Have you ever come to a place when you really wished you could pursue God? I don't mean in the way we normally think about pursuing God, like reading our bibles, praying, doing good things for others. I'm talking about throwing off all the junk that this life gives us to deal with and without any hesitation or reservation pursue the living God, creator and lover of my soul.
So what is it that holds us back from pursuing that real relationship with God? YOU!! Me, us, ourselves. However we want to polish up that penny, the problem is a resounding response to the fact that I am the one that holds back my pursuit of the deep, passionate, and intimate relationship that my Savior desires to have with me. He has desired for me to know him intimately since before he spoke everything we know, and things we don't know into existence. God wanted way back in eternity past to have a relationship with me, and he didn't want it to be some cursory, peripheral relationship that I attended to whenever convenience should allow. God gave up his most precious thing to tear down anything that I may put in the way of letting him be my everything.
You are important enough to God to give up his everything for you, so why wouldn't we want to have an intimate relationship with Him?
Monday, November 17, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Evangelism
What is "Evangelism"?
Webster defines it two ways:
1. The preach and promulgation of the gospel.
2. Missionary zeal, purpose, or activity.
I would like to first preface all that is to follow with I love JESUS, and I don't want to seem as though I am angry at the entire system or even the idea of evangelism. My issue lies within the dogma of outdated, culturally irrelevant, mono-systematic approach to evangelism in a world and culture where cultural relevancy and multi-systemic approaches of impact are not only favorable but essential.
Issue #1:
"THE CHOICE"
Please believe me I mean no offense, even though I'm certain much will be taken if anyone actually reads this. But I have grown up sitting in church services where at the end of the service someone or the praise team begins to lead the congregation in a song for the "time of decision". Now I have no problem at all with a "time of decision" my problem lies in what we are asking people to make a decision about. The choice is "heaven or hell", "turn or burn", "get right or get left", choose your cliche, they're all just as terrible. Why? because more times that not people are making a choice of avoidance rather than a choice of acceptance. Meaning, they choice to avoid hell so the option to avoid hell is heaven. They choose to avoid burning so the avoidance option there is to turn, they choose to avoid getting left: get right. No matter how you couch it or frame it, it's all the same premise, you have people making decisions based on an act and theory of avoidance rather than acceptance. They should be making a decision to have a relationship with Christ. Bottom line, I believe that is what salvation is: you choose to accept the fact that because of what Christ did on a cross for you, even though you didn't accept him at the time, so that you could someday have a relationship with Him.
Issue #2
Issue two is very much related to Issue #1.
If we believe that people should be making a choice to have a relationship with Christ, how can they do that if they don't know who Christ is?
Think about it this way, when you meet someone for the first time have you agreed to have a relationship with that person? No. You have simply made their acquaintance, you know who they are, but you have in no way made a commitment to desire and cultivate a deeper relationship with them. So then why do we expect it to be any different when it comes to Jesus. Why do we think that someone sitting to a sermon and some music, and essentially meeting Jesus for the first time, or maybe just being exposed to Him in a new way, would automatically desire a relationship with Him?
Do we as humans with one another not need time to discover and discern whether or not we want to be in a relationship with someone, through learning about them and who they are? If we are to have a real, genuine relationship with Christ I think that happens over a process of time. So then why do we not devote more energy and effort into building relationships with people who don't have a relationship with Christ and allow them to see Him through us, and then allow them to decide if they want a relationship with him?
Salvation is a one time event: the deciding to have and develop a relationship with Christ.
Redemption is a life long process: the developing of our relationship with Christ and becoming more and more like him.
I think this is a paradigm shift that is essential for the modern church to retain it's relevancy and impact in a culture that is quickly turning away from the God who created us all and loves everyone of us.
With Love,
Drew
Webster defines it two ways:
1. The preach and promulgation of the gospel.
2. Missionary zeal, purpose, or activity.
I would like to first preface all that is to follow with I love JESUS, and I don't want to seem as though I am angry at the entire system or even the idea of evangelism. My issue lies within the dogma of outdated, culturally irrelevant, mono-systematic approach to evangelism in a world and culture where cultural relevancy and multi-systemic approaches of impact are not only favorable but essential.
Issue #1:
"THE CHOICE"
Please believe me I mean no offense, even though I'm certain much will be taken if anyone actually reads this. But I have grown up sitting in church services where at the end of the service someone or the praise team begins to lead the congregation in a song for the "time of decision". Now I have no problem at all with a "time of decision" my problem lies in what we are asking people to make a decision about. The choice is "heaven or hell", "turn or burn", "get right or get left", choose your cliche, they're all just as terrible. Why? because more times that not people are making a choice of avoidance rather than a choice of acceptance. Meaning, they choice to avoid hell so the option to avoid hell is heaven. They choose to avoid burning so the avoidance option there is to turn, they choose to avoid getting left: get right. No matter how you couch it or frame it, it's all the same premise, you have people making decisions based on an act and theory of avoidance rather than acceptance. They should be making a decision to have a relationship with Christ. Bottom line, I believe that is what salvation is: you choose to accept the fact that because of what Christ did on a cross for you, even though you didn't accept him at the time, so that you could someday have a relationship with Him.
Issue #2
Issue two is very much related to Issue #1.
If we believe that people should be making a choice to have a relationship with Christ, how can they do that if they don't know who Christ is?
Think about it this way, when you meet someone for the first time have you agreed to have a relationship with that person? No. You have simply made their acquaintance, you know who they are, but you have in no way made a commitment to desire and cultivate a deeper relationship with them. So then why do we expect it to be any different when it comes to Jesus. Why do we think that someone sitting to a sermon and some music, and essentially meeting Jesus for the first time, or maybe just being exposed to Him in a new way, would automatically desire a relationship with Him?
Do we as humans with one another not need time to discover and discern whether or not we want to be in a relationship with someone, through learning about them and who they are? If we are to have a real, genuine relationship with Christ I think that happens over a process of time. So then why do we not devote more energy and effort into building relationships with people who don't have a relationship with Christ and allow them to see Him through us, and then allow them to decide if they want a relationship with him?
Salvation is a one time event: the deciding to have and develop a relationship with Christ.
Redemption is a life long process: the developing of our relationship with Christ and becoming more and more like him.
I think this is a paradigm shift that is essential for the modern church to retain it's relevancy and impact in a culture that is quickly turning away from the God who created us all and loves everyone of us.
With Love,
Drew
Our Plans vs God's Plans
Sometimes I'm really concerned about our culture and society. If you just look around at all the junk going on in our world at times it could and can be very difficult to see God. There are times when I hear about things that people are having to deal with and go through and it is easy to question if God has left us and given us over to our sins. You see cancer running rampant and claiming more and more lives everyday. Thousands of homes and families torn apart by divorce, thousands of lives being taken over asinine foolishness, people tearing their bodies apart to simply live up to a false standard of success that is neither attainable or realistic. So what do we do when everything seems to be going to the toilet? We claim and pray the promises that God gives us and be obedient to His word. Jeremiah 29:11 tells us that God has a plan for us, a plan not for destruction but for prosperity, a hope, and a future. So when all this mess is going on around us and it doesn't seem to add up it's because we don't have the math to be able to compute God's equation. I apologize for the triteness of that comment, but the heart of it is true. God sees a bigger picture than we do and knows exactly how He will accomplish his plan with us or inspite of us.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
New Book
"A Better Country: Why America was right to confront Iraq"
This is a new book that was recommended to me by a friend. I'm really excited about reading it because the content could prove to be very controversial with the current political and military climate our country is in. I think the cover and title fairly explain the premise and jest of the book. When I'm done reading it I'll post more and let you know what I think.
Love Always,
Drew
Monday, September 22, 2008
Work
Last night I was doing some reading for my career development intervention class at school. One of the things the author came putting a huge focus on was how in our society the overarching theory is that work breeds worth. His point was that how much value and worth someone is assigned is based on the type and amount of work that you do. The author also notes that the two are interchangeable, meaning you can do less work and still receive an equal or higher status ranking if the work you do is of a higher prestige. With this being the framework in which we live and work, it's no surprise families are being torn apart by longer work days, and absent parents, because the need is to be on a higher level, prestigiously speaking, so parents sacrifice the familial intimacy of yesteryear to simply elevate their status in a fictional system which in the end is meaningless.
I am reminded of the passage in which Christ urges us to store up treasures in heaven not on earth where they can be ruined and stolen. Not only do I feel that this system has contributed to the ruin of our family units, I think that this has become the paradigm that runs our churches. We are encouraged to do more so as to have more. The way success is increasingly being measured in our current church society and culture is "nickels and noses", and if we want to get more noses to give more nickels then we have to work harder at getting them here. This to me seems to be a bit of a contradiction to the model in which Christ operated. If we look at the life and ministry of Christ, He didn't "work" hard at all. Christ went around building relationships with people, and he showed, shared, and communicated love to everyone he locked eyeballs with and they followed him by the thousands.
Maybe a shift in our thought process would go a long way to change the "success" of our ministries.
Love Always,
Drew
I am reminded of the passage in which Christ urges us to store up treasures in heaven not on earth where they can be ruined and stolen. Not only do I feel that this system has contributed to the ruin of our family units, I think that this has become the paradigm that runs our churches. We are encouraged to do more so as to have more. The way success is increasingly being measured in our current church society and culture is "nickels and noses", and if we want to get more noses to give more nickels then we have to work harder at getting them here. This to me seems to be a bit of a contradiction to the model in which Christ operated. If we look at the life and ministry of Christ, He didn't "work" hard at all. Christ went around building relationships with people, and he showed, shared, and communicated love to everyone he locked eyeballs with and they followed him by the thousands.
Maybe a shift in our thought process would go a long way to change the "success" of our ministries.
Love Always,
Drew
Saturday, September 20, 2008
First Blog
I really don't know what to post in our first blog. I really wanted to set this blog up for Kurt and I to be able to post things that we're going through, that we're learning through our own spiritual growth and study, and just present topics for discussion. I really don't know how many of you will comment and respond to our posts but I'd love for this to be a thing that we can use to keep in better contact with everyone in our group, and to really spark some great discussion about relevant issues in our lives and culture, and to share our struggles and spiritual growth.
Love you all,
Drew
Love you all,
Drew
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