Archive for June, 2006
“Present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God.”
What is an acceptable sacrifice?
Living: If a sacrifice is dead, if it means nothing to the one who is presenting it, what value will it have for God? In the OT, people brought their best cattle, their best sheep, their best crops to the temple for sacrificing. They gave God their best. What is the best–the most important–thing in my life that I can sacrifice to God?
Holy: If something is holy, it is set apart from the other things like it. It’s not just a plate; it’s a holy plate–set apart from the others. To present myself as a holy sacrifice, I must be set apart from the world, “be set apart as the Lord is set apart.” God is set apart from other gods, and we should be set apart from other people. We should be set apart from others in our actions, in our life patterns, in our thoughts, in our beliefs. Beyond simply being set apart, there must be a difference between me and an unbeliever.
June 29th, 2006
I went for a jog tonight. I really went for no purpose in mind other than to stay awake a few more hours. So I’m running, and I come to the four-way stop just outside my sub-division. I get there first (and don’t forget, pedestrians always have the right of way), but a half-second later a diesel-engined pick-up truck pulls up to cross against me. Well, he has to wait another half-second for me to finish crossing the street, so he proceeds to start into the intersection and rev his diesel engine at me.
Now mind you, I used to drive a diesel. I’ve grown up around diesels. I’m not intimidated by anyone’s stupid diesel engine in my face (no, that is not euphemism). As I’m running, I give him a slight glare, fight the urge to flip him off, and mutter a****** under my breath.
I’m not sure what it is when I’m running that makes me slightly mean. Maybe it’s because I feel so good about myself that I know I don’t have to take any trash anyone throws my way. Maybe I’m jaded by all the stupid drivers who don’t yield to runners. Maybe I feel empowered by the honking cars that pass me (there’s an excellent article in Women’s Health about all that). Regardless, I’m not going to stop running because I don’t have to and no stupid diesel-engined men are going to get in my way.
June 28th, 2006
I saw on my local news last night that the Elks Lodge building in my home town (Clinton, MO) had collapsed. I proceeded to call my mother (who was downtown watching all the emergency crews) and my best friend (who was in Fayetteville with no idea what was going on) but forgot to call my father-in-law who has connections to Clinton.
Well, the story was all over national news today, and their stories made me sad. Clinton seems like such a lame town when they write about it, but they haven’t spent days and weeks and years of their lives cruising and shopping and working on the Square. The Square is the heart and soul of Clinton: it’s been around longer than my grandparents have been.
The truth is, the Clinton Square will never be the same, and that makes me sad. Yes, I probably never live their again, but it’s still home, and I feel like a little bit of me has died with Clinton tonight.
June 28th, 2006
Last week, Chris and I celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary (woot!), and because of all the (ahem) sex, my hips have widened just a little bit. On the other hand, I really haven’t gained that much weight; every time I visit the doctor, I still measure in around 138. And if I wanted to shed, say, ten of those pounds, I’m not sure where it would come off because my thighs are pretty muscular right now from the running. Now some might come off around my middle, and I’m okay with that.
All this to say because I went to my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration yesterday, and the first thing out of my other grandmother’s mouth was, “Well, you and Chris must be eating well. You’ve gained a little weight. You look good.” Of course, I didn’t hear the “you look good” part, but I chose to hear the “you’ve gained weight” part, which is verbatim from the last time I saw her.
So yes, I have gained weight–5 whopping pounds over the last year, and I think that’s pretty good considering that we do most of our cooking at home, and considering that I was weight-lifting a lot this spring, and considering that I’m still running 3-4 times a week this summer, and considering I’m addicted to Cold Stone Creamery’s sorbet. My thighs are a little bit bigger, but I don’t feel self-conscious wearing shorts anymore because they’re lean (save some wiggles around the inner area) and muscular. Cellulite is slowly dissipating and stretch marks don’t look as awful as they usually do (though I agree that a tan would help). Some of my junior-sized pants don’t fit quite right anymore, but at least I still wear the same size I did before I got married. I’m a little bit hippier, but my stomach is still relatively flat (save ‘the pooch’), and my arms are muscular and tan.
Who cares what Grandma thinks? I’m quite happy with me.
June 18th, 2006
Notes from hanging with Chris & Jeri
Spirit: a general reference in the NT to the spirit of human beings (Matt. 5.3; Rom. 8.16; Heb. 4.12)
Soul: that which makes humans alive; the soul departs at death; OR the inner life of a person; the seat of emotions; the center of one’s personality
So what’s the difference between the two? Perhaps the differences are so subtle that truly only God’s Word can separate them (Heb. 4.12). I certainly can’t figure out how the spirit and soul are different from the definitions given.
Flesh: biblical writers express the flesh as weak; it’s the earthly part of a person; if we are living in the flesh, we cannot please God
Deeds of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-23)
- immorality
- impurity
- sensuality
- idolatry
- sorcery
- enmities
- strife
- jealousy
- outbursts of anger (see my running entry from earlier tonight)
- disputes
- dissensions
- factions
- envying
- drunkeness
- carousing
Fruits of the Spirit
- love
- joy
- peace
- patience
- kindness
- goodness
- faithfulness
- gentleness
- self-control
Galations 5.13 says we are called to freedom. Verse 16 says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” Verse 17 says the flesh is set against the Spirit and vice versa. Verse 24 says when we belong to Christ, our passions and desires are crucified with him.
Feed the Spirit; starve the flesh: Is it “feed the Holy Spirit?” Maybe it’s “feed the Holy Spirit, which is in you.” We can do this using our spiritual disciplines. Spirit could also represent our relationship with God or be the essence of your Christian self.
Humanity also fights the flesh; that’s why we have laws against the deeds of the flesh and have no laws against the fruits of the Spirit. Not feeding the flesh does not automatically equal feeding the spirit. You have to consciously feed the spirit manually, if you would. One way we can do this is by doing great instead of merely doing good. A.W. Tozer said that good is the greates enemy of great. Doing good, being good, etc. prevent us from being great and doing great.
Of course, being and doing great for God isn’t easy. It takes discipline, which isn’t easy either. (But consider that Jesus named his posse after this word. They didn’t have an easy time either.) For me, discipline is often making myself do something I don’t want to do, but the end goal of that discipline is to eventually want to do what I should do.
Oh the puzzlement!
June 14th, 2006
I’m the kind of person who chooses whether or not to do something based on whether everyone else is doing it. In high school, I chose not to wear anything Tommy Hilfiger because all of my classmates wore Tommy clothes (so you don’t miss the irony, I’m writing while wearing my favorite Tommy Jeans). A few years ago, I chose not to watch The Passion, Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus’ crucifixion, because all of my Christian friends went to watch it (and because I’m not into gruesome violence).
This isn’t much of a segway, but last night Chris and I watched United 93 at the $2 movie theater. I don’t know what most persuaded me to really want to see it, though I suppose I could attribute it to a good review I read in the Springfield Business Journal, the idea that none of my close friends had seen it, and the fact that the videos from 9/11 are still rather foreign to me. See, on 11 Sept. 2001, I was in the middle of a fast from television, and I simply wasn’t glued to the television like many of my friends and family (though I did get in about 30 minutes).
So we’re sitting in the theater watching the movie, and it starts early in the morning with the terrorists saying their prayers and prepping for their day. We watch them go through the airport security (which is practically non-existent) and sit with the people they will soon be entombed with. We watch the air traffic controllers, military personnel, and FAA folks come into their offices for a normal day of work.
As we watch the passengers board the plane, we get clips from the ATCs as they struggle to figure out what’s going on with the first two planes. We watch the ATCs in New York or New Jersey (I’m not sure where they were) watch the second plane hit the second tower. As I’m watching the FAA people try to figure out what to do, and as I’m watching the military personnel try to get their airplanes in the air and get their rules of engagement, I’m thinking to myself, “What the hell has to happen for them to shut down the airspace? Why aren’t they doing anything?”
About the same time, the final passengers board the plane, and the door to the airplane is sealed, and because I know what’s going to happen, I’m thinking, “It’s like their tomb is being sealed.”
We continue to see events unfold on the plane: the hijackers take their time getting into the action; they take over the plane, killing the pilots and a flight attendant; the passengers get wind of what’s happening from their families; the passengers say their final good-byes to their families and friends, as other passengers and flight attendants plan to fight the terrorists.
As they made their attack, I’ve never been so proud to be an American. What other country so enables its citizens to take action in the face of danger? We’ve never gone down without a fight, and that’s what I love about America (regardless of the political situation right now). I think I bruised Chris’s hand as we watched the final minutes of the movie. Those men and women are heroes, and I am thankful for their fight to the end.
I’ve never felt so many emotions during one movie before. My heart raced, I was angry, I was sad, I was horrified. I was speechless at the end. It’s an awful story with a terrible ending, but I’m so glad the director and actors decided it was a story worth telling.
June 9th, 2006
This week, in an effort to pay more and better attention to our walks with God, Chris and I have started studying the Bible together. Now when I say, “study the Bible,” I don’t mean that we’ve whipped out all of our commentaries to see what the experts think. I mean we’re opening the Bible, reading Scripture, and asking hard questions and trying to come up with logical answers. We’re doing a reading plan that takes us through an overview (60 days) of Paul’s writing, and it helps that we’ve started with Paul.
Okay, here’s what we discussed last night: Romans 3:21-31 (NASV)
We were stuck right away on verse 21, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested.” God brought righteousness to us through Jesus Christ because we could never truly attain righteousness through the Law. But does that mean that the Law is obsolete today? What exactly is the function of the Law (of the Old Testament) today? From what we understand, the old purpose was to bring people under one standard, a standard no one could meet, but now there is a new way to be righteous, which is according to the promises of the Old Testament.
The idea of the OT law was for God to show his people how completely jacked up they were. If Christ had come before Moses and the Law, no one would have understood the cost of Christ’s blood, but because the Hebrews spent centuries trying to atone their own sins with the blood of animals, they (theoretically) understood what Christ’s blood was worth.
Verse 27 says, “Where then is boasting?” Paul has spent his time telling us that we are justified by Christ, and he throws out this question. Immediately, I think of the 1 Corinthians 1:31, which says, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Great. This verse is actually a quote from Jeremiah 9:23-24, “‘Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.”
Now this verse cross-references another half-dozen verses across the OT, but I stopped here because earlier in the evening, my friend, whose name is also Chris, challenged me by asking, “When I find relationship with God, will that relationship be the sweetest gift of my life?” Or in other words, what do I boast in?
Good questions. See he was speaking about how the gifts of God–our family, friends, spouses, talents, etc.–are what truly get in the way of relationship with him, not our sin. Yes, sin poses a threat, but the good things in life get in the way of God sometimes.
Chris spoke about fasting and hungering. Fasting isn’t necessarily about food, though it certainly can be. Mostly, it’s about removing whatever stands in the way of God in my life. So I asked myself, “What consumes my life? If it isn’t God, then, Houston, we have a problem.”
Here is a short list of stuff that consumes my life:
- Sleeping–including lengthy afternoon naps
- Television
- Christopher
- Ravi (the cat)
- Running
- Reading fun stuff (ahem, not always the Bible)
- Listening to music (ahem, not always the “Christian” stuff)
- Icecream
But Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 6:1, “I will not be mastered by anything.” Okay, then what do I do with the list I just wrote down?
Today’s advertising teaches us to hunger, to want something. You see an ad for Pizza Hut pizza at 4:30 in the afternoon, and suddenly you start thinking that maybe pizza is a good idea for dinner. Life is sort of one big commercial that makes us hunger for stuff: true love, great bodies, cool cars, etc.
But what makes us hunger for God? On one hand, God’s put something in each of us that makes us hunger for him, but on the other hand it’s our human nature to hunger for ourselves, to look out for ourselves, which makes us cannibals, in a sense, because what do we really know about what we need?
Our actions reflect who or what we truly love. If we say we want God, our actions must reflect that otherwise we are liars. But how do we change? How do we go from hungering after our own lives to hungering after God and the life he wants so desperately to give us? We start making small preferential choices that favor God. We choose godly conversations instead of television. We choose prayer time instead of nap time. We choose reading Scripture instead of reading smut.
So where am I in all of this? Well, I’m trying to figure it out myself. The list above still taunts me (or rather, convicts me), and while some of the items are good for me (my husband, running) some are not (television, icecream). So this morning’s blog is an effort to not watch as much TV. Instead of watching TV, I’ve chosen to think about God, and I didn’t have any icecream for breakfast.
June 8th, 2006
The rest of the Left Behind series (8-12)
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Power of a Praying Wife - Stormie Omartian
Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
June 8th, 2006
