It’s easy to become a whiner.  Life gets hard.  Challenges arise.  Obstacles interfere.  “God, where are you?  Why aren’t you making my life easier?”

At those times it is helpful to hear about how others negotiate trying times.  People like Nick Vujicic in this video put life in perspective and eliminate the whining.  Watch this and be inspired.

Don’t be frightened away by the Japanese subtitles. The entire video is spoken in English. The link below will take you to the video site.

No arms, no legs!

When our daughter was in high school and feeling omniscient, she had a phrase that she used to repel any attempt to enlighten her or explain some idea. The word was “whatever,” and it was guaranteed to stop any further conversation as she served notice that she had no interest at all in what was being said by her parent. “Whatever” was the ultimate definition of indifference or scorn.  Fortunately, she outgrew this.

Whatever has other definitions. 1. Everything or anything: “Do whatever you please.”  2. No matter what:  “Whatever happens, we’ll meet here tonight.”  3. Any number or kind: “Whatever requests you make will be granted.”

There are some other definitions, but this gives a good idea of its absence of a specific reference.  Whatever is used in interesting ways in the Bible and gives some insight into the kind of freedom that God gives us all. To the disciples Jesus said, “Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave.”  By so indicating, Jesus gave his disciples the freedom to choose the towns they would go to.”

The writer, Paul, told the church at Corinth that whatever they did, should be done for God’s glory. The only boundary or limitation that Paul placed on their activity was that it be God glorifying.

The writer, James, took this a step further and said that to knowingly fail to do something something good is sin. So there is an accountability that is laid on us to make good personal judgments and act on them.  It is as if God is saying to us, “Do something good.”

In Philippians 4:8 we are given the freedom to dwell on any and everything that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable or praiseworthy. Permission is not needed. We have carte blanche on these good things. We are also accorded similar freedoms in prayer.  Whatever you ask…” Jesus said.

God gives his people enormous freedom to act on the many good choices around them.  Doing good has God’s endorsement and has already been approved as long as it is for God’s glory.  That’s a no brainer.

I found out last Friday that a friend had died.  I knew her at a previous church for which I worked.  She had been an insulin dependent diabetic since age 3.  I was always impressed by her personal discipline.  Had she not been, I doubt she would have survived until her late 50’s.

The recent death came on the heels of what the doctors think could have been a stroke or a fast moving infection.  Whatever it was took her life quickly.  Though it was painful to her family to lose her, it was actually a grace.  She did not have to exist in a hospital or go through lengthy suffering.

She was a person of great faith.  So if she had known she was coming to the moment of her death, I think she would have said, “This is the moment I have been getting ready for.”  All of us who knew her watched her live with great spiritual integrity and hope.  Death was just another stage of her journey toward God.

So on the day before Thanksgiving I will have the blessing of talking about her life.  It will be a pleasure because of the inspiration and hope she gives me.  She died in victory.

I was working on a sermon recently that was exploring the idea of being prepared for the Second Coming, whenever that happens.  The language of the New Testament seems to indicate that the First Century disciples believed that the Second Coming was imminent.  Some were, apparently, quitting their jobs in order to wait.  Others were afraid that it had already happened and they had missed it.

Interest and concern about the Second Coming is not unusual.  It persists today as evidenced by the plethora of workshops, books, and seminars purporting to predict the time when Jesus is coming back.  Hal Lindsey’s books sold widely because they promised answers.  But all they did was create unnecessary angst.

Christian Century (November 13, 2007) recently reported that Ronald Reagan once said that the Chernobyl crisis had been predicted in Revelation 8.  In that chapter’s description of the opening of the seventh seal, a great star fell out of the sky which caused people to die from resulting bitter waters.  Reagan said “the star was called Wedgewood which translates as Chernobyl in Ukrainian.”

The reporter who wrote the story later looked up the reference and discovered that the star was called “Wormwood” instead.  Whoops!

Which is what I want to say about all the predicting that goes on.  Whoops!  I wish all those folks would listen to what Jesus said and believe him.  “…about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” Matthew 24:36.  “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour,” Matthew 25:13.

Jesus said to be prepared, not to engage in predicting.  Jesus’ way provides confidence and hope.  Prediction only produces anxiety, which was not something Jesus was into.

A few months ago I bought a book on a whim from InterVarsity Press.  IVP is a really great publishing company, and they consistently print thought provoking and balanced books on a variety of subjects.  Fabricating Jesus is no exception to this.

The author, Craig Evans, is Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.  In Fabricating Jesus he takes to task the narrow, brittle point of view of fundamentalism. 

I grew up in a fundamentalist culture, so what he writes strikes home with me.  I’ve heard the same phrases that Evans cites, and I’ve seen some of my friends leave faith, God, and church because of the untenable positions they accepted. 

Evans calls fundamentalism’s point of view “cramped starting points, which often are little more than presuppositions and not documented and argued conclusions,” page 34.  He says, “I have heard fundamentalists say, “Show me one mistake in the Bible and I will throw out the whole thing,” page 31.  The problem with this is that the moment a person discovers something they didn’t expect, their faith is at great risk.

I think a similar risk exists with those who allow bad theology to govern their thinking about God.  So, based on that theology, when God disappoints them, they abandon their faith.

One of my favorite quotes is Evans’ assertion that “The truth of the Christian message hinges not on the inerrancy of Scripture or on our ability to harmonize the four Gospels but on the resurrection of Jesus,” page 31.  This is certainly what Paul the apostle declared to the Christians at Corinth. 

I handed on to you as of first importance, what I in turn had received:that Christ died for our sins…that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day… 1 Corinthians 15:3,4.

Truly.

Gavin Whitsett wrote the book,, Guerilla Kindness, and was the father of the Random Acts of Kindness movement.  Whitsett said that he wanted to remind people of the kind impulses that all of us had.  In a world that is often rude and unkind, it’s nice to have the reminder.

The Bible also reminds us of the importance of kindness. Micah said in answer to the question, “What does God require of you?” Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, Micah 6:8.

In today’s sermon we began a list deeds that are expressions of kindness.  All of these deeds require attention and determination, and they do not occur by accident.  Below is a beginning list of suggested kind deeds.  Kindness, by its nature, is otherly.  What would you add to the list?

• Listening attentively to others and not dominating the conversation.
• Giving money to people who need it.
• Showing concern about the problems others are having.
• Asking appropriate questions: How are you?, How did that affect you?, What can I do to help?, etc.
• Sacrificing time and energy for others
• Cooking food and sharing it with others
• Sending a card to someone expressing interest, love, or condolence
• Introducing yourself to someone you don’t know
• Sharing clothing, furniture, dishes, and other things with people in need

Use the comment button below and add your kindness ideas to the list.

I hear it all the time.  It comes in some version of “it was meant to be.”  People who are not God followers tend to talk about fate or some amorphous Cause that created a situation.

Believers credit God with the green car they just bought or the perfect job they just got.  The Christian version of it-was-meant-to-be is “God told me to do this.”  Oh really?

This is not a diatribe against being thankful to God for answered prayer.  The Bible actually encourages us to give thanks in all circumstances.  However…

Sometimes the desire to be appropriately thankful and God-honoring, leads to unreasonable extremes.  A friend of mine told me about a woman who said that she was going to move in with her boyfriend and said that if she got pregnant (without the use of contraception) it was the will of God.

Will of God?  Will of God?  Of course it’s the will of God.  He gave her and her boyfriend the equipment to get pregnant.  How she uses it is quite another thing, and she has no right crediting God with her indiscretion and foolishness.  If she got pregnant, it was because she CHOSE to do so, not because God magically touched her Fallopian tubes.

Similarly, Nicole Ritchie got arrested in December for her second DUI.  She seems to have been bitten by the same stupidity bug as her friend Paris.  Nicole is supposed to go to trial this week.  An article in today’s Merced Sun-Star said that she kept apologizing to her father for the DUI.

Her father is reported as saying, “You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing to your father at this age.”  I suppose he might have been saying that she was acting age appropriately.  However, it also occurred to me that he might have been saying, “You’re acting the way you have been caused to do so by some invisible force.”

Whichever her father meant, it removed from Nicole any personal responsibility.  She was “supposed” to be doing all this drunk driving.  No personal responsibility.  No accountability.  No consequences.  Using such reasoning, Nicole should throw a party and celebrate the fact that she was being obedient to what she was supposed to be doing.

I wish we could get rid of the “meant to be” language.  It is responsible for all kinds of trouble as well as the destruction of faith.  Watch how it connects good and bad together.  1. A man buys a “new” car and says the car is so perfect it was “meant to be.”  2. The day before, a heart broken woman brings that same car in to sell it.  It is one of the few things left over from a 20–year marriage.  3. The year before that her husband engaged in multiple dalliances with a series of women, and he finally told his wife that he didn’t love her and wanted a divorce. 

If that car was MEANT to be, so also had to be the broken marriage which enabled the sale and purchase.  “Meant to be” means that the universe’s events are all stitched together, and everything that happens is orchestrated and purposeful.  If you play the “meant to be” game, you can’t discriminate between the things you think are good and the things you think are bad.

In truth, “meant to be” is often “this is exactly what I wanted” in masquerade.  The woman who moved in with her boyfriend wanted to get pregnant.  It had nothing to do with what was supposed to happen.  And the man who bought the green car really liked it, although he would have never wanted the woman to lose her husband in order for him to have the car.

Why can’t we just say that?  “This is what I want…”  Maybe we’d be more honest then about how impure our motives often are and what trouble our choices often cause.  Maybe we’d also quit blaming God for the messes that we create with our own desires.

I just finished Jim & Casper Go To Church, by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper, and I would add it to my <em>must read</em> list for churches.  It is a keen observation at how churches look to outsiders—in this case an atheist named Matt Casper.  A quote from the Foreword lays out the direction of the book.

In some ways, then, attracting people to a conventional church is a greater challenge than ever.  And if a visitor <em>does</em> enter the building, then what?  What do first-timers see?  How are they treated?  What are the central messages they glean?  How do they process the experience?  On what basis do they decide whether or not to return?

The book is the brainchild of Jim Henderson at Off the Map.  Jim gives his full attention to creating bridges between the churched and everyone else.  The idea behind Jim and Casper began when Jim hired (on E-Bay) Chicago atheist Hement Mehta to go to church with him.  Hement was a kind and open minded man who visited churches with Jim and then blogged about it.  The idea evolved, and then Jim hired Matt Casper to go to churches all around the U.S.

While I enjoyed the entire book, I think the hardest hitting parts came at the end.  That is where Casper and Jim sum up their observations.  Here are a few quotes worth re-quoting.

There’s nothing worse than trying to have a conversation with someone who’s convinced he’s right.  It’s like the conversation is over before it can ever begin.  —Matt Casper

Casper simply could not imagine Jesus telling his followers that the most important thing they should be doing is holding church services.  And yet this was the only logical conclusion he was able to come to based upon what he’d observed.  —Jim Henderson

What does the way Christianity is practiced today have to do with the handful of words and deeds uttered by a man who walked the earth two thousand years ago?  There are some wonderful things being done by the people in Christian churches….But there are some incredibly nonsensical things being done too…You’d have to apply an awful lot of spin to any passage in the Bible to make a case for that.  —Matt Casper

“The only thing worse than training your people and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”  Henry Ford.

 Organizations that do not train their people are poured in ideological and methodological concrete.  In some respects they are like a university that never allows research or thought that is dated after a particular time.  This effectively freezes all learning, and the university (or organization) gets no benefits from new discovery.

What’s interesting to me is that some organizations have failed to see the importance of training, forcing their leaders and members to function without the benefit of new thought and new discovery.  Whether they believe this or not, they act as if history is static requiring no new approaches. 

Imagine where we would be, for example, if we still operated with the assumption that the earth is the center of our solar system or without the understandings that come from the Theory of Relativity.  Our science would be impaired, and we would not have much of the exciting new body of knowledge that came from those discoveries.

All this makes Ford’s quote so relevant.   Having untrained people stay in an organization hamstrings the organization.  It cannot become any better than the current level of understanding and practice.

The solution is not to get rid of untrained people, but rather to start a process by which members and leaders can be exposed to new information.  This can be done through reading, audio and video resources, and exposure to successful organizations.  Visionary leaders see the importance of informing and training.

Trained and competent leaders take organizations to greater levels of effectiveness.  Untrained people keep organizations chained to a point somewhere in the past as history and culture move rapidly forward.  

In his book, Letters to Malcolm, pages 92–93, C.S.Lewis wrote the following:

Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for ‘down here’ is not their natural place.  Here, they are a moment’s rest from the life we were placed here to live.

I have been working on a summer sermon series about the Fruit of the Spirit, and this week I have been writing a sermon about joy.  That has prompted me to think about and observe whether the people around me appear joyful or not.  It has been my observation that, in too many cases, joy is woefully lacking.

Which makes C.S.Lewis’ quote about “dance and game” seem all the more pertinent.  It does not appear that joy is a “natural” inclination.  Laughter, yes.  But not joy.  Joy is learned and cultivated, and it is unaffected by temporal matters.

Brian McLaren has his character Neil Edward Oliver say that, We are becoming on this side of the door of death the kind of people we will be on the other side, (A New Kind of Christian, page 91).  Some people, I fear, are training themselves to be cynical and dark for the rest of their lives.  Joy seems to be missing.  They exist from one laughter producing moment to the next, but there is no current of joy flowing through their lives.

I’ve concluded that real, authentic joy is not evident to the casual observer.  This joy is a paradox.  It is not discovered through conventional wisdom nor human endeavor.  This joy is a constant companion of love, and those who have not learned love have not yet experienced joy.

But in this world everything is upside down.  That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is most like that which in a better country is the End of ends.  Joy is the serious business of heaven.