A World at War

I have been reading a book called "Waking the Dead" by John Eldridge. It is a really good approach to practical living and abundent life. Eldridge takes specific time to remind us of the fact that we live in the midst of a spiritual battle. For anyone looking for a fresh take on day to day Christian living I think that this book is great. It will challenge your preconcieved notions about yourself, your heart, and day to day life. Eldridge talks about begining to see the world differently than we normally do. He says that our hearts (if we are regenerated by faith) are actually good. We still do have to deal with the flesh, but we are no longer have bad hearts but good hearts. As we struggle with sin it is easy to feel like "I'm a bad person" or carry the guilt of our sin even though Jesus has given us a new, pure heart. Eldridge says that guilt and feeling of being a bad person is directly related to spiritual battle. Daily we are bombarded with lies from our enemy telling us that we are bad and should feel guilty. All the while Jesus has forgiven us and presented us with a good, pure heart. Learning to live like we are at war is difficult. Everything that is around us screams that life is not at war it's just hard sometimes. It's not really war...

According to the book of Ephesians chapter 6 we are at war. Why is it so hard to realize that and live and think like we are at war. If I could just remember this fact more often it would bring me much more perspective in my life. As it relates to the daily desire that I have to live the abundent life I know that I live in a world at war. I know that I have an enemy who seeks my life.

Hey here is a picture of my family 

The Matrix and the truth

Recently I spoke for our students at CRU at GMU and my talk focused around the concept of perceived reality vs. Biblical reality. My desire was to challenge them to walk with Jesus this summer when life goes back to "the way it was" before college. My main opening illustration for the talk focused around the scene in the Matrix when Neo first meets Morpheus. Morpheus gives him the choice of the pills etc... First I love the movie. Better than the other two in the trilogy in my humble opinion. Of course the film makers use incredible religious symbolism, but I think that outwardly it is pretty Buddhist. What I find to be interesting is that when you look at the concept of the movie I think that it actually agrees with some of the big pictures of the bible. We live in a world where we are slaves, but we don't even know it. There is the rag-tag band of people who are trying to save the world by bringing freedom to one person at a time. They are waging a war. When Neo finally realizes that what he sees is not necessarily what is true,(at the end of the movie) the agents really can't hurt him. In fact he has more power over them then they have over him. It is all about what he believes.

Isn't this true in the Christian life? Isn't our ability to live the abundant life really directly tied to what we believe about who God is and what he says(in his word). Most Christians really don't have that hard a time assenting to intellectual belief in Jesus and his word. The problem comes when intellectual belief stays, well... just intellectual. If our belief system never really makes it to the core of who we are, our heart, it never really makes that much of a difference in our life. My friend Stephen and I were talking a few months ago and we came to the conclusion that real life change and abundant living takes place when our intellectual beliefs become heart/core beliefs. The real question then is how does that happen? How do we make that move from the head to the heart?
The answer is I'm not totally sure. But I know that it is a supernatural process. No different than any person that believes(in a life invested way) that Jesus is God and that he paid for their imperfections in life. This is not just the free will of a person to choose God. God is directly involved in drawing that person in. I believe that God is the one who gives anyone the ability to believe in Jesus. I also believe that this holds true for any other belief about God and his character. More about this tomorrow.