Josh Hatcher's Blog

As we approach Easter, and we look at the story of Jesus, and His resurrection from the dead, I thought it might be interesting to look at this spectacular story from a skeptics viewpoint.

I know and believe wholeheartedly that the Bible is true. I don't need logic, or anything else to convince me of it. If the Bible said something I didn't agree with it, I know that I am the one that is wrong.

That being said, People often think that scripture is just a bunch of made up stories... that they are illogical, or irrational, and innaccurate.

Lee Strobel is a former Atheist that was converted to Christianity as he started researching ways to disprove the Bible.

The following videos are some that he produced that look at the resurrection, and the evidence and logic that prove that it is true.
People may say we are crazy for believing this whole Jesus thing.... but the truth is, the argument holds up to scrutiny. Our faith is NOT blind faith, but faith based on true historical accounts, not mythology or legend.


Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Part 1


Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Part 2




Die For a Lie


Earliest Reports

I'm really getting recharged as I read this book. It's a wonderful biography of a powerful man of God. It's different than most biographies, because it is filled with quotes and clips from Jim Elliot's journals and letters.

Elizabeth Elliot fills in details as needed to weave them all together, but to actually read what was going on in the head of a man so passionate about Christ as Jim Elliot is refreshing, and makes me feel like I've just plugged in to a power source, and I'm sucking in electricity to fill up my batteries. (I say this as my laptop light blinks, because it's not getting enough electricity...)
The Call

Jim Elliot had some awesome thoughts on the concept of a "call" from God to do ministry. In Christian circles, the "call" is when someone feels God is telling them to go into ministry.

Elliot didn't like the response he was seeing to such thinking.

Our young men are going into professional fields because they don't "feel called" to the mission field. We don't need a call; we need a kick in the pants. We must begin thinking in terms of "going out" and stop our weeping because "they won't come in." Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the church. May God send us forth.

The two things that motivated Jim more than anything else was his passionate relationship with God, (A living God that spoke to him everyday.) and a broken heart for the billions of people going to hell without Christ.

Supernatural Power

And it was in the context of that relationship that Jim sought power from God to do the work.
He spoke out of frustration at one point of his life, after seeing very few people won to Christ:

No Fruit Yet. Why is it I'm so unproductive? I cannot recall leading more than one or two into the kingdom. Surely this is not the manifestation of the power of the Resurrection. I feel as Rachel - "Give me children or else I die."

He was frustrated with the complacency he saw within the church, and the lack of the people to take hold of God's power in their lives. He attended a missionairy conference while in college and wrote this:

Think for a moment of the potential here: students from all over the country and other parts of the world, met here specifically to study missions. How long shall we sit analyzing, questioning, arguing, discussing, before God lays hold on us with power to thrust us out to the billion and a half who have not yet heard? But one can pray- and this I ask of you all Lay hold with all your powers upon the Lord of the Harvest, that He would make the effects of this convention resound in dark places for His Name's Sake.
Dangerous

Observing this complacency in the church led him to write one of my absolutely most favorite quotes of all time.


We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not recon with. But we are "harmless" and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part int he comradeship of the cross. We are "Sideliners" - coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like it's own. Oh, that God would make us dangerous!

This has been my prayer for a long time... that we who call ourselves Christian (including me) would live with the kind of abandon that Jim Elliot did. No fear holding us back... No attachments keeping us from giving our all to Him.... Nothing. Absolutely NOTHING should be able to keep us from obeying God. The penalty for not obeying Him is the death of billions of people. They are all around us, and without us being willing to take ridicule, or a fist to the eye, or maybe as Jim Elliot did, a spear to the chest, they will not find the eternal hope that God gives them.

Instead we sit behind our comfortable salaries, our shiny cars, and 300 channel cable TV packages. We spend more on our family cell phone plan than we do funding the Kingdom of God. And when challenged with this fact, we get indignant, because, "who is this guy to tell me that I have to give this up. I NEED this."

No. We need to sacrifice. We NEED to get disconnected from the things of this world. We need to get plugged into Jesus, and then stop being "church people" and start being PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW CHRIST.

To follow Christ means that we "take up our cross"... it means that we lay down our lives...

"Josh, I love Jesus. I am willing to give up anything to follow Him!"
- Yeah? What if it meant losing your job? What if it meant selling your house and moving into an apartment next door to the projects? What if it meant giving away all your stuff, and moving to Guinea to work with our friend Pastor David Coker? What if it meant breaking up with that girlfriend? What if it meant telling your kids that you are canceling your internet service, or your cable tv, or your cell phone, or selling that second car, and taking out a second mortgage on your home, and giving the money to fund God's work? What if it meant admitting to your wife that you are looking at porn? What if it meant face to face forgiving the guy that raped you? What if it meant the whole world turned against you and what if you lost everything?

Wait... it DOES mean all that. It is going to look different for each of us... but the call to sacrifice... the call to live a dangerous faith... the call to abandon ALL for Christ is extended to all of us... And we need to be aware that Jesus never meant for our lives to be easy... or comfortable... or happy...

it might be those things.. because Jesus DOES want to bless us...

but what we are is "sheep for the slaughter"....

I still have about half of the book to finish.... but this quote, written years before Jim was slaughtered by the Waodoni Indians on the shore of the river in Ecuador.... while he was trying to share love with them. It's almost eerie. Did he KNOW his death was looming if he obeyed God? Who knows. What we do know, is that we are all called to follow in Christ's footsteps... to sacrifice... whether it is our lives, or our comfort, or our own wants and desires...

"We are the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise." And what are sheep doing going into the gate? What is their purpose inside those courts? To bleat melodies and enjoy toe company of the flock? No. Those sheep were destined for the altar. Their pasture feeding had been for one purpose, to test them and fatten them for bloody sacrifice. Give Him thanks, then, that you have been counted worthy of His altars. Enter into the work with praise.

I am reading a book called Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot by Elizabeth Elliot.

Jim Elliot is one of the missionaries that was killed in Ecuador in the 1950's... the subjects of the movie "End of the Spear"
You can read more about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Elliot

Elliot's faith was amazing, and my borrowed copy of the book is quickly thickening with little yellow post-its marking my favorite parts. (on almost every page)

I thought I would blog about some of the things that I found interesting.

Personal Convictions
Jim Elliot's convictions were solid. He held his convictions firmly, and he would not budge to do what God had told him not to do. I don't hold to the same convictions, but I respect the way He consistently lived what he believed. Jim would not attend school dances, and he thought Christians had no role in war or politics.
He considered himself a "citizen of heaven", and NOT a citizen of any kingdom on this earth. That, in his mind, exempted him and prevented him from getting involved with politics. Had he been drafted to fight in World War II, he would have been a contientious objector, refusing to serve based on his spiritual convictions.

Again, I don't share those convictions, but I love how firmly Jim held to his.

Education

The book quotes this passage from 1 Corinthians 8

We should remember that while knowledge may make a man look big, it is only love that can make him grow to his full stature. For whatever a man may know, he still has a lot to learn, but if he loves God, he is opening his whole life to the Spirit of God.

Jim lived by this. He got a college education at Wheaton, but often wrote in letters and journal entries about his frustration with the way education distracted him from his relationship with God.

He was a god student, but when his grades started to suffer, he wrote to his family that he was working mainly on his degree of "AUG", which he called his "Approved Unto God."

Elliot wrote, "The acquisition of academic knowledge (the pride of life) is a wearing process and I wonder now if it is all worth while... What thing better can a man know than the love of Christ, which passes knowledge? Oh to be revelling in the knowlege o Him, rather than walling in the quagmire of inscrutable philosphy!"


One Track Mind
Jim went to school because he sensed God telling him to go there. He didn't get involved with many other activities, because He was focused on training his life for the rigors of missionary work. His friend accused him of having a one track mind.
Indeed, his friends also wrote that Jim frequently prayed "O, God, my heart is fixed."

Jim knew that he was going to wholeheartedly strive after Jesus, and nothing would sway that.

His one track mind even changed his feelings toward the things he used to love, but now felt less important as he compared them with Christ.

He said of a football game: "The shouting seems a useless process... far better to be shouting God's praises." That's not to say he didn't enjoy or get into the game, just that he seemed to care less about it than he did about God.

Prayer
Jim wrote this in his journal:

March 22 : I lack the fervency, vitality, life in prayer which i longfor. I know that many consider it fanaticism when they hear anything which does not conform to the conventional, sleep inducing eulogies so often rising from Laodicean lips; but I know too that these same people can acquiescently tolerate sin in their lives and in the church without so much as tilting one hair of their eyebrows. Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims.

BE
Jim wrote this of a speech he gave in college:

...beyond 'believing' and 'behaving' in the Christian life, there is also 'being'...
Be not ignorant
Be not decieved
Be sober
Be vigilant
Be mindful of the word
Be steadfast

Exclusion of All but "The Will"

Jim wouldn't date in college. He had a girl that he really liked. (and one day married) but until God confirmed that they should be together, he was content just to be friends. He refused to let anything in his life if it distracted him from God.
Elizabeth wrote this:

Jim enjoyed to the full all that he believed God had given him to enjoy, but he felt it wisest to exclude from the sphere of activity anything which had the power to distract him from the pursuit of The Will.

No Inheritance
Jim journaled after reading about the Levites in Deuteronomy 9 and 10, and their lack of inheritance. Jim said "Lord ifv you will bu allow me to take this set apart place, by your grace, I will covet no inheritance. Nothing but Christ."

Jim wanted only Jesus, and nothing else mattered to him. His "heart was fixed."

Looking for Truth

Jim looked at scripture as alive, and thought that God would reveal new truth through it. It was not to be locked into rigid interpretation, but rather to be read with fresh insight each time. And if he didn't get something fresh, sometimes he would get frustrated.

Yesterday though I had plenty of time for study and read the chapter faithfully, and earnestly sought truth that would be fresh, I cannot say that I found any. Perhaps I sought too hard. Perhaps I strove with the Spirit and frightened the Heavenly Dove in my eagerness. Teach me, Lord, how to listen and not always seek to squeeze truth out of scriptures which you have not yet chosen to open. My study and prayer time is not yet what I would have it.

I like how he talks about God "unlocking truth" from scripture when He is ready. I've seen it happen like that.

In the 40's and 50's "fundamentalist" Christianity was a popular movement, preaching dispensationalism... that God moved in different ways at different times. People would often look at Jim and scratch their heads at his ideas, because he didn't fit in to their cookie cutter picture of a Christian.

Jim said this in his journal:

2nd Timothy 2:9 says "The Word of God is not bound." Systematic theology- be careful how you tie down the word to fit your set and final creeds, systems, dogmas, and organized theistic philosophies! The Word of God is not bound! It's free to say what it will to the individual and no one can outline it into dispensations which cannot be broken. Don't get it doen "cold", but let it live - fresh, warm, and vibrant- so that the world is not binding ponderous books about it, but rather is shackling you for having allowed it to have freecourse in your life. That's the apostolic pattern....
The Great Calvinist - Armenian Paradox

I'm not going to get into the details of this theological debate. I consider myself an "Armenian" rather than a "Calvinist", but I also respect both viewpoints, and I think that sometimes, even though we seem to contradict each other, it's all a matter of how you see the same thing from another angle.

I have found few others who take this position, because most of the time, people want to argue and argue and debate and debate endlessly over which one is right on the issues of freewill and sovereignty.

I love Jim's position, which acknowledges the bit of a paradox. ...and those who are arguing about foreknowledge, election, and such: read those verses 14:26 and hen look how the apostle is willing to leave it a paradox. "God gives repentance" and "they recover themselves." Yes, I'm Naive, but I'm glad to be in such a case.

There's a lot more to discuss about Jim Elliot, so I hope to post the rest of my notes soon.