Insights on Life Archives - IN DEFENSE OF TRUTH

ON FUNDAMENTAL REALITY

There are four fundamental questions in life that demand an answer. Every one of us would like to know why we are here, what is right and wrong for us, the meaning of our life, and what will happen to us when we die. Origin, meaning, morality and destiny; on these four fundamentals hinge everything you are and all you hope to be.

Academia and the scientific community would like to tell us we are here as the product of an evolutionary cycle that started millions of years ago. They would tell us our purpose in life is to be happy, that right and wrong are what we choose them to be, and that if there is an afterlife, it will be determined by our goodness.

Each of the great world religions address one or more of the issues in question, but they don’t adhere to reality. For Buddhism, nirvana is found in the extinction of all desire. Islam would have us believe Jesus Christ did not die on a cross and that eternal bliss is promised only to those who have earned it by living a good life.

But the best answer to the four fundamental issues in question——origin, meaning, morality, and destiny–is found in the Christian faith. Only here do we discover we have been created “in God’s image” and are privileged to live as His emissaries on earth. And only in the Christian faith does one find forgiveness for sin, a challenge to model the life of our Lord, a moral standard that protects one from evil, and the promise of heaven, too.

During my high school days, a close friend once said, “Scott, you must be a saint! You can’t do anything!” Well … a saint I am not. I am a simple man, created in the image of God, privileged to serve as a living model of Jesus Christ to my generation. I have been given a moral standard that keeps me from doing something counter-productive, and at the end of my journey, heaven too!

And what God has done for me, He can do for you. So check it out, study the record, consider the alternatives, and discover for yourself that ours is a good God Who wants only what is for your best. And God’s best is personified in Jesus, the Perfect Model of who and what God created you and me to be. He will give purpose to your existence and direction to your life, and in tough times like these, that is a faith you can live by!

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On Becoming the Best You Can Be

There is a basic truth, a fundamental principle, that lies behind my writing and everything I do: God wants you and me to be the best we can be! No matter who we are, what we have done, or what we believe, God loves us so much He is committed to this one, great objective: that you and I might become the best we can be!

It is here we discover the reason God invites us into a personal relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ. A new standard of values, a new sense of right and wrong, and a new source of strength have made this the turning point in the life of every believer.

And, it is here, too, we discover the reason behind the limitations God places on our freedom. God wants only what is best for us and knows, because of the way He made us, that we are prone to push our freedoms to extremes. He made us with powerful drives, character traits necessary to our survival, and invites us into a partnership of intelligent cooperation that we might not self-destruct.

As I reflect on my checkered career, and those decisions that changed the course of my life––some made in a matter of minutes––I have often wondered how different my journey might have been had I been able to foresee the future. If only is a question many of us have asked of ourselves, but it does little good to recriminate. The past is behind us; we can’t change what has been.

There have been times I excelled and made my family proud; then there have been those times that prompt me to blush in shame. But I can’t undo the past, and if I could, I’m not sure I would change a thing. The low points, and the high points, have all contributed to who and what I am today. But God has been there through it all, carefully monitoring my progress, helping me learn from the experience, making me into the man I could have become in no other way.

The Apostle Paul once wrote, “God demonstrated His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” With no strings attached, without any assurance you and I would even care, God gave His very best that you and I might become our very best! The kicker here, however, is that it all begins when, and only when, we welcome Jesus Christ as the Lord of our lives. There is no other way.

From Discarded Refuse – A Masterpiece! –

In 1501, a twenty-six-year-old Italian artist was given an unfinished sculpture and commissioned to create a statue of the Biblical hero David for the Cathedral of Florence. To be created from a huge block of granite, it seemed to many an impossible task. But Michelangelo saw something others had missed and in three years’ time, he was able to create a masterpiece that has been hailed by many as the greatest statue created by human hands.

The original commission had been given Agostino di Duccio in 1464. He got as far as shaping the legs, feet and the torso, but abandoned the project in 1466. Ten years later Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to pick up where Duccio had left off but his commission was soon cancelled.

For the next twenty-five years, this block of marble lay discarded, exposed to the elements in the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo. It was, for some, a useless piece of refuse. But Opera authorities, hoping to resurrect the dead project, commissioned Michelangelo to see if he could breathe life into the inert piece of stone.

The two previous artists had abandoned the project, convinced that imperfections in the stone might threaten the stability of the statue. But Michelangelo looked past the defects and saw what it could be. For the next three years, he chiseled away at the excess, and from the huge piece of granite, there emerged a stunning masterpiece.

The depiction of David, poised and ready for combat, was inherent in the stone all along. It only took the vision and endeavor of a master sculptor to bring it to light. And that is how God sees you and me.

“We are God’s masterpiece.” writes the Apostle Paul. “He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”

“Jesus didn’t die just to get us off the hook. He also died to resurrect the person we were destined to be before sin distorted the image of God in us. And He doesn’t just set us free spiritually. He also sets us free emotionally and relationally and intellectually. We are held captive by so many things. We’re held captive by our imperfections and insecurities. We’re held captive by our guilt and anxiety. We’re held captive by expectations and lies and mistakes. Jesus died to set us free from all the above. … He sets us free to become who we were meant to be.” (Mark Batterson, Soulprint, p. 11).

We may be haunted by failure, overwhelmed with guilt, and limited by our mistakes, but in God’s kingdom, our deficiencies do not determine our destiny. Our God is a God of second chances. He knows who we are, but He also knows what we can become. The world may see a hardened, marred piece of granite; God sees a masterpiece.

God has a unique plan for your life, a destiny that is different from that of anyone who has ever lived. He wants to take you as you are and where you are, that He might remold you into something you could never be without Him. In the hands of the Master Craftsman, you too can discover there is no limit to what God can do when He finds a willing heart.

There is a Difference

The city of Cusco was but a small Peruvian town in 1949, but to this 10-year-old lad, the son of missionary parents, it was home. Far from being the tourist mecca it has become today, it was a typical Andean city of some 60,000 residents, with one short, gravel runway, only one Hotel we could recommend, and no restaurants of note. The streets were of stone, and the churches were magnificent, and reminders of the city’s Inca heritage could be seen throughout the city.

Sunday mornings were different from any other I have experienced during my many years in South America. Some time around 8 a.m. church bells began to ring, calling the faithful, most of whom did not own a clock, to Sunday Morning Mass. Each church had a distinctive set of bells and as the noise of perhaps twenty churches reverberated across the city and bounced off the surrounding hills, it was an early-morning wake-up call I will never forget.

If you ever have the chance, a visit to Cusco will be the highlight of your traveling experiences. There is a difference, however, between enjoying a quick visit to the city or to Machu Picchu and living there. A few days in the mountain air gives you only a glimpse of what this Andean culture is all about. You must go shopping in the open market, converse with someone who speaks little but Quechua, and survive the taxing demands of catching your breath at 11,000 feet. A quick visit will never do; you must become a part of the culture.

You may be wondering where I am going with all of this … so, to the point.

There is a difference in knowing about God and truly knowing Him. We want to spend eternity with God, but we’d be pleased if He’d leave us to our own agenda. We want happiness without holiness, success without self-discipline, sanctification without sacrifice.

But until you experience a relationship with God for yourself you don’t know what Christianity is all about. God has no grandchildren; you cannot inherit your parents’ faith. This is one discovery you must make for yourself.

And it is then, and only then, that you find God to be far different from the stern, demanding, autocrat He is sometimes pictured to be. He everything you would expect from a compassionate, understanding, and patient Father.

Living for God is not a spectator sport. You can’t sit on the sidelines. It is only as you become a part of the action, face the enemy of your soul and overcome the influence of sin, that you find a reason to cheer.

Promises must be put into practice. The theoretical must become experiential. The talk must be sanctioned by your walk. What you claim you must live. To know about Him is one thing; living for Him is something else … and you won’t know what you’re missing until you do.

The Price of Success

In the New Testament book of Hebrews, we read: “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt.” Of Hebrew origin, he was the adopted grandson of society’s most powerful and wealthy man … and everything life had to offer was available to him.

Despite the ease and comfort available to him as an Egyptian Prince, Moses chose instead to be identified with his Hebrew family. When he was 40 years old, things finally came to a head. He killed an Egyptian who was abusing one of the Hebrews and had to flee for his life. For the next 40 years, giving up on any dreams of greatness he might have had, he became a shepherd to his father-in-law in southern Arabia. The “pleasures of sin,” the sumptuous life-style, the educational opportunities, the benefits of power – all lay behind him.

But God had not abandoned him. At 80 years of age, God called on him to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt into a 40-year journey through the wilderness of Arabia, to the land promised to Abraham centuries before. Moses, who had spent forty years in Egypt thinking he was somebody, spent 40 years shepherding sheep convinced he was a nobody, only to discover that God can take a nobody and make a somebody out of him – so long as he is willing to pay the price for his success.

But that is God’s way. He is more than able – and willing – to take us as we are and where we are and make us be the best that we can be. That I believe to be true whether we acknowledge Him or not. But taking Him seriously and following the guidelines He has laid out for us, changes everything. A godly life may demand self-discipline and surrender to His will, something that unfortunately most people do not find the least bit appetizing, but as Moses discovered for himself, it beats anything a self-centered and godless life has to offer.

God’s plan for our life, however, can only be discovered “from the inside out.” In Jesus Christ we find enough evidence to substantiate the fact that our faith in God is not misplaced. It is to our advantage, far above anything life without God has to offer, to take a step of faith, accept Jesus Christ as the Lord of our life, and discover for ourselves that the promises of God have not been exaggerated; God is as good as His word!

You want to talk about it? Hit me up at [email protected]

Dream Impossible Dreams

Our weaknesses and misgivings notwithstanding, nothing should be allowed to hold us back from attempting the apparently impossible when we know our Heavenly Father approves. We serve a great and powerful God and He is anxious to demonstrate His greatness through human beings just like you and me.

Matthew Barnett came to Los Angeles with a lofty dream: to establish a mega-church in the city of Angels. It wasn’t going to happen.

As Matthew was walking through Echo Park, God gave him a new vision: to establish a ministry to the lost and hurting in downtown Los Angeles. It would not be a conventional church. He dreamed of establishing a hospital for the hurting, a place of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing for those in desperate need.

With a remarkable faith in the greatness of God, he was driven by a passion for the down-trodden in central Los Angeles. Like the Psalmist, “My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned” (Psa. 39:3). And then he learned the Queen of Angels Hospital, owned by the Catholic Church, was up for sale.

Reality says, “Don’t be a fool!” Faith says, “Why not!”

They were seeking to sell it for $25 million, and an offer was already on the table from Paramount Studios for $15 million. They made an offer of $3.9 million, not mentioning they only actually had $30,000 in the bank.

As recounted in her book, Willing to Walk, Caroline Barnett writes, “The nuns accepted their offer with one stipulation — the mortgage had to be paid off within eighteen months. Matthew and [his father] Tommy morphed into fund-raising roadrunners. For the next year and a half, they made phone calls, they traveled, and they talked to anyone who could help. At the eleventh hour, which seems to be God’s favorite time, the last $2 million came through.”

The history of Trinity Temple, the church I established in Camp Hill, PA. in 1968, was much more modest. But a crisis three years into our ministry was just as critical to our future.

Through a series of events I can no longer reconstruct, Trinity Temple acquired a small but lovely Methodist-Episcopal church building in West Fairview, PA. Complete with a working bell-tower and irreplaceable stained-glass windows, it was perfect for our needs. We installed front-to-back royal blue carpeting, a floor-to-ceiling light-blue set of drapes behind the platform, set off by golden chandeliers throughout. Unbelievable! Trinity Temple was back in business!

Contiguous to our property, an all-brick school building the school district had abandoned came on the market. The bottom-line asking price was $13,000 cash, a steal for the size of the building, but for our small congregation of some 80 people an impossible dream. We prayed about it and I invited the congregation to join me in a true venture of faith and offered $13,000. I held my breath — or perhaps, more correctly, I stopped breathing — as I came to the board meeting in charge of the sale. We were the only bidders! We raised the $13,000; Trinity Temple was in business again!

Venture to do great things for God. He can still do the apparently impossible for those who dare to trust Him. The life to which God has called us will seldom be equal to our strength. He challenges us to a walk of faith that demands His intervention or we fail.

Dream impossible dreams!

You want to talk about it? Hit me up at [email protected]