It’s amazing to think about just what Jesus came to Earth to do.  We like to sing the songs and share the presents and enjoy the decorations and festivities.  But Jesus didn’t come to have fun and to celebrate.  He came to die.  And if you stop to think about what he gave up in Heaven and all the sorrow and pain he suffered during his life on Earth, it can put an entirely different feeling to the Christmas season.  But the great thing is that Jesus was willing to go through all that.  His mission was a volunteer one, and he did it for the joy of the results of giving people a way out of evil and death and into goodness and life.  Christmas is definitely a time worth celebrating.  It’s worth celebrating all year long!.  But don’t miss exactly why it’s worth celebrating.

This continuation goes into some of the prophesy that foretold the coming of Jesus (his birth, life, death, and even resurrection).  As if it wasn’t enough proof to have eyewitness accounts of his life and the things he said and did and how he rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, God gave us prophesy about it all before it ever happened to make sure there was no mistake exactly who the Messiah was.  I just think that’s so cool!

What do you think?

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So lots of churches celebrate the Season of Advent.  It’s kind of a traditional thing.  And there are lots of traditions that go with it.  Sometimes they hang Christmas decorations and greenery.  They usually have different colored candles that are lit on different Sundays during the season.  And it’s all very churchy and Christmassy.  And then outside of church we have all sorts of traditions that go along with the Christmas season.  People hang lights on their houses and put up Christmas trees and stockings and eat lots of food.  And I often see a few decorations or cards that say “Jesus is the reason for the season.”  But you don’t see much Jesus amongst the decorations.  Where is Jesus in all those traditions—at church and at home?  Would anybody be willing to throw out all the traditions, the candles, the lights, the presents, the food, the music, and simply spend the season in prayerful thankfulness for the birth of our Savior?  What would really have to happen to take our focus off of the stuff we buy and decorate and eat for Christmas and instead put that attention on the miracle of God sacrificing the glory and honor and joy of Heaven’s throne to be born a human being and offer himself up as a sacrifice to save the world?  Because there will be a second advent of Jesus Christ.  And depending on how much you pay attention to Jesus now will affect how he feels about you when he comes again.

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I always think it’s funny when grownups tell kids not to run and play in church because they’re in the “House of God!” As if God is getting upset that kids are playing. “Hey you kids! Stop having so much fun, or you’ll make God mad! He’s trying to take a nap like the rest of the people listening to the sermon, and if you wake him up he’ll be as grumpy as I am!” What a goofy thought, that God’s house is a church building–as if God was sitting all by himself during the week, and finally got to see everybody on Sunday morning. “So how was your week everybody? Did you do anything fun?” People come to church thinking they’ll get something from God there. They pray and sing, and sometimes they dance and talk like crazy people. Others just sit there and act like scarecrows in pews. But so many of them transform into completely different people as soon as they get back home. All the ‘God’ stuff seems to evaporate like drops of water on a hot skillet as soon as they leave the church building.

But everybody (even non-church people) know that Jesus is supposed to live in your heart. So shouldn’t the life of any Christian be consistent whether they are at home or church or work or school or wherever? If we have God in us at church, we ought to have the same God living in us when we walk out the door. Right? God’s house isn’t a church building. It’s the pure heart of a Christian. And if God is really living in somebody’s heart, it ought to show through–all the time. If you say you have God in your heart, but he doesn’t show through in how you live your life all the time, maybe it’s because you don’t have God in your heart. Maybe what you really have in your heart is your own made up god. So when you go to church and act like he’s in there on Sundays, is it just a show?

I know these are pretty harsh questions, but don’t you think they are important ones to ask? Do you really believe you can have God in your heart and live like the Devil? I would think this is one thing you’d want to make sure you had right. What else in life really matters compared to whether you’re really following God or just following your own evil desires? Jesus asked the same question…”And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?” Matthew 16, Mark 8, & Luke 9

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So there are plenty of examples of bad churches in this world. We’ve all seen people who give God a bad name. They either teach things that are completely unbiblical or they lead people astray just for money or they are complete hypocrites teaching one thing and living another. It makes me so sad every time I hear of a pastor who got caught stealing from his church or sleeping around or doing drugs or anything like that because they are supposed to be the leaders of the church. But the pastor isn’t the only one who should be a good example. The church (the whole church) is supposed to be holy. That means Christians aren’t supposed to live like the rest of the world. They are supposed to have pure hearts and live righteous lives. By the power of God, they are supposed to be obeying his commandments–all of them. That’s what Jesus said proves who loves him…”Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me” (John 14)

So what makes a good church is when the people who are members are living just like Jesus did. If you are a Christian, I challenge you to live like it. Read what Jesus tells you to do, and if you love him, obey him. If you aren’t a Christian, I challenge you to challenge your Christian friends to put up or shut up. If they don’t live out what they teach, point out their hypocrisy. If they do live out what they teach, then listen to them. They know what it means to have new life (to be “born again”) in Christ.

The reason I did this talk was because we welcomed a new member to our church that day, and I just thought it was a nice chance to talk about what it means to be part of a church.

Enjoy!

PS. I gave this talk when it was snowing outside, and it totally reminded me of a Bible verse about snow. You know how clean and sparkly everything looks after a fresh snowfall. The Bible says no matter how gross and nasty our past looks, God can make our heart look as clean and pure as newly fallen snow. We have to choose to stop living with evil in our lives and start obeying God, but when we do, God says you get a fresh start. Isn’t that cool?! Check it out in Isaiah chapter 1.

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When you ask someone how much money they’d like to have, the most common answer is ‘just a little more.’ Whether they’re making minimum wage or have billions, everybody wants more money. The funny thing about that is we don’t equate that desire with the addiction people have for drugs or alcohol or porn or whatever. Greed is looked at as a good thing in our country. Anybody who is actually content with what they have is seen as abnormal. And this national greed has not only put almost everybody into debt of one kind or another, this idea has infected our government. So now our nation is in debt–huge debt! And like a lot of other things, the church, for the most part, has completely ignored the instructions that God gives in the Bible for how to best manage money. It’s really a sad situation to think about how many people in this country have sold themselves into slavery to the bank. So how are we supposed to live? Well, this talk touches on a few basic ideas. Check it our and see what you think.

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It’s been a year since the last presidential election. Remember all the commotion and excitement around the race for president? And now people are already upset about the government again. And once again politicians promised change, and delivered a lot of the same, old thing. They’re writing checks that the country can’t cash, quibbling over partisan nonsense, and ignoring all the things they said during their campaigns. Yet, every time there’s another race people get excited again. It’s like they think there’s going to be some amazing difference this time. But the truth is that real changes come when the American people stand up and take responsibility for their own nation. The government is not only supposed to work for us–it’s supposed to be us. And if we really want to see change, it’s going to mean changing ourselves and forcing our political leaders to do what we tell them to do or get out of the way and let us do it ourselves.
Anyway, this is a short talk I gave during the last presidential campaign. Enjoy!

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What’s love got to do…got to do with it?  Ok, if we have an idea of what love really is…if you have a basic understanding of what it means, how do you apply it to religion?  Because Christians are always talking about love.  “Jesus loves you” and “I just love God so much” and “Christianity is a love relationship,” what does all that mean?  How does it apply to real life?  Because that’s what really matters.  Isn’t it?  I mean, people can talk about love all the time, but if it doesn’t make a difference in their behavior or how they treat people, then it’s not really love.  Right?

In the last talk I kind of hit on how love can be expressed in different degrees that build onto each other.  We can have friendships and a bond of kinship with people, and we can add commitment to basic friendships, and stick by somebody’s side through whatever.  Then, when we’re ready to make the ultimate commitment and put someone else’s needs above our own, we get married and love just continues to multiply as commitment and intimacy grow together.  Like adding fuel to a fire, our compassion and passion combine and a man and woman come together in the kind of relationship that begins to reveal the depth of what God feels toward us.  When we are willing to sacrifice and commit everything to benefit another person, we get a glimpse of what God feels and does for us.

And like any relationship, it takes work.  You can’t even have a good friendship unless you are willing to contribute to the health of your relationship.  But the really cool thing is how we benefit from giving our love to other people and back to God.  It’s mind blowing to see how our love grows even n the midst of sacrifice.  The people who really understand love, who have really figured it out, find the secret that giving in a relationship is the only way to get the real benefits of love.  And when we discover that secret we find out what we were made for.  If God made us in his image, and if God is love, then it just makes sense that we were built to give and receive love.

Ever wonder what the secret of life is?  It’s loving.  That’s just the way God designed us.

PS. In the very beginning of this talk I spend a minute talking about making it though hard times and how God is with us through the trials we face, and how God  even takes advantage of the tough things we go through to help us become better people.  Sometimes love means just being around for comfort.  And sometimes it means helping a person get up and keep walking, even if it means pushing outside of our comfort zones so we can grow.

My wife and I lost a child through a miscarriage, and it was one of the most difficult experiences I have ever felt.  But God really showed me his peace through the whole ordeal.  And God has used our tragedy to help us be able to comfort others who have suffered similar loss and to encourage people going through infertility and we have even grown closer to each other in the midst of that painful trial.

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Baby don’t hurt me…

No, this isn’t about 80’s music.  But I think it does deal with the questions that Haddaway brought up in his lyrics and the questions that a lot of people have about love.  Did you ever wonder why so many marriages fail?  Did you ever wonder why God said that sexual immorality hurts people more than anything else?  Maybe you remember when Jesus used the connection of a husband and wife as an example of the connection that God wants to share with all of us.  Did you ever wonder what that means?

True love does have a mysterious quality to it because of how powerful it is and how deeply it affects us.  But it’s also something that is meant to be understood.  In fact, I don’t think anybody can really experience love to it’s full, powerful potential unless they understand it on a basic level.  Too many people ruin love by replacing it with selfishness and greed and hunger and lust and things that have nothing to do with real love.  And I think so much of the confusion and pain that people deal with in relationships and romance and marriage come when we lose the meaning of what it means to love.

What do you think?

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We live in a fast paced culture.  Right?  Nobody likes to wait for anything.  We want everything now.  We hate red lights and long lines and people who show up late.  I’ve seen people lose it because they had to wait 5 minutes to get their fast food.  Just the other day I was at a stoplight, and across the intersection was a guy whose car had stopped running.  I could hear his starter kick in over and over as he tried to get his engine started again.  And when the light turned green, the guy behind him laid on the horn–several times. We love to be able to fast forward through the commercials.  We live faced paced lives.

But I’ve noticed that a lot of people who get involved with churches or pray some little prayer that’s supposed to magically change them into Christians are more than happy to wait.  Oh, they still want the sermons to be over fast so they can get back to more fast paced life.  But when it comes to making the world a better place, they don’t mind at all just to wait…to wait for Jesus to come back to fix things, to wait till they die to change their lives, to wait for somebody else to do something so they won’t have to.

So is that right?  Is that the way it ought to be?  Does God just want people to go to a church, sing a few songs, pray a few prayers and then sit around and wait?  The Bible seems pretty clear about how people who claim to follow him ought to be impacting and affecting the world around them.  Jesus talked all the time about helping the poor and the widows and orphans and prisoners and foreigners.  He was very clear that we’re supposed to stand up for justice and teach people to obey his commandments.  So then why do so many people who call themselves Christians seem to be waiting?

By the way, what are you waiting for?

PS. I mention a visual aid in part of this talk that might be a little difficult to see in the audio recording.  So for anybody curious about that.  I tied off a big roll of string and began to unwind it across the room.  A little way out, I used a marker to mark a tiny spot on the string.  Then I kept unwinding it all around the room.  I’d go all the way to one wall, wrap the string around something and go back the other way.  Eventually the string was unwound all over the place.  I thought it was fun.

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Did you ever wish you had super powers?  Did you ever imagine what it would be like to fly or bend steel with your bare hands or shoot lasers from your eyes?  If you could pick any one power, what would it be?  I think superheroes are cool.  I like Superman, the Incredible Hulk, the X-men, and just about all the rest.  And it’s been great to see technology get to the point where artists can make the amazing things they do on the movie screen look so real.  Big action movies like those where the good guys fight to save the world against evil are the best things to see at the theater!

So what if you could really be a superhero?  What would you do with your powers?  Would you use them for good or for evil—to save others or to serve yourself?  What if you really could have super powers?  What if you really did have a special ability written into your DNA or your spiritual make up?  What if you were meant to be the hero fighting to save the world from evil?

Well, maybe—just maybe, you are.  Listen to this and think about that idea:

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