living for eternity today

Tag: Faith (Page 9 of 15)

I Wanna Go Back

I remember my grandpa always saying that life when he was a child was more simple. He said the best times were behind us. He used to think that all of this new technology was making life harder and preventing us from living real lives. In some cases he’s probably right. The times were easier once upon a time I will admit that, but I won’t go so far as to say the best times are behind us.

Today’s Music Monday is about going back, but going back doesn’t mean worshiping the past. It simply means that some things in life need the simplicity of the past. Think of it this way…

When we were children, we’d come to Sunday School and sing simple songs. We didn’t care if we were singing in the right key or even on pitch. We’d sing louder and faster than we do as we grow older. We didn’t care what others thought of our dress or how we did our hair. It was enough to sing with the simplicity of Jesus loves me. Our bedtime prayers were really about having a good night sleep and Jesus being near us.

But as we age, we feel our prayers need more words and our songs need more complicated rhythms. Why? Why is it that when we get older things have to be more complicated? Why can’t we relish the simplicity of grace without complicating things with our intellectual baggage?

I wanna go back. I wanna go back to simple faith. I wanna go back to Jesus being enough. I wanna go back to all the simplicity of what it means to follow Jesus, but remember simple doesn’t always mean easy. Faith is simple but not always easy. It’s time to go back to simple faith in a complex world.

Prison Lessons

So there are certainly a few jokes we could throw around with this one but I’ll leave that up to another time and place. The point of this post is to take an unfortunate experience and see what might the learning moment be in a bad time such as imprisonment.

The audio clip below is from a message on the imprisonment of Peter in the book of Acts. While it would be great if you’d read Acts 12 and listen to the below podcast, I have the highlights below. There are three main principles we’ll cover.

The promises of the past give us peace in the present.

This first principle is a reminder that not all things that are bad in the moment really are all that bad when we step back and reevaluate. Peter is in prison after watching a friend an colleague killed in public. Kind of awful I know! But he’s in prison and the same thing is threatened of him. Instead of freaking out though, he remembers a promise Jesus gave him. Jesus told him that he would die as an old man and since he wasn’t old this moment was not going to be his end. So instead of freaking out, he slept!

God will do God’s work, but you have to do yours.

The second principle is found when Peter is told to get dressed and tie his shoes. This seems pretty unimportant at first glance, but there’s something powerful here. The angel will free Peter from the chains and from the prison but he won’t tie his shoes. Jesus will do all the work to save us and deliver us from evil and shower us with grace but he won’t believe for us. He still wants us to serve our neighbors. He still has stuff for us to do now that he’s done his work.

Pray expecting God’s answer.

This one is a pet peeve of mine but so often I hear so many prayers said as if we aren’t expecting God to answer them. I love the thy will be done section of the Lord’s Prayer to be sure! It reminds us that not all things happen the way we want. But it seems we like to hide behind this part of the prayer. We start our prayers bold and knowing exactly what we want then get to this part of the prayer and the wheels fall off. We use this phrase to erase our prayers altogether. Peter gets out of prison, exactly what his friends were praying would happen. Then he finds his friends and they didn’t even believe it was possible for Peter to be released! So why were they praying if they didn’t think God would answer?!

The long and short is we can learn from every situation in life, even the most challenging like wrongfully put in prison or insignificant like simply tying our shoes. God has a plan and that plan will happen. We just need to move forward in the faith of His past promises and in hopes of his future presence.

Character Attacks & More

There is a method of arguing known by its latin name ad-hominem. I know it’s not a word we say all the time but we probably use this method of arguing and don’t even know it. The idea behind an ad-hominem is that you can’t win an argument on the basis of the content of the argument so you start slandering your opponent. You move from content discussion to character attacks.

When we are backed into a corner and realize our argument really doesn’t hold water, sometimes it’s tempting to stoop to attacking someone’s character instead. Character attacks are just not cool. Actually a character attack demonstrates how weak our argument really is.

The story of Stephen in the Bible is one that starts with an argument based on content, but it’s soon realized that Stephen’s content is rock solid. Then the attack moves to his character. They make up things about him just to make others think poorly of Stephen. But again he doesn’t budge. Finally, when nothing else works they resort to murderous threats and eventually killing him.

We may not go around stoning people, at least we better not! But we often find ourselves easily backing ourselves into a character attack scenario. When we don’t get our way, we lash out at our opposition. When we don’t hear what we want to hear, we attack the person instead of arguing the merits of our position. When our personal attacks fail to get through, all too often we just drop the person from our lives, delete them from social media, block their number on our phones, act as if they no longer exist.

There must be a better way. Check out last night’s message to see what that better way might be.

Jericho

Jericho || Andrew Ripp | WGRC

What are you afraid of? What keeps you awake at night? What are the things that just make your pulse rise and your blood pressure skyrocket? What makes you freeze in your tracks and not be able to move? These things act like walls that keep us immobile at times. These walls need to come down.

Today in our Music Monday, we look at a song about walls that need to be tumbled, walls that isolate us and prevent us from living our lives to the fullest possible.

We spend so much time building these walls of fears and failures. We stack block after block on our foundation of unaccomplished tasks. We let our failures pile up to an insurmountable obstacle that we’ll never be able to escape. How do these walls come down?

The song Jericho is an echo of a Bible story about God’s people in the Old Testament. They had an enemy that was encamped in a well fortified city with massive walls. God’s people simply marched around this city and trusted in God’s ability and power and eventually those walls came down. They were persistent. They were faithful. They were trusting. And God did the work.

All too often when our walls keep us from living the lives we are called to live, we try to go it alone. Or we dig deeper for that extra measure of power deep inside ourselves. But the power needed to bring down these walls of fear and failure doesn’t come from inside us. It comes from God. He is our power. He is our wall breaker.

Happy Monday friends! Time to tumble those walls with humble, faithful obedience.

You’ve Been Blocked

Do you feel You Have Been BLOCKED??? | The Heartbeat of the Queen of Hearts

Have you ever been blocked on someone’s social media or cell phone? A while back an acquaintance and I were chatting by text message and we weren’t exactly seeing things eye to eye. He was in a different place than I was, so I tried to end that part of our conversation and change the topic. Before I could even type a message about changing the conversation, he said that’s it, “I’m blocking your number. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

In this day and age, it’s super easy to not only socially distance from someone but actually socially delete someone! When someone says something that doesn’t line up with our ideas, values, thoughts, or worldview – we can all too easily just remove them from our lives as if they never existed. We block their phone number, unfriend them on Facebook, hide them on other social platforms. For all intents and purposes they no longer exist.

While social media blocking someone won’t get rid of them completely it’s a form of what Saul was doing in his day. In our lesson on Sunday, we met up with Saul. He was on his way to go “block some people” in his own way. He wanted to change their worldview or eliminate them.

Take a listen to the message below as we discuss the implications of Saul’s actions and a better way to handle the challenges of different opinions.

What Is The Truth?

There’s one thing I really have a hard time with and that’s hearing someone tell something that’s not true. I don’t care if it’s a big lie or a little white lie, a lie is a lie is a lie and that is just not cool. So for me the idea of truth is pretty important. I grew up as a child with the understanding that a half truth is still a half lie so tell all of the truth all of the time.

Truth in our world, however seems to be in short supply in general. Everyone seems to think they can come up with their own idea of truth. People seem to have a hard time dealing with the concept of absolute truth. But if you absolutely deny absolute truth, then you’ve made an absolute claim about something you believe to be absolutely true. You see there’s no such thing as a lack of absolute truth. The question is, what is the basis for absolute truth?

As we look at truth, it’s easy to think that truth is found in a word or a book or a concept. But throughout the Bible, we find that truth is not found in a book. It’s found in a relationship. Jesus is the truth. The relationship that we have with Jesus comes through worship, bible study, devotion time, prayer, fasting and any other of the spiritual disciplines. Find a way to come close to Christ and rest in the truth of the relationship that he has begun with you.

Start Right Here

Today’s MusicMonday was released in the middle of our pandemic reality. And to be honest it’s probably a message that is a few years too late but oh so true for our present reality.

The point of the song is that we have to start the change needed in the world and it has to start somewhere. And that somewhere is right here and right now.

The message of the Bible isn’t one of blame or pushing responsibility off to someone else. The Bible is about claiming our struggles and admitting our part of the problem. I’ve had a long-time philosophy in my life that I won’t bring a problem if I’m not also willing to bring a solution and be part of that solution.

The divided world in which we live today makes it too easy to blame someone else. Put others down for not seeing life the way we see it. Even “unfriend” someone because they won’t bow to our way of living. Sure there are some issues that are pretty critical to who we are as followers of God, but most of the things we take a stand on really aren’t that important or critical.

Take time to realize that the change you’re looking for in the world won’t start with the person across from you at work, beside you at church or even the one who lives with you at home. That change has to start right here and right now with you.

Just One

Being a part of the church growing up was a great learning experience. I attended a Christian school and went to church nearly every Sunday. Growing up in the church we went through something called confirmation. This is when we learn the ins and outs of what we believe and actually claim it as our own. Up until this point, you’re learning but if I’m being honest it’s a lot of going through the motions. But in confirmation something clicks. we grow deeper and ask more questions and being to be able to apply what we know.

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Whatever May Come

Unconditional is a pretty powerful concept. But is it a reality? I mean seriously, just about everything in our lives is conditioned on something or someone else. We let our peace be conditioned on our surroundings. Our success is conditioned upon how hard we apply ourselves. We even let conditions creep their way into our love for those around us.

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