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Welcome to GoFarzio

Welcome to GoFarzio, a blog designed to deepen your affections, strengthen your convictions, and inspire your actions. In other words, this blog is about what you love, what you believe, and what you do. You could say it's about the heart, head, and hands. Or you could talk about orthopatheia, orthodoxy, and orthopraxy, fancy words that mean the same thing. Affections, convictions, and actions are completely interdependent, yet distinct. They are mutually reinforcing, and each entails the others, so they are one ... yet three.

The "deepen affections" section will have devotionals and other articles to encourage your sanctification. The "strengthen convictions" section will have articles about biblical exegesis and theology. The "inspire actions" section will have articles about methods and strategies for entry, evangelism, discipleship, church planting, and leadership development.

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Dual dangers accompany the setting up of any list that describes specific do’s and don’t’s. Those dual dangers are pride and despair. If I am able to keep my resolutions, I feel smug and proud, with a tendency to look down on others. If I fail, I feel like a failure, defeated and worthless. This is why I must keep the cross at the forefront of my consciousness. Throughout the day, I’m required to pay attention to many people and tasks, but whenever my mind finds a few moments of leisure, I want to discipline it to fly back to the Lord. The cross leaves me no room for pride or despair. How can I be prideful when I remember my Lord died for me? How can I despair when I remember my Lord died for me ? “The Law is good, if one uses it lawfully,” wrote Paul (1 Timothy 1:8). There are several lawful uses of the Law. One is to provide the soil for love to grow. What? The soil for love to grow? That seems paradoxical at first. What does the Law have to do with love? You can’t command love...
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Exposing My Heart

Over and over again in their history, the Jews of the Old Testament went through the cycle of idolatry —> judgment —> repentance —> restoration. It took years of exile to cure them of their propensity toward idol worship. After they returned from the Babylonian Captivity, they remained firmly committed to YHWH. They thought they had beat idolatry and had things figured out.  After the prophet Micah, there were 400 years of silence. Many interpreted God’s silence as God’s endorsement that all was well. During that time, various schools of thought grew up within Judaism, such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes. Smug, self-congratulatory, and superior, they pictured themselves as the true heirs of God’s promises.  When Jesus began his ministry, he blew everyone’s expectations by placing a bull’s eye on the religious establishment and showing compassion to those clearly in the sinner’s camp. For years, when I read the Bible, I pictured myself on Jesus’s te...
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Subtlety of Sin

Friends, let me reiterate that these meditations are not written with anyone in mind but myself. If they are not helpful, please ignore them, but do find a source of spiritual nourishment somewhere. I caught myself being sarcastic last night. Had I not embarked on this exercise, I’m sure the comment would have passed without a second thought. But I couldn’t dismiss the fact that earlier that day I had made a conscious decision to bridle my tongue. So I had to confess my sin.  Was it an earth-shattering sin? Depends on how you look at it. No, I didn’t ruin anyone else’s life and I didn’t wreck my own life. So from that point of view, it wasn’t big. But was it a sin for which my Savior had to die? Yes! Our holy God cannot tolerate even a smidgen of sin. So if I consider that the One I worship and adore had to suffer and die for that sin, then I must admit that yes, it was a big sin. The confession gave me opportunity to get close to my Savior, so while I hate the sin that r...
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