My lesson tonight at the Transformation House was based on chapter 33 in John Piper's book The Passion of Jesus Christ. Its primary text was Galatians 6:14, and the premise is that Christ died on the cross so that all the boasting we do as believers might be a boasting in the cross. It's quite clear in Scripture that boasting in ourselves, what we have or do, is contrary to God's plan for the world. Boasting in ourselves over such things is misplaced praise, as if we are responsible for our very lives and the things we have been able to do. The Bible teaches instead that God is the giver of life and the one who enables us to do all things, and His desire is that as we come to understand this, we would render praise to God as is fitting for all the good things we enjoy in this life and all the bad things God uses for good in our lives.

This sort of life is only possible through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. He received in his flesh willingly, according to the plan of God, the penalty for our self-centered sin. All who trust in this substitution no longer stand condemned and are freed from an essentially self-centered life, so it makes sense that the cross would become the Christian's greatest treasure. According to the Bible, it frees a man or woman to live life as God intended which is by nature the most satisfying thing for him or her to do and the most honoring to God.

Tonight was a wonderful night of teaching at the Transformation House. I've been leading lessons through John Piper's book The Passion of the Christ that brings to light many reasons given in Scripture for the suffering and death of Jesus. Lesson 27 teaches that Jesus suffered and died to become a sympathetic and helpful priest. The gist of it is that through his life and death he subjected himself to the same weaknesses, sufferings, and temptations that we face daily because we are human. Accordingly, he is able to sympathize with us in our weakness, because he himself suffered when being tempted.

Of course, this isn't just a theological or intellectual exercise. Knowing that Jesus is sympathetic is supposed to give us confidence to approach him in our times of need. What are those? I'd say any time of temptation, conviction, or suffering. Any time we're tempted to look at ourselves in light of God's Word and allow our failures to overshadow God's grace toward those who believe. Knowing that we'll find sympathy with Jesus instead of a rebuke, we are to approach him with confidence for mercy and for grace to help us make the right decisions or persevere through hardship.

My pastor preached a sermon this morning on the fear of the Lord. More specifically, it was a word from Joshua 24 on ways Joshua endeavors to cultivate the fear of the Lord among the Israelites and how he doesn't shy away from challenging their response. I won't go into much more detail, but his message did remind me to put together a few pieces of the Scriptures I've seen to grow in my understanding of the Lord.

It can be dangerous blogging about a topic like this, read by people from various faiths or understandings of Christianity, without providing a robust definition of what it means to fear God. However, for the sake of this post, I'm going to point out one of the most easily understood definitions I use. Proverbs 8:13 says, "The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil."

That's simple enough... no caveats required. To fear God means to hate what is evil, specifically what God has declared is evil. This includes things ranging from pride and arrogance to immorality, hatred, and murder. When the concept of fearing God becomes a little heady or non-practical, this definition gives it feet. It's immediately applicable... if I want to discern whether I'm living in fear of the LORD (as we're called to do, for example 1 Pt. 1:17), I can look at my life and ask whether or not I'm hating what is evil or partaking in it.

At first I was planning on blogging every night of my vacation. Obviously I missed last night so that's a wash. Really it's just a ploy to have enough material to write about.

I'll start with Saturday morning. Honolulu has a place with a famous recipe for banana pancakes and macadamia nut sauce. It's a tiny, hole-in-the-wall kind of place called Boots & Kimo's. There are about 6 or 7 tables, and there's usually enough people there that they need to take your order outside before they find a table for you. This is more than made up by the sheer delight that is the pancakes. I've been keeping a list of foods that I expect to find in Heaven. These were just added.

For the afternoon, we were taken to the Bellows Air Force station. During the week, the beaches are closed for maneuvers, but on the weekends, half the beach is open to the public, and half is open to military personnel and their guests. John's brother-in-law is in the Air Force, so we got to be on the military side.

I've been to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico before, but neither of them were the brilliant turquoise that the Pacific had this day. Several good pictures were taken, and you can find some of them here.

The weeks since the Drupalcon have been a blur, but now I'm fairly well without an excuse for not posting to the blog. I've kept quite busy with work, church, and home related activities, and I think I've started at least a couple blog posts that never saw the light of day. Perhaps for now I'll simply say a blurb about two books I'm reading, post a short poem I wrote for my pastor while he studied for tomorrow's sermon in the same coffee shop as Christina and me, and write a summary thought related to Easter.

This post is a little late in coming, but I wanted to write a few thoughts down about my most recent lesson at the Transformation House before I forgot them forever! I teach Bible studies at a rehab center for men who come to the house understanding that they are helpless to break free of the destructive addictions that have ruined their lives. Together we seek their freedom from and persevering victory over these things through the gospel, the Christian teaching that Jesus died on the cross to atone for our sins and that through faith in that fact we are freed from sins here and now in increasing measure and ultimately forever in heaven. Unfortunately, often times these truths are afterthoughts following a relapse or distant in times of trouble. Our lesson last Tuesday looks at the reality of the situation... Jesus' nearness in trial to save us in spite of weak faith and hearts that cower when tempted to fall again into drug use, alcoholism, sexual immorality, and really any sort of sin that may ensnare a man.

One of my favorite stories in the gospels is that of the rich young ruler found in all three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). I've taught this passage several times to recovering addicts with varied results, and the general conclusion is that we're just as helpless to save ourselves as that man was. The rich young ruler was seeking eternal life from the one man alive who could have led him to take hold of it, and even though he lay at the Savior's feet, he was still miles away from salvation.