Lead Well

Do you remember your grandparents names?  Your great grandparents?  Your great great grandparents?  I would dare say many don't know that far back unless they've done some ancestry work and made a family tree.  But even if you do know their names, do you know what they looked like? Sounded like? Acted like? Smelled like?  For many of us it's impossible.  These people were dead and buried years before we were born. The point?  Our life is short.  Very short, and unless you do something spectacular like becoming the President of the United States or become an A list movie star people will not remember you 50 years after you die.  Sure they might have a name and picture, and with today's technology, probably some video, but will they really know who you are? God knows.  He knew you before you were born.  He will remember you long after you left this earth. But we aren't the main character in the story are we?  No.  Jesus ...

Lately I have been digging in modern evangelical ideas through podcasts, blogs, and books, and it has been eye opening to how the church is changing.  I can feel it.  Maybe this is the way Jesus really wanted the church to be.  Something greater, something that has more meaning.  Something that will make an impact in the community and not just on the congregants in the church.  Shouldn't the church be more outward focused than inward focused? Rob Bell asks the question:  "If your local church all of sudden left, would your community be grieved?"  Would your community even notice?  I'm not saying the people who go to your church.  I'm talking about the people who live across the street and we don't even know their names. Jesus said that true religion is this:  Take care of the widows and orphans.  God's law constantly says that we are to take care of the poor. I am attaching a link to an ABC news video on the face of American E...

In the Bible the disciples ask Jesus how we should pray.  Jesus then gives us a model by which we are to follow.  This is historically known as the Lord's Prayer. In the prayer, there is a line that says your Kingdom come your will be done.  What that line means is "God whatever you want to happen let it happen."  Too frequently we get caught up in doing what we think is right.  We lose sight of what God wants.  We do our agenda instead of His. We then have to ask ourselves are we really following Christ or are we just doing what we think he wants, or even worse what we want to do?  Every day we need to focus on the Lord, and set our own wants and fears aside and trust Him.  As Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane "Not my will, but yours." It's difficult, I know, but whoever said being a disciple for Christ would be easy?

Recently I've been reading The Life of Christ by Ralph Riggs.  It's an old textbook from Global university and has a pretty good survey of Jesus' life and ministry. Riggs made an observation in Jesus early ministry that I think we can all be reminded. But first a little background.  During the time of Christ, the Sabbath had become much more than just a day of rest.  The rabbinical law and traditions had so construed the meaning of rest that most of the Jewish population of the day spent the Sabbath either in guilt for breaking a law or in paranoia of breaking one.  Jesus realized this and decided to set the record straight.  You can read the story in Matthew 5:1-14 .  He went down to the pool of Bethesda and healed a man.  Not a bad thing; actually a very good thing.  However Jesus decided to do this on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees, the ruling religious leaders of the time were appalled.  How dare Jesus do work on the Sabbath it is a ...