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Acts 29 with Dr. John Hannah

By Jeremy Myers
9 Comments

Acts 29 with Dr. John Hannah

Acts 29I recently attended a regional Acts29 church planting event. It was the second one I have been to. You can read about the one I attended last year here.

The guest speaker was Dr. John Hannah from Dallas Theological Seminary. He spoke about spiritual formation, and specifically, how to overcome sin in our lives.

A few things he said rang so true in my life that it was like the dawn rising in my life. Below are these things. Matt Chandler spoke as well, which was excellent. Although he is a Calvinist, he may be one of the most creative and thoughtful mega-church pastors of this generation. I will make a post tomorrow about what he said.

But here is some of what Dr. Hannah said:

A Popular Christian Lie

He said, “Someone once told me—and if I could remember who it was I would shoot them—that the longer you are a Christian, the easier it gets.”

Dr. Hannah is right. That is an outright lie. If we are really making progress in the Christian life, it gets harder and harder. Spiritual attacks become more frequent. Temptations become more powerful. The unanswered questions become more numerous.

Sure, there are a lot of positives and benefits to following Jesus, but we should never tell someone that becoming a Christian will solve all their problems. It won’t. Sure, it solves some, but in many ways, being a Christian introduces more problems than it solves.

The Christian’s Nine Lines

Second, generally, when people draw the progress of the spiritual life, they put a cross on the left side, and heaven on the right side, and a squiggly line between the two that goes up and down, hopefully trending upward.

discipleship chart

Dr. Hannah said that in his observations, there should be nine lines, one each for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-23).

Notice the things that are not on this list: Bible reading, church attendance, tithing, etc.

Sure, these things may be present as a result of some of these nine areas, but the truth is that someone can read through the entire Bible every day, give 100% of their income to God, and attend church every day of the week, but be failures in all nine of the things on this list.

So where are these nine things on your chart?

Clearings in the Rain Forest

Dr. Hannah likens the Christian life to a rain forest. When you first become a Christian, and you fly over the rain forest of your life, it is thousands of square miles of impassible and inhabitable jungle, full of twisted vines, rotting leaves, and deadly predators. But as you make progress, and continue to fly over your life, you begin to see clearings appear.

You are not sure why those clearings are there, or what they will be used for, but they appear, and over time, get bigger and bigger. Then organized buildings and roads appear. And areas of the jungle become useful, habitable, and productive.

Is the rain forest ever completely cleared? No. There will always be areas of jungle that remain. Also, everyone’s jungle is quite different. Just because a clearing appears in a certain area of my life does not mean that same clearing will appear in the lives of others. That area of their life may never get cleared in their entire lives. But that is because the master planner knows what he is doing, and knows what he needs.

Waiting for a Fall

Finally, he said that when you grow in your mental knowledge of truth, but not in your participation of that truth, it’s just a matter of time until you fall into grievous sin.

Yes and Amen.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Acts 29, Discipleship, following Jesus, lies, maturity, sin

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What if you spent one year obeying the entire Bible? A. J. Jacobs did exactly that

By Jeremy Myers
19 Comments

What if you spent one year obeying the entire Bible? A. J. Jacobs did exactly that

year of living biblicallyJennie Yabroff reported in Newsweek that “After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the Entire Encyclopedia Britannica for his book “The Know-It-All,” he figured he had the yearlong experiment thing down. How much harder could it be to follow every rule in the Bible? Much, much harder, he soon discovered, as he found himself growing his beard, struggling not to curse, and asking strangers for permission to stone them for adultery.”

What I found most interesting about the article is some of the comments Jacobs makes in the interview. When asked how his life is now that he can sin again, he says, “I miss my sin-free life, but I guess I was never sin free. I was able to cut down on my coveting maybe 40 percent, but I was still a coveter.” Jacobs sounds a lot like the Apostle Paul, when he wrote, “But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of coveting” (Rom 7:9). Jacobs, like Paul, realized that nobody can perfectly obey the entire law, and trying only makes you recognize your sin more.

When asked if there were any rules he was still following, Jacobs focuses on the Sabbath. He says, “I love the Sabbath. There’s something I really like about a forced day of rest.”

Interesting, isn’t it, that this is what Jesus tells us: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man  for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). God knows that we need to rest from our work, and life is better when we take time to rest.

The entire law, really, is to help us live life better with God and with each other. The great deception of sin is that we think it helps us live life to the full, but in reality, sin only gets in the way of truly living life.

Naturally, Jacobs found many of the laws and rules impossible to obey. For example, there’s a funny story in the interview about when he stones a man for committing adultery, but he doesn’t really stone him to death as commanded in Scripture. Of course, if he did, in our culture, he would be a murderer, which would be breaking other Biblical commands. This leads Jacobs to admit that “One of the lessons…[is that] there is some picking and choosing in following the Bible, and I think that’s OK.”

In other words, since God’s standard of righteousness is too high for us to realistically follow, we can lower the standard by picking which commands and rules to obey. How much better would it be to say, “We can’t come close to obeying all these laws, and since God demands perfect righteousness, I need to get it from somewhere else. Jesus lived in perfect righteousness, and tells us that if we believe in Him, He gives that righteousness to us” (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47; 2 Cor 5:21).

I pray that Jacobs comes to this conclusion. It is evident that the Spirit is working on him, for now that he is without the law, he admits that he feels “unmoored, overwhelmed by choice.” Paul did tell us that the law is a tutor, to bring us to Christ (Gal 3:24-25). Jacobs lived under the tutor for a year, and we can pray it will lead him to believe in Jesus for everlasting life.

If you want to read more about this, you can get his book: The Year of Living Biblically.

God is Redeeming Life Bible & Theology Topics: Books I'm Reading, law, Sabbath, sin

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You Be the Judge…(not really!)

By Jeremy Myers
57 Comments

You Be the Judge…(not really!)

judge1.jpgI indicated in a previous comment that I would refrain from debating this gospel issue any more because none of us on either side are getting anywhere with the others, and I have better things to do. But in light of what I came across today, I am compelled to begin another post.

Besides, I guess public “debates” like this are not really for the debaters, but for those who are “on the fence” trying to understand and decide between the two positions. Even still, my follow-up comments to this post will be limited.

Following the attempts by some of the commenters (from both sides of the debate) to get simple “yes” and “no” answers from each other to theological questions, I have a REAL LIFE situation to pose to the readers of this blog, and I want you to state with a simple “Yes” or “No” whether you believe the following woman is saved or not.

Certainly, only God knows, but based on how you understand the Bible, the Gospel, how people are justified, and what she says, is the following woman justified, Yes or No?

And just so you know, I am not making this woman up. She is a REAL woman I encountered today. So give her the benefit of the doubt. If she says she really believes something, let’s assume she really does believe it.

She says she believes that:

  1. Jesus is God… i.e., He is fully divine.
  2. Jesus is fully human, yet without sin. Also, He was born of a virgin.
  3. Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead three days later.
  4. She is a sinner and needed Jesus to pay for her sin through His death on the cross so that she could gain His righteousness.
  5. Simply by faith in Jesus, she has everlasting life which can never be lost.So far, all of us would vote a hearty “YES.” I know I do. But here is where it gets interesting. She also believes that:
  6. Humans are “divine like Jesus, but to a lesser degree” becuase we sin.
  7. God is Allah, the same god the Muslims worship.
  8. The Trinity is fiction… there is only one God and He is not in three person.
  9. The Qu’ran is inspired by God and is on equal footing with the Bible. Since the two are in conflict on some teachings, neither can be taken literally.

So, what is the verdict?

And here are the RULES for the comments on this post. YOU MUST, IN YOUR FIRST COMMENT, BEGIN WITH EITHER A “YES” OR A “NO.” Following your one-word answer, you may then explain your answer. Also, in subsequent comments, you do not need to begin those posts with your answer, unless you change you answer.

Obviously, none of us are the true judges of a person’s eternal destiny (Isn’t that a relief?), and the Gospel is not even primarily about where one will spend eternity, but this exercise is for the purpose of helping us think through what the Bible says about how to receive eternal life. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t go around judging people the way we are doing here on this post.

God is Redeeming Church Bible & Theology Topics: eternal life, evangelism, gospel, Jesus, sin, Theology - General, Theology of Salvation

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