Author: believersarmedanddangerous

After several decades as a Christian, I still find it interesting how few people know what their spiritual gift is.  We see a number of spiritual gifts listed in the New Testament (Eph. 4:11-12; 1 Cor. 4-11, 28; Romans 12:6-8) and displayed in both the Old and New Testament.  God has given us spiritual gifts for a purpose, for the work of the ministry to grow the church:

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, (Eph. 4:11-12)

This passage contains one of the shorter lists of spiritual gifts in Scripture, but it tells us a lot about gifts in general.  God has gifted each of us with particular gifts to do the work of the ministry.

The issue at hand is that so many Christians have no clue what their primary spiritual gift is.  I say “primary” because we all have a primary gift but often can be given a gift temporarily to suit a particular moment or time period.  A couple of years ago, I was talking with a Jehovah’s Witness, and he asked me a question that came to me from out of left field.  Now I’ve been talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses for nearly 50 years.  There isn’t much I haven’t heard, but this one caught me flat-footed.  While I was still reeling from the blow, God just told me the response.  I stated the response to John, the JW, exactly word-for-word as God had told me.  Then it was John’s turn to reel.  That was a brief gift of knowledge (1 Cor. 12:8).

Another time I was talking to a realtor whose wife got the calling to smuggle Bibles into China even though neither he nor his wife spoke Chinese.  The calling was so strong that they bought several hundred Bibles in Chinese, shipped them to Hong Kong, flew there, and drove them to the border with Communist China.  The realtor’s wife spoke with the guard in Chinese; he identified himself as a Christian, and expressed how grateful he was for the Bibles.  She and her husband returned to the states, but she never again was able to speak Chinese.  God had given her a temporary gift of tongues.

More important than this is recognizing our primary gifts, the gifts we use every day.  How do we recognize those in ourselves?  I think the best way is to ask others what they think your gift is.

Early in my Christian life, I was sitting in an adult Sunday School class with a number of other people when the pastor joined us.  We were going through the book “Body Life” and were discussing this exact topic.  When there was a pause, the pastor stepped in and said “Sometimes we can tell what gift a particular person has by their habits.  For instance,” he said “I’ll bet when Mike and John study their Bibles, they have books and magazines all over the table.  They read commentaries, use Bible dictionaries, and ask questions of others.  They have the gift of teaching.”  I was stunned.  It was like he was reading my mail.  How did he know?  He knew because in the pre-computer age, this was how teachers had to study.  Now we use computers and Bible study programs.

I have friends who have the gift of giving, evangelism, teaching, helps, administration, and so on.  Most of those people know their gift.  It is a drive to do what they have been gifted to do.

God’s gift is often so great a desire it becomes obviously a gift from Him.

Why is this important?

If you don’t know your spiritual gift, ask a mature Christian who knows you well.  Look at the things that drive you.  Do you want to help, does disorganization bother you?  Do you get upset when someone teaches something you know is in error?

There are lots of “spiritual gift tests” online.  Take a few of those and see if there is a commonality in the results.

Without all of us knowing and exercising our spiritual gifts, we are not fulfilling God’s desire to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.  So, do some research.  Find your function in the body of Christ. 

I had a friend tell me the other day he believed in the preexistence of the soul.  This doctrine teaches all souls existed prior to being born in a human body.  Some believe our souls existed from eternity past just as God has.  Others believe our souls were created but created prior to our birth. 

It’s not a Christian doctrine because the Bible doesn’t teach it.  I believe the doctrine of preexistence of the soul comes from a misunderstanding of God’s foreknowledge.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1:5)

Passages like this seem to imply preexistence of the soul, but, again, the reader must read into the passage their preconceived belief.  One of the most basic rules in biblical interpretation is to compare a passage with the entirety of the Bible.  The Bible is the best commentary on itself.

Maybe it would be good here to briefly discuss the omniscience of God.  God knows all things past present and future. 

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. (Ps. 147:5)

He also knows all things that might come to pass if conditions were different:

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. (Luke 10:13)

Since God knows all things past, present, and future; and even what might happen, it’s to be understood that He knows us before we were born.  We didn’t exist yet, but in God’s mind He knew us.  God exists in the eternal now. 

Let me go back to an analogy I’ve used before.  God’s foreknowledge is like a father who has watched a video of his daughter’s fifth birthday party so many times he knows every move, every word spoken, every leaf moved by the breeze.

God’s foreknowledge is like that.  He knows for certain what will happen in the future just as the father knows what will happen before he slides the DVD into his player.  In God’s case, the DVD is all of history past, present, and future.  As it plays out, there is nothing God does not know or expect.  When He says He knew us before He formed us in our mother’s womb, the response is “of course He did.  He knows all.”

We become living souls upon our birth or creation:

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:7)

The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. Thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him, (Zech 12:1)

Why is this important?

⁵ Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified  (2 Cor. 13:5)

We need to make sure our faith is as pure and as accurate as possible.  Looking at counterfeit doctrine should only strengthen what we already know to be true.  Knowing the genuine faith protects us from being fooled and from drifting from the Truth.  It is our job as Christians to test everything no matter what, the strange doctrines we hear from others and even the familiar doctrines we hold ourselves.  Our God is a God of truth. 

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard.  (Heb. 2:1-3)

Grateful for that One Day

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? ² For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. ³ Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. ⁴ Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another (Romans 7:1-4a)

My father was an angry and abusive man.  I went to bed each night hoping not to do anything the next day that would anger him.  If he wasn’t hurting my brother, sister, and me physically, he was hurting us emotionally.

When I was 15, it was late at night.  I lay in bed trying to sleep when the doorbell rang.  I heard my mother cry out when she saw who it was.  It was Ira, my father’s emergency contact.

Ira came into my room and told me, “You’re going to need to be grown up for this, Mike.  Your father has died.”  I almost cried out “Really??”  I was so happy, but I couldn’t show it.  It would have hurt my mother who was unaware of the worst of the abuse.  That one day changed my life.  All the rules, all the threats, all the failures were gone.  Because of one event, one day, I was free.

Even though my father was the way he was, I learned a lot from him that helped me through life: my work ethic, the drive of a father to provide for his family, those sorts of things.  God’s Law was instructive as well.  It showed the ancient Jews how to live, how to please God, and that they could not do it by just works of righteousness.

God’s Law is holy.  I need to make that point before I continue.  It was man that failed to keep the Law because man is imperfect.  Our flesh stood in the way.  Like my father’s rules, the Law came with rules impossible to obey perfectly.  It was frustrating and painful for the Jews who were under the Law just as it was for me.

The passage above speaks of how one event would change her life, the day the woman’s husband died and set her free from the law that kept her from marrying again.  Paul uses this excellent example to show how in one day, Jesus’ death set God’s people free from the law of sin and death:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. ³ For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  (Rom. 8:2-4)

What a wonderful day that was for us.  On another single day, October 16^th, 1975, I gave my life to Christ and was set free once more.  It was a much greater freedom, freedom from the law of sin and death.

We’re all under the Law if we don’t surrender to Christ.  There’s no getting out of it.  Either we must live a sinless life to satisfy God, or accept the free gift of eternal life through Christ.  God requires one or the other.

I often tell my friends I’m not a Christian for the reward at the end of this life.  Heaven is a wonderful benefit, but I would be a Christian even if the reward wasn’t there.  I’m a Christian because of this life God has forgiven me.  I’m grateful for those two days, the day 2,000 years ago when Jesus died for me and the day 46 years ago when I took advantage of His free offer of eternal life.  Those two days gave me a life filled with joy and blessings, family and friends that mean the world to me, but most of all a relationship with the very One Who set me free.

Why is this important?

If you’re a child of God, there was that one day when everything changed for you, too.  It’s a day for which you will be forever grateful.  Sadly, I sometimes forget that.  When I catch myself dwelling in self-pity, I recount the sins in my past and present remembering that God has forgiven, and I’m grateful once again.

“Gratitude” should be at the center of our Christian life.  Talk show host and author, Dennis Prager has said gratitude is the key to happiness.  I think he’s right.  If we want to be happy, we must be grateful for that one day that changed our world and on the One Who died to give us life .

²⁸ Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, (Heb. 12:28)

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. (Rom. 8:2)

This verse in Romans speaks of two laws, the Mosaic Law, “the law of sin and death” and the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.”  The Mosaic Law itself is holy.  Paul wasn’t saying it wasn’t.  It is man’s disobedience to the laws, statutes, and ordinances which bring sin and, therefore, death.  Our sin nature causes us to resist the Law.  If sin wasn’t attractive, we wouldn’t do it.  So, we rebel rather than obey.

The Mosaic Law wasn’t given to make life miserable for the Jews.  God wasn’t on a power trip.  Sin is anything we do which does not align with God’s nature.  The Mosaic Law gives us an idea of God’s nature and how impossible it is for man to align with it on his own.

The Mosaic Law provided several lessons.  Among these was the lesson that man can’t make perfection on his own no matter how hard he tries.  A second lesson is that we now know the character of God more clearly, what it means to be holy, and “we ain’t it.”  The Greek word for “guardian” in Galatians 3:24 means a sort of nanny or tutor, a guardian who is also an educator.  So, while the Law watched over God’s people, it also was meant to educate them in the ways of God.

²⁴ So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Gal 3:24-26)

I need to mention the Holy Spirit’s role at this point.  In the Old Testament times, the believer was not always filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit would come and go as it did with Samson:

 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. (Judges 16:20 see also Ps. 51:11)

Today, as Christians, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit in us.

¹³ 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, ¹⁴ who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Eph. 1:13-14)

So, two thousand years ago, Jesus came to earth in the form of a man and changed things.  No longer does man have to follow a set of specific rules and sacrifices.  No longer can man say “I can do this on my own” either.  Now God has provided the perfect sacrifice that covers the sins of all humanity.  The Holy Spirit enters into the Christian as our Teacher and Guardian to guide us in our walk with God.

Why is this important?

This is important because many Christians are still living under the law of sin and death.  We think the things we do for God somehow add to our favor with God or somehow make up for our sins: kind of a quid pro quo.  Many of us believe we are just going to make it to heaven by the skin of our teeth, and a little time working in the church nursery, dropping something extra in the offering on Sunday, or helping an old lady across the street will gain favor with God, and He’ll forget our sin.  It doesn’t work that way.

Our God is a God of grace.  He forgave us the moment we gave our lives over to Him.  Our sins still upset the relationship with have with Him, but He is quick to forgive when we confess our sins.

So, live a gracious life.  Seek to obey rather than sacrifice.  It will improve your life and your relationship with God and others.

²² And Samuel said,

       “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

       Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to listen than the fat of rams  (1 Sam 15:22)

Fear Not

for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Tim. 1:7)

Fear is not a Christian trait.  Fear, not hatred, is the opposite of love, and we serve a God of love.

We have people all over the New Testament who were afraid, but whenever one of God’s people is frightened, God or one of His messengers tells that person to not be afraid.    When Joseph was confused about Mary being pregnant, he was about to divorce her quietly, but an angel told him not to be afraid:

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. (Matt 1:20)

When the angel appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus, they were afraid, but the angel told them not to be frightened:

⁹ And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. ¹⁰ And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  (Luke 2:9-10)

When Jesus walked on water beside the disciples’ boat, they were terrified, but Jesus Himself told them not to be afraid:

²⁶ But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. ²⁷ But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” (Matt. 14:26-27)

Even when Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after His resurrection, they were afraid, but Jesus showed them there was no reason to be so:

³⁶ As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” ³⁷ But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. ³⁸ And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹ See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:36-39)

Why is this important?

Those were all pretty scary events.  Imagine an angel showing up at your home.  I don’t care if he was coming to tell me he was from Publisher’s Clearinghouse with a check, I’d still be terrified by his presence.

The message from these passages for us should be fear is not a trait of God’s people.  For those who do not know Christ, there is much to fear.  But, for those of us who are children of God, there is nothing for us to be afraid of.  I think the best example of this is when the women went to the tomb.  There were two parties there, the soldiers and the women: the lost and the people of God.  What the angel said fascinates me:

⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. (Matt. 26:5-6)

He didn’t tell the terrified soldiers not to be afraid; he said that to the women, to God’s people. 

We let a late check, a late flight, or a dark period frighten us just as the disciples did, but like 1 Thessalonians says, we should not be terrified of the dark.  We are children of the Light.

⁵ For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. (1 Thess 5:5)

As Christians we carry slogans sometimes: “One Way,” “What Would Jesus Do.”  Maybe it would be s good time for us to adopt a new one: “Fear Not.”

Over the years I’ve noticed how many of the verses I’ve highlighted in my Bible are the third chapter and sixteenth verse of a book, the “3:16s”.  I know the chapter and verse divisions of the English Bibles are man made, so the 3:16s are either a coincidence or maybe it’s just that all the verses of the Bible are interesting.  They’re all inspired (2 Tim. 3:16).  They all lead to Christ (John 3:16).  Gal. 3:16 tells us the Bible is the best commentary on itself.  You get the point.

So, because the 3:16s are interesting to me, I will throw a 3:16 into the mix once in awhile like today:

2 Peter 3:16   ^“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.”

I chose to start with 2 Peter 3:16 because there’s a lot of stuff in this single verse and should be a good passage to start off this theme.

The verse is speaking of Paul’s letters, and there are several points Peter wants us to see.  He tells us sometimes Paul’s letters are difficult to understand.  That is an understatement.  Most of us have struggled with some of the passages in Paul’s epistles.  That said, the most interesting thing to me is Peter knows passages that are not easily understood are easily misunderstood and easily twisted to conform to one’s beliefs.

Let’s look at Peter’s first group, the ignorant.  The Greek word for “ignorant” here is amatheis.  It means “unschooled” or “unlearned.”  The sincere but ignorant Bible student can twist Scripture in a genuine attempt to understand it.  After all, we have 66 books made up of 1,189 chapters (31,142 verse)s in the English Standard Version.  That’s a lot to take in.  As a result, passages can be taken out of context or twisted to fit into a preconceived notion of the reader.  That’s not a good thing.

It is just that they are unlearned and don’t know any better.  What is needed is some instruction from a more mature Christian who is able to interpret the Word of God and show the students how to study the Bible themselves.

Now on to the “unstable” preachers: The Greek word is asteriktoi.   This is the only place it appears in the New Testament.  It means unstable in the sense of having no foundation – “unpropped” is the closest translation to the word.  “Nothing is holding it up.”

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once said “Jesus said, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ so, be still and know that you are god.’”  Lots of stuff wrong with that statement.  Jesus didn’t say it.  It is the beginning of Psalm 46:10.  God said it and didn’t mean we are gods.

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had no foundation.  He was “unpropped,” but he used what he had heard and tried to apply it to his own beliefs.  This is called an appeal to authority.  By trying to drag the Bible into his deception, he could imply Jesus (the Authority) endorsed what the Yogi was saying.

This is the sort of thing we see in the cults as well.  The Mormons point to Ezek. 37:19 as support for the inspiration of the Book of Mormon:

 say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand.

Because Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, the Mormons teach the stick of Joseph is referring to Joseph’s Book of Mormon as a second testament along with the stick of Judah (the Bible).  If you read the context, this verse has nothing to do with any other faith.  It’s just a blind baseless claim no more reliable than that of the Marharishi.

My last point on 2 Peter 3:16 is that it points to Paul’s writings as Scripture.  Peter, the head of the apostles, points to Paul’s epistles as they were still being written and calls them Scripture.  So, there was no doubt in the early church God was again inspiring writings, and those writings were coming from the apostles.

Why is this important?

How we handle Scripture is extremely important.  Scripture “does stuff” as my pastor says.  It gets inside of us and changes us.  It instructs us.  It is our standard for truth.  It is the antiseptic for the infection of evil in us and in the world.  We need to be careful how we handle it and generous in how we share it.

I’m going to narrow my topic this week to just address the men who read this, but I’m sure the women can apply some of this to their relationships within the church.  Not being a woman, I have no experience there.

 How are we brothers? In the first few centuries of the church, the Romans accused Christians of being incestuous because “brothers” were marrying “sisters.”  They simply didn’t understand the closeness of the church.   We are brothers and sisters as God’s children:

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12-13)

Christian brothers are closer than blood because it is not our blood that bonds us together but Christ’s blood.  Men whose biological brothers are Christian are double blessed, but those who are not in that situation still have their fellow Christians who love them, stand by them, support them, and pray for them.

In the New Testament, the Greek word for brother (adelphos) is the same for a natural brother or a Christian brother.  It’s a word denoting an intimate relationship between men. 

As Christians, men are to hold one another accountable.  We’re to share our lives with one another, build one another up, be honest with one another.  In short, we are to disciple one another and seek to be discipled.  Because of this, brotherhood has a much deeper meaning in the church than it does in the natural sense.

The general mechanics of this takes several forms.  A mature Christian man will mentor a newer Christian in the ways of the Lord.  Men who have a special gift may mentor others desiring to use the same gift more effectively.  Men’s groups are a wonderful way for men to grow in their Christian walk.  I have been a Christian since 1975, and Men’s groups are a great way for me to grow and maybe help others in their walks. 

I attend two men’s groups each week.  One is a men’s prayer group where about 40 or 50 of us gather early on Saturday morning to pray for one another.  The other is a group where we discuss the previous Sunday’s message.  There we have a chance to ask and answer questions, share how various passages of Scripture have moved us during the week and get into one another’s lives.  There’s a wonderful bond that forms among all who are involved.

Why is this important?

I became a Christian sort of all by myself.  I thought I was a Christian until something I read in a book explained I needed to go all the way, to turn control of my life over to Christ.  So, it was pretty much between God and me alone.

As a result, much of my Christian life has been one of solitude.  Sure I had Christian friends, even brothers, but they were few and far between.  I liked working out this “Christian thing” by myself.  It wasn’t until I started to share my life with other Christian men that I learned of the closeness we feel toward one another.  I was missing out.

I know I haven’t done a good job explaining how close Christian brothers can be to one another.  It’s like trying to explain color to a sightless man.  We’re more than just family.  We are men who share the same Spirit, the same beliefs, the same purpose.  Christian brothers are men that I have felt closer to than family, friends, closer than any other men on earth.

I am a brother to the Christian in South Africa, Colombia, China.  We share the same Spirit.

The most beautiful part of this is that Jesus feels that closeness, that purpose with us.  He says this directly by calling us “brothers:”

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”  (John 20:17)

That intimacy, that closeness we Christian brothers feel for one another is simply a taste of the intimacy and closeness we have with our Lord and He with us.

Reincarnation, or transmigration as it is often called, has its origins in eastern religions, mainly Hinduism and Buddhism.  In the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of eastern philosophy and religion swept through the west.  Transcendental Meditation and the New Age Movement became prominent.  Along with these came a renewed interest in reincarnation. 

Reincarnation has even crept into the Christian church.  False teachers like Elizabeth Clare Prophet (also known as “Guru Ma Mother of the Flame”) and Edgar Cayce (the “Sleeping Prophet”) have influenced many Christians by claiming to be Christian themselves. 

When someone tells us they have new truth or have solved the ancient mysteries of Christianity, I find it hard to keep my composure.  Christianity and the Bible have been around for 2,000 years.  Some of the greatest minds who ever lived have studied the faith and its documents.  We’re not just going to stumble on some major new truth.  In fact, the famed apologist, Dr. Walter Martin, used to say “New truth is almost always old heresy,” and the studying I’ve done and the church figures I’ve read, both today and ancient, support that as an axiom.

Reincarnation in its original form is an attempt to answer the problem of man’s evil.  There is no hell in eastern religions.  If you act wickedly, after you die you may come back as a lesser being, even a plant or rock in some faiths.  You may also carry karmic debt – a belief you will receive in your next life the punishment for the evil you performed in this one.

The western mind has difficulty accepting a concept like Christianity’s eternal punishment and, so the charlatans pretty much drops the karmic debt idea.  Instead, they say transmigration simply purifies you as you progress through a series of lives.

What concerns me is the idea when some Christians accept this teaching as biblical.  Let’s see if it is: 

Paul tells us we will go directly to heaven upon our deaths not continue on in other lives:

 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord,for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.  (See also Phil. 1:23-24)

Heb. 9:27 says we will only die once and be judged afterward – note this is talking about all men, not just Christians:

 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,

Jesus Himself said we will not go on to eternal lives but after this life, we will receive our punishment or reward:

“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matt. 25:46)

Jesus told the thief on the cross he would not continue on in future lives but enter paradise with Christ:

⁴³ And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

Why is this important?

Since Scripture doesn’t mention reincarnation but in fact speaks of one life and one death, we know reincarnation/transmigration is not true.

If it’s a lie, then we have to ask who would initiate such a lie: The Father of Lies?

 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

“But how can he know so much about people’s lives,” you might say.  Satan knows all there is about our lives.  His demons keep an eye on us and can recite our secrets if need be.

“But some practitioners claim to be Christian and say what they are doing is the Lord’s work:”

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. (2 Cor. 11:13-14)

The Bible is our only standard for spiritual truth.  As Christians, we are to stay away from things the Bible speaks against.  If we don’t know if a teaching is true or a false, the Bible tells us to test all things.  Do a little research:

Do not despise prophecies, ²¹ but test everything; hold fast what is good. ²² Abstain from every form of evil.  (1 Thess. 5:20-22)

Testing new ideas against what the Bible teaches keeps the keeps us from error.

“Worship is an act, not an experience.” 

     I heard this statement the other day, and it got me thinking.  Churches have worship services, worship leaders, we are “lead” in worship, we speak of “praise and worship” and such.  I think because of this, we often believe worship is something we only do on Sunday mornings or in our devotions.  It isn’t, of course.  The variety of our acts of worship is so much broader.

Worship is simple.  It is something we do to praise, thank, or bless God.  In Genesis 24:26-27, God led Abraham’s servant to the wife He had for Isaac.  As a result, the grateful servant worshipped the Lord by simply bowing his head in praise:

The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord  and said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.

Our dedication and our godly sacrifice is considered worship by God:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  (Rom. 12:1)

So, the things we do for God and the lives we live are as much forms of worship as singing praises, maybe even more so.  God says He prefers obedience more than sacrifice:

And Samuel said,

       “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

       Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to listen than the fat of rams. (1 Sam. 15:22)

Worship is not always pleasant.  Recently many in the Afgan Church were martyred.  This wasn’t a painless time for them, but their sacrifices may well bring others to Christ as the sacrifices of the martyrs did in the first few centuries of the church.

Music does play a part in worship according to Scripture, usually in corporate worship (2 Chron. 29:25-30; Col. 3:16).  We like to sing praises to God, of course.  Some of my friends use music in their daily devotions.  That is one way they seek and to praise God.

Why is this important?

Since our Christian walk is a form of worship, we need to realize we should be in a constant state of worship.  What we do, how we act, what we say all reflect on our God.  We should act accordingly.

In my thinking about worship, I would restate the opening quote a little differently: “Worship is an act sometimes accompanied by an experience.”

We are in a constant state of worship.  This is good news to us as Christians.  Every moment of every day is available to worship the God of all things through our actions and attitudes.  It’s not just songs on a Sunday morning.  Worship is so much more. 

There is a time for corporate worship praising God directly:

⁹ And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, ¹⁰ the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

¹¹     “Worthy are you, our Lord and God,

to receive glory and honor and power,

       for you created all things,

and by your will they existed and were created.”  (Rev. 4:9-11)

And, there is a time to live out our worship:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  (Rom. 12:1)

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

I wasn’t able last week to write my weekly blog.  My brother passed away last Saturday, and I wanted to be there with him and with the family.

Naturally, I’ve thought quite a bit this week about death and the continuation of the soul.  I especially thought about the last portion of the verse above: “that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”  In this case, our hope is in the continuation of our consciousness, our souls, to be with Christ.

Modern science has a real problem with consciousness/the soul.  Since science presupposes materialism, that all that exists is material, certainly the idea that consciousness exists pokes their proverbial bear.  To get around this problem, some like Dr. Philip Goff look for a straw to grasp.  Dr. Goff believes all mater might be conscious.

Shouldn’t that alarm those who are vegetarians on moral grounds?  Just a thought.

Some of the early philosophers and even today’s scientists believe there are different levels of consciousness.  Dogs have a form of consciousness.  They can make decisions, they dream, etc., but dogs can’t do calculus.  So, there are different levels.

Humans also have something besides simple dog-consciousness.  We have self-reflection.  Our consciousness, our soul, is special.  We have the ability to say “I” and to think about the things we’re thinking about.  We know of no other earthly being with that capability.

Souls, our souls, exist without being material.  They are not linked directly to matter, and so are not necessarily dependent on that matter.  The only material thing which has a self-reflective soul is us.  With only one study group and no control group, it is hard for science to come to a conclusion as to where the soul comes from or if it can exist away from a body.  We don’t have other self-reflective beings we know of here on earth, so we can’t be sure the soul is limited by what we might see materially in humans.

Some evidence for the existence of the soul, though, could be near death experiences.  In their book, Immortality, Drs. Habermas and Moreland tell of people who were clinically dead, brain dead, for up to three hours and brought back.  Why this relates to our discussion is they didn’t come back as someone else.  When the body rebooted, the soul was still the same.  It hadn’t changed into someone else or ceased to exist.  The soul doesn’t die when the body dies.

Why is this important?

Asking a scientist to prove the existence of the non-material soul or God using scientific methods would be like asking a pastor to prove the speed of light metaphysically.  It can’t be done.  The question is a category fallacy.  It’s equal to saying “prove the number two is blue.”

The soul is not material.  It is a part of us. In fact, it is us.  If it’s not material, it can’t be permanently linked to the material body.  If it can’t be linked to the material body, there is no reason to believe it dies when our material body does.

The Bible has been clear that the soul carries on after our body dies.

We are not like those who have no hope.