Dead American

Just one for you this week.  I’ve been trying to get caught up with lots of stuff and Bible reading has been taking priority …

Saw this in a video and liked it.  Thought I would share.  It’s from St. Augustine.

“Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

You were fearfully and wonderfully made.

Peace.

Almost done with these books …

Jesus Among Other Gods by Zacharias

It often happens that when the moral law protects the , a ceremonial law is invoked to accomplish immoral ends.

Pilate may well be the quintessential example of what politics has come to mean. He knew what was right but succumbed to the seduction of his position.

… nobody is born a Christian. All Christians are such by virtue of conversion. To ask a Christian not to reach out to anyone else from another faith is to ask that Christian to deny his own faith.

From The Pursuit of God by Tozer

The whole Bible supports this idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is, by His nature, continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice.

God’s word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God’s word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the writen Word all-powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.

God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years.

The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends upon our hearing and we have trained our ears not to hear.

Just now we happen to be living in a secular age. Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshiper. We are more likely to explain than to adore. “It thundered,” we exclaim, and go our earthly way. But still the Voice sounds and searches.

The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe.

I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silent God suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finished lapsed back into silence again forever. Now we read the book as the record fo what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood. With notions like that in our heads, how can we believe?

And one last one:

Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?
Well, then I will tell you. Alexander, Ceasar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded his empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him … I think I understand something of human nature; and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man: none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was mare than man … I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me … but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts … Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of the man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him, experience that remarkable, supernatural love toward Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man’s creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This is it, which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Christ.

That was Napoleon.

Peace.

Been busy at work and still working through the same two books … still some good stuff coming …

Jesus Among Other Gods by Zacharias

… most skeptics begin their challenge to God’s existence with the problem of evil or at least reserve their greatest emotion for that discussion. But in doing so, they dig a deeper pit than the one they are trying to get out of, because raising the problem of evil without God runs the risk of failing to justify the question.

We are not merely observers to the reality of evil. We are involved in it beyond mere academic discussion.

Love can only be what it was meant to be when it is wedded first to the sacred.

Goodness in the face of evil is magnificent, because it is more than goodness; it is the touch of God.

I recall talking to a very successful and very wealthy businessman who throughout the conversation repeatedly raised this question, “But what about all the evil in this world?” Finally, the friend sitting next to me said to him, “I hear you constantly expressing a desire to see a solution to the problem of evil around you. Are you as troubled by the problem of evil within you?” In the pin-drop silence that followed, the man’s face showed his duplicity.

The Pursuit of God by Tozer

Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn against a too-great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road to sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, “Oh, Lord, thou knowest.” Those things belong to the deep and mysterious profound of God’s omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.

Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways.

Peace.

More from Jesus Among Other Gods by Zacharias:

It is possible to hold a treasure in your hand but be ignorant of it and go for the wrapping instead.

Jesus took pains to show them that their preoccupation with bread as the primary purpose and expression of enjoyment had seriously displaced both what bread was meant to do and what life was meant to be.

In short, if we are to truly understand who we are, we must understand what bread can and cannot do.

We are not in need merely of a superior ethic. We are in need of a transformed heart and will that seek to do the will of God.

… the task of the Church is not to make God relevant to the people as much as it is to make people relevant to God.

And from The Pursuit of God by Tozer:

The “other world” which is the object of this world’s disdain and the the subject of the drunkard’s mocking song, is our carefully chosen goal and the object of our holiest longing.

Peace.

Finishing up February reading two books, The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer and Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharias. Both have been good, but I’ve been enjoying Tozer a little more … signs that the mystic is overcoming the apologist in my old age …

So here are several quotes, some from each.

Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer:

We Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can.

How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers.

The blessed ones who possess the kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the “poor in spirit.”

There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the life. Because it is natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is. But its outworkings are tragic.

Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole lives there.

The world is perishing for the lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famished for want of His presnence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and God in us.

… the highest love of God is not intellectual, it is spiritual. God is Spirit and only the spirit of a man can know Him really.

God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without any thing other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is.

Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.

Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharias

Truth by definition excludes.

Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive.

Young dreams may be wild ones, but they are never corrected by ridiculing them.

Of all the enterprises in which the human heart engages, none lends itself more to abuse and manipulation than the activities of religion.

Sometimes religion can be the greatest roadblock to true spirituality.

Peace.

I read Enemy at the Gates: the Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig this week. I picked it up at a used bookstore years ago because I really liked the movie. The book is totally different. The whole sniper story is cool, but it took like five or ten whole pages in this 400 page masterpiece. I couldn’t put the book down … but at times the stories were so tragic and horrendous I did want to put it down. The battle itself is an amazing story, but Craig did a beautiful job tracing the real life stories of real people through the six month ordeal. It is a history book, not a novel, but I’ve read my share of history books in my life and this one is one of the best. Some of these quotes are longer, but hopefully you’ll get a taste of what I mean (I chose some of the less gruesome pieces … you’re welcome). The last one is my favorite.

p.327 [This is close to the end of the battle, as the Soviets were circling in around the German 6th Army and closing in] Southwest of Kotelnikovo, Sgt. Alexi Petrov spurred his gun crew on toward Rostov. The squat artilleryman had lost count of the times he had crossed and recrossed the twisting loops of the lower Don, but he ignored his exhaustion as he pursued an enemy who had held his family in bondage for more than a year.
In the midst of the offensive, however, Petrov met a new foe. Approaching the outskirts of a village, the inhabitants - men and women - ran out and attacked his unit with pitchforks and hammers. The Red Army troops withdrew from the onslaught and stumbled back with the news that their assailants were native Kazakhs, a minority violently opposed to Communist rule from Moscow.
The Kazakhs screamed insults and shoulted: “We don’t want any Russians here!” while bewildered Soviet soldiers milled about on the plain. Someone phoned division headquarters for advice. Within minutes a terse order came back: “Destroy them all.”
In the general ardment that followed, Petrov fired high e shells into the village, which blew into thousands of pieces of mud, clay, and timber. Machine guns picked off any who tried to escape, and the Kazakhs were killed to the last child.
Gazing at the crackling flames, Petrov suddenly wondered why these people had such a hatred for the state. What was it about Communism that made them turn against their brothers? He was plagued by a terrible guilt for killing his own brethren.

p.314 At an officers’ mess inside the Kessel [the area in Stalingrad where the Germans were surrounded, cut off from supplies and near starvation], blond Lt. Hans Oettl was surrounded by men wishing him a happy birthday. Seated in front of his own blue china, from which he had eaten for years, he watched a cook ladle out a huge steaming portion of goulash filled with thick chunks of meat. Astounded and delighted, Oettl began to eat.
The door suddenly burst open and a military policeman stormed in, demanding to know whether anyone had seen his watchdog. In the sudden silence, Hans Oettl looked at his companions, now staring uncomfortably at the floor, then his gaze returned slowly to the goulash and mountain of meat in front of him.
While the policeman thundered threats against anyone who might have killed his pet, the lieutenant deliberately raised his fork and chewed a portion of the policeman’s German Shepherd.

p.312 On New Year’s Eve, discipline in the revitalized 62nd Army (Soviet) relaxed and, along the shore, high ranking Soviet officers held a series of parties to honor actors, musicians, and ballerinas visiting Stalingrad to entertain the troops. One of the troop members, violinist Mikhail Goldstein, stayed away and went instead to the trenches to perform another of his one-man concerts for the soldiers.
In all the war Goldstein had never seen a battlefield quite like Stalingrad: a city so utterly broken by bombs and artillery, cluttered with skeletons of hundreds of horses, picked clean by the starving enemy. And always there were the grim police of the Russian NKVD, standing between the front line and the Volga [the river through Stalingrad], checking soldiers’ papers and suspected deserters .
The horrible battlefield shocked Goldstein and he played as he never played before, hour after hour for men who obviously enjoyed his music. And while all German works had been banned by the Soviet government, Goldstein doubted that anny commissar would protest on New Year’s Eve. The melodies he created drifted through the loudspeakers to the German trenches and the shooting suddenly ceased. In the eerie quiet, the music flowed from Goldstein’s dipping bow.
When he finished, a hushed silence hung over the Russian soldiers. From another loudspeaker, in German territory, a voice broke the spell. In halting Russian it pleaded: “Play some more Bach. We won’t shoot.”
Goldstein picked up his violin and started a lively Bach Gavotte.

Peace.

Got this from a coworker today, her pastor, Jentezen Franklin, of Free Chapel, wrote some stuff on fasting I was reading and I liked this part …

Victories are not won in public, but in private. Jesus, while being a very public figure, was actually a very private person. He did not pray in public nearly as much as he prayed in private.

Peace.

Reading mostly fiction lately … sticking with good ole Mum Theresa this week …

True love causes pain.
Jesus, in order to give us the proof of his love, died on the cross.
A mother, in order to give birth to her baby, has to suffer.
If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.

The poor do not need our condescending attitude or our pity. They only need our love and our tenderness.

Someone once told me that not even for a million dollars would they touch a leper. I responded: “Neither would I. If it were the case of money, I would not even do it for two million. On the other hand, I do it gladly for the love of God.”

I pay no attention to numbers; what matters is the people. I rely on one. There is only one: Jesus.

What we say does not matter, only what God says to souls through us.

Do not be afraid of loving to the point of sacrifice, until it hurts. Jesus’ love for us led him to his death.

Peace.

More from Mother Theresa this week. Some are just too good.

Jesus comes to meet us. To welcome him, let us go to meet him.
He comes to us in the hungry, the , the lonely, the alcoholic, the addict, the , the street beggars.
He may come to you or me in a father who is alone, in a mother, in a brother, or in a sister.
If we reject them, if we do not go out to meet them, we reject Jesus himself.

The important thing is not to do a lot or to do everything. The important thing is to be ready for anything, at all times; to be convinced that when serving the poor, we really serve God.

Before judging the poor, we have to examine with sincerity our own conscience.

If abortion becomes legalized in rich countries, those countries truly are the poorest of the world.

The less we have, the more we give. Seems absurd, but it’s the logic of love.

Peace.

Who else?

Some King quotes for the kids.

… the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. — From “The Power of Non-Violence” 1958

… nonviolent resistance is also an internal matter. It not only avoids external violence or external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. And so at the center of our movement stood the philosophy of love. — “The Power of Non-Violence” 1958

… there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. – “The Power of Non-Violence” 1958

I am convinced that for practical as well as moral reasons, nonviolence offers the only road to freedom for my people. — “Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom” 1966

Nonviolence was never more relevant as an effective tactic than today for the North. It may also be the instrument of our national salvation. — “Showdown for Nonviolence” 1968

We have, through massive nonviolent action, an opportunity to avoid a national disaster and create a new spirit of class and racial harmony. We can write another luminous moral chapter in American history. All of us are on trial in this troubled hour, but time still permits us to meet the future with a clear conscience. — “Showdown for Nonviolence” 1968

This morning, you can only be on his right hand and his left hand if you serve. It’s the only way in.
Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator — that something we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, “What is it that I would want said?” And I leave the word to you this morning.
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that’s not important. Tell him not to mention where I went to school.
I’d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.
And that’s all I want to say … if I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or son, if I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain. If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, if I can bring salvation to a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the master taught, then my living will not be in vain.
Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right side or your left side, not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your best side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition, but I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.
— From “The Drum Major Instinct”, a sermon in 1968, just two months before his assassination.

Peace.