You Can't Eat a Chicken You Name!

For my wife's birthday, Phyllis and I were taken to lunch by church friends, Gary & Sue Appleby, former missionaries to Germany. Their adult daughter, Amy was with us and shared that per the norm they had raised chickens while in Germany. The idea was, of course, to eventually make a meal out of them. But when it came time they just couldn't bring themselves to kill those helpless little birds. Why? Because Mike (their son) & Amy had given names to them! And because they had named them, it just didn't seem right to turn them from pet to provision! There is something about naming that is very personal, even if it is just chickens!

God works through people, people with names. "No child is just a child. Each is creature in whom God intends to do something glorious and great. No one is only a product of the genes contributed by the parents. Who we are and will be is compounded with who God is and what he does. God's love and providence and salvation are comprised in the reality of our existence along with our metabolism and blood type and fingerprints." Jeremiah's name, Eugene Peterson writes in Run With the Horses, may mean "the LORD exalts," or "the LORD hurls." Either way, his name involves "the LORD." Whatever his names actually meant to his parents, he became a prophet of God, doing his oft unpopular bidding. He operated against the norm, went opposite the tide of human opinion. We in America, do not tend place as much emphasis on the meanings of names as upon who they represent (a parent's surname, a favorite uncle or aunt). What we DON'T want to happen is for our names to dictate our direction in life, to be only what others expect of us instead of what God expects. And that will likely go contrary to society's norm.

Don't Abdicate Your Role

"The French talk of deformation professionelle--a liability, a tendency to defect that is inherent in the role that one has assumed, as say a physician or a lawyer." Jeremiah was a prophet and "the deformation to which prophets and priests and wise men are subject is to market God as a commodity, to use God to legitimize selfishness. . . . A personal name, not an assigned role, is our passbook into reality. . . . Anything other than our name--title, job description, number, role--is less than a name. . . . We live by the stereotypes in which other people cast us that are out of touch with the uniqueness in which God has created us, and so live diminished into boredom, the brightness leaking away."

Here's The Point

"The only thing more significant to Jeremiah than his own being was God's being. He fought in the name of the Lord and explored the reality of God and in the process grew and developed, ripened and matured. He was always reaching out, always finding more truth, getting in touch with more of God, becoming more himself, more human." Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine (Isaiah 43:1).

Confronting Evil with GOSPEL POWER!

In his wonderfully current book, An All-round Ministry (online), are recorded the annual lectures of C. H. Spurgeon to his preacher's college in London. In "How to Meet the Evils of the Age" (1877), Spurgeon addressed himself to four evils. The first is "the return of superstition." This seems in principle to correlate with something of the postmodern mentality today. And though he aimed his guns at Ritualism, a sort of pastiche of Roman Catholic mysticism and protestant Anglicanism, his words still offer wisdom for us in how we hold to our beliefs. He says:

This superstition, too, is in harmony with the innate idolatry of the human heart; it offers gratification to the eye and to the taste, it sets up a visible priest and outward symbols, and these man's fallen heart craves after. It offers to save men the necessity of thought by offering an outward service, and furnishing a priest to do their religion for them; but, alas! it takes man off from the real and spiritual, it consoles him without true regeneration, and buoys him up with hope though he has not submitted himself to the righteousness of Christ.

What is the Remedy?

In short, he says, "I have only one remedy to prescribe, and that is, that we do preach the gospel of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in all its length and breadth of doctrine, precept, spirit, example, and power." I fear that we today (and I wonder if this applies to us ministers as well!) no longer fully believe in the simple power of the gospel to change the hearts of men? Our adherence to the truth may be nothing more than lip-service. Spurgeon goes on to unveil what was his conviction as to how mighty is such gospel truth:

The gospel, if it were fully received through the whole earth, would purge away all slavery and all war, and put down all drunkenness and all social evils. In fact, you cannot conceive a moral curse which it which it could not remove. And even physical evils, since many of them arise incidentally from sin, would be greatly mitigated [alleviated], and some of them for ever abolished. The spirit of the gospel, causing attention to be given to all that concerns our neighbour's welfare, would promote sanitary and social reforms, and so the leaves of the tree which are for the healing of the nations would work their beneficial purpose. KEEP TO THE GOSPEL, BRETHREN, AND YOU WILL KEEP TO THE ONE UNIVERSAL, NEVER-FAILING REMEDY [emphasis mine].

Even as hunger lies at the bottom of some fevers and maladies, it can be once again corrected by food. "Give the bread of life to the multitude, and the maladies and diseases of fallen humanity will be divinely removed; I am sure it is so."

I hope we are as well!

"Giv'n You a Number & Tak'n 'Way Your Name"

When I was young (1960's) there was a show on TV entitled "Secret Agent," ("Danger Man" in the UK) starring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent, John Drake. (Incidentally, he died 13 January of this year. He was 80.) Johnny Rivers sang the theme song, "Secret Agent Man," in which are these repeated words, ". . . giving you a number and taking away your name." Well, replacing names with numbers is, no doubt, the business of the clandestine world of espionage. They have to maintain some deniable distance in the event things go wrong. But,

God Personalizes

Not so in the everyday world of humanity. Giving names and NOT numbers is vital to our role as those created in the image of God. Eugene Peterson in Run with the Horses, writes:

At our birth we are named, not numbered. The name is that part of speech by which we are recognized as a person. We are not classified as a species of animal. We are not labeled as a compound of chemicals. We are not assessed for our economic potential and given a cash value. We are named. What we are named is not as significant as that we are named.

Peterson reminds us that people don't necessarily remain the same throughout their lives. "Some people as they grow up become less. As children, they have glorious ideas of who they are and of what life has for them. Thirty years later we find that they have settled for something grubby and inane."

He then quotes Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:

The name is the state of speech in which we do not speak of people, things, and values. . . . The name is the right address of a person under which he or she will respond. The original meaning of language was this very fact that it could be used to make people respond.

Society Depersonalizes

But we live in a society that relishes statistics and facts . . . the abstract. Here is where Peterson draws the significance of living according to our names:

Any time that we move from personal names to abstract labels or graphs or statistics, we are less in touch with reality and diminished in our capacity to deal with what is best and at the center of life. Yet we are encouraged on every side to do just that. In many areas of life the accurate transmission of our social-security number is more important than the integrity with which we live. In many sectors of the economy the title that we hold is more important than our ability to do certain work. In many situations the public image that people have of us is more important than the personal relations that we develop with them. Every time that we go along with this movement from the personal to the impersonal, from the immediate to the remote, from the concrete to the abstract, we are diminished, we are less. Resistance is required if we will retain our humanity.

It's Not What We DO, But Who We ARE

OK, maybe you've heard that. It is nonetheless quite true. We are not to be evaluated by our usefulness, or by how much others want us or don't want us. We are not defined by labels. The Lord said to Solomon, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time" (1 Kings 9:3). Notice he did not say, "I have opened the doors of the temple so that you can attend church, and show up only to return home again. No, he put his NAME there, meaning that this is personal, whole-hearted worship about which he's speaking. Like the Israelites, "One of the supreme tasks of the faith community is to announce to us early and clearly the kind of life into which we can grow, to help us set our sights on what it means to be a human being complete. Not one of us, at this moment, is complete."

We Are Always Becoming . . .

John said it, "Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). We're not there yet. But one thing is for sure, we are not simply a set of electronic circuitry, but a "poem" in the making, made by God (Eph. 2:10). We have been given a name--HIS name, and not a set or rules and by-laws (as good as they may be in their place). Don't let this world squeeze you into its mold (Romans 12:1).

Fascinated with JESUS

The goal of Scripture is an intensely personal love for Jesus possessing your whole being. The goal of redemption is your love-relationship, your love-life with Jesus. Christian living is living in love with Jesus. Prayer communion is looking lovingly into Jesus' eyes, thrilling to Jesus' voice, resting in Jesus' arms.

Christ's passionate lovers have bejeweled the history and heritage of the church. No Christian is greater than his love. Few today realize the intense devotion to Christ in the early church and in our sainted martyrs. The Holy Spirit can develop in us just as ardent devotion as He did in those days.

All other passions build upon or flow from your passion for Jesus. A passion for souls grows out of a passion for Christ. A passion for missions builds upon a passion for Christ. When Hudson Taylor was once asked what was the greatest incentive to missionary work, he instantly replied, "Love of Christ." William Booth's passion for helping the underprivileged, the derelicts of society, and for world evangelization was built upon his passion for Christ. The most crucial danger to a Christian, whatever his role, is to lack a passion of Christ. The most direct route to personal renewal and new effectiveness is a new all-consuming passion for Jesus. Lord, give us this passion, whatever the cost!

--Wesley L. Duewel, Ablaze For God

How Sovereign is God?

In his Body of Divinity, the puritan Thomas Watson beautifully unfolds the doctrine of the providence of God. What is that? He defines it thus, "Providence is God's ordering all issues and events of things, after the counsel of his own will, to his own glory." One point he makes is that there are no events that can be termed "casual" and accidental.

The falling of a tile upon one's head, the breaking out of a fire, is casual to us, but it is ordered by a providence of God. You have clear instance of this in 1 Kings 22:34, But a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel between the scale armor and the breastplate (ESV). This accident was casual as to the man that drew the bow; but it was divinely ordered by the providence of God. God's providence directed the arrow to hit the mark. Things that seem to fall out casual, and by chance, are the issues of God's decrees, and the interpretation of his will.

C. H. Spurgeon believed as well that God's sovereign providence reaches to every minute thing. And if you haven't seen this memorable quotation, it's one of my favorites.

I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes - that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens - that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their course. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebush is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence - the fall of...leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.

In how many ways such providence is carried out in our lives, only God knows. But it should at least cause us to rest secure in the loving power of His grace who ordered it.

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ . . . I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it (Isaiah 46:9-11).

Assurance--Hope Out of Trials

The Westminster Catechism says the following (with updated language of my own):

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation shaken, diminished or discontinued in different ways. It may be:

1) Through the neglect of preserving it;

2) By falling into some special sin, which wounds the conscience, and grieves the Spirit;

3) By some sudden or intense temptation;

4) By God's withdrawing the light of his countenance; or

5) By allowing those who fear him to walk in darkness, and to have no light.

Yet, they are never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may in due time be revived, and by the which, in the mean time, they are supported from utter despair.

The Daily Spurgeon: "To Be the Army of the Lord"

Here's a spiritually nourishing blog. I would encourage your reading of this brief but powerful call to the church. But also, you may wish to mark this as one of your oft-visited sites.

The Daily Spurgeon: To be the army of the Lord

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