Relevant Messages for Today's Inspired

A couple months ago when I first started this blog I came in to contact with William Lehman, associate Pastor at Discovery Church in Newark, OH. William runs RelevantMessage.org (RM), a blog for writers to share with the world their intimacy of God. After a few conversations he added me as one of his first writers to the site. Although it took me a few weeks to utilize this opportunity, I eventually came to find great value in this leap of faith that William has taken with me. RM has allowed me to use the site as an outlet and expression for my walk with Christ while at the same time focus Ministry Exec 2030 on workplace ministry activity for young business executives.

William and I come from different backgrounds but God has seemingly brought us together in a virtual setting for reasons only He can know. With the blog activity I have going on, RM has become a extraordinary voice of expression for me to do exactly what it is the site was designed to do…”give to the world [my] own intimacy with God.”

I welcome you to share in this endeavor by visiting the site now and setting up your RSS feed or subscribing to the newsletter via email. You can count on regular postings between the two of us that provoke readers to explore the depths of their relationship with God. With the inclusion of me to RM, I am now including this as one of my ministry activities.

Shouts out to William for recognizing the opportunity at hand and taking the courageous step to let God carry out His plan among us. Peace unto you, brother.

Prophetic Perspective

In 332 BC when Alexander the Great conquered Tyre, his next target was Jerusalem because it was en route to Egypt, his ultimate destination. According to author Flavius Josephus, Jaddua the high priest of Jerusalem at that time, had a dream about meeting with Alexander.

In the dream, the priest was clothed in purple and gold and surrounded by many others robed in white. Apparently, Alexander the Great had a parallel dream in Dios of Macedonia sometime prior. Jaddua heeded the vision by clothing himself in the colored robes along with his people to meet Alexander. When the two met outside Jerusalem, Alexander remembered his dream and gave reverence to Jaddua’s god. He and his armies then proceeded toward Egypt without harming Jerusalem.

This might seem fantastic, but it can be tied to some of the prophecy in Zechariah 9, which Meadowcroft Pastor Dan Kiehl revealed today in his sermon. According to Scripture, Zechariah prophesied about the falls of Tyre and Sidon for their extravagant “ramparts” and storing up of fine treasures. Providentially, yet unknowingly to the Great Alexander, God fulfilled these prophesies through Alexander and his men.

In addition, God also carried out his promise to not harm Jerusalem, which too was in the path of destruction for Alexander and his armies. Zechariah 8 reads:

But I will defend my house against marauding forces. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people, for now I am keeping watch. (NIV)

In this prophecy of Zechariah, our prophet foresaw the falls of these great cities. He also saw the coming of Christ our Lord. He saw him coming humbly into Jerusalem mounted on a donkey and he foresaw his peace taking reign on the earth. What he did not see, however, was the time span between his coming and his reigning peace. He did not see the 2000 plus years before peace on earth would prevail in its entirety. There is a reason for this, and it was revealed to me today by Pastor Dan in what is known as prophetic perspective.

When driving towards a great mountain range, we see a backdrop of peaks and ridges. From a distance, there is no space between them. They simply look like one against the other. But when we near the mountain range we begin to see the distance between each peak and ridge. Eventually we come to realize that there could be dozens if not hundreds of miles from one mountain to the next. In prophetic visionary terms this is known as prophetic perspective.

This is such a great concept and it brings much clarity to the content in the Bible’s prophecies. When a vision is revealed to a prophet, he may see the imagery from afar, thus not permitting him to see the valleys between the peaks and ridges. This is important to consider not just for gaining perspective on your Bible studies but also in your own life because vision is part of each of us.

We might see who we are in the time to come and what sort of impact we can have on those around us, but we might not see the intervals, or valleys between the peaks and highlights. If we strive for the higher peaks without considering the lower ones in front, then we will ultimately lead ourselves off course in the wrong trajectory.

Keep this in mind as you set out to scale your mountains and chart your paths. The imagery in your vision may be solid as a rock, but the depth of perception within the vision might be limited by the distance between you and your final destination.

Trackback: RelevantMessage.org

An Exploration of the Virtue of Christ in the Tao Teh Ching

The Tao Teh Ching is what initially led me to Christ. At 15, my dad gave me a pocket-sized edition of the Tao Teh Ching. I glanced at it a few times but it seemed way out there. At 18, when living in the dormitories of my university, I picked it up again and this time I became engulfed. For nearly 18 consecutive months I read, read, and re-read this book an extraordinary number of times until suddenly something strange and revealing began to occur…Christ Jesus introduced himself to me.

For many years, 12 in fact, I lived with Christ in a casual and convenient way, reading Scripture here and there while also reading other spiritual and religious works. None of what I read ever had the impact on me that Lao Tzu’s words did in the Tao Teh Ching.

Today, I walk with Christ in a conscious, transparent, and invigorating way and read Scripture diligently. Still, the passages in the Tao Teh Ching written by Lao Tzu more than 2500 years ago continue to reveal the Virtue of Christ that can not be ignored. In my opinion, Lao Tzu was walking with Christ during his time but did not have the background and labels of Christ available to him that were identified in the Old Testament. His work is profound and his message is Godly. A scholar of Tao will find that the principles identified in this work can be applied to any situation throughout all time. Essentially, their meaning is timeless and eternal.

There are several sites on the Web that publish words of this book online, but none that I have found offer a take and a direction on how they tie in with the Virtue and Wisdom of Christ. Therefore, I have created my own site, called ChrisTao, which eventually will feature all 81 passages in the Tao Teh Ching along with initial commentary from me on each passage.

The web address is http://christao.wordpress.com/ and the site will be an exploration of the ties between Christianity and Taoism. My hope is to verify for certain if the virtue and wisdom written in this book are indeed the Virtue and Wisdom of Christ. Your participation is welcome and I will be sure to remain open minded and resolute about the content that is posted.

Godspeed.

God Does Not Need Your Religious Activities

Today my pastor delivered a powerful reminder to the congregation by challenging those in attendance on why we perform the “religious activities” that we do. He confronted us with three important questions that I think should be considered on a daily basis:

1. Is your religious activity self-centered or God-centered?
2. Does your religious activity bring you to redemption or to self-gratification?
3. Does your religious activity soften your heart or turn it to stone?

Delivering such a sermon can be controversial because people do not want to be told that the reason they are here at church and carrying out their religious activities is because they are self-centered, but my pastor has conviction for reminding us why we always need to come to repentance and seek God’s forgiveness, not just for when we do bad things, but even when we do things thinking they are for good.

Think about it, the motivation behind all of our interests that we think are “good” is because it makes us feel good doing them. That IS selfish. When you do things for God that do not make you feel good is how you know that you are being God-centered.

I commend my pastor for delivering this message, but more importantly I am humbled by God’s grace to speak through my pastor today and remind me of this. In the past two years my relationship with the Lord has made an about face and I have become involved with many “religious activities” and ministries, this blog being one of them. I know that they are done in selfishness and I struggle sometimes in doing them knowing that I do them because I WANT TO PLEASE GOD. God does not need my efforts. He is totally self-sustaining without me and my efforts.

God uses my self-centered interests to glorify him self in me, to show me who He is. God created me for His own purpose. My actions and my desire to show that to others is for my own purpose because I WANT people to know that it is not they who are great thinkers and benevolent doers. It is He who works in you and through you to reveal and to glorify Him self in you. Our god is a jealous god and if you try to take the spotlight then it is to your own demise.