Big Hairy Deal

My Blog Has Moved

Ben Steele — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:42:53 +0000

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

Ben Steele — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:24:11 +0000

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?

Tagged: A.W. Tozer, deeper life, faith, Pursuing God, religion, spiritual senses

Pursuing God Together, Week 6

Ben Steele — Thu, 31 May 2012 13:17:49 +0000

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.

Though I struggle and thrash I can not break out of this space. There is no escape for me in my home, on vacation, at my job, in my bed. I can find no hall, no room, no closet that is quiet, where I can breathe without choking on sounds.

Noise invades and I cannot hear what I long to hear.

The voice of God.

It is said that His voice sounds over every inch of every thing, every moment sustaining us and holding our world together. It is said that those who long to hear Him will. But I feel deaf or as though my ears were tuned to a frequency he does not speak on.

I want:

peace.

quiet.

I want to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. For I know His voice and trust His guidance.

Your turn: Right where you are, right now, can you hear Him?

Tagged: A.W. Tozer, deeper life, Pursuing God, spiritual senses, the voice of God

Pursuing God Together, Week 5

Ben Steele — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:51:41 +0000

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.

God is here. He is the God beside you and the God inside you. He is at this moment touching every square inch of your body and soul. ”No one is in mere distance any further from or any nearer to God than any other person is.”

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?

Tagged: A.W. Tozer, Pursuing God, religion, spiritual discipline, spiritual senses

Pursuing God Together, Week 4

Ben Steele — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:00:22 +0000

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.

You certainly have the freedom to disbelieve but the claim of the Bible is simple:

He is real. Really real. Whether we want Him to be or not, He is real. Whether we believe He is or not, He is real. Not only is He really real, He is the support structure of all reality.

When Ravi Zacharias was testing for his doctorate in theology he had to answer the essay question, “God is perfect. Explain.” Ravi answered in one line, “He is the only being that does not have to look outside of Himself for the source of His existence.” God is and everything else that is springs from Him.

But Do We See Him?

For believers, though, this concept is not our problem. Our problem is in what Tozer calls the “reckoning.” This is our attention, our apprehension.

The physical world is so immediate, so easily accepted, and so obviously there. But the spiritual world denies our eyes and ears and fingers the access they are used to so our minds refuse to give recognition to that which we say we believe.

A suspicion creeps in that the invisible world is a “trick of the imagination” and, though we may never give up our belief, we might find we have completely given up our experience of the eternal. We become those who were so often spoken of as “ever hearing but never understanding…ever seeing but never perceiving,” Thomas-es demanding to see and touch everything before we really commit. God is no longer our Father and friend but a sterile, impersonal idea.

Sharpening the Senses

So we ask for sharpened spiritual senses. As the veil is torn, granting that sweet access, we expect the spiritual world to overwhelm our physical reality, the eternal to supplant the temporary.

We aim to abide in Him, to draw near, to be purified in heart so that we can see Him. Not an image crafted by our imagination for our enjoyment. Him. We cry out for our souls to touch Him in ways that our hands never could, for our ears to tune out the frantic noise and clearly hear His gentle whisper.

After all, if we are pursuing Him, we aim to find Him.

Your turn: What resonates with you from this chapter? Do you remember a moment when the clarity of the spiritual world overtook the material, when the eternal became very real to you?

Tagged: A.W. Tozer, deeper life, Pursuing God, religion, spiritual senses

Fathers and the Fatherless

Ben Steele — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:00:58 +0000

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?

Wrong.

It’s all too easy to forget the incredibly critical role that fathers play in the family. Unfortunately, we live in a world where fathers are like the Yeti. Big, hairy. Mythical.

While we’ve come a long way from the Mad Men era where men work long hours and ogle their secretaries and have three-martini-lunches, the Cause of the Man hasn’t really advanced that much. We now live in a world where fathers are just disappearing.

In 1960, less than 10% of US children relied on a single parent.*

In 50 years, that percentage has tripled.

According to the 2010 Census, over 20 million kids** are growing up in homes with only one parent left to do it all. And almost all of those are mothers.

Children need two parents.

So much so that the United Nations Children’s Fund defines an orphan as “a child who has lost one or both parents.” That speaks volumes to the importance of the protection a father provides.

Now, I’m not saying that single parenting isn’t possible. I’m certainly not saying that a child is better off not being born, or that there aren’t super-people (both men and women) admirably raising children on their own due to a multitude of circumstances. A good parent is better than two bad ones, or none.

But what I am saying, men, is that you’re critical in the lives of kids.

Too many boys who grow up in environments where single mothers are the norm, where the men “do their part” and move on…they grow up to do the same. And the girls who grow up never seeing a man take responsibility for the family or be a leader? Well, they just don’t expect that from any man in their life either. The cycle repeats. The cycle expands.

Do we want that for our children? Of course not. But we have to acknowledge that we live in a world that’s fallen. Where we live with the consequences of the choices that each one of us makes, and that we all make as a body.

We live in a world where we get back what we put in…as a body.

As Christians, we are called to care for the widow and the orphan in their distress.

That’s not an accident, guys.

When Ben asked me to ramble on here, I thought, what can I say to men about orphans? If we’re being totally honest, women are seen as the “caretakers.” All those commercials with Sally Strothers crying? They’re targeted at women. But I think Sally was missing the boat. She skipped over half of the population.

Men are critical in the call to care for orphans.

You don’t have to be a father to care for a kid. Or even a whole bunch of kids.

You just have to be a man.

A man chasing after God’s heart. A leader. A pray-er.

A man who stands up today and says “I will.”

I will serve a kid who doesn’t have a father.
I will serve a mom who doesn’t have any other help.
I will serve to show that men can make a difference.
I will serve and prove that a man’s word means something.

Where can you be a man today? Leave a comment…

*1960 Census Data: Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_parent
**2010 Census Data: Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/famsoc1.asp

Tagged: fathers, manhood, orphans

Pursuing God Together, Week 3

Ben Steele — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:52:37 +0000

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.

I genuinely feel as though we are just on the cusp of something amazing here, something that threatens to be truly transforming.

As I turn the pages of this book the very air crackles with intensity, my pulse quickens, and I struggle to sit still as I reach and reach for these high truths. Yet I am never quite where I long to be. Why? What must I do? What must we do to gain the closeness to our God that Tozer is so eloquently calling us to?

At this point I notice that Tozer is still grappling with the elementary truth from the first chapter, that God is to be pursued. It’s as if, even as he wrote, he found himself in the same position we are in: with a sense of longing for more but still steadily drifting towards being satisfied with “normal.”

I think that he, like us, suffered from a sick theology that makes a response to an evangelistic invitation the pinnacle of the faith. He, like us, suffered from a sick heart, satisfied to stay in the outer court, for the price to go in behind the veil is blood.

But even as Tozer ultimately felt an irresistable divine tug towards the Presence, so do we experience a drawing into the deeper heart of the tabernacle. We are the thirsty ones who have been thus spoken of, “The urge of God within them will assure their continuing the pursuit.” Having, hopefully, renounced ownership of things we have approached the veil that obscures the inner sanctum.

By God’s grace, we are ready to enter in.

Lose Your Life to Save It

The way forward is not one of ease but one of death. You released ownership of your things, now release ownership of yourself. Indeed, even that word becomes a lie as you are no longer your self. You are His self. You are His, belonging wholly to Him, living and breathing only for His pleasure and glory.

You see, it was Christ’s death that shredded the veil (which represented our sin) in the temple opening up the Holy of Holies for all who would come. For you, though, to experience the full blessing of access the veil of sin must not remain intact in your heart and there is only one way for it, too, to be torn.

When Abraham released Isaac to God he was prepared for the boy to die. Likewise, you have to allow the Cross to do what it was meant to do in you: to crucify you with Christ so that you no longer live.

Death breaks the power of sin and next is resurrection. Suddenly, having died, you find you were never really alive before at all.

Your turn: I’m struggling to put legs to some of this spiritual talk. These truths are awesome to me but what is the practical side of it? Maybe you can help answer, “What do I do?”

Tagged: A.W. Tozer, deeper life, Pursuing God, sin, spiritual discipline

Ben Steele — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:52:26 +0000

Sorry, no PGT post today.

Last week my publishing schedule got pushed back a day due to…life…and that has apparently carried over to this week. So, unfortunately, I don’t have a Pursuing God Together post for today. But I will publish tomorrow and, in all sincerity, I feel this is going to be a special one.

Let me quickly take this opportunity to do two things.

First

As an intentional blogger, it is thrilling to enjoy the level of conversation that I have seen here over the last several weeks. Thank you for walking through this season with me. The process of working through this book with you is proving to be soul-healing and I would cherish your prayers as I wrap up Week 3 tonight and tomorrow morning.

God’s truth is truly pressing in on me and I want desperately to write in a way that will move you too.

Second

Saturday, May 12 is slated to be a special day here at Big Hairy Deal. It will be a cross post: I will publish a post by Christine Niles from River of Thoughts and she will publish a post of mine.

She has shared some powerful thoughts on fatherhood and I absolutely can’t wait for you to read them. I hope you will stop by.

On her blog I will briefly tell how I have gotten involved in orphan care and suggest some things to consider if you’d like to get involved.

Its going to be a super fun day with lots of good writing. I encourage you to visit and interact on both blogs.

Thanks again for stopping by and I’ll see you again here tomorrow and at River of Thoughts on Saturday.

God bless!

Pursuing God Together, Week 2

Ben Steele — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:49:27 +0000

The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

[Things] were made for man’s uses, but they were meant always to be external to and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come.

We now know that it is right for our faith to feel like a craving for intimacy that drives us closer to Him. Is there any chief obstacle, any distraction, that hinders us?

The Possession Malady

Tozer says it is “things.” By this broad word he means any possession or person that rivals God in our hearts as the object of our affection. And many rivals there are.

You should recognize them easily. Take a moment to make a mental list of the relationships and projects that demand your time and passion. Which of these has become a prize for your heart, an end in itself rather than a blessing from God stewarded for His glory?

What about things not yet obtained but dreamt of?

I myself have a dream job, a dream house, a dream mate and I pursue them, work for them and pray for them. They are always before my mind’s eye as I wonder if or when the dream will become reality.

Aren’t these things so much of our identity? How we define ourselves? Do you see what has happened?

“The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die.” In our tragic state, the gifts have replaced the Giver. We have not come to God for the sake of knowing Him but for what He can give us. We are spoiled children with no desire to be held by our parents but who will praise them just long enough to get around to telling them what we want from them.

Of course Tozer is right that we need to deal with this “possession malady” before moving our focus to any deeper truths. Otherwise, in our pursuit of God, we may only end up fleeing further away.

The Cure

Now, at this point we might make one of two mistakes.

The first is to push back against the whole concept. We might say, “My things are good things.” I am sure this is true but just because the thing is good does not mean it is not enslaving. Be brutally honest with yourself. What things have taken over your heart, become an end in themselves and made God the means?

The second possible mistake is to begin to fight back against these things, to rip them from our lives, or by our own moral will to beat them down in their right place. Tozer offers a better way.

“Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power.” In other words, it is a mistake to try to remove things from our hearts for who knows what other things might take their place? Instead, craft a moment-my-moment posture of mindfulness towards God. To the extent that we are successful, He will then fill our hearts, leaving room for nothing else.

A Plee

I am not sure I have, in the deepest places, come to this testing place. Oh, but I want to! Lord, what things have filled my stomach and quenched my hunger for you? By Your grace, make them unsatisfying to me that my soul would feed on you alone. Leave me with nowhere else to turn.

Your turn: What are your most prized “things”? What gripped you in chapter 2?

Tagged: A.W. Tozer, deeper life, materialism, Pursuing God, religion, spiritual discipline

Pursuing God Together, Week 1

Ben Steele — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:51:25 +0000

Following Hard After God

The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.

In this opening chapter of The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer insists that we remember that God is a person.

He is not a plan.

He is not a book.

He is not a convention, an edifice, or a routine.

He is a person. The ultimate and only goal of your existence is to know Him.

David sang, “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God…” Did you note the qualifier? “I want God,” and then, lest you misunderstand, “I want the living God.”

The God his soul is thirsty for is not the lifeless pagan god of the wood, or the god of the stars or the god of the harvest. Friends, lest we make the mistake of making an idol of the Bible, He is not even just the God on the page.

He is the God beside you. He is the God inside you.

The God on the page will surely inspire and instruct you. Oh, but the God beside you can carry you. The God inside you will transform you.

We Have Been Pursued

Now, note the wonderful truth that Tozer is careful to present in the opening paragraphs of the chapter. No one pursues God ’til God has first pursued him.

But friends, we have been pursued! What can it be but pursuit born out of passion when a God who needs nothing wants us to know Him and offers even His own life toward that one end?

We are His treasure! We are His prize, His pearl of great price! Will you elevate Him to that position in your life? Will you hunger for intimacy with Him more than intimacy with any man or woman, more than any accomplishment or commendation, more than any possession?

Above All, To Know Him

Maybe you will say, “But I have met the Lord. I have trusted Him with my soul. I am saved. This business of pursuing Him and hungering for Him is strange to me.”

With trepidation I suggest that if you do not sense the infinite bliss that is offered in close, deep fellowship with Him, possibly you have not met Him. If you have then, having met Him, you have neglected to get to know Him. Authentic, effective saving faith in Jesus Christ is most clearly manifest in a ferocious, gnawing appetite for intimacy with God.

That is why Paul, from his jail cell in Rome wrote to the believers in Philippi, “I want to know Christ…” This is possibly the greatest theologian in our history saying, “Sometimes, when I lay awake at night in this jail cell, even the most well developed theology in the world just doesn’t seem to cut it for me. I want to know Christ.”

“To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love.”

Will you join me in praying, along with Tozer…

“I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory…”

Your turn: What from Chapter 1 was most valuable to you?

Tagged: A.W. Tozer, deeper life, Pursuing God, spiritual discipline