Amazed

Last night Third Race went really well. We had a few new students which is always a plus, so we are staying right around the 35 student mark. I love coming to church on Wednesday nights. There is so much energy and positivity, that I think God is really moving within the student's lives.

Last nights message was about the clearing of the temple (Mark 11:15-19). Usually when people read that or you might hear it preached, you hear all about the actions of Jesus rather than the intent of why of he was mad. I used the word "amazed" as the jumping off platform into the reason for Jesus teaching. The Jews were amazed at his teaching, why? Because Jesus was opening the way for all people to come and worship God with no strings attached.

I wanted the students to walk away with a sense of amazement at what Jesus had done for us on the cross. That this story is a picture of grace and that is why the Jews were amazed. So we talked about grace for a little bit. Also though I gave a warning that we can be like the Pharisees and other leaders too, we can place things in people's lives that hinder them from being able to worship God!

To drive home the point even further, we broke off by ourselves and we wrote letters...either to ourselves or to God. Asking God to remove whatever we may place in our lives or others that hinders them from coming to worship God or about reflecting on the grace that God has given us. It was a good night of worship, in a good community, with good students! I couldn't ask for a better place to be serving right now!

Magic—the problem with Romeo

1). In a paragraph or two, right down some assumptions you have about Jesus?

2). Theologians, philosophers, scientists, and everyday people have all grappled with what C.S. Lewis called “the problem of pain,” that there is some great conflict in the universe with which we are interacting. Many have struggled with the fact that pain exists but doesn’t have a traceable beginning. What do you think loneliness, addiction, price, war, and self-addiction reveal about the state of humanity and the millions of individuals who are a part of it?

It reveals that we all have something in common. Sometimes we try to focus on our differences rather than see what we have in common. That could go a long way in seeing God’s hand in the world and see people reconciled to himself. I think it also shows us that there is something that we all feel and we all try to fill it with different things. Whether it drugs, alcohol, loneliness, addictions, we use those things to fill the void that is common to man. A void that only God can fill and a void that God wants to void.

3). “I couldn’t give myself to Christianity because it was a religion for the intellectually naive.” Does this statement resonate with you, make you angry, confused? In your opinion, does Christianity offer a substantial and believable answer to the problem of pain?

I’m a pastor and I have had to deal with this and wrestle with it. There are times that it just doesn’t make sense to me, and than at other times it is the only thing in the world that makes sense. It’s not that we are naive, but that there are many evangelical Christians who have made a subculture all there own, who can’t see outside of it. They make it seem like something for naive people because they can’t carry on conversations with people without getting defensive. They won’t dialogue with others and invite them into their story.

I think once we get past this, Christianity does offer a response to the pain in the world. A God who loved us so much he came to earth to take that pain away from us and then entrusted us to share this message with others, to help God, to partner with God in reconciling the world back to him, healing the hurt, comforting the lonely. That is a faith I want to be a part of and that I will gladly proclaim.

4). Is the Navy SEAL story a more appealing hero than what you know and believe about Jesus? Why?

Any time we can see a story of redemption and salvation that we resonate with as humans, we are more apt to like that. The story of Jesus seems like something we know happened but happened so long ago that we can’t truly wrap our minds around it. We want to believe it but we have cultural differences, 2000 years of historical differences, and 2000 for His story to become mystical and all most fairy tale like.

Problems—what I learned on television

Imagine that you wake up tomorrow morning as the best version of yourself. What would this look like in a normal day of your life? Write it out as a brief story. Then, imagine that you wake up the following day as the worst version of yourself. What would this look like? How would you behave? What decisions would you make? Write a brief story to describe what this day would look like.

If anyone reads this blog, i encourage you do just as this paragraph asks. I am not going to write it here…

1). How did you respond to the statement that “the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse”? Do you agree of disagree? Why?

I totally agree. We have to constantly check ourselves, if we don’t we will live a perverse life. Why is it you have to teach a child what is good, not bad? We never grow out of that. We must always be constantly being checking ourselves, seeing if we are living perverse or a life that God would be pleased with, liberating others and seeing the Kingdom move forward here on earth.

2). What is the greater problem in the world, corrupt politics or you?

I think everyone would like to say that the answer if corrupt politics. We, as humans, think too highly of ourselves. We think we are good, that God likes good people. We fail to see ourselves as depraved, lost and lonely with out God in our lives. We think we are fine, but really we aren’t.

The question that begs to be asked is who makes corrupt politics? The answer, people who are no different than you and I. Sure you could say the system made them corrupt, but yet again who made the system, people. We are all depraved and when we leave God out of the picture our systems of government, business, schooling, etc are all going to reflect this corrupt and depraved nature we all have. We are all capable of being corrupt, but with Jesus in our lives, we are able to overcome this.

So ultimately I AM the greatest problem in the world!

3). If you could sum up all your thoughts, motivations, and actions in a day as a total 100 percent, what portion of that amount is spent on yourself and how much is spent on others?

I know I am selfish. I am a minister so my job requires me to do things for others and plan things for others, but I still think a lot about what I like, what I think we should do, how I could fix the problems. So probably the percent that actually goes to thinking of others is no more than 5%.

I spend 95% of the day think selfishly about myself! How ridiculous…

Beginnings—God on a dirt road walking toward me

1) What’s your gut response to the following statement? “Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as ‘Father’ at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake.”

At first, you have to wonder what Miller means—a marketing mistake? But when you sit back and reflect on what this means, he has a point. If God wants people to come to know him, why would he want people to call him Father, if almost every human has had some struggle with their earthly Father. Getting over our image our dads can be a hard thing to do. It takes some people a long time, but when we finally do it is a great experience. When we can truly experience God as he was meant to be experienced is truly an amazing thing.

2) What significant memories can you recall that you believe influence your approach and assumptions about Christian spirituality? (I realize this is one of those “can-o-worm” questions, so take as much time as you need.)

I grew up in a conservative Lutheran church and attended there until I was 18. My memories from here mainly deal with how Christianity is a system of do’s and do nots. There are certain things that you must do to “worship” and other things are not “real” forms of worship. You put all this together it is easy to see how people thing Christianity is all about morality and nothing else and that we make it a system rather than a relationship.

Then when I was 18, I started going to a non-denomination church. It was here that I found a group of believers who still were conservative but were willing to acknowledge that faith if more than a system, it is about a relationship.

3) Where does guilt come from?

Guilt is result of sin. Once sin entered the world, we were all given the capacity to feel guilt. We all, whether Christian or not, have some sense of right and wrong. Where does that come from? We all know when we do something wrong and when something is right, thus we have sense of guilt when we purposely do wrong over right.

4) Does Christian spirituality seem more like an aspirin to alleviate guilt or a Godlike slot machine with a lever to pull rather than a relationship?

In the area where I minister, I would answer with God is a slot machine. We want him to fix our problems, we want him to help us, though we are not going to do anything for him, we go, and go and go again to him hoping that the result will come out in our favor.