The Forgotton Art of Holiness

We're starting a new series at Fellowship Bible this upcoming week and were discussing it in the weekly worship meeting. The series is going through 1 Peter and is asking the question of how we should live as exiles in a land that is not our home. So...how should we live? With the great price Jesus paid for our salvation, how should we live?

I think my generation has done well in embracing salvation through grace. The book of Romans and Galatians have become a favorite and the message that we can come as we are to throne of Christ and be made whole again by His death and resurrection is our spiritual heartbeat. I am so glad we are exchanging salvation through legalism for grace and I hope it continues to permeate our spiritual paradigm.

However, something I've observed about my generation is that our spiritual journey often times stops at salvation through grace. It really isn't popular to talk about the process of becoming righteous after salvation. We've bought the lie that it's okay to stay the same sinner we were when Jesus first found us. It is true that Christ's forgiveness covers our sins, both past and future. But God's mercy does not justify our license to stay spiritual babies our whole life.

The book of 1 Peter addresses that very thing. Peter is pleading with the elect to live holy. Since our salvation is so great and the grace of God so grand, we shouldn't cheapen those things by not enduring suffering for the sake of holiness. The lack of holiness in my generation's spiritual journey is becoming pandemic, and it is frustrating. It frustrates me because I know just how much I cheapen the grace of God by my own license and I see how much our message of grace is being hurt by the lack of transformation that occurs after our salvation.

Salvation and transformation should never be compartmentalized into separate things. The art of holiness and the long process of brokenness, suffering, and faith that gets us there is what gives credibility to salvation.

The Boldness of the Apostles

So recently I've been reading through the book of Acts and I'm amazed how bold the apostles were in the way they shared the gospel then. They were almost rude about it at times. When Stephen delivers his final sermon he closes with a fairly vindictive indictment of the Jews prosecuting him. This happens over and over again throughout the book of Acts. It made a lot of people mad, but it made the gospel very clear to those listening.

It has challenged me in the way I think of sharing the truth about Jesus. When I talk about Him and scriptural truth, I'm very often delicate in the way I talk about it. I don't want to offend or "turn people away" so I often tip toe around the sins of others and the full power of the truth. I wish I didn't do this and could have the boldness of the Apostles. It might get me in more trouble, but it also wouldn't water down the gospel.

The Anonymous Man's Second Coming

The Man looked through his window.
street cars, street sounds, street smells,
a pitter-patter of rain

The Man stared through His window
why send me for this?

Abraham walks to the Mountain of God afraid

In the city, all are anonymous
rain unique and then crashing upon asphalt
evaporating invisibly into the sky

The Man scribbles into the wood
"Everyone was expecting me, but nobody noticed."

Abraham shivering raises the knife
But doesn't see the ram

The Man crashed through the window
street cars, street sounds, street smells
the pitter-patter of pain

In the sky he was finally noticed, but not for why He came

Abraham treks down the Mountain of God
a murdering man ashamed

A Few of My Favorites Right Now

Margot & the Nuclear So and So's

Margot and the Nuclear So & So's - As Tall as cliffs - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on ef="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo.

Horsefeathers

Horsefeathers perform live at Portia and Slim Moon's BBQ from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

Bon Iver

#93.2 - BON IVER - Flume
Uploaded by lablogotheque - Explore more music videos.

A Lot Can Happen in a Day...

So this weekend my wife and I decided to build a rock bed in our back yard. It was a great way to start the day and a lot of fun. However, what we didn't know was that underneath our house, our main sewage drain was backing up with dirt and water as a result of root damage and line breaks. It's amazing how much can change in a day. That night we were up till 2 in the morning waiting for city workers to finish digging a ten foot hole in our front yard to the main sewage line to see if there was blockage on the city side. There wasn't. The following day, a dump truck, earth mover, jack hammer, four city workers, and a plumber were camped outside our house deducing our plumbing problems.

In the end, we got the news that our problems would range in the three thousand dollar range. A lot can happen in a day...

Although we are now weighing all of our options, getting second and third and fourth opinions, considering what part of the work we can do ourselves, the whole experience has turned out to be a subtle but great blessing from God. The news couldn't have come at a worse time. In a month I will be an unemployed student, school is expensive, Lauren's hours will be cut back, and, after our plumbing mishap, our emergency fund will be close to depleted. Oh...and our washing machine broke.

It's amazing how quickly God can strip the comforts and delusions of safety from us and make us cling to Him. After the initial shock of everything, my wife and I slowly began to realize that our panic and fear was contrary to what we believe about God and His love for us. That evening, feeling the weight of uncertainty crushing my chest, Proverbs 3:5 began to whisper in my ear.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding."

I had memorized that verse in AWANA when I was five. But that evening it became more than just a sentence, it became the Spirit pleading with me to trust Him. It reminded me that my wife and I now have a wonderful opportunity to trust God without the distractions of financial comfort, to cling to each other without the predication of stability, and to put our hope completely in the will of God and His good grace towards those whom He has chosen.

So as strange as it sounds, I thank God for old pipes, a bad economy, and an unknown plan. Because of all those things, my wife and I can stop trusting in our budget and emergency fund to save us, and start trusting that our shepherd knows where He's leading us.

Ravi Zacharias and Post-Modernism

This afternoon I took our dog to the dog park at White Rock Lake and brought a book I've been meaning to read for a while, Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharias. I first heard Ravi Zacharias while driving from Arizona back to Texas after one of my breaks from school. My youth pastor and mentor Randy gave them to me with only the introduction that this man will change my life. I can still remember listening to his lectures about "Can Man Live Without God" while driving through the forests and plains of northern Arizona and New Mexico. The experience oddly enough, was one I don't think I'll ever forget. Listening to this brilliant yet humble man talk about how he came to know God and who Jesus was in the midst of all the other world religions was profound and life changing. At the time, it was something I really needed. College had posed a serious intellectual challenge to my faith and without thinkers like Ravi Zacharias and others, I could have very easily been swept up into the same pseudo-spiritual post-modern thinking that has paralyzed so many others of my generation.

So, of course I shouldn't have been surprised this afternoon when, within pages of the beginning, he challenged my soul once again. His book begins with a candid look at the true nature of post-modern thinking. As I prepare for full time ministry, I often times forget the particular challenges I will have to face doing ministry in the post-modern, technological, and information-overloaded world. The absolute claim of Christ as the only way to heaven has never been more distasteful to the metanarrative of a culture as it is today. I wanted to share with you what Ravi Zacharias wrote about post-modernism because it really encouraged me and reminded me of the difficult battle those in ministry have of teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"Yet if the human spirit is to survive and every legitimate discipline to find fruitful expression, truth cannot be sacrificed at the altar of a pretended tolerance. All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true. Some beliefs are false, and we know them to be false. So it does no good to put a halo on the notion of tolerance as if everything could be equally true. To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true. But if the denial of the statement is also true, then all religions are not true."

I'm excited to read more and be challenged more by this man's faith and brilliance. I'm sure I will be writing more about what I read in his book.

In Celebration of Freedom...