If a normal picture says a thousand words, this one says at least 1,250. This sums up what I believe Jesus taught about war. Credit for this illustration goes to Alan Close.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Spiritual Warfare
If a normal picture says a thousand words, this one says at least 1,250. This sums up what I believe Jesus taught about war. Credit for this illustration goes to Alan Close.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Keeping it Safe
So our 12 year old is getting to the age where she's interested in the internet, and her friends are talking about Myspace -- YIKES! I've been spending some good time finding out what kind of internet filters there are, and there happen to be some good free ones. Naomi actually has a MySpace blocker and Google image & video blocker!
Naomi
We-Blocker
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Fiero's and God's Will
I was just driving back from my lunch break and I saw a Fiero. Remember those? Click here.
During lunch, I was reading one of my favorite books "Man to Man" by Richard Halverson (I hope you don't get sick of me talking about it, because I may keep on for a while). I only wish it wasn't titled in a way that leads people to think it's only for men - because it's written for all humans. I still can't get over how brilliant the guy is. Here's some bits I read today.
"The blood of Christ cannot cleanse excuses, it only cleanses sin. 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' I John 1:9
How that works is a mystery - but regardless - it only makes sense that God can only work on a sinful heart that wants to be made clean (and that has to happen by a willful admitting that there is something wrong that needs to be worked on).
Another great lesson:
Genesis 24:1-27
"Here is one of the most beautiful and practical incidents in the Bible demonstrating how the will of God is understood. The key to the passage is verse 27. Note the simplicity of the arrangement.
Knowing God's will is NOT complicated. "I being in the way, the Lord led me." The servant was "in the way", therefore, "the Lord led."
Man's side is to be "in the way." God's side is "to lead." Do not confuse these. They are two orientation points in knowing and doing God's will. God promises to lead the man who puts himself in the way to be led. Man does not have the responsibility to figure out God's will, this is God's part. Man's part is to be "in the way." Man's part is to be available.
However he does it, God will make known his way to the man who waits to walk in it. This is not an over-simplification. Count on God to lead, never mind how. He promises so to do! Be sure you are committed to His will, ready to be led, then depend upon Him to keep His side of the bargain. Whether or not you feel you are being led is immaterial. You have God's promise. Count on it! "I being in the way, the Lord led me."
So how does that work? I think it's about listening to our conscience -- to me it sounds like an internal whisper telling me what is the right thing to do. It's easy to drown out the small whisper sometimes with my selfish desires, but when I follow that whisper, I find that God upholds his end of the bargain and leads me to peace.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Not So Smart, Are We?
One of my favorite books is the book "Man to Man" by Richard Halverson. It's been out of print for about 20 years, but it's amazing how relevant to the current times it is.
Here are some excerpts from one of my favorite essays:
"Human-like, man blames everything but himself for his trouble. It's the government or education or economics of the military or the law or management...
Everything is wrong except man himself!
So man goes on in his blundering, egotistical way puttering with the symptoms while the disease rages unchecked. The pay-off is precisely what we feel at the mid-twentieth century--complete frustration. Take a frank look at our position in this enlightened age...
We are more knowledgeable about child psychology than we've ever been, yet juvenile delinquency steadily increases.
Law enforcement has become an excact science and sociologists have produced the answers on rehabilitation of the criminal, yet the crime rate rises every year.
Elaborate, scholarly research has gone into alchoholism and its causes. A.A. labors tirelessly around the clock, yet in the U.S. there are fifty new alcoholics every hour (1200 a day).
Book and articles by the hundreds are published on marriage and the home, marriage clinics and counselors abound everywhere, yet the divorce rate ascends inexorably.
In an era of unprecedented application of psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy, mental hospitals are bulging, mentall illness is skyrocketing, and millions exist on Benzedrine, tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Even the perfecting of astounding new antibiotics seem to trigger new, unfamiliar mystifying viruses.
While America is burdened with a growing food surplus, halft the world never knows the luxury of a full stomach and millions perish of starvation annually -- and apparently the only solution man can devise for the dreaded population explosion is some method of preventing babies from being born.
There is more and more talk about peace--and less and less hope for it...
Incredible progress has been made in science and technology, but the consumerate product of that progress constitutes a sickening, relentless threat to survival of civilization. Meanwhile, human nature sweats it out, blaming everything but itself for its confusion and perplexity.
One step forward and two steps backward, seems to be the pattern of history. It looks like the smarter we are, the farther behind we get--the more we know, the less we can do about it!
However, the mystery lifts when we consider the diagnosis Jesus made as it is recorded in Mark 7:14-23. He declared that the trouble lay withing human nature itself. He diagnosed it as a malignancy in the human heart which infects all that man does. Man's trouble originates within man, springing from a condition in his nature which only God is adequate to meet. The burdens of the world are the symptoms of which the disease is sin, and the only cure for sin is the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.
Not the way human nature is organized, but human nature itself is the root of the problem. While he was president of the United Nations General Assembly, General Carlos Romulo of the Philippines said, "We have harnessed the atom, but we will never make war obsolete until we find a force that can bridle the passions of men and nations." This is the big question, where do we find that force?
The answer is the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes..." Romans 1:16"
Man to Man, Richard C. Halverson, Zondervan Books, Copyright 1961 by Cowman Publications, Inc.
Here are some excerpts from one of my favorite essays:
"Human-like, man blames everything but himself for his trouble. It's the government or education or economics of the military or the law or management...
Everything is wrong except man himself!
So man goes on in his blundering, egotistical way puttering with the symptoms while the disease rages unchecked. The pay-off is precisely what we feel at the mid-twentieth century--complete frustration. Take a frank look at our position in this enlightened age...
We are more knowledgeable about child psychology than we've ever been, yet juvenile delinquency steadily increases.
Law enforcement has become an excact science and sociologists have produced the answers on rehabilitation of the criminal, yet the crime rate rises every year.
Elaborate, scholarly research has gone into alchoholism and its causes. A.A. labors tirelessly around the clock, yet in the U.S. there are fifty new alcoholics every hour (1200 a day).
Book and articles by the hundreds are published on marriage and the home, marriage clinics and counselors abound everywhere, yet the divorce rate ascends inexorably.
In an era of unprecedented application of psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy, mental hospitals are bulging, mentall illness is skyrocketing, and millions exist on Benzedrine, tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Even the perfecting of astounding new antibiotics seem to trigger new, unfamiliar mystifying viruses.
While America is burdened with a growing food surplus, halft the world never knows the luxury of a full stomach and millions perish of starvation annually -- and apparently the only solution man can devise for the dreaded population explosion is some method of preventing babies from being born.
There is more and more talk about peace--and less and less hope for it...
Incredible progress has been made in science and technology, but the consumerate product of that progress constitutes a sickening, relentless threat to survival of civilization. Meanwhile, human nature sweats it out, blaming everything but itself for its confusion and perplexity.
One step forward and two steps backward, seems to be the pattern of history. It looks like the smarter we are, the farther behind we get--the more we know, the less we can do about it!
However, the mystery lifts when we consider the diagnosis Jesus made as it is recorded in Mark 7:14-23. He declared that the trouble lay withing human nature itself. He diagnosed it as a malignancy in the human heart which infects all that man does. Man's trouble originates within man, springing from a condition in his nature which only God is adequate to meet. The burdens of the world are the symptoms of which the disease is sin, and the only cure for sin is the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.
Not the way human nature is organized, but human nature itself is the root of the problem. While he was president of the United Nations General Assembly, General Carlos Romulo of the Philippines said, "We have harnessed the atom, but we will never make war obsolete until we find a force that can bridle the passions of men and nations." This is the big question, where do we find that force?
The answer is the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes..." Romans 1:16"
Man to Man, Richard C. Halverson, Zondervan Books, Copyright 1961 by Cowman Publications, Inc.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Holy to the Core
During lunch today I was reading an article in Christianity Today (a very well produced and non-cheesy pub I should add) titled "Holy to the Core" by Joel Scandrett. I thought Joel does a great job of detailing how the Christian church has struggled for many years with the term "holiness". Even though many churches today have done a good job of casting off the old legalistic notions (i.e. no dancing, drinking & playing cards) -- a lot of churches are guilty of replacing them with "private, moralistic notions" of sexual purity, financial honesty and commitment to private prayer. While these things are good of course, they miss the bullseye of what being holy is. As Joel says:
"This is partly due to our quest for cultural relevance, which is defended in the name of winning others to Christ. If we talk about holiness with unbelievers, won't that present just another hurdle for them to overcome on their way to Christ?"
"Moral purity is not, first and foremost, what Scripture is talking about. Instead, the most basic meaning of the word 'holy' is to be 'set apart' or 'dedicated' to God - to belong to God. "I will be your God, and you will be my people," says Yahweh (Lev. 26:12, Heb. 8:10). Thus, prior to any consideration of morality, biblical holiness describes a unique relationship that God has established and desires with his people. This relationship has moral ramifications, but it precedes moral behavior. Before we are ever called to be good, we are called to be holy. Unless we rightly understand and affirm the primacy of this relationship, we fall into the inevitable trap of reducing holiness to mere morality."
Tell it like it is, Joel! I know that in my past I have been guilty of reducing my "spirituality" and relationship to God to just following rules of do this and don't do that. In hindsight, I was so dumb. God doesn't want me to follow rules -- he want's me to be in union with him. We don't want our children to just follow our rules -- we want a relationship with them!
Joel goes on to say: "At bottom, God's call to be holy is a radical, all-encompasing claim on our lives, our loves, and our very identities. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ requires nothing less than death to our fallen, egocentric selves in order that we might live in and for him." (Mark 8:35-36)
Have a joy and peace filled day.
"This is partly due to our quest for cultural relevance, which is defended in the name of winning others to Christ. If we talk about holiness with unbelievers, won't that present just another hurdle for them to overcome on their way to Christ?"
"Moral purity is not, first and foremost, what Scripture is talking about. Instead, the most basic meaning of the word 'holy' is to be 'set apart' or 'dedicated' to God - to belong to God. "I will be your God, and you will be my people," says Yahweh (Lev. 26:12, Heb. 8:10). Thus, prior to any consideration of morality, biblical holiness describes a unique relationship that God has established and desires with his people. This relationship has moral ramifications, but it precedes moral behavior. Before we are ever called to be good, we are called to be holy. Unless we rightly understand and affirm the primacy of this relationship, we fall into the inevitable trap of reducing holiness to mere morality."
Tell it like it is, Joel! I know that in my past I have been guilty of reducing my "spirituality" and relationship to God to just following rules of do this and don't do that. In hindsight, I was so dumb. God doesn't want me to follow rules -- he want's me to be in union with him. We don't want our children to just follow our rules -- we want a relationship with them!
Joel goes on to say: "At bottom, God's call to be holy is a radical, all-encompasing claim on our lives, our loves, and our very identities. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ requires nothing less than death to our fallen, egocentric selves in order that we might live in and for him." (Mark 8:35-36)
Have a joy and peace filled day.
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