Knowing and Doing

Many years of Christmas, the anticipation is on Christmas day as a child running to the tree in the morning with great excitement and joy to see what presents I got.  My heart was beating fast.  I could hardly sleep the night before.  It was the greatest time of the year.  The tree was at the center of our home and it symbolizes what is at the center of our season in some cases. The Psalmist writes:  “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” (Psalm 95:6-7) Today as I open up the Word of God and read, I am reminded of this simple truth.  It’s not about centering our life around a season or a tree, we are invited to “come and worship.”  In the first chapter of John, when we read about Jesus and His disciples…the invitation was to COME.  When that babe was lying in the manger, the shepherds were invited to COME.  We are to...

“Let’s face it; God has a big ego problem.  Why do we always have to worship Him?” – Bill Maher It seems as if mankind always had a sense of worship, but to many different things.  Let’s blow this up, shall we?  Worship is giving something value – adoration and submission to.  I can go to Best Buy and drool over media and surround sound and IPad’s and I can go to the hardware store and lick my chops at power drills and saws and hammers and nails – oh my! - and when I go to work I can give great value to immersing myself in the job that I do and give it my all.  I can do the same with family, with church, and friends. Christmas was an interruption!  It came at a dark time in a dark place.  Evil leaders/kings were in control of the land, there was an unbelievable amount of poverty because of high government taxation and something amazing was about to happen – Christmas.  The temple system in Israel was spiraling out of control – it became a corrup...

We are always using key words in the church and community as to the desire of the Body of Christ from God's Word. Let's look at principle #1.....Connecting: The Church is a Family. "So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Acts 2:41-42 Brothers and Sisters in Christ, a Family, with God as our Father. Believers should love, support, and encourage one another under the Heavenly Father. Church membership is about people not procedure. Is there a clear path to connect with the body of Christ? There should be! We should work on expanding our family every year. Principle #2.......Connecting: The Church is the Body of Christ Paul writes to the Romans 12:4-5: “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are m...

We seek to control everything in our life.  Why do we crave it and work hard to make everything work according to our plan and then we crumble when it doesn’t work out.  Some have made a profession from “control”.  They are good managers according to their strengths and talents and can handle taking control well.  In our households, we control it all and make sure things get done around there.  We spend lots of time controlling our lives and our relationships. There is a different kind of control in the Bible….”self-control”.  2 Peter 1:5-7 talks about supplementing our faith with self-control….it is listed as knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness.  The key is found in verse 8:  this should increase for our effectiveness in our faith in the Lord.  What is this and how do I get it? This self-control is a sober, temperate, calm, and dispassionate approach to life, having mastered personal desires and passions. – Holman...

“We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.” - ― David Platt , Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream Platt does a great job in pointing out what comfortable and casual Christians are suffering from.  Maybe they believe that they are Christians and have been deceived that all they had to do is walk an aisle and pray a prayer. The average disciple of Christ today is materialistic and consumer driven.  We have built the community of Christ around these two things.  Here are the reasons I think so: 1.  We INVITE everyone to COME to church.  We don’t obey the Great Commission to “GO” or “As you are GOING” anymore.  We ask everyone to COME to us.  Our attendance board depends on counting the ones that are there.  So we have built a faith of ATTENDANCE. 2.  Because we are pushed to INVITE people to the church servic...

I woke and spent some time with the Lord this morning and several things popped out at me. (including a topic in a great Bible Study I attended wed. night with our youth, directed by the great Derekola!). How do we view God?  It’s simple.  Some have made it complicated.  Some have no clue what I am talking about.  Some whine about it.  Some have actually embraced this knowledge.  Proverbs 1:7 says “The fear of The Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”  Where does this really sink in?  When does this start to transform our life?  The fear of God….produces wisdom that leads to obedience! (as my Facebook friend has said) Our relationship with God should lead like this: Belief ---> Obedience ----> Commitment ---> Responsibility ---> Selfless Humility ---> God is Made Famous by YOU!  The problem today with many folks who call themselves Christians is that they know God by name only.  God is like a cool action figure in our...

Today is the National Day of Prayer, May 2. I would like to encourage you to pray today for our nation even though you may not be able to make a prayer service in your community. Here is the list to pray for: 1. Government: We must continue to pray that God protects our way of life, asking that He would embed men and women in office who are committed to serving their constituents with integrity. We must remain in prayer for our elections, beseeching God to prompt our fellow citizens to become involved in this process. Pray for our leaders, as well as the judges in our courts. Ask God to grant them wisdom to act with integrity. 2. Military: As the heroic men and women in our armed services secure our liberty both at home and abroad, pray the Lord’s protection will go before them. In addition, lift up the chaplains stationed around the world, along with the Christian servicemen who unofficially fulfill a role of spiritual leadership. Ask that these believers would faithfully represent Ch...

Lifeway Research has continuously put forth in the past few years that many American Christians are not reading their Bibles. Here is the statement: “The survey found 90 percent of churchgoers agree "I desire to please and honor Jesus in all I do," and 59 percent agree with the statement: "Throughout the day I find myself thinking about biblical truths." While the majority agree with both statements, there is a significant difference in the strength of agreement. Nearly two-thirds of churchgoers (64 percent) strongly agree with the first statement, but only 20 percent strongly agree with the second. However, when asked how often they personally (not as part of a church worship service) read the Bible, a similar number respond "Every Day" (19 percent) as respond "Rarely/Never" (18 percent). A quarter indicate they read the Bible a few times a week. Fourteen percent say they read the Bible "Once a Week" and another 22 percent say "O...

Recently I read an article on prayer and the church.  Are we a praying church?  Someone who has done research on the church in the US has said that this is one of the characteristics of a thriving and growing church is the matter of prayer.  A praying church is a growing and thriving church I guess would be the sentiment.  We find in Acts 2 the church was a praying church.  So, here are some of my thoughts on this:  How are we supposed to evaluate that question?  Are we to have a prayer counter in the sanctuary so we can count the numbers of prayers and their efficiency?  I think some would go as far as to do so.  The preacher can deliver some messages on prayer to spur on a believer’s prayer life.  Jesus said in Matthew 6:5…”When you pray”, so its not really an option.  Pastors should share their prayer life with others to spur others on through their experiences in their time of prayer.  Bible Study Teachers can teach a les...

When a woman conceives and becomes pregnant, goes to Wal Mart and buys a cheap pregnancy test, visits her doctor to verify her pregnancy, different emotions come and true thinking begins about a baby being born, a life that is conceived inside of her.  Is it here that human life begins at conception?  Is it here that life becomes meaningful?  According to Roe vs. Wade in 1973 at the Supreme Court of the United States, the Justices determined that life was not meaningful at this stage.  How do they determine when life begins?  The medical community has differing views as does the scientific. In our history, Randy Alcorn points out, “Whites decided blacks were less human.  Men decided women had fewer rights.  Nazis decided Jews’ lives weren’t meaningful.  Now big people have decided that little people aren’t meaningful enough to have rights.”  Newsweek even reports, “With no hype at all, a fetus can rightly be called a marvel of cognition, co...

First of the year, first blog....yea, yea, yea I ran away from home the summer I was about to turn 17 for about a week.  I was running because I did not like the rules my parents had in the house where I was living.  I didn't care about what they thought!  I thought I could live how I wanted.  I slept on a couch on a friends house.  I went to work on a farm with a friend to make some money.  We stayed up till whatever time we wanted and didn't have to worry about being home or being anywhere for that matter.  I didn't care.  Maybe I was living the "hippie" dream, I don't know.  My parents went out looking for me and actually found where I was living but didn't find me.  They were concerned about where I was and what I was doing.  I was living the free life and loving it. One day at work, I stepped on a nail.  I was moving some old furniture for this farmer and a rusty 16 penny nail went through my foot.  Ouch!  I pani...