Eternal Security/Once Saved Always Saved

Posted on 12/04/2014 by Paul Pavao

I like to find a different way to say “Eternal security is not true” than saying “Eternal security is not true.” I only do that because over the years I have discussed this false, dangerous doctrine with so many evangelicals that it’s been easy to come up with other ways to say “eternal security is not true,” trying all the while to circle them around to the apostle John’s opinion that only “the one who practices righteousness” has righteousness imputed to him by God.

John actually says not to be deceived about that (1 Jn. 3:7), but a rather large percentage of evangelicals are deceived about it anyway.

I’m older now, and I’m on my second bout with blood cancer, being treated with chemotherapy for the second time. Talking with people who refuse to look at the Scriptures any way other than the way they already look at them is pretty tiring to me, and seems kind of useless.

I’ve been enjoying wandering through a friend’s blog today, though, in between naps, and he has taken the time to use his keyboard on a hardened forehead. So if you like eternal security discussions, here’s a guy—Roman Catholic, sorry—who has taken the time to deal with the issue.

Oh, in case you don’t know, I definitely think Roman Catholics, at least in doctrine if not in practice, have a much better teaching on faith and works than the Protestants, pretty much across the board.

Anyway, here’s the post. It’s one in a series.

http://restlesspilgrim.net/blog/2013/06/26/osas-three-cups-of-tea-part-1/

He apparently goes on a December silence from his blog, maybe for Advent or as a sabbatical, and I here I am on December 1 sharing posts of his. Sorry, RP.

Posted in Evangelicals, Roman Catholic & Orthodox | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Amazing Grace for Suffering

Posted on 12/02/2014 by Paul Pavao

I have learned from experience about a grace that many of you have wondered about. I know because I have talked with so many people over the years. Having touched it, I want to testify about it.

The grace I’m talking about is the grace of martyrdom.

I heard a story once about two women in the dungeons awaiting execution by fire the next day. One woman burned her finger on a candle that night, and she began to despair. “Just my finger burning is so painful,” she cried, “how will I endure the burning of my whole body tomorrow?”

The other replied, “God didn’t ask you to burn your finger, so there’s no grace for it. Tomorrow, you will do the will of God and have his grace.”

I have not been tortured, and obviously I have not been put to death. I have, however, been called and commissioned by God to go through an intense treatment for a rare, dangerous, and super-aggressive type of leukemia with joy. I believe that to have been as much a commission from God as anything I’ve ever done.

I’m sure I will never be able to describe the grace. I could lay in a bed in pain and discomfort, and the pain was completely “other.” It was there, I could feel it, it hurt, but it didn’t seem real or part of me.

Depression came on me. Fits of worry. They swirled around, over my head, hiding the people around me from me. They made it hard to interact with those around me as their voices were filtered through the crowd of sadness and strange thoughts, but they didn’t seem to be my thoughts. I hunkered down, deep inside, and I rested in the presence of God. I mourned that I could not comfort those around me because of the cloud, but I rested at peace, comforted by God.

It is surprisingly easy to do what I know to be the will of God when his grace is present, no matter the pain, no matter the confusion, no matter the gloomy prognosis of my condition.

Two years after my transplant, God gave me the opposite gift. I got pneumonia … out of the blue, unexpected, no rhyme or reason for it. I had recently gotten a pneumonia vaccine. I had started an anti-pneumonia antibiotic regimen just a month earlier.

Nonetheless, wham! In one day I went from “Dear, I think I’d like to go to the emergency room; something’s wrong” to wrestling to roll over in bed in less than 12 hours.

Air was hard to come by, even with the oxygen they gave me. The discomfort was awful. I was in a constant haze of pain. My thoughts went from a comfortable acceptance that I might die to a longing for death to deliver me from the terrible discomfort.

There was no grace, and all I could pray for is that God would let me forget the horror as fast as possible.

I don’t doubt that pneumonia was the gift of God because in two weeks I was completely better. The doctors were astounded at my lung capacity just days after barely being able to breathe. A month later, I couldn’t remember the feelings that had prompted my prayers that I would forget the trauma.

I caught the lesson, though. It’s a lesson I’ve always wanted to know about, and I know many others have, too.

There is a grace from God for suffering that is beyond our comprehension. It is sufficient.

It’s still hard for me to believe that a martyr can watch his skin being peeled off, separated from the pain, thanking his tormentors for delivering him from the evils of the flesh. That was a real story I read.

It’s hard for me to believe, but it is no longer impossible for me to believe.

Preparing for Suffering

I rarely pass on the promises of God publicly without also passing on the call of God. I have lots of friends who are wholeheartedly given to the will of King Jesus. I know of many others, and I know that means there are even more others that I don’t know and have never heard of who want God’s will in everything.

Those people don’t need anything added to the message above.

I have other friends who think the will of Jesus is a nice thing. I have met hundreds of Christians with a favorable impression of the commands of King Jesus.

The promises of God are for those who do more than think favorably of the apostles’ message. They are for those who kiss the hand of our Master, mourn for their failings, and get up every day excited about every word that proceed from his mouth, grateful that yesterday’s failings are drowned in the sea of forgetfulness. What does he have for me today that I am not going to fail in? (Ruth, I’m hoping this helps answer your question from yesterday!)

One of the discussions I’ve had several times over the years is with people scared that if martyrdom ever came, they could not bear the suffering. Others would tell them, “When the time comes, God will give you grace.”

After the others walked away, I would tell the person, “You better practice now. If you’re not embracing suffering now and thanking God for the troubles he sends you way, then you’re not going to know the grace of God when real persecution comes.”

That’s not a thrilling message for those that want God to do everything for them. It is, however, a thrilling message for those that are going forward, climbing higher, and delving deeper into the knowledge of God. “Oh, he’s going to send things my way for me to bear, supplied by his grace! Hallelujah! Already! Today! Bring it on!”

Give God that, and he will give you everything you need when the time of suffering come, whether it’s worry, heartbreak, temptation, sickness, famine, persecution, etc. Nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God if you’ll get inside it every day.

Posted in Holiness, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Embracing the Cross

Posted on 11/30/2014 by Paul Pavao

I’ve been being tenderized in a heartbreaking manner by awesome people I’ve met in Memphis. They haven’t said anything to me. I have just watched them.

The fact is, on many days, especially writing on this blog, I wrestle with how blunt to be, how serious a picture to paint, or how much to tone things down to make it easier for people to listen. I wrestle with how strong to be with those who are almost there, not quite willing to take the step over the line to total abandonment to God. Amy Carmichael once wrote a very stark book on that last step called The Way Things Are, but that story will have to wait for a different day.

One principle I have tried to live by for decades is never to compromise God’s truth, even if it condemns me. This leaves me often deciding where to be gracious and where to be blunt. I just want to tell you one story, from this morning, that touches on that constant decision I face.

I love … uh … most of the writings of T. Austin Sparks, and I get a newsletter from Austin-Sparks.net every day. Today it starts with something I have had experience with both in my life and the lives of others.

The Cross is applied according to every man’s make-up. What would be the Cross to me would never be the Cross to you, and the Cross may mean something different for every one of us. … That is our challenge of the Cross, and then it is a matter of whether we, in what we are, will come and allow the Cross to deal with us.

My Story

I don’t know what I’ve told you, but in 1983, I read Gene Edwards’ The Early Church, and from then on I longed for the life he described there, which was taken from the first few chapters of the book of Acts. I looked everywhere I could for people experiencing that life for the next 12 to 13 years. I looked in Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Texas, California, Florida, and Tennessee. I saw tastes of it in Belgium and Florida, but moving to Belgium was not an option at the time.

Finally, in 1995, I threw my lot in with what is now known as Rose Creek Village … come hell or high water (literally). I lived in a 17-bedroom house with 60 other people, surrounded by RV’s and a chicken coop that had been turned into a 2-bedroom house. 120 people ate out of the same kitchen. We called the big house “Mash ’em Inn.”

When we ran out of room, I moved at the drop of a hat with 35 other families to a 100-acre plot with nothing on it but one small farmhouse and a lot of fences and cow vertebrae (really). We turned our buses, RV’s, and mobile homes into a beautiful trailer park over the course of about 6 years, but along the way we lived in any makeshift home that we could, including a small playground covered in tarps, as well as tents we bought from an army surplus in Waco, Texas (of all places).

I now live in Memphis, with about 150 feet of shore on a small lake in a house we just bought, fellowshipping with four other families and some single people—scattered around Memphis each in our own homes—all formerly from Rose Creek Village (and all still in close relation with RCV), interacting and participating with several other ministries here in the big city.

In other words, my fellowship is no longer just with those who have experienced what I experienced.

The Experience of Christian Community with Disciples

In the 15 years I spent at Rose Creek Village, before my year-long battle with leukemia and my move to Memphis to give myself to the work here, I watched a lot of people try to join us in radical Christian community.

It’s nothing like you would expect. It’s nothing like I expected. It’s nothing like any of us expected or could have predicted.

There was love; rich, abundant love, and deep friendships that will never be broken, no matter what we go through, in this life or the next. We know because we’ve been through so much together already.

There were people. Deeply committed, deeply flawed people. We couldn’t make them go away. We kept looking for brilliant, organized, godly people who could help guide us without making any stupid mistakes, without making us look bad, and without driving us into financial ruin in the middle of one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the country.

We couldn’t find them. We kept getting people who loved God, loved us, and were untrained in the Tony Robbins school of how to motivate everyone and the Martha Stewart school of running everything right. (And you know where Martha Steward ended up!)

At some point, we decided we just had to live with flawed people, and watch God transform them into amazing, loving, merciful, patient … flawed people.

Family is flawed people loving one another and sharing their lives together. God’s family is transformed, growing, flawed people with an immense capacity for speaking the truth to, enduring, and embracing other flawed and hurting people.

For 15 years we waited for God to cure other people’s most annoying faults. Those were astonishingly pernicious. They rarely went away. In the background, though, patience, kindness, tolerance, and wisdom that encompassed the best and worst situations were growing in all of us.

Not long ago, a friend told me, “I like talking to you. You always give me a different perspective.”

Everyone who has endured the messy church life we have lived for 20 years and counting at Rose Creek Village can do that. That life produces a wisdom, a tolerance, and an ability to look past circumstances for God’s role in those circumstances.

The Cross and T. Austin Sparks

In the quote at the top of this blog, T. Austin Sparks talks about the unique work of the cross in each of us.

That is one other thing I have seen in the last 20 years: the uniqueness of the cross in each person’s life.

Church life produces a safe environment. We experienced LOTS of people with LOTS of ideas and LOTS of flaws. In fact, we learned that for MOST people, their religious convictions are held, in a large part, to cover up those flaws. Their convictions both justify themselves to themselves and serve to keep others at a distance, lest their flaws be exposed.

Becoming use to flawed people means that flawed people, eventually, learn to feel safe with us.

Such safety produces an environment where God feels free to work deeply in people’s hearts, knowing that we will take care of them while the work is going on. That’s the environment that he has always meant to produce in the church.

Flawed People

Do you know what the most common flaw in men and women is? Fear. It may look like something else, but usually, it’s just fear. They don’t want to be exposed. They don’t want to look bad. They don’t want to be destroyed by the negative opinions of others. We claim not to care what others think, but that is true of almost no one at all. Instead, almost everyone has layers and layers of beliefs and behaviors that have one purpose, to protect us from the scrutiny and criticism of those around us.

Not too long ago, someone I met and really liked told me, by email, that he had read about Rose Creek Village and that we were guilty of “prying into each other’s lives in the name of accountability.”

If that is his definition of what we have experienced, I can’t deny it. I never heard from that person again.

Since I haven’t named him, and you have no way of knowing who he is, I will tell you my interpretation of his email. He saw the cross coming. He knew it would slash through all the layers of protection he had, and who he really was would come out to be seen by others and dealt with by God. He made sure right up front that wouldn’t happen.

He returned to a safer group of people with whom to fellowship. He was very dissatisfied before he met us. Afterwards, though? They would do just fine.

Safety.

The Scent of Death and the Scent of Life

Lots of people, very excited about meeting us, suddenly lose their excitement when they “smell the savor of death.”

Paul talked about this. There is a fascinating passage in 2 Corinthians some of us have experience with, in churches of all stripes, but few of us think about:

Now thanks be to God, who always causes us to triumph in his Anointed King, and through us reveals the scent of what it is like to know him in every place. For to God, we are the sweet scent of the Messiah, in those that are saved and in that perish. To the one we are the scent of death leading to death and to the other the scent of life leading to life. (vv. 14-16a, slightly paraphrased, emphasis added)

To some our lives reveal a scent of death because entrance into the kingdom of God is a death to one’s old life. It’s buried. It’s gone. It’s crucified. Your dreams, hopes, and aspirations are thrown down, never to be picked up again unless your new King chooses to give them back to you. You agree to his dreams, hopes, and aspirations. His may be similar to yours. He may have been the one to give you your old ones, but when you call him King, you drop them all, come to him empty-handed, like a man fresh out of the grave, and you get your new life from him.

Some smell right past the burial of baptism and the scent of death to the new life in King Jesus and the scent of that life. Those long for it, and they plunge into the waters of the new birth headlong, wanting that life.

Others smell only the death. They see not just baptism, but the cross that will end everything dear to them. Those tiptoe forward, smell the scent, and some run for their life.

Others, in terror, knowing that Jesus is the Son of God, the one who will judge them on the last day, embrace that cross anyway. Usually, those are the disciples most likely to endure to the end and be saved.

You see, T. Austin Sparks is right. Everyone faces the cross, and it is different for all of us.

In most Christian clubs …

Pause here: I won’t call them churches because organizations and buildings cannot be churches. The church is people. When a group of people attend a Baptist “church” (or any other), it cannot be the church when those people go home. The church is people, not a building. That sign that says “church” on it is false. Those signs need to be changed to say, “Such and such church meets here at such and such times. We thought you might want to know so you could meet us and learn about King Jesus from us.”

No offense meant. Everyone agrees with me on the principle. I’m not sure why they don’t follow through on that principle and change their signs and the way they talk.

In most Christian clubs, you can’t tell the people apart. Some of those people have embraced the cross. They are painfully dying to self and joyfully longing for the transformation Jesus is working in them. Others, though, have rejected the cross. They attend “church,” but they are simply appeasing their conscience, slowly dying, deeply mourning the fear that stopped them from entering the kingdom of God.

What’s unfortunate is that so many preachers are helping them appease their consciences. They assure them of salvation because of belief, not realizing that these, who have rejected the cross, have not believed.

Or maybe they believe even more than the preacher does. They know that Jesus is confused by those who call him Lord and don’t do what he says (Luke 6:46). They believe that you can’t be Jesus’ disciple unless you take up your cross every day, and they know they have rejected the cross as too painful and too final for them.

It takes work to con people like this into believing that they will enter the kingdom of heaven. They know deep down what so many preachers don’t seem to know, that calling Jesus Lord is meaningless to Jesus unless you do the will of our Father in heaven. Since Jesus only spoke what the Father told him to speak, then the will of our Father in heaven is that we embrace the cross … every day.

You can’t be his disciple otherwise.

Which brings me full circle to my dilemma this morning.

I Love and Usually Defer to the Teachings of T. Austin Sparks, but …

In the teaching I received by email this morning, Mr. Sparks went on to address what might happen if don’t “allow the cross to deal with us.”

There is not one of us, I am sure, who wants to stand in the presence of the Lord later on, and for the Lord to say, “My child, I would have led you into something very much fuller if only you had given Me the chance.”

Is that what’s going to happen? Will Jesus say, “It could have been better”?

Or will he say, “Depart from me, I never knew you”?

Harsh Reality

Over the last 20 years, I have met some zealous, excited Christians, who have run towards Rose Creek Village, amazed by the love they see, amazed by the life they see, and longing for it with excitement.

Like the rich young ruler to Jesus, they come with joy, and like Jesus, we love them. We are excited about them. They say, “How do I get this life? I don’t have it, but I have wanted it for so long. I want this fellowship; I want this love!”

We have all kinds of things we say, but somehow God always manages to get his say in, immediately or later. At some point, they look up and see Jesus on the cross. Now, though, by the revelation of God, they do not only see the blood running down his chest, running from his head, wrists, and feet, poured out in love for them. They also see his eyes, calling them to climb up there with him, and terror begins to strike their hearts.

That’s what it looks like spiritually. In real life, it can look much different. Here’s some real examples.

1. Said to us: “You didn’t tell me you have people here who believe in evolution. Uh, I have to go home. Thanks.” He was actually excited about the excuse, it took only four hours of visiting to see the scent of death flaring his nostrils.

2. Said to one of our members: “Brother, you act simple, like you don’t know how to do things, but it’s becoming obvious now that you just don’t want to work. It’s time for you to find a job, even if you choose a simple one that we now know you are overqualified for.” That brother left that very night.

3. Another person came to visit and asked, “Why do people says such awful things about you guys? I’ve been here for days, and you’re not only perfectly normal, you’re the kindest people I have ever met.” He went home and told his wife about Rose Creek Village. We never heard from him again.

4. A dear friend of mine (and my wife’s) went running out of a ladies’ meeting in a public place, crying and demanding that the ladies leave her alone. The ladies couldn’t figure out what had set her off, but they were familiar with the invisible cross when it appears in front of a seeker’s eyes. They knew that sometimes it’s impossible for others to see what the cross looks like for a person. God was after something deep in this friend.

That was in my early days at RCV, and I asked about how to help this friend. I was told, “God’s involved now. He’ll take care of the work himself. Just be there and be merciful.”

My friend stuck around for the work. She embraced the cross. It’s almost 20 years later, and she’s as invincible and faithful as a person can be now. She’s not afraid. She laughs at herself, and you can always count on her. Nothing rocks her.

That’s the cross. We all face it. It is much easier embraced in the midst of those you can comfortable call the family of God, those you know will love you like Jesus loves you. They don’t condemn, they heal, sometimes with painful honesty, but always without even a faint hint of rejection.

5. For me, it was standing up for what I think is right, even to people whom I respect and would normally follow. That was so hard for me, it was basically impossible, but one day God demanded it of me. It took me months to comply.

I wanted to run. I had been at Rose Creek Village for a few years, so I was confident I’d learned some things. I could go somewhere else, start something on my own.

I knew, though, that God didn’t want me to do that. I asked myself, “Paul, do you really think that if you go somewhere else, you’re going to find people different than these? Better than these? No, humans are humans, and I’m going to find humans everywhere. Yes, they’re being dealt with by God, they’re growing, but they’re all at different stages of growth, and it will always be that way. I am always going to face this, and I better not run.”

In the end, I was frightened enough to complain to someone I knew would “tell on me,” rather than directly confronting the person I had a problem with. Still, it was the first step toward being delivered from a deep-rooted cowardice that was horribly painful to remove. Even after that initial dealing with God, I can remember literally sitting in a corner in my room for two days, trying to submit, obey, and get over my rage at God for forcing me to talk bluntly to a person I did not want to face.

This is the cross. If I were not to take it up daily, would I hear, “My child, I had so much more for you”? Or would I instead hear, “Depart from me. I never knew you”?

Posted in Church, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Christian Thanksgiving Meal

Posted on 11/27/2014 by Paul Pavao

I’m sure very few Protestants know what “Eucharist” means. Ironically, if I’m right, not many Catholics know what Eucharist means, either.

The word comes from the Greek ευχαρστια, meaning the giving of thanks: thanksgiving. It was chosen because of Jesus’ statements of thanksgiving when he took the cup and broke the bread.

I love American Thanksgiving. I know I’ve been guilty of terrible gluttony as a Christian on the fourth Thursday of November most years because I love stuffing and gravy. (Everything else is just okay.) Nonetheless, my favorite memories are of time with family, joy, kindness, and love.

I will never join those who say those kind of celebrations are bad, or that no one but Christians know how to love. My warm memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family are treasures to me, and I am convinced they ought to be.

Thanks to Richard Gorzyca for pointing out today that our feasts should include the needy and those who cannot pay us back. My family was never afraid to do that. I had a great family and great parents.

On this particular Thanksgiving day, unfortunately, I can’t host anybody. I’m hanging out in a hospital room, waiting for my Thanksgiving lunch to come on a plastic platter, consisting mostly of juice because turkey is not on my menu due to the tumor in my intestine.

But this post is not about America’s annual Thanksgiving celebration. It is about the church’s weekly (at least) Thanksgiving celebration, the Eucharist.

That Thanksgiving is the first and most important one. It belongs to the family that ought to be more important than our biological family, even if our biological family is as close and as warm as mine.

I don’t mind that meal being called Eucharist or communion, but I prefer the American translation of the words: Thanksgiving and fellowship. (Paul called the meal the fellowship of Jesus’ body and blood—1 Cor. 10:16.)

The Lord’s Supper

I do mourn that for most of us, the Lord’s Supper is no Thanksgiving meal at all, but a mere taste, with little to no fellowship going on at all. What should be better and richer than the American Thanksgiving meal is actually deficient to it.

Deep down, we all recognize the problem. We have moved our fellowship meal from our gathering (service, meeting, mass) to Saturday or Sunday afternoons. There we have a real meal, one that we are excited about and look forward to. We call it the fellowship meal because fellowship actually happens, rather than private prayer.

Let me pause here to give a caveat/apology. There are wonderful, deeply spiritual people who long and look forward to the modern version of the Eucharist or communion, a token wafer or cracker. Their fellowship is with God, it is real, and their adoration and memory of Jesus has to be commended with absolutely no ill spoken of it.

But with that caveat, I assert that the tradition of a supper is more ancient and is borne better testimony by both Scripture and the early fathers than our modern practice. I think our modern practice puts the body that Jesus is most concerned about on the backburner, out of our thoughts, rather than at the forefront of our thoughts as it was in the apostles’ practice.

Here’s my argument.

The Lord’s Supper in the Scriptures

I have always thought that the Scriptures said that Jesus took the bread and cup after the meal. It doesn’t.

Only Paul says anything was after the meal, and he says it was only the cup. He apparently equates the meal with the eating of the bread:

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “Take and eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me.” (1 Cor. 11:24).

In the next verse, he tells us that Jesus took the cup after “he had dined.”

Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus took “some bread” while they were eating. Neither mention the cup being after the meal. In fact, the wording makes it sound like it was during the meal.

Luke mentions two cups! One came before the bread, and that cup Jesus said he would not drink with them again until they drank it in the kingdom of God. Then he takes not the bread, but just bread, and says it’s his body and we should eat it in memory of him. And finally, he takes a cup after the bread and says it is the blood of the New Covenant, to be drunk in memory of him.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that only Luke and Paul, who were not at the meal, mention that Jesus said to have the meal as a memorial for him. Matthew and Mark don’t mention it.

Does any of this sound remotely like a tiny cracker or wafer and a thimble of “fruit of the vine”?

Paul is even more clear: At the beginning of his exhortation about the Lord’s Supper, in 1 Corinthians 11:20, he says:

When you come together, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper, for in your eating each one takes his own supper first. One is hungry, and another is drunk?

Clearly the Corinthians were getting together for a meal. It is just as clear that they were eating the meal unworthily by having no regard for the Lord’s body: their brothers and sisters around them. They were not having the Lord’s Supper, they were having their own supper of selfishness.

Paul later warns them that such lack of discerning of the Lord’s body leads to eating and drinking condemnation to yourself.

In context, it is impossible to miss that the “unworthy manner” is eating a meal without regard to your brother or sister and his/her family. Leaving them hungry, while you feast at a table next to them. This is horrifying to Paul, and it makes God so angry that he delivers such punishments as sickness and death.

None of this teaching/exhortation from Paul is even possible if the Lord’s Supper is a memorial with a tiny cracker and a thimble of grape juice or wine. It’s not possible even if the wine is served in a cup that is shared by the whole assembly.

Paul’s exhortation is only possible if the Corinthians thought they were getting together for a pot luck. And Paul does not call them to task for having a pot luck, but for not sharing.

There is nothing in the Scriptures that would give us any idea that the Lord’s Thanksgiving meal is a quiet memorial where we examine our own private faults, quietly ignoring everyone around is. It is not only more like the church pot luck, it is exactly like a modern church pot luck.

The Lord’s Supper in the Early Christian Writings

My Catholic and Orthodox friends like to refer to the description of the Lord’s Supper in the Didache as a liturgy. I understand that. It not only gives prescribed prayers for the bread, the wine, and after the meal, it suggests responsive prayers.

But let’s get past the liturgy discussion, and let’s talk about the Lord’s Supper. There is one big, poignant elephant in the middle of that liturgy:

When all have partaken sufficiently, give thanks in these words … (Ch. 10 in the version I have)

When all have partaken sufficiently? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the writer did not mean, “Once everyone has had a thin wafer of bread dropped on their tongue and one sip of wine.”

Justin Martyr describes a Sunday morning “church service” towards the end of his First Apology. It’s pretty simple (and sounds nothing like a liturgy). They read Scripture, the “presiding one” explained the Scripture, then he prayed at length over the bread and wine, and both were distributed to the congregation (which in Justin’s case was probably quite small, like a modern house church).

What I want you to note is that he also goes on to say that the deacons take some of the bread and wine and distribute it to the sick and infirm, any who could not make it to the gathering of the disciples.

Why?

Well, maybe it is because the Thanksgiving was so important that everyone needed “the bread of immortality and the antidote to keep us from dying,”* but I’d like to suggest that is more likely that for some, especially for the infirm, widows, or orphans, it was the only meal they would get that morning. The deacons were not delivering a religious relic; they were delivering a meal, sent directly from God; manna from heaven.

*Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians 20

Tertullian, in Apology 39, also mentions the deacons bringing bread and wine to those who had missed the meal. He calls the meal a feast or banquet, though he says it is carried out with gravity, dignity, and self-control. He says it is more similar to a school of virtue than to a Roman banquet.

That said, it was nonetheless a banquet where the saints ate their fill. They prayed for each other there, shared psalms and exhortations, took vows to obey the Lord, and they were led by a “presiding one,” Tertullian using the same word as Justin, just 50 years later.

Again, I would like to suggest that the reason bread and wine were brought to the infirm that could not attend is because they needed a meal, not to fulfill a religious requirement.

Conclusion

I am not arguing here that the Lord’s Supper is not a religious ritual. Clearly, even to Paul in the Corinthian letter, it is. We eat the supper together, discerning that we are the Lord’s body and taking care of each other because we are body parts belonging to the same body.

Nonetheless, it is a meal, where the fellowship of the Lord is carried out. It is a fellowship of the Lord’s body and the Lord’s blood. The Lord’s body, my friends, is here on earth. As far as King Jesus is concerned, despite the fact that he rose bodily to heaven, the body he lives in is us, and we are each body parts of his body, meant to do his will. His body was broken so that we could be one body, controlled by one head in the heavens.

Everything said in the first couple centuries of the church indicates that the Lord’s Supper was a supper, even its name.

Because we’ve missed this, we end up looking to heaven during our little ritual, rather than looking around at the foundation of the kingdom of God around us in a glorious time of fellowship, exhortation, learning, and renewal together in Jesus.

We may be enjoying American Thanksgiving today and every year, but we keep missing the heavenly Thanksgiving supper every week.

Posted in Early Christianity, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Lymphoma Update

Posted on 11/26/2014 by Paul Pavao

I am going to copy this post to my Yippee! I Have Leukemia! blog. It is no longer up to date because I don’t have leukemia anymore. I’m cured. The immunosuppression that I endure to keep my transplanted immune system under control, however, has probably led to a new blood cancer: lymphoma.

We don’t know much about it yet except that it’s definitely aggressive.

Here’s the whirlwind story.

About 3 weeks ago, I went to the emergency with a blocked bowel. Lots of stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting. If that happens to you, don’t wait. Go early. It took me about 16 hours to get from “Hmm, stomach-ache” to needing help to get to the car in my driveway.

The problem turned out to be a lymphoma tumor right at the connection of my large and small intestines (called the “secum,” I think). They found that at St. Francis hospital in Memphis by doing a colonoscopy and taking a biopsy.

Due to my history, leukemia and a bone-marrow transplant, the local hematologist-oncologist (blood cancer doctor) in Memphis consulted my hem-oncs at Vanderbilt. They agreed Vanderbilt would decide on the treatment, and my Memphis hem-onc would administer it.

Oops, the lymphoma turned out to be more advanced than suspected. It’s riddled my liver, and it may be in my tonsils, too. I don’t seem to have any swollen lymph glands, however. Treatment was now going to be 5-6 days of chemo in Nashville, followed by two weeks rest in Memphis, repeated 6 times.

I was supposed to get a day off yesterday (Tuesday), then several tests on Wednesday in preparation for chemotherapy starting on Monday, Dec. 1. Yay! I couldn’t eat Thanksgiving dinner due to the tumor in my intestine, but I could see family and celebrate.

Nope. I woke up Tuesday with lots of adbominal pain. It was an internal pain, which just isn’t like external pains. It’s not sharp or dull, just breathtaking. For the guys out there, imagine your testicles in a clamp with light pressure. It was that kind of pain on the right side of my abdomen, not terrible, but the thought of it getting worse was frightening.

Thanks be to God who surely moved me through the Holy Spirit to boldly walk into the cancer center without an appointment and beg to see Nurse Practitionar Megan. They let me see her!

A couple hours later, and I was in a hospital room. Apparently they thought it was urgent because I skipped past a couple people coming to the same floor I’m on. They’d been there for hours. I was in “Admitting” for five minutes, including the wait for transport.

Nice, but it does make one wonder what the rush is!

They want information as fast as possible, so they put me right on a regimen to clean me out for another colonoscopy and more biopsies on the mass. The colonoscopy happened about four hours ago.

In a frightening development, they took bone marrow this morning just an hour ofter drinking “GoLytely,” a laxative that makes one “go heavily.” The nurse told me she always chuckles at the name and tells patients not to be fooled by it.

Nonetheless I made it through the biopsy, taken from the top of the hip with my pants halfway pulled down, without spraying the nurse doing the biopsy. She’s already done several biopsies for me in the past, so an accident would have embarrassed me for the rest of my life.

So they’ll spend Thanksgiving deciding on the exact type and extent of my lymphoma, and the chemo starts on Friday.

Well, actually, the chemo started today. My wife is telling me that the doctor said the 100mg of Prednisone they gave me today would start shrinking that tumor. I think I get that dose for a week. That’s 14 times the dose I have been taking on a daily basis to prevent GVH (Graft-vs-Host) from the marrow transplant.

The doctor made a joke about it, saying, “I have good news. I’m giving you so much Prednisone that any GVH you’ve been having is going away. The bad news is that I’m giving you that much Prednisone.”

100mg of Prednisone qualifies as chemotherapy, not as a prescription drug. They’ll add one of two possible chemotherapy regimens to the Prednisone in Friday once the marrow biopsy and tumor biopsy have gone through the pathology lab.

“OUR” Reaction

I have readers that are Protestant, ex-Protestant, Catholic, ex-Catholic, and Orthodox. I have loners and standard church people reading this blog.

Nonetheless, I plead for one reaction among this “family” of readers.

Those who have given themselves to Jesus, bowing their knee to him as King, are his chosen. God takes over their lives, monitoring everything that comes their way, and moving them by the Holy Spirit to respond as they should. He leads, he guides, he disciplines, he protects.

He works all things together for good for people like us. We do not reject his word, we love and long for it. When trials come, even if they are leukemia and lymphoma, we consider it joy. We do a little dance, and we rejoice that we are being molded by God into someone patient. Patience works in a person, producing character and resulting in a maturing work that produces a completed saint, lacking nothing (Rom. 5:2-4; Jam. 1:2-4).

So I’m asking you, my readers, to pray for me to honor God by my obedience to his promises and by joy, which proves my belief in his words to us. You can pray for healing if you want. A miraculous healing would glorify God as well.

However, I’m not among those convinced that God always wants physical healing. Sometimes the healing of our characters and self-will is more important than the healing of our bodies. Pain and suffering are routes to eternal joy, opportunities to clear our souls of self so that the glory of God can be revealed through us.

Please, my dear readers and those who know me in person, join me in rejecting the cares of this world, casting those on Jesus, who cares for us, and praying for one another that our lives would glorify God in the midst of everything. Let’s be the overcomers, testifying to the world and to the devil himself that “though he slay us, yet will we praise him with joyful shouts and singing.”

One Last Note: Earth-Shaking Power

I was a charismatic once upon a time. We loved the idea of praising God and praying and having God shake the building we were in like he did with the primitive saints in Acts (4:31).

The problem was that as charismatics we were missing a key ingredient: suffering. We didn’t want suffering. We believed God didn’t want us to suffer.

In other words, we ignored a rather large percentage of the New Testament.

There is one key ingredient to earth-shaking praise and prayer. There needs to be people with stripes on their back, bleeding. That’s what happened in Acts 4, and that is what happened in Acts 16, when the praises of Paul and Silas, bleeding from a beating, were offered to God with singing.

Apparently the combination of suffering with unabashed, unhindered praise and prayer can cause earthquakes.

Let’s be those that are on that path.

Thank you, King Jesus, for letting us share in your sufferings and know you. Thank you for empowering us through prayer. Thank you for letting us reach further and deeper into you on the path of pain.

I count all things loss for the excellency of knowing King Jesus my Lord and being found in him not having my own righteousness … that I may know him, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. (Php. 3:8-11)

Posted in Holiness, Leukemia, Testimonies | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Comments

I Reckon Sometimes It’s Better to Reckon than Believe

Posted on 11/22/2014 by Paul Pavao

In these har parts, we don’t always think. We reckon.

“Reckon ‘Bama’ll beat the Gators Saturday?”

“I reckon so.”

This is all best said chewin’ on a piece of straw, hat tilted back and feet up on a wooden chair on a wooden porch.

There’s another place that reckoning is important, and it’s in what you believe about yourself and about God.

We are told to “reckon” ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in King Jesus (Rom. 6:11). The Greek word there is logizomai, and it is used 40 times in the apostles writings.

The word is complicated, and we don’t have time to go into all its details in a blog post. I wouldn’t be qualified to be the one teaching those details, anyway. I do know one thing from experience, though …

Sometimes reckoning is easier than believing.

Take Romans 6:11, for instance. What if I were to tell you that you must believe that you are dead to sin?

Chances are, you would do what almost everyone I have asked has said they have done. You would do what I did after numerous teachers told me, back in the 80’s, to believe that I was dead to sin and alive to God in King Jesus.

You will ask, “If that’s so, then how come I still sin? How come I can’t overcome this or that? Why do I have such a bad temper? Why do I still cry ‘thou fool’ or worse to those that cut me off in traffic? Why do I, why do I, why do I?”

The worst thing I ever read back then was one man who wrote, “One day I decided to just believe that I really was dead to sin, and suddenly, boom, I was!”

I could have screamed. Yes! I want that! I believe, I believe, I believe, I believed. Nothing’s happening. No boom for me. I don’t believe. Help! How do I believe?

It was only recently (thanks Matthew), that something really clicked.

I stuck a straw in my mouth, sat back in my chair, and I asked myself, “You dead to sin?”

I answered myself, too. “I reckon.”

I wasn’t waiting around to feel something. I wasn’t looking for a “boom.” I wasn’t waiting to become dead to sin. I just wrote it down as true. I reckoned. I wrote it in my spiritual accounting book.

Somehow, when we try to believe we fool ourselves into thinking that our belief somehow makes something true or not true.

If you are in the King, if you have given up your life for the kingdom of God, then God says you’re dead to sin and alive to God in King Jesus. In fact, the apostle Paul was stunned at the idea that a Christian wouldn’t know that. “Whaaat? You didn’t know that all of us who were baptized into Jesus were baptized into his death? Yeah, that’s right. All of you were buried with him in baptism and into death. Therefore, just like the King was raised from the dead, so you should be living resurrected, too” (Rom. 6:3-4, my paraphrase).

It’s just so that I am dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus. I’m not waiting around to believe it’s so. It’s so whether I believe it or not. I wrote it down. God told me to. Well, the apostle Paul told me, you, and all the rest of us to write it down, and he also told us to write it down that he and his companions are servants of the King and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1, which also uses logizomai).

So, on the authority of the steward of God’s mysteries, Paul the ambassador of the King, I’m dead to sin, and I have been ever since I was buried in baptism.

Now that I’ve thrown the requirement to believe that in order to make it happen, rather than it being true because God said it was true, no matter what I believe about it, belief has set all the way in.

By reckoning, the whole matter got taken out of my hands and my pitiful faith and put into God’s hands and into the hands of King Jesus, his Son, who is the Beginner and the Finisher of my faith.

I am finding that when I just write it down, acknowledging that if Jesus says it’s so, then it’s so whether I believe it or not, my faith has skyrocketed.

Faith in our faith is a pitiful resource. Our faith won’t do anything for us. Faith in Jesus is a limitless resource. He can do everything for us.

So if you’ve had trouble believing, like I have in the past, maybe you should start reckoning. Take the responsibilty off yourself to make it true, and let Jesus make it true (which he already did, no matter what you believe about it).

Does this really work? I reckon you ought to try it for yourself.

I don’t mind recommending that, since it’s the command of the King.

Let me add a plug for the book that got me to really do something that I’ve known to do since 1982: Forgotten Gospel. He has a great illustration of this idea that I am not going to share with you because the book’s not out yet.

My little publishing company, Greatest Stories Ever Told, is publishing it for Matthew Bryan, which we are doing because we love the message. We don’t just publish books for money (and we don’t make any money anyway). We publish books to stir up the saints to love and good works.

Unfortunately, I tripped up our schedule both by overscheduling us and by getting cancer again—bad combination. We have actually ordered proof copies, though, so we’re making progress.

Posted in Holiness, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Cancer and Faith

Posted on 11/19/2014 by Paul Pavao

So I have cancer one more time.

Based on what my doctor said, it’s an easier one this time. I doubt lymphoma is always less dangerous than leukemia, but in my case, it is. This is Little League compared to the Big League version of leukemia I had.

I get to face chemo at home, here in Memphis with my brothers and sisters, though the final authorities on my treatment will be the stem cell transplant team at Vanderbilt in Nashville.

How Should I React?

Hearts are tricky. We have to guard our heart because out of it come the wellsprings of life, but we cannot trust it. Without the daily exhortation of the saints, the craftiness of sin will disguise bad as good and make our hearts unmalleable.

For me, cancer has been the great revealer. Leukemia answered questions about my heart that nothing else could have. Do I believe what I teach, that it is far better to depart and be with the King, or will I shrink in terror when death comes near? As it turns out, physical death came and breathed in my face, and I smiled at him. He found nothing in me, and he went his way.

I told people that if they were faithful in the little things, that if they bit their lip when they wanted to insult, that if they gave way when they wanted to step forward, that if they eschewed glory rather than pursuing it, that all the little acts of faithfulness would give them strength for the big acts of faithfulness.

I repeated Amy Carmichael’s words: “In acceptance lieth peace.” I repeated Watchman Nee’s teaching that the circumstances that come to us are God’s chisel, molding us to fit precisely into his eternal temple.

But I had no way of knowing whether I believed those words until I was writhing in pain on a hospital bed, in honest gratefulness that I might be delivered from my soft American ways and be a soldier in God’s kingdom.

So here comes the chisel again, shaping the hardness of my heart to the power of his will, making me fit into the stones that surround me in the wall of the temple of God.

Such chiseling, shaping, and smoothing does not come by prayer or discipline. It comes by troubles and suffering.

Mia Hamm, the great women’s soccer player, once said that the image of a champion is not holding a trophy aloft, but bent over, gasping for breath, and drenched in sweat long after everyone else has gone home.

The picture of the faithful saint does not consist of the sweat of labor, but of songs through tears and cries of praise in the midst of groaning. It is joy in suffering, and as Paul and Silas proved, that joy and those songs shake the earth and set the captives free.

We don’t have to make the best of the suffering that comes our way. It already is the best. We just need to embrace it.

“May all who come behind us find us faithful.”—Steve Green.

If the following video doesn’t load for you, listen on YouTube.

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James 1:5-7: Faith and Doubt

Posted on 11/14/2014 by Paul Pavao

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.

—James 1:5-7, Orthodox Study Bible

I am using the OSB because I have to give them credit for the idea behind this blog. It is in their study notes on this passage. Godincidentally, we were just talking about this passage at our last gathering.

Here’s my question, if you ask something from God, trying to have faith, but you know there’s doubt in your heart, do you expect to receive nothing from God? Has it been your experience that God never answers your prayer if you doubt even a teeny bit?

It has not been my experience. Nor had it been the experience of anyone at our gathering.

In fact, that is not even everyone’s experience in the Bible. Jesus’ healed a man’s son, after the best the man could tell him was, “I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief” (Mk. 9:24).

So what is James talking about? We are not free to just disbelieve him.

Simply enough (though I couldn’t figure it out) James was talking about our faith in “the faith.” If we are doubters—partly in the world, partly in the kingdom of God—God is not going to answer our prayers. He calls us to come all the way in.

This is believing without doubting. It is jumping in with both feet. No, rather, it is jumping in with your whole body, being buried in baptism, leaving your whole life behind, and rising to a new life not only in the kingdom of God but in the King himself.

Despite the incredible promises of God, many throughout history and today have doubted and wavered. The entire 13-chapter letter of Hebrews was written to those among Jewish Christians who were doubting and wavering, considering abandoning the new covenant God made with them for the old one which was “decaying, growing old, and ready to vanish” (8:13).

James is addressing the same crowd when he speaks of those who are doubting and double-minded (lit. two-souled; v. 8). They are unstable in all their ways because with two souls/minds, they are able to live both “of” the world and “of” the kingdom of God.

James is not asking us to have unwavering faith that God is going to answer our prayer with yes. That sort of faith is only a gift of God. If you doubt that, try working it up yourself.

The reason God answers your doubting prayers is because in many cases it is good to doubt. How do you know God’s will? Why should God answer your every request with yes? Would that even be good for you? In one sense, he would be turning his divinity over to you. Do not confuse faith with the presumption that you are as wise as God!

The reason God answers your doubting prayers is because you’re not really doubting. You are the child, and you have absolute, unshakable faith in Abba, our Father. You have unshakable faith that he is the giver of good gifts, not bad ones.

If you are such a child, and you need wisdom, ask of God! Such a request is always granted, because Wisdom is always good, though you may not recognize it as Wisdom.

Corrie Ten Boom, who trusted and adored our God in a flea-and-fly-ridden women’s concentration camp during WWII, tells a story of her childhood.

She was getting on a train with her father, and she asked him a question that little girls ought not to know the answer to. Her father answered, “Go get my suitcase, and bring it to me, please.”

She replied, “Daddy, you know I cannot carry it.”

“Nor can you carry the answer to this question, my child,” he explained. “You must wait until you are older.”

This was a father granting wisdom to his child. So our loving Father will always grant us wisdom as well, even though he will not grant us the answer to all our questions.

Posted in prayer, Through the Bible | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Obedience and Salvation: A Question for Evangelicals

Posted on 11/06/2014 by Paul Pavao

“Though he was a Son, yet he learned obedience through the things which he suffered. And being made perfect, [Jesus] became the author of eternal salvation to those who obey him” (Heb. 5:8-9).

“We [apostles] are his witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those that obey him” (Acts 5:32).

This question is for evangelicals. How do you interpret these verses?

I would like to suggest that Jesus’ interpretation of these verses would be something like this: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna when he was martyred around AD 160. He was at least 86 years old at the time according to his own testimony, and he was bishop of Smyrna at least as far back as AD 116, when Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, sent him a letter. Ignatius’ letter may date back to AD 107 (the emperor was near Antioch in those two years, which dates Ignatius’ letter).

That great saint was purported to have been appointed by the apostle John and known other apostles. I submit that he would have interpreted the verses above in this way: “He who raised [Jesus] up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do his will, walk in his commandments, love what he loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness, etc.” (Letter to the Philippians 2).

It is important to point out that in the first chapter of his letter to Philippi, Polycarp wrote, “… by grace are you saved, not of works, but by the will of God through King Jesus.” So Polycarp didn’t think his description of the obedience that would obtain the resurrection conflicted with a salvation by grace apart from works.

I am curious how an evangelical would interpret the two verses I began with. Note, I am not asking for other verses you think will prove the two above wrong. Evangelicals don’t usually notice how many verses they think are wrong. I am asking for an interpretation of those two verses, not a reason to ignore them.

Posted in Bible, Evangelicals, Protestants | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments

The Promise by Megan Cupit

Posted on 11/05/2014 by

Last year I ran across a blog by a young lady that I was very impressed by. The blog said she was 15, but her maturity level and commitment to … no, contentment with … our King seemed far older than 15.

She doesn’t blog much, but I get notices when she does, and in the few months before Christmas last year, she produced a four part series about the Nativity told through Mary’s eyes … and heart, hopes and fears. I loved it.

When she wrote another story in the spring, she asked for comments from readers. They all had the same comment: “I cried.”

The two stories are called The Promise and Hope, and I bought publishing rights to them from her. The book has just been released. I can’t say enough about how much I like these stories, especially The Promise. I had never deeply considered what Mary must have went through claiming to be pregnant by the decree of God.

Megan let me feel what it must have been like. By the time Mary travels to Elizabeth and is greeted as “the mother of my Lord,” I was so in the midst of the story that I cried in joy with Mary.

This is a great read, and it is inexpensive enough to make a great Christmas gift for those people you don’t know what to give. It’s on Kindle and in paperback.

Those of you who read our posts on the Christian History for Everyman Facebook Page will have already seen this. Sorry about the duplicate notice, but much of the audience of that page and this blog do not overlap.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged , , | 3 Comments