Deconstruction

I got to hang out with Justin, Kelly and Aiden Nygren tonight at Starbucks. In our conversation the idea of deconstruction came up. I think Aiden mentioned it.

I was thinking on my way home that deconstruction is a part of every Christians life. When we are transformed in our hearts becoming sons and daughters of God then we begin a life journey of deconstructing all the parts of our lives that are not in unity with God. It is a deconstruction toward simplicity. It is deconstructing our lives to simply follow Jesus. It is deconstructing our religion to simply following Jesus.

I like that phrase "deconstructing to simplicity".

Ripples in the pond

I had the privilege of speaking to the songwriters of the At Your Feet community this past weekend and on Friday night to the greater community as a whole.

The key scripture that the Lord put on my heart to share was Hebrews 3:13. It says "encourage one another while it is called today, lest your hearts be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin"

And also Acts 14:22 in which Paul exhorts disciples to continue in the faith.

Why would Paul encourage people to continue in the faith ? As I thought about it, I realized that life can be really hard on all of us as we journey this road of faith in Christ. As Hebrews says our hearts can be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin will lure us or seduce us into hardened hearts. Sin makes itself available when we are stressed, when we have been wounded (sometimes by other believers and even trusted believers), when we get overconfident because Gods grace has come through us.

Sin is like a mouse trap, luring us with bait that entices us only to snap on us and do real damage. And sin seems often at our doorstep.

This is why Paul is calling us to encourage one another. That word for encouragement is not just a pat on the back. It is a summons to fight the good fight, it is a passionate plea to continue. When I was sharing this with my wife, she said the picture that came to her mind was from Braveheart as William Wallace rides down the line of men to encourage them that the fight they were about to face was about their family, their sons and daughters, their country.

One encouragement can be a pebble in a pond and will send out ripples to the rest of the pond. Let's remember to encourage one another often because the battle is real and we all get wounded.

Time keeps on ticking ticking ticking into the future

It has been about ten months since my last blog. It has been a time of hibernation in some senses for me. A large part of that is becuase the business I am in has been very busy. I really think the Lord is directing me to a new season of time where my availability to people increase. I hope to spend time blogging again.

A vision aligned with "the vision"

My friend Loren Bishop has revisited his vision for his blog: Pulpit of the Last Days. It is a great reminder that our Biblical hermeneutic (way of interpreting the Bible)is to have a Christ centered one not a human intellect centered one. Check out his vision on his blog.

link

Real versus False Religion

One afternoon on our recent trip to Kansas city the kids and I decided to check out an authentic Kansas City barbecue restaurant. I had heard of the fame of KC barbecue and wanted to check it out. We ended up at a place near downtown.

We walked in and you could smell the smells of barbecue cooking on a grill. One of the first sounds we heard as we walked in was a high shrill voice almost yelling "Hi may Heeeeelp U". Honestly it was a little freaky because this lady was yelling this statement over and over. My first thought was that this was a gimmick used by the restaurant so that people would remember it. I've been to places where the waitress poured your tea from a distance of three feet above your glass as a gimmick or another place where all the employees had to say "Welcome to Moe's" as soon as you walked in the door. So again, I'm thinking okay this is a ploy to advertise and it's kinda weird.

As we got to the counter I saw a little sign saying you got your meal free if someone didn't say to you "Hi May I help you". It dawned on me that this lady with the shrill yell had taken on a false religion. The store had a statement that was intended on politeness to their customers. They so believed in it that it was required for every customer. It was meant to be done with a heart to serve. This lady had taken that principle and decided to yell an abbreviated version of it so often that every customer would hear it. She didn't realize that the meaning and heart of the matter had totally been lost. Instead of leaving customers with a sense of being truly served, they were left with entertainment at the most and irritation on the other side.

This reminded me of the church today and where we get in trouble. The commandments of the Lord were given as a means for loving and serving God and one another, but at times we manipulate them to serve ourselves. This was a great example of true and false religion.

postnote: the barbecue was good, but didn't quite hit Texas standards.

All the plates are never spinning at the same time

I was listening to Mike Bickle teach and he said some things that really made me think. He was talking about the human propensity to look towards the future to a time when everything in our lives is in sinc, we have all the plates spinning. He laughed and said this is not a perspective birthed from reality. The reality is that there is always a plate not spinning. It helps us continue to depend on God.

Either the devil is keeping one of the plates of our lives from spinning, or our own immaturity, or at times God keeps that plate from spinning.

He also said he considers this life like a 70 year internship preparing us for the kingdom of heaven.

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 2 Corinthians 3:6,7

From the mouths of pups !

I ran across this on Dan Kimballs blog and thought it was relavantly funny.




Originally published August 9, 1976 by Charles Shultz

The New Blog and Dialogue

For a time I have wanted to put together a blog on the topic of the Kingdom of God. It seems God brings that theme to me over and over. So the Kingdom of God dialogue has been birthed . It is my random thought on the Kingdom.

This blog isn't designed to be a thorough treatise on the Kingdom or a well built linear theology of the subject. It is primarily a place for ruminations, meditations, and a growing ideology about the Kingdom. Come visit and feel free to leave a comment.