Two a.m.

I don’t have a two a.m. Someone that I can call and, no matter what, I can count on them.

I’ve been reading this book and it’s been nothing special. Not too profound or applicable to me until I read the line about two a.m. My heart jolted in my chest and my stomach dropped out and I knew that the next lines were going to be important: “Even if they’re asleep or it’s cold or you need be bailed out of jail… they’ll come for you. It’s, like, the highest level of friendship.”

I burst into tears before I’d even finished the paragraph because that’s the real tragedy of living here. I don’t have a two a.m. I don’t have someone who I know will be here for me, no matter what. It’s too far to drive or people are too caught up in themselves-busy with school, or I don’t mean enough to the people that should care. There are a million excuses right, but the truth is, if someone really meant that much to you, you’d be there. No matter what. Damn the consequences and the time and the drive, you’d be there.

There are people that I’d be there for. That I have been there for. But when it’s come down to it. When it’s time to face the truth that sometimes I need other people too- I’m alone.

And that’s what breaks me.

“He descended into Hell.”

This is a copy of the article by John Piper, which you can find here. I’ve always had trouble with the line in the Apostle’s Creed stating that Jesus descended into Hell after his death on the cross to proclaim His victory. In definition, Hell is a place that is entirely void of God, therefore God isn’t there and wouldn’t go there. Also, why would Christ need to proclaim His victory or preach the gospel to the people there, as some believe? Those in Hell cannot be removed from it, or saved after their death, and they already know that Jesus is Lord so what purpose can retelling them do? 

Here is John Piper’s perspective, a preacher whom I have always respected and trusted His theology and interpretation far more than my own: 

 

 

The Apostles’ Creed says, “[He] was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead.” There are many meanings given to this phrase. I simply want to ponder the traditional interpretation that Christ went to the place of the dead to preach the gospel to Old Testament saints that he might set them free for the full experience of heaven. This is the view of the Catholic Catechism and many Protestants as well. I don’t think this is what the New Testament teaches.

The view is based mainly on two passages in 1 Peter.

Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, (19) in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, (20) because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. (1 Peter 3:18-20)

They are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; (5) but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. (6) For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.” (1 Peter 4:4-6)

With regard to 1 Peter 3:19, I take these words to mean that Christ, through the voice of Noah, went and preached to that generation, whose spirits are now “in prison,” that is, in hell. In other words, Peter does not say that Christ preached to them while they were in prison. He says he preached to them once, during the days of Noah, and now they are in prison.

I think this is suggested as the more natural understanding of the passage in view of what Peter said earlier about the spirit of Christ speaking through the prophets of old.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time theSpirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. (1 Peter 1:10-11)

With regard to 1 Peter 4:6, I take “preached to the dead” to refer to those who, after being preached to, have since died. He is not referring to preaching to them after they have died. The context suggests this kind of understanding, as J. N. D. Kelly explains:

They [the Christians] may well have been exposed to scoffing questions from pagan neighbors, and anxious ones from one another, “What is the gain of your having become Christians, since you apparently die like other men?” The writer’s answer is that, so far from being useless, the preaching of Christ and his gospel to those who have since died had precisely this end in view, that although according to human calculation they might seem to be condemned, they might in fact enjoy life eternal.” (A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, 175)

I would say, therefore, that there is no textual basis in the New Testament for claiming that between Good Friday and Easter Christ was preaching to souls imprisoned in hell or Hades. There is textual basis for saying that he would be with the repentant thief in Paradise “today” (Luke 23:43), and one does not get the impression that he means a defective place from which the thief must then be delivered by more preaching.

For these and other reasons, it seems best to me to omit from the Apostles Creed the clause, “he descended into hell,” rather than giving it other meanings that are more defensible, the way Calvin does.

This is so true.

Roadmaps

This gives me so much hope that I’m not broken or the only one for whom it just always seems to   l i n g e r …

Don’t you remember

I gave you the space so you could breathe,
I kept my distance so you would be free.
I hope that you find the missing piece,
oh I hope it’s nice where you are.

What’s best for you

“It’s only because I love you that I’m able to say goodbye. I hope you know how much I love you but I know it isn’t fair to keep you from living your own life just because I want you there. When you really love someone you want what’s best even when it isn’t you so I’ll go on and say goodbye because it’s the right thing to do.”

Uncompromising Truth

2 Timothy 4:1-5

“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fufill your ministry.”

This verse really hit me today as I read about professing Christians who in the church follow their own desires and flock to preachers who offer them God’s blessings apart from His forgiveness, and His salvation apart from their repentance. People who want to be entertained by teachings that will produce pleasantness and leave them with encouragement and good feelings about themselves, without teaching sound doctrine or the centrality of the cross and Jesus Christ in every day life. Under these conditions, the people are choosing what is preached at the pulpit based on what they want to hear, instead of by God dictating what is preached based on His Word.

Often times I have sat in churches and listened to these short, frivolous feel good sermons, if you can call them sermons, that don’t keep God the focus of our life or maintain the centrality of the gospel. Instead, they soften the truth, bending what the Bible says to their own wishes, to make it more appealing to the world, to make it easier for them to swallow. But instead of healing and unity, the glory and truth of God is diminished.

God is truth. Passion for truth is a passion for God. We must be well aquatinted with the doctrine and theology and truths of the gospel, the truths we stand on, and go deeper with them each day. Argue them in your own heart and back it up with scripture so that you may defend it when a question or comment or situation comes your way so that you don’t start to compromise the truth and your foundation is stripped out from underneath of you.

Preserve the integrity of the gospel against false ideas and teachers. We must be a people of the truth. God is the truth that defines all reality and the cross, the cross is the pinnacle of history. Don’t compromise God’s truth, but back up sound theology with the sharp sword of truth in the scriptures.