Papa'sEyes

Sports and Entertainment: Our Nation's False God

2011-11-11T08:30:00.001-08:00

I wonder how many are as outraged as we are, regarding the Penn State Sex Scandal. Or, will you disregard what we are about to say in this article for the sake of a keeping a forty five year legacy and football sacred? You may think we are being dramatic but our souls are at stake here, for Scripture speaks of God’s judgment on a culture that did not repent from such things.

As Coach Joe Paterno, President Graham Spanier and two vice presidents are fired for a cover-up of over fifteen years involving retired defensive coach Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing eight young boys, protests are breaking out on the Penn State campus. Shocking as this may be, much of the outrage is not for the victims but instead for the firing of Coach Paterno who knew of the abuse and did nothing. A freshman student that was interviewed said this, “It’s like where do we go from here? We no longer have a president, we no longer have a 45 year legacy.” One individual close to the program was primarily concerned about the impact of the situation on future recruiting for the football program. Has this young generation come to this? The sister of one of the victims is a student at Penn State and she is having trouble attending class because so many are making jokes about the trouble.

We as a nation have made football a god. Let us demonstrate this. In 2002 assistant coach Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky raping a nine year old boy in the showers at Penn State. Instead of calling the police he went home to his father who agreed they needed to tell Coach Paterno. The coach then reported it but nothing was done, and he let the matter drop. Sandusky continued his privileges at the college and maintained his access to young troubled boys and it was allowed for the sake of the football game and a so called “Squeaky clean football program”. How close as a nation have we come to Genesis 19, and Sodom and Gomorrah?

The word “Sodom” means “cesspool, den, and pandemonium.” Does this sound similar to what is going on at Penn State? What has happened to us that students would protest and destroy things for the sake of keeping a coach on staff who covered up rape? Is this an example of a generation that is in jeopardy of losing their souls? Let’s take a look at Genesis 19. Here is a quote from a commentary by Matthew Henry. “Thus many that are under some convictions about the misery of their spiritual state, and the necessity of a change, yet defer that needful work, and foolishly linger. Lot did so, and it might have been fatal to him if the angels had not laid hold of his hand and brought him for, and saved him with fear.” In Jude 23 it is said “the Lord was merciful to him; otherwise he might justly have left him to perish, since he was so loth to depart. The salvation of the most righteous men must be attributed to God’s mercy, not to their own merit.”

Are we righteous men and women and are we outraged because of the abuse of these boys? Or, do we turn our heads and say it does not involve us? How close are we to destruction because we have allowed entertainment such as football to become an idol and a distraction from Jesus? When the two angels appeared to Lot and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah did you know to this day that area remains a great lake called the Dead Sea or the Salt Sea? There is no living creature in it and it stinks, literally. Also, when Lot hesitated, the angel grasped his hand and rushed him to safety. Lot did not want to abandon the wealth, position, and comfort he enjoyed. It is easy to criticize Lot for being hypnotized by Sodom when the choice seems so clear to us. To be wiser than Lot we must see that our hesitation to speak out about how far we have gone with idolizing entertainment stems from the false attractions of our culture’s pleasure and we would sacrifice innocent boys for the sake of a college and a game.

Two facets of God’s character are His great patience and His fierce anger towards unrighteousness and sin. If there is true repentance, God will have mercy on anyone who calls on His Name, even those who commit such overt and criminal acts. He has had mercy on us, and our sin put Jesus on the cross. Fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much and the very presence of God-fearing men and women in a place helps to ward off judgment. We must pray for these men and the children whose lives were ruined through this behavior. And we must pray that the Holy Spirit will bring true repentance and revival to an idolatrous culture that sacrifices our children on the altar of entertainment and sports. The time has come for us to wake up and see what we have done and what we have become. The Lord is calling us to holiness and our time is drawing short. The Lord Jesus is drawing near.

Gary and Marie Wiens

The Joining of Adam and Eve

2011-10-31T17:20:00.000-07:00

When the Lord God first set man in the Garden, He did an interesting thing. He allowed the newly formed human to experience what it was like not to have a counterpart right from the beginning as all the other creatures did. It was the only thing in the whole of creation that God said was “not good.” Why did the Lord follow this plan? Why did He not establish man and woman at the same time, and give them to one another in the fullness of intimacy that He intended humans to experience together?

Was there something churning in God’s heart that could only be understood by Adam through the sense of being incomplete, knowing first-hand the experience of loneliness and deprivation? Why the man’s sense of exhilaration and wonder at the completeness he realized only when the woman came on the scene? Surely from his observation of the animal realm, he sensed there was something “wrong,” something “missing,” and yet how could that be, since Adam had known no other existence? How can one long for something that does not exist?

C.S. Lewis wrote that the fact that a man is hungry does not ensure that he will be fed, but it certainly indicates that somewhere there is food designed to meet his need. In the same way, the fact that Adam knew he was incomplete demanded the existence of a fulfilling reality. Adam’s longing had to have its root somewhere other than in his own experience.

And what of the strange idea that a man must therefore leave father and mother, and cling to his wife? Adam left no one to cling to Eve. Was this merely the starting point for future reference, or was there already a reference point in place, one that stretched backward beyond the boundaries of time? The understanding comes much later through the writings of Paul the apostle. In Ephesians 5, he quotes some of the same phrases as the basis for commitment in human marriage, then shows us that the reference point for these ideas is none other than Christ and the Church. The statement about leaving and cleaving was an early reflection of God’s plan for Jesus to come in the flesh, leaving the heavenly home of the Father to cling to a human Bride.

Adam’s longing, his sense of being unfulfilled, his exhilaration at the discovery of his counterpart, had its genesis in the heart of Christ and His desire for the Bride that was the standard before mankind was ever created! Adam’s experience of longing was, from the first moment, a reflection of the chosen longing in the heart of the Triune God to have a counterpart suitable for His beloved Son, the living Word in Whom was formed everything that exists.

The taking of the woman from the side of the man, out of his very flesh and bone, must have seemed to Adam a bizarre methodology compared with the one God employed for the rest of creation. We see it now as a picture of the Bride taken from the riven side of the crucified Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He identified permanently with her humanity without negating His divinity, thereby leaving Himself with no alternative but to exalt her to the incredible place of fellowship and partnership in the triune life of God. Truly a magnificent picture! And it’s only the beginning.

A New Way Of Seeing

2011-10-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

Back in the early 1980s my wife and I were privileged to be associated with John Wimber and the emerging Vineyard movement, with their emphasis on the release of a new style of intimate worship, and the release of the healing power of the Holy Spirit as normal in the Christian life.

In order for us to move freely into those kinds of experiences, we needed to make some adjustments in the way we perceived reality. We needed to have a way of seeing that made room for the incursion of the miraculous into what we called “normal” life. In short, we needed a paradigm shift, a way of re-defining normalcy that included opportunities for the power of God to invade our usual experience.

The wonderful thing was that as we developed this new perspective according to Biblical patterns, we began to experience that power more regularly and some of our experiences began to resemble the dynamic of the New Testament accounts. Through subsequent years, more and more believers began to experience new dimensions of God’s miraculous presence in their everyday lives.

I believe we need a paradigm shift once again among God’s people with regard to prayer. In the activity-addicted, performance-oriented entity that is the Church, we have largely lost sight of the experiential intimacy with Jesus to which we have been called, and we need a restoration of that understanding. The new perspective makes room for believers to define their lives before God not on the basis of what they do for Him, but on the basis of the declarations of His ravished heart as the Heavenly Bridegroom.

We need a shift in the way we read the Scriptures, with a resultant shift in our theological thinking and ultimately a shift in the way we relate to Jesus, to ourselves, and to what we do in His Name. Our experience of the Christian life needs to be deepened and changed. The path the Holy Spirit is opening into this deeper experience is the way of intimacy with Jesus as our Bridegroom. My goal in these articles is to begin building a foundation of biblical understanding that will enable believers to see with new eyes, to begin to experience the presence of the Lord in new and sweeter ways.

I readily acknowledge at the outset that this “bridal paradigm” is not a new thing. It has been a central part of biblical theology all through history, and has been preserved through the life of the Church in marvelous ways in the experiences of mystics and contemplatives, most of whom have lived within the Catholic and Orthodox expressions of Christianity. There have been, however, only a precious few saints within the Protestant ethos who have gone deep into the understanding of Jesus’ love for His Bride, and whose personal experiences of these depths have enabled them to write in helpful ways.

Like Martha of Bethany, Protestant Evangelicals have been concerned with many necessary things, to the point that we have excluded the needful thing Mary chose—sitting at the feet of the Bridegroom to hear His heart and voice. But God is changing that, and my prayer is that this little contribution to the process will be of assistance to those who read it.

Over the next weeks we will look at this theme of bridal relationship as it is presented through the Scriptures, beginning with the Old Testament record, that we might know and believe what is in His heart.

Blessings,
Gary Wiens

Partners in Intercession

2011-10-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

And so the Man Christ Jesus still stands in the place of intercession, ever before the Father, ever living to intercede. Assisted by the Holy Spirit, the constant posture of Jesus now is to agree with the Father concerning the position of the Bride before God. He is our Advocate, pleading our case before the Father, our just Judge. By the power of the Spirit, we are constantly being transformed into His image, becoming one with Him as a man and woman become partners in the context of intimacy in a marriage relationship.

Now and throughout eternity, we have the privilege as His bridal partners to intercede in the same way Jesus does, standing in the gap on behalf of the rest of mankind and agreeing with God’s desires. We come boldly and confidently before His presence, the throne of grace, because the way has been opened for us by the true Man, Jesus Christ, our Bridegroom. We receive His mercies afresh every day and we are empowered by His presence to walk out the new life He has given us by the blood of Christ. In that place of safety and intimacy, we take our place as His Bride and bring before Him the needs of the people around us, declaring over them the will of God by agreeing with His agenda as revealed in the Word of God.

In this process, we come to an ever-increasing awareness of His goodness and the truth of His ways. We begin to understand that the heart of God is for us and not against us, and that His purposes for the human race are more wonderful than we ever imagined. We come into glad-hearted agreement with the Son of God concerning Who He is, Who the Father is and who we are.

We are the objects of His delight, the focus of His affections, and because He speaks this to our hearts in such a personal and convincing way, we begin to comprehend that He can feel the same way about every person without leaving any individual unattended. We start to share His perspective of our cities and nations and of the situations in which our families and friends find themselves. When we experience His love poured out upon us, we become convinced of His power to set right every situation for every person. When His powerful affections touch our hearts, we realize that the true reward of prayer is not changed circumstances, but the reality of intimate experiential friendship with Jesus Christ, the Lover of our souls. In that place of intimacy, we are free to affect the world around us with the knowledge of His love.

As we come to know His heart, there is a point at which He invites us to walk the streets of the cities with Him, personally touching those who need Him—the “dimly burning candles” and “bruised reeds” of this world—until their lights burn brightly and their countenances are lifted up. The power is His. The new identity is ours. The methodology is intercession.

And so, we pray.

Jesus: The Original Intercessor

2011-10-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

Jesus, The Original Intercessor

The most significant intercession in history is the work Jesus accomplished on the cross of Calvary. The only adequate ransom to purchase the Bride back from sin’s captivation was a perfectly obedient Man—since in God’s economy only a flawless Intercessor could “stand in the gap” on behalf of the guilty.

Because of God’s great goodness, His own Son became a human being, forever joining humanity with the true divine nature. Jesus walked out a life of perfect human obedience to the will of God and took His place on the cross, that the judgments of God might be poured out where they belonged—on the ultimate Intercessor. God provided Himself as the required sacrifice, the Lamb. In doing so, through Jesus He restored to the human race the position of righteousness that a relationship with God requires, and with it, all the promises and intentions that were in His heart from the beginning. The intercession was complete.

The stunning thing about this historical occurrence is that God had made provision for it before He ever began the process of creating. Before creation was established, God the Father and God the Son instituted an eternal agreement that God Himself, in the Person of Jesus Christ, would become the one true Man who would stand as Intercessor between the Father and the human race.

Revelation 13:8 informs us that the Lamb was “slain from the foundation of the world,” establishing our redemption before the first sin was ever committed! From eternity past He stood in our place, the true Adam, perfectly agreeing with the Father’s will where the earthly Adam did not, and taking upon Himself the just and right judgment of death for the sin of all humans. From eternity, long before the incarnation, He was pouring Himself out that we might live through His life—the ultimate picture of intercession.

Jesus’ Continuing Intercession

In His bodily resurrection, Jesus, the eternal Bridegroom, released to us the power to become the children of God, and now lives in the presence of the Father to sustain us in that relationship by His constant intercession. Through the power of Christ’s resurrection, we stand even now in that place of intimate authority, anticipating the full realization of our identity as the Bride, which is the corporate identity of all who accept His invitation to the ultimate wedding feast at the end of the ages.

Even as the wrath of God was poured out upon the perfect Intercessor, so the pleasure of God is now poured out on the Bridegroom, and righteousness is imputed to His yet imperfect Bride. He is gathering to Himself all who will respond, so that when the time comes, a holy and blameless Bride might be called forward to reign with Him. The need of this hour in history is for the people of God, those called to become His Bride, to take their place as Jesus' partners in intercession, to bring about His purposes on the earth.

You will be blessed as you align yourself with His purpose.
Gary Wiens

Prayer: The Great Romance

2011-10-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

PRAYER: THE GREAT ROMANCE

Since the focus of God’s heart from the beginning of time has been preparing a Bride for His Son, He has always desired an intimate relationship with His people. And so He has spoken to us in various ways, with the consistent goal of engaging us in a dialogue about life in relationship with Him. This dialogue is called prayer, and its primary purpose is that we might come to know the heart of the One Who loves us and understands who we are and what we will become.

He alone knows my true identity, and His words empower me to live in that identity. What could be more helpful, more healing than listening to Him? What could be more beneficial than speaking with Him in loving dialogue? Out of His heart of love, He draws us to the place of prayer, that He might communicate His intentions.

As we listen, the Spirit of God works within our hearts and convinces us that God loves us and that we are indeed His children, called according to His purposes. He speaks to us about His plans for us, just as He spoke to Jeremiah in the Old Testament:

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

He knows the plans He has for us and He’s in the mood to talk about them! God is a communicator. He has romance on His mind, He is preparing us for an eternal relationship of joy and gladness with His Son Jesus Christ and He longs to speak with us about it.

As He speaks and we listen, we come to agree with His agenda for ourselves and for the rest of the human race. Because God is a lover, His strategy is not simply to invade the earth with overwhelming power and authority, but to woo and win a Bride through gentle persuasion. He wants voluntary lovers who become convinced of His honorable intentions. From that place of confidence, we become partners in accomplishing His purposes, first in personal matters, then in the redemption of all mankind and the restoration of the created order, and finally in a place of shared rulership for eternity over His ever-increasing Kingdom .

This partnership is realized through intercessory prayer. We begin to say back to God that we agree with His agenda and His strategies, not only for ourselves and the things that concern us, but for every situation outside ourselves for which He gives us the strength to pray. In doing so, we stand alongside the Man Christ Jesus before God as heirs of His Kingdom. As we begin to agree with Him, He begins to release more and more of His influence, until at the end of the age all things are conformed to His pleasure and will. Those who have come into agreement with His assessment of reality will stand together with His Son Jesus Christ, the Lord of all that is, as His royal Bride and ruling partner.

Why We Pray

2011-02-23T07:09:00.000-08:00

WHY WE PRAY

If you walk into the International House of Prayer Northwest in Federal Way, Washington, you enter into an emerging intercessory ministry associated with the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, since September 19, 1999, the fires of intercession have been burning in the Kansas City base, and this fire is spreading rapidly to the cities of our nation. You will find teams of young adults in their teens and 20s, as well as older folks like me, ministering to the Lord in the prayer room, singing well-known worship songs, creating spontaneous songs directly from the Scriptures, and weaving short, spoken prayers with the phrases of the songs. Ministering from a perspective of intimacy, they give expression to the longing in their souls to know God and be known by Him.

These young people are part of an emerging community of intercessory missionaries who are giving their lives to the work of prayer. They are declaring the purposes of God over the cities and nations of the earth and seeking to understand and agree with His intentions for the remaining years of human history. During the course of this day, in the same way it happens every day, hundreds of people will come through the prayer rooms of America’s cities and participate in this adventure in intercession. Many will be on the staff of the Houses of Prayer, individuals and families who have raised their own financial support to give themselves to a life of intercessory worship. Others will come from the surrounding metropolitan areas to participate in this new expression of the leading of the Holy Spirit in the American church.

This form of prayer is called the Harp and Bowl model of intercessory worship, and it is but one expression of the emerging prayer movement that is exploding all over the earth. In a way unprecedented in human history, the Spirit of God is stirring the hearts of Christians everywhere to seek Him in prayer. As the Director of the International House of Prayer Northwest and one who has been privileged to travel around this country and around the world to call believers to a life of intimate prayer, I am becoming increasingly aware of the scope of God’s search for true worshippers who will seek His face and His will for the earth.

With the chaos and foment that is stirring all over the earth as I write this – political riots in the middle East, drug-related warfare in Central America, political wars in our own nation – there has never been a time in which focused intercession along with night-and-day worship has been more necessary. God is stirring the prayer movement even as He is stirring the nations in preparation for the return of Jesus to planet Earth. Long ago the Prophet Isaiah spoke that God would raise up intercessors that would give Him no rest until Jerusalem was the shining city of bright righteousness that He created it to be. The day of the fulfillment of that promise draws ever nearer, and believers in His Word must take their place in this assignment.

I urge you to find a place of prayer near you, and become a regular part of that ministry. If it’s in your local congregation, great! If there is a House of Prayer near you, go join yourself to it, and make it a priority in your schedule. The Day of the Lord is drawing near, and we are called to pray.

Blessings, GW

Response to Trinitarian Issue Responders

2010-11-20T09:27:00.000-08:00

Wow! I'm amazed at how many apparently intelligent people have suddenly become interested in my blog!

It's important, first of all, to understand my statements in my previous posting. The boundary lines that are clearly drawn in history are that those who do not accept Trinitarian theology are outside the framework of historic Christianity. That is simply objectively true. If you disagree with that statement, you simply are ignorant of the history of orthodoxy. There have always been dissenters, but they've never been considered part of the mainstream of orthodoxy.

Secondly, I made the statement that those who do not acknowledge that the Jesus of the Bible is their Lord are in grave danger. Paul's statement in Galatians 1:8-9 is very clear and pointed. He was clear that Jesus is and was fully God, and that to be outside that, and to proclaim another gospel, is to be accursed. Strong language, and dissenters must face it and deal with it.

Jesus said it best: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. . . ."All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.
"I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. (John 10:1,8-9)

Third, the councils that gave rise to the great creeds, primarily the Nicene creed, were ecumenical councils, and did not give rise to the unique (and erroneous) parts of Catholic theology. Thomas Oden, in his wonderful work "The Word Of Life," (HarperSanFrancisco, 1989) clearly lines out the record of the historic councils on the matter of Christology. You'll find it very helpful.

In the fourth place, this quote from Ivankum's last post points out in a glaring and obvious way the central falsehood in this matter:

It is Trinitarians that are not satisfied with the biblical explanation of who Jesus is. Demanding that I explicitly call Jesus God when the Bible does not is not yours or anyone else’s place to do and this is why after 25 years as a Trinitarian; the scales have been removed from my eyes.

I would simply call to your remembrance that Jesus calls Himself "the Alpha and the Omega" in Rev. 22:13. He received worship, which would have been blasphemous, He claimed God as His Father, which in the Pharisees' clear understanding made Him equal with God (John 5:16-20; John 10:25-33). Jesus did not refute these statements; rather, He accepted these words as an accurate assessment. There is so much New Testament evidence of Jesus' identity as God as to overwhelm the space required to state it all.

I have posted on our website at the International House of Prayer Northwest an excerpt from Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology on the Trinity and its necessity. You can access it by clicking here. Please read it, and may the Holy Spirit truly remove the scales from your eyes. Those who are blind and yet think they see are the most blind of all.

Gary Wiens

Standing On Firm Foundations

2010-11-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

Standing Firm On The Foundation Of Christ: Why It Matters What We Believe

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who raised an interesting question. It was this: “What are your ‘brick wall’ doctrines, and what are your ‘picket fence’ doctrines?” He and I were in an interesting dialogue about the chronology of events surrounding the return of Jesus to the earth to establish His Kingdom, and though we came to different conclusions about this particular topic, it was clear that this was a ‘picket fence’ discussion.

There are, however, certain things that are not ‘picket fences,’ but are indeed the ‘brick walls,’ the foundational truths upon which the Christian faith is established. These foundation stones are eternal and essential, and must be maintained in each generation if we are in fact going to call ourselves Christian. These are the bedrock belief systems that, if you change them, you can no longer honestly call yourself part of that company that makes up historic Christianity.

One of these ‘brick wall’ realities is the nature of God as a Triune Being, one God in three Persons, with each Person – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – being eternal, fully God, yet each with His own personality and role within the Godhead. Within this Trinitarian formula falls the nature of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, the second Person of the Trinity, who existed with the Father as the Word (Logos), and who took on humanity when He was born of the Virgin Mary. He always has been fully God, before He was human, while He was on the earth in His first visit to the planet (the Incarnation), and now as the Heavenly Man in the Father’s presence as He awaits the timing of His return to earth.

This Jesus was the agent of creation, the unique Son of God, the One who holds all things together, in Whom is life itself. He is the one Mediator between God and man, and if you attempt to change His identity you are in grave danger. The New Testament tells us that in these last days many different “Christs” will be presented, but there is only one who is true, and who is worthy of our trust and confidence. Faith in another Jesus – one not presented in the Bible – will not be sufficient for relationship with God and hope for eternal life, no matter how sincerely that faith is held.

Jesus Himself raised the issue to His disciples when He asked the question, “Who do men say that I am?” Several answers were given, and then Jesus made it personal: “Who do you say that I am?” When Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Jesus declared that Peter was blessed by the Father with supernatural revelation that could not come by reasoning process or by the instruction of men. Only the Spirit of God can show us who Jesus is by revealing Him in agreement with the Scriptures. If the revelation you have received does not square with the Jesus of the apostles and the Scriptures, you need to scrap that revelation and turn to the truth as quickly as possible. In 2 Corinthians 11:1-4 we are warned that through a deception similar to what happened in the Garden of Eden, our minds may be corrupted to believe in another Jesus, one that is different from the one presented by Paul and the other writers of Scripture.

I hear many who are excited in our time because people like Glenn Beck are calling us to return to God and to Jesus for the restoration of our nation. That’s a good idea, but don’t go to Beck’s Jesus, for as a Mormon, he is talking about a different Jesus than the one the Bible speaks of. There are those who find it difficult to comprehend the Trinitarian teaching of the Scripture, so they change the nature of Jesus to make it more understandable. This is not acceptable! You end up with another Jesus, a different gospel, and leave yourself open to other levels of deception.

There are certain things to be passionate about, and this is one of them. I’m not talking about mindless acceptance – believe me, there is so much room for inquiry into the vast realms of the knowledge of the Son of God – but it must be inquiry within the boundaries, the ‘brick wall’ of the nature of Christ as revealed in the Bible. Though He is beyond comprehension, He will fascinate you and thrill you with the revelation of who He is as our Champion, our Prophet, Priest, and King.

Gary Wiens

The Need For The Father's Voice

2010-02-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing that we are living under in these days, in terms of difficulties that are spelled out in the Scriptures, I believe it is the curse of Malachi chapter 4. This section of the Bible declares that a very important spiritual dynamic must be released as the present age comes to a close, or else we will find ourselves in a boatload of trouble. Malachi says that the spirit of Elijah must be released, the effect of which will be to turn the hearts of fathers and children toward one another in an expression of reconciliation and healing. If that dynamic does not happen, there will be a curse that will strike the land. That curse is the reality of our day – the brokenness of relationship between children and fathers, and even more significant, the brokenness of connection with God, Who is the ultimate Father with Whom every person must be reconciled.

Here’s why this need for the Father’s voice is so profound. Every individual is defined by the input that comes to them through significant other voices, most profoundly, the voice of the father. As much as we may protest in our current state that we are autonomous, that it is up to us to validate and authenticate our own existence, it is simply not true. The history of every individual is filled with voices that define us, some positive, some negative. Every individual has an internal awareness that they ought to be someone special, that someone ought to care about them, and that someone authoritative must declare their worth to them so they can step into their destiny.

I recently read an article about Tony Dungy, who is a Christian, and a former NFL football player and Super Bowl winning player and coach. He is having a profound impact in the lives of a number of visible athletes, speaking into their lives as a father-figure, helping shape and define their self-images so that they can live effectively. The reason that Tony is successful at this is because Christians believe that we can have a relationship with the ultimate Father, Who is the creator God. This Father God thought all these individuals up in the first place, defined them, and set before them a journey of discovery into the identity that would resonate with how He made them to live.

Without a relationship with God, there is no hope of connecting with true identity, since He alone holds the information, and He alone has the ability and willingness to communicate that information with truth and trustworthiness. What we have done in our culture is insisted that our young people come from nothing – there is no Father’s voice out there, we’re all here by chance, and it’s up to us to make something out of our lives. As long as we validate and authenticate our existence by what we do, all is well.

The problem with that is that there is no value system in such a culture that gives a reference point concerning whether that authentication process is good or bad. There can be no good or bad, because we’ve eliminated the reference points of truth by which good or evil can be measured. Therefore, the gang-banger and the missionary are equally valid, because no one can say whether their choices are right or wrong – just that we happen to prefer one over the other.

Thankfully, the universe does not really operate like that. There is a God Who is infinite, personal, and good, and Who communicates truthfully about important things like destiny and purpose. He is speaking continually – through nature, through the Scriptures, through His Son Jesus Christ – and anyone who desires to hear Him can begin to learn how. This God meets the need of every human being, because His is the Father’s voice that we long to hear. Those who listen to Him can not only discover the meaning of their own lives, and begin to walk it out, but can also listen on behalf of others – like Tony Dungy for Michael Vick and others. Any human father or mother or sibling or friend or acquaintance or total stranger can listen for the voice of God, and speak truth over the life of a child, a friend, or a stranger. God desires relationship, and is quite willing to speak to His friends about others that He loves so they might be drawn into the same relationship.

When these friends of God listen, and then speak according to what the Father reveals, the words resonate with the inherent reality that each person holds inside their secret heart. If they will listen, the voice of the Father will awaken them to life and reality, and the curse will begin to be reversed.

All this is possible because of what God did through His Son, Jesus Christ – the One the Bible talks about. But that’s a topic for another day.

Gary Wiens

Can Hope Be Real?

2010-01-16T06:10:00.000-08:00

It’s early on a Saturday morning, and I’m wide awake when I should be sound asleep. I had some stuff rolling around in my head, and so I decided the best thing to do would be to get it written down so I can do what any self-respecting male would do on a rainy Saturday morning – get some more sleep!

Here’s the biggest problem we face in our culture, in my opinion. We have trained our young people for several decades now to think of themselves as nothings that come from nowhere and who are going nowhere. We have systematically eliminated any knowledge of God from our school systems, preferring to talk about the religion of evolution that tells us we mysteriously appeared by chance over a great amount of time, with no purpose or definition that impels us to greatness. By the way, I call evolution a religion because it takes a great deal more faith to believe its foolish claims than to look at the evidence of a beautiful, elegant universe and realize that there is no way it could just appear out of nothing. Someone personal, infinite, and intelligent had to design it and start the whole thing rolling. You cannot live consistently with the belief system that tells you that you came from nothing, that you have no meaning, and that you’re going nowhere.

Everything inside us screams at us that the opposite is true. We instinctively know that someone ought to notice us, someone ought to be paying attention, someone ought to be telling me that I’m worth something and that I can have an impact in life. Instead, we tell our children that they don’t matter, that abortion is one of the great cures of human ills, that mother earth is more important than they are (remember to be “green” and don’t leave any carbon footprint that might disturb the polar bears or the little tadpole that swims in a mountain stream!). Then we are totally surprised when some young person believes the message, and realizes that the only thing that makes any sense in the worldview that we’ve thrust upon them is to end everyone’s pain – mostly their own – by killing as many as you can before you kill yourself. Nihilism is the only logical conclusion of the worldview that dominates our culture today. If we come from nowhere, and are going nowhere, what’s the point anyway? I would eat, drink, and be merry, but the pain is too great, so I’ll destroy myself and take as many with me as I can.

This is the death culture of the young generation, and it is unthinkably tragic to someone like me. It’s tragic because I have a totally different worldview than the one I’ve described. My life matters, and so does yours, because there is an infinite, personal, beautiful Someone out there who thought me up, who designed me, who speaks to me about my identity and purpose, and who infuses His own life into me so that I can live up to His vision of who I am. This Someone is God, and because He is there and is communicating, my life has meaning. I can know who I am to Him, and I can know who you are to Him. Therefore, you can mean something to me, and I can relate to you in love because I have received the love that He has for me.

I can know these things because this God has spoken and continues to speak. He is personal, so He has communicated personally. He is intelligent, so He has created me with intelligence and with the ability to hear Him and to understand what He says. Though the information He gives me is not exhaustive, it is true. There is mystery to be sure, but the mystery is not nonsense. The mystery is a realm of wonder that is available to me by the Spirit of God, if I will seek Him on His terms. Since He created me, He has the right to set the terms of our relationship. He has spoken consistently and truthfully over the ages, and His truth is made real to the human realm because He lived it out personally on the earth in His own Son, Jesus Christ.

This line of thinking is no leap of faith into a realm of mystical imaginings. These things have been revealed by the Spirit of God through the ages to human beings who wrote them down. Their message is consistent and it fits human life as it really is. Jesus is not an ideal to be copied, He is a real person who is also God, and who proved His divine-human connection by living perfectly, dying in my place and yours, and rising again from the grave in a human body. The great prophets of the world’s religions all have burial sites – only one of those sites is empty.

Only this worldview gives any hope to humanity. Only this gospel is internally consistent, with the ability to withstand any scrutiny. Only this reality sets personal, holy love at the base of everything else, and then gives the power to live in that love with all who will receive it. Only this Biblical worldview explains mankind as it is today – broken and filled with rebellion, not living according to the design of the Creator. Only this message tells us there is real forgiveness, a real way out of despair, and a real hope for a glorious eternal future. There is no other hope but that which is given to us in the Bible, the Word of God, lived out by the Man Jesus Christ, who still lives and who is preparing to return to the earth to take ownership and leadership of the planet and the people He loves.

More later. GW

Something Is Out There! How Come?

2010-01-11T04:49:00.000-08:00

I want to thank Fishcleaner for his/her thoughtful comments on my last posting. I fully agree that it is not sufficient for us Bible-believing followers of Jesus to merely talk to ourselves in congratulatory tones, affirming that we have kept the faith, but to have no reasonable explanation for why that’s important or possible. So, in the next several entries, I’m going to try to lay out a reasonable basis for the hope I have in the God that the Bible talks about, in the Jesus of the New Testament, and in the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s purposes in a way that will mean maximum benefit and blessing for all who give themselves to Him. Let’s begin!

Suppose you wake up some morning in a philosophical mood, and take a step out your front door. The first thing that you would ask yourself in this reflective moment is this: “Is there anything out there?” I mean, is there stuff out there that really exists, that’s not imaginary or just an illusion. In simple terms, if I walk out in my yard and take steps toward that tree next to my driveway, will I actually bang into it and get a bloody nose, or will I just pass through it as though it were a mist?

The answer to your question has to be “yes, there really is something out there. I can see it, I can feel it, and I have to deal with its presence when I back my car out of the driveway, or I’ll have a big problem and a bad day.” Once that first question is answered, it demands the second question: “How did what is there get there?” Did it just mysteriously appear, or was there some sort of agent that produced that reality? Now remember, when you ask that question, you have to deal with everything that is actually there – the whole line-up of things that exist, including nature, people, beauty, evil, poverty – how did what is there get there?

People who really believe in materialistic evolution insist that everything that’s out there came out of nothing. I mean, nothing nothing. You can’t start with something like primordial ooze, because then you still have the question, how did that get there? People can try to explain with all kinds of complex sentences how something came out of nothing, but the simple fact is that it cannot be explained. You can’t get something from nothing. There has to be something eternal and infinite behind the something that is temporal and finite.

The question gets more complicated when you realize that part of what is out there is you. A person, one among many. You have this thing called a “personality,” the unique dimensions of you that make you who you are. You are a personal entity, with feelings, emotions, thought patterns, physical realities, relational and physical needs – so how did you, the personal you, get here? (I’m not asking a biological question!) Since you and I are personal beings, which is a higher order of being than if we were not personal, it must mean that whatever entity was behind the whole thing is personal as well, because you can’t get something personal from something that is not personal. For example, if you come home from school or work one day, and find a letter on your table that communicates something to you, you assume it is from someone, not from something. It’s a personal note or gift, and cannot possibly have come from a non-personal entity. Even if the letter was computer generated, somewhere, somehow there was a person behind it!

So, it’s more reasonable to assume that the eternal and infinite entity that started the whole process is also personal, because only that assumption can explain what is actually out there. Remember your old high school science experiments that taught you that water cannot rise higher than the level of its source. In the same way, personal beings could not possibly have arisen out of an impersonal source. To believe that would take more faith, more suspension of disbelief, than to believe that something personal, in other words, Someone was behind the beginning of it all. The most reasonable explanation for what is really out there is that there is a personal, infinite Someone who thought it all up and caused it to exist. That has to be the starting point.

We’ll go farther next time.
GW

Emergent Celebration or End of the Age Foolishness?

2010-01-08T12:17:00.000-08:00

I just watched an interview on a website called “TheOoze.com,” which is one of the main reference points for those engaged in the Emergent Church conversation. I’m one who has come lately to this dialogue, having recently read and been impacted (stimulated and disturbed at the same time) by a book entitled “Why We’re Not Emergent” by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. The subtitle is intriguing: “By Two Guys Who Should Be.”

I was stimulated by the book because I’m one who firmly believes that God is really there, and that He has really spoken to us truthfully and without error through His written Word – the Bible – and ultimately through His own Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. These two guys also believe that, and therefore we have a solid basis for communication, because words can have meaning only so far as they refer to a solid basis of objective, propositional truth. The book was disturbing to me because through their writing I was exposed to the thought processes of some who are giving leadership to the emerging/Emergent church movement. So, I decided to go to the source and see for myself, thus ending up at TheOoze.com.

It’s a very attractive website, with all kinds of interesting links and connections, video clips, and visually appealing design. Even though I’m an old guy, I’m totally interested in the young adult generations, and the media presentations and language that appeal to them. However, this morning when I watched the interview between Spencer Burke, who authors much of the stuff on the site, and Tim King, an author and publisher, I was appalled to the point of disbelief and even anger.

These two guys were talking about downplaying discussions concerning the end of the age (which they called “doomsday scenarios”), and instead the need to move past our theologies to embrace the mystery of the unknowable God, who has given us pointers to Himself (though He apparently cannot be found) through all religious systems, not just Christianity. Burke and King were speaking with great relief about finally transcending our formative theological patterns, renouncing the need to convert others, and moving into the exhilaration of true dialogue and celebration with those of differing belief systems, kneeling humbly before the feet of mystery, seeking together to find the unknowable God.

This is malarkey. There’s a more contemporary term that would be totally accurate, but I’m enough of a traditionalist to confine that term to mostly private muttered syllables emerging at times of personal frustration, for example, on the golf course.

First of all, God is not unknowable. Though we do not have exhaustive truth concerning Him (since He is infinite there is still plenty of mystery to go around), He has communicated truthfully and accurately concerning Himself through His Word and through the person of Jesus. His Word is truth, and Jesus is the absolutely accurate representation of that truth in human form. Jesus was pretty exclusive in His claims and demands. He stated that He is the only way to the Father. He commanded His followers to know Him and obey Him. He gave us of His Spirit so that we might have the power to live like He lived, and He commanded us to make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe everything He taught His followers. Jesus alone provided necessary forgiveness and the power to be transformed, and He clearly stated that to refuse Him is to refuse the Father, who is God.

The only reason God seems to be unknowable to men like Burke and King is that they have turned their backs on the One who makes Him known, seeing Jesus only as a model for living, and not as the Living One who encounters us by His Holy Spirit to reveal truth about Himself and His Father to us. This kind of stuff is poison for the mind and soul, and if it is read or listened to at all, please approach it with a clear filter of truth in place. The journey they are on is one that leads to death, and they need to encounter the Jesus of the Bible, repent, and be saved.
GW

Welcome to Papa'sEyes

2010-01-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

I suppose I feel a bit presumptuous entering the blogging world, because it means that I'm assuming there's someone out there that might care what I think about things. But there are some things I really care about, and one of those things is the choices that people make as they are finding their way from day to day.

I'm one who believes that we don't need to simply stumble along in the journey, looking sideways to fellow-travelers who have no more idea of where they're going and how to get there than we do. Instead, I believe that there is a Father in heaven who cares profoundly who we are and how we're doing along the way. He loves us deeply and personally, and is so very willing to talk with us about anything that concerns us.

Because of this deep love for us, the Father sent One who has gone before us through all the twists and turns of life, who navigated perfectly because He was led by the Spirit of His Father. That One who has gone before us is Jesus - the One the Bible talks about. He is God, but He lived on earth as a man filled with the Holy Spirit, following His Father's will, and providing for you and me a perfect model of how to live, along with the power to live that way.

In addition to the leadership of Jesus, there is this whole company of people who have followed Him through history, whose journey was directed by the Spirit of Jesus. These people actually arrived successfully at their intended destination, taking notes along the way that are really helpful to us. The Bible calls this group "a great cloud of witnesses" (the book of Hebrews, chapter 12 verse 1), people whose spirits are very much alive and well, and whose writings serve us well as guideposts along the way.

So, I hope you'll check in with me here from time to time. My hope is to provide some trustworthy reference points, since without them it's hard to know if you're even on the right road, let alone getting to where you want to go.

More soon. Blessings on you!