Give me a Sign!

Ok, this is waaay longer than my average blog post so grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable. This is a continuation from God (read HOPE) in Schools posted 10/25/2011 and part of a longer/larger conversation that started on facebook. A lot of stuff was covered in that conversation but this post is designed to get back to the core point of conention that started the discussion which is the image pictured left. Comments, and disagreements are very much welcome.

Logic tells us that if A + B = C then whenever A and B are together they will yield C. If however, A and B are together and it does not yield C then we must question our original premise.
Example, Ask and you shall receive. Christians in the United States have long been asking for Jesus to invade the schools and yet we continue to see examples of violence and conflict that very clearly indicate that Jesus has not made his presence known. Logic therefore demands that we question our premise by saying “Either God does not exist, God does not answer prayers or God does not hear prayer.” Christians meanwhile, are loathe to accept either of the three explanations as possibilities and insist that the real reason there hasn’t been an outbreak of signs and wonders in the halls of the local junior high school is the result of “evil” secular authorities refusing to advocate or endorse Christianity as the faith of the school.

#JesusRevolution what/why?

I don’t remember the entire context of what was said, but the day after I became a Christian I heard another sermon and the only thing I remember from it was Revelations 3:16 “Because you are neither hot nor cold I will spew you from my mouth.”

I’ve talked about this once before.  I said then that a Christian might take this to mean we MUST be on fire for Christ whereas I understood it to mean “make a choice buddy.”  And we can be hot, on fire and passionate for Jesus, but if we aren’t careful our passion will overrule our reason and we will have no knowledge of who God is, we will have no foundation of truth to stand upon and will eventually fall.  We can similarly be cold and intellectual, sure of our orthodoxy and secure in our understanding of the truth and yet have no heart God because our knowledge has cloaked our apathy.

learning from/during/about rest

My last post here just over a week ago was talking about stopping with the navel gazing and just start doing.  Well I very quickly realized that I haven’t been doing all that much introspection compared to the amount of activity in my life and no sooner had I made that realization than the physical repercussions of massive amounts of activity came crushing in on me.  Which is to say, I slept. I went to bed that night, woke up for breakfast and went back to sleep.  I woke up sometime around 2PM on a Sunday afternoon with just enough time to catch Dr. Who and that’s when it hit me.

today i mourn

Whenever someone dies, well meaning Christians seem to come out of the woodwork to try and comfort those who are left behind.  This is a good thing.  When someone is hurt and broken and weary in their soul I would hope that Christians would show up to comfort the afflicted.

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

Today, I remember the day that Jesus died.  I wasn’t there but I wish I had been.  I wish I could have been there to comfort Him in his pain and suffering even if there wasn’t anything I could actually have done.  I wish I had been there to thank Him for everything He had done until that point.  Would it have made a difference at all?  No not in the least.  Can I thank Him for what He’s done in my present circumstance? Of course I can.

Your dreams are His permission

 

Receive My Loving Fire, Ramone Romero

So as I was laying on my couch yesterday, lamenting the unfortunate consequences of Chinese food on my digestive tract and watching my usual lineup of feel good b/c I’m sick movies (Bourne Identity, The Last Samurai, and Paycheck), it occurred to me that I’ve lost a lot of passion in my life.  So I asked myself “where did it go?”  I mean stuff like that doesn’t just up and disappear, we’re talking about a natural inborn desire.  So I was really sitting around thinking about this yesterday and here’s what I came up with.