The Insanity of God - Purity 925
Purity 925 12/27/2022 Purity 925 Podcast
Purity 925 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of sunset from the vantage point of Pelican
Point at Crystal Cove State Park in New Port Beach, CA comes to us from a friend
who enjoyed this scene on Christmas Eve with his family and shared it with his
friends on social media.
Well, it is Tuesday and for the vast majority of the
working population of my friends, the sun of the Christmas holiday – actual or
observed – will have set last night as they will be rising this morning and
returning to work.
As for me? I will continue to enjoy an extended
holiday vacation this week in the “bliss bubble” of my countryside home which I
only left briefly yesterday for a couple of walks down Waite Rd with the
dog. Although I may be prone to “cabin
fever” because I am usually on the go 6 if not 7 days of the week, and enjoy
getting out to stretch my legs, the cold temperatures with highs in the 20’s,
has made the walks brisk ones and fewer in number if the environment was more
hospitable.
As for the accommodations inside, I have no
complaints as my wife has created an atmosphere of warmth and love where I feel
cared for and carefree as she provides for my every need while simultaneously giving
me the space to not feel smothered as we each have individual projects and
activities to occupy our time and interest independent of one another.
I have been reading through “Living from the Heart
Jesus Gave You”, a text by Jim Wilder & company that I will be required to
study as part of Deeper Walk International’s School of Prayer Ministry that
begins in a few weeks. To familiarize myself with the content of the book, I
decided to dictate it’s contents into a word document, creating my own e-version
of the book. The book creates a “Life
Model” for individuals and churches to follow that encourages recovery from
trauma and maturing in one’s faith through community, essentially developing a
spiritual family from the body of Christ that helps us overcome the things in
our pasts that shouldn’t have happened (Type B traumas) and providing us with
the good things we never received (Type A traumas). The testimonies presented
in the book demonstrate how our faith and the church, when operating properly,
gives us everything we need to become the people God created us to be. I all but finished the dictation of this
book yesterday, with just a few last sections to complete today or tomorrow as
I have been working on “getting ‘er done for a week or two, here and
there.
Dictating can be a draining process and as I have
made great progress to all but complete this project over the last few days, I
have often hit a wall of exhaustion of frustration that needed to be allieviated
by taking the dog for a walk, lying down and taking a nap, or taking a break
and listening to an audiobook that I started just before Christmas.
As the impending yuletide splendor of secular
Christmas was upon us I decided to listen to “The Insanity of God” as a way to not
only keep Christ in Christmas but to remind me of the reality of the costs of Christian
discipleship. I heard about the “Insanity
of God” back when I was in my undergraduate days of Bible College and had put
it on my “wish list” years ago but I didn’t actually purchase it until shortly
before Christmas, admittedly as part of an out of control spending spree where
I was making some final purchases to take care of my Christmas shopping and
decided to “treat myself” as well.
Anyway, perhaps out of guilt or a true desire to
draw close to God in repentance, I started listening to “The Insanity of God” on
Christmas Eve Eve or the day before and have been listening to it here and
there ever since. Although I had heard
it was a “good book” I didn’t recall exactly what it was supposed to be
about. Having listened to all but a few
hours of the totality of the book, I can report that “The Insanity of God” chronicles
a Christian missionary’s life and his and his family’s experiences in
Somaliland in the 1990s and the author’s search for the answers to the hard
questions that come when one takes Christ’s direction to go out into all the
world to make disciples seriously. Tragic,
frustrating, and almost unimaginable things happen in the mission field which
causes to author to seek the answer to his questions from others who have
experienced persecution for their Christian faith leading him to conduct
interviews of persecuted Christians I the former USSR, the Ukraine, Eastern Europe,
and China where persecution was a normal and expected part of life as the “sun
rising in the east”. I’m not through the
book yet but the heart wrenching testimonies of faithful Christians who
suffered emotional, mental, and physical torture and the amazing things that
they experienced to maintain their faith makes me thankful to be a Christians and relatively free of any persecution
and almost unworthy to be mentioned as being a part of the same body of Christ of
these Christian saints and martyrs. If
my resolve to remain faithful to the call God put on my life to encourage
others to be disciples ever wavered before, the testimonies of these other brothers
and sisters in Christ encourages me to continue walking and talking with God and
to pursue this “crazy” course that the Lord has called me to.
Considering all that I have received and considering
all that other Christians have suffered for their faith and intention to live
and share the gospel of Jesus Christ, I consider that my efforts are the very
least I can do for the Lord.
I was a little puzzled by the title of the book can understand
why it is called that. In this world
broken by sin and that actively seeks to silence the gospel, it is considered “crazy”
to follow the Lord, and positively insane to have to suffer for our faith.
The author, as a young man, was a few weeks away
from pursuing his dream to become a veterinarian, when he suddenly heard a “voice”
from the Lord calling him to abandon his planned out course to follow the Lord.
Even though his faith and knowledge about Christianity or Christian service was
minimal, the author answered the call and he has been answering it ever since
and despite the pain and suffering his journey has led him through, his encounters
have confirmed the goodness and presence of God here on the earth.
Similarly, I have experienced loss and suffering as
I have answered the Lord’s call to follow Him and even though I sometimes
wonder about this path of Christian Discipleship and how positively insane some
of it has been, I too am convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and
God’s ever present goodness, presence, and love.
So, let me encourage you to ignore those who would
call you “crazy” and to instead seek the Lord and His purpose for your
life. As those who have received the new
life in Christ will agree, God’s love and life make ANYTHING we have to go
through worth it all.
If you feel anything like I do after this Christmas
of over indulging and over spending, you
feel ripe and ready for repentance. We might not have gone far from Him but it
is so easy to take a few steps in the wrong direction when we seek to “treat ourselves”
but that’s okay because the Lord is still calling us to come on home with open
arms and to start walking in His wisdom and ways again.
---------------------------------------------------
I’m taking a
vacation from sharing the “Bible Verse of the Day from the “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”, again, well
frankly because I think I left that book back at Riverhouse! But I did grab the
“Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By John G. Krus and will share the
first Bible verse listed, right in the introduction, to impress upon you the
importance of reading God’s word:
2
Timothy 3:16-17 (NLT2)
16 All Scripture is inspired
by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is
wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what
is right.
17 God uses it to prepare and
equip his people to do every good work.
Today’s
verse tells us that ALL Scripture is useful to teach us what is true and what
is wrong in our lives. It corrects us and teaches us to do what is right. God
uses the Bible to prepare and equip us to do every good work.
So
read the Bible, every day. Start with the New Testament to learn about Jesus
and to learn how we as members of the body of Christ, the church – the saints,
are supposed to live.
It might seem “crazy” to live according to the Bible in this post Christian age, but the author of The Insanity of God, countless numbers of Christians who have experienced the new life and Christ, and myself would tell you to “be crazy” and to answer God’s call and obey His word because His life and His love make it worth it all!
___________________________________________
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
“Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
The
Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship
Chapter
Thirteen
The
Image of Christ
“Those whom he foreknew he also
predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be
the firstborn within a large family” (Rom. 8:29). To those who have heard the
call to be disciples of Jesus Christ is given the incomprehensibly great
promise that they are to become like Christ. They are to bear his image as the
brothers and sisters of the firstborn Son of God. To become “like Christ”—that
is what disciples are ultimately destined to become. The image of Jesus Christ,
which is always before the disciples’ eyes, and before which all other images
fade away, enters, permeates, and transforms them,[2] so that the
disciples resemble, indeed become like, their master. The image of Jesus Christ
shapes the image of the disciples in daily community. For disciples, it is not
possible to look at the image of the Son of God in aloof, detached
contemplation; this image exerts a transforming power. All those who submit
themselves completely to Jesus Christ will, indeed must, bear his image. They
become sons and daughters of God; they stand next to Christ, their invisible
brother, who bears the same form as they do, the image of God.
God once created Adam
in God’s own image. In Adam, God sought to observe this image with joy, as the
culmination of God’s creation, “and indeed, it was very good.”[4] In
Adam, God recognized the divine self. Thus, from the beginning, it is our
unfathomable mystery as human beings that we are creatures and yet are called
to be like the Creator. As created human beings, we are called to bear the
image of the uncreated God. Adam is “like God.” In gratitude and obedience,
Adam now ought to bear his secret of being creature and yet God-like. The lie
of the serpent was to suggest to Adam that he would still have to become like
God, and to do so by his own deed and decision. That was when Adam rejected
grace and instead chose his own deed. The mystery of his nature, of being
creature and yet God-like, was what Adam wanted to solve by himself. He wanted
to become what, from God’s perspective, he already was. That was the fall. Adam
became “like God”—sicut deus[6]—in his own way. Having made himself
into a god, he now no longer had a God. He now ruled alone as creator-god in a
world bereft of God and subdued.
But the puzzle of
human existence remains unresolved. Human beings have lost their own, God-like
essence, which they had from God. They live now without their essential
purpose, that of being the image of God. Human beings live without being truly
human. They must live without being able to live. That is the paradox of our
existence and the source of all our woes. Since then, the proud children of
Adam have sought to restore this lost image of God in themselves by means of
their own efforts. But the more seriously and devotedly they strive to regain
what was lost, and however convinced and proud they are of their apparent
victory in achieving this, the deeper the contradiction to God grows. Their
distorted form, which they modeled after the image of the god of their own
imaginative projections, resembles more and more the image of Satan, even
though they may be unaware of this. The image of God, as the Creator’s gracious
gift, has been lost on this earth.
But God keeps on
looking at God’s lost creature. For the second time, God seeks to create the
divine image in us. God wants to be pleased with the creature once again. God
seeks the divine image in us, in order to love it. But God cannot find it
except by assuming, out of sheer mercy, the image and form of the lost human
being. God must conform to the human image, since we are no longer able to
conform to the image of God.
The image of God
should be restored in us once again. This task encompasses our whole existence.
The aim and objective is not to renew human thoughts about God so that they are
correct, or that we would subject our individual deeds to the word of God
again, but that we, with our whole existence and as living creatures, are the
image of God. Body, soul, and spirit, that is, the form of being human in its
totality, is to bear the image of God on earth. God is well pleased with
nothing less than God’s own perfect image.
The image springs
from real life, the living primordial form. Form is thus being shaped by form.
The prototype from which the human form takes its shape is either the
imaginative form of God based on human projection, or it is the true and living
form of God which molds the human form into the image of God. A reshaping, a
‘metamorphosis’ (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18), a transformation has to take place
if, as fallen human beings, we are to become again the image of God. The
question is how it can become possible that human beings could be transformed
into the image of God.[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
Breaker”, "Freedom in Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the
mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts
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Audible.com.
These teachings are also available on the
MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MT4Christ247
Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and
to be encouraged.
My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian
encouragement via her Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock (https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 ) and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on
Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)
“The views, opinions, and commentary of this
publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to
reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries,
or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication,
and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the
author may represent.”
Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship,
ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 281–283.
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