Healthy marriage, healthy singleness – Relationships: Family, Part 2

I think this will not surprise you: husbands and wives are to love one another.  In Colossians 3:19 Paul wrote, “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.”  Ephesians 5:25, similarly says, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  A few verses later, we read in Ephesians 5:28, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who love his wife loves himself.” Love is the first quality in the Fruit of the Spirit, and it certainly applies to marital relationships.

Did you hear who these verses are directed to?  Husbands!  Does that mean husbands are to love their wives, and wives don’t have to love their husbands?  Of course not.  The reason why Paul repeats this to the husbands over and over is because that culture was very different from ours.  In contemporary American culture, as in many places around the world, there is one major reason we get married.  Love!  Our ideal is that we will fall in love with someone and make a commitment to love that person for the rest of our lives. 

That aspect of our culture is a very good thing.  Love should be the foundation of a healthy marriage.  But in the Greco-Roman culture of the first century, this was not assumed like it is for us.  Instead, the culture was extremely patriarchal, to the point where men ruled over and in some cases owned their wives.  The idea that a husband would love his wife, or be married to his wife because he loves her, was not at all an expectation.  Wives, on the other hand, were absolutely to give themselves sacrificially to their husbands, almost like a slave to a master.  They might not feel loving toward their husband, though, but there were certainly to act like it.  Paul, then, in these passages was being very clear about how Christians are to approach marriage in that culture.  Husbands should love their wives, and they should do so sacrificially.  Obviously, then, wives should view their husbands the same way.  What Paul taught was nothing short of radical for his day and age.

Paul also says something that is fascinating when considering the marital relationship.  He says, “Submit to one another” in Ephesians 5:21.  God’s heart is for a marriage relationship where the husband and wife equally submit to one another.  Some might read that and respond, “But doesn’t there need to be one leader in the relationship?”  My answer is that there does not need to be one leader when both spouses work together, communicate together, and decide together, sacrificially, selflessly, graciously, loving one another.  When both apply the Fruit of the Spirit to their marriage, they can be totally equal partners.  I know there are also numerous Scriptures about wives submitting to husbands, and I believe it is best to view those teachings as applicable to the patriarchal culture that Paul lived in.  If he were writing to our culture, which is no longer patriarchal, I believe he would have written even more about equality in marriage than he already did.  This is an area of major disagreement among bible scholars, so if you would like to talk further about that, I’d be glad to.

Husbands and wives should emphasize mutual love for one another.  To have that kind of mutuality, it is vital that we walk in step with the Spirit, so that we can grow his love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness and self-control in our marriage.  In the difficult conversations, in the stress of life, in the ups and downs of agonizing decisions, often facing conflict, marriage is not easy.  All marriages will face challenges, and it is important that we face those challenges by together, both spouses walking in step with the Spirit, inviting the Spirit to grow his fruit in our lives. We will not be able to walk through challenges in our marriage in a consistently healthy way without the help of God, because we are human.

What about singles?  Single people are equally important to God as married people.  Singleness is no better or worse than being married.  We need to celebrate singleness in the same way we celebrate marriage. We celebrate relationships all the time.  Engagements, bridal showers, weddings, anniversaries.  We even have special parties marking the end of singleness: bachelor and bachelorette parties. But when is the last time you celebrated singleness? We as a church should also celebrate singles that way!  We should communicate that singles are just as vital family members as married couples.  In fact, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, prizes singleness.  Here again the Fruit of the Spirit is crucial.  Our posture toward single people should be filled with the Fruit of the Spirit. 

And those who are single, likewise, walk with the Spirit, growing the Fruit of the Spirit in their lives, so they are flowing with the Spirit in their family relationships.  My point in bringing up single people is to remind us all that they are family, that their station in life is equally dignified to all other stations in life. 

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Is the breakdown of the family the cause of societal collapse? – Relationships: Family, Part 1

Some of our favorite television shows of all time are about families.  Did you watch Father Knows Best?  Leave it to Beaver?  The Brady Bunch?  When Michelle and I were young parents, we loved Parenthood about the Braverman family, led by parents Zeke and Camille and their four adult children and many grandkids, who all lived in Berkeley, CA.  More recently we watched Modern Family about Jay Pritchett, his second wife, Gloria, his two adult children from his first marriage, and their diverse families living in suburban Los Angeles.  There are plenty of other films, shows, and books about families.  Family is the basic unit of human life. 

We often hear that the reason why we have societal problems is the breakdown of the family.  And while there is not one reason for the problems in society, I think most sociologists and anthropologists would agree that the breakdown of the family is a contributor, perhaps even the major contributor.  Think about your own family.  How healthy or unhealthy was your family growing up?  Or still today?  Do you have any broken relationships in your family? 

One phrase we sometimes hear in relationship to families is, “the black sheep of the family”.  Usually that refers to someone who for one reason or another doesn’t seem to fit in the family quite the same as other members of the family.  Does your family have a person like that?  Is it you?  Or are there people who are not on talking terms right now?  Or have you heard, “You’re no longer in the will!”  My father-in-law loves to say that all the time, jokingly of course, and we just say, “Fine by me! We don’t want to be in your will, so we don’t have to sort through all your junk when you pass away.”  But sometimes threats about money and inheritance are thrown around in families, like blackmail. 

I don’t believe it is possible to overstate the impact that families have on us.  So what does the Bible have to say about healthy family relationships?

Last week we started a five-week topical sermon series about relationships.  We’re studying relationships as a natural outflow of our previous sermon series about the Fruit of the Spirit. The Fruit of the Spirit is nine qualities that are best applied to our relationships with others.  Last week we looked at what it means to have a vibrant relationship with God. I mentioned the premarital counseling workbook that Michelle and I sometimes use that asks the question, “How will the presence of Jesus affect your marriage relationship?”  The authors ask that question because they rightly believe that our relationship with God is foundational to everything in our lives.  When we are nurturing and growing a thriving relationship with God, we will have his resources in our lives for growing thriving relationships within our families, churches, communities, and world. 

How so?  Because, as we learned last week, and in the previous sermon series on the Fruit of the Spirit, God the Spirit lives in us.  When we walk in step with the Spirit, he grows his fruit in our lives.  Remember the nine qualities that together are the fruit of the Spirit?  The kids in our children’s ministry made awesome posters with one of those qualities on each poster and we displayed them on the walls of our church sanctuary during that sermon series.  I wonder if, without Googling it or looking it up in the Bible, can you say all nine from memory? 

Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control

What I will attempt to answer this week is: How might the Fruit of the Spirit impact our family relationships to help us have thriving family relationships?  Let’s begin where a family begins.  Earlier this week, my wife, Michelle, and I had the privilege of witnessing a new family begin.  For the previous year, we met with a young man in our congregation, and his fiance, for premarital counseling. Then I officiated the wedding ceremony. As you might expect, in that wedding ceremony, there were “I dos” and vows and rings, and a kiss, and finally a declaration of marriage: “By the authority vested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife.”  At that moment a new family begins! 

How can a husband and wife have a healthy marriage? We’ll talk about that in tomorrow’s post!

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

What is family? – Relationships: Family, Preview

My family has changed a lot over the last 6-7 years.  For a long time we were six.  Two parents, and four kids.  Then our older boys went to college, and our home had five, then four people.  Then those boys got married.  Though they left the house and started families with our daughter-in-laws, and now there were only four in our house, we felt like our family grew to become eight.  This past fall, our grandson was born, and now we are nine.  In one month our third son moves to college, though, and our house will only have three.  The days of the so-called empty nest are nearly here for Michelle and me.  And yet our family is bigger than ever.

In recent decades social observers have claimed that family is being redefined. What is family? Who is in your family?  Think about your immediate family, your spouse and your kids.  Or your parents and your siblings.  An immediate family is defined differently depending on your station in life.  Family includes adopted persons, guardianships, step-parents, step-siblings, and perhaps other people that live in your home.  Family could also include special friends who are closer to you than your biological or legal family. 

Now think about your extended family.  Aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, grandkids, nieces, nephews.  Some people have family reunions that include hundreds of people.  My mom’s extended family used to get together every Christmas Eve, and I looked forward to seeing my cousins every year, and of course open gifts.  But as the family grew, and as my grandparents passed away, that gathering didn’t happen one year, nor the next, and it hasn’t happened since.  This past spring one of my uncles passed away suddenly, and my siblings and cousins attended.  At the reception, we talked about having a family reunion. 

How important is it to have family reunions?  It is not wrong to have reunions, but it also is not wrong not to have them.  How much do we need to push for family relationships?  Is it okay if a family grows distant?  Some families are close and some are not.  Some families have healthy relationships, and some are unhealthy. I’m sure you can think of organizations, both faith-based and non-religious, that strive to help people have healthy families.

How are your relationships with your family?  Are you close with your parents, your siblings, your children?  What kind of a grandparent are you?  As we continue our series on relationships, this week we are talking about families.  What does the Bible have to say about having healthy family relationships?

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

We can choose to have a vibrant relationship with God – Relationships: God, Part 6

There is a very real sense in which our relationship with our Trinitarian God is connected to the choices we make in life. That is true for all relationships.  The quality of the relationship is connected to the choices we make.  For example, we grow a closer relationship with God when we choose to follow his way of life.  This is quite like the Old Testament covenant God had with Israel.  Now God has a new covenant with his church.  Thus, just as he did with Ancient Israel, God now is in relationship with both individual Christians and the collective called the church. It is very important that we nurture both an individual relationship with God and a corporate one.  This is why it is a fallacy that an individual person can have a relationship with God totally disconnected from any other people.  God always desires that individual to connect with others who also have relationships with him, so they can partner together to advance his Kingdom, actively loving their neighbors and encouraging one another in their discipleship to Jesus.  We see this reflected in the Trinitarian concept of God.  God is a three in one, relating in a loving way totally unified as Father, Son and Spirit.

So you and I strive to grow our relationship with God certainly by reading the Bible, and by spending time alone with God, listening for him to speak, through his word, and in many other ways.  God speaks through his Spirit, through nature, through his church. 

When you are with friends, whether in person, on the phone or texting, what is one of the first questions you ask them?  “How are you doing?”  A couple years ago I had the realization that when I spent time with God, I primarily focused on me.  There is a verse in 1st Peter than says, “Cast all your cares on him, because he cares for you.”  So we can get used to the idea that when we spend time with God, we do the complaining, the crying, the longing, the asking.  Imagine how that would work in any other relationship. Maybe you have a friend like that, one is a talker, but not so much of listener.  You know that person, right?  Annoying.  You have to work hard to stay interested.  The crazy thing is that when you lose interest and start checking your phone, or looking away, or stop paying attention, all while they are still talking nonstop, they eventually notice that you are not paying attention, and they confront you.  “Hey…are you listening to me?”  How bold of them, right?  They give no indication that they are aware of how annoying they are by droning on and on.  They don’t ask you how you are doing.  Or if they do, they barely listen for an answer, because they are so eager to talk.  They are focused, not on you, but on them.  It seems to me that I can be that way with God.  So I would recommend that you ask God, “How are you doing, Lord?” and then listen.  It might be quiet.  Learn to listen by practicing it.  What helps me when my mind wanders, which is often does, is to say a word or phrase that helps you return to listening.  Pick a word that is based in Scripture. 

I also encourage you to learn about listening to God.  Dallas Willard’s book, Hearing God, is a good one.  Martin Laird has a three-part series of small books that are helpful (Into the Silent Land, An Ocean of Light, A Sunlit Absence).  Place yourself together with other people to listen to God together.  Talk to other people about your relationship with God.  This is why I have a monthly appointment with a spiritual director.  I encourage you to do the same.  This is not a counselor or therapist, but a person who is trained to help you listen to God.

Listening to God and learning to grow your relationship with God takes practice, and that means working on it.  I also recommend books by Henri Nouwen.  Now is the time to make a change in your schedule, in your habits, to make working on your relationship with God a priority.

God wants to do a great work within you and through you.  His relationship with you is one that is deep and connected to others.  Let me conclude with a passage that has become so meaningful to me, Ephesians 3:14-19,

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” 

Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

You can have a relationship with the Holy Spirit – Relationships: God, Part 5

In the previous posts, here and here, we’ve been talking about how we have a relationship with God, expressed in the three persons of the Trinity. So how do we have a relationship with God the Spirit?

We read about the arrival of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, and the rest of the New Testament is all about the new relationship that humans can have with God, through the Spirit.  In fact, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3 and 6 that we are the temple of the Spirit, God lives in us.  In the previous blog series, we talked about how the Fruit of the Spirit is how God the Spirit works in us so that his life is being grow within ours.  His fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control, flow out of us.  That’s quite a relationship.  God the Spirit at work in us. 

We also read about something called the filling of the Spirit, and that we can quench the Spirit, which we will see in the Scripture passages below.  When we place our faith in Jesus, the Spirit enters our lives.  But that doesn’t mean we are suddenly transformed into perfect beings.  Our evangelical forefather John Wesley taught that a Christian could be perfected, and because Wesley was a far smarter man than me, I don’t think Wesley was off his rocker.  But as I look around the world and in my own heart and mind, I think there is a better way to understand the biblical passages on which Wesley based his teaching. 

Our goal is to become more like Jesus, to live like he lived, or to put it another way, to live like he would live if he were us.  Some have called it the pursuit of holiness.  This pursuit of becoming like Jesus is directly connected to God the Spirit.  We are in a relationship with God the Spirit who lives in us.  But when we choose to rebel against or be apathetic about that relationship, we are not allowing the Spirit to fill us, and we can grieve the Spirit. 

Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 4:29-5:2 “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Instead of grieving the Spirit, we pursue the filling of the Spirit, which Paul goes on to write about just a few verses later in Ephesians 5:16-20, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Photo by Joshua Eckstein on Unsplash

You can have a relationship with Jesus – Relationships: God, Part 4

In the New Testament we meet God the Son, Jesus.  Jesus is unique in the persons of the Trinity because of something called incarnation.  Incarnation refers to the idea that Jesus came in the flesh.  Jesus took on a human body.  For 33 years he lived as a human.  When you think about your relationship with God, what does it mean that God became human?  What I’m getting at is this: if Jesus took on a body, his body located him at a certain time and place.  Just like us. 

We Christians believe that we humans are hybrid creatures, with a soul/spirit and a body.  We have an immaterial part and a material part.  Our physical body is seamlessly merged with a spiritual part.  That is quite similar to what happened when, through the Holy Spirit, God joined the spiritual Christ who is the second person of the Trinity, with a physical human body in the woman of a young Israelite virgin named Mary.  That baby did not have a human soul.  It only had a human body.  It was a human body joined with the spirit of Christ.  After the baby was born, his human parents, Mary and Joseph, gave him the name Jesus.

It is wonderful to read the Gospels, the four books of the Bible that describe the life of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In those four accounts of Jesus’ life, we get to see what God is like.  If you want to know what God is like, just read the Gospels.  Jesus is God.  He said that he and the father are one.  The New Testament writers affirm it.  If God seems mysterious to you, then immerse yourself in the Gospels.  I think this is why many Christians are so enamored by dramatizations of the life of Jesus, like the TV show The Chosen, because they gives us an idea of what Jesus might have been like.  My Old Testament professor Dave Dorsey once said that if God walked into the room, he would be so gracious, it would take your breath away.  Imagine that.  And the disciples and friends of Jesus got to be in actual walking and talking relationship with him!  I’m jealous of that.  I wish Jesus would show up in my life so I could talk with him.  But he said in John 14-16 that it is better for us that he left, because he was sending someone to take his place. 

So can we have relationship with Jesus?  Certainly, yes! Jesus himself talked about it quite frequently, that entering into a relationship with him is vital if we want to experience both eternal life and abundant life. To enter into a relationship with him, we first believe in him, which we will learn about in our forthcoming blog series on the Gospel of John. John frequently describes Jesus as saying, “Believe”. But that belief is tied to action, which is why Jesus called his disciples (and us) to follow him. We have a relationship with Jesus when we believe and follow.

But also remember that  Jesus died and was resurrected with a new spiritual body.  Then he ascended to heaven, and Acts 1 tells us that the disciples watched him leave.  While they must have been sad, Luke tells us in Luke 24:50-53 that they praised God at that time.  I’m not sure I totally understand that, except that something happened a short while later.  Jesus kept his promise.  He sent the Spirit.

In the next post we’ll survey what it means to be in relationship with God the Spirit.

Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash

You can have a relationship with God – Relationships: God, Part 3

What does it mean for you and I to have a relationship with God the Father (or Mother if you prefer, see here and here, or perhaps you view the Lord as the Almighty one)?  In the Old Testament God the Father is the person of Trinity we most often read about.  God the Spirit shows up for sure, such as we saw in our recent study in the book of Ezekiel, such as here.  Does Jesus show up in the Old Testament?  There’s lot of debate about this, with Christians trying to make a case for some angels to be Jesus, and with Jewish scholars responding, “No way.”  I think it is best to say we don’t know if Jesus shows up in the Old Testament.  The point to focus on is that when you read OT historical books that tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon and others, the stories depict those people as having an individual relationship with God. When you read the psalms, you read very relational poems, songs and prayers expressing the psalmist’s individual relationship with God, often specifically referred to as God the Father. When you read the prophets, the prophets also interact with God the Father.

God is also very emotional, relationally-speaking, to both the individual and to the whole nation corporately.  He expresses his hurt when the people turn away from him.  And he is overjoyed when they return or when they just stay in close relationship with them. I find it particularly appealing that we can have a relationship with God that is real and alive. He is not cold, unfeeling, and distant. Instead God is emotional, interactive and feeling.

One major concept of relationship in the Old Testament is the concept of covenant.  God has a relational agreement with his people, a corporate relationship with the entire nation of Israel. When they are walking in the wilderness in the Exodus, God appears to them in the pillar of cloud by day, in the pillar of fire by night, and in some other pretty amazing manifestations, such as his presence in the tabernacle and temple. The Old Testament Law, which we studied a few years ago when we worked our way through Deuteronomy, is a relational agreement between God and Israel.  If they abide by the terms of the covenant, God says he will bless them, protect them and provide for them.  But if they do not abide by the covenant, God say he will not bless, protect and provide.  Throughout the history of the ancient nation of Israel, we see all of the above.  Actually, the people would spend a lot more time turning away from God.

In the New Testament, Jesus shows us what it can be like to have a vibrant relationship with God, as he often spends time alone in prayer with God.  This is a reflection of what we read in the earliest description of God’s relationship with humanity, God walking and talking with Adam and Eve in the garden.  For Christians then, it is quite appropriate to grow a relationship with God, and one of the primary ways of doing so is prayer.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will mention Brother Lawrence and his concept of having a conversation with God all the time. He called it The Practice of the Presence of God.  You can read his short book of that same title here.  I urge you to do so.  My guess is that many of us have sparse communication with God.   Given the psalms, which are also almost exclusively individual expressions of prayer and worship to God, it is also quite appropriate to express our relationship with God in song.  But by far, the New Testament presents relationship with God in a radical new way that is a striking departure from the Old Testament.  We’ll explore that in the next post.

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

Some difficulties of having a relationship with God – Relationships: God, Part 2

In one of the premarital counseling workbooks that Michelle and I use with engaged couples, the authors ask a question at the end of nearly every chapter.  Whether they are talking about love or finances or in-laws or communication, they ask the same question: “How will the presence of Jesus help you in this area of your marriage?”  Their point is that a relationship with Jesus is primary and empowering to all other relationships.   

So how is it going in your relationship with Jesus?  It is hot, cold, lukewarm?  Jesus once said to the church of Laodicea, as we read in the New Testament book of Revelation, chapter 3, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”  What is the temperature of your relationship with Jesus?  Let’s talk about how we can move toward a vibrant relationship with him. 

I’ve already asked some questions that maybe we don’t talk a whole lot about.  But there are more.  What is God?  If we are to have a relationship with him, what is God? 

God is spirit, and that means he is invisible.  But that raises more questions.  How do you have a relationship with a being that you cannot see? 

Is our relationship with God just in our imagination?  In our minds?  Is it something we make up to make us feel better?  Is belief in God “the opiate of the masses”?

Or is it a real living and breathing relationship with a real being? 

Another question, is it me and God in relationship?  In other words, can I have an individual relationship with him? Does God have unique relationships with individual persons?

And is God a him?  Some people call God a her.  The biblical writers all use the masculine pronouns for God, but that does not mean that God has a gender and that he has a specifically masculine gender.  You will hear people make impassioned arguments for the importance of God as a male.  He is father, they say, not mother.  He is king, they say, not queen.

But those same people admit that God is not a human or animal that has biological gender.  God is spirit.  Yes, God has tendencies that are typically considered male.  But God also has tendencies that are typically considered female.  Furthermore God as spirit has tendencies that surpass biological gender. 

There a few times when the biblical writers says that part of what it means to be in relationship with God is best understood by the metaphor of a mother-child relationship.  God is “Like a bear robbed of her cubs.” (Hosea 13:8)  Or “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you” God says in Isaiah 66:13.  Finally God says that “like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.” (Isaiah 42:14)

In Matthew 23:37, Jesus himself declares that he has motherly thoughts.  “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” 

Additionally, from the very beginning, both human genders are described as made in the image of God: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) Are you female? You are made in God’s image. Are you male? You are made in God’s image.

Thinking about God as parent might be difficult for some because perhaps you have a difficult relationship with one of your human parents.  Maybe one or both of your parents has mistreated you.  No parent is perfect, and often people transfer the negative parts of their parents onto God.  That is understandable.  If you do that, you are doing something that is normal, but that doesn’t mean God is like your flawed earthly parents, at least in their flaws.  What we should strive for is to have an honest evaluation of our conception of God.  Ask yourself, Am I conferring negative flaws onto God?  If so, we should get to know who God truly is.  God does not have the flaws our parents have, even if it seems like he does.

God is perfectly loving.  Even when it seems God is distant and far away, he remains perfectly loving. 

But we need to remember that God is a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we have a relationship with all three persons of the Trinity.  The concept of Trinity certainly has some mystery to it.  How can God be both one and three?  Do I have a relationship with one God or with three?  Thinking in relational terms, it sure seems like we Christians have three distinct relationships, one with each person of our Trinitarian God. But as we read in Deuteronomy 6, “the Lord is one.” While it might seem that we have individual relationships with three Gods, we have one relationships with one God.

In the next post, we’ll talk more about how we have a relationship with one God who has three persons. For now, I want to conclude this post by mentioning that each of the three persons of the one God have aspects that can feel difficult to relate to. For example, the person of God the Father is the Lord in Heaven.  Because of that he can feel distant sometimes. But we pray to him, sing to him, and generally think of him as God.  That’s why we’re thankful for Jesus who is God in the flesh.  We can identify with him, because he took on a human body.  It can feel easier to have a relationship with Jesus because we can read stories about him in the Bible.  But we have to admit that he ascended to heaven, and he is not here anymore.  He said that was a good thing, but we sometimes disagree with him and wish he was still here.  Lastly there is God the Holy Spirit, who is God in us.  He lives in us.  So we can also identify with him, because, of the three persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is the one with us.  But the Spirit is also, well, spirit, and not human, so it can sometimes feel that a relationship with the Spirit is mysterious. 

And none of that answers my original question: do we have a relationship with one God or three?  Let’s talk about our relationship with each person of the Trinity individually first, and we begin that in the next post.

God only speaks through the Bible? – Relationships: God, Part 1

Usually once or twice each year, I teach a course as an adjunct professor for Lancaster Bible College. This fall I’m teaching a theology course that I have never taught before. To prepare I’ve been reading the textbooks, and the first book got under my skin.  I have no problem with about two-thirds of the book.  But that other third?  I am very concerned with that. 

The book is about ideas that the author believes are false and potentially destructive to Christians.  All the ideas sound good, but when you examine them closely, he believes there is a danger in them.  The danger is that believing these ideas could hurt Christians emotionally and spiritually.  Like I said, for the most part, I agreed with him. 

But not always.  He wrote a couple chapters about one particular issue, and I disagreed with his point of view on that issue.  While his intent was to be helpful and biblical, I think he missed the boat.  The issue that he said was destructive is that idea that God speaks inwardly to people. 

The author believes that God only speaks through his word.  If you want to hear from God, the only option you have is to read and study the Bible.  Many Christians, teachers and preachers, however, say that we can and should listen for God inwardly, whether in thoughts or in feelings, and we can hear God speaking in those ways. This author said, “Nope.  If you hear something inwardly, that’s not God, that’s you.  Your mind.  Your feelings.  The only way to hear from God is through the written word in the Bible.” 

There is no doubt that God speaks through the Bible.   One of the most important aspects of our evangelical Protestant heritage is a high view of Scripture.  We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.  We believe the Bible is inspired by God because the apostles themselves taught that God inspired Scripture.  Here are a few examples of their teaching.

The Apostle Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:21, “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

In 2 Timothy 3:16, the Apostle Paul writes, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

When Peter and Paul refer to inspiration (“carried along by the Spirit” or “God-breathed,” they are not referring to dictation.  Instead, God works along with the human author.  God’s Spirit inspired humans in the process of writing the various history books and letters and poems and wisdom sayings and parables and prophecies that are all part of the library we call the Bible. 

We live in a day and age and culture when we can access God’s word easier than ever before.  We have wonderful tools to help us understand it.  There were times in the history of the world, when accessing the written word of God was next to impossible for most people.  There are still some places in the world today where it remains very difficult.  Praise God for organizations that, for decades, have been bringing the written word of God to those who do not have it.  Organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators.  It is very possible, Wycliffe reports, especially because of computing capabilities, that at least some of the word of God will be available to every person on the planet in the coming years.  That is a joyous bit of news because we believe, as the Bible says, that God does speak through his word.  The word of God is living and active. God’s word changes lives. We can hear God speak through the written word. But is that the only way God speaks?

Must people wait until they have the Bible in their language to hear God speak? Or to put it another way, is our relationship with God exclusively a relationship with God as presented in the written word?  Do we only access God through words in a book? Or can we hear God speak in other ways?  Can we have a relationship with God beyond a relationship with the Bible? I think we can. In fact, I think the Bible say so.

Today we are starting a five-week blog series on relationships.  This series is a natural next step from our previous series on the Fruit of the Spirit.  As we walk in step with the Spirit, he grows his fruit in our lives, and those qualities are primarily effective in our relationships.

So while we begin by studying our relationship with God.  In the coming weeks we’ll talk about relationships in the home, in a church family, in the community (places like work, school and friendships), and finally our relationship with the world.  God created us for relationship. In the earliest description of God’s creation, Genesis 2:18, God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”  So we will be studying what God’s word has to say about relationships. 

There is a sense in which this blog series over the next five weeks will be Relationships 101.  I highly doubt that I will be able to say anything you haven’t heard before.  But that’s to be expected.  Relationships are the stuff of life, and we talk about them constantly.  When it comes to relationships, there is nothing new under the sun.  That doesn’t mean, however, that we remember it all, or that we have it mastered.  We need to be reminded, over and over and over again, about healthy, godly, loving relationships.  We forget so fast.  Or we get stuck in selfish ways of thinking and relating.  Our relationships are often not what we want them to be.  Relationships sometimes take on adjectives describing how unhealthy they’ve become.  A dysfunctional relationship.  A broken relationship.  “They have a codependent relationship.”  Or we just say, “Their relationship is messed up, screwed up or jacked up.” 

I suspect you know what I mean because you have one or two or three or more of those relationships in your life.  Maybe in your family.  Every single family has them.  Every single church has them.  How, then, can we have healthy relationships?

It starts with God. 

In the next post we’ll begin talking about how to have a vibrant relationship with God.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

Relationships: Series Preview

Who are your closest relationships?  Think about the top five to ten people who are your best friends.  When I mention the category “friends,” that list could also include family members.  Sometimes we have the distinct pleasure of being friends with our family.  Michelle and I have thoroughly enjoyed the transition from being parents of four young children to being parents who are friends with their four adult children and their spouses.  I’m also thankful for my parents and siblings.  On a recent day trip to an extended family member’s funeral, I traveled to the funeral with my brother and sister, and I traveled home with my parents.  It was wonderful. 

I am also quite thankful for my long-time friends, such as my friend, Chris, as we have been accountability partners since our days together in the college dorm 30 years ago.  Believe it or not, Chris and his wife have three boys and a girl, just like Michelle and me, and in the same order.  Chris and I continue to meet up for lunch every couple months or so to talk about our relationships and pray together.  We also text or call quite a bit in between those face-to-face meetings.

As we near the mark of 20 years in pastoral ministry, I’m also thankful for our Faith Church family.  We’ve been so blessed to be a part of this church family, with relationships at a variety of levels of closeness. Michelle and I are especially thankful for a group of church friends that one of the group dubbed the “Fire Friends” because we often gather at each others’ homes around a campfire to talk and laugh and cry.

The reality, though, is that whether family, friends or church family, not all relationships are so good.  In fact, my guess is that you could make a list of 5-10 broken or difficult relationships in your life.  Those broken relationships are probably in your family, with (former) friends, and in the church family.  I can make a brokenness list too. As a result, relationships tend to be our greatest source of joy and pain. 

That’s why this coming week we’re starting a five-week topical series on relationships. We’ll be seeking what God’s word has to say about our relationship with God, family, church family, our community and the world, in that order. Our hope and prayer is to build healthy relationships.

Photo by Kimson Doan on Unsplash