Saturday, October 10, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Glo Bible
As I was preparing for the Wednesday night Undercurrent sermon I saw an add for Glo: The Bible for the Digital World. This caught my attention for a few different reasons. The first reason was the word Glo, my Glo Worm was one of my favorite toys when I was very small, so I figures that anything that spelled glow "glo" was worth checking out. LOL! The second, and more important, reason this add caught my attention was the claim that it is "the Bible for the digital world." Now that is a bold claim. I've seen several computer based Bible study tools, many of them helpful, but none of them had an attractive GUI (Graphical User Interface, yes my inner geek leaked out). However, could this, this beautiful work, be everything I have been looking for to bring the Scripture to life and relevance to those of us living in 2009? Maybe, just maybe. I do wish it had more than just the NIV version of the Bible, I do most of my teaching from the Message version nowadays. However, the NIV is what I sunk my teeth into when I was emerging from my cocoon, so it ain't bad if you know what I'm sayin. Check out this Bible for the digital world here. I preordered my copy and can't wait to start using it for personal growth and for teaching!
Enjoy!
Jonathan
Enjoy!
Jonathan
Friday, October 2, 2009
Eternity in our hearts
9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men and women will revere him. Ecclesiastes 3:9-14
Ecclesiastes is a sobering book of the Bible to say the least. King Solomon was quite pessimistic, if not down right depressed, at this point of his life (ref. 1 Kings 11) yet we can still gain wisdom from this writing. In my opinion, the scripture above is a good snapshot of life. God has put eternity in our hearts. That's why we are never satisfied with just what we see, we are always striving for more. Only through a relationship with Jesus are our strivings quelled. Then, we are able to "eat and drink, and find satisfaction in our work" for the meantime until our hearts are united with the eternal one. Solomon says that God does this so that people will revere Him. Revere means to "show devoted differential honor to" and respect deeply. Now the Princeton University online dictionary defines "revere" in this way -- idolize: love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess.
Based on this, I wonder how many of us really revere God. Do we really love God unquestioningly and uncritically? How different are/would our live's be if we do/did this?
Ecclesiastes is a sobering book of the Bible to say the least. King Solomon was quite pessimistic, if not down right depressed, at this point of his life (ref. 1 Kings 11) yet we can still gain wisdom from this writing. In my opinion, the scripture above is a good snapshot of life. God has put eternity in our hearts. That's why we are never satisfied with just what we see, we are always striving for more. Only through a relationship with Jesus are our strivings quelled. Then, we are able to "eat and drink, and find satisfaction in our work" for the meantime until our hearts are united with the eternal one. Solomon says that God does this so that people will revere Him. Revere means to "show devoted differential honor to" and respect deeply. Now the Princeton University online dictionary defines "revere" in this way -- idolize: love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess.
Based on this, I wonder how many of us really revere God. Do we really love God unquestioningly and uncritically? How different are/would our live's be if we do/did this?
Monday, September 28, 2009
Freedom (continued)
Yesterday I ended my post rather abruptly because I exercised my freedom to do so as the kids began waking up from their Sunday afternoon nap. Back to the freedom issue: I think that we would all agree that freedom in and of itself is a good thing, yet some may argue, as the fallen angel I quoted from the book Lucifer's Flood in yesterday's post, that freewill is not, or is nonexistent, or if God is truly loving he would have never given Adam the opportunity to choose and therefore choose to fall, sin, die. Well, as the aforementioned character stated in Lucifer's Flood: "Believe me, I know the company line: God wants those who love him to do so of their free will."
Saturday night, I took our oldest two children to see the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. My son had read the book prior to our viewing, but I really had no idea what the movie was about, save what he had told me and the review I read at www.christiancinema.com. As a pastor, I can't watch or listen to anything without getting a moral example from it. In the movie the main character designs a machine that converts water into any food item you want! People love what the machine can do, and the creator loves the appreciation he gets from everyone for making the machine. Yet, when people get greedy and start overloading the machine with requests to fill their own desires, things get out of control. Some people want to blame the creator of the machine, but the police officer (voiced by Mr. T) speaks up and says "He may have made the machine, but we're all responsible for this disaster."
That kind of sums up how I feel about free will. I like being able to choose what I want to eat, what I get to wear, what I get to think, what I get to say, etc. Whenever I feel like that freedom is being oppressed, I get unhappy. Sometimes the freedom to choose presents a dilemma for me when I know the right choice, but would rather choose the wrong one. Yet even then, I don't blame God, and I usually don't get mad at him for giving me the opportunity to choose. After all, he only gives me the option of choice because he loves me. I'm that one that messes the whole thing up.
Thoughts?
Saturday night, I took our oldest two children to see the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. My son had read the book prior to our viewing, but I really had no idea what the movie was about, save what he had told me and the review I read at www.christiancinema.com. As a pastor, I can't watch or listen to anything without getting a moral example from it. In the movie the main character designs a machine that converts water into any food item you want! People love what the machine can do, and the creator loves the appreciation he gets from everyone for making the machine. Yet, when people get greedy and start overloading the machine with requests to fill their own desires, things get out of control. Some people want to blame the creator of the machine, but the police officer (voiced by Mr. T) speaks up and says "He may have made the machine, but we're all responsible for this disaster."
That kind of sums up how I feel about free will. I like being able to choose what I want to eat, what I get to wear, what I get to think, what I get to say, etc. Whenever I feel like that freedom is being oppressed, I get unhappy. Sometimes the freedom to choose presents a dilemma for me when I know the right choice, but would rather choose the wrong one. Yet even then, I don't blame God, and I usually don't get mad at him for giving me the opportunity to choose. After all, he only gives me the option of choice because he loves me. I'm that one that messes the whole thing up.
Thoughts?
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Freedom: Good, bad, indifferent
One of the books I am working through right now is titled Lucifer's Flood by Linda Rios Brook. Much of the book is a fantastical description by a fallen angel of the casting out of Lucifer and his followers from heaven and the recreation of Earth. I thought that the narrator's expression of how he felt about God giving Adam the freedom to choose whether or not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
His response is as follows: "The choice to obey or not is far too dangerous to be experimented with. It should be banned from every universe. I could be the poster child for why free will is an eventual disaster for everyone who has it. The ability to defy God is the cause of all my misery. Lucifer decided he could rebel against God. One-third of the angels decided to follow Lucifer. And what did it gain for us? Loss of everything we once held dear -- loss of our home with God; loss of our purpose for being; loss of our high place; nothing but loss with regret, despair, fear, and hatred becoming our destiny. Why does God insist on imposing free will on creatures who cannot possibly use it correctly? He knows what is best for everything He creates. We would be so much better off if he just eliminated the choices."
I will write more on this tomorrow. Grace and peace.
His response is as follows: "The choice to obey or not is far too dangerous to be experimented with. It should be banned from every universe. I could be the poster child for why free will is an eventual disaster for everyone who has it. The ability to defy God is the cause of all my misery. Lucifer decided he could rebel against God. One-third of the angels decided to follow Lucifer. And what did it gain for us? Loss of everything we once held dear -- loss of our home with God; loss of our purpose for being; loss of our high place; nothing but loss with regret, despair, fear, and hatred becoming our destiny. Why does God insist on imposing free will on creatures who cannot possibly use it correctly? He knows what is best for everything He creates. We would be so much better off if he just eliminated the choices."
I will write more on this tomorrow. Grace and peace.
Friday, September 25, 2009
An Unknown Romancing
This week I decided to pull a book off of the shelf that I read probably six years ago and enjoyed immensely at that time: The Sacred Romance. Chapter two, "An Unknown Romancing," begins with the question "What, or who, first calls to us from the wellspring of our heart?" There are so many great things that I could quote from this chapter, and this entire book, but I'd like to focus on wooing. Yes wooing. I ascribe to an idea that John Wesley wrote about in the 18th century that God attempts to woo all of our hearts to Him over and over again. Sometimes we recognize the wooing for what it is and enter into the sacred romance. Sadly, however, many times we ignore the wooing, rationalize our selves away from it, or misinterpret it as something else.
As Brent Curtis and John Eldredge pen in The Sacred Romance: "Sadly, many of us never come to see the wooing, in whatever geography it first finds us, as having anything to do with our heart's deepest desire, our spiritual life, or our souls destiny. This is true in part because it is a story that is very hard to capture in propositions. We have learned to tell ourselves that it is naive to trust it after we become adults, as if some how we have outgrown it and moved on to more reasonable or "scientific" ways of thinking. We have learned to think of it as quaint, or sentimental, or the foolishness of a child. Contemporary (as in present day) Christianity has often taught us to mistrust it, for fear that it will lead us into some New Age heresy, unwittingly giving away what most deeply belongs to the Christian faith. We are certainly rarely told to listen to it, look for it, follow it to it's source."
Where do you find yourself in this sacred romance?
As Brent Curtis and John Eldredge pen in The Sacred Romance: "Sadly, many of us never come to see the wooing, in whatever geography it first finds us, as having anything to do with our heart's deepest desire, our spiritual life, or our souls destiny. This is true in part because it is a story that is very hard to capture in propositions. We have learned to tell ourselves that it is naive to trust it after we become adults, as if some how we have outgrown it and moved on to more reasonable or "scientific" ways of thinking. We have learned to think of it as quaint, or sentimental, or the foolishness of a child. Contemporary (as in present day) Christianity has often taught us to mistrust it, for fear that it will lead us into some New Age heresy, unwittingly giving away what most deeply belongs to the Christian faith. We are certainly rarely told to listen to it, look for it, follow it to it's source."
Where do you find yourself in this sacred romance?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Dependency
The word dependency can set off some negative emotions when we hear it. Yet, dependency on the right thing is good. The right thing to be dependent on is God. Isaiah 30:15-16 reads: God, the Master, The Holy of Israel, has this solemn counsel: "Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves. Your strength will come from settling down in complete dependence on me."
I know as a man, reliance on anyone outside of myself is not appealing for the most part. We've all heard, "Pull yourself up by your own boot straps!" or "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." Yet, God tells us that our real strength comes when we decide to settle down in complete dependence on him. Please do not misinterpret what the scripture is saying. This doesn't mean sit around and do nothing and wait for God to do something. What it means is asking God to guide your interactions, to reveal to you where to go and what to do, and to put people in your path that you can bless and others that you can be blessed through by God. This is referring to not allowing any of our actions or activities to be controlled by selfish motives, but by the desires of God's heart. Instead of relying on ourselves, and looking like a cartoon character trying to run on a pile of marbles and end up worn out without going anywhere, settling down in complete dependence on God helps us know when to go and when to wait. Dependency, are you in complete dependence of God?
I know as a man, reliance on anyone outside of myself is not appealing for the most part. We've all heard, "Pull yourself up by your own boot straps!" or "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." Yet, God tells us that our real strength comes when we decide to settle down in complete dependence on him. Please do not misinterpret what the scripture is saying. This doesn't mean sit around and do nothing and wait for God to do something. What it means is asking God to guide your interactions, to reveal to you where to go and what to do, and to put people in your path that you can bless and others that you can be blessed through by God. This is referring to not allowing any of our actions or activities to be controlled by selfish motives, but by the desires of God's heart. Instead of relying on ourselves, and looking like a cartoon character trying to run on a pile of marbles and end up worn out without going anywhere, settling down in complete dependence on God helps us know when to go and when to wait. Dependency, are you in complete dependence of God?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
