Church Blog

God Works

Religion mostly works well within the context of four walls. It rarely works in daily life or crisis situations.  The lives of religious people prove it every moment of every day in every nation. God the Being, the Creator, the Bible God and not the topic of religion or the Big Guy in the Sky god often thanked for awards, that God works within us so that everything outside of us works better. This God works. When we are alone,…

Right Standing Without A Leg To Stand On

To be self-righteous is to attempt to show right standing by our actions and that type of righteousness carries no weight in any courtroom in the world nor in the Courtroom of Eternity. The imagery of self-righteous is to be our own witness, our own advocate. The idea that we can put ourselves in alignment, in right standing, with the perfect, completely righteous God of the universe is absurd, leaving us without a leg to stand on. Yet, we regularly…

Wrong Side of the Courtroom

Righteousness in scripture is always connected to the courtroom.   It is here where we use the imagery of Right Standing. We stand in a room, facing a judge, awaiting a sentence.  If the court finds in our favor we are called righteous.  If the court finds in the favor of the plaintiff, the one who has initiated the legal suit against you, then we are called unrighteous. We either are in right standing with the court or not.  No…

Contempt For God’s Kindness

We show contempt for the riches of God’s kindness when we judge, condemn, hate, and gossip. They spit on the work of the cross as they condemned THOSE People. Forgetting that they have been forgiven and given eternal life, they judged the weaknesses and wounded ways of THOSE People. Shouting down the kind and gracious voice of God, they greedily offered up their tongues and ears to gossip and rumor about THOSE People. Thinking that love was something they, instead…

Rest That Produces Life

The man who is perpetually in motion is a man who is afraid of what might be said in the silence of stillness. There is something that happens when we set aside time to be still.  We see this in scripture with “Be still and know that I am God” and “It is courageous to wait…”, as well as the Sabbath law of the Old Testament and the Sabbath rest of Hebrews. For most of my life I have been…

Prayer is Simple

Prayer is simple. Prayer is humanity having a conversation with God—a back and forth where one talks, the Other listens, and then One talks and the other listens. The complexity comes in on our part, never on God’s part. God is perfect, His motives are pure, and His timing is extraordinary. His hearing is perfect, His words are clear, and the tone of His voice reflects what is in His heart. There is no maneuvering or manipulating on God’s end.…

Authentic Prayer

Prayer, like anything else in church life, can become religious. And useless. And boring. And possibly sinful procrastination. In fact, repetitious prayer can replace authentic conversation with God and actually hinder our spiritual lives, opposing the very life of CHirst within us. Authentic conversation? The first definition in my dictionary for ‘authentic’ is: Not false or copied; genuine; real. Jesus preferred the wrong but authentic response of James and John when they asked Him if He wanted them to call…

Lie to Me

From one culture to another the interpretation of lying is very different and viewed with different perspectives on its morality or lack of it. Is it moral to lie sometimes? Varied cultures answer the question very differently ; Is it right to lie to save someone’s life, health, reputation, money, job, marriage, or feelings? While we are all uncomfortable with situational ethics , we all lie at varying degrees more often than we are probably willing to admit. You doubt…

God asks…

If God asks something from us, I wonder if it is because He created us to be that way, operate best that way? God asks us to confess our sins one to another.  Were we made for confession? God asks us to repent, to think again.  Were we made to change our minds and line them up with His ways? God asks us to forgive, to not judge.  Did He never intend us to judge?  Not even judge ourselves? God…

Sticky People

We as humans are designed to stick to people and most especially to God. Our souls are constructed that way. To have stickability, loyalty, faithfulness, fidelity and such. As an infant we feel a part of our mother since we are in fact one with here and we go throughout our childhood becoming less and less glued to her. We create new bonds with siblings, relatives, friends, teachers, and coaches. All of which require various levels of stickiness commitment. Some…
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