Just a few hours of work a day can reward you with rich dividends! With no money down, and all from the comfort of your own home, you can become unbelievably wealthy! Millions have tried it and have testified to the results.
This is not a scam!!
Hard to believe? Well, if I were talking about money, I hope you would have the courage to call my church and get me fired. No, the rich treasure I’m talking about is the Word of God. Continue Reading…
Beep, beep, beep- snooze- beep, beep, beep- click. Yawn. And then it begins. The Sunday pre-church tornado of chaos…
Wake kids, dress kids, feed kids, clean up kids’ mess on floor, clean up kids mess on kids, dress kids again, shower, choose tie, convince wife that tie does match outfit, dress self, feed self, clean mess on tie, load car, screech out driveway only 3 minutes late this week, return for kids’ juice cups, screech out driveway again, 7 mins late this week. Still better than last week. Discuss tie choice on the drive. Struggle to be patient with clamor from kids, taxi drivers, broken traffic light, no parking in church lot; ignore dirty look from usher who saw you park in the handicapped spot, humbly accept that your pew is taken, remember that you forgot the overdue church library book, the sound is too soft so you move forward where it’s too loud. You missed the opening song (your favorite), but you were just in time for your three least favorite hymns.
Then the sermon starts.
After you wrangle your thoughts away from whether or not you turned off the iron, the stove, and the curling iron, and after you stop imagining your house burning down, you start drifting into a light doze as the movie you watched til midnight last night plays in your brain. After a few elbow jabs from your spouse, you catch the last point of the sermon about how you should pray more. The sermon ends you greet the pastor who says, “Good to see you again, it’s been a while, have you been away?” You resist pointing out that you haven’t missed a service in three weeks, because deep down you know that although you were there in body, you really did miss the service every week since you had kids.
Take heart. You are not alone. This is the frenetic milieu of every suburban churchgoer. I’m not sure what the solution is, or if there is one at all. But there are some practical preparations you can do to ameliorate the experience somewhat.
What makes tornadoes so devastating is if you are unprepared for them. If you get some warning, you can batten down the hatches, get under ground, and ride out the storm. If you are caught off-guard, you get swept up in the clutches of the chaos. It’s the same for Sundays. You know what’s coming, so get your house in order before it hits.
Last week we looked at some spiritual preparations suggested by Ken Ramey in his excellent book, Expository Listening. Here are four practical steps you can take:
Earlier this week, businessman, reality TV star, and former presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke at Liberty University’s convocation. As far as I can tell, convocation is like chapel, except that non-Christians are allowed to occasionally ascend the pulpit. In his speech, Trump said that if you want to be successful in business, you need to learn to punish people for crossing you. You have to be comfortable sending a message to those who wrong you by “getting even,” so others learn not to mess with you.
This was not the only troublesome line in his speech. He encouraged people to get prenuptial agreements in case of divorce, then joked that “you people never get divorces” (the “you people” apparently referring to Christians and/or Liberty students), and he spoke disparagingly of the President. But Trump is on his third wife, does not claim to be a Christian (as far as I know), so certainly can’t be expected to have a handle on the finer points of Christian business ethics, the seriousness of marriage, or the what it means to honor our leaders.
Thus, one could argue that it was unwise for Liberty to expose their student body to a non-Christian’s business ethics… Or one could argue that it was helpful to the University’s mission by giving their students a front row seat to a non-Christian businessman showing how radically different worldly ethics are from the Bible’s. I’d buy either argument, and since Liberty isn’t a church, I ultimately don’t really care one way or the other who speaks at their convocations.
I have been profoundly impressed with the sacrifices made by Christian men and women throughout the centuries of church history. From martyrs to missionaries, these individuals have served their King with greatest intensity and courage, valiantly standing as examples for those who come behind them. They are individuals of whom “this world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:38) because their eyes were not set on the worth of this world, but rather on the values of heaven.
One of those individuals is Adoniram Judson.
Though he grew up in a pastor’s home, Judson walked away from the truth as a young man, only to be recovered in a dramatic fashion. John Piper details this part of Judson’s life in his book Don’t Waste Your Life: Continue Reading…
I have a genetic mutation called Loeys-dietz syndrome, which in addition to physical and external complications, also weakens my arteries and causes them to rupture easily (depending upon the location of the artery, this is both life-threatening and faith-strengthening). My wife and I have three beautiful children named Abigail, Noah Jay and Silas, two of whom also have Loeys-Dietz. Frequently, we get ‘asked’ about why we chose to have children knowing that they would likely be born with a life expectancy of 26 (though with the surgical replacement of arteries, this number can be significantly improved).
Non-believers ‘ask’ us why we did not abort.
Believers ‘ask’ us why we wouldn’t have chosen to adopt instead.
Doctors ‘ask’ leading questions about our family history. When they realize we chose to have children knowing that my mutation would force half of them to live with physical pain, their faces make it obvious what terrible parents they think we must be.
Our world is like a carnival. Not the expensive, Six-Flags kind of carnival, where admission is pricy and only the rich kids can go. Our world is like the carnival in the mall parking-lot. Everyone is there, and somehow in that environment even corn-dogs seem like a good idea.
The rides in this world go round-and-round, and you have to admit that many of them are silly. Plus, it is impossible to look dignified on most of them. Of course there are always those that try to appear noble on the merry-go-round, and they only look more ridiculous. Philosophers and university professors are akin to those who ride on the Ferris wheel, get to the top, and think that they really are superior to everyone else because they can see farther. Losing sight of the fact that they are carnival-going-folk like everyone else, they bask in their four seconds of intellectual superiority, but they will soon be replaced by those in the next cage.
And death is when you are finally mature enough to go on the really gnarly rides. Continue Reading…
