Delayed posts

I seriously have been working on several posts for this blog. But I seem to get one typed up, then decided that I don't know if I like the idea any more, etc. My goal for this blog is quality rather than quantity ;-) Anyhow, I'm really sorry for not keeping up with this blog more. I haven't given it up or abandoned it and I will eventually post again. In the mean time, if you have any ideas for any good topic for me to discuss, I'd love to hear them. Please just comment on this post!

But I'm not bad compared to /them/.....

I find myself often comparing what I do to others. Like, 'Oh come on....a movie with a little bit of *insert something inappropriate/immoral here* can't be that bad. Because so and so watches much worse stuff'.

Why do we compare something sinful to other sinners? We are all sinners, so what makes another person right or wrong...or something we can use to judge our actions? Why do we think that comparing something 'less' sinful to something else 'more' sinful (in our book) justifies the sin? Does anyone else ever have this struggle?

Think about this: You'll watch a movie that everyone raves about and there will be a bad scene or some language here and there, but it was a 'good movie'. So you go tell others about it, just mentioning that there are a few bad things in it, but the movie is awesome. But then you go watch it again.... realizing the bad content. But you do nothing about this bad content....you just are reminded that it's sinful every time you watch it. Does this make it suddenly 'ok' to watch? I don't believe so. Some may say "just because I watch a such and such on TV doesn't mean I'm going to go do it myself". And this may be true, in most cases. But, I'm not so sure that God agrees. 'You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' Matthew 5:27-28 We are not immune to what we see. And that is what I believe that Christians often forget or do not realize.

I want to to consider something. Would you be comfortable watching that movie with God sitting next to you? Do you realize that God is always sitting right next to you whenever you do anything? Oh wow, that puts a different angle on it, doesn't it?

I'm just talking about our hearts here, kids. That's it. I'm not talking about a list of dos and don'ts, or rights or wrongs. In the end, God is the one who will judge and we will have to testify for what we have done on this earth. Not for what others have done and how good or bad we were compared to them. So I'm just asking you to consider this. Considered what I've said. I know even I have had a change of heart on a few things since I started writing on this.

1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

Colossians 3:1-8: 1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.

Love

That's right: Love. In honor of Valentines Day which is coming up, I'm going to blog on love. I'm talking about Biblical love, folks =P

I think that when most people are asked what love is, they might say something like: 'It's when you really care about someone', or 'When you always want to be with them' or 'When you feel such and such a way when you're around someone' or there could be a lot of other answers....some of which would not be appropriate for me to post on here =P. But what about what the Bible says about love?

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails....

That's a little bit more than 'caring for someone'. So, I've been thinking. God is love, right? If we are supposed to be a Christ like example and shine his light, then do you think we need to 'live out love'? I think so.

How often to we follow this verse? I can't say that I always do. How often do we 'live out love' to those we do 'love'...like friends and family?

But let's take this a step further. We're supposed to show love to everyone.....even those people who we don't like very much and those random strangers that we pass on the street, or the ones we work with. Note the words 'always' and 'never' in the verse above. Oh...there are no exceptions for 'when someone is not being kind to you' or a 'sometimes' on patience. ;) Also note that in verse 8, it says that love never fails...so it's not optional. We have a big job here.

I'm not going to ramble on and on about the same point like I tend to do. I just want to you think on this point: God commands us to love. According to the biblical definition of love, do we 'live out love'? Do we live it out to everyone and not just the ones we want to love? And for those we know that we do 'love', do we love them biblically or how our world perceives love?

'Live out love' this Valentines Day...biblically ;)

And like always, I'd love to hear other's thoughts on this =)

Preach-O-Rama.....

Both Jason Kovacs and Christopher Blackburn were really good last night. They both did better than I expected. But, Christopher Blackburn's message really perked my interest. So, I'll try to explain what he talked about.

For those who don't know, the 'Preach-O-Rama' is something that my church has done on the past 2 Friday evenings. It's purpose is to hear some young men who will be possibly pursuing full time ministry and it gives the pastors a chance to evaluate their communication skills and possible giftings. But, the biggest reason is just to hear God's word preached =)

Alright, so Christopher Blackburn spoke on Peace. His main verse was Philippians 4:6-7:

6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God,which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.


His first point was the problem. The problem is Anxiety. He described anxiety as: 'a state of restlessness', 'fear of an outcome' and 'a mild case of Atheistisam'. That last one kinda hit me. A mild case of being an atheist....wow. Great point, in my opinion.

His second point was on the solution. the solution is prayer[and supplication]. Oh how true that is. He was saying that prayer is just like a request like if one of his kids comes up to him and asks "Daddy, may I have a glass of milk". Supplication is more of a humble request for something. Like if his son comes up to him 20 years from now and says "Dad, I need $4500 to replace the transmission in my car". He explained that he wouldn't want to just give this to his son at the drop of a hat. He wants his son to humbly show that he needs his father. Because he wants to see is son's problem fixed. This is how it is for God. He wants us to pray with thanksgiving. To demonstrate a faith in what God will do. Because God does want to see his children happy and to help find a solution to their problem.

Note: I do not want this to be confused someone doing 'works' to get God to do something for them. It's more of a faith, believing and showing that you are serious. It's also not to say that God will do it how we are planning on. His plans are far better and may not always be how we are picturing them.

The third point is the promise. Peace. God's personal peace that surpasses all understanding. A neat and very touching point he made was about his dad. His father had throat cancer and underwent incredibly rough treatments that ended up ruining his dad's throat. but through it all, his dad's 'awareness of his need for the Lord is greater than his awareness of his life' wow, I could learn a whole lot from that. If you have God's peace, He will guard your heart and mind. It's an upward focus instead of an inward or outward focus.

So, there you go. A lot of this was just from my notes. I haven't struggled with peace on a huge scale recently, but I have had a few problems in that area with school. The two things that stood out to me from this message was: 'awareness of his need for the Lord is greater than his awareness of his life' and the fact that anxiety is a mild case of atheistisam.

I also thought of what a lot of Christians might be like after this inauguration. they could have anxiety about our future and our economy. Well, we have to remember that earth is only a short time stop on our way to our home: Heaven. Our 'home' is not here on earth, but in heaven with our Father. =)

Alright. Thoughts?

Idols

"You shall have no other gods before me." Exodus 20:3

I think for a lot of us, we would say that we of course don't have any 'gods' and that we only worship the true God, Jesus Christ. No, we may not go make an idol of gold that we bow down and worship, but that is not the only type of idol.

Some idols that could be in our life may not be something we think of as one, yet it can be. Look at this definition of 'idol': any person or thing regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion.

See? It's something that we are blindly devoted to. Something we may not even think of as something we are devoted to.

Yes, idols are bad. But you know what? We make them bad. They are not inherently bad in themselves. Just like the gold calf. When you think about it, gold molded into a shape is not bad in itself.

But, I think we often forget about some other things.....our secret idols....our not so obvious idols and 'gods'.

Alright, so now that we have that clear, maybe you will think of this from a different angle. What in our lives are we really devoted to?

Let me throw out a few that may be a struggle:
TV
movies
music
phones
computers
work
shopping
school
sports
hobbies
power
money
fame
sleep
friends
boy/girlfriends

None of these things are bad. It's not wrong of us to have or do any thing on this list. In fact God even encourages some of these things....some we can't live without. It becomes bad and an 'idol' when it comes before God. It isn't even wrong to love a lot of these things.

When I think of it this way, I realize I have a lot of idols. Sometimes which I put before God. That makes me so sad. Somethings which I would say are my biggest struggles to not let be more important than God to me would be friends, music and the computer. There are so many times when I push off reading my Bible or praying to do something that brings me temporary pleasure. Then later I feel empty...like I just wasted time. Or when I 'hanging out' with friends, I decide to goof around instead of talking about uplifting, meaningful things.

I take something God made that was good and turn it into something wrong. I take something that was supposed to be a gift and turn it into something harmful to myself.

I think God can use things that you love to help you grow in Him. Like for me, my friends have helped and encouraged me in Christ so greatly, or music with some amazing lyrics or stuff like this blog. But we still need to spend time with God....it's impossible to have an intimate relationship with Him if you don't spend time with Him often and put Him first.

I want someone to look at me and their first impression to be 'wow she loves Jesus so much... and music and her friends too'. Not 'she loves music and her friends ....oh, and Jesus too'.

Can anyone else relate? What are some of you struggles in this area? Does anyone have anything to add to this? Other thoughts?

Sorry.....

I haven't really had any good ideas for posts on here recently. I really like the idea of having something like this, but I'm not sure if it's going to work out. To type something up that is 'deep' and to make sure I'm doctrinally correct it takes a lot of time and study. And with school and 2 other blogs that I'm trying to keep alive, well I can't keep up with it all. In fact I haven't hardly scratched the surface of all the things I could talk about.

Then on top of that. The more I think about it, I'm not so sure if I think it's right for someone like me to be doing this...sort of giving my opinion on stuff when I could possibly be incorrect and could be teaching something that could be not doctrinally sound. Then, I realize I have/tend to be pretty opinionated in a lot of areas of life and I don't want to force my opinion or offend someone by it(esp. because sometimes it's hard to read someone's tone online). Plus I'm a girl. =P

haha, soooooo, all that said, for these reasons, I have not posted recently. I haven't decided if I'm going to keep this going of not. Maybe if I have something like this on occasion, I'll post it on one of the two other blogs. Or maybe I'll just post very carefully and infrequently on here. We'll see.

Now that I've wasted like 5 minutes of your life, I'll stop talking =P

Women in the church

Alright, I have been thinking about this and I would like opinions.

1 Corinthians 14:33-35

....As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Ok, so here is what I was thinking about. The Bible clearly says that women should remain quite in the church. That they are not allowed to speak and if they have questions, to ask their husbands.

When it says speak, I think of that as preaching or pastoring. But, if we take this literally, that would also mean that women can not share a prophetic word, for they must remain silent. My argument back to that would be that it is straight from God, and not so much the teaching or words of a woman. Well then arguing back with myself, when a pastor is preaching he is not preaching on his wisdom or opinions, but straight from the Bible which are God's words. Confusing, eh?

I do believe it's ok for women to teach the Word to other woman and children(like in (Titus 2). But what about to anyone if it is outside the context of church like teaching Bible, Theology, World View or Apologetics at a university? That wouldn't be at church, yet you are still teaching from the Bible to men. I think there is a difference between pastoring/preaching and teaching. However, it looks like teaching is wrong as well:

1 Timothy 2:11-14

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

I'm not sure what I think of all of this, but it's been on my mind recently. Particularly because if I couldn't do something with animals, I would love to teach Biblical Theology, but dunno, I was just curious what everyone else though.

I just find it interesting. Thoughts??