Words of Wisdom

"The only thing of my very own that I can contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed."

Archbishop William Temple in Nature, Man, and God - p. 401

Larry Norman @ Home with Jesus

Robin has broken his upper arm

Last Monday our son Robin (15) broke his upper arm and dislocated his shoulder during a judo match. I took him to hospital for an x-ray and it turned out that he needed an operation the next day. I stayed with him during the night and he had to wait until Tuesday 20:30 PM for the operation (there were several emergencies in the hospital that needed attention first).
He is at home now, after three nights in hospital, and he is doing reasonably well - but still with a lot of pain in his arm and shoulder. Your prayers are appreciated.

King of the Trees

One day the trees went out to anoint a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, 'Be our king.'
"But the olive tree answered, 'Should I give up my oil, by which both gods and men are honored, to hold sway over the trees?'
"Next, the trees said to the fig tree, 'Come and be our king.'
"But the fig tree replied, 'Should I give up my fruit, so good and sweet, to hold sway over the trees?'
"Then the trees said to the vine, 'Come and be our king.'
"But the vine answered, 'Should I give up my wine, which cheers both gods and men, to hold sway over the trees?'
"Finally all the trees said to the thornbush, 'Come and be our king.'
"The thornbush said to the trees, 'If you really want to anoint me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, then let fire come out of the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!' Judges 9:8-15

Can anyone explain this story to me? Are there some deeper layers of meaning that we need to unearth here? I sense that there is a lot to learn from this parable and I have left a little clue to give you a hint about what I am thinking right now... Feel free to share your thoughts with me and my valued blog readers!

Photograph taken this morning in Driebergen - in the garden of the Youth for Christ head quarters in the Netherlands. Maybe you think that this is 'just a tree' - but I was very impressed by it... The giant tree was just too beautiful to ignore! The same could be said about this intriguing parable from the book of Judges. Just wanted to share this with you. Please let me know what you think.

Three kinds of salvation, all by God's grace

In the comments section of the recent guest blogger posting by Cori (which has generated an interesting discussion, by the way!), Traveller left this question for fellow blogger John:

This may seem a bit off topic but do you think that a person can be a follower of Jesus without actually articulating an answer to the questions you ask them? In other words, is being "saved" an event that occurs at a point in time just by agreeing to propositions of fact/truth? Or, is "salvation" more than that? Or, something different if not more?

Dear Traveller, I agree that this comment is a bit off topic, so let's start a new topic! Last Wednesday our pastor (Rev. Wigle Tamboer) talked about three kinds of salvation: past, present and future.

In the past Jesus Christ died for our sins - once and for all. This kind of salvation is called justification. But there is more salvation to come, because in the future our Lord will return and then our "lowly bodies" will be transformed into his likeness. This salvation can be called glorification:

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. Philippians 3:20-21

In the meantime, we are still living in this fallen world, but we are undergoing a third kind of salvation, called sanctification. In this process we are growing into the likeness of Christ - the Holy Spirit is changing us from the inside out.

Christians agree that the first and last kind of salvation are worked out by grace alone. But it seems like we are playing an active role in our sanctification process. In reality, it is God's grace again, working in us through his Holy Spirit. If we have the power to grow spiritually and if we have the discipline to read the Bible, pray and actively participate in our faith communities (Hebr. 10:25), this is still a matter of pure grace. In other words: this is God's power at work in us!

Back to the point our friend Traveller raised: is there a connection between our salvation and our knowledge of a certain kind? My answer to that question is: if we know anything, it is - again - only because of God's grace. We are not in the position to earn salvation, not by the works of our hands, nor by the thoughts of our minds. God is only asking us to allow his grace into our lives, so that He can save, sanctify and change us into the likeness of his Son. The only thing that is required from us is FAITH.

In other words, I believe that it is all God's work. If this was not the case, we could still claim that we are saved because we came to the right conclusion. The Bible states that it is God who is saving us. His saving grace goes out to us, his Son died for us, his Spirit dwells in us and his Word enlightens us. All we are asked to do is: accept God's grace. It's undeserved, it's incomprehensible and the good news is: it's 100% free!

PS What a coincidence! ;-) This is the Verse of the Day:

Sosha was baptised last Sunday!

Last Sunday our daughter Sosha (13) was baptised in our church. It was a great day for our family and we are all so proud of Sosha's personal decision and her public testimony of faith in Christ!

Just wanted to share this with you... I did try to upload a video clip here, but I'm afraid the file was too big. But believe me, it was great to watch the testimony of our daughter and the baptisms of 17 other brothers and sisters in Christ!

Guest Blogger: Cori

Cori, you live in South Africa, a country with many differences: socially, demographically, religiously.
Please comment: "Sometimes you must agree to disagree".

Someone once said to me that we always get excited when someone is the same as us (“Wow – we have the same favourite food/colour/etc!”) but that true richness comes from being different and learning to embrace that difference. I love the richness of my country, and rather than being threatened by that, try to gain from it and embrace it as much as I can. I also believe that in South Africa we have learnt a lot about how to handle diversity without conflict. A number of western countries have historically been homogenous and now have to deal with other cultural and religious groups and the conflict is intense (could we include the Netherlands and the UK here?). I don’t think it’s as much about agreeing and disagreeing about something as learning about, embracing and appreciating diversity.

The Good Shepherd went out to find the lost sheep, the sheep did nothing to be rescued. But the prodigal son came back home on his own initiative. Saul (before his name became Paul) wasn't looking to be saved by Jesus, on the contrary - he was actively persecuting Christians at that time. This is my question: what do you think, are we looking for God or is God looking for us?

Perhaps both is happening at the same time! I’m a little hesitant to speak of the cliché of the ‘God-shaped vacuum in all our hearts’ but on the other hand do believe that everyone is looking for meaning, beauty, truth, love, purpose, a more abundant life and all of these in a way are a searching for God. But more than that, I believe God is truly ’wooing’ every single person to him. Somewhere in Acts 17 it says that God is not far from any one of us.

In this post-modern time it is not acceptable to proclaim 'the truth'. But as Christians we are called to share the Gospel with all people from all backgrounds. How do you deal with this tension?

It depends what we mean by ‘truth’. If truth is a dogmatic statement of belief then I’m as happy to drop it as the postmoderns supposedly are. But if truth is relational and dynamic, and if truth is more about a person, and about love, then it is something I am sharing all the time, every time I interact with another human being meaningfully. If truth is limited to knowledge it is a very sorry thing. If it has more to do with experience, and with who we are and what we live out, it is very rich and deep.

You know more about the African continent than most people mentioned in my blog roll. Could you please tell us some things that we really need to know about Africa? (This is your chance to correct misconceptions and to enlighten us with your first hand knowledge and experience!)

It’s hard to talk about an entire continent. I know almost nothing about any country north of the DRC. But in general terms, Africa is an extremely resourceful continent. I love what a lot of celebrities are doing to bring attention to this continent. But it’s not a continent that needs handouts. It needs fair trade and it needs to be treated justly in its political and economic relations with the West. And it doesn’t need all the arms, and cheap medicine, and other dud stuff (like faulty condoms) the West is selling it to get rich at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. But this is an incredibly diverse, rich beautiful and resourceful continent. It is also a whole lot safer to travel here than people imagine. And very affordable. Anyone interested in visiting an African country? I’m part of several networks and can probably link you to a local in several places for a very authentic experience!

Feel free to ask yourself any question that needs to be answered here...

Hmmm…. How can we more effectively bridge the gap between people who have been churched all their lives and know little of life outside of their Christian church reality and those that are leaving the church (although not necessarily Christianity) and those that aren’t Christian at all? Because I have the most to do with the last two categories, I guess my question is mainly aimed at those in the first category – how can we open a dialogue between the very-churched and the not-so-churched?

Dear blog readers - feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments section of this post. Maybe you have an answer to Cori's question about the dialogue between the very-churched and the not-so-churched....

Cori, thanks for being such a good blog friend and for sharing your thoughts with all of us! Cori gave me the name of the next Guest Blogger from my blog roll that I will invite: P3T3RK3Y5 (just try to pronounce that! I will ask him soon!)