three stick...

So, I am by far and away not a golf expert. In fact, aside from my only PE credit in college and the occasional round of putt-putt (at which I am a total disaster) I've never played the game. It's not that I don't like the game of golf. I actually do. I've been know to watch whole tournaments on television... something even die hard golfers won't necessarily do... it's just it takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of patience... none of which I have.

But one thing I have learned about golf is that of all the dozens of clubs in a golfer's bag, they can get by as long as they just three: a putter, a wedge, and some sort of middle iron. When I found this out, I was dumbfounded! I mean they why do you have all those clubs, that expensive bag, and that guy that carries all that around for you... yes, I know he's called a caddy. But, as the Florida Southern golf coach told us on the first day of our PE class, "You can learn and master all the fundamentals of golf with just three sticks." He later explained that the other clubs were for nuance, and specialization, and to add to the fundamentals.

So, I was running through Lake Ashton, a golfing community (in Florida they have whole villages and towns built around the sport, and no I am not kidding...) watching men and women out on the course with their carts, and all-leather golf bags... some of them were decent golfers, others... not so much, but the lousy ones still had a bag full of sticks. Anyway, I was running and watching, and I got to thinking about fundamentals and our Christian walk. What are the three sticks of Christianity? I mean, what are the base things that we need to get straight before we can expect any real Christian fruit? Well, I know every teacher or preacher will give you lists of three things or five things or 1 thing or 50 things depending on his or her lesson that week, but I know one Scripture that is pretty clear about the progression of Christian growth.

3 By his [God's] divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. 4 And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

5 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 1 Peter 1:3-7 (NLT)

Here Peter tells us that we have everything we need through God's power to live a godly life, and he tells us the very first stick to the Christian life is "coming to know him" or faith itself. It is a fundamental, non-negotiable. Without faith, moral excellence is just looking good without being good. Without faith, knowledge is just intellectualism without understanding. Without faith, self-control is just asceticism without direction... and on and on. Faith in Christ is the first and most important fundamental. But here's the caveat: faith isn't really faith unless it produces the rest. If you say, "I have faith" but are a pretty shady business person or unfair to your kids or don't make time for the Lord or family, then guess what... it ain't faith. The cool thing here in this passage is that it shows the Christian life for what it is: a progression toward godliness that takes time.

There are two problems that crop up though, with golfers and with Christians. First, some spend all their time on the fundamentals and never try to take the next steps. For golfers all they do is go to the putting greens or driving ranges to work on their skills but never hit the course to see how those skills work on an actual hole. For Christians, some spend all their time going to worship services, reading their Bibles, or in prayer developing their faith but don't do anything to express that faith in action. They aren't necessarily good, because they use faith just to feel better or think better but nothing else. On the other side, some golfers never work on the fundamentals. They never practice putting, chipping, or driving a ball; they just hit the course. The result is often disaster. I've seen the same thing with Christians. They don't make the fundamentals a priority, but instead avoid worship services, studying the Bible, time in prayer and just want to serve. Their desire is to serve or go on mission trips and just "do their faith" without "developing their faith". And the results? Often disaster.

Success in golf and in the Christian life is knowing how to balance both. The fundamentals are important but that is not all there is to playing the game. Develop faith. Then add to that faith.

FearBUSTERS... from the pulpit...

Gotta watch this first... this is the extended youtube edition...



Enjoy...

the biggest problem... part 2

So, I told you I had more to say about the problem of pain, because it is a universal problem. No one escapes it... but I left a few things undone... and, of course, I can't do that...

When you meet a person for the first time one of the first questions you will likely ask is, "So, where are you from?" It may not be worded like that exactly, but usually in order to get to know a person you need to know where they are from. So it is with pain. A lot of non-Christians get hung up on the origin of pain, and why God allowed it to enter into the world? Pain is a by product of evil and evil enters the world through sin. But it is important to remember that evil is not something created. It is more like a state of things. Just like good isn't concrete... you can't point to good... you can point to a good chair or a good person or a good movie, but not to good by itself. The same is true of evil. And the state of evil is a byproduct of disobedience, rebellion, etc. against God.

In the Garden in Genesis 3, Satan tempted Eve and Adam with the idea that they could "be like God" by eating the fruit of the tree. Some people think that the mistake that Adam and Eve made was that they ate the fruit, but really it is deeper. It comes down to the fact that they wanted to replace God and be God for themselves. Their choice to try their hand at being God resulted in the status of evil entering into the world. Now, a lot of people will say, "Well, Satan is there so evil is there already, it doesn't have anything to do with human sin." In one sense, that is true. Satan is there already, and so is the possibility that Adam and Eve will mess up. (Side note, I'm not going to launch into an origin of Satan discussion since only a couple of passages in the Bible may or may not deal with it but you can check out this article for more details on that http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=389)... But as we see from Genesis 2 God gave them that free will. But... whoa... wait a minute... does that mean God created sin? NO! God created human beings, and human beings have to have free will in order to be human beings and not merely animals or robots. You see, God created us in his own image. Something about how we are made, and something about the content of our being reflects something of our Creator. God has choices and thus so do we. Without the option to not choose God we wouldn't be what we are created to be.

So, sin allows evil to come into the world, and sin brings pain, toil, hardships and so on. But the good news is that God always, always, always knew that was going to happen, and always, always, always had a plan to redeem what he created, and it would be even better than if he had never created anything in the first place. God, even in Genesis 3, tells Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the seed of the serpent pointing to the redemption of Christ. Paul explains it best in Romans 5.

12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.

15But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

18Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

20The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Therefore, the problem of evil and pain points us to the solution... Jesus Christ. And his sacrifice of his perfect life more than accounts for all the evil and sinfulness in the world, and that can be accessed by anyone who chooses to quit making the mistake of Adam and Eve, quit trying to be God, and put faith in Christ and his Lordship.

the biggest problem... part 1

It's funny what can occupy a person's attention. People who should be concerned with driving their cars often pay more attention to a phone conversation... okay that's the pot calling kettle whatever... People who should be concerned for their child's character are more preoccupied with if their kid is a good athlete or musician. And the list goes on and on. It's the whole smoke and mirrors routine your typical magician uses. They make some big spectacle during a trick, or move a hand one way, or do some dramatic gesture to keep you from seeing how they pull off the astonishment that is the trick... here's a "good" example from a favorite television show...



Satan has done that to so many of us when it comes to belief in a loving and perfect God. The old story goes if God were really so loving then He wouldn't allow people to go through pain. If God were really so powerful then He'd be able to do what he wants. So either God doesn't care, or He really isn't an all-powerful God. This is essentially the crux of the argument for most atheists, and C.S. Lewis outlined this problem in his book, The Problem of Pain. The fact is that even for most Christians this is where our faith hits a road block... and even full-time professional Christians, like yours truly can stumble on this topic. But let's take a minute or two and think about it, should this really be seen as a problem for us as Christians?

The first thing we need to understand is that evil is not something created, not something tangible, not something God could have made because God made all things good. Look at Genesis 1, after everything God did he called it "good". And from John 1, we see that every created thing has its ultimate origin in God. Second, we need to differentiate evil from pain. A lot of times we get hung up because we think that anything that causes pain is evil, and anything that doesn't make us happy has some level of pain associated with it. But think about that garbage for a second. When I go out and run 6 or 7 miles, there is certainly pain there, but it is far from evil... in fact it is actually good. When a doctor prescribes medication or physical therapy there is a level of pain, or at least unhappiness, but the treatment is good. Even emotionally, a lot of times we watch heart-wrenching movies or read terribly sad books, which may cause us pain, but the result is cathartic. On the flip side of that is the fact that not everything that causes happiness is necessarily good. I can think of a number of examples such as drug use, skipping work to relax, going to the beach without sunscreen, eating McDonald's french fries every day (it's lunch time sorry)... all those things may cause happiness in the short term but they are not good because the long term effect is bad.

That's one of the things that we need to understand with this problem of pain and evil... God is always in control, and He does work out all things for the good (Romans 8:28), but it may be that the good is not totally revealed to us except in the long term. And by long term, I mean God's eternal long term, not our finite long term. But over and over again, throughout the Bible, God is taking what is evil, painful, and even sinful and using it for His greater good. From Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery thousands of people are fed during a time of famine (Genesis 37-50). From David's murderous affair with Bathsheba the next king of Israel is born with Solomon, and he leads directly to Jesus Christ (2 Samuel 11-12, Matthew 1). One of the most heinous persecutors of the church, Saul/Paul, became the first and greatest church planter and writer of the majority of the New Testament. Sometimes we do see the purpose of a given painful situation, other times we don't. But that doesn't mean God's greater purpose isn't working.

I have more to say about this, but I want to get to a bottom line... Pain does exist in the world, and whether you're an atheist or a Christian you cannot escape bad things from happening. But with God there is hope. With God pain is not merely pain, and evil not merely evil. With God those things don't have the final word. With God there is purpose beyond the problem.