Desire To Live

So someone got shot at my work yesterday. A 19-year old African-American male got shot in his arm when he left the arcade I work at. It happened in the parking lot. The gunman shot approximately 5-6 rounds. Only one bullet hit the victim. He was OK. It was an exhilarating 60 minutes at my work. So, I enjoy working there. Why you may ask? Because it keeps life in a real perspective for me. I get to socialize with people that get in real fights, have real abortions, and praise God when they experience life for real.

Sometimes I wonder if the churches we go to are real enough or not. Think about it. How real is your church? Does the church as a community live to save sinners from the world or do they live to make themselves as comfortable as possible? I've had the opportunity to share the gospel with many young adults at my work. They usually don't care about what I tell them right away. But, then something happens. A personal crisis, a relationship break-up, a financial problem, or they start fearing of what's after life because someone got shot at their work. After these events, they suddenly are open to a gospel they didn't much care about or are persuaded from previous testimony that this is truth. The incident itself does not bring their salvation, but God who justifies the ungodly. There is a godly grief, a desire to fully know God and his character. I saw this in one of the young African-American guys I've been sharing the gospel with. He had started reading his Bible for the first time the night before. He had brought his Bible with him to work for some odd reason. He was reading it at work after this shooting incident. Praise be to God that someone got shot because it may be a catalyst to save one lost soul.


2Co 7:10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

This is an adaptation from an article from the Harvard Business Review about the three strengths that can be weaknesses for entrepreneurs. I am going to try to connect these three points to church planting, building a ministry, etc.

1. Persistence - A willingness to persevere is a great gift. Patience is definitely a virtue. We as Christians are called to persevere with the Church, persevere with our spouse, persevere with our salvation, and persevere in tough times, etc. However, perseverance can sometimes lead to stubbornness. When a desire to keep the same path overtakes the desire for maintaining truth, then it is time to give up your position. It is better to say you are wrong about a certain position and try to find a better position rather than stay the course and lose it all at the end.

2. Control - Early on in building a team, starting a church plant, or opening a business, you should try to control all the aspects of the operation. After all, someone needs to do all the hard work and it is your operation after all. However, after you develop the team, it is time to empower people with duties and responsibilities and it is time to delegate. As my pastor would say, it is time to stop micro-shepherding. Being a maniac about every detail is only going to frustrate your subordinates and it will be very counterproductive. You can see this evident in Christ's life. He came to shepherd his flock. First, he chose his disciples and went around preaching, but then you see him delegating his tasks to his disciples and empowering them with the Holy Spirit(gifts) so that they can continue to do the work even though he is not physically around. Of course they don't do it as perfectly as they should, but more work gets done in the long run.

3. Loyalty - Loyal friendships and close ties are essential to getting good results. In fact, it is one of the most desired traits in people joining up any kind of an operation. Especially in a church plant, loyalty is very key for it to develop and maintain as a whole. However, sometimes loyalty can cloud leaders' judgments. Whether it is to assess people with gifts they don't have or to give them a responsibility they cannot handle. Sometimes their opinions can also cloud your decision-making. It is the goal of a leader to assess each individual to see what gifts they possess and empower them to grow in those areas and not be blinded by loyalty.

The first two sermons from The Church In Dekalb. Pastor James Page. Check them out:



Kingdom of God is At Hand
Mark 1:14-15

If I had a million dollars...
     I would buy 20,000 birds and release them one by one
If I had a million dollars...
     I would buy a large enough cannon to shoot me to the sun
If I had a million dollars...
     I would build the tallest and scariest roller coasters
If I had a million dollars...
     I would dry my tears after I wet a million posters
If I had a million dollars...
     I would have the largest fireworks show ever
If I had a million dollars...
     I would never want to see you again, no never 

1 Timothy 6:10

Freedom
1 Corinthians 6 says that all things are lawful as long you do it in moderation. 1 Timothy 4 says that all things God created is good if it is received with thanksgiving and prayer. Jesus says in Mark 7 states that it's not what goes into a man that makes him unclean but the evil that comes out from his heart that makes him unclean. Looking at these passages, I can try to understand the freedom we have in Christ. A little while ago I was told by someone interested in the Hookah study that they heard from someone else that it was a slacker Bible Study. Their source told them that we just hang out and smoke the hookah, and try to revolve a Bible study around that. I was confused as to why other Christians said stuff like this. Anyone who has ever come to a Hookah study knows that I spend hours on end to prepare for the Bible study and make it so that it is challenging to mature believers yet simple to newcomers and even appealing to non-christians. Most of us don't even smoke the hookah. I always told people that the Hookah study isn't for everybody, likewise a small group isn't for everybody either. But, I get concerned when people start gossiping about other Christians and how they want to get to know God. With that said, Paul says in Romans 14 that it is good not to eat meat or to drink wine which will cause your brother to stumble. We have to be careful and take that as a warning in not going overboard with anything. I have been trying to learn how to do this: have the freedom yet be reserved to not cause a brother to stumble. The answer comes in Romans 14:6,"...The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God." And correlating that passage with the 2Tim. passage, it can be seen that if we do something with thanksgiving and prayer and to honor God and not our self, we do it the right way.

Hypocricy
This brings us to hypocricy. I have seen so many friends who reject God because of the hypocricy that they saw within Christian circles. I personally couldn't stand Christianity at one point because of Christians saying one thing and then doing another. One of the strongest passages in the Bible is when Jesus taught saying that we should not look at the speck in another person's eye when we have a log in our own eye. Matthew 7:5, "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." He calls these people hypocrites because they were too busy trying to fix everyone else before they fixed themselves. I heard a message reently in which the pastor said that we have to first be focused on changing ourselves, then on having an impact on our family, then our church (brothers and sisters in Christ), and then our land (mission field). We can't skip step 1 and go straight to step 3 or step 4 because that will bring out our hypocricy. Most of all, let God be the one guiding us, not our own motives.

Love
Jesus tells us that the most important thing to remember is to love God and then to love everybody else. God is love. So whenever we show love to others, we display God. That is why it should be easier to talk to your friends about Christ. If someone loves you, they will love what you love. Love God and love them and they will reciprocate. I believe that if you love someone, you should love them 'til the end, because love is everlasting. So, I get peeved when I hear people say that they were in love with someone, but now aren't. There are three types of love: unconditional love, brotherly love, and romantic love. Love God unconditionally, love your family and friends with a brotherly love, and love your wife romantically. If you love more than one person romantically, ever, that's not true love because you are deviating from God's master plan for marriage. It might seem like love but it is just your lusts and passions getting in the way. Physical love before marriage always screws up the relationship. Take a lesson from Amnon and Tamar. He loved her but after he lay with her, he hated her more than he used to love her.

The next few days will be mighty hard to blog with my schedule so I will resume my blog on pastoral adultery when i return in a few days. For the mean time... I was looking over some past journaling and I came across someone asking me the question. "Why are you a Christian?" These following posts are my reply. I wrote this back in 2005, less than 2 years after I became a Christian.

Sin
I look at my life like a wall, where you can hang pictures and paint and such. After a while the wall starts having nail holes everywhere and is useless for future decorations. But, to me, the death and resurrection of Jesus signified a rebirth or washing, which made that wall new again. Jesus is the artist. He cleans up the mess every time. I feel very lucky that I found such a great friend to do that for me, as a free gift. And a good thing too, because God says that if I even have one hole in my wall, I won't be used for his work. That wall will be used to demonstrate God's glory, his work of art, and you better believe he won't start with a bad "canvas."

Religion
I'm not a big fan of religion. People who are Christians are people who believe in Christ's teaching, and follow what he says. So if someone asks me what religion I am, I tell them Christian. I have no shame in that. But, when that statement is followed by asking what denomination I am, I usually give a sigh. Why? well, I think everyone has to be a Christian on their own. Noone will be able to take you to heaven with them. I don't want to leave my eternal life in the hands of a denomination. My denomination is reading my Bible. Because after all, a denomination is just a group telling you what you should believe based on their interpretations of the Bible. And, since we're lazy, and don't want to, or don't make the time to read the Bible and learn for ourselves, we join a denomination (not that it is bad to join one, but them being your sole bible interpreters is bad). You can certainly still go to a certain denominational church, but your view should be different, even if it is very little, from the denominational view that reared you. Why? because no denomination has it all right and I want to try to get as close to the truth as possible. 

Isaiah 40:3 A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Mat 3:1-3 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.'"

John 1:14,15 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'")

The prophet Isaiah is clear that the one preparing the way for the Lord is John the baptist. John the baptist prepares the way for Jesus. John the baptist is either preparing the way for one God or he is preparing the way for multiple gods not mentioned in Scripture. If therefore we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture and also that God is one, Jesus must be God.

So I know, I like to make fun of Joel Osteen. Yes, he's got horrible theology and sometimes he just outrightly makes me laugh out loud at the things he says. He's not a perfect man, and neither are we, so we shuld pray for him. I was just noticing his book titles and I can already see the progress. His first book was titled, "Your Best Life Now" and his second book is title, "Become a Better You." How can you become better if you already were the best? I see a downsizing in his view of self in relation to God. The following are just optimistic guesses on how he could progress on this view of God and also on his future book titles.

His first book title: "Your Best Life Now: 7 steps to living at your full potential"
His second book title: "Become a Better you: 7 keys to improving your life every day"

Suggested third book title: "You can do OK: 7 goals to stay exactly where you're at"
Suggested fourth book: "You're not all that bad: 7 methods to not get worse"
Suggested fifth book: "Being positively bad: 7 models of good and bad people"
Suggested sixth book: "You are totally depraved: 7 ways I've been wrong about God"