Book Review: Crossing the Scriptures by Debra Chapoton
October 5, 2011
Crossing the Scriptures: The Amazing Bible Study by Debra Chapoton
Reviewed by Lillie Ammann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Available in the All Saints Bookstore
Christians sometimes wonder if there is any value to studying the Old Testament, with its genealogies, strange laws, violence, and vengeance. The author shows how the entire Bible ties together in a beautiful tapestry of God’s truth.
In the Introduction, she writes, “The Old Testament is 39 books that tell of mankind vacillating between worshiping and obeying God and then turning away from Him and being idolatrous and immoral. Man‘s behavior requires judgment. The New Testament is 27 books declaring a message of hope: Christ has taken on our punishment (death) and paid for our sins. If we accept that he has done this, then hooray, we get out of the punishment, but if we don‘t accept it then we‘re on our own and the judgment is eternal separation from God, i.e. hell.”
There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and each of those letters is associated with three books of the Bible, books that are evenly spaced 22 books apart from each other. Chapoton shows how words and themes connect each of the three books associated with each letter in perfect symmetry. She also points out many other instances of symmetry and inter-relatedness among the books of the Bible.
Although I read the book straight through, I think it would be even more effective as a Bible study, spending more time on each Hebrew letter and the relationships among the three associated books.
Whether you’re new to Bible study or consider yourself knowledgeable about Scripture, you will likely learn many things you didn’t know. You will also come away with a greater understanding and respect for the remarkable way that God structured the Bible.
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All Saints Movie Night: Friday, October 7 to see Courageous
October 4, 2011
Come join All Saints Anglican Church as we go see the movie Courageous on Friday, October 7 at the 7:20 pm showing at the AMC Huebner Oaks 24 theater at 11075 I-10 West.
We would encourage anyone planning on coming to purchase their tickets before the day of the showing (it did sell out in some theaters the opening weekend) and meet our group in front of the ticket purchasing area at around 6:50 pm, so we can go into the theater together and hopefully be able to sit together.
For more information about the movie, visit the Courageous website.
For more information about the All Saints movie night or to RSVP, contact Bill Wimp at outreach@allsaintsanglican.net.
Man Plans…God Laughs by Jason Dass
October 3, 2011
I was helping my buddy Dwight set up for a show downtown when we started talking about our wives. Dwight said he couldn’t figure out how he ended up with such a kind, loving, beautiful wife. And it got me wondering how I ended up in the same situation! Dwight said: “God must really love me…. Or have a really strange sense of humor.” My immediate response was to agree with God having a strange sense of humor. We are two chubby, bearded guys living in a world where being chubby and bearded would normally exclude us from having mates at all, much less attractive, loving mates. But that is when I really started thinking about God’s sense of humor.
As I was driving home from work tonight, I was looking forward to getting home, relaxing, and getting some chow in me. Then God decided it’s high time He poked His head in to disrupt my plans. Hence: Man plans, God laughs. I started thinking, God has an awesome sense of humor. But how many people know that? I’m blessed with a church family that is well aware of it, but a lot of Christians I’ve met have yet to figure that out.
Maybe they’re caught up in the Old Testament passages where God is raining down punishment on a disillusioned and disobedient Israel. Maybe. But I think many people spend a lot of time thinking about how God is teaching them by poking them in the eye or giving them a little smack on the nose. They forget that He loves us. And if you love someone, you want to laugh with them. We spend so much time taking ourselves so seriously that we forget how silly we are. Just listen to me speak in pretty much any social situation. I stumble over my words, use words that don’t make sense (and most of the time I’m totally unaware of it), or just lose my train of thought mid-word. It’s silly. Maybe it’s because I’m Irish. Everything really is quite funny. And you think God wouldn’t know this?
Take the platypus, for instance. It’s some weird cross between a duck, beaver, and something with poison spurs. POISON SPURS! Would you look at an oddball creature that most people make fun of and think of as being cursed and expect poison spurs? I wouldn’t. Now, I’ve gotta point out that the first person to find those things wasn’t laughing very hard. Well, maybe, if they were Irish. They would laugh later at what seems to be the absolute absurdity of it and at their foolishness for not checking the thing for built-in weapons in the first place. I would, after I got done writhing in mind-numbing agony.
Now, let’s take it a step further. Try to look at yourself the way God does. When I do this, I see a bumbling child absolutely delighted at discovering that there’s something beyond my nose. AND IT MOVES!!! The whole world is a spinning, barely (if at all) comprehensible mass of things we really don’t have a solid grasp on. But we claim to know it all. Oh, we can identify cells, cell components, atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, gluons, and all sorts of interesting things. And we try to think our way through it. Then we argue because our way has to be right. Right? Then we kill each other. We commit foolish, stupid, ignorant, and sometimes evil acts, all in the name of being right. Then God picks us up, sets us on our feet, and watches us blunder to the coffee table and knock something else over. If you’ve got kids, you’ve gotta see the humor in that situation. And look at our theories. We’ve got so many ideas that we can barely make sense of them. Evolution? Possible, maybe even probable, within a small, isolated community utterly separate from everything else. But on a large scale….There’s a reason it’s still a theory, folks. String, Superstring, Quantum Mechanics/ Foam and other assorted theories. They’re genius! And we can’t verify them. Ever watch a kid try to stuff a square peg through a round hole over and over again and catch yourself laughing? I do.
Then there’s the other reason He laughs. Like when your child finds the square hole after hours of trying to make it fit. You laugh with joy. You are absolutely delighted that they learned. You think it’s any different for God when we figure out that all we have to do is ask and He’ll grant us eternal life along with a bucketful of other benefits? When we figure it out, nothing delights Him more. And He laughs. As much time as He spends heartbroken over our refusal to acknowledge Him, or our outright hatred of Him in some cases, I think He spends just as much time laughing with joy in His heart whether it’s with us when we misstep and chuckle about it, or when we learn more of Him and His joy is beyond imagining.
You see, folks, God laughs. A lot. It’s not all fire, brimstone and condemnation. In fact, most of the time, it’s not. God’s just waiting for us to open our hearts so He can laugh with us, share in our joy, and make a new creature from the broken things we pieced together ourselves. Go ahead, laugh with Him. It’s delightful. And your life will be much the better for it.
The Mountain of Unbelief by Ellen Dass
October 1, 2011
Warning! Parable enclosed!
Our Lord Jesus spoke his messages in parables so that his audience could understand the lessons. Unfortunately, his disciples were always confused and asked him to clarify the message as it pertained to them. He always rebuked them for being ignorant or unbelieving. Today, I present a parable, but instead of being in the third person it is in first person. It is intended for you to recognize yourself and the weakness in which you walk.
Psalm 116:1-2 perfectly covers what we need to remember in our daily lives: “I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.” We don’t come to the Lord on our knees and accept him as our Savior because he ignores us. We come because we recognize we have a God-sized hole in our lives.
We believe we are saved. We hang onto our faith, but sometimes in our walk we are bombarded by disbelief and questions. There are two ways we can go with it. We can be like the apostles in Luke 17:5, “and the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith,” or we can lose our faith and return from whence we came, into the darkness.
The Mountain of Unbelief
Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s because you can’t even hear me! For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies. So when I tell the truth, you just naturally don’t believe me! John 8:43-45 NLT
It spans the horizon from left to right. It towers so high it covers the sun and moon. The surface: craggy and pitted with sharp precipices and sharper ravines. The surface rocks can pierce the flesh, shred clothes, and puncture the toughest climbing boots. The insurmountable mountain; woe is me to be blocked by disbelief.
For we walk by faith, not by sight. /em> 2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV
I moan and bewail my tragedy; a still small voice speaks. As I am crying louder, pleading, begging; again it speaks. Raising the volume on my pity party I nearly screech out my prayer. “Mercy! Mercy! Lo, I have erred! Behold this impassable mountain of disbelief! I fear! I struggle! Lord! I hear not your voice! What sin have I committed to blot you from my senses?!?!”
In the midst of voluminous sobbing, again speaks the still small voice: “Arise my child, for I am with you.”
Again, I gnash my teeth. “Lord! You have forsaken me at the foot of this mountain! I have prostrated myself for your sake! Free me from this bondage!”
Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”1 Kings 19:11-13
Again speaks the still small voice. “Arise my child, for I am with you.”
Peering at the mountain, fear sets back in. “Lo, my Lord. Have you not seen this mountain at which you have forsaken me?! How do you say to me: arise? Have you not noticed the path I walked alone, that caused me to stumble and fall here Lord? Woe is me! Woe! It is thy will Lord that caused me to be stranded here. Thy will, Lord, not mine.”
“Arise.”
“Thy will Lord, thy will…but, my strength. I cannot rise my Lord. I am struck! You have cursed me!”
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understandingProverbs 3:5
“Arise, for I am with you. My father sent me as a sacrifice for you and I obeyed. You too, shall obey, not by the flesh, but by the Spirit. ARISE!”
“Yes… my Lord.”
Arising with eyes closed in fear, dusting off tender bleeding flesh pricked by the stones. Reluctantly my eyes are opened. No longer is the horizon engulfed by the mountain. To the left I see plains, forests, rivers, and oceans. To the right, the same. Looking up I see the heavens, the stars, clouds, sun, and the moon. Looking down, a mere anthill at my feet.
I stand, bewildered yet relieved, unable to believe my eyes. What happened to that insurmountable mountain, of which a mere touch would render wounds? What happened to that fear that paralyzed me? The weight upon my flesh was lifted as a sense of freedom began to overtake me.
“As you stumbled over the obstacle placed by the Father of Lies, your eyes were clouded. Your perception became skewed. All you could see was the end of your nose as you lay prostrate, too fearful to trust me. That anthill is your mountain. Each lie whispered in your ear, you accepted as truth and your mountain grew. With each blink of your eyes you became blind to me. It was not I that blotted my presence from your senses.”
How often have we blamed God for our unwillingness to be open to Him and to obey Him? I know for me it is far too often. I frequently allow myself to fall victim to the temptation to be powered by “Power of ME,” not “Power of HE.” Occasionally, God the Father is kind enough to remind me. Other times he lets me stick my fingers into the electrical socket. When we wake, let us remember Ephesians 6:10-18:
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.
Also, if you’re musically inclined, I highly recommend searching out Chris Tomlin’s Come Home Running. But take the time to step over that anthill.
