Biology Class Growing Up

Monday evening I walked into a class I wasn't even signed up for because I got an email about it.  It's a perspectives course on Christian work throughout the world.  The topic was missionaries to unsent peoples.  As I was walking into my church, into my Sunday school room where we've been lately pouring over the issue of creation vs. evolution, guess who was standing there to register me in the class?

I shook my head in disbelief as I approached.  It was obvious God was up to something.  I smiled at him and said, "You're Mr. Shrout, right?"  He was indeed.

He is my science teacher from when I was in 7th and 8th grades.  Amazing.  This is just another step in almost a year's worth of development that God is making for me in my life when it comes to the issue of creationism vs. evolution.

In fact I've been trying to write this blog post since June 12th.

It all started when I was in my friend April's church last spring, visiting one of their services.  An older gentleman walked up to me afterward and said to me with a smile, "I know who you are.  You're... Michele, right?"

"Yes," I said.  I looked at him for awhile.  I recognized his face and I smiled big.  "I know you too...!" I trailed off.  I couldn't figure out how I knew him.  He filled in the blanks.

He said, "You were in my science class."

"Yes, I remember.  You're... Mr. ..," and I almost said it as he did, "Mr. Haight."  I smiled bigger and said, "Oh my gosh!  I remember being in your class!  Biology at North Salem High."

He said, "I remember you were really good at science, seemed to know a lot of the answers, that's what I recall about you."  I smiled and I tried to shuck his compliment away but he continued.  "I remember one day I was upset with the whole class because of how badly they did on a test.  You raised your hand and said, 'It's our fault for how we did.'  And that made me feel like you were defending me, it was nice of you."

I thought about that.  Coming to think of it later, I can remember that.  What I remember more is how on one time I took advantage of his trust.  There was a kid who was doing something naughty, and I advocated for him.  Looking back, the kid didn't deserve my advocacy.  Mr. Haight looked me in the eye about it and I felt it.  That's my memory.

I remember something else.  The funny kid in class was eating gummy bears.  When Mr. Haight turned his back to the class to write on the board, this guy would take a juicy bear out of his mouth and throw it full-force toward the wall or the ceiling.  It would stick.  Mr. Haight turned around and couldn't tell why people were laughing.  Ohh, the naughty things kids do!  But Mr. Haight was a great teacher.  He cared about the kids.  That's why I remember him so fondly.

Me in 5th grade

I told Mr. Haight as he was before me now, "I remember in class that sophomore year you had a creation vs. evolution debate for the students by the students.  I was on the evolution side.  I remember it was so odd to me that people used the Bible at all, or would argue things like that.  I thought everyone should or did believe in evolution.  That was the beginning of my awareness that there could be something else.  It was a big deal to me."

He didn't respond too much to that.  He moved on to ask me about my kids who I had brought with me.  He's been a Christian all this time, and a wonderful one at that.  How fascinating!  No wonder he wanted to have that debate in the classroom!

Fast forward to May.

My daughter Grace goes to an orientation for entering Middle School - Claggett.  I see this teacher at the school, and I think he looks familiar but it doesn't click in my thinking.  Later they announce "Life Science class is taught by Mr. Shrout."  What!  That was my science teacher when I was in Middle School (Whiteaker).  Then I realized who I had seen in the hall.

I find out over the summer that he is retiring that year.  So my daughter will not have the opportunity to have him for Life Science like I did growing up.

I wondered if he had recognized me.  I had seen him coming out of the school once or twice since May.  So this thought of actually getting to talk to him too has been building in my mind since last year.

One of my science teachers was a Christian, how neat!  But what if my other science teacher was not?  Mr. Shrout was my most favorite teacher of all.  He was my teacher when I kind of discovered that I loved science, and wanted to do stuff in science for the rest of my life.  That's the way I completely felt back then.

If I met him, what would I say?  All these months, I wondered.  I tried to explore my heart.  I could hear some normal questions he might politely ask.

"Did you end up doing something in paleontology?"

"Did you become an anthropologist like you had been thinking about?"

"Are you doing something in science at all?"

My answers:

"No."

"I stay at home with my kids."

"I'm trying to build momentum for something called 'missional communities.'"

"I'm a Christian, now.  So, ..?"

And all I could imagine someone saying in reply to that, is, "Oh."  And that's where I've never been able to figure out how the rest of my story, goes?  What would I say, about my love for science?  I feel like, I still love science.  I still know everything I once did.  It just doesn't mean as much to me.  Does that mean anything at all, to someone who teaches science for a living, who invests himself in students so they might become something someday?  I can't tell you how I solve the question of what hominid fossils are all about.  I don't know the answer between what the Bible says and what the fossil record shows.  I don't have enough science to make the Bible a scientific textbook.  I'm stuck saying mostly, "I don't know."

Do you see now why I couldn't finish this blog post?

(I even told my arch-nemesis in middle school that I was going to be a paleontologist when I grew up!)

Because of Monday evening, I realize I don't have to finish this blog post.  The story ends a little differently.   My other science teacher, is also a Christian!  Hm.

All of this, was built into this moment, walking into my church and seeing my science teacher standing there.  I don't have to try and explain why I'm a Christian, thank God for that!  He would know!

I said to him, "I was one of your students."  (He probably hears that a lot.)

"Oh, what year?"

I said, "About '92, '91..."

"Hmm," he said.

"I remember one of your jokes.  'Why didn't the moss hang out with the lichen?  Because he heard he wasn't a "fungi [pronounced 'fun guy'],'" I repeated to him.  He acknowledged.

"Remember, I did special reports on science over the summer because my dad made me study college level Biology?  I gave you a paper at the beginning of the year?  You asked me to be teacher's aide the following semester?  You had me help pass out papers?  One time you asked me to transfer dead frogs for dissection from one bucket to another bucket in the back storage room.  And I cried and said I couldn't do it?"

He listened and said, "I'm sorry, I don't remember."

I looked at the floor, and tried again.  "Remember I wrote down all your jokes you told in class on my book cover?"

His eyes lit up and he said, "Oh, that's YOU?" and took a step back.

"Yes, that's me," I said smiling.  "Remember at the end of the year you asked me if you could photocopy my book covers so you could keep all your jokes?"

He replied, "Yes, my son was just wondering where those were.  They put on a retirement party for me and he wanted those out as part of a display.  I'll have to text him in a little bit and let him know that I met you."

That was wonderful.  I was pretty sure my testimony of becoming a Christian would matter because he would remember the textbook covers.  But I still don't know what my testimony is, about science.

I remember that I was always raising my hand in class.  I remember the other kids eventually got annoyed.  They started to say, "Okay Michele just put your hand down" and I would laugh.  Kids thought I was teacher's pet.  I remember that Mr. Shrout was hilarious.  He was so funny.  He is humble about how funny he is.  Most of his jokes were puns, but I just remember the entire class breaking out into laughter out of nowhere because of him.  All the time.  I remember dissecting frogs and worms.  I remember his green bicycle that he stored in class.  Even back then it had a reputation: it was dubbed "the green machine."  I had so much fun in that class in 7th grade.

Over the summer my dad used to make me choose a college-level textbook and read it and write reports.  So I picked 200-level Biology and studied it.  When I got to the end of the summer I had written some papers on things like the evolution of man and chemistry of ATP converted to energy in the bloodstream.  I could draw the tree of human evolution and used it for speech class and for random papers in English all through middle school. I knew all about evolution.

In the last few years, I've tried to abandon what I know altogether.  Most of the books I read in the last few years about creationism only talk about the hoaxes, they don't really say anything about the thousands of fossils of hominids that are out there to be considered.  I guess I'm stuck between two worlds.

I didn't expect to discover that my science teachers were Christians.

I can't explain to you the sense of lostness that I lived in spiritually, growing up.  At 17 I saw the movie about what the Bible explains about Jesus.  I saw Jesus as strong.  And authoritative over creation.  Provocative.  A leader who meekly gave His life, dying cruelly.  He said He did it for me, and for everyone.  He depicted how God cared if a bird fell to the earth, and how much more God cared for me.  And then, He gave me His kind of JOY.  It changed my life.  I still didn't understand sin, or God, really.  Or what my purpose was.  I just knew that I knew the Author.  The Origin.

Me, age 17

Looking back, now, over all those years of feeling empty and lost, I just feel like God had this big hug, wrapped around me.  He was there.  All along.  Even though I was lost, He was there.  His people were there.  God was never that far away.

Why did I have to wait to get saved, I wonder?  So many people who were saved at the age of 17 have done much to glorify Jesus.  Just something I've noticed.  Reid Saunders was saved at 17.  Billy Graham was saved at 16.  The missionary who spoke to us Monday night who went on to give 20 years of his life to the Iteri people, was saved at the age of 17.  It is a kind of fervor that is truly annoying to those who are closest to you; they are a people who just won't stop talking about Jesus.

Don't you just love how provocatively God speaks?  Like sending my favorite science teacher into my church classroom on Monday night where the day before, we had been discussing evolution.  I marvel at God's message to me:

Honey, your science teachers were Christians, just like you.

Thank God for filling in the blanks, showing me His creative presence is so near.

Ben is Better :)

We went to the doctor today and he was like, "Get out of here," in the way doctors usually are.  Don't you just hate it when you have to wait day after day, after day, just to talk to the doctor again and find out the answers to your concerns... and then they blow through the appointment in a measley five minutes?  Then you go out and get in the car and realize, it's over.  ...It is encouraging.

The doctor still does not know how the bleeding started or why it stopped, but said again that he had lost a lot of blood; it was a big deal.  I was able to share this testimony of the power of prayer at the coffee shop this morning.

There is no reason why he can't go back to work, but he still will take time before he can do lifting or have his energy back.  So we're pretty happy around here.  Yesterday was boring.  Ben had had the desire to "telecommute" to work as they say, but his company told him not to work until the doctor gave the ok.  So he came back into the house and got a snack and said he was going to watch youtube.

he rests his case: man-zone

 He's tired of doing that.  :)  Before he got sick he had been working on clearing out the garage so he could turn it into a man-zone.  It's not quite mannified yet, but the broken couch he likes to sit on definitely sets the tone.

I was not alone through this; I have the Church.  And the LORD gave His presence to me in a specially close way.  He shows me how close He is to me and how He is happy to be my Spiritual Head, and share His resources, His thoughts, His strategies, interests and purposes with me, even His authority.  Hmph.  I'm so blessed!  Not because I have this or that thing in my life, not even because I saw God work a miracle through my husband.  I'm blessed because He has commanded me to believe that "they will be my people, and I will be their God."  He is mine, and that makes me the richest person in the world.

A few days ago I wasn't clear headed.  After we got home from the hospital I was discouraged.  For a few hours I found myself thinking thoughts that are not aligned with God's will.  I am sad that I'm unfaithful in my humanity.  But I'm glad that I saw it for what it was and held still till the feeling and temptation passed.  It's okay to ask questions.  It's okay to be frustrated.  Are you going through some difficulty in your soul today?  Don't be afraid to name your disappointments.  If you can wait to see what God does in them, you will have passed the test and have so much deeper joy after the moment.

Ps. 119:11,

Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.

2 Tim 2:11-13,

This is a faithful saying:

For if we died with Him,
We shall also live with Him.
If we endure,
We shall also reign with Him.
If we deny Him,
He also will deny us.
If we are faithless,
He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself.

I am quite aware that Satan likes to keep disturbing me in the same tender spot, but the Light shines in the dark, and the darkness cannot overcome it.  I cannot wait to see more of God's power in my life and the lives of the ones I love.  It is a constant prayer!!

Missional Community: My Story

What do you hear God saying to you, through the Missional Community way of life?  I've seen many become born again through the gospel and now they need to grow with Christ.  Growing in our trust of Christ we call "discipleship."  I have about 7 adults and 7 children who primarily look to me since they received Christ through my testimony.  Frankly it's too much for one person to provide, but I can't just ignore them either.  I feel like the disciples who threw their nets onto the other side of the boat.  The catch was so heavy they had to call other fishermen to help drag it out of the sea.  We really don't need a church program to reach God-seekers, they're quite plentiful to find while just living our life!  I do know I wasn't meant to do this in isolation, and neither are you dear Christian.

My Story

About ten years ago my husband and I got married, bought a house and started going to church in Salem. I reached out to my neighbors with the testimony and love of Jesus Christ doing the sorts of ideas being suggested in the free book you can read right now called "Simple Ways to Be Missional."  I offered to help them out with things I could see they were in need of, and had neighbors (now dear family!) regularly in my home.  I did not see much fruit for several years.  Then in about 2007 my husband and I started a season of marital discord which isolated us out of patience for one another.  It was during these 3-4 years of separation that I saw over 30 people trust Christ through my life and testimony.  Wow... something remarkable was happening!  I didn't think consciously at the time, but one day toward the end I looked back and started counting.

God drew others not because I was awesome, but because I was broken.  I testify that it was ALWAYS when I was a wreck and crying, seeking to obey God's voice toward me, when someone would knock on the door and be searching for hope themselves.

In December of 2010 my Sunday school class prayed as a community for marriages and I believe it was at that time that it was the miraculous power of God that restored us.  In mid-January 2011 we reconciled.  The very week following this reconciliation I sat down and began to write a document.  I later titled it, "The Disciple Making Workhorse."  It was a summation of the lessons I had learned about ministry during these years.

For all of 2011 I continually worked on the document.  I was conflicted about sharing it.  Why?  Well first of all it's a piece of paper, and as a human being I think I make a much better substitute for intimacy.  What's more the whole point of what I wanted to say was meant to avoid the familiar route of self-determination and program and organization.  It's too easy to falsely emulate a movement of God in the power of the flesh.  I want show up where the Spirit is already moving.  (See Nobody Told Me About Good Flesh.)

However I wrote the paper because I didn't know how to find people who could join me or who I could join.  In October last year I began looking for a community of people who were more or less like me.  I prayed and prayed for God to help me find likeminded people, to open that door for this reality of my experience of God to spread.

It was last December 25th when God answered that prayer.  I was celebrating Christmas with Ben (my husband) Painter's family.  This is the day we celebrate the incarnation of God, and He gave me the best gift of all!  We sat around with the whole family after a wonderful time of eating dinner and opening presents.  Ben Joyce (my husband's sister married a man with the same name as her brother, different Ben; he is the narrator in the video of yesterday's post) began to share his story of what God had been leading him to.  I asked him to explain what it was all about.  Out poured the very concepts I had been writing about in my document, right down the list!  Now, I had a name for the thing I was seeing: "Missional Community."  What an unexpected way to answer prayer!

Within a two week period I had found a local variety of Missional Community called PAX, here in Salem.  The PAX community is gracious and I am deeply blessed learning with them what it's like to be on mission.  PAX has brought Ben and I together as a couple in ways I never dreamed could happen.  We are truly a team, serving others.  I'm so thankful for my husband and his heart for people.  He supported me all these years, even the difficult ones, to pursue God's work and I'm grateful!

What's Next?

What I have seen is an answer to prayer; amazing!  But what do I do now?  I can't really tell you more of my story without you the reader.  If you know me -- you're part of my story.  I need help to live the life God imparts.  I wasn't meant to make decisions regarding God's plans for me, privately by myself.  You are endowed with the same Holy Spirit I am and I rely on brothers and sisters to testify what God is saying to them.  Yes - I really care what you believe and the last thing I'm interested in is putting down someone or something.  What is the LORD showing you about the Missional Community way of life?

These posts are meant to create conversation.  I hope you will approach me, if you're reading along here, and tell me how the LORD is speaking to you so that I can obey the voice of God - we all can, as one, be caught up in God's story.

Learning Life

Getting life from God's Word is vastly freer than anyone's formulation of how to get it.

"The trees of the LORD are full of sap" Ps. 104:16

Mary was a young woman famous for learning at the feet of Jesus.  She makes it sound easy.  For me learning has not always been easy.  When I was a teenager my parents had big expectations that I do well in college and outside of school I was subject to daily studies and written and verbal comprehension tests.  I didn't handle it well, and as I grew up my attitude toward learning worsened.  I felt so much pressure that by the time I found my own place on campus in college, I remember opening up a textbook and I could not even read a sentence.  I just stared at the page.  All I felt was stress when I looked at a book.  I graduated college without reading for tests with a 2.4 GPA.

In spite of near failure at college it was in that time that I became a follower of Jesus Christ.  After graduating I accidentally joined a cult who told me I was not saved.  I needed to find truth in the Bible for myself.  I spent the next three years trying to understand the nature of baptism and salvation.  I thought I had answers on paper.  However I got something more out of all that searching.  It was by the life-giving experience of receiving love and restoration through His power and presence in His Word -- I noticed -- I finally enjoyed learning.  Jesus changed me!  For years I failed to identify who He is in relation to me and what it would do to me now.  Why didn't I perceive what He was going to do?  Later I went into the pre-nursing curriculum for a year and everything was different.  I studied anatomy and physiology and got the highest score in about half of the exams.  My attitude toward books transformed in the turning leaves of scriptures.

Mary had a true love for Jesus and meditated deeply before Him.  She was praised for choosing the "better" thing in receiving the truth, because it was better than her sister Martha's attempts to earn God's intimacy through works. She attempted to be a captive listener, but I wonder if she really believed what she "learned." When their brother Lazarus died in John chapter 11 I would have thought that Mary would be first to understand that Jesus wants to give life right now, not just final resurrection from the dead. Mary didn't greet Jesus when He arrived "too late."  She was only grieving.  Consequently Jesus did not test her faith.  She sat on the sidelines as an onlooker.  Though Mary failed to anticipate what Jesus was going to do, she was so grateful afterward she poured all her wages on His feet. She finally identified Him correctly; that believing in Jesus was the same as believing in the presence of God.

To Martha's credit, she was a woman of action and she rightly interpreted Jesus through those lenses. Now she understood what Jesus would do for her and she applied her less-intensive base of scripture to trust in God's power. "But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give You," she said to our Lord (Jn. 11:22).  If the Father has given Himself to Jesus, then Jesus has given Himself to us.  Jesus' rebukes always fell to strengthen Martha: "Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?" (Jn. 11:40).

Jesus prayed out loud so that all would believe that the Father has sent the Son.  It is through this amazing abiding relationship that Jesus showed He was God's only begotten heir, the first of many sons to come (Heb. 1:2, 2:10).  Jesus was God and also With God from eternity and He came to us as such (Jn 1:1).  When he prayed concerning Lazarus to the Father He showed us the intimacy of the Trinity and therefore displayed how approachable He is to us all.  Identifying with another is integral to the image of God.  When we identify with one another in the Body, we imitate Christ (1 Jn. 4:17, 5:1).  We reflect Christ's image of the God-Man who was identified as With God; we also see the glory of God in our circumstances (Jn. 17:22-23; 14:13; 15:7-8).

Believing in Jesus is to trust Him to affect me because of who He is. Though I regret my GPA I have lasting joy over God's life-giving transformation in me.  He will continue to do wonders I don't even dream of asking if only I abide in greeting Him and His people.  He has glorified Himself in this small way of granting a love to learn.  I believe that those reading here can identify many of their own experiences of Jesus giving life.  Whether you are like Mary and are praised for learning or like Martha who was ready to see God's power, may we continue as one Body to encourage each other when in our human imperfections we miss the holy mark of receiving life right now by eyes of faith.  God is with us -- grow deep.

Faults: Mine

The other day I was hanging out with a fellow believer and I was explaining to him how important an ethic of grace truly is in my eyes. I said the following to illustrate how far I'd take it:

I'd prefer to have ten million unkind, unflattering things said about me (that were also true!), out loud for everyone to hear, so that way I could be loved with true grace. True grace, to me, is the kind that knows one's weak points and loves them in spite of them.

Visiting Gary's, Tim's and Rose's blog just made my words ring in my ears. Might as well come to learn what my faults are. I won't be able to grow as well as a person just expecting God alone to tell me.

So if you are a friend, what I would like is to have you leave a comment, telling me plainly about a fault of mine. A sin, even, or a weakness. No COSF doctrine issues are game though. Just character, or personal flaws.

Seriously.

Leave a comment.

Now here's a blog post that's interesting for a change. This is so cool, I wonder what took me so long to think about doing this? Well, it's cool... but I know it'll hurt at first.

If you aren't sure if you qualify as friend, the qualification is that you and I have greeted one another pleasantly in the last six months on or offline.

Education verses God

I've been having some pleasant discussions with my dad in the last year or so. I've explained to him some of the things I am interested in, and I'm surprised to report this, but, he gets it. In fact it appears to me that I must have gotten this way of assessing situations from him, because as I tell him things I am thinking, he's thinking right alongside me in the way that I would do it. Cool. He's even told me some amazing stories of how he has used his intelligence for serving others. Some he's told me not to publish, and that's not an issue of course. But some are just dang cool. Like how he attended the national conference for the FBI and he was asked to stand in recognition amongst hundreds for the framework he created post 9/11. I never knew that.

There's lots of stuff I never knew about my dad. I'm really only beginning to hear about them. He's finally moved home, and I'm an adult. He never shared them before. He wouldn't do that, and I see why now. It would only overwhelm me as a teen, as if I could never measure up. That was a wise kindness I can see looking back. Instead, he tells me things recently like "You can do anything you decide to do." "You are a woman but that has no bearing on your ability." He really believes these things, and I, well, I know I'm at least blessed to hear them, even if I am not sure if I should believe them entirely. I am his firstborn of two daughters; no sons, but he'd tell me gender is irrelevant to potential. I'm certain I'm not as smart as he's telling me.

As we smile and laugh along because we are both discovering that we approach problems in exactly the same fashion, he says something I haven't heard in a long, long time. With a pang he says,

"You could have gone to school...."

I did go to school and graduate at Oregon State. But that's not what he means by "going to school." He means an Ivy League like where he went; Wharton (ranked #1) and the University of Pennsylvania (ranked #4). Little does he know that "going to school" is the very thing that God has been putting in my heart... lately. Instead of agreeing, I still cringe. Why? His idealism of school has always driven me to an oppositional idealism.

When I was 12 he started telling me how important it was to be ambitious and achieve my own Ph.D. He made me read and give speeches every day of my life and read college textbooks. My grades were decent, but the attitude behind the GPA was deteriorating.

"Don't befriend people outside your race."

3.95

"If you get an A, that doesn't mean you learned anything in my eyes."

3.86

"There's not much chance a Ph.D. student is going to lower themselves to marry someone with just a master's."

3.78

"You can't spend any time with others because your grades aren't good enough."

3.71

"After-school clubs are for successful students who are getting straight As."

3.65

"The kind of people who live around here aren't of any positive influence on you."

3.59

Where was the meaning? Where was the purpose. It was so empty of life. I hated school. It did not define who I was or measure my value as a person. These things were obvious to me, but, my father couldn't understand. I decided as soon as I left home, my number one ambition was to forever dwell among people who valued people. As if all people are inherently priced at an inestimable value, regardless how unschooled they might be.

God was softening my heart, I can see looking back. This was the circumstance that humbled me to listen to Christianity, and receive Jesus by believing upon Him through hearing the gospel. I wondered about this God who demonstrated relationship based on the sacrificed blood of the Savior.

The first thing I read in the new testament beyond the gospels was 1 Corinthians, beginning in chapter one.

It said,

For it is written:


“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

I became God's that day. He wrote this especially for me, to confirm the journey we'd already begun. I was officially through with courting the wise. He was telling me in this passage that it was fully right to continue to value God so highly that it could, should, cost me what the world thinks should be learned to become significant.

For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

"It's okay, child. Come, follow me... and participate in the wisdom that no man can deny because it is Mine."

I haven't looked back since. The blessings have been real. I've have no regret in the absence of continued education... till this year. Do I really want to go to school? It's so not me. It speaks many "wrong" things to me that I could have sworn 1 Cor 1 taught me ten years back. I don't even know for what I would take seminary classes. God is not showing me that.

I am afraid of my heart. What if, while enjoying learning, I oust God's values? What if somehow it becomes more important to me than people? But "He keeps my foot from slipping." I know what kind of God it is that saved me and called me, who will also keep me. He is the Savior who could have ascended, dressed in royal robes, to sit on the throne, but did the opposite. He came as a mere man, and just gave his time. He sat in dirt and listened to the sorts of things other people really wanted to talk to Him about. His comfort was to dwell with the ones who knew they knew nothing. Jesus' ministry was paramount, successful, and the glory of God spread.

Rather surprisingly this describes not only the way of the Savior, but it sounds a lot like my dad's ways as well. Hmpf. The LORD is trying to open my eyes.

Thank you LORD for reminding me through these times that your ultimate interest is in people, not idealism or intellectualism. Not only are you confirming 1 Corinthians 1, but you are showing me that I should not stray to serve your values as if I were an idealist or intellectualist. Let me remember how significant the people of this world are for you, that you came and gave everything just to initiate restoration. Even when I think I know what is in lack with another person, your value of them denies me the full exercise of my provisional understandings.

LORD your greatest preference is to use those who are nothing, and God, you are everything.

"The Very Works"

Are the scriptures saying that the works of Jesus prove His deity and the Trinity, without explicit words and concepts and doctrines? I found these:

Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.

john 14:11

What does this passage mean? I tried a measly dose of study and came up with no leads. Is Jesus saying, "Okay, you don't have to believe in the Trinity idea just yet, but at least believe in Me, because the works themselves which I do - the works which are the works of YHWH God alone - if you know your Hebrew scriptures well, you'd know that."

But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.

john 5:36

(One of my most favorite passages of the GoJ's (Gospel of John's) deity chapters (5,13-17))

Why "the very works I do"? Because only YHWH had eternal life, only YHWH could forgive sin, and, YHWH had all judgment entrusted to Himself. These works-characteristics of YHWH identify, set Him apart, and distinguish Him from all false gods.

The question I am trying to ask is this: are "the very works" when believed, essentially a transaction of believing in the deity of Jesus? Also, a transaction therefore of believing in the Father?

John 14:11 (above) comes at the tail end of Jesus talking with Philip who asks, "Lord, show us the Father and that is sufficient for us" to which Jesus replies, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?" If you have One you have The Other as well - that's a theme from the deity-chapters of the GoJ.

In John chapter 5, the context from which I'm pulling the phrase "the very works" is on bearing witness. Jesus says,

If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true.

john 5:31

As far as I comprehend things, there is an interconnectedness in bearing witness. The Father bears witness of the Son and the Son also bears witness of the Father - and the Holy Spirit might be meant instead in those passages in John 5? But John the Baptist is a forth witness in this passage who God foretold in the OT. John the Baptist was also a witness to Jesus.

If "the very works" bear witness, then essentially we've got the Godhood of Christ, and the Trinity, being believed upon, on that level alone. It's kind of like "pay it forward" - believing on the light you have received, even the "voice of one crying in the wilderness" in the transitory-covenant period, is essentially proving our honoring of the entire Trinity?

Of course, I find this interesting because when I was coming to Christ, I could tell while watching Jesus as an atheist that He had authority on some level, and His works and miracles persuaded me to acknowledge and revere Him. To review an old post I additionally wrote on my testimony of salvation, you might read this...

Who was Jesus when I was Saved?

How I gained assurance of salvation

How did I come to trust that I personally had been saved?

Does assurance only come through knowing about "eternal life?" Or, are there other verses and other exchangeable terms giving assurance of salvation in the Bible? If there are, is there a need to only consider the eternal life verses? Can we use the other ones instead?

I had someone tell me that they did not think I was saved, when I was much younger in the LORD. My response was that I knew I was a believer, but, how did I have evidence of it? I never looked to my works for assurance because I knew better. The people who told me that I had not been saved, made the receiving of the Holy Spirit as the hinge-point of my justification with God. Consequently what I searched for in me was evidence that I was Spiritually alive, and not dead. This was before I looked to the word of God for the answer. I noticed my own delight in the Word of God, its Spiritual revelation toward me, and the change of heart that took place as a result of my listening to it. And, I noticed that I had known the presence of God substantially enough that it propelled me to become a disciple because of His demonstration to me, of His Presence.

I could offer those things to someone as my answer of why I knew I was saved. For some it would be enough. But for anyone else crafty with the Word, I had nothing. So I went home and started reading the Bible.

Here was the verse that gave me assurance:

In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

Ephesians 1:13 is this verse. It was good. I still point to one verse, today, as my assurance. But one verse wasn't really enough... to assure me. Isn't assurance many times just this way? Impossible to be satisfied until after a good deal of reading, knowing, and believing and trusting on the word of God in general. So I studied and found that salvation had many exchangeable terms, such as "eternal life" "everlasting life" "living water" "salvation" "the granting and indwelling of the Holy Spirit," "justification," "Abraham's heirs" "(imputation-verses)" "baptism into Christ" "faith-righteousness"....

All these are talking about the same thing. And I knew that. I'm sure that Lordship Salvation people understand that all these things are exchangeably referencing the same thing, meaning salvation. But other people in our lives, don't know this. Remember the church down the road from my house? They are Oneness Pentecostals, who have also changed the gospel to include works:

May I ask you now, “Have you received the holy Ghost since you believed?” Our Lord declared, “He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe in him should receive)” (Jn.7:38-39). The age in which we live is especially the dispensation of the holy Ghost, for just as certainly as Jesus made his advent into the world at Bethlehem, even so, the holy Ghost made its advent into the world at Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost. Those who rejected the Savior when he was sent into the world lost their souls. Those who reject the holy Spirit which he sent as his Vicar will lose theirs.

- Taken from a UPC-equivalent website displaying a tract for Christians who have been "spiritually conceived" but not "born again;" those Christians who have received the Word of God in their hearts but still stand eternally condemned by God.

I ask these O.P. people what they think of my standing with God, as I am. I might possibly convince some by the Gospel of John to agree with me that I might possibly have "eternal life" because I believed in Jesus. But they would still tell me that I will suffer condemnation and have not yet received the Holy Spirit. So you see just studying eternal life is good, but there is more work to be done regarding assurance, more than one way to express and prove it for others' sake.

In fact I remember very distinctly studying for awhile on "eternal life" verses. I did notice that "living water" and "eternal life" were good. They helped build my case, at least in the sense of proving righteousness by faith, alone. But in another way this topic made assurance of salvation much more difficult to build the proof of having received the Holy Spirit (another words, proof of being saved of everything I need for life and righteousness in this life and the next). I'm not saying it can't be done, of course it can be and we have a number of verses which connect the two together. BUT - being someone interested in a rock-solid grasp, being someone interested in assurance, what I was seeking was proof on an even more relevant matter. And that matter is whether or not I have been indwelled by the Holy Spirit. For no one could harm me in the next life concerning eternity if I had been marked in him worthy of redemption by having received His own self - the Holy Spirit - even right now as I live everyday.

But in addition, if I can prove I have received the Holy Spirit I could also open the door to proving my easy-positioning to sanctificational-righteousness. No man, including my own self in a season filled with doubts, could harm my general acceptance by God if the Holy Spirit had indeed been deposited to me on faith in Jesus, alone.

In conclusion, my assurance came through one verse on the depositing of the Holy Spirit, and then it came through studying how the Holy Spirit is dispensed to men, and then it lastly came through studying the works-less condition of faith in which salvation takes place. Eternal life never came up on my radar as the hinge-point for assurance, for me personally.

I'd venture to guess that assurance of salvation by faith apart from works is the Free Grace preoccupation. I wonder if FG people might be those distinguished by this attempt to free the gospel of all which harms the imputation of righteousness that comes by faith alone in Christ alone. I assume that everyone who has seen sects exchange the truth into some demand of works, and has grown disgusted of it, finds true brothers and sisters here because they share the same passionate mission. I guess this is the case? I may be mistaken on that. I never was conscious of Lordship Salvation specifically. I saw a lot of other odd doctrinal arrangements even by those who claim to understand the infallibility of scripture. So I might not fall into a core camp of those FG people recoiling from LS. But that's okay.

compromise before truth?

i see grace


I have heard a few fair assumptions about the bare-bones belief I have on what it takes to be saved. Too, I have heard a fair assumption of the kind of ministries I take, mostly with promiscuous, poor, young women, both professed believers and non-believers. One more time, I have heard people make a comparison between my childhood environment and my current beliefs.

They sound like this:

"Well I can understand that you are probably reading your experiences of salvation into it, letting them dictate what you believe about the Word."

"It's good that you can understand that scenario better than me and so you're just trying to take their side since no one else will."

"Oh, well when you were growing up every detail of life was controlled and now you love freedom."

I can understand why these things are said, because it certainly looks like it.

But what really happened? You remember my testimony, right?

What was it that made me start reading the Word of God? It was someone telling me that without baptism I could not have truly been saved. So I started reading the bible on baptism. (By the way, I had had enough with being told answers so I did not consult anything except the bible itself.) There are only a handful of verses. Then I noticed that Paul was explaining what did save, which was faith. Good. But I needed to prove to myself that somehow, baptism was not the act which invoked salvation in tandem with faith. I noticed that Paul wanted to say that faith is separate from law. I didn't understand what that whole thing really was about. But I could prove that baptism was a command, so therefore, it must not be part of what saves.

But how could I prove it to someone else, in a way that would be indisputable? I had to make such a clear separation that salvation could not include any requirement for a commandment -- I mean, if I indeed was on the right path. So I began to study law versus faith. I found a whole treasure of passages where Paul makes it very clear that law was something to be discarded. Wow! Now that I know how finite law would be to include in salvation, and how sufficient faith is, I knew that whatever other issue might come along, it must all pass the test of Paul's teaching that salvation was by faith, apart from all law.

That faith could be defined in such a way that it meant works, could not be true.
That law could be defined in such a way to not include every kind of law, ever given, could not be true. In fact, I prove so here.

Everything must pass the test of the principles of grace reigning over any kind of law.

Some people, when they read my conclusion that "the law is inappropriate for Christians," hear chaos.

But that's not what I hear.

When I see the vacancy left by law, I see grace having all the room, the Spirit of God having the freedom to work, and the power and glory all being given to God as He has already set forth to receive in the New Covenant.

And indeed, it is the reason why Paul writes things like:

"But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person..." or for anyone who walks by faith with God. 1 tim 1:8

Oh, so essential to victory!

"But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." rom 7:6

Even our sanctification should be guarded from intrusion of law!

"Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?—just as Abraham 'believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.'" gal 3:5-6

And now, wherever I go in scripture, I see grace, covering over everything when a man gives his trust. I see Abraham justified because God simply made a promise. This is the "promise" by which we are included as described in Romans chapter 4!! God made that promise and Abraham believed it in chapter 15. That was before God said: "I make a covenant with you" in chapter 15, and before God inaugurates it in chapter 16, when the LORD walks in between the carcass broken in two. All these details of the covenant took place after "it was credited to Abraham as righteousness."

Why do I hang with the unlovlies? Why do I speak secondarily of the facts of what Jesus has done?

Because I know that faith has preeminence over all. Where there is faith, there is the power of God. The bible told me so.

Two years after I had made this discovery of Paul's teaching of law versus faith, I looked back over my testimony, my story of being converted, and noticed the grace being woven throughout. I just woke up and saw the beauty in it, one day. And now I talk about it.

Mission Statement

One of my best friends Julie is going through an amazingly rich time of self-investment. In a class for believers, she has been asked to think upon her life history and the themes threading through it. What a fascinating little project! It got me to thinking of the major themes of my life. I have a "life-verse;" it is above as the banner across this blog site.

Below is a rough draft. I remember writing about the symbolism of the "fence" back in 2005 somewhere in a blog post... I'll have to look around for it later when I have more time.

I was a nobody, when Christ saved me. I had nothing going for me that was noteworthy. But Christ gave me hope, and gave me a rich inheritance. Now, I live in a home literally behind a white picket fence. I could prop my feet up. But I cannot forget where I came from. Not everybody lives behind a white picket fence like me. So I do what I can to stand alongside the unlovlies, the unlikelies, the down and out, and when I do I see that both I and them are magnifying our hope in the grace of God. I spend my inheritance in Christ, my reputation, my voice, my money, my time, to lift up the ones that have been left behind in the dust. I'm not afraid of the loss, because I see who I once was and who they once will be because of Jesus Christ, just like I am now. I am attracted to them, and to the surprise of some I can see how God is blessing them. And they also bless me! I love the scriptures, I believe in them and they burn like a fire deep within me, because they are our only source of righteousness: His grace. The more heavily grace becomes the only thing to hope in, the greater the glory He receives. I love to be in that place. Jesus Christ came to dwell in comfort with those who didn't deserve to be dwelled alongside in comfort. He calls us to be like Him, a living theophany of the invisible, immortal, all wise and HOLY God.

I encourage others to try this out too!

Who was Jesus when I was saved?

I've had an epiphany how to describe what Jesus seemed to me, when I was saved.

(I remember it like it was yesterday... after all, in the thirteen years I've been a believer only in the last six (the minority) have I worshiped in delight that Jesus is YHWH.)

He was a prophet:

(Answers.com)

n.
1. A person who speaks by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed.
2. A person gifted with profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression.
3. A predictor; a soothsayer.
4. The chief spokesperson of a movement or cause.

I was convinced that He knew God and had spoken on His behalf. There was an authority there that was obvious. And that is what I submitted to, in my prayer of salvation.

"Son of the living God," "Messiah," "Lamb of God," and even the resurrection... these were ideas that didn't have any place in my exposure or understanding.



Maybe there was an extra fuss over Him I understood. As if He were the super-version of the predecessors? If you had asked me what I thought, I would have said, "He was special." And I was convinced into revering that quality despite being very uncomfortable confessing it.

I think it would have been impossible for me to understand, watching that movie (the content of NT gospels), that Jesus could have been fully God. I mean, that He was something more than just another man, was clear; but, He was no question, a man. He suffered the same limitations as we do. The only times He seemed to be able to overcome human limitation was to give punch to his teachings about the Father, or on occasion how he was tied to the Father.

Even today, it still is a mindbender to contemplate Emmanuel; God, with us.

Testify Again

There is another story from my past which I have not yet shared because it is slightly embarrassing, and because the post titled "My Testimony" is just a little bit too long for more.

Again, it testifies that God's grace is free to all who put their trust in Jesus.

When I was eighteen, a year after my experience of having received an immovable joy from praying to God through Jesus, I still knew hardly nothing. It is difficult to explain knowledge, sometimes, isn't it? For instance, I had watched the four-hour long story of Jesus' life and teachings two times, so I had heard the "truth," but as for my own ability to decide what I believed, I had no reason at that point to make up my mind.

Perhaps some of the things I observed about Jesus in the movie were there to encourage me in a greater faith for Him, when I became hard-pressed.

At this time in my life I was friends with a boy at lunchtime for a couple weeks. There was this other girl who also liked him. She was a trouble-maker, meaning she had a juvenile case worker who was allowing her to go to school and live back at home after a rough history of getting into fights. When she started coming around she told me to back off from him, and I said forget it, and I made fun of her. Then she realized that we both rode the same bus route home. On the bus she started telling people that at the end of the week, on Friday, she was going to beat me up when I got off the bus.

Great story, isn't it??

Well, I had been in a fight once before and I wasn't the kind to back down, but, my stomach just churned and churned for five days in anticipation. On day one, I decided to pray. I asked this God whom I was just beginning to know, "Can you make it so that, no matter what, she just won't have the opportunity to do it?"

I prayed that prayer. I sat for a day. On day two I wanted more assurance that God had heard me. (Don't we all do this?) So I prayed again, "God, I am trusting you to take care of me and stop her from doing this. I think this wold be pretty miraculous if you end up protecting me, and if you do it, well, that's pretty awesome."

I sat for a day. She still flaunted how she was going to beat me up on Friday. All the kids were listening to her. I was worried about it, the prayer, whether or not God was going to do this for my sake or if I was being too foolish in what I requested. So I prayed again, "Do I need to do something in order for you to do this for me? God, what would I have to do in order for you to think well enough of my request to do it?" That thought sat with me for awhile. I probably thought about all of the stories where Jesus healed people in the movie because they believed. I decided that this was an issue of whether or not I could trust Him. I almost abandoned the request because it was getting frustrating. Then I realized that if I were really trusting Him to take care of it, I ought to be able at least to give Him the credit.

So, I prayed, "God, if you do this for me, I will tell others that it is Jesus who is protecting me."

There -- that would really be a test to see if I was relying on God to protect me.

The day came. The bus ride was horrible. She had all the kids in a frenzy. She stood over me, yelling how she was going to beat me up. For the first few times I didn't say anything. The bus driver heard about it, and hadn't said anything yet but kept his eye toward the back of the bus. The kids asked her again and again, "Are you really going to beat her up?" And she said heck yeah. Meanwhile I remembered my prayer -- I was so stressed out I almost forgot about it, but, I realized that I needed to be public about Jesus. How embarrassing, I felt for a few minutes. But, in the last couple minutes of the ride home, I finally spoke up.

She said again, "I'm going to beat you up!"

And I said in a small, squeaky voice, "No; you're not."

"What??" she said. "Did you just say I'm not?"

"Yes... you're not going to do it," I said quietly but calmly.

"Oh really? Why's that??"

"Because," I said, pausing, "Jesus is going to protect me."

The kids around me got real quiet. Then one of them asked me, "What did you say?"

I sighed. I was embarrassed, but I thought it was just another test of faith. I resigned to raise my voice significantly louder and said, "Because Jesus is going to protect me."

Now the whole bus was silent. Everyone was perfectly still, including the girl, till I reached my stop. I got up to get off and stood there, and listened.... One of the kids asked her, "So -- are you going to do it?"

And as I was walking to the front I heard her say "Uhh, I can't. No, I can't, because I'll get in trouble with my case worker."

PHEW!

JESUS CHRIST IS A LIVING GOD!

Coincidence?? No way, not if God answers prayer. Now, He didn't have to save me. I still didn't believe in sin or that I was a sinner for another two or three years. I didn't believe that He is God as I do today. And I don't think it's biblical to go around claiming God will protect me from whatever I desire. But, I had faith in Him just as the kind of Abraham's, and because He is all-knowing, and He knew where I was in my relationship to Him, He blessed me with deliverance.

"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Hebrews 11:6

How liberal am I?

Good question. I might be taking back some of my most liberal positions regarding the JWs and LDS at bible.org, which were written a year or two ago. I know what they are and they are there on public display. I won't bother now with those.

Lou Martuneac left two comments on my post in May quoting Antonio da Rosa's parable, which depicts what has been called "the crossless gospel" or "redefined free grace theology."

There is a controversy brewing over the content of the gospel message, within the Free Grace movement.

I have been trying to decide for myself in years passed, what I ought to believe. I feel relieved that I found Free Grace. Unfortunately I don't fit quite right in with them either. I'm going to exercise the freedom to keep improving my understanding, and admitting when I've made a mistake.

So that you understand the controversy, let me give a couple quotes for reference:

Here is what the free grace fringe say themselves.... Da Rosa's comments (courtesy of being forewarned second-hand) are:

At the moment that a JW or a Mormon is convinced that Jesus Christ has given to them unrevokable [sic] eternal life when they believed on Him for it, I would consider such a one saved, REGARDLESS of their varied misconcetions [sic] and beliefs about Jesus.

{1}

And here is what the free grace mainstream say of the fringe.... This quote (below) is from Martuneac's post which assessed the crossless gospel (here).

Even conscious rejection of the Lord’s deity, in a personal evangelism setting, is viewed as something to be put on the back burner and left there. The GES believes issues like that are to be dealt with in a discipleship setting.

Both capture the concerns I myself take by being liberal.

I want to moderate it and blur this disagreement, using the truth found in God's Word. I don't think it's wise to take sides! Because all of them are used by God to cause the people to believe. If we think it has to be one or the other, we pit our minds and understandings against a portion of scripture. And that is never good!

To say that "the full gospel," meaning a three-fold understanding of Jesus' payment for our sins, deity and resurrection, are not part of the gospel that brings eternal life, as Da Rosa says and I have also said, may be going too far.

What did Paul preach, what did Paul teach? He preached a simple gospel of "Christ crucified" to Greeks and Jews, and reminded believers of the gospel already taught to them in 1 Cor. 15. But, Paul also taught that the righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Can we say that Paul had more than one way to express the gospel message? I think it needs to be explored.

What about Jesus' gospel? As for Jesus' statements of those who believe have eternal life, they cannot be wrong. Certainly Jesus would not have spoke such a sentence if the sentence stood incomplete.

Is there a scriptural reason why the gospel message can be, or maybe even should be, slightly variant? Has anyone pointed out yet that every time Jesus declared the gospel in scripture, it was always a little bit different in content? He even went so far to describe it in Mark (16:16) saying, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." Somehow evangelicals have enough wisdom to realize that He's added baptism in here as an extra non-salvific component. Did we forget to apply the same wisdom to the rest? It was only fear of being wrong, fear of being found lacking, that caused some Christians to think that baptism was necessary. We had to stand out from them by pointing to the freedom we have by faith. Let's take that freedom the rest of the way for the same reason -- to keep evangelicals from living in fear, which is living according to laws or lists or rules. We are born of God, Spiritually!

The written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. Our praise is not from checking off a list but from God who sends the Spirit because of the condition of a believing heart toward Christ.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

No one knows the thoughts of a man except that man himself.

A man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. In the inward places a man is born again and even we cannot see it happen but we often find subsequent evidence of it having taken place.

Having believed, you were marked in Him with the Holy Spirit, a deposit guaranteeing the redemption of those who are God's possession. This is much more about the Holy Spirit than it is about eternal life. Or it is to my understanding, thinking of how God applies the covenant of His Son described in Ezekiel 36:25-29.

Consider this passage in which Jesus describes salvation in a very minimalist way:

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scriptures has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Therefore many from the crowd, when they heard this saying, said, 'Truly this is the Prophet. Others said, "This is the Christ."

john 7:37-41

Salvation is a mysterious thing, is it not? That's because it is Spiritual, not something we can precisely measure with rules. We have some really basic rules as being conscious outsiders to this process. One ought to be able to tell a tree by its fruit. We ought to, and many times we can, but, God ultimately knows.

Free grace or no, anyone who goes around telling others "you personally are saved because of this scripture," speaks too quickly. We are saved because God "puts his Spirit within us." (ezekiel 36:27)

I think all of these versions, from a minimist's "he who believes has eternal life," to the mainstream's use of 1 cor. 15, are the gospel. Which one we use depends on our audience. Oftentimes we cannot know for sure what their spiritual need is, but God does.

To some, believing in more than just "Jesus gives eternal life," is legalism. Consider the pagan who has never even heard of an Abrahamic faith. They have so much to hear, nothing is inherent.

To others, not understanding the transaction of my sin for His righteousness, leaves the whole need for deliverance by a Savior, unmet. I and my kind like Da Rosa, must take note.

I do not think we need to be afraid to use by inspiration a "crossless gospel," though, because Jesus did. Only the Spiritual man can agree and understand Spiritual things, like what sin is. No one can say "Jesus is Lord," except by the Spirit, and as you can see above in John 7, once they heard Jesus proclaim an invitation to receive the Spirit, then subsequently ensued the discussion of his identity.

Do we not know what it means to be led by the Spirit into all truth? How far can we trust this? All the way to John 6:47?



{1} Antonio da Rosa, Free Grace Theology, Believe Christ’s Promise and You are Saved No Matter What Misconception You Hold, (May 2006).

Dangling out on a Limb

(This is a history of my exposure to Free Grace Theology. It explains that I had independently come to read scripture in the same ways the Free Grace movement too has been doing for some time.)

I did something a little gutsy. I emailed the president of Grace Seminary of the Northwest: Dr. Earl Radmacher.

Then I sat on my hands, nervous as heck, waiting for a reply.

I guess I had digested for some time their beliefs which were like the sweetest song I had never heard. I couldn't hold my testimony inside any longer. Let me tell you how I came to make contact with this Seminary....

My first class was Dr. Dale Taliaferro teaching "Romans and Galatians." Attending the class was a random effort on my part. One day in February of this year, I was bored and I wandered to a corner of my church where the Seminary class list was made available. I had no clue the theological background. I asked my husband to attend the class and he supported me.

What a pleasant and amazing surprise it was to hear others read it like I!! It didn't take long, actually three days of listening to Dr. Radmacher comment during class, for me to believe that they and I are kindred, and I said so when he asked me to comment at the end of class; I said, "I fit with you and you fit with me."

I took these three months for me to assess I didn't say that in haste. I began to contrast what they believe, what I believe, and my testimony. I realized that my testimony could possibly be a proof of the necessity of this theology. I even tried running into my pastor, who I know is free grace because simply because he attends these classes, to get a preliminary reaction but no such luck. If I was right about its usefulness, I'd better take some time to figure out if I really wanted them and they would really want me. I decided to withhold my story and keep taking classes.

Dr. Radmacher spoke occasionally about the free grace effort. I have mixed feelings. Honestly? It makes me nervous, because I am not a fan of movements and certainly I fear school of thought of any kind because of my former experience with a cult.

On the other hand they are organized and have amazing resources to talk about the Word in the ways I already am. I certainly should take advantage of what they can offer since here they are, an amazing five minutes away from home.

It was astounding to listen to them teach. I was inwardly shocked and thankful. I have never personally known a Christian believe in such ways as I. That feeling of being crazy? The feeling of being an outcast or just plain uneducated -- was wiped away as other human beings talked about the Word in the same ways I do. I shook my head in disbelief! For three days till the class concluded!

Then there was a second class called "Intro to Free Grace Theology" in April and I loved it, though it was way over my exposure level, including a whole section on history. The last class I finished was "Evangelism," in the end of May.

In a few moments after each class I asked the professors to tell me their thoughts about my testimony. I told them what I thought it took to be saved, and they both told me their ideas of salvation, which happen to not be identical.

Pastor Laeger, the teacher of the "Evangelism" class, made a tremendous effort to be humble in his ideas on salvation the next day... for my sake perhaps. I was impressed.

And intrigued beyond belief. Okay, so, what if I don't know yet what it is that they think? What if I am too liberal for them? At least they are conscientious about getting it right. That's a great quality for any movement. And here I was, taking classes from them for months, nodding my head along and never introducing myself in a class where everybody knew everybody else and I was a big question-mark.

So, like I said, I got gutsy. I emailed Dr. Radmacher to see if he would grant me permission to share with him my testimony. He said he would be delighted. We talked on the phone a few days later, and he was very kind to me. He treated me in such a way I could only dream of being treated: as if my convictions do matter. He encouraged me to keep learning. I was directed to the story of Cornelius in Acts 10 and doubting Thomas in John 20.

He spent time entertaining the ideas I shared from scripture as I have publicized in My Testimony. Though, ultimately his praise was reserved for having persevered enough in my circumstances to ask these kinds of questions at all.

A couple days later Dr. Radmacher forwarded an email that was written by Dr. Bob Wilkin. In that letter Dr. Wilkin detailed his thoughts over my testimony. He said that the questions I am asking are the same ones being asked by the whole Free Grace community. And it was at that time that I knew I fit into Free Grace. Wilkin's letter gave me the impression there was a healthy and lively discussion within Free Grace circles. I made the commitment that I should begin to investigate what the issues were.

This investigation was postponed till after the last class of spring term: "The Evolution of Theology," taught by Dr. Stephen Lewis. After my mind stopped tingling from that stimulation, I found this article, which introduced me to the controversy:

"The Tragedy of the Crossless Gospel," by Tom Stegall.

I had a renewed sense of doom, that I was not accepted by Free Grace after all. This was during the first week of June.

But at this point, being mid-June, I know I belong, more or less, and as I go I may make some significant adjustments. I have deep appreciation for this community, who will strengthen my own efforts at scholasticism.

My Testimony

I'm not sure if I have ever shared my testimony of becoming a Christian, on my blog. Probably I have.... I know I've shared it at different forums before.

I'd like to point out a few important things in the story. I'll point those out in a future post. Foremost I want to show here that God accomplished my salvation with very little acknowledgement of the truth on my part, and in complete isolation from other Christians and poor exposure to the Word. These qualities are important to me, because they are evidence that grace is indeed by faith apart from law, so, I beg you to bear with me as I share some critical details.

I never heard the gospel growing up. My father was atheist, or perhaps a scientific agnostic. My mother had become Mormon while our family lived in Utah, and when I was young I attended church there maybe ten times. Once we moved away, my mom became inactive and had great doubts about her worthiness. I, like my father, looked to science to answer the questions of life: where did we come from? What is our purpose? Where are we going? You see... I was sad and deeply oppressed at home, and I became hungry to know for myself anything that would bring me hope and a sense of self-respect. I turned to physical anthropology (the study of human origins (human evolution from a common ape ancestor)), animal psychology, and physics. But the theories had "holes," meaning they were incapable of giving a consistent and complete answer, and I desired a truth without any holes. I decided that I ought to investigate religion if I were going to be fair and open-minded.

I watched the movie "Jesus of Nazareth," four hours long, on public television. It was amazing. I was absolutely curious why, if He could save others, then why would He would also not save himself? Mysterious. I didn't know much else but I could see that the people who followed him in the movie were reacting to the things He taught and did, in the same way I was: He taught with authority and all the people were amazed. I was too. He performed miracles on earth such as forgiving sin that only God was supposed to do. He never seemed to make any mistakes, He always was cool under pressure. Today I might explain the personality of Jesus with doctrines from the Bible... but back then, I knew not how to describe this outstanding person.

But I heard him preaching often about three things: love, peace and joy. And, he constantly was seeking to engage people to come near, to ask, knock, and so on. So when I had watched the movie a second time at the age of seventeen, I prayed after much inward struggle: "God -- if you're real -- if you really do exist -- I'm asking you: I keep hearing about this peace, and this joy and this love, that you say you have. I don't know if I can believe in them, but, I want to know: is it for real? I wanna know and experience this "love." If you let me experience it... well, let this be the test for whether or not you are really real. If I feel it, then I will know you are real, and if nothing happens I will assume you're not." Then I paused shortly because I was called to think that I had heard somehow along the way that business with God was intended to go through His Son. So I said, almost begrudgingly, "And... I guess I could say I believe... that Jesus is who he claims to be."

The next day I woke up with joy. My personality contained joy. It was in there. It actually made my reaction to crises, different. I was not so worried, or burdened. Keep in mind that I continued living at home for another three years, and in those three years the oppression and desperation and isolation remained constant or got worse. But the joy was unquenchable. I could not lose it despite circumstance. It was that joy that caused me to think beyond my current life and make plans to grow out from under that position.

I never knew a Christian. I consider this odd. No neighbors, no people at high school. One of the attributes of the isolation I suffered was not being allowed to be around anyone except family, so, I had rare socialization with the outside world beyond school. I remember seeing signs at Christmas saying "believe in Jesus and you will be saved," but I didn't know how to process what that was about. In those three years I never knew a Christian person or attended any denomination, and today I believe I was saved all the while.

A handful of times in those three years I actually found a bible and opened it up because I wanted to know God: I only flipped through these books: Psalms, Proverbs, & Matthew. I skimmed the book of Matthew and got frustrated, because it was almost entirely about Jesus. He's only one person, I thought. Why does it need to talk so much about one man? That's rather arrogant. Why doesn't the bible have something more to say about somebody else, say... me? Why isn't there something written in there about who I am, what I can do?

After those three years, I escaped from home, and moved onto a college campus into a girls' co-op. I roomed with the strongest Christian young lady living in that house of fifty girls, all "by chance," but God had great things planned for me. Her name is Julie. On our second night of being roommates she asked me:

"Are you a Christian?"

"Umm, I don't know. [pause] I'm not sure what a Christian is," I admitted.

She said, "Well, a Christian is somebody who believes in Jesus. Do you... believe in Jesus?"

"I... don't know if I believe in Him, though I guess I could say that I know He's real." I thought for a bit. I knew He was real because I remembered how I had made that prayer, citing Him, and had received joy, and, the joy was real, to me. It had changed me. I couldn't deny it. I had even prayed for physical protection through Jesus occasionally, and God answered. "I guess I do believe in Jesus, since He was real to me when I prayed."

"If you believe in Jesus, then you ought to follow Him," she soon said a few days later when she discovered that I knew nothing about the Bible and was greatly enticed to experience everything set before me in my newfound freedom. She told me about sin. I didn't know what sin was, or perhaps I could not believe in the idea of it. For a few weeks I rebelled against her efforts. But she kept on reading scripture with me. I'll tell you what I wanted to do: I wanted to go to frat parties since I was kept isolated from people my age for most my life. With Julie's admonitions to think about living a better lifestyle, at first I delayed but soon realized that way down deep inside I already had made a decision. Jesus was real. He had been there to show me love when I couldn't believe there was such a thing. I couldn't stuff that whole experience away and pretend like it never happened, and tried to figure a way out, but to no use. So I gave in, and decided to learn the truth. After a time I agreed that sin was a real thing, and inwardly contemplated the idea that I had committed some. This happened at the age of twenty.

At the age of twenty-one I had learned enough of God's purpose for me that I knew His truth was the one "scientific theory" of my life that was flawless, with no gap in the fabric. And I loved Him for it. I became sold out for Jesus from this time on.

When I was twenty-four I unknowingly entered into a cult which told me, after leading me along in scripted bible studies for several months, that because I had not been baptized after already having become their definition of a disciple of Christ, I was not saved. They told me I had never received the Holy Spirit like I thought. God's wrath was still upon me. I went home crying. Thank God for my husband Ben: he said "That's not true. Read Ephesians 1:13." I did. But it wasn't enough. I needed to know more, a whole lot more, in order to combat the confusion in me and the various messages out there in the world. I saw, in two years of obsessive study, that baptism, repentance, confession, asking Jesus to be LORD, good works, etc. sometimes accompany the salvific statements, but there were plenty of them that had none of these -- just faith. I took the scriptures to my cultist mentor. She rejected them but years later, God answered my prayers and I received a surprise letter saying that she had finally learned and took peace knowing she was saved by faith apart from law. Praise God!

God gave me for a time a ministry with the Oneness Pentecostal church down the street from us. Many members were interwoven into my life, including the pastor and his family, and he allowed me to use the scriptures to show him that he was saved by faith alone. After several months I noticed in one of his Wednesday night sermons that he had taken my notes and rebutted each point with his opinion and occasionally a scripture. I was sad, told them I felt God was asking me to move on, they disfellowshipped me and to this day when I cross paths (and I do nearly every day) with any of those neighbors, most of them frown at me and raise an eyebrow of wariness.

My other Christian roommate from college, Jenn, humbled herself and permitted her apprentice, me, to teach her several years after we roomed together, that faith was not just the means by which we are justified, but also that faith distinct from legalism is how we are to be sanctified. She thanked me when it was all over, saying she had not realized that she herself had slipped from recognizing this all important truth, and set herself for speaking with her Pastor in Halsey, Oregon.

Online, I have been evangelizing the LDS at a religious forum. I've been there loving on them for five and a half years. In year three, an Evangelical-Lutheran came in to evangelize them too. She loved the Word of God but made mistakes in how she treated them, and how she presented the truth. She called herself someone who believed that grace is free -- but she didn't act or preach in a manner obedient to that belief. For instance, she believed in baptism for salvation. I had to make a choice: was she right that the gospel was more than just faith, or was salvation that simple? I felt peer pressure, thankful to have another evangelical to witness to this great bunch at the LDS forum. Through a year of wrestling with my thoughts over watching her methodology and message, and what I knew I already believed should be the message and methodology from scripture, I took a stand in front of the LDS, against her message, defending the simple truth: faith in Jesus is what saves. She accused me of being softened by the LDS toward heresy. That's okay. We're still in contact. I emailed her a fifteen page document of scripture I wrote showing her how simple faith really is. For a time it excited her, then she decided it was not true once more.

There are other less significant projects I have involved myself in through time in terms of using scripture in social context, to try and illuminate the simplicity of "faith apart from law."

If readers would please allow me the privilege, I would ask some questions for anyone who is marveled that salvation could be so simple to come with neither agreeing sin was real (till three years after salvation), or without confessing hardly anything about Jesus: not that He was Messiah or God's Son (I learned at the age of twenty-four that Jesus was claiming to be God in the same manner as the Father was God--an additional three years later).

There are implications to anyone's rejection of my story. I can imagine what they are.... Am I supposed to believe those six years I spent after receiving the joy and peace and love, the same kind I know now, were not God's gift of the Holy Spirit, who is living in me? In order for their assertion to be correct one would need to discredit my experience. But let me ask: What false experience of joy would lead me to confess, when asked by a stranger named Julie, that I believed in Jesus? What's more, what false experience of joy could have wrestled so powerfully in my life to win me toward trusting Him, more? Think with me about what I surrendered: I knew no doctrine about Jesus and I wanted to be in control of me and party. But I couldn't just do as I pleased. Because He was too real. And I couldn't escape that. I started to care to learn the commandments of the One who had been there for me. I willingly and even eagerly became His disciple in the truths of His Word.

What more could you ask out of a salvation experience, than this?

Aren't these the very things that we hope happen to those who have been saved? It is these behaviors, these decisions that come for those who receive the grace of God.

My assurance (of salvation by that prayer of faith) was tested, though not first by the mainstream of Free Grace....

I know that it isn't a written code that saves. It isn't doctrine, that saves. It is not knowledge that saves. It is Jesus who saves, if we believe in Him, even in His name, even to look to him for help. As Pastor Laeger taught us about Judas's repentance, all kinds of repentance brings benefit, but -- only one repentance is the kind that brings salvation. In the same way, I could have found the good in many people who share personality characteristics with Jesus Christ, and I could have put trust in them. But -- when I trusted in Jesus I got something no one else can give: eternal life.

Dr. Wilson taught in the "Intro to Free Grace Theology" course that you have to, have to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God to be saved. In the "Evangelism" class it was said the content for saving faith is what Paul affirmed in 1 Cor 15. What will someone else add, what would another well-intentioned Free Gracer select to teach about Jesus? All of these selections are so critical for understanding the LORD in truth. I confess that's true. All of them are truthful statements about what Jesus did on our behalf. But: how many of them are necessary to receive eternal life? One, two, many? All? The whole gospel of John, every chapter, every verse??

The written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. We are not saved by any arrangement of rules, scriptural or otherwise. If we start regulating by a list, are we any different than most any religion out in the world around us? I don't desire people to believe in a "false Jesus." But I'm not afraid of it to the point it cripples me into another brand of legalism. Can a person be deceived or uneducated about who Jesus is in any manner, and yet be saved? Yes, it can be propitiated by Jesus' blood, shed for our sins.

It was once taught during class at seminary that the disciples were saved while Jesus was with them on earth (something I have not personally studied out up to this time). And they did not believe in resurrection? So then, they did not get one of "the essentials" right. But I see more. How come the disciples were amazed and wondered aloud that the wind and the waves obeyed Him, and were rebuked for not knowing who He was all that time? Didn't they fail to identify his deity? How come they were amazed that He could what sounded like blaspheme God when He called himself "one" with the Father or was able to forgive sin? Did they really know Him as Messiah, and yet were saved? I was also taught that we should have a faith like a child. That as we grow older we become more pharisitical, more legalistic. If you and I could have been there and witnessed a child want to follow Jesus, want to trust Him, not knowing all the things about him that an adult can, should we have stood in the child's way, for a list? Would God not grant eternal life for a child's trust in Jesus? Anyone who trusts in Him will not be disappointed.

Those living in the era after the New Testament was canonized have the privilege of understanding progressive revelation. I want to ask whether because it has been revealed must it all be agreed upon in order to be saved? Without faith it is impossible to please God. The righteous will live by faith. Though knowledge is not opposed to justification or sanctification, it is often opposed to humility. God comes near to the humble but opposes the proud.

I understand that Dr. Wilson found two attributes of Jesus that are thematically tied to salvation. But for us to pull them out and require them is a bold move. Should such stance be made? Does God honor such a stance? My testimony and my understanding of salvation tell me no. I have been convinced since the time of my studies that even before I was aware, God did something unusual in my story to prove the power of God: to show that no man, no doctrine, no denominational distinctives need mediate between God and a man seeking His reality. Jesus is my all-sufficient Mediator.

We are so afraid because of the Calvinist's influence that the heart is desperately wicked and cannot be trusted, and in the same way we are convinced that because Satan masquerades as an angel of light so we must also not trust our experiences. But my experience led to Christ, not to deception: "wisdom is justified by her children." matt 11:19

"And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God." rom 2:27-29

There has been no one to lead or encourage me as I agonized to be sure and also vocal on what the scriptures teach. Foremost the Word and secondarily my testimony proves, that the grace of God is free by faith alone in Chirst alone. I never have met any other Christian who can keep their confidence in the face of popular corruptive Christian teachings. Till now, till attending Grace Seminary of the Northwest.