theology in pencil

Try the spirits

Matt Parkins — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:43:46 +0000

Many tender-minded Christians fear to sin against love by daring to inquire into anything that comes wearing the cloak of Christianty and breathing the name of Jesus. They dare not examine the credentials of the latest prophet to hit town lest they be guilty of rejecting something which may be of God. They timidly remember how the Pharisees refused to accept Christ when He came, and they do not want to be caught in the same snare, so they either reserve judgement or shut their eyes and accept everything without question. This is supposed to indicate a high degree of spirituality. But in sober fact it indicates no such thing. It may indeed be evidence of the absence of the Holy Spirit.

Gullibility is not synonymous with spirituality. Faith is not a mental habit leading its possessor to open his mouth and swallow everything that has about it the colour of the supernatural. Faith keeps its heart open to whatever is of God, and rejects everything that is not of God, however wonderful it may be.

‘Try the spirits’ is a command of the Holy Spirit to the Church. We may sin as certainly by approving the spurious as by rejecting the genuine. And the current habit of refusing to take sides is not the way to avoid the question. To appraise things with a heart of love and then act on the results is an obligation resting upon every Christian in the world.

AW Tozer

Atheism

Matt Parkins — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:49:07 +0000

ho ho

US priests ‘in $800,000 theft’

Matt Parkins — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:40:42 +0000

Two Roman Catholic priests have been accused of stealing $800,000 from the collection plate of their church in the US state of Florida.

They allegedly planned to spend the money on property, holidays, gambling and to meet the expenses of mistresses.

It could be the biggest embezzlement case to affect the Catholic Church in the United States.

via BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US priests ‘in $800,000 theft’.

It would be very easy to look down on these guys but I’m posting this here not for that but because I’m just gobsmacked at the sheer scale of the embezzlement. Last night one of the guys at a meal we were having said that he doesn’t touch other people’s money unless someone has counted it first. It also shows why it is wise to have two people counting money!

It brings up the importance of transparency and accountability in every day life - we all have our price at which we’d cave in and are becoming better at managing our weaknesses but no-one is beyond falling which is why we are exhorted to flee temptation: we’re so ill-equiped for dealing with it.

The key, I think, is to recognise that it is very hard to make appetites just disappear. But you can choose how to feed them - you can either drink from “earth’s broken cisterns” by caving into temptation - though that never satisfies and only ever increases the appetite - or you can drink from the living water Jesus speaks of in John 4 which not only satisfies but puts other appetites into their lowly perspective.

“Pray Obama fails”

Matt Parkins — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:54:00 +0000

Many a coward has been bolstered in his conviction against challenging tyranny by not reading too deeply into the Scriptures. Yet, nowhere does the Bible ever suggest evil rulers are to be obeyed. When the rule of men conflicts with the commands of God, the Bible leaves no doubt about where we should stand.

That’s why I do not hesitate today in calling on godly Americans to pray that Barack Hussein Obama fail in his efforts to change our country from one anchored on self-governance and constitutional republicanism to one based on the raw and unlimited power of the central state.

via Pray Obama fails on wnd.com.

Interesting, very interesting. There are some rather strong views held out there about the new president! The author goes on to say that Obama’s plans are 100% opposed to God’s plans. 100% is quite some statement. What do you think ?

Genesis and Creation

Matt Parkins — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:27:15 +0000

There are lots of theories about Creation and Genesis. Many Christians hold what is known as a “young earth” view - that Genesis 1 is a literal account of how the universe came into existence around 6000 years ago. Other Christians hold an “old earth” view - that Genesis 1 is either a metaphorical (or picture-language) account that helps us understand why we were created without explaining how we were created, or that Genesis 1 is explaining another event altogether (!) and that the universe is probably about as old as the scientists think it is.

Personally I fall into the 2nd category but I’ve never been comfortable with the gap in the fossil record (if we and every other species have evolved into their present state surely the world should be full of transitional fossils? There aren’t many and there are almost no complete sets), nor have I been happy to interpret Gensis 1 metaphorically just because it suits current scientific understanding. So whilst I think it is obvious that the universe is billions of years old I have always been on the lookout for a way of satisfactorily interpreting Genesis 1.

One of the most interesting (and convincing) ideas that I came across last year is the idea that Genesis 1 is not describing the creation of the universe but actually describing the emergence of man (from man’s perspective) and that the creation of the universe, forming of the earth, and then its geological eras pre-date Genesis 1 (in fact you’d need to look to John 1.1 to find the beginning of the universe). Ralph Winter likes this idea and talks about it a lot in his article “The Unfinished Epic” - well worth a read!

Whilst I do like some of his ideas, some of his reasoning does appear to be politically motivated, he refuses to “give an inch to Darwinian Random evolution”, (who does he think made evolution in the first place? Darwin?) and I do wonder why he thinks that angelic beings had to intervene/cultivate so much in order to bring the human form to where it has come - again, who does he think created the systems that govern the universe? Frankly I don’t think it would have mattered if it had been here on Earth or another planet or whether we had 6 legs and were a funny green colour (being made in the image of God means something other than our physical form since God is spirit, not humanoid). I’m not opposed to a view of minor occasional intervention to ensure the survival or a good growth of a species, but he presents the idea as if without the angels continual cultivation humankind would cease to exist - the forces & universal systems God created (gravity, magnetism, evolution, etc) were made by God and don’t really need that kind of continual cultivation! Humankind might need protection from malevolent, fallen angels, but that is a different thing entirely.

Boyd goes further to suggest that Evolution is just another expression of the Cosmic Warfare in this war that we find ourselves in. He suggests that the development and expansion of life on the planet is on the side of the kingdom and that the destruction, wastage, corruption of creation (was there lions & lambs could sit together?) and the sheer volume of wastage we see in evolution is almost entirely the work of the enemy (either directly or indirectly). Again, interesting, though I’m not sure I agree. What is wrong with wastage in nature? (especially given CS Lewis’ idea (and Boyd’s later idea) of the trivialisation of those that rebel against God in The Nothing - they were simply free agents that at one time had the potential to say Yes to God but now are eternally trivialised. Boyd doesn’t mind wastage in eternity as a result of free-will but ascribes wastage in nature as the work of the enemy). But what is wrong with a roaring, violent lion? Obviously it would be foolish to say that nature represents perfection away from which us sentient beings have drifted and so look back to nature to see how we should be - by no means! But nature is kind of neutral - I do wonder about the “blame God or Satan for everything” syndrome I see a lot of…

I think I tend to adopt a hands-off approach - perhaps it is the computer programmer in me! The better the system that governs the universe the less you need to interfere with it for it to operate as you wanted it to. And we all know who made the systems that govern the universe…

How Sunday School shaped Britain

Matt Parkins — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:48:41 +0000

A number of Premiership clubs, and a remarkable percentage of those who set up the Football League in the 1880s, grew out of Sunday schools - names as famous as Everton, Aston Villa and Fulham. Such teams grew out of the men’s sections of Sunday schools - Catholic, Methodist, Anglican - and started as a winter addition to the popularity of cricket in summer.

via BBC NEWS | Magazine | How Sunday school shaped Britain.

Interesting reading about what people remember of Sunday School from years ago - interesting too reading the comments - some hostile, some with good memories. It is good to see that the media isn’t always decrying the effect of religion upon society - many great things have come into being because Christians made it happen.

Jesus born on Christmas day

Matt Parkins — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:39:10 +0000

A Peruvian woman called Virgen Maria, who is married to a carpenter, has named her son Jesus Emanuel after giving birth on Christmas Day.

via BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Peru Christmas baby named Jesus.

It had to happen eventually :)

How not to do Matthew 18 accountability

Matt Parkins — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:46:15 +0000

Should Christian discipleship & mentoring be completely confidential? What if someone confesses sin that they then refuse to turn from. How do you ‘tell the church’ as Jesus say in Matthew 18?

I came across a link of a story about a member of a church in the US who confessed to her mentor that she was in a sexual relationship outside of marriage. After some time the mentor got other people involved to mentor her - without her permission or any prior warning. She left the church rather than leave her new bloke. But her church, instead of handing her over to the sin to run its course, decided to take Matthew 18 literally and announce her sin to the rest of the church (the man involved is not an attender) despite the fact that she has left.

A little vindictive, no? Grace Church (tagline: Changing Lives One Truth At A Time) doesn’t think so…:

Rebecca Hancock told FOXNews.com that Grace Community Church, a non-denominational church in Jacksonville, Fla., was against her relationship with boyfriend Frank Young because the two were sexually active but not married.

When she wasn’t willing to obey the church’s orders to leave him, she decided to leave the church instead, allowing her two children to remain active members.

Now, she says, church elders have given her the worst ultimatum yet: In a Dec. 8 letter, they told her she either has to meet with them and end her “immoral” relationship or she will face public humiliation.

“Bottom line, on January they 4th they are going to the church publicly with my sins, and my children will be sitting in church at the time,” Hancock told FOXNews.com.

via FOXNews.com - Florida Woman Says Former Church Plans to Make Her Sins Public - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News.

Jesus’ heart and words in Matthew 18 are not about bullying & humiliating people into repentance.

Todd Bentley

Matt Parkins — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:49:26 +0000

Its a real shame to see what we’ve seen in the life of Todd Bentley over the past week - it has finally emerged that TB was in an illicit relationship whilst running these recent meetings and that that is the reason behind the separation. You have to feel for his wife & family.

I imagine there will be further revelations about what he’s been up to behind the scenes. I do feel both angry and sad. I visited Toronto twice but I’ve never been to Lakeland or anywhere to see Todd speak - I’ve always felt strangely ambivalent toward his ministry and so have not invested an awful lot and hence don’t have a feeling of being duped. I do feel disappointed that this is going to be used to undermine some of the work God did despite Todd in the first place (Calvanists would say God planned this to happen for higher purposes, Arminians have to admit that God foreknew what Todd would do and still chose to use him - praise the Lord there are more sensible ideas than these about God’s perspective of time). It is an amazing testament to God’s grace & favour that He would meet with people despite what was going on.

So is this just a clear cut case of someone diving into ministry before their character was ready?

Or, as a friend of mine suggests of many fallen leaders, did Todd just pull the ejector seat cord because the pressure of leading this ministry was too great for him?

Reading on the internet there are quite a lot of vicious things being said, but also a lot of needless defending. Lots of accusation of judging (we can judge someone’s actions but not judge (in the sense of ‘condemn’) the person), on both sides. None of it looks good to the outside world. One thing that has angered me has been the constant over-defensiveness of Todd’s followers.

If one were to question Todd’s theology & methods before all this blew up we were told by many that by questioning Todd we were questioning God, that by raising concerns people were accused of being against God. In fact, God TV said (from http://fireinmybones.com/index.php?col=081308~Life%20After%20Lakeland:%20Sorting%20Out%20the%20Confusion) “any criticism of Todd Bentley is demonic” and went on to warn listeners that if they listened to criticism of Bentley, they could lose their healings.

Now that his affair has come out those of us with concerns are still not allowed to speak of it: Looking around the internet the two things being said by his (clearly hurt) defenders is: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and “judge not lest in the same measure ye be judged”. Apparently you can’t question it while it is going on and you can’t talk about it all blows up - just when can we talk about concerns?

Most seem very quick to defend Todd and request we pray for swift restoration of his ministry - I wonder whether people are in denial or I wonder whether that is perhaps because (at the present time: 20th August) it has only been announced that Todd has had an ‘unhealthy relationship on an emotional level’. Thing is - you don’t tell someone to step down and distance yourself from a leader because they’ve had a few coffees and an exclusive chat with the same girl a few times - you don’t seperate from your marriage partner because they’ve had a few cosy chats with someone they shouldn’t have - I’d be very surprised if after the final Lakeland meeting on 23rd August there are not further revelations.

Don’t get me wrong - I know of people who have been genuinely affected for good by God through the revivalist meetings in Lakeland, it is great that God responds to his people that are hungry for Him and expect to meet with Him. I’m thankful for the lives that God has touched and transformed and I’m sure that in 10 years Todd will have a great testimony. I’m also aware that anyone in ministry can fall for the same thing - I have a saying when people (or I) think that someone isn’t capable of something: If you’re physically capable of doing something, then you’re capable of doing it. So like I said, I don’t judge the man, just what he’s done - I don’t condemn the man, just his actions.

Election and Depravity

Matt Parkins — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:47:57 +0000

Calvinism teaches the doctrine of Unconditional Election. Briefly stated, it is the idea that before the world began God chose (elected) who he would save, and who he would destine for reprobation and punishment. It is called ‘Unconditional’ because there is no condition placed on humans or any action that we could do that could change that predestined election. Regardless of what we do eternal bliss awaits those whom he chose, and eternal punishment awaits those he chose to be punished. (Frankly I think that is enough to write off Calvinism but I’m trying to focus on the Election issue).

Arminianism teaches the doctrine of Conditional Election. Again briefly stated, it is the idea that before the world began God had foreseen who would have faith in Christ and then predestined them. Arminians are forced to say it like this because they (like the Calvinists) insist that God sees the future as a single certainty - that God has exhaustive foreknowledge of the future (Calvinists go a step further to say that God determines the future also).

The Arminian position on the conditionality of Election is not quite as ridiculous as the Calvinist position but it is a complete fudge in terms of finding and presenting a simple, elegant solution to something that is a simple reality. It shows how unsuited to various ideas presented in the bible both worldviews are as they are stretched - they struggle to naturally deliver reasonable explanations that prove anywhere near satisfactory. I also think is a bit of a let down (perhaps even an inconsistency) with the non-Calvinist doctrine of Unlimited Atonement (that Christ died for all without exception, not just those that would be saved in the end a la Calvinism’s Limited Atonement). I can completely see why the Arminian is forced down this route: because they say God foresees the future exhaustively. But I think there has to be a better route through than either of those formulations - I think my objection is that I really believe that salvation is genuinely open to all and is not the illusion that both Arminianism & Calvinism portray.

I think this also comes from my dislike at the doctrine of Total Depravity (which is held by just about all Protestant schools of thought) - the idea that without God first doing something in us we are incapable of responding positively toward him or of doing anything at all good. For some this is an excuse (albeit a poor one) to say that a Christian doing a charitable act is somehow better than a non-Christian doing one (they believe that the goodness of an act is not found in the act but in the person - an altruistic act conducted by a non-believer must be an egoist one). Silly, very silly.

Casting aside such obvious mistakes of application that aren’t even worth responding to, I do object to the mainstream position of the doctrine. Just because we have become partially separated from God through the fall (hell or death (spiritual death I mean) being total, complete and final separation) doesn’t mean that we entirely lose our free-will - if that were the case we could not be held responsible at all - we would be no more responsible for our actions than animals are. The idea that our free-will is fully lost because of the introduction of sin is an assumption and not found anywhere in scripture other than in overstating the intent of scriptures about becoming slaves through sin.

Anyway, I am sure a simpler way can be found through the Election issue than fudging it to fit.

The Meek Man

Matt Parkins — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:03:31 +0000

“The meek man…knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring.”

A.W.Tozer

I love this quote. It reminds me too of the phrase “in God’s eyes” that we often hear prefixing a sentence: “In God’s eyes you’re great!”, “In God’s eyes you’re worthwhile!”, “In God’s eyes you’re beautiful!”. We forget that the prefix is entirely redundant, as if the world’s sight, or our sight is absolute reality. Sometimes I think we get a little too caught up in relativism and overvalue our own worldview at the expense of cold, hard reality and do ourselves no favours at all. Relativism is a recent human construct born of our individualism and the next logical step of a society disconnecting itself from God - we do well to remember that.

Optimism and Hope

Matt Parkins — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:01:54 +0000

The categories of optimism and pessimism don’t exist for me. I’m a blues man. A blues man is a prisoner of hope, and hope is a qualitatively different category than optimism. Optimism is a secular construct, a calculation of probability. Black folk in America have never been optimistic about the future - what have we had to be optimistic about? But we are people of hope. Hope wrestles with despair, but it doesn’t generate optimism. It just generates this energy to be courageous, to bear witness, to see what the end is going to be. No guarantee, unfinished, open-ended. I’m a prisoner of hope. I’m going to die full of hope…

Cornel West

Love and Hate

Matt Parkins — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:59:52 +0000

Hate has a reason for everything. Love is unreasonable.

V. Raiuhes Ahaefvthe

The Lord’s Prayer: …and lead us not into temptation

Matt Parkins — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:58:41 +0000

Transcription of my sermon preached Sunday 9th March 2008, at St Matthews Anglican Church, East Geelong, Australia.

Funny Warnings

People put some funny warning labels on products - here are some of the funny ones I found the other day on a website:

On a driving mirror in the USA: Warning! Objects in the mirror are actually behind you.
On a Korean kitchen knife: Warning! Keep out of children.
On a carton of sleeping tablets: Warning! May cause drowsiness. May !?
On the package for a Batman costume: “Warning! Cape does not enable user to fly. Batman didn’t fly! Obviously you need the Superman cape for that!
On a bottle of dog shampoo: Caution! The contents of this bottle should not be fed to fish. Who do I sue!?

Funny labels! Temptation doesn’t really come labelled though - or if it does it comes labelled to us as something harmless or even good when, of course, it in fact bring genuine harm to us & others. When we’re tempted we’re almost never presented with the downside.

If temptation came labelled with its full effect & downside then it wouldn’t really be a temptation at all. Just like some of the adverts for some medical pills where all the warnings are in very small text or said as quickly as possible on a TV ad. “Breathe Easier” with new Claritin-D - helps you breath easily. (Side effects may include drowsiness, fatigue, abdominal pain, dihorrhea, nausea, headache, fever, chest pain and/or flu symptoms). But when enticed by a temptation to sin it is usually because we’re just focussed on what we have to gain.

So today we’re going to be talking about temptation - Now of course, I’m going to be working mostly from memory & theory today because as you know once you become a member of staff on a church you no longer face any temptations whatsoever. Seriously though, Jesus faced temptation, the Archbishop does, and while we continue on as denizens of this fallen universe we’ll all continue to encounter temptation.

I want to start by looking at some different translations of the bible. Translations other than the NIV use different words on this line of the Lord’s Prayer, and consequently, so do some other churches. I think for some people this raises questions - which one is right?!? My bible says this! My church says that, etc:

Do not bring us into hard testing (Good News Bible & a couple of others)

and

And do not bring us to the time of trial (New Revised Standard)

Some churches say ‘Save us from the time of trial’. Notice that they have used Testing and Trial rather than temptation. How do you go from temptation to testing & trial? Well that’s because the word in the Greek is {pi-ras-mos} Peirasmos and it means temptation, trial and testing all rolled up into one word - it means all of them and so when we’re praying it means you can use different emphisees as you need to. No one is saying that ‘Lead us not into temptation’ is wrong its just that this prayer has a lot more to offer than just praying merely about temptation.

Peirasmos has several senses:

It can be a trial or testing, or proving - and the book of James says this is good because then we grow or to prove or show to yourself or others your character, holiness & faith. God uses what Satan & this world throws at us to bring glory to himself & growth to you - tests of proving give you muscles!

I had a chat with Mike Breen about how this phrase works logically if we’re talking about testing and trials, especially since James talks about ‘Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds’ - why would we say ‘lead us not into trials or testing’ when James says ‘Consider it pure Joy when you do’ - and Mike suggested that where trials is the emphasis of our prayer we’re asking God to lead us on a path that avoids spiritual conflict but if the Father chooses conflict then we ask Him to ‘deliver us from evil’. I imagine this is rather like Jesus in Gethsemene asking for his trial, torture & crucifiction to be avoided, but if God choses that it must be so then so be it and similarly we say ’so be it but deliver us from evil’.

It is good to remember here about the second part of the phrase: ‘but deliver us from evil’ begins with the word ‘but’ not the word ‘and’, it is ‘lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil’, not ‘and deliver us from evil’ - meaning that these are not two separate petitions, but two-parts of the same petition. Ian will be covering the 2nd part next week but I just wanted to underline this so we don’t lose the context - we need to remember ‘lead us not into temptation’ with the rest of the phrase ‘but, instead, rescue us or deliver us, to you, Father, from evil (or the evil one)’. Also ‘deliver’ here means to deliver to God, not just to avoid evil - there’s a specific target - like a postal letter has a delivery address where it is to go.

So peirasmos can mean a trial or testing, or proving.

And it can also be a temptation to sin. Either as

An external enticement to sin, such as an alcoholic walking past a pub, but also,
It can be an internal temptation, in our thought lives. Pride for example, or take the 10th commandment, do not covet, don’t be envious - that is a good example of ‘Don’t do this in your mind!’, a good example of an internal temptation - because only God & I know what I’m thinking!

What else?

Temptation can also mean to be tempted away from God or obedience to a task God has given you- rather like Satan tempting Jesus from His divine errand - his mission to save the world - in Matthew 4. That’s another sense of temptation.
Finally, and this particular sense isn’t reflected in any of the translations we see, but pierasmos can be about us humans testing God through our rebellion. One example would be the Israelites in the desert in their rebellion where God shows his justice by leaving them out there for 40 years. Lead us not into a place where we test God’s patience through our rebellion.

For this talk I think that since we pray ‘lead us not into temptation’ every week I shall focus mainly upon the temptation sense of the word Pierasmos - the internal desires & external enticements. There are a couple more translations that use the word temptation with a different effect upon this line in the Lord’s Prayer:

And don’t let us yield to temptation (NLT)

and

Keep us from falling into sin when we are tempted. (New International Readers)

Personally speaking I really like these particular translations. They assume that temptation will come our way - especially internal temptation that we cannot flee from - and we are asking that when it comes that God would keep us from yielding to that temptation.

Again, how can they translate it this way? Well it is to do with the word ‘into’ as in ‘lead us not into temptation’, and what they’re saying, insightfully I think, is that praying: Lead me not into temptation is not the same as Lead us not unto temptation.They are suggesting that we are not to pray that we wouldn’t face temptation, we’re not praying that we wouldn’t encounter temptation but we’re praying that when we do encounter temptation that we would not enter into it. Let me expand the difference:

Jesus often talks of entering into the Kingdom. To enter ‘into the Kingdom’ means much more than to merely encounter or face the kingdom it means more than plainly standing within the kingdom also; To enter into the kingdom means to yield to its claims, to be subjected by it, to surrender & submit ourselves to it, and to take upon ourselves its laws. And so I think that to enter into temptation can mean much more than merely encountering temptation; but it can mean to yield to its demands & become subjugated by it & surrendering to it.

For example in Matthew 26.41 Jesus in Gethsemene bids his disciples to “watch and pray that you do not enter (fall) into temptation”. He knew that within a few minutes temptation would come to them - temptation of cowardice & disloyalty. Jesus wasn’t suggesting they should pray that they would not encounter temptation but he bid them pray that they would not enter into temptation, under its power and mastered by it. They would undoubtably fight a battle but Jesus did not want them led as captives into its citidel.

So I hope that is helpful - sometimes we’re asking God to avoid taking us on a troublesome path upon which we might fall, and at other times we’re asking God to help us not to surrender & come under the power of temptation! This line in the Lord’s Prayer, this fragment, has an awful lot to offer us depending on our situation whether we find ourselves in preparation for Trial, Testing, or Temptation, or whether we’re in the heat of the moment - we can pray this line with an appropriate emphasis.

I think another thing we need to take from this line of the Lord’s prayer is that Jesus is telling us that we need to pray about temptation. There are 5 or 6 parts to the Lord’s Prayer, each with a different emphasis: Glorifying & honouring God, praying for his Kingdom & Will to be done, praying for provision, praying about forgiveness, and then praying about temptation and being delivered or rescued from evil. Well I think I know which one gets prayed about the least in my life!

But Jesus tells us to ask for God’s help and we can pray this line of the Lord’s Prayer both in preparation for and in the moment of temptation. Its just that perhaps we’re not too convinced of why we should pray about it. For this morning I have prepared 3 reasons that why we should pray about temptation:

Well, firstly we should pray about temptation because often the temptation is tapping into something much deeper than mere pleasure, or greed, or flesh-life moments. Let me give you an analogy from my life:

My first car was a Volvo 340. After a couple of years it began to make some funny noises as I was driving. Now I’m not an engineer so I just ignored it. The car was still running, it just sounded a bit funny. I was talking to one of my co-workers and I mentioned it to him and he gave me a pretty insightful piece of advice. He said “listen to your car - your car is trying to tell you something!” I thought “Yeah, that’s a good idea, I should probably do something about that”. And promptly forgot about it except when I was in the car and I would feel a bit guilty that I wasn’t dealing with it.

One day not too long afterwards the car broke down! I turned a corner onto a road that goes up a steep hill and the front-right suspension collapsed and the front-right wheel disappeared altogether into the wheel arch because of the amount of rust in it - it was a real mess. It looked terrible. Now, I’d like to stress again that I’m really not an engineer… so despite the fact that the front-right handside of the car had collapsed I figured that it still had 4 wheels even if one of them wasn’t in the right place “strictly speaking” - but I’m “generation X - it’s all relative - it doesn’t have to be perfect - just go with the flow…” and I figured I could probably still do the remaining miles of my journey. It didn’t take long for me to realise that wheels embedded in wheel arches don’t budge - at all - perhaps they can move but there were angels preventing the car from moving at all !? “Noooo - don’t let him move the car”, etc. The point is I didn’t listen to what my car was trying to tell me and I paid a price in the form of a hefty repair bill! It had a genuine need that I didn’t deal with - I didn’t take it to someone who could sort it out - and so that part broke completely and the whole car stopped functioning!

You & I can be a bit like that car. We have deep needs within us that by God’s design only he can meet. Needs like intimacy with Jesus that when not met means we can be tempted by offers of intimacy from elsewhere. Needs like security, hope & future which if not met mean we can be tempted into greed and buy into materialism, the world’s version of security, among other things. Needs like feeling valued and worthwhile which, when not met, can tempt us into sins of pride or low-self-esteem - when God wants to give you his sense of your value & worthwhileness. Needs like Joy & godly pleasure not being met can mean that we’re open to an external enticement to the world’s versions of those things, of escapism or substance abuse, etc. You see what I’m getting at - you can trace temptation & sin back over several stages until you find the root cause, the underlying need that God wants to meet anyway - its just that the world has sinful rubbish versions that damage & hurt and doesn’t really meet the need, or if it does it just does so temporarily, for a moment. We have to seek God to meet those needs - and sometimes that requires an awful lot of grace, patience & perseverance.

So when temptation and sin come along, especially if we find ourselves in cyclic temptation & sin, we have to use them as triggers to take ourselves back to God both in the moment, and in reflection & discussion and ask God to show us what the root cause is of the temptation. What is the underlying need, ask God to show you what you lack and then ask him to deal with it in whatever way he sees best. If we don’t deal with these needs & inner weaknesses we just end up going around in circles and eventually that part of our lives breaks and then we break down.

Take, for instance, the lack of God’s Joy in our lives. It is a fairly common need that we have that can be the root cause of a temptation to obtain a physical high or escapism - this is an interesting one because we can often feel like our desire for pleasure & enjoyment is just plain wrong when nothing could be further from the truth. Or in rejecting the temptation to bring pleasure through sin we can wrongly assume that we are not to seek pleasure at all.

CS Lewis had something immensely helpful to say about desire & joy: …it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

We are far too easily placated with this world’s idea of Joy & pleasure when God has made an offer of infinite Joy - the world offers its version now, easily accessible but at a high cost, but God’s Joy & pleasure is worth seeking, worth obtaining, and worth waiting for, and it is free!

The 2nd reason we should pray about temptation is because as I said before it is a really bad deal, it is deadly, it comes to us labelled as something harmless, and you & I are not very good at dealing with temptation.

It would be great if temptation did come labelled truthfully: “Warning! This sin will bring disharmony to your relationship with God”. “Warning! This sin will compromise your witness!”. “Warning! This sin will cost you your marriage.” “Warning! This sin will bind you into an addictive cycle.” But of course temptations don’t come with warnings because then they wouldn’t be temptations they would just be really bad offers. And that’s what they are - bad deals, bad offers! Jo and I saw one the other day on the back of a reciept: “2 nights in Echuca - $250 per person”. That’s not an offer that’s daylight robbery! I’m not saying Echuca is not nice, but….

When we yield to temptation we’re ripped-off, we get mugged. As CS Lewis says, we have no real idea what is offerred us so we can easily think the world’s broken and damaged version of Joy is all there is to be had, it is the same for the world’s version of security, intimacy, worth, and so forth.

It was Franklin Jones who said What makes resisting temptation difficult, for many people, is that they don’t want to discourage it completely. Sometimes we’re just not entirely convinced about how bad it is and we need help from the Lord & each other. Lets ask God to remind us that sin is always a rip-off!

And that brings me to the 3rd reason that we should pray about temptation, and that is that God wants to help! Jesus would never and will never ask us to pray a prayer that the Father didn’t want to fulfil, and this is no exception. God wants to help us, to strengthen us, he wants us to pass the test and grow muscles, be mature and complete not lacking in anything as James says.

If we will stick close to God & live in community with the body then he will ensure that we have a choice to not yield to temptation, and he will deliver us from evil. If we stick close to God we will be close to the one who has defeated sin, evil and temptation.

In an interview Henri Nouwen said: I cannot continuously say no to this or no to that, unless there is something ten times more attractive to choose. Saying no to my lust, my greed, my needs, and the world’s powers takes an enormous amount of energy. The only hope is to find something so obviously real and attractive that I can devote all my energies to saying yes…. One such thing I can say yes to is when I come in touch with the fact that I am loved. Once I have found that in my total brokenness I am still loved, I become free from the compulsion of doing [such] things.

God and all he has to offer us is infinitely more attractive than any sin - it is just often we can’t see it. So lets continue to persevere with being vulnerable in our mpods - I know it can be hard, it takes an awful lot of character & maturity to be able to reveal your own weaknesses - and continue to open up our lives to one another, to ask each other for help & God for his joy, intimacy, power & healing in order that we can resist sin, the very thing that separated us from God in the first place.

Lets pray…

Help us to pray about temptation, show us underlying needs and weaknesses that are bringing about temptation in our lives.
Help those of us who are in Trials & Hard testing to consider them joy, and that they would bring about perseverance, maturity.
Help us to be open with one another & together to ask & seek you for your help & intervention in our lives.

And now I shall show you a more excellent way…

Matt Parkins — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:56:48 +0000

“It is the observation of an ancient writer, that there have been from the beginning two orders of Christians. The one lived an innocent life, conforming in all things, not sinful, to the customs and fashions of the world; doing many good works, abstaining from gross evils, and attending the ordinances of God. They endeavoured, in general, to have a conscience void of offence in their outward behaviour, but did not aim at any particular strictness, being in most things like their neighbours. The other sort of Christians not only abstained from all appearance of evil, were zealous of good works in every kind, and attended all the ordinances of God, but likewise used all diligence to attain the whole mind that was in Christ, and laboured to walk, in every point, as their beloved Master. In order to this they walked in a constant course of universal self-denial, trampling on every pleasure which they were not divinely conscious prepared them for taking pleasure in God. They took up their cross daily. They strove, they agonized without intermission, to enter in at the strait gate. This one thing they did, they spared no pains to arrive at the summit of Christian holiness; “leaving the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, to go on to perfection;” to “know all that love of God which passeth knowledge, and to be filled with all the fulness of God.”

“From long experience and observation I am inclined to think, that whoever finds redemption in the blood of Jesus, whoever is justified, has then the choice of walking in the higher or the lower path. I believe the Holy Spirit at that time sets before him “the more excellent way,” and incites him to walk therein, to choose the narrowest path in the narrow way, to aspire after the heights and depths of holiness, — after the entire image of God. But if he does not accept this offer, he insensibly declines into the lower order of Christians. He still goes on in what may be called a good way, serving God in his degree, and finds mercy in the close of life, through the blood of the covenant.

“I would be far from quenching the smoking flax, — from discouraging those that serve God in a low degree. But I could not wish them to stop here: I would encourage them to come up higher, without thundering hell and damnation in their ears, without condemning the way wherein they were, telling them it is the way that leads to destruction, I will endeavour to point out to them what is in every respect “a more excellent way.”

“Let it be well remembered, I do not affirm that all who do not walk in this way are in the high road to hell. But this much I must affirm, they will not have so high a place in heaven as they would have had if they had chosen the better part. And will this be a small loss, — the having so many fewer stars in your crown of glory? Will it be a little thing to have a lower place than you might have had in the kingdom of your Father? Certainly there will be no sorrow in heaven; there all tears will be wiped from our eyes; but if it were possible grief could enter there, we should grieve at that irreparable loss. Irreparable then, but not now. Now, by the grace of God, we may choose the “more excellent way.”