bible

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Questions that might get you lumped

When I noticed the pastor read just 10 verses of scripture before the sermon, I began to question whether us pew warmers were getting the whole story? So I counted up all the scriptures in the Bible, divided by 10 per week and 52 weeks per year and discovered it would take nearly 60 years to read the Bible at that rate. Clearly if I wanted to know what was in the Bible, I’d have to read it for myself. Focusing in on Proverbs, it would take 1 year and 9 months at the 10 verse per week rate; however if we took it one proverb at a time which seems logical since each one is sermon worthy, Proverbs would take 17 and 1/2 years! Similarly, instead of 5 months on Ecclesiastes, it would take 4 years and 3 months. So, if we’re honest about the 10 verse per week approach, most of us would die of old age before we finished the Bible at plodding sermon speed. We might be able to bring it in under 80 years if we droned through all the begats in a single Sunday. That sounds like a good mid-summer sermon when half the congregation is out on vacation.

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Here lies Goliath

My mom, oldest of her siblings, was abandoned after her birth mother had several more children with a different man. Mom was taken in and adopted by an aunt who turned abusive and mom in turn filed for emancipation. With the help of social services, she hoped to make a home with her birth father, an alcoholic, but he refused to give up drinking. Finally, mom moved in with the family of her best girlfriend until she finished high school and married my dad. They were married a few weeks shy of 50 years, the last 3-1/2 dad cared for mom following a crippling stroke. It was during those years mom came to trust in the love dad had for her and rest assured she would never be abandoned again.

So we learn from our parents, right?

Mom and dad raised me to be polite, kind, respectful and Christian. Unfortunately, I was also raised to be insecure and prone to self-blame. Unintended of course, but in a home with such an undercurrent of emotion and me an empath, I learned my self worth hung on the approval and acceptance of others.

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I pledge my head to Christ Jesus

When the Lord prompted us to move to the mid-west from the Seattle area back in 1999, He gave me a dream that I did not understand until after we had left the institutional church the Lord sent us too.

The Dream

I was driving a white 1965 Mercury Monterey convertible with light blue interior. Ahead were the gates of what looked like an old west log fort. The gates swung open and I drove in. The church the Lord sent me to was near the back of the compound. After parking in front of the church, I exited the car and went around to the trunk to collect the gifts I’d brought for the church. From everywhere it seemed, child-like dwarfs emerged and surrounded me. As I began to show the gifts I’d brought, they began snatching them from my hands, treating them with disrespect, grabbing gifts from the trunk and throwing them back after handling them carelessly. Several were letting the air out of the tires and kicking the side panels, while others were jumping up and down on the seats.

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Who Bakes Your Bread

Jesus calls each of us to fellowship with Him because He loves us. He wants to spend time with us and teach us His ways. Getting to know Jesus takes commitment and discipline on our part to spend time with Him daily. But how should we go about getting to know Him?

I once thought knowing Jesus was as simple as reading Christian literature. There is no shortage of Christian devotional and study guides, topical books, and even fiction for entertainment. As if that weren’t enough, there are countless blogs and web sites devoted to spreading the Gospel, and an abundance of subscription services to deliver daily prayers, scriptures, and devotionals directly to my desk top.

But is reading Christian literature and media the best way to get to know Him?

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School of the Holy Spirit

I’ve attended more than a dozen churches in my lifetime. Some of the ministers I met encouraged me to seek God for myself and obey Him without hesitation. Such were the men who led me to Jesus and who married me and my wife. Both remained genuine and loving brothers in Christ who would never come between me and the Lord, except perhaps to stop me from doing something that would harm my relationship with Him. The former was like a 2nd father to me during my teen years, the latter a sweet friend and counselor, who could always be found on Saturday evening standing in the pulpit delivering his Sunday sermon before God and an empty sanctuary. Sadly, some others questioned whether I could really hear God’s voice for myself and insisted I obey them instead. Through them God taught me to stand up for my freedom and to respond like Peter who said: “judge for yourself whether it is right to obey you, or God”.

Examining what it means to be a Free Son takes several forms: identifying ways in which we’re free, and the things that hold us back. Often that means coming to terms with falsehoods we’ve embraced and the people who taught and reinforced them. No one ever said rising from the dead was going to be easy (Luke 9:60, Ephesians 5:14). Imagine Lazarus, passing peacefully in his sleep, only to awaken days later on a cold slab in a dark tomb, tightly bound in linen cloth with 75 pounds of burial spices wrapped up with him (John 19:39-40). However did Lazarus manage to get to his feet and stagger out of the tomb? Likewise, when we awaken from our slumber, how do we come out from under the heavy burdens placed on our shoulders by false teachers and teachings (Matthew 23:4)?

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