Food For Thought

Okay, blog friends, I'm afraid this week has not lent itself to successful blogging. We've had some annoying health problems (nothing too serious, but serious enough to create a severely out-of-sorts toddler and mama). All of my resources have gone to keeping my family sane (relatively speaking), and I don't have enough left to give you an effective, well-thought-out blogpost you need, so instead of doing you the disservice of posting a half-assed article, I'm going to give you a few ideas/concepts to mull over and meditate on over the next few dayS while I collect my thoughts and sanity.

Did you know, brothers and sisters, that you are sanctified?  That you have been set apart by your Creator and Savior for a special and holy purpose?  You've probably heard that idea a time or two, but do you know what it means? Have you ever heard any teaching or spent any time thinking about and studying what that concept might really look like in your day-to-day life?

How about legalism? I'd be willing to bet you've heard that word thrown around in your church 10x more than "sanctified" or "set apart," it seems to be quite the catchphrase in the emerging church of late.  But what does it really mean? What does legalism look like in a real world context and why is it so often confused with Christ's call for holiness (1 Peter1:14-16)?

These ideas have been bouncing around in my head all week, so now let them bounce around in yours for a few days, and we'll really get down and dirty with the hard stuff on Monday, when hopefully some sense of normalcy has returned to my life. 

Guest Post: Where Are We and How Did We Get Here?

This blog is aimed at followers of Jesus.  I'm not talking about all who say they are Christ-followers.  It is curiously acceptable, even cool in our debauched, decidedly pagan, American culture to be "spiritual" and call oneself a follower of Jesus (What presidential candidate does not hope to gain popularity by claiming Christianity?)  Jesus classified hearers as sheep or goats.  Paul as saved or lost.  John as belonging to God or the evil one.  Now we mortals cannot see into people's souls to identify one from the other.  But the real life challenges of relating to people require that we make a discernment about others' relationship (or lack of) to God.  And our Lord calls on us to do just that, because we are to love people differently, depending on which category they are in.  You who are born again, reconciled to God, justified in God's sight, I'm writing to you.  

And I have a challenge for you.  Name the two or three best Bible students in your church group.  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Yeah, I know.   The best you will find in most American churches these days is someone who uses a story out of the Bible now and again to support an argument they are making, or to persuade you to get on board with their cause.  We are literate, but ignorant of the Word of God.  The situation is shameful.  How did we get to this place?  We got here by traditionalizing the pagan notion that religious leaders are a finer breed of people, and letting leaders proceed with their career agendas,  without holding their feet to the fire of God's Truth.   We got here by accepting the assumption that studying and knowing the Bible is a professional's job.  So here we are.  Outlandish behaviors (stuff Paul said should NEVER happen in the Family of God)  can proceed and we shrug.  Church leaders can make strange, spiritually ambiguous presentations among us; we wonder what that is about, but we shrug.  If some courageous soul does raise his voice to suggest we look at what the Word of God says about something, he is labeled "divisive" and subtly marginalized.  So the study of the Bible to know God and His ways better, and  for discernment, is discouraged.  Honestly admit with me that among your American Christian acquaintances the Bible is generally viewed as a devotional book, something you read a little bit of occasionally to make you feel better about yourself and the world.


Of the number of people who read these words, almost all will just shrug.  But if these words strike a chord in your heart, I have another challenge for you.  Get into the Bible;  it wasn't written and kept all these years for the reading of a special caste of clergymen.  It was written in the language of everyday people, for them to understand for themselves.  And for you.  Ask God to speak to you as you read His Word.   Ask your Lord to connect you to others with the same thirst.  Please note what I am NOT suggesting.  I'm not suggesting you find out what the emergent, pop-christian, hip, 2013 writers are selling, and start a book club.  (I was mortified recently upon hearing a young pastor name a best-selling Christian book, and pronounce  it  the most influential writing in his life.  I read the same book;  the writer really had NOTHING TO SAY!  But that kind of nothing is sadly and obviously what most American Christians want to hear, and it sells.)


Come along as we seek a better understanding of God, His ways, the big picture, and what He is really calling us to.

Testing the Spirits: Biblical v. Pastoral Authority

Matt (husband): "When you were younger, did anyone ever tell you that you had a problem with authority?"
Me: "Umm ...no, I don't think so."
Matt: "Huh. You'd think they would've."

Yeah. It's a bit of a joke around here that I have a problem with authority. This is a complicated idea for me, for sure; I definitely have a prideful streak in me that bristles when someone tries to exert any sort of control in my life, ie: I don't really like to be told what to do. But, even when you remove the pride issue, I am just not the type of person who falls into line because someone walks into my life and claims they have authority to tell me to.  Blame it on homeschooling, I wasn't programmed with the sit-down, shut-up, raise-your-hand, wait-your-turn, never-question-authority mentality that many of my public-schooled peers were subjected to for all of their formative years. My father taught me to question everything. Everything I was told, everything I was taught, everything society accepted, and everything I myself believed. He told me there is a reason behind everything that every human being thinks, does or says, and I have the responsibility to hold it all up to the Light and examine it. So, when a person enters my life and seeks to exercise authority, I'm probably not going to immediately fall into line. I'm probably going to question that person's right to wield said authority. And this is doubly true for people who claim spiritual authority and leadership inside the Church.

I've been in the church my entire life, and I have a pretty good handle on how it all works; the basic hierarchical structure, the pastor v. laity paradigm, etc., and, in the future, on a day when my brain is feeling excitingly clear and I feel like biting off more than I can chew, we'll get in depth on some of those ideas. But today, I want to present you with an idea that you might find surprising, shocking, or even unthinkable. Ready?

The pulpit is not a magical mystery machine that miraculously transforms someone into a spiritual authority figure. And just because the guy standing behind it graduated from Bible college or seminary and got hired by other guys in your church to preach, does not make him the final spiritual or Biblical authority in your life.

Translation: just because the pastor said it from the pulpit doesn't make it true.

Hear me:

He's just a guy, like every other guy in the church, and he can be wrong. All your leaders can.

He can misinterpret, misread, misunderstand, and be misled. All your leaders can.

Nor is it his job to impart to you everything you need to know about following Jesus. He's just a teacher, hopefully one of many in your life, and it's your job to listen to his teaching, and then crack open the Bible and study it for yourself. Like the Berean Jews, who heard Paul's teaching and compared it to the Scriptures every day (Acts 17:11). And this was commendable behavior! They weren't being contentious or rebellious, they were merely testing the Spirits (1 John 4:1) to make sure that the teaching they were receiving from Paul lined up with the Scriptures, because the Bible is and always has been the final authority against which everything, all preaching, teaching, and claims of "personal revelation," must be weighed. Period (2 Timothy 3:16). And this is something we are ALL responsible to do. Somewhere along the way we have given up on personal responsibility in favor of this passive (lazy?) role in our own spiritual walk. Because studying the Bible is hard work, there are a  lot of complicated ideas in there! And why bother to study them for yourself when your church has hired a guy to stand up there and just explain it all to you, right?

It is your responsibility to weigh all preaching and teaching against Biblical principles (1 Thess. 5:21-22).  So if you hear teaching, and you take that teaching to the Bible and find that it comes up lacking,  even if it came from the pulpit, or straight from the pastor's lips, you have the right, the responsibility, to stand up and say, "That's not right." We've been raised for generations, nay centuries, to quietly obey the clergy-types and never dream of questioning their authority in any way. Well guess what? This is an entirely anti-Biblical idea. We are all subject to one another (Ephesians 5:21), we are to teach and admonish each other (Col. 3:16), and nowhere in the Bible does this exclude leaders, teachers, or pastors. 

Below is a very short article by The Bible Answerman Hank Hanegraaf. If you're struggling to come to grips with some of the ideas I just shared, here's a boatload of Bible to back them up and maybe clarify them a little better. I would seriously encourage you to take the time to click on each link and examine the Word of God for yourself, because gees, don't take my word for it, I'm just one more supremely fallible human trying to figure it all out, just like everyone else. And Mr. Hanagraaf was kind enough to gather up most of the verses on this tough subject and put them altogether for us, which makes the study of it so much easier.

And, as always, please, I encourage you to argue with, refute, or expound upon the ideas I share in my blog. I'm here to learn, too:


"Q: Should the believing community judge the teachings of its leaders?

A: Not only is it permissible, it is our responsibility to do so. Nobody's teachings are above sound judgment — especially influential leaders. Biblical authority and accountability go hand-in-hand (Luke 12:48). The greater the responsibility one holds, the greater the accountability one has before God and His people (James 3:1).
In the Old Testament, the Israelites were instructed to practice good judgment by inquiring, probing, and thoroughly investigating a teaching or practice (Deut. 13). In the New Testament, the apostle Paul commands the Thessalonians to test all things (1 Thess. 5:21-22) and commends the Bereans for testing his teachings in the light of Scripture (Acts 17:11). Instead of rebuking them, he lauds their character as noble. While our Lord Himself cautioned followers not to judge self-righteously (Matt. 7:1-5), He also counseled them to judge rightly (John 7:24, cf. Matt. 7:15-20).
Furthermore, this responsibility to make right judgments extends to public exposure and correction of false teachings and practices within the church (see Matt. 23; Gal. 2:11-21; 2 Tim. 2:17-18).
Christians are frequently uncomfortable with such judgments. They assume that since they are often painful they are also destructive. However, as apologists Bob and Gretchen Passantino explain, "The 'pain' of biblically conducted confrontation produces individual growth (1 Tim. 4:16), encourages others to Christian maturity (1 Tim. 5:19-20), promotes church strength (Eph. 4:15), and preserves the church's reputation in the world (1 Peter 2:12; [cf. 2 Peter 2:1-2])."

My name is Libby and I'm an alcoholic.

I didn't think we'd get so intimate so fast, but anyone who knows me knows that I tend to jump into everything I do with both feet. Why would this be any different?

I was a pastor's kid for most of my formative years, which, for me, means I spent my first 20+ years playing the pastor's kid game. There were lots of eyes on my, which meant that I had an image to upkeep and a lot of rules to follow. I never resented this role I had to play, it was just the way things were, and I was quite adept at playing, without even knowing that my head was engaged in a pursuit that my heart cared very little for. I went to a Christian college and met and married a nice Christian boy.  Once married and out of college, I pretty much gave up any pretense of holiness or obedience. Understand that I never doubted that Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life, that He was my living savior, who died and lives again. I just ..got tired of following rules, I guess. Obedience, when not accompanied by a sincere desire for holiness and a fuller relationship with your Creator, is just plain miserable.

But the real problem, I found, was that I liked to drink. A lot. And often. Being a nice Christian kid my whole life, I hadn't really had the opportunity for much drunkenness, but once out on my own, I found I had a serious affinity and a boundless appetite for alcohol. I could drink anyone under the table, and while my friends were moaning and clutching their heads and bellies the next morning, declaring how they would never do THAT again, I was thinking about what pansies they were, and how lame it was that I needed to try and wait til at least 5 pm to start drinking again.

For a few years, it was just partying. And by 'just," I don't mean that it was no big deal, because disobedience is always a big deal. I mean that it wasn't apparent that I had a "problem" in the beginning. I just looked like your average 20-something young woman, sewing her wild oats and having a good time. But after a couple for years, it became very apparent, at least to me, that I had a very, very big problem. Partying on the weekends gradually turned into several nights a week, and then every single day. Every single day I drank until I threw up and passed out. By the time my husband caught on, I was mired in my alcoholism, drowning so completely that I could not possibly see a way out. I spent most of my time suffocated by a crushing depression that could only be alleviated by drunken oblivion. There was a gaping hole in my soul, and only way I could fill it was by pouring alcohol into it. Or so I told myself. And my husband when he would confront me.

Now, I've been a believer ever since I can remember; there's no time in my life when I don't remember knowing that Jesus loves me. But when I made up my mind to give up on even the tenuous connection I had to following Jesus, it threw open the door for the disease of alcoholism to take complete control of my life. And even though I knew ..my heart and soul KNEW ..that Jesus would fill that hole; if only I would turn to Him and ask it; if only I would surrender, repent, fall on my face in submission, He would fill me completely. But my heart was hard, and above all full of fear. If I surrendered to Jesus completely, He would ask me to let go of my only comfort, my only solace, the only thing that made living bearable. He would say, "Let it all go and follow Me."

I wasn't willing. I convinced myself that I couldn't live without alcohol, and so I spent the better part of a decade stuck in an unbelievably painful, demoralizing,  and dangerous spiral of shame, misery, and self-destruction, willfully destroying my body and soul, and almost every relationship in my life.

I honestly can't tell you what changed. There were hundreds of days when I woke up determined that I was done drinking, what made that one day any different? I really feel like it was the day that God said, "ok honey, I've been patient enough, we are done with this now." That was the day that He chose to convict my heart of my sin. Within a week He had almost entirely replaced my crippling need (physical addiction coupled with mental obsession) for alcohol with an all-consuming desire to know Him more. Every recovering alcoholic has their own experience, but mine, by the grace and mercy of Jesus, was complete deliverance. I never "slipped," (got drunk once), "went out," (resumed previous drinking behavior for a period of time), or was even really seriously tempted to take another drink. Now, there's a lot more to being an alcoholic than just drinking too much, and the mental, emotional, and behavioral aspects of my disease still take constant vigilance. But By His grace, He still makes the idea of taking a drink entirely unthinkable to me.  I celebrated 6 years of sobriety on October 5th.

So why do I share this most vulnerable, shameful, painful part of my past with anyone willing to take the time to read a little blog post? For a couple of reasons, really. First, because I am so hardcore Bible, because I take the teachings of Paul and Peter and John very seriously (ALL of them, not just the nice parts about peace and kindness), because I very keenly feel the call to speak out about the need for obedience and holiness in His Church, I am often considered legalistic, or unloving, or judgmental, or self-righteous. And you know what? I'm certainly guilty of all of those on many occasions. But I want people to know that I know; maybe better than most, I know what it is to be a hideous, broken, shame-filled failure. I have no high horse, I have failed at following my Jesus more bitterly than I can tell, and so I don't spend all my time sitting in the pew and looking around for wicked sinners to correct. I just want to help people understand that, when we see fellow believers stuck in sin, they need us. Not to just hold their hands and "love" them! They need us to help them get free! It is not out of a need judge people or to force them to obey, it's out of deep desire to see His followers truly transformed into new creatures.

And second, because my life is a testament to the fact that JESUS CHANGES PEOPLE'S HEARTS, and I wanted to give you a little insight into who I am, and how my relationship with Jesus changed my heart and my life. So you can decide if I seem like the kind of person you might like to go on this Christ-seeking journey with.

 There is pure joy and ultimate freedom in submitting to the leadership of Jesus and in living in obedience to Him. I spent almost 30 years fighting it, and when I was through fighting, the transformation was almost instantaneous. He changed my very heart, and when my heart changed, so did my behavior. He made me into a new creature that very day, and He continues to shape me and mold me ..as long as my heart remains willing to be molded. I remember this one day, not long after I got sober. My dad and I were working together, building a little rock wall along the edge of his property, and I confided in him that, since I had stopped "self-medicating" with alcohol (often chemical addictions are covers for other underlying issues), I kept having these experiences of kind of mind-boggling bliss that just came out of nowhere, and I was afraid that I might be bipolar, as we have history of it in my family. He looked at me and chuckled, and said, "Libby, what you're experiencing is joy." Joy! For the first time in my life, while finally living in compete submission to the will of God, I was experiencing joy! How amazing!

I feel like this post has been a little disjointed, I know I touched on so many ideas today (exhortation, accountability, submission, love, community, willingness, holiness, obedience, transformation).  You'll have to bear with me as I get my blog-groove on, I've never done this before :) But these are all ideas that, I feel, are of paramount importance in truly experiencing the fullness of Jesus Christ in our lives, and I hope to better study, examine and flesh them out in later blog posts. I hope you'll keep walking with me on this journey to a better understanding of what it mean to truly follow Jesus.




Said AW Tozer:

"The act of accepting Christ, if it is a true act, has an instant effect upon our entire moral life, and it changes the man from being a bad man to being a good man. God will not, by some trick of grace, take evil, foul minded, self-righteous and vile people into His heaven. When He saves a man, He saved him from sin. If he is not saved from sin, he is not saved at all! There is no act of grace and no trick of mercy and no justification that can take an unholy man into the presence of God or an evil man into God's holy heaven. He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. He came not to call people who thought they were righteous but people who knew they were sinful. When He calls us to Himself and saves us, He saves us out of our past and out of our own iniquity; and by a threefold act of justification, regeneration and sanctification, He makes people fit for heaven.

It is an erroneous idea that justification is an imparted robe of righteousness put over a dirty, filthy fellow who terribly needs a bath and is filled with cooties and the accumulation of the dirt of a lifetime, who stands boldly in God Almighty's holy heaven, among seraphim and cherubim and arch Angels and the spirit of just men made perfect, and blithely and flippantly says, "I belong in hell. I am a filthy man but what are you going to do about it? I have on me the robe of Christ's righteousness and that is enough."

God saves only sinners, and He saves only sinners who know they are sinners. He saves only sinners who admit they are sinners; but He saves sinners and turns them from being sinners to being good men and full of the Holy Spirit. When we teach anything else we are teaching heresy". 

Why are you so contentious?

There's a running joke in my family that, while many adjectives have been used to describe me in my life, the word "sweet" is never one of them. I think I give people around me the impression that I'm just inherently contrary; that I'm ornery, petulant, and constantly spoiling for a fight. This couldn't be farther from the truth. While I'm certainly not the sweetest girl you'll ever meet, I hate conflict, and have spent most of my life avoiding it by any means necessary. Even today, when I know that I need to open my mouth in dissent, my hands shake and I start to sweat, and if you listen carefully, my voice is probably quavering. But in the last few months, I have come to realize that conflict is sometimes not just unavoidable, but imperative; sometimes avoidance or placation is an act of cowardice. Or worse, betrayal.

So I speak up. When my heart and mind, powered by an indwelling Spirit and knowledge of God's Word, tell me to speak, I speak. Even when it's uncomfortable, tense, or or downright incendiary, I speak.

So why do I start this blog?  I believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible, authoritative Word of God, and the supreme standard by which all teachings, ideaologies, and actions should be tried.  It is the beginning and end of all truth, and is the authority against which all beliefs and revelations must be weighed (2 Timothy 3:16, 1 Peter 1:23-25).

I want this blog to be a place for serious Christ-seeking believers, who want nothing more than to better understand God's Word and how it applies to the way we live;  to better understand God's Word so as to better obey Him. Jesus told us that if we love Him we will obey Him (John 14:15); if obeying Him is equal to loving Him, than obedience is of paramount importance in our lives as followers of Jesus! But there are so many voices out there, so many denominations, sects, movements, etc, claiming authority and telling us that they have the corner on truth, that they've got the answers, if we'll just listen. How can we know? How can we discern what's true in a sea of babbling voices? 

Together. Colossians 3:16 says: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom..."  So together we can take everything we are told, by our culture, from the pulpit, by popular Christian authors, and fearlessly weigh it all against the inspired Word of God.

God wants us to seek (Matthew 7:7)! 

He wants us to know (James 1:5)!

He wants us have the truth (John 8:31-32)!

Who's in?