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Don’t Water it Down

In Seth Godin’s book Tribes(a book on leadership). He talks about how important it is that a leader of a tribe, which for these purposes will be any leader in the church, or leaders in church as a group, not water down the message that they stand for.

He make such a solid point that if you water down your message, though you may gain some people who would be offended or not interested otherwise, you will loose the passion and commitment your “tribe” could have. The message of Christ will sometimes be offensive and sometimes it will just be inconvenient but that should not stop the leaders church from holding to it strongly. So pastors, don’t let your messages become easy, challenge us, offend us. Youth pastors make the kids know what Christ stands for and how important it is that they live a life for him, challenge, inspire and strengthen them. And to the leaders of the church stand strong with the bible’s moral standards don’t let the world around us influence our morals.

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The Bride of Christ?

Well a few weeks ago I was talking to someone about my blog, and mainly about how harsh I have been toward the church in general and he said you still need to remember the church is still Christs bride. I did alot of thinking about that comment and here is where I am at.

The Church as in institution is not Christs bride, the group of people making rules and standards, the building, that is not Christs bride. And for the most part that is where my problems lies with the institution of “The Church”. Christs bride is made up of those people who follow Christ, it is made up of the Christians. There are many people who I am honored to look up to in “The Church” but it is “The Church” I am frustrated with.

So I just wanted to make that clear, I am frustrated with the institution of the church and I believe God is too. That said there are many people in the church, even our church, that I look up to and respect for there walk with God, people who I know are following him and my frustration is not toward them.

Let us never become to content with “The Church” or get stuck with the idea it is Gods bride. Because the institution is not, He already at least some what replaced the Catholic Church, there is no reason that he will not do that again  with the american protestant church.

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Welfare our fault?

What do I mean? I am against welfare, and pretty much all the socal programs that take my tax money and give it to someone else. That is clearly not the job of the government was never meant to be and I am sure the founding fathers would shake there heads in disbelief.

What I want to know is did we cause this, did we create this monster. As a church the bible calls us to care for ophans and widows in there distress. To help those in need and to care for the elderly. Is the reason welfare is around, because the church failed to do what the bible calls us to do? I definitely think that is part of the problem though I am not sure I would say it is one hundred percent.

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If love is what your counting on you better plan on a divorce

That is the summary of something my mom said to me that I think is so true. I think so many people rush in to a marriage knowing they love someone so much. And Love is a wonderful thing but sometimes things are going to suck. Sometimes marriage is going to be no fun and you won’t think you really love that other person. If at that point you are counting on love to keep you together it won’t because the feeling is gone.

What you need to count on is commitment. If your desire when you marry someone is to be with them for life(which it should be) you need to base it on commitment otherwise you won’t beable to last.

Anyway this is coming from an unmarried person but still I think it is true.

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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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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.