My Blog Has Moved
April 9, 2013
Hi friends. I’m happy to tell you that I have a new home for my writing and preaching. I’ll now be publishing new blog posts as well as sermon audio over at BenSteele.net. If you were reading along here at Big Hairy Deal, thank you so much and I hope you’ll check out the new page. Be sure to watch the video on the home page where I talk about my calling to preach and just what it feels like to be called. I look forward to connecting with you again.
Ben
Pursuing God Together, Week 7
June 8, 2012
This post is part of a 10 week series. You can read this to find out what we’re doing and how you can participate. Maybe you’d like to use the form to the left to subscribe to e-mail updates or use the orange button to add me to your RSS feed, so you don’t miss any of the other posts.
The Gaze of the Soul
Faith will get me anything, take me anywhere in the Kingdom of God, but without faith there can be no approach to God, no forgiveness, no deliverance, no salvation, no communion, no spiritual life at all.
What Faith is Not
Faith, as a concept, has been much maligned by both believers and non-believers.
People from both parties will sometimes refer to faith as belief without evidence.
I reject that idea entirely.
The God of the Bible, neither His Son, neither any of His prophets have asked us to believe anything about Him without evidence. Instead we are given thousands of years of written personal testimony of the work of God in the lives of His people, among other things, and encouraged to believe on the strength of that testimony.
Simply Look
In this chapter what Tozer has done is describe for us what it looks like, what it feels like, to believe. He has answered a question that you know is near and dear to my heart if you’ve read my other posts in this series.
What am I doing when I am believing?
I am looking.
“Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.”
How marvelous to think that the sum total of my faith amounts to the direction of my attention. When my spiritual eyes; my thoughts, my longings, and my devotion are focused on Jesus Christ I am in that moment “believing on Him.”
Of course, the opposite of this is to be always self-focused. The man who is always concerned about his own needs or who is even meeting the needs of others with the design of improving himself is giving improper attention to his lowly form.
He is adjusting the hair and make-up on a corpse. He needs Life and to find it he needs to look to Christ and Christ alone.
“While he looks at Christ the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him.”
How precious also Tozer’s specific reminders that the simplicity of looking means the practice of our religion should be simple. A tell-tale sign of insincere belief or problematic theology is an emphasis on complicated, external hoopla involved in the practice of faith.
No special clothing is required for leaders in the church. No sacramental ordinances are needed to secure eternal life. No marking of seasons or special fasts are needed to maintain holiness. No pilgrimage to the Holy Land will help you to “find” God.
Simply look unto Him.
Charles Spurgeon was led to faith in Christ by an uneducated man who, filling in for his pastor, preached this simple sermon:
“Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me, I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! look unto Me!”
Your turn: What do you think about this approach to describing faith? Too simple? Too complex? Wrong altogether?
Pursuing God Together, Week 6
May 31, 2012
This post is part of a 10 week series. You can read this to find out what we’re doing and how you can participate. Maybe you’d like to use the form to the left to subscribe to e-mail updates or use the orange button to add me to your RSS feed, so you don’t miss any of the other posts.
The Speaking Voice
My ears are ringing with the racket men make, hoping by our noise-making and endless toiling to accomplish something that matters. The dissonant notes flood over me, unsettling my mind and turning my stomach. I am in pain.
Pursuing God Together, Week 5
May 25, 2012
This post is part of a 10 week series. You can read this to find out what we’re doing and how you can participate. Maybe you’d like to use the form to the left to subscribe to e-mail updates or use the orange button to add me to your RSS feed, so you don’t miss any of the other posts.
The Universal Presence
What now does the divine immanence mean in direct Christian experience? It means simply that God is here. Wherever we are, God is here. There is no place, there can be no place, where he is not.
God is Here
As we are talking about pursuing God, we might get the idea that we are on a journey to find Him. We might imagine ourselves as searching for something that has been lost or that we have been separated from by a great distance or dangerous terrain. It’s possible that there is some truth in these kinds of analogies but Tozer does well to remind us what is real.
But Where is He?
That’s the glorious truth but it’s also the problem, isn’t it? If God is here, where is He? We often don’t feel we have in any way sensed His presence. How is it possible for the omnipotent God to be fully present with all men and to be simultaneously ignored by them?
It comes down to a pattern of obedience. ”If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.” Tozer calls it “spiritual receptivity.” Those saints who seemed to live on a holier plane made their minds more aware of the spiritual world by exercising and cultivating that awareness. It seems they were inclined in their emotions and their thoughts toward spiritual things and they made a habit of not ignoring their heart’s desire to follow after God.
For those of us who feel cut off from Him, His presence is precious to us but we have not dwelt on the thought of it or allowed the weight of it to rest on us. Haven’t we mocked it in sin and lust? Haven’t we nurtured wickedness right before His eyes?
In fact we have done that and more. We have often traded in the blessing of the manifestation of His presence for showmanship and branding. I was astonished to read these words in this chapter, “We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action.” This was written in 1948! How much more now is entertainment confused for a move of the Spirit?
…For They Will See God.
How are we to unwind this twisted mindset and become people who continually experience God in His intimate presence with us? By the same means we have really been saying all along: by turning our thoughts toward Him with purpose, talking to Him as we would a caring father and close friend, by doing those few things he has asked us to do.
The humble heart wanting to experience God’s presence will not be left unsatisfied (Matthew 5:8) He has not intended to hide Himself from us. His desire always is to make Himself more manifest. He does not need to come from far away, nor does He need us to journey to Him. He is here, wherever here may be, and His heart is that we should “be nearer” to Him in experience. He wants us to feel the fulness of His love, for our hearts to pound and our faces to smile at the thought of His affection.
Your turn: I have a hard time pinning down this concept of spiritual receptivity in my mind. How would you describe it? Do you think it’s a real thing?
Pursuing God Together, Week 4
May 16, 2012
This post is part of a 10 week series. You can read this to find out what we’re doing and how you can participate. Maybe you’d like to use the form to the left to subscribe to e-mail updates or use the orange button to add me to your RSS feed, so you don’t miss any of the other posts.
Apprehending God
A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His Presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality.
He Is Real
I have heard it said, “He’s as real as you want Him to be.”
Wrong. People who say such things are playing word games.
Fathers and the Fatherless
May 12, 2012
This is a guest post from Christine Niles. She is a writer and project manager with a heart for orphans, and a mother of two girls adopted from Ukraine at ages 12 and 14. Christine blogs about adoption, parenting, and writing at www.riverofthoughts.com. Follow her on Twitter @croyseniles.
May is a month for mothers.
Flowers spring up, baby birds hatch. Kids everywhere make mother’s day cards and awful crafts that mothers proudly cherish.
May is full of mothers. So full of mothers that we often forget that fathers are a pretty important part of it, too. We’ll throw them a slab of meat and a baseball game next month. Their part is done, right?
Pursuing God Together, Week 3
May 10, 2012
This post is part of a 10 week series. You can read this to find out what we’re doing and how you can participate. Maybe you’d like to use the form to the left to subscribe to e-mail updates or use the orange button to add me to your RSS feed, so you don’t miss any of the other posts.
Removing the Veil
So the life of man upon the earth is a life away from the Presence, wrenched loose from that “blissful center” which is our right and proper dwelling place, our first estate which we kept not, the loss of which is the cause of our unceasing restlessness.
We Are At the Edge
Do you feel the “unceasing restlessness” that is mentioned here? Do you have the constant nagging sensation that there is so much more treasure in the heavenly storehouse that is set aside for the child of God? Maybe, like me, you even feel this more acutely since we started trying to pursue Him alongside one another. Read the rest of this entry »
