.new message.

Does the church need a new message?

A new way of saying it?

Both?

Neither?

It seems like there are two main camps in this discussion. There are some churches that are in the emerging/emergent movement that think that we need a new message and a new way of saying it. Why do we need a new message? Why do we need to get rid of the cross? Why do we need to get rid of the message of sin? How can the message of grace be as potent as it should be when we water it down?

On the other hand there are churches that have a message that follows the Bible however they don't want to present it in a way that people understand. What is the point of that? How does that benefit the kingdom of God?

May I suggest that we keep the timeless message and try to find new ways of presenting it to people. A few churches have done this well. By presenting I don't just preaching or teaching, rather more of a conveying. Now preaching and teaching are a very important part in this conveyance, however so is shepherding. May we in trying to find new packages to convey the truth not change the message. It seems that the ones who have changed the message were reacting to the methods and in fact overreacted and in that changed the message. My hope is that we as Christians and leaders do not change the message of the Gospel of Christ Jesus. Hopefully the church will reclaim the Gospel and let that be the only stumbling block and not the way we convey it to people. May Jesus give us the strength and wisdom to do that. Remember Jesus is Lord and Savior of all.

.human will?.

"We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified." (Galatians 2:15-16)

How often have we tried to be better people?

How often have we failed at being better people?

How often have we heard a sermon about being a better person?

How often have we as teachers of the Bible taught people how to be a better person?

How often is the answer Jesus?

I ask these questions because in my life I have tried to become a "better" person. I have tried to be a person that is more like what I read about in the Bible. I have heard so many sermons, it doesn't matter from what kind of church, about being a better person. Not often was Jesus the answer from conservative churches to emergent churches the answer was the same, human will and strength.
When I look back on some of the lessons I taught, they were about doing things. Doing things under our own effort. Some were about relying on Jesus for the power and guidance to change and be transformed. However not as much as I would like. I only hope that the ones about relying totally on Christ Jesus sunk in. So I hope when I am in a teaching position again the message that the students hear is Jesus, Jesus and Jesus. I want to be a one song band.

So have you found a place where Jesus is the hero?

Have you found a place where you are taught to seek Jesus?

Have you found a place where you are taught to rely on Jesus?

Have you found a place where Jesus is the answer?

I have and I plan on someday soon being that place for students. A place where they can come and fall more in love with Jesus and learn to humbly follow and rely on Him. I hope that we all learn and live out that Jesus is Lord and Savior.

.merciful?.

9. Q. Does not God, then, wrong man by requiring of him in his law that which he cannot perform?
A. Not at all; for God made man capable of performing it; but man, through the instigation of the devil, by his own willful disobedience, deprived himself and all his posterity of these gifts.

10. Q. Will God suffer such disobedience and apostasy to go unpunished?
A. By no means; but he is terribly displeased with our original as well as actual sins; and will punish them by a just judgment temporally and eternally, as he has declared, Cursed is every one who continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.

11. Q. Is, then, God not also merciful?
A. God is indeed merciful, but he is also just; therefore his justice requires that sin which is committed against the most high majesty of God, be also punished with extreme, that is, with everlasting punishment of body and soul.

.Jesus the gracious giver.

Jesus is amazing and provides in ways that are way beyond anything that I could ever dream of. He works in peoples lives, including mine. Jesus is Lord and Savior of everything!!

.all about Jesus.

It is all about Jesus. We as the church need to be proclaiming this all of the time. It is so easy to forget sometimes. Sometimes the message of the church can become moral-ism. Not that the things that are taught are wrong, the things taught are good things. However people are told to just try harder to do good. That however has not worked, has it? The church in America hasn't grown, we just have moved people around. We haven't changed America, on the other hand America has changed Christianity in America. We need to proclaim Jesus as the answer to everything. Not just for our salvation but also for our sanctification. We need to humble ourselves and rely on Jesus. When the church in America starts preaching Jesus and teaching people to rely on Jesus and his grace I believe that we will see lives changed for the glory of Jesus. May we make him the hero of everything and in everything proclaim that Jesus is Lord and Savior.

.love and grace.

6. Q. Did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?
A. By no means; but God created man good, and after his own image; that is, in true righteousness and holiness, that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love him, and live with him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify him.

7. Q. From what source, then, comes this depraved nature of man?
A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise, whereby our nature became so corrupt that we all are conceived and born in sin.

8. Q. But are we so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good, and inclined to all evil?
A. Yes, indeed; unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God.

Isn't it amazing that when we receive the grace of God by faith in the person and works of Jesus that God sees us as righteous and we can again be in right relationship with God again? That we can worship Jesus and in that be living life to the fullest. See because of Jesus' death and resurrection we have life everlasting. Life here and now and life for all eternity. That is grace. When we see what we would be without God and then realize what we have in Jesus how can we not help but be joyful and humble before Jesus who is Lord and Savior of all? May you and I realize that Jesus is Lord and Savior.

.grace.

The grace of God is amazing.

.my generation.

Its seems as though my generation has made a lot of the Bible a relative thing. While I was listening to past sermons of the pastor where I go to church he had a good point that this is nothing new. My grand parents generation really started doing this and it has affected those of us who grew up in conservative churches where things that we a cultural thing were said to be Biblical. So it is no surprise that my generation people in their 20's and 30's are relativistic. However it saddens me that the pastors and other Christian leaders have come up with some absurd claims that are supposedly Biblical.

One recent development has been with Young Life. This is an organization that I was a part of and was in a position of leadership in and where I realized that I was called to be a youth pastor. So this is a organization that is near and dear to my heart. If you go to Christianity Today you can read about it more. However I will try to boil it down into a summary that is true. Basically Young Life is making its leaders sign a set of beliefs that are the non-negotiables of what they teach. This is an important thing because of the nature of the organization. It is a group that is multi-denominational, there are not requirements really of secondary theology. Their goal is to earn the right to be heard and then proclaim the Gospel of Jesus to students, even to the farthest out student. Just to give you an idea of what is being argued here is the non-negotiables that Young Life has put out:

1) We proclaim the Person of Jesus Christ in every message.
2) We proclaim the reality of sin and its consequences — that apart from divine
grace, we are estranged from God by our disobedience and incapable of a right
relationship with God.
3) We proclaim the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as the ultimate proof of God’s love
and the only solution to our problem of sin.
4) We proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
5) We proclaim the risen Christ’s offer of salvation by inviting our middle school,
high school and college friends to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior.
6) We proclaim God’s call to discipleship by encouraging all who respond to grow
in their faith.

The problem that has arose from this is number two, leadership in North Carolina did not agree with the fact that they should have to preach sin. They claimed that students did not need to hear the sin message and that Young Life was just trying to guilt students into believing and be legalistic in their ways. They have decided that the message of sin is no longer relevant to this generation so why teach it. It would be nice if this was an idea that only existed in Young Life, however this is an idea that has started to permeate the church from all over. It seems as though the church in the mega church movement to the emergent movement has decided that we do not need to preach the idea that we as humans are sinful and apart from the grace of God we have no chance of having Life. Some have decided that we aren't that bad and that Jesus is just a good way to live. Some have decided to preach this idea of humanism. However this is not the true gospel. The gospel is that I am a sinner and am separated from God and that the only way that I can have life is the grace of God which allows me to have faith in the person and works of Jesus. In my life and in others we need to realize our sin and need for a savior before we can accept the grace of God. We need to come to grips that we can't have life on our own. So may we not stop preaching about sin, we do not need people to wallow in it. We don't need to bash people over the head with it but we do need people to realize that sin separates them from God and life and that Jesus is the hero of the story and that He alone can give life everlasting.

kingdom of God

Do we follow the ways of the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of the world?

.Christianity.

Here is a question to think about.

Has Christianity changed America or has America changed Christianity?

.loving God with everything.

The Weekly Installment of the Study of God

3. Q. How do you know your misery?
A. Out of the law of God.

4. Q. What does the law of God require of us?
A. Christ teaches that in a summary, Matt. 22:37-40, Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your entire mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

5. Q. Can you keep all this perfectly?
A. In no wise; for I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor.

Isn't it amazing that God calls us to love Him with everything. How many times do we not follow Him completely? The passage from Matthew calls us to love Him fully, with all that we have. Not only with 50% of what we have, but with everything. This is a passage that makes me fall on my face before God and say, "how can I fully follow you?" Honestly sometimes I think that I love Jesus with maybe 20% of me, sometimes with even less. Wouldn't you say that this is true in your life. If we lie to ourselves we may be able to justify and say we love Him with our whole being. However this is a lie and the world knows it. However the message of the Gospel is the hope we have. See we don't need to be stuck in this pit of trying to do it on our own. When we submit ourselves to Jesus we can have to power to love God more and more. When we stop trying to do it on our power and fully rely on Jesus we can start to worship Him with our entire heart, soul and mind. In fact we can love Him with our entire being. Not on our own, but with faith in person and work of Jesus. Faith that His blood washes away our sin and that He can give us the power to change and be more like Him. In fact belief in Him can bring about redemption in our lives. May you and I humble ourselves before Jesus more every day and may Jesus be the hero in our lives.

Learning

The past few weeks I have been learning a lot. One thing that has really stuck is this idea we as Christians are to glorify Jesus in everything. In every thing we are supposed to humble ourselves a glorify him more. We need to rely on Him everyday. Otherwise the Bible is just a set of rules that are impossible to follow. We need Christ not only to save us and give us life eternal but also to help us become sanctified (more like him). I hope that this gives us freedom and takes the wait off our backs. We don't need to do this Christian thing on our own rather we need to humble ourselves to totally rely on Jesus. When we rely on Jesus in every thing he is the hero and glorified even more.

First Post Here

Here is a post from my other blog. I wanted to transfer over what I was doing there to here since it would be easier to remember the name of it. I will keep up the other one because of the other posts on it.

Knowing God in a Deeper Way

Well over the past few years I have been on a journey trying to find out what exactly I believe about Christianity. During this time I have drifted from what I was taught when I was younger, now there are things about the Reformed tradition that I do not agree with. However there are things that I agree with them on and think that they have right. One is the Heidelberg Catechism, this is a theological statement of faith that has a lot of depth to it. The catechism is divided up into 52 parts and is normally studied or talked about on Sunday. However I will try to put it up on Thursday so that I and those who read have a middle of the week reminder of Jesus and a devotional. So I hope that you come back every week for this. I also hope for those that read this that it leads you closer to Christ and may help you know him more.

Lord’s Day 1

1. Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?
A. That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, wherefore by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him

2. Q. How many things are necessary for you to know, that you in this comfort may live and die happily?
A. Three; the first, how great my sins and misery are; the second, how I am delivered from all my sins and misery; the third, how I am to be thankful to God for such deliverance.

With the answer to the first question let it sink in a little. It continues to strike me that I am not my own. In a culture that screams individuality it is hard to remember that I am not my own. I need to remember that I was bought with a price and what I do should bring glory to Jesus. It is of much comfort that nothing can happen without God knowing it. I am reminded of Psalm 139 and how wherever we are there God also is.

The second answer brings much comfort in that no matter what I have done I am delivered from it. That is the great joy of Christianity that no matter what I am delivered. What great joy that should bring in every day life no matter what my situation is.

I hope that this has strengthened your relationship with Jesus as it has me. May your understanding of Him continue to grow every day.