Christian Life

A Little Understanding – Above Ground – Humble Prayer

A Little Understanding – Connect to the Foundation & Footings

In my days, as a world-renowned scientist, well not so much days, more like hours. Well not so much hours, but instead it felt like hours when I had the dream. Okay, I really know very little about science, but I do know that this little thing called gravity cannot be defied while living on the earth. When a plane takes off, it must have more power from the engines and lift from the wings than the force exerted by gravity. It flies not because it defies gravity, but instead it overcomes the force until it runs out of fuel. Once it is out of fuel, gravity, the law that no plane can defy, does what gravity does: it pulls the plane back to earth. It is the same with our Christian walk. We can hold up the basic day-to-day living of a Christ follower’s life. We can hold up the day-to-day operations and programs in the collective of Christ followers. The problem is, we were not designed to defy the laws of spiritual gravity.

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A Little Understanding – Love Outwards and Inwards

How different would the parable of the Good Samaritan be today? If Jesus was asked in your country, “Who is my neighbor?” by someone claiming to follow Christian values, would the story be the same? I will take a chance and make changes to this well-known parable. I do not claim to know for a fact how Jesus would answer if He were physically walking the streets of your city or town and was asked this question. All I can say is my observations would lead me to believe that the following parable would not be out of line in Western culture and much of the developing world.

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A Little Understanding – Love Upwards

We, as Christ followers, aren’t so good at loving God fully and completely. If we aren’t so good at it, then the collective of Christ followers must suffer from the same flaw. Did you know that loving God completely is actually part of our nature? God created us that way, and until a piece of fruit and a slithering tempter altered the path of history, that’s the way it was. God created human beings different from other beings. Humans are created in the image of God and are able to think and make choices. Inside this creation was the longing to be tied to God. Outside of it was the sense that…

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A Little Understanding – The Footings

People often ask, “Why does life suck?” For those who find the language offensive, please forgive me, but it wouldn’t be a quote if I tried to soften it. Pastors may use more carefully chosen words, replacing the offensive ones and reworking the question this way: “Why is everything a struggle at my church?” I would never go as far as to say the solution to life sucking or a struggling church is Proverbs 3:5-6, but I can say the solution to navigating through these times is not in your hands, your strength, or how you understand things. The solution lies in letting God take over, and He will plot the course. He will carry the weight. “He will make your paths straight.”

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A Little Knowledge – What We See Becomes What We Know

Many personal growth, church growth, and outreach how-to books and motivational sermons are “mirrors,” or to bring it back around to the building metaphor, pictures of the décor. They address the appearance. This isn’t a bad thing. Appearance will go a long way when it comes to enticing people to visit your church or ask about your faith. What people see demonstrates the commitment, enthusiasm, and passion of Christ followers.

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Blueprint – A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Matthew 7:21- 23 (NIV)

How fast it all changes.

When the pandemic hit, there were things we had been doing in the name of Christianity under the umbrella of church that were really our way of “staging the house” to make it look good.

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