I am so happy to serve a sovereign God. There is so much comfort to be found in the fact that He is all-powerful, all-good, and all-perfect; He makes no mistakes and He never fails.

I have been selfish and I have been afraid.

The past two months have been unspeakably difficult. Not because of anything external, but because of me. I have learned better what it means to contend with the flesh; I have known the right thing to do and longed to do it, and yet I have continually fallen short.

Paul says in Romans 7 , “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” And oh how the meaning of that has been etched into my mind and conscience these past weeks! Every word of that passage has been infused with new depth of meaning for me. I have always known what it is to sin willfully, but lately I find myself waging war with tiredness and sickness and uncertainty and (most of all) a tremendous mental “backlash” after these past few stressful months. It has been stressful, no matter how much I would like to ignore or deny the fact, and I think that even if I had reacted flawlessly to the situation, it still would have been stressful. Even just the physical aspects of things — surgeries and recoveries, weeks of radiation and tiredness/sickness, and not inconsiderable pain even still. All these things have taken their toll. Add to that the stresses that are a result of my own failure to trust God — the worry, anxiousness, nervousness, and everything else that goes along with them — and I am emotionally and mentally exhausted. Even if my life in this very instant is going perfectly as I had intended, there’s still this enormous backlog of tension that runs as an inescapable undercurrent in the midst of every happy moment.

So here I am, in the middle of much present discouragement, trying to stop drowning in this sinful ocean of not-quite-despair. I am clinging to every little bit of hope that I come across as surely as if it were food and I were dying of starvation. But to be honest, I am still failing.

And yet. What does Paul say in the midst of his exposition about warring within himself? “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” He doesn’t say that his mind took over his flesh and won the battle forever. The battle continued to rage. “I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin,” he concludes. That’s not an answer in the conventional sense! It doesn’t tie up everything neatly and announce that the work is complete and perfect. On the contrary; can a Christian come any nearer to despair than to admit with resignation that their flesh remains sinful? That regardless of how much they know the right thing to do, they find themselves unable to do it? Is there anything worse in our lives? Sin is the very opposite of our joy. But even as Paul writes these ostensibly depressing truths, what else does he find to say? Thanks be to God.

Could a phrase seem more out of place? “I’m rotten through and through, and all this perfection that I’m striving for is absolutely unreachable. Praise God!” What on earth is Paul going on about here? Contextually, he’s talking about the law which shows us our sin but fails (in salvation) because of our flesh. If the law was all we had to go by, we’d all be lost causes: we’re “wretched.” Even when we want to do the right things, we fail. But the praise is that we are not saved by the law — we’re saved by grace through Christ. I praise God for showing me that I’m still depraved even when I’m not meaning to be. When my sin is in one sense out of my control (being, as Paul says, what my flesh chooses to do but not what my mind wills), it is so clear that even if I trained my mind to perfection and dedicated myself from birth to a sinless life with the best of intentions, I would still fall short. I don’t need God’s grace merely because I’ve made bad decisions; I need God’s grace because every atom of me is tainted with sin. The most perfect person I could conceive to be would still fail. It’s a small distinction, but important. It’s very easy for me to fall into the fallacy of thinking that these little sins I choose to commit are the ones that would send me to hell, which is really a sort of works salvation in reverse: if my sins of choice are my death sentence, then perhaps if I didn’t commit them, I could live? But my current situation is teaching me that not all sins are “of choice.” I’m fallen no matter how hard I try not to be, and still completely responsible for that fallenness.

Secondly, and oh so encouragingly, Paul rejoices because Jesus Christ is the answer to “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” To be helpless in the grip of a sinful nature is a horrible thing. Paul goes on to explain that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness… we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” And it is in this context that that marvelous and famous promise is given: “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” This is grace for today, I think — the Spirit is surely helping me in my weakness now, and it is so unspeakably amazing to think that He’s interceding for me with the words I don’t even know how to speak. And it only gets better: “…those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” This “body of death” will soon be cast away completely, and our souls will be glorified! We will be perfectly sanctified, restored, and freed forever from the grip of sin. The depth of my struggles today should be matched by an ever-deepening thirst for that future fulfilling of utter grace! And the deeper the struggle, the deeper the thirst!

While I praise God for being perfect and also for proving my own imperfection, I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t think I’m responsible for my current state of difficulty. I am having a dreadful time keeping a positive attitude and I’m entirely too enveloped with fear. These things are sin. I am responsible for my flesh, even when it’s fighting with my mind. It’s even more horrible to me that I am proving unable to rein it in. I am not rejoicing in sin; I’m rejoicing that I need God! I’m rejoicing in the awesomeness that He is not only sufficient, but that He is gracious, and that He is showing me these things anew and violently to my mind.

I still have fleeting moments where I’m really truly afraid. They’re less fleeting than I would like; wherever the balance is between “be anxious about nothing” and a normal instinct for self-preservation, I’m far too much on the anxious side.

Yet: “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5:8. Scripture is very clear — in more places than just this one verse — that Christians are to live as though this life is not something to be grasped at. Living is not preferable to dying. Living should not be more comfortable than dying. Or, to paraphrase John Piper, we should not feel at home here.

These past few weeks I have been experiencing a sort of second shock, I think, about the “whole cancer thing.” It’s like there was the initial moment, that first awful and glorious week, and then a long respite of relative ease… and now I’m doing radiation and trying to figure out working and health insurance and future plans and realizing that my life will never, ever be the same. There’s the scars and tattoos that will be there forever, and the reddish tinge to my skin that will soon develop into a full-fledged burn that will take a year to fade. And I am starting to hurt, physically, and I’m honestly having a really difficult time not feeling sorry for myself. All of this is coalescing into the dread realization that I have cancer, and that while the statistics are in my favor, they’re by no means certain, and since God is in control anyway, statistics are fairly irrelevant.

These past few weeks have been almost as difficult emotionally as the first week in May. Maybe even more difficult. There have been times when I’ve been quite literally on the edge of falling apart — I think this is much exacerbated by my physical condition (which is not so good right now), but it’s there and I’m having to learn how to trust God even more. It’s harder, in some ways, because it’s not as easy to find the energy to actually think about things, so my sinful reactions are coming more to the fore.

And in these dark nights of mine, the one thing God keeps bringing me back to is that I am just passing through. I will be here and I will keep breathing until He is finished with having Julie Fuller here. Not a moment more or less. And that is comfort: I can trust that all my purpose here will be completed, not cut a moment short, and that He has planned the final moment with precision and perfection. My problem and the reason for my sinful worry is that I get caught up in my purpose instead of His. Hebrews 11:13-16, out of the “faith” chapter, has been increasingly convicting to me: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

Strangers and exiles on the earth. Seeking a homeland. Not thinking of the land from which we’ve gone out. Desiring a better country. This is me, too! In the world but not of it. This body in which I reside is fallen and sinful and tainted and scarred and to be rid of it is to be with Christ. To be rid of it is to be freed from sin! Why on earth am I not begging God with all my heart to make it so?

The answer is very obvious: I am much too infatuated with the things of this world. Good things, like marriage and family. But even the highest of these things is secondary to my calling as a child of God. Seth and I are married, yes, but we do not “belong” to one another; our deepest sense of ownership is possessed by God and God alone. We are here for the furtherance of His kingdom, and we are just sojourning here briefly until we join Christ and all the saints in heaven. Marriage is a beautiful and wonderful and ever so fun and enjoyable gift, but it’s an earthly gift. It’s a precursor to the ultimate wedding of Christ and the Church, and precursors melt away when their fulfillment is complete. We are to rejoice in that! If I am so tied to my husband that the thought of leaving him to be with Christ causes me to stumble, then we’ve tied ourselves together with the wrong sort of thread! You can’t take Christ out of your definition of love, and real love is never about clinging to something when it isn’t yours to cling to. And eternally, I have no right to cling to Seth. He is God’s; I am God’s; God can render us asunder at His pleasure.

I wish I would, with the people of Hebrews 10:34, gladly abandon these things I hold dear with equanimity because I know I have “a better possession and an abiding one.” That is the promise we have been given, and we have the God Who orchestrates every atom in the universe as Guarantor. That future “possession” of ours is everything we were created to desire, perfectly suited for us in every way, the summation of everything we yearn for, and the beginning of things we have not even begun to glimpse. This is through a glass darkly; that is face-to-face. Face to face. There is no thought of heaven that shakes me as much, that thrills me and terrifies me and that makes me hunger as nothing else.

But it is one thing to know, and another to live and to trust. I am learning — very slowly — that I must have the spirit of a sojourner, who stays in a strange country for a time and for a purpose, but never loses sight of the homeland, and who waits, every day, for word that the return ship has arrived in port, and that soon she will be going to the home she’ll never have to leave. Coming to a point where that is real, day-to-day, internalized, and instinctual is so infinitely much more important than getting better. I am not and have not been such an alien to this world.

I am so thankful that God does not abandon us to wallow in our misery and try to make sense of things on our own. He has never left me in the darkness, and I am continuing to see how He is using this “awful” circumstance for my greater good, and how He continues to teach me to praise Him for these things that my fallen self finds so unpraiseworthy.

Seth’s windshield is cracked — on the passenger side, near the top, at least a handsbreadth long. Mine is chipped, the result of our latest roadtrip.

So I, being the obsessive-compulsive rule-follower that I am, did some research and asked around and found a way to get our windshields fixed — for free. I was so excited that I called Seth from work. “Hey, baby, guess what? We can get your windshield fixed for free!” I was brimming with enthusiasm, and was utterly crushed and speechless at his response: no. What? No? Why?

The ensuing argument isn’t important, except to say that in it I certainly overstepped the bounds of Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”

I never dreamed I’d have a “problem” with submission. Look at my track record with my parents, I reasoned; I submitted to them, didn’t I? Sure, there’d be aspects of marriage that I’d stumble in, but submission wasn’t gonna be one of them.

And, of course, I was wrong — not only about not struggling with submission, but I’m realizing more and more that I was pretty rotten to my parents compared to the way my behavior should have been.

I “submit” pretty easily when Seth is able to convince me to his point of view, or when I’m able to convince him. But then there’s things like the windshield when I absolutely think I’m right (the free opportunity is now and should be taken) and think his position is wrong (that it’s not worth taking the time at the moment). And then I prove myself to be this arrogant self-absorbed idiot of a wife who makes her husband wish to be “on the corner of the rooftop“. In short, I’m pretty lousy about supporting him when I disagree with him.

It’s not like I went off and took the car in despite his protests, and I didn’t really bug him about it endlessly, either. But there’s a line somewhere of what is submissive speech and what is unsubmissive sin, and I strode boldly across it. Or ran across it.

I seem to do that rather often, although I don’t think I saw it so clearly until the windshield incident. It’s so complicated to think of or speak of in this age of feminism — it’s not like I can just strike up a conversation with my coworkers, “hey, how do you submit to your husbands as to the Lord?” It’s a valid topic, and one I’ve certainly discussed with nonbelievers — but truthfully, too few believers even are prepared to discuss it (or believe it, perhaps), much less nonbelievers.

I wish I had a multitude of answers to write here; I’d even settle for enough organized thoughts to make a bulleted list. I have neither. I have the very startlingly huge command to submit to my husband “as to the Lord” — just thinking about the magnitude of that is amazing in an intimidating way — if Jesus said “I don’t want to take the car in to get the windshield fixed” I think I’d be like… okay, and it would end there. Yet Christ is perfect; Seth is not, and I think it’s clear that a “good wife” attempts to gently and submissively impart some wisdom to her husband when he lacks. And therein perhaps lies the difficulty; not only can it be difficult to determine exactly what “gently and submissively” should be, but it can be a terrible thing to tame my pride enough to remain submissive even if I do know how.

I keep coming back to Colossians 4:6, “let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt…” And trying to always put Seth before myself. And listening to his advice on the subject, which, while very difficult for me to hear at times, is nonetheless very useful.

“There was a celebrated Englishman who sat with a friend once, watching and listening to a philharmonic orchestra. As they listened, the Englishman watched a man playing second violin. He was playing it well, but he was second violin. The Englishman said to his friend, ‘See that man there playing second violin? If I were playing second violin in that orchestra, do you know what I would do? I would never rest day or night until I was playing first violin. And then I would never give myself rest day or night until I was directing that orchestra. When I got to be director I would never rest until I had become a composer. And when I got to composing music for the orchestra I would never give myself rest until I was the best composer in England.’ The children of the world are sometimes wiser than the children of light. We have been offered not the directorship of a great orchestra, but glory and truth unsearchable. We have been offered the face of God and the glory of Christ. We have been offered holiness and righteousness and indwelling by the Spirit. We can have our prayers answered and have hell fear us because we have a hold on God who invites to draw on His omnipotence. We are offered all this, and yet we sit and play second violin without ambition.”

Quote from A.W. Tozer, Rut, Rot, or Revival. I think I’d like to start reading theology books again…

Sitting in church today, it occurred to me: this is a “forming” time. Meaning that right now, I’m picking up ideas and forming philosophy and altering and growing and setting patterns that are going to affect me forever.

Then I thought — it’s always a “forming” time. When I look at the road stretching behind me and the road stretching ahead, it just keeps going. I have changed so much, even in the past year, and yet I am continually frustrated by how very many things about me there are that are yet to change. I want a much improved character; I want my first reaction to be selflessness, and I want to see God’s grace in all things, and trust His providence without a thought. I want to be in control of my emotions, to be a person rarely given to vibrant discord, but possessed of gentleness in speech and a gracious and merciful spirit. I want the times I am angry to be well-chosen and in wisdom. I want a thirst for the Word that drives with a force I cannot ignore or quench. I want to be as eager to speak to God as I am eager to speak at all.

I am, in so many ways, so short of what I want to be. Today in church (yes, I’m going to a reformed church, at long last — the grace!) Pastor Jim spoke on how women must be “dignified… soberminded, faithful in all things,” and there are so many adjectives in Scripture that should describe me but don’t.

I know my only hope of improvement is God’s grace, but I know, too, that His grace is sufficient — for this, too. It’s so easy to “float,” to think that I can improve tomorrow, or the next day, or next week, to think that it’s impossible to be changed in a day. But I think that mode of thinking leads to not changing at all; I am called to be holy now. I am a child of God, born for His pleasure, now.

I’m not sure exactly where I’m going with this entry, except to say that I find myself again to be fallen, and His grace to be ever efficacious, and I hunger so much for complete sanctification. I’ve also been much convicted lately about being more focused, more passionate, and more sober about the one Reason I live and breathe and walk this earth.

The sermon this morning was… good. Today was the last sermon preached by our interim pastor before our newly-hired one takes over. The interim guy has been amazingly good; truthfully, I had very low expectations — he’s a professor at Philadelphia College of Bible (now Philadelphia Biblical University, but I think that’s the silliest name in the world for a college…). I very nearly went to PCB as a freshman (for all that I talk about secular schools lacking for believers, my intention was always to go to a Bible school myself), but I didn’t. Anyway, my opinion of PCB had dropped in the years since, but this man has brought the college back up a bit in my estimation.

He made a lot of very good, solid, convicting points today. I’m very aware of 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:15, but needed the reminder of the reality of Christ as “a stumbling block,” as “the foolishness of God,” as to the world “foolishness” and “folly.” That “…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”

Like, hi, I didn’t get here through my own brainpower.

This isn’t new. But I was just… really reminded of the offensiveness of the Gospel this morning. I’ve really been having trouble this semester at school; the anti-Christianity I’m encountering is both stronger and subtler than it has ever been. I’m good at the whole “standing up for my faith” thing when a professor asks for a show of hands on a particular issue, or when we’re discussing how to teach a Piers Anthony book to junior highers. It’s very cut and dry, and I don’t mind being the only one to raise my hand or being the “weird one” who thinks morality isn’t altogether out of style. I’ve actually grown to like being the weird one; it provides a surprisingly effective angle to befriend nonbelievers and live and talk Christ around them.

This semester, though, I’m taking two philosophy classes, two “religion” classes, and one history class that blends right in with the other four. I’m thinking about thinking more than I ever thought I could think about thinking. (Heh.) And there’s not anything really overt, nothing to stand up for — except for the whole horrific worldview and serious misconception of Christianity that is so pervasive in my classes. I’m reading this book on Christian warfare, and we’re discussing the “Hebrew Crusades” (i.e., the conquest of the Holy Land), the “Christian crusades,” and the “Islamic crusades.” And the author of this book divides everything up into three strata — pacifists, “just war”ites, and crusaders. And in each time period, the three are represented. Currently, he says, the pacifists are represented by the Quakers, the “just war”ites are represented by Lutherans, and the crusaders are represented by Calvinists. This is in a tiny class, and the professor has known me for three years or so, in an academic setting and in a “religious” setting (I was a youth worker on one of his church’s missions trips and a quasi-regular attendee at his church’s college group and compline services). Anyway, when he explained this three-way division, he shot a look in my direction to see how I reacted. (A rather frequent happening.) And I really didn’t know how to react. I understand the animosity towards the church very well. I mean, if you’re not part of the Church, then you really can’t see how all the divisions work, and, throughout history, people have done a lot of completely absurd things in the name of Christ, and those things, without question, overwhelm completely the good and true things that have been done. Everybody can talk about John Calvin burning people at the stake, the Puritans hanging innocents by the truckload, the Pope aiding and abetting Hitler, Joan of Arc, the Crusaders… from the world’s point of view, the church has a whole lot of skeletons hanging around in its closet.

I only know what the “culture” is at my college (and even then, only in my departments), but when you walk into a classroom, the assumption is that you’re an agnostic. By the time you’re a senior, naturally, you’ve converted to full-scale atheism. Mixed with a proper amount of humanism, of course, and generally referred to as “secularism” or “materialism.” No exceptions expected. Nada.

On the rather frequent occasion that Christianity is brought up, it’s pointed out that the “god” central to the religion is “Yahweh,” that “they” view the other gods as inferior or non-existent, and then people go into great detail about how the Jews created a religion to serve their purposes and how they changed it as their situation changed. There’s no question of “Yahweh” actually existing. My textbooks just happily assume that everyone has “obviously” concluded that gods are just a manifestation of the ideal parts of humanity, or something our psyches make up to make us feel better, etc.

Point being, profs don’t even consider that there might be Christians in their classes. At all. They’ll make a few allowances for deists, but even they’re regarded as a rare breed. This makes conversation difficult because they’re past the point of expecting controversy. If you want to bring up a point, it’s a sure bet that the prof wasn’t expecting to have a discussion/disagreement about it, and somebody is very annoyed at you. Already. Not because your beliefs are offensive — you have the “right” to believe whatever you like — but because you’re wasting their valuable time mentioning something that they genuinely put on a level with Mother Goose.

In this kind of atmosphere, my reaction is to try to show them that I’m an intelligent, tolerant (albeit too persuaded and convinced about “things” for their comfort), thoughtful individual. The idea is that this distinguishes me sharply from all the “other” Christians that they’ve known, and makes them more receptive to my “religious” points of view. And, honestly, it does. My friends have repeatedly talked to me about “all the Christians” on campus — the Christian groups have terrible reputations amongst the nonbelievers (I’ve heard stories about people from InterVarsity literally locking people in bathrooms until they agree to come to the group) — and they tell me I’m different. They can and do talk to me. Something big happens; “will you pray for me?” They want to know something about God; they ask. They like me.

But I’m not here to be liked.

I do think Christians should be unoffensive, in a very real sense. As our pastor pointed out in the service tonight, 1 Timothy 3:7 has a most curious qualification for elders — the good opinion of nonbelievers. You can be the “most godly” person on the planet, but if nonbelievers don’t speak highly of you, you’re not qualified for eldership. At the same time, though, the Gospel is undeniably offensive. God’s wisdom is foolishness to everybody whom He hasn’t called! And the essence — our need for grace — strikes at the very heart of human pride. In our post-Christianized world, most people know that “pride” is supposed to be a bad thing. Yet the Greeks (the gods of humanism if ever there were any) thought pride was a virtue. I’m consistently seeing that attitude — shameless glorification of self — rising amongst my fellow students, and certainly by my professors, who largely encourage it.

The only offense we bring is the “stone of stumbling” — Christ. I’ve always found Paul’s words in the “foolishness/wisdom” chapter very challenging: For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

There’s a very obvious sense in which I would never be willing to dilute the gospel. Truth is truth; it’s very absolute and straightforward. But I think I try to make it something it most definitely is not — unoffensive. I don’t want to “turn people off” from Christianity. I think this probably comes out of my “cheap grace” background — where the focus is on trying to convince people to “believe” — but wherever it came from, it doesn’t matter… we talk about not being “afraid” to “share our faith.” I always thought that meant that I wasn’t supposed to be afraid of what people would think of me. But there’s another sense — I’m not supposed to be afraid of how people will react to the Truth.

Not groundbreaking, I know, but I’m… convicted. I want to say with Paul that I decided to know nothing but Christ, the “chosen and precious” cornerstone — the “rock of offense” to those who do not believe.

To call church today “discouraging” would be the understatement of the year. It was just… amazing. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. So much today was made utterly obvious. I don’t want to go over it all here, but suffice it to say that some very big, very serious… undercurrents were brought to light. And… just, wow.

I’m really struggling, because a big part of me wants to find another church. A big part. This morning was just unbelievable. I long to go to a church that understands the character of God. He is so sovereign, and we are so fallen, and His grace is so breathtaking and so challenging and He is so worthy of all our worship.

This summer, I spent some time in the south. And I’m sure there’s hypocrisy and problems and everything with the churches there as much as there are problems with the churches up here, but, to me, at least, I was just totally blown away. One memory that’s very poignant is of sitting on a dorm apartment couch, listening to the ten or so people around me share — spontaneously, it wasn’t a “Christian” gathering — about how God had worked in their lives, bringing them to where they are, showing them their depravity and His grace. I was amazed. I mean, we’re talking college people here! The college groups I go to talk about God in the “serious” part of the preplanned Bible studies, if then. Get a group of college-aged Christians together for “fun,” or just as friends, and you can bet that God isn’t going to be a topic of conversation.

I love my church. I love the people. I’ve spent twelve years of my life (far from consecutive) there. I’m really, really tired of bouncing from one church to another. I don’t want to leave. But I’m going to church where I can’t reinstate my membership, where the service distracts me more than it focuses me, where I’ve learned more from the wrong things that are said from the pulpit than I have from the right. I long for a church where the Word is taught and rightly divided, where the people are concerned about pursuing God (or at least understand what it means to pursue God!); where I can go to worship God on this day He has given us expressly for that purpose.

I’m so incredibly confused.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately (online and offline) about Arminianism/Calvinism, and I have some thoughts running through my head. Thought I’d share. Not sure how much sense I’ll make; this is certainly not purporting to be anything more than a journal entry full of thinking-out-loud.

Briefly, though, a definition. Arminianism, as I’m using it, refers to the fundamental belief that God gave a “universal” grace to all the people of earth, enabling them to choose to believe in Him, and thereby go to heaven.

I was raised Arminian. I also thought that theology books were largely immoral and theologians who had any significant amount of followers were obviously doing something wrong, because the truth isn’t popular. (Ergo, if you’re popular, you’re sinful.) I mention the anti-theology bit because I had no earthly idea that I was an Arminian, which is an important point.

I spent the first fourteen years of my life in Christ having absolutely no understanding of how I got there. Every once in a while, I’d run into people who believed, astonishingly, that God actually sent people to hell of His own accord. I knew the Bible pretty well, but the only verses that are really explicitly Calvinist – like Romans 8:29-30 – were, frankly, pretty easy to explain away: God decided in time past that He would eventually conform all who choose to believe to the image of His Son. And, yes, there were people who God hated. This, too, was explainable: the Unpardonable Sin (attributing the works of God to Satan) resulted instantaneously and irreversibly in damnation. Christ’s death didn’t atone for the Unpardonable Sin, and, at some point, every unbeliever committed it before they died. (In other words, Christ’s death was not only sufficient for the sins of all the people in the world, but it actually paid for all the sins of all the people in the world. But it couldn’t pay for the Unpardonable Sin, which was why some people still went to Hell.)

I really don’t know where this stuff came from. It was a pretty elaborate system, much more developed and defensible than most Arminian theology I run into now.

In my freshman year of high school, I very briefly entertained the idea of believing that God chose me, instead of the other way around. I still had never heard of the word “Calvinism” or anything associated with reformed theology, but it was increasingly evident to me from Scripture that my belief system had a fatal error at the heart.

I asked my church teachers (youth leaders, etc) for insight. They
said I was wrong, that such a belief denied the basic nature of our loving God, that it made evangelism useless, and strongly advised me to yield to the interpretation that was so obvious to everyone else. (Everyone being none too small a word; I didn’t know that there were any Christians out there who believed differently.)

I, headstrong idiot, did what they said. Moreover, I studied and
learned how to defend Arminianism and how to warp Scripture to fit the philosophy.

Now… I’m a very recent “convert.” Less than a year ago, I was still an Arminian, although I would have said at the time that I was somewhere in between, or that I was “leaning Calvinist.”

All this to say what? As an ex-Arminian, who believed exactly what a lot of Arminians profess, I honestly believe that Arminianism is works salvation, in the same sense as the “works salvation” that people caution against whenever we read James.

Why? Because I could evangelize – and my church was pretty evangelical – and the difference between me and the non-believers was that I had the wisdom to accept Christ. I was no better than they were in the sense that I was every ounce as much of a sinner – but I was better than they were in that I had decided to follow Jesus. A very small point, but a very important one. This isn’t ancient history for me; I remember how I felt and how I
thought. And let me tell you, at the very root of my ideas about my salvation was my pride. Look at me! There’s a God in heaven Who is gracious, and He offers a free gift to all who would come. I came! Everyone who is going to Hell is only going because of their ignorance and illogic. Ignorance and illogic that I lack. God offered salvation to all, but I reached out and took it!

I could quote Ephesians 2:8-9 until I was blue in the face. Faith’s a gift of God. Not by works. Nobody gets themselves to heaven. But I had no earthly idea what these things meant! People either have faith or they don’t have faith. The Bible doesn’t talk about a “capacity for faith,” even though that’s what Arminianism teaches. And my faith sure didn’t get here because of anything I did. Belief, you know, is a work — “believe” is a verb! And, incidentally, Satan believes. Belief doesn’t get you to heaven.

The little dead Arminian in me is pointing out that I know perfectly well that when Arminians say “believe,” they really mean “trust.” They really mean “ask.” Some of them even mean “repent.”

Okay. We still have the pride issue. No matter how minute and unimportant you make my role – “believing,” “recognizing,” “accepting,” are surely not amazing feats by the standard of “works” – I’m still in the equation. There’s still something I did that distinguishes me from the rest of the unsaved world. Yeah, I did it by the grace of God, and yeah, I did it by His power, but I still did it of my own volition, whether God wanted me to or not.

In reality, my salvation is by grace alone. God works in me. God draws me to Him. God leads me to repentance. God shows me Himself. I have nothing to do with it, and not an iota of the credit goes to my account.

God leaves us no space for self-pride.

Arminians generally seem to think that Calvinism/Arminianism are just two different theologies centered mostly around salvation.

I cannot express enough that a glimpse of God’s unconditional and irresistable grace is absolutely shattering. I’m not sure that people who were raised reformed really understand this any better than people who are still Arminian; the practical difference between Arminianism and Calvinism is utterly profound. The “hope I have” is now incomparably clearer and brighter and more joy-filling. Infinitely so!

In conclusion, Arminians honestly bother me very deeply. I know many are Arminian because they don’t know any differently – as I didn’t – but there are also people who are passionately persuaded to Arminianism, knowing well the alternative. The vast majority of my Christian friends are Arminian. Most of my church is Arminian. And it’s very hard, because I know how much better and purer and more enjoyable life is once the error of Arminianism is cast away. And it’s not just in my head; my heart knows it’s true, and I yearn for people to understand the depth of the awesomeness of this God we serve. And I honestly believe that this clear, unfettered sight of the Almighty is impossible while embroiled in this obsession with understanding our role in saving ourselves.

God is so infinitely gracious to me.

Church this morning was unbelievably good. And it was so evident that that goodness was the direct result of God’s working. Our interim pastor is on vacation, and the speaker this morning strangely passed out and fell down the stairs in the first service, leaving the pulpit very empty for the second (and primary) service.

Our bulletins were pretty much useless, and it was a grand thing. Everybody was off-balance. They prayed. Longish prayers, at that. Talking about the sovereignty of God. It was obvious that the reality of our Creator was very near to the hearts of the people gathered this morning for worship. Then, for the message, a man got up and preached for forty minutes. (With no more than an hour’s warning or so that he would do so!) It was way after noon by the time church got out, but God was unbelievable.

The man who spoke has been an extremely central figure in the oh-so-slow conversion of my church to theology somewhat nearer to reformed principles. (At this point, I think about a third of the congregation [including the majority of the elders] is leaning away from Arminianism and are at least minimally tolerant of reformed theology. As far as I know, only two families [not elders, unfortunately] in the church are “reformed,” but it’s very encouraging to see some other people engaged in discussion and prayer and soberly considering issues, even if they aren’t “converted” away from Arminianism yet. :-))

Anyway. The man’s reformed. And usually, he speaks on Sunday nights. Attendance actually goes down dramatically when he speaks; his (reformed) ideas aren’t very popular and some people in my church have reacted very badly to his preaching. But this morning, of course, nobody knew he was preaching until the service had already started, so he had an audience of four hundred or so, instead of the forty or so who come out when everybody knows he’s gonna speak.

Four hundred people for forty minutes listening to someone rightly dividing the Word is a very, very good thing.

It was so odd the way all our human plans got messed up. My church stands on formality, and, by God’s grace, formality was utterly impossible today. I’ve gotten so used to going to church and coming home unconvicted and unchanged. (Oi, that sounded rather bad!) What I mean is, if I just went to church and “paid attention,” I could usually come home feeling pretty good about myself and my spiritual walk. The Word is always fresh and never returns void, but sometimes we do a pretty good job of slaughtering it in the presentation! It’s only ever by grace that we grow.

The text was Genesis 1-3. And he brought out so many things that are so obvious that I never saw before, and certainly never heard taught. (Did anybody ever notice that Adam was with Eve during her little conversation with the serpent? That Adam was put in the garden to work? Look at the Hebrew for Genesis 2:15, it’s thought-provoking. :-))

Most importantly, though, he made it crystal clear that there are two ways people live: either they recognize that God is in total and complete flawless control of the entire universe, or they try to invite God into their lives as they please. If we consult God in good times and bad, recognize His gift of salvation and choose to accept it and follow Him, we’ve made ourselves the main focus. We’ve got this little sphere going that we live in, and God intervenes as He pleases or as we invite Him. The point of the sermon today was that it ain’t our sphere! We live in God’s sphere, whether we like it or not. It’s His reality.

People were attentive.

God’s marvelous grace has been extremely evident to me this past week, in so many incredible ways. Ephesians 5:25b-27 (Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish, ESV) has been on my mind lately, as has Derek Webb’s cd She Must and Shall Go Free, and I’m increasingly aware of the sharp and awesome process of sanctification, both of myself and of the larger body that I’m part of, the Church. Scripture is very clear that Christ died for reasons that were all about Himself, which is very cool… because God wants me to be perfect. Faultless. Sanctified. He wants me to be part of this group which is His, and He wants His people to be perfected. And He doesn’t just want it, He’s making it happen, in His perfect timing and by His perfect grace and for His perfect reasons. Do we have any idea just how awesome He is?