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Let’s Be Young Again… EPIC FAIL

Dan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:30:42 +0000

And yet another ridiculous antic from Pastor Steve Munsey.

Of course all you have to do to be young is wear a tight graphic tee and a pair of jeans….

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…

Dan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:30:56 +0000

It’s become a common cliche to ask a person to try walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, but I think that’s really hard for most of us, if we’re honest. Last week I pointed out that every life has a story, and few of us take the time to learn others’ stories. Learning to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes is the next step: entering into another person’s story.

This means suffering alongside a friend when they are in pain, and rejoicing with them when life is going well. Both of these tasks are equally challenging for most of us, whether we realize it or not. Some of us avoid suffering at all costs, it’s too scary and we’re not sure we’ll be able to find our way out of it. Some of us have a hard time being thankful when others are doing well, sincerely offering our congratulations. Granted, we will never fully understand the depth of someone’s suffering or joy, but we can still share some of it with them. In doing so we “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way [we] will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

Here’s a profound example of a little girl who did this very thing:

This little girl entered into her brother’s suffering the best way she knew how, yet her action was very simple. Often walking a mile in someone else’s shoes doesn’t have to be radical, it can be as simple as finding common ground over a cup of coffee, or in this case, a haircut.

Jesus entered into our suffering by joining the human experience. God became a man and lived among us. Philippians 2:5-8 (NLT) reminds us:

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Because Jesus has experienced life as a human being, he can relate to us in our sufferings. Hebrews 4:15-16 (NIV) tells us:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

How does Jesus’ life and example help you deal with your own suffering? How can you enter into someone else’s story this week? How has someone entered into yours? I’d love to hear what it is like walking in someone else’s shoes….

Short Reader Survey

Dan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:30:36 +0000

Please consider filling out a short reader survey (only 10 questions).

I’d like to hear your input, even if you don’t read prayeramedic.com all that much anymore. I’d like to know why. Please be honest and blunt, your identity is anonymous, and the survey is being handled by a third-party service to ensure this.

Here’s the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5BX86C3

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Every Life Has a Story… What’s Yours?

Dan — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:30:50 +0000

Every life truly does have a story, as this short video from Chick-Fil-A reminds us:

I think it’s all-too-easy for me to forget that everyone has a story, and I am often quick to judge someone without knowing their story. This is especially hard when someone acts out of their pain. The old quote is true: “Hurting people hurt people.” It is easy for me to get angry when someone lashes out at me, but I may not realize what’s driving their anger.

In a similar fashion, few know our story. Many get angry at Tiffany and I because we critique mainstream American Christianity, yet they fail to realize the lives we have seen literally destroyed by churches, or the many people we know who have died young who the church had no clue how to reach (or rejected altogether).

Jesus had the advantage of omniscience (knowing all things), which made it easier for Him to see through people’s actions to the underlying motives of their hearts. It’s a little harder for us, but we are called to do this nonetheless. That is why I CAN’T STAND evangelism and apologetic resources which teach methods or techniques to reach people. People are different and they have diverse backgrounds and stories. You can’t effectively reach people if you aren’t willing to hear their stories and enter into their lives and brokenness. Your approach will be unique with each person if you really care about them.

This is the problem with mainstream evangelical “tactics.” Tactics are cookie-cutter solutions to messy problems. Tactics imply that Christianity can expand using sales and marketing techniques, which are based on man’s wisdom, not God’s. Don’t get me wrong, churches will grow in quantity using these techniques, but read any recent church survey to discover the quality of the growth.

Jesus promises us something better than empty marketing ploys to make new disciples: His Spirit, which will guide us into all truth. Then again, following bullet-pointed steps is easier than prayer and waiting on the Holy Spirit….

What’s your story? How have you misjudged someone because you didn’t know their story? How have you been misjudged because someone never took the time to hear yours?

H/T: Truth Matters

Weekly Wisdom

Dan — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:30:32 +0000

I would not give a penny for your love of truth if it is not accompanied with a hearty hatred of error. - C.H. Spurgeon Related posts:Weekly Wisdom Weekly Wisdom Weekly Wisdom Related posts:

Soldier Surprise Homecoming Video

Dan — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:40:59 +0000

Tiffany posted this on Facebook the other day, and it’s a very powerful film showing moments where service members made surprise homecomings. Make sure your tissue is handy….

As moving as these homecomings are, imagine this one:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son” (Revelation 21:1-7).

Your religion is nothing more than man’s failed attempt to turn faith into a science

Dan — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:30:53 +0000

“Your religion is nothing more than man’s failed attempt to turn faith into a science.” I actually said these words to a theology professor in 2003 shortly before my complete disillusionment with Christianity. I was tired of being fed dead, theological answers to life’s living, breathing problems and experiences. Don’t get me wrong, theology is immensely valuable to us when it comes to defending against heresy and combating error. When properly understood, it can also be helpful in grappling with the problem of evil. But when theology simply becomes a dead system of concepts and loses touch with people’s hearts and souls, we’re in the danger zone. I’ll call this academic theology for the purposes of the blog post, but keep in mind that I am NOT saying all academic theology is bad. I will simply use this term to refer to theology devoid of any practical application to people’s lives.

I recently came across a great article entitled “The Bible is About God’s Character, Not Concepts.” The article got me thinking about some of my own experiences and thought journeys. Here’s some highlights from the article:

“[The Bible is] not about ideas, it’s about people,” … “Ideas were not made in God’s image, people were.” Christians should not imagine that faith is merely about theological description….

People are tempted to pursue a conceptual understanding even of God because it gives them a sense of control amid a world full of uncertainty. But assurance for Christians does not come by way of their ability to describe unchanging truth…. They are secure in the knowledge of God’s character.

Christian confidence lies in a God who came to mankind in Jesus Christ, who loved, died and resurrected for them….

Making a science out of an attempt to understand God may give people a sense of power. Yet, like science, which it resembles, theology as it is done today cannot give insight into human meaning and ethics….

Philosophy cannot address the deepest needs of humankind. That is because human beings are not just thinkers. In contrast, writers of the Bible had a better understanding of what it means to be human. Human life revolves around the story and history….

[For example,] “How do you get to know somebody?

It is not by asking them about their weight or DNA composition. “You ask questions about their history….” That will offer a glimpse into the underlying person.

… People get to know others by observing them in different situations. Knowing people is about knowing their character, which is revealed through their behavior.

In the same way, “we get to know Jesus because we see Him in a whole range of different situations….”

The Gospels, stories about Jesus relating what He said and did, record His encounters with an adulterous woman and chief tax collector, among others. The “bias” of His disciples who wrote the accounts of His life and ministry is not an issue, contrary to contention in some academic circles. That is because every history is an interpretation….

This is so very true. I don’t believe in Jesus as a theological statement, I believe in Jesus because He was a real man who walked the earth, died for my sins, and rose from the dead, demonstrating His power over sin, death and Satan. I love Him because I have had the opportunity to get to know Him as the Word, where I also learn about Him (John 1:1, 14).

Do you think academic theology at times simply masks our desire to control our destiny? Do you think academic theology can obscure human meaning more than aid in its understanding? What are the positive benchmarks of academic theology? What has academic theology got right, and what can we learn from it?

Weekly Wisdom

Dan — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:41:38 +0000

“God never clothes men until He has first stripped them, nor does He quicken them by the gospel till first they are slain by the Law. When you meet with persons in whom there is no trace of conviction of sin, you may be quite sure that they have not been wrought upon by the Holy Spirit; for ‘when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.’”

-C.H. Spurgeon

Bureaucracy: The Real Problem

Dan — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:30:04 +0000

I saw this post about bureaucracy being the real problem over at Mike Baker’s blog. Mike writes:

The greatest allies of a failing bureaucracy are not the bureaucrats; they are the common people who believe that the bureaucracy could be used for good if only it was steered in the right direction. Bureaucracy isn’t a big ship with a bad captain. It’s an oil slick. It isn’t a productive machine that is just going the wrong direction. It is the juggernaut that systematically destroys all productive ideas because it is in its very nature to do so. The man who tries to harness a wild bureaucracy for “good” is as foolish as the various heroes of story and legend who–in their hubris–thought that they should try to control the mighty cave beast rather than just slay it.

Here’s my question: do all institutional churches fall into the bureaucracy category? What about denominations? I don’t think this was Mike’s point, but it made me think. People are quick to apply this logic to national government, but what about church government/ politics/ bureaucracy?

Is the best solution really to “slay the beast,” or can a bureaucracy be used for good if steered in the right direction?

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Authentic Worship

Dan — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:30:36 +0000

First watch this short, humorous video:

As a former attendee of a Pentecostal church, I couldn’t help but laugh. Many of these apply to most traditions these days. I’d really like to focus on one word, however: authentic. I’ve given examples of inauthentic / fake worship before, but what does authentic worship look like?

The core meaning of the word authentic is something that “is not counterfeit or copied; conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief.” Almost everything about modern day “worship” is often just a copy of some other church or movement’s style. Some Christians love to say that “worship is about how you live Monday through Saturday, not just something you do on Sunday,” but then proceed to live as though this isn’t true and continue to use the same rhetoric as those who view it as just the opposite. So what is worship?

Worship is defined as “reverent love and devotion; adoration; a religious service.” The last definition is the one I have a problem with. This is just like the word “church.” Church is not a place we go, it’s something we are. It’s an organism, not an organization. Worship is a reaction to who God is and all that He has done for us in and through Jesus Christ.

Worship is natural for a believer, it doesn’t have to be learned. We do a disservice to the kingdom of God when we think of a Sunday morning gathering as worship and coach others into a certain way of responding to music. Rock fans do the same thing when they teach fans how to mosh or head bang. This doesn’t make them any more or less a fan of rock music, it just helps them fit in and acclimate better to rock concert culture. Telling people to raise their hands is no different, we’re simply training them in a culture. This is a culture that is foreign to nonbelievers and frankly, it can even be a hindrance to the Gospel. I’m not saying it is wrong to raise hands, clap, dance, etc. I am saying that the reasons it is being done should be authentic, not simply because it is normal in your local gathering’s culture.

We may worship God at a Sunday morning gathering, as a member of the Church (the Body of Christ), but the scheduled event itself is not “worship.” I don’t want to turn this whole thing into semantics, which is useless if hearts don’t also change along with terms, but I think a vocabulary shift is in order. It’ll hopefully make people think.

Back to my original question: What does authentic worship look like? It’s not something that can be seen externally. It’s impossible to look at how someone responds to music on a Sunday morning and say, “That person is really worshipping authentically!” There are too many people who close their eyes and look sincere but their hearts are far from God. This has been a problem throughout all of creation:

“The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men’” (Isaiah 29:13).

“They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men” (Matthew 15:9).

Authentic worship is our heartfelt response to our Creator and Savior. It flows naturally out of our gratitude for what God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ. It doesn’t have to look like anything to others. It’s what is going on in our hearts when we think of our great and gracious God. It’s our attitude toward God in the midst of our sufferings. It’s how we praise Him for His blessings. It’s our reaction to a merciful Lord.

Thanks Luke Dalach for sharing this video with me!