When God Sings

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Zephaniah 3:17

This verse gives an important insight into the heart of our saving God. God loves to be the God of deliverance and salvation. The precious promises found in this verse come after severe judgment and justice come among God's people. They would pass through a refining fire. Arrogant leaders and profane priests would be eliminated (Zephaniah 3:3-4). The humble and lowly would be left with an attitude of seeking the Lord (Zephaniah 3:12). Then salvation would work again among God's people.

I love the three ways this affects God. 1) He rejoices over the people whom He has saved and who now serve Him. Our salvation and service bring joy to the heart of God. 2) He will quiet the hearts of His people by His love. He enters into a relationship with us that brings peace and love into our troubled lives. He settles us down. 3) The wildest part of this is that God will break out in exultant, loud singing over our salvation! He sings over us. Imagine that! We worship Him in song in our humble praise, but God loudly sings over us when we are saved by Him. Salvation's joy is a duet, song by man and God!


- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.

Human Pride & the World's Oldest Lie

This is the exultant city that lived securely, that said in her heart, "I am, and there is no one else." What a desolation she has become, a lair for wild beasts! Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.
Zephaniah 2:15

These words were written about a city that God at one time spared when they repented: Ninevah. You can read about their story of repentance in Jonah. But at this stage, human pride had crept in. The Assyrians were proud and cruel. This city had attitude. They felt they were the greatest thing on earth. The new city slogan was one that only should be said of God: I am and there is no one else. This was hijacking the glory of God.

God promised complete desolation to that town, and that is exactly what occurred. Ninevah is now an archeologist's ruin. It became desolate and deserted. An empire crumbled. A city was overrun and destroyed. Only ruins exist and they had to be dug from the earth that swallowed them.

Human pride is very powerful and very temporary. It gets its instant of self-glory, but in no way does it compare to the eternal majesty of God. Eventually humanity's best efforts lead to ruin. We fall apart. Entropy and decay, disease, chaos, war, and poverty all take their toll. We cannot claim to be like God, though Satan continues to re-package that first lie to us (Genesis 3:4-5). Glory only belongs to God. And human beings are better only in worship of Him.

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Believing There is a God is Dangerously Not Enough

At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, 'The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.'
Zephaniah 1:12

This verse show us that the heart of God is not tender toward His people when they become apathetic toward Him. These folks are theists. They believe God does exist. They just cannot ascribe any clear activity in the world to Him. But God is about to change their theology.

The climate that created that kind of complacency in Jerusalem was one in which Israel had slowly let the worship of God decline. It began by allowing idolatry to coexist. Then they became syncretistic in their religion, acknowledging every kind of pagan god around them. That is the danger of an accommodating religious tolerance that things all religions are equal. All religions do not teach the same thing and do not lead to the same place. And God gets our attention when we disobey Him or replace Him or deny Him.

God was going to demonstrate His judgment on people who doubted His activity in the world. It would eventually come very swiftly and brutally to Jerusalem. Eventually Babylon would totally sack the city, kill thousands, and lead the survivors in humiliation to a captivity far from their familiar home. There the Jews would abandon idolatry never to return to it. But the hard lessons would come because believing there is a God is never enough to enter into proper relationship with Him. Good theology leads to robust worship, obedience, and the awareness of His activity in the world.


- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.

Location:Thompson Dr,De Soto,United States

The Supremacy of Face to Face Conversation

Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
2 John 12

Technology and time have created more distance in personal communication even as they have made messages and contact with others ubiquitous. This is true in every form of communication since the advent of the paper and stylus and the written word. John knew that though this letter could be encouraging, nothing would beat a personal visit and face to face conversation.

But today, in the 21st century, speedy communication now rules most "conversations". We have the "instant message" and the cellphone text message where even spelling and grammar barely exist for the urgency of the medium of the messenger's choice. All the focus is on the messenger, and not so much the message. I consider these things as necessary evils. They are bottom dwelling scum-suckers in the food chain of communication. Above them is the concept of e-mail or the Facebook status... but just barely above them. These are also fast forms of communication... fast, but hard to see if they are friendly.

Voice communication is better because intonation can help determine what is being said. But without body language and eye contact, meaning is inevitably lost. Sometimes it is a big deal these days to call rather than e-mail or text. What a sacrifice!

The best way to know what is really meant is to talk face to face. This is what John loved. And it took sacrifice and months of travel, but his plan was to do so. The gospel and true Christian fellowship was worth the investment of face to face talking. It always is. This is why Christians should congregate together. That is why no blog, no on-line "community", no e-mail distribution list, and no group text chat can replace the real fellowship of believers in the church. Let's not lose that!


- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.

Truth & Love: a beautiful balance

And now I ask you, dear lady - not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning - that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.
2 John 5-6

Love is a dominant theme in all of the apostle John's writings. And this little postcard is no exception. But it isn't about gushy emotions. There is a necessary relationship between love for fellow believers and love for the Lord shown by obedience to the truth of His commands. John says that walking in obedience to the Lord is the first step in real love among Christians.

This is important because the very next section (2 John 7-11) - what is really the heart of the epistle - warns against associating with false teachers. False doctrine is wrong because it does not walk in Christ's commands. It cannot be love. It must be avoided and confronted.

The necessary relationship between truth and love is vital to the church. It makes us unique. Truth cannot exist without love or it is just stale fact that is void of life. Love cannot exist without truth or it is just sappy emotionalism. Both must exist in commitment to each other as evidenced in the lives of Christians who together walk in love according to Christ's commands.

- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.

The Truth Lives Among Us

The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever:
2 John 1-2

This short little scrap of a note of a letter was meant to encourage Christians in their commitment to the truth. Truth is certainly doctrinal, but it is not JUST that alone. Truth lives in God's people. I love the way that John puts it here. The Greek that the ESV translates as "abides in us" can be translated as "lives among us." This is a community effort. Yes, individual believers must know and obey the truth of the gospel. But it lives, it remains, it is seen in us as a group. This is about the primacy of the local church.

Christians are to thrive in a church, a community of fellow believers, because that is how the truth remains. Lone wolf Christians will be more likely to have shortcomings in truth and obedience. God designed Christians to need one another. It is maturity in community that is the bond of disciples to one another.

The problem is that we focus in on the areas where my brother or sister still needs maturity. And it is easy to pridefully pick on the collective church as a group of hypocrites and liars. But that is taking our eyes of the truth and our own need to grow in it. The truth challenges us individually to change and to grow. And it challenges us to lovingly challenge one another. That is how the truth of the gospel lives among us.


- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.

The Last Word on Jesus from the Gospels

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
John 21:25

John's final commentary on the life of Christ is poetic and personal. He lets himself say something in the first person, a comment unique in all four gospels and he saves it for the last of the book. It is a fitting epilogue.

He clues us in on how the gospel writers composed their works. They needed to be selective. They had to define the life of Christ and even in his three years of earthly ministry their was an intensity and breadth that not every word and deed could be recorded. They were men who had a message in their written accounts. Some brevity was necessary to relate that message pointedly. But nothing was lost. We know everything we need to know about Jesus. What emerges from each of the brief four gospel accounts is a full picture of Jesus, not just a rudimentary sketch.

They also had a daunting task. John is the most personal and the most doctrinal of the four gospels. It shows the deity of Christ most dramatically. It paints the conflicts Jesus had with official religion in the boldest strokes. John gives us the strongest personal reactions to Jesus by those who accepted Him AND those who rejected Him. And John says there was more he could have written. There is an old story tellers adage that applies: "Always leave them wanting more". The gospels do just that.


- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.