The Fundamentality of Grace

"Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him, and all nations shall serve Him; for He shall deliver the needy when he crieth. The poor also, and he that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in His sight." Ps. 72:11-14

That which will cause every knee to bow in the end will be the understanding and acknowledgment of God's goodness and grace. Christ's humiliation was and is the grounds for His exaltation (Phil. 2:8-9), and that humiliation was to become a man and die on the Cross. We do not draw men unto God by lifting up clever arguments and sound speeches. Those things are useful, but they are not the needful thing (I. Cor. 2:1-5). The needful thing is the elevation of Christ as the demonstration of God's love towards us (John 12:32 & Rom. 5:8).
Any old god can garner worship out of fear and terror, and our God is a God of wrath and judgment. It is grace, however, that serves as the grounds for worship, His goodness as the foundation of praise. Of course, His grace and goodness is complex; from our limited and fallen perspective, His love towards us can often look like hate. We will see the goodness of it all in the end, however; we will see the hidden workings of grace, and we will know that in all things the Divine was and is not indifferent towards us and has directly involved Himself in our salvation; and with all the nations of men left on the earth, we will cry, "Holy, holy, holy."

-Jon Vowell

Desiring God: Something Real

"O God, Thou art my God. Early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsteth for Thee. My flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. I have looked for Thee in the sanctuary to see Thy power and Thy glory. [...] My soul followeth hard after Thee...." Ps. 63:1-2, 8a

The whole of Christianity these days (esp. in the Western world) comes off as either dusty and fragile or fluid and messy rather than solid and real. We could help it come off as solid and real more if we, as Christians, took seriously this concept of thirsting after God, of desiring Him above all things. Some of us desire head knowledge, with good theology and proper exegesis. Others of us prefer respectable religion, with practical advice and moralisms. Many other desire various things. Very few desire God. All other things are not bad per se. They become bad when they take the place of God, as they often do in our lives. To paraphrase Charles Williams, we say "This is Thou," but never get to "This is not Thou." To paraphrase Lewis, we mistake the inns for home.
Perhaps Christianity and its current Christians would be taken more seriously as something solid and real (i.e., as truth) if we (1) unapologetically told people that there is a God, that He can be known, and that to be known by Him is the soul's deepest desire; and (2) unapologetcially live like it, because it is the truth. If people gazed into a common sanctuary and saw souls thirsting after and satisfied by God, His power and glory and all that He is, rather than dusty scholars and amiable moralists, then perhaps they would begin to see why the Gospel is the only good news out there, for it tells us how to satisfy our deepest longings by taking us back to God through the Cross of Christ.

-Jon Vowell

The Past Reborn

"...for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood anymore." Isaiah 54:4b

The past is one of the greatest demons to ever torment mankind. If there is one ghost no one wants to be haunted by, it is the past. It could be argued that part of the psychological terror that ghost inflict is that they are dreaded embodiments of the evil past, the unholy manifestation of some former failing or sin no longer with us chronologically but still with us actually. To that affect, the past is a ghost that haunts us endlessly, and the greatest haunting pain of mankind is a past action, i.e., the Fall. The remnants of that horrendous aboriginal disaster hovers about corporate humanity and individual humans like a foul wraith (or a foul odor).

"Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (II Corinthians 5:17) One of the glories of the gospel is the realization of the reality that our slate is wiped clean and kept clean by Christ (see I John 1:7 in regards to "kept" clean). The one demon mankind needs slain is the past, full of fears and failures, full of the Fall. Christ deals with our past at the Cross, and thereby gives us a new past, a new legacy, one whose foundation is not the Fall but the Atonement. One of the joys of the Christian is that (because of Christ) God no longer sees them on the basis of the Fall, but rather on the Cross. Thanks to Christ, we are set free from the unholy past and given a new, irreproachable legacy, one that even God Himself can find no fault in.

"May men find in You

Not beautiful words and phrases

But a legacy reborn

Into immutable Holiness..."

-Jon Vowell

Back to Reality

"Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore they shall know in that day that I am He that doth speak; behold, it is I." Isaiah 52:6

To know that God (the infinite-personal, Scripture revealed God) is there, is real; that is the reality all men strive for, whether they know it or not. Whether or not we are ultimately alone cuts to the core of all other significant questions: if we are ultimately alone, then there is no solution to the conundrums of being (what is real?), knowledge (how do we know? how do we know that we can know?), and morals (what ought and ought not to be?), because there is no objective, infinite-personal outsider that can tell us these things. The knowledge of the reality of God automatically gives a man the groundwork whereby he can begin to answer the 'big' questions.

Everyone of Israels 'redemptions' was always about bringing them back to the reality of God. The same is true of the Redemption found in Christ. Our Sin has separated us from the God who is there, and that alienation will be the death of us. Christ dealt with Sin on the Cross, and now mankind can return to the reality of God, and find in Him all that humanity has ever desired and hoped for. Jesus is the joy of man's desiring, because He satisfies man's desiring by bringing us back to God.

"Tell all the lost and lonely people

That God is real

And there is a way back to Him..."

-Jon Vowell

God's Immutable Mark of Love

"Awake! Awake! Put on strength, oh arm of the Lord. Awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old! Art though not the one that hath cut [Egypt], and wounded the dragon? Art thou not the one who hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?" Isaiah 51:9, 10

The underlying mythos of Israel was the Exodus. It shaped their very view of God: His character, His ways, and His relationship to them. Consequently, it shaped the way they viewed all of their circumstances. Every captivity, every conquest by foreign invaders, was to be viewed as another sojourn in Egypt, another chance to see the wondrous power of God.

The underlying mythos of the Church is the Cross. All of our days are to be seen through that lens (Psalm 118:22-24). It is the objective reality that is to shape our view of God. Like the Exodus, it too speaks of His character, His ways, and His relationship to the world. The groundwork of understanding who God is to begin with the Cross, and the Cross as it is revealed by the Scriptures; all other notions must be dominated by that one theme.

That one theme should dominate all of our life as well. The Cross stands to silence all criticisms of God's character and all doubts that lurk in the hearts of men. Any fears we have, all distresses or preoccupations, must be laid to rest at the foot of the Cross, God's immutable mark of love upon the world.

"Holy spike that shattered the world,

May I hide myself in Thee..."

-Jon Vowell