Liberating you from bad ideas about God
How are y’all doing this morning? Are we ready to worship the Lord in music today? Can I hear an “Amen”? God is Good? All the Time!
Let’s lift our voices in praise to God, and put our hands together for Eric Carpenter at Pilgrim’s Progress who posted this hilarious video on his blog:
This guy is right on! Though I noticed in this sample song at the end there that he forgot to sing about fire…
Door to door evangelism may be one of the most ineffective ways of evangelism. I have written about this before.
So I laughed when I saw this picture online:
I want one of these! Of course, in some instances, I don’t mind when people knock on doors.
Yes, I know that God can use all sorts of methods to bring people into the Kingdom, but as this sign shows, door to door evangelists are lumped together in most people’s minds with door to door salesmen and door-knocking politicians. Nobody likes these last two categories of people knocking on our doors, so why do we want to present Jesus to people in a way that is inherently negative?
Chuck McKnight has written some fantastic articles recently on his blog, and I wanted to invite my readers to head on over there and check it out.
One of his recent posts was on what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain. I have written briefly about this before, but I really like the direction Chuck took in his post, since it provides a little more historical-cultural research and background information than I provided in my post.
Here is some of what he says:
The Israelites were a special people—set apart by Yahweh and called by his name. They bore God’s name before all the nations.
This command then becomes an all-encompassing one. Since God’s chosen people bore his name, they had better not take that responsibility lightly. They were supposed to be a shining beacon, bearing the name of Yahweh with obedience and distinctive holy living.
Unfortunately, for the most part, the Israelites failed. They did bear God’s name in vain.
But that responsibility has now passed to us. We, the followers of Christ Jesus, bear his glorious name before all the nations.
Head on over to his blog and read the rest of his post, and while you are at it, check out his intriguing post on Jesus being Yahweh and his post on whether or not Jonah died in the belly of the fish. This post was highly intriguing for me right now, as I came to a somewhat similar conclusion in my research as I continue to write my Commentary on Jonah.
While I was searching for images for this post, I found these two pictures, and figured I would include them here, just for fun. Enjoy!
The image above represents what has been my view for a while, that to use the Lord’s name in vain is to speak for God when He never spoke, or ascribe something to God (our actions and behaviors) in ways He never approved. It would be like saying, “God told me to tell you…” when God did not actually tell you this, or “God told me to…” when God did not actually tell you to do any such thing. My view (before incorporating Chuck’s post into my thinking) was that we take God’s name in vain when we add God’s name to our beliefs and behaviors so that we can appear more holy and authoritative to others. The comic above seems to take a similar view.
Here is the next humorous image about taking the Lord’s name in vain.
This guy is making fun of religious rules, but he makes a good point. “Christ” is not part of God’s name. It’s a title for “Messiah.” And “Jesus” comes from the Greek Iesus, which comes from the Hebrew Yeshua, or Joshua. So his point is valid, but I disagree with his implied conclusion. I don’t think it is wise to say “Jesus Christ!” or “Oh my God!” in an off-handed way. Of course, even if you do, it is still not blasphemy.
And last but not least, here is a guy making fun of how we Christians use “the God card.”
What do you think about the sin of taking the Lord’s name in vain? What is it, and how do we avoid committing it?
The request “Can you prepare lunch for the homeless one day next week?” resulted in the opportunity to meet sixty homeless people, which at the time I assumed were the first homeless people I had ever met. Gradually, however, I realized that I had previously met and known other homeless people, but just didn’t know they were homeless.
Most of our communities are home to poor people and to homeless people. Somehow I had overlooked both groups of people in the communities in which I had lived. How could that possibly have happened?
Perhaps I had overlooked the poor because my family by today’s standards would have been considered poor. We had a house, food to eat and a car to drive, but not many extras. I never heard anyone call us poor. Our family laughed when we discovered that we were barely above the “federal poverty level” line.
My parents referred to people who were better off than us financially as “rich”. I knew who those people were. They lived in the part of town with the expensive houses.
However, I did not think I knew homeless people.
Sure, I knew about hobos. We lived near the railroad tracks. Hobos appeared at our door and asked for food and sometimes clothing. My mother always gave them something, as her mother always had. They knew the way to our house. However, I never knew where they lived.
I knew about bums and winos. I saw them in the street, usually dressed in ragged clothes. Occasionally they asked for spare change. I also didn’t know where they lived.
I knew about people who temporarily lived with friends or relatives “until they could get back on their feet”, and afford to rent a room, apartment or house. Some of those people were my relatives. But they did have a roof over their heads. I never heard anyone call them homeless.
After that day in the park eating lunch with the homeless, however, I started seeing poor and homeless people everywhere. I assumed there must be an influx of poor and homeless people into my community. As I would eventually realize that what had changed was not who was moving into my community. I had changed. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the reality that is our world.
Soon I knew the volunteers in the homeless programs in our town. I met the woman who ran a local shelter for abused women and children, most of them from poor homes. Within a year or two I knew the people in our community who worked with the poor, the homeless, the abused, the battered, and the overlooked.
My wife and I began meeting not only the people who worked with the poor and homeless, but also, and most importantly, we began meeting the poor and homeless. We began building friendships and relationships with them.
We discovered that we like people who live under bridges, under bushes, in canyons, in tents, and on sidewalks, as well as the poor, lonely, and needy who have roofs over their heads. We are friends with the homeless, and friends help friends. So we help our homeless friends.
How can we best help our friends? Future posts about our journey with the poor and homeless will look at some of the ways in which we are answering that question, and how you can too.
Until then, how are you finding ways to help your friends among the poor and the homeless? If you do not yet have any homeless friends, what are you doing to begin seeing them around you?
And YOU can help.
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I usually don’t post on Sundays, and with today being the Super Bowl, probably fewer people than normal will be reading blogs today. But I decided to put up a short post anyway.
Some churches believe God will be mad at anyone who watches the Super Bowl instead of attending the evening church service. I couldn’t disagree more. I think that if you love to watch football, you should enjoy the Super Bowl with your friends and family, knowing that Jesus is right there with you, cheering on His favorite team. I won’t tell you which one that is…
Then of course, there are those churches that try to compete with the Super Bowl:
When churches try to compete with the Super Bowl, the church always loses.
But this is only true when we think of the church as a building that people enter and sit in a pew to sing and listen to a sermon.
If we think of the church as the people of God who follow Jesus into the world (see my book Skeleton Church), then we realize that part of being the church is enjoying a good game with friends, family, and neighbors around us.
So, I hope you enjoy the game!
