Today's Thoughts - on what's trying to happen at BJ

I originally posted this on October 6, 2010.  What I have posted today is only a portion of that original post.  Here is the link to the entire post.  ttp://annettehardysblog.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html

But today is about something else.  I can't blog about all of it for it would be too lengthy, but here's a link to what got me thinking about this  http://www.facebook.com/#!/DoRightBJU  .  To be honest, I don't think BJ is salvageable - I may be typing this in red in honor of their attempt, but  as I have grown in my walk with Christ, I see more and more how extremely off base they really are.  It would take a true reformation - of Martin Luther caliber to change what all is wrong.  But, you know, that's exactly what Jesus did when He took on the Pharisees.  One of the best things that has helped me in my understanding of what Jesus thinks about all this - I went through the gospels and even Acts, Romans and a few other NT books and with a colored pencil marked all the verses that either addressed Pharisees directly or taught about them.  Do you know that I could hardly turn a page without there being a mark on one of the two open pages?  It was eye-opening. 

My story is not shocking like the Tina Anderson story is, but it would probably be offensive to many who still hold BJ in high regards.  I don't put much on the line because I have been away so long, but I debated blogging because I have just reconnected with a slew of old friends from high school - sadly over the death of a high school buddy.  We were shocked into remembrance.  All of us suddenly take back 25 years or so to relive old days in the Academy.  For me, I haven't been around since graduation.  I didn't know it at the time (May 1987), but God had other plans for me.  Most of them stayed on and went to college together . . . but for me,  a LOT changed. 

First God saved me. 

(I remember wandering around my new California campus and contemplating the conviction that God was putting on my heart and wondering if I could really start all over like Nicodemus described to Jesus.  I remember thinking about the people I had met vs. the people from the school I had left:  "What they have is something worth dying for vs. what I had witnessed at BJ - was something that wasn't even worth living for." )

So I did it.  I gave my life to Christ. 

Then I began to think. 

No longer was a school telling me what I was aloud to say, think, believe or do. 

I (don't give me too much credit - or actually any credit at all - to God be the glory) began to think about what I believed.  What the Bible really said.  I asked God to show me the truth - His truth.  And He did.  And I began the most wonderful journey of trust and faith in God - something I had never seen or experienced at BJ.  

In the last 25 years, God has taught me so much.  Walked me through so much - good and sad.  And a few weeks ago, I wondered why was I again rubbing shoulders with these friends from a different life?  Maybe it was for a little bit of this - the real sharing of my life or rather, what God has done in me.  You would think that going to a "Christian" high school I would be more sure of the salvation of those friends, but I'm not.  You see, we were brainwashed into thinking that if we kept the rules, we could be better Christians.  Ironically, none of us thought we really believed that, but real life told me something different.  I have to preach to myself all the time that my goodness is in Christ Alone.

To this day I am amazed how much just 5 years of their brainwashing can do to one's thinking. When I got to school in LA (my first year of college), my first question  to my roommates was: can I read the handbook? Even then I didn't think I was as brainwashed as that evidenced that I was.   I am so thankful for Him freeing me from the life of a Pharisee - I was more prone to it than I'd like to admit. Rules are much easier than a relationship and searching scripture to find out what God really means about stuff.



Enough ramblings - here is a portion of the Blog from 10/6/ 10:



A little more than twenty years ago, I got on a plane to cross the country on my way to college. I vividly remember at some point in the trip realizing that I had left all I knew and loved behind and that I was on that plane with only God. I am ashamed to say, I was uncomfortable with even that idea. Within the next month, that God, who was on that plane with me, revealed Himself to me through sermons from I John, and Matthew 7:21-23, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven. . . Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evil-doers!'"

Up until that time, I had been a "Doer" - Jesus called it what it really was/is an "Evil - Doer." It was sobering at the time and still sobers me today that but for the grace of God, I would have continued in my Doing. Instead I had to humble myself, admit my sin and ask for His righteousness. I then had to tell those around me, but even harder, I had to tell those at home that I had just been saved. That all that they had seen and watched had not been because of my love for Christ, but rather my own working my way to heaven. So, I ask you, I ask myself, "Could you walk away from it all, could you let it burn, could you never Do another thing to please God and be okay with it?"

(As an aside, an argument with myself, if you will. I am not talking about the "easy-believism" version of salvation at all. That once you say the words and walk the aisle, you are a "Christian." This would be the opposite type of "believer" to which I am referring. I think I am starting to understand why James is sometimes so confusing. "Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works. . . . " James 2:14-26 speaks to this opposite type of "believer." So, there are both extremes - those that lean on their works and have no faith and those that lean on their supposed faith, but their lack of works prove them false.)

So, with that being said, I give you one last Biblical illustration. Solomon wisely determined the mother of the baby by offering to cut the baby in half and give part to each woman who claimed the baby. The true mother could not bear the idea and gave up her claim to save the baby's life.


So too, my question is a twist of reality.

When I thought of it today - "Could I give up my works?" My immediate thought was not of the loss of the works, but of the loss of the things that build my relationship with God. Could I not go to church for the rest of my life? That would be painful to not fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ. It would be painful to not hear the Word preached or to sing and worship Him. It would be painful to not have a Bible to read. It would be painful to not speak of Him to others. Indeed it would become a fire in my bones. I could not hold it in. (Jeremiah 20:9 But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in His name," His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.)

Wow, it would be as if we were locked in a cell to live out our life holding onto only the Righteousness of Jesus - without the evidence of it - here comes the wow part. That is what happened to John the Baptist.

John himself said, "He must increase; I must decrease." But not long after "2When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples 3to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Matthew 11.

John, in prison, sends a message to Jesus, "Are you really the Christ?"

Can you fathom?

The one who was sent to "prepare the way,"

the one who so boldly proclaimed "I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God."

The one who was linked with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as testifiers that Jesus, the Man, was also Jesus, the Son of God, the Lamb of God.

4Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." Matthew 11

Oh, my, I have just gone back to the cross reference of where those words were in the Old Testament, and I am almost crushed with the beautiful words that surround the message that Jesus sent to John. Isaiah 35:5 Jesus was telling John with words from Isaiah that He was fulfilling those words while John was locked in a dark dungeon. Want to guess that maybe John also knew the words surrounding that verse? Listen to the comfort of the words around Isaiah 35:5


1 The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;

they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.

3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way;

4 say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come, he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution he will come to save you."

5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

7 The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness.

The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way;

wicked fools will not go about on it.

9 No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it;

they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there,

10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing;

everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them,

and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Would those words not comfort you - especially if you were John the Baptist!  John knew about the desert about the wilderness, He knew all about what these verses were predicting. It makes me wonder if this were a passage that the young Jewish children learned. Or if just John and his second cousin Jesus learned it together as teen boys, and if John was at the temple when the boy Jesus was teaching the Teachers. Somehow John knew that Jesus was greater than he before it was revealed to him that Jesus was the Son of God, for he argued with Jesus that he shouldn't be baptizing Jesus but rather the other way around.  Jesus was telling John that it was all coming to pass, that John had been right - that He, Jesus, really was the Christ!  It was all the comfort John needed.  He could put his head back down in his dank and dark prison and let his heart rejoice that Jesus really was the Christ!  And not long after, his suffering was ended - not the way any of us would have expected, but mercifully God took him home for his work on this earth was done and it ended not with a last sermon or 100 more baptisms, no more works for John, but the reassurance that Jesus was the Christ!