Category: Day to Day

Just thoughts about my day to day life.

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The Danger of Nostalgia in Christmas Music

As we joyfully sing these wonderful Christmas songs, one of the dangers is that we get caught up in the nostalgia and fail to contemplate the words. In the new movie “The Grinch” that just came to theators, the first verse of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen is repeated several times. Words like Jesus and Satan being sung in a clearly secular industry.

I think for many people the warm feelings surrounding Christmas make it easy to fail to consider what the words really mean and, in a theater, full of people who don’t know Jesus the song simply translates to “it’s a happy time of year.”

Even though we know the Savior, we know what Christmas is truly about, I believe we are susceptible to doing the same thing. Singing Christmas Carols filled with excitement for the season but failing to consider the meaning behind what we are saying. We can sometimes slip into worshiping Christmas rather than Jesus.

Consider the song God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. It is written in old English and often is misunderstood as speaking of merry, or happy, gentlemen. But that simply isn’t what the phrase means. Consider what the first verse might say in modern, albeit far less poetic language.

May God give generous rest to you people!
Don’t let your heart be distressed.
Because we know that Jesus our Savior was born on Christmas day.
He came to set us free from Satan’s power and slavery to this world,  even though each of us has chosen sin over God.

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Pride

1 Corinthians 13:1-3:

1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

This is a great verse, one that really did not mean that much to me until I read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. I had never thought about it but how true is it that as we over come sin, or as we do what we know is the right thing, pride slips in. And the point that C. S. Lewis makes is that any sin that we over come and as a result let pride slip in, or any great good deed we do but as a result let pride slip in… the devil has won. For he will trade any one of our sins for the chance to make us prideful. Pride can be one of the most damaging sins and one of the hardest for us to see and over come on our own.

Also see James 3:13-16

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Tribes

I strongly encourage any of you who read my blog to listen to or read the book Tribes by Seth Godin. The book had many amazing points and was really challenging. Though the book was written to a secular audience mainly I think the people of the church, especially anyone who is passionate about their faith needs to hear this also I think every leader of the church and pastor need to hear this also. Read with an open mind some of the stuff he says can catch you off guard but most of it, if you stop and thing, is really true.

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Should I lead?

Don’t be afraid to ask that question, whether you are leading now or you are not yet, ask! If you should lead it is important that you do but if what you are looking at leading is not the right place for you to lead then it is just as important that you do not lead, that you get out of the way and let someone else, someone who is passionate and committed take the lead. A passionless leader is not a leader it is simply someone filling in.

Make sure you do not lead something if the passion is not there, do not try to fill shoes that were not meant for you. But if you have a passion about something, don’t be scared to step out and lead, it is scary, and it does take commitment but if you truly have a passion for it, if you have a desire to see change then you have a responsibility to lead.

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Fear of God

The concept of Fear of God confused me for quite a while when I was younger, well confused is not exactly the right word but I did not get it or try to get it. In one of C.S. Lewis’s books in the Narnia Series he I think explains it as simply as it can be.

One of the of the children ask about Aslan(the character that plays the part of God/Jesus) right after they find out he is a lion, “is he safe”, the wise beaver looks at the child and says.

No he is a lion, he is not safe, but he is good!

How true is this of our God, no he is not safe, he has the power and the reason to wipe every one of us out. If it were his will he could destroy us. In Romans 9:14-16:

14What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

I it so awesome that God has taken our place, and has take the punishment for our sin, and that he desires to be in communion with us but let us not forget to fear him. So often today I feel like we try to make Jesus our buddy, and we tend to forget to pay him the respect and fear and awe that he desirves.

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Hypocritical Church

Yeah I know that was kinda a bold statement to make but this one is for real, no joke or hidden meaning. When it comes to judging and correcting I believe the church is doing almost the exact opposite of what the bible(there for God) has called us to do.

There is a great line from a “Casting Crowns” song, it goes:

God’s gotta change her heart before He changes her shirt.

We are we constantly paying so much attention to what is going on in the world around us. Why do we judge people when we see them. Why do we try to point out the sins of someone who does not know God. The concept of sin is foolishness to those who are not Christians. Yet we still try to inforce our “morals” on people through telling people they need to change, by politics and other things. But until someones heart has changed what does it matter how much sin is in there life. That is not for us to figure out.

On the other side we read in 1 Cor 5:11-13:

“But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

This both backs up my last point and begins my next point. Why do we never call each other on our sins. Why is the church so full of sin and no one has the guts to tell someone else that what they are doing is wrong. Sure maybe sexually immoral and drunkard might not be real common but the others? especially idolater. How many people go through their lives with out ever setting aside good parts of there day to spend with God. I believe the American church today is at its weakest, prayer and listening to God just take to much dang time. Maybe you might read your bible if you have time and spend 2 or 3 minutes praying for a few things you think you “should” pray about. But the people of the American Church today do not find the time they need to make God first. Something can not be first in your life if finding time to spend on it is an after thought in your day. Rather you must plan your day around finding time to spend with God. Yet ever time I told someone in the church I struggled with prayer, the response was almost all ways the say, it was understandable, everyone has that problem, even the leaders of our church, and very few of the people I asked to keep me accountable ever did.

Let me ask you this, if Jesus(the son of God) had to spend hours and hours in prayer, why do we think we can get away with less. Even leaders of the church, elders and pastors are often stuck in struggles to find time for prayer, and all we can say is we understand that is everyone struggle. The church should never be lead by people who are not constantly praying for the out come of the church. But not just the leaders every christian needs to make prayer, reading their bible, worship in song and listening to God priorities in their life.

What needs to happen in the church is for people of the church to turn back to God and pray. And leaders of the church to call people on it when they are not spending time with God. And also, let the outside world be, that is nothing for us to judge nor does it matter this is only our temporary home.

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One sin greater than another

Some times in Christianity we focus so much on the fact that God does not see one sin as greater than another that we forget the not all sins are the same to Satin. You may wonder why that matters if you are a christian so let me explain.

As a christian we must do our best to live our life in comunion with God, but when sin enters our life it can many times pull us away from him because it can either absorb our life or maybe in order to continue sinning we have to stop listening to God all together, you can’t just shut off the warnings and expect the rest of your relationship with christ to continue.

What the devil wants most from christians is to see us sin and to fall away from God. I think for some christians he may twist the understanding of one sin not being greater than another, because though to God they are the same in badness(all sin seperates us from Him for eternity except through Jesus). Sometimes satin twists our minds so that we can believe all sin is the same and does the same damage to our spiritual life this is not true….

Some sins are much easier to over come than others some sins are one time only. But when you fall in to a sin that grabs hold of your life(like many sins do). It will cause you to fall away from God, it will cause you to turn from him and while you are sitting there thinking that all sins are the same satin knows that as long as he can keep you thinking that you will continue and you will decive yourself thinking at anytime you can turn from whatever it was back to God like it was no different that just the little lie you told last week. But when you try to turn you will soon realize that satin has lead you down that path and it will take much work to make your way all the way back to living in a right relationship with God. Don’t take me wrong God will be right there to be with you as soon as you turn but you will find that that sin will for a very long time be there try to pull you back in to itself.

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Pessimism

Ok so there is a line I like in a Jack Johnson song it goes:

somebody saw him jump yeah, but nobody saw him slip

I don’t know if this is what he is getting at but it always makes me think of how true it is that we so often see the worst in everything. Especially the media has away of making everything out to be as bad as possible because that is what sells that is what gets us interested… nobody wants to hear about the guy who slipped fell and died everyone wants to hear about the guy who jumped and killed himself.

Kind of a sick problem with our society.

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Passion For the Word

So in mexico I had alot of time to think and really focus on God, not so many distractions and one thing really hit me that I thought I would share.

I realized that the reason that I had such a hard time finding times to read my bible and seldom remembered what I read for very long or got excited about it was because all I was doing was reading it because that is what you should do.

It hit me on this trip that I need to have a passion for the Word. I need to want to know what God has to say, and I have just been praying that God would give me a passion for the word. That God would give me a desire to know him more. And it has been cool having that desire and that I want to read the Word and I get excited about what I read.

Anyway I think someone told me a while back that you have to have a passion for the Word but I kinda let it go, sometimes it takes it really hitting you yourself for you to realize.

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Have we lost Focus

James 1:27

27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Mathew 25:37-40

37“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

John 21:17

17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

My question is this, have we lost focus from that goal? I like how James puts it, this is what is acceptable religion to God, caring for those who need it and keep our selfs pure. Yet in our church today we seem to working so hard to make things nice an easy for us we tend to forget about all those in need.

What if instead of buying the best chairs and building the nicest building and buying the nicest coffee machine and the news game station for the youth. What if we let all that go and we used that money to pay for those who are in need.

What about the money christian spend trying to do research to prove that Evolution is false and God created all things. I think we need to be taking that money and using it more wisely and instead of trying to prove that God created all things just know he did. The bible says he did why do we need proof. I truly believe that the only thing these studies have done is given me doubt, I do much better when I just believe on Faith that God created all things rather than trying to prove to my self that it is true. Because sure Evolution makes sense but if I simply believe on faith that God created all things it will be much easier.

I believe if we did this church’s would drop in size dramatically. All those boarder line Christians who many more conservatives Christians would say are not Christians at all(a whole other topic for another post). But after the church had been weeded down to those true Christians that are there even if it is not convenient(see What is church?) I think the church would grow like crazy because when someone would think about Christians they would think about those on fire for God and I know God would move if we were more focused on him.

I believe we need to start letting go of the things that we love, we need to use the money that we so commonly throw in to little things for ease at the church and start using that Money to pay for the poor and need both here in the US and around the world.