Uncategorized – K8EMusic

The (actual) Promises of God

It is impossible for God to speak a promise that He cannot or will not fulfill — and make no mistake, all of His promises are written in Scripture (there are no new promises being made) — whether that be to the Church, to Israel, or to the world. We do not doubt that God is unchanging, nor that His Word is unchanging. So why would we take it upon ourselves to attempt to change the promises written in His Word?

Some cases in point: 1.) God has promised His future wrath to the unbelieving world; telling them that God has no wrath for them is both sinful and deceitful. 2.) God has promised salvation to the Church, to those whom He has directly called to repentance; to claim that all can and/or will be saved is to ignore the Gospel and to usurp God’s authority/sovereignty. 3.) God has promised to return Israel to her land, and to redeem a remnant of Jews; to deny these promises or claim them as belonging to the Church is to rob the Jews of both their identity and their inheritance.

To some, these may seem like insignificant errors. But any error in communicating or teaching the Word of God is not merely a mistake; it is sinful. God requires of us that we handle His Word rightly, that we are advocates of truth, and that we are not deceived. Disobedience to these commands constitutes sin and therefore begs repentance and correction.

References:

Numbers 23:19: “God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?”

Deuteronomy 4:2: “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you.”

Proverbs 30:5-6: “Every word of God proves true; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar.”

Romans 2:5: “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”

John 6:37: “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.”

Ephesians 1:3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will.”

Jeremiah 23:3: “Then I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.”

Revelation 7:4: “And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel.”

2 Timothy 2:15: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

Colossians 2:8: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”

1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

What the Gospel is(n’t)

The Gospel does not free you from physical ailments, poverty, difficulties, struggles, or afflictions. The Gospel is very simply that our righteous God established laws in accordance with His righteousness — those laws required that a sacrifice be made when they were broken. As sinners, we have all been guilty of breaking those laws. But Jesus Christ, a perfect man (and perfect God), became that sacrifice for us, that all who call on His name in repentant faith would receive forgiveness for our sins and be granted eternal life with Him.

That is all that the Gospel promises. And it should be enough — more than enough! If, in God’s abundant grace, He chooses to call us to repentance of our sin, we must follow Him at all costs. Scripture does not promise that it will be easy — the disciples were poverty-stricken, tortured, imprisoned, and martyred. To divert ourselves around the difficulties of life is to divert ourselves away from the Gospel entirely, substituting a false Christ for the true Christ.

If we have faith in Him, we must also have faith that He is sovereign over all things, that His will is perfect, and that He can and will be glorified even through (and especially through) our afflictions!

References:

Job 23:10: “He knows the way that I take; when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”

James 1:2-3: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”

Romans 5:3-5: “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.”

2 Corinthians 12:8-10: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Romans 1:16-17: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.'”

1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

1 Peter 3:18: “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”

1 Corinthians 14

1 Corinthians 14 is the subject of much misunderstanding within the Church. Most of which comes from our lack of Greek knowledge and historical understanding.

To start with, this chapter addresses prophesying — but it’s important to note that the Greek word for “prophesy” has two primary meanings: most commonly in the Old Testament, it means to “foretell” (i.e., reveal something about the future, usually pointing to Christ). But in the New Testament, it often means to “forthtell” (i.e., to speak forth the truth and counsel of God — in the modern sense, this includes teaching what He has already revealed to us in Scripture). Needless to say, the latter definition is applicable here.

Next, there’s the mention of tongues. People have a tendency to take verse 2 (“For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit”) and separate it from the rest of the passage, while also ignoring the entire historical context. When we read the passage in context, taking into consideration the time period in which it was written, we gather that Paul is very clearly discussing people who spoke in foreign languages (languages other than their native language). He instructed the Church that this gift did have a use, but that use was only applicable in the context of speaking directly to foreigners, who could not understand the language of those native to the land — during that time, God enabled certain people to speak in the languages of other nations to share the Gospel with them. 1 Corinthians 14:2, when read in the context of the letter, simply means something along the lines of this: “When you’re in an English-speaking church, if you try to teach in French, you’d might as well just be speaking to God, because He’s the only one there who understands you.” That’s an extremely modernized paraphrase, but it’s the best way to explain it without getting too deep into history and the Greek language. The rest of the passage sheds more light on this understanding, but people tend to ignore it or pretend it has nothing to do with the first verses.

Songs from the Heart and Beyond

I’ve launched a fundraising campaign for my second album, “Songs from the Heart and Beyond” — come check it out and support it if you can! I donate 50% of proceeds from album sales to a local Autism cause! The album should be released this Summer (date to-be-determined).

I have some pretty awesome rewards to choose from for those who can donate, including a custom song I’ll write and record about anything you want! For more details, visit the link below:
http://www.faithlauncher.com/projects/192-songs-from-the-heart-and-beyond#/

A Race of Tinmen Bred by Technology

[written November 17, 2011]

Technology, while providing us with a vast amount of information, has desensitized us. It feeds our minds while starving our hearts. At our fingertips is the ability to attain knowledge on any subject or person like never before. Within seconds, we can read the equivalent of a person’s autobiography, in which we learn his origins, his interests, his beliefs, and what he did last weekend. But knowledge is no substitute for heart.

Proverbs 3:5, an over-quoted verse, roots itself in the fact that the mind is not superior to the heart — it is man’s nature to put mind before heart (i.e., “lean on his own understanding”). The two are not mutually exclusive (i.e., for one to be present, the other is not required to be absent), but rather work hand-in-hand. However, man has lost sight of this and reverted to his original, egocentric nature of elevating the mind to a pedestal which crushes the heart beneath its feet.

This is not to say we are smarter now than we were in days past — I believe the opposite is actually true — it is just to say that our minds are prioritized at the feeding trough. And since we have lost the ability to use logic and reason, we have yet to discover that the trough is laden with filth and toxins — we are poisoning our own minds.

As violence is glorified in film and video games, we gain a higher tolerance for it; it is no longer shocking to us when an innocent man is shot (afterall, we see it all the time on our screens). As bullying, teasing, and insults are made into comedy, we lose our empathy for others; we laugh at the misfortune of others because we have been told that it is funny. Our morals are gone, our hearts are cold, and our minds have labeled the concept of “walking in someone else’s shoes” as foolish, foreign, and outdated. Let’s face it: we’re selfish.

What will it take to convince us to wage war on the apathy that has overtaken us like an uncontrollable, life-quenching vine? When will we wake up to the cries and screams of those who still have the ability to feel — those incessant “noises” we’ve drowned out for decades?

We, collectively, are labeled as “humanity.” But the moment we stopped caring whether another person was hurting, needing, or breathing was the moment we lost our humanity. I’m not sure what is more grim: that statement itself, or the fact that so many people would look at it, ingest it with their eyes, let it stop at their minds, swallow without chewing, and respond with a chuckle and an eye roll before even allowing their hearts a taste of it, confounding any hope for a proper digestion.

If we want to regain our humanity, it will require the one thing we have the greatest deficit of: heart. But, like the Tinman, perhaps we had it all along, we just refused to see it or let it be.