Three Ways to Think Like Christ

Mike Hosey, Elder

There's really no doubt that our lives are governed mostly by how we think and what we believe.  For instance, if we think something to be true, we will act on that something. After all, you won't continue to work for your boss if you think your boss doesn't intend to keep paying you -- unless  you think working for your boss for free will give you some greater gain down the road, or unless you think working for free is the right thing to do. Regardless of your choice, your actions will be based on what you think and believe. Even when our lives seem to be governed by our emotions, those emotions must gain the consent of our thinking. Think about it (no pun intended), how often do we try to gain the consent of our thinking simply to make ourselves feel better about an emotional choice we'd like to make?  We call that process "rationalization," and it looks something like this, "You are just trying to rationalize you're emotional desire to visit your ex-girlfriend."  Such a process can be quite dangerous.  It is important, therefore, that our thinking be right if we want our lives to be right. It's a psychological truth that when our thinking is truly right, our emotions will often fall in line!

Our thinking should be just like the thinking of Jesus. In fact, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:16 that believers have the mind of Christ. So how do we get the mind of Christ?

By Filosofias filosoficas (Own work)

1). You must be a believer who has submitted your life to Jesus. You can't have the mind of Christ unless you belong to His body. Every part of a body has some kind of access to the head. Paul doesn't say everyone has the mind of Christ. He only says believers do.

2). You must recognize that the mind of Christ and the mind of the world oppose one another. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:5-6 that the wisdom of Christ is NOT the wisdom of men.  And he tells us in Romans 12:1-2 not to conform our thinking to the ways of the world but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

3). We must not be double minded. James 1:5-8 tells us that wavering between the mind of the world and the mind of Christ makes us unstable. We must keep our mind focused on what God wants us to do. Read the story of Satan tempting Jesus (Matthew 4:1-11) and ask yourself how things might be different if Jesus had been double minded.   

Those Pesky Bible Contradictions!

Mike Hosey, Elder

Through the years there have been many things that have strengthened my faith in the Bible and in God. Most of those things would seem normal to most people. For instance, seeing God work out healing and change in the lives of others, or seeing evidence of his handiwork in creation, or noting the archeological accuracy of the Bible, or experiencing his presence personally in my own life are all the kinds of things that one would expect to be strengtheners of faith. But some things that have convinced me of biblical truth are really quite counterintuitive.

One of those oddly counterintuitive things that has convinced me that the Bible is true is the number of apparent contradictions that exist within its pages. Whoa, hold on now! Wait a minute Mike Hosey!  Are you telling us that the Bible's contradictions increased your faith in the Bible. No. What kind of nonsense would that be? I'm telling you the Bible's apparent contradictions increased my faith.  Actually, it was my resolution of many of those apparent contradictions that did the trick. 

Take for instance Exodus 33:20 where God declares to Moses that no one can see his face and live, or John's gospel (John 1:18) declaring to us that no one has ever seen God. These verses seem to be in stark contrast to verses like Exodus 33:11 where we are told that Moses spoke to God "face to face," or when Manoah and his wife declared that they had seen God and not died  (Judges 13:22), or when Abram speaks face to face with the Lord, and even has a meal with Him (Genesis 18:1-33)!

So how do we resolve such contradictions. Well, we use the Bible to interpret itself. Take a closer look at the Abram passage above. In verse 1, The Lord is introduced as the Lord, then in verse two He is described as a man. Has God ever walked as a man? Well,  go to the first few verses of John that tell us that Jesus existed in the beginning, that he was with God, and that He was God, and that He became flesh and walked among us (John 1:1-14).

The Bible teaches that God exists in three persons, and that those three persons are all God. With that in mind, those apparent contradictions don't seem so contradictory anymore. In fact, they demonstrate a strong consistency within the pages of the bible. When a person has seen Jesus, he has seen God, but he has not seen God the father directly! So when all those Old Testament characters spoke to God face to face, well, in all likelihood, they were speaking to Jesus in harmony with those first few verses of the gospel of John. Simply amazing!

Defining Faithfulness

Mike Hosey, Elder

What does it mean to be faithful?  This is an important question because the Bible seems to require of God's people a strong faithfulness. Does it mean that we are to be perfect in everything we do and never make a mistake in our beliefs or logic? Does it mean that we are to attend every single church service everytime the doors are open? Does it mean that we are to visit every homeless person in Gainesville, Alachua or High Springs everyday? Does it mean that we are to always treat our spouses with utmost care?

The answer to those questions is no, not necessarily. In reflecting on this, I thought about the Old Testament character of Moses.  He was not a perfect person (Exodus 2:11-12, Numbers 20:8, Numbers 20:9-12). But even though he was not perfect, and even though he blatantly disobeyed God because of an apparent moment of frustration and anger with his people, he is still described as faithful (Numbers 12:7, Hebrews 3:5). The Old Testament uses the same word for faithful ('aman, Strongs H539) that it does to describe God (Deuteronomy 7:9).

So somehow Moses is faithful in a similar way to how God is faithful. That's a pretty tall trait for a mortal man who sinned and eventually died! Well, it's a good idea to know what that word "faithful" mean's in the Old Testament's original Hebrew if we are to understand why the Bible makes such a comparison. The common threads that run through that word's many shades of meaning are the concepts of standing firm, to confirm, to uphold or to be reliable.

Just a cursory overview of the Bible shows that God stands firm on truth, and his word; that he upholds it, and that he confirms it with miracles.  The faith that Moses had for God was confirmed when he stood his ground consistently on the tasks that God asked him to do, and when he upheld God's word, and when he proved reliable to God's mission.

We can be called faithful when we do the same things.  When our spouses aren't doing as they should be doing, or the world is falling apart around us, we can be called faithful when we walk by a belief in what God has told us, rather than in what we see.  When we stand firm, uphold God's word, confirm our faith by our behavior and prove that our character is reliable in terms of our allegiance to God and his mission in our lives, we can be called faithful, just like Moses was.


SEE MY SERMON FROM LAST WEEK FOR THE RELATED TOPIC OF COVENANT
http://sermonations.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-ball-chain-mike-hosey-march-9-2014.html

Your Spouse Is Not The Ball and Chain

Mike Hosey, Elder

One of the staples of American humor is the cliche of "The Ball and Chain."  You can see this cliche bandied about in t.v. sitcoms, books, plays, or in many creative works that reference marriage.

Usually the cliche - perhaps unfairly - is aimed at the wife in a relationship.  It might look something like this: the husband tells his buddies that he can't go bowling with them without dragging his ball and chain behind him.  The message is quite clear. What he means is that his wife is (#1) a drag on his ability to move about as freely as he chooses, and/or (#2) that she is a drag on his fun.  Like most humor, it illuminates our cultural perception of the world around us.  We recognize easily the truth in #1 - that ties to another individual act as a leash on our freedom. But unfortunately the humor does not illuminate the lie in #2 - that such a person is by necessity a dead weight.

By Anni Tamminen
(http://49999.org/sampsa/archive/)
[CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The failure to recognize the lie of #2 comes from our inability to see that the ball and chain is not truly a person at all.  The ball and chain is really the covenant that one enters into with that person before God.  It is not the person to whom we are married that puts a leash on our freedom, rather it is the promise we made to that person and to God to stick it out until death ends the relationship.  If there were no covenant, or no internal moral obligation compelling us to honor that person, we'd wrongly exercise freedom and leave that person on a whim -  especially if some transient desire for pleasure overwhelmed our immediate affection for that person. And what kind of world would that be? In answering that question, consider what God seeks in Malachi 2:15.

People who have healthy marriages recognize all of this before they bind themselves together. They make a conscious decision to chain themselves to another person.  They make a commitment to that person.  They cement their commitment - their love - with the ball and chain of a covenant. They recognize that they must learn to be selfless and enjoy the world with the person to whom they are now bound.  It is no longer a world of their own but a world they share - a world full of both better and worse. And if they will only choose to love one another, there will be more better than worse.  And each period of "worse" that they choose to see each other through will strengthen their love in those periods of "better."