Category: My Faith

Here I will post blogs with my thoughts on my faith and things related to it.

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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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Selling the wrong product

As a church I feel like we are selling the wrong product, maybe because it is easier to sell but as a result we are creating many fake/half hearted christians.

The idea that the reason you should become a christian is because that is the only way you can get to Heavan is a very popular idea. No one wants to go to hell so as long as you can convince them that jesus is the only way to heaven this is a great way to get someone to accept Jesus, if the goal is to make lots of “christians”

As I see it the reason someone should become a “christian” is because God has called us to be his sons and daughters. He wants to know us personally and wants us to surrender to him, calling him abba and making him the center of our lives. And with any thing we make the center of our life we should always be striving to make it more center and do a better job of following him. That is what God has to offer because of Christ’s death on the cross, heaven is just a continuation of what has been offered on this earth. Heaven will be the fulfilling of what we were meant to be and hell will be the opposite.

As Christians we need to start explaining christianity as it really is, and yeah maybe we would have less people become “christians” but the church would not be broken, the church would be what it was meant to be not what it is. The church would be strong and maybe people on the outside would want to be a part for reasons other than heaven. If the church was how it was meant to be I believe that people would see the difference and have a strong desire to have part in that.

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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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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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Short Term Missions

This is in responce to a comment my dad made to me in passing today when talking about my last blog. He said I struggle with if we are using our money wisely when we spend so much money to send people out for short term missons.

I understand and agree to a point, we spend so much money and wouldn’t that money be better put to use if we could just send them the money that we pour in to it rather than sending people for a few days. But there are two things that I think are important to realize, first off the relationship aspect of things, the way we do short term missions through AIL at our church allows us to work with the same people every year and as we are down the our biggest focus is to love on the kids and show support for the pastor. I think it is good for the kids to feel that love from out siders and also I think it is so good for the pastors family to have that support to feel the encoragement that we are right there with him supporting him and we believe in what he is doing. Second what the poeple going on the missions gain, on each of the missions trips I have been on they have all been a big spiritually growing point for me. The refocus you on God in a way that other things can not do.

In closing I just wanted to say like Matt said in his comment on my blog is we need to be careful not to just be focused on money, sometimes in our rich country it is just easier to just send the money but it is so important that we are actually phsically and emotionally invested in the people we are supporting for our sakes and theirs.

Anyway we leave tomorrow for Mexico, if you guys could be praying that would be great.

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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.

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Why God?

So many people ask the question why God, and so many people say why would a good God let this happen to me. Why do some people seem to have it so perfect and others have it so hard? I would say that the answer to that is this, When did you forget this is God? The creator of the Universe the all powerful one?

It is put so perfectly 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.”[f] 16It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

God choses what he wants and he has a plan for everything(Romans 8:28). So at some point we must stop trying to figure out why God and say Yes God your will be done. Because God is all powerful and he has every right to do anything he wants but we do know that all things are done to bring glory to him. So in the end as long as our desire is to bring glory to God as it should be we need to learn to trust, stop asking why and start saying Yes.

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Proverbs 10

When reading Proverbs 10 for my devotions today 2 verses hit me:

9The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.

Basically though sometimes the easy way seems the best though sometimes the wrong way seems easiest. Always take the way that is ok and rightious in God’s sight. For your walk with be secure the fear of someone finding you out will never be there, the problems that come with lieing and sinning will catch up to you.

Second:

18 He who conceals his hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool.

When I first read this I was kinda like ok so do not hide your hatred for someone, but also don’t talk about them. Kinda like how does that work but it really does, I feel like this verse is saying if you have  problems with someone go directly to them and deal with it quickly, don’t talk bad about them but rather go to them and talk about the problem right way. Deal with it don’t store it up and make sure you do not use it against them, don’t use something they did against you to make others have a problem with them.

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What is Church?

There is a professor at Multnomah bible college that was quoted saying church is this:

Church is the gathering of people who share some common beliefs and religious standards but who’s true allegiance lies somewhere else.

When I was being told about this it really hit me. How true is this for so many people now. If something else comes up then we do that instead of church. Instead of making church our first priority and making putting time in at church helping to grow the church rather we spend time on other “noble” causes.

When the chance to go to a Football game comes up, or the chance to play with your team in whatever sport it may be comes up, or when your friends ask you to do something, why do we say to our selfs Oh it is just one time I am just missing church once not a big deal. It would be better if we thought to our selfs, I can go to a football game some other time, I can miss this game with my team I have lots of others, I can hang out or go do something another day because today what really matters is that I am in church worshiping God.

So yes church is simply a gathering of people with common interests who’s true allegiance lies somewhere else. Don’t let your self be one of them, get your priorities right make sure your true allegiance is to Jesus Christ and to following him, not to something of this world.