Lent: Day 4

Reading: Psalm 101: A Psalm of David (I will walk with integrity)


Reflections:
Yahweh, how I craved Your awful presence—a terrifying and holy place—a place in which I should be consumed!

My flesh cries out—don’t consume me, O awesome and terrifying God—my sin is so terrible, I can’t stand Your presence!

My soul finds rest in the fact that Jesus carried my sin on the cross so that I will not be consumed by the angry justice of God. Because of His death and His cleansing blood I boldly enter the terrifying and glorious presence of the Most High God!! As a result, I am perfectly safe in His presence!

How great Your love for us
How great our love for You!
--that Grace would cover us
How great Your love…for us![1]

My spirit cries out:

Holy, holy, holy!
Is the Lord God Almighty
The whole earth is full of His glory![2]

Stir it up in our hearts, Lord
A passion for Your Name
A passion for Jesus![3]

Consume me Holy fire
That nothing of me would remain!
Consume my stinking flesh!

For Yahweh is a consuming fire—a jealous God (Deut. 4:24, Hebrews 12:29)

Oh, Consuming Fire
Burn away my stinking sinful flesh
Purify my life from the vestiges of this world.

My flesh quivers and my mind screams out against such a though and what it means—I’ve been through this before!

My spirit still cries out “consume me that I would be more like You!
To be completely surrendered to You!
To let You flow freely and unhindered through me!”

I’ll set You as a seal upon my heart
As a seal upon my arm!

My heart and my soul vacillate between my flesh & my spirit.
The world and the armies of evil are allied with my flesh and arrayed against my spirit and work against this cry for Your consuming fire!

For these is a love that is as strong as death
Jealousy as demanding as the grave
And many waters cannot quench this love.

Yet, my spirit cries:

Come be the fire inside of me
Come be the flame upon my heart!
Come be the fire inside of me
Until You and I are one!

Then I remember—though the powers of this world and evil are arrayed against me, the Community of Faith and the Spirit of the Almighty are allied with my spirit!

You won’t relent until You have it all!
My heart is Yours![4]

Purify my life and help me live for You!

How can a young man keep his way pure? By living it according to Your Word (Psalm 119:9)

Yahweh God, I pray that I would:

• be conversant in Your ways and commandments that I find in Your Word;
• behave myself in a way that is consistent with Your ways, actions and teachings;
• have the center of my mind, intellect will; the way I view myself; the center of my very vitality be baptized and washed thoroughly with Your Word and processed according to Your ways, style and wishes.

[1] How Great by David Crowder
[2] a bunch of seraphim in heaven and saints gathered around the Throne
[3] Consuming Fire by Tim Hughes
[4] You Won’t Relent by Misty Edwards

Lent Day 1: Ash Wednesday Reflections

On Ash Wednesday, a group of student interns from school and I attended an Ash Wednesday service at St. Peter of the Rock Church. I then took the rest of the day off school to take a break from the school routine. These are some of my reflections throughout that day:

Wow! There is such a depth and reverence I felt while attending the Ash Wednesday service this morning. What community with the students I attended with as well as with our historical community of faith. ...Then to wear a cross on my forehead (my bald forehead) so that all can see it—this mark of acknowledgement of my sin and my repentance. My experience this morning elicits a variety of random thoughts in me:

• There is something in me that mourns the loss of the historic practice of our faith—and the deep and somewhat mystical reverence it brings. This is a vein of practice that I have craved for years—it is so rich and steeped in tradition. it is so full of physical and tangible reminders—the Stations of the Cross on the walls, the sign of the Cross the participants make, the mark on our foreheads, the responsive readings and exclamations….even a sense of biblical-ness with the “peace be with you”…”and also with you” deal. The reverence for the reading of the Word of God—so much increased for the reading of something from the Gospels.

Through out the service and in the sanctuary there was so much to remind us of God’s tremendously amazing self-sacrificing love for us. Very much like the starkly simple tradition God brought me up in—the focus of the Cross was so strong and culminated in communion. The kneeling and standing was great—it kept all my senses engaged.

The Plymouth Brethren in me craved more depth in the homily and the charismatic in me cried out for more unbridled celebration (though Ash Wednesday isn’t really designed to be a celebration…).

To me there is something about celebrating a common activity that believers around the world are also celebrating today and that believers throughout the centuries have celebrated—(referring to the Catholic mass). We’ve experienced something that our spiritual and blood ancestors experienced since the first millennia.

• Now to the wearing of a mark of my faith and spiritual condition—an ash mark in the shape of a cross on my forehead. It is something new to me. I’m rebuked as I think of how ashamed and embarrassed I am to carry a symbol of repentance and Christ’s sacrifice on my forehead—yet, God carried my sin and shame upon Him. Jesus still to this day carries the marks—the physical reminders of the Cross—on His hands and feet and n His side. So, how does it hurt me to wear ashes on my forehead in the shape of a Cross for the day?

But Supreme God intentionally demonstrated His unconditional self-sacrificing love regarding us, to the extent that while we were still being sinful, Christ was slain for us. Romans 5:8

I’m so bored of little gods
While standing on the edge of something large
While standing here so close You
--we could be consumed!

What a glorious day!

I give up
I lay down
Rest my face
Upon this ground
Lift my eyes
Up to Your sky
Rid my heart
Of all I hid
So sweet this surrender!!

How great Your love for us!
How great our love for You!
--that grace would cover us
How great Your love
How great!!

How marvelous
How brilliantly
Luminous
You shine in me
And who can fail
To give You awe
To fear You God
So sovereign & strong! (David Crowder)

Another thought that has come to mind as I wear this ash cross on my forehead, is what people think of me. I am known as a religious guy. Here I sit at McDonald’s-->I’m the pastor guy who comes and studies his Bible on Saturday and Sunday mornings. They, I’m sure, are not tremendously surprised at my mark—maybe I’m a bit more radical than they thought. To John-Mark’s scouting friends’ dads I’m the pastor guy. At school that’s kinda my rep. Yet, is my reputation and my heart condition the same? There are those who would just assume that I’m a spiritual guy—this cross of my forehead screams it—yet am I truly spiritual on the inside?

The Christian Response to Illegal Immigration & other things

While reading Isaiah 56 this morning, an old political philosophic thought ran though my head with new relevance. Isaiah 56 begins with the words: “Thus says the Lord: “keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed” (ESV). The passage continues to talk about God’s perspective on various populations in the land—one of them being the foreigners or aliens who had attached themselves to God’s people. To these aliens, He said to be faithful to Him and to honor His covenant and they too would be brought to His holy mountain—a place that He had also promised to His chosen people.

As I mulled over God’s perspective of these foreigners, a thought came to mind:

• The Christian response to the illegal alien is to demonstrate the love of Christ to them in order to bring them to Christ. As they come to Christ, part of the right living as a Christian will then be to deal with the difficult issue of their illegal status. Yet isn’t it better to act on God’s conviction in God’s timing than to act on a political agenda in our own timing?

This took me back to a lecture I used to give to my Civics classes on how to turn a republic around. The conclusion of that matter was that it was better and more effective to turn a republic back to a moral foundation and footing using evangelism rather than using the process of legislating morality.

The idea behind both of these positions is to change the heart of the people. If we were to point our neighbors and the aliens among us to Jesus Christ and make disciples of Jesus Christ of them (per the Great Commission), then it would improve the eternal direction of their life as well as change their perspective on what “quality of life” means. Both of these would be the result of their new personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This new relationship would cause them to be better family members, employees, employers, and American citizens. ultimately, this new relationship would influence them to vote along the lines of their new found morality in they’ve found in Jesus Christ and to elect fellow citizens to various offices with similar morality and priorities.

Caution! The end of illegal immigration and the change of political agenda should never be the motivation for evangelism!! However, it is the command of our King and the duty of each citizen of Heaven. An earthly byproduct of much lesser significance is that as their value system changes, so will their actions, habits and views. Any “Christian” who were to use evangelism simply as a tool to achieve a political or legal result is short sighted and stupid. The eternal destiny of each human being is of far more important that some political or legal agenda. The rules of the Kingdom of Heaven have a funny little habit of having byproducts that dramatically improve the earthly condition of society if followed by enough people. Another topic for another time would be the social & economic results of the rise of Christianity in the world and specifically in America—especially on the poor & abused, women, and minorities.

Back to the topic at hand. I began to think: maybe the #1 civic duty of a Christian American is to live righteously at home, in his neighborhood, and at work. This means to “to keep justice and do righteousness”—or to guard, protect and be circumspect regarding our judicial style, rights, and the decisions we make and to behave in the prosperity of rightness, rectitude, justice and virtue. Micah 6:8 says it similarly: “to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”

Wouldn’t it be something if the Christians in America would live out our faith in God rather than protect our interests in mammon and politics?

• …if we would respond to the socialist agenda in America by living out Social Justice as God desires.
• …if we would thwart communism by living in true community with our fellow believers and neighbors;
• …if the source of our inspiration would be centered around the person of Jesus Christ rather than the next or present greatest personality we can find to run for office;
• …if we would find our safety net in the “cleft of the Rock” and the “shadow of the Almighty” rather than in human government. And that we would bring people into this safety net with us so that they might find their security there!

If we would live in the prosperous fulfillment of our heavenly citizenship and answer the calling of our heavenly King; if we were to seek to advance the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth (like it is in heaven), rather than holding to a temporal view of wealth, prosperity, earthly citizenship, and political intrigue, then we would in exchange find that “as the things of earth grow strangely dim” we actually become better earthly citizens.

My Educational Theology 5: Summary & Conclusion

In summary, if the role of the parents has historically been to socialize and train their children vocationally; and if part of the historic role of the church is to train their children in their religious beliefs; and if western society and specifically American society has historically created a separate institution to assist in accomplishing these things, then a role of Christian education is to be the delegates of the Christian family. As delegates, the Christian school assists the parents in the socialization and vocational training of their children so that they enter the post high school world as productive godly Christian citizens in the world of business and in their calling to raise a family. The role of Christian education is to provide religious training so that the local community of believers have young people who are strong in the tenants of their common faith in Jesus Christ and are equipped and trained in how to serve and participate in the local church as the local church works to advance the Kingdom of God on this earth.

Christian education is the servant partner of the Christian family and the local church. Christian schools are to serve the community of local churches by preparing, equipping and training Christian young people who can think, create, analyze, process and produce from God’s perspective. Christian schools train up young people who are well trained in the Spiritual Disciplines and the accurate study of Scripture as well as vocationally and liberally trained as productive Christian citizens. The church looks to Christian schools to produce their best and brightest preachers, teachers, evangelists, prophets, apostles, artist, leaders, and servants. The church looks to Christian schools to produce the most excellent of business leaders and in a democracy to produce critical thinking politicians. All so that the work place is governed by the prosperous principals of the Gospel of Christ and the government is run by Scriptural principles resulting in peace and prosperity. Finally, the young men and women from Christian schools marry, have kids and raise up godly men and women to fuel a new generation.

In the future, I will post the rest of my theology of youth ministry:

• #6: Mentoring
• #7: The Value of Youth
• #8: Culturally Relevant Ministry
• #9: Wrapping It All Up

My Educational Theology 4: Education in America

As today’s western cultures and societies have evolved in the last 200 years, education has become a hybrid of the families’ vocational training and the religious communities’ religious training. Particularly in America, both early American families and the church founded a fourth institution—community education of children—to be a social benefit. The first public schools in America were established by the Puritans & Pilgrims in New England[1]. As America grew, expanded westward and prospered, this fourth institution began to be coordinated by the government. Originally schools in the west were established by citizen groups to the benefit of their children. As governments were organized and schools grew and education became of higher social premium and needed regular funding, schools came under the auspices of the local government. As local, state and federal governments grew in size and power and became increasingly liberal during the 1930’s, `40’s and `50’s, so did the power of the government over schools and the curriculum in the schools. During the late 20th Century, formal religion and religious teachings were forcibly removed from the public school system[2].

So western civilization has developed a culture in which the vocational training of children and much of their socialization has been given to the local schools. In America, that development has long been a part of our American culture and was embedded in Christian socialization and religious thought and ethics. Therefore, the secularization that our increasing liberal governments brought to our schools posed a difficult issue for American Christian parents. Do they leave their children in an increasingly secular training environment that has come under the influence of a secular-humanist system of thought and ethics and rely again on the family and the church to provide the religious and ethical socialization of their children or do they begin an entirely new brand of education that combines the more traditional American religious combination of vocational and religious education. Thus the Christian school movement of today shifted into high gear.

Recognition must be given to a number of Christian branches or denominations who have and continue to provide this combination of vocational and religious training for their children. They have set the model for the newer movement of “evangelical” Christians to establish their own versions of Christian schools. Many new evangelical Christian schools have followed the traditional models of the Catholic, Reform and Lutheran churches in starting schools in the basements of their churches.

Building on the American tradition of education and the model of older Christian denominations, a new unique feature in the modern rise of Christian schools is the multi-denominational approach to schools. This approach has at times proven difficult, yet very successful when schools are established to support the general Christian community (usually focusing on the Protestant evangelical version of Christianity to the exclusion of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Lutheran versions) in teaching shared values and doctrines. Christian schools have always been more than Christian people teaching “secular” topics such as math, reading, writing, the arts and the sciences. Christian education has always been about the dispensing and infusing of God’s truth not only through these “liberal arts”, but very specifically teaching young Christian children to “understand and obey the things Jesus taught” His disciples so that they may live godly lives, serve as witnesses of Jesus Christ to the lost[3], and teach others how to live godly lives[4].

[1] First public school promotes Christianity. Massachusetts Puritans found the first "free grammar school" in North America explicitly to teach religion. Puritan schools reflect the religious faith and values of a homogeneous community. Puritan minister John Cotton stresses "zeale is but a wilde-fire without knowledge." The Puritans' goal is to have a devout and well-educated community. Even in the 19th and early 20th century, U.S. public schools will remain de facto Christian institutions (1635: First Public School), (John Cotton). Also see America’s Godly Heritage [video] (Barton).
[2] (Barton)
[3] Acts 1:8
[4] 2 Timothy 2:2; 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Christian Education & the Kingdom of God

A few years ago, we were challenged to revision how to teach Bible at CSCS. In that process, I became convinced that it was not that we need a completely new and regenerate Bible Department, but that we need a new and regenerate view of “why Christian education”, “why Bible” and “why we emphasize Spiritual Life” (or Student Ministries as we call it at our school).

I believe that a revolution needs to happen in our perspectives of ourselves as a school; as individuals at the school; or our students and their parents; of our position in this city, state, nation and world; and in the realm of Christian education.

The perspective that I feel we need to have can be described in a “we should not be” perspective or in a “should be” perspective”. I will attempt to project a positive vision of what we could be rather than a vision that appears to be reactionary to what we currently are.

Since we are Christian schools we need to look at things from the perspective of Christ—the One whom we follow and are equipping and empowering our students to follow. Jesus Christ taught us to pray that God’s Kingdom would come and His will would be done on this earth as it is in heaven. Our overall prayer for our Christian schools, as institutions and as bodies of believers, needs to be that God’s Kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth in our day, in each student’s life and in every class that graduates from our schools. Our prayer and ambition in and through our Christian schools is that God’s Kingdom would come and His will be done in all the policies, operations, budgets, curricula and decisions at that our schools make so that His will would be done in our lives and in the lives of our students; and that we as individuals and an institution would be His instrument through which God’s Kingdom comes and His will is done in our cities, around our states, throughout the country and to the ends of the earth.

Jesus, before leaving this earth gave His followers some instructions on how to see His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He said this:

• All authority and power has been given to Me and you will receive that power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You are to go and be My witnesses to all the earth, beginning in Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria and ultimately to the ends of the earth. You are to preach the Good News to everyone, making disciples of those who believe and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. And be sure of this: I am always with you and will work with you until the very end of this age. --A combination of translations
  

I believe that our Christian school can play a more instrumental role in the advancing of God’s Kingdom and will on this earth without changing many of the programs, but in rather changing perspectives and filters. I believe that if we filter our current policies, budgets, programs, curricula—everything—through such a filter that it will truly make our school distinct in the Christian Education community, in the competitive community of education in the region and in the Kingdom of God. I suggest that we say the following:

• In order that the Kingdom of God may come and the will of God be done in our day, in this generation, both in our lives and around the world, we will make disciples of our students and empower them with spiritual programs that are age appropriate, academically sound, and biblically consistent. They will be taught by biblically spiritual men and women who are academically, relationally and culturally prepared to teach them at each level. We will then provide complementary programs of excellent education as well as quality athletics, fine arts and training in leadership, service and ministry. We will do this so that upon completion of a students time at our school, our students will be young men and women who are skilled, empowered and prepared to continue to advance the Kingdom of God and His will for them individually and their generation and to the ends of the earth.

My Educational Theology 3: The Government & the Church

The second institution that we see God establishing is that of the civil government. The civil government is God’s agent on earth designed and delegated by God to keep order on the earth. Human government is designed by God to protect and defend the rights and freedoms that He gave to mankind. It is not important to spend a great deal of time discussing the civil government in this paper, but it is important to recognize its institution at this point in my discussion.

The final institution we see that God sets up in the Scriptures is the local church. The Church is the community of God’s ambassadors of His kingdom on earth[1]. The role of the church is to bear witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ on this world that all people might have an opportunity to know God and the salvation of Jesus Christ. The church is then charged to disciple those who believe in Jesus and are saved and to teach them to obey everything that Jesus commanded His disciples[2].

Schools have historically developed as outgrowths of families training their children for vocations and churches training their youth people in the doctrines of the church (catechism). For ages parents either trained their own children in the family vocation or they made arrangements with other families to train their children in an alternative vocation. For a period in history, this developed into the system of apprentices, journeymen and masters as well as the more noble system of pages, squires, knights and lords. On the other hand, schools have also grown out of a variety of religious traditions where the religious community provides religious training for their youth—this is best exemplified by the three great monotheistic world religion: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

[1] 2 Corinthians 5:20
[2] Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-18; Acts 1:8.