I haven’t been posting lately because….
Oh well, I don’t have a good reason. I’ll get busy, finish writing something I started a while back, post some sermons, post some videos and then maybe all of you will get off my back.
What? You didn’t remember I had a blog??? I am so insulted. 🙂
We use words like, “Justification,” “Atonement,” “Salvation.”
They are big, Christian words to say God isn’t angry with us.
Why would God be angry with us?
We know. Don’t we?
If we say, “Sin.” We are right. We are theological, but we are right. Sin is violating God’s Law. Sin is falling short of righteousness.
That sounds so good to me. “Sin” sounds like, “Gosh, I tried really hard, but I made some mistakes.” “Sin” sounds like, “No one can really make it, so whoops, neither did I.”
Sin is not that neat. It is not that sterile.
God created us. He infused us with His image. God loves us. He calls us His children. He calls us His Bride. He calls us His beloved.
But we betrayed Him. We loved everything more than we loved God. We loved our passion. We loved our stuff. We loved our ideas. We loved our own ways more than we loved God.
Betrayal. That is what sin is. It is not a theological problem, it is a relational one. That is why sin is so difficult to overcome. Betrayal is why forgiveness is so costly.
Though we betrayed God, He pursued us. God became a man to demonstrate His continued love for us–He is not angry. At great cost, God sought to re-establish His connection with us. He came to pay the price of reconciliation—the price was blood. His.
I love this video. We did it as a concept to show that we are not supposed to do life alone. It went really well.
I liked it so much, I worked to get it back to the format it was supposed to be in the first place–16:9. So this is how it was supposed to be framed.
We did a bunch of interviews with people about our small groups. Here is what we did with them…
I got a little behind in posting these, but I didn’t get behind in preaching them. 🙂
Mirror, Mirror The first one is called “Mirror, Mirror” and is a reflection (ha) on how we demand things from God and each other but really don’t care what response we get because we have already made up our minds. This sermon went entirely ok. I thought the idea was good, but there was a whole section in the middle that could have been dropped. I would give it a B. Maybe a B-.
Remembering Bread The second one, preached today is called, “Remembering Bread.” It encourages us to take time to remember what God has done for us so we can face what is currently unfolding in our lives. This sermon went well. I give it an A. 🙂
So, if you are keeping track, that is a 3.3 gap the last two weeks.
This is our latest Small Group promo video. We showed it this morning at church. We had a blast shooting it….
Hope you like it!
Yesterday, Karis, my eldest daughter, turned 17. It makes me feel like I am getting old. It sent my mind racing.
Some days it seems like the day will never end. Time creeps by slowly. But it does end. Some weeks are like that. Monday and Friday are an eternity apart. We have had months that the budget made the month seem far too long. Years seem to drag.
But 17 years later, it is all a blur. 21 years of marriage has been like that. Come to think of it 42 years of life have been that way.
When we are right there, sometimes time stands still. But when we get a little perspective, it has moved quickly. Imagine what the perspective looks like if it is taken larger still? Perhaps a thousand years look like a day.
I don’t know how to get in my head that our time in flesh is short. It goes by in the blink of an eye. I want to enjoy every single moment of my life, but I am recognizing those moments are frightfully few.
May we make the moments we do have glorify God—the God who has the perspective of the Ancient of Days—the God for whom 17 years is nothing, 42 years is nothing, 1000 years is nothing. May THAT God be glorified by our moments.
I am not a scientist. I am a theologian.
I was watching a scientist on YouTube railing against pseudoscience. By “Pseudoscience,” I mean the stuff people try to pass as science that is nothing of the kind. Like people who talk about the “proof” aliens are among us, stories of Bigfoot tramping through the forest, miracle cures made from bee toe jam, etc.
Then he began to talk about Christians. He ripped through, “Creation Science,” miracles, prayer and many of the things we hold dear. I was ticked.
But the truth is, he was right.
He had apparently been listening to Christians trying to talk science from the Bible. He had heard people explain the mechanics of miracle. He had read people who explained how to work prayer. He rightly called it pseudoscience.
We believe the Bible to be God’s revelation to us and we believe it to be true. It is the paradigm with which we view the world. It is not, however, science.
Christianity does not explain how the world works. It doesn’t give secrets that unlock astronomy or hidden insights into nuclear medicine. It doesn’t do science. It doesn’t even try. When we push it into the realm of science, we take it where it does not belong.
This scientist went on to wax eloquent about the meaning of life. He talked about how life all just winds down and there is nothing more to it than biology. There is no God and there is no meaning to any of it. I was ticked again.
Christians may be guilty of pseudoscience, but he was guilty of pseudotheology.
I ought not attempt to make the Bible try to explain science. I am not a scientist. He ought not try and make test tubes explain theology. He is not a theologian. His test tubes say as little about God as the Bible does about quantum physics.
Christianity is not science. Christianity is faith in God. Science is not theology. Science discovers how things work. Faith gives life meaning. I trust science to tell me about plants, rocks, space and biology. I trust God to give meaning to all the things science explains.
My soul craves purpose, which is why I am a theologian, not a scientist.
My previous post included a new video Steve and I just completed.
Steve and I have NO, ZERO, NADA real video experience. So when he and I agreed to do our video curriculum for our small groups, we were headed into uncharted territory. Whether we could do it or not was up in the air.
I went to a minister’s meeting a few months ago and met a guy named Dave who does video work for his church and for ministries around the country. He offered to tutor us on videography. We took him up on it.
A few weeks later we visited to get an idea of the equipment we would need and what was involved in the whole process. We were overwhelmed.
On Monday, we packed up all our equipment and went to see Dave again. He gave us a crash course on the operation of our camera. He sent us out and asked us to send him our video. We did.
I just got his evaluation. He liked it. 🙂 He had some hard words on a few things, but the vast majority of the evaluation was good–great, actually. But, he liked it.
Happy dance.
At church we are changing how we do our small groups. Each week, Steve (our worship pastor) and I are writing, shooting, editing and publishing a video based on the content of the sermon.
It will be ambitious. No doubt. This week, Steve and I did a test video. Let me know what you think.
Here is the sermon that was preached in conjunction with the video.
and… the video!
