Monthly Archive for November 2013
See yourself in your marriage
Disrespectful Judgments Questionnaire
Circle the number that best represents your feelings about the way your spouse tries to influence your attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. If you circle a number greater than 1 for any question, try to think of an example that you can share with your spouse and write it on a sheet of paper.
1. Does your spouse ever try to “straighten you out?”
Almost Never—————Sometimes———-Much of the Time
1———-2———-3———-4———-5———-6———-7
2. Does your spouse ever lecture you instead of respectfully discussing issues?
Almost Never—————Sometimes———-Much of the Time
1———-2———-3———-4———-5———-6———-7
3. Does your spouse seem to feel that his or her opinion is superior to yours?
Almost Never—————Sometimes———-Much of the Time
1———-2———-3———-4———-5———-6———-7
4. When you and your spouse discuss an issue, does he or she interrupt you or talk so much that you are prevented from having a chance to explain your position?
Almost Never—————Sometimes———-Much of the Time
1———-2———-3———-4———-5———-6———-7
5. Are you afraid to discuss your points of view with your spouse?
Almost Never—————Sometimes———-Much of the Time
1———-2———-3———-4———-5———-6———-7
6. Does your spouse ever ridicule your point of view?
Almost Never—————Sometimes———-Much of the Time
1———-2———-3———-4———-5———-6———-7
The scoring for this questionnaire is simple. Unless all of your spouse’s answers are “1,” you’re probably engaging in disrespectful judgments.
3 dollars worth of God
$3 Worth of God
“I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth.
I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.
I’d like to buy $3 worth of God, please.”
Wilbur Reese
It doesn’t require all that much to be a church member. The time commitment isn’t too bad; at its worst, we’re talking about three hours on Sunday and one on Wednesday (and you can easily cut it down to just 45 minutes on Sunday if you play your cards right). The cost isn’t bad either; nobody really knows how much you drop in the plate. Outside of church, all you have to do is avoid doing anything to publicly embarrass the church. It’s not a bad hobby.
But what does it take to be a disciple? That’s where things get tough, talking about denying ourselves and taking up crosses and being different from the world. That’s not really the life that most of us signed up for. It’s kind of like signing up for the safety patrol at school and finding yourself a Navy SEAL. We want to be Christians, but do we have to be fanatics about it?
Men have turned Christianity into a religion focused on gathering in a building on Sunday and doing certain things the right way. Success is measured by how many people we can gather to do things the same way that we do them. Evangelism is convincing people to come and do things the way we do them. Good church leaders organize the Sunday meetings well and make sure that the place that we meet is well taken care of. For many, that is what Christianity is about.
If we consider this to be Christianity, then we have to feel that Jesus really didn’t do a very good job of setting things up. Couldn’t He have spent at least a little time talking to us about how to do this Sunday “worship service” since it’s the center of our religion? Couldn’t He have spelled out a little better the exact rules for songs, for prayers and for taking the Lord’s Supper? Better yet, couldn’t He have left us at least one sample order of worship? Why did He spend so much of His time talking about other things?
If we want to be the Lord’s church, we have to be about the Lord’s business. If we are going to be imitators of Christ, it only makes sense that we are going to try and do the things He did. We will want to talk about the things He talked about and concentrate on the things He concentrated on.
Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) That’s every day. Not weekly. Not twice a week. Daily.
It’s all or nothing. Total commitment. We are His or we aren’t. God wants an intimate, daily relationship with us. He compares it again and again to a marriage. He doesn’t want to be a part of our lives; He wants to be our lives.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30) Not some. Not part. All.
Not $3.00 worth. Not one day a week’s worth. Not “inside the church building” worth. God wants all of us, every day. That’s what it is to be a disciple. That’s what it is to be a Christian.
Someone said that instead of focusing on being the right church, we should focus on being the right kind of Christians. The gathering of the right kind of Christians will be the right church.
$3 worth of God? Why don’t you supersize that?
Podcast – Sermon 11-03-2013
James 1: 5-8 Pray for Wisdom 11/3/13
Question: Your 6 -year -old son has climbed to the top of a 120’ tree. The wind blows hard, and he yells for help; very afraid. A truly dangerous situation. What would you do?
My son actually did this in the NW where trees are very tall!
1. I prayed for wisdom;
2. God calmed my voice
3. Diversion and confidence:
“I am so proud of you! You have to be brave and strong to climb that tree!
We have to get a picture of this to show everybody!
4. I ask, “can I try it?”
5. I climbed up, and we admired the view.
6. I finally said, “I am hungry; want to go to McDonalds?”
7. He said, “Will you carry me down?”
(That could not be done, even if I wanted to)
I said, “ Nope, you don’t need any help; you already did the hard part;
going down is easy!”
****************************************************
It is not enough to have knowledge; you must have wisdom to make good decisions. And the deepest wisdom is godly wisdom.
Let’s look at an example of God showing his wisdom. *********
I Kings 18: Victory over the prophets of Baal
I Kings 19: Afraid for his life because Jezebel swore to kill him. He is physically exhausted from running away; He ask God to take his life, so he will not have to face what is coming. He lay down and fell asleep; he awoke and an angel feed him. Had to encourage him to eat. He traveled to Mt. Horeb. He settles in a cave.
God has all knowledge, but wisdom in communicating it made the difference.
QUESTION: How would you restore your messenger in this situation?
Read I Kings 19:9-14 Do you think the tone of voice changed between the first time the question is asked and the second time the question is asked? YES!
Wisdom? Elijah knows now he will live and have a useful, fulfilling life.
But how? New assignment! I Kings 19: 15-16 READ
Knowledge alone cannot give you a quality Christian life.
For that you need Godly wisdom!
READ TEXT: James 1:5-8
Greek ( gin-os-ko ) “To know, to understand”
Greek ( sophia ) Wisdom; not just WHAT the facts are, but the WHY behind the facts.
* Most Christians know what they believe, but are clueless to know why it is true.
* Wisdom is to live out the truth of the Word of God, and be able to converse about it
in a flowing symmetry, in your own unique way.
* Wisdom is knowledge- facts, working together to bring about a good, and godly result.
* Godly wisdom satisfies all aspects of the human condition.
Spiritual; emotional; physical; mental
* Wisdom is able to navigate, subtly, through areas that are not always black or white
* God can give you the sudden wisdom by asking in an emergency;
but usually it is an ongoing process of learning the Word of God to get the WHAT and WHY and then, through experience, having a peaceful flow of fruitfulness for yourself and those around you by applying wisdom..
Psalms 19:7b “,,, The Word of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple”
Remember we are talking about godly wisdom; not self-seeking human wisdom
I COR. 2:1-16 READ
TEXT James 1:5-8 *******************************************
v.5 “generously and without reproach” ( i.e. no scolding the recipient!)
Calvin: “God gives generously and without any selfish motive to undeserving people, lest anyone should fear to come too often to be helped. Even among the most giving of men, when anyone ask too often for help, will mention their former acts of kindness, and then excuse themselves for the future; there is nothing like this in God; He is ready to add new blessing to former ones without any end or limitation.
If He, “causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good; and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous,” how happy He must be to give us wisdom!
v. 6 Like all kinds of prayer; we must ask in faith; which means leaning on God.
It means turning your whole mind toward God!
You cannot face two directions at once!
EXAMPLE: Asking God to give you wisdom because you plan to go back to school.
Question: How do I know I am not doubting?
Answer: The day you are sitting in your first class!
Source of doubting? Not really believing God is good
* Do you think God has your best interest at heart and is concerned about you at a
deep and personal level?
* Do you think of him as a managing director or a loving father?
* Do you trust that He has a better plan for your life than you do?
v.6-8 “double-minded”
All the time a man is asking; he should be trusting!
DOUBTING – A plan of running to the worldly things, and worldly approval,
even knowing it will disappoint; then after the thrill of the world is gone
again, you then go back to God when things fall apart. MISERY!
(We know the struggle of living the new life in Christ and continually rejecting the life of the flesh; but this double-minded attitude is different! You deliberately plan to rise and fall, because you cannot single-mindedly chose who you will love; God or the world.)
DOUBTING is affirming the truth, then denying the truth by taking no action.
“surf of the sea” Very good picture of the spiritual nausea of a divided mind!
Poem- “ He went up to heaven to receive the promised wisdom;
he went down to the depths sure it would never happen.”
Isaiah 57:20-21 “But the wicked are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, and
its waters toss up refuse and mud. “There is no peace” says my
God, “for the wicked.”
We want to grow wiser individually, but the deep wisdom of God is not gained as a private affair; it is not some selfish personal journey.
A wise person always looks for the good of the entire body of Christ through his wisdom to benefit the church; and particularly the good of the church they are in!
Ephesians 4: 11-15 READ
* It takes humility to admit that you need others in your church to fulfill your
journey of gaining godly wisdom.
* It takes a deeper fellowship than you think you want.
* It takes cooperative prayer and a certain vulnerability to each other,
that at present you do not see the need of.
* To have this wisdom and the peace of mind it brings, you have to
constantly absorb the Word of God and be done with a mere
sprinkling of it your life.
Proverbs 13:12 “He who walks with wise men will be wise.”
Share time and prayer “Ask for wisdom for yourself, and for the church”
Courage
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
Eleanor Roosevelt: You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
All serious daring starts from within.
I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world
Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.
Margaret Chase Smith: Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously):
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?
The best way out is always through.
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910
Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
( I do not agree with the lifestyles or beliefs of all the persons above but I think that these attitudes, applied to you will strengthen your walk because you love God)