New Life'n

Using the Bible to witness to people who don't believe the Bible

"But, Irene, I don't believe the Bible." -- over twenty years ago that's exactly what I said and it made me feel like a heathen, but what was I suppossed to do when she answered one of my objections with, "but it says right here in the Bible"...?

I remember thinking, if I believed the Bible, I'd be a Christian!  And obviously I wasn't which was why she was using the Bible to convince me. 

But, I don't agree with Stuff Christians Like that this is a "cuckoo" idea.  When I finally did believe, the things people had been telling me from the Bible came alive, crushing me and freeing me at the same time.  And haven't you heard stories of people who suddenly believed solely from hearing the words of Scripture?  At the same time, for me, people who lived like they were from a different planet definitely got my attention and served to help make things clear, so I'd agree when Stuff says

if your Bible is the only outward expression or explanation of your faith then the minute you meet someone that does not believe in it you've hit a serious wall. It's like trying to tell someone that lived their whole life in the desert how deep the ocean is and how many animals live in it. They don't even believe in the concept of salt water, never mind the miracle of oceanic life. You've got to live it. You have to be the ocean and express your life in such a way that even if all they've seen are sandstorms for the last twenty years, when they're around you, they can't help but start to hear the waves.

Beth Moore's pricey soup

I heard her in person the other day. 

She joked that her audience was usually all wearing capri pants, and yeah, being a guy probably limits my appreciation of her.  It did take a minute to get over that feminine, (to me) over-emotional way of praying and asking God to bless our time.  But soon I was caught up in Jacob wrestling with God and my own reaction to her urging us to not ever let go of wrestling with God in intimacy. 

The words came out like they had butterfly and eagle wings, fluttering and soaring, and none seemed to fall to the floor.  It felt like each person was given something personal.  I know I was -- my relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in the world...

You can get the stage, the gig, the platform and draw a crowd and make a knock-em-out impression.  You can do that with skill and effort, on your own.  And then you can give Jesus credit, even though you did it, and it sounds good, and some people won't know the difference.

But this kind of thing, where the speaker becomes invisible, and you're listening to her but you feel like it's only you and Jesus -- that comes at a greater price than skill and effort and perseverence.  There's some kind of soup of brokenness, humility, hopelessness, rejection, suffering and death that cooks for God-knows-how-long into this nourishing bowl of exaltation, healing, acceptance, and new life. 

Nourishing for others.  Very expensive for you.

And while it's cooking, you ask, how long?  And the only answer you get is, until I say it's done. 

There aren't many price-payers in the world.  There's way more benefit-getters -- I'm one -- and the contrast when you're in the same room with the other one can be convicting and inspiring at the same time.   

I wrote her husband a note, but didn't give it to him -- "I don't know what cost you've had to pay to be able to do this, but it's worth it."  I think I wrote it for myself, as maybe some kind of soup-starter of my own.

Adopt a Terrorist

I had a friend who said he just couldn't pray for a certain President we had -- even though he knew what Jesus said.  I'm guessing he'd have even more trouble adopting a terrorist.  Want to?  You don't have to actually bring him home and make scrambled eggs and bacon and tuck him in at night.  But maybe something good could happen, even from far away.  There's a whole catolog of terrorists to choose from.  Pick yours HERE. 

Six things gracious souls discover

From William R. Newell's Romans: Verse by Verse:

1.  To 'hope to be better' is to fail to see yourself in Christ only   

2.  To be disappointed in yourself, is to have believed in yourself

3.  To be discouraged is unbelief, as to God's purpose and plan for blessing for you

4.  To be proud is to be blind!  For we have no standing before God in ourselves

5.  The lack of divine blessing, therefore, comes from unbelief, and not from failure of devotion

6.  Real devotion to God arises, not from man's will to show it; but from the discovery that blessing has been recieved from God while we were yet unworthy and undevoted

Laugh, cry, mad, think

You might do any or all of that when you read Stuff Christians Like.  Or maybe you might send him a suggestion.  He comes up with new ones every day.  Here's an example of Stuff Christians Like:

#58. Calling people "seekers."

Dear person that does not go to church,

I don't know how to say this, but when you're not around, we call you "seeker." We say things like, "what kind of music will seekers respond to?" or "is that drama seeker focused or not." And when you show up on Sunday, if our church is small enough, our seeker spider sense tingles a little and we really hope the service reaches you.

But before you get mad, please know that the alternative is to call you "lost" or "unsaved" or "sweaty philistine." OK, we don't say that last one. A lot. But my friend Joel said something to me tonight. He said, "you know who the lost were in the New Testament? They were the people Jesus hung out with and loved on the most."

So tonight, even though I'm in marketing and I might want to treat you like a target audience or a demographic, I'm retiring the words "seeker" and "lost." From here on out, I'm just going to call you "the people Jesus loves."

Protection and purpose

When I was 8 or 9 my brother and I would ride our red 20-inch Murray bikes, faaaaast, on the sidewalk down the hill next to the apartment where we lived.  At the bottom of the hill was a busy street.  Right before we got to the bottom, we'd cut left onto the sidewalk that ran along that busy street.  We'd do that over and over again.

I was thinking about that laying in bed half-asleep -- my brother and I may visit the old town this summer and I was reminiscing -- and I realize it was a miracle we didn't one time end up in the street clobbered by a car.  How may zillions of times does God protect kids from horrible accidents without anyone realizing it?

But sometimes there is a horrible accident.  Where was God then?  If he gets credit for protecting, shouldn't he get blame for not? 

If his protection is the priority to me, then that's a normal question. 

But if his purpose is priority to him, then a normal question might be different; and might be a question he asks me -- If there was a time that I could either protect you OR carry out my purpose, and you got to pick, which one would you choose?

My answer to that might be why he doesn't usually leave his purpose up to my choice.

Why it's such a big deal

It's like he was saying, "OK, I'm done...time to get up"

Of course, it was much more than that.  He was done -- with the dying.  Now came the living; but not like before.  Before, to be with him you had to follow him, or find him, over the hill in Bethany or across the lake, or in the morning off by himself praying.  If you couldn't find him or catch up with him, you couldn't be with him. 

But now, the living was to no longer be in his own body.  It was to be in (gulp) ours -- wherever we were.  Christ in you, the hope of glory.  I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  United with him in everything that has just happened: his death, his burial, and now, his resurrected life, that we too may live a new life.  His life flowing thru you just like a tree's life energy flows thru a branch producing fruit.

He can't do that if he's dead.

"Calvary is the secret of it all. It is what the Lord Jesus Christ did there that counts, and what He did becomes a growing force in the life of the believer when it is seen, and rested in by faith. This is the starting point from which all godly living must take rise.

We shall never know the fact of the Lord Jesus' victory in our lives until we are prepared to count upon His work on the cross as the source of our personal freedom from the dominion of sin and the old man within. There is no liberty for us that was not first His. The beginning of spiritual growth is faith in that fact."                                                                                   -- Hungry Heart #9–11

What's so good about Good Friday?

Why it had to be so bad

Twenty years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a doctor detailed what the physical death of Jesus Christ was like.  Yes, the punishment and flogging of Jesus was as terrible as what we saw in The Passion of the Christ...

the scourging of Jesus was particularly harsh...Each wound apparently was intended to produce intense agony, and the contributing causes of death were numerous

Sin must be really bad if it deserves that.  Sin -- its punishment and defeat -- is obviously way more serious to God than it is to me. 

If you can stand it, you can read the whole description HERE, including the illustrations of the tools of punishment and their affect on the body.

The end before the beginning

If you could fly right now to Israel and hover over Jerusalem, what would you see? 

THIS. 

Click anywhere and use your plus/minus key to explore where Jesus walked and suffered and died the last week of his earthly life.