The cosmic dance of life

My wife and I are taking dance lessons again.  A couple of years back we learned west coast swing.  Now we are learning a slow dance called night club 2 step.  I really like it. Not only does it give the two of us something  to do during our long winters in Minnesota, but I also love the symbology of dancing and how it is a communication style of  non verbal cues  between 2 people.  The entire dance hinges on a “connection” between 2 people.  For the dance to succeed in looking like a dance it requires some very basic skills of highly subtle communication. Once those basic skills are mastered you can move on to more “styling” in your dance.

For the dancing to start being successful it requires 2 things. First, I need to communicate the dance moves to Sue in a way she understands.   In dancing a lot of these are subtle things you do to communicate your intent.  This connection between 2 people is what makes the dance work.  If the leader gives the wrong understanding to the follower it does not look like much of a dance. If the follower back leads the dance it is not very much fun for the leader and its definitely not how dancing was designed to be like.

Second, to move on to where the dance really looks good and start making progress Sue needs to feel safe in the dance communication going on between us.  If that safety is not there she is not willing to move on to learning the next thing to make dancing even more fun.  Furthermore, A lack of safety sucks the fun right of out dancing for me and her.

Those are the building blocks of dancing. Communicating  our intentions with understanding  and providing a safe environment where can grow and move on to more advanced and more fun dance moves!!  Growing with my wife is is much like dancing.   Intimacy and closeness with  my wife requires understanding and safety. Safety and understanding are the building blocks of intimacy and both, like dancing, require effort and intentionality as we take specific steps to grow together.  To communicate with understanding and safety requires some very deep roots in Gods love and mercy because, quite often it is NOT safe to communicate our shortcomings and vulnerabilitites to other sinners.  Also, we strive and work hard to protect our image of performance as a good performing employee, nice person, or moral achiever.   We communicate our strengths but.. gasp!…. never our weaknesses.   When we live up to our performance expectations we feel good about ourselves and when we don’t we feel like failures.

However, when we create an environment to safely share our weaknesses (James 5:16) and we live with the grace and mercy narrative of the cross  in how we behave toward other sinners we have the recipe for growth and change and finally have a chance at …. real intimacy.  This intimacy is not rooted in the performance and expectations of the other person but it finally has real understanding.  It loves progress but does not demand perfection.   We can put finally put down the performance achievement mask and be real with each other.

Finally, intimacy must be about something shared.  For years as Sue and I were raising the kids we seemed to be on separate missions.  Our shared lives were dismal as I became rooted in my job and she became more rooted in the children.  So what are you sharing? For Sue and I we now share workouts together, walks, devotions, a few games, some deep conversations and of course … we are trying something new …. dancing.

As we enjoy our new dancing skills I also have a vision I established about 5 years ago that I am temporarily calling for this blog topic  “the cosmic dance of life” . <—Link

Merry Christmas to you all!

The Gospel and Relationships

Reblog Below:

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is…
We are more sinful and weak than we ever dared to admit and…
We are more loved and accepted than we ever dared to hope.

In recent years I have been working hard at understanding my core and to not deviate far from it. In essence to try to remain in the sweet spot of Gods word. The sweet  spot to me is the Gospel message. If we don’t keep that clearly in our sites we can eventually use scripture to damage relationships as we claim obedience or attempted obedience in some judgemental way.

I want to expand on some personal reasons why I believe we as Christians need to “Keep the main thing the main thing” and continually beat the gospel message about Christ into our heads. We need to re-remind each other of the Gospel message continuously. Martin Luther says, “The truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine….Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.” (on Gal.2:14f).  The gospel might be easy to understand but it is very difficult to apply in a persons life!!!!!

What I have seen [and participated in] is that as sinners we can twist anything and everything, including scripture, in idolotrous ways and suck life out of it for ourselves. People can spend years in Bible Study and still not be closer to Christ and understand the Gospel message any better than they did previously. We have a tendency to use scripture fore getting over bumps in life as opposed to drawing into more intimate relationships with God and the important people around us.

In the book of Genesis, before the fall of man, scripture says we were naked and unashamed.  We had an intimate trust relationship with each other and God.  After the fall of man, without the Gospel true intimacy to God, Christ, and each other is impossible. We can not achieve the intimate relationships we were designed by God to have without the Gospel message. Without the gospel, we will feel the need to portray some level of worthiness or holiness around each other. We cant discuss our true limitations, our shortcomings, our sins as we put on a “mask” of obedience or attempted obedience on. True obedience requires a deep understanding or our sin and an intimacy and vulnerability that only comes from needing a Savior. Without this ground leveling concept of mans total depravity we just CANT achieve intimacy with God, our spouses, or other sinners.

We have,  for whatever reason, learned to live our lives as a sequence of proofs. We start our by proving how great a husband I can be, then a great father, then a great lover, a great moral upright citizen in the pews of MY church…  whatever!  In a sports analogy, eventually. we look down the bench and the bench is empty of any more proofs we can ever have. We see the success and failure of many of these proofs.  In the areas where the proofs were successful we get self righteouss and in the areas the proofs were unsuccessful we learn to  avoid these proofs and live withdrawn, insecure, or overly protective lives and find a defensive form of self righteoussness. In the case where we were victimized in our early life then we use these proofs as self defense mechanisms and have a legalistic, defensive form of self righteoussness that becomes deeply entrenched and self-justified. All of these self-salvation proofs we spend countless hours pursuing come from not finding our sense of approval DEEPLY “in Christ”.   Unfortunately, this problem is easier to understand than it is to apply in real life.  This is why an on-going committment to not only repenting of sins, but more importantly repenting of the sins behind the sins … or the idolatry of our sins  is so important.   Many people repent of their sins but far fewer learn to repent of the sins behind the sins.  Only a DEEP  understanding of the Gospel  and the Cross  and what Jesus did allows us to be vulnerability  honest to God and with ourselves about our sin.

We all have different histories, insecurities, and emotions. We have not walked in each others shoes. We sin “yes”, we are selfish yes. But we yearn for a close, intimate, trust with Christ and each other. IF we focus on the externals, “the problem”, without transparently sharing our intimate heart issue we will ultimately destroy what we once had. If we share our intimate issues and especially our feelings and emotions in a transparent, deeper way with other men and with our spouses and if our spouse can not focus on the externals then the problem is not quite as daunting. Eventually a deeper, more intimate trust than the “external behavior” based trust is built. Hopefully this trust will last forever. All of this is built on the idea that the external behavior is not the problem. If fact, focusing on the externals gets IN THE WAY of true intimacy, it gets in the way of resolving sin since its not getting to the “HEART” of where the deeper problem lies. IF we focus on the externals then we are doomed to a pattern of judgement, hypocrisy, and pharisiism (yes the pharisee that lives in all of us). We learn to not share our feelings since we CANT really share them without being condemned by the other person. Intimacy and trust will always be ultimately destroyed in a world focussed on externals.

We tend to focus on the problem …. but a wise person once told me “THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE PROBLEM”. As a matter of fact, focusing on the problem only tightens the power of the noose around our necks in dealing with the problem. As we focus on the problem, the problem becomes more entrenched in our lives. Dealing with the underlying “heart issue” is the problem and sharing those in a transparent way is essential to maintaining intimacy with God and others.   Many people repent of their sins but few people repent of the sins behind the sins and few see sin at the deep level that scripture describes.   A deep understanding of the Cross, a deep understanding of the Gosple is the trigger to allow us to start being honest with ourselves.  The Gospel freedom I am discussing on this BLOG topic gives us the ability to be honest about ourselves, to understand the sin behind the sin, to see our own religious idolatry as well as our irreligious idolatry,  and to become a sleuth of our own hearts through the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  Anyhow,  read my Vision Statement and you will understand me more.

Also, if we find our self-worth in ONLY external behaviors without a deeper understanding of sin and without a deeper understanding of the heart, we eventually lose the boldness and braveness to reach out to each other and to take risks emotionally with each other in loving ways as our spouse and friends eventually see through the masks of artificiality we put on each morning. We will portray our relationships, kids, etc as more perfect than they really are and build up a net of lies to each other. Real “gospel” transformation without intimacy and trust is impossible and eventually becomes focused on external results and behavior only.

True intimacy does not put on a face or our “Sunday best” and it attempts to have an intimate inner relationship as opposed to focusing on externals. It comes with heartfelt communication. Quite often people or spouses have beaten the ability of their partner or friend to confess their weaknesses to each other as we attempt to speak to them in Christian-ese. We become too impatient to allow Gods life changing relationship through Jesus Christ transform us from the inside out. Instead we try to transform each other from the outside in. In doing so intimacy and trust in our relationship is damaged and broken and it becomes almost impossible to reclaim as we persist in this superficial area for too long. We lose the capacity for intimacy quite often as we attempt to grow as a Christian when we focus on external moral behavior. With this type of deeper intimacy comes deep trust as well. As people we tend to see trust as if you do this behavior then I trust and if you do that behavior then I distrust you. However, gospel trust, begins with an understanding that we are more sinful than we cared to ever admit. If we actually believe that then intimacy is really about sharing our emotional frailty as humans. if we can share this frailty on a deeply emotional level than we can develop a trust much deeper than the one based on performance and the right behavior. This vulnerable openness is the beginning of a “trust” relationship with God and the people around us. It is the starting {and maybe the ending} point of our sanctification. A much deeper intimacy with each other comes after we have fallen and after we realize how great our need is for a savior and how great our need is for transparent, deep, emotional and spiritual intimacy.

The problem we have as Christians is we try to make obedience the main product of the Christian walk. It it not the product of the Christian walk it is a by-product of the Christian walk. In my real life experiences (long story here) I believe Christians who lead or EASILY throw out the words “obedience” and “truth” do not fully grasp the Gospel message. We tend to show how highly insecure and very unsure we are of our relationship with Christ and the the people around us when we use language like this all the time. The focus we have on externals will destroy our relationships eventually or at best ONLY maintain the relationship we have with others. We will never get to deep “intimacy” in Christ or with people around us. I don’t say this in a judging way, I say this in a way that I hope causes people reading this to reflect on the purpose and core of why they desire to be a Christian. If we can avoid focussing on externals (being a moralist) we can be patient with slow growth or lapses and realize the complexity of change and growth in grace.   What many of the self righteouss “truth and obedience” mongers do NOT realize is that both our justification and our sanctification come from one source and that source is NOT my will.  The only righteousness we have comes through the Cross and what Jesus did in my place.

“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.” — Tim Keller Again

The Gospel path to intimacy is not the path of least resistant approach. It means we share deeply the things hurting and we try deeply to understand the hurts of others. We don’t rashly and quickly jump to the ideas of external based Christianity where we quickly and easily place ourselves over and above others. We realize that how you feel is separate from what you do. To deal with the problem you do not deal with the external problem but you intimately discuss the inner workings of your emotions and how it works with you in light of your history. This intimacy requires relational freedom to express the true you!

The gospel gives you freedom to handle the wrong things that you will do. You won’t have to deny, spin, or repress the truth about yourself. Only with the support of hearing Jesus say, “You are capable of terrible things, but I am absolutely, unconditionally committed to you,” will you be able to be honest with yourself.

A continual re-discovery of the gospel in our Christian walk is absolutely necessary for intimacy and transparency with Christ and transparency and intimacy with Christ is necessary for real transformation. A continual re-discovery of the gospel in our Christian walk is absolutely necessary for intimacy and transparency with each other and transparency and intimacy with each other is necessary for real transformed relationships.

Martin Luther once said the following: “The principal point of the law is to make men not better but worse, But by the knowledge of their sin they may be humbled, terrified, bruised, and broken … and by this means they may be driven by Grace so to come to Christ”. Scott Sauls said in a sermon once “That we will never hunger for Christs beauty until we have seen the filth of our own vain efforts to make ourselves beautiful” . Both of these are great summary sentences cause by reflecting on scripture and validly good attempts to understand scripture through the eyes of Christ.

The Gospel is not the beginning of our Christian walk it IS the entirety of the Christian walk! Lets keep the Gospel message of Jesus Christ in focus!

Getting the gospel on Video — Living in Community

When I was young I heard the message of the gospel and I responded.  As I grew I read Gods word and I tried to respond as best I could.  But yet as much as I tried I still had some worldly attachments that God did not want me to have.  I did not want to remove these things I was “friendly with” from my life.   These things I was “friends with”  became a major source of strife later in life for me, my wife and family.  As I type this I think of the following verse in James:

James 4

Submit Yourselves to God

¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

⁴ You adulterous people,^[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us^[b]? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”^[c]

⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up

So in my beginning I heard a message and responded.  I read and learned but yet I still struggled against these things that I was “friends with”.  As I consider all those years I think back and realize now when I heard the message I responded … but I responded mostly alone.  When I read Gods word, I responded ….. mostly alone.  I heard Gods message and I read (saw) Gods word… mostly alone.   I had Gods word in audio and visual form but I did not have it in “living color” video.  I think a lot of people are like this. They have the gospel of Jesus Christ on audio but not necessarily on video.

So this begs the question on how do we get the gospel in “living color” video and rather than  just “learn and hear” Gods word?  I think the answer lies in being in community with other Christian brothers and sisters. Coming along side them and shedding tears of joy and sadness.  Having them support us and us supporting them.  As we do this we are not just sharing biblical insights but we are sharing real problems, real concerns,  and doing real life with each other.  This community of grace then allows grace, mercy, and the support of Christian community transform us over as we live under the cross of Jesus Christ.  As we  intimately and safely share real life situations we transition from an audio Gospel to a living color video Gospel.  We find that having the gospel on video begins to transform the mind in ways that only having it on audio could not do. Having the gospel on video now allows us to see how we have subtly judged other people that have different types sins than we had. It gives a complete paradigm and an agenda shift of the heart!

Getting the gospel on video, for me at least, also meant knowing and understanding all the worldly things I was “friends with” and how they worked in my heart.  Getting the gospel on video did a lot more than just give me another new biblical insight (I had a lot of those).  It offered me a complete shift in how I saw the agenda of my heart.  I began to see all the things my heart was “attached to” that James describes as adulterous in James 4. You see James 4 is not discussing adultery in the sense that we see it in today’s world. It is talking about spiritual adultery.   Spiritual adultery is about giving our first and primary love to other things that belong  to God first and primarily. It also took this community of people to help me see all the affections of my heart that I was completely blind to.

So as I examined my heart over the years I found 2 categories of things that were taking my affections away from loving God first and primarily.

1. Worldly sins that I had to completely remove from my life

2. Wonderfully good gifts from God that I prioritized higher than God. In this category are things like desiring acceptance from my wife, family, coworkers, and friends

Over the years I have become pretty good and figuring out the first one. That one is obvious for most of us.

The second one I find much harder to discern.  Even though I still struggle with fear of rejection and uncertainty (sometimes only paranoia of rejection) at times in this area I also know that God will never ask me to love my wife and children less. He does, however, ask me to love Him more.  So as I think about James and my continuing efforts to get the gospel on video rather than audio, I see now that James is asking us for a shift in the agenda of our heart and affections.  When I am discerning of the idols and agenda of my heart and replace this with a God that is BIGGER than those idols,  I find out that if I am rejected by someone I am no longer devastated to the point of complete inaction. I no longer flee to my “things of safety” and my old sinful habits because I see a God that is bigger than the affections and friends of my heart.   I am able to make steps toward communication and reconciliation rather than sit in my own self pity. To me this is major victory!

Finally (Foremostly), God has offered his son Jesus Christ so I can completely get off the spiritual treadmill of life and learn to discern the affections of my heart and to love under the freedom and victory of the cross!!! How wonderul is that! Having the Gospel on video gets me off the spiritual treadmill of life and having to prove myself to other people… even in good, godly ways! Perhaps having the gospel on video is the only way to discern our “religious idolatry and cravings”?

That’s my .02c worth for today!

Empty Religion — an excerpt message from Grace Church

Even though my wife and i were out of town, my daughter and her boyfriend went to a Church near us to listen to this message.  Troy Dobbs did a decent job of discussing something that my BLOG discusses quite frequently. The pharisees were a powerful religious and political organization in the days of Jesus that jesus spole boldly against. Today, we still have pharisees (in how we ALL think at times) and they range from overtly pharasaical to something maybe more subtle like when Paul had to approach Peter in Galatians.  Both Jesus and Paul became livid at people who strayed from a pure Gospel message as Paul explained it in Galatians. This is what Paul said to Peter and the church of Galatia!

Galatians 5:7
You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?

Galatians 5:12

As for those agitators [Pharisee like thinkers, discipled  by Peter] I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!

As far my BLOG I have always stated the religion of the Pharisees says “if you obey, then your accepted, but a pure Gospel message centered on Christ says your accepted, then you can have real obedience”.   The pharisees, in a nutshell found a righteoussness in obedience. This type of obedience can only end in religious pride. A pride that drives sinners away from the Church. This message is the opposite message Jesus was sending and perverts the Gospel!

Here is a portion of what Troy said in his sermon notes:

What is God saying?

• I have not come to set aside the Old Testament; I have come to fill it full of meaning.
• Jesus’ issue is with the Scribes and Pharisees and their addendums and additions to the Law.
• The Scribes and Pharisees were recognized as “the key scholars” of religious Judaism.
• Jesus didn’t weaken the Law—He freed it from the cage in which the Pharisees had imprisoned it.
• The Scribes and Pharisees codified the Scriptures into 365 negative commandments and 248 positive commandments.
• The Mishnah is the codified scribal law (or the book where all of their regulations were recorded).
• The Talmud is the commentary on the Mishnah.
• Civil Law – Ceremonial Law – Moral Law

Three ways Jesus fulfilled the Law:

1. He simplified it.
2. He satisfied it.
3. He intensified it

Does calculus apply to real life?

In calculus there is saying that is often used called “with respect to”. Quite often we say with “with respect to” time.  Or in the case of a car accelerating; acceleration is “with respect  to” a change in velocity.  Velocity is a change in position or “with respect to” a change in your position. And of course velocity and acceleration are also with respect to changes in position with respect to time changing.   Well, I don’t want to bore everyone reading this but our beliefs are often with respect to “our education”, the people we have been around, or the rightness or wrongness of how our parents raised us.  Quite often our beliefs trend toward and agree with many people we like and respect and they trend far away from people we dont like or have differences with.

I was reading the following NY times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/opinion/sunday/biased-but-brilliant-science-embraces-pigheadedness.html?_r=1&src=tp

In the article he author says:

And yet a large body of psychological data supports Planck’s view: we humans quickly develop an irrational loyalty to our beliefs, and work hard to find evidence that supports those opinions and to discredit, discount or avoid information that does not.

You will see the irrational beliefs in every major arena and especially arenas that have a lot of emotion associated with them.  Some good examples are some of the “social political items” today.  Because our beliefs are “with respect to” something outside of ourselves they are quite often based on things we may have experienced in childhood or people that were just major pains in the ass over the years. We all “think” we know truth but what is truth?

As  a Christian that has though a lot about this, I believe, that a lot of people that shy away from the Christian faith do so because of extreme, self-righteouss, graceless views of  people that have observed that are Christians …. quite often theses views are placed in politics , rightly or wrongly, as conservative.  And of course radio and TV talk show hosts (as well as CNN and Fox News especially during the presidential election) make money polarizing the sides even further and widening the gap between the sides.  often peoples beliefs in life  are “with respect to” what they don’t want to be…. a self righteous pharisee like person in politics. I have seen this in my own family and friends.

I am not sure who I will vote for on the next Presidential election. I want to vote conservative … but what I do know is we are about to enter a time with some very conservative and polarizing  Christians like Michele Bachmann entering the fray for President.  Its time for a change in how the world sees themselves “with respect to” a Christian faith. Its time to differentiate todays “religion” from the Gospel message Jesus Christ.  Michele Bachman will give todays Church an opportunity to differentiate between “The Gospel” and “religion”.  Churches and Christians will  have an opportunity in the next year to show real faith, real obedience, and real personal change or to be a self-righteous, Christ less church.  We can either take advantage and gain some ground by engaging in a Gospel-centric worldview and to be people that are on forward moving journey of change and growth…. or we can lose ground be engaging in the a self righteous, christless religion that many people see the Church as today.   A church that only creates people in the image of the politcal, religious pharisees of Jesus day. Yes the pharisees were a religious sect but they were also a political sect 2000 years ago.

Its time for some real change.. especially change inside our churches!   We have an opportunity coming up Church in the upcoming presidential run! Rally the troops and differentiate the Gospel from religion!  The article below shows Tim Keller  discussing the difference between Gospel and religion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNLcDl00Pz0

Who do you love?

Seldom do you hear my BLOG discuss obedience.  This is intentional on my part. Also a good video below of the song Who do you love?

On the other hand obedience is one of the things I personally think about the most. How do I become obedient, etc.

Let me explain why I don’t mention it.

In my personal struggles and in my understanding of scripture I have realized that obedience is not the goal of the Christian walk. But rather, it something secondary or the output of a Christian “love”  relationship with Jesus Christ.   As a matter of face I honestly believe that without the Gospel message of Christ even a persons morality if life will have a self serving motive to it.  In my experiences a focus on the output of being a man of integrity (ie morality) or doing more spiritual push ups, and memorizing more  scripture seldom works despite the best efforts of men in their accountability groups and pastors to press this on their flock.  Quite often spiritually trying harder only tightens the noose of sin stronger around mans neck!

The other reason I don’t discuss obedience often  is I have known a few truth and obedience mongers in the religious world that are self righteouss.   Once your aware of religious self-rightoussness you will find out how common this pharasaical attitude is and how it actually exists in all Christians as a form of religious pride.   Often this “religious idolatry” goes unnoticed in the eyes of beleiving Christians.

How stubborn and prideful we are!

Lets read a few verses from the Gospel of John:

Joh 14:15  “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
Joh 14:16  “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
Joh 14:17  that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
Joh 14:18  “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Joh 14:19  “After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.
Joh 14:20  “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.

John 14:15 says if you love me , you will keep my commands.  This verse does not hinge on obedience.  However, I have realized many people do hinge this scripture in their lives on that word in with what I believe is an incorrect focus.

The scripture hinges on the word love.  Obedience will always hinge on what or who you love the most.  Being disobedient will always be an idolatry problem. An idol to me is defined by something you love more than Jesus Christ.

The first commandment (to have no other idols before God) was the first commandment for a very important reason.  If we kept the first commandment we would really have no need for the next nine commandments.

In recent years I have recaptured a secular song for Christian reasons.  The song is “Who do love” by george Thoroughgood.  In my quiet time in the morning there are occasions when I put down the bible (gasp!) and just spend some time being alone with Jesus Christ.  When I do this I ask myself some important questions>

• What/Who do you love the most?
• What were my idols yesterday?

In the very last Chapter of John Jesus asked Peter 3 times “Do you love me?”.  This is the question around which the Christian walk needs to revolve.  Obedience will naturally follow a life the looks to love Jesus more and more every day.

Even though most of the words of the video do not apply the words “Who do you love” do apply to our daily lives in Christ as in the case of the book of John.

The land of I – Itunes, Ipods, Ipads, and Idolatry

The new thing of this generation is for people, parents, and kids to be online and plugged into something all the time. The latest fight for parents in schools is for the parents to be in touch with kids ALL THEM TIME…. even if they are in the middle of a classroom. We are getting to the point where we will constantly be plugged in the internet wherever we are. We need to be mindful that in coming generations being plugged in does not become a substitute for having real relationships. In the future this will become something parents NEED to be mindful of.

How does this relate to this post. Well,  for the purpose of this post I am defining idolatry as the things we are plugged into the most.

I have had several posts about how people have a tendency to make good things into ultimate thigns. I want to expand on that.

Why is making good things into ultimate things bad?

Here is list of thoughts supporting this?

• We live in a generation where child centered parenting is just as bad as absent parents. This is placing our children as idols.  This child centered parenting leads to a lot of dysfunction in families as we tend to engage in dishonest assessments of family problems to protect the family image of our children.
• We live in a world where people place their spouse on pedestals leading to major expectations that can never be met in a single person. Rejection from our spouses leads to major marital disorder as well as dishonest assessment of real problems as we protect the image of being a great couple.
• When we place our major sense of self worth in our jobs we become workaholics
• When we place our major sense of self worth in sports or coaching we lose site of relationships.
• When we place our image above others we make an idol of self. This image could be our moral performance and the rightness of our beliefs. Making this an ultimate thing then will place  people not living up to exepcations on a lower social scale. This behavior actually becomes a major hindrance for growth in people as we inoculate people against our behavior or beliefs.. even behavior and beliefs that can be VERY good.

In the Christian world when we make good things into ultimate things we call them idols and we believe having an identity in Christ needs to come first. Why is this important? Because then when the other things we hold close to our hearts are attacked we may feel bad but we are not devastated by them.  Also, its really not healthy to place a person or child at the center of your self-worth.  If we do we tend to respond in unhealthy ways as opposed to healthy ways when we feel your idol being threatened.

That’s my thought for the day.

What fills your hole?

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is…
We are more sinful and weak than we ever dared to admit and…
We are more loved and accepted than we ever dared to hope.

Whether we are all aware of it or not we all have a hole in our hearts that need to be filled by something. I have found out when I dig in my back yard and leave a hole, the hole eventually will get filled with whatever is around it… sticks, leaves, garbage, whatever blows around in the wind.

People are much like the hole that I dug. We all have holes in our hearts that need to be filled by something. Freud, Jung, and Adler and other phsychologists call it needs and many good sounding theories surround ways to fill these holes. When this hole is left unfilled for long enough it will get filled with lots of things that are blowing around the social “winds of man”. I am convinced we can fill these holes with a lot of good sounding things… man has done this for centuries but most of these things are not the things “ultimately” designed to fill the hole. Some of these things are indeed good and theymay have a place in our lives …. but they are not what was “ultimately” designed to fill the hole.

I also believe there are many dangerous pretensions that masquerade as “Christian” but are missing the transformational core of the Gospel. Whenever we are missing the message of Christs’ indwelling work OF THE GOSPEL to progressively transform us, the “hole” will be filled by a Christian lifestyle that is focused on external behavior and not the heart.

Col 2:6-8 tells us to be aware by being taken captive by hollow and deceptive philosophies. They sound good and they may fill us for a while but eventually, maybe years later, we will be found with an empty hole again. We need to be cautious about what we fill our holes with!!!!!!

What needs to change: my behavior, my self-concept, my circumstances? There are numerous counterfeit hopes we can place in our lives but scripture is clear — the only true hope can be found in Christ. In Christ we can find both the boldness and humility to not be blown around by “social winds of people” by just filling it with the needs of other people who themselves are also sinners. When sin confronts us we will be hurt but not devastated because our one true hope is “in Christ”.

If we fill the hole with THE GOSPEL then we have a fighting chance to have healthy relationships because our hole ultimately is filled by us being transformed into the image of Christ. Our hole is filled with what it was designed for …. Jesus Christ!

We will never hunger for Christs’ beauty until we have seen the filth of our own vain efforts to make ourselves beautiful. Only by keeping the Gospel central to how we think and behave do we have a fighting chance of maximizing the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.

Tastes Great, Yes Filling

In the video below, at some point Bill makes a point that the word righteousness is deep in meaning. I agree!  Quite often the word is read over too quickly. Over the summer we are taking a more subdued approach in the Hosanna sermons before we dig into Romans in the fall. Looking forward to digging into Romans.

 

Communication 2 — Reblog Post

The following is a reblog post of a while back:

I strive very much to have a mercy narrative in how I live and behave…. especially in light of the things that have occurred and played out in my life.   Mercy and love are two words that are very interchangeable in scripture.  Mercy basically means love toward people that are strugglers and sinners.

There are two basic narrative identities at work among professing Christians. The first is what I will call the moral-performance narrative identity. These are people who in their heart of hearts say, I obey; therefore I am accepted by God. The second is what I will call the grace or mercy narrative identity. This basic operating principle is, I am accepted by God through Christ; therefore I obey.

People living their lives on the basis of these two different principles may superficially look alike. They may sit right beside one another in the church pew, both striving to obey the law of God, to pray, to give money generously, to be good family members. But they are doing so out of radically different motives, in radically different spirits, resulting in radically different personal characters.

So what do you do when these two narratives clash!  I know that I can have a form of grace-legalism; that is, I can have an unloving heart toward unloving self-righteousness ….. or pharasaism.  So what have I learned!  Well, the first thing is just love others unconditionally.  The second thing is when confronted by self righteoussness is to have strong  boundaries when it comes to your communication. Love them … yes … but these people are not the same as the people you trust in the closer circle… so dont communicate in with them the same way.  The deeper levels of communication are reserved for people you trust and have a secure track record with.   For example, I have a few close friends that have invited me into their inner circle.  These are special friends.  We talk at a deep level. We are invited into each others lives and discuss things at a very intimate level.  My wife is one of those people. I have a few other men in my life that share that same level of communication.  Communication goes beyond cliches, fact reporting, and advice-giving. Its transparent, honest, and gulp…. intimate.  Walls of performance and personal image have been torn down…. mostly!

Also this form of communication is threatening to most people and to talk to people that aren’t ready at this level is almost impossible. They will feel threatened.  You really cant invite yourself into that world unless you invite each other in. To go in uninvited means a threatening environment  for the other person.  And if you are invited in it also means you share a two-way, not a one-way street.

The thing you can do with ALL people is to have a mercy and grace narrative with them!  This is the one need and thing you can offer that is completely audience and type of person independent. This grace and mercy narrative meets the needs of all people all the time!

The parable of the pharisee and tax collector contrasts the pharasaical moral performance narrative approach with the mercy narrative of the tax collector!

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

⁹ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

I want to point you to the words “I fast twice a week”!    Up to this point the pharisee was only quoting old testament law about being a robber, an evil-doer, etc. Now he says he fasts twice a week.  He now has an additive to the divine will of God!  He now has something other than a grace and mercy narrative to the tax collector!  He compares his moral performance to the tax collector’s and says here look at my performance RELATIVE to him!

This is what phariseeism does it. It adds a tweak or narrative that exists outside of the Gospel based truth and adds something to the truth.   It has a close resemblance to the truth…. but its really a very evasive lie. It compares its performance to the others. The tax collector on the other hand just looks at his own heart and says “God have mercy on me a sinner”.

Today, I am thankful for the way my wife and I communicate. Sue and I are taking a marriage class and she told me last week “I cant believe how far we have come”.  It took a lot of hard work for me and Sue to get past the first three levels of communication of  (1) cliches, (2) reporting facts, and (3) giving advice.  Its deeper and more intimate and it (4) shares real needs and feelings… yes men, feelings…. and it (5) risks emotional and personal openness.

I am also thankful for the men that have invited me into their lives and that I have invited in.   Together, we strive to see the tax collector and the pharisee in all of us and says “have mercy on me, a sinner”!