As many of you already know, September 11, 2001 was an unforgettable day for our family. It was unforgettable for us for different reasons than most. On 9/11/01 our family was blessed by the birth of our second perfect little girl. She was born with a knot in her umbilical cord. She had been swimming in little circles inside me just like she runs around in circles now. I remember how thankful we were when the doctor showed us the knot. It still makes my stomach sink just thinking about it. It’s amazing how easily she could have not made it. But that’s A7 (wow, that’s weird to type!). She’s always living on the edge.
Why we were blessed with A7 on a day that so many others lost their loved ones is beyond me. I know that I too easily forget that while we celebrate her birth today thousands of others still mourn the loss of life. What will I tell her about the day she was born? What will she think? Will she recognize the gift God has given her? For that matter, will I? How many other significant things in my life do I take for granted like I take her life for granted? I’m not sure that the answers are easy to come by, but I’m thankful that I know Who to ask.
So today I thank God for A7. For the giggles, the sobs, the way she does everything all the way, the way she loves her sister and brother, the way she never listens the first time unless dessert is on the line, the way she is always so eager to make a friend, I love her head to toe. Happy birthday, A7!
After a week of spending 2.5 hours a day on the road(commuting for some training), I’m happy to be home doing next to nothing on a Saturday. Posting to the blog was non-existent too, and though I could have found the time, quite honestly the motivation was lacking.
So to get things started again I’m going continue the acapella theme started a few posts ago. If you’ve never heard Take 6 then you’ve really missed out. Their sound is smooth and the harmonies tight. I remember hearing them at the Fox Theater in Atalanta in the early 90s and the show was fantastic.
This video is a little dated but just enjoy the sound.
Thought this would provide a good counterpoint to the opinion expressed in my previous post. It’s a little long but worth it.
There is nothing between the person of the Lord Jesus and the person of the believer as that union and communion develops and grows. I think this is a very important thing for us to grasp. Let me put it the way I sometimes put it: The union with Christ we have is not that we somehow or another share His grace. Because – follow me carefully – there actually is no ‘thing’ as grace.
That actually is a Medieval Roman Catholic teaching. There is a ‘thing’ called grace that can be separated from the person of Jesus Christ. It is something Jesus Christ won on the Cross and He can bestow it on you. And there are at least seven ways it can be bestowed on you and they all, as it happens, turn out to be in the hands of the church. And you can have this kind of grace, and this kind of grace, and this kind of grace …
There is no such ‘thing’ as grace! Grace is not some appendage to His being. Nor is it some substance that flows from us: ‘Let me give you grace.’ All there is is the Lord Jesus Himself. And so when Jesus speaks about us abiding in Him and He abiding in us – however mysterious it may be, mystical in that sense – it is a personal union.
Do not let us fail because of the abuse of expressions. Do not let us fail to understand that, at the end of the day, actually Christianity is Christ because there isn’t anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is is Christ and your soul.
Can grace somehow be defined as power? And can we then we then follow certain steps to get more grace/power from God? The pastor at a Baptist church we visited recently certainly thinks so. Here’s a little snippet from his sermon :
…We take our faith and we direct it to God. It doesn’t take a lot of faith, because God has a lot of power, a lot of grace, that will come through that pipe no matter how small it is. And God’s grace can do a lot. So God’s grace equals power in our life.
The question then becomes, how do we get more of that power? Because what Christian in their right mind is going to say they don’t want that? The solution, according to this pastor, is found in eight easy steps taken from James 4:6-12 which starts out “God gives grace to the humble”. These then would be the practical steps to achieve that goal :
Relinquish control of your life
Resist the devil and he will flee
Renounce sinful actions
Restore worship
Reject a sinful attitude
Refrain from a frivolous attitude
Respond humbly to [spiritual] success
Refuse to slander your brother
Funny thing is, Camille posted on this exact thing a few days before we visited this church. And my response on her post fits this one as well. His basic mistake is treating grace as a force rather than as an unchanging part of God’s character. When you start making a separation between the two you start treating grace as a power source to be tapped into and it just goes downhill from there. It becomes all about you and what you need to do to get that power.
At least that’s what I think. What about you guys?
Our blog friend Katiekind recently posted on her affection for a certain contemporary hymn – which just happens to be one of mine as well. We have a nice acapella version of this done by the ZOE Group that I finally found online at Imeem(which I’ve never used, so I hope it streams ok).
If you’ve read AsF for any time at all, you are probably aware of our family’s struggle to stay or leave the church that we have attended for 16+ years. We’ve been visiting around some this summer. Frankly, it’s not our favorite thing to do, but it’s been beneficial. It has given us a little distance (not an unhealthy amount) which has allowed us to more accurately assess our current position. We’ve been able to step back a little, so to speak. It was nice to be back and see faces we haven’t seen in several weeks this morning, but our concerns about the teaching were confirmed a little. Here’s a snippet of what we heard (based on the first few verses of 1 John 5):
-”Salvation is the desired opportunity to live in the Kingdom of God, which enables us to experience life as we would never know it and takes us where we cannot go.”
-”God will take you on as a project.”
-”If we are born again, there should be a ‘genetic pass-down’ from our heavenly Father” [I'm not sure exactly what was meant here, there wasn't much explanation.]
-”If it’s a burden to keep God’s commands, check your love levels.”
-The culmination of our communion time was the song, “Living for Jesus.” We were instructed that if we really take the communion plate seriously, the first verse should be our response. It states, “Living for Jesus, a life that is true/Striving to please Him in all that I do;/Yielding allegiance, glad hearted and free,/
This is the pathway of blessing for me. ”
While none of this is absolutely incorrect theology, it seems to me to be shallow at best, and in places, it’s simply incomplete. I’m left feeling a little like the old lady on those old Wendy’s commercials.
Was cleaning up some stuff and ran across this questionnaire I did as part of a worldview class a few years ago. Thought it might be of interest to someone out there.
Note : Most of these aren’t original with me. Looks like I swiped a good part of them from here.
Is the amount of good in the world limited, or can more good be produced?
Are evil and good equal and opposing forces?
Are there things which are inherently evil in this world?
Why do so many unfair or mysterious events occur?
Does God sometimes change his mind?
Does God involve himself in human events? If so, in what ways?
Does God communicate with all humans or only certain chosen ones who speak on his behalf? If so, in what ways does he communicate?
Can God be affected or changed by human actions or beliefs?
Can we anger, please or grieve God?
Can we change God’s mind on a particular question or plan?
In prayer, do you seek to change God’s mind about something, or align your will with his already-determined plan?
What is meant by “agreeing with God” in prayer?
Is God free to reveal himself directly to other peoples as he did to the Hebrews?
Is God free to do whatever he wants?
Does a visit to a church of another denomination imply that you agree with the teachings or practices of that denomination?
Which is more important, the unity of the group or agreement on a principle or belief?
Should people cooperate if they agree on the goal or task, even if they disagree over the reasons for it? What about Christians with opposing viewpoints?
Should the failings or sins of an individual be considered his fault personally or the fault of his society or family, or Satan?
Something about the meeting last night brought to mind a Ken Myers talk I listened to recently. Yes, I’m linking Ken Myers and “emergent” but I think it’s because they have some of the same concerns. Namely, seeing God’s plan as more than just individualistic salvation and then working out the ramifications of how we live embodied in this creation. I’d love to see the Emergent guys move towards Myers’ more robust and historically connected views on these subjects.
This is from about the 36:30 mark in his talk :
Culture is the cultivation of the order of creation.
Now for many American Christians, culture is not the pursuit of ramifications of the order of creation in ways that honor our nature and the nature of the world. Cultural experiences are just pleasant diversions or opportunities for evangelism. Because we tend to separate creation from redemption and because we’ve tended to think of redemption as an escape from creation to a purely spiritual existence, culture tends to be trivialized.
I spoke with someone recently about some church leaders who had made, in my judgment, some rather bad choices in the culture of their church. The person I was speaking to [said] “…they mean well, they’re trying to get as many people to Heaven as possible”. I said that’s exactly the problem. They see the church’s ministry as an escape plan rather than a recovery project.
Some Christians believe that creation is a lost cause because of Adam’s sin and thus our salvation involves a deliverance from creation. Our spiritual lives don’t have much to do with our embodied life and so cultural choices can be made according to the very pragmatic standard of what enables evangelism. Evangelism understood very minimally is encouraging someone to respond to a few propositions about sin and grace. That view depicts an inadequate view of the relationship between the order of creation and the effects of God’s redemptive work in Christ and thus I think misunderstands the church’s cultural obligations.
I think in the Biblical picture, the church is not simply a fellowship of spiritually and internally and invisibly renewed people. We are a people who recognize the cosmic lordship of Christ [and] who strive to configure our lives as best we can in ways that conform to the kinds of creatures we were made to be. And in whom by God’s grace our full humanity will eventually be realized.
