Fundamentals for Maturity

As I’ve grown in my walk with the Lord there are a list of concepts that I have found to be revolutionary and rooting in my walk:

  1. Identificaion Truths
  2. Positional Truths
  3. Abiding
  4. Hermeneutics
  5. Understanding of Covenants and Dispensations

Identification Truths
This is the concept that is presented strongly in Romans 6 and various other places confirm and expound on the idea that we were identified with Christ in His crucification, death, burial and resurrection. We were identified with Christ and so we therefore are not slaves to sin. We still will sin due to our bodies being strapped to the sin nature but that is why Paul writes that we should reckon our bodies dead. Instead of focusing on the flesh we should set our minds on the things above (Colossians 3:1-3).

Positional Truths
This is the concept that my position is in Christ. Right now I’m hidden with Christ (Colossians 3 again) and no matter what I do in this human body I am baptized into Christ and cannot be seperated from Him. My relationship with Christ should be consuming and not my keeping track of my condition. My condition is what I’m experiencing now on the earth. My position is perfect in Christ due to my identification with Him, but my condition can at times not match my position. However, as we walk in fellowship with Christ we will have our condition match our position. This is the process of sanctification, there is no hindrance to our sanctification we will be conformed to the image of Christ, even if we have ‘Jonah’ moments where we walk in the flesh and try to walk away. Ephesians 2:10 says that God has good works planned for us, which means that even if he needs to bring about a large fish to relocate us, get a donkey to talk to us, or bring us to the bottom of things in our condition, He is sanctifying our lives and conforming us to the image of Christ!

Abiding in Christ
Instead of trying to figure out what righteousness looks like in a to-do list fashion we should be focusing on our relationship with Christ. This guarantees us a righteous walk and that we will exceed any set of rules or laws that we may be able to construct. Instead of trying to live down to laws, which only put us into bondage, we need to abide in Christ (see John 15) and this will produce the fruit of Christ in our lives. Don’t get distracted by junk that you can do, but instead be focused on Christ who will do pure and rewardable things in your life!

Hermeneutics
This is a consistent and methodical approach to reading and understanding scripture. Inconsistancy in interpretation is one of the major reasons that there are differences in believer’s theology (that’s a rather obvious statement, sorry). Paul tells us that we need to be united in our doctrine and I think that one of the big issues that I see today in the church is that we don’t recognize that the author of scripture (the Holy Spirit) had one intended meaning for what He inspired through the human writers. I have written about hermeneutics before, you can read it here.

Understanding of Covenants and Dispensations
Understanding the major sections of scripture and the agreements God made with mankind helped me get a feel for the plan of God for the world. Understanding the Noahic covenant was critical in grasping God’s plan for grace, capital punishment, God’s provision for eating meat, and God’s faithfulness in not destroying the world with another flood. Then you learn about Abraham’s covenant, which is really God’s covenant with himself to Abraham and his descendents. After that you learn about God’s covenant with Israel, God’s covenant with David and then the New Covenant in Jeremiah. Grasping these covenants, seeing who they relate to, when they relate to and how they fit into the timeline of scripture is awesome and something I suggest every believer study and grow in.

From there you can grow in many, many areas because of God’s word being so amazing, but those things really helped me grasp my relationship with God and helped me understand the Bible more wholely. Reading scripture (or listening) and understanding what your reading makes it easier to grow as well as discern when others are teaching law or mis-understanding God’s word because you know what it means with certainty because you have a consistent method and a broader knowledge of the Bible.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

Happy Hallmark Holiday!

Happy Valentines Day. Do try to be romantic the other 364.25 days of the year will you? It can sure help get you practiced up and prepared for the one day of the year that Hallmark expects to be paid for it. Oh, and the jewelry store called and said that the earings you ordered won’t be in until Wednesday, sorry about your luck. I guess its back to foot massages and being nice. 😉

Race Card Drivers

No, the title is not a typo. In fact its a play on words. If you read this site normally that will be as surprising as waking up in the morning and discovering that your breakfast cereal has indeed not changed into a leprechaun. My friend Robin just sent me a link to a new reality series called “Black. White.” wherein families of (wait for it…) black or white ethnicity go under the not so careful eye of makeup artists to look the opposite color. What the heck? Why do we need this on television? Why do we need to see if people can cope with being in a different environment? Who is driving this issue of racism and segregation so that it will not die?

Sure, it is convenient for marketers to be able to use demographics to discover white or black or hispanic or Hawaiian or Japanese or Chinese or purple dinosaurs [with inordinage influence on children] neighborhoods so that they can sell racially targetted products, but do we need to further the concept of American inequality? This is just more postmodern drivel wherein we will discover that many people don’t know what other people go through and that someone somewhere is putting us all down so that we can be in perpetual victim mode. But not me, I’m done. I’m not going to watch this show or any of the other shows that make a big deal out of race. In fact I will go so far as to say that if more shows come up I may start writing the networks and let them know that the only thing that is real about reality television is that it really stinks.

Know Thine Sausages

Today at lunch Abby looked up at me with her beautiful blue eyes and said with such excitement, “Dad, masali tastes like pepperoni.” Which might as well have been French, Russian or any other language besides some dialect of English at first. I didn’t know what she was talking about until I realized that she was talking about salami, which is a completely different kind of sausage, but at least it was close. Salami doesn’t taste like pepperoni to me, but it is a good tasty sausage, and therefore I enjoyed it during my lunchtime meal.

Jumping the Shark

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Jumped the Shark?” Just in case you haven’t its a reference to the TV show “Happy Days.” In the show the Fonz is water skiing and jumps over a shark. Thus the phrase was used to describe a show that had reached the limit of ‘reality’ and switched to the crazy in an attempt to continue churning out plot lines and story boards.

A couple weeks ago Abby was watching Dora the Exlorer and Dora was on a boat with her friends the map, backpack, boots and Hitler. OK, not with Hitler. They came upon treacherous waters with sharks in them. The whole boat jumped over three sharks.

Wow. I totally lost all respect for Dora. Wait, I don’t think I had any in the first place.

I Finally Get It

Growing up my dad would tell the story of my first time to a movie. He took me to see “The Fox and the Hound.” I heard the story of my explanation towards the climax of the movie possibly 50 times or more in my life. I never understood why my dad told that movie so often. Friday night I learned why. We took Abby (and Evie, but she slept the whole time) to see “Curious George.” For the record I think they should have called it Curious Jorge the Intrigued Monkey, but they didn’t because apparently this is based on a book series that I found completely mind numbingly boring as a child and that book series was not called Curious Jorge the Intrigued Monkey. But I digress.

Abby just glowed and glowed throughout the movie. As event took place she would exclaim various things. She smiled a lot, but she sat still on my lap through the whole movie. It was wonderful to see her excitement and enjoyment of the rather goofy cartoon. And, in the end it was way better than the books.

One Hundredth

I’m watching Olympic luging right now (commercial break+computer recording=breathing room). I can’t imagine that many parts of my life are critically evaluated by one hundredth of a second. At work we’re glad when computers operate relatively closely performance wise and we never focus on hundredths of a second by itself. Sure, when you’re iterating through something that has thousands of lines or hundreds of thousands of lines you have to think about one hundredth being multiplied into seconds and eventually into minutes, but I won’t be getting a gold metal – just a “Wow, that’s fast.” verses a “It gets the job done.”

I don’t know that I do anything in one hundredth of a second, but it sure is nifty to have that sort of accuracy when measuring luge speeds.

UPDATE: They actually were keeping track of things to the thousandth, but the difference between racers was hundredths of seconds at times.

Yeah for White Powdery Stuff!

No, I’m not talking about cocaine, sugar or baby powder, I’m referring to snow. We got some last night and its still falling ever so daintily from the sky as I type this. Abby can’t wait to play in it, and I can’t wait to drive in it. It always makes Jessica nervous when we have snow, but I quite enjoy the fun of the challenge. As I wrote before: drive carefully!