Posts

Showing posts from 2010

This is the day.

A sense of urgency.  It's something I desire greatly.  I have been listening to a lot of Christian hip-hop lately, which is odd for me cause honestly I'm kind of a country music guy, and most Christian music just annoys me with it's lack of depth spiritually.  But I ran across some stuff by Lecrae and Tedashii one time while looking for John Piper clips on youtube.  And I was greatly intrigued.  Here was an artist(s) who pounded the gospel song after song.  And not in some soft, warm and fuzzy, type of way.  You can't listen to much of their music (or others, such as Trip Lee) without hearing about the Gospel and the affect it ought to have on my life today.  And it has given me pause to think.  How am I living?  Do I live each day as if it were my last?  Not only my last, but the last of a friend?  Do I really believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven?  If so, why do I deny Him with my actions, why do my words not constantly reflect Him, who He is, and what He has d

What is Sin?

So this will probably be another short one.  But I have been wrestling for a while now with the whole concept of sin.  What is sin?  I can go to the Bible and from there determine what actions and inactions are sinful, but is that really what sin is?  How does fit with the Gospel?  Jesus came to die, not from my wrong actions and/or inactions, but from my sin that condemns me to Hell.  But how can we call actions a heart condition?  We seem to teach something that is contradictory, like there is a disconnect between our doctrine of sin in reference to actions and our doctrine of sin in reference to salvation.  And this has bugged me.  If sin is merely to "miss the mark", to do what I ought not, or to not do what I ought, how can I be saved from it?  I still do things I ought not and fail to do that which I ought.  Even the Apostle Paul wrestled with this problem!   But.  What is the mark that we are missing?  It is the mark the the Holy and Sovereign God of all the universe

A quick thought on Christian thought.

Okay, so it's late, so I'm gonna keep this short.  But I'm gonna ask you a few questions and ask you to think through them critically, because I believe your answers to them will radically affect your beliefs...let me rephrase, they do  radically affect your beliefs, this will simply aid us in identifying this circumstance.  When we read the Bible we often come up with questions.  This is good, and healthy.  Questions encourage thought and when we question and subsequently find answers our thoughts are more firmly established, faith is built, etc.  But there are times when we come to Scripture and are troubled by what we find.  Times when God exercises speedy justice and we question His fairness.  Times when we see something go unpunished and question His justice.  Times when we come up against a doctrine (eg, predestination) that seems to contradict our view of who God is and/or how He operates.  In times like these it is of extreme importance to keep in mind that things s

Radical?

So.  A few quick thoughts on something that has been ripping at my mind and wrenching at my heart lately.  I have lost many hours of sleep to it without necessarily finding so many answers as I do more questions.  But here is my primary question?  What does it look like to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?  What should life as a Christian look like?  I look around and see all these different ideas clashing in culture, in our church sub-culture, in society in general, but in the midst of all these ideas I notice a lack of sufficient answers.  Rare is the person that you can look at and say "Wow. They have something different. They must be a Christian."  And yet the very term Christian finds its origin back in the 1st century, it's literal meaning is "little Christ".  People used it as a derogatory term to make fun of believers in Jesus, or as Luke calls them in Acts, followers of the Way.  That last term I think is an interesting one to ponder when on this subject.

A quick thought...

how foolish is the church today?  We are so focused this new method and that new method, and how to reach people, and how to make everyone like us, and how to avoid offending people...and don't look now, but in an effort to "win souls", we've lost our own.  We're busy out here, not giving people the Gospel message, but chasing after our own glory.  We're too busy scratching people's itchy ears.  It is high time we refocused our attention...or in many cases, simply focus, it was never there to start with.  Our focus need to be Jesus.  We need to tell people about the problem of sin.  It gets skipped because when we talk about it it offends people.  Well let me pose this question.  Do you think they'd prefer that you tell them now and run the risk of offending them, or would they like you to brush it off and let them find out on their own that God is Holy and hates sin?  In the immediate sense, of course people want to hear nice things, but we have to qu

Missing the point.

So...first post on the new blog, let's kick it off right.  And by kick it off right, I mean post something that most likely will have a lot people disagreeing with me.  But it's something that's been bugging me for quite some time.  I will apologize in advance for it's disjointed nature, my brain is running sub par at the moment, so bear with me. There is no question...or at least there shouldn't be...that our country is having serious problems.  From our multi-trillion dollar financial deficit, to the attacks on marriage and the unborn, to growing threats from foreign powers.  And while I could write a book on the roots of all these problems and the people responsible, I will refrain, because right now it is a different group of people annoying me.  And that is people on the far right, especially Christians, who are missing the point. These are the people getting riled up and throwing fits over the recent court ruling in California overturning the ban on same s

Subscribe to the Stopping to Think newsletter: