Why do I keep doing this to myself? – 11/29/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

 

Have you ever asked yourself, "Why do I keep doing this to myself?"  Whether you wake up in the morning with a raging hangover and suffer the headache, you always seem to overdraw your bank account and incur the unnecessary fees, or you find yourself with the wrong guy or gal 'yet again' and suffering heartache; you recognize your pattern of self-harm and wonder why you keep doing this to yourself.

Is it even possible to break the pattern that you seem to be stuck in?

I've been there.  Actually I'm there a lot. Many years ago it was one self-destructive pattern after another and today it's still another.  I used to think it was just a matter of repenting from my sin and by sheer force of will (which I did/do not have) stop doing that thing that I do; but not anymore.  Today I know that I am helpless to break the harmful patterns of my own will, and I am dependent upon God to break the patterns in me by little individual miraculous interventions.

Here's a dumb one. 

I love donuts.  No seriously, I LOVE them.  My downfall is that I cannot seem to pass them up.  When I go to the grocery store I have to get a Boston Crème and an Apple Fritter, when I pass by the donut shop I have to stop for a Boston Crème and an Apple Fritter, and when I go to the gas station I have to get a, can you guess it? A Raspberry/Creme Cheese Hostess what-ever-you-call-it and a package of powdered donuts.  (What?  Gas stations don't generally have Boston Crèmes and Fritters).  Do you see the pattern and understand the destructiveness of it?  While this is a dumb example I have plenty of serious ones that I'm not willing to share in this post - but I assure you, they're there.

When I recognize a destructive pattern in my life I generally feel terrible.  I realize I am weak, I'm sinful, I'm useless, I'm a terrible person, I'm not worthy to be loved, and the self-deprecation goes on.  But then, because I am in a relationship with Jesus I begin to hear the words of encouragement from Him that begins to break the spiral of an all-out self-pity loathing session.  Jesus doesn’t argue the fact that I'm all those self-deprecating things because I am,  but rather he lets me see that He loves me and will get me through it (whatever "it" is) anyway. He reminds me that "Yet while I was still a sinner that he died for me."  (Romans 5:8) and that I'm not alone in the battle.  That He can, and does, cause me to see the battle from a different perspective and show me ways of avoiding the dreaded traps that so easily ensnare me.

Does this mean that passing-up the donuts is easy?  No, like I said I LOVE donuts.  But what it does mean is that in my heart of hearts Jesus shows me the escape hatches and gives me a real option for a new choice so I don't have to keep asking myself "why do I keep doing myself?"

If you find yourself asking that question of yourself and need some help with your relationship with Jesus, please call on me, I would love to introduce you to the one who loves you more than you actually love yourself.  

Best!

It’s Tradition! - 9/2/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

Mark 7:3-9

³ (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. ⁴ When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.)

⁵ So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

⁶ He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁷ They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’

⁸ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”

⁹ And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!
---

We Love Traditions…
It used to be tradition in our family to “help” babies celebrating their first birthdays to make a mess of their birthday cake (and themselves).  The theory is that a baby left alone with a birthday cake will naturally shove their hands into it (up to their elbows) and plow into it (face-first) as well.  That’s the theory anyway.  However, if a baby in our family ever deviated from the theory then it was expected that somebody would help out by giving baby a little shove on the back of the head sending it face-first into the cake – and that was how a picture perfect moment would be born.

Our lives are filled with traditions, from the simple every-day tradition like which sock we put on first in the morning to the elaborate way in which we celebrate Christmas; then our traditions get more magnified as we add in elements of the spiritual.

Jesus as Tradition…
In many ways, the traditions that we have in our times of the worship of Jesus are not problematic.  Our methods and customs in worship are comforting as we actually need familiarity.  Have you ever noticed that you like songs at church that you actually know and sung in a way that you can sing with?  I actually believe that many of our traditions are good as they help us to worship.  However, there is also a limit to the worth of our religious traditions.

In the American culture, Jesus has become a huge tradition.  A majority of America claims to be Christian because they “believe” in Jesus but few would admit to being a “devout” Christ follower.  This culture of Jesus tradition makes us sort of stupid at times as we claim to be subservient to God in Christ but we create all sorts of dumb stuff to burden ourselves and loved ones.  Read the scripture above if you don’t know what I mean.  Because of our traditional Jesus culture I have a motto that states, “Jesus is not as petty as we are."  Seriously, think about the things that you do in your religious life and ask if what you do actually matters to Jesus who sacrificed his life for you.

The main problem that I see with our Jesus tradition is that our personal worldly traditions easily bleed over into our spiritual practices - and we call this“right”.  In our culture we place a very high value on self –reliance and working hard.  These qualities I agree with because they are great qualities.  The problem is that these qualities fail at the Cross.

The Cross is NOT Traditional…
In our culture, we wear crosses around our necks as adornments.  However, the Cross is the exact opposite of what we value as humans.  We value self-reliance and hard work but the Cross of Jesus demands dependence and trust in someone else, leaving us dependent and vulnerable. 
 
In the realm of spirituality, we largely depend on ourselves so that we will be acceptable to God.  We assess ourselves about how good we have been, or how well we have followed the rules, or how much money or time we have given.  And in these self-assessments we deem ourselves as acceptable to God or not.  And all the while the Cross communicates that your deeds and actions will never be acceptable
.
Romans 5:8
⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus went to the cross for one reason and one reason only, because YOU were not able.  In the grand scheme of things you were subject to the wrath of God.  As the offspring of Adam, you are under the curse of sin and death.  As the idiom goes, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” and in this case you were as much under the curse of Sin and Death as our grand sire Adam.  The Cross proclaims that you are not self-reliant but totally-dependent as it calls us to give-up our self-reliance and trust in the death of a man who claimed to be God.

It is traditional to believe that somehow you can be good enough to please a Holy God when the reality is that you cannot.  The very idea proves that you need to get a proper understanding of what the Holy is.  The Cross of Jesus is an affront to human sensibilities of pride and work-ethic and doesn’t really make sense to us.  But it is in the non-tradition of it that we find acceptance by a Holy God.

The Peace that Passes all Understanding…

When Jesus hung on the cross, he held our sins and died because of them.  With his blood he gave to God the death required because of Adam's sin and that blood covered over our sins.  Now God calls that sin "justified" which is a term that simply means that the price has been paid and the debt is retired.  (This really is the ultimate of mortgage burning parties.)

When you and I go to the non-traditional Cross of Jesus, we must humbly repent and trust Jesus with our sins and then accept from him righteousness, and this is the justification of our sins.  This is the method of the nontraditional cross and this is the only way of salvation and peace with a Holy God.

Romans 8:1-2

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

When we have accepted Jesus as the Cross demands, we are no longer subject to God’s condemnation of sin because in Jesus we are given new life – the old has truly gone and the new has indeed come.

As we live our new lives of faith in Jesus we no longer live according to the traditions of men but we live completely dependent upon Jesus.  We live by faith alone in him, and that is the most difficult tradition of all.

What Have You Done? - 7/19/2018

WARNING PREACHY

 

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
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The other day a gentleman was talking to me about how he could not believe that Jesus could forgive him his sins; he kept telling me that “You don’t know what I’ve done.”  He then proceeded to recite for me a laundry list of his offences and evil deeds from his 60 years of life.

After listening to him I said, “You’ve done a great job telling me what it is that you have done but you’ve told me nothing of what Jesus has done.  When you stop focusing on yourself and begin to focus on Jesus, then you may well learn to trust him and believe that you are indeed forgiven.”

I believe this sentiment is for us Christians as well.

It is too often that I have been in church during the time of Communion only to have the minister lead the congregation to focus on their personal sins.  The mood is generally somber and reflective as we congregants are urged to feel the sorrow of our deeds that covered Jesus upon his cross.  I however think that this might be wrong; I think that when we Christians share the Cup that we should be focusing on and rejoicing in all that Jesus has done instead of belly-aching over what exactly we have done.  By faith we are redeemed by the blood of the lamb and in that reality we must give thanks and celebrate!  To do anything less seems to not trust our Lord when He tells us that we are a New Creations.

I think we all have a tendency to think too much about what we have done and not enough time thinking about what Jesus did.

---
Romans 5:8

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Eternity and Cremation - 11/20/2016

WARNING PREACHY…

I shouldn’t be writing this right now, I just drank a bottle of wine.  Ok, not really a bottle, my wife nursed a half-glass.  It wasn’t anywhere near 11% ABV or I would have went to sleep a half bottle ago, but I’m relaxed enough to not care if anyone knows that I’ve been imbibing.

I did a funeral today.  It was my first Romanian Orthodox funeral.  They called on me because the woman was cremated, and so her Romanian Orthodox church would not do her funeral.  It was fun because I got to do the service of the Colac bread before the memorial meal.  It was a nice ceremony but I’m off point.

The point I am trying to make is that there is not a problem about being cremated.  I am positive that those who disagree with me will supply a number of bible passages that prove otherwise, so I will provide my reasoning and let you decide.

Jesus died on the Cross for us while we were yet sinners.  (Romans 5:8)

This means Jesus died for us…  He took the shame of the Cross upon Himself, for you and me, and He had nails pounded into His hands or wrists and feet, voluntarily, in order to set us free from the curse of sin and death.  But since He did this I do not now believe that He has become so particular that the remains of our earthly bodies’ actually matter. 

When He died for us, He died while we were in a state of unrepentant sin.  We were actively in the hood or in the bar and living our lives ignorant and separate of Him.  We were looking at the stars and our horoscopes expecting the world to work according to common knowledge of the pagan traditions and the ruler of the air.  But Jesus went to the Cross, in order to redeem us all from the death and sin that originally separated us from our Creator.

God went to great lengths to set us free, even sacrificing His own Son, Himself Emmanuel, on the Cross.

And since He did this, are we now to believe that He would be so petty as to reject those of us who have been cremated?  That everyone who has ever been lost at sea, everyone who did not get out of the burning home in time, and everyone who has been destroyed in the myriad of other human tragedies is now rejected by the blood that Jesus shed in order to redeem mankind?

Some may decide that God really is that petty, but I cannot believe that this is true.  I cannot believe for a moment that the sacrifice of Jesus, and the shedding of His blood, is not so eternal that it doesn't overcomes every human tragedy and instance of human destruction.

The blood of Jesus covers over the spiritual sin of mankind, and so it also must cover the entire physical tragedy of humanity as well.  The tipping point for me is the question between the power of the blood vs the power of this physical realm.

I guess the point is that I am confident in the blood and not the doctrines of men.  And I would encourage you to know the Savior who died, was buried, and resurrected from the grave, so that you may have His confidence as well. 

I could be wrong in this, but I am at total peace having hope in the blood that my Savior so graciously shed for me.