If you just pray hard enough, God will do it

Lisa Spencer1 Comment

war room claraAs a follow up to my last post, I wanted to bring the subject of The War Room closer to home. Again, in full disclosure I have not seen the film but I have heard a common thread in those that have seen, including the two reviews I posted in my last piece. Most notably, the takeaway from the film is that if you just pray hard enough God will do it.

Please allow me to get a little personal. Not that my story in no way can be a measuring stick but I think it can be instructive concerning this simplified formula in the context of God’s work in his creation. I also share this story because I know I’m not alone and I suspect this will resonate with a good number of Christians.

First know that I’m not sharing for this the sake of bashing a movie or releasing emotional diarrhea but the sake of examining how we consider prayer. For most of the 7 years I was in a troubled, unequally yoked marriage that was peppered with chronic illness and unkindness, I prayed. Oh how I prayed. I prayed that God would save my husband and soften his heart. I prayed that God would heal him and make our marriage whole. I turned my living room into a ‘war room’ and being more aligned with charismatic teaching at that time, would storm the gates, as I called it. The situation didn’t budge.

One day in 2004, I stopped dead in my tracks, or rather, I believe I was stopped dead in my tracks because the Lord gripped my heart. I was tired. I was disappointed. But most of all, I was intent on having things my way. My roar of anticipated triumph turned into a whisper of surrender – “not my will, but yours Lord.” I so desperately wanted him to give me that shiny object of a good marriage that I had prayed for. But alas, his will was something different. It was not long after that in that same year that my husband’s health rapidly declined and he passed away that August just shy of my son’s 7th birthday. Continue reading →

When bad theology makes us feel good

Lisa Spencer5 Comments

woman hugging herselfImagine that you are enjoying a delicious ice cream cone on a hot summer day. There’s something soothing about the frigid, creaminess that alleviates the scorch of the sun. Now imagine that someone comes and tells you everything that’s wrong with the deliciousness that you are enjoying or even goes so far as to knock that cone of goodness out of your hand. If you are like me, you would not take very kindly to that gesture, especially for something that was giving you such relief and comfort. You would feel violated in a way.

Unfortunately, I think that’s very much the sentiment whenever critiques or criticism arise with popular Christian books or movies that many, many Christians enjoy. And I believe there is a good reason. For Christians, our faith is the most defining aspect of our lives and hopefully, the lens through which we view life. It’s life shaping and intensely personal. But the Christian life is wrought with challenges – trials, temptations, difficulties, periods of lethargy and even apathy. We need fuel and encouragement. And so when we encounter movies and books that give us that lift, we will want to embrace it with all our might. God forbid that someone come and try to mess up that mojo with words of warning!

So what I want to do here is not knock the ice cream cone out of your hand but rather ask you to examine the kind of ice cream that will give true relief that we really need. Because I’ve noticed a common denominator with each release of popular books and movies that people praise – “It encourages my faith.” But I think a more important question is at stake. Is that encouragement produced by something that is faithful to the whole counsel of Scripture? Continue reading →

Reading Revelation with fresh eyes: why I’m excited about my latest book arrival

Lisa Spencer8 Comments

Beale_Revelation commentary coverI just received this commentary in the mail having ordered it about a week ago. I normally wouldn’t write a post about how excited I am about my latest book purchase. But this one is a bit special because it fits with the particularly trajectory I’ve been on regarding how I understand the 66 books of the Bible fit together in terms of God’s outworking of his redemptive history.

In a separate post, I’m writing about my departure from dispensationalism a couple of years ago. Now, if you’re not familiar with the term but have spent a significant amount of time in non-denominational churches with baptistic, pentacostal or charismatic leanings, my guess is that you are a dispensationalist and probably don’t realize it. Dispensationalism is a system of seeing the Bible as segmented into separate and distinct dispensations in which God is outworking his purpose with his creation. Dispensationalism considers that Bible prophecies are fulfilled in a literal, historic way such there is a distinction between Israel and the Church. A natural consequence of this distinction is viewing the book of Revelation in exclusively futurist terms in which God will bring certain events to pass in order to save Israel before Jesus’ final return but not before taking the church out of the way through the Rapture. If that is how you read the book of Revelation and believe that God is bringing about a separate plan for Israel than the church, congratulations, you are a dispensationalist.

Now this is a very brief and generalized sketch since dispensational theology has evolved since it’s formal articulation with John Nelson Darby in the latter 19th century. Following Darby’s work, earlier articulations treated God’s distinct treatment of the Israel vs the church in such disparate ways that it left Bible students and scholars thereafter to continually pursue how these distinctions related to God’s redemptive plan through Christ. Earlier articulations, such as under C.I. Schofield and Lewis Sperry Chafer (founder of Dallas Theological Seminary) considered the church as an interruption (or intercalation as Chafer proclaimed) of God’s plan for Israel such that the kingdom of God was deferred until the millennium reign from Jerusalem since it was at that time Jesus would fulfill the Davidic covenant (Rev. 20–interpreting of course that Rev. 20 refers to a literal 1,000 earthly reign). It’s easy to see the charged of two-ways of salvation, especially with Chafer’s dual covenantalism (the reference of new covenant in the NT as something different than the reference in the OT). Revised dispensationalists, such as Charles Ryrie brought some correction to the unnatural dualistic nature of God’s outworking but still considered a future for the millennial kingdom in which God would bring salvation for Israel. Continue reading →

Post-modern Pietism and the Bible

Lisa Spencer2 Comments

woman eating healthyI came across the term “post-modern pietism” in a twitter exchange regarding this article from Stephen Altrogge, God doesn’t care what you eat. The thrust of the article is how we can create spiritual elitism out of food preferences, most notably the Daniel Diet. Altrogge states,

Jesus’ point is that food in and of itself is not spiritual. It goes in the mouth and comes out the other end. Eating a particular food does not make us more or less spiritual. Vegetables are not more godly than meat. Organic is not more godly than processed. Oreos and Cheez-Whiz are just as holy as homegrown basil. An Eden diet is not more pleasing to God than a Paleo diet or South Beach diet. All foods are clean and can be eaten and enjoyed.

Why does this even matter? Do I care if you are on The Eden Diet or The Daniel Diet or The Maker’s Diet? Nope, not one bit. If a particular diet helps you lose weight, great! But, we Christians have a tendency to moralize our preferences and create artificial spirituality. If we say that God wants us to eat a particular food group we are on the verge of creating spiritual cliques in the church. The most godly people follow a particular diet, the less godly people eat processed food. A diet can become a stumbling block to the gospel and a source of spiritual elitism.

He strikes to the heart of something that has bothered me about how we treat the Bible, especially the Old Testament, as a prescription for life principles today. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do believe that the Old Testament instructs us in the right character that we should have. But it does something so much more. When Jesus indicated that all Scripture is about him (Luke 24:27), he was pointing out that everything that occurred prior to the Incarnation was about him. As Paul notes in Col. 1:16, all things were created through him for him. Continue reading →

One thing seminary can’t teach you

Lisa Spencer5 Comments

pupit w bibleRecently, I’ve been a bit unsettled over some observations. I’ve heard a few different stories, all revolving around seminary graduates. There were the stories of newly installed pastors, who after going through a rigorous “calling” process involving strenuous scrutiny, presented themselves and their beliefs as something different than in that process. Then there’s the pastor who proclaimed heresy in front of the congregation despite earning top grades in seminary on that same topic. And I see with an uncomfortable frequency, espousal of ideas that veer towards syncretism of Christianity and some contradictory worldview (like new age ideas) or endorsement of teachers who do the same.

But it also reminded me of some of my experiences during the six years I spent in a conservative evangelical seminary – conversations I overheard and took part in, observations of students, and even grads, endorsing teachers with questionable theology and in some cases, flat out false, other-gospeling teaching. I’ve also encountered inability to articulate core doctrine of the Christian faith or discern when something is just flat out wrong despite it’s attractive flavor. No, not everyone. Of course not. But enough to be concerned about the attention that was being given to how Christian belief is being articulated and lived.

Seminary is a tricky animal for it can create a false sense of accomplishment and arrival. While there are varying motivations and life experiences that lead people to seminary, at the core is to, in some capacity or the other, serve as a minister to the gospel. And seminary does provide very useful tools and education for serving in a ministerial capacity bolstered by wonderful, pastoral oriented professors and building strong relationships. So please don’t misread what I’m communicating or think I’m down on seminary. I am not and am grateful for my experience. Continue reading →