(Also, be sure to check out my latest groove in the “free goodies” page on the top bar… )

This is a radically controversial topic because it is the question of government. In what circumstance, if any, is rebellion to authority (insubordination) legitimate? I can think of only one right now: “When obeying authority would cause you to disobey one of God’s commands”, then in that instance, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29, 4:19).

“Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” (Rom. 13:1)

I woke up the other morning with the movie “Cool Runnings” running (he he) through my head. I didn’t even know why until some things started to connect in my mind. In the movie there is a young man named, Junior, who longs to be an Olympian on this Jamaican bobsledding team, but who is being pressured by his father to take a prestigious job and get on with the real world. The interesting thing is that the movie hinges upon Junior’s decisions for disobeying his father and going behind his back to pursue his dreams, climaxing in a sharp disagreement, “No Father, you don’t know what’s best for me.” Junior lies to his Dad about selling his car to provide the money necessary for the bobsledding team to travel to Canada and then once there, he refuses to return home immediately at his father’s demand, choosing rather to support his team with the necessary 4 men needed for them to compete in Canada. By the end of the movie, you see his father rejoicing that Junior got to be an Olympian and represent his nation in the Olympics (implicitly stating that Junior was right and the Father was wrong).

I am beginning to notice this dark strand woven into the hidden fabric of many popular movies and stories. It is the idea that rebelling against authority and doing your own thing because you know what’s best will truly result in the greater good. You see this blatant humanism (really, satanism -John 8:42-47) in so many kids’ movies which makes me almost angry (I would recommend raising your kids on Adventures in Odyssey instead of Disney, check out this post to hear more from a wise mother…). It says, 1. You can do anything if you just believe in yourself (So prevalent! Instead of biblically submitting to God and His way and His timing) 2. The authority figure will eventually come to acknowledge that you really are right when you prevail in your pursuit (whether golf in “Greatest Game Ever Played” or bobsledding in “Cool Runnings” -the father here being the authority figure in both of these). This is found in so many classic movies (Particularly Disney, I was told, as in “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin”, though I have been spared from ever seeing either).

It is my opinion that these story lines are nothing less than demonic echoes of the same deception that prevailed upon the story line of mankind in the garden of Eden in Genesis 3.    “…and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)

At the end of the day, if Junior would’ve obeyed his father and took the job, do you think God could’ve still provided something better than just being an Olympian in a bobsled race that really doesn’t matter that much? God cares way more about making you great in the billions of years after this 70 year internship. If you’re living for a medal then you will disobey authority to get it, but if you’re living for God and trusting his provision and eternal reward, you will trust Him to the hilt.

Some closing thoughts:

The testimony of God’s word is that submission (humility) to authority is the pathway to ruler-ship and greatness and honor (Mt. 20:26-27, Prov. 18:12, Prov. 22:4). Antithetically, our culture tells us that rebellion and revolution is the pathway. Yet the Word shouts to us that if we choose rebellion, it will cost us leadership and greatness in the kingdom (Mt. 5:19, and the story of Saul in 1 Sam. 15:22-23). So, I challenge you to think real hard about the decisions you may want to make that go against the authority God has placed in your life. The true test of obeying authority is faith and trust that God really knows what’s best for you (you must GIVE Him the ultimate knowledge of what is good and evil for you) and He is able to secure your well-being and satisfy every longing of your aching heart for pleasure and beauty and acknowledgment (greatness) and intimacy; and that even though the present circumstances (of not getting what you want so badly) seem contrary to your expectations and desires raging within, God has promised to satisfy them (to give what is good -Ps. 34:9-10, 37:4, 84:11) and His promises must be your life! O the purifying power of living by faith in future grace; fix your hope on that day and that kingdom (1 Pet. 1:13)! THEN wisdom will be justified. “Leave room for the wrath of God” (Rom. 12:19). “Commit your way to the Lord” (Ps. 37:5, Ps. 31:5, 15).

(I am actually going to talk about myself… hope it’s not too boring… he he)

Well, the Bible Bee local contest just finished! Suffice to say, I believe I did well. We will see. I think I have a good chance of qualifying in the top 100 15-18 year olds to compete in Washington D.C. We shall see very soon (probably in a couple of days, but definitely by Friday the 18th)!!! Thank you all for supporting me in this, I have felt so encouraged by everyone. I am thankful I got to be a witness of excellence and diligence at the contest. It was kind of funny. By the time I got there with Samuel Hood, Ellen Hackett, and Chauntelle Hall, the whole place already knew who I was because of how I helped them sort out discrepancies within the passages for the NASB version of the quiz cards. The judges and coordinators were all impressed by me and were even blessed at how I had a smile when quoting the Word (Jer. 15:16). One judge even said she “got on fire again” when I was speaking. She even wants me to come and share my heart with the choir she directs at the Presbyterian church! I love the church! I love home-schoolers. I love every kid who came to compete in that place. They had such a passion for the Word and we all got to hang out and talk about it. Today was fun.

History is my favorite subject because I love stories (hence my infatuation with the audio dramas of Adventures in Odyssey and Radio Theatre’s Narnia) and as Pawson says, “History is His Story”. We are born into a story and do everything under the overarching drama of it. Seeing that story gives our life great meaning, not because we are focused on ourselves and the details of our own personal callings, but because we are a part of something so transcending ourselves that to be caught up in the glory of it results in a joy far surpassing that which self-introspection and self-love provides. We love to exult in story and we will forever be caught up in exulting in the story of Christ, it is The Story that surpasses all stories.

Ephesians 2:7, “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” Meaning: God, the Father of story-tellers, will sit down with us and will personally tell us the story of redemption forever; Jesus will take us on a walk with Him in Bethlehem and will show us where He was born, Mary will give testimony of her Son, David will show us how he took down Goliath, Adam will explain to us what the garden was like and talk about the tree of life. But more than that, in that day, we won’t be distant from the story, we will live it. We will walk in the same sacred garden of delight, we will eat from the same tree of life, we will touch the belly of the woman who bore God, our faith we be made sight as we will put our finger into Jesus’ hand and shout just as Thomas did, “My Lord and My God!” (John 20:26-31), we will personally see the victory of God over that Serpent of old, and we will see all nations bowing their knee to the Son of David as He defeats the Antichrist as he boastfully taunts the armies of the living God just like Goliath, and Christ will take His seat on the very same throne of David… I believe we will all have a place to share of telling that great story, whether through music, songs, poetry, art, design, etc. Forever we will do this. It will all be praise and exultation and forever we will be astounded with sheer awe and delight that we get to be apart of something far much greater than ourselves. We will discover anew that ALL THINGS are ours, we are the richest people who have ever lived, and the currency bestowed on us is Love Himself, “OH THE RICHES of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus!” We know in part now (1 Cor. 13:12)… It has not yet appeared as yet what we will be (1 John 3:2). We are a story waiting to be told.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.” (Ephesians 1:3-12 NASB)

Fun thing… The power went out in the prayer room for about 2 hours this morning. It started during the 6 am and went straight through most of the 8 am set my team leads and I play keys on. So, I sat there on the front row with the rest of the room in the pitch-black dark just singing to God with Ron leading the way on an acoustic guitar with 6 singers on the platform, a couple more guitars, Joel on some drums, and Catherine on Cello. It was actually quite nice. Right as the power went out and all the sound system and web-stream broadcast collapsed, the room rallied to the place of prayer and corporate worship. Worship. That’s about all you can do when you can barely see what’s in front of you and you have to question and realize why you’re there in the first place: Let’s minister to God! I loved how a blackout reminded us of this. This is about Him whether or not anyone else is watching. Oh, that we would truly worship in the secret place where He’s waiting for us (Mt. 6:5-6), that we truly find Him when we search for Him with all our hearts, not just with our lips (Jer. 29:12-13). There is nothing better than that; to get HIM! To get His friendship and to hear His secrets when we bare our souls and tell Him ours (simple understanding of friendship, see Ps. 25:14 in the ESV, it’s pretty cool). All He’s really after is that exchange of love and prayer in the secret place. He’s looking for friends. He’s really after your heart, and He’ll do more than a blackout to get it.

Sometimes it takes a disruptive cessation of all the clutter and noise and busyness of the day-to-day-mundane to actually realize that He is right here, (He’s not a God afar off- Jer. 23:23-24) waiting and longing for one thing, to see your face and hear your voice (Song 2:14). Will you answer His invitation? Will you set apart a time to where you are actually coming to Him in the place of vulnerability; exposed, weak, helpless, and contrite (Is. 66:2)? You will find He will start talking to you too, all you have to do is enter the conversation.

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” -Jesus

I highly encourage you to read this important, convicting article by John Piper about television and movies. It helps explain why so many Christians are more vulnerable to immorality than ever.

Here’s a little foretaste:

“If you want to be relevant, say, for prostitutes, don’t watch a movie with a lot of tumbles in a brothel. Immerse yourself in the gospel, which is tailor-made for prostitutes; then watch Jesus deal with them in the Bible; then go find a prostitute and talk to her. Listen to her, not the movie. Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.”

Another:

“One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.

TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it. I am jealous for my evenings. There are so many things in life I want to accomplish. I simply could not do what I do if I watched television. So we have never had a TV in 40 years of marriage (except in Germany, to help learn the language). I don’t regret it.”

Is not God’s love for the unbeliever (like John 3:16, Ps. 36:5-6) a love for one who has broken covenant?

Hosea 6:7, “But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant…”

If all the sons of Adam, as C.S. Lewis brilliantly described the boys in Narnia (Man in Hebrew is Adam), have likewise broken covenant, this implies 2 things, 1. That God made covenant with man BEFORE the Fall, and 2. All of us, BEFORE we became believers, were covenant-breakers.

If so, this brings New Testament understanding to the Hebrew word for love, “Hassed”; denoting a steadfast, covenantal faithfulness.

If this love is for unbelievers, it means much. It means that God doesn’t have different types of love, one limited type of love toward unbelievers and one vastly different love toward believers. He has one love, the Love that He Himself is, a covenant-keeping love. This changes the way I think God deals with man, He deals with us on the basis of covenant, before and after we fell.

What are the parameters and elements of covenant? These I will explore in the future. For now, let’s think about God’s love for the unbeliever as possibly being a love for one who has BROKEN COVENANT..

(Please comment and tell me what you think)

Truman

UPDATE: Deadline to enroll extended to May 15th! Get on board!

If you are 18 or younger, live in the States, and want to go against the tide and do a little, hard thing this summer, I think you should enroll in the National Bible Bee.

I found out about this through the blog (via my RSS feed I have set up in Mail) of Alex and Brett Harris (the younger twin brothers of Joshua Harris, the “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” guy). They lead a movement called “The Rebelution”. If you haven’t heard of it, I highly recommend it; it’s the Word of the Lord for my generation. In a sentence, it’s “a teenage rebellion against the low expectations of an ungodly culture.” And calling us to “do hard things” (also the name of a book they wrote), not just coast along with our culture, but actually LIVE the gospel for display of the glory of Christ in the earth before His return.

Ok, back to this. The first-of-its-kind, a world-class Bible Bee Competition. It is very similar to a spelling bee, except contestants are required to recite Bible passages and facts rather than spell words. The competition will begin with Local Contests in communities nationwide on September 12, 2009. The top 100 finalists from each age group will advance to the National Contest in Washington, D.C. to compete on November 5-6, 2009. Not only that, the National Contest awards (if you win in DC) are crazy. For age 15-18, the grand prize is $100,000 (yes). For age 11-14 it’s $50,000, and age 7-10 is $25,000 along with 2nd and 3rd place prizes for each age group. Check it out the awards here.

It’s twenty bucks to enroll (but less if siblings sign up together) and you sign up with your parents online. The DEADLINE to enroll is now May 15th. Check out the details of the Bible Bee on the website. It’s sweet! You have to be 7-18 years old and I just qualify by a couple months.

As youth, this would be a great opportunity to go deep and hide the Word in our hearts by memorizing it and we would have fun together! From April 30th to Sept. 12th, you have over 4 months to study and memorize with their provided study guide (includes all content that we will be judged on) that you can download and print on May 1st (day after enrollment deadline).

Let’s be those who wield the sword of the Spirit! In a day when culture entices us to fill our minds with trivial “stuff”, I want to be a tree planted in the house of the Lord who meditates day and night. Honestly, I find myself constantly “resigning up” for reading the Word, but I think this is a gift of God to have me commit to something that will hold me to the Word. If the Lord stirs your heart like He’s stirred mine, I would go for it! It would be so much fun if we all did it in our communities and youth groups and held each other to the Word in memorizing/studying it. Let’s SPREAD THE WORD and get whole youth groups doing this!

Also, one last thing, the more you read the Word, the more you talk about it (it’s really true- Mt. 12:33-36, what goes in must come out), and if youth groups and friends did this together, I think it could be said of us like John Wesley said of the congregation in Herrnhut, they were those “whose conversation is in Heaven” (i.e. So filled with the Words of truth and life and edification that we are little concerned with the passing fads of the world that hold no substance like the latest movie or latest restaurant, but instead our mind and our hope and our joy are set fully “on things above”, on Christ- 1 Pet. 1:13, Col. 3:1-3) and if this be so, I believe it will set the water level for youth groups in this nation and in schools and on soccer fields, causing us live out this passage: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture…” (1 Tim. 4:12-13) I want us to be so filled with the Word that we’re contagious weirdos and bold witnesses of Jesus to those who don’t know Him.

-Truman

http://www.biblebee.org/

I got to watch my nephew, Joshua Kim, tonight. He was having a hard time going to bed (There is something so stirring about hearing a baby’s cry when he can’t fall asleep). At the instruction of my sister, I gave him a bottle and laid him down; no relief. I then gave him the remainder of the bottle. I turned off his noise-maker and just sat in silence with him as I laid him in his crib. This wasn’t the first time I had done this, so I decided to go with my secret weapon: patting his bottom. He quieted down as the noise-maker stopped static-ing and I stopped talking; it was just… presence. His eyes were fully awake, but he was calm and he even held my finger for a bit. I stayed there with him for a good ten minutes, amazed to see how not unlike him I am. In fact, the same cry of Joshua resides in my own heart. I felt the words quietly slip off my tongue, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5). Perhaps all Joshua wanted was somebody there to just be with him. To be truly alone is dreadful indeed. After patting him for a good while, I slowly got up and sat in the rocking chair next to the crib. I wasn’t going to leave him.

Perhaps, amid all that jumble and muddle of noise we surround ourselves with is a whimpering cry for the Lord’s presence and acceptance that would hold us and never leave us. You are a gaping thirst for God. You need, therefore you seek. All I can say right now is just the invitation the Lord is extending to me, “Let me be with you”. That is really how he feels about us in our crying and whimpering. What I felt with Joshua is but a glimpse of what my Father in heaven feels towards me. Amid all the noise of things we have to do and people we should minister to, could we stop and just be with the One who loves us and accepts us regardless of what we do? I often find myself unable to minister to others when I have not first been with God as a son and a friend. To let that cry for acceptance (presence) come out is vulnerable indeed, but God loves the true you, not what you do. Maybe the story of a child will give you enough boldness to come as one and to cry as one.