Friended By Christ | Rediscovering Our Identity and Calling As the People of God

My Conundrum

March 19, 2012 in Misc with 2 Comments

It has been more than three weeks since I last posted. And in the last couple months, my posts have become fewer and farther between.

I’ve hit a wall of sorts.

I’m not sure what the problem is. It might be writer’s block, it might be a lack of time and space to write… or it might be Twitter.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas. Lately, I’ve been feeling like I have too many ideas rumbling around. Complex ideas that I’m not sure how to articulate. Ideas that may be more appropriate for books than blogs. To be honest, I feel overwhelmed; I don’t know where/how to start. But I want to write.

So I’m just going to start up again, fumbling along the way. I’m just going to write.

I might start a series that never gets finished. I might seem more random than usual. I might not make much sense (or less sense than normal).

There might not be any regularity to my posting. I might not always post in the morning. I know I won’t post every day, and I might occasionally post two things in one day. I’m going to stop worrying so much about the blogging “rules” and building my tribe.

I’m just going to write.

And I appreciate you coming along for the ride.

Nero did not throw Christians to the lions because they confessed that ‘Jesus is Lord of my heart.’ It was rather because they confessed that ‘Jesus is Lord of all,’ meaning that Jesus was Lord even over the realm Caesar claimed as his domain of absolute authority.

–Michael Bird

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and Sin

February 23, 2012 in Discipleship with 3 Comments

When you think of living God’s way and your personal track record, what emotions rise to the surface? Regret, disappointment, frustration?

What words or phrases come to mind? Failure, all have sinned, nobody’s perfect, sinful nature?

With that in mind, watch this clip from “Facing the Giants.”

Pure inspiration. As good as a Rocky movie.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Lent

February 22, 2012 in Discipleship with 6 Comments

Something’s bugging me. And it has to do with me.

Today is the start of Lent, the forty-day period leading up to our celebration of Easter. It’s tradition to give something up for Lent, whether it’s chocolate, TV, Facebook, or the musical sounds of Justin Bieber. It is a wonderful, ancient practice that has been getting more attention the last few years. Its benefit is in preparing our hearts and reflecting on what our Lord Jesus went through for us. To suffer and find some solidarity with Christ’s sufferings.

Why do we need to do this?

Glad you asked. We live in a culture that is so bubble-wrapped and cushy that giving something up has become a felt need for many of us. Suffering is a rarity. It is, because when it comes our way we are always shocked. We live “blessed” here in America.

We have fully adopted this mindset in the church. We equate God’s blessing with the American dream. While we scoff at the ridiculousness of the “health and wealth/name it and claim it” gospel, we cling to a version of it. In Christ, God is ready to give us “The Life You’ve Always Wanted.” Not to pick on the book with this title, but this is such a popular message and an underlying layer of Christian sub-culture.

While I do believe God wants to bless His people (so that they in turn are a blessing), this was not the central focus of Jesus’ message about the kingdom or what life would look like for kingdom people.

Seems the marketing strategy of the church these days is: “You can have the life you’ve always wanted.”
But who would want a life that looks like a cross?

–Rodney Reeves, Spirituality According to Paul (33)

The Two Most Important Things To Remember This Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2012 in Family with 6 Comments

This past weekend our church hosted a marriage conference called Love and Respect. So many light bulbs went off for me, it was like a fireworks display in my head. If you get the chance to read the book or go through the material, jump on it. Several people had told me how good it was, and I believed them to a degree but was also skeptical. I’m dumb; it was better than they said it would be.

Pretty simple, huh?

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, and since I need to blog about something, let me share an overview of the conference and a couple of the big takeaways for me.

Women need love the same as they need air to breathe.

Men need respect the same as they need air to breathe.

In Scripture, husbands are commanded to love their wives. Wives are commanded to respect their husbands. Interesting, right?

The marriage relationship was uniquely designed by God so that these two different needs would best be met within this relationship. A husband can meet the wife’s need for love in a way no one else can. Likewise, a wife can meet the husband’s need for respect in a way no one else can (with the possible exception of Chuck Norris. If he respects you, you’re pretty much set for life!).

Quotes of Note from the King Jesus Gospel

February 10, 2012 in Discipleship, Gospel with 4 Comments

I have resonated with the content of this book and McKnight’s call to recreate a gospel culture. And so I am providing a Cliff Notes version of the book… some Quotes of Note. May it give you an idea of the book, and possibly propel you to read the book yourself.

FOREWORD BY N.T. WRIGHT

The Christian faith is kaleidoscopic, and most of us are color-blind. (11)

… “the gospel” is the story of Jesus of Nazareth told as the climax of the long story of Israel, which in turn is the story of how the one true God is rescuing the world. (12)

… we all urgently need to allow this deeply biblical vision of “the gospel” to challenge the less-than-completely-biblical visions we have cherished for too long, around which we have built a good deal of church life and practice. (13)

FOREWORD BY DALLAS WILLARD

At the root of the many problems that trouble the “church visible” today, there is one simple source: the message that is preached. (15)

INTRODUCTION: 1971

At the most conservative of estimates, we lose at least 50 percent of those who make decisions. (20)

What Does It Mean To Place Faith in Jesus, Part Three

February 7, 2012 in Gospel with 2 Comments

What faith in Jesus looks like has a lot to do with our understanding of the gospel. If we limit the gospel to the plan of personal salvation, then faith means trusting Jesus as Savior.

However, if we see the gospel as God becoming King on earth as He is in heaven, then faith means trusting Jesus as Savior and Lord (a.k.a. King). Now Christianity becomes all about obedience and allegiance, rather than mental affirmation of information. Discipleship is a natural outflow of this kind of faith, rather than an unnatural persuasion that feels more like a square peg being jammed into a round hole.

Now the purpose of life for Christ-followers becomes making God King on earth as much as we can until Jesus comes back and finishes the job.

Making God King on earth begins with me making God King of my life. And that is going to take some work.

It begins by looking again at Jesus’ gospel. I must understand what Jesus’ message meant to his original hearers if I am going to have any chance of properly contextualizing it for my life today.

Better Than Saturday Morning Cartoons

February 4, 2012 in Humor with 0 Comments

1. The Master Makes A Comeback… Hipster Style

2. An Extended Version of a Commercial You Might See Tomorrow

3. Another One

4. Going to a Super Bowl Party Tomorrow? Here Are Some Handy Pointers

What Does It Mean To Place Faith in Jesus, Part Two

February 2, 2012 in Gospel with 2 Comments

In the last post, we looked at the gospel message as it is typically put forth today, what Scot McKnight has labeled the ‘soterian gospel’ and identified as not being the original gospel but rather the plan of salvation.

Before that, we looked at the elements of story and how each version of the gospel sees God’s Story. I do not know that McKnight would totally agree with how I’m comparing the two, but this framing is what is most helpful to me. The picture below shows how I see these two storylines differing.

The Soterian Gospel vs. The Story Gospel

Again, the gospel we are used to (the Four Spiritual Laws, the bridge illustration…) is really just the Plan of Salvation. Sharing it is not wrong or invalid, but as we saw in the last post, it easily leads to a one-dimensional, one-way, me-centered relationship with Christ.

That is not to say that the Billy Graham crusades (for example) were pointless, or that God cannot use this skinny version of the gospel to bring us into right relationship with Him, expand His kingdom, and bring glory to His name. But for those of us who take the Great Commission in Matthew 28 seriously, we must always be seeking to make the message we bring be as close to Jesus’ original gospel as we can.

So asking ‘What is the gospel?’ and ‘Who is Jesus?’ are essential questions for each generation to freshly wrestle with as we stand on the shoulders of the generations before us. We cannot be afraid of the search, but it must be a search done humbly and with open minds in Christian community, led by the Spirit, immersed in the Scriptures, contextualized in history, and tested theologically.

In the next post, we will examine what faith in Jesus looks like based off of ‘the King Jesus gospel.’

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FOREWORD BY N.T. WRIGHT

FOREWORD BY DALLAS WILLARD

INTRODUCTION: 1971

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