Corby Stephens

This is supposed to be the world largest diamond. It would fit comfortable in the palm of an adult’s hand. I don’t recall how many facets it has, but it has a bunch of them. Yet they are all different side of the one diamond. They are all important. The gospel is very much the same way. It has many facets, all of which are important. The funny thing is that many preacher/teachers, ministries, parachurch organizations, tent to put a lot of effort into one facet in particular. On the one hand this is to be expected because the Lord has made us all different, so it kind of makes sense. On the other hand, it can be an unhealthy thing. Other facets can be neglected at the expense of the one.

If you have been reading this blog you know I have been reading Why Revival Tarries by Ravenhill. Someone pointed me to another website where you can download videos and audios of his stuff. I was surprised that there were videos because he died before video taping stuff became a consumer thing. At any rate, it struck me that in his speaking and writing he seems to really focus on motivating people to pray. What’s wrong with that? Nothing in and of itself, but the way he does it really borders on condemnation if you don’t do it the way he is describing. he doesn’t cross that line, but if the only thing you read was his stuff, you might not be a very joyful person.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still really digging this book. It’s a short book but it’s so potent that I can really only take one or two chapters at a time. And they are short chapters. In fact I’m going to have to re-read it because it is so dense. If I can modify my behaviors I think I will get something out of this book. If I just read it and feel this man’s passion and agree with him, but don’t do anything about it, then it’s kind of pointless.

I have not tried to listen to more of Ravenhill’s stuff yet. I hope he was just as passionate about other facets of the gospel. Grace is important. Joy is important. Compassion is important. The Holy Spirit is important. And yet, I can see his point. If Christians, if preachers, if the church isn’t a praying thing, then none of that other stuff will be effective. Perhaps that prayerful connection as evidenced by the power of the Spirit is the carbon that the diamond is made of and the facets are ways of reflecting all of that? Possible.

All I know is that I don’t have it going on like he did or like he is preaching about. If that circuit can be closed and the juice allowed to flow, perhaps I will finally arrive.

Today I’m at the Northwest Creation Science conference. Acutually I was here last night as well, just for the record. I’m sure that this isn’t a new idea at all, but this stuck me in a way I had not considered before.

Dr. Johnathan Sarfati was giving a talk on Refuring Comprimise (based on his book of the same title). I’ve heard the idea that if billions of years is true then God’s word isn’t true, because the plain reading of scripture says that God created the earth and the universe 6,000 years ago in six days. Everyone agrees, Christian or not, that the plan meaning of the text of Genesis 1-2 is trying to communicate that God created everything in 6 days, not billions of years. Even if you think that these passages are poetic and not literal, the words are trying to communicate that idea. Those of us who take it as literal history (which is how it is suposed to be taken) understand that if billions of years of cosmic history is true, then God’s word is untrue, and if any of it is untrue then none of it can be trusted.

There are those who are Christians that believe in both billions of years and God’s word, that a “day” in Genesis 1 isn’t an actual day it’s a long period of time, so science that is biased against the Bible and the Bible are really compatible. They say that God’s creation is another means by which God reveals His truth to us, and the study of God’s creation via modern science tells us that the earth and universe is billions of years old, and that man has been around for millions of years.

Here is the idea that occured to me. Initially God’s written word communicated to people that the world and universe were very young and created quickly. A few thousand years later, man’s technology and understanding advances enough to determine that God’s creation communicates that the world and the universe were very ancient and created slowly. So which is God trying to communicate? Which are we to understand? These concepts are contrary one to another. If God told some people one thing, and others something that was contrary to what He told the first people, then God is lying to one of them. These two opposing views call into question God’s integrity. That is not a good thing.

This is why this issue really is an important one for Christians to get a grip on. It is separate from the question of salvation, but it has oh so much to do with many other things in God’s word and how we live them out.

Blogged with Flock

Wow. I’ve been reading a book that I have not read since Bible college days called Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill. This guy was crazy insane right on. The book was first published in 1959, but you couldn’t tell by what he writes and addresses. I, personally, am getting my booty kicked by this thing. As some of you may know I’m involved in a blog called Simple Minded Preacher. Well, this guy Ravenhill is the original SMP!

Every chapter, without fail, is right where I am. Or at least where I want to be. It’s so direct and right on it’s as though I’ve never known Jesus at all. It’s as though I’ve never understood what faith is. But it isn’t guilt ridden. It’s more encouraging, if that makes sense. He says “This is how it’s supposed to be and if you aren’t there then you need to get there because this is what God has for you!” The primary audience is preachers but this is a must read for anyone who feels like there is a gaping hole in their spiritual life in the Lord. This is it. Before each chapter begins there are quotes from classic teachers and preachers of old. Those are worth the price of the book alone. And when the forward of the book is writen by A.W. Tozer you know it’s good stuff.

I have found myself wanting to retype in this blog what he writes from, but then I’d be reproducing the whole book. Here. I will write the first few sentences from each chapter I have read so far.

The Cinderella of the church of today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorouse with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel! No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shopwindow to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off. When a man who has crept along for years in conventional Christianity suddenly zooms into spiritual alertness, becomes aggressive int he battle of the Lord, and has a quenchless zeal for the lost, there is a reason for it. (But we are so subnormal these days that the normal New Testament experience seems abnormal.) The secret of his “jet-propelled fellow” we have just mentioned is that somewhere he has had Jacob-like wrestling with God and has come out stripped, but also “strengthened by the Holy Ghost!”

To the question, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” we answer, “Where He has always been – on the throne!” But where are the Elijah’s of God? We know Elijah was “a man of like passions as we are,” but alas! we are not men of like prayer as he was! One praying man stands as a majority with God! Today God is bypassing men – not because ther are too ignorant, but because they are too self-sufficient. Bretheren, our abilities are our handicaps, and our talents are stumbling blocks!

After describing the boneyard in Ezekiel 37, God’s command to call it to life, and the faith that requires, he writes Now obviously no faith is required to to the possible; actually only a morsel of this atom-powered stuff (faith) is needed to do the impossible, for a piece as large as a mustard seed will do more than we have ever dreamed of. Again and again God asks men to do not what they can, but what they can’t.

Harnack defines Christianity as “a very simple but very sublime thing: To live in time and for eternity under the eye of God and by His help.” Oh that believers would become eternity conscious!

Centuries have passed since the Swiss Reformer Oecolampadius forged the phrase, “How much more would a few good and fervent men affect the ministry than a multitude of lukewarm ones!” The passing of time has not taken the sting from this statement.

One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed. We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).

That’s as far as I have gotten, 8 chapters. Amazing stuff! After going through this book again I can accurately say that my prayer life really, really sucks big-time. I’ve been far too passive which is easy for me because that’s who I am naturally. A pastor friend of mine named Gary described it like being a otter, just floating around and eating. That’s my dream life! However it is just incompatible with what we are called to be.

Let’s see if I can even make it to the end of the book.

Blogged with Flock

Have you ever heard or read something so many times that you think you understand it just because of the number of times you have heard or read it, only to figure out that you never really have understood it until something clicked and then suddenly you did really understand it? Could I make that sentence a little longer? Like, fur sure.

I was reading Romans 12 as part of the through the Bible in a year thing. Romans 12:1 is a classic verse. “I beseech you therefore, bretheren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” It’s a classic. Almost every time I’ve heard it taught on, something along the lines of continually offering yourself to God as a sacrifice is taught. And that is a correct Biblical teaching. At the same time, it is a contradiction.

A sacrifice is something that has been killed. To be a living sacrifice just doesn’t make sense. But I’ve always just let it go as some deep, mystical, spiritual truth we won’t fully get until we are with the Lord. But, as I was reading it this time, I remembered something I heard a Bible teacher say once. He said that if you ever come across a passage that puzzles you, stick Jesus right in the middle of it and it will make sense. It might take some time, thought, and prayer, but it will make sense. So I did it. And it worked!

Jesus is a living sacrifice. He was sacrificed as an offering for our sin. That’s the whole point of Jesus comeng in the first place. But He didn’t stay dead, obviously. He was resurrected. He was transformed. In Romans 6 Paul makes a big deal about how if anyone is in Christ, he too has died with Him, been buried with Him, and risen with Him. He uses baptism as the illustration for this. This is a major thrust of Paul’s teaching. Galatians 2:20 echoes this, how we have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live but Christ lives in us.

So, just as we have died, been buried, and risen with Christ, we are also living sacrifices just as Jesus is. That is the only way we can be “holy, acceptable to God”, through and in Jesus Christ. This might be a no brainer to some, but it’s the first time I have ever heard it. It’s the first time I think I really get this passage. And it makes perfect sense in the context. Paul going on to talk about be transformed, literally metamorphosis. Death and resurrection is a metamorphosis.

For me, being a living sacrifice no longer depends on my efforts to be holy and acceptable to God. I can’t do that on my own. No one can. I can only do that in Jesus. I just have to rely on the Spirit to do that. I just have to die to myself. And therein lies the challenge.

Blogged with Flock

Now that I have your attention…

No, this post isn’t about some nut job that thinks Jesus impregnated them. Nor is it intended to be a disrespectful title for what is a very Biblically based blog posting. It’s the phrase that came to mind as I read the first part of Romans 7 the other day. Romans 7 is usually famous for the “Romans 7 shuffle” which is the last half of the chapter. “The thing I don’t want to do, that I do. The thing I want do to, I don’t do. Do be do be do.” (OK, that last part was Frank Sinatra). Take a look at the first half and you will see what I mean by “knocked up by Jesus.”

In the first three verses, Paul begins by comparing our relationship with the Law to a woman whose husband has died. You have to think 1st century Jewish here. When we get married today, people say “as long as we both shall live” but over half of them don’t mean it. In the ancient Jewish mind, a woman who was married, got divorced, and remarried was committing adultery because her fist husband was still alive. That is what is so significant in Paul’s argument here. If a woman’s husband died, she was free from all of the Laws that connected her to her husband. She was no longer bound to him or those Laws. Because he died, she was free to remarry.

In verse 4, Paul makes the connection to those who are in Christ. Whether we knew it or not, before we became Christians we were married to the Law and all it’s consequences. Now that we are Christians, the Law is dead to us. This means that we are free to be married to another; to Jesus. This isn’t the only place Paul uses this picture of followers being the bride of Christ (see Ephesians 5). It’s a picture of our relationship, of our intimacy, of our commitment to Him. Jesus is alive, or else we’d be married to a dead guy. Ick. So the Law is dead to us, it no longer holds power over us to condemn us of sin, and we are now remarried to Jesus. He is our main Man. But look at what Paul says at the end of verse 4. “That we should bear fruit to God.” What does that mean? I’m glad you asked. I’m glad I asked!

The context here for the usage of the word “fruit” is marriage. A student of the Bible should instantly flash back to the beginning, to Genesis. What was God’s command to Adam and Eve, the first married couple? “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Genesis 1:28.) What does this mean? Get pregnant and have kids. What does it mean to bear fruit to God? Get pregnant and have kids. Knocked up by Jesus. Obviously I’m speaking figuratively or spiritually, as is Paul. He is trying to communicate a point, a principle.
The picture is reproduction. Reproduction involves intimacy. Again, the context of the illustration is marriage. Closeness. Openness. Letting another see you and experience you as you also see and experience them. Is that language to personal? Making you uncomfortable? As close and personal as you may be with your husband or wife, it is only a shadow of what we can be, what we are supposed to have, with the Lord. If your marriage sucks then you probably don’t have a positive mental image of what all this means. That is unfortunate. But let’s keep moving, shall we?

In verse 5 Paul points out what we used to have when we were married to the Law in our flesh. Look at the overt sexual innuendo Paul uses. “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.” Passion. Arousal. Members. In case you didn’t know, Rome was a very sexually screwed up culture. Much worse than we are here in America. The picture here is a horny person who will have sex with anything that moves. I believe the term in we used in college was a “horn dog.” That’s what we were before we came to Christ. Ever thought about it like that? I hadn’t until I just reread this passage. The result, the fruit, the kids, the offspring was death. Spiritual death, disease and decay for ourselves and those around us, that always had real, physical consequences. STDs. Drugs. Jail. Divorce. Abuse. That’s what we were, that’s what we had when we were married to our ex.

Verse 6 tells us that we have been delivered from that. The Law is dead to us. We have died to it. It has died to us. It no longer holds any condemning authority over us. We aren’t married to it anymore. We are married to Jesus. The result of our intimate relationship with Him is offspring. In our previous marriage we produced death. In this one we produce life. That is supposed to be our fruit.

To continue in the theme we must examine ourselves. How is your marriage to Jesus doing? Are you warm, open, and receptive to Him, or are you frigid? Do you go on dates with Him or do you have to constantly reschedule? When you are out and about do you introduce Him to others? Imagine being out with your spouse and you run into some people from work or something. Your wife is right there with you. Would you introduce the group to your wife and your wife to the group? Of course you would. It’s the same thing with Jesus. He is with you 24/7. He watches your movies and TV shows with you. He listens to your music with you. He hears the conversations you have and the thoughts you think.

Does that make you nervous? If it does, you can fix it. He will never leave you nor forsake you. (Matthew 28:19-20.) Fall in love with Jesus. Develop that intimate relationship with Him. It’s what He made you for. Go on, I dare you…

If you are still married to the Law, if you are not a Christian and you want out of that marriage but you don’t know what to do, head on over to this website and it will get you started.