A MAN OF ONE BOOK

“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105 NIV)

The Reformation slogan sola scriptura has power, clarity, and simplicity. Its power counters the authoritarian claims of church, later tradition, and all other competitors to the revealed Word of God. Its clarity shows others we are serious about basing all of our Christian faith and practice on this book of books. Its simplicity allows all Christians to understand the basis on which our claims to truth are made. We sing with understanding, “Jesus loves, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

John Wesley knew this and fully subscribed to the song’s sentiment. When challenged on his most controversial doctrines, he appealed to the Bible as the primary justification for his teachings. In the famous passage from the Preface to his sermons, he calls himself homo unius libri – a man of one book. Forty-one years later, in his sermon “On God's Vineyard,” he uses the phrase again to talk about the beginning of Methodism and its continuing commitment to Scripture:

“From the very beginning, from the time that four young men united together, each of them was homo unius libri -- a man of one book. God taught them all to make His Word a lantern unto their feet, and a light in all their paths. They had one, and only one rule of judgment with regard to all their tempers, words, and actions, namely, the oracles of God. They were one and all determined to be Bible-Christians. They were continually reproached for this very thing; some terming them in derision Bible bigots; others, Bible-moths -- feeding, they said, upon the Bible as moths do upon cloth. And indeed unto this day it is their constant endeavor to think and speak as the oracles of God.”

Any accurate understanding of Wesley’s view of the Bible must first start here, with a strong statement that Scripture alone is the authority for Christian faith and practice. On this point Wesley is definite. It is the Bible that serves as the final court of appeal. 

-- Scott J. Jones in “Wesley and the Quadrilateral: Renewing the Conversation” (1997)

#5910

RIGHT ABOUT WRONG

For me, one of the strongest, deepest, most compelling reasons for believing the Bible is because it has the most accurate explanation for what is wrong with us… I have never run into anything remotely like the Bible when it comes to an accurate fix on what is wrong with the human heart…

The New Testament Church got its definition of sin from the Old Testament, the only written Word of their day. It defines the problem for which the New Testament presents the solution. The Law and the Prophets relentlessly expose the nature of human sin from God’s perspective.

For several years now I have studied the last half of the Old Testament carefully, and from that reading I compiled a huge list of God’s creative descriptions of sin. I’ve boiled the essence of that list into the following descriptive phrases in the language of today:

• Going our own way
• Doing our own thing
• Defiantly resisting authority
• Stubborn disobedience
• Willful rebellion
• Defensive and antagonistic attitudes
• Self-centered focus
• Compulsively competitive nature
• Addiction to control

This analysis of sin… is as powerful in provoking the human conscience today as it was two thousand years ago.

“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:21-24 NKJV) 

-- Adapted from “Follow Me: Experience the Loving Leadership of Jesus” by Jan David Hettinga

#5909

BEING REAL WITH GOD – Part 2 of 2

“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  (Matthew 11:28 NIV)

Our ingrained mask-wearing keeps us from having the authentic, intimate relationship that Jesus wants to have with us. What if you put on this kind of show with your spouse, dressing things up and trying to be someone you aren’t? A wife would feel she needed to be in her finest clothing with all her cosmetics on at every single moment. A husband would believe he had to put on a show as well. Both would speak to each other as they’d speak to someone on a first date, dancing around things, worried about saying the wrong words. Marriage would be totally exhausting and utterly unsatisfying. After a few weeks of it we’d be hiding from each other.

What we love in marriage is the utter relaxation, the complete intimacy we enjoy with each other. We let down our hair, we stop hiding our warts, and we say whatever is on our minds. Why can’t we be that way with God?

Getting to the end of me means I don’t need to hide my flaws because I know God’s love is unconditional. And we’ll be deeply satisfied, deeply fulfilled, because it’s so much easier to be one person than two – so much easier not to create and sustain a false identity…

Jesus wants a real, no-makeup relationship with you. He wants you to be pure in heart – unmixed and soul-sincere. 

-- Kyle Idleman in “The End of Me: When Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins” 

#5908

BEING REAL WITH GOD – Part 1 of 2

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  (Matthew 6:5-6 NIV)

Many of us have struck spiritual poses in prayer. We have a hard time being ourselves. Praying before others, we have a tendency to talk more to people in the room than to God. Even in private prayer, sincerity doesn’t come easily. We talk to God as if He requires formal language, as we would talk to some governmental authority we didn’t know well. Or we speak in a kind of fake biblical language we’ve cobbled together from the Scriptures or other embellished prayers we’ve heard. Prayer becomes a performance, and we have to work at it.

God simply wants us to talk with Him. Talk is simple communication, and it doesn’t need to be dressed up. We should talk to Him as we’d talk to a best friend -- simply being ourselves, being totally honest without worrying how it might sound.

Have you ever listened to a public prayer and really liked a turn of phrase? And you thought to yourself, That’s awesome -- I’m going to put that into my prayer repertoire! We pick up phrases like these: traveling mercies; lead, guide, and direct; the nourishment of our bodies. Perhaps we believe those are special phrases that establish some kind of spiritual superiority. But it’s not God language. He wants to hear from the real me and the real you.

Who we’re pretending to be doesn’t match who we are on the inside. Yet what God asks could not be simpler. His invitation says, “Come as you are. Please don’t dress up. Don’t decorate your language. Don’t put on a show. Just be at home with Me. Be real. My place is your place.” 

-- Kyle Idleman in “The End of Me: When Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins” 

#5907

ONE HONEST LOOK

“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”  (Romans 8:32 NKJV)

Nothing like one honest look, one honest thought of Christ upon His cross. That tells us how much He has been through, how much He endured, how much He conquered, how much God loved us, who spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. Dare we doubt such a God? Dare we murmur against such a God? 

-- Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)

#5906