My wife and I have started working through reading the Bible together in a year. It comes down to four chapters each night (we each read two) right now. I am not sure if it doubles up chapters later or not. The interesting part so far has been the other things that seem to happen around our house while we sit down to do it the last two nights. In two nights we’ve had our dogs spontaneously start fighting, Aidan wake up crying and quite terrified for no reason, dogs randomly start barking, and neighbors begin being rather loud.
All of which were quite distracting from reading the Bible together.
Spiritual warfare?
I feel like there is a Jesus image that we lift up for each generation. It’s rather strange to think that this timeless Gospel must be re-branded every few years to “relate” to our culture. Our culture is going downhill rather fast. Shouldn’t we be lifting up the timeless truth of the Gospel rather than the latest rendition?
I’ve been giving a lot of though to the idea of how we typically do outreach. I think I have often misunderstood that marketing and outreach were the same thing. A talk the other day with one of the pastors at the church I’ve been involved in lately has really opened up my eyes to how marketing can also become a trap that we fall into. We are supposed to “market” God with our lives, not just some catchy slogan on a billboard somewhere. The catchy slogans are good for building awareness that someone indeed wants to reach out (outreach) to them and may serve as a connecting point, but we will never touch a life through a fancy billboard. It’s what happens when people do respond to our marketing efforts that changes lives. But here’s the catch, marketing isn’t required if lives are indeed changed. Marketing will only be to let outside people know of the exciting things already going on.
I am guilty of this. A friend or someone has opened up in some vulnerable way and just laid bare their soul before you and not knowing what to say or do, I’ve closed up the breakage with a greeting-card-sticky-pathetic-sloganized “I’ll pray for you”. Almost as if a vital artery (are there non vital arteries?) has been cut and we just slapped a band-aid on it and sent them home. I was talking online via xbox the other day with a friend of mine and he opened up about a situation that has been on his heart and mind a lot lately. I almost said “I’ll keep you in prayer, man” but I thought better of it (or more likely, I was too tired to be overly spiritual anyway) and I just told him flat out “um, I don’t really know what to say… If you are asking my opinion, then I don’t have an answer for you on this one.” For a second, everything went really quiet as if I had crossed some invisible line. Then he went on to tell me that he really only needed someone to listen and be available in that way.
I started a series awhile back called “full disclosure” and one of my little business card slogans was “I am praying for you”. But, I think I even perpetrate a misconception about prayer at times. Prayer isn’t something that we do because it’s easy to close our eyes and act like life doesn’t get messy at times. Life gets quite messy, dirty, and rather unpleasant at times. God knows that. Jesus even died on the cross a messy, horrible, even nasty death so He knows it better than we can imagine. He even prayed a messy prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, sweating blood and asking His Father if there were any other way. But we often use prayer as an excuse to get out of real life situations that are quite hard to deal with. The bad part about it all is the fact that most times when we flippantly tell someone that you are praying for them, that we completely forget to do so. Or worse yet, it’s just the “Christian” (say it with sarcasm) way of telling someone to bugger off!
I saw this video the other day and I thought it was wonderful. You may also recognize the guy who plays in the tv show “Bones”. But what I liked about the video was the message. We have an opportunity to “validate” and encourage others. So often we miss out on the chance to do so.
found via shallowfrozenwater (awesome find by the way)
I know often I am blinded to the spiritual element of life. I go day to day thinking that things could be coincidence or just random events conspiring against me. I forget that we are at war. It”s not that I don’t believe that I am at war for my soul, it’s that the way this war is waged is not by physical weapons. It’s thoughts and feelings and nudges of both demonic influences and my own sinful nature that are working against God in my life.
All we get out of sin is death and destruction.
Sure, sins seem nice when they are happening. We even try to justify them a thousand different ways. But what it ultimately comes down to is that God is God. He is the one who decides if something is sin or not. In fact God even holds Himself up as the standard of Truth and righteousness.
If there is question about it, stay away.
It gets me that some argue that certain things are not sin because it’s part of their genetic makeup. I find it amazing that they have come to that conclusion because scripture tells us we have a problem called “sinful nature”. I won’t deny it.
- I am likely to speed every time I drive, so I use the cruise control to keep myself in check.
- My mother was an alcoholic, therefore I stay away from beer.
It’s really that simple. I realize that I am prone to a certain sin so I take more measures against it. Sin is still part of our nature though. Often, those sins we are most likely to commit are also the ones that we are most aware of actually being sin and are the ones we usually fight most vehemently that they are not.
The opposite of rebellion is repentance.
Once we are aware of our sin, we can accept God’s grace. Repentance means humbling yourself and turning around and going the other way when you realize you were wrong. Rebellion is going the way you know is wrong knowing it is wrong.
Sin and the Church.
Unfortunately, many people who attend church have gotten it backwards. Church is a gathering of sinners who recognize their own depravity and want to be in community with other people seeking out the way of repentance. So the church can be divided in several categories of people.
- Those who recognize their own depravity and are somewhere in the process of turning away from it and seeking God.
- Those who think they have it all figured out and so waste their time by telling those who are seeking God where they think He is.
- Those who are delusional that their particular brand of sin is somehow acceptable to God and are seeking the acceptance of the church to somehow justify themselves.
- Those who really don’t care one way or the other so they go with whatever the majority thinks.
I’m a mess, you’re a mess, we’re all a mess.
Not to sound like an AA meeting, but we are all sinners and we have to come to recognize that fact first. You don’t have to justify it to me because God’s the one who has set the standard.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3
Godlessness in the Last Days
1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
6They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 8Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth—men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.
Paul’s Charge to Timothy
10You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
I am thinking about making some business cards with the above image on them. I think the term “Christian” has become so diluted with wannabes that it’s hard to find the authentic ones in the metaphorical barrel. So I am starting this little series of business cards for Christians called “Full Disclosure” Each one has a different theme that will be explored in post on it’s own and made into a message as well.
Praying for You
Often, I pray for friends, family and people I meet. I think that some people perceive this as some kind of hidden motive if I tell someone I am praying for them. There is no hidden objective and no agenda behind it. It’s just a part of who I am in Christ. Other people influence me and I would be naive to think that I don’t influence them, so when I talk with God, yes I pray for those people. I also pray for things I write; that people’s hearts would be moved by God rather than by my own attempts. There really is no need to tell someone you are praying for them, but often when they know that you are, they mention specific ways that you can pray for them. Often for me, this also leads into a deeper and more open and meaningful relationship too.
I have a problem. Sometimes I pray to God like God plays the “kiss and tell” game. You tell him your innermost thoughts and He runs off to shout it from the rooftops. I often get angry with God and other people. Anger is a sin I know, so I play the “not me” game. I guess it started in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That evening, God was walking around the garden.
“Adam. Eve. I know you are here. I mean I am God. Wait a second… are you trying to hide from me?!” God laughs.
There is an absurdity here. I like to think that God laughed here and yelled out “Marco?!” But I bet what brought Adam and Eve out of hiding wasn’t laughter. I bet it was tears.
