Tag Archives: Bible

Six-Pack (58)

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Consider this Six-Pack “right out of the ice” — these prairies are unbelievably cold this past week. Spring may not be far off, but it feels light years away in the midst of these days.

My reading and writing habits are beginning to regain some steam after stretches of sickness and travel. Here are the best pieces of the past week’s exploring.

If six ever feels overwhelming, start with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move out from there.

For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter to the right of this post.  Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily.

Today’s edition:

1) What Studying Camels Can Teach You About the Bible (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
 This is an very intriguing read for any who love Scripture and long to understand its journey from “inspired word” to “leather-bound book”. This piece does nothing to shake my confidence in the Bible, but it raises some great questions for how believers define the Good Book’s authoritative nature.

2) Top Ten Jesus Movies
Last week marked the ten-year anniversary of “The Passion of the Christ”. To mark the date, CT released its assessment of a century’s worth of Christ-centered cinema.

3) Five Powerful Ideas that Could Change Your Ministry Approach
This will take you two minutes to read. How long you think about it after is up to you. Any one of these five succinct ideas has the potential to contain the kernel of truth that you and your church need for the season ahead.

4) Two Different Types of Hitchens (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
Christopher Hitchens was a well-known atheist. His brother Peter is a slightly less-known journalist. One died viewing religion as a source of poison’ the other lives, having embraced a faith he once scorned.

5) The Hardest Medal to Win
The nation of Poland have a special medal you can win, but it will take you fifty years to do it! Why don’t more nations do this?

6) How to Begin Forgiving Your Parents
Whether you’ve had great parents, lousy parents, or somewhere in between, you haven’t had perfect parents. What do you do with those gaps, those shortfalls? What about the wounds or the scars or the hurts you still carry. Leslie Leyland Fields (hosted by Ann Voskamp) has a few ideas on where to begin — they arose as she visited her long-absent and dying father.

May your week ahead be filled with life, as you seek the One from whom it flows!

leaveacommentYOUR TURN: Your input makes this post better!

  • Which link above was today’s best-of-the-best?
  • Why that one?

Direct others to the best of the bunch with a quick comment.

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

Sabbath: Why We Stopped Resting

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Slide1Our church recently worked through a series of teachings on Sabbath. Far beyond a weekly holiday, this biblical concept is loaded with meaning, with each additional layer creating a rich tapestry of teaching that displays the love and goodness of God in fresh ways.

This series of blog posts will aim to capture some of the highlights of discovery along the way.

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tencommandAs a child, I don’t remember any mention of Sabbath. I memorized the Ten Commandments for bonus points at Bible school one summer, so obviously the word was in my vocabulary. But I don’t recall ever giving much consideration to how this ancient-sounding term might be meant to impact life today.

But Melanie changed that.

She and her family were some of the finest people I knew, and I counted her among the classmates that I most genuinely enjoyed in high school. Her family drove quite some distance to be active in an Adventist church. If the weekly commute wasn’t noteworthy enough, they worshiped on Saturdays. How weird was that! And they used the word Sabbath – it was a legitimate term, still alive in their mouths as they lived out their days in the 20th century.

WWF-Superstars-cerealSo I asked the question that every kid asks when they encounter a way of living different from his own: “Why don’t we do that?” Truth be told, I was desperately hoping we wouldn’t begin going to church on Saturdays; that would have ruined my sporting life and cheated me out of the Saturday morning cartoons and WWF served up by our three TV channels. But this was one of the earliest instances where I met someone else who valued the Bible and loved God and desired to please Him, yet did so in visibly different ways. What to do with that?

Back to Sabbath: I got my answer. Now you should know that I grew up in a fellowship of churches who prided ourselves on seriousness about Scripture and a fierce commitment to “New Testament Christianity”, a long-standing goal within the Restoration Movement from which my childhood church had sprung. In a sentence, this form of “restoration” was a deeply-convicted drive to (wait for it) restore the first-century church. (I confess to having a long list of questions about this entire venture of restoration, but that will have to be another set of posts. In this space, I share this only to provide context for what comes next.)

I don’t know who voiced it. It may have been my parents. It might have been our preacher. It may have even been whichever adult was teaching my Sunday school class at the time. The particular voice doesn’t matter, for the answer rang true from the collective consciousness of our congregation.

Q: “Why don’t we observe Sabbath?”

A: “Because Jesus didn’t say we had to do it.”

One could do lifelong study on how Old Testament laws are handled in light of the New Testament. One current example that highlights the issue well is found in the red-hot discussion around homosexuality. Many note that the Bible explicitly speaks of homosexuality only a handful of times. Some then make the move of attempting to undercut the majority of those passages, from the Old Testament, by highlighting inconsistencies in how we handle Old Testament laws. “God hates gays” (a statement I’ve never actually heard from the lips of any Christian I know) gets rebutted with “Well, God hates shrimp too.” Sharp-witted way of stating, “We’re obviously not heeding some of these old rules. Can’t we just toss them all?”

(For a brief-but-helpful explanation of how to handle Old Testament laws with integrity and consistency, Tim Keller offers these guidelines.)

How does this speak to Sabbath? It attempts to decode the meaning behind, “Because Jesus didn’t say we had to do it.” (JDSWHTDI) For some, Sabbath has been dismissed; it’s viewed as expired, unnecessary, burdensome, even unhelpful.

I don’t see it that way.

7_playing_cardsIf I had a handful of JDSWHTDI cards, I confess that I would not slap one down on the Sabbath discussion.

If the discussion revolved around cutting bacon from our diets, I’d lead the charge on playing our JDSWHTDI cards. If stoning rebellious children were the topic, loving parents the world over would lay down their JDSWHTDI cards. If circumcision were put forward as the chat of the day, you can already hear half the population slamming down their JDSWHTDI cards!

While joking somewhat, I am serious when I say: I think we need better reasons to disregard Scripture’s teaching of Sabbath. When your Maker puts out a call to regularly rest, to habitually slow, to set periods aside when “More God” is the only item on your task list – that seems to me like a time to put away your JDSWHTDI card, and instead to play your IDTUHTMTS card.

“I’ll do that until he tells me to stop.”

Just a thought.

leaveacommentYOUR TURN: Your input makes this post better!

  • What do you do with the concept of Sabbath?
  • Practice it? Wonder at it?  File it away?

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

Six-Pack (56)

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Way too long away! I have missed every one of you, AND I’ve missed posting. Time to re-establish order in our post-sickness lives. Cheers to new days and new starts!

So let’s jump in: Here is the first Six-Pack of 2014 — the best pieces that have kicked off my year. As usual, selections are generally centered on faith or ministry, though we leave sufficient license to include who-knows-what as we discover it!

If six ever feels overwhelming, start with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move out from there.

For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter to the right of this post.  Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily.

Today’s edition:

1) My Advice to Married Couples After Divorcing My Wife of 16 Years (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
 Married, single, divorced, engaged, want-to-be-married, couldn’t-care-less — if you know another human being, read this. It might change the way you see or touch those lives.

2) How I Rediscovered Faith
Relevant Magazine‘s latest issue involves Malcolm Gladwell recounting a life-altering trip to Winnipeg as part of the research on his last book.

3) The Absolute Best iPhone Apps for Pastors
I do love being a pastor (most of the time), and I do love having an iPhone (most of the time). This list, from ProPreacher provides an interesting read for any other preacher trying to wield smartphones productively.

4) SATAN: Old Testament Servant Angel or New Testament Cosmic Rebel?
This is a LONG read. But if you’ve ever been interested in the person of Satan as Scripture describes him, this is fascinating stuff that will have you asking new questions and re-reading familiar old passages with fresh eyes.

5) Interview with the Ultimate Warrior (*PICK OF THE WEEK*)
This is a fun article, filled with childhood flashbacks for this former WWF fan. The former superstar chats about everything from career challenges to the business side of wrestling to being in a video game still today to slamming Andre the Giant.

6) Why Atheists are Angry at God
Joe Carter, of TGC, observes that some atheists approach non-faith in a strictly logical and rational way. But he notes what he considers to be far more atheists whose stance is emotionally charged. His question: What are they mad about? That might be good to know.

May your week ahead be filled with life, as you seek the One from whom it flows!

leaveacommentYOUR TURN: Your input makes this post better!

  • Which link above was today’s best-of-the-best?
  • Why that one?

Direct others to the best of the bunch with a quick comment.

[You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or email, in the upper right corner of this page.]

FAITH RE-VISITED (4): Living and Active

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faithAt church, our current series is a discussion of how faith grows.

In the process of Sunday sermons and weekly Small Groups, a handful of observations are rising to the surface.

Here is one of them.

WORDS THAT BURN

I once heard a remark from a highly-esteemed Christian leader, who had observed a trend. Every Christian whose life had deeply moved or inspired him was a lover of Scripture. The pattern was so observable that it easily highlighted for him the vital role that Scripture plays in the shaping of our faith.

Along those lines, nearly every “faith story” that I have heard involves some description of a point along the way when Scripture came alive. Something ignited. Something was birthed. And by the help of a human teacher or the direct impact of Scripture itself, God’s written Word came alive.

Perhaps the best such “a-ha moment” in Scripture is described in Luke 24. The resurrected (and apparently tough-to-recognize) Christ pulled alongside two of his disciples as they walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Perceiving him as an out-of-touch traveler, clueless about recent and monumental events, the two travelers begin to educate Jesus on all that he had “missed”.

Beginning in Luke 24:25, Jesus responds. In an effort to frame what they know firsthand, he begins to weave strands of clarity through their blurred canvas. Moving fluidly through long-known Old Testament texts, Jesus connects the dots. What’s more, he connects not only the dots of ancient texts, but he connects Scripture’s dots to the dots of his listeners’ “today”. So impacting was this powerful time of teaching that the two listeners noted later that they could feel it: to a realize Asian: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Lk 24:32)

LIFELESS AND STILL

In Mark 5, Jesus is approached by a man named Jairus; the desperate daddy’s little girl is dying. Jairus was the local synagogue ruler, perhaps something like an executive pastor — first-century Jewish style. Finding myself employed by a church with a house full of little girls, I find this story today far more personal than I used to.

Among the purest pleasures of fathering little girls are the affectionate cuddles and the cozy snuggles that are shared. Cheeks are brushed, hands are held – these life-touches are treasures that represent the tender warmth of life shared. Conversely, death deals in cold hardness. Everyone who has viewed an open casket ahead of a funeral service knows this thought: “Well, that is him. But it is so not him at the same time.” The body may resembles the person, but the body is not the person. The essence of the loved one, to which every memory is tied, is elsewhere. And that is why we feel loss.

It is a tragedy when something meant to be living and active is lifeless and still.

Jairus knows this. Jairus fears this. And before the story is done, Jairus feels this.  But Jesus, in a stunning display of power, whispers life back into the deceased daughter’s ear, and Jairus learns another truth that day.

Yes, it is a tragedy when something meant to be living and active is lifeless and still.

But it is a wonder when something lifeless and still becomes living and active.

So back to Scripture.

LIVING AND ACTIVE

Hebrews 4:12-13 describes the Word of God with those two adjectives: living and active. Like a supernatural sword, God’s Word is sharp and piercing, capable even of discerning our deepest thoughts and intentions. Scripture is intended to impact us in profound and personal ways. But as we said earlier:

It is a tragedy when something meant to be living and active is lifeless and still.

Most of us have experiences where Scripture seemed far less than living and active; lifeless and still would be closer to the truth. Blame it on poor teachers, dry preachers, or slack devotional habits — whatever the path, there are many ways to reach this unfortunate destination where swords are dull and souls stay hidden under layers.

But it is a wonder when something lifeless and still becomes living and active.

Most of us have known experiences where Scripture spoke so clearly, we wondered if someone were spying on us — even spying into us.  That’s just sword-penetration, par for the course for the force of Scripture.  Credit it to passionate pastors, sharp writers, or creative teachers as you wish, but be sure to affirm God’s part in the process. He is the One who packs power into His Word, and He is the One who rescues what humanity might render lifeless and still, to ensure that everyone seeking Him might taste the wonder found in engaging with the living and active Word of God.

leaveacommentYOUR TURN: Your input makes this post better!

  • When did Scripture first come alive for you?
  • What do you suppose keeps people from encountering more of the “living and active” nature of God’s Word?
  • Do you have any suggestions for those wishing to experience more of Scripture’s power in their own lives and churches?

 

A Sermon Through A Child’s Ears

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hippoLast Sunday morning, our sermon at church focused on the story of Peter joining Jesus in walking on the water. In the midst of that section, I shared a passing story about my daughters and a cartoon hippopotamus. It turns out that these two portions were heard by my five-year-old nephew, who was uninterested in attending kids’ classes and was instead sitting in the back of the auditorium with an aunt.

After service, they recounted to me a conversation they had unfolded during my lesson:

Nephew: “I don’t think uncle Jason knows what he’s talking about.”

Auntie: “Well, I’m pretty sure he probably does.”

Nephew: “No, he definitely doesn’t.”

Brief Pause

Nephew: “Hippos do not walk on water.”

Is it fair to say that I’m hoping most in the room heard the message slightly differently than that?!