receive.

i went to a church service here in st. louis with a friend yesterday, and was kind of taken for a spin. the church was on it's 4th week of a word a week leading up to the christmas service (of which there was TEN--it was so packed) and this week was receive. i think throughout the service most of our thoughts consisted of asking questions as to when the meaty stuff was going to come, when is there going to be the christmas message, when is the story going to be told. but there wasn't really any of that, just simple explanation after simple explanation of what means to receive an incredible gift--namely the gift of Christ. grace was emphasized so much that there wasn't much else to the sermon.

while there are reasons why this will never really be my "home" church, it forced us to step back from analyzing all the components that went into this service and just reflect on this core reality of Christianity. this gift of God making himself fully man--for us--is something that i need to keep coming back to. God is a God we can and should worship. and doing that, really letting our soul rest in the worship, receiving the grace that is continually poured out on us, is so important.

i think sometimes i can get so caught up in all the forward progress that i need to be making, doing all of these things for God and trying to be culturally relevant and focusing on all of these other things. during our drive home, we had some good talk time about how it is good and "successful" in itself to worship, to rest in grace truly, and to do that before anything else. it is such a simple thing, yet the difficulty comes when we lost sight of what a true gift it is. everything in us wants to say "what's next," or "ok, now what," but it's ok to be just be; it just is.


on another note, what would i do without all of these amazing friends i have? i have been so blessed, and i am so grateful for that.


merry christmas!

idolatry in worship.

read this blog post(s) about worship on sunday mornings. there's multiple parts to it, so check those out too, because that's where the meaty stuff is :)

here's an excerpt:

What is our greatest hindrance in worshipping God? We could come up with a number of potential answers.

“Our worship leader isn’t very experienced.”
“The services are too planned/spontaneous.”
“The songs are too complex/simple.”
“The band/orchestra/organist/guitarist sounds bad.”
“There are too many new/old songs.”
“Our church is too big/small.”

Ignoring for a moment that all these statements refer to a meeting context, they reveal a profound misconception about the hindrances to true worship. Contrary to what we might think, our greatest problem doesn’t lie outside us, but within our own hearts. It’s the problem of idolatry.

for the sake of obedience.

i've been thinking about obedience a lot lately, namely how hard it is and the reasons we are supposed to obey. obedience to God parallels the reasons why kids obey their parents--they don't obey out of sheer fear of their parents, or because they have been yelled at without love, essentially being degraded, or because they will be rewarded. kids obey their parents because they love them and don't want to disappoint them. it comes from a deeper relationship with their parents than kids who don't obey experience.

i can see this so closely in my own view of obedience with the Lord. my obedience must be grounded in love, not out of fear of something God will do to me if i don't have a quiet time, not so that i will be rewarded with the american dream sometime in my life.

i think this can relate a lot to how we see church. we kind of try to "trick" people into obedience by using fear, or telling people how miserable they will be if they don't obey God. or maybe obedience is the "cool" thing to do, being a christian is "cool." so we see church as needing to be cool and fun, and making all the bible studies cool and fun. but if someone truly needs change, they need an encounter with Jesus, not anything else. everything we teach about Jesus needs to be first and foremost rooted in a foundation of a love for him.

i want to pray, not that someone, or myself even, would stop doing something, or start doing something else, but that they would encounter this love of Jesus with such immense clarity that they have no choice but to obey; that they will be blinded by love for him and this is what will change their lives.

i want to stop working so much out of actions and putting so much weight on what i am doing, on my "successes," and bring it back to what God is doing or isn't doing. i want to be faithful to God alone, and not to what looks like success to this world.

ESV bibles -- 45% off

justin taylor just posted a blog with the link to 45% off of ESV bibles everyday... check it out: http://theologica.blogspot.com/2007/12/wts-books-all-esvs-45-off.html

that's a pretty great deal :)

whose kingdom am i building?

i’m so sick of my self-righteousness, so sick of how my life so easily becomes all about me. so much of my life is taken up in “building my own kingdom”; so many things that i do have more to do with my own pride than my desire to build God’s kingdom here on earth.

Jesus teaches that in seeking God’s priorities, i can be free from this burden that i place upon myself—matthew 6:25-33 talks about this. verse 33 says, “but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you…”

i want all my activities and standards that i place upon myself and others to be centered on the advancement of God’s kingdom and not my own. he’s already promised to supply all of my needs.

also check out matthew 13:44-46 and john 6:27: “do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. for on him God the Father has set his seal.”

i want to be praying, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done..” and mean it.

believe: to accept as true, genuine, or real (v).

"to believe God is to look at what God has said and to let that define reality for you." -- tim keller.

this has been my constant prayer, but what does this really look like, how does this define my life? here's some practical things i've been learning, thanks to mr. keller:

1. believing God means to not go on feelings or appearances. it is going on something despite our weakness and despite our feelings and perceptions; ultimately a death to self-trust. look at abraham: "he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of sarah's womb" (romans 4:19). i mean, his body was completely hopeless. abraham heard what God said and simply believed him. sometimes it is so easy to make things more than they are--to hear what God is saying but to question it, to doubt it, to let other factors get in the way. but when He has spoken He has spoken.

2. when you are truly believing God, you will focus on facts about Him. how often do we just sit and think about God, to really consider his power? do we really know what his power entails? all through isaiah, we are shown of his might. he holds the waters in the hollow of his hand and encloses the dust of the earth in a measure. he weighs the mountains in a scale; the earth's inhabitants are like grasshoppers. there is no limit to his power--our lives should reflect this. "faith is not the absence of thinking, but rather is a profound insistence on acting out of measured reflection, instead of just reacting to circumstances."

3. trust the bare word of God. even when there is nothing else to go on, we need to take God at his word--and we need to know his word. if we reason on the basis of what we know about God, it's easier to deal with things and easier to overcome any struggles of weakness. we are called to act on God's promises and word even when it is hard--faith is living as if these promises are true. it's doing things because they please the Lord, because we believe him even when circumstances are saying otherwise.

faith looks at God--not itself--and holds on to the faithfulness of God.

i need to be knowing who God is more and more so that i can be believing him more and more. i desire to live in this reality because i know it is the best for me; he has made these promises to me and they are true, every moment of my life.

newfound obsession.

seriously, i love blogs/blogging. i might be getting addicted, but they are taking over the world. or at least my computer time.