The Greatest Treasure

          Matthew 13:44

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."


This man knew that he had stumbled upon something with the greatest value: the Kingdom of Heaven. Of course he would give up everything he had to obtain it.

It would be like playing Jeopardy and getting to the final stage (where you have to wager a certain amount of money against answering a question that hasn't been revealed yet). But in this game, you know what the last question is and you know the answer. Would you not wager everything you earned?

Except this isn’t a game at all. This is real life here on Earth and we’re headed for an eternal life which we will either spend with God or away from Him.

And everything we “wager” here on Earth is nothing compared to the reward of being with God. It would be like having earned just one dollar through the whole Jeopardy game yet being able to wager that one dollar to win one million dollars. It seems like a no-brainer that we wager everything, our whole lives.

What is our response when we learn that Jesus died to be the sacrifice for our sins and allow us to be in heaven with His Father? Are we giving everything we have? All God is asking for is that one dollar we’ve received in return for unfathomable riches. Are we just throwing pocket change back at God and asking Him if it’s good enough?

All the Possibilities, part 2

This post is a much different topic from the last post, but oddly enough, it flowed from it. So I will begin with the statement I last made:

We must be open to ANY possibility so that the Holy Spirit can work through us.

How else might have Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an avid pacifist and Christ follower, been open to the idea of killing Hitler?

We have seen God work through every kind of extreme. To the point where he has called certain people to kill those who oppose Him and He has called others to give up their own lives for those who oppose Him.

What I believe matters is where your heart is. As C.S. Lewis has said in Mere Christianity,

“Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature. We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating.”

When David went off to kill Goliath (1 Samuel 17) he did so because Goliath disrespected and “defied the armies of the living God.” He had no voice of God booming down from the clouds telling him to kill Goliath. But he knew what was right. His heart was for God. This was, however, different from a cold-blooded killing—it was a time of war.

In the past, God has commanded his people to kill others—not even simply in war—but even when the people being killed were not fighting back (when God has commanded whole nations to be killed—an example being found in Joshua 8, with the nation of Ai). You can see this throughout the Old Testament.

But then Jesus came along, commanded us to turn the other cheek, and every single one of the apostles was killed due to the dedicated spreading of their testimony. They did not fight back. A beautiful picture of self-sacrifice.

So then we have to ask, why is there this discrepancy? The answer does not lie in the character of God because God is unchanging. So what is God trying to accomplish through the killing in one situation and the pacifism in another?

The Israelites were God’s protected people, often surrounded by many who wanted to kill them. Would it have been better for them to practice pacifism in this situation? Would they have survived?

For the first small band of Christ followers, would it have been wise to wage war against the leaders of the land? Their focus was on spreading the words of Christ. The ideas that came from the first believers have lasted centuries and have spread to almost every corner of the Earth.

From what I know of the past, present, and future (through Revelation) the answer is that God WILL be glorified. Often through different situations and in different ways, but his will is always accomplished.

We must allow the Holy Spirit to work through us as we ask ourselves, “Are our actions glorifying God?”

When our college group discussed this topic, the idea was brought up of certain radicals who have felt is necessary to bomb abortion clinics in the name of God. Can Christians be called to kill ANYONE who opposes God?

Is it strange that I, personally, feel that it would have been acceptable to kill Hitler but not AT ALL acceptable to bomb an abortion clinic? I believe there is a stark difference between the two.

There was no Earthly authority over Hitler, no one at all to stop him from continuing to order the murder of millions of people. How else would we stop the actions of a man who is clearly committing atrocities? Hope for God Himself to strike Hitler dead? Hope for someone to change this man’s heart? Not impossible, as anything is possible with God, but shouldn’t it also be possible that God was calling upon the action of man to stop Hitler by other means?

Hitler’s death almost certainly meant the end of the holocaust that was being committed. So an answer to the solution to the holocaust would then be to kill Hitler. The answer to ending abortion, however, does not lie in bombing a clinic or killing the doctors who perform abortions. Only policies set in place by law would change the extent to which abortions are committed in our country. Laws are not effectively set in place by murder and destruction but by the changing of hearts and minds.

I believe that the war should always first be waged on hearts and minds.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

It bears repeating; when it comes to any action, we should allow the Holy Spirit to work through us as we ask, “Is it for the glory of God?”

All the Possibilities

Every day we see bad things happening to people around the world courtesy of the news media. To make ourselves feel better about not being able to help so many others, we say, “Well, of course I will help those in need who are placed in front of me.”

But we often live in places where we can avoid those in need, where necessities like hunger and health are taken care of but where materialism and pride run rampant. We focus on ourselves while comfortably ignoring those in need who live around the world or even just a city over.

The needs in the world can be overwhelming to think about and impossible to take care of all by ourselves. But I think we should be asking these questions:

1. Are my priorities straight? What am I living for? What comes first in my life? Money, pride, pleasure, status, seeking the love of a husband, a wife? Or God?

Stop and think about this first question. It is the most important.





2. We wouldn’t have been able to see the devastation of the 2004 tsunami in India if we didn’t have today’s technology. We now have easier ways of seeing and of helping. But the fact remains that we can’t help everyone. 18,000 children die a day due to starvation. But there’s only one of me. So to what extent should we be helping the seemingly infinite amount of needs that are now placed in front of us?

3. Should we physically place ourselves in areas where need is apparent? Moving out of our hometown, our state, our country?

4. Have we been so focused on ourselves and on those around the world that we fail to address the need of the person in the room right next to us?

The answers to these questions are not plainly laid out in Scripture. We have no rules about how much emphasis we place on any one of these questions. Different people are led to take action in different ways.

From a simplified, “reaching the nations” point of view, one person may be led to give up everything they own and become a missionary in a third world country which does not know Christ. Another person is led to be a good steward of his money to support the guy who went to become a missionary. And there are yet others who are led to do any number of things between the two extremes.

You cannot say to one or the other that they are not doing as the Bible says because, depending where their heart is, they both are! The missionary is helping others because of support from the steward and the steward is helping others through the missionary.

If ALL Christians were to give up their houses, cars, and lives here to go live in another country, how would they all support themselves and the others that they are trying to help? If they all chose to be good stewards in America, who would reach the unreached in other countries?

To what extent must we take action?

We have to be open and asking ourselves these questions, open to ANY possibility so that the Holy Spirit can work through us.

11/11/11

A text message I sent this morning after a lot of thinking, praying, and--to be honest--crying.

A woman just came in to our store to send $2000 to someone in Mexico who has kidnapped her son. I don't even know what to do with that. I don't even know who these people are--but all of a sudden it's just SO real for me. Not just another newspaper article. This isn't just another headline in the long list of how many bad things happen on a day to day basis. It's real life. Real bad things happening to real people. And of course I know that. But do I KNOW it so that it affects my day to day actions, my thoughts, my prayers?

The Beginning

I've begun writing notes to myself. Usually on sticky notes. These are my thoughts that I collect throughout the day.