Emotions and maturity

What does God have in mind for your life? The answer is pretty straightforward. It’s that you would mature in Him. Or, as the book of Romans puts it, it’s that you would be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ (Rom.8:29).

When people think of becoming like Jesus, what usually comes to mind is being obedient and doing the right thing in every circumstance. This is very biblical, but there’s another dimension that must be considered – the emotional dimension.

God made us emotional creatures. Emotions like joy, peace, fear, sadness, anger, and love are all part of what makes us human. In proper balance and in their right place, emotions like these enable us to live lives that are full and effective as we engage others and receive what God brings us.

The problem is that many people find their lives dominated by negative emotions. They wake up every day bound up by a negative feeling like anger, bitterness, jealousy, fear, or sorrow. The result? They are stuck, with little hope for the future. Instead of living their lives to the fullest as they serve others, they endure each day trapped by their own negative emotions. They fail to grow and become stagnant.

So, how does one in this situation become unstuck and free to embrace life, move forward and mature?

Here are a few places to start.

Let God be God. People who are dominated by negative emotions often have a hard time accepting what God has dealt them in life. By letting God be God they are able to believe that God works all things for good for those who love Him, and are then in a position to experience personal growth.  

Types of fools

In his concise commentary on Proverbs, Derek Kidner notes that the fool presents himself under various names.  I like to remember these as the three stooges of scripture.

First, there’s the simple.  This kind of person is easily led, gullible and silly.  He is naive, and because of his thoughtlessness, may graduate to more serious forms of folly.

The locus classicus of the’ simple’ is Proverbs 7, where it describes a young man who seems to court temptation.  The simple’s problem is not that he is incapable of wisdom, but will not accept it.

Second is the fool.  There are actually three Hebrew words that are translated ‘fool.’

The most common refers to one who is dull and obstinate.  Not because he lacks mental equipment, but because of his chosen outlook.  He likes his folly, and like the dog that returns to its own vomit, he keeps repeating the same  sins.

His major problem is that he rejects the fear of the Lord (Pr.1:29).   At a minimum, he wastes your time, and if you have to endure him long he becomes a menace.

There is another word for fool that also describes one who is stubborn, but this person’s folly comes across darker.  He knows no restraint or sense of proportion.   He is impatient of all advice and is flippant.  Because of the disposition of the heart, foolishness is very hard to drive from this type of fool (Pr.27:22).

An infrequently used word that is often translated “fool” is nabal and brings to mind Nabal’s wife when she said, “One cannot speak to him” (1 Sam.25:17).  He is a crude, overbearing and godless man.

Third, the scoffer or scorner.  He despises correction and sets his heart on mischief.  He is a debunker and a trouble-maker.  He is a bad influence on the impressionable.  Yet, for all his arrogance, in the end the Lord will scorn him (Pr.3:34).

The common thread with all types of fools is that their problem is not their mental capability but the attitude of their hearts.  They are enamored with their own way of thinking and will not have the fear of the Lord.

Even a brief review of the types of fools is an admonishment to “Get wisdom” (Pr.4:5ff.)

Reaching postmoderns

In light of the fact that today’s evangelical church is intent on being trendy, this quote is worth pondering. . .

“I will argue that the postmodern church could do nothing better than be ancient, that the most powerful way to reach a postmodern world is by recovering tradition, and the most effective means of discipleship is in the liturgy.”

~ James K.A. Smith, PhD., Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? p.25

Demographic winter

One of the aspects of the dominion mandate is that man and woman would be fruitful and multiply.  That is, couples are supposed to have children.

Today, that command  clearly is not being followed as birthrates drop across the world.

A couple hundred years ago Thomas Malthus was warning that societies would not be able to sustain themselves due to unchecked population growth.   More recently, it’s been predicted that a population explosion would lead to mass starvation in a very short time.

None of this has materialized, and we actually have the opposite on our hands.

Worldwide, birthrates have declined by more than 50% in the past 30 years (since 1979). There are now 59 nations, with 44% of the world’s population, with below-replacement fertility.

If this keeps up, it will be devastating as many nations simply will be unable to keep up and sustain themselves.  They will effectively go out of business.

It’s not hard to see that this trend is the direct result of failing to obey God’s mandate to be fruitful and multiply.

Learn more about demographic winter.  It will change the way look at economics and children.

Get dominion

The very first chapter of the Bible gives us what is known as the dominion mandate. This mandate reads as follows. . . “God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Gen.1:28).

With these words God made it plain that His design for mankind is to take this world and develop it for Him. From the beginning, this task was to involve the expansion of what God had already given and its cultivation.

But the with the entrance of Adam’s sin, things got complicated. Mankind ceased to be occupied with the mandate God gave, and instead became preoccupied with selfish pride (Gen.4), wickedness (Gen.6), and making a name for itself (Gen.11). To the extent the dominion mandate was remembered at all, it was used to advance evil purposes, not good ones.

Yet God did not forget the mandate He gave. His plan to develop the world was still intact. And He took steps to be sure it would be brought about.

In the Old Testament He called out a special people, Israel, who were to serve as a witness to the world when it came to living by God’s ways. This people did not live out their calling perfectly, and the Lord had to regularly send them prophets to get them back in the right way. But through this imperfect people, God was still at work to bring about His initial plan.

In the New Testament we see a huge, definite step taken to this end with the arrival of Jesus Christ. It is well known that Christ came to bring forgiveness for sins. But He also came to bring more. He came to bring salvation, which involves not only deliverance from sin’s oppression, but a deliverance to a new way of life – a life that involves the recovery of the dominion mandate.  

Heavenizing the earth

Is there good reason to expect the redemption of this earth? Absolutely. Why else would Jesus have commanded us to pray as He did? In the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer He teaches us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt.6:10).

By teaching us to pray in this way, Jesus reveals that the Father intends that His will would be lived out on earth as it is in heaven. Shouldn’t this truth influence the perspective we take in our own lives and prayers?

The Early Church Father John Chrysostom gives sound guidance in his 19th homily on the Gospel of Matthew. . .

For ye must long, saith He, for heaven, and the things in heaven; however, before heaven, He hath bidden us make the earth a heaven…it is possible even while abiding here, to do all, as though already placed on high….He hath enjoined each one of us, who pray, to take upon himself the care of the whole world. For He did not at all say, ‘Thy will be done’ in me, or in us, but everywhere on the earth; so that error may be destroyed, and truth implanted, and all wickedness cast out, and virtue return, and no difference in this respect be henceforth between heaven and earth.”

What is paedocommunion?

Paedocommunion is the practice of giving the Lord’s Supper to baptized children, even apart from a coming-of-age ritual such as confirmation or profession of faith.

Paedocommunion was the universal practice of the Church until the late medieval period (c. 1200). It is attested at least as far back as Cyprian (c. 250), and is witnessed throughout the centuries following (e.g. in Augustine, Leo the Great, etc.)

Nonetheless, the practice dropped off in the Western Church. This was due to a combination of factors (such as superstition regarding the sacramental elements, and the view of the bishop as the conveyer of the Holy Spirit, so that confirmation could not be conducted by a mere priest at baptism, but had to be accomplished by the bishop).

Biblically, paedocommunion is supported by the status of children within the covenant. Even as God counted Abraham’s offspring as His own, and therefore required that they be circumcised (Gen. 17), so too Jesus assumes a priestly role in relation to the children of new covenant believers, and calls them the heirs of the kingdom (Matt. 19:13-14).

What is perhaps most surprising is that many (indeed most) who hold to infant baptism nonetheless reject paedocommunion. They suggest a cleavage between the two sacraments. Biblically speaking, however, the two sacraments are tied together very closely. Baptism incorporates one into Christ and His Church (1 Cor. 12:13). Meanwhile, the Lord’s Supper is precisely the meal of the Church. The Church is the one body together precisely because it partakes of the one bread together (1 Cor. 10:16-17).

Consequently, just as the children of the old covenant were admitted to the sacramental communal meals of the OT (such as Passover), so too the children of the new covenant belong at the table of the Lord. This is the position of a growing number of Presbyterian and Reformed scholars and pastors, who are recognizing the profound biblical foundation that underlay the historic practice of paedocommunion.

From paedocommunion.com

Bible study software

Personal Bible study is an important part of Christian growth. These days there is a lot of Bible study software available that can help make one’s study more efficient and complete.

Some Bible study software can be quite expensive. But there is some very good Bible study software available at little or no cost, that comes with lots of resources.

One of these is e-Sword, by Rick Meyers.

The basic e-Sword installation comes with some very basic tools. But many more modules can be added. Some of these are available at a nominal cost, and a great many others are available for free.

Here’s just a sample of some of the free modules that can be had. . .

Matthew Henry’s Commentary
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary
Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
Calvin’s Commentaries
The Treasury of David (Spurgeon)
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Brown-Drive-Brigg’s Hebrew Definitions
Fausset’s Bible Dictionary
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Nave’s Topical Bible
Thayer’s Greek Dictionary
Noah Webster’s Dictionary of American English
Ante-Nicene Fathers
History of the Christian Church (Schaff)
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin)

If you do not have any Bible study software, I encourage you to check out e-Sword.

The peace God gives

One of the common problems of our time is the number of people that endure each day without peace in their lives.  Whether the cause be anxiety, doubt, fear, guilt, or trouble, the problem is serious.

Not only do people who lack peace become immobilized and unable to lead the kind of productive lives that God intends for them, they also have adverse affects on the people around them.  At a minimum, those who lack peace are irritable, preoccupied, and hard to live with.  More seriously, those without peace can become angry, destructive, and even violent.

The good news is that God gives His peace freely to those who turn to Him.  And he gives it in three different ways.

First, He gives the objective peace that we need to have with Him.

The Bible’s description of us is not flattering.  It tells us that we have all sinned and fall short of His glory (Rom.3:23), that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom.1:18), and are by nature children of wrath (Eph.2:3).  Because of this, we are naturally out of accord with Him, and by going our own way we are not at peace with Him.

But God, being rich in mercy, has taken the initiative to do what is necessary to bring peace.  He has sent His Son to be the satisfaction for our sins (1 Jn.2:2) so that His wrath would be turned away from us.  To experience the resulting peace with Him, all we need to do is believe Him.  The promise of the Bible is that “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom.5:1).

Thankfulness and dependence

I’ve been listening to James Jordan’s lectures on Ephesians, available at Wordmp3.

In one of the lectures he makes an interesting point about thankfulness.

He notes that giving thanks expresses dependence, and the reason why people are so little inclined to give thanks is that they don’t want to reveal dependence on anyone but themselves.

The people of God, on the other hand, are to be a thankful people.  Being thankful is to be part of who they are because it helps train them toward dependence on the Lord, and keep them there.

Thinking about this further, the value of teaching children to be thankful becomes apparent.  It’s more than good manners.  It prepares them for a life of unashamed dependence on the Lord.