Father, Can You Hear Me?

Father, can you hear me?

I’ve been crying out for so long
I speak out words to please you
And say things just to belong

With a sudden burst, you took off
And didn’t care to look back
You ran swifter than a fox could
Without a hint of conflict

Father, why aren’t you listening?
You’re holding back; where is your hand?
Father, why won’t you show yourself?
Are you there or am I alone?

Father, will you answer
If I call out for your help?
How can I know that you care?
How will I know I’m not shelved?

Like the silence before the storm
I’m haunted by your absence
Are you dead or are you hiding?
Or am I just mistaken?

Add to the load more heavy burdens
You’re keeping me from loving you
When will you be satisfied and glad to
Call me your son?

But in the quiet, in the stillness
The veil is lifted from your face
I see that in the silence you were
Making me your own son

Father, I know you’re listening
No holding back; here is your hand
Father, I know you’ve shown yourself
You are here; I’m not alone

I'll Quiet You

Though nations come against your land
Though kings have pillaged all you have
Though food is taken from your hand
I'll quiet you by my love

For three transgressions, judgment hits
For no one will their sin admit
And when your soul sinks to the pit
I'll quiet you by my love

And though you choose what I create
Thereby sealing all man's fate
A new creation will be shaped
I'll quiet you by my love

Though the fig tree has decayed
Though your flocks have run away
Rejoice! I, the LORD, am your strength
I'll quiet you by my love

You shameless people, gather here
Seek the Lord in humble fear
And though you turn, I'll draw you near
I'll quiet you by my love

And though you try to take my crown
And wear my jewels upon your brow
My goodness can't ever be drowned
I'll quiet you by my love

The Lord your God sings over you

And given you burden of proof

That I won't leave but will stay true

I'll quiet you by my love

Sing aloud, my children, shout!
In joy for freedom has come about
And in my care you have no doubts
I'll quiet you by my love

Tree Worshipers

In reading my title, you might think this post is about people who worship nature, trees, or the environment. But this isn’t about people who only eat organic food and think they are better than everyone else because they drive a Prius.

Rather, this post is about the people who worship an aspect of the gospel and not Jesus himself.

I had a conversation with a man the other day about why we do not use crosses or pictures of the crucifixion of Jesus in our church gatherings on Sundays. He visited RLA and told me his church in Orange County uses them because they point to the glory of God.
Though I think there are better ways of being motivated to worship Jesus, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to use images or crosses to remind us of the glory of God.

However, we must be careful with this. We do not worship a cross or an empty tomb, we worship the God-man on the cross, who came out of the tomb after being resurrected from the dead.

If we use images to spur on our worship of God, we must be careful not to make those images the things we worship.

God’s glory is shown to us through the gospel: the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus in fulfillment of scripture.

We do not worship the cross, we worship Jesus. We look at the cross and praise God for the gospel. We do not worship the resurrection, we worship Jesus who is the resurrection. We praise God for his promise of a future resurrection for those with faith.

If you see a cross, an empty tomb, or any other image that depicts Jesus or any part of the gospel, may that spur you on to worship God and not the image itself.

Our hearts take good things and worship them as supreme things. The cross, the empty tomb, and all of God’s graces that we enjoy daily must point us back to him as the object of our worship.

Unseen

Cold, alone, but in the air
The echo of a timeless truth
Beneath the sky, I listen there
Too faint, arise the fear to move

What if, in the dark of night
I see your hand move in the trees?
Too dim to know that my eyes were right
My body, weak, fall to my knees

Your way remained right through the sea
Your path was made through waters great
And yet your footprints were unseen
You led your people sure and straight
A guiding hand we knew was there
The whole time kept us from despair

A whisper through the falling rain
I swear I hear, though I can’t see
Is there a chance there’s more to pain
A greater purpose, more meaning?

Come to find, I’m not alone
Though your face remains hidden
Your back is all I see
But only because you pave a way for me

Problem, Solution, Resolution

All it takes is the truth of death to make it obvious that something is wrong with the world. Everybody knows it, because we all have something within us that cries out for longevity. Something in us knows we weren’t made for this short of a life. Many people choose to not think about it because it is a daunting fact that we all will die. All we have is today, and we live for today and act like death will never come.

I could tell you that the problem is sin, that it has caused death, despair, hatred toward one another, selfishness, every evil thing in this world, and at its core separation from our Creator. But this truth doesn’t seem to affect many people today. They don’t believe in a good Creator because of the suffering and death that exists in this world; maybe there is sin and maybe we have rebelled against God and brought this all upon ourselves, but who cares? If God is good, he could have fixed that and stopped it all from happening.

In order to understand the real weight of our problem, we must know how things were meant to be and how they will all end up. If this world isn’t the way God created it, how was it created? And what why has God allowed it to go down the drain? And what will be its end?

God created the world perfectly. He created humans as image bearers of himself, which brings him glory and brings his creation joy and fulfillment. By enjoying the Creator above all else, we are able to enjoy all his creation the way he intended us to. But we decide to enjoy created things the way we want to rather than the way God intended. We take good things and put them in the place of God, and try to enjoy them in a way they were never meant to be enjoyed. When we understand how God meant things to be, we can begin to see how evil sin really is. It isn’t just breaking a rule, it is replacing God with things he has made.

But God is bigger than sin, bigger than our rebellion against him. He allowed sin and evil into the world, having a greater plan in store. God did not create the world and check out; he will not let the earth spiral down an endless vortex until it will eventually destroy itself.

God allowed sin and death and is currently working his redemptive plan in the world. He started this work the moment sin entered the world, and he planned this work before the world was even created. Death still exists, for God’s work of redemption has not reached its completion. But we can be assured he is working.

He paid the price for our sin through the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus; Jesus is the solution to the problem of sin and death. In Jesus, we see how far God would go to redeem the world. He was so intent on redeeming the world that he sent his Son to die and pay the price. It is because of Jesus that the redemption of all things is possible; God thought redeeming the world was worth more than the life of his own Son, and Jesus thought it was worth it to give up his own life.

And all this will be resolved when Christ comes back to finish this work of redemption. He will come back and recreate the whole world. He will give new bodies that don’t die to all those who have faith in him, to live on a new earth, forever enjoying him. Jesus is coming back to reclaim the world for himself, to put in place his perfect kingdom which will never be overthrown again. There will be no evil, no sin, no selfishness. Death will be absolved forever. Mankind will exist to enjoy God, one another, and all his creation perfectly on a never-dying earth.

If this is God’s plan for the world, is the problem still unclear?

It is in light of God’s plan that we truly see the problem. And when we see the problem clearly, we are able to find even more joy and hope in the solution God has given and resolution God will bring.

Fitting In

Pride has been said to be the mother of all sin. Out of pride, we have all chosen to love created things more than God. We think we know what is best for ourselves, and we make decisions based on our knowledge instead of making decisions based on God’s knowledge, which happens to be much greater than our’s (in case you didn’t know).

In our pride, we do all that we can to appear the way we want to. We all live in cultures built around said or unsaid rules. Some cultures look at different “holy scriptures” and attempt to obey all the commands and rules. They do this in order to maintain an appearance of living the way they believe is right. Other cultures look down on religions, and the rules you must abide by in order to appear good in these cultures is to accept all people, no matter what they believe, say or do.

Said or unsaid rules exist in every culture, and in our pride, we do all we can to appear obedient to them.

The culture around us is going to try to shape us into its image, and in our pride, we are going to struggle with wanting to appear like them. We are going to want to look the way our culture does because we want to fit in.

But Jesus has created a new culture for his people, a culture whose foundation is him, a people who recognize they have been made in the image of God. Sin damaged us as image-bearers and made it impossible to reflect God perfectly. But Jesus came and lived sinlessly in our place and has given us his Holy Spirit so we can reflect him correctly! Made in the image of God, remade in the image of Christ: this is the person with faith in the Gospel.

So the Christian culture is one of humility and service. If Jesus humbled himself even to an undeserving death on a cross, we are to image this same humility to those around us. Jesus served us more than is possible apart from God. Nobody could pay the price for our sin, but God paid the price for us through Christ. The work of salvation is completed, and all that is left is for Jesus is to come back and redeem the physical world to himself. Jesus was the perfect servant. And we are able, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be servants as well, both to our church family and to the world.

This is the culture Jesus desires. There isn’t pride allowed in it. And though we are commanded to humble ourselves, we have actually been freed from the power of pride because of what Jesus has done. If you have had faith in Christ, you don’t need to appear a certain way to fit into the Christian culture. If you have had faith in Christ, his appearance has become your’s, and you are now able to image Christ’s example. As one preacher has put it, the Christian is becoming who he already is.

If you have had faith in Christ, you are sealed for salvation, and your life is one of imaging God, which brings him glory. We don’t have to image God in order to be saved, we get to image God because we have been saved. We get to display God’s loving and humble character to everybody around us by the way we live and speak. This is what we were created for, and this is what Christ has made possible for his church.

Finding Purpose In Killing Sin

The root cause of all sin is that we choose created things over the Creator. Jesus came to earth and, through the cross, dealt with our sin. Every sin we do can be traced back to this root. Tim Keller calls it the “sin beneath the sin.”

If I look at pornography and masturbate, the root sin is that I chose momentary pleasure over choosing God and his design for sexuality. If I am eating too much (gluttony), the root sin is that I am choosing to find satisfaction in food and not in God, who made food for me to enjoy and not to overindulge in. If I lie to a friend about why I can’t hang out, I am choosing to trust that I know what’s best in the situation and that God doesn’t know what’s best.

Pick a sin, and you’ll find it’s root is choosing something over God.

Many times, sin is a chain that extends with many different links all the way down to it’s foundation. We struggle with pornography because we have an inordinate desire for the male or female body. But this desire is not limited to just pornography; we also look at other people and lust after them. But it’s not just seeing people that makes us lust; there exists in our mind images of men or women that feed our inordinate desire. And when we masturbate or hook-up with somebody, it solidifies how much of an inordinate desire we really have.

This can be so overwhelming because it feels like an insurmountable obstacle. We can’t kill sleeping around if we don’t kill looking at pornography; we can’t kill looking at pornography if we don’t kill masturbation; we can’t kill masturbation if we don’t kill our lust for men or women. And not only this, but we aren’t truly killing any of these things unless we are choosing God over all of them.

We fall into a defeated mentality because we want the whole thing to go away. Killing any one part of the sin by itself seems pointless. After all, what’s the point of killing a sin that seems so far removed from it’s root?

But Jesus came to earth and dealt with the root cause of all sin. He chose God over his own desires and lived perfectly in our place. He took the punishment and wrath we deserved for choosing creation over the Creator. And he rose again, conquering sin and death on our behalf.

Once we believe in the gospel, God changes us and makes our desire and goal to glorify him by the way we live: in our thinking, speaking, actions, working, friendships, sexuality, and every other aspect of our lives. We have been reborn, as Jesus calls it. We have a new heart with new desires, and the Holy Spirit dwells within us to help us obey God’s commandments. And because of this, each day we are becoming more and more like Jesus, growing in holiness, and killing sin by the power of his Holy Spirit.

Killing sin in our lives is never pointless. In fact, it is the exact opposite because God is glorified anytime we kill sin. We become more like Jesus every time we put to death any sin. We have been given the Holy Spirit, and it is his job to make us more like Jesus. The Spirit is the one who gives us the power to kill sin. Every time we do, we are showing off the work of the Spirit and bringing glory to God.

Someone once told me we are like a white piece of paper that has become completely black with dots of ink. Once we have been saved, the Holy Spirit begins to take off the dots one by one. The whiter the piece of paper becomes, the more obvious the black dots appear.

I use this illustration to point out the truth that the more like Jesus we become, the more obvious it will be that we are not Jesus. Our sinfulness will become more obvious to us the closer we get to him. We know how perfect he is the closer we get to him, and his perfection casts light on our imperfection.

If you are weary, if you are burdened by the heaviness of your sin,take comfort in the fact that Christ has dealt and destroyed the root of your sin, that you have been reconciled back into a right relationship with God, and that you have the Holy Spirit who will not stop destroying sin in your life. Every sin killed is a victory that brings glory to God.