Week Four, Day Three

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.”
Hebrews 4:9-11

Do you have a problem slowing down? How do you rest and relax?

Week Four, Day Two

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Exodus 20:8-11

Do you keep a Sabbath? Why or why not?

Week Four, Day One

“One of the local characters on Orcas Island, where I live, is named Applegate. His friends call him App. For App, life holds nothing more precious than sailing. His passion is unending as he builds by hand his eighty-foot dream boat out of native Northwest timber. Locals trek up the mountain to cheer on this newest ‘Noah’ as he builds his ark under a mountaintop’s cover of cedars and Douglas firs.
For ten years now App has been hammering and sawing hour by hour, day after day, week upon week. The construction has been running a few years slower than he figured, App admits, but he’s confident the yacht will be finished in the next few years.
App is in his eighties.
I look at App with Janus-faced irony. He’s my hero: someone not afraid to commit to a project that takes him into his eighties and nineties. But in my about-face, he’s my antihero: someone whose passion for a life experience has lifted that very experience out of his life.
One day a friend asked App to explain his obsession. ‘I love sailing,’ he disclosed.
‘Been sailing recently?’ my friend wondered. App’s hesitant admission of ‘been too busy’ seemed to shock him into momentary awareness. But he returned to his nails.
The harder we hammer nails, the more unfurled our sails. The faster the lanes get in life, the more fatal our inability to slow down. The hotter the culture gets, the cooler the soul’s core becomes. The more culture accelerates, the more axiomatic the soul’s decelerations.
Leonard Sweet, Learn to Dance the Soul Salsa

Are there good and important activities that are distracting you from God? What “busyness” is keeping you from embracing a fuller life with God?

Week Three, Day Five

“You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Revelation 3:17

Do you see your own situation clearly? Who might you go to get a clearer picture?

Week Three, Day Four

“The Sinful worship of Mammon does not consist in eating and drinking and wearing clothes, nor in looking for a way to make a living and working at it; for the needs of this life and of the body make food and clothing a requirement. But the sin consists in being concerned about it and making it the reliance and confidence of your heart. Concern does not stick to clothing or to food, but directly to the heart, which cannot let a thing go and has to hang on to it.”
Martin Luther, The Place of Trust

Materialism is a difficult sin. If we’re to live in this world, we need money. How do we live in the world, but not be of the world?

Week Three, Day Three

“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘These people say, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’”
Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: ‘Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?’
Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.’
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,’ says the Lord. ‘You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.” Haggai 1:2-11

How tied are you to material possessions? How is this tied to our generosity toward God?

Week Three, Day Two

“The outer distractions of our interests reflect an inner lack of integration of our own lives. We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us.
Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. Each one of us can live such a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity, on one condition—that is, if we really want to.”
Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion

Are you familiar with a “divine Center”? How often are you able to live there?

Week Three, Day One

“Those who love money never have enough; those who love wealth are never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 5:10

How much money would be enough for you? Is the lack of money the real problem or is it your expectations and desires?

Week Two, Day Five

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Matthew 6:5-8

Do you have a place you where you pray in secret? Find a quiet place to be your “room of prayer”.

Week Two, Day Four

"How does a man become increasingly a Christian when he already is one? How does he begin from where he is and at least be in motion away from 'not Christian enough'?
"To know and to love God directly is to come to know what we are. . . . Prayer is an attempt to get ourselves into that active co-operation with God where we may discern what is authentic and be made ready to carry it out."
Douglas Steere, Prayer and Worship

God expects us to grow as Christians. How have you done in this area? Have you plateaued? How do you plan to next move forward?

Week Two, Day Three

“Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”
Daniel 6:10

Daniel followed a disciplined pattern in his prayer life. We sometimes resist this type of discipline, thinking it is somehow less “spiritual.” How can ritual help form your prayer life?

Week Two, Day Two

“I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me; hear me when I call to you.
May my prayer be set before you like incense;
May the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.”
Psalm 141:1-2

How confident are you that God listens to your prayers? How might you strengthen your relationship with God?

Week Two, Day One

“Why, then, do so many believers confess that they do not pray as they should? Sometimes the problem is primarily a lack of discipline: Prayer is never planned; time is never allotted just for praying. While lip service is given to the priority of prayer, in reality it always seems to get crowded out by things more urgent.”
Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life

Evaluate your prayer life. Is it healthy or anemic? How might you seek growth in this area?

Week One, Day Five

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12

How is God’s word “alive and active” to you?

Week One, Day Four

“Knowledge of the Bible is not a matter of trivia; it is the core memory that we share, reminding us of who we are. We need to learn the stories—to have Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Amos, and Paul become the people we know. A reference to Enoch, who ‘walked with God’ (Gen. 5:22), or to Joseph and his brothers will shape one’s understanding of what God calls his people to be. To speak of Babel, Pentecost, Sinai, or Zion should evoke memories from the Bible to help us interpret the present situation. To lose this knowledge of the Bible is to lose the memory that holds people together and to suffer spiritual amnesia.”
Kenneth L. Cukrowski, Mark W. Hamilton, James W. Thompson, God’s Holy Fire: The Nature and Function of Scripture

How has your church background shaped your memory? How are we doing at shaping the memory of the next generation?

Week One, Day Three

“Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night. They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will be destroyed.”
Psalm 1:1-6

Meditation is not a practice to which our tradition has given great attention. How do you meditate on Scripture? How can you further develop this practice?

Week One, Day Two

"Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the Holy Community as food nurtures the human body. Christians do not simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father.
Readers become what they read. If Holy Scripture is to be something other than mere gossip about God, it must be internalized."
Eugene Peterson, “Eat This Book”

How do you internalize the Word of God so that it will not be “mere gossip”?

Christ in us, Christ to others Disciplines

Yesterday we began a new sermon series at church. There is an accompanying booklet with daily readings. I'm including those readings on the blog. The first week focuses on Scripture.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17

How does Scripture function in your life? In what ways is it formational?

Getting to Teach

Last night I got to begin teaching the Introduction to the Old Testament at PCC again. This is now my third time through and I feel like I'm finally hitting my stride. I had 6 students registered and 5 actually show up.

Two had never read the Bible before. I had to explain the books, chapters, and verses. I had to give a brief overview of the OT story. Explain different translations. We began talking about the story of Creation and the Fall.

It's exciting to watch people learn. The faces of the people who really are interested in learning just light up when they catch a new insight. Teaching is so much fun when the students are motivated.

Any other teaching stories?

Thr3e

Last night, several of us went out to the movie "Thr3e." It's a new production from FoxFaith. This is a division of Fox that is going to put out several Christian movies over the next few years. They intend to produce well made movies with a Christian theme. They've also released "A Night With the King" based on the biblical story of Esther.

"Thr3e" is a psychological thriller (PG-13) and not for the faint of heart. It is well done, produced by the same person who produced the X-men trilogy. "Thr3e" is the story of a police psychologist and seminary student pursuing a killer.

I didn't take a pole of the attendees, but I think most of us liked it. It was a little intense. Traci jumped several times. But it was a good story.

Sometimes, it seems, that Christian authors and artists think we should support their material because they are Christian. The quality of the material may be inferior, but if you want to see more Christian material instead of the current "trash" you need to support this inferior product.

I believe that Christian material needs to be of just as high or even higher a quality as other material to get an audience. Supporting something that is inferior just because it's Christian only leads to more inferior material.

Shouldn't Christians books, movies, music, be just as good as secular? I believe so. Thoughts anyone?