jeff mikels

I just completed my series of messages on the Bible (see sermon series Shhhh! God’s Talking) and during the series I spent a good amount of time dealing with tough questions of the Bible and tough questions about the faith, but one of the toughest questions that I had to deal with is God’s take on homosexuality.

Actually, I wasn’t able to give it the time it deserves in the brief message or two I was able to address it, so I thought I would go into a little more detail here on my blog.

During my senior year of college, one of my best friends sat me down to talk with me one night. I listened to him tell me how that he had struggled his whole life with a strange desire to be with other men. He flirted with girls and dated a lot, but never wanted to get close to any of them. Instead, he always wanted to be close with another guy. He confessed to me that night that he was a homosexual.

Within the next five years of my life, four other friends of mine shared the same basic story with me. I was regularly heartbroken to hear the stories about the struggles my friends had with their feelings, their desires to do what is right, and in one case a strong belief that God hated him.

I’ve spoken with men dealing with homosexuality. I’ve cried with them. I’ve engaged them on deeply spiritual issues.

I’ve also read books about it, done research, and cried some on my own. I’m not fully qualified to give the world’s best answer to this issue. But it is on my heart, and I think I have something worthwhile to say anyway.

What’s the authority?

When it comes to the issue of homosexuality, we have to realize that apart from some spiritual authority, there is almost no practical way that any discussion can be anything more than the sharing of opinions. However, we also have to realize that among those who accept the Bible as their spiritual authority, there are differing points of view. What I want to do is approach the issue from two sides to do justice to both arguments.

Before I do, though, I want to say that I will not be wasting my time trying to refute the extremists. I completely disagree with the fellow who runs the “God Hates Fags” website and “ministry.” However, I also completely disagree with the majority of the homosexual lobby. There are clearly extremes on both sides of the issue, but there are also people who are really trying to find some middle ground. Those are the people I want to address.

Two Approaches to the Bible

On the one side of the argument, you have people who believe that the Bible clearly teaches a prohibition against homosexuality. Not only is this the most traditional view of the teaching of the Bible, but it is also the one that seems to take the Bible with the more “literal” of interpretations. Here are the key points they generally make:

• The Bible clearly outlaws all forms of sexual interaction except for that between a husband and a wife.
• The key passages relating to this are Leviticus 18:22-23 and Romans 1:26-27 where sexual relationships between men and men are put in parallel to sexual relationships between women and animals.

However, there are those who argue that the Bible makes room for those who practice homosexual monogamy akin to heterosexual monogamy. Usually, their reasons are these:

• There is no passage in the Bible that talks about wholesome, loving, monogamous homosexuality.
• Sexual orientation is not chosen. Your sexual orientation is just who you are. Therefore, homosexuals are “naturally” homosexual. When Paul mentions homosexuality, he was talking about either temple prostitution or pedophilia or perhaps heterosexual men having sexual relations with other heterosexual men. Two heterosexual men engaging in sexual activity would be acting “against their nature” but two homosexual men doing so would be acting in accord with their nature.

Now, I can understand the approach of those who believe homosexuality should be accepted; but I cannot agree with their conclusions. In fact, I feel that their arguments in support of the acceptance of modern day homosexuality are weak for the following reasons.

• Homosexual monogamy is not discussed in the Bible because God never addressed homosexual love from a “relationship” or “commitment” aspect. God only addressed the physical sexual act. In fact, there is never any prohibition in the Bible about men loving other men. The prohibition is focused on the physical act.
• Homosexuality, however powerful of an innate feeling it may be, is not natural according to either God’s design in Creation or God’s revealed will for human beings.
• Loving, homosexual monogamy is largely a myth. There are exceptions to this, but the majority of homosexuality is practiced with high levels of promiscuity.

What is love?

Homosexuality is not an easy issue to deal with today because there is no doubt that the people who call themselves homosexual have strong internal feelings that they have experienced in most cases “all their lives.” Additionally, they often have discovered those feelings most profoundly in the relationship with one key individual who has sparked a real sense of love within them. There can be no denying their sexual urges or their feelings of love. Therefore, if God is love, and if “that’s the way he made them,” shouldn’t they be allowed to live out that love? Why would God be so cruel as to give them desires that can never be lived out? As a result of that kind of thinking, a large number of people who believe in the Bible want to warmly accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle, and those are the people who seem to be showing the most love—those are the people who seem to be “acting Christianly.”

Is that really love, though? Let me give an extreme example to illustrate my point. Every individual on earth has extremely powerful urges within them to drink. The infant’s first experience of love comes from drinking her mother’s milk. Thirst is more powerful than hunger. There can be no denying that the urge to drink is powerful and universal.

However, there are some people in this world who have extremely powerful urges within them to consume alcohol as that drink. There are powerful biological forces that are driving them to pursue the buzz brought on by alcohol. They have great friendships that have developed around alcohol. However, it is ruining their lives. Take a person like that, and it isn’t hard to imagine that those who love that person the most are also the ones who will confront him with the inappropriateness of his behavior and maybe even stage an “intervention.” Through counseling and support, that person may be able to defeat the biological urges and even the memory of past experiences for the sake of greater good.

Likewise, one might say that all human beings have a powerful internal drive to experience sex. The problem is that while most people have their sexual drive attuned to members of the opposite gender, there are some who feel that attraction toward members of the same gender. If the analogy with alcoholism holds, then those who most love the homosexual will be the ones to confront the homosexual with the inappropriateness of his behavior.

So then, does the analogy with alcoholism hold? In order for the analogy to hold, two things must be true:

1. Homosexuality must be an unnatural and damaging behavior.
2. Homosexuality must be a mindset that can be controlled or at least managed.

Homosexuality is unnatural and damaging

Regarding #1, the clearest teaching of the Bible is that homosexual behavior is both unnatural and damaging—Romans 1:26-27 & 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul argues that those who engage in homosexual activity (again note that it is not those who are tempted with homosexual feelings, but those who become “offenders” by indulging those feelings) will not enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s a pretty strong claim. Of course, those who use this verse to point fingers at homosexuals should be sure to read the context where Paul also says that greed, slander, and drunkenness are also things that will disqualify a person from heaven!

Now, there are those who will say that homosexuality as practiced today is “natural” and “wholesome;” however, if the Creator calls it unnatural, then it’s unnatural, and if it might land someone in eternal punishment, that seems to be damaging. If nothing else, doing something that is outside of God’s will is clearly going to be something that causes spiritual damage to a person’s soul.

Homosexuality can be controlled or modified

Regarding #2, all sexual behavior can be controlled. Ascetic monks, of course have been doing it for centuries, but throughout human history, there are countless examples of men and women who have restrained themselves from indulging their sexual desires until their wedding dates or in fact for their whole lives. Controlling sexual behavior is clearly possible. This does not guarantee that the desires can ever be changed although there is a significant body of evidence developing that supports both the claim that homosexuality is not based in biology alone but also in environmental and social aspects of a person’s early childhood and also the claim that homosexual tendencies can actually be lessened or even reversed through sensitive psychological counseling! There are a number of well-documented cases where just such a reversal has taken place.

If I had the time, I would review my old research and do new research to grab some of the best cases and make them available here, but a quick Google search should reveal a number. Try looking up “testimony of a former homosexual” and see what that gets you. You might also want to check out Focus on the Family to see the research they have on the topic.

As it stands now, these are just my thoughts on the matter. I don’t have an academic paper to which I can refer you, but I do have the Bible and my own logical thinking. I’d love to interact with you about this more. Just post a comment below, and let’s start the conversation.

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Yesterday was Mother’s Day 2005, and I preached a message on three women in the beginning of the gospel of Luke—Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna. While I was preparing for the message; though, God helped me to understand something that I had never really seen before. There are no unplanned pregnancies.

This was a profound thought to me, but consider with me why I can make such a claim based on the teaching of the Bible.

1. Elizabeth, and many other women in the Bible were barren until it was God’s time to give them a very special child (Luke 1:5-25)
2. The Bible teaches us that God is ultimately behind everything that happens.

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21

1. The Savior of the World came into being as an unexpected pregnancy.

We can so often think of the events of this world as if they are all up to the whims of human beings. Even Christians and other religious people can easily forget that there is another will at work in this world. It is God’s will, and his will is ultimately what will happen.

Now of course, there are always the questions of “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and I’ll address that in more detail at another time, but one question we can address is this: if God is always in control, and if God’s plans are the ones that always succeed, then from God’s perspective, there are no unplanned pregnancies, so what about…. (fill in the blank with your own “unplanned” pregnancy idea).

God has a plan for every baby.

I know there are many times when a woman gets pregnant without actually planning to be pregnant, but that doesn’t make the baby unplanned. I believe that God has a plan for every single baby. Here are my reasons:

I have 2 parents. I have 4 grandparents. I have 8 great-grandparents. I have 16 great-great-grandparents. They have 32 parents. They have 64 parents. They have 128 parents. They have 256! If I consider only the past 20 generations of my family tree, I have over two million total parents! Here’s my point. Out of two million parents, I am certain that at least one of those pregnancies was “unexpected” by the parents involved. And yet, the Bible tells me that God has a purpose for my life. Therefore, if God has a purpose for my life, then God had a plan to bring that particular baby into the world at that particular time so that someday, he could work out his purpose for me!

If I believe that I have a purpose and that God has a plan for my life, then I must believe that every single pregnancy in my family tree was planned by God.

Additionally, I’m a white man descended from European blood, and back in the middle ages, there was a great deal of warfare and barbarism going on in Europe. In fact, I can almost guarantee that one of my moms in my family tree got pregnant with a child as the result of an abusive situation or perhaps even a rape.

What does all this mean? Biblically, every child has a purpose and no child is unplanned—consider that the Savior of the world chose to be born as an unexpected pregnancy! Practically, I have a purpose for my being here, but I don’t have the right to claim that any other child doesn’t.

But what about…

Let me cut to the chase. Let’s deal with some terrible examples.

You tell me about any pregnancy. I know there are some “trouble” issues when it comes to issues of abortion, so let’s consider the worst possible situations a mom could be placed in.

• A woman is raped and becomes pregnant.
• A woman becomes pregnant and the baby is threatening the mother’s life.
• A woman is pregnant and the doctors have determined that the baby has severe deformities that will diminish that child’s “quality of life” severely.

I claim that in each case, God can still have a purpose and a plan for that baby.

• Perhaps the baby is in the womb of the raped woman because God wants to give her something beautiful out of the tragedy.
• Perhaps God wants to teach someone about the beauty of forgiveness.
• Perhaps God wants to teach someone about unconditional love.
• Perhaps God allows for an ectopic pregnancy today to prevent ovarian cancer in the future.

Now, I believe that there are some biblical grounds for terminating a pregnancy in the rare case of a mom’s life being severely threatened as in an ectopic pregnancy, but in every other case, I think it’s time for us to realize that there are no unplanned pregnancies, and we should let God’s plan work itself out until it becomes clear what it was or we can ask him ourselves face to face.

Never forget Jesus

More than anything, our God is a God who turns terrible evil into glorious good. After all, he is the one that brought forgiveness to the world through the tragic and evil crucifixion of Jesus.

The next time you encounter a situation that seems evil to you, ask God to give you patience and wisdom to someday see the good he will bring out of it.

The next time you encounter a woman who is debating abortion, encourage her to trust in a God who has a plan for her and for her unborn baby.

Nothing surprises him.

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Every year at this time, I begin to think critically about the resurrection of Jesus. Yeah, you heard me right. I said, “critically“. Just because I’m a pastor, that doesn’t mean I accept everything in the Bible without thinking about it too. I’m a thinker, I majored in mathematics and philosophy at Wheaton College, and I’m deeply concerned with how things work. Therefore, I think deeply about the resurrection of Jesus.

One of the things I do each Easter is to try to come up with the single most reasonable explanation for the resurrection story that doesn’t include an actual resurrection. In other words, each Easter, I try to disprove the resurrection to myself. If I can come up with the best counter-argument, and then show how it is insufficient, my belief in the resurrection will be confirmed again in me with enough strength to let me present an Easter message with confidence and conviction.

This year, I have been studying the Gospel of Mark, and I’ve come up with my best and most plausible counter-argument to the resurrection that I’ve ever had. (Of course, I always think that each year’s argument is better than the previous one.) Here it is…

Joseph of Arimathea Faked the Burial

Many theories have been proposed throughout the years to account for the resurrection stories, but there is always one incontrovertible issue that they must all deal with—the tomb was empty on Sunday morning.

There are many ways that the tomb could have been empty.

• Jesus could have been truly resurrected and left the tomb in one way or another.
• Jesus could have been resuscitated somehow after having only “swooned” on the cross and was never really dead in the first place.
• Jesus’ body could have been “dissolved” in some spiritual way similar to the way Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi “die” in the Star Wars movies.
• Jesus’ body could have been stolen from the tomb by someone.

However, all of them have weaknesses in the argument that others have dealt with at length. You can see the links below for some other websites that deal with these issues. (I have never seen a website that addressed the Star Wars theory, but then again, I don’t think it really matters!)

Just this week, though, I thought of another possibility. What if Jesus’ dead body had never been placed in the tomb in the first place?

There are three specific times during the biblical account where there is the greatest potential for deception.

1. During Saturday night when there was a small attachment of guards on duty and no one else around. This is when the “stealing” of the body is supposed to have taken place. Last year, my theory was that one of the soldiers himself had done the “stealing” while it was his watch and the others were sleeping.
2. During Friday afternoon after Jesus was buried and before the guard arrived. There is no evidence that there was any delay between those periods of time, though there might have been. The biggest problem with this idea, though, is that there simply weren’t any of Jesus’ followers who were willing to show their faces in broad daylight on the day Jesus was crucified.
3. During the time after Jesus was taken off the cross and before the body was placed in the tomb.

My counter-argument for Easter 2005 takes place during time period #3, and it centers on the activity of Joseph of Arimathea.

All four gospels agree on a man named Joseph from Arimathea who approached Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus (Matthew 27:57-61, Mark 15:42-47, Luke 23:50-56, John 19:38-42). Taken together, they teach us that he was a rich member of the Jewish council but had disagreed with the crucifixion of Jesus and was secretly a follower of Jesus.

All four Gospels agree that Pilate granted the request and gave Joseph leave to take the body of Jesus. After that, we are told that Joseph wrapped the body in clean linen and placed it in a new tomb. We are told that some women were there watching where the body was placed, but we are not told that they witnessed the preparation of the body.

However, this may have been an opportunity for Joseph to play a little trick. Here’s the scenario I’ve come up with. Joseph took the body off the cross and into a room to “prepare it for burial” where he actually got a co-conspirator who was still alive to consent to being wrapped in graveclothes. After placing the decoy in the new tomb, Joseph would use his considerable wealth and influence to find an alternate place to bury the real body in an inconspicuous and unmarked grave. The plan could then have been that after a couple days (according to a prediction Jesus had made), Joseph or someone else would return to open the grave, and the co-conspirator could walk out unwrapped from the linen, but dressed in white acting like an angelic messenger proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead or perhaps acting like the resurrected Jesus himself who had been “transformed” in physical appearance. After all, we are told that people who saw the resurrected Jesus didn’t recognize him at first.

I don’t believe it.

This is the best scenario I’ve come across yet to explain the resurrection as a “hoax”; however, I’m not convinced by it for a few of reasons:

• The Gospel of John tells us that Nicodemus helped Joseph to wrap Jesus’ body together with nearly 100 pounds of spices. Therefore, at least three people were in on the conspiracy, and the likelihood of it remaining secret is reduced with each new person added. Additionally, the tight wrapping of the graveclothes with the profound amount of pungent spices was quite likely to endanger the life of the one who had consented to being wrapped up.
• We are also told that the women took a serious interest in the burial procedures for Jesus. It doesn’t seem likely that they would have allowed Jesus’ body to be out of their site for the length of time it would have taken to prepare this ruse.
• This scenario doesn’t do anything to explain the numerous accounts of personal encounters people had with the resurrected Jesus. Sure, the people didn’t recognize the resurrected Jesus at first, but all of them became convinced that it was really him, and they became convinced enough to die for their claim that they had seen a living and breathing Jesus three days or more after he had been crucified. Thomas also could claim to have touched the holes in the hands and the side of Jesus. Such things would have been difficult for an imposter to fabricate.
• Finally, it was well known that Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the high council and also the one who administered the burial of Jesus. If there had been any opportunity for deception, he would have been the first person to be interrogated about it by the council. Therefore, it’s most reasonable to assume that Jesus’ body was not prepared for burial privately but that there were a number of witnesses to his preparation and burial.

None of the “hoax” descriptions of the resurrection are convincing to me. Don’t get me wrong. I find the whole resurrection account amazing and almost unbelievable, but whatever doubts I have are because of my inherent, human, North American doubt in the reality of the supernatural and not because of any historical evidence. The evidence of the Bible, the witnesses, and the history still convinces me that the resurrection is real, and if it’s real, it must make a difference in my life!

The resurrection tells me that Jesus is who he claimed to be—the divine Son of God.

The resurrection tells me that Jesus has conquered death and the sin which causes it.

The resurrection gives me the hope that one day, I too will experience resurrection.

Acts 2:32, 36 — God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact… Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:20-23 — But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.

1 Peter 1:3-4 — Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you.

Links to other sites

Here are some quick links to interesting websites on this topic.

• A great article at answers2prayer.org from the Evangelical Christian viewpoint.
• A detailed article at laborlawtalk.com attempting to address all sides of the issue.
• A poorly documented but interesting sermon at exchangedlife.com discussing many aspects of the resurrection and raising some controversial claims about non-christian support for the resurrection.
• Some anecdotal information on the Catholic Church’s tradition of what happened to Joseph of Arimathea is here, here, and here.

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This last Sunday, a lady in my church gave me a blue card with some questions on it regarding tithing. Since my email to her was rather long-winded, I thought I would share some of those thoughts here.

Deuteronomy 26:2-15

1. Verse 2 says to take “some” of the firstfruits. What happens to the rest? Is it sacrificed?
2. Verse 12 talks about tithing every 3 years. What’s up with that?

The Old Testament teaching on the tithe was quite a bit more complicated than the simple 10% that is advocated these days. In fact, some estimates have the ancient Jews giving roughly 30% of their income back to God through sacrifices and other forms of worship. Nevertheless, there are three key principles that today we lump together into what we call tithing.

1. Firstborn. (Exodus 13:1-16) God claims for himself the firstborn male of every womb. Firstborn animals are to be sacrificed, but firstborn sons are to be “redeemed” by substituting another sacrifice or by giving roughly 10 ounces of silver to the high priests (Numbers 3).

2. Firstfruits. (Exodus 23:19; Deuteronomy 18:1-4 & 26:1-11) God claims the best of the first produce of the land for himself. Nowhere does he tell how much of the firstfruits belong to him. Nowhere does he say how long it takes for the “firstfruits” to end and the regular harvest to begin.

3. Tithe. (Leviticus 27:30-33; Numbers 18:26-29) The tithe specifically refers to a tenth of the produce and is intended to be an easily computed amount that also equalizes people of different economic status. For animals, the tithe means that as the sheep enter the pen, you simply count them off and every tenth one is set aside for the tithe. It’s probably best to understand the tithe as a method to quantify how much of the “firstfruits” should be given to God.

When Deuteronomy 26:2-15 says to take “some” of the firstfruits, what happens to the rest? This particular passage is talking about the very first crop to produce fruit after the Israelites enter the promised land. Putting some firstfruits in a basket and taking them all the way to Jerusalem is a symbolic gesture specifically for that very first harvest. The rest of the firstfruits would be handled just like the firstfruits would be at any ordinary year. How were they handled? The answer to that will also address your second question regarding the tithing every three years thing.

The tithe, the firstfruits, and the firstborn all belong to God. But God commanded them to be used together for three specific purposes:

1. Celebratory worship
2. Supporting the Levites (vocational ministers)
3. Supporting the poor

You can see these three themes in Deuteronomy 14 which directly addresses the tithe.

From Deuteronomy 14:22-29.

Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always. But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the LORD your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the LORD will choose to put his Name is so far away), then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice. And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own.

At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Every year, the tithe is to be enjoyed and celebrated in Jerusalem. However, the local Levites in one’s home town were to be remembered each year as well. Additionally, once every three years, a person’s tithe should not be eaten in Jerusalem but should be storehoused in his home town to take care of both the Levites and the poor.

These same three themes appear in the passages on the firstfruits and the firstborn.

(It’s also important to know that the poor people (who have no income of their own) are not commanded to tithe, but the Levites are commanded to obey all three (tithe, firstfruits, and firstborn) by giving their portion to the high priests at Jerusalem. One final thing to note is that Jesus reaffirms the tithe but never directly addresses the other two, so it seems that the tithe principle might encompass the other two.)

As I understand it, all these principles can be summarized like this.

• A portion of the first and the best of everything that enters my household should be returned to God. In our money economy, a tithe off my gross income should be considered the baseline starting point.
• My tithe should be used to directly support local vocational ministers (the Levites), to help the poor people in my town, and to give my family positive worship experiences. In a healthy church, these things can be accomplished by giving the entire tithe to the church.
• Both ministers and ministries should also “tithe upward” from their income to regional bodies.

Nevertheless, the best news about tithing should always be remembered that God promises great blessings to those who are faithful with the tithe.

Deuteronomy 14:29

…so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands…

Malachi 3:10

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.

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In the church I pastor, ReCOMMITMENT is something we do once a year in terms of church services, but it certainly shouldn’t be so in terms of our spiritual lives. The Bible is clear that the spiritual life is not one that can be lived on the basis of one commitment made many years in the past. Of course, the Bible teaches that once a person has come to faith in Jesus, that person will be forever in the grip of the saving grace of God regardless of future behavior.

However, the Bible clearly teaches that to rest lazily upon that truth is actually a dangerous thing to do. It’s a sticky situation to deal with when you try to reconcile human responsibility and the sovereign grace of God, but truthfully, we don’t have to deal with all that. The spiritual life is really simple. Consider some of these verses.

2 Peter 1:3-9 (MSG)

Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you–your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.

So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.

You see, in these verses, Peter teaches that on the one hand, we have been given everything we need to live a life that pleases God. The power has been handed to us simply because we know Jesus. More than that, our old sinful lives have been wiped off the books! But that doesn’t eliminate our responsibility. What it does is free us to be able to make spiritual progress in character, understanding, discipline and more.

So how do we make spiritual progress?

Simple, we decide to! That is, we make growth commitments, work on them, and then celebrate our success. I’ll talk about that more later, and it will come out especially if I ever get my “LWL 301 — GROWTH” class completed. However, you don’t have to know all the details about effective “growth commitments” in order to take the attitude of a growth commitment.

Here is the spiritual life in simplest terms–every day, renew your commitment. Here are four basic commitments you should make regularly.

• Commit to the person of Jesus: My first commitment needs to be to Jesus himself more than any other person who has ever walked this earth. My heart and soul belong to him. (CORE COMMITMENT: Worship)
• Commit to the people of Jesus: My second commitment must be to the family of God that has been created through the work of Jesus on the cross. God has adopted me into his family, and I need to acknowledge that I’m not alone. If I’m not in a small group, I will seek one out. If I’m not a member of a church yet, I will pursue that as well. I want my family to know I’m committed to them. (CORE COMMITMENT: Community)
• Commit to the purpose of Jesus: The whole reason Jesus came into this world was to touch people’s heart with the love of God and to change their lives into being more like himself. Jesus’ purpose is to bring growth to me and to you and to all who will respond to him. I commit to being a part of the growth he is bringing about in this world, this neighborhood, and in myself. (CORE COMMITMENT: Growth)
• Commit to the plan of Jesus: Amazingly, Jesus plans to use people to accomplish his purpose in this world. He plans to use people gathered together into local fellowships called churches. He plans to use each local church to reach its neighborhood. And he plans to use me. That’s his plan; he has no backup plan. I’m making a commitment to do what I can to be part of it. (CORE COMMITMENT: Ministry)

These are really the four basic commitments of the spiritual life! Make these commitments this week. Renew them every day. Do something about them. And watch the great growth that God will bring in your life over the rest of this year. You will be amazed!

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If you like to talk to tomatoes. If a squash can make you smile. If you like to waltz with potatoes up and down the produce aisle, then you need to talk to my son. He knows just what you need.

Charlie loves Veggie Tales, a series of videos made for children. Each video has various talking fruits and vegetables (done with computer animation) telling stories and teaching moral lessons based on the Bible. It is a very well done series of videos, and Jen and I enjoy them just as much if not more than Charlie does. Although, after seeing a blueberry cry on screen for 12 mornings in a row, I find it a little more difficult to appreciate the lesson being taught.

I bring this up because the first Veggie Tales episode ever touched on a very sensitive topic for little kids. The title of the video is Where Is God When I’m Scared? and the point of the show is made through a little song sung by a cucumber, a tomato, an asparagus, and a celery.

God is bigger than the boogeyman. He’s bigger than Godzilla or the monsters on TV. Oh, God is bigger than the boogeyman and He’s watching out for you and me…

The point is that little kids don’t need to be scared of the secret monsters in their closets because “God is the biggest” and He cares for them.

Many of us are adults now, and many of us have grown out of the monster-in-the-closet thing. At the same time, many of us have grown out of believing that vegetables and fruits can actually talk. However, many of us have also grown out of believing that God is truly in charge. Many of us still fear quite a lot of things-maybe not monsters, but unemployment, bankruptcy, shame, anonymity, loneliness, and death, and in many ways, the last one, death, is the root of the others.

We often fear change because whenever something new arrives, something old needs to leave, and that leaving is a kind of death. We fear humiliation and embarrassment because in those situations, a portion of our pride is cut away and dies. Someone once told me that all human conflict comes from an underlying sense of anxiety over some kind of loss, and loss is another kind of death.

Preparing for Good Friday and Easter, we generally do a lot of thinking about death. From Ash Wednesday which traditionally is a time for people to consider their own mortality until Good Friday when we fully encounter the mortality of the Son of God, death is a big theme. In fact, death was a big theme for Jesus. Remember how he told his followers that to follow him they were supposed to take up a cross (the symbol of death)?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. Our current series of messages is about following Jesus to the cross, and here’s the question I want us to meditate on for just a bit: Preparing for his death, was Jesus afraid?

Consider Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. He’s out there in the middle of the night. It’s dark. It’s cold. His best friends are not too far away, and his three best friends are even closer, but they are all sleeping. He can’t sleep, though, and he’s amazed that his friends are finding it so easy to sleep during this time.

Nevertheless, he’s here to pray, and he turns to it in earnest. Kneeling down, he pours out his heart to the Father in an intense plea, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” His anguish is so great that tiny vessels in his skin break under the stress, and he begins to sweat blood. This is a real medical condition that has only been observed in cases of extreme stress, and Luke tells us about it so we have a glimpse of Jesus’ anxiety. Jesus knows what is coming, and he wishes with all his heart that he could avoid it. What was he afraid of? Death?

Just think, much of our fear of death is because it is an unknown. None of us can possibly know what death is like because none of us has experienced it and none who have are able to tell us about it. But consider Jesus. He was the agent of Creation! He is the one who designed the process of life and death. Being God, he knows completely what happens when a person dies. He has even had the privilege of talking with people in heaven after they have been through death.

Jesus also knows that he will be raised from death. So, could he really be afraid of dying? I don’t think so. It doesn’t fit with his character. He himself told his disciples not to fear those who can kill the body but to fear the One who has the authority to judge the soul after death. I don’t think Jesus was afraid of death.

Was Jesus afraid of the pain he would face? After all, many of us are more afraid of pain than anything else. However, Jesus never speaks of pain as ever being an issue. The word pain is not even found in Luke and in fact, the only time Jesus mentions pain is in the context of childbirth where temporary pain leads to joy! (Jn 16:21).

What about fear of humiliation? Being hung on a cross was a humiliating experience to say the least. However, I don’t think Jesus was afraid of humiliation. Jesus’ whole ministry was about walking into humiliation. Remember, he was equal with God but became a foot-washing servant! No, I don’t think Jesus was worried about enduring humiliation.

So what was Jesus afraid of?

I’m going out on a limb with this, but I believe Jesus was afraid of the one thing that, throughout all eternity, the Triune God had never experienced-sin. We know that on the cross, the Father placed all the sin of the world upon the Son and punished the sin by punishing it in His Son. But that means that there was a moment in the history of eternity when God experienced sin and when the perfect fellowship between the Father and the Son was somehow broken. You can hear it in Jesus’ cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

By its very nature, sin results in separation from God. So when Jesus paid the penalty for sin, he had to experience a momentary separation from the Father. You and I know that separation all too well because we were born distant from God. We’ve grown used to feeling that God is distant. However, Jesus hadn’t ever known it before.

Of all the things in the world that Jesus had to fear, his main fear, I believe, was what you and I consider to be the natural way of things-separation from the Father. He was in anguish over the thought that it could happen for even a moment.

This is my point, Jesus was afraid of sin and its consequences more than death or pain or humiliation or anything else. Jesus would rather die than spend a single moment out of fellowship with the Father. He would rather die than know the effects of sin for an instant.

What about us? We spend so much time avoiding death, humiliation, pain, etc. that we often enter easily into sin. As just one example, we would rather have a broken relationship with God than have Him point out a painful character flaw. I think we’ve got this fear thing all backwards. We fear all these things and easily get separated from God. Jesus feared only separation from the Father, and as a result he could face all these other things with confidence.

Following Jesus, we need to realize there is really only one thing to ever fear–a broken relationship with God caused by sin.

What are you afraid of?

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Would you like to boost your spiritual growth? Would you like to get into a regular habit of Bible reading and prayer?

Well, of course you do, but you probably are thinking that you don’t have enough time to do any of that. Here’s a little solution for you. For some time now, I’ve been familiar with a little method of Bible study called “Seven Minutes a Day with God.”

Here are the details…

• 1/2 Prayer for guidance (Psalm 143:8)
• 4 Reading the Bible (Psalm 119:18)
• 2-1/2 Prayer Adoration (I Chronicles 29:11) Confession (I John 1:9) Thanksgiving (Ephesians 5:20) Supplication (Matthew 7:7)
• = 7 minutes

I have found this to be a great method to begin a good habit, but there’s one more thing I’d encourage you to do. During the reading time, don’t just read the Bible for four minutes. Read the Bible and take some notes in a notebook. You might want to read the Bible for two minutes and then write in a notebook for the other two.

Also, don’t just pray your prayers in your mind. Write them down in a journal or at the very least keep a written list of your current prayer requests. Also, make sure you review the prayer list and write down the ways that God has been answering your prayers!

Only seven minutes for a stronger spiritual life? You can do it!

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