Remember, even when it’s hard

I noticed something while reading the Crucifixion story today that I don’t think I’d seen before.

After Jesus was put in the tomb, the Pharisees go to Pilate and tell him about Jesus saying He would rise from the dead after three days.

Now, they claim not to believe it. They say that His followers might try to steal the body. But they remember what Jesus said about it.

The thing is, even His own disciples didn’t remember this. They were so caught up in their grief that they forgot what Jesus had said about His death.

Plus, I don’t think they ever took those sayings seriously. I think they didn’t fully understand what He was talking about, so they just ignored those things.

How easy it is to forget the things that God has promised us, and live like the disciples did in those days after Jesus’ death.

dad and DAD

So, I’ve been reading Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love, these past few days and today I read about his relationship with his own earthly father and how that affected his relationship with his Heavenly Father.

His dad was abusive and he feared him.

So, when Francis became a Christian, he found it easy to fear God and was drawn to the passage about an angry and vengeful God. That was the way he knew to receive love.

But, as he grew in his faith, and especially when he became a father himself, he realized this was not the fullness of God’s love for him.

I’ve had a pretty good relationship with my dad.

But I still know that this has affected my relationship with God.

When I was a kid, if I had a problem, I would usually go to my mom.

This has kind of made it difficult to bring my problems to God. I usually just don’t want to bother Him with my little problems.

He’s God. Why would He care about my little problems?

Even the biggest problems in my life are nothing to Him, or compared to others problems.

Who am I to bring my them to Him and expect Him to even listen let alone care?

Chan talked about as he became a father and realized the extent of his love for his own children that he realized God’s love for him was even greater than that.

After all, if we fallen humans can love our children and care about each and every one of their needs, how much more so does our perfect Heavenly Father love us, His children?

Being a parent has also helped me to more fully understand the anger and wrath parts of God too.

When my kids aren’t listening or are purposely going against my wishes, it can be hard not to get angry with them.

It’s when you have to make the rules that you finally understand that rules are there to help you not just keep you from having fun.

I only pray that in me, my children can catch a tiny glimpse of the love that their Heavenly Father has for them.

“Biblical Marriage”

Not everyone will like this post. But it is something I feel I need to write. So, here goes…

Many Christians in today’s society, when they talk against same sex marriage use the term “Biblical Marriage” as their main defense.

With this they mean, one man and one woman.

But as I read the Bible I find it hard to see that in there.

I see men marrying several women.

I see men treating women as their property.

I see men with wives and concubines and slave girls and also the town prostitute.

Now, I’m not saying that these people were really living by God’s intended rules or that they weren’t sinning.

But, it seems that the idea of marriage in the bible simply meant that you had sex, and that men could have sex with whomever they wanted.

This may have also been just part of the culture that they were surrounded by.

I’m not saying here that I believe we should all except same sex marriage, even though I don’t see why it’s such a big issue to Christians.

I’m really just saying that I don’t see how our main defense against it being ok, is to say that we should have biblical marriages.

Because if I lived by the rules of the bible and tried to have more than one wife, for one my wife would leave me.

Now, if by “Biblical Marriage” you mean that we should live by God’s laws inside of our marriages, that is a whole other thing.

I believe that we should do this.

But I also believe that that God said to love one another, and spouting that you are loving the sinner while hating the sin, while yelling at the people you disprove of, is not what I would really call love.

Rebekah’s choice

I’ve always thought it was kind of strange that Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, would choose to help Jacob trick Isaac into giving him the blessing that should have gone to Esau.

But today as I was reading Genesis 25, I came across something I don’t think I’d noticed before.

When she is still pregnant with the twins, she feels them fighting inside of her, and goes to God to ask what is wrong.

“The Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples will be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger.” Verse 23

This made me wonder if this was the reason she favored Jacob over Esau and helped him.

Or did God know that she would favor Jacob and so He gave her this self-fulfilling prophecy as such?

Or did God see that He would use them in His own ways that I can’t even begin to comprehend?

I don’t have any answers. Just a thought I had this morning. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Pick up an instrument and join in

I’ve been very slowly making my way through Simply Christian by N.T. Wright for a while now.

It’s been slow going partially because I haven’t kept up with the discipline of reading some everyday and because it’s a pretty thought-provoking book.

But today I reached the end and I think I was inspired as much by the last paragraph as I was the whole rest of the book.

In the afterword to the book Wright gives some things he thinks will help you move further in your Christian journey after you are done with the book. He mentions getting a good bible and also some other books that you might want to consider looking into.

Then he says:

“It would be wrong, though, to give the impression that taking things further after reading this book would consist simply of reading more books. The church, for all its faults, is at its heart the community of those who are trying to follow Jesus, and in whose company those who are starting to explore these things for themselves may find help, encouragement, and wisdom. As we might say to someone starting to enjoy music: don’t just listen to it, find an instrument and an orchestra and join in.”

For a long time I didn’t see the point of having a church. After all at church they tell you that you need to have a personal and intimate relationship with God, so why would I need other people to help me with that.

But I’ve come to realize that the church is just a place where a group of us who are trying to wrap our heads around this thing that we believe, can meet up and join together on our journey.

Me, on my own, can only do so much.

Me, on my own, can get so in my head that I’m not helping anyone but myself.

Me, on my own, will mess things up every time.

But with others by my side and God with us, we can do anything.

With God and a church. we can change the world both near and far.

With God and a church, we will still mess up and fall, but can be there to pick each other up along the way.

What could we really do in our world, if we truly joined together with God and other believers and sought to bring about Godly change in the world around us?

Dreams

I was reading today in Genesis 22 about Abraham sacrificing Isaiah, and I starting thinking of the conversation he would have had with Sarah when they got home.

No matter what he says I’m sure she is having a hard time believing that the God who gave them this child, would now be asking him to kill him.

She would probably treat him like he had actually killed him.

All the while, Abraham is left thinking, “But God told me to. Besides I didn’t do it. He’s alive and sitting right over there.”

While I was thinking of this conversation, I realized that that’s kind of the way it can be when you tell people around you, believers and non-believers, that you feel called to do something.

There is this sense of, “Yeah, sure God is calling you to do this crazy thing.”

It can be really hard for other people to get behind your dream and behind the things that you feel God is calling you to do.

But that shouldn’t stop you from doing them.

It shouldn’t even stop you from explaining it that way to the people around you.

Because if God is calling you to do something, not everyone is going to be behind you.

But God is, and that’s all that matters.