I can't help but smile.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Squirrel in Church
In one of my seminary classes the professor just shared this video. I have to pass it along.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
What Religion Boils Down To
"If Christ cannot be glimpsed in the followers of Christianity, they should admit their religion is a mistake and stop faking it; Muslim's should not advocate Islam until Muslim against Muslim carnage ends and Salaam Aleikum becomes a reality in true submission to God's will; If Hindus want to prove their religion is the Sanatan Dharm, why not break free from Samsara by revolting en masse against India's caste system? That will eliminate a far more insidious form of apartheid than South Africa's, because the caste system persists in the guise of religion." -Frank Raj
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Video of Me Preaching
Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.
Have you ever felt that when you pray that God picks up but then puts you on hold. Or that all you get is His voice mail. Have you ever felt alone or abandoned by God?
When we wake up in the morning sometimes we don’t want to get out of bed. I’m not talking about when you have a hang over or stayed up to late. I’m talking about the morning when you wake up and don’t want to deal with family. When you don’t want to go to work. The kind of morning when you just want to turn on your side and go back to sleep.
I can’t speak for all of you but I know I have. I’ve had those feelings.
Its called depression.
You might be thinking, “hold on a second, a true blue, dyed in wool Christian, isn’t supposed to get depressed.”
Well, being a Christians doesn’t make us immune to our moods going up and down. It’s part of going through life. We can’t help but have ups and downs. Its part of being human
I was at a pretty low point in my life and someone told me that I really loved the Lord and had faith that I shouldn’t feel depressed. I shouldn’t be sad. This person told me, “There’s no depression in the Bible,” so turn that frown upside down.
Well, first I wanted to punch the person in the face. I got over that and got to thinking.
There is depression in the bible. There’s a lot of it.
Moses begged God to kill him. Jesus became so sorrowful and suffered excruciating agony before his arrest. He wept before he raised Lazarus from the dead.
If you are human, if you have blood in your viens and skin on your bones, your moods are going to go up and down. We’re gonna have bad day and we’re gonna have good days. Those days may even drag into weeks or months sometimes.
There have been times in my life when I could only hope that God was listening to my beggings and pleadings. That he was hearing my calls for help.
Depression can be a like a fog that moves in slowly or hits us all of the sudden.
Sometimes the fog that hits us all of the sudden the loss of a husband, wife. A son,or daughter. A mother or father. When we face these losses we’re forced to confront the deepest of truths and the darkest of our fears. That’s when the fog of depression rolls in.
We may even at times wish to call out my God my God why have you forsaken me.
In the Bible there is a story about a prophet named Elijah, a queen named Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal:
A foreign queen, Jezebel, had married Ahab, the king of Israel. She brought with her hundreds of prophets of Baal. Baal was a pagan god.
When she arrived in Israel, she tried to establish a mission there and was doing a good job of it. Jezebel was a manipulative, mean, devilish woman. Ahab was a weak king, and things were not working very well for him or Israel or the God of Israel.
So Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest. It was a winner-take-all contest. They went to Mount Carmel and built two altars, one to Baal and one to Jehovah. The rules were that the prophets of Baal would sacrifice the bull and do their thing, and then Elijah would do the same on the altar to Jehovah. The god who brought the fire to the altar would be the god that Israel would worship.
So the 450 pagan preachers did their thing -- they beat their drums, they prayed, they danced, they called on Baal, but nothing happened; and, finally, they gave up. Then it was Elijah's turn. He put the sacrifice on the altar and poured buckets of water over it to demonstrate his confidence in God's power. He prayed and God sent the fire that consumed the sacrifice. Jehovah was obviously the victor. Then he killed the 450 priests of Baal. When Jezebel received word of this, she was furious and sent word to Elijah that she would have someone do the same to him.
Now here was a man who had scored the greatest victory of his life. He had called down fire, embarrassed the opposition, and had 450 pagan priests killed. He was riding high, and all of a sudden, one word from a defiant queen sent chills up and down his spine. So what did he do? He started running because he was afraid of Jezebel. This happened in northern Israel, and he ran past Jezreel and got all the way to Beersheba to the south. And he was so exhausted that he collapsed.
Then God sent an angel to him in the night. The angel said, "Arise and eat." The angel said that to him twice and then fed him. Elijah got up, took care of his body, and then he was instructed to go down to Mount Sinai, about another 150 miles. When he arrived there, he still wasn't relieved of his fear and depression. He stood in the mouth of the cave and watched the lightning and the storms. God wasn't there, he determined. Then he heard God in a still, small voice say, "Go back to Israel by the way of Damascus. Anoint Elisha to follow you. There are 7,000 people waiting for you to come. They are the people of God who have remained faithful."
I have told you the story, painting a verbal canvas for you. Now let's pull out the three pegs to hang the lesson on. This will help us when the fog of depression rolls in.
Remember, the first thing God said to Elijah was "get up." In a sense, take care of yourself. I will guarantee you this: If you want to be depressed, the first step on the road to depression is to let your body get depleted.
Elijah had neglected to take care of himself physically and this had resulted in an emotional collapse. Body and soul are connected as one, and when we neglect self-care, the fog rolls in.
The body must be cared for in order to prevent the fog of depression from overtaking us. So, get up and take care of yourself: Eat, sleep and exercise.
Next Elijah, standing in the mouth of the cave at Sinai, realized that God spoke in the still small voice - not the earthquake - wind and fire. And he began to reestablish his relationship with God. This prevented the "fog" from overtaking him. So, look up. God loves us, even when dark moods overtake us and God is still speaking quietly to us.
Finally, God makes it clear to Elijah that he was not alone. Dark moods, depression, the "fog" make us feel that we are one against the world.
One night I dreamed a dream.
I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord.
When the last scene of my life shot before me I looked back at the footprints in the sand. There was only one set of footprints. I realized that this was at the lowest and saddest times of my life. This always bothered me and I questioned the Lord about my dilemma.
"Lord, You told me when I decided to follow You, You would walk and talk with me all the way. But I'm aware that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I just don't understand why, when I need You most, You leave me."
He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you."[1]
Elijah is reminded by God that there are 7,000 in Israel who are still loyal to their God, and he is to link up with them. When the dark moods overtake us, we need other people.
Our faith is a plural faith. Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered together, I'll be with them." It is not a singular faith as reflected in the country-western song "Me and Jesus, We'll Get By." We are not complete without our Christian family. To beat away the "fog," we must link up.
Elijah gives us a clear path to surviving when the "fog" that descends on us: Get up, look up, link up.
And let's remember that we can act our way into a new way of feeling easier than we can feel our way into a new way of acting.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Holy War Cry
Psalm 119:33-40
Teach me, LORD, the way of your decrees,
that I may follow it to the end.
34 Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law
and obey it with all my heart.
35 Direct me in the path of your commands,
for there I find delight.
36 Turn my heart toward your statutes
and not toward selfish gain.
37 Turn my eyes away from worthless things;
preserve my life according to your word.
38 Fulfill your promise to your servant,
so that you may be feared.
39 Take away the disgrace I dread,
for your laws are good.
40 How I long for your precepts!
In your righteousness preserve my life. (NIV)
A Holy War Cry
AAAAAAAHHHHHHH
Start the day with a Holy War cry unto the Lord.
I want each of you to give a holy War cry. You call that a war cry.
Since the days when our ancestors pounded on each other with wooden clubs there have been battle cries. A battle cry was intended to show the enemy how determined and hostile their opponent was. The purpose of a battle cry was to frighten an enemy into fleeing before the battle even started.
With that in mind, when we wake up in the Morning, Satan should know that we awoke because of our war cry. Satan should start shaking in his boots because a Christian has awakened. The gates of hell should tremble, knowing that a committed Christian is on the warpath, looking to kick butt and take names.
A Christian’s life is more than just a journey; Christian life involves spiritual warfare. We are in a war, fighting for God or against him. In the morning, we decide if we are the new person who committed their life to Christ. The new person who is fighting to kill the old person, or are we to be the old person who wants to live life by their own rules?
In this war there is no middle ground. There are No Neutral parties. We are either with God or we are against him.
Every day when we wake up, we should wake up ready to battle against Satan and the old us. Every day, our goal should be “how can we give Satan a black eye and break the chains that link our old life to our new life?”
Since we are at War, we need to train everyday that we aren’t in battle to be ready for the next battle we have to fight. There is an adage that many of you may have heard: “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in War.”
The psalmist realized that if he was to keep his life in line with God's Word, there would be a struggle – and he needed to train. He turned to his leader and begged for more training, so he could be prepared to fight. This is why he said to the Lord, “Teach me; lead me.” He was turning to his leader, saying, “Help me train for my battles. Help me do my part to win the war.”
One attribute any good warrior has is discipline. I was taught that discipline is instant willingness and obedience to orders.
We should be obedient to God because it’s something we love to do. When’s the last time you saw a parent have to make a child eat ice cream! We might have to make a child eat their vegetables, but we have trouble keeping them away from the cookie jar. We might have to make them practice their piano lessons, but we won't have to force him to run and fetch our wallet when we get ready to give them their allowance. In our willingness to be obedient to God, we should be as eager as the child seeking ice cream or their parent’s wallet.
Obeying God should not be something we have to be made to do. It should be something we do without thinking. It should be so ingrained in us that we follow the commandments before we even think about it. If we love God, why would we have to be made to walk along a path we delight in?
We have to, because we battle against ourselves. We are not comprised of one person but rather two. There is the old person we were before we found Christ, and there is the new person who we want to be now, that we know Christ.
The new person loves the path that God’s commandments help us walk down and the old person doesn’t, and so, the fight is on.
In this battle we swing back and forth between the old man and the new man. One day we have the discipline needed to be obedient and several days later the old person wins. And we go back and forth. The new person seeking to turn to God fully, and the old person hunting for a return to a life of drugs, sex and rock ’n’ roll.
The old person desires to slip back into being too proud, telling lies, looking at pornography, sleeping around, getting drunk and stirring up trouble at work and at home.
If we want the new person to win the battle more often we need to have discipline. We should echo the words of Lord Tennyson, “Ours is not to make reply, ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.”
It is discipline that allows a person to make such a statement.
In this struggle between the new person and the old person there is no quarter. There is no retreat back to safe ground. In the end, there can be only one. Either the new person or the old person will be triumphant.
That’s why we should say as the Psalmist did, “Lord, I need your discipline. A discipline higher than anything I currently possess. Lord, I need you to help me walk in the path of Your commandments.” That is the mark of a true believer, an obedient child.
The psalmist wanted God to help him be obedient. He asked, “God give me your strength to wage my war. Turn me away from the person I was. Help me follow You.”
The difference between the old person and the new can be seen in difference between the prodigal's going-away petition and his coming-home petition: Going away he just said, "Father, give me..." Returning home, he humbly begged, "Father, make me as one of your servants…"
The man or woman who can say to God, “Father, make me one of your servants” is a true believer.
There are those who read it and forsake it…rebelling against God's Word. There are those who read it and forget it… simply allowing it to be crowded out of their lives. There are those who read it and are wise enough to want to live it
We need to be warriors who battle to keep their lives in line with the Word of God. We need to train for battle against the old person we were. We need to start every day with a war cry to the Lord. Amen.
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