Bumper-stickers and The Mind of Christ

 

It's not an perfect metric, of course.  Not every driver wants to publicly state his or her personal opinion, or feels strongly enough about some issue to do so: but bumper-stickers are probably a good indicator of the thoughts of those who do.

Or perhaps better, "attitudes."  Some bumper-stickers are indeed only "attitude," and probably minimally indicative of thought.  Someone whose car is plastered with bumper-stickers like "You'll Only Take My Guns From My Cold Dead Hands" is probably not open to thoughtful (or calm) discussion of the meaning of the Second Amendment.

Most other bumper-stickers presumably indicate the driver has considered his or her viewpoint/opinion/preference on "issues" or candidates.  When that's the case, a bumper-sticker can be an insight to the driver's personal thoughts.

Which sometimes we don't want to know.

I recently had to park in a distant part of the church parking-lot...behind a car with a "Trump 2024" bumper-sticker.  When I left after church I literally prayed I wouldn't see which of my fellow-parishioners drove that car: how could I not think less of that person's moral character and intelligence, knowing those were his or her political thoughts ?

But what's most been on my mind these days is if we should remain at our current church after we move, or go to a church nearer our new living-place.  It has seemed that God may be saying, in the latter eventuality, we should test our Spiritual discretion in choosing a church, and see if we are attuned to His will: able to be "guided by His eye."

So God's metric for a church has been a recurring meditation.  And bumper-stickers may also be relevant there.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, the Great Commission's "make disciples" has seemed to me Jesus' absolute metric: so my question has been what Jesus deems a bona-fide disciple.

The Greek word there is literally "learner:" appropriate for one who follows and listens to the Teacher.  I don't doubt that Jesus also means His disciples will be, in today's phrase, "life-long learners:" since that's how long we are to follow and listen to Him.

And He means more.  His teaching, and that of those He commissions, is that "all nations...obey..." His commands: not merely hear to His teachings, but act on them.  That's considerably more than "evangelizing." which is how the Great Commission is usually preached.

The meaning of our English word "disciple" is undoubtedly enriched by the fact that the Latin word for "learner," discipulus, has also given us the word "discipline."  (And Latin is, of course, one of the first translations in which the gospels spread.)  In regard to preparing those who hear the gospel to act on it, I think we'd be on the mark to connect "making disciples" with teaching people the disciplines that Jesus taught.

Having "the mind that is in Christ" (Philippians 2:5, I Corinthians 2:6, and elsewhere) is undoubtedly one such discipline.  Not natural to us: we must learn it...learn, in the title of one of my teacher Derek Prince' most powerful series, "agreeing with God"...and practice it, to make it our absolute habit-of-mind.

The old saying was that someone was "as nervous as a whore in church."  If a church is making disciples, and its people hear the gospel, I have to think anyone who prefers to hear satan's lies (such as those of the above politician) would be even more uncomfortable in that church: and wouldn't go there at all.

It's not an perfect metric, of course.  But in discerning if a church is "making disciples" according to Jesus' command, driving through the church' parking-lot might provide some insight into whether or not its members' thoughts manifested "the mind of Christ."

Receiving the Holy Spirit

 

A former pastor said once that it was possible to receive the Holy Spirit the way we might answer a friend's knock at the door.

"Hey, I'm upstairs, in the middle of something.  Come on in and have a seat."

My teacher Derek Prince used to say the Spirit is a gentleman, and won't force Himself on us.  So I can imagine Him taking a chair in the front-room, and waiting for us to join Him, and talk.

It could be that many have received the Holy Spirit that way, and that He's still waiting for them.  It may be that our "receiving the Holy Spirit" is actually a matter of His receiving our time, our attendance, our attention...ourselves.

Wisdom

 

The idea I've long held of what scripture says about wisdom...and it says a lot...is that wisdom is essentially a moral quantity.  I consider that "wisdom," in scripture essentially means knowing, and doing, "the right thing."

But scripture also recognizes what it usually terms "worldly wisdom.;" and which is never about doing "the right thing."  I was thinking about that fact this morning: how can both (even with one's contrasting modifier) be rightly termed "wisdom" ?

My teacher Derek Prince once preached on wisdom from Ecclesiastes 10:10:: "If the axe is dull and he does not sharpen its edge, then he must exert more strength.  Wisdom has the advantage of bringing success."  And I think that may be the key.

Wisdom makes our efforts successful...in whatever purpose we expend our efforts.  If our purpose is worldly...to enrich ourselves, glorify ourselves, make our lives comfortable...there is an app for that, a worldly "wisdom" that enables us to succeed: even if our endeavors totally lack any intent to do the right thing.

That may be what's going on in Jesus' surprising commendation of the unrighteous steward in Luke 16:1-9: that even though his purpose was entirely to feather his own nest, he evidenced an understanding of how God's creation "wisdom" works, and trusted it to succeed, even among the "sons of this age."

As God's creation, we know wisdom is a good thing: and man possesses no good thing except by God's gift.  Wisdom is one such gift: and I think Romans 11:29 may apply here, that God's gifts are "irrevocable" in doing the work for which He created them.

The Wisdom of Timeliness

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Derek Prince Ministries' letter this week, and Brother Derek's "legacy" teaching it introduced,
seemed so immediate and personal to me that I've been able to think of nothing else !

The teaching letter was on "reigning with Christ:" and after citing the scriptures which tell us
we will, Brother Derek talked about how we prepare ourselves for that high calling God has
prepared for us.

The first preparation was self-examination on this question: "Is God's Purpose Our Purpose ?"

I haven't read any further yet.  God impressed on my mind that that's not only a true teaching,
but also one I need to respond to now, before going any farther.  We have before us every day
the negative example on that score of "conservative Christians;" so God also impressed on me
that I need to examine all the ideas by which, and for which, I live and work.

(And "God's purpose" is of course the central point on which Brother Derek's seminal teaching
of 40 years ago, "Agreeing With God," was structured.)

So I've really only read in full the introductory letter.  And I note too that it offers another free
pamphlet of Brother Derek's teaching called "Take Heed That You Are Not Deceived."  Nothing
could be more relevant to my recent Bible-study readings and meditations on I John, and their
parallels in Matthew 24: for in the latter, Jesus' discourse on the end-times, and repeatedly
warns the disciples (and us) to not be deceived.

The introductory letter goes on to say the free pamphlet "...expands on one of Derek's key points:
developing a love for truth:"  which is probably my greatest touchstone of all.

Nothing could be more immediately applicable to this time than loving truth, and being on guard
against deception.

And the introductory letter mentions in passing a verse I'd never noticed, on "timeliness:"

Among those who joined David when he was hiding out from King Saul were the sons of Issachar,
"...men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do" (I Chronicles 12:32).

And that verse immediately resonated for me with Jesus' vehement words to the people of His time,
for their failure to understand the times, and what they should do:

"You hypocrites !  You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but
why do you not analyze this present time ?"  (Luke 12:56)

AMEN !! 

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
 

Defining

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The great teacher Derek Prince once did a series of sermons he called "Agreeing With God."
It's stayed with me over 40 years.

His point was, as scripture says, that none of us can walk with God, except we agree with God
(Amos 3:3).

Agree, first of all, in His Authority to choose the path.  Which is where we all first stumble, and
in different ways and forms, keep stumbling.

His sermons talked about how to get past that: and they all came down to thinking as God thinks.

One sermon I remember was about thinking in God's categories.  But the one that most shaped
my thinking to this day was about thinking in God's definitions: latching on to the certainty (as I
always put it) that "what God says anything is, it absolutely is."

We've all had the frustration of talking with someone at seeming cross-purposes, to eventually
discover what they meant by (for example) "mercy" was entirely different than what we meant
by that word.

If we don't want to talk at cross-purposes with God, we have to adapt His...not our own, not our
nation's, not our faction's...meanings.  Disciplining our thinking in that way is why we read the
Bible: that's where God tells us His definitions.

Some are straight equivalencies.  Because God made truth a central part of my thinking, I have
worked to train my mind in Jesus' affirmation that "...I AM...the truth" (John 14:6).  There couldn't
be a more absolute statement of what...of Who...truth is.  It's seldom I hear the word "truth," in
any context, without reflexively thinking "Jesus."

I John 3:4 is just as clear in defining sin: "...sin is lawlessness."  That's one I'm still working to
make my automatic and immediate definition.  And that process, I should say, convinces me that
knowing God's definitions doesn't end our thinking about a matter so much as it focuses and
greatly deepens our understanding of what God's saying.

But not all the Bible's definitions are presented in straight equivalences.  Reading with a desire
to know His definitions, God shows them to us in various ways.

One I'd call inferential.  It takes a little meditation, for example, to understand that Isaiah 53:6a
is a definition of sin: "All we like sheep have gone astray, Each of us turned to his own way..."
But if we consider that "gone astray" is a common Biblical trope for sin, we can readily see that
God says sin is "turning to our own way."

The bonus-points for working through this verse to God's definition is that it underlies His prophecy
of Christ, His remedy for sin.  And Isaiah broadens and deepens our understanding of how"lawless-
ness" operates in our own lives, by our choice to "turn to our own way."

I recently came across another of God's definitions: one I've read hundreds of times, and didn't "see"
as a definition.

"Wisdom" is another of those key concepts God's impressed on my mind over the years.  I can still
remember the Sunday afternoon I was laying on my bed, reading James 1, when the reality of verse 5
smacked me HARD: "...if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and
without reproach, and it will be given to him."

I remember the excitement of knowing that verse applied to ME...and that God guaranteed He'd
give me wisdom...and all I had to do was ask.  So I did.

The years since, I've had to come to a working definition of "wisdom"...how else would I recognize
it to thank God for it ?  With apologies to Spike Lee, I settled on "wisdom is knowing how to do
the right thing."

Close.  But scripture's definition is better, once I saw it in Ephesians 5:15-17:

" Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time,
because the days are evil.  So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is."

Wise men show wisdom by making the most of their time.  The most we can ever do is please God:
and we please Him when we do righteousness ("the right thing").  We are foolish, and our lives are 
futile, if we do not"understand what the will of the Lord is."  Wisdom is understanding God's will.

I'm sure God has more to say about what wisdom is.  If I pay attention, I can look forward to learning
more of His counsel.  Meanwhile He's working this portion of His meaning into my operative under-
standing, so I can better, more deliberately and with less stumbling, walk with Him.

I agree with God that that's what we both want.  Amen !


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Me and Israel

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I'm a life-long friend of Israel.

Even as a kid, when I was more enarmored with end-times prophecy than with Christianity, I was
firmly impressed that the creation of the modern state of Israel was one of God's signal works in
our times.  And I was pleased to reflect that Israel's birth and mine were within a few days of each
other.

By the time I was old enough for the draft, Vietnam was much on my mind, and I didn't want to end
up there if I could avoid it.  Not that war was then a great evil to me: just that, even in its early stages,
the Vietnam war seemed the kind of ill-conceived muddle nobody should risk their life in.

But I remember staying up all night excitedly listening to the news of the outbreak of war between
Israel and its Arab neighbors.  It was the kind of war I could genuinely consider a "cause:" Israel's
rightful fight for national survival.

I wrote to the Israeli Embassy the next morning, asking how and where I could volunteer for the
Israeli Army.  I was no doubt thinking, as most people probably did, that the war would continue
for some time.  The fact that hostilities ended after six days, with the Israelis sweeping the board
(including most significantly, the formerly Arab-held parts of Jerusalem), was marvelous, and made
me jubilant: and even more certain that God (as little as I knew of Him at the time) had re-asserted
that Israel would exist.

It was also a bit disappointing.  A letter from some junior military aide at the Israeli Embassy only
arrived weeks after the war was over, thanking me for my wishes of support for Israel.  I think I still
have it somewhere in my papers.

When I became a Christian, I had even more admiring interest in Israel.  I'd gone back to school,
and the university I was lucky enough to attend had a program in Judaic Studies, which became
my minor.  I wanted to learn Hebrew anyway, for studying the Bible; and also picked up some hours
on Biblical archaeology and history.

Interestingly, one course under the Judaic Studies program was on Middle Eastern society, taught by
an authority on Islamic civilization (herself Jewish).  One of the most informative courses I took, it
really didn't deal much with politics: but treated Israel as one of the nations whose society was, and
is, shaped by Arab people, and by Islam.

(My Hebrew teacher Tzivia Gaba, the sweetest lady, was by contrast not an academic at all, but a
local housewife.  I think she got the gig because of her fluency in the language.  I learned later that
her husband Joe "had friends" who'd illegally shipped guns to Israel in 1948.)

But the greatest influence on my love for Israel was the man under whose ministry I was baptized in
the Holy Spirit, and whose teaching I've followed ever since, Derek Prince.  A teaching Fellow in philos-
phy at Cambridge before the war, he'd taken a Bible with him to critique when he was drafted in 1940:
and felt that he personally encountered Christ, reading one night in an Army training barracks.  ("From
that day to this, I never doubted that Jesus is Alive.")

He served as a medical non-combatant in North Africa and the Sudan during World War II.  When the
war ended, he moved to Ramallah in the British Palestine Protectorate to marry a Danish woman he'd
met on leave, Lydia, who had started a small Christian orphanage there.  He became the father of her
adopted Jewish and Arab orphans, and began to preach Christ.  The family remained there until 1948,
and had what he called "the very dangerous privilege" of being in Isreal as it became a nation, and
fought for its survival.  (When his ministry became international, he maintained a home in Jerusalem,
where he lived 6 months of each year, and where he died in 2003.)

A lot of my understanding of rightful Christian love for Israel traces back to Derek Prince' teaching.
Too much to summarize it all; but only to say that my conviction of Israel's centrality in God's plans
is firmly rooted in scripture.

From that viewpoint, I have to regard the current "Christian" political adulation of Israel as completely
unscriptural.  It has made love of Israel a political "issue;" and fostered the inevitable unGodly mindset
of angry partisanship.  Its teaching is that love for Israel must entail contempt for Palestinians; if not
hatred of them.

This fits nicely into the mindset of many American "conservative Christians," with whom contempt for
Arabs is an article of faith "sanctified" by the fact that they are Muslims, followers of a violently anti-
Christian religion.  It's a false belief, which overlooks the fact that the minority Christian community in
both Israel and Palestine is Arab, and the oldest continuing Christian community in the world. It's also
an unChristian belief that any race or nationality are inherent enemies of Christ.

But it has served the purposes of "conservative" Israeli politicians (Bibi Netanyahu, for example) that
America's "Christian conservatives" support, as "love of Israel," whatever violence and hatred Israel's
government visits on Palestinians.  (There's a close parallel in "Christian conservatives" willingness to
support the violence and hatred their faction inflicts on Americans, as "making America great again.")

The best counter to what today's "Christians" teach as "love for Israel" is scripture.  Simply this: that
America's "Christian conservatives" show they "love Israel" by approving Israel's unrighteousness and
violence towards its neighbors.  In His love for Israel, God continually excoriated and chastised the Jews
for their unrighteousness and violence toward their neighbors.

I do not for an instant believe that "Christian conservatives"are better "friends of Israel" than God.  And
fiercely believe that their politically-motivated "love for Israel" is spiritually destructive to Israel.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The Turn-About of Disobedience

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

As my long-time teacher Derek Prince pointed out, the word "authority" comes from the word "author," which means "the person by whom a thing is created."  Even leaving aside His complete wisdom, His infinite love, and all else He IS that makes Him the Only One Who should ever rule, God's absolute authority in all things is His as absolute Author or all things.

So His decision that men should have kings to rule among them is unquestionable, as is His choice of the men who will rule.  His command is that we respect and obey those He puts in authority, in respect and obedience to His Sole authority to make those choices.

An interesting thing has happened among us in recent years.  When God placed Barack Obama in authority in America, there were very many people (including very many Christians) who treated him with complete contempt.  In our recent history, no American president has been more violently hated, or had more lies told about him.

Of course God's choice of the "kings" He gives us owes nothing to the personalities of the men.  But it's interesting that those who most reviled and hated Obama were those most instrumental in "choosing" (as they thought) the current president, who was one of their kind.

The current president has certainly made that faction's characteristic spirit a large part of how he rules.  America has never had a president who ruled with more contempt, hatred, and lies than this one "chosen" by those Americans most given to lies and hatred.

I don't entirely subscribe to the saying that "people get the kind of leaders they deserve."  It doesn't seem completely accurate, or fair, to blame the ruled for rulers like Hitler, Nero, Stalin, and others.  But in the reality that God authored, there will certainly always be a moral equity between what people do, and the consequences of their actions.

It all comes down, ultimately and completely, to God's authority.  And the most important point is that He commands those He sets in authority, His authority, to rule in His Character, as "ministers [servants] of God" (Romans 13:4, 5).  He commands that they rule in His moral Character, for good to those who do good, and "bring[ing] wrath" on evil-doers.

The kind of rule God commands of those to whom He gives His authority could not be farther from that of America's current ruler.  I will not say that the lovers of lies and hatred who (believe they) "chose" him "got the kind of leader they deserve:" but there's a God-ordained moral equity in their being ruled in the spirit they love.


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Jerusalem

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The president declared today that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, against almost universal warnings by people who have a burden for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalms 122:6).

With all the Baptist end-times preoccupation I soaked up as a kid, I've long regarded Israel as key in God's end-time plans (sorry, American nationalists); and Jerusalem as the apple as His eye.
 
In 1967 (certain of God's destiny for Jerusalem, though at best a superficial believer) I eagerly wrote the Israeli embassy in Washington, volunteering for the Israeli Army when the Six Day War began.  (The war was over by the time I got a reply.)

When I became a Christian, it was under the ministry of Derek Prince, a man whose "dangerous privilege" (he said) it was to have lived in Jerusalem during the War of Independence, and who maintained a home in Jerusalem all his life.

Brother Derek was the most profoundly scriptural preacher I have ever heard.  All his life he taught that we owe a debt of gratitude to the people whom God chose as His own, through whom He gave us the Torah and Jesus; and that we must recognize Israel's special place in God's affection.

(I'd hasten to add Brother Derek also preached that God repeatedly said His laws in the Torah, and the just society He enjoined on Israel, were for both the Jews and "the alien [alternatively "stranger"] who sojourns among you:" and that "...the aliens who stay in your midst...shall be to you as the native-born among the sons of Israel..." [Ezekiel 47:22].  His love for Israel was entirely based in scripture, and not in nationalism.  His family comprised Jewish, Palestinian, and Kenyan orphans.)

When I went back to college in the mid-70s, U.M.K.C. had a new program in Judaic Studies.  I was a new Christian, and wanted to know as much as I could about everything in the faith: so I took as many of its courses as I could, and graduated with a minor in Judaic Studies.  My wonderful Hebrew teacher, Tzivia Gaba, was the wife of a man who'd helped smuggle arms to Palestine before the War of Independence, whom I was honored to meet one time.

I consider myself a staunch long-time friend and admirer of the Jewish people and nation.

I am nonetheless conflicted by Trump's rash action today.

And I have to say I'm greatly put on guard when a world-leader who's established himself as a "man of lawlessness" (II Thessalonians 2:3) postures, for his own self-glorification, about the status of Jerusalem, the city of the Great King.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

"Missing It" in Scripture

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I'm amazed that sometimes when I'm meditating on a subject, and do a search to see what the Bible says about it, it doesn't appear in scripture at all, or only rarely.

"Honest" (and "honesty") was one such surprise.  It's a quality which seems cognate with, or the foundational heart-attitude of, "righteousness:" which scripture enjoins as one of man's primary duties. But the word only occurs once in the New Testament, in Jesus' parable of the sower, where He explains that the "good soil" on which the seed falls is "an honest and good heart" (Luke 8:15).

More recently, I had that experience when I was looking to see what scripture says about "unrepentance," or the "unrepentant."  Scripture often speaks of  "repentantance;" again, a primary duty of all men.  So I was sure the Bible had some trenchant comments about the contrary attitude and action.

But those words don't appear in scripture at all.  To find what the Bible says about unrepentance, I had to re-think my search-terms: what would the Bible call that attitude ?  And when I mentioned this quandry to my wife, she came up with the same scriptural terminology I'd settled on: "stiff-necked."

That search-term opened up some scriptures: and I'm still pondering what scripture says.

My take-away was, again, that God's thoughts and God's ways are not our ways and our thoughts  (Isaiah 55:8): sometimes not even our search-terms of God's thoughts.

I was reminded of the point my teacher Derek Prince emphasized in his seminal teaching on "Agreeing With God:" to hear, and comprehend, what God is saying, we have to think in God's definitions and God's categories.  Experience shows me that I often do not, even when I think I AM. That even when I believe I'm thinking in the right "religious" terms, I can miss God's ways and God's thoughts.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Unrepentance

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
 Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.     --  Isaiah 55:8

In his seminal "Agreeing With God," my beloved teacher Derek Prince emphasized that it's critical we agree with God's definitions.  What God says anything is, is what it absolutely is.

Last week I was meditating on repentance.  I often find it helpful, in getting a clear and full idea of a subject, to consider its opposite, so I was searching for scriptural references to "unrepentance," "unrepentant," and related words.

There were none, in any of the top three English translations of the Bible (the King James, New American Standard, and NIV versions).  I found it remarkable that the Bible speaks so often of "repentance" and "repenting," but not once of its opposite.  But clearly God thinks in different terms than I do.

When I told Donna about it, she immediately came up with the same word I did, as scripture's characterization of the unrepentant: "stiff-necked."

That's the beginning of another study, of what scripture says about being "stiff-necked."

But in the meantime...while I was working in the garden yesterday and pondering these things, a thought came very clearly to mind.  We often hear these days of public figures who are publicly shamed for telling lies or doing wrong.  It is amazing to me how often they justify their lies and unrighteousness, rather than repenting of them.

The term that's commonly used to described their self-justification is "doubling down."  Rather than admit they've lied or done anything wrong, they angrily "double down" on their sin.

The thought God put strongly in my mind is that I should think "stiff-necked," and "unrepentant," each time I hear that someone "doubles down" on his lies and unrighteousness.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

God's Word Without Glasses

I was thankful God directed me to the teachers He did, local and national, when I was a new Christian.  Bob Mumford and Derek Prince were the two main Charismatic leaders whose teaching I followed.  They, with Don Basham, Ern Baxter, and Charles Simpson joined together in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the early '70s to hear and spread God's word for that time.

I always admired that these men, each having his own successful individual ministry, willingly entered into covenant with each other.  To teach and live the Kingdom of God, they submitted their ministries, their teachings, and their personal walks to each other.

I admired their integrity.  After Derek Prince was widowed, he met a woman he was convinced God told him would be his wife.  But Prince submitted his re-marriage to the others.  When the other men counseled against the marriage, he parted from his fiancee.  It was only after the other men became convinced God approved the re-marriage, and gave their approval, that Prince and his second wife were wed.

More importantly, these leaders showed public integrity.  When they perceived that the "Shepherding" movement that grew from their collaboration had gone beyond scripture's teaching, Prince, Mumford and Simpson distanced themselves from that movement and publicly repented their involvement in it.  (Basham and Baxter had passed away in the meantime.)

They were very different men. I consider Prince my mentor in the faith.  I was baptized in the Spirit after one of his teaching-meetings, and thank God for his teachings then, and in all my Christian walk since.  Prince was born in India in a British military family, and had been a fellow in Philosophy at Cambridge University before he became a Christian.  His scriptural teaching was as thorough, logical, and penetrating as his academic training, and always powerfully spoke God's word to my heart.

Bob Mumford had been a knock-about American kid, with divorced parents and a 9th-grade education.  His teaching style was as folksy and humorous as Derek Prince' was intellectual and disciplined.  Bob used to say that when people were laughing, he could hit them in the teeth with the gospel, and never even split their lip.  I loved the teaching of both men, and loved the contrasting ways God made His word memorable !

One teaching of Bob's I especially remember was about wearing "glasses" when we read scripture.  As he put it, "If you're wearing your Baptist glasses, you can find water baptism in the Song of Solomon."

We all know what he means.  People can always "find" what they want to find in the Bible.  The problem is that's only their prelude for reading out of the Bible what they wanted to find.  We wear our "glasses" because we think they'll help us "read" the Bible better.  They actually make us blind to the Truth: which the Bible is.

We've all heard hundreds of these "the Bible says/teaches..." deceptions.  Christian clowns or white supremacy, prosperity gospel, abortion "rights," gun "rights," unitarianism, "Christian socialism" and "Christian conservatism," bus-ministry, capitalism, monarchy and democracy, cremation, angel-worship, slavery...  Whatever glasses you choose to wear, you can "find" it in the Bible.

(If you can't "find" it, you can always put it in the Bible by way of false "translation"...like the Jehovah's Witnesses' New World version of scripture.  Or invent a "Bible" of your own, like the Book of Mormon.  For those who want to hear something other than the truth of the Bible, the ways of lying, and the lies, are infinite.)

Truth is One, Jesus.  My experience in life fully convinces me that all Truth is in the Bible.  The way to get to more of Him is to go further into what the Bible says.  Jesus is also the One Way.  When we take our pet theories and doctrines out of scripture context, we move away from Jesus, and take scripture the wrong way.  Taken out the unity Truth IS, our "proof-text" scriptures become not-quite-truth.  Even in the natural, we don't consider a bit of Frank's body, removed from Frank's body, is still somehow "Frank."
 
There's no secret to reading scripture truthfully.  Come to scripture with an honest heart: read scripture without your glasses.  Ask the Spirit to "lead you into all truth," as Jesus promised He would.

Everybody knows this.  The amazing thing in these dark times...when our One Hope of Life is The Way we follow The Truth...is that so very, very, few do this.

Derek Prince on Pride

As always, Derek Prince' teaching nails it: simple, Biblical, straightforward, logical, Spirit-given.


The essential nature of the sin into which Adam fell...was the same as Satan's own sin. It was the sin of pride, leading to rebellion against God.

In Genesis 3:5 Satan presented his ultimate temptation to Adam and Eve. What was it ? To disobey God and eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden than God had forbidden to them. Satan, in the person of the serpent, said to them:

"For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

The motivation that prompted Satan's own rebellion in heaven is summed up in the self-exalting statement, "I will make myself like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14). Subsequently, Satan's ultimate temptation to Adam and Eve was, "If you eat of this tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will be like God--equal to God." It is the same motivation, producing the same disastrous consequences--pride that led to a fall.

What is, therefore, the intrinsic nature of pride ? It is most important that we see this. I can sum it up in one simple sentence: Pride of this kind is seeking to be independent of God. It was not a denial of God's sovereignty in the universe. It was simply a personal decision by Adam and Eve that they could do without God. They didn't need God. If they could acquire the knowledge of good and evil, they would no longer need to depend upon God...