the gate

The Church seems to suffer from multiple-personality disorder when it comes to Halloween . . . it’s evil / it’s not evil / turn off your lights and hide / have a fall festival / hallelujah, free candy! / etc. Who’s right, and what’s it really all about?

Justin Holcomb has a good post (and this gory picture) on the Resurgence blog. He writes, “Why did Martin Luther nail his famous 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door on October 31, 1517? He was confronting two religious observances that promoted false saintliness and exploited people’s fear of judgment and purgatory. There’s a curious connection between Halloween and Reformation Day, and it’s more than just proximity on the calendar.” (click here to read the rest)

Then, at the Life2gether blog, Doug Wolter quotes Michael Patton:

I can’t believe I am going to say this but, WWJD? Really, what would Jesus do? Can you see it? Jesus with his lights turned off on Halloween? That would be the Jesus history never knew. That would be the Jesus of western fundamentalism. The one who is not a friend of sinners and tax gatherers. The Jesus that was never accused of being a drunkard. The Jesus who looked from a distance at the wedding of Cana waiting for the sinners to wipe the dust off their feet before he talked to them. The Jesus who saw a child dressed up as a Ghost and said, “I can’t take this anymore. It is not worth it. Give me that stone so that I can turn it into bread.”

Mark Young, my friend and former missions prof at DTS (now the president of Denver Seminary), used to talk about this in his missions 101 class. Oh the shame of all of us students who turned off the light. We left the class crying looking for little witches and ghosts to hug. His thesis: Christians are not Christians on Halloween. Not because they have compromised and participated, but precisely because they don’t participate. The one day of the year where children (”Permit them to come to me…” Mark 10:14) were attempting to come to us and we shut the door and turn off the lights.
(click here to read it all)

1 Comment »

God isn’t seeking our advice or opinion, but he listens to our prayers.

Comments Off

“A community of missionaries created by the Spirit on the mission of Christ.”
– Jonathan Dodson

Comments Off

“You will never lead consumers to be missional.”
– Alan Hirsch

(via Alan Cross)

Comments Off

I found this and thought I would post this here. It is of utmost importance to our reading of Sacred Scripture. May it help in our understanding of who we are and most importantly Who God is. To God be the glory.

There are two ways to read the Bible. The one way to read the Bible is that it’s basically about you: what you have to do in order to be right with God, in which case you’ll never have a sure and certain hope, because you’ll always know you’re not quite living up. You’ll never be sure about that future. Or you can read it as all about Jesus. Every single thing is not about what you must do in order to make yourself right with God, but what he has done to make you absolutely right with God. And Jesus Christ is saying, “Unless you can read the Bible right, unless you can understand salvation by grace, you’ll never have a sure and certain hope. But once you understand it’s all about me, Jesus Christ, then you can know that you have peace. You can know that you have this future guaranteed, and you can face anything.”
Tim Keller

1 Comment »

1 thessalonians 4:30-33:  what shall we say then? that Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. why? because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. they stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, “BEHOLD , I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”

it’s a little difficult for me to think of Jesus as a stumbling block.  but here it is, plain as day.  it goes hand in hand with Jesus’ teachings on how He would turn son against father in matthew chapter 10.  it’s almost counter-intuitive given what we know about God.

but i think this particular teaching is a lot like peter walking on water.  peter was fine as long as he was focused on Jesus.  as soon as he took his eyes off of Him and placed them on the water, physics took over.

jesus is only a stumbling block if our focus is in the wrong place.

is the Law bad?  did God get it wrong when he penned the Law through his prophets?  did He regret His teachings and admit that somehow the wisest being ever to have existed, the alpha and omega and creator of our universe, made a mistake?

nope.  the Law is and always will be God’s words, and furthermore, His truth and wisdom.  the reason that Jesus is ever a stumbling block is that we have our eyes fixed in the wrong place.  we can look at the Law without any understanding of faith, and suddenly we trip over Jesus.  but when we look at the Law through the eyes of faith, suddenly we walk on water like Peter did.

why did Israel fail?  was it that they had bad information?  no.  it was because they did not pursue the Law through faith.

we should all be striving to live lives worthy of our calling as adopted sons and daughters, but it must be through faith and not law.  otherwise, we’ll fall flat on our face having tripped over Jesus Himself.

1 Comment »

This is a summary of Sunday’s sermon from Luke 10:1-24.

“However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20)

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he and his disciples went about announcing that the Kingdom of God is dawning like the sunrise. It has not yet fully come, but it has sprouted. This inbreaking of God’s Kingdom, which continues today, is nothing less than a full on assault against Satan’s kingdom. Through the spreading of the gospel, Satan’s prisoners are released. But with ministry success, we must guard against pride (“look what I can do”). Jesus wins the battle, not us. We only pick up the spoils of the battle Jesus won.

The only thing we can boast in is the cross of Jesus! “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14) “Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.’” (1 Corinthians 1:31)

Comments Off

Inspired Bicycles - Danny MacAskill April 2009

This guy know some good tricks. Notice that at first he fails, but he doesn’t let that stop him. God gave this guy skills.

Comments Off

“every other power is either fraudulent or subordinate.” love that line…

Comments Off

On Sunday, I mentioned the hoopla leading up to 2012. Will the world really end then?

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

The movie is coming out, there are websites warning about it, and it’s been a topic in the news (here’s an example).

Regarding the end of the world, let’s listen to Jesus instead.“But no one knows the date and hour when the end will be—not even the angels. No, nor even God’s Son. Only the Father knows.” (Matthew 24:36) Whoever is deluded by those who think they know, please tell them the truth!

What’s sad is that it’s not only people outside of Christianity that get sucked into this delusion. Many Christians give inordinate amounts of time and attention to connecting “Bible prophecies” and current events, and think they have it figured out. Often their major focus becomes looking for and interpreting “signs” rather than abiding in Christ (John 15:1-5) and telling people the gospel.

Here’s what we are clearly told to do because of the end of this present world that will one day occur. “Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day, he will set the heavens on fire, and the elements will melt away in the flames. But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness.” (2 Peter 3:11-13)

1) Live a Christlike life (“what holy and godly lives you should live”).
2) Let our future joy spill into this present life (“looking forward to the day of God” — we don’t look forward to something we are afraid of or indifferent about).
3) Hurry that day along. How, you ask? By telling people the good news of Jesus — “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14)

So replace the end times hype, hoopla, and fear with the joy and mission of Jesus.

2 Comments »