Living All In

I’ll try and blog about it tomorrow and post an update when I do but the basic theory I’m noodling on right now is that men that find it impossible to survive in a work environment with a less than desirable boss are more susceptible to porn and lust problems then ones that can apply 1 Peter 2:18-23 to their everyday life.

Care to make my case before I blog on it?

Here are the verses:

18 You who are slaves must accept the authority of your masters with all respect.* Do what they tell you—not only if they are kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel.19 For God is pleased with you when you do what you know is right and patiently endure unfair treatment.20 Of course, you get no credit for being patient if you are beaten for doing wrong. But if you suffer for doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you.
21 For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered* for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.

22 He never sinned,
nor ever deceived anyone.*
23 He did not retaliate when he was insulted,
nor threaten revenge when he suffered.
He left his case in the hands of God,
who always judges fairly.

To regular subscribers of my blog, I apologize, but I needed a good way of the guys on our softball team to bid on their jersey number in a first come, first serve basis in the comments!

Guys, place a comment and use your first and last name, your jersey size, and what number you want. Practice starts week after next!

Heard a great story from a friend in the ministry this past weekend.  A couple he knows was new to the area and church shopping.  Sadly, is there anything worse than church shopping?  Anyway, this married couple arrived at the church and no one greeted them at the door.  They went into the service and though the music was good and the message biblically sound, no one introduced themselves or even noticed they existed.

Lastly, adding insult to injury, they walked by the pastor and he seemed preoccupied with where he was headed off to next.  The couple walked out to their car and once they got in, they smiled at each other and said, “looks like we found the church for us!”

Wha?

That’s right.  The perfect church for them.  Most people are so concerned with what a church does for them, they miss the fact that God might just bring them to a church for what they can do for the church.  Now many times people are more than willing to serve on the worship team, volunteer in the children’s ministry, or head up a MOPS group as long as someone recognizes their gifting and makes them feel wanted. But when a church exhibits a need that it seems oblivious to or even indignant that someone would rise to meet it, most shake the dust of their sandals and move on to the next church.

That’s what I LOVED about this true story.  This couple saw a need that they could meet (hospitality) and they sought to serve first instead of wallowing in ‘offendedness.’  The simplicity of the story was just what Hayley and I needed to explain why we’re still at our church after so many have left. Now when we’re asked why we’re at our church because  of this and that, we’ll simply say, “that’s exactly why we’re there. Because love isn’t a feeling first, it’s an action and they need what we can give even if they say they don’t.”

Hayley and I have often discussed we may just be called to the mission field of the local church. We have a passion for teaching a biblical approach to living the Christian life with a special emphasis of excluding secular psychology’s methods and notions for resolving conflict and soothing ’self’.  Being a prophet was never the glamour job in the Old Testament; the ‘never feels welcome’ phenomenon is real. So even though a number of churches have standing offers for staff positions for us, we’re excited about what God is doing through us (and in spite of us) in the lives of the men and women at our church.  

God is good!

I read this article in USA Today about a widely-read Christian blogger caught making a Christmas story about someone else’s son his own.  So now I’m composing an article about what it says about you as a leader when you plagiarize, especially as a Christian leader, author, or pastor but want your thoughts before sharing my own.  A local Christian academy has this definition in their student handbook:

Plagiarism is another form of cheating.  The definition of plagiarism is as follows:  

A student must not adopt or reproduce ideas, words, or statements of another person 

without appropriate acknowledgment.  A student must give credit to the originality of 

others and acknowledge indebtedness whenever he or she does any of the following: 

a. Quotes another person’s actual words, either oral or written 

b. Paraphrases another person’s words, either oral or written 

c. Uses another person’s idea, opinion, or theory 

d. Borrows facts, statistics, or other illustrative material, unless the information is 

common knowledge

So before I post my thoughts and observations, let me ask these two questions:

Why do you think Christian leaders/authors/pastors plagiarize?  What does it say about their character and integrity?

Another question Hayley and I tagged teamed and we’re posting it on our respective blogs:

Do you have to love yourself before you can love others?

The question is, don’t you have to learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else? That sounds good. It makes sense even. After all, if you hate yourself, where will you find the strength to love? You can make all kinds of arguments that sound very wise and even biblical to support this idea, but unless you can actually give a biblical support for this claim watch out. Because each claim that you cling to that isn’t a biblical one is by nature unbiblical. It sounds harsh, but bear with me. We have to get this one. Anything that sets itself up as biblical or even Christian truth, but is really the result of a world trying to figure out life without God’s word, is pollution to the Christian mind. When you are born and raised in a culture it becomes very easy to adopt that culture, even when you don’t want to. Whether it is out of ignorance, or just constant exposure to a way of thinking, it is very easy to adopt unbiblical social norms as biblical truths.

Whenever you hear something or believe something, test it against God’s word. In this case the concept is love. So let’s dive into a study of biblical love and see if we can prove or disprove this theory.

The two greatest commandments both involve love. So if there were going to be any conditions that apply to your ability to love you would think they would show up there, so let’s have a look: Read the rest of this entry »