Lasting Impressions

I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was sitting in my third grade class at Eastside Elementary School when the principal came over the intercom and announced that President Kennedy had been shot. Our teacher turned on the radio, and we soon learned from a choked-up Walter Cronkite that Kennedy had died. For those who were old enough to remember that day, we all know where we were and what we were doing when we got the news that the President had been assassinated. That made a lasting impression on us.

I also remember when Martin Luther King met his death at an assassin's bullet at a hotel in Memphis. I remember when my parents woke me up gently on a Saturday morning I believe to tell me that Bobby Kennedy had been shot and killed the night before while campaigning in California. Those were lasting impressions.

O.J. Simpson dazzled football fans the nation over with his lightning-fast speed, quick moves, and numerous touchdowns as a running back in college and in the pro ranks. To this day, though, I can't remember one of them, because the lasting impression I have of O.J. Simpson has nothing to do with football, but with charges of murder, his Bronco ride get-away, and the sham of a trial where he was acquitted "because the glove did not fit."

The same can be said of Michael Jackson. I wish I could say that I chiefly remember that little boy-teenager-young man with his incredible singing voice and dance moves. However, the lasting impression for me of MJ has nothing to do with the songs he sang or the moon walk he created, but the continuous disfiguring of his face and the pedophile accusations that hovered over him.

The lion of the Senate has died, and the era of Camelot has come to an end. To this day, I don't remember much about the speeches that Teddy Kennedy gave, or the votes he made in the Senate, or all the political posturing he did. What comes to my mind first and foremost when I think of Senator Edward Kennedy is when I saw unfold on TV at the age of fifteen the news about his car accident that killed a female passenger of his. I remember his walking around with a neck brace, and I remember his trying to defend his strange actions after the accident. I asked myself then how can a person get away with what he did. We know the answer to that question. Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne made more a lasting impression on me than anything else associated with Senator Kennedy.

We all have our lasting impressions, and they differ from person to person, but lasting impressions are real and forever etched in our memories.

For those who discount the notion that a born again, forgiven, redeemed child of God is always at all times securely kept by God's grace, then we have to assume according to this line of thought that God is not able to make a lasting impression on us. Other events and other people can do that to us, but omnipotent God is somehow unable to complete what He started, that our salvation which is here today can be gone tomorrow, and what God did when He saved us can be easily erased, forgotten and discarded. So much for lasting divine impressions!

I find this line of thought repulsive and a slap in the face of a sovereign God. Salvation is not ours to lose; it is His to keep. The perseverance of the saints (the "P" in the acronym TULIP) is as scriptural as the deity of Christ and the inerrancy of Scripture. I can see, though, how a person can believe that our salvation is tentative at best. If a person believes that salvation is somehow a joint effort between God and man, that man had a pivotal role to play in his getting in by the exercise of his unregenerate will, then it only follows that man's will can play a pivotal role in his getting out. God is less than sovereign at the beginning of our salvation, and He is less than sovereign during our salvation. It has consistency going for it, but foolish consistency has nothing going for it.

If God got us in, then God can and will keep us in. "Being confident of this very thing, that God who began a good work in us will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6) If we don't believe in God's sovereign grace in our salvation, his unconditional election of lost sinners, his regenerating power through the effectual call of God's Spirit, then we are left with no confidence at all. If we began a good work in us, then it won't be completed at the day of Jesus Christ. If it is possible for us to lose our salvation, then it is not possible, it is not even probable, it is certain that we all will lose it. I pity the poor soul who lives under constant dread because he thinks what he does today may determine his eternal destiny, instead of believing that our salvation is determined by what was predetermined before the foundation of the world.

We look unto Jesus, "the author and finisher of our faith." (Hebrews 12:2) The One who authored or gave us the faith to believe in the first place is the same One who will see us cross the finish line. God is sovereign all the way through. Now that's a lasting impression.

Jesus could not have made it any plainer when He said in John 6:37, "All that the Father has given to me (election) shall come to me (irresistible grace), and him that comes to Me I will in no way cast out (perseverance of the saints)." Two verses later Jesus would state it again, "And this is the Father's will who has sent Me, that of all He has given me (election) I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day (perseverance of the saints)."

Now what is it about those two verses we can not understand?

My New Testament college professor put it wisely and succinctly, "When you see a falling star, you know it is not a star, because stars do not fall. Meteors do, but not stars." What about all those innumerable professing Christians that give no evidence of a changed life and seem to have fallen? What about all those "inactive" church members (a category unheard of in the New Testament)?

Could it be when we get away from teaching and preaching that salvation is solely the work of God, then we are more inclined to resort to means and measures where we play on people's emotions to squeeze a decision out of them, so the end result much of the time is not a convert of God, but a proud convert of ours? No wonder God has not made a lasting impression on many folks like that. If we begin a work in others, don't expect it to last. As Charles Spurgeon said, "We don't need to strike when the iron is hot. When God heats the iron, it will stay hot."

Scriptures teach the perseverance of the saints, and not the perseverance of the phony pretenders. Scriptures teach the perseverance of the sheep, and not the perseverance of the goats. Scriptures teach the perseverance of the wheat, and not the perseverance of the tares. Scriptures teach the perseverance of Jesus' friends, and not the perseverance of His enemies. Scriptures teach the perseverance of the children of light, and not the perseverance of the children of darkness.

Those who persevere in the faith are those whom God has preserved in His grace. And those who persevere in the faith are those who will "give all diligence to make their calling (irresistible grace) and election sure." (2 Peter 1:10) God's grace is not the excuse for laziness on our part; it is the best motivator and power behind all obedience. (Titus 2:11-14) Such was the theology behind John Newton's second verse to his most famous hymn.

Salvation from God is not hanging by a thread; it is forever secured by the One who was hanging on a tree on our behalf. His blood forgives us of all past sin, present sin and future sin. To say that our salvation is iffy from day to day is akin to saying that Jesus can forgive us of all past sin and present sin, but He is simply not up to it to forgiving us of all our future sin. Now that's a lasting depression!

"Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen." (Jude 24-25)

I can say that there have been many events and people in history that have made a deep impression on me, but they are nothing compared to the eternal impression that God has made on my soul. This is why I am confident that He, the author and finisher of my faith, who began a good work in me will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ.

Kept by God's grace,

Chris

Doing Personal World Missions Without Leaving Your Home

After the school year began in 1992, I got a phone call from a foreign exchange student organization that was sending out a desperate S.O.S. for a high school senior from Spain. As pastor of a church in that town, this organization's area representative wanted me to make an announcement at church to see if anyone in our church would like to be a host family for this boy that had recently come from Spain to study in our country for one school year. The boy had in just a few weeks had been shuffled to two different homes in our town, and neither home could be his permanent residence.

So I made the urgent appeal from the pulpit and in our church newsletter, and just like it is a good idea for pastors to listen to their own sermons from time to time, I began to listen to this announcement more closely. Long story short, Juan Luis Vega Jimenez came to live with our family, and we could not have been more delighted with God's providential workings for that entire school year. Juan became an integral part of our family, a big brother to our two very young girls at the time. We had such a pleasurable experience, that we decided to host another student the following year. This time we got a boy from Uzbekistan; Alisher (Alex) Abdaliev had a different personality than Juan, and he came from a totally different culture, to say the least. Still, we had again a memorable time that school year, and we made another friend for life. Alex was there at the birth of our third daughter.

Since my wife had three children at home, all pre-school age, we decided my wife needed a breather, so we did not opt for a third year in a row in hosting an international student. My father would die later that year anyway, so everything worked out well in our not hosting for a third consecutive year. We had all intention in hosting again, but other providential turn of events made it unfeasible for us to host again for the years to come.

We still have the most wonderful memories from those two years. I could tell story after story to illustrate that point, but I will keep it short. Juan came back to see us a few years later; he brought his fiance with him, so that he could get approval from his American parents. Juan is now in his mid 30s, married, with children. We kept in touch a lot, but with our move, Juan's move, different email addresses now, I have not communicated with him for awhile, but through a google search, I think I have been able to find him. So I plan on getting in touch with him by snail mail soon. Juan supposedly made a profession in Christ while he was with us, but I don't know to this day the genuineness of his profession. He came from a long line of Catholics, like nearly everyone in Spain, that he told me he would have a hard time in finding a non-Catholic church like ours in his home country, and still be in favor with his family.

As for Alex, his story had a very interesting turn. Alex came from a predominantly Muslim country, but Alex and his family were nothing. They had no religious affiliation of any kind. Alex became a part of our family, and as a result went to church with us. Again to save time, Alex during the last few months he was with us, stopped going to church, because as we found out, he was under heavy conviction from God. He told us he did not want to be saved, because he knew he would be all alone in his country. He did not know of any Christians in his home town. Of course, we respected Alex's wishes, but we kept praying for him.

Back in Uzbekistan, Alex took a Spanish class from a visiting professor from Panama, who was not only a Christian but very reformed in his theology. Alex was converted to Christ under this professor's influence, and he wrote back to me in an email in glowing terms of his testimony. He forgot at the time that he was to be not so open in his email communication, due to the fact that emails are screened over there. We have to write in coded language most of the time, especially when it comes to religious matters. He is married, has a family now, is teaching in a university somewhere in Central Asia, was involved in a prison ministry, and just two weeks ago I got another email from him.

When we were hosting Juan and Alex, it occurred to us we were doing personal world missions in the comfort of our own home. I have never been able to go on a mission trip yet in my life, and at one time in my life, I thought God was leading me into foreign missions. As it turned out, I went to Michigan and Ohio to do church planting, and from an Okie's perspective, that was very close to foreign missions. (I don't mean to offend Michiganders and Buckeyes.)

Most of us will never do foreign missions. We can pray for and financially support foreign missionaries; those are good things we should all do. We can go on a week-long mission trip overseas with our church or with some organization, but most Christians will not do that or can not do that for a variety of reasons, chiefly among them it can be quite expensive even for just one member of a family.

There has been a raging "discussion" for years if all of our short-term mission trips from our country to another country are really helpful in the long run. Some will describe them as "glorified vacation trips" for young people and adults. Considering finances alone, some will point out that the money a group from a church spends on doing a one-week mission trip could be better used in fully supporting a new missionary and his family on the field, who can be there year-round and not just for one week. Some missionaries have told me that in many cases the well-intentioned groups come with their Americanized methodologies that simply do not work in other cultures, and they have had to clean up some messes left behind by the visiting mission groups.

With that being said, and to be fair, good points can be made by the other side, because I know that these mission trips can be life-changing experiences for those who go, that missionaries can be greatly encouraged in the process, much spiritual good for all eternity can be accomplished, and God has used these short-term mission projects to confirm in the hearts of young and old alike that they need to enter the mission field on a full-time basis. So it is not my intention to come down on one side of this argument, but to use some of the points made to talk about the obvious advantages of doing personal world missions without even leaving your own home.

The Bible does say we are to take the gospel to every creature. We all have our Jerusalems, but there are Judeas, Samarias and the ends of the world out there. We can go to them; that is one way, and we have been pursuing that for 2000 years now. But what if God brings the Judeas, Samarias and the ends of the world to us? That has been happening in the United States for a very long time now. How many immigrants come to live here and eventually become U.S. citizens, and how many college students are there from other countries who come here for their education, either to stay here afterwards or to return to their home country after getting their degrees? Travel and communication--citing just two examples--have made this world a much smaller place, and it has brought the world to us.

I may never go to Spain in my lifetime, and if I do go, it will be for a very short time in all likelihood. Much more doubtful is my traveling to a place like Uzbekistan. But guess what? I know a young man in Uzbekistan, who lives there, grew up there, is from there, has more connections there than I ever would have, and is being a witness for Christ where I can not be a witness for Christ. And it was all because God made it possible for me, along with my entire family, to be involved in personal world missions for nine months, and not just for one week. Remember Jesus invested over three years of His life into a small group of men. Jesus was not a world traveler, but these men became that. If you can not become a world traveler, then all is not lost, because there is more than one way to skin a cat. God can bring the world to you.

Since I grew up as "cost analysis" type of child and teen (my mother would have phrased it differently, but we won't go into that) and due to my educational background in finance and business and jobs I held in those sectors, I am always looking for ways to get the best bang for my buck. I did the numbers, roughly speaking, and the cost of room and board for an international student in my home for nine months is an insignificant drop in the bucket compared to the cost of my entire family going on a mission trip to anywhere in the world for one week.

I know this has already become a lengthy article, but "finally, brethren" (Paul said that in Philippians 3:1 and he was only halfway through his letter, so hold on. . .) some years ago I became an area rep for OCEAN (Organization for Cultural Exchange Among Nations). I wanted to be an area representative way back when we had Juan and Alex, because I was fully convinced that this was a golden opportunity for a Christian family to be a witness for Christ and do world missions within their own four walls of their home. I get to match up students with potential host families.

OCEAN is such a wonderful organization with very high moral standards. Their process is very detailed and structured. All students must go through intense times of orientation in their home country and when they arrive here initially before they go to their respective host families. OCEAN will only accept top-notch students, academic-wise and in terms of character. They must pass a battery of tests, including English proficiency. They must have very good grades, they can not have any blemishes on their records in terms of behavioral misconduct, (they can not smoke, drink, do drugs or partake of any immoral or dangerous activities while they are here), they must come with numerous recommendations from teachers, principals, and other respected individuals who know them well. The parents who send their children here must pay a big sum of money for their student-child to partake of this American experience, so there is much financial incentive that nothing goes wrong while the student is here.

Some of the students who come here are already Christians, like the young man from South Korea, whom I helped place some years ago. Next week I will be traveling up to Tulsa because a 17-year old girl from Germany has just arrived, and I need to meet with the host family. Usually I interview the host family first before a student arrives, but there were special needs in this case. But this 17-year old from all accounts is not a Christian. From everything I have heard she is a very courteous, friendly, intelligent, sports-inclined, beautiful and helpful girl who on her bio put down she is open to "religion", but does not attend the Protestant church in Germany frequently. Her mother left her, her older sister and her dad a few years ago, and her dad is raising both her and her sister. It is a heart-breaking story, but here again is an opportunity for this host family and for me to sow the Word in the heart of a girl from a country we may never get to visit.

If the host family attends church regularly, then the international student will do as well, because for one thing, he or she wants to do everything the family does, and also because the student generally wants to experience as much as American culture as possible while here. If that means attending church, then he or she will definitely attend church.

The neat thing about my being a rep is that I get to choose who will be host families, which means I want only strong, consistent, loving Christian families to be host families for these incoming students. OCEAN does not believe in advertising for people to become host families; you can get a lot of takers doing something like that, but many of those kind of takers are not to be taken. A host family must undergo a background check, must be interviewed by the rep, must meet a lot of realistic standards, must come with good recommendations from others, must fill out necessary paperwork, etc. OCEAN is just as picky about host families as it is about students.

The host family provides room and board throughout the school year. The student's own family back home will provide money for all other expenses, so the costs are really minimal, but the rewards are maximum. The student does not need necessarily his or her own bedroom, just so long he or she has a separate bed. The student becomes part of the family for the school year. The host family gets to pick which student it wants from all the bios and paperwork we have on students coming in from everywhere. The host family can pick which student it wants based upon such things as country of origin, gender, age (all are high schoolers, though), interests, personality, family upbringing, religion, and other factors.

I know not everyone can be a host family for a number of reasons. Right now our family falls in that category ourselves. But there may be a lot out there that can host, if not this year (some students come in January and stay until the following December; most students come in August and stay through the following May), then maybe sometime soon in the near future. Maybe they have not considered this option or opportunity before with much thought. I have laid out the personal world missions angle, so perhaps God is calling some of you to be a foreign missionary in your own home. . .

For all those who live within a 100-mile radius of me, I am the area rep for OCEAN. I will be your go-to guy, and I will stay in constant contact with host families and all students. I see this as a joyful ministry on my part. For all those who live outside that radius, and even for those who don't but who want to check out things further, you can contact OCEAN, whose headquarters are in Tempe, Arizona, at 1-800-28-OCEAN or go to http://www.oceanintl.org/ for more information.

I don't sell Amway or Avon, but I am really sold on this, because I can't think of a better way to redeem the time and be involved in personal world missions, where God can bring the Judeas and Samarias and the ends of the world to our own personal Jerusalem.

Yours in Christ,
Chris

Back to the Future, Forward to the Past

"History teaches us that man learns nothing from history."

"There is nothing new under the sun."

When the War of Independence ended, King George III of England signed a peace treaty with each individual state, named one by one in the document, and not with some obtrusive, consolidated entity called "the United States government."

Each state had accumulated an amount of war debt. Some states, like Virginia, were more responsible and diligent than others in paying off their debt, but other states, like northern Massachusetts, dragged their feet in paying off their debt. The first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed socializing or nationalizing the debt, which would force the more responsible states to foot the bill for the less responsible states.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed Hamilton's radical socialist attempt to disrupt the sovereignty of the individual states. They and others led Congress to defeat Hamilton's assumption plan five times, beginning in April 1790. Hamilton then used one last big bargaining chip. He and his supporters wanted the nation's capital to remain in New York City; Jefferson and Madison, being Virginians themselves, wanted the capital to be located along the Potomac River in Virginia. Hamilton went to dinner with Jefferson and offered to eliminate the political opposition to moving the capital to Virginia if, in return, Jefferson and Madison would marshal the congressional votes needed to get the assumption bill passed.

The deal was struck; the central government assumed the state war debts, and our nation's capital is Washington, D.C. today and not New York City. To secure the support of Pennsylvania's politicians, the national capital was located in Philadelphia for ten years. That dinner proved to be one of the most costly meals in U.S. history.

The national debt soared to a total of over $80 million. To service this debt, almost 80% of the annual expenditures of the government were required. During the period of 1790-1800, payment of the interest alone of the national debt consumed over 40% of the national tax revenue.

The Party of Hamilton used its power to make it illegal to criticize the Federalist-controlled government. With the Federalist John Adams in the White House, Congress passed a very controversial and notorious Alien & Sedition Act, which was written so that it would expire the day Adams left office. Journalists, ordinary citizens, and even a member of Congress, Matthew Lyons of Vermont, were imprisoned for merely criticizing the government. Those who spoke out against the ever-growing national government were slandered as un-Americans. A Rev. John Ogden simply carried a petition to Philadelphia for the release of Congressman Lyon, and he himself was imprisoned for doing so. Soon the citizens became fearful of the Federalist "reign of terror."

Jefferson and Madison were so incensed about the direction the infant country was taking, that they became authors of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves of 1798. Both these states declared they had not intention of allowing the Sedition Act to be enforced within their boundaries. States rights triumph over the unconstitutionality of the expanding national government.

Congressman Lyon enjoyed sweet revenge in 1801 when, after being released from prison and reelected to Congress (while still in prison), he cast the decisive vote that made Thomas Jefferson President of the United States in an election that had been thrown into the hands of Congress.

Hamilton's political legacy is that his policies led to the disintegration of the Federalist Party. Heavy taxation, out-0f-control debt, a menacing standing army of tax collectors pre-IRS days, and the Federalist Party's attack on free speech led to the election of President Jefferson in 1800, and the eventual demise of the Federalist Party by the 1820s. While the party died, the party's big government, statist, socialist ideas lived on. The ideology came back with a vengeance under Abraham Lincoln's administration and under the New Deal program under FDR. On the eve of the depression in 1929, the unemployment rate was 3.2%. Eleven years later it soared to 14.6%.

Jefferson by 1807 had abolished all of Hamilton's excise taxes and had cut the government debt by almost 30%. Jefferson had adhered to the idea that the government could borrow for such reasons as financing a defensive war, but only if the current generation was taxed to service the debt.

With the exception of the War between the States and the Spanish-American War periods, the Jeffersonian view of government debt, which was also Adam Smith's view, prevailed into the twentieth century. In the 1930s, a British economist John Maynard Keynes took center stage worldwide. Keynes and his followers, the Keynesians, argued that fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the government was not subject to the same principles as that of individuals and families. The government could simply finance spending with borrowing, thereby pushing the payment of the debt to future generations. After 1964, during the Kennedy administration, the United States embarked on a course of fiscal irresponsibility matched by no other period in its two-century history.

Should we celebrate today because we have certainly learned from the failures of the past, that the ideas of an ever-expansionist national government of Hamilton and his cronies have been laid to rest, and that the mistaken notion of the Sedition Act to silence and villify the voice of the ordinary citizens would never surface in our nation again?

Back to the future, forward to the past.

"When the wicked rise, men hide themselves:

but when they perish, the righteous increase."

Proverbs 28:28

God's High Yield Investment Returns

God has too much invested in His people for Him to allow His investment to go belly up. He always gets great returns on His investment. How many mutual fund account managers can guarantee their clients an increase of "thirty fold, or sixty fold, or hundredfold" on their investments?

Back in 1992 when I joined the PC world, I was advised by a friend to join a religious chat room. This was in the Dark Ages way before Twitter and Facebook. I had no idea at first what he was talking about, but I took his suggestion, and I soon discovered that this chat room idea can be terribly addicting, time consuming and very unprofitable. I soon gave up the chat room excursion, but I did have some interesting "conversations", if you can call them that, with some people over some deep theological and doctrinal issues.

In almost every case, the talk eventually turned to what has been labeled as Calvinism vs. Arminianism. Either people were for the five points, or for some of the points, or for none of the points, and many times the back and forth volley got pretty heated among some chatters. I did find one civil person who I was able to talk to who was dead set against the five points of the doctrines of grace (TULIP), but when pressed, he admitted he did not know what to do with Romans 8:29-30, because the only possible way to understand those two verses was to accept the five points of total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement (definite, successful atonement), irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints.

Romans 8:28 is a promise that God gives only to those whom He has called irresistibly by His sovereign grace, but the thought does not end at verse 28, when many people quit the memorization at a place where God put a comma and not a period. To elaborate and further define who these called people are, God says they are the ones that God has foreknown, has predestined, has called, has justified, and has glorified. It is not that God knows ahead of time who will choose Him, because #1, God is the subject throughout the passage; God is the actor and initiator of everything regarding our salvation, #2 it is not what God has foreknown, but WHOM God has foreknown, predestined, called, etc., and #3 "known" in Scripture often means more than just mental knowledge about something, but it means a special love toward someone.

"Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore a son." (Gen. 4:1, also 4:17) Adam already had a head knowledge of His wife, but here it means nothing else but an intimate relationship with his wife. "Depart from Me, I never knew you." (Matt. 7:23) God knows everything about everyone, but He does not have a special love toward everyone alike. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth." (Amos 3:2) God mentally knows all the nations on the earth, but only one, Israel in the Old Testament, had His divine favor resting upon it.

Romans 8:29-30 has been called God's unbroken chain of salvation. He loses none of His investment along the way. The same group He has foreloved, He has predestined. The same group He has predestined (determine their destiny in advance), He has called. The same group He has called, He has justified. The same group He has justified, He has glorified. The crowd does not thin out along the way. Pretenders, hypocrites, empty professors, wolves in sheep clothing, and apostates will fall away, but they never were foreknown in the first place. (1 John 2:19) God will make sure that His Son will have His bride. The true predestined, called, justified Bride of Christ will not jilt her True Love, because the True Love will make sure He will not lose His costly investment.

To add further weight to this high yield return on God's eternal investment, notice that the future aspect in this unbroken chain is mentioned in the past tense. It is not "will be glorified", but "glorified", as if it has already happened. In God's eternal decree, it has already happened. God guarantees the final result, because He got the salvation ball rolling in the first place. Heaven is a done deal for those whom God has dealt a done salvation.

I count about eleven times in v. 31-39 that the word "us" or "we" is used. Who are the "we" or "us" in this context? We are already told their identity in v.28-30. It is not no one in particular and everyone in general, but it is the specified, particular group of the foreknown, predestined, called, justified and glorified. It can mean nobody else, or else the whole train of thought breaks down into confusing nonsense. Read those last nine verses in that chapter and every time you come across the word "us" or "we", just substitute the words "foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified", and it all makes perfect sense. If one still is unsure, then v.33 should remove all doubt, "Who shall lay a charge against God's ELECT?"

God is for the foreloved, predestined, called, justified and glorified. (v.31)

God spared not His Son but delivered Him up for all of the foreloved, predestined, called, justified and glorified. (v.32)

Christ died and is risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for all the foreloved, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. (v.34)

The investment picture on Wall Street can look pretty bleak at times. A commercial reminds us that some 401ks have become 201ks with our recent economic downturn. Read any mutual fund portfolio and they must inform you that past returns are not a guarantee for future returns, that these investments are not FDIC insured, and that you can lose money and your investment along the way.

Not so with God's investments. These instead are FDIC insured--Father Decreed In Christ.

If God were to lose some of His investments along the way, then how would God be any different than what this world has to offer? "And this is the Father's will which has sent Me, that of all which He has given Me (those foreloved, predestined, called, justified, glorified folks) I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." (John 6:39)

God did not take a big gamble when He sent His Son to die on the cross. It was not a roll of the celestial dice. It was a perfectly planned out salvation investment design with a guaranteed outcome.

Instead of our railing against God's investment strategy, we should gratefully and humbly praise the Manager of our salvation account "who began that good work in us and will perform and perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil. 1:6)

Now go back and read Romans 8:28 afresh with all this in mind. If God providentially decreed every aspect of your eternal salvation, don't you think He can manage all the lesser details of your life, even those things which may not make much sense now, and even those things that hurt like the dickens, so that the end result will be for your good in your life now, just like the end result of your salvation will be for your good throughout all eternity?

God will not lose out on His investment. You can bank on that.

Kept by God's investment,
Chris

The Call of the Mild

"Speak softly and carry a big stick." -- words of a former President of the United States

". . .but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind, an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake, a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice." -- an experience of one of God's prophets in 1 Kings 19


If the outward call of the gospel is all we need for people to come to faith in Christ, then we need to think of the most clever, ingenuous, innovative, convincing, dramatic, energetic and successful ways to get the Word out and be done with it.

But since there is something else and more besides the outward call of the gospel, then we should not rely upon the most clever, ingenuous, innovative, convincing, dramatic, energetic and successful ways to get the Word out and be done with it.

Why do we pray for lost folks as well as witness to lost folks? Is it not because--even though we may not have thought of it along these lines before--that we know there are two calls and not just one? We "share the gospel", because that is what God has told us to do. We pray, because that is what God has told us to do.

By praying are we not saying something like this--"Lord, convict my friend _________ of his sin, open his eyes to see the truth, open his heart to receive You into his life, humble him and help him to see his need of You, etc."? Notice how we frame all our prayers for the lost to be saved. How can we pray otherwise? With all our prayers for those lost friends, acquaintances, or family members, we are asking for God to regenerate their hearts, for God to call them irresistibly to Himself. Why else do we pray, if it is not because we know that all our outward calls will amount to nothing unless God provides the inner call of His Spirit?

So I guess those who want to fight against this precious biblical truth of irresistible grace need to quit praying at all for the lost to be saved, in order for their actions to match their words.

We read in Acts 16:14 about a woman named Lydia, "whose heart the Lord opened (that is the inner, irresistible call of God), that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul (that is the outward call of the gospel)." We never once read in the Bible of anyone "opening up their own hearts to receive Christ", nor do we read of any preacher of the gospel asking people "to open up their hearts." I guess we would expect to find those things in Scripture if there were only the outward call of the gospel and if people were really not dead in their sin.

Since we do not know whom our Lord is calling, we extend the call of the gospel to everyone. (Mark 16:15) It is not for us to pry into God's business; we are simply to do the Father's business.

Jesus is no wild, raving publcity seeker who must shout at the top of His lungs to get any attention. "He shall not strive, nor cry out, neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He shall not break, and smoking flax He shall not quench, till He sends forth judgment unto victory." (Matthew 12:19-20) Since He is gentle and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:29), this irresistible grace or effectual, inner call is not the call of the wild; it is the call of the mild.

God's call to those whom He has fore loved, predestined, justified and glorified (Romans 8:28-30) is not some detectable, dramatic, boisterous call that thunders from the heavens for all to hear. The call is not like an earthquake, a wind storm, or a fire. It is the precious, indescribable, unfathomable, discreet still small voice of a loving God in hot pursuit of a hell bound sinner.

How does God draw His own to Himself (John 6:44)? The Jews who heard Jesus' words in John 6 should have known the answer to that question. How did Yahweh God draw the Israelites to Himself in the Old Testament? "I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love." (Hosea 11:4) God's call to any of us is irresistible because His love sweeps us off our feet. This is the call of the mild.

Concerning Teddy Roosevelt's advice, we don't have it said that Jesus carried a big stick around when He walked the earth. Maybe His big stick was the Resurrection. If He can raise Himself from the dead by His own power, then He does not need to raise His voice. He has spoken softly to millions upon millions of lost sinners, and that call of the mild works every time.

Called by God's grace,
Chris

Gentle Mental

In a previous article I mentioned how I heard a definition for the doctrine of election when I was much younger, that at the time made much sense to me. "Election is when God casts a vote for you to be saved, the devil casts a vote for you not to be saved, and you have the tie-breaking vote." By using some gentle mental, though, one can begin to see that there are more holes in that statement than there are in a donut shop. Not as a way to brandish a sword against someone, nor to show arrogant one-up-manship over someone, you can use that above statement to get that someone to use some gentle mental on his or her own.

You can begin by quoting the definition and then asking the person if he or she agrees with that statement, and then ask him or her, Why or why not. Then after you listen thoughtfully to the reply given, without any sort of interruption or dead giveaway body language, you can gently point out what would be the only conclusion if that statement were indeed true. Either the devil is on the same level as God (each one has the same number of votes), or worse yet, you are more powerful and influential than both God and the devil, since you have the tie-breaking vote.

What may be the hardest assignment today is to get professing Christians, who are active church goers, to use the mind that God gave them, especially in a day when spiritual showbiz or postmodern thought may await them each Sunday. It can be done, though, in a one-on-one encounter with gentleness and patience, without trying to play "gotcha." Here are some gentle mental questions that you can insert into a conversation with a friend:

1. Must God have our permission before He can do anything? I have heard people say something along these lines, "You must allow God. . .", or "Permit God to. . ."

2. Can you give me all the times where "free will" is used in the Bible to describe the essential feature of every sinful man?

3. Did and does Jesus Himself have a free will? (Free will means the equal ability to choose to sin or to choose not to sin, to choose God or not to choose God, to decide to repent or to decide not to repent, etc.)

4. If Jesus died for all the sin (which naturally would include the sin of unbelief) of everyone everywhere, then why aren't all people saved?

5. How much life is there in a dead person? (See Ephesians 2:1f to get my drift.)

6. Why is man commanded to repent of sin and believe in Christ, but there is no commandment for us to be born again?

7. What does a dead person need before he can do anything?

8. Why do so many Christians love to quote Romans 8:28 and very few of them it seems will refer to the rest of the verses that follow?

It is to this last question we now turn as we work our way through the five points of salvation: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement (or better yet, Successful atonement), and now we arrive at Irresistible Grace (or the effectual call).

When I was a boy playing outside with my friends down the street, toward supper time my mom would step out on our front porch (sorry, kids of today, but this was before we had cell phones) and say as loud as she could in her typical warm voice, "Chris, you need to come in now. It's time for supper." There might be an occasion or two (or more, but who's counting?) when I failed to hear my mother's simple request. I was having too much fun with my friends, or I was up to bat at the time. If I failed to "hear" my mother's call to me, a couple of minutes might pass, and my dad would step out on the front porch and yell something in a very manly tone of voice, "William Chris Humphreys. You come in right now. It's time to eat."

The call of my mother was a resistible call. The call of my dad was an irresistible call. (There is probably a good number of people reading this who knows exactly what I am talking about from their own personal experience!)

I could probably cite an even better illustration. A young bride sees her new husband go off to Afghanistan. He is at a location he can not disclose and communication back home is non-existent most of the time. One day this young bride gets a telephone call from an annoying telemarketer in the middle of the day. After midnight when she has already gone to bed and has been asleep for a couple of hours, she gets an unexpected, surprised call from the love of her life. Now which one of those calls do you think would be properly classified as a resistible call, and which one would be correctly identified as an irresistible call?

Here's the deal. The Bible mentions both kind of calls we get. There is the resistible call. Left in our natural state, every time we hear the outward call of the gospel, we consider it along the lines of an annoying telemarketer. God is bothering me, and I wish He would leave me alone. Or like in my case as a boy, I refuse to hear God speaking to me just like I refused to hear my mom on occasions. I am having too much fun in my sin to hear God speak to me. Such is the plight of every lost person.

All calls to a dead person go unheeded. I tried calling my mom one evening, to be exact, on February 8, 2001, and she did not answer the phone at her apartment. My sister called and got no response. A good friend called as well. None of us got any response when we tried to call her. My mom had died of a cardiac arrest, and she was sitting in her favorite chair in her apartment when we got there. No wonder she did not answer any of our phone calls; she was dead.

That's how it is with all of us who are dead in our sin (Ephesians 2:1, Colossians 2:13). The phone could ring off the hook countless nights long, and my mom wouldn't hear them nor respond to them. All the screaming I could muster up in the ears of my deceased mom would do no good. All the outward calls we give to lost people will have the exact same effect, if all we have to go on are the outward calls of preaching, witnessing, the written Word, gospel tracts, testimonies or other good forms we have at our disposal.

All of us would resist God all the time if it were not for the second kind of call that God gives to many. It's the kind of call mentioned in Romans 8:28 and following. ". . .to those who are THE CALLED (literal Greek has "the called") according to His purpose." The Greek word for our English word "church" literally means "the called out ones." It is only those who love God who are the called out ones, according to Romans 8:28.

I know a lot of Christians read Romans 8:28 without thinking along these lines. I can relate, because I did that myself for a good number of years. We quote it in rapid-fire fashion, and we use it to console or encourage others or ourselves, but we fail to see that this promise is given to a very specific group of people that are specifically identified as "the called", those who have received an irresistible inward call of God which enables them to overcome their natural dead-in-sin-and-trespasses resistance to God so that now they love God. God is not some big annoyance that shows up in the middle of our lives; He has now become the adoring King over all areas of our lives.

Some people get the wrong notion when they hear the term, "irresistible grace." They imagine that there are people that are zapped into salvation, or that they go kicking and screaming against their wills into God's kingdom. They are saved when they don't want to be saved, because it is "irresistible", beyond their power to say "no." Nothing could be further from the truth. Do you think that the young bride who gets a call from her husband in Afghanistan has to be forced into talking to her husband, even if she wakes up with a splitting headache after a few hours sleep? Do you think she is kicking and screaming in protest in having to take this call from her love? Or is it more likely that a team of wild horses could not and would not keep her from talking to her husband?

This special kind of call from God is irresistible in the same sense, that when the new Love of our life calls us, nothing will stand in the way of our coming to Him. We are drawn to Christ just like a newborn is drawn to its mother. When a person is born again, or becomes a newborn spiritually (regeneration), God unilaterally and unconditionally gives life where there was death; He takes away the old "will" that would not and could not come to Christ (John 5:40, 6:44, 6:65), and He replaces it with a new "will" that will freely, readily, eagerly and lovingly come in faith and repentance to the new Love in his life (John 6:37). Whereas before God was nothing but like an annoying telemarketer or a disturbing figure who was intruding into the fun I was having in my life, now He has become my chief treasure and the One who instills me within life eternally and more abundantly. (I may not have liked it at the start, but I'm so glad I listened to my dad's irresistible calls at times, because my mom was a great cook, and I never left her table unsatisfied! I could live without an extra inning of baseball, but I could not live without my mom's cooking.)

This article has probably become too lengthy, such that some might find this piece too "resistible" by now. With that being so, I better wrap up things for now.

Just one final thought though--if a person will come to know the different calls mentioned in Scripture, so much of God's Word will fall into place now. For example, have you wondered what Jesus meant when He said on more than one occasion, "Many are called, but few are chosen"? (Matthew 20:16, 22:14) Many do receive the outward call of God through sermons, evangelism, missions, testimonies, written literature, etc., but only a few are chosen (the elect ones), who receive an additional type of call, an irresistible call, whereby one comes freely to Christ to be saved.

God commands us to do what we can do. We must call all sinners to come to Christ. We extend the outward call of the gospel to anyone and to everyone. But all of that is for naught if it were not for the inward effectual irresistible call of God. When and only when a person receives this special calling from God will that person call out to God to be saved. We find that in Acts 2 when in the same evangelistic sermon Peter said "whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (v.21) and later he said, "for the promise to unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call (v.39)." One can not level the charge that knowing and teaching all these truths will shut down our evangelistic efforts. It sure didn't stop Peter one bit. About three thousand were called by God that day, and that same three thousand called upon God.

"For our gospel came not to you in word only (the outward call of the gospel), but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance. . .(the inner, irresistible call) 1 Thessalonians 1:5

I do thank the Lord for those loving parents and other faithful Christians who extended the gospel call to me when I was a boy, but I praise my sovereign, good Lord for that sweet, regenerating call of God's Spirit which enabled me to respond to those cumulative outward calls.

Called by God's grace,
Chris

A Non-Typical "Dear John" Letter

Dear John,

I don't know why I am writing this to you, because I know it won't reach you. Since it is your birthday, I felt I had to do something to honor you. Five hundred years ago today, on July 10, 1509, the Lord blessed your parents with a little boy who was destined by God to become a great champion of the faith. Your legacy lives on today, although I am sad to report, many would deny your contributions, and others would love to rid your name altogether from the annals of history.

Much has changed since you walked on God's green earth. Sometimes I wish you were still around, but then again I am happy for you considering where you are. Then again, according to Methusaleh's calculations, if you were still alive today, you would have only reached mid-life by now.

I live in a new country that was not even born when you died. Our first President was a man by the name of George, and he is affectionately called the Father of our Country. While that is true, in reality you, John, deserve that title. Our country was birthed out of Europe, and in particular, the Protestant Reformation. Even many historians today see the direct link to what you espoused in your lifetime, such as a representative form of republic, free market capitalism, individual entrepreneurial spirit, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, among other things, and what we have enjoyed in our nation now for over two hundred years. (I must confess, though, that many of those cherished traditions are under attack from many corners.)

I read a book once on our nation's constitution, and the respected author freely admits that he was not a follower of all your ideas. In a footnote, though, he honestly acknowledges that most of what we find in our founding documents are borrowed from your understanding of Scripture. Of course, that understanding was not yours alone, but was shared by countless number of peoples who initially came to our country, namely the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Separatists, and other like-minded groups. For example, the biblical teaching on the total depravity of man had a huge role in our country's founding fathers when they drew up three branches of government with all the checks and balances that were needed to protect us against man's despotic sinful nature.

Sadly, our country went through a big cultural shift in the first half of the 1800s, and we have not recovered from it. Early in our nation's history we had two great awakenings from God, heaven-sent revivals with thousands of conversions that swept across our land and preserved it from internal spiritual and moral collapse. While there were many men who God used in those two great movements from God, the two most prominent men were Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, great preachers of the gospel that followed in your theological footsteps. Since our country has turned away from our doctrinal heritage as a nation, we have not seen a genuine mass movement of God in our country for over two hundred years now. What was generally held to be true by many at one time in our nation's history has been either swept under the rug or given the boot out the back door in most places of worship today.

What pains me more than anything is that those who profess the name of Christ do not know who you are, or what you stood for, or they don't care. We have moved on, and we are more into other things now. We have lots of religion, just like in your day, but as you wrote and preached about on so many occasions, many can have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. Tares grow up with wheat. Wolves don sheep's clothing. An outward profession does not mean an inward possession.

As you taught so well and so consistently, God truly is sovereign in everything in the universe, and that includes the salvation of man. Today, we may give lip service to your sovereignty, so long your sovereignty does not interfere with man's sovereignty over some things. Today man must increase, even if it causes God to decrease some.

There are many today who go way beyond of just ignoring you and your contributions. There are those who revile you, who will curl up their nose and upper lip at the mention of your name, who accuse you of the most vilest things imaginable. Some will say that you were harsh, stern, unloving, judgmental, overly strict, Pharisaical, unevangelistic, and other things I dare not mention. After all, it is supposed to be your birthday. Those who knew you best and up close know those things were simply untrue. You were a loving family man and a gentle humble shepherd of God's flock under your care. You had an enduring and endearing passion for souls, for the Word of God, and for God's glory.

We have a leader in our country whom some think would make a great leader over all our country. She was a governor of one of our fifty states, and many believe she has been unfairly targeted with the most baseless attacks on her character. Whether she would be a great national leader or not is debatable, and that is beside the point. I just wish that those who criticize you most will step back and see that they are doing the same things against you that many say are being done against this governor, or anybody else who is being slandered and falsely attacked.

I have heard in my lifetime that people don't want to be associated with you in any way, because "we should not follow any one man, and that we should only follow the Lord." You would be the first one to agree with that statement. I guess people are really scared or irked when they hear people who basically agree with you as being called by your last name with an -ist tucked on at the end. Knowing your high commitment to the name of Christ you would be horrified and disgusted yourself if you knew that people are identified by your last name. You would do your best to put a stop to it, but with that being said, in our day we don't follow one man; we follow many men, we adore many men, we worship many men, and those men sometimes have very little in common with the biblical gospel.

The nature of Christianity today in our country is that we will identify ourselves with the latest anything that comes along. Several days ago we saw a very popular man by the name of Michael die. I can't go over all his life story, John, because you wouldn't understand it, and you especially couldn't understand how millions of people could watch his funeral service all over the world. A lot has changed, John, like I said. But after hearing with my own ears and after seeing things with my own eyes what has said and done at this man's funeral, I almost became convinced that they needed to keep his dead body under heavy guard where they had his funeral service for at least three days, lest his followers come steal his body. And then on the third day, everyone could come back to the same place and watch this Michael guy dance his way out of his coffin. It is ironic and contradictory, to say the least, when people accuse us of following you, just because we believe you on some key doctrinal points, when today there are people who fall down and worship all sorts of individuals all the time. That is done all the time in religious circles too.

John, I don't agree with you on every single point you taught, and I don't follow you in the sense I should follow Christ and Him alone. At the same time, the Bible says we ought to obey our leaders who spoke the Word of God to us, submit to them, consider the outcome of their lives, and imitate their faith. So, John, while others may spurn you, deny you, ignore you, ridicule you, and attack you, I want to thank you on your birthday, or more especially I want to thank the good Lord for giving you to us. Even though you are dead, you still speak. I have many of your writings in my personal library. That's not a bad legacy for someone who was born 500 years ago.

I must end this "Dear John" letter on an encouraging note. Maybe we are seeing a reversal of trends in our country. Due to whole host of factors working together, more and more people are coming around to see and accept what you taught, preached and wrote during your lifetime. How shall I word it? There are many alternative ways of educating our young people today, and because of that, so many people are learning for the first time the glories of Reformation history. While at one time old books by these great saints of the past like the Puritans were buried under layers of dust in some remote library archives, they are now being printed and published the world over. People are reading what they have to say, and people's minds are being opened up to truths forgotten or buried under layers of dust in near and faraway pulpits.

Added to all that, numerous bold preachers have stepped forward to herald these great truths, and two of the most notable men carry your first name. One preacher John is from a state called California, and the other preacher John is from a state called Minnesota. Because we have ways of communication that are far numerous and superior than what you had in your day, John, these preachers, and others just like them, are getting the Word out to a massive worldwide audience. (You would be pleased to know a long time after you God raised up another John, this time in England, who wrote a book called Pilgrim's Progress. It is the most read and published religious book in the world, second only to the Bible.)

So maybe, just maybe, things are looking up, John, in our day. That is where we should be looking any way, since He is the author and finisher of our faith.

Happy birthday, John. I will see you one day in glory. I will know where to find you then. You will be at the feet of One who saved you by His grace, and that is where we all will be. Some or many may fight it now, but then at that time all must and will acknowledge that salvation was and is entirely from God. May that recognition come sooner, though, and not later. Thank you, dear Lord, for using your servant John for many to come to that recognition sooner, and may many more follow in those same paths.

Yours by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God's glory alone,
Chris