A Sharing Moment | Testimony, Ministry & Issues

sonalGangte Church, New Delhi, India
Sunday, August 7th, 2008
Chelms Varthoumlien

Being in Canada for 2 and half years now, I have adapted myself into a society that seemingly is the covetous lifestyle endorsed by the mass media and exported across oceans – and I do thank God for providing me the strength that I needed to accept this change. Growing up from a Christian home, I was a child notoriously known to be a polar opposite to the faith my parents proclaimed. I felt God was a joke. From over consuming a style of life – very much distorted by Satan – I lead a life that was meaningless, a fanciful false reality that conjured more false ones. I wasn’t looking for the truth. I was looking for pleasure. A narcissistic fantasy where I was secure in my own bubble, curled in a fetus position.

But now, when I look back at the years that have gone passed. I realized each step was preordained, having a significant impact to the way I live now and will live. A lesson was being taught to me consistently. As a man who remains unable to pick up a large boulder from his path due to his lack of physical strength. Training oneself and being prepared beforehand would prove to be wise. Thus God foreknew what was ahead of me and he prepared me, refining me from dirt, similar to how God refined David, Joseph and more. He used certain circumstances to build up a person, thus enabling that person to over haul the large boulder that he would soon come across and perhaps even bigger. Now God continues to refine me and will continue to do so until I am at last with him.

Currently I am involved with a campus ministry called Campus for Christ. Campus for Christ is an international and an Interdenominational worldwide Christian organization dedicated to glorifying God by helping to build movements of evangelism and discipleship around the world. The purpose of Campus for Christ is to help change the world by turning lost students into Christ-centered labourers. Former President of the United Nations General Assembly, Charles Malik, once said, "The University is the clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. More potently than by any other means, change the university and you change the world." That's what we believe! Our strategy in accomplishing this is to win, build, and send:

• WIN - Through various forms of initiative evangelism, as well as through the many outreach events we put on throughout the year, it is our hope that every student every year at universities across Canada will have the opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ.

• BUILD - Discipleship Groups, weekly large group meetings, and special retreats like Summit and Winter Conference, all serve to better equip and "build" students up in their faith.

• SEND - We also want to send students out to their jobs and on Spring and Summer Projects to be lights in the world for Christ.

All of these commitments are based on our Lord's commands: And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

It is now the 21st century and human history has come a long way since the 2nd century Christians who took hold of their inheritance from the eternal God, and valiantly went against the tide that the world was surging at them. From the Apostle John writing to his contemporaries warning them about a deception that was percolating through their beliefs, to the reformation era when Protestantism sprang forth from a perverted establishment. Satan who clothes himself in sheep’s clothing, prancing around as an angel light, deceiving people where ever he goes, has been deceiving people since Adam and Eve.

In the western society – albeit being considered highly modern in its infrastructure – has been a victim to great deceptions. The Bible has numerous prophecies about the end times that are to befall on this world, and I believe most of them have found their home in the comfort of the so called “free-world”. The society now continues to progress into a philosophy of liberation – A naturalistic approach of getting rid of the old and bringing in the new. Carl Henry says that “The Modern Era sought to liberate humanity from... fate or existence in a God-ordered universe, Secular science promised a new freedom for humanity and progress for the planet. The intellectual order of the world was relocated in human reasoning.” (Henry, PNS, as cited in Dockery, CP, 36) As a result, man has now become a measure of all things and not God – humanism is the sole perpetrator.

Humanism was born in the Garden of Eden. When Adam decided to do it his own way and set up his own Eden outside the parameters of God (Ravi Zacharias). Human reasoning thus replaced reliance on God in the modern Era. Malcolm Muggeridge says that “"It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself. Tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania, and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction. He keels over, a weary battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.” What results when man becomes the measure of things? It is nothing but chaos. The Nazi regime for example, came out from the minds of the most educated people of that time and it resulted in a termination of millions of lives. People often retort with a question “how many people are killed in the name of God?” but I ask them “how many people are killed in the name of Godlessness?” Killing in the name of God is an infrastructure set up by people by their illogical outcome, whereas killing in the name of godlessness is a result of logical outcome; keeping God out of the picture, they become the measure of all things, but who? Hitler? Stalin?

Humanism has degraded our human essence to something purely matter, pulling us farther away from our spiritual essence, the modern world is encouraging us to deny the objective truth, be materialistic, be the measure of all things and be the boss of our own lives. Jesus knew this and said "Man shall not live by bread alone," because he knew there was something far greater in the need of man, than merely a stomach that is in need to be filled.

God Does Not Repent Like a Man - John Piper

November 11, 1998

After Saul disobeys Samuel, God says, "I regret [= repent] that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands" (1 Samuel 15:11). Some have argued that since God "repents" of things he has done, therefore he could not have foreseen what was coming. Else why would he repent or regret, if he knew in advance the consequence of his decision?

However, this is not a compelling argument against God's foreknowledge. First of all, the argument assumes that God could not, or would not, lament over a state of affairs he himself chose to bring about. That not true to human experience; and more importantly, God's heart is capable of complex combinations of emotions infinitely more remarkable that ours. He may well be capable of lamenting over something he chose to bring about.

Not only that, God may also be capable of looking back on the very act of bringing something about and lamenting that act in one regard, while affirming it as best in another regard. For example, if I spank my son for blatant disobedience and he runs away from home because I spanked him, I may feel some remorse over the spanking - not in the sense that I disapprove of what I did, but in the sense that I feel some sorrow that spanking was a necessary part of a wise way of dealing with this situation, and that it led to his running away. If I had it to do over again, I would still spank him. It was the right thing to do. Even knowing that one consequence would be alienation for a season, I approve the spanking, and at the same time regret the spanking. If such a combination of emotions can accompany my own decisions, it is not hard to imagine that God's infinite mind may be capable of something similar.

Now the question is: Does the Bible teach that God laments some of his decisions in the sense that I have described above (which does not imply that He is ignorant of their future consequences), or does the Bible teach that God laments some of his decisions because he did not see what was coming?

The answer is given later in 1 Samuel 15. After God says in verse 11, "I repent that I have made Saul king," Samuel says in verse 29, as if to clarify, "The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent" (KJV). The point of this verse seems to be that, even though there is a sense in which God does repent (verse 11), there is another sense in which he does not repent (verse 29). The difference would naturally be that God's repentance happens in spite of perfect foreknowledge, while most human repentance happens because we lack foreknowledge. God's way of "repenting" is unique to God: "God is not a man that he should repent" (the way a man repents in his ignorance of the future).

For God to say, "I feel sorrow that I made Saul king," is not the same as saying, "I would not make him king if I had it to do over." God is able to feel sorrow for an act in view of foreknown evil and pain, and yet go ahead and will to do it for wise reasons. And so later, when he looks back on the act, he can feel the sorrow for the act that was leading to the sad conditions, such as Saul's disobedience.

Hence we have our precious fighter verse in Numbers 23:19 - "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?" I say it is precious, because here God's commitment to his promises hangs on his not repenting like a man. In other words, God's promises are not in jeopardy, because God can foresee all circumstances, he knows that nothing will occur that will cause him to take them back.

Resting in the confidence of God's all-knowing promises,

Pastor John