You Learn Something New Every Day

Did your dad or grandpa ever tell you that you learn something new every day? Mine did. I remember it well, and I also remember my dad commenting on Roy Rogers, who said that he never met a man he didn't learn something from. God has made it very apparent to me as I live life; these pithy little sayings are quite true. I mean, think about it. Every day some new piece of information enters our world even if it seems miniscule. Learning from every man holds true as well. When you meet someone who is so very irritating and seems to be in possession of the same amount of wit as a an 'ol jersey cow, how beneficial is it, instead of ridiculing them, to realize that you are actually learning from them? As a Christian, you really should be striving to hear God and perceive His glory in all things. If you are not a Christian, you are still glorifying Him in your unbelief. Life is far more stress free when we lean on God's understanding and ask Him what He is saying to us through each person we meet. Certainly, it is good to reflect on how longsuffering God is when it comes to dealing with our own self, and how often we are bovine in our stubborn sin nature in God's eyes.

Applications aside, I would like to bring to your attention something new I've learned. For the last three or four years God has wrought changes in me. They have been painful, exhilirating, and foundational. Through these changes He has been gracious to show me many things which I have never known; things about Him and how He works in this world, and in the lives of men that have transformed everything I have ever been taught about God. The very title of this blog reveals the cry of my heart as I have been embraced by sound, Biblical, pre-destinarian faith. Last Sunday was Reformation Day, celebrating liberty and freedom from the bondage of man-centered theology. During set-up before the service, my pastor alerted me to something special.

In our service we use graphic slides during preaching to provide the verse addresses, accomodate the points made, and give quotes from respected authors. As I set up and adjusted the over-head projector, pastor Matt showed me an additional last slide he had made. The picture was of the peircing white light of a sun just creeping around the edge of a black planet in deep dark space illuminating the phrase...

POST TENEBRAS LUX

                                                                                        
This is Latin for,

OUT OF DARKNESS, LIGHT

Wow. Now that would make a good blog title. More importantly, the battle cry of the Reformers should ring loud in your ear. It sure did in mine last Sunday as Matt explained it to me. This was their motto as they strove for reform in an apostate church and eventually seperated from evil for good. I had not yet heard it physically, but maybe my soul had heard it before. Who has not heard of the God who outshines all the rest? A look down through the corridors of accurate, historical record will show a blazing white light forging a trail through the bleakest, blackest of nights. In every time in history, as destruction seeks to consume the land, there is always a small point of light that is preserved and perseveres to victory. Hopelessness can be so pervading that it masquerades as the only reality, until hope breaks forth like the morning sunrise in victory to reveal that the high-mindedness of self-seeking men who have decreed hope a crutch for the weak, have in the end only been grasping at straws.

Job of the Bible learned that God is faithful. In one of the most gripping dramas of all time, a man who loved God was cursed. However, out of his darkness came light. He called damnation down on the day he was born, but he refused to damn God. Through unimaginable suffering, he experienced communion with God that few men have ever experienced before or since. God revealed Himself to Job in he midst of pure blackness. God was faithful to Job, because God is faithful to Himself. All things come from God. Evil is a corruption of a thing. God allowed certain things to happen so that He would be glorified as He shows what hope is and what it does.
No man can thwart the will of God.

Learning comes today in so many forms that we oftentimes miss what we could learn from the stranger in real time. God uses so many ways to speak to us. I am convinced there is a blight on our nation and a storm coming the likes of which we have never seen. I am hesitant to speak of the details in mixed company. My pastor gave me a peice of gold in the statement
"POST TENEBRAS LUX".
In learning this statement and it's meaning for the first time, I was starkly reminded of how God works! What a joy and a blessing to know that through the most dark, desperate, heinous of times our God chooses to shine the brightest! Like a trillion diamonds reflecting the white light of the sun, so it is that a few priviledged souls will reflect the glory of God in blinding contrast to the demonic wars assuaging them at all angles; and as so many of the deceived call for submission and blood, O, how precious is the sight of men and women called to proclaim the victorious standard by which all others are measured.

Look around you. What is happening to the world you once knew? What are you learning? Put down your post-modern philosophy, leave off your death grip on self-will, turn off the television, put down your shallow books on non-sensical issues that serve only to distract from the real war at hand.
O Christian, what are you learning?
You will love what you look at and look at what you love.
Hear the cry of men who stood against tyranny!
Hear the soul-rending sobs of painful victory!
POST TENEBRAS LUX!
POST TENEBRAS LUX!
POST TENEBRAS LUX! ........................

OUT OF DARKNESS, LIGHT