The Undercurrent

2009-10-10T01:12:00.001-05:00

2 hours into the first Undercurrent lock in....6 more to go. :) So the blog has been neglected this week in preperation.

Glo Bible

2009-10-05T14:58:00.001-05:00

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

Eternity in our hearts

2009-10-02T15:48:00.000-05:00

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?

Freedom (continued)

2009-09-28T12:02:00.000-05:00

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?

Freedom: Good, bad, indifferent

2009-09-27T15:19:00.000-05:00

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.

An Unknown Romancing

2009-09-25T10:17:00.000-05:00

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?

Dependency

2009-09-23T15:29:00.000-05:00

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?

Who knows me?

2009-09-22T16:21:00.000-05:00

For the last couple of weeks we have been studying the epistle Hebrews in the New Testament. Hebrews is rich with teaching on how Jesus relates to the Father, to the Old Testament, to the angels, to the world, to us. Yes, I said "to us."

Hebrews 2:14-18 reads: "Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it's logical that the Savior took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil's hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death. It's obvious, of course, that he didn't go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham. That's why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people's sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed."

When I meditate on this I think, this is a God that I can serve, this is why I serve the only true God. The scripture reads that he entered into every detail of human life -- all the pain, all the testing -- so that he could get rid of our sins and so he could help where help was needed. I find this so empowering for my Christian journey. To know that there is nothing that I encounter in life that Jesus has not already been through.

So, when your soul feels battered and bruised, and you sigh, cry, or scream, "Who cares about me? or Who understands what I'm going through? or Who really knows me?" be comforted in knowing that Jesus does. The best part is, he is able to help us through our struggles. Tell him where you need help and he will give you an answer through his Word and through others.

Ignoring distractions

2009-09-21T15:02:00.000-05:00

Q: How do you succeed at anything?
A: You focus on the desired end result and do the work it takes to attain that result.

In a Christian's life, when we have a true desire to do that which the Lord has called us, it seems to me that it is easy to get discouraged and distracted. Even when we have the best of intentions, we get distracted by people who give us a hard time about following Christ, or we allow the business of life to keep us from doing that which we are called to do. (You know, Love the Lord our God with our whole being and love our neighbor as our self.)

This morning as I was spending time in the Word, I read David's prayer to God in Psalm 119:65-72: Be good to your servant, God; be as good as your Word. Train me in good common sense; I'm thoroughly committed to living your way. Before I learned to answer you, I wandered all over the place, but now I'm in step with your Word. You are good, and the source of good; train me in your goodness. The godless spread lies about me, but I focus my attention on what you are saying; They're bland as a bucket of lard, while I dance to the tune of your revelation. My troubles turned out all for the best -- they forced me to learn from your textbook. Truth from your mouth means more to me than striking it rich in a gold mine.

What an amazing prayer! It is easy to see by these words that David had an intimate relationship with the Father. If our hearts desire to have that same divine intimacy, I think that it is imperative to notice the source of David's produced desire. David's desire comes from his attention to reading God's word. David said that he was "in step" with God's word, focused his attention on what God was saying, truth from your mouth... etc. I encourage you to read the Bible every day, if even just a few verses, and to not allow anything to distract you from doing that.

Well

2008-11-20T10:31:00.000-06:00

So let's go ahead and establish that I pretty much stink when it comes to keeping up with the blog. Yeah 2 months since my last post. I guess I need to get more organized or something, or somehow avoid being so easily distracted. It really is amazing how easily we are distracted as humans. Now I'm not saying that we don't become engrossed in some projects, even sometimes to the point of shutting out the rest of the world, which is also not healthy.

The paradigm that I have wrestling with for a long time now is that of balance. I suppose this subject was brought to my attention a few years ago when I was working almost full time, enrolled full time at graduate school, and my wife and I began a family. I felt as though I could not put as much focus and attention into any of these three areas as was needed, let alone any sort of social or recreational life, without neglecting one of the others. Oh, and carving out additional time for personal scripture study and prayer time aside from what scripture I was studying in school, I'm sorry to say, rarely happened, and if attempted usually turned into "wake up drooling on the pages of my Bible time."

So, what to do with such a quandary? Should I sacrifice my family and job in order to succeed in school? Focus only on a corporate career and chalk my calling, the reason I was in grad school, as a "lost in translation moment" between me and the Almighty and hope that the job would provide enough lifestyle for my family they would excuse me working 60+ hours a week? Should I focus on my family putting in a half-hearted effort into school and work? The answer to all of these is no! For sanity I began compartmentalizing each area of my life, but doing so did not settle well with my conscience.

Separating that which is sacred and that which is mundane seemed to be the antithesis to what God has called us to do and what Jesus modeled in his earthly life.

That was it! I began realizing a pattern in Jesus' life as I studied scripture for school. Jesus worked hard, but still surrounded himself with friends, every interaction was an opportunity to be reminded of the work of our heavenly father, and perhaps the most important thing to realize in our hustle and bustle life, Jesus frequently took time to get away from everyone to rest and pray. I realized that the only way to achieve balance in life, and to invest our best into every situation, is to rest and talk to our creator no matter how hectic life gets. After all, scripture tells in Matthew 6:33 "Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met." (The Message)

This is still a work in process for me, but I'm getting better every day.

Peace

In response to my post.

2008-09-16T11:02:00.000-05:00

Well, well, as you can see it has been quite some time since I have posted anything on this blog. I was a bit disheartened when I found out that only those with a Blogspot account could respond to the posts. However, I found that some of you are still clicking on the links and are finding nothing new. Out of courtesy, I thought it wise that I should at least respond to my own questions.

Let me preface by stating that I have heard people claim that perception is reality. Whereas that may be the case within one's own brain, I do not believe that is the case in relation to society. One can perceive one to be something that is completely wrong because a misunderstanding.

In response to my questions:

I tend to agree with Justin Martyr who was known for finding something good in every circumstance and happening. In the case of major natural disasters, acts of terror, the senseless killing of babies, and of any person for that matter, I do not search for good in those happenings. Those are events that are caused by evil and are treated as such.

As an example of how I do put this idea into practice, I had been on the road quite a bit one day for work and had more places to go, but had to come back by the office to do a few things. When I got back in my car to leave, it cranked, went about 2 feet and died, and would not crank again. Sure this was an inconvenience that caused me to rearrange my schedule, and sure it cost me money that I didn't want to spend. However, what I found to be positive about this ocurence was the fact that my car didn't stop working while I was 50 miles away visiting someone in the hospital, nor did it die while I was driving on the highway, which could have easily happened since it was an electrical issue.

I don't try to make all of life out to be lollipops and candycanes, but I see no sense in wasting time and energy complaining and obsessing on the negatives of such occurences.

The people that I encounter that seem to be angry about everything remind me of a Bush song from the late 1990's. One stanza of the song reads, "Do you feel the way you hate? Do you hate the way you feel." It appears to me that most anger at the world stems from an anger fostered by something that they dislike about themselves. I also believe that their anger limits the potential in which they can achieve. What I mean is, many people have much more potential, and can acheive wonderful things in life, yet they allow their anger to hold them prison from ever realizing that potential.

Through Your Eyes

2008-06-23T17:17:00.000-05:00

Now that we have the time and place set for The Undercurrent, I would like to get your thoughts on a few things.

First, when you look at the world, what do you see wrong with it?

Second, what do you see right with the world?

Last, in your opinion, is society improving or degrading.

Leave your answers in the "comments" section.

After some comments are posted I will post my answers to these questions and from what resources that I pull from.

Time to start

2008-06-19T11:36:00.000-05:00

I am happy to announce that The Undercurrent will have its first meeting Wednesday July 2nd and continue on every Wednesday thereafter. The middle school age set will meet from 6 pm to 7 pm and the high school age set will meet from 7:15 pm to 8:15 pm in the modular at the northeast section of St. Andrew by the Sea located at 17263 Hwy. 180, Gulf Shores, AL. Of course, on this blog you can leave a comment to a post at any time and I will respond as soon as I get a chance. Selah.

2008-06-16T16:19:00.000-05:00

Welcome to The Undercurrent in Gulf Shores, AL. The Undercurrent strives to be a place that allows conversation over diverse sociocultural happenings, world events, and personal experiences to take place without judgement. Every gathering will end with biblical interpretation of the topic discussed. The gathering place and time will be announced soon.