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I’ve recently been thinking alot about a specific passage in the New Testament book of Galatians where the author of the book says: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
(Galatians 2:20 ESV)

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
(Galatians 2:20 ESV)

The author is saying that the new spiritual life he has because of Jesus is so powerful that it takes hold of his entire existence.

Very often as a Christian I hope that non-christians will begin to follow Jesus, but when I consider my own life I am living by my own set of rules. I do not see my life in such radical terms.

Most of the time I feel like I have tried to make some deal with God, where he gets a certain percentage of my week, but the rest is mine as long as I can keep my nose clean.

I wonder how different my life would be if I stopped living for myself, and began living my entire life by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I think my free time would be different. I know I’d care for my wife more. I probably wouldn’t avoid eye contact with people that I didn’t want to talk to. I might actually begin to follow Christ in a way that showed my friends and neighbors what it could look like for them to be reconnected to God.

I’m a hypocrite and thats one of the reasons why I need Jesus.

One very sad trend among many Christians is how quick they are to throw other Christians under the bus to prove they are better and more thoughtful about their faith. This often comes into clear focus when you read comments that Christians post around the web.

I don’t think most Christians realized that they only have two options when they are speaking about people:

1. The person is connected to Christ, and therefore we are connected to them, they are family.

2.The person is not connected to Christ and is what John Newton calls  an”object of [our] compassion”

John Newton who is most well know for his hymn amazing Grace, was a pastor and wrote many letters. In one of these letters he spoke about how Christians disagreements should be characterized.

I wish more Christians would take Newton’s advice when he says “before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing.”

Questions:

Are you really so short sighted as to assume that you are the only one who is a critical thinker?

How often do you pray for people that you publicly or privately  disagree with?

You can read Newton’s entire letter here.

A church in Louisville is making headlines, by moving forward with ordaining a registered s ex offender. For most people, this is an outrageous idea, and to be honest Im not sure how I would proceed if I was a part of that church.
For many people it might be better to begin with a broader question: Should churches even let s ex offenders to attend? For many I think the answer would easily be “no”, but is that the Biblical answer? Read More

When I was maybe 15 I found one of my father’s old tapes, It was Strange Days by the Doors. I was mesmerized, It was somber and despairing, and I immediately related to it. At the end of the album was a track called When the Musics Over. I remember being young and open to accepting lots of new thoughts, but when I got to this song, I remember feeling sad, and detached, but not detached from myself, or my faith, or who I was; but from the artist. It was Morrison cursing and yelling at God, it was him saying “I hate you”. One line more than any other struck me: “Cancel my subscription to the resurrection Send my credentials to the house of detention”.

David Bazan’s new album Curse You Branches is his When the Musics Over. But what I get from Bazan’s album is a sense of inconsistency, and a bad taste in my mouth, much more than when I first hear Morrison cancel his reservation to heaven. Maybe it was the fact that Morrison was long dead and I was so young, but when I hear Bazan not only curse the branch, but God, I get alot more emotional. I fell bad for the guy. I can’t help but want to hug the dude or punch him square in the face.

Listening to Bazan he is plain and settled in his distaste for God, as understood by Christians. He seems to want to make it clear that he sees it as stupid or ill-conceived.

So do we honor David Bazan’s honesty and authenticity even if he is authentically taking a jab at Christianity. I guess defending Jesus wouldn’t be hip.
Some people seem to be fine with Bazan still being treated as some Spiritual guide, even though I doubt he would call himself one.

One final question, in regard to Hard to Be: Do you think its easier for him to be, now that he has walked away from Jesus and all that makes up Christianity?

Tim Keller, Senior Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC, has recently come out with a new book called the Prodigal God. The book is an examination of Jesus’s parable commonly called the prodigal son, found in Luke 15:11-32.

He points out in the book that both the sons care more about what they can get from the father, than they do about their relationship with him. The younger might be more brash, but the old is more subtle and in the end unwilling to change.

The thing that I have found interesting is that Keller points out that Jesus was surrounded by more people who would fall into the brash Younger Brother category.

The question that I am wrestling with is how do we interact with the older brothers and the younger brothers? To be more specific how do we learn to forgive apologetic younger brother and still try to show the older brothers that they also need to be forgiven. Forgiveness is something that people want. Take for instance yeasayer’s track on the Dark Was The Night album:

“So your wishing that you never did all the embarrassing things you’ve done? and you wishing you could set it right?”

Do most Non Christians even think that grace–forgiving and forgetting mistakes–is something that Christians do well? If not why? What are we preaching instead? What are we living out instead? What crap has taken the place of the message of Christ forgiving people no matter how deep or stupid or life altering their mistakes.

Ok so though Ive known about the article for about a week, I just getting around to reading the article about the driscoll in the NYT. Im not sure
Here is one very interesting quote from the article:
Human beings are totally corrupted by original sin and predestined for heaven or hell, no matter their earthly conduct. We all deserve eternal damnation, but God, in his inscrutable mercy, has granted the grace of salvation to an elect few.

But I thought to myself–did they just say that in the New York Times?!?

The article makes me proud and a bit sad.

After about a month of not finishing this article I finally took some time to sit down and complete my thoughts on this issue.

The percentage of “churched” Americans has continued to rise over the last 100 years. Yet at the same time there is a sense that especially since the 1960’s there has been a dramatic change in the cultural influence the church has in American society. How are we to take these two seemingly contradictory notions.

Here is what I think might be happening in the last 50 or more years.
the evangelical church in general came into existence of of the fighting over modernism vs fundamentalism. The American Evangelical church can be seen as a fighting church, it fought to maintain the infallibility of Scripture, what some would call the battle for the Bible. Christians no matter what their denomination, theology, or church practices, were in agreement when it came to defending the authority of the Scripture. In reality, American Evangelicals, had won the biggest fight in their time, they had defended the reliability of the Bible. Once that battle had been fought, the church maintain a mentality of fighting. I think it is fair to say that the church lost its focus. This proper ecumenicism among different branches of the vine began to fade.

Many churches turned their focus from defending the core of their faith, to lamenting the changing face of American Spirituality. Rather than prophetically speaking into a culture that was rejecting even the notion of a knowable God, many churches decided circled the wagons and began to attack certain cultural trends that bothered their established membership. So the church lamented–over Longer hair and beards, guitars in worship, the lost of Hymns for choruses, the use of technology, and many other issues that should not have taken up their focus. Churches that forbid their members from dancing, were more faithful than those who didn’t. Churches that introduced guitars were more obedient to the great commission than those who still used the piano. The churches that I grew up observing were divided along style choices, that claimed to be based on major doctrinal significance. We have splintered, we have spent our energy fighting each other and fighting against every minor cultural taste.

The church has spent much of its resources on peripheral issues. We now find ourselves running on the cultural fumes of yester-year. Put another way, we have been yelling about secondary issues for so long, that we are finding it difficult to speak to more crucial issues because our prophetic voice has become hoarse.

Christians need to reorient their ways of thinking. We must repent of any, and all cultural corruptions, either from the modern or post-modern, the right or the left, the red or the blue. We must shake off all the cultural baggage that has hindered our fulfillment of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Most Christians have accepted that their flavor of Christianity is the one true faithful flavor left, and we must call on the Spirit to remove out pride.

We must use the resources that the Lord has entrusted to us with, to Love the Lord Our God with all our heart soul mind and strength, to Love our neighbor as ourselves, and to help every other brother and sister do the same. All with confidence that Grace will extend to more and more people, with the result being more thanksgiving all to the Glory God.