Monthly Archives: November 2017

"Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." Jude 3

Jude wrote his letter to warn churches against the influence of false teachers, a common problem in the early church and not so uncommon today. These "grumblers, malcontents, loud mouthed boasters" (v. 16) taught a perversion of grace (v. 4) and practiced a licentious lifestyle (v. 7).

In response, Jude appealed to Christians to "contend for the faith." The word for contend is built on the word for "agony." The stakes were high. The effort would need to be intense.

An apologist is someone who makes a defense. These early Christian apologists started a long line of intellectual inquiry and engagement that continues today. We need good Christians who will fight for the faith, define it, identify threats to it, and encourage Christians to embrace the teaching of the New Testament. They battle on behalf of the entire church body.

This "corporate" defense of the faith has a personal dimension also, and that is what I want to address in this week's GraceWaves. Individually we face many challenges to believe. It may come in the form of a clever argument against the resurrection or authority of Scripture.

For example, occasionally I run across someone who has heard or read about The Jesus Seminar, a collection of scholars who have reduced Jesus' teaching to a few Farmer's Almanac proverbs and dismiss His divine nature and atonement. They appear to have a presupposition that the miracles are contrived, and if that is your presupposition then it's easy to see why they think Jesus was just a meandering prophet who benefitted from an incredibly successful marketing campaign.

They are successful at making doubt and denial look like the intelligent option. For the record, let me affirm that equally intelligent and equally qualified people have looked at the same evidence and come away with the conviction that Jesus is who He claimed to be. Gratefully, we have strong apologists who can engage and refute these challenges, and thus help the church at large to embrace "the faith."

Much more common, however, is the doubt that creeps in because of personal disappointment. You have suffered some hard blows. You are disappointed in a church. Or you just don't seem to get much out of reading the Bible. Prayers seem hollow. Denominational bickering disgusts you. Doctrines confuse. These affects "your faith."

I know a great many Christians who, because of long-running doubt, have set the bar so low that they expect little and receive less. You may be one of these Christians. Doubt has lodged in your heart. What can you do?

First, do not embrace doubt as a virtue. Doubt is a challenge to be faced. It is a reality, a "black dog" of the spiritual life. But the fact that it is a common problem does not mean doubt should become a self-justifying excuse. Yes, you may have doubt; and yes, we all do sometimes, but that is all the more reason to contend for your faith! In other words, don't let the seed of doubt root its way into your soul. Fight it!

How? Remember that faith, and growing faith, is both a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:23) and a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:9). Ask God to help you. The Spirit loves to remind us and encourage us! That is His task. God does not expect you to manufacture faith on your own. He expects you to exercise it, like a muscle, and grow stronger in the process. If you haven't worked your faith in a while, start again by calling for the Spirit's help.

Probably the most important step you can take is to talk to a Christian who appears to have what you desire. Go for coffee and tell this person of your struggles. An honest believer will share his or her own struggles. You'll discover that you're not alone. You'll also have someone to pray for you, and if you can't pray it's wonderful to have someone do that for you!

Other practical matters include the usual. Read the Scripture, pray, worship, sing hymns, and lead a life worthy of your calling. Serve and encourage someone else. The Biblical word for faith has a strong element of perseverance in it. See Hebrews 11 for a list of people who kept believing. When challenged, do not fling away from what you know is right and good.

Faith senses subtlety. That is especially important because the world shouts, the ego screams, and God whispers. Sometimes it's just plain hard to believe. That's the point where you may want to give up. Let's change that to the point where you contend for your faith.

In the end, we're all like the father who came to Jesus pleading for his son's healing: "I believe. Help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24). We are all schizophrenic mixtures who need regular reminders that God does help us to believe, and at the same time urges us to fight for our faith. This week's GraveWaves is your reminder. Contend for your faith.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

November 12, 2017

 

"Walk Where Jesus Walked"

Have you ever thought about taking a trip that could deepen your faith? I visited Israel years ago, but the warmth of the experience still stirs my soul.

I remember Bethlehem in particular. An ancient church marks the spot where tradition claims Jesus was born. The entrance is low, about four feet, so I bowed to leave the glaring streets and enter the cool shadows of the basilica. A faint smell of incense lingered and shafts of colored light through stain glass bathed the line of whispering worshipers. I entered the small area where a fourteen-point star marks the birthplace.

The skeptic in me was saying "This site wasn't identified until Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, visited Bethlehem in the 4^th century. There's no way we can know for sure this was the spot." But the faith in me answered "Perhaps this isn't the spot, but you're not far from it. Jesus was born in Bethlehem."

At that moment the fact that God became man touched my heart and changed me forever.

For many years, I've been asked about leading a group to the Holy Land. I've always replied to such requests "I'll do that some day!"

Earlier this year I decided that if I was going to do it I needed to do it! So I've partnered with my good friend Dr. Dwight Moody to form E & M Tours. Working with the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies we've put together a tour of Israel ending with three days in Rome, May 26-June 10, 2018. My vision is to visit the birthplace of our Christian faith and then to see the glory of the city where the Church blossomed and gave rise to the church universal.

Dwight and I are committed to being your teachers and pastors on this trip. We'll teach you about the places we'll visit. We'll also encourage you to have a transforming, spiritual experience. We aim for the mind and the heart!

Please contact me for more information. You can reply to this email. Or use [email protected]. You can call me at (225) 405-0797. I'll be glad to send you a brochure.

You can also view information about our trip by going to www.jcbs.org/find_trip. In the box to the right labeled "I Know My Tour Information" enter the following information: In the "Tour" field enter JC18, in the "Departure Date" field enter 052618, in the field to the right enter x, and in the "Group Leader id #" enter 41969.

Making a pilgrimage is a big commitment, but if not now when? Let me be the catalyst for this significant spiritual experience in your life.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

"Surely God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid." Isaiah 12:2

Ever had allergies? I've had minor trouble occasionally, but nothing like as bad as my son, Gregory.

He went through years of sniffling, coughing, and wheezing before we took him to an allergist. You probably know the drill. She performed tests on the little guy to find out what he was allergic to. Turns out it was only two things: indoors and outdoors. So glad we narrowed it down.

What to do? We could encase him in a bubble with filtered air, but I wanted a son not a hamster. Keeping him away from all allergens was simply not possible. Sure we could keep him from rolling in the grass and snorting ragweed, but this was a red-blooded kid who wanted to take on the world, not be excluded from it.

So we decided to put him on a regimen of allergy shots. Now here's the really interesting thing about allergies and their treatment. You develop a tolerance to an allergen, NOT by avoiding it completely, which is impossible. In the shot you take some of the allergen inside you. You're exposed to the very thing that causes you distress. Of course, this is all carefully controlled by the doctor so as not to overwhelm you, but to train your body to endure the allergen and not overreact to it. Exposure to the allergen is the point.

That's about the extent of my knowledge of allergies and their treatment.

Now let's talk about fear, for I've had a lot more experience with that than allergies.

I do wish I could avoid everything that makes me fearful. I wish I could arrange everything in life to be to my liking. I don't think I'd be cruel or excessive in my expectations. I doubt you'd hardly notice. If I could eliminate all my fear triggers then I would not have any adverse spiritual reactions like, well, fear.

I take this simple plan to God. What does He say? "Fear not." Someone has said that the Bible has the phrase "fear not" in it 365 times, one for each day of the year. That sounds like one of those biblical "facts" that preaches really well but isn't 100% accurate. We preachers are given to the occasional embellishment, especially if it's really hard for you to fact-check it. I'm not sure "fear not" appears 365 times, and I'm not going to take the time to comb through a concordance and count. Let's just agree that "fear not" is in the Bible a lot.

That sounds promising! If I take God at His word, He does not want me to fear. So I turn from Him and His reassuring words to find that the objects of my fear remain stubbornly a part of my life. They're all there. Just like ragweed. Can't get rid of them. And that's the point.

My fears are like allergies. God treats my fears by allowing them to remain and asking me to trust Him to be stronger than my fears. By facing my fears, I learn to live in faith. It's the only way to grow in faith.

I cry out "But if you just removed the things that cause my fear then I could be done with them!" God calmly answers, "Life is not like that. You will have to trust that I am with you and will take care of you. You must have faith."

Faith. Faith is such a multi-faceted word, so highly nuanced that the Greek word requires multiple English words to translate it. It can mean belief, as in a certain content. We need to believe the right things about God and confront the irrational and harmful ideas. This is the cognitive component of faith. "I believe in God the Father…in Jesus Christ His Son…in the Holy Spirit" etc. This is faith as belief.

Faith can also mean trust, and here we really home in on the way to deal with fear. The Bible does contain many examples of God's removing the fear triggers. Parting of the waters, protection from enemies, stilling of storms, healing of diseases, casting out demons. All of these are in the Bible to show us what God can do.

Now here is the most difficult part of this little devotional. Removing the fear trigger is the least of God's miracles. Providing courage born of deep and abiding trust is God's real goal for us. He wants us to have the spiritual muscle to keep believing in Him even when the evidence may look a little thin, or even absent. In fact, what God really wants for us is our trust that is completely divorced from physical evidence. He desires that we believe in Him based solely on the certainty of His presence and promises to never leave us and to take care of every need.

I'm grateful for my pastor, Rev. Brady Whitton of FUMC Baton Rouge, for stirring these thoughts today in his sermon. He gave a special application that really spoke to me that I want to pass along to you.

He asked us to think about things that we want to do for God that make us fearful. We're just afraid to try them, implicitly thinking that God might not come through for us. So we stay safely on the shores and never launch into the deep.

But the fear we feel at the outset of a new commitment is precisely the point. If we don't attempt things that take us beyond our comfort we never know how powerful and dependable God is. Thus God's response to our fear is not to remove it, but simply to ask us to have faith in Him.

What is the commitment you've struggled with? Has fear kept you from making the attempt? If you're waiting for God to remove your fear while you stand on the shore, you're in for an endless wait. You won't get stronger, better, or less fearful by standing still.

So go ahead and make the decision you've known you needed to make for a long time. Take action that demonstrates your faith. Life is full of uncertainties, storms, and terrible chapters. God is over all. Trust. Have faith. Fear not.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

November 5, 2017

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