biblical worldviewing

Last night I went to a really excellent Bible study put on by Dr. Roger Wiles. It was on the Glory of God, or the 5th Sola. During the middle of the teaching, my cellphone went off in my pocket and I was of course really embarrassed and apologetic–afterall, there were less than 12 people there. I pulled out my phone to put it on vibrato and saw that the call was coming from a Charlotte area code (704). I didn’t make the connection, but the fact is that as of yesterday, my last reference arrived at RTS Charlotte. The Bible study went on and I had another discussion with my pastor afterwards about the validity of a person going to seminary on their own accord without being officially sent out by a church’s elders. I told him I thought very highly of his perspective but I had trouble making sense of it myself. We talked for a long time and he explained the problems posed by a seminary student preaching in a homiletics class who had never been sent by a church to be there. I told him it was never my desire to be an island of a minister or missionary, and how I was originally thinking of going to seminary for a master’s. Actually, Sarah’s father (who is an elder in the same denomination, different church) was the one who recommended going for the M.Div so I could later be approved by the church and sent. It was a difficult conversation, but I thank the Lord it was free from any pettiness and sincerely spoken in love. My pastor consented it was not wrong to go to seminary at your own desire and it was a godly thing to want–he just feels a more God-honoring decision would be to do nothing now and wait until I am sent.

After further discussions with Sarah’s dad, it seems like the official stance of the Orthodox Presbyterian church is that the session does not exist to send some young men to seminary and bar others, but to establish a partnership and put under care and examination any young men who express desire to enter into ministry. My case, he says, may be considered special in the way I am not a member now but seeking membership while starting seminary at the same time. If I had been a member of the church a year before all this, it might be a different story–or it could be I would be sent to seminary now anyway with the church’s blessing. I fully respect my pastor’s perspective, but at the same time, I believe the desire to enter seminary and graduate as soon as possible and taking my new wife into ministry or the mission field is a calling implanted by the Lord.

By the way, the phone call was from the dean of admissions at RTS. I have been accepted and will start classes on February 6th!

I have a new pastor. I am becoming a member of a great OP (Orthodox Presbyterian) church here in Greensboro, and the pastor there is becoming more and more of a pastor to me. Through lunch meetings and chats we’ve had after church, I feel it is certainly the Lord’s providence that led me to this church and also to have this man as my pastor. The other day, however, my pastor took me to lunch and gave me some advice about starting seminary this semester (less than 2 weeks away) that was very hard to swallow. I don’t mean it was hard to believe he was speaking biblical wisdom, because he seemed supported enough in everything he was saying, but I mean he told me of a perspective that I had never heard before and never once had cross my mind. He asked me, ‘Why do you think you should go to seminary without being called to by the church?’

I had no good answer, because his question presumes that a decision to move towards a vocational ministry is not something a person should take it upon themselves to decide out of a heart desire or dream, but, much more solidly, the call needs to come from a body of elders in a church that has examined a person and their gifts and recommends they serve the Lord through going to seminary and doing ministry. My pastor sees people who up and go into ministry on their own (whether they hope to partner with a church or not) as taking away from the supremacy of God in the church. I think he would say there are many many people working as pastors and missionaries who have undercut their own ministries by not waiting on the Lord to call them through the church–even that if many of them had waited, they might have found they could honor God much more by not being in ministry at all. In the past two days nothing has been more prevalent on my mind than his words and the decision to start seminary. Please be in prayer.

Without fail, every night when I drop her off at her dorm my fiancee, Sarah, tells me to ‘drive safe’ on my way back to the house. Of course I say ‘fine, don’t worry’, and without fail she says, ‘no! promise you’ll drive extra safe’, and I always do. The part of the trip she is most afraid of is the top of an off-ramp coming from a 55 mph state highway. It’s a rural road, and the brilliance of country folk shines bright by the fact there is a yield sign, not a stop, for people turning right (which is me). Why in the world should you have to stop all 100 times out of 100 if there is only going to be another car 3 times out of 100? Sarah says I always take the turn too fast, even though I tell her about how much extra gas it takes to slow way down off a highway only to accelerate again on the next road AND that it is perfectly legal (to my knowledge) in the great state of North Carolina to cross the solid yellow double lines of a 2-lane road with your 2 driver’s side tires only during a curve situation with no oncoming traffic. This curve’s ominous reputation in Sarah’s mind led me to call it ‘Dead Man’s Curve’, which is just a funny name. Then I thought about those words. If Christ has redeemed me and I am now a living man, now for me, it is a sign of the death at work in my flesh to sin. When I am tempted, not fighting back by faith and hope in Christ and letting myself get carried away by temptation is, in essence, like flooring the gas pedal when I’m on Dead Man’s Curve–on my own, I spin off into oblivion.

This is an essay I wrote for my RTS application. The essay topic was to say how you came to know Christ and your experience in ministry. The essay was supposed to be 1-4 pages, and when I started I thought I’d aim for the middle–but as usual, I got carried away while writing!

Blake Law
January 4, 2007
RTS Application for Admission – Essay 1

As with many believers, I do not know precisely when the Lord truly said to me in my blood, “Live!” I was on a slippery slope as a young boy—not because of any outward sinful patterns–I was kind of a choir boy, and actually sang in the North Carolina Boy’s Choir. I did go to public schools and constantly got myself sent out of class and to the principal’s because of acting up in class and seeking the attention of the other kids through humor and cheekiness. Those were the actions of an insecure boy, but not one who was given completely over to revelry and delight in sin. The Lord’s hand stayed me in so many ways as a boy, but I was on a slippery slope because of my family’s attitude towards the Lord was so nominal and marginal. We were church attendees at churches that were large and didn’t believe in hell. I went to Sunday school and learned the Bible stories that were devoid of Christ and the Gospel. It is still a wonder to me now that I could grow up in denominations that many would consider evangelical, but did not know the basic principles of the Gospel until I was 16. I saw less and less sense in going to church, and resisted attending, but my family required that much of me—if nothing more. I never prayed. I had no sense for true acts of mercy and love, and saw such things with an unmoved, hard heart that was entirely self-interested. Yet I still hid behind a façade of being a Christian choir boy. I went to Christian camps in the summer, one in New Hampshire, and nodded my head and pretended to know what counselors were talking about when they said things like they had been saved. One summer when I was 15 and it was just us boys hanging out in the cabin during a free time, no counselor around, a particularly brave boy asked, “Hey, do you guys really believe that you’ve asked Jesus into your hearts?” Each of us, one by one, nodded and so did I, with no understanding other than a schoolyard desire not to be singled out.

When I was 16, my year was going worse and worse and I had no sense of purpose or meaning in life. Immagine a thin, insecure teenager who had always thought he was a Christian but now found no consolation in God, but rather looked for comfort from avoiding work and withdrawing away from all people. I was failing in school and didn’t care about anything. My attitude was on the fast track to leading me to the life and destruction of something like an Epicurean or hedonist. One especially hopeless night, I came back to my room knowing that if I didn’t read The Scarlet Letter that night, I would be in even more trouble with my English teacher. I fell on my bed and despaired at having to read a book I’d rather not read because I didn’t really care about anything, but then I wondered what else better I had to do? I saw a dusty Bible sitting on the shelf near my bed, given to me upon my “confirmation” in 1991, and not opened for years. At the leading of the Spirit, I remembered all the years people had told me that the Bible was so great, and I thought maybe it might be more worthwhile than reading Hawthorne. I picked it up and began reading, and was amazed! That night I read for hours, and the next night too, and the next. I was reading things I found so much hope and truth in, and things that formerly seemed dim and disconnected to me were coming together—the light was shining through. It was the third night, and I was deeply afflicted by passages I read which underlined the necessity of salvation and repentance. I read 2 Corinthians 6:2 (”Today is the day of salvation”) and it profoundly impressed me. As I lay reading, I became keenly aware that I had lied back at camp when I nodded yes to accepting Jesus into my heart, and that I had never done so before, and because of that I was in rebellion to the clear command of Christ. I suddenly felt a holy fear that I not only lied but had been living a lie by being in Church so long and participating in so many worship services. I had a holy fear and awe that I needed to give Christ the honor of doing what he was so clearly asking me to. so I prayed that Jesus would come into my heart and forgive me, and make me his.

The argument could be made that even though I “believed” at that time when I was 16, and even though I studied my Bible and prayed and stayed away from evil, the Lord did not fully lay his claim on me until much more recently. When I was 21, I gave up college for a semester and accepted an invitation from my older brother to go to Asia and take a job both teaching English and ministering to students with him. I had no idea what the Lord had in store for me there: the greatest single season of shaping, growth and maturing he has yet to work in me. I had gone on short-term mission trips before all over the world, but never before had I experienced the joy of digging my heels in deep somewhere, and investing all I had into the ministry. The Lord gave me a ministry there that brought me so much joy and so much more dependence upon him! Students came to our apartments five nights a week for Bible studies, and there were opportunities to pray with them and disciple them in so many ways. I was humbled and awed that I was now considered a full-time minister of the Gospel. The other brothers there put trust in me, I made lasting bonds of fellowship and through it all an unshakable conviction became entrenched in me: that it would be absurdity to ever desire other than what is pleasing to the Lord! For the first time I realized the absurdity of the suicidal and impossible ideas I had entertained as a young believer about only serving God with half my heart and just believing by mental assent but not needing to do anything else. Now I belonged to him and I felt the weight of being purchased and owned by such a great God. This was the real start of my heart for missions and the start of many other desires for holiness that the Lord implanted that spring in Asia. I finally realized the supremacy of Christ and the awesome favor and grace a calling to minister in his name represents.

The time in Asia in 2005 represents the largest part of my ministry experience, but for four summers I have worked as a camp counselor (remember how I became a believer through things I learned at summer camp?) During those summers, I was responsible for cabin Bible studies almost daily and nightly devotions, and occasionally bringing a short word to the entire camp during chapel meetings. I have also been on numerous musical teams in worship, playing the guitar, keyboard, bass or singing. Due to transforming views on music as a part of worship, I do not know right now if I will continue to participate in band-led worship anymore. As of today, I am still not sure in exactly what capacity the Lord is calling me to minister to his church and the world. My heart longs to go to the nations and resume the work I was doing in Asia. Now that I am engaged, my fiancée Sarah and I dream about missions and having a family overseas. I love to write, and think the church may be blessed and God glorified with that gift at some point as well. My experience in ministry has taught me that it is through ministry that I am most dependent upon God and serving others in ministry is a joy! Ministry always fills up my soul more than it wears it down and pours it out. I can’t see myself doing any thing that doesn’t involve ministering and encouraging, because I most encouraged myself by offering others the hope and consolation of Christ.

Well this is it. I’ve turned in my application to RTS Charlotte, and await their decision for attendance starting in the Spring semester. Classes start February 6th, in about 2 weeks, and applying now is really no problem for a small seminary like RTS. I got all my references in (Sarah’s dad was one of them) and wrote my essays. In every outside way I am qualified to go to seminary in 2 weeks and study, learning how to correctly interpret the Bible and learning the Bible’s original languages. Yet I have this apprehensive feeling. It’s the feeling that I’m going to get there and someone’s going to find out what a fake I really am. In the next two weeks, I want to read 4 theological books, spend over an hour a day in devotion, and listen to 2 sermons a day–in other words, I want to prepare myself spiritually and work up to some imaginary goal of holiness so I won’t feel so guilty for such an amazing privilege like going to seminary. While all those things would be good, they would be missing the point of grace and turn me into someone who was trying to earn God’s favor. I must remember that the Lord favors me in allowing me to enjoy him and his presence in the act of studying, prayer, and devotion. Doing those things will not accrue the Lord’s favor in return, as if the Lord owed me anything! rather, doing those things themselves is evidence of a blessing and favor already richly given.

I still feel unworthy to go to seminary. I know that it’s the devil who will not allow me to view myself as a young man of God entering into a time of intense study of the Lord, but Satan would rather have me view myself as I was when I was 15 and completely immature and living for myself. Yet I hear the words of Paul in Philippians 3:13-14

‘But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.’