This past Father’s Day I issued an encouragement and a challenge to dads. If we take the Scriptures at face value, we are the ones primarily invested with the responsibility of passing on our faith to the next generation. In what follows, I talk about how exactly to do it. Thanks for reading.
Job One
As most of you know, I am a Kansas City Royals fan. I know…this has been a tough summer. But three years ago, it wasn’t. Three years ago was the best summer to be a Royals fan since…well…the summer before (there’s even a children’s book about that one that is on the shelves at home). But before that you have to go back 1985 to find one of comparative excitement. As for the summers in between, I’ll be honest: They were pretty rough. There were four seasons when we lost more than 100 games (for my non-baseball fans that’s a notable mark of having had an exceedingly bad season)…three of which were back-to-back-to-back. There were many more when we were just generally bad. The badness occurred at pretty much all levels from the top of the organization to the bottom. Read the rest…
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
At first read, this is a pretty far-out there claim for Paul to make. I mean, as far as an objective fact goes it is totally false. He was not crucified with Christ. As far as we know, he was not anywhere nearby when Jesus was crucified. More than that, given where he was theologically then, he would have been part of the crowd cheering on the event. He would likely have been glad to have been able to drive the nails into His hands and feet himself. So what does he mean? Read the rest…
In this final part of our series, Reasons to Believe, we take a turn. We are still talking about reasons to believe, but this one is different from all the rest. At the end of the day, a person can listen to solid answers to all of their objections to the life of Christ and still not be willing to make Him their Lord. The reason for this is that their primary objection is not logical, but relational. This is last and most important hurdle to overcome. When someone becomes a follower of Jesus, the most powerful reason they do so is a relationship. Keep reading for more.
Yielding to Relationship
There was once a man who hated Christians. He hated them. He hated everything they stood for. He hated the things they believed. He hated the impact they were having on his culture. There was nothing about them he liked. It was so bad that he dreamed about hurting them. He thought up ways he could harass them and interrupt their activities and keep them from accomplishing their goals…all within the means of the law of course. Now, you might be thinking, “Well that guy was dumb. It doesn’t really do any good to focus that much effort on hating a group of people. What was his deal with religion anyway?” But, religion wasn’t his problem. Christians were. He had no problems with religion. In fact, he was a very religious guy. He just didn’t like Christians. Furthermore, he was no dummy. Actually, he was brilliant. He had gone to the best schools and studied under the best teachers. He was routinely at the top of his class. The level of success he had attained for his age was simply astounding. When peers looked at him they routinely saw big things in his future. This guy was leadership material. There were few positions which were going to be off-limits to him. He merely had to apply himself in the relevant directions. With his big brain, then, and as committed as he was to the way he saw the world working, he knew all the reasons Christians and their Christianity could and should be rejected. He could have given you a list with sources. He had a reason for every argument. But then, something unexpected happened. And that something was this: he actually met Jesus. Not literally met, of course, but he encountered Jesus in a personal, powerful way. And all his reasons went out the window. Instead of reasons, he now had a relationship. Read the rest…
“Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Passages like this one often get the Bible criticized for being pro-slavery, or at least not sufficiently condemnatory of it. Why wouldn’t Paul just come out here and declare it to be the evil it obviously is? There are two reasons, I think. One helps us understand the culture into which Paul was writing better, the other points to how God has nearly always moved people forward toward the ethic of His kingdom. Read the rest…
“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Two things really stand out here to me. One is obvious, the other is not so obvious. First the former. It took a lot of courage for Paul to call Peter out for his obvious deviation from the Gospel. Peter was clearly wrong, most everybody there knew it, but nobody wanted to say anything until Paul spoke up. Because it was Peter. Would you have wanted to call Peter out for this? Read the rest…
The Nexus 