Posted on by Abe Austin

Seeking Signs- Path Before Destination

Finding the Right Approach)

Yesterday I spoke about those who require a sign before they will believe in God or consider changing their lifestyles to fit His commandments. Today I want to point out that God does not just want us to believe in Him, He wants us to come to belief in the right way.

As any teacher knows, it is not enough for a student to have the right answer, but to come by it honestly. If all the teacher wanted was perfect grades, then the best method would be to show the children how to find the answers in the back of the book. Obviously, what is actually wanted is for the child to find the right answer through work and understanding.

It is the same for God. The disbeliever who calls for a sign is trying to peek at the back of the book. He assumes that if God wanted him to believe, then God should take the easiest, most direct route in convincing him. And yes, God does want him to believe, but like the teacher, God knows that belief is only helpful when the child comes to it through work and understanding.

The Flattening of God)

When those that seek signs describe what they want from God, it is manifestations that are perceived by the mortal senses. Writing in the heavens, a booming voice, an earthly visit…these are all things that would convince through sight, hearing, or touch.

Right away, I can see a problem with this. We are already a lopsided people. We rely on our physical senses so much more than our spiritual ones. There are many who only observe the world sensuously. Who doubt that there even is a spiritual domain. Who believe that knowledge can only be obtained by inquiry of the physical senses. If God were to flatten His presentation into this physical domain, it would only reinforce that lopsided view. It would reward us for being overly sensuous. It would affirm that this temporal domain is the only one that matters.

But God exists on so much more than just the temporal domain. He is transcendent and spiritual, and He wants us to meet Him on those planes. He wants to reward us for exercising our spiritual intuition. He wants us to feel Him in our hearts without ever seeing Him with our eyes. He wants us to learn that a spiritual connection is even more real and intimate than a physical one. So yes, God wants us to believe, but He wants us to find that belief in a way that sets us on a journey of rich spiritual discovery.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Seeking Signs- How Far Will You Pursue?

Waste of a Miracle)

There are those that say they will only believe in God if He will show them an irrefutable sign of His existence. They say, “If God is real, and He really cares about having me believe in Him, and He knows me perfectly, then He knows that I need physically observable evidence of Him.” They suggest things like a message written in the stars, or God descending to the earth in all His glory, or a booming voice sounding from heaven. Those would be strong, undeniable proofs of God’s existence, and surely that would bring many more people to accept Him as their Lord, so why not just do that?

To that I say: And what will you do if God does not show up with these great, undeniable signs? Will you continue to pursue the knowledge of Him?

The answer: I will do nothing, and I will pursue no further.

And to that I say: Why would God ever waste His time on someone with that attitude? Why manifest Himself to someone so fickle and disinterested? Frankly, you don’t seem to actually care all that much whether God is real or not. Are you genuinely quivering on the edge of remaking your whole life to follow Him just as soon He shows you a miracle? I find that hard to believe.

Pattern for Belief)

People hear that God wants us to believe in Him, and from that they assume that the onus is on Him to do the convincing. But two things can be true at once. God can both want us to believe in Him and also be perfectly willing to let us go if we don’t care enough to take the first step.

To be clear, I do believe that God pursues on His end, but I also believe He always stops short of making us believe in Him. In my experience, He always requires us to make at least one step in total faith. We have to do something because we believe it is right, not at all sure that it will turn out well, and that is when He appears to us.

If, on the other hand, we see that step before us and say, “no, God, not until you show me a sign,” He will let us go.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- Summary

The Journey We’ve Been On)

In the course of this study, I have argued in favor of Jesus’s claim in Matthew 11:28-30

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Through this study I have made special effort to address the two groups that might disagree with this claim: the unbeliever who sees the commandments of God as a terrible burden, and the believer who struggles every day to be worthy of God’s expectations. Here were the main points in my study:

  1. The liberation of the commandments. I examined how the true purpose of God’s restrictions is to free us from the demands of addiction and vice, which are the great taskmasters of humanity. Yes, God requires us to surrender to Him, but it is a surrender into rest and peace.
  2. Refutation of self-made perfection. I discussed how God never intended for us to perfect ourselves through sheer moral grit. Through that act of surrendering to Him we open the door to a miracle: effortless change.
  3. Surrendering will and autonomy. Yes, achieving a state of rest, peace, and effortless change is possible, but only at the cost of unconditional surrender to God. The one truly difficult task that God requires of us is to give up our autonomy and submit to His will.
  4. The easy way. The scriptures are full of examples of those who made this surrender, then found that God shouldered their burdens, accomplished miracles in their lives, and gave them easy victories. We talked about Gideon’s army, but also consider the examples of Peter fishing, the widow’s cruse of oil, the parting of the Red Sea, and the siege of Jericho.

The Great Secret)

Speaking for myself, I am not yet done surrendering my will to God. I am still very much a work in progress. This is because even after having had some practice at it, surrendering is still hard to do. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.

As difficult as surrender may be, it is still easier than the alternative lifestyles of grit or appetite-satiation. And once that surrender is made, everything afterward is weightless. I have learned these facts for myself, personally.

So, surrender is easier, but it does not at first appear so. I believe this is by design. It ensures that no one accidentally stumbles into that better way. They have to take what appears to be the harder path, by faith, before they can finally discover for themselves that it is actually much, much easier.

This is the great secret. Many people live and die, never understanding what it was all about. They are perpetually frustrated, always searching for success and satisfaction, but never finding it, and yet the answer was there in front of them all the time. Hopefully you and I can do it better.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- An Easy Task

An Impossible Task)

Christianity calls us to accept Christ as our master, and modern society would go further and say that he is an overbearing taskmaster, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Perhaps Christ’s demands are seen as heavy because he does at times asks us to do the impossible, but in practice they are actually very light, because we don’t actually do any of the heavy lifting for thme.

I cannot think of a clearer example of this than Gideon in the Old Testament, Judges 6-8. God called Gideon to accomplish a few things in His name, but the greatest of all was to stand against the Midianite horde with a small band of Israelite men. At the outset, Gideon had only 32,000 men, while the Midianites had approximately 135,000. As if that wasn’t mismatched enough, God then commanded Gideon to send home over 99% of his army, leaving him with a mere 300 men! The task seemed absolutely impossible.

But then, remarkably, the fulfillment of that task could hardly have been any easier! Once Gideon’s army was sufficiently small, God instructed the 300 men to surround the Midian army in the dark of night, then each soldier broke a pitcher, lit a lamp, and blew a trumpet. The sudden manifestation of sound and light on all sides drove the Midianites into a panic, and unable to properly tell friend from foe, they slew each other until only a fraction of their forces remained! Then, Gideon and his men dealt with the rest.

Easy to Bear)

So, too, the true Christian who has committed his whole soul to the Lord may make incredible transformations in his life and accomplish wonderful things for the Lord. So much so, that it might seem superhuman what he has accomplished, and cause people to mistakenly believe that his effort was extreme. But this is not the case. Like Gideon, the true Christian accomplishes the impossible not by his own effort, but by the Lord’s.

We live in a world that demands strength and genius. In our vocations and communities, we are given a never-ending stream of demands, and we must constantly strive to meet them. God, however, requires so very little of us. Like Gideon, we do not have to be mighty, and we do not have to be brilliant. All we have to be willing to do is stand where God tells us to stand and perform the little things God tells us to do, and the victory will fall into our lap.

This is how God has “chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty,” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The foolish and the weak are sufficient, because so very little is required of them. All they have to be willing to do is surrender to the Lord, and anyone can do that.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- The Beginning of Good

The Greatest Commandment)

Yesterday I shared scriptures which assert that refusing to surrender one’s will to God leads to all manner of evil, selfishness, and causing harm to the world. Today, I wanted to consider one other passage, the one where Jesus is asked which is the greatest commandment in the law:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
-Matthew 22:37-39

Loving the Lord with all of one’s heart, soul, and mind involves offering each of those to Him, which is elsewhere summarized in the scriptures as our will “being swallowed up in the will of the Father” (Mosiah 15:7). Jesus listing this as the first commandment suggests that it is of a higher priority, but that it is not all. By putting it first, he is suggesting an order. Devotion to God naturally comes before loving our neighbor as ourselves. Thus, if not surrendering one’s will to God leads to harming the world, then surrendering one’s will to God leads to healing the world.

While the world may no longer be convinced of the importance of submitting to God, we do still value helping and treating one another with kindness. We value it, but also we are really bad at it. By inverting the proper order and putting self and fellow-man before submission to God, we have broken the entire sequence. We want to be good to each other, but we don’t want to submit to God, and so we end up treated each other horribly instead, violating our own ideal. Any cursory glance at the contention in our modern society will bear that out. The only way to get back to civility and compassion will be by putting things back in their proper order and first loving the Father and submitting to His will, just as Jesus taught.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- The Consequences of Refusing to Surrender

A Scriptural Condemnation)

I have spoken at length about the importance of surrender in the gospel of Jesus Christ. To put things simply, there is no such thing as being a true disciple of Jesus Christ and also not surrendering your will and autonomy to the Lord. Jesus surrendered himself to the Father, and every follower of him must do the same, or they are not really his follower.

But why is surrender such an essential part of the gospel? Why did Jesus need to do it, and why do we need to? What cosmic or fundamental principle requires it? That’s an excellent subject for another series, one that I may try to tackle later. Today, though, I want to point out how the scriptures make clear the negative consequences that follow if we will not surrender our autonomy to the Lord. Let us look at a few verses.

For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 
-James 3:15 (NIV)
Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.
-Proverbs 18:1 (ESV)
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
-2 Timothy 3:2-4

Each of these passages begins with those who set their own, autonomous self above all else. They are focused on their own desires, their own love, and their own ambition. Rather than surrendering their will they have set it upon the highest pedestal, and in each of these passages it is clear that what follows is harm and evil. The unmistakable message of the scriptures is that those who do not surrender will inevitably cause hurt and suffering.

We live in a society where people constantly speak of waking up to the notion that they “need to put themselves first.” That may sound nice and affirming, but anyone that follows it should know that they are embarking on a path that the scriptures have declared to be ruinous. One may, of course, reject that assertion, but if they do, at least they will know that the consequences that follow were foretold.

NOTE: In the process of editing this post, I accidentally published it twice before it was ready. I apologize for any confusion caused to my email subscribers.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- The Core Disagreement

The Outsider’s Perspective)

I began this study focused on the secular humanist, who balks at the idea of God’s commandments restricting his pursuits of pleasure. Afterwards, I shifted to the confused Christian, who is frustrated by his attempts to obey God while still holding part of his heart back. I’ve spent some time in that latter category, and would like to briefly shift back to the secular humanist, and how he often misinterprets adherence to the laws of God.

From the secular humanist’s perspective, God and His commandments are understood as a checklist, one series of behaviors that are forbidden and one series of behaviors that are required. Thus, an individual’s level of obedience can be measured by a simple comparison to that list. The more points where you align with God’s law, the better you are in His eyes. If you get enough points right, Jesus will cover the rest and you get to go to Heaven, but if you are off on too many points, God will send you to Hell.

Thus, many secular humanist say they reject Christianity because they are not willing to conform to lists of rules that they don’t believe in. Many of them believe that God doesn’t exist, or that if He does that Christians fundamentally misunderstand Him, and that He really want people to be true to their own autonomy. Or if the Christian God did exist, the secular humanist concludes that He is a tyrant, and being true to one’s own autonomy and being damned for it would still be more noble than subservience to a cosmic taskmaster.

Autonomy as a God)

In short, the secular humanist sees autonomy as the ultimate ideal. It is the highest god that it would be blasphemous to sacrifice for anything else. Any discussion about commandment-following is therefore a distraction. True, the secular humanist might not want to adhere to those commandments, but the deeper, core issue is that they worship the autonomous self over any creator God.

To the secular humanist, the following of the commandments would be torture, because they would refuse to let go of their sense of autonomy. Every commandment would be like a shard, cutting deeply into them, fundamentally opposed to their most-precious ideal.

I think if Christians and secular humanists understood this, they could actually discuss the real issue, instead of quibbling over this side business of following rules. Yes, the true gospel of Jesus Christ leads to obeying God’s commandments, but that’s not really what it’s about at its core. It’s about letting one’s will be absorbed into the Almighty’s, and the Christian who isn’t willing to do that is outside true theology just as much as the secular humanist.

I won’t take the time to exhaust all of the reasons why the surrender of autonomy to God is essential in Christian theology, I am only interested in making the point that this is the true disagreement between it and secular humanism. I will, at least, use tomorrow’s post to share one of the reasons that the scriptures tell us that surrender is essential, but beyond that I would have to do a separate study to truly explore the matter.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- What I Held Back

My Enslavement)

In my last post I promised that today I would share a personal example of my own struggles with vice, how I exerted great effort to overcome them and failed, but then found that freedom could come at a much simpler price.

I have already shared before about my addiction to pornography, and how I spent many years under its power. Perhaps some people do not feel guilty when they take their first steps into addiction, but I most certainly did. From the very first day, I was ashamed and disappointed with myself. From the very first day I tried to stop. I had fits and starts, I tried to make deals with God, I told myself again and again that this next time would be the last time. But no matter what I tried, I remained a slave to my lust for twenty long years.

Because for twenty years I wasn’t willing to try the one thing that would actually work.

Practically from the very start of my addiction, I knew that I needed to make confession. My conscience would consistently prick me to shine a light on this secret shame, but I would always make an excuse not to. I told myself that all I needed was God. He and I would work this out somehow, no one else needed to be involved. God would know how to fix me. That was ironic, given that I was deliberately ignoring what God was telling me to do in my heart.

For so many years I couldn’t make a confession because I couldn’t tolerate being seen by another person at that level of intimacy. It was a boundary that had never crossed in my life, not even in my marriage, and frankly I didn’t think I would ever be willing to have it crossed. That was the part of my autonomy that I kept holding on to, the surrender that I wasn’t willing to make.

Light Streams In)

Then, one day, I finally accepted that there was no salvation in the path that I was walking. I finally admitted to myself that I was getting worse, not better, and that as ashamed as I was of what I had done thus far, I would yet do things more shameful. I realized that for all of my attempts to keep myself whole, I was fracturing apart even so.

That was when I decided to finally make the surrender that God was asking of me. That was when I made my confession. Not just once, not just twice, but over and over again to my wife, to spiritual leaders, to therapists, to twelve-step groups, and even to all of you reading this blog. I surrendered my need for darkness, and finally let the light in.

There were other surrenders that came as a part of this, too. I surrendered my need to hate and punish myself. I surrendered my pride, my need to solve things on my own. I surrendered the fate of my future.

Making these surrenders wasn’t easy, but the transformation that followed them was. In fact, the transformation was effortless. The very changes that I had been trying so hard to make for twenty years took place on their own practically overnight. I didn’t have to wrestle them into submission, I didn’t have to choke them out, I didn’t have to force myself to be worthy by sheer force of will. None of that. I just changed, and there’s no explanation other than that God worked a miracle inside of me.

Now, to be clear, I am not saying that I am impervious to temptation now. I do still need to watch myself. I do still need to make deliberate choices to remain true to who I was born to be. I do still need to remove myself from situations that are going in a bad direction. But for the first time I actually can do those things, and they actually work! I am not free from temptation, but I am free to deny it.

In my following posts I will break down a few key themes in this story, but for now I hope it is clear that God’s way is not one of constant, painful exertion. Following Him and becoming a better person is supposed to be easy and joyful, not tedious and brutal. Jesus was really telling the truth when he said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28, 30). In the following posts, we will examine more closely how that could be.

Posted on by Abe Austin

God Reaching for God

God is the standard to strive for, but He is also the activating agent that makes the striving possible. God lives outside of us, but also part of Him lives inside of us. Thus, it is God that reaches for God and God that raises God, and we simply are pulled along by the part of Him that is inside us.