God Through Us

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

God works through us.

It’s not that He can’t work in other ways; obviously He can and does. But because He believes in us — that astounding fact of scripture which simply cannot be denied or dismissed — He wants to work through us.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. ~ Philippians 1:3-6

Can you conclude anything from this that there is a partnership in the gospel? That “he who began a good work in you” can be anyone other than God? So is this partnership just between Paul and the folks at Philippi?

(for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), ~ Galatians 2:8

No! It’s God working through Peter to the circumcised and through Paul to the Gentiles! How does He do that?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. ~ Ephesians 2:8-10

Is it just to Peter and Paul? Does He just makes work for us? No! It’s for all, and for every:

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. ~ 2 Corinthians 9:8

Does He just give us the grace to prepare ourselves for the work? Not by a long shot! There are gifts attached to that grace:

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. ~ Romans 12:3-8

So He gives us specific gifts to prepare us for the work He has prepared for us to do. But prepared us in what way?

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. ~ 1 Corinthians 12:4-6

He empowers us. The Spirit, the Lord, God. How much power are we talking about?

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. ~ Ephesians 3:20-22

That’s a lot of power! Does He do it long-distance?

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. ~ Colossians 1:24-29

No; from within! Christ in us. It’s His energy working powerfully within us. That makes us partners in the gospel with God, through Christ!

Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. ~ 2 Corinthians 6:1

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ~ 2 Corinthians 5:20

How does Christ dwell in us? Through His Holy Spirit:

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. ~ Romans 8:9-11

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. ~ 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

The Spirit of God! The Spirit of Christ! Without His Spirit within us, we have no hope of resurrection! We have no chance of escaping destruction! Without His Spirit, we have no way to partner with God in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ!

We can know scripture forward and backward and think we know everything it means, and if we do not have the Spirit dwelling within us, we are pointless and powerless in our attempts to minister. By the Spirit, God speaks through us:

Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. ~ 1 Corinthians 12:3

And the One who knows how best to prepare and empower each of us does so at His own discretion, not ours:

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. ~ 1 Corinthians 12:7-11

Therefore we work for the common good, Paul says, in partnership with God to build His building, sow and water and tend His field:

For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. ~ 1 Corinthians 3:9

So how do we respond to this offer of powerful, dwell-within partnership?

Do we say, “Well thanks, God, but I’ve got my Bible and I understand it completely and perfectly; that’s all I need and I don’t really want your help”?

Or, “I’m just not sure about all that miraculous stuff or being a part of that; it’s not that I believe You can’t do it, but it scares me a little bit and I’d rather just believe that You don’t work that way anymore because it’s too likely to be perceived as fake and I don’t want to have my credibility damaged”?

Perhaps just: “Oh, You don’t need me, Lord. Use my brother; he talks better than I do”?

Maybe: “I’m catching the next outbound boat for the other direction.”

Do any of those sound familiar?

Too familiar?

I Hate Cancer

/ W. Keith Brenton / 13 Comments

20130403-194937.jpgOne of my earliest memories of cancer is seeing a movie on television when I was a kid – I think it was “Stolen Hours” with Susan Hayward – in which a not-so-nice lady was humbled and humanized by it, and finally succumbed to it. When the movie’s characters talked about a brain tumor, I thought they were saying “brain doomer.” Back then, it might as well have been.

My other memory is of visiting a sweet elderly widow from church, bedfast at home from an untreatable cancer. Her name was Anna Clancy, and like many other residents of the area near my church in the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis, she was originally from Germany and had the accent to prove it. She knew she would never return there, but loved to see and share with us color slides from her homeland in her GAF stereo viewer. On one visit, she gave me the chocolate-brown plastic viewer and all the gorgeous slides; it was an early version of the View-Master. For a child like me with poor distance vision and no ability to fuse the images from my two eyes more than a few feet away, the device was pure magic. It turned out to be our last visit. I think she knew it would be.

I hate cancer.

It has taken shots at my maternal grandmother, my mom, my older sister and even me. It has threatened and taken relatives, friends, colleagues anf neighbors.

There’s nothing fair about cancer. I survived a pretty easily survivable type of it in my early twenties, but it took away my ability to father children. Sure, we’ve been able to adopt the two greatest kids in the whole world. But no thanks to cancer.

Cancer doesn’t care whether you are young or old, male or female, wealthy or poor, healthy or infirm, gay or straight, black or white or somewhere in between. It is very democratic. But it is not fair.

Now cancer is trying to kill my sweet wife Angi.

She is battling it with all her might, while it slowly saps every ounce of strength she has. I hate that she has to.

I hate that it sneaked up on her like a filthy thief. Pancreatic cancer has no outstanding symptoms. It’s almost always diagnosed too late.

I hate what it is doing to her; torturing her, starving her, drying her out, weakening her.

I hate what it is taking away from her: food and water, strength, comfort, health, pleasure, hair, dignity.

Yet no matter what cancer takes, it does not take away her patience, her persistence, her cheer, her love, her faith.

I hate what it is giving her: wracking pain, nausea, dry heaves, insomnia.

I hate that I try to help and there is not really one thing I can do to make life better for her, and I am still worn out at the end of the day.

I hate what cancer is doing to my family.

I hate having to sell our house because I’m not working fulltime and wouldn’t be able to make payments on it nor utilities for it if it fell to me.

I hate the prospect of having to move and not knowing when or where.

I hate what this cancer is doing to my kids, to Gran, to extended family and dear friends and church siblings.

I especially hate the stress and uncertainty this is all putting on my daughter, about to turn 17 and fighting her own brave battles.

I hate cancer, the slow torturing killer of loved and loving people. I hate cancer because it is evil. I hate cancer because it is of the accuser.

Cancer lies. And we know who the father of lies is.

Cancer murders. And we know who was a murderer from the beginning.

It doesn’t help to hate cancer. Just hating it doesn’t help at all.

But cancer isn’t a person. I don’t get any picture from scripture that there’s anything wrong with hating an evil thing. When I think about cancer, I can’t help but hate it.

No apologies.

I hate it.

Hope

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

What can I say on this dark, rainy Holy Saturday about the resurrection of Jesus Christ that has not already been said, and more eloquently?

Probably nothing.

But I continue to repeat — to myself and to others — sometimes like a mantra of comfort:

“For my family and me, at this time of challenge, the resurrection is the single unique fact in all of human history that can bring us hope.”

In it, God shows His power, desire and passion to turn death into life, pain into bliss, tomb walls into gardens, darkness into light, hope into glory.

When all other alternatives are exhausted through human failure, He stands by the rolled-away stone in the divinely-perfected form of His Son and assures us:

“It is accomplished.

“It’s not over.

“It’s just beginning.”

Totally Humbled

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

When you’re in the position my family is in, you can’t really plan for anything.

You want to hope that God, as He says in Jeremiah 29:11, knows the plans He has for you — plans for a future and a hope.

But you can’t see them, and you don’t know what they are.

So you speculate.

That’s what I was doing a couple of days ago on my 6:00 a.m. walk with Roadie, the world’s sweetest dog.

It occurred to me that it might not necessarily be His plan for us to be stalwart heroes of unwavering faith.

He might not expect us to stoically weather these storms with perfect calm in our souls.

He might not even want us to try to be perfectly whole or holy when it seems like our lives are being shattered into tiny fragments.

It might be that He just wants my family and me to be the humble recipients of extraordinary grace at the hands of an exceptionally generous group of friends, neighbors, colleagues, and church family.

And so we are.

If you could see all the cards and gift bags, the home-delivered meals and flowers; read all the messages and emails and CaringBridge notes, you would know – in the midst of these challenges – how very, very blessed we are.

We are completely overwhelmed by your willingness to be channels of God’s blessing for us.

If that’s His plan, we can see that you are part of it.

Thank you.

Judging Others by What We Don’t Know

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

Micah 6:8Dismiss these as the ramblings of a deeply troubled man who is too weary to sleep if you will; I’m okay with that. You may be right.

But just in case I’m not, please take a moment to consider them.

I have offered on these pages and elsewhere my judgment that we should judge words and actions, but not judge others. By that I mean that we have no right, authority or ability to pronounce judgment on others: make broad statements about their motives and their character; absolve or condemn their souls. We are to judge actions and words — of others, as well as our own — and lovingly, humbly, and personally (privately at first) attempt to persuade the one who strays to amend and make amends.

I’ve proposed that we have no ability to make accurate moral judgments of others’ motives and character because:

  • Our own may be suspect; not pure.
  • We do not have complete knowledge of their circumstances in life, influences and pressures on them.
  • We do not have infallible knowledge of another’s heart. It’s difficult enough, at times, to know our own hearts. God, however, knows them better than we know ourselves.

Let me propose yet another reason we do not have this ability:

  • We don’t know the complete physical condition of another person.

Millions of people suffer from health challenges ranging from depression to schizophrenia to hormonal/chemical imbalances of the body and brain. Sometimes — many times — they are not even aware of them, and these conditions go undiagnosed and untreated.

These conditions affect judgment and behavior. The laws of many lands recognize this, and shelter those who may be guilty for these reasons once diagnosed.

You can’t tell by looking at a person — or even at their acts, or hearing their words — if they are so affected. You may suspect it, but some of these conditions will stump medical doctors trying to accurately diagnose them.

Oh, it’s easy to just regard someone in their misery and think “crazy person” or “they made their own bed; now they have to lie in it.” Anyone can do that. And we all do.

In doing so, we disqualify ourselves as accurate judges of others’ motives and character.

We would not want to be judged in that way.

So for that reason, Jesus says “Don’t judge.”

In the past three weeks, I have seen enough of the inside of waiting rooms, emergency rooms, examination rooms and recovery rooms to last me for the rest of my life. Not one of them is fully private. You hear and see people in all kinds of misery. You have no idea the depth to which it takes their souls.

Sometimes, all you can do is respect what little privacy they have … withhold your judgment out of your awareness of your completely insufficient comprehension of the human condition … and silently pray.

Job, the Lord, and Theodicy

/ W. Keith Brenton / 9 Comments

I originally wrote this as a comment on an excellent, honest and challenging post called “Fight Like A Man, You Dirty Dog!” by Les Ferguson, Jr. at his blog. But I thought about it a little more and wanted to share it here, too. Les closes his post by asking these questions:

“What do you do when it feels like you have given God everything and there is no divine protection in it?

“If the Creator of the Universe doesn’t fight fair, what recourse do we have?

“I get that we live in a broken world and bad things happen to good people. I get it. I hate it. And I certainly don’t understand it.

“But what do you do when it feels like the dirty dog is God?”

So I answered:

I have struggled with this long before my current challenges began.

I continue to believe that God is good. I’ve concluded from the book of Job that evil, pain and suffering are from the accuser, not from God. I don’t understand why God permits it. Job doesn’t get a reason. God never tells Job about His wager with the accuser, or the fact that (incredibly) the Creator of all things believes in Job just as much as Job believes in Him.

That’s what astounds me. God’s answer, in essence, isn’t an answer to Job’s questions at all, but the implied reassurance that God is God, and He can be trusted.

There’s never a moment in the book of Job that I can recall where the existence of God is in question. His nature and character (along with Job’s) are debated on and on. But no one ever says, “With all these terrible things happening, there just can’t be a God.”

The whole work is a work about faith. It may be called integrity, but ultimately what Job (and his friends) must learn is that his trust can’t be in himself or others or stuff – but in God.

So I can only hope to navigate this present hell in my life by faith – and trust that His inscrutable purpose in letting Satan tear at my family is because – somehow – He believes in us.

Which is not as much help as I would like it to be when I want to grab the one responsible for the suffering and evil and pain in the lives of my family and yours and so many others … and beat him to a bloody dying pulp.

I can’t do that.

The victory is already God’s through Christ.

I have to trust in that.

It’s all I’ve got.

A Thundering Answer

/ W. Keith Brenton / 10 Comments

 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”  The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

~ John 12:27-29

jesusprayingrockI have prayed and prayed. My soul, like my Lord’s, is troubled as surely as His was on that day when, still freshly arrived in Jerusalem, Phillip brought to Him two Greeks who wanted to see Him. And He told them it was time for Him to die.

That a seed must die before it can grow.

That one must hate life to save it.

That one must follow and serve Him.

My soul is troubled, because life as I knew it and wanted it to be will change in the weeks and months to come; will be overshadowed by fear and pain and death — and none of us in our family knows what those days will hold for us.

I have prayed and prayed. And, like Jesus, I don’t know what to pray for anymore. The very Son of God, God in essence talking to Himself in prayer, shared my perplexity about what to pray.

But Jesus’ answer came immediately, and it has come to me this morning. Thundering. Unnerving. Blowing me away.

“Father, glorify Your name.”

He can glorify it by taking away Angi’s pancreatic cancer and liver lesions; by completely conquering the depression that Laura has been courageously battling these many months. I understand that. It’s what I want, and what I’ve prayed for.

Yet, I also know somewhere deep within that He can also glorify His name by doing only one of those things, or neither, or something exceeding abundantly beyond all that I can ask or imagine. I don’t understand that. It’s what I’m afraid to want, and what I’m unable to pray for.

Jesus’ answer is simple: “Trust Him.”

He doesn’t need the thundering answer from His Father or through an angel; it’s for our benefit. For my benefit:

“I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

That, of course, it what must matter most.

Not because God is any less if His name is not glorified, but because we are.

Not because God will shrivel up into a powerless dry myth if His name is not made known, but that the power of His name will not be made known in order to explode the dry myth into powder.

Not because God will be blown away, but because sometimes “me” needs to be blown away, and replaced with “He.”

I write these words now while I can still write them in faith, because I know me and I know I will need to read them again later as my faith is stretched and pulled and yanked out of socket by the unseeable future. I will need to remind myself of the commitment of faith I’ve made to praise Him as the only One whose name is to be hallowed; to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven;” to offer as my only plea, “Father, glorify Your name.”

I will still tell Him what I want and need and beg for in His unique love, mercy and providence.

Yet I will still need to temper my petitions with the recognition that He knows me better than I know myself; He knows what we need more accurately than we do; He knows and loves my family more dearly than I ever could.

He alone can — and will — do what will best glorify His name, to the blessing of all whom He loves.

And His grace will be sufficient.

Your Prayers Needed for My Family

/ W. Keith Brenton / 30 Comments

20130219-201831.jpgThe Brenton family needs your prayers, because we need two miracles.

Angi has been a little ill – digestive difficulties – since January and it got bad enough that she went to the doctor early last week. They did some blood tests and a CT scan Friday, 2/15. The preliminary diagnosis we got the next day from the scan is pancreatic cancer – a golfball-sized tumor near the bottom of the pancreas, and unfortunately, signs that it has spread to the liver.

The prognosis for this type of cancer is never good, and life expectancy if caught early is usually about nine to twelve months – less if other organs are affected.

She will see an oncologist in Asheville Thursday, one who specializes in this type of cancer, and we’ll know more then.

This has been a shock for all of us, and we have been informing family members and friends. It has been especially difficult for our 16-year-old daughter Laura, who has been battling depression for some months. The day Angi’s scan was taken, we were admitting Laura to the local hospital’s ER for a comprehensive evaluation. We agreed (including Laura) with the evaluating team that she needed to be placed temporarily at a hospital which specializes in treating depression, and one of us was with her at the ER 24 hours a day until a bed opened up Monday evening 2/18, just 3-1/2 hours away. We have taken her there, and she’ll be in that program to help restart her life about 5-7 days.

I preached Sunday morning and longed to explain to our church family at Sylva why I was so earnestly seeking their prayers, but I couldn’t until we had been able to tell extended family – our moms, kids, sisters and Angi’s cousins – and a few working colleagues. Each one of our church family respected that, and prayed in faith that God knew what was best for us and would provide.

That’s what we’re asking from all of you: prayers of faith. Be as specific as you want to be in your prayers, but we really need two miracles. I’ve only asked for a miracle once before – my dad’s recovery from a heart episode and coma at age 66, 20 years ago. God didn’t answer as my family and I had hoped or asked at that time, but we still believe in His limitless power and desire for what is best for us.

Thank you in advance for your grace in doing this. We may not be able to respond to every kind word you send while we try to cluster our far-flung family in prayer and hope. But please know how much we appreciate your prayers, love and well-wishes.

Situation Ethics

/ W. Keith Brenton / 21 Comments

Forty and fifty years ago, Christian preachers of every stripe, color and denomination so soundly and roundly condemned this philosophical principle that people have feared to even utter the words lest they be laughed at for their stupidity as they be spirited away by hell’s flame-winged demons.

I have no fear of these two words situation ethics. I have no fear of the philosophical principle which they describe.

And I have no fear of people who would roundly and soundly condemn me for uttering them, and defending even a part of that principle.

Part of it is what I wish to defend, and all that I wish to defend.

As long as we all understand that it does not supersede scripture.

And that the end does not justify the means.

There are serious difficulties and aspects of the principle that are just plain wrong — and by that, I mean indefensible in light of scripture. But there is also a truth or two at its core that we cannot, must not so easily dispense with.

One of Satan’s most powerful tools in the war against Christianity is his myth that any given action must-be-and-is intrinsically (of itself) either right or wrong.

And we have swallowed that lie as if it were a draught from the river of life itself.

Let me state this plainly:

Not every possible action we can take is, in and of itself, morally right or morally evil.

Some actions are morally neutral. We perform thousands of them each day: Tying a shoe. Walking out of a house. Driving away in a car.

It is the situation in which those actions or objects are found that can make them morally right or morally wrong.

Tying someone else’s shoes together without their knowledge is wrong. Tying your own shoes together is stupid, but at least you’re only wronging yourself.

Walking out of a house that is on fire without telling anyone else that it is aflame is wrong.

Driving away in a car you’ve just stolen is wrong.

You get the point.

Even scripture recognizes this.

Paul wanted to take with him on his mission trips a young man named Timothy, who had not been circumcised. In order for Timothy to enter a synagogue (where Paul initially always went on those trips), he needed to be circumcised. There was nothing wrong with it circumcision just wasn’t a prerequisite to salvation (Acts 15). Paul had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3).

On a trip back to Jerusalem, however, Titus would not be compelled to be circumcised (Galatians 2:3) because it would have seemed to support that false doctrine, that circumcision was a prerequisite to salvation.

Is circumcision morally right or wrong?

Well, obviously, in one situation it helped the gospel and in another situation it hindered the gospel.

Isolated example, you say?

Then you need to read the entirety of Paul’s letter to Rome, but especially Romans 14. Believers were asking Paul to make rules about whether it was right or wrong to celebrate certain holidays; whether it was faithful or evil to eat meat of unknown origin; meat which might have been partially sacrificed in honor to a pagan god or idol. Paul’s response is that the good or evil of it is in your own heart; follow your conscience. If you violate your conscience, you do evil. But you cannot violate someone else’s conscience nor can they violate yours, because a conscience is a deeply personal, individually formed thing.

Christian speakers of a previous generation would have liked for Romans 14 to have ceased to exist, and they avoided and refuted it (by re-interpreting or limiting it) as much as possible. Having every action declarable as right or wrong makes things easier to control; makes it easier to judge and condemn others and frankly, too much of Christianity has been in the business of doing those things for so many centuries that a blanket condemnation of situation ethics was a very comforting blanket indeed.

Don’t start on me. There have always been, and always will be, scriptural injunctions against specific acts of evil and encouragements to specific acts of virtue. They will not change. Ever. God meant for us to discern good and evil, or the potential for it would never have been placed in the garden east of Eden, right next to the tree of life. (This, by the way, is where the principle of situation(al) ethics goes awry; it does not ask if loving God is important or if expressing it by obeying His will for us is important. It considers only love for others.)

Don’t warn me of the slippery slope. Every day we live and breathe and have our being; every moment we make moral choices, we’re facing a slippery slope. Each time we sin, it gets a little easier. It doesn’t matter what the sin is. Each time we sin, we drive a little more wedge between ourselves and God.

That’s why it’s so vitally important that we understand that this world of choices was never created in moral black and white or even just shades of grey, but in every conceivable, perceivable color and hue and shade and texture and sound and smell.

God put man in the garden to see what he would do; to see what he would name the animals; to see if man would understand that there is a difference between good and not-good, and that being alone is not-good. God gave man choice in order for him to be able to discern good from evil because He knew that we learn best by doing. Man chose the easy way, the knowledge of good and evil in one great gulp — and learned the hard way that evil has consequences and that evil separates one from God.

That was the situation God put man in.

He puts us in our situations to be able to discern good from evil, too; to act out our own ethics and learn from the experience; to taste what is good and see that it is good and to taste what is evil and to see that while it is pleasurable and self-satisfying and seems good to self, self, self … it is bitterness and poison and death in the end.

Now this puts us in very uncomfortable territory. It would just be easier to have a big book of rules and follow the rules and make God happy and generally be ignorant about life and discernment and wisdom. It would be easier for God to just keep everyone under control by giving us a big book of rules and smiting anyone who disobeys.

But that violates the very nature of God, the very meaning of the Word/ Logos, the very Spirit of Holiness. Because that one Word which makes sense out of everything that’s hard to discern is love.

God IS love.

Love the Lord your God with everything that is within you and is you.

Love your neighbor as dearly as you love yourself.

Do this, and you have the key, the linchpin on which the law hangs and the world revolves.

In any situation, it is the defining ethic.

In matters clearly defined by scripture, follow scripture. It is God’s word; God’s revelation of His very nature and His will for us. But it is not a mere rule book. It does not cover every possible and conceivable action, let alone every situation in which that action can be taken. If you’re not sure about any action you feel compelled to consider; doctrine you’ve been taught … if you can’t find it in scripture (not everything God would like to see us do and become is explicitly spelled out there!), then measure it by this golden rule:

Do for others as you would have them do for you.

That’s the way God operates. That’s the way Jesus lived and lives in you. That’s the way the Spirit moves.

He has given and given and given. He has loved and loved and loved. He wants the joy found in that life to be yours, forever.

There is no joy in judging others.

He does not want that for you.

That will be His task, as little joy as it must give Him in far too many cases, for He alone is competent, worthy, righteous, just, merciful, forgiving, perfect.

We are not.

That, my dear ones, is the situation in which we find ourselves … and find our God … and find that He has placed us.

For our own good. For everyone’s own good. And for His own good.

Time to Pray for My Friends Again

/ W. Keith Brenton / 17 Comments

Praying for CFTF, Day 4In this instance, the friends I’m praying for are the folks preparing and gathering for the 2013 Spring “Contending for the Faith Lectures.”

I had such hope when I saw on the sponsoring church’s home page that the topic this year would be “Christ – The Great Controversialist.” I dared to think that the practices of the past might be done away with in this year’s lectures, and that the presentations might actually be Christ-centered, and elaborate on His controversial teachings, life, death, and resurrection – the gospel that saves us.

But here’s their list of topics and speakers, and I greatly fear that the topics (in many cases, at least) indicate a focus on repeating questionable doctrines generated by men and attributing them to God as if scripture relayed them from Him word-for-word, and no human logic or inference or deduction or conclusion was involved. And I suspect that these topics will serve as an opportunity for lambasting as apostate those who disagree with the speakers’ logic, inferences, deductions and conclusions — as well as disagreeing with their insistence that these constitute God’s own doctrine.

I fear these things because of the tenor of these lectures in the past (2012, 2011, 2010, etc.), and so many of the names are the same, and the odds of a change of heart among so many are not very good, really.

So as speakers and attendees prepare, I will again be praying for them the same things I have prayed in years past — and these are the same things I pray for myself and anyone else who desires to speak about, for and in partnership with God, His Son and His Holy Spirit.

I would so very much like to be proven wrong about the things I fear.