God’s Word

I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie

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As you probably already know from reading earlier posts, I have quite the collection of Bibles. I don’t mean on my iPhone or iPad, either (although I do have TWO Bible apps with a plethora of translations between them). I mean actual Bibles.

I have a 1611 facsimile of the King James Bible. I also have at least one of the following: American Standard Version, New American Standard, Revised Standard Bible, New Revised Standard Version, New King James Version, English Standard Version, New International Version, New Living Translation, Holman Christian Standard Bible, Amplified Bible, New English Bible, The Message, and The Voice.

I ran out of breath just typing that.

I have lots of Bibles that look pretty and make me look all spiritual and impressive when I tote them under my arm. Not all of them at once, mind you. I only carry one at the time. Two tops.

But for all that, how much of a Bible do I carry inside me? How well do I know this Bible I profess to love, that I boldly proclaim as inerrant, perfect, God-breathed?

And if people are reading my life like the only Bible they will ever read, what kind of message are they getting? Is it that God only loves good little children? Is it that God loves the same causes I do and is against everything I’m against? Is is that you have to jump through all the right hoops and say all the right magic words to get God’s approval?

Or is it that I (like you and everyone else alive) am a broken person living in a broken world, hopelessly lost and estranged from God? Is it how that very God took on skin like mine and came to live among people like me to show me the way Home? To be the way Home?

I don’t have a neat and tidy ending for this post. I don’t have a funny story to close on. I do have the feeling that with all these Bibles, I should know a lot more about THE Bible than I do.

I also know that God is faithful and patient. He wants me to know Him far more than I do most of the time. And He’s very persistent.

I’m praying for a deep hunger and thirst for God’s Word. I want to crave it, to live it, to breathe it, to cherish it, to make it as much s part of me as my own skin.

“Deep within me I have hidden Your word so that I will never sin against You. . . . Your word is a lamp for my steps; it lights the path before me” (Psalm 119:11,105).

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Some Inconvenient Truths

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 5 Comments

This is probably not going to be one of those feel-good blogs that leaves you all warm and fuzzy. This is probably not going to win me any popularity points or make me the next trendy blogger. Then again, the truth has never been popular.

The truth is that there aren’t many ways to heaven. There’s just one. Jesus Himself didn’t say, “I am one of the ways, one of the truths, and one possible life. You can get to Heaven through me if I fit your lifestyle.”

No. He said, “I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life. No one comes to the Father (or gets to Heaven) but through Me.”

The truth is that hell is real. As much as I would love to say it’s not, as much as the reality of it makes me uncomfortable, I can’t deny that Jesus belived it was real and spoke more about hell than heaven.

The truth is that the Bible is God’s Word and it is without error. It may not always say what I want it to say and I in my own human reasoning would have left some parts out. But thankfully, I didn’t have a say in what got into the Bible.

The truth is that God can save anyone at anytime anywhere who truly believes in Jesus. Not just their parents’s belief. Not just intellectual assent. But real faith that translates into a lifestyle of obedience and surrender. After all, as one pastor has said, “If you don’t live it, you don’t believe it.”

I didn’t make it up. I didn’t come to the truth because I was so very smart and wise. God revealed it to me.

To say that I know the truth isn’t arrogant; to say that no one can know the truth is. Has anyone spoken to every single person alive on the planet to know that none of them know the truth?

To know the truth means I am responsible to live it out. It means it will change everything about me. I can’t be glib about speaking the truth. I must speak it with great humility because apart from the grace of God, I woud never have found it.

I may get called a fundamentalist or a Bible-thumper or arrogant or narrow-minded. I may get defriended or unliked. But for me more important than being popular or liked is to be faithful to what I know to be true. I can’t do anything else.

By the way, the truth will still set you free.

A Letter to Kim Kardashian

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

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Kim,

I don’t know if you will read this or not. Realistically speaking, I’m pretty sure you won’t, since you probably don’t have time to read blogs by people you don’t know who aren’t famous. But if by some extremely remote chance, you happen to stumble on this quaint little blog, I hope you know I’m rooting for you.

I know a lot of people will look at your decision to start a Bible study and question your motives. They will say you just want to hook up with Tim Tebow or give some other reason why you can’t legitimately want to read God’s Word for its own sake.

I am not one of those.

I hope you read the Bible and find all that God has for you in there. I hope you find God’s love letter to His people, including you, and how much He loved His people and what great lengths He undertook to win back His people lost to sin and death.

I hope you will find that true beauty is in what God says about you, not what some magazine or television producer says about you. God says, “I made you and that makes you beautiful, because I made you in My image.”

I hope you will know that Jesus loves you just for you, not because of what you do or what you wear or who you know. I hope you can find joy in the fact that Jesus looked at you in your worst moments and thought you were still to die for.

I hope you fall in love with God’s Word and want it more than anything else. I hope you are transformed by what you read and that every time you read the Bible, you put it down a different person than when you picked it up. More than that, I pray you will take what you read and live it out in compassion for the needy and love for those whom God loves.

I hope you understand that no matter what you’ve done in the past, God has a purpose for you. He can work in and through you to do some pretty amazing things that will blow you away.

Like I said before, I’m rooting for you and hoping you find the peace you’re looking for.

Signed,

A Ragamuffin who is just trying to tell others about the grace of God that he’s found

PS It’s still not too late, no matter how messed up your life seems right now. Jesus can still turn your mess into something beautiful.

He giveth more grace (featuring a surprise guest blogger!)

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Ok, not really. It’s still me, but I am including a bit of poetry (not mine) in this blog, because it so profoundly affected me when I heard it tonight at Kairos Roots. Here it is. May it affect you like it did me and make you more thankful and grateful to our great God! Here is her story and then her poem will follow (I copied and pasted her story. Shh! Don’t tell anyone!)

“Annie Flint was born in the Johnston home where she lost her mother, then shortly after lost her father too and was raised by the Flint family. After she graduated from college, she contracted arthritis in one of its most crippling forms and lay in bed for not one or two years, but for decades of her life. And if that wasn’t bad enough she lost control of her internal organs and to her utter embarrassment had to live on diapers for many years of her life. And if that wasn’t humiliating enough she began to become blind and cancer began to take its toll…according to one eyewitness, who wrote a book(called Making of the Beautiful), the last time he saw her, she had seven pillows cushioning her body from keeping the sores from inflicting indescribable agony.

In the midst of all that, she wrote this beautiful poem:

‘He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction He addeth His mercy;
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

Fear not that thy need shall exceed His provision,
Our God ever yearns His resources to share;
Lean hard on the arm everlasting, availing;
The Father both thee and thy load will upbear.

His love has no limit; His grace has no measure.
His pow’r has no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!'”

Annie Johnson Flint

Confessions of a Ragamuffin (inspired by good conversation tonight at Ben & Jerrys)

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 2 Comments

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My greatest fear is that people will find out who I really am deep down inside and will leave me and want nothing else to do with me. I project my own self-condemnation onto others and believe that they are angry with me or upset with me or have written me off when it is just me that is not liking me.

Most of the time, I feel the constant need to be approved, affirmed and admired by everyone and my biggest peeve is to be ignored (or to feel that I am ignored). I try to be all spiritual and come across as so very wise and super-saint, when many times the words coming out of my mouth feel like hay and rubble that will not stand the test of the fire. I say I trust in God, but I am almost always working on a backup plan in case God fails me and does not come through for me. I am a mess.

I am also beloved by the God who knows all this about me and more. He was not willing that I should perish, but that I should come to repentence and He will not ever stop loving me. I am blessed. I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies (so why do I still want more?). I am becoming who God has already declared me to be. I am constantly amazed just about every single day at the extreme lengths God will go to in order to prove Himself to me through friends, circumstances, reminders and (most importantly) through His Word.

Thank you to my friends who have inspired me by their honesty and willingness to be naked emotionally and spiritually. Your words and actions make me want to be more like my Jesus. You help pull me out of myself (notice how many “I”s are in this blog) and keep me wanting to live for a kingdom bigger than my own. You will never ever know how you have blessed me. I feel like I have given one tenth of what you have given me, but I want to do more.

So who am I? I am not my weaknesses or my strengths. My greatest strengths apart from God become my biggest weaknesses and the biggest obstacles to me being who God wants me to be. My greatest weaknesses in the hands of God will turn into His perfect strength working in and through me to impact the world around me. I am BELOVED, BLESSED and BECOMING LIKE JESUS. My Abba is very fond of me.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.