WATER OF LIFE

I was at a men’s conference last weekend where I had to rate all the relationships in my life and I rated my relationship to authority figures as the worst. Then the pastor explained that I am only as close to God as the worst relationship in my life. He said it doesn’t matter what they think of me, I have to clean it up.

God also showed me in my dreams before and after this sermon that I was having problems with authority in my life. He used the symbols of my mother and father in my dream. In the first dream I was arguing with my father and older brother and in the second dream I was angry at my mom. The Lord has healed my relationships with my parents but He is still using them as symbols of my struggle with authority in my life. The first dream was about my desires versus my mothers ideas about how things should be done. That dream is a message about the conflict with authority I face at work. In the second dream I was angry with my father and older brother about their insensitiveness to others, which I is also a struggle I have with authority figures in my life.

Also this week, I was reading the New Testament (according to a chronological reading schedule) and miraculously I read this passage about Christlikeness in relationships and with authority:

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.
Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ. But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites.
Colossians 3:18-4:1

This message is also timely because my mother-in-law came today to visit us for the next week and a half. Submitting to and honoring the authority in our lives is important because God is the ultimate authority—and how we react to authority is how we will react to His kingship and authority over our lives.

We Americans are some of the worst at submitting to authority. We founded our country by rebelling against an earthly king and we have completely lost our understanding of how to live under the authority of a king. Our children learn from what we do more than what we say. I don’t want my children having issues with my authority or honoring me as their parent in the future—that is motivation enough to surrender this sin to God’s healing hand.

Lastly, why do I share my struggles with you? Because as a pastor at the men’s conference shared, we have to stop being ashamed of what we’re attacked with. We have to bring it to the light. My blogging is one way I keep myself accountable—it’s out there for the whole world to see (including people at work and church!). It’s also a way to keep me humble because others can see that I’m far from perfect and struggle just the same.

There can be a burning in your heart when you die to self. This is the burnt offering of the new covenant. In the old covenant burnt offerings were made according to the LAW, NOW THEY ARE MADE ACCORDING TO THE LEADING OF Holy Spirit.

Instead of following the Law everyday we are following in Christ’s steps to the cross everyday. We are a living sacrifice as we die to ourselves each day and come one step closer to being made into the image of Christ. We are no longer called to follow a set of rules or commands but instead to follow the guidance of His Spirit within us and make the sacrifices of self that He leads us to make.

So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
Colossians 3:5-11

On May 5th I had a dream and wrote about it in my blog here. This dream was more literal (or prophetic) in meaning than purely symbolic as I had interpreted it. It’s good to journal dreams because God may later reveal more and give you a better understanding. I spent some time looking into the meaning of the dream but it didn’t hit me until May 23rd that this dream was about the class we started attending the day after my dream. I had been praying for a way to teach our kids more about the Lord and there was a flyer for a class for kids to teach them about Genesis. I thought this was an answer to my prayer—and it was—but what God was showing me through this dream was that this class would have just as big an impact on me as it would our kids.

This class introduced us to Answers in Genesis (AiG). To say this class has rocked my preconceptions about creation, the solar system, and the dinosaurs is a gross understatement. AiG is nothing other than God’s own divine truth revealed. I have read the whole Bible twice but this class has taken God’s Word to a whole new level for me. It has removed the deception that the secular world had brainwashed me with, and shown me how God’s creation really happened.

The biggest impact for me is about dinosaurs because it’s so obvious in the Bible. AiG explains the dinosaurs in the Bible as the Leviathan, the Behemoth, and dragons. “Job 41 describes a great animal that lived in the sea, Leviathan, that even breathed fire. This ‘dragon’ may have been something like a the mighty 55 foot long Kronosaurus, or the 82-foot long Liopleurodon.” (Ken Ham, What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?)

“Take a look at Behemoth, which I made, just as I made you. It eats grass like an ox. See its powerful loins and the muscles of its belly. Its tail is as strong as a cedar. The sinews of its thighs are knit tightly together. Its bones are tubes of bronze. Its limbs are bars of iron. It is a prime example of God’s handiwork, and only its Creator can threaten it. The mountains offer it their best food, where all the wild animals play. It lies under the lotus plants, hidden by the reeds in the marsh. The lotus plants give it shade among the willows beside the stream. It is not disturbed by the raging river, not concerned when the swelling Jordan rushes around it. No one can catch it off guard or put a ring in its nose and lead it away.”
Job 40:15-19-24

Some Bibles say the Behemoth is an elephant, hippo, or mythical creature. However, you can certainly catch and lead an elephant and I’m sure that God wouldn’t be talking to Job about a mythical creature so only dinosaur fits the description. Dragons are mentioned in the books of Job, Psalms, Isaiah, and Revelations and in the legends of many cultures. It makes sense that these dragons are what we today call dinosaurs. In addition to the other evidence presented by AiG, I have no problem now believing that the dinosaurs were created on the six day with all the other animals and thus are only 6000 years old and became extinct like so many other plants and animals in this fallen world we live in.

As I read my Daily Bible for the third time this year, I thought God was going to take me deeper into Revelations but He took me the exactly opposite direction. Instead of the end of time He showed me the beginning of creation. This has so much meaning on so many levels. First off, I don’t consider myself a man of science—I find it very interesting but I don’t base my beliefs on it. I take God’s Word as truth based on the miracles he has done in my life. But God wanted to show me His Glory even deeper and He gave me the scientific explanations even when I wasn’t asking for them. And He gave them to me on a level that I could understand and even explain to my kids. This is how my prayer to teach my kids about Him was answered. Also, I believe He is taking me farther in the direction of teaching and He showed me ‘creation science’ because He wants me to share it with my future students.

Why did it take until May 23rd, eighteens days after my dream, for me to understand what my dream was about? I didn’t read all the packets they had given us in the class until after I was intrigued by the third weeks session on dinosaurs. Then it became clear to me as I was reading the one of the packets on the solar system. There was an article from a Ph.D. astrophysicist (from my home state of Colorado no less), who explained the fallacy behind the big bang theory: “Despite claims to the contrary, we’ve never seen a star forming. Star formation seems to be nothing more than a secular attempt to explain the universe without invoking God.” (Dr. Jason Lisle, The Stars of Heaven Confirm Biblical Creation) This is when I recalled my astrophysics dream. I mean how often do I do anything with or read anything about astrophysics in my life? Never!

One question I raised during a couple sessions of the class was about carbon dating. One theory is that carbon could have been different before the flood (Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible?). I didn’t realize that carbon dating is just used for living things and radioisotope dating is used to determine the age of rocks. In my mind (and probably in many others) this carbon/radioisotope dating was key to my belief about the millions of years of creation. “The world is awash with evolutionary propaganda centered on dinosaurs. This has resulted in the thinking of even Christians being permeated by evolutionary philosophy.” (Ken Ham, What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?)

The problem with ‘historical’ science is that we really can’t tell how things age over many years—it’s just guesswork and theories that are presumed to be fact. “All radioisotope dating methods assume (among other things) that the decay rate of a given isotope (an atomic nucleus with a given number of neutrons) is constant—that it has always been what it is today. The RATE researchers have uncovered several independent lines of evidence that strongly indicate that nuclear decay was much more rapid in the past.” (Dr. Jason Lisle, RATE research reveals remarkable results—a fatal blow to billions of years).

Here is my own thought: Adam lived 930 years (4000 BC to 3000BC?) and Moses lived to be 120 (approx. 1500 BC), and now we live to be about 80 years old (2010 AD). God changed mans life-span after the flood (3000-2500BC). Noah lived 950 years but after him each generation had successively decreasing life spans. This was a fulfillment of God’s Word (Genesis 6:1-3) to make man’s life-span 120 years. Decay began with the first sin but it sped up after God’s pronouncement to decrease man’s life-span and His judgement with the flood. And today the average life expectancy has fallen much lower than 120 years. If God radically changed the decay of man how can we make any assumptions about nuclear decay over six millenniums?

Nuclear engineering obviously involves nuclear decay. Once again how often do I have anything to do with nuclear engineering in my waking life? Yet, God prophesied to me in my dream that I would be studying that along with astrophysics. I believe God gave me this dream to confirm the truth that He was about to reveal to me and the effect it would have on me. It was truly like in my dream where the astrophysicist unexpectedly became a nuclear engineer. I had no clue what He was about to show me through a class I thought was for my kids.

As Christians we must speak the truth about the fallacy that’s at the core of the evolution “science” and philosophy. Ken Ham states, “A non-Christian is not Neutral. The Bible makes this very clear: ‘The one who is not with Me is against Me, and the one who does not gather with Me scatters’ (Matthew 12:30). Evolutionary science scatters theories around presuming to be fact and ends up deceiving children, adults, non-Christians and Christians alike.

“Down through the ages, people such as the Egyptians have worshiped the sun. God warned the Israelites, in Deuteronomy 4:19, not to worship the sun as the pagan cultures around them did. They were commanded to worship the God who made the sun—not the sun that was made by God. Evolutionary theories (the ‘big bang’ hypothesis for instance) state that the sun came before the earth, and that the sun’s energy on the Earth eventually gave rise to life. Just as in pagan beliefs, the sun is, in a sense, given credit for the wonder of creation.” (Ken Ham, Six Days or Millions of Years)

I dreamed that I was with someone else shooting bad guys. He had a big gun that look like something from an 80s TV show. I was shooting down all the bad guys no problem. It looked like they were all shot but I was worried and hurriedly reloading my guy fearful that there was still a sniper out there. I asked the other guy for some ammo and he gave me his bullet belt and mine had a few left on it. I was loading all these into the cartridge and my children were there and I was telling them to watch out cause there still might be gunfire. And I was worried that the bullets that I was loading might go off. There was some dust where I was putting them and thought it might be gunpowder that would set off the bullets.

I woke up at 5am and when I can’t sleep I usually read my Daily Bible but I felt led to pick up my Life Application Study Bible. I had an old sermon stuffed in it. I reviewed it and realized this sermon held the meaning of my dream. Pastor Ed Silvoso preached on Luke and stated that there was a hostile spiritual climate in Luke chapters 1-9 but after chapter 10 and through to 24 there was a favorable spiritual climate. Silvoso said that in a favorable spiritual climate you are no longer confronted by the devil.

The online dream dictionary states that “to see a bullet or bullets in your dream, indicates anger and aggression directed at you or someone else.” I believe God is telling me that I have moved from a hostile spiritual climate to a favorable one (maybe in one area of my life). That I need to put away the bullets (anger and aggression) and my fears (and worries about my children) and stop preparing for another attack. If I put away my bullets I don’t have to worry about insignificant things (dust) setting off my bullets.

Pastor Silvoso pointed out a four step strategy when things turn to a favorable spiritual climate.
1. Bless them (Luke 10:5)
2. Fellowship with them (Luke 10:7)
3. Minister to their felt needs - offer prayer (Luke 10:9a)
4. Proclaim or preach the gospel. (Luke 10:9b)

Pastor Silvoso said Jesus sends us out before him to the places He plans to visit to do these four steps with with signs and wonders (Luke 10:1).

Let me take it a step farther past his sermon. Jesus said, “I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can even walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you.” (Luke 10:19). As we apply this four step strategy we will be walking among snakes and scorpions. I see snakes and scorpions as symbolic of people. Snakes are clever, guileful, and deceitful to others and themselves. My grandmother used to say “you old snake in the grass” when someone was acting sly or sneaky. Scorpions are poisonous with their stinging comments, gossip, slander, and foul language.

My step-father said one of my best qualities is that I’m honest so it’s not surprising that I STRUGGLE WITH THE SNAKES DECEITFULNESS> I’m more insightful and intuitive than clever like a snake. I’ve been called a weasel before because I weaseled into a good deal—not dishonestly—like a good job or benefit or bonus, but I’m not a snake. I don’t struggle with scorpions as much because I also have a critical and condemning side that can be poisonous too. I guess I’m more forgiving with scorpions because I also need grace in that area. Sometimes snakes and scorpions claim to know Christ or be a Christian. That’s not surprising because the devil also disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:13-14) and even demons admit to knowing Jesus (Mark 3:11, James 2:19).

Lastly, to tie this back into my dream I don’t need to prepare for an attack and load bullets anymore because God has moved me into a spiritual climate where I can now walk among snakes and scorpions without fearing injury.

One Christian pointed out that God has transformed the hierarchy at his work and he has found more favor. We have lived in our townhouse complex for a few years and God has recently moved in a two Christian couples who we have befriended. I think this coincides with the changing of the spiritual climate both at my work and in my neighborhood. Lastly, when we move into a favorable spiritual climate we start to see salvations occur around us, as demonstrated in Luke chapter 19.

Jesus responded, “SALVATION HAS COME TO THIS HOME TODAY< FOR THIS MAN HAS SHOWN HIMSELF TO BE A TRUE SON OF Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost."
Luke 19:9