This is a beautiful pro-life video that I've appreciated for awhile. Enjoy.
There is an interesting article on The Voice of the Martyrs blog. Glenn Penner discusses how all to often our response to the persecuted church is to be thankful that we are free to worship as we choose. I agree with Glenn that this misses the point. Phil 1:29 and 1 Peter 2:20,21 both even go as far as saying that we are called to suffer for Christ. I, personally, am starting to long for persecution. Not for my own glory but for Jesus’. I want to share with him in his suffering.
I am coming to the conclusion that if we are not experiencing it then we need to figure out why. I’m realizing that persecution is inevitable if we are living godly lives. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Tim 3:12). Holiness is an affront to our culture. It exposes evil. When they see our love it challenges their feeling of security. If we’re not experiencing persecution then we are a probably not challenging society in any meaningful sort of way. This is not holiness.
When I was attacked in the spring while doing an abortion demonstration I think that I got my first real taste of persecution. Of course, when I go out there every week and people yell at me that is persecution too but it isn’t the same. I’m not at all fearful of having someone rant at me. Having been attacked has made me somewhat fearful of going out. For me the fear that I feel when I stand out on the street now is very humbling. It reminds me of what Jesus must have been feeling in the garden of Gethsemane as he contemplated his death. I guess that you can say that in a very small way I’ve fellowshipped in his suffering. I definitely feel blessed by the experience.
I just read a very interesting critique of Rick Warren's recent invitation of U.S. Senator Barack Obama to speak in his church. Kevin McCullough criticizes the invitation on the grounds that Obama's track record shows that he is strongly in favour of many anti-Christian values such as partial birth abortion, gay marriage, condom distribution, etc.
I think that Rick Warren has now moved himself from the crowds of apathetic Christians that are doing nothing about abortion (evil in itself) into the arena of outright support of evil. Having a senator speak in your church is a very strong endorsement for that leader. Unless Warren is going to give a very harsh disclaimer to his congregation telling them not vote for Obama because he is pro-genocide (highly unlikely) he is essentially giving his outright approval of this politician.
Let's look at this another way. If Obama was pro-pedophilia what would you think of having him speak in your church on some unrelated subject? I think that most people would be thoroughly out raged and for good reason. They would be afraid that the smooth talk on the unrelated subject would encourage the less critically minded people to vote for someone that thinks that it is alright to molest children. Abortion harms far more children per year then pedophilia so why is Rick Warren willing to back someone that is pro-genocide?
I think that one of the deeper problems here is that a lot of Christians think that it is alright to vote for someone that is pro-abortion or opposed to any other justice issue. If you were Jewish would you have voted for Hitler? If your mother was a slave would you vote for the people that were enslaving her? I Jesus was running as in independent in your riding would you still vote conservative in order to keep out the liberal candidate? If your answer is no to any of these questions then why would you being willing to vote for someone that thought that allowing people to kill hundreds of thousands of children per year was good?
Now I would like to add one little disclaimer before I get all sorts of negative feedback. I'm in no way trying to say that US people should vote republican. I also don't know anything about Kevin McCullough. I just agreed with this article and I don't know what other opinions he holds. If his other opinions are abhorrent that shouldn't colour your opinion of this article. Just read it for what it's worth.
hat tip: Armybarmy Blog
If I were her I'd be buying the biggest, gaudiest cross earings that I could find and see what they would do with that.
A British Airways (BA) employee has lost her fight to openly wear a cross necklace at work at Heathrow. Nadia Eweida, 55, of Twickenham, has been on unpaid leave since her bosses told her she could not visibly wear her cross at the check-in counter.She found out she had lost her appeal against the decision by BA when she met with the airline bosses on Monday.
BA denied it had banned the wearing of crosses and said Ms Eweida had a right to a second appeal.
It said its uniform policy stated that such items could be worn if concealed underneath the uniform.
I’ve realized again recently that what I need is not more good deeds but more love for God. Then good deeds will flow out of that. I was a bit distressed when I can back to the realization that my love for God had waned a bit and that I was yet again trying to compensate by zealously doing “good deeds”. My heart has not fully been on God and I’ve been soothing my conscience by trying to do more. I frequently fall into this trap. This was the trap that Martha had fallen into when she tried to pull her sister away from the feet of Jesus. It was the trap that Paul had fallen into before he was converted. For a lot of people the more common trap is just to not obey. For me my common trap is to obey (although obviously not completely) without love. I need to remember the words of God that follow:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1 Cor 13:1-3
It makes me sad when I acknowledge this because there is nothing that I can do to create love within myself. I don’t really know how to swallow this. How do I surrender this? I can surrender physical things but I don’t know how to surrender pride and arrogance. I do love some. I know that God has given me that strength but how do I radically love?
"There is a notion aborad of a sort of make-believe religion as though God would count us righteous and deal with us as if we were righteous while He leaves us in our unrighteousness." —Catherine Booth (hat tip: Armybarmy blog)
I just wanted to point out to everyone that there are some great online books available online at The Spurgeon Archive. in particular I wanted to direct people to his book Come Ye Children—A Book for Parents and Teachers on the Christian Training of Children. I haven't finished the book yet but just from the first few chapter I can tell that it is going to be a gem. If you are a parent or involved in ministering to children then you might want to check out this book.
I’m up in Dease Lake right now with Joel and my kids while he is doing an elective at the medical clinic. It’s really beautiful up here but very cold and remote. We’re seven hours from any town of more then a few hundred people. I’ve been bored still and under stimulated so this entry isn't going to be very insightful. The most exciting thing that I’ve done in the last week and half was attend the little local church here. It was a very typical service in many ways but what was a little weird was that it was only eight people not counting my family. Someone did mention that they did have a few more members that weren’t present at the time. The pastor and his wife led the worship time with microphones and slides on a television screen and then he took an offering and preached. We then ate our little square of bread and had our thimble full of grape juice. Why couldn’t we have had a whole piece of bread and cup of juice, or even a meal?! (There was a potluck afterwards but it wasn’t considered the Lord’s supper.) Why couldn’t we have sat around and shared our struggles with obedience and then prayed for each other? We were only 12 people in total. Instead we got a silly little ceremony that left me wanting something authentic. I’ve become so accustomed to the house church model over the last couple of years that this just screamed bizarre.
I got to thinking about why they were running a service this way for so few people. I’m sure that the majority of the reason is simply tradition and the usual inability of people to think outside of the normal way of doing things. I think that there are many reasons that this model of church ministry has come into place. To start I think that this model of church is the easiest for everyone involved. Nobody really ends up needing to vulnerable with anyone else. The lay people don’t end up having to do anything for the local body at all if they don’t want to and the pastor just needs to put of a little service once weekly and he’s done his duty to the congregation, well, at least mostly. It’s easy to come to church, get your spiritual batteries charged and then go out into the week on your own. It’s hard to be vulnerable and sacrificial with fellow Christians that you may not particularly like. It is plain old hard to live in real community with fellow believers.
I think that the main difficult thing about the typical church model is that it requires a lot of money to maintain a building and pay any staff. One of the announcements was that the church would be starting a finance committee. Why in the world should a church of 15-20 people really need a finance committee? Why couldn’t they just talk about the money that they wanted to spend together? If they met in homes they could have been using the offering money to help the poor rather then provide for their building which was actually just a small trailer then had been redone church style. Surely someone in the church could accommodate the group or possibly people could take turns. I just wish people would start to think about things and being willing to experiment with better models.
If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. Matt 16:24,25
These are some of my favorite verses. I think that Jesus shows really well here that faith in him that is saving is faith that is willing to surrender everything to him. One of the teachers at the bible school that I went to used to like to say that it is easy to die for Jesus then it is to live for him. When Jesus says that we must lose our lives for him he is not just referring to physical martyrdom but also to an intentional surrender of everything that defines our life. This is just a theoretical surrender but a surrender that will actually change how you live. For example, everyone should evaluate their career and decide whether it is the best way that they could be serving God. Even if you like your job and it pays well if you could be doing something more productive for the kingdom of God then you should change. This is true for everything in life. This is what Jesus means by deny yourself. Our selfish nature requires that in order to serve God's kingdom as much as possible we are going to have to make sacrifices and deny ourselves of things that we would rather be doing. Following Jesus is not just about learning to be good but learning to give more and more to his kingdom.What have you given up lately?
I just read this wonderful article over on the Voice of the Martyrs blog. I think that the article that Glen Penner posts by Ronald Boyd-MacMillan very clearly outlines what our job as Christians is. We need to fighting back the evil in our society. If we're not facing persecution we should be asking ourselves if we're really being faithful to challenge the evil around us. I don't think that I've ever read such a good summary of the churches role.