church life

The greatest lesson I’ve learned for successful Christianity

Lisa Spencer1 Comment

man standing on rockI’m not really a task oriented person and shun the standard listicles of how you can have a better life. Our world today gravitates towards simplified pragmatism for improvement and living a Christian life is no exception.

However, I might just break that disposition . . . maybe. There is one principle I’ve learned in all my years of Christian living. It’s the one thing that successes and failures and trials and disappointments and uncertainty and bad church experiences have brought me to time and time again. What is this one principle, you ask?

Get over yourself.

Yep, that’s it. Everything rests on that. Yes, but what accepting Jesus? Well, it starts with that. First, I had to get over myself to even be a Christian. It’s when you realize there is no way that any goodness on your part makes you acceptable to the Father, that your best efforts fall way short and it is only through faith in Christ. It means wholeheartedly accepting his life, death and resurrection and what that means.

Then, I had to try to understand who this God is. Though I spent some years following all kinds of distorted roads, over time, I came to realize that he spoke to us through his written word that testifies to the Incarnate word through whom we come to God in the first place. I came across hard passages, stories that made me cringe, divine actions that made me question, and I ask questions. Lots of questions.

However, in all my years of Bible reading, I’ve recognized the importance of getting over myself. Because you see, I could read hard things, troubling things and then set myself up as judge and jury over God’s actions to determine what I would find acceptable or not. I could shape my own version of Christianity based on my level of comfort and acceptability. But that would make me full of myself. Continue reading →

The church that Christ built (and is building): a Pentecost reflection

Lisa Spencer1 Comment

pentecost doveI’ve had some swirling thoughts today that I wanted to spit out in reflection on Pentecost Sunday. If you’ve read my About page, you’ll know that I’ve gone through quite a theological transformation. My Christian life began with prosperity oriented, Word of Faith, Pentecostal based teaching. I read the Bible in a very fragmented fashion that led to all kinds of erroneous beliefs about Christian faith and practice. I then went through a dispensational/baptistic phase because I started reading the Bible in a more holistic manner and came to recognize the connectedness in Scripture. That evolved in a solidly Reformed position.

I couldn’t help but think of this trajectory as I listened to the sermon today on Acts 2:14-36. In my earlier Christian days, the focus of Acts 2 had been about the evidence of tongues as proof of the Holy Spirit’s work. It demonstrated the miraculous work of the Spirit that moved people to prove their Christian position through extraordinary events. In this view, the Spirit moved individuals to do whatever it is they believed God called them to do based on some existential, individualized perception.

Since 2006, I’ve come to see that Acts 2 is but a reflection of the Christ-oriented nature of Scripture and God’s redemptive plan for his creation. The baptism of the Spirit had less to do with extraordinary events but had everything to do with the testimony and proclamation of Jesus Christ and our empowerment to proclaim him. After all, in John 14-16, Jesus had promised the Spirit after he was no longer with the disciples. Specifically, he said;

But when the Helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me and you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. (John 15:26-27)

A good trinitarian understanding will negate seeing the Holy Spirit as a rogue agent that propels us to focus on the Spirit’s work apart from the work of Christ. The Spirit’s role is to glorify Christ and point to him according to the Father’s good purpose that he has already revealed. So while it might seem plausible to focus on the the extraordinary works of the Spirit, the central character of Acts 2 is not the 3rd person of the the Trinity, but the 2nd person – Jesus the Christ. (Also, regenerating hearts to believe the gospel IS a miraculous event.) This is wholly demonstrated in Peter’s speech in our sermon passage today, vv. 14-36. Continue reading →

Some more thoughts on Revelation, the church and the bigger picture

Lisa Spencer4 Comments

people holding globeI remember that day back in Spring of 2006 almost like it was yesterday. I was pacing in bedroom while reading Romans 4 and then that moment came. I stopped dead in my tracks reading 4:17, “He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” You see for many of my Christian years, I cited that phrase as if it is something we can do, calling those things that be not as though they were.  It’s not like I didn’t read the Bible. I read it diligently. But I imposed the philosophy of “speaking things into existence” unto the text.  Because it was so popularly taught in my circles, I sincerely believed that words contain power and we can use them to wield that God would move according to the words we spoke, as if our words had some kind of power over circumstances. So when reading Scripture, I brought that presupposition in to whatever I read (such as Mark 11:24).

But during this particular time, I was already being challenged on the fragmented way I had read Scripture and the frequency of ripping verses out of their context. So when I read that verse in it’s context, it really brought to life my propensity to bring presuppositions into the text. That one verse sent ripples through considering elsewhere in the Bible where that did not validate this concept. It struck me so powerfully that I had imposed this thought unto the biblical text and presumed it was the way it was.

In some sense, I think I’ve had one of the moments as I’ve been studying the book of Revelation and eschatology, in general. As I wrote about here, I’ve been reading Revelation with fresh eyes because of certain assumptions that I’ve made for many years when approaching this book. Presumptions included that 1) it tells a story of what will happen in the order; 2) that it describes literal events that will take place in the future and 3) that it involves bringing Israel to salvation as the church has been moved out of the way. In other words, as I wrote about in my last post, I presumed a dispensational premillennial position. Funny thing was that I’ve long had some tensions with some components of this position that I just took for granted because of the presuppositions that I held regarding the futurist chronological literalism of the book. Continue reading →

Why pursuing shekinah glory can leave Jesus behind

Lisa Spencer3 Comments

OT_templeI can’t harp enough on how important it is to understand the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament. When we don’t make proper connections, this impacts how we understand the events of the Old Testament apply to us. In a way, I suppose this post is a follow up to You Can’t Read the Bible Any Way You Want.

One such way is when Christians pursue the “shekinah glory” remiscent of how the glory filled the temple in the Old Testament. I spent many years in church circles where this was a common occurrence, especially at special conference type of events. The thrust of pursuit was worshipping hard enough so that that “atmosphere” was charged and that glory can fill the physical space.

I recently started reading Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative, by Sam Storms. I purchased the book because of my shifting views on eschatology (end times) and seeing more and more, especially in context of Revelation, how biblical prophecy points more to what is accomplished in Christ than literal, physical interpretation of events. But I have another post on that! So this post is not necessarily about eschatology but about how we understand the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament.

I really appreciate Storm’s straight forward easy style of writing. In his first chapter, he appropriately lays the foundation that Jesus is the center of the Old Testament. Specific to the glory of the temple he explains what the shekinah glory in the OT means for the NT; Continue reading →

Pope Fiction: The clash of the Protestant Titans

Lisa Spencer2 Comments

pulp fiction_travolta and jacksonAs I’ve watched the events unfold these past few days with Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S., I’ve watched another set of events unfold – Protestants. Angry Protestants. Protesting Protestants. Protestants that pepper the interwebs with angry rants about the evils of Catholicism and the falsehood of the pope celebrated as the head of the church (which actually he would say Christ is the head of the church as would any knowledgeable Catholic). Nonetheless, I’ve been somewhat amused at the “hit job” that has emerged from a simple visit as if the Pope is seeking to take over the United States and must be silenced.

Now, I am staunchly Protestant so please don’t confuse me with a overly mushy ecumenical sympathizer who just wants to blindly sing Kumbaya with my Catholic friends (some of whom really are Christian by Protestant standards BTW) while I bask in the presence of his majesty the pontiff. I’m no expert but I believe I have a somewhat firm grasp on the distinctions between Catholics and Protestants. While I am sympathetic to the premise of Catholic belief especially the intrinsic relationship of Christ to his church, I don’t agree with some tenants of Catholicism primarily the way the indistinguishable nature of the invisible church with the visible church leads to a faulty view of justification as a Christian. Of course, as a Protestant I believe that justification is a one time forensic act through the work of the Spirit not an infusion as one walks out their Christian faith in the context of the church. I am also vehemently opposed to the veneration of Mary and prayers to the saints.

However, given the tumultuous Catholic v. Protestant divide, I took the opportunity in seminary to really investigate Catholicism through a couple of required research papers with the intention of dealing fairly with the material, to the best of my Protestant ability. Considering the charges that are commonly levied against Catholicism and it’s adherents as being misled at best or a false religion at worst,  I thought it was really necessary to examine the charges levied against this system by actually striving to understand the system. Given the love that Christ has lavished on his church, I think some caution is in order before banishing folks out as heretics. Continue reading →