Right to judge?
I wonder why it is that christians, at least in the US, fight so feverishly to be able to judge those outside the church. Heaven forbid they loose there right to tell someone they are going to hell. Don’t get me wrong here, I beleive fully in making people aware of sin and its consequences and in telling them the salvation from those consequences available through Christ Jesus our Lord. But it does not amaze me that so many Christians demand the right (as if they had any real rights for this) to tell people they are gonna burn. As if that will trun others to God in and of itself. And in so doing they can and will have the right to treat those outside the body with anger and hostility. Like inbread idiots they press on with veins poping from their forhead and misquoted scripture on their lips.
One of the basic justifications they use is Jesus language and actions toward the pharisees and saducess in Jesus day. Yes, he called them snakes and vipers and their were all maner of colorfull exchanges between them. But the thing to remember is those people were inside the church of that age sort to speak. They were leaders in religion of the temple and in their society. So if Christ attacked them, as He often did, he was attacking hypocrits and wolves in sheep clothing. Those who sought to call themselves God’s choosen and elite and not seek to trully follow him. The true test of Christs character came with his interaction with the tax collectors, prositutes and the like. While he never condoned their sin, and he made them aware of it, he still loved them in a way that could only come from God himself.
Some christians tend to judge, name call and push people to hell ourselves more then we actually benefit from it. Quoting scriptures in support of our position without even having a grasp on the basic of what those scriptures really means. Seeking to hold fast to traditionalism and legality that binds, they attack all that compromise those same things.
Its a shame really. It is this that turns so many from christ. It is amazing to me why someone would think why calling a woman a slut and prostitute while they enter a planned parenthood would save them. There is a big difference between loving someone and showing them what sin is and what the cure to it is; and telling them with anger to burn in hell. It is no question why the Christian church has got such a crap reptuation.
“I love you God but save me from your people.”
“I have no problems with God, its His fan club that bothers me”
Ministry dream returns
Its been a long time since I’ve considered being in ministry a life goal. It has been on the back burner for a long time. Various reasons but mostly God wanted it there. But God has really been putting the burden and desire for it on my heart lately. I know he called me to it, have known for a long time. But I had to learn some things that I need to learn.
Its just funny really. I’ve not even considered it for so long. But I see a need, God’s laid in me a burden and the more I pray about the bigger the burden. Its no secret I don’t see eye to eye with the traditional church now days. The heath and wealth teaching is one of the worst things to happen to the church. The belief that the closer you get to God the less trials and struggles you’ll have when in reality it is the opposite. I only give Paul and the apostles’ lives as examples but in short God uses trails and struggles to teach us and mold us in His image. But this teaching turns so many away from the church.
Aside from that there is the traditional structure of a church that does little more but place the focus for one’s walk on a pastor rather then on the individual. In many church the pastor controls the direction for the members walks in the church. When in reality its God and the Holy Spirit that should be. But the biggest fault of the church model today is the complete lack of community. Real community. People attend and share little of there lives with those around them. They don’t see them, they are not like family, or very rarely are. Its a shame. I read the church in the first chapters of Acts and I am moved to tears at the thought of being in a church like that, one that meets daily, encourging daily and your neighbor’s concerns were yours as well.. I hope to be in a church like that someday. I hope to lead a church like that someday.
Remembrance and Restoration.
I remember when I first gave God control of my life. When I made Him my Lord, not just my savior. I remember how every breath was an adventure and on my tounge were his praises always. I remember where walking outside, talking with God was an adventure that I longed for. I remember when I had friends who loveded God as much as I do. I remember sharing God with them. I remember them walking away from God and from me more then once. Coming back, but bitterly and judging me without knowing what I think, assuming things they ought not of me.
I remember what it was like to have friends I could count on. To have people that thought about more then what they can get from me or argue with me about. Thank God for my wife who still is everything great about every Relationship I ever had and more. She is God’s love personified for me. Thank God though that while your friends my go astray and turn from you, God will not.
What I want now is for the restoration of my relationship with God. To stop having the relationship of a distant onesided speach and start having an interactive relationship with God where He talks to me. I’ve been reading Nehemiah lately. God, even back then, was about restoring.
…If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.
Nehemiah 1:8-9
I find it amazing that even after Israel was scattered then that He sought to restorm them. God is about love. True love. He seeks to restore us. He seeks to find us.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.
Jeremiah 29:11-14
God Desires to restore us bring us back from the things and places which drove us from Him. So often we want life on our own terms. So often we want life to be about us and our desires. We think “If there is a God, and He is love, then he wouldn’t send me to hell.” But we neglect the truth of His word, seeking only to bring about fleshy justification for ouselves. Life begins to bring us down and an overall emptiness prevails. God is the missing component. I don’t claim that walk with God is easy, it isn’t, you need staying power, you need to endure trials, sufferings and even persecution for his name sake but in the end, he is there and the emptiness isn’t. Why so few people, especially Chrisitians, neglect to seek true relationship with God is beyond my comprehention.
The past, and the walk ahead
I turn 30 next month and every day I get closer to that, is a day where I examine my life till this point. No its not a crisis. I don’t mind turning 30, its just hard to believe I am 30. I don’t feel 30, I feel 18, I feel like I just graduated high school. I feel strange that way. Its funny when your concerns turn from finding a job you like to finding a job that gives you good healthcare. Where you have to start putting money into a 401k to provide for the future.
Hindsight is always 20/20 vision and it becomes easy to pick at the decisions you made in the past. Its a trap, you get thinking about what you did and who you were and you consider “if only I knew then.” Somethings we’ve done in the past still hold us in remorse for things we have done. It is in those things we must be careful to keep ourselves on track with where we are heading today. Diversionary tactics in combat have always been a key move in setting an enemy off kilter. Setting there defenses against a perceived target while the enemey slips in the back. Sometimes remorse over our past is just that, a diversion. A foothold to set our minds off the task at hand and onto the tasks gone by. To concentrate on our failures and stay in a continued state of remose over something you’ve repented of, and forgiven of is not wise. It pulls your defenses away and takes your focus off of following the path God set before you for today. So if the past bites back, set it to rest in God’s hands, and look to the path ahead. Always be wary of something that turns your focus from God and his will.
Choices
Its funny about life and choices. I think back 10 years and look at the choices I made then. Wondering where they’d take me and where I thought I’d be in 10 years. Working in front of a computer was the last thing I wanted or saw myself doing. But going hand in hand with that is the willingness to do what you have to do to get the job done.
So I’ve come to the realization that hard work, choices and callings are all dependent on eachother, at least when it comes to walking with God. God called me to the ministry, I chose to accept the calling but in many ways I didn’t work toward it. The older I get the more I relize that dreams are things that require commitment, hard work, and dedication to achieve. Words easily agreed with but somewhat harder to comprehend. James 2 talks about faith and works. It goes on to elaborate that faith is not complete without action. So If I have faith that God calls me to ministry, but take no action in that, I trully don’t have faith in it, at least not a complete faith. And like a incomplete care, incomplete faith won’t take you far.
