Someone very important to me recently informed me of his/her intention to start going to church. Only it was in a very simple and matter of fact kind of way that didn’t even mention being born again or finding Jesus or any of those “I’m a fool for Christ” kind of things you might hear. This person said,
“I really should know what songs we’re singing on Sunday [since I’m part of the choir] but I’ll go anyways.” Read more…
We all know the movie with Haley Joel Osment and Christians especially I’ve found just love this movie. They say things like “God loves us so much, He has given us so much and continues to give us so much and we’re so overwhelmed and amazed by His grace and generosity that we can’t begin to imagine paying it back, so we pay it forward.”
Which is awesome. I love that idea. I love that thought. But I want to take it a slightly different direction today. Read more…
If you are reading this right now, and you are somewhere with a reasonable degree of privacy, please stand up. Now put both hands in the air as high as you can and jump up and down while singing your favorite worship song.
If you are somewhere public where people will think about finding you a room with padded walls if you did the above, then please give a little victory arm pump to the LORD.
Why? You might ask.
Because GOD IS ALWAYS GOOD! But I’m not going to stop there because He has once again demonstrated His goodness, His love, and His just plain awesomeness…(is that a word? Oh who cares.)
~God has provided above and beyond what we need for our trip to South Dakota. As of our final fundraiser we have 105% of our goal.
~God has inspired people with the stories and the plans we have shared. Already we’re looking ahead to Pine Ridge, South Dakota 2011 with a team and mission duration double the size of this year.
~God has revealed himself to people who have been hard of heart. These are people I’ve been trying to witness to through my life and example for ages (or so it seems) and this past week they have opened up during conversations about South Dakota in ways that HAD TO HAVE been God.
So thank you to all of you who have supported the team with funds and with prayer, you have paved the way for breakthrough at home before we’ve even started! If God’s only purpose for my first mission trip was to impact the people at home before I even left then I feel pretty good calling it a success, but the truth is that I know He has more in store for us once we hit the road.
Last night I had dinner and a bible study of sorts with the teens I mentor. The main focus of the discussion was purity and we got to the point where we were talking about “the rules.” Now because I grew up outside the church I had no idea what these so called rules were. And the list began.
No drinking, no drugs, no make up, modest dress, no piercings, no tattoos, no dancing, no secular music… I was trying to write out a list but got bogged down around item 34 somewhere. So as I looked over the list that I had (while refraining from cringing at the painful legalism I saw) I came to the conclusion that all of these items really boiled down to being IN the world but not OF the world. Now that’s probably an oversimplification, but it’s still a valid question that addresses a lot of these issues.
Our case study for the question became secular music. Not going to lie, I know NOTHING about secular music. I was never a big music fan in my pre-christ days and now I’m pretty much Thousand Foot Krutch and Skillet. But I absolutely love my sci-fi and fantasy novels. These are the books that promote atheism, reason over faith, polytheism, witchcraft and sorcery and on and on. I’m even in the middle of writing a book that falls into this genre so I looked at the issue from that point of view, and here’s what I came up with. Read more…
Someone very important to me recently informed me of his/her intention to start going to church. Only it was in a very simple and matter of fact kind of way that didn’t even mention being born again or finding Jesus or any of those “I’m a fool for Christ” kind of things you might hear. This person said,
We all know the movie with Haley Joel Osment and Christians especially I’ve found just love this movie. They say things like “God loves us so much, He has given us so much and continues to give us so much and we’re so overwhelmed and amazed by His grace and generosity that we can’t begin to imagine paying it back, so we pay it forward.”
