Thursday, March 20, 2014

Breaking Through the Fog

                As I look out my window this morning, the parking lot is shrouded in a thick fog. I was surprised by the fog when I left my house, although I should not have been. There is much moisture in the air, as the many snow piles slowly melt in the warming temperatures. That moisture condenses in the cool air, blanketing the world in a white, opaque mist.  

                In some ways, I like foggy days. There is something mystical and mysterious about a world covered in fog. But fog can be very dangerous. A number of years ago a young mother with small children was killed when she collided with a school bus on a very foggy stretch of highway. I was driving up from Iowa once, when I was engulfed in a thick ice fog. Visibility went from clear to non-existent. Almost immediately, I came across cars in the ditch and multiple car crashes. We counted close to 20 such incidents as we inched our way north. Then we emerged from the fog and everything was clear again. It was amazing and very scary.

                I grew up with old horror movies. All of them used fog to portray foreboding and danger. The hero or heroine usually found themselves alone in the fog, with tense music in the background. You just knew that at any moment something was going to reach out and grab them. The old Sherlock Holmes movies were routinely set in a London shrouded by dense fog. The lesson I learned was that bad things happen in the fog.

                We live in a world that is shrouded in a spiritual fog. Paul describes this fog in 2 Corinthians 4:4. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Satan has done a masterful job of filling our world with spiritual fog. It is thick and confusing. It keeps people from seeing the light of Christ.

                Satan has created a thick moral fog. Today, morality is based on what feels good, and not on what is morally right. God has clearly stated that our sexuality is a gift from Him that is to be exercised and enjoyed within the bounds of marriage. Today, sex is a party game. We no long are disturbed by people living together before marriage or having casual sex with (sometimes) total strangers. We have reduced our sexuality to a physical, biological act, devoid of real purpose and meaning. We have opened the floodgates of sexual expression. Anyone who stands up for a biblical view of sexuality is labeled as a prude, a bigot or a subversive.

                The Bible clearly blows away this fog and shows it for what it really is; a distortion and misuse of God’s perfect design.  
                Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
                Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
                Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1:24-32

                Satan has also created a spiritual fog. For a time, the truth of the Bible shone brightly in many parts of our world. It was recognized as a guide to spiritual truth. The reality that Jesus is the one and only Savior of the world held sway. Then Satan turned on the fog machine and everything changed. Today, people are excited about spirituality, but not about Jesus. We are routinely told that there are many ways to connect with God and that there are many gods with which to connect. We are encouraged to create our own personalized belief system, while accepting everyone else’s personalized belief system as just as valid. To stand on the Jesus’ claim to be the exclusive Way, Truth and Life, is to be seen as intolerant and misguided. Truth has become relative. Everyone is invited to create their own truth.

                Again the Bible blows away this fog and shows how misguided it really is.
                The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,  since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
                For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Romans 1:18-23

                Fairly soon, the sun will rise high enough in the sky to begin to burn away the fog outside. Already things are becoming brighter and clearer. The only way to burn away the spiritual fog in our lives is to come into the light of the Son. As we allow Jesus to shine the light of truth into our hearts and lives, the fog of Satan with clear. But Satan does not give up easily. He will persist day after day to cloud our minds, hearts and souls. Daily we need to invite Christ to shine his light into our lives.

                This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." John 3:19-21



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