The Rich Man, Lazarus, and Jonah Stories

"The chasm between "heaven" and "hell" in this story does not seem infinite. The rich man, though dead, is not beyond the reach of love. All he needs is for someone naked and alone to seek him out in hell---a loving emissary of the naked God, come to liberate him from his own internal prison."
- Doug Frank  (A Gentler God, p.302)

"Jesus once treated a crowd that had gathered around him to these cryptic words: "This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Ninevah, so the human son will be to this generation (Luke 11:29-30).

How does Jonah point to Jesus? Perhaps by spending three days in Sheol and then returning----a human son who goes to hell and back. When Jonah finally meets the Ninevites and warns them about God's judgment, he speaks with the conviction of one who has experienced that judgment----not as condemnation, but as salvation. He knows that hell's eternity is not literally eternal, and those who find themselves alone in their sufferings there are not literally alone.

It will be a cold day in hell before evangelical preachers use the story of Jonah to explain that "eternal" flames are not without end and that Jesus is present in hell. But large sectors of the Christian church have kept alive the strange idea that Jesus went to hell to put and end to its tortures."
- Doug Frank, pp.309-310).

Today The Scripture Is Fulfilled

“We have to start with Jesus and refigure our ideas around him, rather than trying to fit him into our existing worldviews.”
- N. T. Wright

“I knew Jesus before he was a Christian . . . And I liked him better then.”

- Rubel Shelly

How is it that Jesus is rejected in his own home town of Nazareth? Maybe the saying is true, “Over familiarity breeds contempt!” Jesus is assigned to read from the Prophet Isaiah scroll. He puts his finger on this place and begins to read:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon,

Because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

And recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Jesus rolls up the scroll and in the synagogue with his fellow towns people, he says prophetically, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1-2 but breaks off the ending of the verse of God’s judgment and God’s vengeance. If someone were to read the Scriptures today and do this, people might yell, read the end of the verse! For God’s sake, read the end of the verse! The people were looking forward to the day when all of Israel’s enemies would be destroyed and they would go back to the glory days of how it was during the time of the reign of King David and King Solomon’s reign.

          What happens next is unbelievable. The people cry out for a sign because they heard stories of Jesus doing mighty miracles and works of God but they had not personally witnessed any themselves. I mean, ‘C’mon, isn’t this Joseph son who did day labor for other people in town? We know this kid, and he seems liked an average Joe in our community.’   

          So Jesus does the unexpected. The crowd in the Synagogue were somewhat admiring his reading of Scripture but Jesus begins to tell how God used Israel’s enemies in the past from other Older Testament Scriptures like Elijah went to the widow in the land of Sidon and the prophet Elisha only healed a leper who was from Syria. The crowd went from being impressed to being enraged. They actually tried to physically push Jesus off a cliff. Can you see the hometown newspaper the next day? “Riot breaks out and home boy falls off a cliff!”

          We neglect the Scriptures or read them to bring us some comfort or help us to fall asleep reading at night. Yet reading the Scriptures can be quite dangerous and get you killed in certain places. God’s message to Israel was good news for the whole world. The problem was Israel just saw it as good new for themselves while it was bad news for everybody else. What many Jews believed was salvation was their exclusive right and they were willing to fight and do violence over that belief.    

          Can we come to the point to understand what Jesus is driving at over and over when it comes to what some people call the doctrine of election? Wars and divisions have been fought over the meaning of this little word. Election gives us no claims on God and certainly not a privileged status over other people. God’s incredible love is for the whole world and all people of every nation.

          When Jesus comes on the scene, Israel had failed throughout most of biblical history to live out their covenant faithfulness to God. We read over and over of their failures and their extended exiles. When all of Jesus disciples abandoned him and he was left standing alone, it was because Jesus represented the sole elect one for all of humanity. Where all others failed, he remained true to his calling and identity for God. If election means anything, it more means a vocation of suffering and greater responsibility in living for others. We are all elected corporately into Christ who was the faithful elect one of God.

          What Israel had a hard time understanding about Jesus was not only his willingness to hang out with all the wrong people but salvation and God’s kingdom were both universal and cosmic in scope. Jesus continually reversed everything where people who thought they were in God’s kingdom are out and those who thought they were out were actually in (Matt.25). No one for Jesus was beyond God’s redeeming love and the last will find oneself first and the first will find oneself last (Matt. 20:16).

Can We Rescue the Dead?

The modern western church typically sees a great divide between those who are still alive on earth and those who are dead and have passed on to the after life. What is fascinating is to learn how the earliest Christians not only prayed to the dead and asked for assistance in their prayers but they even prayed for the salvation of those who died without Christ.

There is a list of early evidences from archaeology, grave sites, epitaphs, and early church writings to at least take another look at what these early Christians believed and practiced. Some of the early Christian writings that point in this direction are Luke 16:19-31 nd 2 Clement 8, The Shepherd of Hermes, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the odes of Solomon written during the second century.

Particular interest is Thelca's prayer for Falconilla and Perpetua's prayer for Dinocrates. There is the harrowing of Hell by the ancient Eastern Orthodox of Jesus descent into hell and emptying it and several early church fathers views of universal salvation from Origen and Gregory of Nyssa to later Christians in the early church.  Two teachings that have been lost in the modern church today is (1) Christians still spiritually grow and evolve in the after life; and (2) people can still choose God even after they have died.

God is in this place and I did not know it

I survey the land and what do I see?
Songs of heaven in the noise of creation.
I see traces in the dust of footsteps.
Are they the feet of men or angels or miracles?
God is in this place and I did not know it.

I sail across the ocean with the breeze in my face.
A heavenly dove flies by with wings of grace.
The secrets of the world unfold before my eyes.
I am seized by awe and wonder as the new day shines.
God is in this place and I did not know it.

I try to look at the rising sun.
I feel captured by its rays and ruined by its light.
All creation is heaven in disguise.
I wait in silence as I hear the whispers of angels gone by.
God is in this place and I did not know it.


(inspired by Genesis 28:16)

Will Animals Be In Heaven?

"My parents told me animals will not be in heaven but I think they will" ( said to me by a young girl yesterday)

Will animals be in heaven?  What about my pet dog?  My dog died last week and a group of children started talking about the loss of their pets and would they see their pet in heaven?  To young children, this is an important question and to serious adult pet people, it may be a serious one to them as well.

One precious young girl said this to me yesterday in regard to death and people and pets.  "If you carry them in your heart then you take them to heaven with you.  If they are in your heart, they are with you forever."  I'd rather hear the theology of children at times than the more "mature" adult ways of thinking on topics such as these.  I love children and how they think at times amazes me in their profound simplicity and child-like wonder and awe of God's universe.

When we think of animals being in heaven, one response is the Bible is silent.  We do not really know definitely one way or another.  But if one digs a little deeper into Scripture, it is interesting how important animals are from creation to Christ's birth to new creation.  We have a great cloud of witness of saints who have already died as the writer of the book of Hebrews says but we also have a great cloud of witnesses of animals that have surrounded us from the beginning.

If God saved the animals on the ark, who knows about heaven?  And if one thinks about heaven, is not the new heaven and new earth joined together?  If might be hard to think of animals in heaven for some folks but nobody has difficulty thinking of animals on earth or a new earth. 

All I know is all of creation is united together by God's love so like the little girl who spoke of her love for animals, I suspect we will experience animals in a greater way just like we will experience relationships in a greater way in heaven or should I say a new heaven on a new earth.

You Will Be Amazed by Heaven

"There are three things that will amaze us about heaven. 
The first is you will be amazed at who is there.
The second is you will be amazed at who is not there.
Lastly, you will be amazed that your there."

People have so many questions about heaven.  Who will be there and what will people be doing there?  What will life in heaven be like?  So the question of today is what is God the Father doing in heaven?  God the Father is always taking in Jesus as His Son to make you into God's son or daughter.  What is Jesus doing in heaven?  Jesus is always preparing a place for you in heaven.  What is the Holy Spirit doing in heaven?  The Holy Spirit is putting heaven in you on earth so that you will be ready for heaven.  Any questions?

Heaven and Hell on Earth and what About the Afterlife?

"We look to a new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells" (1 Peter 3:13)

People tend to either know nothing about life here and now much less life or non-life after death or people act like they know whose in with God, whose out, as if there will no so surprises in the afterlife.  I believe we need a lot more honesty and humility when it comes to speaking about this life and the life to come.

In the Bible, God's fire stood before Israel and Pharaoh's army.  To God's people the fire of God was warmth, light, protection, and comfort.  To Pharaoh's army the fire was confusion, darkness and terror.  For Daniel's friends thrown in the fiery furnace, the fire did not touch them and the presence of God was with them.  The ropes that bound them were burned off but they were not burned by the fire.  But for Daniel friends captors, they were incinerated by the fire.  When we think of heaven and hell whether we experience that in this life or think about it in regards to the afterlife,  God's love gives light and delight to those who love God and it is darkness and torment to those who do not love God.

There are multi-dimensions to reality where the veil between heaven and earth may be more thin that people realize for those who have spiritual eyes to see.  Christians today get worried about apocalyptic images of the end of days and people who might end up in hell but fail to also heed the prophets and Jesus warnings against the self-destructive idolatry that takes place in the here and now.  We think of Hell as merely retributive but fail to see it as corrective because God loves all His children, even his wayward ones.

Can we read the Bible with new eyes to see what it truly says about our own souls.  The story of the rich man and Lazarus is a familiar one to some in Luke 16:19-31 but I am afraid we miss some of the deeper dimensions of the story while we focus on the wrong details of the story as if the story is about how the torment in hell works or what the final outcome looks like in the end.  Both are left more to our own imaginations rather than listening to Jesus main point concerning turning away from our idolatry and a strong hint at resurrection.

What this biblical story shows is what Jesus does in many of his teachings, it shows reversals in God's kingdom.  The rich man is rich in this world but poor in being rich toward God'  Poor Lazarus seemed like he is abandoned in life whereas in reality God is the one who holds his life together, for better or for worse.  The rich man fights God's process of the purifying fire and still does not have love or compassion for Lazarus much less sees his own self-centered delusions about himself.  Dare we look into the abyss at the condition of our own souls?  What will we find there?

We think we know the last word but do we?  This story of Jesus is not before the final end?  Who knows how far God's love will go or what will finally happen in the end, only God knows.  Just like the young rich ruler who walks away from Jesus sad because he could not become one of Jesus disciples because of his great wealth, is that the end of the story?  Church tradition and history tells us this man finally gave it all up and became a follower of Jesus.  The truth is until God brings the end about, we really don't know how the story will end since most of us are still in the middle of the story.  What we choose now has significant impact so choose wisely.

In the end, if the only reason your a Christian is to avoid hell, have you really encountered the risen Christ yet?  We follow Jesus because Jesus loves us and we love Him.  Our hope for the future is not because of anything we have done but because of everything Jesus has done on our behalf.  One of the things we don't know for sure is if people end up in hell or even annihilated or destroyed in some way, doesn't this allow evil in some sense to have the last word?  Is not the annihilation and destruction of God's good creation precisely the aim and goal of evil?  Is not the self-destruction of people made in God's image a victory for evil?  Maybe in some mysterious way love has the last word in these cases but should not the love of God still hold out hope even if by all appearances there seems to be no hope?

If Jesus taught us to love our enemies, then should we still not hold out love for those who are God's enemies?  I believe we misunderstand some scripture that is more about the coming judgment on Israel, Jerusalem and its temple rather than an eternal cosmic judgment for all time and for all eternity.  And even if some people resist God's love for all eternity, should not people filled with God's love pray for mercy and have a blessed hope for them because the heart of God is that none should perish but all have eternal life (2 Peter 3:9).

Help, I've Lost My PassPort

"Don't wait to leave earth to experience heaven on earth now"

Our family is going on a cruise to the Caribbean and we lost my oldest son's passport.  When you want to do ordinary traveling, you don't need a passport.  But when you are doing great distance traveling like leaving the country, you have to have a passport.  If you ever lose a passport, you will find out its hard work and costly to get another one.  It's takes both time and effort to get a new one issued to you.

I believe some of us when it comes to experiencing heaven on earth is like losing our passport.  Maybe trying to go to a far away destination comes with too high of a price tag.  God desires to draw us closer to Him because He is our destination.  God wants us to see and hear the sights and sounds of heaven.  God wants us to be tuned in to His voice, renew our minds with God's Word, and fix our eyes on heaven.

For God to work within us in new ways means we first need to be open enough to think in new ways.  God's thoughts are not our thoughts and God is calling each of us to go deeper and farther in the spiritual world than we have ever ventured before.  We need to know who we truly are in Christ if we are going to understand more the character and ways of God.  Only by meditating and contemplating on God's Word will we cultivate our inner life with God.  God wants us all to be fully alive in Him.

This deeper spiritual journey of heaven changing earth will also mean that our self obsessions, blind spots, and self deceptions will be challenged and checked by God's Holy Spirit and purifying fire.  It is only by becoming still that we experience the rhythm of God's presence.  What I am discovering and slowly seeing is what many of the great mystics saw in their visionary experiences of Jesus who is the lover of my soul.

God is always ready to receive us like His little children but we must come honestly and humbly before God's throne of grace.  When we pretend, conceal, hide, and deceive, we cheapen God's grace and spurn God's love to trust Him with our most desperate hearts.  When we truly pray, the true condition of our hearts are revealed in the light of God's brilliance.  The more we pray and come into God's Holy presence, the more we pass from thinking of God as a part of our life to understanding that we are a part of God's life.  God's heart enlarges our heart and He transforms our spirit with His Spirit.

So as God prepares us this year of 2015, get ready because things are not always what they seem.  Things right now are not as bad as you think and for others who think everything is fine spiritually, look out what God may show you next.  This year is about being and not doing.  God wants us to rest in His Presence and enter into a season of his peace. 

This is also a year of depth.  God is taking us deeper and we will not be ready for what is coming next if we do not submit to God's purifying fire and a season where God nourishes our deep spiritual roots so that we can be fruitful for things to come.  And the greatest part of this faraway journey is we will learn to dwell and live in love which is to dwell and live in God!

Heaven Sees You, Do You See Heaven?

"God has torn us to pieces so that he can heal us" (Hosea 6:1)


We continually ask the wrong questions and focus on the wrong things.  If one reads the book of Judges, people will ask the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"  God's Word asks us, "Why do good people do bad things?"  People ask "Why does waiting on God take so long?"  God's Word tells us that God is waiting on us.  And then we focus on our problems, concerns of the world, and the weaknesses of our flesh.  God sees what is not yet, what we are becoming, what God is perfecting and making stronger.  A thousand times a day Jesus is telling us "Focus on Me."  Jesus is greater than our problems and bigger than our circumstances.  Jesus asks us like he did Peter, "Do you love me?  Feed my sheep."  Do we love Jesus, feed others.  Do we love Jesus, focus on what he is doing and not on what everyone else is doing.


In my brokenness, I am realizing Christ is my healer.
Hope in Christ is what holds the future.
Joy is realizing Christ is all I really need.


God is calling me and each of us to walk in the Holy Spirit every day.  Everyday I am learning to ask God to help me do that very one thing!  God wants to bring a change of perspective, a change of pace, and maybe even a change of place in our lives.  Are you ready?  Heaven is invading earth right now.  Are you ready?  God sees everything where we only see partially.  God sees the beginning and the end where we are caught in the middle and can't see or grasp the big picture.  God is doing more than we can even ask or imagine.  So if heaven sees you and the things of the earth, do you see heaven and the things of heaven?

Let No One Deceive You, Heaven is for Real

"Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die!"

When it comes to other people's experiences of God, we need to be careful as Christians.  Can we show people grace and mercy even if we don't understand or find some things they say problematic or unscriptural to our own understanding of the Bible.  It is easy for Christians and atheists to show contempt towards others prior to investigation or truly trying to understand where the other person is coming from.  If this world needs heaven and more saints, this surely will not come from Christians being known as harsh critics and being judgmental.  There is a difference between testing the spirits and grieving the Spirit.

When people have spiritual encounters or even paranormal experiences, should they not receive our love and effort to understand them, no matter how hard it is to understand what is really going on?  It seems that since Satan counterfeits so many spiritual experiences, it is easier to discount all spiritual experiences outside our own limited ones.  Can other people's life experiences reshape or even challenge some of our assumptions concerning the Bible?  Even when other people's experiences sound wild, bizarre, or strange, we should neither mock or attack them.  Should not our attitude be more of open and cautious rather than closed and obstinate.

When it comes to the strange, bizarre, and weird, they are all found in the Bible.  One can not simply dismiss other people's testimony or experiences because they do not conform to what we think is either normal or safe.  The truth is silence does not prove anything one way or another in the Bible. If there has to be a biblical precedent for everything someone does then Jesus would have never met those standards of his day much less any new thing God may be trying to demonstrate or show us in the present. 

If Jesus taught us anything, it is we are to look at the fruit of people's experiences.  Is it drawing someone closer or farther away from God?  Does it produce a deeper love for God, God's Word, and God's people or does it hurt the body of Christ?  Rather than critics simply resorting to "Where is that found in the Bible?", can we come from the other side "Is it contrary to God's Word?"  Let's not confuse extra-biblical from unbiblical!

I have watched the movie and read the book, "Heaven is for Real" and I like many others, find the stories of a four year old both humbling and encouraging.  I will share some of my favorite quotes from the book in the next post but I find it very belittling to take a few of the weakest or potential troubling parts of the book like people have wings or the Holy Spirit is 'kinda blue' and then mock the whole thing.  What about all the inspiring and beautiful parts of the book or movie?  From the critics perspective, it seems they are only there to find the bad and not the good.  Is this how we would want others to treat us?

I have come to the place where I don't think the church can afford any more to simply rubber stamp every spiritual experience much less condemn anything they don't understand or can't neatly fit into Scripture as either deceptive, cultic, or from the Devil (even though there are these counterfeits, let's  please not throw the baby out with the water, even if the water gets pretty murky and dirty at times). 

There are many Christian people who have spiritual manifestations or events that happen in their life that are real and they must exercise discernment but that does not mean it's not real.  We simply cannot write off all spiritually weird phenomena, ghost stories, near death experiences and the like as simply fictions, lies, and spiritual deception.  It would be interesting to know the whole history of the church and document these strange experiences by people who are canonized as saints and are known for their orthodox theology.

In the end, there is something fundamentally wrong when sophisticated adult Christians are mocking the account of a four year old child.  It's like "you can't believe children, they are too young to know what they are talking about!"  One of the things Colton Burpo learned from his heavenly experience is "Jesus really, really loves children."  Do we?  It is a misunderstanding to equate Colton's heavenly experience or vision as he died and went to heaven and came back.  He never died and to put him into that category is a mistake from the get go.

What I find are a few teachers of the Bible who criticize "Heaven is for Real" and say very confidently that the Scriptures are clear that nobody goes to heaven and comes back to tell about it no matter how many people claim otherwise (people who have near death experiences are called "NDE's").  If one drops all the reading in between the lines concerning Lazarus who should have given us a full report of his four day journey when he died and came back, what I see are two scriptures where this whole edifice typically rests upon.  Two scriptures do not make up the clear testimony of Scripture and comes closer to looking like proof texting.

The two texts often quoted against the movie and book and all "NDE's" is Proverbs 30:4 and John 3:13.  Both speak of nobody ascending to heaven or descending to heaven and earth except the Messiah Jesus (the only perfect man who came from heaven).  Before I speak to these verses of Scripture, I want to say we need to distinguish between people who have visionary experiences of heaven like Colton Burpo and those who say they actually died and was in heaven until they were revived back to life.  There are several people who have visionary experiences of heaven in the Bible from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Paul's third heaven vision, and John's grand vision of heaven in the book of Revelation.  The Bible is simply silent on people actually dying, going somewhere (intermediate state) and then returning and talking about it.  Just because it is not recorded in Scripture does not mean it never happened then or can't happen today.

The truth is these two texts taken literally mean that nobody ascends to heaven or descends to earth.  Only God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and those with God in heaven (angels and the heavenly host) ascend or descend.  Something the church and world needs to understand and often does not get is heaven is not something you go up to but something that comes to you!  Heaven is both a present and future reality.  Heaven comes to us because of Christ and because of Christ in us, heaven is in us.  If there is one thing people need more of today are people living like citizens of heaven on earth rather than simply living a worldly life and waiting on heaven.  The world is crying out for the sons and daughters of God to bring heaven to earth.  The earth can no longer wait for God's children not to bring heaven to earth and if we really think about it, heaven can't wait either!

To Pilgrims, Monks, and Mystics

"I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God, and God is in my soul"  -  Elizabeth of the Trinity

The more I study the Bible, the bigger it gets and the smaller I become.  The longer I meditate on God's Word, the more it penetrates the depths of my heart.  The more I learn, the less I know.  Instead of me mastering the Bible, the Bible is mastering me.  To be a mystic is to encounter God in the ordinary and the everyday.  The movie "Heaven is for Real" comes out tomorrow and I find Christian pilgrims, monks, and mystics stumble, run, and fall into the unseen realm of heaven all the time.  Many times we are neither looking for God or heaven but God and heaven have a habit of finding and running headlong into us.

My prayer life is changing.  My prayers are simply echoes of listening to God and His Word and praying them back to heaven where they come from.  I am learning how to come into God's presence every day.  I find myself at times simply praying my concerns to God and then God prays His concerns for the world back through me.

2014 is like a new season preparing us for another spiritual season of 2015.  I see the wheat and the tares growing together, God doing more than I have ever seen before and Satan trying more to stop God's heavenly advancement on earth.  I am not one for apocalyptic fevers but I pray for all my brothers and sisters in Christ for the coming days because I sense something huge on the horizon spiritually.  The spiritual always changes the natural and manifests in the physical world around us.
Things are not always what they seem.  People who are comfortable will find their world shaken apart and those who find themselves in the miry clay will be lifted out of it to a place they could have never come on their own but only by God's help and direction.

Be still, and know God!

Who Goes to Hell?

"THERE ARE THREE PLACES WHERE RACIAL DIVISION STILL PERSISTS: BARS, PRISONS, AND THE AMERICAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH" - Francis Chan

The church has often focused on the unchurched as those who are going to hell. What is refreshing of Chan and Pringle's book "Erasing Hell" is the self-critique style and looking at oneself first before they consider looking at others.

They list several ways from Jesus words on why we should take a hard look in the mirror:

1. Our words can condemn us. When we call people fools and condemn others, we are not showing God's kingdom but are actually unwittingly participating in hellish ways. We either speak words of life or death. We speak words of hell that demean others or heaven which esteems others.

2. When we don't help the poor may be an indicator that we are on the road to hell. Chan and Pringle write, "Yet many hellfire preachers are overfed and overpaid, living in luxury while doing nothing for the majority of Christians who live on less than two dollars a day (p.121).

3. Jesus did not warn drunks, thieves, or adulterers about going to hell but he did warn teachers who taught God's word. Teachers of God's Word should take the teachings of hell most seriously since it particularly pertains to them.

4. The lukewarm are in danger of hell. People who confess Jesus with their lips but deny him by their actions that the Bible gives it's strongest warnings to.

As I have been reading the fifth chapter of Chan's and Pringle's book, they sum it up by saying, "Racism, greed, misplaced assurance, false teaching, misuse of wealth, and degrading words to others are the things that damn people" (p.124).

They end with these strong words, "I want to shock my enemies with Christian love."

Now that's a shock that more people could use!

Interesting Occurrences

So I listened to two awesome new songs this week.  On Wednesday, I found this one:  Heaven Come My Way by Abandon Kansas from their album Ad Astra Per Aspera (Latin - To the Stars through difficulties - apparently a motto for a whole bunch of different people and one I have not heard but love!)

Yesterday I found this song which I linked in this post as well:  Coming My Way.

These two songs are very uplifting!

Truth is Unkillable

Supernaturally Natural

THE QUESTION NOBODY SEEMS TO BE ASKING IS WHEN WE GET TO HEAVEN, COULD IT BE THE EARTH RESTORED TO ITS FULL BEAUTY?

T. S. Eliot, a Christian poet words reminds me that poets can also be prophets. T. S. Eliot said,

"To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtous life here one will continue to exist in the best possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without; it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now."

Do you believe this?

Confessions of a Hypocrite

I have been reading Rob Bell's "Love Wins" and my response has been kind of a love/hate relationship. Rob Bell says some wonderful things that many Christians should affirm and there are a few things he says in regards about Hell and Salvation that will probably make them mad as well.

Bell asks a lot of challenging questions and at the end of the day, I have come to the conclusion that Rob Bell is simply stating what most of us live as followers of Jesus. So here is my rant which is trying to pull the logs out of my own eyes as I see splinters in Rob Bell's.

1. Many Christians believe in the traditional doctrine of Hell as a place of eternal punishment but they live like it really does not exist nor do they want to talk about it.

2. Which is worse, people who say they don't believe in Hell but love Jesus anyway or people who say they believe in Hell but never lift a finger to help others avoid that destination?

3. We have gone from Hell-fire Brimestone preaching to the gospel of God loves us. The gospel many of us preach every week is often more about us than God. Man has become the center in our practices even if that is not the case in our theology.

4. Every funeral most ministers preach at extends the hope of heaven. Why would people think we are not universalists because of our practices?

5. If it is all about love, why are we shocked by the lack of holiness whether that be new converts to how Christians live their lives?

6. If we can baptize and accept members into churches irregardless of people lifestyle choices, why do we try to correct people in the church later when we don't bother at the start?

7. Don't we practice a kind of once baptized, always baptized or once you said the sinners prayer, that is all that really matters when it comes to following Jesus?

Bell is simply saying out loud what many people have thought for a long time. If the basic gospel is all about 'God's love for us,' then why not love wins in the end? If it really is about US, why shouldn't God meet us on our terms?

If issues like homosexuality, divorice and remarriage is really about what is marriage, then possibly the main issues of heaven, hell and the fate of every person has to do with the question, "What is the Gospel?" Until we resolve this issue, I think many people are simply going to be talking past each other with all of our eye planks firmly intact.

Roswell

I watched the first season of Roswell which is about teens with alien powers that know this is not their home and their home is somewhere beyond the heavens. Are not Jesus followers supposed to be resident aliens where this earthly place is not our home but our home is in heaven?

In the last week, I've had three people tell me they pray and ask for the Holy Spirit every day which comes from Jesus' teaching about the Good Father (Luke 11:11-13). God the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who keep asking Him. I started praying this prayer today as another discipleship experiment. Where this leads, only God knows.

So I have been studying Luke chapter eleven which starts with the Lord's prayer. Then Jesus gives several teachings on prayer going from the parables about prayer like the persistent friend and the good father and then we read about Christ healing a demonized person and Christ's power is stronger than Satan's power.

Can it be that as we pray and ask for the Holy Spirit that God is empowering, leading, and giving us spiritual power for the day?

Is there "more" to the Christian life or even to our prayer life?

Heaven on Earth?

"INSTEAD OF TRYING TO GROW BIGGER
CHURCHES, WE OUGHT TO BE TRYING
TO GROW BIGGER CHRISTIANS.

THE CRUCIAL QUESTION IS NOT HOW
MANY PEOPLE ARE IN OUR SEATS BUT
HOW MANY PEOPLE WE ARE SENDING
OUT INTO THE WORLD TO BE THE
PRESENCE OF CHRIST"
-Rich Mullins


We love to talk about heaven today. What a wonderful place it will be. Nobody wants to go there right now but at the end of life, I sure want to inhabit that place. But does not God want to inhabit us NOW? Does not God want to bring heaven down to earth (read Rev.21:1-5). What do we really think Jesus was saying when he taught his disciples to pray "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven?" Does God want to make what is already happening in heaven to happen on earth? Are we supposed to be simply earthy people or heavenly men and women?

I remember reading the exciting biography of Brother Yun and the under ground church. He was a man who lived out things one reads in the book of Acts. He even escaped from Prison like Peter did miraculously in Acts. When Brother Yun was imprisoned for his Christian faith, they simply asked him, "Are you an earthly man or a heavenly man?" If he said earthly man they would of let him go but if he said heavenly man, he was declaring himself a Christian and therefore would be locked up and tortured as a criminal.

Does not God ask us the same today? Are you an earthly man or a heavenly man? Are you showing a glimpse of heaven on earth or are you living in such a way that one can not tell which one you really are? No matter what happens in this world, God is calling forth his beautiful Bride, the church, to extend God's kingdom on earth. Maybe that is why the Bible also calls it the kingdom of heaven?