Category Archives: Christianity

The Grace to be Christ-Like

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A couple of days ago I published The Challenge to be Christ-Like on the blog Life in Mordor.  It’s a group blog that I contribute to.  In Luke 23:34, while Jesus is hanging on the cross, he prays “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  How can anyone be that Christ like?  Perhaps some have given sacrificially, prayed for our enemies, served on the mission field, maybe even given up their own life to save another.  Jesus prayed the prayer of intercession for the very people mocking him while they crucified him.  And we are commanded to have the same mind in us (Phil 2).

As I have continued to think about this challenge, I am reminded of a couple of things. One, we are never tempted beyond what we can bear.  God knows what we are made of, and he has searched and knows each heart.  As we learn from Job, the devil is on a leash.  Even when he’s the devil, he’s God’s devil.  Secondly, and more importantly, is the promise that God’s grace is sufficient to meet each need.  His grace provides our daily bread, as Jesus taught us to pray and history demonstrates in Exodus with the heavenly manna.  When Elijah asks the widow to feed him (1 Kings 17) she was just about to make one cake for herself, one for her son, and then they were both going to starve to death.  By God’s grace, she makes three cakes and they each have a small meal.  The next day, there was enough flour and oil for one more day; and the same the next day, and the next day, and the next day.  There was always just enough; the Bible never says one morning the bowl was full of flour, nor the bottle full of oil.  God’s grace was sufficient daily.

By the way, the original challenge was about being Christ-like to the extreme.  I asked who besides Jesus himself could do what he did on the cross.  Read Acts chapter 7.  As Stephen is being stoned to death, he prays in verse 60 “Do not hold this sin against them.”  It’s one of those “With God all things are possible” moments.  When the time comes, his grace is sufficient for whatever he has called us to.

I Preached on Baby Diapers

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Father's Day, June 2010

I know what you’re thinking: the stress of working in full time ministry with a 14 month old at home has finally caused me to crack.  I reached a breaking point if my sermon is on changing diapers.  It’s not as bad as all that.  Let me explain.

Last week I preached this sermon on Galatians 4.  It’s about God adopting us into his family.  I had three well-defined points, as a good Baptist preacher should.  Today I preached that same sermon for our students in their Sunday a.m. chapel service.  I can’t take for granted that 6-12 graders know their Bible stories that way my church congregation does.  I cut some of the scripture citations and needed a more colorful analogy or two.  The first point in the sermon is that we are naturally the enemies of God.  He says “Do this” and instead we do that.  Adam and Eve are the first example, and not much has changed since.  I talked about how cute Johannah is; all our students know this to be true.  But when we’re changing a diaper, sometimes she quits being so cute.  If she sits up, rolls over, or otherwise tries to escape then everything takes longer.  We have to do things twice; or three times.  The students all smiled, nodded and laughed.  Then I pointed out that in my history class some of them are the same way.  I have to repeat myself and/or do things twice.  Sometimes three times.  That’s our nature.

It gets worse.  God sent his Son.  Like the father of the prodigal, God waits and watches down the road for us to come home.  The prodigal son (Luke 15) spent a fortune on good food, good wine and loose women.  Eventually he hit rock bottom, and desired the same slop that he fed pigs.  He had to learn that lesson the hard way.  You couldn’t have told him any different, and if the father had come looking for him any sooner, he would have ran as fast as he could in the other direction.  We were all wallowing (or are still wallowing) in our own filth.  We are slaves to sin, whatever sin you want to fill in the blank with.  If my daughter Johannah has filled her diaper, then she is basically sitting there in her own mess.  She stinks.  Yet when I reach for her she runs away.  She ducks and dodges.  Her natural impulse is to escape the diaper change.  Are we any different?  We wallow in our filthy sin, in our own mess, and push God away even as he wants to clean us.

God loved us when we were unlovable.  That’s the Gospel.  And if you have kids, had kids, or know parents with new kids, fell free to preach the Gospel according to dirty diapers.

Halloween and…

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Today is Halloween and… Halloween and… Reformation Day.

On the Eve of All Saints Day (which is November 1st) Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517.  Protestants celebrate October 31st as Reformation Day.

Internet Monk shared the following today.  I approve this message 🙂

Book Review: Jesus Died for This?

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Jesus Died for This? by Becky Garrison came out in August.  (Why I’m just reviewing it now is kind of a long story.)  In this volume Garrison reports as a pilgrim, a sojourner on a quest to find out whatever happened to Jesus.  She documents her travels from early 2007 to the election hype of 2008, taking her all the way from Jordan and Israel to Seattle and Manhattan.  Along the way she witnessed a lot of “Jesus junk” but also found genuine communities living out the Gospel in small groups of broken individuals. Continue reading →

Adopted by God

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Adopted by God, a 3 point sermon from Galatians 4

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.     – Galatians 4:1-7

We are by nature the enemies of God.  Ever since the Garden of Eden, humanity has been prone to do the opposite of whatever it is God wants us to do.  Jesus describes us in John 8 as being slaves of sin.  It is easily witnessed throughout the history of God’s people in the Old Testament, the struggles of Paul with his own sin nature, and for that mature the course of all history.  While in a general sense we are all belong to God, our natural state is like that of the prodigal son.  God is watching and waiting for us to come down the road where he will welcome us with open arms. Continue reading →

Christians and Halloween

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Halloween – I’m not going to write a new rant on Halloween this year, click here to read the one I wrote last year.  After reading the post, be sure to read at least the first two comments; I probably should amend the post by including those footnotes in the article.

Christians – Here’s another thought to keep in mind: we should be Christ-like toward each other.  If you have Christian friends, co-workers or relatives that do not celebrate Halloween, please don’t study up on it and accost them.  Don’t e-mail someone a link to my blog and brag about how right you are/wrong they are, etc.  If I saw a Christian brother who was putting his marriage in danger by spending too much time with a female friend, then I have an obligation to say something.  Maybe he doesn’t even realize, or perhaps he assumes no one has or will notice.  That would be one thing.  If my neighbor does not hand out candy on Halloween, then that’s another entirely.  I have to respect his doing what he feels is best for his family.

If you read those first two comments on that post I linked, you will be reminded that celebrating Easter and Christmas are extra-biblical.  So many details about how to live as Christians in our particular culture have to be worked out by each believer. We are all on the same side.  Christians should not be cannibalistic and apt to devour our own.  Infighting hurts the witness and testimony of us all.  If we can’t love each other, how can we love those in the world?  The un-saved and un-churched need to see Christians treat each other the way we would each like to be treated.

What I’m Reading: Jesus Died for This?

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I’m currently reading Jesus Died for This? by Christian satirist Becky Garrison.  In this volume Garrison humorously takes a critical view of the foolish things we do in the name of Christ.  Not since the writings of Michael Spencer has the evangelical circus looked so ridiculous.  From souvenir shops in the Holy Land to product pushing publishers, Garrison begs the question “Is that what Jesus died for, to be hacked by vendors like a ball park hotdog?”  I expect to finish the book and publish a full review this weekend.

This Just In…

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There are two things I never do; one is over react in a restaurant if my order isn’t right.  I rarely send anything back, and when I do it’s with a lot of respect for the kitchen staff and multiple apologies.  You should never act like a jerk to the people who are spitting in preparing your food.  The other thing I don’t do is complain about the postal service.  No matter how bad it gets, keep your mouth shut if you ever want to see your mail again.  It’s not like they have competition.

Becky Garrison’s new book Jesus Died for This? went on sale in August.  A batch of our local mail was misdirected, and just discovered this morning.  The postmark on what would have been my advanced copy was July 21.  I’m not bitter, I just bring it up to say this: I’m reading it now, and will post a review as soon as I’m able.  Keep in mind that Garrison is a satirist, not a theologian.  Her books combine hard-hitting journalism and good common sense with frequent LOL’s.  Read more about the book and author here, and perhaps purchase a copy for $14.99.  There is also an audio download and e-book available as well.  My review will be up in a few days.

I was introduced to Becky Garrison when I reviewed The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail for the Internet Monk.  You can read that review here.

The Body of Christ

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John Lennon’s quote that “we are more popular than Jesus” sparked controversy and protest once it reached the United States.  That statement, part of a much larger discourse, was taken terribly out of context.  Here’s what Lennon really said:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Lennon was commenting on the decline of Christianity in England (and all of Europe for that matter) and over there no one even got upset.  In it’s context, what Lennon was saying was true. Continue reading →

More Popular than Jesus

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Update: this is a very good introduction.  Read the whole thing here.

Yesterday, Oct. 9, would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.  Huge crowds gathered across the street from his former New York apartment, at the appropriately named Strawberry Fields Park.  He’s still fondly remembered, both here and in the UK, some 30 years after his death.  Google honored his birthday with their first animated doodle.

Back in 1966, protests and violence erupted in the United States after Datebook quoted Lennon on the cover of their magazine saying that the Beatles had become “more popular than Jesus.”  Concerts were cancelled, KKK members rallied, the Fab Four once thought they were the target of gunfire.  Well… here’s what Lennon had really said:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

We still remember Lennon 30 years later; and despite what you see on the covers of Time, U.S. News & World Report and so on every Easter, Christians still remember Jesus some 2,000 years later.  Lennon had studied many religions extensively.  There are much more vocal enemies of Christian faith today than anything he said back then.  Perhaps he was just ahead of his time.

“His disciples were thick and ordinary.”  Yes they were; and yes we are.  And we the body of Christ.  That my friends is the Gospel.