Andrew Busch

Reformation Day Chapel—Spheres of Influence and Christian Education

Tomorrow is Reformation Day, a day on which all Christians of all times, places and traditions are called to remember the constant work of God’s Spirit as He calls us, his people, out of unbelief and rebellion, into the goodness of the gospel. Today isn’t about Protestant versus Catholic. It’s about the people of God remembering who we are and recognizing God’s working among us.

Almost 500 years ago, Martin Luther lit a match that ignited the world. In nailing his 95 theses to the church door, he gave voice to the work of the Holy Spirit in his day. It changed everything about the way people lived—not just the way they did church. The Reformation changed politics, law, economics, art, music, language, education, even the way we view the individual in contrast to the larger community. God moved powerfully through Martin Luther and John Calvin to change the world for the better. That doesn’t mean everything they did was great—it means they left the world looking more like heaven than when they came. Today, the call for reformation and renewal is still just as fresh and relevant as it was in 1517. God continues to call the church further up and further in (to use the words of C.S. Lewis). This calling relates to you and why you’re here at NMCS but we’ll have to get there in a roundabout way...

"No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations” (Gen 17:5).

Abraham = "father of many" (NIV footnotes)

I find this fascinating. God changes Abram's name to "father of many" before he has any children. God's reasoning included the past tense: "I have made you a father of many". It was already done by God's reasoning but had yet to happen (a year later). So here is Abraham, changing his name at 99 years old to 'Father of Many' while he has no children. People must have thought he was crazy: "There goes the childless 'Father of Many'."

While reading the Bible, I'm struck by what jerks many of the characters are; they just keep doing stupid things over and over. It's comforting to know that they are mess up just like we are. It's also comforting that God keeps his promises to them (and us) often in spite of them (and us). We play a very small part in whether God keeps his promises to us. He is faithful. His kindness knows no end. That’s just what he’s like.

This reminds me of a Graham Cooke teaching. Graham talks about stepping out into God's promises for us. God speaks a promise over us and then he begins to interact with us from the standpoint of the promise fulfilled. God changed Abram's name to Abraham before he had children. God referred to his reasoning using the past tense--"I have made you…" though the event of Abraham becoming a father was still a year away.

Paul picks up on this same story in Romans 4:17b "the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were."

God often does the same thing in our lives that he did in the life of Abraham; he speaks promises to us which make zero sense based on our current situations. This is where faith enters the picture; we step into a spiritual reality based on God’s promises--often in spite of our circumstances. It’s our job to believe; it’s his job to work out the details.

"It is important to lay aside perceptions when they become inappropriate or inaccurate" (Graham Cook).

What am I unlearning?

I am unlearning a toothless God and discovering a God of wrath. Many of the preachers I listen to have at one time or another mentioned that God does not currently deal in judgment with the world. God's wrath has been completely poured out on Christ and there will be a day of judgment; now is a time of Grace.

Yet, this is poor logical reasoning. It ignores the stories in the New Testament regarding God's present day judgment: Paul speaking judgment over the magician and he went blind, people eating the Lord's supper incorrectly and getting sick or dying as a result, and Ananias and Saphira. I agree we should be wary of calling natural disasters God's judgment on a region, yet neither can we be sure it is not. It is better if we counsel people to evaluate their hearts and motives rather than placate them by saying everything is going to be okay.

As I begin to see God's anger as a present reality (since Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world), I realize how much I appreciate it--how necessary it is to God's redemptive work. If God didn’t get angry over how we hurt each other and use each other for selfish gain how could he love us? I expect a God of love to be at war with everything which corrupts his original intention for our lives. Granted, God does not sin in his anger; He does not fly off the handle. There will be a day of judgment when all people will give an account for their lives. But we also live with God's judgment all around us. The cross was God's judgment against sin. Healing is God's judgment against sickness. Judgment is about setting things right not punishing. God's anger is redemptive--it's what he's like.

In reading through Acts we find opposition to the gospel over and over again: arrests, beatings, riots, etc. Then in Acts 17:10-12 we meet the Bereans who receive the gospel with great eagerness. Yet even in their desire to believe, they did not forsake their duty to check the validity of what Paul said: they “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Doing our best to push and prod someone's message is not unbelief—it's due process. The Lord does not put doctrinal issues before us and force a quick decision. He allows time to tease out the details. I find it comforting that the Bible describes noble character as an open heart and healthy skepticism—gentle as doves and wise as serpents. We eagerly accept the message and we process the truth together in community; we are open to what God is doing here and now and we check everything to make sure it lines up with Scripture.

Acts 11:1-18 Peter has just come back to Jerusalem after visiting with Cornelius and seeing God give the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles. When he got back, the believers in Jerusalem confronted Peter. Before when reading this I always took a negative view of these believers; "there are always people in the church opposing what God is doing".

However, Peter willingly and painstakingly explains himself. In the footnote on 11:1 it says "in matters of great concern the apostles did not act alone." Peter left in one paradigm and came back in another. The church in Jerusalem was holding him accountable to the paradigm of Jesus being the Jewish messiah. But God changed all that. Notice their response after Peter's explanation: "When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God…"

Sometimes, willingly subjecting yourself to the scrutiny of others not only diffuses the situation but also brings them into God's plan for their lives.

After a several month hiatus, I picked up Paul E. Miller's A Praying Life and found myself reading the chapter dealing with unanswered prayer. I think he captured the tension and difficulty with prayer well.

Multiple times in the Gospels Jesus says something along the lines of "Whatever you ask for in my name you will receive" (Matt 7, John 14, etc). So, we ask. We pray believing that we ask as God's representatives in the situation. We ask in his name… and nothing changes. We remember Jesus' parable of the persistent widow and we continue to pray and still nothing changes. I have prayers I've prayed for years and still nothing changed.

When reality confronts our hope there is often a divide between the two. We don't know what to make of the Bible's promises regarding prayer. The temptation is one of two things:
1) We become bitter at God.
2) We stop hoping for the big things and pray prayers that are more in line with reality. Instead of praying for healing we pray that the doctors would have wisdom.

There probably is a 3rd option here as well:
3) one in which people ignore the reality of their situations. People claim to be healed and still die of cancer. The pain and frustration involved with living in the tension of unanswered prayer becomes too much.

It's hard to live in the desert between God's promises and the pain of our situations. Life is hard enough and then we add the pain of testing our faith. All sorts of questions come to mind when God doesn't answer prayer; the scariest of all is the one calling into question the veracity of what we believe. If God says he will answer our prayers and my prayers don't get answered then maybe it's all a hoax. All of a sudden faith seems like a house of cards about to collapse.

I think this is where experience comes in. Our history with Christ becomes an anchor for the soul. In our confusion and desperation our minds cry out for something to grab hold of and the reality of our experience provides a footing. That happened. God revealed himself. He spoke to me. This is real. And from that ledge we catch our breath and re-assert our faith--I don't know why this has (or hasn't) happened but I do know God is good and He is in control; we remind ourselves of what is true and continue leaning on the nature of our Heavenly Father.

As Saul/Paul is on the way to Damascus (Acts 9) to keep the Way from spreading he encounters Jesus. This is a full on encounter: an audible voice, a vision--everything.

Here's what caught my attention: "The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone" (Acts 9:7). Later in Acts 22:9, Paul recounts the story and gives us a little more detail. Paul's companions heard the voice but did not understand it. This is an awful lot like John 12:29; the people heard the audible voice of the Father but did not understand it. They did not have ears to hear.

This begs the question: what is the role of experience in faith? For Paul the experience he had on the road to Damascus changed everything; it changed his understand of Scripture and his view of the nature of God. Before encountering Christ, people could have argued with Paul until they were blue in the face and he still would have strung them up. When we meet the risen Lord in a tangible way the experience provides a monument in the life of the faith. In our hearts, we pile 12 stones on top of each other to remind ourselves of what God has done. This was real. It happened. God met me here.

Many of the great men and women of the faith who have gone before mention the central role experience played in their life of faith. Blaise Pascal wrote his down on a sheet of paper and sewed it into his coat. We have no clue what it was--he never tells. We only know that when doubts battered his faith, he would rip open the stitching on his coat, take out the piece of paper and read it to himself. This was real. I don't know how to answer all the questions coming at me right now but I do know this event happened. You cannot argue with an experience. Paul says "God knocked me off my horse and you want to argue that He's a figment of my imagination?".

Paul's companions are a different story. Nowhere do we read about their interpretation of events. Paul lets us know in a single sentence they didn't get it. They were present for the experience but they were not participants in the experience.

This has a couple of applications for teaching on the Holy Spirit. First, it is completely inappropriate for someone to take their experience of God and shove it onto someone else. The "did you feel that?" type questions are fine, but there cannot be an expectation in the group that everyone will be affected in the same way. Second, we cannot discount someone else's experience just because we didn't have one. Paul says "I heard the audible voice of God!" and his companions say "Whatever Paul, it only thundered."

Spirit, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.

In reading through Acts, I'm being challenged in my current understanding of the Holy Spirit.

After the Spirit is given to the church in chapter 2, we see people receiving the Holy Spirit throughout the laying on of hands. "When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized ingot he name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 8:15-16).

It is my understanding that you cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit--we cannot be in Christ without the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9). My hunch is that this passage refers to something different than the initial filling of the Spirit upon believing in Jesus. (I know it's possible to interpret it as a salvation experience but I don't think it must be that.)

The phrase "baptism of the Holy Spirit" makes many uncomfortable in my circles, though Christ comes--according to John the Baptist--baptizing with the Holy Spirit and fire. Some people in the Reformed tradition use the term "empowered", some "Spirit-filled". Whatever the label, I can't get around the multiple in-fillings of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts (ch2 then again in ch4). Praying for the Spirit is more than a once-and-your-done kind of thing. If the apostles needed to be refilled with the Spirit (Acts 4:31) surely we do as well. How about we stop ignoring the supernatural aspect of our faith just because a couple of people take it too far? I know it's uncomfortable--we can't explain it and we can't control it--but when I read the gospels, I don't often see God concerning himself with whether or not we feel a bit silly.

Holy Spirit, come fill us again. Empower us to "speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus" (Acts 4:29b-30).

In preparation to move onto another journal I reread some of my old entries. The entry from last September reflecting on Graham Cooke's Language of Promise got me thinking about how faith and belief are a lot like probability and relative frequency. Probability is always future oriented; you attempt to discover the likelihood an event will happen. Relative frequency is always past oriented; based on past events we determine what has already happened. Relative frequency informs probability and, given enough events, approaches the ideal found in probability.

Likewise, faith is future oriented while belief bases itself on our experiences. Faith is always on the front edge of our current experiences. Once we experience something, that event moves towards our beliefs. Granted, we must intellectually and emotionally process what just happened in order to appropriate the experience. I don't need faith to believe in things God has already done in my life. I don't need faith to believe the Lord will provide for me; that's happened so many times it's moved into belief. My belief expands when my circumstances surrounding my need to trust go beyond what God has already done; then it requires faith to trust. As our experiences grow to meet our faith, our faith continues moving into deeper trust in the nature of God.

Believe it or not, I'm having some issues with our Bible reading plan; it's too fast for me. I never thought I'd say that, but I find myself wanting to liner longer in certain passages. The chapter a day routine is great for understanding the larger scope and context of the Bible, but it's not the best for a devotional reading of Scripture.

The end of Exodus is rich soil to spend time digging around looking for treasure. For example, take the following text from this last week's readings:

It strikes me that Presence distinguishes God's people from the rest of the world: not miracles, not political preference, not righteous living, not even correct theology. Some of these things are incredibly important but they aren't primary to the faith. Even the 12 Apostles' mandate of preaching, teaching, and healing came secondary to the primary calling to be with Jesus (Mark 3:14).

All the time and effort we spend as Christians trying to change ourselves by our own will and determination is wasted. Just like Moses came down from his encounter with God in Exodus 33-35 changed, so we are changed through encountering Christ. "And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18). We change by by being changed. Our hearts are transformed by being with Jesus. To borrow a phrase from Mike Bickle: "We become what we behold".

Holy Spirit, give us the grace to encounter the Risen Christ. Let our lives be marked by your Presence. Let our hearts hunger and thirst for more of you.