Alone or In Community, Beware – Lent with Bonhoeffer Day 26– Purity 998
Purity 998 03/23/2023 Purity 998 Podcast
Purity 998 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of my canine friend, Harley, looking
down a freshly fallen snow bordered Waite Rd with the morning sun shining down from
on high comes to us from yours truly as
I captured this scene on a later than usual morning walk this past Sunday,
which I now realize was the last morning of Winter 2023. See ya.
What a difference a few days can make! That morning
I was a little miffed because I discovered that we had a fresh dusting of the
white stuff and even though the sun was shining brightly I wondered if we would
ever be free of the snow and cold temperatures that were clear and present that
Sunday morning. But now spring has
sprung and most of the snow down my way here in Stuyvesant is gone and I wake
up this morning with my electronic personal assistant reporting that it is 45
degrees outside with a forecast of showers and a high of 58 degrees. So who knows it looks like we are free so let’s
believe it and even if we experience some bumps in the road in the days ahead
that challenge that belief let’s trust that the Lord will do what He has done
before and move the seasons forward in the way He has before.
Now I fully understand that my beliefs and hope don’t
have an effect on the weather, if they did it would have been a snowless
winter, but sometimes our beliefs and our standing on the truth of God’s word
is the missing ingredient in our success at experiencing our freedom and
victory in Christ.
Today’s Thursday and I shared today’s photo because
it highlights a pathway and I intentionally used that as a visual reminder to
keep walking and talking with God on the path of Christian Discipleship because
our life of faith is a walk and it must be continuous. Our faith must endure to
the end. Scripture doesn’t paint a pretty picture of people who lived a
righteous life for a time and then go into sin at the end. Scripture indicates
that those who say they believe but never repent of their sin may be a false
convert, that they were with us but not of us.
The fruit of a Christian disciple’s life grows out of faith and the
application of God’s wisdom to their life. A Christian disciple agrees with the
word of God and lives by it. They can their minds that lived independently of
God to align with the truth of what God says in His word.
Just like our salvation is won by faith alone, in
Christ alone, our freedom and victory
comes through the faith that God has set us free and has already given us all
we need for life and godliness.
In my walk of discipling others I have often encountered
Christians that seem to have a “block” or a “wall” that separates them from
realizing or keeping their freedom in Christ for long. After much thought and consideration, I
believe that the “wall” or “block” in these Christians life is self-imposed and
created by a combination of deception and a lack of faith. These Christians can either have that thick
wall of separation in their minds that divides the holy and the secular aspects
in their lives into two distinct categories. With these there is their life of
faith and “real life”. They shift from the secular to the holy when they go to
church or do their spiritual practices but then revert to their worldly ways
for most of the time in their days. They
end up being those who honor the Lord with their lips but their hearts or minds
are not “all in” and that causes a real problem of doubt and disbelief. These are the “sinners saved by grace”. They “believe”
in God but actually show their disbelief by not repenting or by believing that
the promises of God don’t apply to them – they are hopeless cases – it’s not
God’s fault -it’s there’s – is what they think. And in a way, they are
right.
They are believing a lie – that God hasn’t given them
the power to overcome – or they simply don’t believe in any real way – they claim
belief but not a belief that would cause them to obey God’s word or not a
belief that would cause them to seek the Lord and His purpose for their life.
Whether its based on the belief that they can’t do it or they simply don’t want
to do it – that’s volitional – by their own will they are choosing not to trust
the Lord and follow Him into repentance and freedom.
Marcus Warner touched on this in the realm of
spiritual warfare by stating that even though we have the authority to cast out
demons that oppress us, if we don’t really believe we have that authority – the
demons don’t have to leave. He wrote in “What Every Believer should know about
Spiritual Warfare that:
“Sometimes the missing ingredient is
simply the person's confidence. The demon is waiting to see if the person doing
the evicting really believes. I have seen more than one demon flee after a
person who had been victimized and reduced to slavery for years finally begin
to affirm their true identity in Christ and often for the first time in their
lives stand up to the demons and fight for what was theirs.” (Warner, 2020 Page
41).
So we have to really believe, and we have to demonstrate that
we really believe by standing in our true identity in Christ and fight for what
is ours.
So let’s fight the good fight, and let’s show the enemy and
ourselves that we really believe by drawing close to God in this season of Lent,
as we enter into Day 26 of our current series, the 40 Day Journey with Dietrich
Bonhoeffer.
As a reminder, and as we will say each day of this
journey, we take this path to mark the season of Lent and to draw closer to God
in anticipation of the celebration of Easter, knowing that if we take this
journey of repentance seriously, we will not only see the days and seasons
change, the Lord will use it to change us too.
You can sign up to get this devotional yourself by
going to the Biblegateway link on the blog ((https://www.biblegateway.com/devotionals/40-Day-Journey-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer/today)) .
Day 26
Bonhoeffer writes:
“Whoever cannot be alone should beware of
community.
Such people will only do harm to themselves and to the
community.
Alone you stood before God when God called you. Alone you
had to obey God’s voice. Alone you had to take up your cross, struggle, and
pray and alone you will die and give an account to God.
You cannot avoid yourself, for it is precisely God who has
singled you out. If you do not want to be alone, you are rejecting Christ’s
call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called…
But the reverse is also true.
Whoever cannot stand being in
community should beware of being alone. You are called into the community of
faith; the call was not meant for you alone.
You carry your cross, you struggle, and you pray in the
community of faith, the community of those who are called. You are not alone
even when you die, and on the day of judgment you will be only one member of
the great community of faith of Jesus Christ…
Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community.
Whoever cannot stand being in community should beware of being alone.”
Biblical Wisdom
For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members
have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and
individually we are members one of another. Romans 12:4-5
Questions to Ponder
- Why do so many people in our
society seem to fear being alone?
M.T. Clark: Many people fear being alone because it can be
frightening and depressing. If we are
alone we can feel unsafe. If we are alone we can feel unloved. God has made us relational creatures from the
beginning as He declared of Adam, it is not good for man to be alone. Our
existence depends on community and when we isolate from the company of others
we are failing to meet our purpose in Christ which is to love God and to love
others as ourselves. However, we are to
love God first. If we love God first, we need never fear being alone because when
we put our faith in Christ, God is with us. He indwells us with the Holy Spirit.
Those who fear being alone don’t understand or appreciate the presence of God
in their lives. But to be complete we are not just to stay hidden away in God’s
presence either. God calls us to go out into the world and love people into His
kingdom. God’s purposes are perfect because they fulfill our need for
companionship and they meet His desire that people would have peace with Him.
Thus Bonhoeffer, encourages to beware of both being alone and being in
community to the exclusion of the other because we are to do both. Just another
paradox of our simple faith.
- Why do so many churches seem
to be mere aggregates of individuals rather than true communities of
faith?
M.T. Clark: Aggregates? If you are as sharp as I am you may have
to look that up. An aggregate is a “whole
formed by combining several elements”, a collection I guess. So why do some churches seem to be a mere “collection”
of individuals rather than true communities of faith? Western societies tend to
stress the individual more than a group or community identity that eastern
cultures tend to stress. So it is not
surprising that our societal influences that tell us to focus on ourselves affects
us when we come into the community of faith. The world at least in this hemisphere seems to
teach us that it’s “everyone for themselves” rather than “we are all in this
together” and I don’t care what propaganda may have been pushed during Covid-19
– the empty shelves in the supermarkets demonstrated just how much we are “ all
in this together”. So that’s why
churches can seem more like aggregates of individuals, than a true community. I
don’t think we will have true community until Jesus comes back, because of the
world broken by sin and driven by self-interest. I’m guilty too.
- In what ways can a disciple
establish a healthy balance between aloneness and community?
M.T. Clark: A disciple can establish a healthy balance between
aloneness and community by being intentional about having “alone time” with God
and by fully engaging in their local church by making friendships within the
body of Christ and by seeking to serving where they worship. We need both to be balanced.
Psalm Fragment
Praise the Lord!
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,
in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
Great are the works of the Lord,
studied by all who delight in them. Psalm 111:1-2
Journal Reflections
- Write about times when you
have intentionally been alone. How did it make you feel? What did you do?
Did your aloneness have any impact on how you felt when you were with
others again?
M.T. Clark: I have often been intentionally alone. Before Christ,
I did it to escape the company of man that rejected me or to indulge in sinful
behavior that I didn’t want any witnesses of. But after I put my faith in Christ,
I realized the I was never alone and when I choose to have some solitude, God
goes with me. Aloneness before Christ made
me feel anxious, afraid, angry, or depressed.
But now in Christ, I have peace and joy in the presence of the Lord. My
aloneness would make me wary of being in the presence of others before Christ
but since I have Jesus in my life I am markedly less wary and more appreciative
of the other people of my life.
·
Write about your
experience in community. Do you feel an integral part of your community? Do you
feel like you have a good balance between time in community and time alone?
M.T. Clark: Some of the best moments of my faith journey have
been in community. Those perfect shining moments where I and others were
serving or praising the Lord in unity make one feel like an integral part of
our community, that we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves, and
we are blessed. Do I have a good balance between being in community and time
alone? I do for me. My disposition, my temperament, or my
relational attachment style if you will, is one that demands a good deal of
alone time. And not for nothing, a disciple’s zeal for our faith can afford us
some loneliness even when we crave community. But I do feel I have a good balance, for me,
in that I regularly engage with small groups for the sake of community or
ministry. I sometimes think that it would be nice just to stay in my room reading
the vast quantity of books that I have collected and to just focus on my individual
relationship with the Lord but when I contemplate actually doing that it never
sits right in my spirit because I know that part of my purpose is to be in
community with the body of Christ and to be an ambassador for the kingdom to welcome
others in. We need each other and thus
we need a balance between being alone and being in community.
Intercessions
If you know anyone
who seems lonely, pray that they might discover true community. If you know
anyone who seems afraid to be alone with themselves, pray that they might
discover the joy of solitude, of being alone with God.
M.T. Clark:
Lord God,
I’m not going to call out names. But you know who I am thinking
of who is lonely and of another person who seems incapable of being alone, I
pray for these people to be touched by you to be compelled to seek out a
community of faith where they can have their relational met and be able to grow
in their faith and maturity individually.
I pray that the one who fears being alone find the joy of solitude – of being
alone with You and I pray for the one who is alone to find the faith community
they so desperately need.
In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
Prayer for Today
O Lord, when I am
too much alone, help me seek community. When I am too dependent on the
community, help me to set aside time to be alone.
In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
(40-Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Copyright © 2007
Augsburg Books, imprint of Augsburg Fortress.)
***As we are being
provided with Bible verses from the 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we
will are taking a break from sharing a verse of the day from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”. We plan on
resuming that normal installment of the blog following Easter.***
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 A.W. Pink’s “The
Sovereignty of God.”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Pink’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 SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
By
ARTHUR W. PINK
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS continues
The Word of God is
addressed to men, and therefore it
speaks the language of men. Because we cannot rise to God’s level He, in grace,
comes down to ours and converses with us in our own speech. The apostle Paul
tells us of how he was “caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable words
which it is not possible (margin) to utter” (2 Cor. 12:4). Those on earth could
not understand the vernacular of heaven. The finite cannot comprehend the
Infinite, hence the Almighty deigns to couch His revelation in terms we may
understand. It is for this reason the Bible contains many
anthropomorphisms—i.e, representations of God in the form of man. God is
Spirit, yet the Scriptures speak of Him as having eyes, ears, nostrils, breath,
hands, etc., which is surely an accommodation of terms brought down to the
level of human comprehension.
Again; we read in
Gen. 18:20, 21 “And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is
great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now, and see whether they have done
altogether according to the cry of it, which is come up unto Me; and if not, I
will know.” Now, manifestly, this is an anthropologism—God speaking in human
language. God knew the conditions
which prevailed in Sodom, and His eyes had witnessed its fearful sins, yet He
is pleased to use terms here that are taken from our own vocabulary.
Again; in Gen. 22:12
we read “And He (God) said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything
unto him: for now I know that thou
fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.”
Here again, God is speaking in the language of men for He “knew” before He tested Abram exactly how the
patriarch would act. So too the expression of
God so often in Jeremiah (7:13 etc.) of Him “rising up early” is manifestly
an accommodation of terms.
Once more: in the
parable of the vineyard Christ Himself represents its Owner as saying, “Then
said the Lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send My beloved Son: it may be they will reverence Him when
they see Him” (Luke 20:13); and yet, it is certain that God knew perfectly well
that the “husbandman” of the vineyard (the Jews) would not “reverence His Son” but, instead, would “despise and reject”
Him as His own Word had declared!
In the same way we
understand the words of Gen. 6:6—“It repented
the Lord that He had made man on the earth”—as an accommodation of terms to
human comprehension. This verse does not teach that God was confronted with an
unforeseen contingency and therefore regretted
that He had made man, but it expresses the abhorrence
of a holy God at the awful wickedness and corruption into which man had fallen.
Should there be any doubt remaining in the minds of our readers as to the
legitimacy and soundness of our interpretation, a direct appeal to Scripture
should instantly and entirely remove it—“The Strength of Israel (a Divine
title) will not lie nor repent: for He is
not a man, that He should repent” (1 Sam. 15:29)! “Every good and perfect
gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow
of turning” (Jas. 1:17)!
Careful attention to
what we have said above will throw light on numerous other passages which, if we
ignore their figurative character and
fail to note that God applies to Himself
human modes of expression, will be obscure and perplexing. Having commented at
such length upon Gen. 6:6 there will be no need to give such a detailed
exposition of other passages which belong to the same class, yet, for the
benefit of those of our readers who may be anxious for us to examine several
other scriptures, we turn to one or two more.
One scripture which
we often find cited in order to overthrow the teaching advanced in this book is
our Lord’s lament over Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest
the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a
hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and
ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). The question is asked, Do not these words
show that the Saviour acknowledged the
defeat of His mission, that as a people the Jews resisted all His gracious
overtures toward them? In replying to this question, it should first be pointed
out that our Lord is here referring not so much to His own mission as He is upbraiding the Jews for having in all ages rejected His grace—this is
clear from His reference to the “prophets.” The Old Testament bears full
witness of how graciously and patiently Jehovah dealt with His people, and with
what extreme obstinacy, from first to last, they refused to be “gathered” unto
Him, and how in the end He abandoned them to follow their own devices, yet, as
the same Scriptures declare, the counsel of God was not frustrated by their wickedness, for it had been foretold
(and therefore, decreed) by Him: see, for example, 1 Kings 8:33.
Matt. 23:37 may well
be compared with Isa. 65:2 where the Lord says, “I have spread out My hands all
the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good,
after their own thoughts.” But, it may be asked, Did God seek to do that which
was in opposition to His own eternal purpose? In words borrowed from Calvin we
reply, “Though to our apprehension the will of God is manifold and various, yet
He does not in Himself will things at variance with each other, but astonishes
our faculties with His various and ‘manifold’
wisdom, according to the expression of Paul, till we shall be enabled to
understand that He mysteriously wills what now seems contrary to His will.” As
a further illustration of the same principle we would refer the reader to Isa.
5:1–4: “Now will I sing to my well Beloved a song of my Beloved touching His
vineyard. My well Beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: And He
fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the
choicest vine and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress
therein: and He looked that it should
bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O
inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt Me and
My vineyard. What could have been done
more to My vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked
that it should bring forth grapes, brought forth wild grapes?” Is it not plain
from this language that God reckoned Himself to have done enough for Israel to
warrant an expectation—speaking after the manner of men—of better returns? Yet,
is it not equally evident when Jehovah says here “He looked that it should
bring forth grapes” that He is accommodating Himself to a form of finite
expression? And, so also when He says “What could have been done more to My
vineyard, that I have not done in it?” we need to take note that in the previous
enumeration of what He had done—the
“fencing” etc.—He refers only to external privileges, means, and
opportunities, which had been bestowed upon Israel, for, of course, He could even then have taken away from
them their stony heart and given them a new heart, even a heart of flesh, had
He so pleased.
Perhaps we should
link up with Christ’s lament over Jerusalem min Matt. 23:37, His tears over the
City, recorded in Luke 19:41: “He beheld the city, and wept over it.” In the
verses which immediately follow we learn what
it was that occasioned His tears: “Saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at
least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are
hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies
shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on
every side.” It was the prospect of the fearful judgment which Christ knew was
impending. But did those tears make manifest a disappointed God? Nay, verily.
Instead, they displayed a perfect Man. The Man Christ Jesus was no emotionless
stoic, but One “filled with compassion.” Those tears expressed the sinless
sympathies of His real and pure humanity. Had He not “wept” He had been less than human. Those “tears” were one of
many proofs that “in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His
brethren” (Heb. 2:17).[1]
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Encouragement
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