Ripples
Throwing a stone into a still pond creates ripples, not just in one direction, but in all directions. Our preacher talked about “Responsibility Ripples” this past Sunday, in the adjective, noun sense of what we do affects others around us. Taking the analogy further though, we see that what we do does not just affect a few people in one part of our life, but it affects people all around us, and goes further than we will ever know. Just as ripples in a pond radiate outward, it grows and grows in influence touching areas of the pond far away from the event that created the ripples. When we do something wrong, we set into motion a series of events that creates ripples that have an effect not just locally, as some would tend to believe, and do not just...
Morning Prayer as a Kick Off
“If morning prayer is a foreign habit, stop and pray for one minute with the Lord’s Prayer as your guide. Repeat tomorrow.” – Burk Parsons Personal prayer life is one of the elements of my faith that I struggle with on a regular basis. I love God, and therefore, prayer should be a more integral part of my life. I need to be more disciplined for taking time away, but I try every morning to pray on my drive into work. I am not sure whether it is being tired or other factors, but I often feel the time is cold. With all of that in mind, I really appreciated Burk Parsons suggestion. I sometimes feel like I am muttering a foreign language to God, and the suggestion to use Christ’s own words as He directed us is great. Any other...
This one is for the parents
A buddy of mine gave me several Focus on the Family sermons and I have been listening to them during my commute. It was good and convicting to be reminded of my awesome responsibility to the three children that God has blessed my wife and I with. In one of the sermons, Dobson talks about how deeply burdened he is for the spiritual welfare of each of his children. Not boasting, he told that his wife and him had fasted one day each week for the lives of the children in which they pleaded that above all else, that God would grant them that their children would be among God’s saved people. I have struggled to have a decent prayer life, and still fall consistently short. With that said, I am in love the with idea of heaven and spending eternity with my...
The way up is down
James 4:7-10 (English Standard Version) 7Submit yourselves therefore to God Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. This past Sunday, I heard a great sermon on James 4:7-10. In the sermon, the pastor spoke extensively about drawing near to God, and what that would take given the passage. The introduction to the sermon was around a Christian in the 1700s who kept a diary over 30ish years where he consistently notes that he tries to get up early in the morning. Again...
Living the Questions
In Evolving in Monkey Town, Rachel Held Evans talks about “living the questions,” which is something she picked up from a Rilke quote: “Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question.” For Rachel, this means learning how to ask questions, and how to be patient when the answers don’t come easy. Which is something I often struggle with. Sometimes I get tired of the whole “learning process.” I wrestle with Scripture the way Jacob wrestled with the angel; I’m pinning God to the ground with all my strength demanding Him to bless me. But lately I’m starting to realize that maybe...
No Place for Accountability in Religion
As I have grown up in the church, I have noticed that one of the main undertones in the religious circles was to only commit sins you could hide. To be a good Christian by religious standards you have to get rid of all the public sins such as drinking, smoking, hanging out at “bad” places (of course later you can use these things to measure how much better you are then the people who still do them). You replace the “bad” sins with ones you can hide and you bury them deep and never speak of them. You can keep over eating, gossiping, being greedy, overworking, being prideful, not loving others, and lusting after everything you can find but you just don’t mention it to ANYONE. I think that’s the biggest fault of religion. Its...