Christian Hedonism

A few years ago I picked up a book that I had heard about many times. I hadn’t read and in fact I knew very little about its content.

The name of the book was Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. It was written by a pastor whose name was becoming more and more well known in certain circles – Dr. John Piper. Prior to reading the book I was perplexed by the message of the title.

As someone who has a college degree in philosophy, I had read extensively about hedonism. As such, everything I understood about hedonism told me that it was a bad thing. Hedonism, as defined in the secular sense, is the doctrine that pleasure is the highest good and therefore all of life should be devoted to pursuing pleasure.

What then is Christian Hedonism? To put it in simple terms, it is the understanding that the greatest pleasure/joy/happiness in life can only be found in the presence and glory of God. Therefore we should base our lives on the pursuit of the greatest pleasure – God Himself.

I was reminded of this life changing truth as I was reading through the Psalms this morning.

Psalm 16:11
You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

I pray that you will live a life of unbridled hedonism – true hedonism – Desiring God.

So how does God feel about this? Look for a future post to answer that question.

A Fundamental Question

There is a fundamental question that a Christian must answer. Not that they owe the answer to others. In fact, it is a question that must be answered in one’s own heart or it is no answer at all.

The question is this:

Is my faith the result of me inviting Christ into my life OR is my faith the result of Christ inviting me into His?

The answer to that question will be the foundation on which all of life will be built.

Dared to Move

Our church has been in the sermon series Dare You to Move through the month of November. I have been speaking to our church about hearing from God, choosing to step out in obedience, and holding on to His promise. I have preached these messages with a sense of expectation. I have expected people to step out and make decisions to trust God. What I didn’t expect was to experience this series in such a personal way.

Over the past few weeks, God has been speaking to me about some things that need to happen in my own life and ministry. They are things that I can see that He has been preparing me for. So the words that I spoke to our church a week ago must apply to me as well:

Life change steps of faith happen when conviction seizes the opportunity to move in faith.

I will be talking more specifically about what these things are in the weeks to come. The point of all of this is, however, that my expectation for God to move amongst our church must begin with the expectation for God to move in me.

Remind me… Who are we called to love?

I have been thinking a lot lately about some of the celebrity mess ups that have been the talk of the news.

The beginning of the football season saw the reemergence of Micheal Vick. Micheal went to prison a couple of years ago on criminal charges for promoting dog fighting.

A couple nights ago, Kanye West committed a crime of his own. Maybe it wasn’t one worthy of jail time but he has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Even the President Obama referred to him as a “jack*ss.” When you are called a name like that by the President you’ve performed a major mess-up.

And I have heard judgmental statements about both of them come out of my mouth and the mouths of many professing Christians. But God has convicted me about that and has used both situations to remind me of something huge.

As God’s people, we are to be agents of redemption. It is not our place to push people down after they’ve tripped. We are the ones called to lift people up. We are to desire the best for people. We are to seek the best for people. Even the Micheal Vicks and Kanye Wests of the world. We are called to love them.

What does that love look like from a Biblical perspective?

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It is not rude,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.

But what does that look like practically? I think the best question is this:

Would you be more excited to see Micheal Vick go to the Super Bowl or jail cell?
Would you rather see Kanye at the Grammy’s or in the gutter?

More than anything I would like to see both men transformed by God and seeking Jesus… but… your answers to the questions above will say much more about the state of your own heart than the guilt of their actions.

Jesus: The Life Giver

I thought this article was too good not to share. Please read and think deeply.

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The Life-Giving Voice of the Son of God
By: David Mathis

Let’s talk about your resurrection from the dead. If Jesus doesn’t come back before your die, then you will be raised someday—believer or non-believer—by Jesus from the dead, either to eternal joy or to eternal misery.

At least six observations about the final judgment can be made from John 5:25-29:

1. Jesus raises all the dead. Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy will be raised from the dead. And Julius Caesar, Judas Iscariot, Isaiah the prophet, Michelangelo, Johann Sebastian Bach, Adolf Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, and Princess Diana. All the dead who have ever lived will be raised from the dead by Jesus. Millions of Chinese and Nigerians and Indonesians and Germans. And you too.
2. Jesus raises all the dead by his mighty voice. He upholds the universe by his mere word and one day will raise the dead just by speaking.
3. In a sense, the hour of the resurrection has come. Jesus raised Lazarus as a foretaste of the resurrection he will bring about in its fullness someday.
4. The power of the Son of God to raise the dead originates in himself as God. It’s not that the Father is a source and the Son is a channel. The Son has life in himself just like the Father has life in himself. Life comes from the Son, not just through the Son.
5. Nevertheless, it is crucial that this Son of God also be human<a son of man<in order to be qualified for his role in the judgment. God deems it fitting that human beings be judged by one who knows what it’s like to be human. And not just human, but one who suffered to deliver the rest of us from judgment. There is something suitable that the one who sentences men to heaven or to hell will be a suffering Savior. The judge of all men will be able to look into every eye and say, “I too was tempted. I too suffered.”
6. Finally, eternal life and eternal judgment at the last day will be in accord with our deeds—good or evil. Not ‘based on’ our deeds but ‘in accord with’ our deeds. If we are justified by faith, our faith will produce good works. And our good deeds will be the evidence, the confirmation, the verification at the judgment that we were justified by faith alone.

Someday we all will be raised.