Heart Song

I was glad when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord, Psalm 122:1

How would you finish this sentence:  I was glad when they said to me, let us go to ...?  Would your answer be worship?  Would it be even in your top five?

There are many songs for the heart but this Psalm is the song of the heart.  What is is the difference?  Songs for the heart calm us and stir us.  But the song of the heart flows out of us to God as a deep expression of worship.  The Lord made us for Himself, thus we are most satisfied when we turn from serving idols (man-made gods that we make in our own image) to worshiping the One who made us in His own image. God both delights in our worship and deserves our worship. As the Psalmist also sings, “Come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.  For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand”, Psalm 95:6-7.

How can our worship honor God and “brings a smile to His face” and as a result satisfies the longing of our heart?

We are to come to God — honestly, Hebrews 10:22.  Because of Jesus Christ, we are invited to draw near to the Holy One with a sincere or honest heart. For all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, Hebrews 4:13.  

We are to come to God — hungry, Luke 1:52. This means when we come to God, we come expecting to hear from God.  It is in a posture of worship that often times we “hear His voice, see Psalm 95:7.  Through worship, we come into His presence to look to Him and to learn from Him.  

We are to come to God — humbly, James 4:10. I read somewhere two great confessions, “Your are the Christ!”  “We are but men!”  We are not in ultimate control or even in control of the control that we think we control.  We don’t have all the answers.  The Lord, He alone is God!  He is beyond our understanding and our control.  

Yet, we are invited to feast in His presence in worship with an honest hungry and humble heart. When we do, songs of worship arise and flow from our heart to His.  

Fields of Glory

One morning when I was as college student I got up before the sunrise and took a walk in the dark through a large grassy field called Tuttle Park.  I walked through moist field of grass with a soft-slight breeze at my back toward the Olentangy River at the far end of the park.

I sat there as I observed the rising of the sun for that day.  As the sun rose over the horizon, the golden rays of the sun slowly filtered over dewy grass field of grass. Then suddenly something spectacular happened!  The whole field lit up in a glistening glory.  Each blade of grass came alive, with a shining silver and being moved by the soft wind celebrated the appearing of the sun.

It was then that the words of Scripture came alive to me where it says, When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory, Colossians 3:4.  My heart leapt for joy!  Through the birth of a new day, the Lord gave me a glimpse of His glory and what will happen with us and to us when He is revealed in glory — we also we radiate with an unspeakable beauty and glory!

Each blade of grass in the massive field represented for me every believer gathered together in That Day to celebrate the rising of the Son of God as He comes to rule and reign over all the earth one day.  Even though this happened to me nearly forty years ago I can “see it” like it was yesterday and my heart leaps for joy again today - waiting for that great Day!  

Where Do Fish Live?

Where Do Fish Live? 

The answer to the question is obvious.  Fish live in water.  In fact they were made for water.  Only for a short time fish can live out of water.  If they remain in a waterless condition for awhile they will shrivel up and die.  To a fish, water is not a luxury.  It is essential to live.  Water is the environment for which God made fish to live.  

As God made fish to live in water, so He has made you and me to live in His Word.  “For man shall not live on bread alone”, said Jesus, “but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  The Word is not a luxury.  It is essential to live.  

As Christians, we can get by for a short time without God’s word (or so we think). But when we neglect the Word, we become insensitive to the needs of our spirit as we fill our hearts with the world’s junk food.  When we ignore the Word, we end up leaning on our own understanding, we take matters in our own hands and we we determine for ourselves what is right and wrong apart from God.  The end result is our spirit shrivels up and dies.    

We were made to live in the Word of God — to enjoy the surface, to explore the bottomless depths, to breathe in the fragrant heavenly perspective, to saturate our mind, to experience the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit through the Word.  

God’s Word becomes our delight only when we spend time in it.  When we learn to focus and center our thought life on the Word in order to cross reference God’s Word into our daily life!  God promises He will establish us like a tree that is firmly planted by irrigation canals which will not wither even in drought.  We will sink our roots deeply into the limitless supply of the riches of God’s grace.  We will renew our mind, have strength to overcome fleshly temptations, gain a new perspective on our circumstances and life and be nourished with a thirst-quenching hope for our life.  

Fish were made for the water.  We were made for God and His Word.  Where do you live?

doug

Religious Freedom and Discrimination

Exercising religious freedom while not discriminating can be a challenging issue. Freedom of religious expression is essential and not endorsing bigotry or racism its vital.  It is important for each one of us to respect, to love and to honor all people while not compromising our conscience in matters of religious conviction.

The 1st Amendment of the U.S. supposedly guarantees that the Federal Government cannot establish a National religion AND that it cannot prohibit the people from the free exercise of their religion. The Constitution provides the framework for the freedom of religious expression unless the practice of that religion undermines the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In 1990 the Supreme Court reduced the scope of religious freedom which is guaranteed under the Constitution of the U.S. (1st Amendment). In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed into law a return to religious liberty. This is a Federal Law. In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Religious Freedom Law could not be apply to State law. If States wanted these religious protections from government coercion they would have to pass their own religious freedom laws.

As of today, there are around twenty States that have such laws and a number of other States that have some kind of protection in place. From what I gather the Federal law and the various State's laws are essentially the same. However, the initial Indiana law had two major differences from the 1993 Federal law. According to Garrett Epps, in the Atlantic, March 30, 2015, there’s “nothing significant” about this law that differs from the federal one, and other state ones—except that it has been carefully written to make clear that 1) businesses can use it against 2) civil-rights suits brought by individuals.“. This created an uproar and I understand.

Here is the purpose of RFRA: Author Amy Hall states, “The point of RFRA is not to discriminate against gay Americans. It is supposed to prevent the government from discriminating against religious Americans.” These laws are to prevent state and local governments from infringing upon someone's religious beliefs without a compelling interest.

This is where religious freedom and differing values can clash as witnessed recently in Indiana and other places. There is tension here. Can the government or an individual force me to go against my religious convictions or can I use my religious convictions as a means for racism and bigotry? NO!

The solution to this dilemma in honoring both religious conviction and a person's civil rights it to recognize there is a world of difference between serving an individual and supporting their event. 

We are to respect and serve all people but that does not mean I need to support an event that is contrary to my religious convictions. For example, I am a pastor. I am not against anyone but try to show love and the love of Christ to all. I hold to the traditional time tested view of marriage between a man and a woman as defined by God in Genesis 2 and affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19.

I have friends who have a different sexual orientation than I do. Do I reject them, judge them or deny serving them? Of course not! I enjoy them, serve and love them. But if they asked me to marry them in a same-sex marriage. I could not and would not. I would hope that as I have respected them as individuals, they would respect my religious conviction of not participating in their ceremony. And I hope that we would be able to remain friends. Here I stand.

Marriage Matters

marriage matters part two:

The marriage controversy today is primarily the result of the clashing of two world views.  A worldview is how one “digests” reality.  The two world views are — A Biblical Theistic worldview versus a Humanistic worldview.  Below illustrates the thinking according to each world view. The real issue here is not about marriage but really which world view “digests” reality comprehensively and coherently.   

Biblical Theistic Worldview	Humanistic Worldview
Marriage created by God	Marriage is a man-made social convention
Genders: male and female are equal but different complement each other	Gender: male and female gender is blurred and obscured
Marriage is between a man and a woman only	Marriage is open to whim of the society
Sex: sex is designed specifically for the marriage relationship	Sex: sex is open
Men and women are different from animals not just in degree but also in kind.	Men and women are only different in degree from animals.
Authority:  The ultimate reality is God and His authority	Authority: The ultimate authority is mankind.  “Man is the measure of all things.”

The last statement regarding authority is really the issue here.  By whose authority do choose — God’s or man’s or the State?  This is the long struggle of mankind: “Do we submit to God’s design of reality or do we define our own reality independent from God?”  

The reason we have such a moral culture clash today is because we have cast God off like an old worn out coat and we are determined to make our own reality.  Yet, ideas have consequences.  What we are witnessing is the changing of our moral mores to catch up with a humanistic worldview.  We have declared “God is dead” — He is no longer relevant to us. Now, we can chart our own course and make it on our own.  However, if God is dead, then man is dead.  And this is where our culture is headed.  We have turned our celebration of marriage and so much more into a dance of death.

So, which worldview comports most with all of reality?  A humanistic worldview “sees” reality as material only.  There is no spiritual truth or reality to life.  According to a humanistic or materialistic worldview all can be explained through the natural processes of our materialistic universe.  

Really?  

Is the materialistic universe really all there is or is there a spiritual reality as well.   A spiritual reality of justice, significance, purpose, love, and beauty for example.  In a humanistic-materialistic worldview these words are really meaningless.  

But are they?  Do not the words justice, love, purpose have weight to them or they simply empty vacuous words?  When we get down to it, many may claim that the materialistic world is all there is but they actually live contradictory lives in the day to day.  They live as though there was real justice, love and purpose.

We have lost the sacred view of marriage, of gender, and what it means to be human and now we are lost.  

What is Marriage?

Same Sex Marriage — What Say You?

“If we truly love each other why don’t we have the freedom to marry whomever we want regardless of gender?”  

Sounds right doesn’t it?  I mean who is against freedom?  

However on second thought what do we mean by freedom and is it true we are free to choose to do whatever we want?  Really?  Freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want but the power to do what is right.  Yes, we have freedom but not absolute freedom to do whatever we want.  

I heard a man on the radio use this analogy. He said, “ just as we should not discriminate and prohibit people from two different races from marrying so also we should not prohibit two people of the same sex to marry. They should be free to marry whomever they want.”   Is he serious?  As Dennis Prager has stated, “There are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites (and yellows and browns) are inherently the same. Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational; on the other hand, separation by sex can be both morally desirable and rational. Separate bathrooms for men and women is moral and rational; separate bathrooms for blacks and whites is not.”

We are not free to marry whomever we wish and there are many good reasons for this.  We are not free to marry a family member — incestual marriage is an illegitimate marriage.  We are not free to marry another if we are already married — polygamy is illegitimate.  Why are these two examples taboo?  And what right do we have to continue to say these are illegitimate marriages if we permit same sex marriage?  In doing so, don’t we open Pandora’s Box to all sorts of possible so-called marriages?  If not, why not?  

Why should we care who marries whom?  Marriage is the oldest institution of mankind.  It is over 5,000 years old and exists in every single human culture around the globe.  Every culture, every civilization, every religion has recognized marriage as that of between the two sexes: a man and a woman.  Why is this?

There are two questions that need to be asked in answering the original question of being free to marry whomever we want.

The first is, “What is marriage?” The second is, “Why does the government have an interest in regulating marriage?”   

The issue today is not ultimately about same sex marriage, but about marriage itself.  “Marriage is, of its essence, a comprehensive union of will (by consent) and body (by sexual union); inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment, whatever the spouses’ preferences.”  (What is Marriage by Girgis Sherif; Anderson, Ryan T.; George Robert P.)

If same-sex “marriage” is allowed, then we misunderstand what marriage really is.  It becomes simply an emotional union versus a comprehensive union.  If marriage is merely an emotional union, then what is the difference between marriage and a deep friendship?  

We don’t legislate friendships and thus the government should not be interested in legislating marriage if marriage is nothing more than an emotional union.  However, even though emotional union is important in marriage, it is much more than that.  Marriage as defined above is a unique union which can only take place between a man and a woman.  It is the basic building block of the family and of society.  It is for this reason that the State has a vested interested in protecting traditional marriage.  For, in doing this, it helps to protect and sustain itself.  

If two people of the same sex want to live together and commit immorality, that is their choice but don’t call it marriage.  

Ebola:  This virus strikes fear in the heart of men and women.  It is described as a severe and often fatal virus.  Since this past March, 2014, the largest outbreak of the Ebola virus has taken place since 1976 and the result there is more deaths from this outbreak than all of the others combined.  It is estimated that 1.4 million people from Liberia and Sierra Leone by the end of January.  

Cure:  There is treatment that is effective if ebola is caught early.  

Sin:   This “virus” is even more virulent than ebola.  It has infected the entire human race inherited through the first man, Adam.  It is deadly, for one out of one dies.  Sin has ravaged the human race, the environment and the entire cosmos, Romans 8:20-23.  

No Human Cure:  There is no human cure for sin.  We try hard, though.  We make ourselves look good on the outside but on the inside we are full of greed, rebellion and selfish ambition.  We are like whitewashed tombstones:  outwardly we appear beautiful but within we are full of dead people’s bones. 

Heavenly Cure:  There is hope — for there is a cure.  The cure is from Jesus Christ.  Jesus is immune to sin and we can be cured through His blood.  We need to be “vaccinated” through the blood of Christ, for it is like an antibiotic that counteracts, overcomes and restores us to spiritual and moral health.  Then one day, we too, we too will be impervious to sin for all time. 

Free:  The “vaccination” is free because it has been fully paid for by God Himself.  But each one of us must choose choose Christ in order to be “vaccinated”.  

Have you been “vaccinated”?