The Brick Walk

Blog theology requires laying one stone at a time. I'll enjoy the work, you enjoy the walk.

How do we understand the makeup of man? Scripture says that man is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26) and that man also is one distinct peson consisting of three areas. Those we call - The Body - The Soul - The Spirit. Paul identifies these for us in his blessing at the end of 1 Thessalonians; "May the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

There has been debate about whether we have a body, and a soul/spirit (a two part nature) or if we have a three part nature. Hebrews 4:12 says that the word of God can pierce "as far as the division of soul and spirit", and I believe that even when separated there is a God designed unity of all three which will be ultimately realized in God's time and plan.

The body is the physical part of man. It is the bone, the flesh, the muscles, the organs, the brain; everything in the world we live in that will undergo decay. The physical part begins at conception and goes on until death. We believe in a resurrection of the physical body at some point where it will be restored and continue on with the soul and the spirit for eternity. When scripture refers to the desires of the flesh it is usually talking about bodily desires not reigned in by a soul in submission to God.

The spirit is the eternal part of man. Creation has a physical dimension and a spiritual dimension and I think just as there are laws of physics that govern the physical there are also laws of spiritual physics that govern the spiritual, perhaps even the same laws. The spiritual cannot be comprehended (or observed) by the physical but it is just as real. In fact, scripture says that certain things that God has made in the physical are based on patterns from the spiritual (check Hebrews re the Tabernacle for example). So we have a physical body as well as a corresponding spiritual body. I suspect that the spiritual body grows with the physical but does not age (or look old) after a certain point, and that babies that die have spiritual bodies that gradually grow to adulthood. That, of course, is just my opinion.

The soul is our personality. It is who we are as a person, and it includes our memories, desires, and decisions. It is actually the link between the body and the spirit of man. A lot of who we are comes from the chemical and electrical processes of the brain but we need to remember that a lot of the same things are going on in our spiritual brain and body. At death then, the soul and spirit leave the body and our personality and memories go on into eternity, where we wll one day be united with a glorified physical body. Scriptural references to the mind or heart of man are usually talking about the soul.

While walking down this path remember what Jesus said to Martha in Luke 11; I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies."

Triple Triangle Defense

Some things are a mystery. We understand what we picture in our head to be the way a thing is without really understanding the way that thing is. Our vocabulary in defining spiritual things is limited and so we use phrases such as "it’s like" or "can be compared to." This does not make the mystery not true, but it sure helps in keeping it a mystery.

Our children were in a variety of sports and if we ever got involved at home in a discussion of tactics Jackie, my wife, would always inform us that we should use the "Triple Triangle Defense". Didn’t matter what the sport was, the "Triple Triangle Defense" was always the answer. Exactly how it works, though, remains for me a mystery.

We believe in God as one God with three persons in the God-Head, and that is called the Trinity. It took the early church many years to settle on what the Trinity was and what were the characteristics of each part. For hundreds of years the church was beset by differing views, both within and without, especially concerning the divine nature of Christ. One of the main causes of the split between the Eastern Church and the Western Church was on defining the procession of the Holy Spirit. Was it from the Father, the Son, or from both? So I’m going to briefly address the concept of God being understood as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and if they remain a mystery after that, great.

Consider God at creation. Genesis starts with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" and right away we have in verse 2; "And the Spirit of God was moving over the waters." As we saw in the last post, the 1st chapter of John says, talking about Jesus, that He was with God at the beginning and that all things came into being through Him. So this is how I understand the Trinity at creation. It was the desire, the intention, the plan of God the Father to have creation, which is both a material and a spiritual world. It was the Son who carried out the will of the Father, calling all created things into existence. And when the Son called out (speaking the Word) it was the Spirit of God who accomplished the work.

This is somewhat like the famous Triangle Offense. The Triangle Offense is a basketball system perfected by a guy named Tex Winter, and used by coach Phil Jackson who won a boat load of NBA championships with it. A star player in that system was Michael Jordon, who flew through the air doing amazing things. So even with this Triangle Offense we have a group of three. One was the designer, one implemented what was designed, and one insured the success of the design. Being a Piston’s fan I still don’t understand how or why it worked, so it must be a mystery.

There is a lot of scripture to confirm the three persons of the Trinity being active at the same time, and I’ll leave you with two. In the 3rd chapter of Matthew Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, and after He came out of the water "Suddenly the sky opened and he saw the Spirit of God descend like a dove and hover over him. With that, a voice from the heavens said, "This is my beloved Son, My favor rests on him." And in the 3rd chapter of John it says: "For the One whom God has sent speaks the words of God; he does not ration his gift of the Spirit. The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him. Whoever believes in the Son has life eternal."

And The Truth Shall Set You Free

For a bookmark in my Bible I use a chart similar to the one shown. Every once in a while when I glance at it I’m reminded that Adam was alive and could have talked with Lamech who was the father of Noah. Adam walked and talked with God, and after Adam and Eve sinned God clothed them with leather garments, showing him and his descendants God’s plan for redemption, fulfilled thousands of years later through the Lamb of God, Jesus.

Through faith Able presented to God a pleasing sacrifice (Heb. 11:4) of the first fruits of his flock, but Cain missed what God desired (Heb.9:22) and became angry and crestfallen. God talks to Cain and says; "Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, well not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is (a demon) crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." We see that Cain did not master it, he did not respond to the leading of God (through the Holy Spirit) and that the prediluvian world as well became progressively evil, resulting in God sending a world wide flood. Yet there was always a testimony to truth available (in this case Adam’s testimony of all that God spoke to him about) and some in each generation who through faith could see and understand the truth.

Holy scripture gives us help in hearing God communicate to us today. Hebrews 4:12 says; "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Well, what does "word of God" mean? John starts with "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" and goes on to say "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." So John says that "The Word" is Jesus, and in scripture we find in every book, in one form or another, a testimony about Jesus.

Who was it that talked to Adam and to Cain? In that same chapter in John it says about the Word; "All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." John says here that it is Jesus who is the creator. It must have been Jesus who formed the dust into man and breathed life into his nostrils and Jesus who walked with Adam in the garden and talked with Cain. And it is being "in Him" where we have (eternal) life and where we come to know truth ("the light of men").

"Faith, then, comes through hearing, and what is heard is the word of Christ." Rom. 10:17.

Dancing With The Stars

The other day my four year old granddaughter Ellie asked her mother Ceci, "Mom, how old is God?". Now Ellie is one smart cookie and I don’t remember exactly what Ceci told her, but Ceci knew that Ellie was not yet ready to understand concepts like Preexistence, Omnipresence, or being both in time yet not in time. I would have quickly answered Ellie "Old enough to know better." and left it at that, but then I think I sometimes get in a little bit of trouble with God for some things I say about Him.

When I was young and smart I often tried to figure out God and never got anywhere but wrong. And after I began to have a personal relationship with the Awesome Lord who designed a universe where the smallest part is a billion times more complex than I can start to comprehend, I realized that I can only know Him as much as He chooses to reveal Himself.
In the 10th chapter of Luke Jesus imparts the Holy Spirt on seventy of his disciples and sends them out into the local communities to heal the sick, to cast out demons, and to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God has come to the earth. The seventy return rejoicing and say; "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name." Jesus rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit saying; "I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hide these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to babes."

And in the 3rd chapter of Romans Paul says; "I am not ashamed of the gospel (the same good news proclaimed in Luke), for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes . . . For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith . . . For since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made."

So ultimately our understanding of the Awesome Lord comes through faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the means which God has designed, so that we can know both Him and His plan for us. Through faith we come to know that He loves us, even more than Ceci could love Ellie, and we can trust that His design for our lives is better and more amazing than anything we could design for ourselves.

Oh The Old Rugged Cross

I attended Catholic School from 2nd grade through 8th grade, and every morning would go directly from the school bus into church for morning mass, then from mass to my classroom. Everyday, whether I noticed it or not, there was a cross sitting on top of the church, a crucifix at the front of the church, a crucifix on a post carried by an altarboy if there was a procession (and sometimes I was that altarboy), and a crucifix at the front of every class room. At home we had a crucifix hanging in our hallway, and for a time my mother would gather her kids in front of the crucifix to say the rosary.

We had religious education everyday, or if not everyday then at least once a week. And when I went to the public high school I still had weekly CCD classes and Sunday Mass. It was while in high school that I started to question if God really existed. By the time I was in college, and I went to a Catholic college, I was convinced that God was a myth necessary because of mankind’s ultimate destination, death.

It wasn’t until after college and in my first year of marriage that we had a heated family argument at the Johnson dinner table about abortion which somehow merged into religion (I was never going to argue religion). That night I told Jackie to lay her hands on me and pray that God would reveal Himself to me. I figured if there was a God who was intelligent and thus had a way that He wanted me to be then it would be stupid not to know what that was. Intellectually I couldn’t wrap my mind around God although I had spent sleepless nights trying to. When Jackie prayed nothing seemed to happen. But over the next 6 weeks I began to get a lot of answers to questions I had, and saw the power of God move in really interesting ways. In fact, I began to believe that prayer would activate the power of God even if I personally still didn’t believe in God. And as I shared in the last post, one afternoon He led me to confess my sins and lay down my life before Him, and to step out in faith (without first seeing or feeling), and He became Light and Truth in my life.

For me it was the scripture from Luke 11 that reached out and grabbed me: "Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For whoever asks, receives; whoever seeks, finds; whoever knocks, is admitted. What father among you will give his son a snake if he asks for a fish, or hand him a scorpion if he asks for an egg? If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him."

Some years later I had a chance to go back into one of my grade school classrooms and talk to some 5th graders, and I noticed the crucifix on the wall. I realized that although I had always known that Jesus died for the sins of men and then rose from the dead, the connection never was made in my brain; why was that necessary? And even, during those 6 weeks prior to my conversion when I read and understood the why, there still was another step. The knowledge needed to go from my brain to my heart. Praise God, He did it for my sin, He did it for me.

For God so loved THE WORLD

About three weeks ago I had a dream that I believe came from God, and in that dream I was with a group of people, we were outside somewhere in the Holland area, and I looked at the sky to the southwest and saw a mushroom cloud. My first reaction was to tell everybody that we had to hurry up and head in the opposite direction. Then I thought that it was strange that I hadn’t noticed a bright flash before seeing the cloud. At that point I woke up and realized that it must have been a nuclear explosion in Chicago, or maybe at the Palasaids power plant, and if something like that happened then I was totally unprepared to take any intelligent action. I know that in our area prevailing winds are from the West, and that would leave everyone in the Holland or Kalamazoo area at great risk from nuclear fallout. Perhaps,I thought, I should prepare an exit plan in advance.

A couple of days later a saw a guy on TV who had written a book saying that a nuclear attack from a terrorist in a major US city was a matter of when, not if. His point was that not only were American citizens not prepared to handle the mass chaos that would follow, but that the church was just as unprepared. Funny how God will confirm a revelation.

I was in grade school during the height of the cold war. We would have drills where in case of a nuclear attack everyone would get underneath their desks and cover their faces to protect themselves from the bright flash and the searing heat. No one told us why the Russians would want to nuke our windmills, but we dutifully practiced. Today we can list reasons why a terrorist would want to set off mass destruction, but we remain complacent, not wanting to admit the threat nor understanding the nature of evil.

And isn’t the nature of evil the first question that an unbeliever will come up with? "If God is love, how can he allow cities to be nuked and little babies to suffer, and the poor to die of malnutrition?" And although we can begin to explain all the stuff about the devil and evil spirits and the selfish and rebellious heart of man, the real answer is: God loves us, He loves the world, and I know this because I experience His love in MY life, and you can too if you would honestly seek Him. We know the verse in the 3rd chapter of John - "For God so loved THE WORLD, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." The unbeliever, knowing their own heart, is really questioning if God could truly love them. v19 "This is the judgment, that the light is come into THE WORLD, and men loved the darkness rather than light, for their deeds were evil."

The mushroom cloud in my dream did not have a bright light and so it may not be a prophecy of things to come, and yet scripture says that there is a true light that has come into the world, and that is Jesus. I first saw that light 34 years ago on a late Novembr Sunday afternoon after confessing my sinfullness, and asking Jesus to come into my heart as Savior and Lord. I went from one moment of not knowing to the next when He filled me with His peace and revelation of Himself. Both have remained ever since.

Initial Post - For the next generation

Today is the 9th anniversary of the death of my father-in-law, Harry Johnson. In his families eyes he was a giant in the faith, somewhat like my buddy Smith Wigglesworth, pictured to the right. Smith was a no nonsense, straight forward, gifted in the Holy Spirt man who lived from the 1800's to mid 1940's. The presence of the Spirit was at times so powerfull in his ministy that it was said that at the moment his train would pull into a town's station that people near the station would start to weep under conviction from God in realizing their sinfullness, and thus were easily led to faith in Christ Jesus for their salvation. Harry as well was strong in faith and used by the Holy Spirit with gifts of tounges, prophecy, discernment, wisdom, healing and deliverence. He consoled many and prayed with many for salvation and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Harry was also a gifted teacher of Holy Scripture. He had one of those automatic bibles that would instantly open to whatever verse was needed at the time.

We had many years of Friday or Saturday night prayer meetings/bible studies with Harry, Helen, Virginia, brother and sister-in-laws and others and were able to search out scripture upon scripture to understand what we believed was truth as God had reveiled it. We also had lots of times of praying for our needs or interceeding for others, and times of listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit during times of worship or prayer. In these times, although the Spirit would touch and work through each of us, we still saw Harry as a leader who we could count on to have that little extra faith, that more sensitive ear to the Lord's leading.

Nine years ago Harry went out to help an old lady by cutting up a tree that had fallen during a November storm. He had a heart attack and was brought to Borgess and almost died enroute. Although he could not communicate he was kept alive by a machine for the next 7 days. Jackie and I brought in some worship tapes to be played in his critical care room and the whole family was constantly at the hospital in prayer and in searching the scripture for words of comfort, hope and healing. Initally I did not feel that Harry would recover but some had found verses that seemed to them to indicate that he would come out of it. As time went on things shifted, they became discourged at the prospect of recovery and I began to think that things would go right to the wire and then God would step in and Harry would recover.

I remember coming home on the night of November 17th after being at the hospital, walking in the door, and Becky asking about Grandpa. "Things don't look very good but I still feel that he might recover." I told her. Just then the phone rang and Jackie told me that her Dad had passed away. The 7 days had been an intense time of prayer for the family and I think the time was a blessing from God because many in the family began to experience needing to seek out and trust in God for themselves instead of having Harry to rely on. The Holy Spirit moved in their lives in a more powerful way, led out of spiritual shyness because of their love for Harry.

I am concerned for the next generation and the one after that if the Lord delays. That is why I want to use this forum to teach what little I know about the will of God. Of course it would be better to be able to lay hands on someone in person to impart a blessing, a healing, a word of encourgement, or to send forth, but this will be used by God. The foundation of faith we have in our family can be an advantage IF WE BUILD UPON IT, or it can be a hinderance if we use it as a substitute for daily seeking out the awesome plan that God has for each of us.