renewing
Caught in the Political Crossfire
by Linda Rex
It seems like everywhere I turn recently, there is some new report about one of the candidates for the presidency doing or saying something which has gotten a whole lot of people upset. I realize a person who has chosen to live in the public eye is faced with this all the time. But, from where I am sitting, there seems to be a lot of mudslinging in this election.
Mudslinging is a human response to our broken humanity. When we are experiencing fear, shame or guilt for our failings as human beings, it is a whole lot easier to sling some mud at someone else than it is to admit we are imperfect and flawed and are in need of redemption. Pointing the finger at another’s flaws enables us to be free for a moment from the unpleasant experience of being exposed for who we are at our core.
But being open and transparent is what we as human beings are created for. We are designed by God to live in a fellowship of love in which each is known and accepted completely for who they are as God’s beloved child. Instead of slinging mud at one another, we are meant by God to be slinging love and grace at one another. But this doesn’t come easy for us.
Think about it. What if each candidate, instead of finding fault with his/her opponent, spent every moment they could promoting the other’s best interests, and seeking to point out their strengths and valuable experiences, and all their qualifications for the position? What if they sought to promote the success of the other person instead of seeking their own success at the expense of the other?
It’s hard to get one’s mind around, isn’t it? This isn’t how we function as Americans in the political sphere. We don’t even work this way in the business world or at home. It seems a ridiculous concept to even consider. And yet, this is the perichoretic life we were created in and for.
But there is so much more involved in what is going on today than just candidates slinging mud at one another. There is also a lot of mudslinging going on between people on all sides of this equation, the most appalling being that of between Christians.
Christians of all people ought to understand and live out the reality the Trinity teaches us that since we are beings made in the image of God to reflect his likeness, we can and should live out our uniqueness in an atmosphere of love and grace which affirms both our equality and our oneness with one another in Christ. We are the ones who should be creating an atmosphere within our society and within the political arena in which each person is appreciated and respected for their unique calling, abilities, training, education and experience, while being included in the community as an accepted and beloved equal.
Bonhoeffer was quite clear in his book “Ethics” and I have to agree with him, that the [Christian] church was not meant to dictate to society, but to influence it. It is in how we live out the truth of our inclusion in God’s life and love, our personhood as God’s beloved children, which influences society and affects politics.
As a Christian pastor, I don’t tell people who to vote for, but I do speak pointedly about the difference between the life God created for us in his Son Jesus Christ and the life our broken humanity drives us to live. We need to pay attention to this difference and live out the truth of who we are in Christ, thereby influencing transformation in our community and in our society as a whole.
Some people are called into leadership roles in our communities, cities, states, and nation. How they fulfill their roles largely depends on how well they are immersed in and living out of their connection with the Triune God of love. If they are living out of a center which is located within their broken humanity, it will be reflected in everything they say and do, promote and accomplish. And the results of leading in this way speak for themselves.
I have to say, though, every human being finds themselves in that place where he or she wants to live in the truth of who they really are, but in this broken, sinful world, it can be almost impossible to really do it day in and day out. We can only live each day and each moment in the grace God gives us in Christ. We each respond feebly and ineffectively to the Spirit’s lead, and most of the time, I would say, we don’t even realize he is leading us.
So, this leaves us all at the same place—the place Christ bought for us in his personhood as God in human flesh—the place of grace. We live as best as we can in that life of love given to us in Christ by the Holy Spirit and then we need to trust—trust that God will work all this out for the betterment of all humankind, redeeming, renewing and restoring whatever we break along the way.
The best place we can be along this journey of faith is in the everlasting arms, resting in God’s grace and love, and doing our best to participate in those things God is at work doing in this world. We can come to see what it is God has called us and gifted us to do in this world, and be busy participating in God’s mission of redemption and renewal. We can actively be building community, helping to heal the hurting, and bringing about justice for the needy, poverty-stricken, enslaved and abused.
And yes, in this next election, we can vote. We can begin the process of voting by informing ourselves, studying each candidate objectively, and learning about the issues at stake in our world today. We can pray and ask God for wisdom and insight, and for the ability to look beyond our prejudices into what it is God would like to see done in this situation.
We will each come up with a different person, a different point of view, but this does not mean we cannot come together to make a mutual decision about who to elect. We want to all bring our opinions and choices to the table, and to have a just and fair election. But then we want to place the outcome into the hands of God. For indeed, he could allow us to elect a very scary leader. It happens. But it does not change God’s ability and desire to sovereignly work out what is best in the long run for all of us collectively and individually.
God is the One who puts people in power and removes them from power. Nothing can prevent him from removing a candidate, or a president, out of the way, should he choose to do so. (Ps. 75) Nothing stands in his way, either, from using this elected individual to accomplish his purposes in the world—there are plenty of examples of this in the biblical historical record.
This is why we ultimately rest in the everlasting arms. We trust in God’s love and grace. And we go vote our conscience while leaving the results up to him.
Abba, you are a good, good Father, and you want what is best for us. Thank you for taking our broken efforts to lead and care for ourselves and turning them to accomplish your purposes in this world. Give us wisdom, insight and courage to make the best decisions possible in this election so we may choose leaders who are people of godly character, who are wise and intelligent men and women with good hearts who will lead us into paths of peace, love and grace. May you provide us with leaders who will govern us with justice and mercy and humility. Through your Son Jesus and by your Spirit, may it be so. Amen.
“It is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall.” Psalm 75:7 NLT
An Anxious Heart
by Linda Rex
I’ve notice in the past few weeks as I have been making a transition in my life there is sometimes a sense of underlying anxiety in my heart. This creeps in here and there as I am facing the changes and decisions which come with the closing of one church and the need to move closer to the other.
It is easy to get caught up in the decision-making and the concerns about what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. And to get caught up in it to the place where I become anxious or worried about what to do next, or whether everything is going to be all right. When I feed this anxiety, it can get to the place where I’m afraid it is all going to fall apart and I’m going to be left destitute and on the streets. This isn’t healthy.
This anxiety never presumes God isn’t there in the midst of my problems. But I do believe there is a subtle unbelief which drives it, which says, “I know God is love and all that, but he doesn’t really care about these little details in my life.” It questions God’s heart—does he really love me? Does he really care that I am struggling or that things are getting hard for me? Does he know and understand my heart and my feelings?
We are instructed in the Word of God to take all our anxieties to God and to rest in him. Peter, who wrote this passage, instructs us at the same time to be on our guard, for the evil one seeks out the weak and the stragglers, hoping to find someone to prey upon. This is why it is so dangerous to feed our anxieties rather than casting them upon God.
Focusing on our anxieties rather than turning them over to God keeps us in that place of unbelief where Satan would like us to stay. Staying in unbelief, in not trusting God to care for us and to love us, in believing God’s heart is evil and not good toward us, opens the door for Satan to go to work in our hearts and lives, twisting us into tighter and tighter knots of anxiety, despair and unbelief. We can even get to the place where we stop trusting in God at all because we no longer see God for who he really is, the God who loves us and wants what’s best for us.
The thing is, we sometimes expect God to be a person who only does fun, happy things in our lives. We figure if he’s a good God, then he never allows bad things to happen. Our God-concepts are a little immature, I believe. At least, I find mine often are. I want a god who does everything I want him to do when and how I want it done. And that’s not Who the Triune God is. He is not my flunky who waits on me hand and foot and gives me everything I want when I want it. And my carnal humanity doesn’t like that.
The writers of the New Testament over and over remind us there will be suffering in this life, especially for those who choose to follow Christ. Bad things will and do happen. Life can be quite difficult and painful at times. But none of these things alter Who God is. And none of these things alter God’s love and care for us in the midst of what we are going through in our lives.
What these struggles and difficulties in our life provide are opportunities to trust God. These are opportunities to once again believe the truth about Who God is and how much he loves and cares for us. These are opportunities as we trust and walk with Christ by the Spirit through them for God to form Christ in us, to transform our hearts by faith. These struggles and difficulties become opportunities for God to be glorified by healing, restoring, renewing, or just sustaining us in the midst of them. God loves us through our struggles and pain.
I think this is why Satan looks for people to prey upon when they are at their lowest. He knows when we trust God in the midst of difficulty, struggles, and pain our relationship with God deepens. We end up closer to God than when we began. And we grow in our Christ-likeness. And those are the things the evil one seeks to destroy—relationship, community, love, and the restoration of humanity in the image of God in which he was made.
So as anxiety is creeping around the corners of my mind and heart, I keep turning to Christ. He is the one who holds in my place, and in yours, the perfected peace and trust we need in the midst of all these things which are happening in our lives. We can cast all our anxiety upon God, because God in Christ came and shared in our humanity, and knows and understands all we are going through. God knows our hearts and cares for us. His heart toward us is good.
As we turn to Christ in the midst of all we are going through, God works to perfect us, to restore our true humanity, to strengthen us and plant us with a firm foundation in Jesus Christ. God draws us closer and closer to himself into deeper relationship with him.
And God also works in community to strengthen and help us. God places us within a spiritual community, the body of Christ, so there are others to come alongside and help us through our difficulties, whether through prayer, support, encouragement, or physical help.
One of the greatest blessings for me has been the gift of a new family here in middle Tennessee through the churches I have been blessed to pastor. I am comforted by those who pray for me and my family. And I am encouraged by all those who have offered physical help and support. This reflects the Triune life and love in our humanity, and demonstrates God’s unconditional love in tangible ways in my life. And this also helps to ease the anxiety which is a natural part of our human response to change.
It is good we are learning how to show love to one another in healthier and more tangible ways as the body of Christ. It is through this loving one another in the midst of difficult times we demonstrate the love of God, and enable others to experience a taste of the Triune life and love. May we continue to grow in Christ by the Spirit so others can experience God’s love and grace more and more as time g
oes on.
Abba, thank you for your gracious love and grace. Thank you we can turn to you in all our anxiety and distress, and you care for us and lift us up. Grant us the grace to turn to you and to trust you in the midst of every difficulty, struggle and joy, and to provide support and love to one another as well. We give you praise and thanksgiving for your faithful and abundant love, through Jesus and by your Spirit. Amen.
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” 1 Peter 5:6–10 NASB
The Divine Aggressor
by Linda Rex
The last thing I would ever want to do would be to make God look like he is an evil monster looking for opportunities to destroy you or me because of our badness. It seems our ways of looking at God and thinking about him do enough of that without my helping them along.
But we do need to understand that God isn’t just a nice, feel-good sort of Person all the time. Just because he is loving and compassionate doesn’t mean there aren’t things he really truly hates. Indeed, God abhors and vehemently opposes anything which mars the beauty he created you and me to reflect—he is passionately opposed to those things which keep us from being the image-bearers of God he created us to be.
This passion of God—this “wrath” of God—is behind all he has done in sending his Son to live, die, rise and ascend on our behalf, and behind his sending of his Spirit to dwell in human hearts. This passion of God has driven him from before time to ensure what he began in us would be completed through Christ and in his Spirit.
There is one who has opposed God from the beginning, and who, with his followers, seeks to destroy God’s work and to undermine his efforts in renewing all things. The adversary opposes all which is good and holy. He labors constantly in an effort to turn human beings against the God who made them, sustains them and redeemed them. Any effort we make to trust in and obey the God who is Father, Son and Spirit is resisted and thwarted by the evil one.
In many world views, good and evil are seen as equal opposites, who must be kept in a constant state of balance for people to be able to exist in harmony and peace. The balance I see being kept in the divine life and love is not of the balance between good and evil, but the perfect harmony and oneness of the Trinity in their equality and diversity. Evil in this worldview only exists as that which opposes the Trinity, and is allowed to exist only because of the freedom of will given to those who are created by God.
God summarily dealt with evil and all who oppose him in our cosmos by taking on our humanity and dealing with it from the inside out. He was very aggressive in tackling the issue of our broken humanity and the efforts of the evil one. In Jesus Christ, God conquered death and Satan, and gave us all a new life in Christ which is ours through the Spirit.
The message we find in Revelation and elsewhere is Satan and death are defeated foes, and we have nothing to fear. In fact, God sent his Spirit and he is systematically penetrating this world with his very life through his gathering of believers (which we call the church) who are the body of Christ. There is a finality about the destruction of Satan, his demons and evil, as well as death. As far as God is concerned, it is already over with. All that’s left is the mopping up. What we experience today of evil and death and suffering is just a temporary blip in the radar, and in time, it will all be gone.
Dr. Michael Heiser, in his book “The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible”, puts it like this:
The theological messaging couldn’t be more dramatic. Jesus says he will build his church—and the “gates of hell” will not prevail against it. We often think of this phrase as though God’s people are in a posture of having to bravely fend off Satan and his demons. This simply isn’t correct. Gates are defensive structures, not offensive weapons. The kingdom of God is the aggressor.(a) Jesus begins at ground zero in the cosmic geography of both testaments to announce the great reversal. It is the gates of hell that are under assault—and they will not hold up against the Church. Hell will one day be Satan’s tomb.(1)
While I may not agree with every detail Dr. Heiser writes in his book, I can appreciate his emphasis on the already, not yet, focus of the establishment of the kingdom of God today. God has invited believers to participate with him in the expansion of his renewal of all things to fill the whole cosmos. He is allowing those who follow Christ to join with him as he aggressively intervenes to bring healing, hope and restoration in many people’s lives all over the world.
We forget sometimes we are at war. We forget our Jesus is a mighty warrior fighting on behalf of all that is just, holy, right and good. And he has invited us to go with him into battle against all his foes—all which oppose the glory he created human beings to reflect.
God is not impotent against the forces of evil at work in this world. But he has invited us to share in the battle, and he has reasons for allowing things to happen the way they do. As the commander-in-chief, who died at the hands of humanity so humanity could be saved, he has a way of dealing with evil which often seems out of sync with our reality. This is why it is so important that we follow the lead of his Spirit and grow in our knowledge of Who Christ is and who we are in him. God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts.
The bottom line is to trust him—to believe Abba so loves you and me that not only did he send his Son Jesus to free us from sin and death, but that he also is sending his Spirit to bring to fruition all Jesus forged into our humanity in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. Thankfully, Jesus even took care of our need for faith, by accomplishing in himself our perfect response of love toward Abba. We are held, we are loved, and we are Abba’s beloved children, and God will accept nothing less than this for you and for me. This is his passion and Jesus will see that it is realized by his Spirit.
Thank you, Abba, for your great love and faithfulness toward all you created. Thank you for giving us the freedom to choose, and the privilege of mirroring your glory and goodness. Thank you for allowing us to participate in all you are doing to renew what you created and you sustain. We trust you to finish what you have begun in us through your Son and by your Spirit. In your Name, we pray. Amen.
“I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. Mt 16:18 NASB
(1) Heiser, M. S. (2015). The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (First Edition, pp. 284–285). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
(a) [Note by Dr. Heiser] See the discussion in John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Eerdmans, 2005), 675.
Our Life in the Trinity 