7 posts tagged “jesus”
Something disturbing happened tonight at my small group, and I covet your prayers. A discussion was started that ended badly because it became evident that our leader holds a belief about salvation and grace that isn't biblical (though he swears up and down it is). It got so bad that his wife left the room crying and a man who wraps his whole existence in God is now doubting his faith. And the whole time, the one with the differing view did not change his opinion or admit that he could be wrong or seem to care that others were upset and offended.
Pray that the spirit of confusion will be rebuked. Pray that God opens his heart (and ours). Pray wisdom for me as I put together a study that will be Scriptural on this issue. Pray that hurt feelings will be healed. Pray that God will guide all of us to the Truth. Pray that unity, not discord, will once again reign.
Show us what you're made of.
Submitted by Robin.
I'm pretty sure I posted about The Irresistible Revolution a while back. It was an incredible book! If you don't have time to read the book, here's a video of Shane speaking at a Youth-Fusion conference. It's a little long (50 minutes), but it's incredible. He has a lot of good things to say. His ideas get a little radical, but you know what? Jesus was a radical too.
At the end of the presentation, Shane shows a video clip of a child who is severely malnourished and suffering from PTSD. He is shaking uncontrollably. Until he is touched. The power of a loving touch is amazing. That segment made me break down…sitting at my desk at work. If you don’t watch anything else, at least go to the end of the video* and see that. See the power of love.
*You'll find the segment when there are 7:15 minutes left.
I started reading this book last night, and I keep finding things that I want to share with the world! I'm impressed with the way Bell connects God with humanity. He gives practical applications that seem so normal and natural that you just don't question them. In one section, he's talking about love and what love is (to read an excerpt go here). Then he begins to talk about God and love and how God loves. When I got to the end of this passage, I literally said, "Wow."
So if you were God--which I realize is an odd way to begin a sentence--but if you were God, the all-powerful creator of the universe, and you wanted to move toward people, you wanted to express your love for the world in a new way, how would you do it?
If you showed up in your power and control and might, you would scare people off. This is what happens at the giving of the Ten Commandments. The first two commandments are in the first person: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image...for I, the Lord..." But starting with the third commandment, someone else is talking: "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord..." The rabbis believed that this is because God was speaking directly to the people in the first two commands, but they couldn't handle it. As it says in the text, "They trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.' " So, the rabbis reasoned, the switch in person is because Moses gave them the remaining eight commandments.
Just God speaking is too much to bear.
If you're God and you want to express ultimate love to your creation, if you want to move toward them in a definitive way, you have a problem, because just showing up overwhelms people.
You wouldn't come as you are.
You wouldn't come in strength.
You wouldn't come in your pure, raw essence. You'd scare everybody away.
The last thing people would perceive is love.
So how would you express your love in an ultimate way? How do you connect with people in a manner that wouldn't scare them off but would compel them to want to come closer, to draw nearer?
You would need to strip yourself of all of the trappings that come with ultimate power and authority. That's how love works. It doesn't matter if a man has a million dollars and wants to woo a woman, if she loves him for his money, it isn't really love.
If you were an almight being who made the universe and everything in it, you would need to meet people on their level, in their world, on their soil...like them.
This is the story of the Bible. This is the story of Jesus.
This is the coolest thing Steve Harvey ever did. It gave me goose bumps!
This is an incredible book. Here's a quick excerpt:
Please note that this biblical goal of Christlike humility is a far cry from many currently popular, but unworthy, goals of helping someone become well adjusted or develop his "moral consciousness" or achieve personal happiness and success. Our Lord did not come to this planet, live a perfect life, and become a worthy atonement for the sins of the world so that those who become His children can merely be well adjusted, live morally upright lives, and enjoy personal happiness and success. He died to redeem us from the penalty and power of a sinful heart that keeps us from being useful servants of the living God.
I also wrote a post about the meaning of Christianity over on Imago Dei, and I used this book as a source for pretty much the whole thing.
I definitely encourage you to check it out!
Crossposted at Imago Dei (*I've turned comments off here...if you would like to comment, please do so at Imago Dei*).
I am told that Christians do not love each other. I am very sorry if that be true, but I rather doubt it, for I suspect that those who do not love each other are not Christians.
Charles Spurgeon
I’ve spent a lot of time in recent months becoming more and more aware of how the world views those who use the label “Christian” to describe our lives. At first I just dismissed those negative views as some anti-Christian bias, but I’ve recently become acquainted with a group of people who harbor some very strong and very negative feelings and opinions towards anything having to do with Christianity. When I took a step back to ask myself how anyone could possibly feel that way, I didn’t like the answers I found.
It felt like a slap in the face when I realized that all of the spiritual growth I’d experienced in the last several months had come with no help whatsoever from the Christian world. God has brought me to some new places by opening my eyes to those outside of the Christian bubble I’ve always lived in.
I noticed pretty quickly when I became a frequent commenter on an atheist blog that it seemed as though the most hateful and condescending comments often came from those proclaiming the name of Christ. Sadly, the problem is not confined solely to the internet. The only “Christians” getting any media exposure these days always seem to be the extreme fundamentalists who are busy proclaiming “God hates fags” or promoting similar hate-speech. If it’s not that, they’re busy condemning our nation as wicked and predicting God’s wrath raining down upon us in the form of a natural disaster. The biggest churches in America are now promoting the “prosperity gospel” where followers are promised financial prosperity through faith, thus turning evangelizing into a form of bribery.
Christians: it’s time to get back to the basics! Is this the face of Christianity that you want the world to accept? Is this what it truly means to be a follower of Christ?
We have become complacent in our faith.
We have forgotten what it means to be like Jesus.
We watch daily as these “Christians” run the name of Christ through the mud, yet we are content to sit idly by and do nothing about it.
Would Jesus ever condemn a man or woman by proclaiming “God hates fags”? Absolutely not! Would Jesus ever sit on a pew in a church comfortably listening to doctrines that promote the “prosperity gospel”? Never!
We must ask ourselves why we let those who call themselves “Christian” do those same things. Why is no one standing up and proclaiming “Hey! That’s not right! That’s not what it means to be a Christian!”?
I once heard a great story about a bag of Oreo cookies that nicely parallels our current situation. A husband and wife bought a box of snack-sized bags of Oreo cookies. When they arrived at home they decided to open up a bag for a snack. The bag looked like all of the other bags, but when they opened it there were no cookies inside! The bag contained nothing but air, so they threw it away and opened another one. Again, though the bag looked normal from the outside, they found no cookies inside the bag. The husband turned to his wife and asked “How many bags of cookies will you go through before you give up and assume they’re all empty?”
How many times does a nonbeliever have to get burned by someone claiming the mantle of Christ before they give up on Christianity altogether?
How long will it take before Christians stand up and show the world what it really means to be like Christ?
Many people, after a brief look, come to the conclusion that Christians have become the most judgmental and hypocritical group of people on earth. Many Christians, it seems, go to church on Sunday and spend the rest of the week living however they choose.
Is it any wonder that people don’t want to associate themselves with anything “Christian”?
The Bible says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was” (James 1:22-24).
That paints a perfect picture of how most people view the Christian: hypocritical! Dare I say it: Christians are the most hypocritical group of people living today.
When are we going to start doing everything we say we believe in?
When are we going to stand up and let the world know that Christianity isn’t a label, but a lifestyle?
When are we going to show the world who Jesus really is?
