Spiritual Ponderings

The following is a very brief outline of some thoughts I had recently on authority. And Jesus came and said to them, " All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always , to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20 NRSV) If Jesus has all authority and He is with us always, then that means that His authority can be with us all the time. But what does authority really mean and how are we supposed to relate to it? There is also counterfeit authority, and it will assert itself as being legitimate, even to the point of using deception and force to get people to believe it must be recognized. We are much more accustomed to the counterfeit kind of authority than we are in living under true, godly authorities. And then the lawless one will be rev...

As I was lying in bed praying this morning before I got up, the verse about submitting to God came to my mind and I began to realize that I have always had a subtle resistance or feeling of resentment connected with that word. I mulled that feeling over in my mind to unmask what might be embedded in the word that makes me feel so uneasy and it didn't take long to identify the cause. From my experience with authorities in particular, the word 'submit' has usually, if not always, been associated with a forced submission to abusive misuse of power by others to control or suppress me. Whether it was spiritual abuse or abusive exercise of power by governmental authorities, I have had many experiences that have caused my heart to recoil from this word 'submit'. But as I pondered this problem of my heart, I noticed that the way God uses the word 'submit' in James 4 is in direct contrast with the word 'resist'. It then became clear to me that once again ...

I am not an avid football fan, but many years ago I learned the rules of the game mostly because I was tired of being bored. That may sound like a strange reason, but the fact was that my wife and I were visiting friends over the holidays and we were all not feeling well. Since we couldn't do much more than lay around the house and since our friends were football fanatics and had it on the TV, I found myself very confused by the terminology and the numbers of 'downs' and all the running around and excitement over a ball bouncing around here and there. So I insisted that my friend explain what in the world was going on so that at least it would make sense if I had to watch it anyway. So, that is how it came to be that I learned the basics about football – American football that is, since all the rest of the world finds it strange that we don't understand much about what all the world outside our country considers real football. Learning the basics about football did ...