Urgency of Faith

What happened to having an urgency in our faith? A sense of "if I don't turn to God now, I may not get another chance." I have been thinking about this after noticing in different churches I've been to throughout my life, as well as people I know showing no urgency in their faith. Churches aren't preaching in a way that shows people that faith is not something that can wait until your deathbed as a "just in case" kind of action. People aren't thinking about what happens if they die tomorrow.

In life we are taught a little about what to think about in case we die tomorrow. We are told to have a good Will written up so that our children and family can be taken care of in the event of our untimely death. We are told to keep our finances in order so that our death doesn't leave a mess for our family and friends that might have to take care of our debt when we are gone. What we never really hear or talk about is what happens to US if we die tomorrow.

Now, I'm not a big fan of scare tactics in ministry. We've all seen that guy on the side of the street that has the big sign and is screaming at the top of his lungs, "Repent or burn in Hell!!" That's not what I intend to do here. I am not so much talking to unbelievers here as I am, "quasi-believers". Quasi-Believers being those that believe in God and Christ, but don't let it change their daily lives. They are those people that would say they are a Christian when asked, but don't show any obvious signs of it by the way they live their life.

A way that I have been thinking about this lately is the idea that we should be hoping and praying for the speedy return of Christ in this world. We should be praying daily that Christ do what needs to be done so that he can return and take his people as soon as possible because of what Paul said, "...to die is gain." This is a terrifying thought to me. I am a believer in Christ and I try to live for him daily, but I am not at all sure I am ready for him to come back and take me. As hard as I try to live for him, I fail every day. I'm not sure I value him above my life, and above my time on this earth with my wife and friends and family. It is terrifying to think about giving up all of that for Christ, but it is how we should be living and thinking.

This thought of what would happen to me if Christ came back today and took his people has got me thinking. I can't honestly say that I sit here every day and pray for Christ's return. I hope and pray that I get to that point where I can value an eternity with Christ over anything that I have in this life. I hope and pray that you get to that point as well. I would just challenge myself and all of you to think about that sometime. "What would happen if Christ came back today to take his people?" Would we ready and excited to go with him or would we be caught sleeping? Could we say that we had been doing everything we could to prepare God's people for Christ's return?

"But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works done on it will be exposed." 2 Peter 3:10

"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." Matthew 24:42-44

"For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Philippians 1:21

Fireproof (Possible Spoiler!!)

Last year a movie called "Fireproof," with Kirk Cameron came out. It is a movie about a firefighter whose marriage is falling apart with a quickness because neither him or his wife believes that the other loves or respects them. To be honest, when I saw Kirk Cameron in this movie I said, "Haha, yeah right!" I mean, lets face it, he's no Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. It was obviously a poorly acted movie.

Courtney ordered it on Netflix a few weeks ago and it has been sitting around our apartment so we decided last night to watch it. The first twenty minutes I'll admit I was regretting watching it. The acting was awful and the plot seemed so cliche. After it got into the story I was drawn in a little more.

It is the story of a man who realizes that he cannot truly love his wife until he learns what REAL love is and where it comes from. His father puts him up to a "Love Dare" in which he is to, each day for forty days, do a new act for his wife that puts her before himself, even if she never shows any appreciation. Over the course of the forty days he finds Christ, learns what love is, and wins his wife back.

Although it is a pretty low budget, poorly acted movie, it can really be motivating to any of us that are married or thinking about marriage. It shows what different "parasites" can do to a marriage. A parasite being anything that takes away from and eats at the true love in a marriage. In the movie this was pornography, pride, money and a few other things.

Now you don't have to be a porn addict to take something from this. I'd recommend anyone that is married or thinking about marriage to check out this movie. Make yourself watch it, even if some of the serious acting makes you want to laugh a little. It will at least get you thinking about your marriage and what may be a distraction or "parasite" for you as well as what you can do to show your spouse that you love him or her.

Don't Waste Your Life - Lecrae

This is a song by Lecrae.  It is called "Don't Waste Your Life."  Also the title of the John Piper book that I have been reading and mentioned in previous posts.  I just thought it would be cool to post a music video on here.  Check it out and check out his latest album "Rebel."  (We may have borrowed the Rebellion idea from him a little...haha.)  

Hearing Christ in a Modern World

I have been reading a couple of different books lately.  One of them was talking about Paul's conversion to Christ (found in Acts chapter 9).  Saul (Paul's name before coming to Christ) was on his way to Damascus to find followers of the "Way" (Christians) so that he could take them prisoner back to Jerusalem.  While on his way to Damascus Saul saw a bright light from heaven come over him and heard a voice say, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"  Saul questioned who it was that was speaking to him and the voice said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."

This encounter between Saul and Jesus on the road to Damascus got me thinking.  Why does this never happen in our present time?  Why have I never been stopped by a bright light and heard the voice of Jesus Christ?  How can I hear the voice of Christ in my life?

We live in a very modern technological world.  Everything in our lives has something to do with technology.  While at home we constantly have the television on.  While driving to and from work (or wherever) we constantly have the stereo on (some of us louder than others).  When not watching television or listening to music we are surfing the internet to catch up with people we never met on Facebook or texting our friends.  Our lives are cluttered with technological noise.

All of these things serve as static between us and God.  We don't give Christ a chance to speak to us.  We constantly have our attention focussed on something else.  Maybe if we turned all of these things off for a bit each day we could hear the voice of Christ in our lives.

Now I'm not saying Jesus is going to flash a bright light in our eyes and speak to us while driving on Interstate 70 or something.  I do believe that if we take the time to be silent and listen, we can learn a lot about Christ's will for our life.

I am addicted to television.  I have like six or seven shows I watch each week, plus I watch too much Fox News.  I have an iPhone that I play with constantly.  I am on my computer all of the time, often while still watching television or playing with my iPhone.

Challenge to myself and others:

At the beginning of Lent I took the advice of a friend and chose to give up "Not doing my devotions" for lent.  This means that I was going to spend twenty or so minutes each day in the Word and prayer.  I had to turn off the T.V., close my computer, turn off the stereo, and put away the iPhone for twenty minutes.  I read a couple chapters each day from a book of the Bible, beginning and ending each day's reading with prayer.  

I have seen a great change in myself over the last month and a half almost.  Now I admit that I missed a few days, it happens, but the vast majority of the days during Lent I kept up with my commitment.  I now find myself thinking about God much more than I did before Lent when my time with God was lacking.  I find myself thinking about the impact of what I am doing and saying daily might have on the Kingdom.  It has changed how I view my relationships, my work, and my personal time.  

I challenge myself and all of you reading this to do what I did.  It doesn't have to be during Lent, please do not wait another year to do this.  Starting today, right now, spend just the next 30 days spending fifteen to twenty minutes each day in the Word and prayer.  Don't just say you will do it, follow through.  Set some ground rules.  "I will read fifteen minutes each day, before work starting April 21, 2009 until May 21, 2009."  I promise it will change your outlook on life and you will find yourself desiring that time each day after that and continuing this practice.  

It seems so painfully simple.  All of us strive to do this all of the time.  Most of us fail.  We will continue to fail as we are not perfect.  If we take the time to ask Christ to take away all of our distractions for just a few minutes, we can begin to hear his voice.  Think about it.

"The Lord will do what is good in His sight."

This is a quote from 2 Samuel 10:12.  In this passage Joab is about to go up against two armies; the Arameans and Ammonites.  He splits his army.  Joab sends his best Israeli soldiers to fight the Arameans and sends his brother, Abishai, with the rest of the troops to fight the Ammonites.  Joab has no clue how this is going to turn out.  He tells his brother...

"If the Arameans are too strong for me, then you are to come to my rescue; but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come to rescue you.  Be strong and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God.  The Lord will do what is good in his sight."

Joab was taking a HUGE risk here.  He was heading into a situation where he did not know the outcome.  Frankily, he didn't seem to care.  All he cared about was that the Lord "do what is good in his sight."  If Joab's army won, the Lord would be glorified.  If Joab's army lost, the Lord would be glorified.

We can take a great lesson from this.  Right now my wife and I are in the process of relocating back to Indianapolis from Oxford, OH.  So far I have one job that probably isn't enough money to support us both without serious cuts in our lifestyle (which isn't at all lavish to begin with) and another possibility in waiting.  Courtney is most likely on the verge of getting a job but still does not have anything nailed down.  We have put a down payment on an apartment and hired a moving company.  

We are moving without knowing exactly what God has planned for us.  We have no clear future planned out in detail.  I was reminded of this story while reading John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life.  This story reminds me that it doesn't matter what happens.  We may find great jobs and make a million dollars, or we might tank and have to sell our cars, move into a smaller apartment, and take multiple part time dead end jobs to make ends meet. 

Either way we need to rely on God and realize the only thing that matters is that "The Lord will do what is good in His sight."  Whether we have great success quickly, take years to find success, or spend the next thirty years scraping by.  The only thing that matters is that God's will be done and that we take what we can learn from our struggles through that and grow in Christ.  

What Jesus Did for Us

This is an excerpt from A Case for Christ by Lee Strobel in which Strobel interviews Alexander Metherell, M.D. Ph.D.  Metherell describes what Jesus went through prior to his crucifixion.  This is not for those with a weak stomach.  This is what Jesus went through.  He knew this is what he was going to go through.  He was so incredibly stressed about going through this that he actually sweat blood prior to this experience (which actually caused his skin to be more sensitive).

Leading up to the crucifixion...

Roman floggings were known to be terribly brutal.  They usually consisted of thirty-nine lashes but frequently were a lot more than that, depending on the mood of the soldier applying the blows.

The soldier would use a whip of braided leather thongs with metal balls woven into them.  When the whip would strike the flesh, these balls would cause deep bruises or contusions, which would break open with further blows.  And the whip had pieces of sharp bone as well, which would cut the flesh severely.  

The back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the deep, deep cuts.  The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back, the buttocks, and the back of the legs.  It was just terrible.

One physician who has studied Roman beatings said, 'As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.'  A third-century historian by the name of Eusibius described a flogging by saying, 'The sufferer's veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.'

We know that many people would die from this kind of beating even before they could be crucified.  At the least, the victim would experience tremendous pain and go into hypovolemic shock [massive loss of blood causing the heart to over work itself to pump blood that isn't there, fainting, shutdown of kidneys etc].

Now the crucifixion...

He [Jesus] would have been laid down , and his hands would have been nailed in the outstretched position to the horizontal beam.  This crossbar was called the patibulum, and at this stage it was separate from the vertical beam, which was permanently set in the ground.  

The Romans used spikes that were five to seven inches long and tapered to a sharp point.  They were driven through the wrists.  Through the wrists, this was a solid position that would lock the hand; if the nails had been driven through the palms, his weight would have caused the skin to tear and he would have fallen off the cross.

And it is important to understand that the nail would go through the place where the median nerve runs.  This is the largest nerve going out to the hand, and it would be crushed by the nail that was being pounded in.  (the same idea with the nail through the feet).

Metherel explains this by telling Strobel to think of taking a pair of pliers and crushing and twisting the nerve in the arm that you hit when you "bump your funny bone."

The pain was absolutely unbearable.  In fact it was literally beyond words to describe; they had to invent a new word:  excruciating [which means 'out of the cross'].

Jesus arms were stretched about six inches in length and immediately ripped from their sockets.

Now you could go into greater detail about what if felt like and what Jesus endured when he was tortured and hung on the cross for our sins.  The things that levels me is that he KNEW BEFOREHAND exactly what pain he was going to be in and how awful this was going to be, but he did it anyway out of love for us.  Which one of you would knowingly go through all of this for anyone else on this planet...I'd love to say I would, but lets face it, 99.9% of us would back out.  Think about it.  

Applebees and Europe

Tuff title, huh! Check out our first video blog!

To Give More Than We Can Spare

We have all heard this verse...

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be  also." (Matthew 6:19-21)

and...

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me."  (Matthew 19:21)

So as Christians, what do our personal finances look like?  How much of our income do we give away?  Is it 10%?  Is it more?  One friend I know once told me he did a reverse tithe...he gave 90% of his income for a summer to the Church.  That is pretty intense!!  So what are we called to give?

I would like to share with you a few things that I have heard or read on the subject of Christian giving recently.

A few weeks ago I attended a service at Oxford Bible Fellowship here in Oxford, OH with my wife, my parents and brother.  The pastor was speaking that day on giving (the dreaded sermon by all pastors and congregants alike).  He had some pretty interesting things to say.  He gave us many statistics on Christian Giving, our relative place in the world according to our income (see "Poor or Less Rich" below), and what Americans are spending their money on.

Pastor Jeremy Carr asked us if we had thought about how much to give to the Church this year.  He proposed that the real tragedy is that most of us probably hadn't even thought about how much money we were going to put in the offering plate that morning until it came down our aisle.  We just looked around to see what others were giving so we wouldn't look too cheap, or maybe just crumpled up a dollar bill or two so it might look like a $5 or a $10 bill.  Sadly, he was totally right.

C.S. Lewis said in his book Mere Christianity this...

"I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.  In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.  If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.  There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditure excludes them."

How much money do you make right now?  Do you know someone that makes a similar annual income?  What does their lifestyle look like?  Is yours equal to theirs?  I don't believe that this means we should give to the point where we are living in poverty.  Maybe this means that if we make $50,000/yr we live as though we make $40,000 - $45,000.  Or if we make $1,000,000/yr we live as though we make $800,000 - $900,000.  

Most of us can still give far beyond the standard 10% (although if you look at a church's list of annual giving it probably only adds up to 2-3% of what the congregation actually made that year).  We will not have to live a life of poverty to give a little more than we are comfortable with.

My challenge to you would be to take the time to think about what you are going to give to the Church and worthy charities this year, or even this month.  If you have an income, budget some giving into it.  Even if you are in high school or middle school and only make $50 every now and them when you mow a few lawns.  Think about what you can give to the Church and God's people.  My wife and I are doing the same.

A Thought on Theology

Lately we've been having some discussion on here about religion, truth, love, and their source.  We have debated whether our old theologies and doctrines are stale.  It has gone even a step further in questioning why we need a specific religion, or set of doctrines, at all.  Why can't we just find God and Truth in all places instead of one specific doctrine?

I am one that has thought that theologies can often get in the way of God.  There are so many denominations and doctrines out there, even just within Christianity itself.  How can these small differences in doctrine possibly make a difference in our faith?  I don't really think they can honestly.

I do think, on the other hand, that understanding the different theologies and doctrines in our faith is important.  Last night I was reading a chapter in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and he had a good point about theology.

Lewis was considering the fact that many people are put off by theology (theology being the "science of God").  Many people find it is more personal and beneficial to feel God, through whatever means they can.  They feel they can learn more about God through their daily interaction with Him as opposed to studying theology.  

It is true that personal interaction with God is going to be more "real" than any old theology.  Lewis' illustration was that this is similar to standing on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean and seeing it's magnificence, then going and looking at it on a map.  Obviously the map is going to be far less real than the actual Atlantic ocean itself.  The map, however, is necessary in navigating the ocean, should you want to travel that ocean from England to the US (I am paraphrasing Lewis here).  Lewis made the point that theologies are based on the interaction of hundreds and thousands of people with God over thousands of years.  They have written down what they found to be truth about God.  Others have then built on those theologies as the centuries have gone on.  

Take science for example.  Over thousands of years scientists have studied the world and its inner workings.  Each one building on the next and correcting the falsehoods of the last.  What if each time we wanted to learn something of the world we had to reconstruct the Periodic Table, or refigure the E=MC2 equation...we wouldn't get very far.  

In a similar way, the theologies that have been passed down over the centuries can help us better understand the God we worship.  We can learn great things from what others before us found as Truth about God and attempt to build on them.  This seems a far greater way of coming to know God than relying solely on our own feelings and experience.  As long as we study with a certain skepticism.  We still need to constantly question and come to our own conclusions.  

Don't get me wrong, experiences have a huge place in understanding and learning about God.  What I am saying is that it is foolish to negate thousands of years of people, just like you and I, trying to know God, and passing on the truth that they had found.  It is still important to discuss and debate these theologies, none are perfect.  It is impossible for any of us to understand and explain God perfectly...if it were possible, He would be a pretty lame God.  

So let's continue to discuss our theologies and doctrines, whether from Christian faith, or from any other source we believe we can find truth in, and see what we come up with, but let's not forget the great people that came before us that God revealed His truth to as well.