I read a fascinating article on World’s Magazines website this week by Gene Edward Veith titled “Praying For Persecution.”

The crux of the article is a quote from a leader of the underground house church in China. He said this about how Chinese Christians are praying for the church in America during an interview.

The leader of the underground church then added something else: “We, in fact, are praying that the American church might taste the same persecution so revival would come to the American church like we have seen in China.”

Not exactly what you’d expect is it?

In fact I’m not convinced it’s the wisest prayer either, but it does point out just how differently many persecuted Christians view their faith than we in America do.

As Veith points out in the article persecution does not always make the church grow – just look at what’s happened to the church in most countries where Islam is the dominant religion.

But leaving that aside for a moment, here’s my admittedly somewhat twisted question of the day for you: Who says we aren’t under going persecution already?

No, I’m not talking about the roll back of religious liberty we’ve seen in recent years, or anything even remotely connected to politics!

I don’t care about that!

I’m talking about the fact that every Christian everywhere is constantly under spiritual attack regardless of the political or cultural climate he or she lives in.

I’m talking about Spiritual Warfare!

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If you’ve been paying attention to the debate about Gay marriage you’ve heard one of the arguments against it is that letting gays marry opens things up so that marriage can become anything you want it to be – including a man marrying two women, or a man and a woman etc.

Of course this is scoffed at by those pushing for gay marriage.

But it’s already being pushed for in Europe, so it won’t be long till we see it here!

Check it out!

Hat Tip: To Michelle Malkin!

It’s 9:25 PM on September 28th as I start to write this. I got home a little while ago from my Family Group (Small Group) and then IM’d and called a dear friend who’s been going through a lot lately.

My day started around 4:00 A.M., being woke up by some serious sinus blockage – then off to the radio station at 5:30 AM for my usual Wednesday morning live SonRise Show and recording the church’s Sunday afternoon show onto the computer.

The rest of the day followed suit.

And you are asking, “So What?!?”

Just wanted to point out that I haven’t had hardly any time to really think about writing this post. A lot of things came to mind but I’m very tired and don’t have a lot of time, so I’m just going to “go with the flow” so to speak.

To me there’s been a theme running through a lot things lately. It came up tonight in my group when we talked about why God lets bad things happen, why some get healed and others don’t, etc.

Talking to my friend tonight on the phone about a very difficult situation her and her daughter are in, and how the Lord is slowly bring healing, or at least the ability to deal with her illness, to her sick daughter made me think about it also.

I have also sensed this theme as I’ve been wrestling with my sermons the last two weeks. Usually they come fairly easy, at least the outlining does. I’m a fast outliner, but not for the last two weeks! I have it in my head, but it doesn’t want to come out right on paper.

Then tonight my friend mentioned Psalm 139 which speaks to all of this so beautifully.

Speaks of what? The Otherness of God.

God is our friend, He is always close to us and as Christ said will be with us always even to the end of the age.

But He isn’t like us. He is eternal, He is perfect, He is just, He is truth. Or in other words – He is Other.

This strange mixture of being close to us and through Christ understanding our every pain and sorrow, and also being so completely Other is one of the great mysteries and joys of the Christian faith.

We do not worship a Big Man that we’ve made up to make us feel better! If that were the case the God of the Bible would be more like Zeus and a whole heck of lot less like Jehovah!

He knows us completely, He is everywhere we could possibly go, He has a plan and a purpose and the power to accomplish all that.

And He is totally Other.

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This week’s Christian Carnival is up and running!

Stop by and check out all the great posts – including one of mine!

Be sure to support all the great Christian bloggers you can – just as long as you put The Marshian Chronicles first of course!!

[Just kidding - sorta!]

I just did some checking and discovered the the “official” opening of the Marshian Chronicles was exactly seven months ago today!

Trying to find a way to respond that isn’t a cliché is very difficult!

I must tell you that it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but it does seem like it’s been both a lot of work and quite a bit of fun as well.

This is my 345th post here, and there will be more to come. I’d like to thank all of you for reading, commenting, etc.

In the last two weeks I’ve seen the hits on this site increase nicely, though today things are down again!

Ah well, regardless of what the number of hits do I’m just going to try and keep on writing what seems most authentic to me.

I hope all of you – and more – will find it helpful.

- Louie

What I wrote about yesterday is still bouncing around in my mostly empty head today! I keep thinking about how different God looks at nearly everything than we do.

God’s Economy – what is it? Let’s start out by defining our terms. Here’s how Answers.com defines economy:

1. Careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labor: learned to practice economy in making out the household budget.

2.
1. The system or range of economic activity in a country, region, or community: Effects of inflation were felt at every level of the economy.
2. A specific type of economic system: an industrial economy; a planned economy.
3. An orderly, functional arrangement of parts; an organized system: “the sense that there is a moral economy in the world, that good is rewarded and evil is punished” (George F. Will).
4. Efficient, sparing, or conservative use: wrote with an economy of language.
5. The least expensive class of accommodations, especially on an airplane.
6. Theology. The method of God’s government of and activity within the world.

It’s that last one that’s most important to our little discussion here of course, but I want to make a side note before going on. As I read the definition I was struck how often it used terms like sparing, least expensive, etc.

From that perspective it’s no wonder we sometimes look at God and think that since He’s perfect in everyway He would never be wasteful, and indeed His very perfection forbids any kind of inefficiency in all that He is and does at all!

All true. But it begs the real question which is – what is truely wasteful to a Being who is all powerful, eternal and knows everything?

Not being all powerful or all knowing I don’t expect that any of us can fully answer this, but I do believe that the Bible has given us some hints of what God’s perspective on this could be.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)

Of course God’s thoughts and points of view are different from ours. He is eternal we are bound by time. He is all powerful, perfect and sinless, we are none of the above!

Why then would we think that He would agree with us on what we think is wasteful? He could have another point of view couldn’t He?

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If you’ve followed this blog since it’s beginning in late February of this year you may have noticed a chance in how I’m writing it. I started out with definite things I wanted to say, series to explore, etc.

But over time I’ve found it more effective and helpful (for me at least, and hopefully you too!) to take a more “stream of consciousness” approach to it. By that I mean that I’m writing about things that engage my mind or heart each day, and will only attempt a series of things if it appears urgent to me.

All of which has nothing to do with what I’m writing about today, but I just felt you ought to know how I’m doing what I’m doing here since you are generous enough to give me your valuable time to read this stuff!

I keep thinking back to a post that Joe did on September 16th at the Evangelical Outpost.

At the time I wrote a little about it and my disagreement with his point of view. But there were things I didn’t say that keep bugging me, so I’ve decided to talk about at least one of them today.

Let me start by saying that I love Joe’s site and think it’s probably the best Christian blog on the net – I visit it just about everyday and learn a lot from him. He’s much more intellectual than I am that’s for sure!

So please don’t interpet this as a friendly and loving response to a brother in Christ. I don’t believe anyone is likely to solve the mystery of God’s foreknowledge and predestination anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be engaged in frank and friendly discussion of it.

Thanks Joe for making me think!

I want to quote two paragraphs from his post and talk a bit about them.

When Calvinists refer to this doctrine (which I prefer to call “definite atonement”) we are referring to the scope of God’s design for redemption and intent of the Cross. Unless a Christian is a universalist, they must admit that Christ’s work on the cross is limited to those who believe. Though he died for all, not everyone is saved through his death. Christ atonement is sufficient for all, as R.C. Sproul explains, but efficient only for some.

I’ve read that quote several times and have decided I misinterpeted it when I first read it. I am most definitely NOT a universalist, but I also do NOT believe in the Calvinist doctrine of limited atonement.

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I received the following e-mail on my churches e-mail and was very pleasantly surprised! Read on…

Greetings,

I came across your blog (The Marshian Chronicles) while searching for blog posts on sin and or original sin. Though I do not personally agree with your conclusions, I found your Sept 20 post “Some Thoughts On Addiction” interesting and well written. I will be hosting the first GOD or NOT carnival this coming October 3rd. With your permission, I would like to include this post in the carnival.

If you have not heard of GOD or NOT (very likely since it is new) I would encourage you to visit www.GODorNOT.com for more information. The main goal of GOD or NOT is to create a forum for believers and non-believers to post a collection of articles on a single topic. The first round topic will be “Sin”, the second round will be “Proof”. It is our hope that this combined forum will help create a more open environment for communication on both sides of the issues. Or, put another way, it will give the saved an opportunity to witness to the unsaved and vice versa. The carnival will alternate hosting between theist and non-theist sites.

If you reply to inform me that you would not like to be listed as part of the carnival I will of course respect your wishes. Otherwise, I will include your post and you will receive a trackback ping when the carnival itself has been posted.

Cheers and thanks,

Sean

a.k.a. LBBP

www.SkepticRant.com

I’m going to check this out and hope all of you will too. As I told Sean in my reply I’m honored to have anything I’ve written be used!

I am also very much in favor of opening lines of communication between people everywhere! That’s what sharing our faith is all about isn’t it?

So check it out and if you comment there (and I hope you will!) tell ‘em the Marshian Chronicles sent you!!

Yesterday I started a new series of sermons, with the above title. The idea came to me in Malawi after a conversation with our Missionary Bob Kuest. I did as much research as I could with only my Bible and even put together a rough outline.

The idea is to look at some of the more common problems or storms that we believers face going through life. Thinking of the term overcoming I remembered the letters to the churches in Revelation chapters 2-3.

So we’ll be looking at the themes of those letters, not the letters themselves, though I feel free to draw from them as needed.

The first message was the introduction to the series, and I looked at what overcoming is really all about from a New Testament perspective. The more I thought about this the deeper it became to me. To my mind this issue strikes at the very heart and core of the Christian lifestyle.

To overcome is to conquer or win. How do we do that as Christ followers?

Through weakness.

As Paul wrote, But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (NIV)

Of course Jesus is the ultimate example of all this, He said he had over come the world just hours before being arrested, mocked, tried, beaten and killed on the cross!

For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you. 2 Corinthians 13:4 (NIV)

Such weakness! And yet our salvation comes out of just such weakness! Without His weakness we could have no relationship with God.

It is Christ’s weaknesses that buys our entry into God’s Family, forgiveness of sin, new life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, etc. All that and more comes directly out of weakness!

I felt this deeply and still do. It’s much more central to my life than it’s ever been due to my experience in Celebrate Recovery.

Admitting weakness and inability is the indespensible key to successful recovery. I think that those of us who’ve admitted we’re addicts have an advantage over those who either aren’t addicts or who haven’t admitted it yet.

How strange that our weakness gives us an advantage over those “stronger” than we are.

It seems to be a universal principle that God has built into creation, if we admitt our weaknesses and turn them over to God, great strength, peace, joy and victory will come.

Perhaps if more people could see this more people would bite the bullet, admit their weaknesses and through the power of God overcome them.

It’s my prayer that I will have the grace to not only continue to trust God for strength in my areas of weakness, but that I’ll have the courage to admit more of them – and let His grace and strength work through me as a result.

I be chillin’.

No, I haven’t lost my mind, even though it sounds like it for a 52 year old man to talk like that!

Actually I’m just a happy guy! I went back to the doctor today and she said that my blood pressure is in the healthy zone now! She okayed me to continue taking the bp meds I’ve been on, and I’m free to live life without this hanging over me!

I also found out that my cholesterol is excellent!

That’s absolutely amazing when you consider that for nearly all my adult life I over ate and ate more junk than you can imagine! We’re talking cookies or cake for breakfast here!

And not just in my college years and my 20′s – I was doing that in my late 40′s!

On top of that I was about as sedentary as is humanly possible. I couldn’t walk around the block without getting out of breath.

51, overweight, out of shape, high blood pressure and high cholesterol to boot! Sounds like the classic description of a heart attack victim doesn’t it?

Yet because of the power of God working through recovery today I’m in pretty good shape, 73 pounds lighter, and more healthy than I’ve been since who knows when?

What an amazing thing the human body is that it can take literally 30 plus years of abuse, and bounce back in just a year and a half! And that at the half century mark! Just think what shape I could be in if I had shaped up and stayed that way in my 20′s or 30′s!

All of this is, to me, incredible proof for the existence of God. In fact I don’t see how you can argue against it on any basis other than the emotional.

The human body’s incredible self-healing and recuperative powers are the result of mere, random chance?

I think not!

The human body’s ability to get back into shape so quickly without completely falling apart with all it’s various parts working in perfect unision just a coindence?

I think not!

The human body, and all of creation, all but screams that it’s was planned by a Creator, and functions under His loving care and guidance.

Recovery is like that too. Watching the human heart and soul heal, recover, and move forward after the worst possible abuse is nothing short of amazing.

Or miraculous.

My life is a testament of God’s goodness. So is everyone else’s if we will but use the eyes God has given us to see.