spiritual stuff

This is kind of heavy stuff for a Friday afternoon but I just can’t get these verses out of my head.  I shared them with our small group last week and it wasn’t enough to get it off my heart.  I was shuffling through my Bible last week looking for something and ended up on 1 Corinthians 5.  It’s kind of long so I’ll let you link over there to read it.

But basically Paul is writing to the church where there has been some unrepentant and blatant sexual sin in the church and no one is doing anything about it.  In fact, they’re kind of proud of it.  And Paul basically says “What the heck are you doing?  Throw the guy out of the church!  I’ve told you before not to associate with sexually immoral people!”  And I think so many Christians stop reading there.  And that’s how many get their stance where they need to keep sinners out of the church and at arm’s length in general.  They’re bad yeast!  They’re going to ruin us all!

But I love what Paul does next.  He says, “I know I said not to associate with sexually immoral people but I wasn’t talking about people of this world!  In that case, you’d have to leave this world!”  That line cracks me up!  He’s giving a big DUH to the church.  He’s saying of course I don’t mean not to associate with unbelievers/non-Christians who sin.  That’s impossible!  You’d have to fly right out of here to accomplish that.  But he does say, don’t associate with Christians who are living a life of sin!  Oh yes, he says if that person calls himself a Christ follower and they are sexually immoral or greedy, an idolator or slanderer or drunkard or swindler, don’t even EAT with them.  Bottom line, they’re hypocrites. So here it seems Paul is saying it’s better to associate with the non-Christian than the Christian!  In fact, he says of the non-Christians, who am I to judge them?  They’re sinners.  They’re going to sin.  God will judge them.  Not me.  Not you.  If someone doesn’t profess Christ, quit expecting them to act like it.

I don’t know about you, but this makes me start asking a lot of questions, just a few of which are:

What do I do with the Christian friend that isn’t acting like it?  Where does grace end and truth start?  To what level am I responsible for them?

How do I change my views of attendants at church? Or those that don’t attend church?  Or those that shouldn’t?  Man, that’s a tough question.  Paul is so clear but that concept is so foreign to me!

Or more important, in what ways could I be accused of being a hypocrite?

I don’t know if I have answers yet but the verses and questions are burrowing way down deep.

Have opinions?  I’d love to hear them.

Another long one!  Sorry!  I debated even posting this but I figure if I’m open enough to say I’ve got questions, I ought to post any answers I feel like I have.  I’m never saying I’m 100% right, just explaining what I feel like I understand right now.

Nearly two months ago I blogged about some doubts I had about prayer, predestination and free will.  As I said, I prayed about it which is weird I know.  How can you pray about whether prayer works or not?  But I did.  Here were the pieces to the puzzle I knew:

• We’re told to pray
• Jesus prayed
• I’ve seen prayers being answered
• I believe I have free will
• I believe God is omniscient meaning he knows the past, present and future

For some reason, though, I could not put the pieces together.  As I blogged before, if he knows the future, how is it free will and if I don’t have free will and everything is set, what’s the point of praying?

[Read more…] about Bowing My Head

Picture courtesy of Pete’s blog

So this is going to be a  long post.  It was only 9 hours of a conference, but it’s taken a few days to process.  I’m still processing to be honest.  In some ways, this conference was just a continuation of the changes that have been rumbling inside me, specifically surrounding the church. But in others, I was still challenged about my responsibilities as a church member and views of church in general.  They say it was meant for church pastors but I say if every church member could hear it, a true Uprising could start.

How We Got There

To start off with, I wasn’t really supposed to be at this conference.  Many people, even those at the conference, continued to ask what this thing was and why were we going?  A few months ago, Pete Wilson gave away a few set of tickets and I blindly signed up, seeing that he and Perry Noble were speaking.  That was enough to know whatever it was about it couldn’t be too bad.  Come to find out it was geared for pastors and leaders.  But as I expected, we didn’t walk away empty handed.

[Read more…] about The Uprising 2010

I know it doesn’t mean much to have Sunday Highlights on Monday but I was at home for all of 1 hour yesterday and just didn’t get it done.  It was a great service though and I don’t want to skip it so here we go.

Many of us view Jesus as one way to religion, often tacking Him on to our religious beliefs.

Paul was addressing gnostics who tacked on Jesus to their beliefs and says Jesus was “established to be the Son of God by the resurrection”.  The word established comes from herizo, the word we get horizon from.  It’s like the line that separates the sky and land.  Jesus draws a line in time by the resurrection.  He’s on one side and everything else is on the other.  Which side are you on? 

A Risen Jesus Changes Everything

A dead Jesus

1. Doesn’t have a story to tell.  Nothing significant.
2. Means Christians are slanderers against whatever God there is.
3. We are still guilty and everyone will be punished.
4. v9 says we should be pitied.  He’s not worth living for.
5. And certainly not worth dying for.

Risen Jesus becomes

1. A story you want to tell
2. Gives everything meaning and purpose
3. Deals with our sin
4. Offers us hope
5. Making life worth living
6. Takes fear out of dying

Question is are we alive?  How has he changed us/ 

If your life or beliefs contradicts Jesus, you have to change.  Stop tacking Him on to your life and let Him change everything.  Get on his side of the herizo.