Called To Ministry

            Upon my arrival to college to study to become a successful business man and preacher “on the side,” I encountered some very uncomfortable language.  First of all, that language of “on the side” sounds harsh in and of itself.  I came to the conclusion that if anything was going to be “on the side” it would be whatever business practice I ended up pursuing.  Another phrase I was uncomfortable with is “going into ministry.”  What does that even mean?  What are you coming “out of” to “go into” ministry?  

            That language has no business entering the ears of anyone, much less someone who is considering ministry for a living.  This may just be a pet peeve with words, but I believe every Christian is in ministry no matter what their occupation.  “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).  Peter did not just speak to the preachers, elders, and deacons.  We are all priests, whether school teachers, administrators, bus drivers, nurses, maintenance workers, electricians, stay-at-home mommies etc.  No Christian can avoid the call to ministry.

            That last statement was another thing that made me uneasy.  People would ask, “What is your calling?”  I would always joke back, “I don’t know, I never got the phone call.”  The language just sounds like everyone should have this great epiphany directly from God about what they are supposed to do in life.  That is not how it works.  Paul wrote, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).  Don’t miss it, “…that by testing you may discern…”  People that sit around and wait for this call from God better not hold their breath.  Knowing God’s will takes action and you can know it.  Whatever your passion is and you decide to do, never forget that each of us entered ministry and its call the day we put on Christ in baptism.  “Of this gospel I was made a minister…” (Ephesians 3:7a).

The Lord Surrounds Us

            Some of the most beautiful images of God’s protection resides in the Psalms.  I had another opportunity to visit the Rocky Mountains and the scenery is absolutely breath taking.  Words are hard pressed to describe the overwhelming feeling of being 32,000 feet above sea level and look around to see nothing but snow capped mountain range.  God’s creation is always around us, but those mountains made it feel like his creation had wrapped around me and was giving a bear hug. 

            The Psalmist had similar feelings when he looked at the mountains surrounding Jerusalem.  “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, from this time forth and forevermore” (125:1-2). 

            Bobby Price, a song writer, took inspiration from these verses and compiled the lyrics to “Surround Us, O Lord.”  Robert Taylor in his Praise Hymnal thought Psalm 106:47-48 was appropriate for this song as well, “Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! And let all the people say, “Amen!” Praise the Lord!”  The song goes like this: “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people (Repeat).  Surround us Lord, surround us, O Lord.  We need to be in your presence.  Surround us Lord.  Surround us Lord.”

            What a beautiful and comforting image to think how God surrounds his people.  He is not some distant deity who is out of touch with the world he created and the people he calls his own.  He wants to be a part of us and surround us with his presence and love.  While in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, to look around and see the endless mountain range to me meant that I could not easily escape them.  That’s the picture the psalmist paints.  We cannot easily escape God and ultimately nobody will for one day every knee will bow (Romans 14:11).

Bibliology

            The doctrine of Scripture is vital for how Christians present the Bible to others.  The world questions things like the Bible’s reliability and if it is really a revelation of God.  Christians even question the doctrine of the scriptures by challenging the necessity of the Old Testament and if God’s presence with us resides solely in a book. 

        The first place often turned to in defense of the reliability of scripture is 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (ESV).  This is a powerful text that is hard to deny if one believes that there is a God.  For now we will stick to the doctrine of the scripture for believers in God and deal with Christian evidences later.

A second argument for the reliability of scripture is to consider the prophesies and their fulfillments through the ages, “And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:19–21).  The Bible is reliable because it contains fulfilled prophecy confirmed by time. 

It is vital that Christians not throw out the Old Testament in their Bibliology.  Paul wrote, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).  The “Scriptures” the 1^st Century Christians had were what Christians today call the “Old Testament.”  They certainly did not call them “old,” but considered them living and active (Hebrews 4:12).  God’s presence resides with us through his Spirit by which Christians speak through the word of God, the Bible, the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17).

Are You Still Growing?

            Never stop growing.  People often admire how quickly children grow, but do not recognize as often or as long when someone becomes a babe in Christ.  Hopefully the growth of the Christian does not stop.  So why do people stop taking notice?  Maybe we need to encourage one another more often in spiritual growth.  When was the last time you encouraged someone in a spiritual nature?  Encouragement can go a long ways.  It may just make a terrible day turn bright, and it is free to give.  The only thing it costs you is what God has given you, breath.  This is encouraged in 2 Peter 3:14-18,

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

            Peter wrote this right after he described the end times.  It is urgent that we walk in righteousness since Christ’s second coming can take place at any given second.  With this in mind, Christians have all the more reason to encourage one another and continue in growth.  It can be seen if one measures body weight on a consistent basis that it constantly fluctuates.  If you weigh yourself in the morning it will be different then when you weigh yourself that night.  On a regular day, a person will weigh more in the evening than they did that morning.  Our spiritual weight (i.e. growth) should measure the same way.  Have you grown more spiritually by the end of the day?  If not, then you have not consumed a healthy spiritual diet.  Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6).  Growth comes with a good spiritual diet and encouragement.

Eschatology

            The “study of the last things” is both exciting and frightening.  It should be easy for Christians to say that there is no fear in the second coming.  Revelation tells us who is going to win the spiritual warfare in which we are fighting.  God will overcome evil.  The frightening part is in the unknown.  Nobody knows the day or hour that Jesus will come again, “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come…Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning— lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake” (Mark 13:32–33, 35-37, ESV).

Jesus states the warning four times to remain “awake,” and once he said “Be on guard.”  The Bible describes how things will unfold in the eschaton, but there is still widespread interpretation of the timing and events of the judgment day and eternity.  “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:1–2).  Paul then echoes what Jesus said, “So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober” (5:6).  Satan is lulling people away from anticipating the end.

Paul describes how it will be when Jesus does return, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (4:16–17).  What happens then is described in great detail in 2 Peter 3:1-13.  Once everything is burned up and dissolved, a new heaven and a new earth are prepared for the believers and the “second death” for the wicked (Revelation 21:1-8).

Soteriology

In the first Century, Christians came up with a symbol to show if they were a Christian.  They did this because of the persecution of Christians that was prevalent in the first few hundred years after Christ.  The symbol was a fish.  Christians today still slap a bumper sticker of the “Jesus fish” to their cars and call themselves Christians.  The reason those first Century Christians chose a fish was because of its letters.  They made the acronym utilizing the letters that made up the Greek word for fish, ichthus (ἰχθύς).  Each letter stands for Jesus, Christ, God’s Son, Savior.  That last word is where the title of this article is derived.  Soteriology is the study of salvation (from σωτήρ (sōtēr) meaning “savior”).  You have to start from why salvation is needed.

When God created the world, he was fully present with his creation.  When men sinned, that made a separation between humans and God, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (Isaiah 59:1–2, ESV).  God cannot look upon evil, “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong,” (Habakkuk 1:13a).  There is a need for a savior because sin and evil are prevalent in the world and God wants to be fully present again.

Stanley Grenz noted, “In his response to Arius, Athanasius showed that the deity of the Spirit is necessitated by soteriology.  If the Spirit who enters our hearts as believes is not the actual Spirit of God, then we have no true community with God.”  In other words, you are not saved if you do not have God’s Spirit.  Paul lays this out beautifully concerning the Ephesians’ salvation in 1:3-14, but look specifically at verses 13-14, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”  It is impossible to have salvation (sōtēria) without “the promised Holy Spirit.”

Trinity

            People through church history have been hesitant to use unbiblical terms.  One of the restoration pleas that developed was from Alexander Campbell, “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.”  Because of this mentality, which is helpful, many stay away from any term that cannot be found in the scriptures.  If Christendom was to follow through with this, topics like “providence” and “restoration” must be avoided because of their lacking appearance in the Bible.  Christians are affirmed that God does provide and he desires to restore his people back to fellowship with himself.  Thus, providence and restoration are topics Christians cannot afford to avoid.  The same is true with the Trinity.

            The Holy Spirit as part of a divine Trinity may be confused as tri-deism.  The divine plural seen in Genesis 1-11 has similar implications to the concept of a Triune God.  The Holy Spirit is not some arbitrary thing or “glorified ‘it’” as Earl Edwards puts it.  The word for “spirit” is a neuter noun, but when the personal pronoun is used in conjunction with the Holy Spirit it is the masculine, “he.”  Let not the believer in God be confused about the oneness of God,

And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God… (Exodus 20:1–5a, ESV).

            The eternally present, divine, equal, and unified Trinity does not consider its three “persons” as separate.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make up the one God of Abraham, who formed Adam and created the world, who came in the flesh then died leaving the Comforter until judgment day.  These three persons of God are evident in the baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:16-17) and his great commission before he ascends to be with the Father (Matt. 28:19).

Theology

           Theology is a fancy word for the study of God (theos).  People carry many different ideas about who God is and what his nature entails.  There is a plural nature to God seen very early in the Bible, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).  The narrator uses these plural words (us and our) to describe God.  Some theologians explain these plurals used in Genesis 1-11 and other places in the Bible to portray a divine counsel of sorts that includes celestial beings.  Since God and the Spirit of God are mentioned in the text, that suggests that the plurality of the one God is solely at work in this creative act.  As seen in Christology, God’s son was present during the creation process and is an entity of the unified Godhead seen at work in creation and certainly part of these plurals.

            The study of God encompasses the Trinity.  One cannot get around the idea of three “persons” in one substance when Paul writes things like, “…be filled with the Spirit…giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Ephesians 5:18c, 20).  There are truly three parts of God and man has come up with countless metaphors to try and explain this.  Sometimes metaphors can be very dangerous though because they may leave someone with the wrong idea.  Let us stick to the Bible when trying to explain the plural nature of the one God.  Deuteronomy 6:4 does this beautifully, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”  Trinitarian Christians are not polytheists or tri-deists, but believe in one God that has different roles that are named in the Bible as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

            A temptation might be to make God modal who puts on different masks through history to play different roles.  The problem is we see all three “characters” on the seen at Jesus’ baptism.  The Son was baptized, the Spirit of God descended on him, and the Father spoke from heaven declaring favor for his son. (Matthew 3:16-17).  We must be careful to explain God to others and not give the impression we worship three different gods, but only the one God who is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Christology

            Christology may sound like a confusing and scary word, but do not let it be.  Break down its parts and you get simply the study (from –logia) of Christ.  This study within Christian theology deals specifically with the person and nature of Christ.  There are many conflicting views about who Christ is and what his purpose was while he walked on earth in the 1^st Century A.D.  Some of these differences people hold include his deity, humanity, status as “son,” the resurrection, and his eternal reign.

Jesus wanted to know, “Who do men say that I am?”  How people answer this question is the core of christology.  Jesus is eternally divine.  Everything was created through him making him present in and responsible for the creation.  He was called Immanuel, “God with us,” because he was God in the human form.  The historical implications to this claim are affirmed in Jesus’ own claim of his divinity and the confirmation of that claim through his resurrection from the dead.  Jesus’ humanity is strongly affirmed through his birth to Mary.  He was born of flesh and blood.  The book ends of his life point to his humanity maybe more than anything else.  While he was born of flesh and blood, he died because of that same flesh and blood that he allowed to be abused and poured out during his crucifixion.

Christ is God’s one of a kind son.  Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus in the gospel of John carries one of the most descriptive christological verses in the Bible.  Jesus said in 3:16 (NASB), “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son…”  The description “only begotten” is also translated “only” and “one and only.”  The notion that Jesus came from or was created by God the father does not line up with his eternal nature.  The second verse of the Bible expressly mentions God and the Spirit of God during the creation narrative.  Later in that same story, the divine plural is seen for the first time, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).  It is a little easier to understand why the Jews could understand the Spirit, but not a third substance of God.  John 1:1-5 tells of the son’s presence also during creation.

Campfire Christianity

            One hobby I enjoy thoroughly is camping.  A “must do” while camping is building and maintaining a campfire. The fire is used for several different activities while in the woods.  Food is often cooked on the campfire, marshmallow roasting is a sure hit, heating up chocolate Hershey bars to make "smores" wets my taste buds, keeping warm during the night’s cool breeze, and “chewing the fat” are all events that I love to take part in around the campfire.

A good campfire starts out as a dead pile of brush and small twigs that will catch a spark easily.  As the base is broadened, larger sticks are used for the endurance of the fire.  Once the base is set up a spark is needed to ignite the flame either from a match, lighter, or the old school hard core way of friction from a stick.  The campfire is now going, the food has been cooked and the time is at hand for gazing into the fire being mesmerized by the red hot coals.

Kurt Kaiser wrote the song “Pass It On” which speaks of a fire.  The first verse says,

It only takes a spark to get a fire going,

And soon all those a round can warm up in its glowing;

That’s how it is with God’s love, once you’ve experienced it:

You spread His love to everyone; you want to pass it on.

Jesus speaks of this “spark” in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (ESV).  Jesus provided the spark which started the fire of Christianity.  The fire started out small and then turned into a blaze.  Often in our lives though, the fire weakens.  When a campfire is built, the spark starts the brush, the brush starts the twigs, then the twigs catch the logs and a big fire is made.  Once the logs start to burn out though, the fire will lose its flame.  Is our Christianity burning out?

            It is not a new concept or weakness to allow one’s Christianity to burn out.  Peter was on fire for Jesus and stated in Matthew 26:35 “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You.”  Peter’s fire soon died out when he was approached three different times that night being accused of being associated with Jesus and denying the accusation all three times before the rooster crowed (Mt. 26:69-75). Do not be discouraged if your fire dims down, but do not become slack concerning the matter.

Exert from The School Bus Drivin’ Preacher.