The Critical Moment

"...I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me; I girded thee, though though hast not known me..." Isaiah 45:4b, 5

Ignorance of the presence of God is not synonymous with His absence. We know that this is true of believers, but apparently it is the same with non-believers as well. The beauty of the will of God is that even those who do not know it are not necessarily outside of it. To be outside of it requires willful rejection after comprehension of it. Cyrus apparently neither knew of it nor had rejected it; he was apart of it all along.
God does indeed lead people through their ignorance to the realization of Himself, and that is the critical moment. Read John 3:19. Men are not condemned for merely rejecting the light, but for rejecting it after they have seen it, i.e., realized it. It perhaps goes without saying that meetings with God are critical moments, yet we treat them so lightly in spirit, and that to our hazard. On this side of the objective reality of redemption, the critical moment for the non-believer will be in regards to salvation; for believers, it will be in regards to deeper communion with Him. We reject either to our peril.

"To know You and be known.
Yet before I knew You,
You knew me..."
-Jon Vowell

The Ultimate Happening

"...that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, who calls thee by thy name, am the God of Israel." Isaiah 45:3b

God's workings in our lives are always in order to bring us into an understanding of Himself. Many today are under the foolish notion that God is working to get things done. That is utter nonsense. Things do not need to be done, they are done: God's will is an unstoppable rolling tide whose breakers will crash upon the shore with or without us (God prefers that it would be with us). From where God sits, all things are finished, as good as done; the thought that we can help or hinder His will is utter prideful foolishness.
God never calls us to works or ministries, He always calls us to Himself; whether or not we are led through works or ministries of whatever kind is none of our business. The ultimate happening is God, not our circumstances or situations. God engineers our happenstance in order to bring us to Him, not to fill some quota. The finished product of all of our lives is intimate communion with God.
"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee," (John 17:3) not "work for thee" but "know thee." God is neither haphazard nor utilitarian; He is strictly a lover, and all things are ordered towards our good (Romans 8:28), and that good is oneness with Him.

"Draw me close to You;
May I never let you go.
Help me see how all things
Are to lead me to You..."
-Jon Vowell

Reason and Faith II: Beyond Logic and Common Sense

"Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer...[who] frusrateth the signs of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backwards, and maketh their knowledge foolish; that confirmeth the word of His servant, and performeth the counsel of His messengers..." Isaiah 44:24-26

The oddity of Christians is that while most men are content to stop with mere logic and common sense, Christians find a restless need to transcend mere logic and common sense to their source, i.e., God. In effect, Christians are trying to be more logical and more common sensical than mere logic and common sense allow. By accounting for God in the events of life, Christians add a new premise to reality that does not negate logic or common sense; actually, it changes the argument entirely: "Yes, yes, I know logic and common sense and the past all say this, but God said this, and He is the Lord of logic, common sense, and the past." Faith takes the child of God to God Himself; thus, they can know in a way that merely logical or common sensical men can never know.
That God frustrates the wisdom of men does not mean that He is against wisdom itself, for He is wisdom itself. What God is against is human wisdom, wisdom that does not account for God. Our reason is a wondrous faculty, but unless it is augmented with faith, it can never know as God knows, and thus mere reason (divorced from faith) becomes a handicapped way of thinking.

"Reason and Faith
Were meant to Dance
And take us to Your Heart..."
-Jon Vowell

An Even Further Thought

"He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, so that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, 'Is there not a lie in my right hand?'"

Idolatry is a deception, and he who is deceived thereby is not wise, no matter what stellar arguments they think they have. Whereas the life of faith is not one that is void of understanding, the life of unbelief is a life void of understanding. This is the truest application of Romans 1:22: Believing that is it wiser to move on without God, without faith, they fall into every deception and side eddy and false hope under the sun. They say that the life of faith is the naive life; the inverse is the truth: the life of unbelief is the naive life, for it is a life of constant deception.
Step into the marketplace of ideas, step into the universe next door to you, and hear the sounds of fools trying to pass themselves off as wise. Believing that God is merely a spiritual entity that can be ignored and not as the Source of Truth (and all good things), they cut themselves off from the one thing that they say that they are trying to achieve, i.e., to know. You can never know until you know the One who knows all, the One upon whom Truth, Knowledge, and Wisdom rest upon like trees on a mountain.

"How long will we play the fool?
Why do fools fall in love
With lies, and say
That they have found the truth...?"
-Jon Vowell

A Further Thought

"Shall I fall down to a block of wood?" Isaiah 44:19b

Despite all of the hubris that we give to revelations and faith, it is still amazing how common sensical Christianity is in the end. I say, "in the end," because in the moment, Christianity is astounding, and the claims of Christ ludicrous. It is true that are ability to understand ultimately rest on obedience through belief ("By faith we understand..." Hebrews 11:3), but that understanding is real understanding. Beyond the borders of faith is that which makes perfect sense. When we cross the final threshold, and faith becomes sight, we will finally understand the true meaning of the word "duh".
"None considereth in his heart...'Shall I fall down to a block of wood?'" There is none who can see the obviousness of it all, because their foolish hearts have been darkened. If God is the Good of the universe (and is therefore the Good for we who are in the universe), then common sense says that anything other than God (whether it be noble, beautiful, or logical) can only be to our detriment if we focus on it: "He feedeth on ashes. A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul..." (vs. 20). The life of faith will take you to the shores of true understanding, for faith is how you can know the One who knows all.

"Help my darkened understanding see:
Your Foolishness is Wisdom
Because You see what we cannot;
You are Holy and we are not..."
-Jon Vowell

A Small Thought

"Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image, that is profitable for nothing? [...] They have not known nor understood...and none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, '...Shall I fall down to a block of wood?'" Isaiah 44:10-19

Are not all the people with all of their plans, all of their ideas and thoughts, their institutions and organizations, their examples and evidence, their wisdom and knowledge, their objections and arguments, their gods and idols, their luxuria and self-indulgence, their rallies and protests, their railings and rantings, their leaders and icons, their corporate temples and concrete monoliths, their diversity and individualism, their fears and their hopes, and all things past, present, and future that people use to do away with God: are they not all about as sensible as he who worships a block of wood?

-Jon Vowell

A Witness to Yourself

"Fear ye not, neither be afraid; have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no other God; I know not any. They that make a graven image are all of them vanity...they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor know, that they may be ashamed." Isaiah 44:8, 9

Ultimately, an idol is a reflection of yourself, or your own soul. The material and graven thing that you put as the highest reflects back to you yourself. Whatever your idol represents reflects what your soul is bent towards. When you speak of your idol, you speak of yourself; when you worship your idol, you worship yourself. Idol-worship is self-worship, an abysmal form of pride.
With God, the order is reversed (or rather, set correctly). When God is your highest, He is not a reflection of you; you become a reflection of Him. Idols are made and chosen by the idol-maker; God makes and chooses His children. With idols, we are the initiators; with God, we are the responders. The difference is the element of surrender. With idols, there is no surrender; there is only luxuria and self-indulgence. With God, there is absolute surrender, a complete giving yourself over to another; and in that giving, everything that God is we become.

"May the Beam of Your Brightness
Reflect off of me
And onto others
And unto You..."
-Jon Vowell

The Beauty of God's Soul

"I, even I, and He that blotteth out thy transgressions for my own sake, and will not remember thy sins." Isaiah 43:25

The forgiveness of God is found within His own nature; it is not based upon any merit of ours. God did not send Christ because we deserved it. What we deserved is exactly what we chose in Adam: the not-God, outer darkness, Hell. God sent Christ not because of who we are, but because of who He is. We are fallen, broken, cursed, defiled and diseased. We deserve nothing and can merit nothing except damnation. God is love, holiness, goodness, grace, justice, and mercy. He cannot help but act in a loving, holy, good, gracious, just, and merciful way. Christ is the result of everything God is responding to the reality of Sin, and this response has revealed the beauty of His soul.
Christ is the beauty of God's soul, the revelation of Himself in His entirety. The Incarnation was not only God made flesh, but also a revelation of His nature. God (being who He is) could not and would not simply ignore Sin. His response had to be, and that response was, the Incarnation, a revelation of all that He is. Christ reveals a God that, though men may not believe in Him, at least they will know that there is a God worth believing in.

"Christ the Glory of God,
The Revelation of Deity's Soul.
Though the world is bitter and ugly,
Heaven is Sweetness and Beauty..."
-Jon Vowell

All Things New

"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth. Shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rives in the desert." Isaiah 43: 18, 19
"Behold, I make all things new." Revelation 21:5

"After a falling, not a recovery, but a new creation." C.S. Lewis

What is this paradox of God that He is never-changing and yet never old-hat? Can we truly confine Him to any parameter, aside from the ones that he gives us, i.e., He is holy, just, love, good, wise, etc.? Are even those "parameters" in the sens of limitations, or are they constellations by which we navigate an eternal sea? Are his "bindings" really bindings, or are they the signs of order? Is not chaos the worst kind of tyranny? God is bound to nothing except His own nature, something that will take eternity to fathom (which is why there is a heaven).
We do not exactly know what God "did" before the Creation (other than live in eternal intimate communion as the Trinity), but we can rightly assume that the Creation was a new thing. Redemption is a new thing, too. When Christ returns, and this chapter of eternity closes, what will be the next chapter?The Scriptures are silent except in this: whatever it is, you can bet that it will be a new thing.

"What lies beyond the edge of this story?
What lies beyond the last page of Revelation?
Is it not true that beyond the lands of Eternity
Are but more lands to explore...?"
-Jon Vowell

The Tale That We Tell

"I have declared, and have saved, and I have proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you. Therefore, ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God." Isaiah 43:12
"...ye are witnesses of these things." Luke 24:48

I believe that it is safe to say that we have lost a true understanding of the meaning of the term "witnessing." More often than not, we take it to mean that we are memorizing a cue card, spouting out the "ABC's" of salvation in order to score points with God. There is nothing real anymore, nothing pertinent, nothing driving, nothing that says, "I have seen these things, and know that they are." Neither Israel nor the disciples where to pay lip services; they were to be speaking facts: God's presence really did abide in the temple, and God really did become flesh and die on a cross for our sins. These were not fancy phrases and beautiful speeches to Israel or the disciples: they were actualities; deep, abiding truths.
"Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet believe." (John 20:29b) We who believe now are still witnesses, though of the unseen. We have not seen the inauguration of salvation at Golgotha, but we have seen its effects in ourselves: we who were once dead have been raised to life. Therefore, we can witness that the things that God has said happened really did happen. Our witness is not a matter of duty; it is a natural outgrowth of our believing in an unseen reality, i.e., redemption, Immanuel, God with us. How would our witness increase if we took God at face value that redemption is an abiding reality and not an abstract principle?
We are the storytellers, and the tale that we tell is true. We do not merely speak of traditions handed down to us, but of a reality that we have not seen but have known. We are the bards who do not tell of knights and dragons because the story is nice to hear but because we, upon hearing and believing it, felt the burns of battle. Likewise, we do not tell of the death and resurrection of God and the redemption of man because the story is nice to hear but because we, upon hearing and believing it, had redemption wrought in us. The tale that we tell, the reality that we witness to is not mere words; it is an overwhelming presence, an all-consuming fire, and those touched by it are not left unchanged.
"Ye are witnesses," witnesses to what is real; not what is possible, not what is fanciful, not what is dreamy, but what is, has been, and ever shall be. Now live like it.

"Why do we escape to dreams
When we have been bound to the Real?
We are not slaves to lies;
We are servants of the Truth..."
-Jon Vowell

The Knowing that Glorifies

"[Every]one that is called by my name...I have created Him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.... Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant who I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am He. Before me, there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me." Isaiah 43:7, 10

The purpose of our existence is the knowledge of God; and through that knowledge, we glorify Him. By "knowledge," I do not mean the accumulation of facts, but the idea of intimate communion. The "knowledge" of God is trinitarian: it is the complete enmeshing of one person with another. Intimate communion is the way to know a person; abstract reasoning can only take you so far. God was meant to be known, not studied.
By "glorify," I do not mean mere worship or evangelism. I also mean that, in intimate communion with God, you are drawn more and more into Him; and by that drawing in, you become more and more like Him. Thus, the knowledge of God glorifies God because the more we partake in intimate communion with Him, the more we disappear and the more He remains. By this, we become a living channel of His presence, and therefore His glory.

"To know You and be known,
Me in You and You in I,
Wed to Fire that burns and soothes.
Oh the agony and the ecstasy..."
-Jon Vowell

Free to be Strong

"When thou pass through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walk through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame scorch thee." Isaiah 43:2

The presence of God in a person does not mean that that person shall have an absence of troubles, but that they shall barge right through them with all the might and power of God Almighty. The Incarnation is our inspiration: "God in the flesh" did not mean the avoidance of death for Christ, but of smashing right through it unto life. So too are we. Read Isaiah 43:2 in the light of II Corinthians 4:8-11 and you will understand the nature of they who have been indwelled with the Holy Spirit: never safe, ever invincible; and ever barrage of the enemy, when passed through and not avoided, draws us deeper into the life of God.
Routinely dismiss those whose religion placates (as Lewis would put it) to their "congenial preference for safe investments and limited liabilities." They have not the hardiness of the Son of God in them. Equally dismiss, however, those who foolishly claim that Christianity is merely a religion of death. Death as an end is diabolical; the sacrifice that leads to life, however, is the Gospel.

"Finally, finally, finally
Free to be Strong,
To face fears head first, heart first, feet first,
Following Love through the fire..."
-Jon Vowell

The Definition of Redemption

"Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel, 'Fear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine." Isaiah 43:1

It is a crying shame today that we find the word "redeem" to by only synonymous with "rescue". There is an element of rescue in redemption, to be sure; but that is not its fundamental meaning. At bottom, "redeem" means "to claim," or "to reclaim." It implies the idea of ownership. If you "redeem" something, then that something becomes yours. You have not merely rescued it; you own it as your own.
"I have redeemed thee...thou art mine." That is the definition of redemption: not "we are set free," but rather "we belong to God." In the redemption of Christ, we are not unbound from sin and made independent agents; we are unbound from sin and bound to God. We have been "bought with a price," says the Apostle Paul, and purchase implies ownership. "Ye are not your own," says God, "I have redeemed thee. Thou art mine." To be unbound from Sin is to be bound to God; to leave off one master is to submit to another. We cannot escape this; we can choose which master, but we must choose a master. The question is, to who or whom will you belong to: God or Sin? To who or whom will you be bound: Life or Death?

"Unto You I now belong.
To be free from You
Is to be lost in sin..."
-Jon Vowell

Godless Christianity II: Numbness

[God] hath poured upon [Israel] the fury of His anger, and the strength of battle; and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew it not; and it burned him, yet he took it not to heart." Isaiah 42:25

Another consequence of Godless Christianity is numbness. The absence of God's presence in our lives and religious practices produces an ignorance of what His presence is, which consequently produces a numbness to His presence when it comes. Because Israel is God's chosen people, His sons and daughters, He will chastise them for their sin (vs. 22-24). They are so far away from Him, however, that all that chastisement on numb hearts and numb minds.
Godless Christianity, the religion of many a Christian, produces this numbness. It produces it so well that people can easily and foolishly mistake other things for the presence of God: emotions, self-esteem, agreeable sermons and services, amiable dispositions, etc. All is utter self-centered nonsense. Look at Jesus: if there was ever one person who was totally disconnected with himself, it was Him. His Father was an ever present reality to His mind, while He himself was an afterthought. Godless Christianity is exactly the opposite: there God is forgotten, and consequently we grow a numbness towards Him and an oversensitivity to ourselves. Godless Christianity is yet another worship of man.

"Turn me ever from myself
And unto You;
From the shadows in my cave,
To the Sunlight of Your Reality..."
-Jon Vowell

The Magnification of the Law

"The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness' sake; He will magnify the law, and make it honorable." Isaiah 42:21
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law...I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Matthew 5:17
"Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law...Therefore, the law is holy..." Romans 7:7, 12
"Therefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." Galatians 3:24

The "law" is God's immutable code of conduct, a concrete representation of His own holiness. It is immutable because He is immutable: like Him, it does not change or alter; no amendments or addendum's. He has no intention of doing away with it anymore than He has any intention of doing away with Himself. This codex dei is still the same: if you want to abide in the presence of the Holy, then you must be holy; and if you must be holy, then here is what it means to be holy. There is still no escaping those conditions.
"The law hath concluded all under sin" (Galatians 3:22a), "Whosoever shall keep the law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10). The law cannot save us; it was never meant to save us. It was meant to point us to a savior. The law condemns all "so that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe." (Galatians 3:22b) God said that he would magnify His law, and He has done it. Jesus Christ is the magnification of the law. In Him, it was fulfilled completely; and in Him, we fulfill it completely. The law was not meant to be a standard for us to meet, but a standard for us to become; and it is in Christ that we become it: "Of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us...righteousness..." (I Corinthians 1:30), "For God hath made Christ to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." (II Corinthians 5:21)
It is amazing how we forget that God has not changed. From the Old Testament to the New, the law is still the standard, and blood is its price. Whereas once it was fulfilled in temple worship, now it is fulfilled in Christ. It was, however, in Christ so much more than mere fulfillment; it was magnification. On the cross not only came the redemption of all, but also the magnification of these two truths: the law is still the standard, and blood is still its price.

"The Law is Holy, The Lord is Righteous.
May this my plea be:
Christ my Holiness, Christ my Righteousness..."
-Jon Vowell