Hard Luck and Bad News

Morning Everyone,

I have a friend, not much older than I am, who is not long for this world. It is a good thing for him; he will soon be in the presence of his Lord. But there are many here who are suffering because of the approaching loss. It reminds me oh so deeply that I am nearly 51 and tomorrow isn’t promised to me.

51 and going back to school; I think I must be crazy. At least I’m not going back with the illusion of getting a better job like I did with that wasted Masters. I’m going back because I need the focused study. I need to hone the things that are bouncing around in my head looking for direction.

Already, in my self-motivated pre-reading the iron sharpening iron has begun. My eyelids have been pealed back and the paradigm shifts are being poured into my skull. Yet, there is a part of me that is asking why now? Why this late in my life? What if I don’t have enough time to do anything with what I learn? What’s the point?

I may never know what the point is. The secret things belong to God. I guess I’m finally figuring out and applying myself to the fact that the destination is not the point the journey is. I must do the things that are put before me: Study and Write. Those things are my calling. I must pursue them as long as my brain continues to function and my fingers are able to type or my voice holds out. I must be faithful to my call even if there is not visible fruit in my life time.

I find myself taking comfort in the fact that most of the writers I am now reading were dead long before I knew who they were. They wrote around the time I was born or long before and it took me almost 50 years to even hear of them. They are names that for the most part had little effect on the state of affairs in the culture of their day. And now that they are gone their work is bearing fruit in my life and in the lives of others.

I won’t be able to look at the world the same since I read some of H. E. Runner's work last week. I will spend the rest of my life trying to sort through the changes it has made in my view of the world. It is with some fear that I think about pressing forward with my reading list. I’m not sure why I’m the one who has been put on this long slow path. I am finally figuring out though why it is such a long slow path and that’s because it has taken me this long to mature enough to begin to head in this direction. I’m really slow at growing up. And that answers the above questions about why now so late in life. I wasn’t ready for it until now.

It’s not just paradigms that are shifting in my life; other areas of my existence are beginning to change. I actually closed out my ridiculously small retirement account a couple of weeks before the market mayhem began to ensue. I had been talking about it for over a year since I dealt with the topic of knowing what companies you invest your money in during a sermon series. It has been on my mind, gnawing at me for some time and I finally did it. I paid off some bills and then for the first time in my life I consciously invested in something. I set aside some of my income for the future. Yes, at 50, for the first time.

At this point, I’m not sure whose future it is for but that’s another problem for another time. To those of you who have been doing such things since you were born this may seem unbelievable that someone could be so pitiful. But as Larry Norman sang: Hard luck and bad news has followed me from town to town all my life my luck’s been down I’m getting so weary…. You can change luck to providence if it makes you uncomfortable.

That’s why these seemingly inconsequential things are such a big deal for me. God is letting me change. That’s not something that everybody gets to do. I know a lot of people who think about changing all the time but never get around to it. These little baby steps that I am taking flood over me like a tidal wave. Some of you have probably been grown up since you were 5 but I only thought I was grown up until I was thirty and now at 50 it may be starting to happen.

I find myself grateful for the opportunity because I know deep in my heart it is something that most people don’t get to do. Maybe, I will be in the presence of my Lord tomorrow. I don’t know. But I do know that when I get there I will fall at his feet in gratefulness that he let me be saved from myself. Only he is strong enough and brave enough to do such a momentous deed.

Grace and Peace,

Brad

Up Around the Bend

Hey Everyone,

I’m finding out more and more that I am a goal oriented person. I like to have something out there on the road ahead of me that I am working toward. For me it needs to be relatively specific; something broad like ‘advancing the Kingdom’ is just too broad and too unobtainable for me.

In the last few months I think I had pretty much come to the end of all that I had been focused on. The FMC meeting came and went and that had been my last big goal. I mean there are other books out there to be written I’m sure and I am getting the fourth one ready to publish but it just doesn’t ‘feel´ like the right time to start writing a new one yet.

Part of the reason for that is that I know where I want to go with the next book but I am not at the place where I can work it out in detail. That is a reflection of my life as well. It feels like I’ve been working on this life-sized jigsaw puzzle and I’ve come to the realization that I’m missing a few pieces and I can’t finish the puzzle until I find them.

Over the last few years I’ve been getting hints about where to look and I’ve talked about them from time to time in my blurbs. Like the time when my friend Jim told me about the scholar and theologian H.E. Runner for the first time. It was like a light clicked on for me. The same is true when I found a used copy of Herman Dooyewerd’s In the Twilight of western civilization several months back.

How does a boy who grew up thinking that a Reformed church must be the equivalent of a reform school; start falling in love with Abraham Kuyper and his Dutch Reformed cohorts in his 40’s? I don’t know but I have. And in doing so I have also realized that I can’t fully understand the ramifications of these men’s writings on my own. I need iron to sharpen iron.

So it was with a mixture of joy and fear mingled with more fear that I received the news last week that I had been accepted into the Doctoral program of Edinburg Theological Seminary in Edinburg….Texas to study in the Dutch Reformed tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd.

How did I get here? I look back on my theological journey and I am amazed at how God brought things into my life without telling me anything about their background beforehand for my own good. For instance, I first encountered RJ Rushdoony in an Assembly of God church in 1986 or 87. Had I known what he stood for I would have run in the opposite direction but after I read the introduction to Institutes of Biblical Law there in my house in Beloit WI; I knew I would never be the same. I had been placed on a new path going a totally different direction. I had no way of know just how different at the time.

Not long after that my life blew up and I found myself working second shift as a janitor at a church in Nashville. Somehow, I ran across a cassette tape series on biblical theology by Gerhard Van Groningen and soon I was reading the books on the class notes which included Vos’s biblical theology. At the same church I found a copy of Van Til’s Defense of the faith and the man who owned basically said “Take it. I don’t have a clue what it’s about.”

Over the course of my life I have often wondered; why did my life end up the way it did? Why did I end up working as a janitor most of my life? Well, the truth is God took me down the paths he did so that I would find the treasures along the way. Had I never quit the ministry and gone back to work for McDonalds; I would have never come across Rushdoony. He would have been the devil incarnate in the circles I ran around in. The same is true for most of the others that I encountered along the way.

I’m reading a book by Calvin Seerveld right now that I picked up after I spent time in a recording studio where I was general all around flunky, talking to a young Canadian intern (which is a code word for work for free) who had just graduated from Dordt College who turned me on to Seerveld’s book Rainbows for a fallen world.
I realize that these names and events mean next to nothing to you. I guess they’re not the important part in all of this; what is important is understanding that unless I had walked the path that I walked I would NOT be in the place I’m in today. God had to send me on what I would consider many many detours to get me to find what I needed to find. But the truth was they weren’t detours at all.

I talk often about what a long strange trip it’s been but that is only from my perspective. God, who made me, knew exactly what it would take to get me to where I needed to be. He knew that if the hard hearted, socialist, law hater (I know that explains a lot to many of you and confuses others even more) that I was in my teens and twenties was ever going to change it would have to be by subterfuge and not a frontal attack. My acid tongue would have sliced apart anyone who came within a hundred miles spouting the validity of the law of God and the joys of earning a living through actual work.

So God, slowly but surely, tore my life apart, changed my hard heart, taught me to love his law and ways and now in the next stage of the race is sending me to reform school. For that I am grateful.

Maybe you can’t relate to the things that are important to me. That’s ok. I realize I am way off the beaten path for most people. But I would guarantee you can relate to the journey (especially if you’re over 40). I’m reminded of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song:

There's a place up ahead and I'm goin' Just as fast as my feet can fly
Come away, come away if you're goin' Leave the sinkin' ship behind
Come on the risin' wind We're goin' up around the bend

I’ve been going just as fast as my feet could fly most of my life in a hurry to leave the sinking ship behind. If it weren’t for the bends in the road I would have turned and run the other direction a hundred different times. I’m am blessed to be here on this road getting ready to start a new phase of the race, a race I would have run in a totally different direct had I been in control.

For now I think I’ll do the things that are at hand, keep working my way through the two thousand plus pages of new reading material that is coming in the mail soon and spend some time singing Doo, doo, doo, while lookin' out my back door.

Grace and Peace,

Brad
Cosmoyada.com

The long and winding road

Hey Everyone,

I don’t know about you but I always thought the straight and narrow was going to be a lot straighter and narrower than it is. I guess I assumed that the phrase meant shortest and quickest; but it’s dawning on my lately that such is not the case.

Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think the path would lead me through the valley of the shadow of death so many times. At the same time, when I was in those valleys I never thought I’d see good times again, not just good times, better times. I never imagined even just a few short years ago that I’d be praying with my wife in the mornings and enjoying it. It just never entered my mind.

I know some of you think praying is the next best thing to sliced bread and that everybody should be praying non-stop with anybody and everybody anytime they can. And perhaps those things are true but in the reality that is my head that’s a lot easier said than done. I made it through 16 or 17 years of marriage with limited prayer time, who am I kidding limited communication of any kind. Those of you who have read this weekly blurb for any length of time are quite familiar with the fact that I don’t communicate one on one very well.

But the path erroneously named straight and narrow I’ve been walking on has been changing me in the last few years even though it has been like pulling teeth without anesthetic. Somewhere along the line I be grudgingly started praying in the mornings with my wife not of my own volition but because she asked me to. It has been a struggle for me. It has been a dying for me – a dying to me. I need a lot more dying so that I can start living.

This morning after our short prayer together my wife looked at me and I couldn’t tell you exactly what she said but this is what I heard: Thanks for praying with me. It means a lot. And the look in her eyes said more than her words.
This comes on the heels of us coming home from a trip to Chattanooga without me turning on the stereo. (Never been done before). We simply talked for two and a half hours.

I still can’t figure out how the path led me here. How did I make it past the dead man’s curves of fear? How did I start to grow up against my own wishes? Why did it take so damn long? I mean come on I’m going to be 51 in a few weeks. I’m just doing things now that I should have been doing 30 years ago but I couldn’t. I wasn’t able. It wasn’t possible given the state of my heart.

I’ve been going through Genesis in my weekly sermon series. We’ve been looking at the extreme dysfunction of the families in there. They were messed up but no more than our own; our lives are just not revealed for all the world to see. God took years to get them where he wanted them to be. Abraham was 75 before he gave up his idols. Jacob was in his 60’s before he reconciled with his brother. His family continued to be a mess until just before he died. I’m learning that it takes a lot (of both pain and time) to change a man’s heart: A whole lot.

So much for straight and narrow. I think the Beatles might have been correct when they sang The Long and Winding Road: The wild and windy night that the rain washed away has left a pool of tears crying for the day. Why leave me standing here? Let me know the way. The long and winding road that leads to your door will never disappear I've seen that road before it always leads me here: Lead me to your door.

This crazy road is leading me places I didn’t know existed. And I can’t say that it gets any easier driving through the new fear frontier but at least I now know I’m traveling across country I would have never seen if I’d been on another path.
Can anybody explain to me the difference between terror and excitement? They blur together for me. Perhaps the long and winding road is a roller coaster. The terror is the long slow climb. The excitement is making it past the climb and falling into the father’s arms with your stomach in your mouth.

I think another hill is about to end because my knuckles are about as white as they can get. I hear Jeff Bridges singing: It’s funny how falling feels like flying –for a little while.

Guess I’ll know which it is in a few weeks.

Grace and Peace,
Brad

www.cosmoyada.com

Every Word I Say

Hey Everybody,

Well, I’m trying to get back in the writing groove after taking almost 4 weeks off. It’s not as easy as one would think. My routine came to a standstill and now I’m scrambling around trying to put my life back together. Brian Whitehead taped another episode of The Final word this week which is always interesting for me. I wouldn’t say it to his face but he needs to practice a bit more if he’s ever going to be really good at being a tele-evangelist. You can see it at

http://www.youtube.com/bradleyscotstephens

In my own life, I’m getting a sense that it is time to move to the next level, to move deeper into my calling and at the same time I find my calling becoming clearer. Those are always good things for me. I have a couple of opportunities before me and as they unfold I will let you know more about them. No need in talking about things that are simply wishes. I would however appreciate your prayers that God would lead me down the path.

Part of what is driving this is watching the destruction of multiple friends’ lives in large part due to bad shepherding: Bad theology coupled with short term vision and naïve understanding of the condition of man. In the so called new reformed circles there is a great desire to preach grace out of context from the real world.

The flocks are being taught that grace is a substance that puts you in right relation with God regardless of your actions. In fact, your actions can’t add to or take away from anything that God does. He is sovereign after all and so your actions are pretty much meaningless. Of course they would deny those charges but whether they intend their words to be interpreted like that or not they are by many people.

In the last couple decades I have seen many who have been under such teaching for years really starting to apply it to their lives. They are living out what they are hearing. They are doing what they are being taught and taking it in a direction that their pastors did not intend but good intentions don’t make up for bad theology.

People work their theology out in the real world as they understand it. The result in so many of my friend’s lives is nothing but devastation. I remember the feeling of that devastation being applied to my own life by someone close oh so many years ago. I don’t know how long this whirlwind will last but there will be damage to clean up for a long, long time. We may have only seen the first wave of devastation.

Back when I was a part of those circles I tried to be a bit of a balance to what was being taught. I saw the danger of rejecting the law because I lived the danger. I pursued grace to the inth degree. I hated the law in my early years. My life now is still filled with past consequences of bad theology. But my words were of no avail – offering vegetables to kids in a candy store doesn’t go over so well and so I moved on, not entirely of my own choice.

But now, years later people are dead, families lie broken beyond repair in many cases because of great sounding words coupled with poor understanding. See it’s one thing to preach grace alone to those who have been rooted and grounded in right and wrong, in the law. There is still a structure to hold grace in place. But if you feed someone who was raised with no real moral foundation the concept of grace alone not just in salvation but in every area of life and couple that with a concept of sovereignty that eliminates responsibility they will eventually come to the conclusion that it makes no difference what they do; there will be no consequences, grace will cover all and they will begin to do what they want to do. They will live what they are being taught.

There will, however, be consequences: Both for those who walk in rebellion and for those who don’t teach the whole word of God. Shepherds who feed their flocks ideas and words so big that the sheep can’t consume them, can’t make them a part of their lives or those who feed them things that cause disease and malnutrition will be held to a stricter judgment. Shepherds will be held accountable for the long term consequences of what they teach. Those men from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s who taught that we should not be a part of culture because it would taint us or those who taught that we wouldn’t be on the planet past 1988 will all be held accountable for their part in ruining lives and cultures. We are living in the long term consequences of the food those shepherds fed the flocks.

We are only just beginning to see the effects of the half developed concepts of sovereignty and grace that are now permeating the sheep. They will not be good. I have seen suicides; divorces, adulteries and general destruction of lives already grow out of these things. But God’s sovereign so that makes it ok. What can you do? God planned it that way.

I’m sick of it. I’m sick of what the shepherds are doing to the flock. I’m tired of watching the flocks starve to death on what they are being fed. This may sound, I don’t know, heretical, but it is time to get past theology to application. By that I am not saying we should throw out theology, on the contrary we need to know what the bible says, but it is time to start applying what the bible says. My friends who are dying, running wild are simply living out the theology that they’ve been taught. The ones in those circles who refuse to follow suite are probably just too afraid that what they believe might really not be true in the long run so they are hedging their bets.

For too long we have been selective about what parts of the bible we will let influence our theology but that kind of study of God is nothing more than a study of us as god. If our knowledge of God doesn’t include the whole word of God then it is not a study of God. We live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God not just the ones we like or agree with.

I am reminded of a song by the band Adam Again called Every Word I Say.

Everybody is talking, many words are spoken, But they're telling me the things that they think I wanna hear,
Enough is enough, it's time to get serious, Sounds so good, (can you see us?)
And if you tell me you love me...well, it better be the truth.

Well, I know that the things that we say are sometimes automatic, (I mean every word I say)
We just follow a script, like a charter reading his lines, (I mean every word I say)
Enough is enough, it's time to get serious, (I mean every word I say)
And if you talk about love, know the meaning of the word. (I mean every word I say)

From my heart to my head, from me head to my mouth,
Can the words cross the air between us, oh, and be true? - yeah. I mean every word I say,

Of course I take that as God speaking to us. He does mean every word he says.
On the other hand our lives, what we do, are a true reflection of what we believe.

May God have mercy on his church,

Brad

Cosmoyada.com