Stopping to Think

Unparalleled: How Christianity's Uniqueness Makes It Compelling by Jared C. Wilson My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is the first book I've read by Wilson, but after listening to a number of conference lectures by him I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm glad I did. If I had one problem it was the number of pop culture references that I think will date the book fairly quickly. Otherwise, I think this is a clear, useful, compelling introduction to the Christian faith. View all my reviews

The Nature of Christianity (I originally preached this as a sermon in 2012, and posted the notes here on 06/23/12. This is a reworking of those original notes, hopefully a little more readable.) Our topic is Christianity. That may seem a broad or obvious topic. But for us to understand properly how Christians are to live, we must first understand what the nature of Christianity is. The reason this is foundational is that what you really  believe defines who you really  are. You will always, always , act in accordance with what you truly believe. So if we miss the boat on the meaning of Christianity and believe something apart from the truth, we are in big trouble. And frankly, I believe much of what we might call current evangelical teaching has, if not missed the boat entirely, hung its legs out into the shark infested waters. This being said, I want to give you three negative statements right out of the gate in relation to the nature of Christianity. 1) Christianit...

"Christ is the center of Christianity; all else is circumference." John Stott Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

Throwback Thursday is a series of posts, wherein I will on (some) Thursdays post a piece of writing from back in the day. Generally not from this blog. I will edit lightly for readability, but my intention is to allow each piece to stand basically as written. Over the years my mind has shifted on many things, as my knowledge of life, the Scriptures, and myself has grown. I'm not in the business of hiding this fact, so these will probably (at least on occasion) contain some things which even I think are crazy. Originally posted on Facebook as: "Because apparently I belong in the White House...or jail" January 4, 2010 So I posted a status about appreciating real news and started World War 7...or whatever World War we are on now. So I thought it prudent to examine some of what other people had to say there, and take the time to flesh my thoughts out more thoroughly. My original point was that I was thankful for a source of news where I got just that - news. Ne...

"The closer you get to what makes Christianity ghastly, the closer you get to what makes it glorious." John Piper Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

Throwback Thursday is a series of posts, wherein I will on (some) Thursdays post a piece of writing from back in the day. Generally not from this blog. I will edit slightly for readability and grammar, but my intention is to allow each piece to stand basically as written. Over the years my mind has shifted on many things, as my knowledge of life, the Scriptures, and myself has grown. I'm not in the business of hiding this fact, so these will probably contain some things that even I think are crazy. Notes from Fuel 2/13/2010, with some elaboration. Originally posted on Facebook, February 14, 2010 Well, I was gonna post the notes I had for my message, but I meandered a bit from them, so I re-worked them and elaborated on them a bit. A lot a bit. In fact this is taking that message as a basis and basically going into what God has taught me in the last two days. My base text was Revelation 3:12-22 (NIV) "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of...

I have, for a while now, been attempting to communicate to very well-meaning folks that there is not, and has never been a truly Christian nation; and that this statement includes America. I mean to tackle this at length at a later date, but for now here are a couple quotes from Rodney Stark's book, "The Triumph of Christianity" (HarperCollins, 2011). Emphasis is added. "In 1776, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, only about 17 percent of those living in one of the thirteen colonies actually belonged to a religious congregation ; hence more people were probably drinking in the taverns on Saturday night than turned up in church on Sunday morning. As for this being an 'era of Puritanism,' from 1761 through 1800, a third (33.7) of all first births in New England occurred less than nine months after marriage, and therefore single women in Colonial New England were more likely to engage in premarital sex than to attend church." (353) "The very low l...

Prayer. Bible reading. Meditation. Fasting. These, along with a number of other things, are what we refer to collectively as "the spiritual disciplines." What an obtuse term. Who really wants to practice spiritual discipline? The idea of discipline seems so boring, restrictive, and terribly un-modern. Patience, discipline, toil- these things have become somewhat akin to curse words. Shouldn't religion or spirituality be more free flowing than this? More free flowing, perhaps, than any part of life? And more gratifying, too. Right? I don't have any data on this, but it is my assumption that most Christians would like to know God better. I have a simple question. Why do we think that it would be easy? Don't get me wrong, God isn't grading us on a "he tried harder than she did" scale. The only basis for a right relationship with and forgiveness by God is the finished work of Christ on the cross. Nor is a relationship with God difficult in the same way...

I feel like the last few posts I've been ragging on traditional values. Allow me to make a clarifying statement. I am all for both traditions, and values. They are not, in and of themselves, bad things, and can be quite good. But when we take an issue of massive import, and lower it to the importance level of tradition, we do our culture, our country, and our fellow man a great disservice. That is my point. And so I want to take some of that logic and apply it to the abortion topic. The prevailing stance on abortion on the "right hand" side of the isle seems to be that abortion is bad, unless the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, or if the mother's life is at stake.  I want to explain why this position is completely illogical and indefensible. What is the basis for opposing abortion at all?  Opposition to abortion rests on two premises 1)that an unborn fetus is a person 2)that the unprovoked killing of any person, something commonly known as murder, is wr...

Just a quick thought on grace. Reading in Matthew 26 in my devos today and Jesus tells them the will all fall away, and of course as we know, Peter says "not me! I'll die before I leave you!" Of course he's wrong. Peter's confidence is misplaced. Jesus reinterates that Peter will not only fall away, but more than the other disciples, will verbally deny Jesus three times before morning. imagine being Peter right now. You are Jesus' closest earthly friend. And you're told that you will fall away. You reassure him that you are faithful. And then you're told you're falling will be worse than the rest. Isn't that us? Does it not seem that every time we become more determined to be "good  Christians" that these are the moments we fall the hardest? Of course they are. That used to terribly frustrate me. Reading that today though showed me something beautiful. Those failures are the grace of God. If through grit and Will-power(pardon the pun...

I preached a sermon similar to this at our church last month, and plan on using these notes tomorrow. Thought they might be useful to someone. (Okay really, it's just that if they are here I can't lose them!) The Nature of Christianity Our topic this morning is Christianity. This may seem something of a broad and obvious topic for church service. But I think for us to understand properly how we as Christians are to live, we must first understand what really the nature of Christianity is. The reason this is of fundamental importance is that what you believe defines who you are. You will always-always-act in accordance with what you truly believe. And so if we miss the boat on the meaning of Christianity, we are in big trouble. And quite frankly, I believe most of what we might call current Evangelical teaching has most certainly missed the boat. So, with that being said, I want to give you three things right out of the gate that Christianity is not about. These three are ...

Let me open with this disclaimer-I am in no way referring to the physical fitness (or obvious lack thereof) of many Christians. That’s another blog for another day. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get to that one, I’ll have to be getting pretty low on subjects to write about. So, if I use the term “Fat Christians,” what am I talking about? Well, if I were clever like Pastor Todd over in Harrison, I’d turn it into an acronym…however, I am not so clever, and am terrible with acronyms. I am speaking rather to the tendency many Christians have to spend all week gorging themselves on “Spiritual food,” and spend no time exercising any of it. I must admit here to a bit of cynicism on my part that really is probably unhealthy and possibly sinful. I find it very easy to poke holes in most anything churches do. The old joke is that Christian firing squads are usually aligned in circles, and the last thing I want to do is be a part of that. I really do have a love both for my home church and ...

In Matthew 13:44 Jesus says, " The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field."  What is the kingdom of heaven?  Jesus many times refers to it as His kingdom, essentially it is where believers dwell with God.  And Jesus says that this is so valuable that he compares it to a treasure we would sell all of our possessions to obtain.   Is this how we value our relationship with God?  Are we so caught with Him that we would consider Him our highest treasure?  Would we be willing to forsake our jobs, our money, our lives, our reputations, our friends, our family, our popularity, etc for the sake of gaining Christ?  Can we say with Paul in Philippians 3:7-8, " But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.   Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his ...

This is a little paper I wrote for our BTC class over in Missoula.  Not super thorough, being as it is (sans the footnotes) under 500 words.  I do think it covers some things that are important to keep in mind though, so I thought I'd post it for y'all to take a look at, perhaps I will elaborate on it at some point. Paul's Theology of the Church A short summary of the writings of the Apostle Paul concerning the nature and function of the church. Will Dole -What is the church? Paul states in Ephesians 5:25 that “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Following this line of thought, the church would consist of all those for whom Christ died; “the community of all believers for all time.” [1] Paul uses several terms to describe these people throughout his epistles. These include (but are not limited to) saints [2] , the called [3] , believers [4] , and collectively, the body [5] and God's dwelling place [6] . We may conclude from Paul's writings that...

Disclaimer: If any of you recognize or remember this, it's because I wrote it over a year ago.  I read it tonight and saw some changes that needed to be made and thought I'd add a link to the video.  Matthew 11:28-30 (NKJV) -“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” I tend to struggle a lot with anxiousness in my life. And I choose the word anxiousness instead of worry, because it’s not necessarily a conscious thing, so much as it is a subliminal or mindset based problem. I don’t necessarily waste my day worrying about how this thing or that is going to turn out. It’s something that has taken up residence, “set up shop”, if you will, in my mind. And it shows up in everything from what I think about, to how I think about it, and eventually flowing into my actions. And all of t...

David.  Isaiah.  Job.  Jeremiah.  Jesus.  I could add more but you may want me to quit listing and start writing.  What that short list (which could easily be expanded) is in reference to, is people who were broken before -or broken by- God.  People whos hearts were broken either by their own sin or the sin of others, and in some cases, both.  One of my favorite parts of the Gospel narrative is Matthew 27:46  where Jesus cries out, "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”"  Here we see Jesus, God of all the universe, come to earth as a perfect and sinless man-broken and abandoned by God, through no fault of His own.  This is the epitomy of despair, when He who is God is forsaken by His Father.  That is a brokeness our finite minds cannot fathom. His words here echo the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 22:1-2, "My G...

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 ...