Is God shouting at you? Then Listen!

“Do you have an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like His?” 

Job 40:9.

     I thought of that verse after hearing the wall-rattling booms from Fort Hood this week. Those “sounds of freedom” from F-16s dropping 500-pound loads for target range practice may not be the voice of God, but they sure do get your attention (and the attention of the animals and a few car alarms).

     Even though I’ve lived here long enough to even appreciate those sounds of our military, I texted a friend who works on Fort Hood, just to make sure everything was okay. It made me think about the men and women who go through the “shock and awe” of actual battle. And even if it awakens us in the night, just knowing that those booms are from “our side” should give us a peace to go back and sleep at ease the rest of the night.

     Elsewhere in the book of Job, it says, “God's voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding” (Job 37:5).

Some rumblings and rattlings are not from God but rise to the deafening level that also gets our attention, causing us to try to understand things that are beyond our understanding.

     Romans 8 talks about groanings that are too deep for utterance of words. There’s a mystery about the thunder that rolls from one horizon to the other. In Rev. 10:4, John was going to write about the seven thunders he heard, when a voice from heaven stops him, “Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.” There are some things we simply will not know here.

     There are things that rattle our world that don’t quite make sense: the death of a soldier or sailor or airperson, random violence, political and social clashes that are increasingly inexplicable. Even the death of a beloved spouse after 60 years of marriage can be comprehended but only scarcely understood unless you’ve lived through it.

     Have you ever been rattled by God? Or by humanity’s insanity? Are you trying to make sense of senseless acts that perhaps even make you ponder the very existence of a God who would allow such things to occur?

Be assured, you and I are not the first to wonder aloud “where is God in all of this?”

     It’s found in the unforgettable lyrics of African American Pastor and Poet Charles Tindley, who penned the refrain of “We’ll understand it better by and by” in 1906. The toe-tapping melody can almost eclipse the real pain found in the rich lyrics about being “tossed and driven on the restless sea of time” and how “we are often destitute of the things that life demands, want of food and want of shelter, thirsty hills and barren lands” and how God often leads us as He “guides us with his eye, and we’ll follow till we die.”

     The wonderings about all the rumblings of this world’s thunder is also found in the memorable lines of apologist C.S. Lewis, who wrote The Problem of Pain, during the early stages of World War II. The later “Narnia Chonicler” wrote this in 1940, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

     Is God shouting to you? Then listen!

     The point of all this is simply this: if you are rattled by the world’s rumbling, don’t be alarmed. It’s merely the sounds of freedom, preparing us for life’s battles and eventual victory. The ultimate Victor of the battle of all battles, Jesus Christ, said this, “I have said these things to you, that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

     Tim McKeown is associate pastor of First Baptist Church of Killeen and blogger at www.johnoneday.blogspot.com.

           

Don't forget the "once saved" part...

A person who is a believer, with God’s Holy Spirit living within them, cannot continually and unrepentantly reject God’s Holiness within them without burning their conscience and departing from the truth.

But what if our desires constantly and consistently deviate from God’s clear and explicit commandments? The Bible and especially Jesus is clear: We must die to those desires. Jesus Himself gave us this example.

“Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done,” He prayed.

After all, is not the symbol of our faith a cross? A cross at that time stood for death, excruciating death, from which we get the very word “ex-cruc-iating” (“cruc” means “cross”).

What does the cross stand for? Merely that Christ died and we do not have to? No, for if that were the case, why would Jesus explicitly teach otherwise?

“And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.” Matt. 10:38.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matt. 16:34.

Shall I go on? I could you know…

If a person claims to be a Christian and utterly refuses to follow His clear commands (see Matt. 7:21-23 below), that person should seriously question his or her faith.

“How dare you say that? Who are you to judge?”

I did not say it. The Bible did in 2 Cor. 13:5. Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.

“Oh I am not disqualified! I prayed a prayer when I was a kid! I am saved by grace and faith, not by works!”

Where did we first learn about salvation and grace and faith? THE BIBLE. So, can we claim some parts of the Bible as true and other parts false? How is that consistent?

Let’s look how Paul (who wrote the most about salvation through faith and grace) how he tells us to examine and test ourselves. Did he really teach that we can pray a prayer as a kid and then live according to our desires and never feel a twinge of guilt? Never repent? (Jesus’ first sermon was, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near.”)

Here is the entire 1 Cor. 13 passage in the New Living Translation. Does this sound like you or I can pray a prayer and then live a life of rebellion or compromise or disobedience and still “pass the test” of true salvation?

5 Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you (literally “in” you); if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith. 6 As you test yourselves, I hope you will recognize that we have not failed the test of apostolic authority.

7 We pray to God that you will not do what is wrong by refusing our correction. I hope we won’t need to demonstrate our authority when we arrive. Do the right thing before we come—even if that makes it look like we have failed to demonstrate our authority. 8 For we cannot oppose the truth, but must always stand for the truth. 9 We are glad to seem weak if it helps show that you are actually strong. We pray that you will become mature.

10 I am writing this to you before I come, hoping that I won’t need to deal severely with you when I do come. For I want to use the authority the Lord has given me to strengthen you, not to tear you down.

Paul is saying, “Don’t make me pull over the car! Don’t make me come down there and correct you! I would rather appear weak and not have to correct you rather than be the tough guy and demonstrate that your bad behavior will force us to exercise authority. Show that you are in the faith by living to the commands of Christ. If you oppose the truth, the truth won’t conform to you (sorry Os Guinness), you will fail and show yourself as disqualified from the faith!”

We are saved by faith and kept saved by faith and grace, but we prove the validity of our faith by our works, for which God saved us. If we show otherwise, we prove our faith is false. This is not sinless perfection. This is “saved to serve, not saved by serving” theology.

“Once saved always saved” hinges on one very important truth: ONCE SAVED.

If we fail the test of examination here and now or fail to examine ourselves and change, there will be a final test, and it is pass or fail. Jesus will be the examiner. Jesus said to those who practice lawlessness but still called Jesus “Lord, Lord” in Matthew 7:21-23—“I NEVER KNEW YOU.”

The cross of Christianity is not a shiny gold medallion to wear. It is a rough, splintery life to bear.

This is so hard to write because I am writing to a particular loved one whom I greatly love. I see why Paul said “I would rather be weak than strong, but if you force me I will say some strong things.” And He had apostolic authority. He had the truth. He wrote the majority of the New Testament. If you reject what Paul said, you reject the Bible and without the Bible how can you pick and choose what is right and what is wrong. You reject the martyred lives who laid their lives down in response to the cross, without which we would not have the Bible at all. You make God in your own sinful image, no longer a Father who loves through disciplining us for our own good and His own glory. We submit to Christ, not only for a FREE SALVATION but also for CRUCIFIED LIVING. We follow a crucified Christ, who carried the cross and calls us to go and do likewise.

Warning to a compromised conscience

How do we go from a comprised, weak conscience to a defiled, contaminated conscience?

     The Bible segues from 1 Corinthians 8:7 to the next digression of the conscience in Titus 1:15. Separated by at nearly decade in authorship, Paul writes these two sentences: “However, there is not in everyone that knowledge; for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled,” and “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.” 

     Even though he is writing from a different location to a different audience and in a different time, Paul is carrying forward the same thought: when people stray from what they know is right and wrong and willingly embrace wrong, they can “trick” their conscience. It no longer is just weak and vulnerable, like a computer with no virus protector or a person without a flu shot. Their conscience is open to attack.

     A mind closed asks questions but only to win arguments and satisfy himself. An open mind ask questions listens to the wisdom of the world. But an open mind without being firmly grounded in the faith in God and a firm grasp of morality can be easily swayed from the truth. British author Sir Terry Pratchett said, “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”

     A closed mind which is right is better than an open mind which is open to being contaminated with error.

     Paul goes on to say that those with a defiled, contaminated conscience professes to know God with their lips but deny God in their actions and works. He uses a different word than he did to the Corinthians when he was referring to merely the ethics of a struggling conscience being defiled. In Titus, he uses a word which speaks more to the spiritual foundation, a deeper sense of defilement to the core.

     A conscience which is defiled at the roots can do no other than have defiled actions. It shuns and refuses sound doctrine (the next verse in the following chapter, Titus 2:1). With a deeper departure in the conscience needs a stronger response to turn from such defilement. A sensitive conscience responds to the word of the Lord; a struggling conscience responds to works and examples of others who are stronger in the faith; but a soiled, contaminated conscience needs a warning, a “rebuke” (Titus 1:13).

     The other day a potential school shooting was foiled when someone who heard something, said something to authorities. There comes a point when an intervention needs to occur.

      Jesus used this progression of first go privately, then with one or two witnesses. A defiled conscience needs an intervention. Matthew 18:16-18 says tell it to the entire church for a warning.

Consider this prayer from Psalm 141:15 (NIV)

Let a righteous man strike me—that is a kindness;
let him rebuke me—that is oil on my head.
My head will not refuse it,
for my prayer will still be against the deeds of evildoers.