Monthly Archives: September 2011

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

The movie Titanic came out in 1997. My daughter at the time was nine years old and according to her was “the only person my age not allowed to see it!” Despite her indisputable accuracy, and due to the fact that we, her parents, were obviously social Neanderthals, I would not allow her to go see the movie due to a few racy scenes. Besides I ruined the story for her when I quite inadvertently let slip that the boat sank. Hence she did not need to go see it anyway.

All parents have been in this position multiple times. You withhold an opportunity from a son or daughter they feel is crucial to their socialization. If not allowed to go, they will have few or no friends, or worse the wrong group of friends. And finally the deadliest of labels applies, they will not be popular.

This article is not about parenting, but let me quickly add that parents should never fear the common “but everybody else is doing it argument” as coercion for giving in on an issue. I promise you, other parents are with you, and are looking for support in their position that they are not the only parents not allowing their child to go on an un-chaperoned kindergarten graduation cruise to St. Thomas.

The purpose of this GraceWaves has to do with what we are being prepared for. Neither my daughter nor my son understood my response to their complaints about being left out of the popular group of over-privileged children of chronically self-important parents. I said to them repeatedly: “I am not concerned about your social success in junior high. I am not designing you to peak in high school. I am preparing you for success in the real world.”

At every juncture when I gave that little speech my children stopped and looked at me with a mixture of wonder and gratitude. Their words were something like, “Thank you, father, for your wisdom in not allowing us to go further down this path of dissipation.” Then we hugged and went back to watching The Little Mermaid.

Of course it did not turn out quite like that, but I stand by the point. My greatest concern is that my children learn how to function well in the real world, a world that can be very rough, unfair, and uncaring. Going through tough and unpopular times was unpleasant but necessary for a much higher goal than temporal success or popularity. I could not sacrifice their future by giving into every present wish for ease or unhealthy peer-acceptance.

Paul was writing to chronically fractious Corinthians who loved to compare and rank themselves. Additionally, they looked down on Paul as shallow and unsophisticated, yet his defense was “I simply preach the cross, and that is the way to glory.”

God has never made it easy on His servants. Prophets were seldom popular and often imprisoned, apostles were stoned, shipwrecked, beheaded, and crucified. A very reasonable request to God might be for some incentive here that makes the Christian life more appealing here. While God does bless us immeasurably in this life His main response to us appears to be “I am not preparing you for temporal success, but for eternal glory.”

The delay of gratification is a cardinal Christian quality. The writers of the New Testament had their eyes on heaven and eternity. It was not an escapist view of life here, for they engaged life by going from city to village, planting churches, writing letters and gospels, and generally arguing for the necessity and truth of a puzzling message: God loves you, offers eternal life to you, but requires you to have faith every step of the way.

Look at the disciple John, for example. Writing late in his life, he understood the necessity of faith quite clearly. His life had not been an easy one, though he had been the beloved disciple. He had been on the “inner circle” with Jesus, but he enjoyed no life of ease. How do you explain this apparent contradiction of having followed Christ so closely and writing about the Christian life so divinely and extensively (1 gospel, 3 letters, and an apocalypse) yet having so little in the earthly sense to show for it? Listen to his explanation: “this is the victory that overcomes the world: our faith” (1 John 5:4).

This yearning for faith and greater faith became all-consuming for New Testament writers, and it gave them a vision for eternity in which “the things of earth grew strangely dim.” Possessed of this same eternal vision, and faith as the means to it, Paul quoted Isaiah, “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

With all of our great technology and rapid expansion of knowledge, we suffer today from a more limited vision. We worry about bills, arthritic hips, a banking crisis in Europe, and why LSU gave up over 500 yards to WVU last Saturday night. We turn to God with all these gravely important worries (and some are genuine) and ask that He make life easier.

His typical response? “I am not preparing you for worldly success. I don’t want you to peak in 2011. I have plans for an eternity for you.”

You need to be reminded today that you cannot possibly conceive of how glorious your future is in Christ. While you cannot imagine the unimaginable, just remember that is your future. Your present task, therefore, is quite simple: love God deeply and have faith in Him. Today, this week, or the coming years, may be full of toil, but part of your worry is simply due to your inability to grasp what God has in store for you. You are being shaped for eternity.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

September 25, 2011

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without wisdom’” Job 38:1

The picture of the wildfires in Texas was another final straw. As the man looked at the picture of smoke and flames and read of destruction of property he groused to his wife, “where is your God now?”

I hear this kind of response to bad things, and it’s often uttered as the coup de grace for any fading attempt to believe in God. The underlying assumption is clear enough and somewhat plausible. A caring, good, and all-powerful God could send rain anytime He wants to put out a destructive fire. He didn’t, ergo He either does not care, is not good, or is not all-powerful. Or most likely to many people He is not.

Charles Templeton claims that a picture of a starving child in Africa sealed the deal for him. This man who once roomed with Billy Graham and conducted evangelistic crusades turned away from his faith. He wrote Farewell to God, and forever cited that particular picture as the crystallization of his agnosticism.

Part of my point in this week’s GraceWaves is to alert you to something you have probably already witnessed: a theist, perhaps in the thinnest meaning of the word, decides God cannot possibly exist because of evidence that seems to present a prima facie case against God’s presence, power, or compassion. And I would certainly concede that if God lacks any one of the three, then He is not much a of a god.

What would be our answer to such an intellectual assault? We deal with some form of it, internally or externally with regularity. The questions are old as Job and his friends. Three points come to mind.

The first point does not sound very sympathetic, but without doubt applies to some degree in most all cases. The fires in Texas have been going on long before there was a Texas. Forests and savannah burn as part of the natural cycle and actually produce very salutary benefits. The problems arise when we use our technology to build in areas where these fires occur.

One time my 12 year old daughter was exploring a rather large tract of woods behind our house when I heard a high pitched scream and looked to see her running, quite panic-stricken, toward the house. She appeared to have no major cuts or gashes, all limbs still attached, so at this jaded point in parenthood I knew she was all right, simply frightened by something. She breathlessly explained to me “there’s a snake out there!” Ahh, the old enmity of the serpent!

I explained to my young Eve that her observation was as natural as if the snake had entered our house, and slithered quickly back to its den to tell its snaky parents “there’s humans in there.” “You were in their home” I said. That is where snakes quite reasonably live. We simply cannot afford the intellectual naiveté of treating bad circumstances as if God were somehow either responsible or neglectful.

As for the fires in Texas, the only way He could properly be blamed is for us to assume he slung the lightning bolts Himself (a la Zeus), or that as a doddering old mad He was simply turned the other way while some of His children played with matches. I would like once and for all to pin down the fact that one reason we regularly endure harsh natural consequences is that we live in a harsh natural world and often choose to live right next to or right on the harsh natural potential (see LA). We want all the freedom to do whatever we want, but none of the consequences.

The second response to someone who is perennially aggrieved by God’s apparent impotence is to echo God’s answer out of the whirlwind. “Who is this that darkness counsel by words without wisdom?” God, in a sense, has had enough from know-it-all-Job God and has a few questions that stretch back into eternity. Job, of course, is brought to humiliated silence. God is God, and Job is not. The job description is way behind his pay grade. Better let God be God.

Now as obvious as this answer is, a post-modern man or woman, replete with cell phone technology that surpasses former computers that took up warehouses, may find it unsatisfactory. We can google almost anything, and that has given us the power and, unfortunately, the ego of little gods. We are not comfortable being told “you wouldn’t understand," but the fact is, "you wouldn’t understand."

Sin has broken the world, and God is in the business of fixing it in a way that takes into account our often self-destructive free will. Frankly, we need a little humility, and need to show God a little respect. He does know what He’s doing. Thankfully, He’s used to hearing all the rants. But still it would be in your best interest to stop throwing your tantrum and listen instead of trying to bully God about.

And that brings us to the final point, the cross. The cross is God’s painful way of fixing all the brokenness. It shows a God who comes nears to us, mixing in our tears and blood, and somehow bringing out a future bright and clean.

I find as I get older my life is more focused on the cross. Parenthood has taught me about cruciform forgiveness. Failures have taught the depth of grace. Brokenness of all sorts has taught me the brilliant necessity of the cross.

In a complex world, it’s good to know a few simple things. One of the main things is to know that God is on your side, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. We find this truth in so many places in Scripture but perhaps most clearly in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul wrote, “But God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This is good news indeed. You do not have to “clean up” before you come to God, and you don’t have to have it all figured out. He came so that we could be clean. He stays around to finish the job.

I hope and pray that you carry with you every day the certainty that God really is with you, pulling for you, encouraging you, renewing you, and that nothing will separate you from His love and peace. That simple truth should serve as a North Star of your life. It is a certainty that will guide you and enable you to live in a way that honors God and brings peace to you. Now why don’t you just go ahead and lay down those questions?

Grace,

Terry Ellis

September 18, 2011

"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Philippians 1:21

Paul was in prison when he wrote these remarkably optimistic words. He faced the very real possibility of execution, and while he indicated elsewhere in the letter his expectation of release he could not be sure. Even if he were to once again evade capital punishment his long and varied experience with prisons, shipwrecks, beatings, and general privation I’m sure he knew that, from a worldly point of view, his life was not going to end easily or comfortably. He did not care. All death meant to him was a change of address.

So how could he maintain such a startling hope and apparently joyful (a main theme of Philippians) disposition? A greater point for consideration is why I, in the comfort and security of my present surroundings, should not possess the same divine optimism?

Or let’s take you for example. You are likely reading these brief observations with a solid roof over your head, not living in a cave or tree. The clothes you wear are comfortable, possibly even stylish. Even if you have not dressed for the day’s activities you are likely wrapped snuggly in a bathrobe with a nice pair of house slippers. You obviously have electricity, and quite probably a nice cup of coffee with which to start your day. A Golden Retriever lies curled in the corner and wags his tail every time you look his way.

Perhaps I’m off a bit, but compared with what Paul faced when he wrote Philippians 1:21 you are a Norman Rockwell painting of ease and delight.

Delight and joy, however, are not the first words that leap to mind for you, are they? One common problem we all manufacture is to set the bar of our expectations so impossibly high that we cannot possibly be contented, joyful, or peaceful (all three are themes in this prison letter). We are somewhat like golfers who take the very lowest score they have ever achieved, make that the standard, and manifest shock and even outrage that today’s game did not go as well or better.

I believe God wants us to maintain such a deep trust in His providence that we can even treat death as simply a change of address. We truly can have a “can’t lose” faith. Instead we live each day as if the end were somehow in doubt. It is not.

It is the certainty of victory that frees us to live daily with joyful optimism. One of my favorite professors is Dr. Fisher Humphreys, and I have benefited equally from his teaching and friendship. He wrote of a personal experience which served as a perfect analogy for God’s ultimate victory and the confidence that gives you today.

“I was playing in a chess tournament in which I was the weakest player. One afternoon my opponent was a mild looking young man whom I did not know. Later on I learned that he held a prestigious place among chess players in universities, but when I played him I judged from his mild manner that he was not a vigorous player.

“He checkmated me in eleven moves! After my humiliating defeat he kindly offered to go over the game (we kept records of our moves) to explain where I had gone wrong. I cannot remember his exact words, but the gist of his comments was something like this: ‘Your first move was good. Your second move was optional but satisfactory. Your third move was weak but not seriously so. But your fourth move was disastrous. You lost the game on your fourth move.’

“Because I am sometimes a literalist, I responded ‘You are mistaken. I did not lose on the fourth move; you defeated me on the eleventh move.’

“But my opponent was even more literal than I. He responded: ‘No, Mr. Humphreys, you are mistaken. When you made your fourth move, you were defeated. I won on move four. Nothing could save you then. The game was mine.’”

Dr. Humphrey’s goes on to explain that the cross was God’s fourth move.

Paul lived with a powerful conviction that Christ had defeated sin and death on the cross, and been raised from the dead. That conviction freed him to live joyously no matter his circumstances. He had no doubt about the end.

Alan Redpath sums up nicely the “can’t lose” faith you can have today: “There is nothing—no circumstance, no trouble, no testing—that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand at the moment. But as I refuse to become panicky, as I lift up my eyes to Him and accept it as coming from God or through God for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart, no sorrow will ever disturb me, no trial will ever disarm me, no circumstance will cause me to fret, for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is. That is the rest of victory.”

Live with joyful confidence today. The cross and resurrection are God’s promise that nothing can defeat you.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

September 11, 2011

“For through Him we both have the right of entry in one Spirit to the Father.” Eph. 2:18

Ephesians is Paul’s most lovely and soaring letter. He touches on themes of such grand and sweeping importance that even he gets caught up in the excitement. The longest sentences in all of Paul’s writings are in Ephesians. Two of his main themes are in the verse for this week’s GraceWaves.

First we see unity. Paul was formerly a dedicated schismatic. For him the world consisted of two groups: the Jews and the Gentiles. To be fair from the other side, the Greeks considered the world to be divided into Greeks and barbarians. This tendency to classify and create divisions is part of human nature. Put two people in one room and you likely will soon have a division.

But not in Christ! The “Him” of the verse is Christ, and through the cross Jesus broke down all the dividing walls. In fact, in one of the most powerful images anywhere in the New Testament Paul described how Christ broke down the dividing walls between us. He had in mind the temple, which rather than being one great building was actually a huge series of concentric courts with the Holy of Holies in the middle.

The first, most external court, and the one most distant from the place of God was called the Court of the People. All people, Jew and Gentile could enter this large court, and a great deal of commerce took place here. The next interior court was the Court of Israel. You had to be Jewish to enter here, and above every door were signs promising death to any Gentile who transgressed. This court was as close as Jewish Women could come, for none of them could enter the Court of the Men. And here a typical man must stay and not enter the Court of the Priests. In the Court of the Priests only certain priests could enter the Holy Place, and only one Priest, The High Priest, could enter the Holy of Holies once a year. The very religion of the first century reflected a highly segmented society.

To emphasize the unity we can enjoy with one another Paul cited the Trinity. God’s very nature illustrates what we can be and what we have to look forward to in eternity. We need this message more desperately than ever today with the endless sub-dividing of the church into countless “interest groups” with different “felt needs.” Most marketing strategies I see today play to our divisions not to the fundamental unity that defines us.

On a personal level, when you feel dissected by your schedule (which social media does nothing but exacerbate) you are often likely to feel estranged from God. You will find unity and peace only in Christ. You desperately need a time each day to remember who you are and how God has made you to live in Him.

The second overarching theme of this verse is access. The word for access is used of a man bringing a sacrifice to God, or of bringing a man into God’s presence so that he may be consecrated for God’s use. The word is enormously important, for it underscores the right of access you have to God. You have this access because of God’s fundamental predisposition to you. He wants the way to be clear, and He wants you to use it. You must never doubt this access.

Walter Shurden writes the following story: “While I was a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, the late Carlyle Marney lectured on our campus. In a chapel address, he gave us vintage Marney! His address was overlaid with so many historical allusions, so many poetic images, so many profound thoughts wrapped in such mysterious language that we all left talking about how great it was, while not a half dozen of us, including the faculty, really knew what he had said.

“Immediately after the chapel service, Marney appeared in one of the theology classes to answer questions about his address. The first fellow to his feet was a first-year student who hadn’t been at seminary long enough to be ‘cool’ and hide his ignorance like the rest of us. He blurted out: “Dr. Marney, I heard you in chapel a few minutes ago, and frankly I didn’t understand a word you said. Can you tell me in simple language what the gospel of Jesus Christ really is?” Marney paused, peered over his glasses, and stared a Grand Canyon into the fellow. Then he turned, walked to the chalkboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and after waiting an interminable moment, wrote four words on the board in capitals: GOD IS FOR YOU! And he underlined you.” (The Doctrine of the Priesthood of the Believer, 45).

We humans are too subject to circumstances, misleading ideas, an ill-timed rush of enzymes or hormones to be as constant now as God will one day make us. But Paul’s words in this verse powerfully remind us what we can strive for. Ontological reality trumps subjective feelings.

Your life right now may be fracturing and dragging you in a dozen different directions. You have lost the feeling of God’s peace and presence. Trust me, He has not moved. He is the one thing in and around you that has not moved. Use your right of access to enter His presence, let Him whisper His reminder of who He created you to be.

Grace,

September 4, 2011

Dr. Terry Ellis