preaching (giving God's Words to His people) should be honored. But Jeremiah shows how bad can be the fate of the pastor who gets so mixed up as to think his own words are from God.

I will continue to pray for my pastors / preachers - that they will get it right. Somehow I suspect that humility on the part of the pastor will play an important part in this. (The older I get, the more impressed I am by the virtue of humility - its importance and its rarity.) So I will pray for humility for them as a piece of the puzzle.


The flip side is that the book of Jeremiah is positively permeated with God (using Jeremiah's mouth) offering to change his plan(s) to destroy his sinning people for plans of blessing those same people if they will only turn back to Him. Sometimes the people do repent (Jeremiah 26:18,19) and God relents. I truly am doing better than I deserve. Praise God.

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It

I think these are the words of the great philosopher, Yogi Berra - "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." hhmmm...

I get a daily devotional newsletter (from James Denison). The last line of today's was: "All of God there is, is in this moment. Choose wisely." The point is that knowing the will of God is more about the next step than it is about charting a path for one's longer-term future. I can (sort-of) buy that. It makes sense. The problem is: while most of the time the next step is directly in line with the last many steps, occasionally the next step is the one that starts a turn. How do I determine the will of God when I am at a turning point (a fork in the road)? And I think that this is what people are really interested in when they ask how they are to determine what the will of God is. As an example, it is easy to know that I should finish my education, probably at the same school I am currently attending. But how do I choose which school to attend? Some next steps are more obvious than others.

Can I trust God to open the right doors and close the wrong ones, guiding my steps in the correct turns as I come to the forks in the road? Or does He (instead) inform my thinking processes to give me the wisdom to make the correct choices? The classic answer is that God will open and close doors to guide me. But my experience is that sometimes multiple doors will be open simultaneously and I get to choose which one to go through...or that all of the doors will appear to be closed until further inspection (rattling the doorknobs) shows that some are open-able while others are locked...and I don't have adequate time to rattle ALL the knobs - I have to choose some and disregard others. Is this my experience because my sinful nature is building up my hubris to the point where I am forcing the doors open? (Have I forced this door analogy too far?) Or is God using circumstances to develop wisdom in me? Come to think of it, this is a classic answer as well. (James 1 says that God will provide wisdom to men that seek it God's way.)

I suppose that God leads different people in different ways, based on the mental / emotional make-up that He gave them. It seems to me that He will lead me along paths that He has shown me are sensible and reasonable. I hope and pray that I have the humility to see sensibility and reason the way that God sees them, rather than through the lense of personal hubris.

(BTW - I am not in the throes of a major decision. The concept just hit me today is all.)