Life. Faith. Jesus.

Some of you read the title, “God Recycles,” and may feel an inward resentment due to all the people in the world that has made recycling a religion.

And if you don’t do it, you’re a bad person.

Others of you will read this title and think, “Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! It’s about time someone bring God into recycling! Everyone should recycle!”

Seriously guys, chill out on the whole recycling bit. You scare me.

I intend to appeal to neither of these parties in particular. Instead, I will simply share with you a conversation I had with my daughters about how God uses people for His good.



Sometimes my daughters get their little hands on fake tattoos. The ones they had today was a rainbow with a dove above it, and another one that simply read, “God’s Law.”

They know the difference between real tattoos and pictures they put on their skin that easily wash off. They also know that their dad has two real tattoos. One of them is in the picture you see above.

Earlier today, my daughters were asking me about why I got my tattoo. We have had this conversation several times, and I am always eager to share with them the same reasons each time they ask.

I tell them that when I got the tattoo, I knew for sure that I wanted it for the rest of my life. Then I tell them that now I would rather not have it there.

Obviously, this confuses them. So this is how the conversation went:

Daughter: “But didn’t you want it for the rest of your life, Daddy?”
Me: “Yes, honey, but I didn’t know then what I know now. Now I like the skin that God gave me better than the ink that I have put on the skin God gave me. This ink will never go away.”
Daughter: “Can’t you get the ink out somehow?”
Me: “Yes, there are ways to do that, but that costs a bunch of money. But I don’t think I would want to do that anyway.”
Daughter: “Why not?”
Me: “Well, hun, I have had so many conversations with people about my tattoos. Some people like them very much. And when I get to talk to people about my tattoos, then I may be able to talk to them about Jesus. There have been many times that I have done that. So, I believe that God uses the things that we might have messed up at, or failed at, to bring people closer to Him, to bring US closer to Him. God uses our weakness and our failures to help us get closer to Him.”
Daughter: “You mean like recycling? God takes away what’s bad and replaces it with something good?”
Me: “[moment of silence] Yes, honey, that’s exactly right.”

I could have cried when she said that. “God takes away what’s bad and replaces it with something good.”

I used this moment to teach her that it is times like this when we know God speaks to us. We learn from Him because He reveals a truth to us that we otherwise would not have known. To this, my little girl smiled the kind of smile that reveals gratitude and joy in knowing that God really is close to His people and communicates with them.

I got a tattoo when I was 19. I would rather not have gotten it now, but I would never get it removed. God has used that as a way to connect with people I would otherwise have never connected with. It’s happened numerous times.



It’s your turn: What is something that you have done in the past, that you may have regretted, but can see that God has now used it for His good?

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That’s right. I’m a softy.

Yesterday I was watching a Veggie Tales Christmas theme with my daughters. I don’t know what it was called. Anyway, I was hit like a sack of potatoes dropping on the floor. Let me share the scene.

Bob the tomato and Larry the cucumber were putting on a play. Bob’s character wanted to put on a play to teach the people of London how to love. Well, it turns out that everyone who said they would come canceled because they like the star of Christmas the church used in their play. So, Bob ended up convincing Larry to go with him and steal the star from the church. They stole the star, took it back to their theater, and rehearsed the play. During their rehearsal, the lights sparked and caught the theater on fire, thus ruining their chances for the play.
Read more

For my last installment of my recent, yet overdue series end!
I know what many of you are thinking. You want some scholarly conclusion of my whole stance on open theism and the ramifications of following Christ, don’t you!

Well, I have been quite the busy one lately with school, meeting people, and what I haven’t disclosed before – except a select few – church planting stuff. I’ll get to that later.

As for the Open Theism and Following Jesus

This is not going to be very scholarly for all you intellectuals (yes, I know, it even hurts for me). Like I said above, I have just been busy. Nonetheless! I shall give my conclusion on the said topic of theology.

While Open theism has some qualities that have the potential to make the person who embraces it feel good, I do not believe it is Biblical-centered theology in the Christian worldview. It asserts that God does not know all, and actually doesn’t know the future fully, therefore God can be “surprised.” What it does for the person is gives them an opportunity to “create” their own future, since God is in no way determining a particular future for that person. Honestly, I believe Open Theism is borderline heresy. I want to call it heresy, but I say borderline because there are certainly true believers in the camp of Open Theism; I just don’t think they’re being led properly. Some of our theological convictions can be down right inaccurate and God isn’t going to send us to hell for that – He’s going to send us to hell for rejecting Jesus.

By the way, what about Jesus?

Well, I think the ramifications of following Christ is denying self. This would be the first, and primary issue. Denying self comes before theological exposition; after all, one does surrender to Him upon salvation. However, through growing in grace and knowledge of the Word, I believe that another ramification of following Jesus is embracing His deity. This means that we rejoice in the fact that God is in Jesus! If, and it is, this is true, then the words Jesus says are the very words of God. So when Jesus says in John 8:58, “before Abraham was, I Am,” we must realize this is not only a statement of deity, it is one that transcends time. Jesus also calls himself the “Alpha and Omega” in Revelation 22:13.

If we say “yes” to these statements, we say “yes” to His deity; and in His deity lies the person of God, who enables such a transcendent statement; and if we agree to such a thing, we agree to sovereignty (even though we don’t necessarily understand); and by agreeing to sovereignty, we affirm that God is, indeed, preparing a future and manipulating time in some sense incomprehensible to us. This rejects Open Theism. It is SortingBean’s position that truly following Christ results in denying theologies such as Open Theism.

From here on out

Since I am in the interesting place in life I am, from here on out I will be updating you on the latest news of my call to church planting. I am currently gathering a team and we will soon discuss and determine our plan.

Stay tuned for the latest. I can be contacted at woodward@sortingbeans.com

Soon, I will have a website for the church and will post it here for you all to see.

Keep me in your prayers as I move forward. God bless!

- Jonathan J.

This post is part of a series that will be discussing theology; in particular Open theism.
In this post I asked for you all to help me choose a series topic to write about. I got two good responses which I enjoyed:

1. Open Theism from Arminian Today
2. Ramifications of truly believing Jesus as Lord and Savior of one’s life by YouSeeDryBones.com

I like them both, so I would like to combine them

Please carefully read the following disclaimer: While I do not intend to hurt someone’s feelings or offend anyone, it may be offensive as I talk about truly following Jesus in regards to open theism. I may challenge your theological position. When this happens, interact with others in the comments and let’s do this together. If you are super offended, well, I am really here to exalt Christ. And if me exalting Christ in the context of Scripture is offensive to some, it seems there is no other thing for me to do than pray and praise God.

Now, off to the thread
I began this series with a picture and a question, which you can see and read here. I asked for comments on the interpretation of these words and picture, and lo and behold, someone fell for my trap (yes, you know who you are)! This person’s comment opened up my next post. This comment left was in response to Isaiah 40:8:

“. . . there is no way for the thoughts of man through theology to suppress those of God through Scripture.”

I wrote some words my father used to often say, “What is of God you cannot stop and what is of man will come to not.”

When I think of Scripture and God’s lasting word that is recorded Isaiah 40:8, I think of another Scripture: Acts 5, in particular, Acts 5:39. The Apostles were being persecuted after healing many in the earlier part of the chapter. Acts 5:17-18 says that the high priests and the Sadducees were filled with jealousy and arrested the Apostles. Soon after, the Holy Spirit shows up on the scene, lets the Apostles out of jail (basically breaks them out of prison, which would be against the law, think about that) and leads them back into the courts and charges them to teach the “full message” of the new life.

Soon after this, the Sadducees found the Apostles missing, were stumped on how this could happened, and found them and brought them back into the full council of Sanhedrin.

These religious leaders wanted to Kill the Apostles!
But one of the Pharisees, named Gamaliel, spoke to the rest of the council. He basically said, “Watch out, you might be doing the wrong thing. If these guys are fake, they will die with the rest! But if they are real, and God is behind this, we will never be able to stop them. That’s right, we’ll be fighting against God, not them!” Read it for yourself in Acts 5:34-39.

What do we make out of this?

Not only do we have O.T. Scripture affirming God’s everlasting word – how it cannot be thwarted – but we even have Pharisees affirming the everlasting word of God.

Open Theism states that God does not necessarily know the future and is therefore dependent on the future working out before fully knowing the end result. To put it short, God can be surprised.

If God’s word is everlasting, then how can it be unexpected?

In light of the few passages we have here in this post, how does the theology of Open Theism line up to these?

- Jonathan J.

Taken from a devotional called “Prime Time With God, generated by Ephesians Four Ministries: Church Growth Institute
The University of Adversity
TGIF Today God Is First Volume 2, by Os Hillman
03-03-2009

“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

I’ve observed a principle: The pathway to leadership almost always takes us through the valley of adversity. We see this principle not only in the story of Joseph, who endured thirteen years of adversity, but also in the lives of many other leaders in both the Old and New Testament.

Moses was raised in the royal splendor of Pharaoh’s household in Egypt, but he was forced to flee and spend 40 years in desert exile before God spoke from a burning bush and called him to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery. Joshua spent the years of his youth as a slave in Egypt and his middle-aged years wandering in the desert at Moses’ side. He was well acquainted with adversity when God called him to lead Israel’s armies in the conquest of Canaan. The prophet Daniel was thrown into a den of hungry lions before he could reach a place of power and influence in the Babylonian courts. And we see this same pattern played out in the lives of David, Isaiah, Amos, Hosea and other Old Testament leaders.

Turning to the New Testament, we see that even Jesus had to face adversity in the desert, suffering hunger, thirst, temptation and opposition from Satan. Only then could He begin His public ministry. The Lord’s disciples had to endure the loss of their Master, the failure of their own faith and character, and the dark days of despair between the cross and the empty tomb before they could become the founding leaders of the Lord’s church.

It’s hard to find anyone in Christian history who became a great leader without earning an advanced degree at the “University of Adversity.”

— end article—

- Jonathan J.