Filled with What?

My mother often told me, "Never go grocery shopping when your hungry, everything will look good to you and you'll end up with a lot that you don't need or is good for you!" I must admit that she is right! At my job, I get a hour long lunch break and that is often when I do the grocery shopping for us since we live 30 miles from town. Some days I have been in to much of a hurry to eat my lunch first and get to the store still hungry. Bad move!! I end up spending about twice what I would have needed to! (but the Cheetos's, pop, chips, and chicken wings were very good! :-)

On Sunday we had all the youth at our house due to us having A/C and the youth leaders did not. It was 95+ and quite sticky so they were all glad to come over. We had supper and then a time of sharing. It was during this time that God used something that Dawson said to really stir me, it's not what you don't eat that makes the difference, but what your filled with that counts! I so often focus on what I shouldn't do that I leave an 'empty stomach' that craves all sorts of other things. I need to fill it with good stuff and then the appetite for the things of this world will diminish. Just like this, if you are hungry and you haven't eaten at Hardee's for a long time and you long for a roast beef sandwich! Hmmmm! But you also know that till you put the mayo, ketchup, cheese, bacon, and ranch dressing on it, plus the fries, you might as well apply it right to your waist! So you decide to eat something a little more healthy at Subway. You buy one of their nice, foot long, lettuce filled subs and happily devour it. When you are done, you might still think that Hardee's sounds OK, but not right now, you're not hungry, there is not the same appeal of an hour ago!

So it is with Christ, if you want to have less of a struggle with the world, you need to quit staring at the things you shouldn't do, and instead, continually fill yourself with Christ and His word. You'll find that "the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace!" Thank you Jesus!

Children and Converts

Just a thought; When a husband and wife have a close, intimate relationship, children are one of the natural outcomes of it.

We as Christians, are the bride of Christ. If we are in close communion and fellowship with Him, will not new babes in Christ be one of the natural outcomes of our walk with God?

Secondly, we would never say that we do not want another convert so soon after the "first" one, yet we do that with our children. Marriage was not created just for our enjoyment, but as a reflection on what our relationship with God should be like. Thus, is it an error on our part to try to limit God's hand in either area, because we don't know if we can handle it, or whatever excuse we so often come up with?

Horse or Mule?

Are you a “horse” Christian or a “mule” Christian? What’s the difference you may ask? Your right, they both eat the same food, they both do the same kind of work, the both live in the same kind of place, they look very similar, they even sound somewhat alike. What is the difference?

The horse can reproduce, the mule cannot!

Jesus said that every branch that beareth not fruit will be cut down and throne into the fire and burned. What kind of Christian are we?

So often I can get caught up in “my” life that I forget I gave it away to Christ. What does He want me to do with it. One thing that He has made abundantly clear is that I am to tell others about His love and coming judgment. I am to bear fruit!! But do I?! Am I willing to sacrifice my time, my reputation to my customers, my easy life to tell others of the right way to walk? Many times I have to answer “No.”

When we looked at going to Thailand in mission work, a great Brother, Luke Kuepfer, talked about a paradigm for church planting in that culture and I wonder, would it work here?

As a way to reach people, you start an English class. You use a bible based learning to read curriculum and after a few times you may notice that one of your students is more interested in what the lessons are saying than in what they are teaching. You take him aside and when he asks you questions about what your saying in class, you respond by giving him the basic plan of salvation and your life testimony over the next couple meetings. You then ask if he would like to receive this same Jesus into his heart. If he says “no” then you need to keep working on the need of salvation and personal repentance. If he says “yes” then you teach him on who he is in Christ, baptize him and show him the promises of God for His children. But, within a short time, (weeks not months) you set him or her down and give them a paper and tell them to write down all the people they know on a conversational level who don not know Jesus as their Savior. It may take them some time to come up with this but when they are done, tell them to pick out 3 people and tell them about what Jesus has done in their lives. If they are unwilling to do this, then we need to go back to the salvation issue and relearn what Christ calls us to do as His child.

Then when he has started telling others about Jesus, don’t have him bring them back to you, you teach the first guy and let him teach those HE has lead to the Lord. To often we want to quick bring them into OUR church and make them dependant on us! If we lived out the Great Commission in our daily lives, and taught others to do so as well, Christ’s kingdom would explode! If you don’t believe me, read the first few chapters of Acts.

Would this paradigm work here in America? The very worst it would do is get us off our duffs and put Christ at the center of our lives instead of something we try to fit into it.

Are you a spiritual horse, or a spiritual mule? What would Jesus say?

Thanks AIG for this fitting cartoon!

Of What Profit?

Though relatively new to the world of blogging, I see a pattern and it is often mirrored in our lives. If I were to sum it up it would be this, "Talk, rarely turns into, Walk." We can spend so much time talking about issues, analyzing them, defending them, justifying them, rationalizing them, and yes, attacking them that we never step back, look introspect, and ask, "Does this need to change in my life?" If we never ask this question, or worse yet, if we ask it and never are willing to deal with it, we are only filled with so much hot air and will never amount to much.

Let me back up a bit and ask is discussion and debate even necessary in the church? I will answer with an unmitigated "Yes!" We are told by Paul to "...contend for the faith," by Solomon, "as iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of a friend." What happens when you sharpen something, there is friction, there is heat, and yes there is pain when sparks fly. Yet look at what Jesus did while he was here on earth. Did He debate and challenge the status quo? Absolutely! He called the leaders of that day to task for their hypocrisies and when one of them came to Him for a personal dialogue, Jesus challenged him and stretched his thinking. But look with me if you will at what Nicodemaus's response was. Now wait, you say, the Bible does not record what he said in response. Your right, but that is no as important as to what he DID! Look at the end of Jesus life and you will see a man bold in his faith and willing to go before great men of state to plead for the body of his Lord.

I have seen people who can argue persuasively both sides of an argument yet continue to waffle back and forth for years. If talking does not lead to a closer walking, than we have wasted only so much time!

Secondly, people are always talking about standards. We all tend to feel that our standards are the most scriptural and others are either hyper-spiritual, or too liberal for scriptural accuracy. Thus we often tend to use offensive terms when referring to our brothers and sisters in a different denomination. Once again, is it ok to talk about them and examine the consistency of a certain stand? Yes, provided we take what we read back to the word of God and examine if there is error, or a better way, in what we believe. I am by no means perfect and realize the need for others to help me be consistent and keep walking in a straight line. It is so easy to have a "blind spot" that makes sense to me but is glaringly wrong when seen from others perspectives. I have often had to eat crow when I realized that I have gone off on my own little trail and ignored the advice of my brethren. The goal of the brotherhood is first and foremost to seek, to save, and disciple the lost, and secondly to promote growth in each others spiritual lives.

Let me use an illustration from my father. Picture with me the goal post of football. The ground is the world and in the possession of the devil. The stadium roof is face to face fellowship with God, heaven. Each church has placed the lower bar at level that is the lowest that you can have and still be saved. The sides are to provide some uniform consistency in our fellowship. When we first came to Christ, we crossed that lower bar. Our goal is not to stay close to the bar, but to draw closer to God. Thus we start our upward journey and some of us have traveled farther than others. Some people forget the trail they've traveled and want to raise the bar to their current height and thus discourage those that are starting on their journey. Others want to lower the bar so that more can get in. Let me say right up front that God will not move His bar for anybody! The Bible is very clear about what will and will not get into heaven. Read the Bible literally and with an open mind and you will find it. That is HIS bar and will ALWAYS be His bar.

The problem comes for us in living Holy in our daily lives. This is the time to remember that we are growing and so are others. Are they living in sin? If so, warn them, if not, encourage them in their walk but remembering that they may not be in the same awareness and sensitivity to the Spirit that we have grown into. As Christ’s church, we are like a wheel. A wheel with only spoke on one side is useless. We need to balance each other out but sadly we often just go our different ways and take pot shots at each other from across denominational lines. I don’t believe this was ever God’s plan. Let us never become so egotistical that we feel we have the upper hand in understanding God. We can always learn from our brethren of all like-precious faiths.

Let me bring this to a close. We must NEVER forget that we have a number one priority, which is winning the lost. If we lose that we will forever be filled with infighting and bickering and sadly some of our Mennonite churches are in exactly this place. We have not fulfilled our duty to the lost by simply dropping the offering in the mission fund. If winning souls is not part of our daily walk, we have yet to know the true heart of Christ!