spiphywarfare

Category: Faith

  • and We Wonder Why We Lose Them

    I have 2 teens.

    I was telling them about this https://bereanresearch.org/lifeways-blasphemous-new-gen-z-bible-devo/

    After I said the phrase Gen Z Bible Devo, they looked puzzled and asked what is devo? I told them it is short for devotional.

    Then I read this line:

    Since Day Uno there was Cap G. Big J was chillin with Cap G. And Big J was Cap G

    They were completely confused. I said that is John 1:1 according to some people over at LifeWay.

    My teens had no idea what any of that nonsense was. They may not be the target audience, but they are the target age group.

  • Where is Our Delight?

    Man, this is so true. For my believing family, who hasn’t experienced ups and downs in closeness to the LORD and who hasn’t experienced the unmatched joy of life when every aspect of your life is dedicated to his service.

    Psalms 37:4

    Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (ESV)

  • Hate Wearing a Mask? Me Too. But…

    2020 has certainly turned out to be a bizarre year. Pandemic. Cities moving to eliminate law enforcement. Statutes. Mandatory mask orders. Division. I find some of these things bothersome.

    What I’ve noticed that bothers me more than most anything else is a distinct lack of Christlikeness among some professed Christians.[ref]Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, Phillipians 2:5[/ref] I’ve noticed this among friends, among acquaintances, and among well-known figures I follow, but have never met. What is Christlikeness? Basically, being like Jesus.[ref]https://www.yourdictionary.com/Christlike[/ref] I am seeing less of that, especially considering the issue of masks. What have I been seeing?

    Things like this- Folks with tons of followers on Twitter who claim Christ also referring to every person who wears a mask in public as fearful, complaint, sheep, even slaves who can’t think for themselves. My, what a joy it must be to be like God[ref]1 Samuel 16:7 & Psalms 44:21[/ref] and know every man’s heart! I had a very long post I was working on about this topic including lots of examples. I tend to do that when I feel passionate about something, and how people represent Jesus is something I get very passionate about.

    This morning, this video popped up in my YouTube feed. So, I think I will let Todd talk about it while I work on some memes. Enjoy!

  • Deadly Familiarity

    Deadly Familiarity

    Several days a week find me commuting a little over 70 miles. Once in a while a take an alternate route that takes me through open range land. You know you’re in open range land when you’re driving down a road, usually a Farm-to-Market road, and you suddenly cross cattle guards and the fences disappear. This type of driving demands your attention so toss the phone in the seat beside you. Why? Because livestock has just as much right to the roadway as you do and a 1,200 lb. piece of beef will destroy you and your vehicle.

    So I noticed a few months ago when the little beefs were just learning to walk/run that when I approached they appeared to briefly think for a nanosecond or two and would then bolt off in whichever direction they happened to be facing at the time. Of course, sometimes that direction would send them bolting in front of the 3-ton truck I was expected to keep under control.

    Obviously, one of the safest things for me to do was to slow down when I approached them. A few months ago the sight of one of our bovine friends would bring me to a crawl of about 30 mph. Not so much today. Today, I continued past them at a nice 50-60 mph, depending on their proximity to the roadway.

    One of the things that occurred to me today was how their mommas would never panic. Momma cows always looked at the approaching vehicle and then went back to munching on grass. Why did that occur to me? Because, today, most of the calves (when do they stop being calves?) did the same thing. They’ve gone from panicked rushing in whatever direction, to dashing away from the road, to taking a few steps away from the road. I expect that soon enough they will, like their mothers, look up and not react at all.

    This occurs even though the 6,000+ tons of steel still pose a mortal threat to my little bovine friends, despite being familiar.

    When I was thinking about that, I couldn’t help but wonder, how often do we as individual believers or the church do that? How many issues have we accepted culture’s changing norms as okay? How often do we not fear what we should due to our familiarity with the threat it poses?

    Culturally, where are we? Do we accept things that could kill us spiritually simply due to their familiarity?

  • The Gospel Comedy

    The Gospel Comedy

    How does the title of this post make you feel? Even knowing what I was going to write later in this post, it was uncomfortable to type those words out. It was inspired by a podcast in which I heard the phrase “The whole Gospel is really comedic…”

    I was taken aback.

    Are you uncomfortable? Insulted? Curious? Think about that for a second before continuing please.

    (more…)

  • Wait. What? Things I Didn’t Know About the Bible

    I was raised in church. I’ve often joked with folks that in the church of my youth, the pastor had to push his way through the our family to get the doors unlocked. That experience formed me and gave me some connections that have lasted my lifetime.

    We changed our church affiliation when I was 13.  The involvement didn’t change at all. I did the Monday evening visitation where we’d go and knock on neighborhood doors to talk to folks about Christ. I sat in Sunday School. I sat in Sunday Morning Services. I sat in Wednesday evening services. I was taught all the standard things that I assume almost every other Western Evangelical was taught.

    I don’t remember anything being taught to me about the sons of God taking daughters of men as wives. I was not taught that chapter 6 in Genesis records an episode where a divinely established order was violated and resulted in the birth of part-spirit being, part-human giants (nephilim).  I wasn’t taught anything about the divine/spiritual realm other than about Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Satan. I was certainly never taught anything that included “other gods” in any meaningful way.


    For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

    Psalm 95:3

    But without other gods, if they are nothing and non-existent, what is this verse saying? Is it saying the LORD is a great King above made up beings? Above nothing? Further, what do we do when the god Dagon[ref]1 Samuel 5:7[/ref] is referred to in the same manner, with the same word,  as the LORD[ref]Exodus 3:18[/ref]?

    Along with this what was left out, there were things I was warned away from. To me, apocrypha might as well have meant anathema. I came to the conclusion that these books were deceptive and had no value. They weren’t scripture, and were therefore useless. They were to be avoided and I obeyed. I remained willfully and intentionally ignorant of their content.

    Maybe we should treat them like bible commentaries or Christian books written today. That was my moment. Wait. What?

    That’s what started my latest journey in understanding. I’d noticed that some quotes in the New Testament didn’t have the little letter and the note referencing the scripture that was being quoted. Many did. I use my references and always try to check them. Once in a while, you find new testament writers quoting a work that existed outside of scripture. Jude:14-15 for example.

    I was a bit stunned to find that some were quotes from the Book of Enoch. You know, one of those books to avoid. I ended up stumbling across this guy, Dr, Michael Heiser[ref]https://drmsh.com/[/ref] and some of his teachings. The understanding his teachings give has helped the Bible make much more sense to me. I’d challenge you to listen to some of what he teaches.

    This is longer than I intended so I’ll end it now with a summary of what he says to relieve any ideas he may be heretical:

    • The Book of Enoch is not, and should not, ever be part of the Canon;
    • God, our LORD, is a unique being and there is no other being like him;
    • God is the creator of everything, including other divine beings;
    • Jesus Christ is/was/will be God and is the sole pathway to salvation.

  • “They” are Us

    Paul wrote in the book of Romans about men who rejected God. God gave them over to their desires. We get a view of what such men look like. I read his description and compare them against daily headlines and can’t help but think God has given this country over to our desires.


    They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

    Romans 1:29-31

  • Tozer on Watered-down Religion

    I’ve really taken a liking to A. W. Tozer over the past two years. He would likely be stunned even more in some of today’s “church” services.

  • That’s What I’ve Been Saying

    That’s What I’ve Been Saying

    Over the years I’ve mediated disputes (not legal mediation) between people. On several occasions I found it interesting that they both had the same position but the same vocabulary. The words they were they were using to express themselves were not registering with each other. On those occasions I found the words and would ask, “So-and-so, are you saying this?” When they responded “yes” the other would say, “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

    The point here is that sometimes we need to find another way of saying what we are saying to get the point across. Sometimes, it takes someone else to do it for us. When I read this post, I thought, this is exactly what I’ve been saying. What I’ve been saying in particular is how we (the church) gloss over the difficult parts of scripture rather than contemplating them and working them out.

    We simply cannot let the passage say what it says and do what it is meant to do.

    Jim ELliff, Reading Scripture Rightly

    Elliff makes the point that we sometimes are too quick to look at certain passages and immediately try to counter it with another passage that seems to state the opposite.

    I think we could liken this to the skill needed when counseling people about work performance. Often people want to turn the conversation from their performance issue with statements like, “Yeah but he/she did it too,” “we’ve always…” or “I was trying to…” As humans, we will do about anything to get out of the discomfort of having to confront  our own shortcomings.

    One of the saddest things as a supervisor was always to counsel someone and have them walk out having not owned up to the issue they were having. You could watch them walking away from their career because they weren’t willing to face their own difficult issues. Do we do the same thing with our faith? Do we refuse to correctly understand scripture because doing so challenges our beliefs and makes us confront our own shortcomings? If so, do we walk away from what God truly wants of us?

  • God Always Knows