Entries Tagged 'God Type Things' ↓

So tonight in our small group it was my turn to share some of my spiritual journey. As I’ve been doing my mental preparation for it over the last couple of weeks I’ve been looking at things from my past with my present-day glasses on.

The more I looked at a situation from 15+ years ago I recognized similarities in some present-day situations. Talk about an eye-opening realization. For someone who likes to know things, and have answers for even the most obscure questions, I have no answers, but I have a bunch of my own questions.

Disclaimer: These are honest questions. I do not intend to question anyone’s service to the church. These questions come from a desire to understand.

The biggest question in my mind right now is what does “worship” really mean? What does it look like? I know what Google says worship is, but those are just words. I know I experienced it this morning when Julie Anderson led us in song during Open Worship. The problem was that I was so excited to sense and recognize the worship happening that I almost missed participating in it. I’m silly.

The second big question, which is a follow-up to the first, is what is the point to church? Why is it that we get together for the “worship service” every week? Is it bad that I believe the purpose of the worship service is not to make me feel good, and get me energized to go out and face the “evils” that the week is going to throw at me? If it’s called a worship service, why is it used for teaching? I don’t know if I’ve ever felt worshipful listening to a sermon. Teaching and preaching is important, don’t get me wrong, but why do we treat the 30-45 minutes singing spent on Sunday morning as sufficient? Is singing the only “acceptable” way to worship?

I’m not trying to say that God does not respond during worship, and you should leave church feeling empty. What I’m saying is why do we expect the act of going to church to be for our benefit? Are we so consumeristic that we look for what we can take away from our time in the pews rather than focusing on being in the presence of the almighty God? On the flip-side, we can’t be so complacent that we don’t recognize when God responds to us. So where’s the point of balance?

See, I just have questions.

Back when I was growing up, I got into trouble on more than one occasion. It could be something like not turning in a school project. After the error had been discovered by my parents, we would have the “talk.” This usually went something like this.

“Jason, you [insert screwup here]. What are you going to do in the future to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

“I’m not going to [insert my solution of what I won't do].”

“I don’t want to hear what you won’t do. Tell me what you will do.”

My parents used to share stories about me in sermons or lectures, but I just used a story about them in my blog. It’s about time I got some payback (and I’m not going to pay you $.25 for it either :-)).

The generic Christian mindset today is all about what we “shouldn’t” do. “I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I won’t aknowledge that people do this, and I certainly can’t associate with these people.”  This mindset is similar to that of the religious leaders of Christ’s time.  When Christ was on earth he didn’t act or speak in this negative fashion. He spent time with the “wrong” people. He was all about having that personal relationship, not about telling people what they were doing wrong. Now the caveat to that is that he did chastise the religious leaders for their sins, because they should have known better.

I know it sounds kinda cliche and cheesy, but I wish to be more Christlike.  I don’t want to be more modern-day Christian, I want to have an authentic Christlike-ness.  I want to be in intentional relationships with people I come into contact with.  I want to do this without regard for what the “rules” say I should (or shouldn’t) do.  I want to be someone that accepts people wherever they are in life, and whatever their faults and sins might be.
The world doesn’t need anymore of the “I’m right, you’re wrong, and you need to change your ways” religious speak.  Taking your rule book and whacking people upside the head just doesn’t work.  What the world needs is people who are willing to be authentically Christlike, and treat everyone with respect and the love of Christ.  This is what I will strive to be.

A while back in church this video clip was shown. I thought it was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in church ever. So, I asked for a copy of it, and now I am passing it along to you all.

I recently went to the dentist for the first time since the spring of 1998. Yup, that’s 7.5 years. Actually, I’ve gone twice recently. The first trip was my whole mouth evaluation where they took a full set of xrays, plus some other stuff. Then just this last week I went back and had my cleaning done. One thing that was found during my eval that is kinda not good was some leftover bracket adhesive from when I had braces…in 1994!!! Seriously, 11 years later I still had stuff stuck on #13 — whatever tooth that is, all I know is that it was on the upper left. Anywho, as I was brushing my teeth the night before my cleaning I was thinking about how it seems that we treat God and the dentist the same.

In the hours/days before you go to the dentist (understand that I’m making some societal assumptions here) you try to clean your teeth as best you can. You brush with a little bit more effort, making sure you get to all of those hard-to-reach places wishing you had a flip-top head. Even though you know it’s the dentist’s job to clean your teeth, you want to have them commend you for doing such a good job keeping your chompers in good health.

When you (again, making societal assumptions) are struggling with sin, depression, trauma, etc. the way that we tend to react is not to approach God with the problem. Rather, we think that if we work a little bit harder, listen to all of the self-help guides, watch all of Dr. Phil’s shows :-), that we can fix the problem and THEN approach God, expecting God to commend us for the Godly life we lead. This is one of my complaints/grips about the way Christianity is portrayed/perceived. The perception I see is that God only loves those who have everything in order, and if I’ve got something “wrong” with me then I need to get it fixed so God will love me. I’m hopeful this portrayal/perception will change.

It’s weird what you think of while your brushing your teeth.

This morning in church Gregg spoke on Colossians 3:12-17. Verse 12 says this:

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

In reference to “patience” Gregg had this to say, “I can’t be patient unless you do something annoying.” The context of that statement is that even in the body of Christ we are not always going to get along; we are not always going to be on the same page. But, when the time comes that I’m annoyed I need to have the patience.

It just made me laugh. I even wrote it down so I could remember it

As a kid you might hear that you are in trouble, in a great class, or in line to get your hair combed for lice by the school nurse. Well, where I (and my wife too) am is this place called escrow. That is right, we are in the process of buying a house. It’s been a long road since we first started looking at houses back in February. When we first started there were a bundle of houses that fit into our price range, but as spring came (and went) then summer came the houses we could afford became fewer and fewer, to where now I don’t think there are any.

Ours is a place in SW Dundee, and we are reciting one of our favorite phrases…we are just “holding it loosely.” This phrase originates with a pastor at church, Steve Fawver. We were in a small group with Steve, and he would suggest that we hold things loosely in regards to plans or expectations of the group. Aj and I have taken this on, in a sense, to the plans and expectations for our lives. Eeven though things continue to progress with the purchase, we are holding the timing and final outcome loosely. Even though we are in escrow, and the outcome seems to be certain, we are trying to be calm about it when the paperwork doesn’t go as quickly as we’d like it to. Even though I’m a pretty laid back guy, I can get frazzled when it comes to the timing of important things. The longer things stretch out the more stressed I become. Hold it loosely, hold it loosely, hold it loosely…and dog-gone-it, people like me!

Well, this will hopefully catch you up on what’s been going on in my world over the last week-and-a-half.

As mentioned here, I was recently in Michigan for a conference. There are portions of the conference that were geared towards me, more of the technical/operations side of things. It was good to hear from the presenters, and to recognize that while we are doing things well there are definitely things that we can improve upon. I’d like to see us take some of our print marketing we do and turn it into some electronic format. That process has already started in a very minor way, but we are a long way off (both in the office and in society) from moving totally away from paper.

For the trip we flew into Chicago, then rented some vans for the drive to western Michigan. When the conference finished on Saturday we drove back to Chicago and saw the sights. We took a ride on the Chicago River (which was very relaxing), strolled along Navy Pier, ate at Giordano’s, and saw the Navy Pier’s fireworks show from the top of the Hancock Tower. While waiting to get into Giordano’s we saw Tim Wakefield and Doug Collins (separately) walking down the street. On Sunday we went to Willow Creek for church. Boy howdy that place is huge, but they have a very effective ministry going on.

Work last week was mostly me trying to get back into the rhythm of being in the office. Lots of stuff going on, so there was no real time to relax.

Found this quiz online which is supposed to rate my “world view”. Some of the questions I didn’t really understand so I just marked the neutral option Well, here is “my world view”:

What is Your World View? (updated)
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