It's Saturday, and the end of a very busy week, that included all the usual sermon and Bible Study prep - but also a very important meeting on renewal that soaked up a lot of time and energy. So I apologize for the lateness of this post. I hope you're still reading along and finding gems in Tozer.

I really felt that he hit on a solid point about mid-chapter when he points out that the prayer, 'Be thou exalted', is the corrective for all things in the spiritual life. In his own words: "Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually, 'Be thou exalted,' and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity."

In my own experience I discover this when I stop worrying about 'what' God will do with me; and 'how' God might use me, and simply begin to pray that he might be glorified in me and through me. Then I believe that God is already doing what I have prayed and I open His Word and begin to obey whatever I find there. I don't worry if my finances seem to founder, or if attendance dips at the church, or if God seems to call me to a very 'unglorious' task. I have prayed that God might be glorified in and through me, and I am no longer concerned with whether I will receive glory, or whether my church will be glorified, or whether anyone will remember my name. However - I find I need to be reminded of this from time to time. The old flesh often pushes in and starts asking, 'Hey - How is this going to benefit me?'

I appreciate Tozer's honesty in pointing out that this is not 'perfection' that is on display in our lives, but 'holy intention'. We are inclined to seek God and his glory and in doing so "...God finds a theater where He can display His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Beware... God often uses his faithful servants as a canvas for grace in the midst of suffering and sorrow. Daniel was thrown to the lions; David had to hide in caves from Saul; Paul was beaten and imprisoned. But in all of these characters, God displayed the marks of his glory and his grace.

So pray this with me. Pray that God might be restored to his rightful place as king and lord of your life, that you might find the genuine, lasting joy of being in the centre of his will and purpose for you!

One of the repeated questions I heard at the open-house in Walsh this past week had to do with hermeneutics.  (Hermeneutics is 'The Science or Study of One questioner wanted to know why we would hold a conference that advertised gender as one of the topics for hermeneutical discussion.  Another asked ‘what hermeneutic’ we would be using.  Now I don’t deny that there are different approaches to hermeneutics, certainly the Roman Catholic church holds to a different hermeneutic, but should it not be concerning that within our own denomination we approach the Bible as if the whole thing were some mysterious puzzle that is beyond our understanding and agreement (or even just an open discussion)?

The question that wanted answering at the open-house was: “What sort of hermeneutic are you recommending to the churches of the CBOQ?”

So here is my contribution to the conversation at this point.   (I hope you will agree with me, I think you should, but if you don’t, feel free to add your voice to the conversation in the comments below.)

In order of importance, the materials necessary for good hermeneutics (the first three are sort of like the trinity, impossible to separate but distinct at the same time).

1) The Holy Spirit.  Don’t try to do hermeneutics with those who aren’t born again – they are lacking the key component to understanding the Word of God (You’ll end up reliving the Jesus Seminars and casting votes about whether the Word of God is the word of God).

2) The Bible.  This is the perpetual trump card.  If the answer you came up with at the end doesn’t agree with this – you got the wrong answer.

3) Prayer.  The Holy Spirit and scripture are sufficient, prayer goes hand in hand with these two and sets us in submission and humility before God.  You might try some version of this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven...’  That invites the Holy Spirit to lead us rather than to simply follow us around blessing and endorsing whatever we decide to believe.

4) Your brain.  God made it, sin has twisted it, but the Holy Spirit can renew it as long as you’re willing to submit humbly to the Bible, to believe it and obey it even when the rest of the world suggests that it sounds like foolishness.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.  Romans 12:2

5) Your personal experience.  You can never escape your personal experience, and it holds some validity, but it is also treacherously connected to the old flesh.  (Example: So you felt a burning in your bosom at campfire when you were 15… there might be something to that, but I wouldn’t base your entire call to ministry on some experience until you have submitted it to the Word of God.)

6) The writings and thoughts of others.  This is really an optional element, if you are about to board a tiny space craft and are only allowed to bring one book, leave the Augustine’s Confessions, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary and the CBOQ Blue Book behind and take your Bible.  Remember two things about these writers: A) If they don’t have the Holy Spirit, it doesn’t matter how many letters come before or after their name, they are disqualified from saying anything worthwhile about scripture; B) The Bible is the perpetual trump card.  It doesn’t matter if all the puritans agree in the same direction, if the Bible contradicts them, they’re wrong.  If the Bible commands it: obey it.  If the Bible forbids it: abandon it.

I think that list is sufficient (and even a little superfluous), maybe you want to suggest a couple of other things we might bring along?  With these tools – especially the first three, we are ready for biblical hermeneutics.  You can do it on your own, like most pastors do week by week in sermon preparation;  You can get together for Bible Study with a bunch of other people and do ‘hermeneutics’ together; Hey we could even do this with a bunch of CBOQ pastors (forget the latest fad that is on the front page of Christian Book Distributors, choose a topic and open our Bibles in search of understanding).

Biblical Hermeneutic stated simply: We must read the Bible as a whole.  No one passage can be torn from its context and used to prop up some pet doctrine; it must all be brought to bear.  You don’t need a theological education in order to read and understand your Bible (it was written in the common language of the people for a reason).  There is no passage that does not matter, if it is recorded within the 66 books it is there for a purpose.  Examine the word prayerfully and humbly.  What does it tell you?  Your experience may be admissible, we can never escape experience, but realize that your experience is the lowest point on the totem; what you feel, what you like, what you think, what you love, and what you hate are all things that may find more influence in your flesh than in your renewed spirit.  Pray that the Holy Spirit might lead you into all truth, and then begin to read ‘all-truth’. 

I often say to my congregation, “The Lord has given you a pastor for a purpose.  I am here to lead you and feed you, to guard you and protect you, and to open the Word of God to you.  But the Lord has also given you a Bible and a brain.  Please don’t arrive at the final judgment shrugging your shoulders and saying, ‘….well my pastor said.’  Get into the Word of God!  Read it, meditate upon it, study it, memorize it!”

Biblical hermeneutics is not some mysterious ‘Urim and Thummim’ that we cannot use.  Hermeneutics is the agreed upon means by which we read and understand the Word of God.  It controls what we preach and teach and how we live, even who we are. 

We are not surprised that from time to time someone will come to the church with some ‘new hermeneutic’ and try to explain the casuistry behind how they have justified some new practice or belief.  But we must come to the church with our hand upon the page of the Word of God and the words, ‘Thus says the Lord.’  That, my friends, should settle the matter.

Marc Bertrand

Chapter 6 – The Speaking Voice

It took me a few pages to settle into this chapter – sometimes it seems like Tozer wants you to ‘intuit’ what he’s aiming at, rather than coming out right at the beginning with the chapters major theme.

Tozer is right in pointing out that there is a right and a wrong way to read the Bible.  You would be amazed to know how many academics and scholars have written books about the Bible who haven’t begun to read it in the right way.  They have read it as a history text, or as a thing to be analyzed and parsed up into the parts that matter and the parts that don’t.  Amazingly, you don’t need a Master’s degree or a PhD in order to rightly read and benefit from the Bible – but you do need to approach it as a living and authoritative word.

I have had other ministry leaders criticize me for rejecting the writings of certain scholars based on the argument that they aren’t qualified to write anything about scripture because they prove by their opening premise that they don’t believe it is the Word of God.  The moment a person, who doesn’t believe the Bible, takes it upon themselves to write about the Bible, everything they write will at best be without understanding, and at worst, will be reliant on human wisdom and divorced from every aspect of the fear of God.

Now, I especially appreciate how Tozer points out that God is speaking both in nature and in his word.  Psalm 19 immediately came to mind as I read, The heaven’s declare the glory of God and the skies above proclaim his handiwork.  Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.  There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard…  Indeed, God makes himself known to any who are attentive to see Him and hear Him.  But reveals himself fully through the scriptures.

Tozer also points out that the world is hard of hearing, for inspite of God’s continual proclamation of his reality, we stubbornly refuse to praise him, honour him or give him the worship he rightly deserves.  However, I think I am willing to follow along on his suggestion that every act of goodness and beauty produced in the world has been “[a] result of [man’s] faulty and sin-blocked response to the creative Voice sounding over the earth.”  Scripture makes the claim that: ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…’ (James 1:17).

Tozer then writes of the universal sense of awe in the face of the universal vastness: ‘…a sudden sense of lonliness, or a feeling of wonder or awe in the face of the universal vastness.  Or we have had a fleeting visitation of light like an illumination from some other sun, giving us in a quick flash an assurance that  we are from another world, that our origins are divine.”  These words reminded me of some of my favourite words from C.S. Lewis, from his sermon ‘Weight of Glory’ (you can find it online if you like).  In it, he speculates on the open secret of the universe, that we were not made for this world.  After explaining that what a man or woman desires, demonstrates that whether or not they ever obtain that thing, it is a sure sign they were made for it – he then states, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

I think that both Tozer and Lewis would suggest to us that human experience – these inexplicable, emotionally charged moments, are key aspects of our journey in life – but that many go astray at this point, because they try to self-interpret experience rather than setting experience within the contexts of divine revelation and asking God to anchor in scripture our experience.  So I deeply appreciated the instruction Tozer offers, “It is important that we get still to wait on God.  And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible outspread before us.  Then if we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts.”

That, my friends, is the vast difference between Eastern meditation that invites stillness and emptying of the mind (which will lead to the self being magnified, exalted and glorified – and great spiritual confusion) and Biblical meditation that invites stillness and the filling of the mind with the living word of God.

So to conclude this (slightly overlength) reflection on chapter 6; let me challenge you to take up the Word of God and read.  Many of you already do this, but is it your daily practice?  Begin with a simple prayer that God might impress the truth of His Word upon your heart – and then take up and read.  Let me add one more aspect to this challenge 1) Read systematically, don’t just jump all over the place; 2) Read from at least two places at once, this not only gives breadth to your reading, it will reveal to your mind and heart the fact that behind every human writer is the divine author who has presented a complete text in 66 books, 3 original languages, 2 testaments, over the period of 2500 years.

May God meet you there.

(This is a letter written by my friend and fellow pastor Paul Carter.  Paul will be preaching the anniversary services at Walsh on April 27.  In the letter that follows he, and I, invite you to come and visit the new website for CLRA.  You may notice some duplication, as I have supplied some edited versions of articles first written here - but there is plenty of fresh content as well.)

Late last month we launched a new website for our wider Canadian Baptist family interested in Gospel renewal and discussion.  Many of you will be aware that our relationship with the denomination has been somewhat strained over the last several years.  At root the issue is compatibility and alignment.  Though we all came from common stock and commitments, over the last 100 years there has been a lot of drift and we haven’t all been drifting in the same direction.  Many churches within the denomination are waking up to the fact that we may no longer have sufficient agreement among ourselves to facilitate any form of significant partnership, particularly with respect to mission.

What is the appropriate response to that?  Some would say that the only appropriate response is to pull out and associate elsewhere, and while there is a time for that, I can’t help but feel that 135 year old friendships should not be abandoned lightly.  With that in mind, a few relationally connected churches began a conversation forum known as the Covenant Life Renewal Association (CLRA for short, pronounced like the lady’s name ‘Clara’).  CLRA has as its aim to stir up Gospel conversation that could potentially, by God’s grace, reestablish a basis of theological agreement that could facilitate a more robust missiological partnership within our denomination. 

We’d like to invite you into the conversation.  We’ve recently launched an on-line discussion platform at www.adfontes.ca and we’d love for you to visit and take a look.

When we met with Tim McCoy, the Executive Minister of CBOQ, to explain our plan and approach, he referred to our efforts as “a very Baptist way of addressing these concerns”.  Baptists believe in free will association, which means that none of us are obligated to participate in our denominational activities or mission programs; they are “free will”.  However, we also believe that such partnerships can be very useful, provided we agree on what we are trying to do.  This requires discussion, dialogue and mutual understanding and the more people that participate, the broader the potential base of agreement going forward.  Please join in this conversation in the hopes that our deeper agreement will serve to advance God’s glory among the nations in our generation.

Pastor Paul Carter
Lead Pastor

Let me add my Amen to all of this!
Marc Bertrand

Dear Church,

I love you.  This is not some sort of weak Valentine’s Day love that I hand out to every member of the class – but a deep and rich sort of love that I have for you.  When you hurt, I hurt.  I love you like one of my children, and like a child, there are times when I wish I could better understand what is going on inside you so that I could better care for you or meet your needs – but I am determined, that no matter what, I will love you.  I want you to know that I often think about you, each of you, that you are regularly in my prayers, as are your family members who never come with you – or who live somewhere else.  I know how you long for your husband, or wife, or child to know Christ – and I long for that too.

You should know that your souls rest upon my heart with considerable weight.  Just as a parent feels a burden for the future life and choices of their child, so I feel that weight as I think of your future.  I know that before God you each stand individually accountable, but I have taken responsibility before God for shepherding this flock, and so I often feel that weight.  It is my prayer and greatest desire that every one that sits under the proclamation of the Word should come to be saved, that is: to put on the Lord Jesus Christ; to believe the gospel.  But my desire for you doesn’t stop there, I want to see you thrive!  I want to see you grow up in Christ and to see you conformed to his image.  A lot of the time I don’t know how to do that – but I know that Paul told Timothy to devote himself to the public reading of the scriptures and to prayer, and that by doing so he would save both himself and his hearers (I Timothy 4:13-16).  So, when I don’t know what else to do, I preach, and when I preach the gospel, it isn’t just because I think there are lost people in our midst, but because I am convinced that the gospel (that is the good news of Christ’s victory on our behalf) is as much for the man or woman who has belonged to him for 70 years as for the one who doesn’t yet know him.  I preach the Word because I love you, and I long to see you growing strong and mature.

You have grown.  I have watched you grow.  In fact, it seems in the last few years that we have enjoyed a deepening of our fellowship, and I live with the expectation that God is at work within you and within us to bring about renewal and revival.  But I also realize that there are some tensions that threaten our unity.  I don’t think any of these things are enormous, but it is often the little foxes that ruin the vine, and I worry that some little thing may cause a disproportionate break in our fellowship.

I also realize that a bit of discontent can feel very large to the person who is upset by it.  There are those who don’t understand (or like) the doctrinal flavor that is set within my teaching.  As I think about this and pray about it, I know that I cannot set aside these strong understandings I have gleaned from scripture.  So I hope that my love and care for you, and my determination to continue to search the scriptures and base my teaching upon them will persuade you, that while we may differ at points, we can agree that the primary mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  The best way for pursuing this, I am certain, is the proclamation of the gospel and the systematic teaching of the Word of God through sermons and Bible Studies.

There is a passage in scripture that says that ‘Love covers over a multitude of sins’  (I Peter 4:8). I don’t think that verse is meant as an excuse for willful sin; but rather that in the midst of trying to live for God and his glory we will sometimes rub each other the wrong way, and some of that rubbing may actually be sinful, although we aren’t aware that we have perhaps wronged our brother or sister.  It’s there that love covers the sin – the knowledge that we are loved and cared for and that you won’t be abandoned or thrown out or left behind just because you don’t agree on some point.

I sense that our adversary is magnifying little things beyond their proportion right now, in an attempt to cut off this little congregation in the midst of our journey towards Christ.   He can’t ultimately keep us from Christ, but he might prevent us from growing into a more effective tool of evangelism and discipleship.

So I plead with you to set your focus on the big picture.  Feel free to come to me and tell me that you are concerned about a certain thing I have said, or have done, or have failed to do – but do not let it rupture our fellowship and our pursuit of God and his glory.

I know that in history God used a man named Peter Bohler to awaken another man named John Wesley; and then he used John Wesley to awaken much of the world.  Both men were used to God’s greater glory – but sadly in the midst of their friendship a rupture occurred over how the lost are saved, and though both carried on in their work for the Lord, I cannot help but think that they were both wounded in the loss of one another.

As your pastor, tasked by God with leading you and feeding you and even correcting you when necessary, I ask that you would pray for me.  I need your prayers.  Pray for the church, pray that we might finally get down to the work we were given to do and make disciples – new disciples who were once in the kingdom of darkness and mature ones who have long been in the kingdom of God.  Don’t let an annoyance, irritation or frustration blunt the work of God among us.  I invite you to correct me, that is why you have a Bible and a brain – but please be open to correction from the same sources.

Regardless of the outcome, know that I will love you, and will continue to love you and pray for you that you might be continually remade in the image of Christ.

                        In Love,

                                    Marc