The completely undeserved “Welcome Home”
If you look over a lot of the posts that I have written in the past couple years for this site, you will see an undercurrent of mild confusion on the Christian life and how I am supposed to live it out. This is especially evident in my last post talking about the difficulty of talking to God in the morning. Well last week, God blew my doors off on my way to work. Through church conversations and reading, I have been more and more shown the importance of the Gospel, that is God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8). His work on the cross is what saves us, not our works thereafter. In light of this, I drove into work listening to a song called “Welcome Home” by a band named Radical Face (good band), and...
An Inconvenient Salvation
We recently had Missions Conference at our church, and four outstanding missionaries shared their burden and their vision for missions with our people. It was very well attended, the love offering for the missionary families was very generous, and in what seemed an all too short time, they were gone. I am left now with the memory of another year in which our people were challenged to think outside the walls of our church and gain a vision that will lead to a burden to do something, and do more to see souls saved. I wonder if anything will change. One of the missionaries spoke on this passage particularly: 2Corinthians 5:14 “For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15 And that he died for...
Being Yourself
I hope I write well. I hope that I come across some what knowledgeable. I want to be one of those people…one of those people who is smart…one of those people that people come to, to confide in… one of those people you can look up too… but if I try to make myself into that person am I really being myself? I struggle with being honest. Am I being honest because I am honest or am I being honest because I should be? If I am just being honest because I should be does it mean I am an honest person? I feel like Christianity for me is sometimes just a charade. I look at the evil in my life and I don’t understand how people could believe me when I call myself a Christian (more importantly sometimes I even doubt it). Thankfully, my salvation...
Whining
I considered several topics for the blog post this week. Some were ok topics, others were relevant to what is going on around me. They were all personal and many dealt with how I need to live or act. But to be honest, I realized that a lot of them were essentially just me whining. Specifically whining about why I can’t be a better Christian. I don’t know about you, but I do that a lot. Sometimes I worry so much about why I am not a good Christian that I forget to just go out and be the best servant that I can be. I let myself get caught up in too much thinking and not enough doing. When those times of doubt come, it is usually good to get back to the basics. If I am having trouble serving, maybe I need to take a moment and worship. I...
How Great is Our God
This morning sunrise was amazing on the way into work and I just had to agree with Chris Tomlin. How great is our God. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. How Great is Our God The splendor of a King, clothed in majesty Let all the earth rejoice, all the earth rejoice He wraps himself in light, and darkness tries to hide it trembles at his voice, trembles at his voice CHORUS: How great is our God, sing with me How great is our God, and all will see How great How great is our God And age to age He stands and time is in His Hands Beginning and the End, Beginning and the End The Godhead, three in one Father, Spirit, Son the...
Always Room for Repentance
I normally don’t like repenting because of two reasons: 1). I hate admitting when I’m wrong, and 2). I have this fear that God will eventually lose His patience. Even after nearly 10 years of being a Christian, I still don’t have my crap straight. I’ve made progress, of course, but there are still moments when I screw up. And I mean really screw up! One thing I struggle with is anger. I’m incredibly defensive, so when some one is giving me constructive criticism, that’s when Passive Aggressive Travis comes out. “Well,” I say, “excuse me for not being perfect.” Sometimes I say worse things. Then I realize, “Wait, did I just act like a jerk?” Not too long ago I was talking with a friend,...