Just Pray

Often there is debate about what Christian's should pray for.   Should we pray for this or that?

There is at times use for wondering what we should pray for.  But it is easy to wonder what we should pray for and then never pray.

We should often just enter into prayer with God.  God listens not just to the words, but the spirit of what we say.

We enter into the presence of God as broken and confused people.  God beckons us to come and speak.  To open our heart.

To say what we feel and to be honest even if we are wrong.  We cannot hide our heart from God and it is not good to try to do so.

Freedom From vs. Freedom To

Often in life we see the concept of freedom. We feel that freedom is intrinsically good. And of course we are right. Freedom is a great intrinsic good.

But too often freedom is thought of as "freedom from" something. Freedom from regulation, freedom from rules, freedom to do whatever we please. And while these things may be fine at times "freedom from" is never a fully Christian view of freedom.

Christian freedom needs to have a sense of "freedom to" do something. Freedom to follow God. Freedom to do good. Finding true freedom in obeying the law.

True freedom is freedom to become who God intend us to be. Freedom from something lacks the compete fullness of a robust sense of freedom.

A Great Need: Faith

A great need of everyone is to feel accepted and loved by God, and to have a sense of love for God and his beauty.

When people start saying that the only way to be accepted and loved by God is to follow a set of rules, this has terrible affects. Being accepted into God's family is not about what we do, but what Jesus Christ has done for us.

We are compelled to do good works out of deep gratitude for Christ's work in our lives, and Christ still works in our lives through the Holy Spirit. He gives us faith. He continues the good work in us.

Fear often causes trouble. For instance, a person hears the gospel but may become afraid that they didn't hear it right, that there's something that needs to be done, and just to be careful, pushes themself hard to do certain things. And it continues. Rules upon rules are added. But we are asked to rely in faith only in Christ.

The Bible says that God's word and way are the truth. We make things way more complicated than they really are when we are "just to be careful" following certain rules or steps, things which honestly don't need to be followed. Understanding the truth is letting go of those and having faith that it really is that simple. It requires one thing: faith.

Christian Debate

Debate is only useful when both parties in the debate seek truth. Too often in debate the involved parties are not in dialogue but rather just jabbing at each other.

True debate requires understanding the position of the person you are debating with. I often have found myself among like minded people telling them they are not fair in their criticisms of other positions.

It is often that we will not agree with a position, but most frequently most of the criticisms of positions we hear are unfair and frankly untrue. In the current day we cut corners in debate. It is easier to throw mud than to do the hard work of explaining why an opposing position is wrong. Why this is important is that we are called to be people of love.

If we wish to live out our faith we need to enter debates in a spirit of love. Sometimes it may mean respectfully leaving a debate where people are more interested in mudslinging than truth.

Always as Christians we should be mindful that how we debate is as important as what we say when we debate. I believe a respectful tone of debate is not only Christian but also enhances our message.

Listening as Vital for Friendship

It is common in life for people to try to do too much. They will try to be friends with everyone in the church and in the end they are friends with no one in the church.

I am not saying there should be an inhospitable spirit of anyone to anyone else in the church. It is quite frustrating to see Christians who do not wish to include other Christians in conversation or such.

What I am saying is that we cannot have significant relationships with all people. I often find that people who try to have too many friendships begin to have a deep knowledge deficit about their "friends." They cannot really remember the details about their many friends because they have too many friends to count.

Ultimately the friendships are of a kind which are quite trivial and often verge frankly upon having a vast number of acquaintances. Ultimately true friendship takes time.

I believe that true friendship requires listening. And listening takes a great deal of time. We often have a choice between developing many shallow relationships or a few deep relationships.

I believe developing a few deep relationships is usually preferable to many shallow relationships. Of course having deep and shallow relationships are not absolutely opposed, but with limited time often having many shallow relationships will leave no time for deep relationships.

Choices often make other choices untenable. A choice is not wrong in any logical sense because it makes choices untenable; it is simply the nature of life. Often we choose one thing at the expense of another.

The issue of course is when we try as we often do to choose too many things. Often when we choose too many things all of our choices suffer or we suffer because of our choices.

To Criticize without Offering a Solution

Often we find a large amount of criticism of positions without offering a solution.  To criticize other positions or other solutions is easy in comparison to expressing opinions or solutions.

In general it is best if we wish to criticize a position if we can offer a better position in it's place.  We often find criticisms of positions which offer nothing which is better.  It is often as if we are told what ten wrong positions are but have no right position.

The reality is that positively expressing positions is far harder than criticizing.  It is easier to tear down than to build.  As Christians our primary purpose is to build up.

Sometimes tearing down error is necessary to build up.  But tearing down should never be an end in itself, only a means to an end.

The church is a community meant to bring God's blessing to the world.  We exist to follow the example of our savior who preferred to serve rather than to be served.

Understanding What We Believe

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Co-Contributor

To truly be able to lead and live well, it's important to truly understand what you believe. A lot of people say that they are a Christian and assume that means they know what they believe, but may not live or think much differently than the culture around them that is not Christian these days. We live in a postmodern culture, where this is acceptable to the culture: it's viewed as good to not strongly believe anything because postmodernism is more okay and fine with everyone's beliefs.

If someone were to ask you why you're a Christian, do you know what you'd say? If they asked you what is different abut your religion compared to other religions, would you be able to answer? Does your religion cause you to live differently than people of different religions or those who don't have a religion?

A major difference in the Christian religion compared to others is that it's not our works that get us to Heaven. It's Christ's perfection and faith that does.

Some people think that feeling/emotion is most important in religion and that thinking hinders religion. For instance, feeling that God is for them in that moment, or they made God happy is what they aim for. They feel like that's all they need. But not working to truly understand their beliefs of God and what God wants--that may cause them to feel things to be true that are not true: A person may feel happy and in some sense that makes them feel like God is happy with what they're doing--but really they could be happy in that moment because the sun is shining that day or they had a great meal the day before.

The way for them to truly know that God is happy or accepting of a choice is to truly understand the Bible as much as they can. To think about it. Some people may live in the thought that they can never please God because they feel crappy and nothing seems to go as right as they envisioned it, but really understanding God's true acceptance of us would help them feel like God is still okay with them. Our feelings don't always match the reality of the situation. We are fallen and there are so many factors to what makes us feel certain ways (the weather, how much we eat or sleep, what's going on in the world and in our lives).

An Essential Part of Love - The Need for Boundaries

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Co-Contributor

When Jesus tells us to love everyone, that means and includes respect, and one important part of respect is relational boundaries.

Some Christians believe that everyone should share every detail of their life with other Christians. A person who is okay with sharing everything about their life sometimes will pry into another person's life, possibly not realizing that each person has preferences on that and that should be respected.

It could be the over-realized eschatology that has seeped into some popular Christian thinking. If people think that everyone is perfect here and now, then if someone shares some sad part of their life or past that the other people won't judge or be weird about it. But that's the thing. Christians still judge, gossip, and aren't nice about things at times. We are all sinners the Bible says. And it's not until we are in heaven that we aren't sinners.

So it's wise for people to be careful about what they share and who they share it with, even if the person they are considering sharing details with is a Christian. It helps protect from unhelpful and sometimes relationally damaging judgement and gossip from happening.

I've heard someone say that sharing every detail with others helps others and the community realize that life and people are not perfect. They hear not perfect things in other people's life and therefore know that they are okay--bad things happen to everyone. However, there are many other ways to see and know that the world is not perfect. It doesn't have to come through "over-sharing."

We can still trust people and other Christians--it's just that trust should grow over time. Just like trusting people with job responsibilities. You trust them with little, and how they take care of little determines if you can trust them with more. And the nature of time is that we only have time to invest deeply in a small amount of relationships, so we don't have the time to develop deep relationships with everyone. Just because two people are Christians doesn't mean they automatically or will eventually be best friends. Each person is created with unique likes and a unique personality.

The Christian View of Money and Vacations

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Co-Contributor

Spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars on vacations is viewed as normal and even in some places expected in our culture. It's as if when we take time out of work, even on weekends, it might seem odd to others if we don't spend some money doing something "significant" like going to a fancy restaurant or traveling to some popular place.

Is this the way Christians should spend a large portion of their money or a large amount of money? It's good to rest and to desire to see God's beautiful creation outside of places we normally see it. But it's also good to be sure we give some money to God and to the poor, as the Bible tells us to do this--and God also desires for us to be healthy financially, to be good stewards of what he has given to us.

Here are three questions to ask when planning a vacation to help determine if we're following God's instructions to us in his Word:

1. Is the money that will be spent on this trip going to make it hard to be financially healthy?

2. How much money has been given to God and to the poor? If the answer is nothing or not much, it'd be much better to do that and rest at home than to spend the money on the vacation. Also, is what you're going to do something that can be done closer and be mostly the same?

3. Will this vacation help you feel more rested? Rest is a part of life that is needed. Vacations often can be crammed full of activity.

Good Theology Includes People

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Contributor

A theology so focused on the knowledge of God that it disregards people, including self, is missing a great deal. Throughout the Bible God interacts with people, he cares about them, and wishes for their true happiness. God's desire is for people to thrive.

It's important that we don't forget about people in need locally and throughout the world. We don't need to focus on it but if we have time or some money to help, our heart should aim for that. If we don't have that, we can pray to have that heart, a heart like Christ's.

Some people focus so much on doing what they view as the right thing for people ("I must be involved with this church group or do this church activity") they mostly just go through the motions of interacting with people. They don't have a true, genuine love for people, where they start to truly know the person, they just have a feeling of obligation to be with people because that's what is expected. At times we should go to or do things we need to go to or do when we aren't feeling it, but we should truly aim to have our hearts in what we choose to do, and pray and work on over time loving more.

Truly caring about someone means taking time to get to know them and remember, and wish for their best. Getting to know someone doesn't mean asking 10 questions in a row. It's over time just being with the person and noticing things about them.

The mark of a Christian is love. Many people may nod in agreement with this but think love is simply following a set of expectations or rules. Genuine, true love involves the heart and really cares. If a person always just follows rules, then he or she cares about following the rule and not loving the person (maybe for the pride of doing it or only being concerned about obeying one rule instead of God's commands to obey and love people).

Objectivity and Apologetics

Gresham Machen in the 1920's and 1930's wrote about the issue of objectivity. It used to be that people were sure about objective reality and unsure of themselves. Now people begin to question objective reality and are sure of themselves.

I believe the same tendency Machen notes has continued and intensified. We should have great certainty in the truths of scripture and be doubtful of ourselves.

It is of course the teaching all through the bible of how our hearts are deceitful and trick us. We are very quick to excuse ourselves. That is why it is proper to have great certainty in the bible and a suspicion of ourselves.

Too often people have great faith in themselves and little faith in the bible. Where the bible seems not right they are quick to point out that the bible must be wrong on this issue because the bible seems to not make sense.

Of course the bible usually does not make sense because we do not like what it has to say. If you push people for why the bible does not make sense on moral issues usually you get a response something like: " It does not seem right or fair and who has the right to impose on my freedoms."

It is of course a difference of opinion. The sense of freedom is that no external power has the right to dictate upon our lives.

Of course the teaching of scripture is that the God of heaven and earth who created all things has such a right. As the Creator and sustainer of all things he has the right to declare right and wrong.

Of course to accept scripture's opinion we must first accept God. But the whole criticism of those outside the church that the bible's morality is deficient or the bible does not make sense is off track.

If you reject God than some of the bible's points on morality are easy to question, but if you accept God then it is folly to question his ideas. The bible is a completely consistent viewpoint on life and a highly rational one at that.

The skeptics who attack the bible often do themselves a disfavor of questioning the rationality of the bible. They of course wonder why the church has such a bad viewpoint of their arguments.

It is of course because their arguments are very poor because they have taken a grave shortcut and avoided the basis of Christian ethics. Their arguments only have power once you already agree about their presuppositions about God or often in their case the lack of a divine being.

You can only attack Christian ethics successfully once you get rid of the biblical view of God. Christian ethics are wholly consistent and rational once you accept that the God of the bible is who he says he is.

The Messiness of Life

Post by
Michelle Dowell
Co-Contributor

A theology that is missing an acknowledgement of the messiness of life is deficient. I heard a pastor say once "God is a God of order." That is absolutely true, but I am more encouraged to know that God is a God who, in his mercy, allows people in a messy world with a messy nature to still take part in serving him.

This fallen condition of the world and humans is a hard reality, but the fact that we are allowed to participate in God's work of loving and helping people and honoring him in the midst of it all--that is what is encouraging. It's broken, but we're called to work with that brokenness, to help when we can to put pieces back together if it's possible. Let's focus on that, but also not forget the state of everything being tainted by the Fall. It's discouraging to always try to grasp for the impossible of perfection in this life.

It's sad to see so many Christians try so hard to always force a smile. It's as if they feel if they don't appear that everything is perfect and in order in their life and if they aren't happy in that moment, something is missing. They may feel that their smile doesn't look forced, but often it's easy to see if a person is forcing it if a person is really wanting to know.

I'm not saying that Christians should grumpily walk around. Christians should show more genuine emotions. They should trust that it's okay to not feel happy every moment of the day, and to allow others to see that. It may mean not having much of an expression but it's honest and frees others of the pressure to pretend to be what one is not.


It's not one or the other: Not happy or sad all the time. But a variety of emotions at different times. This is life. It is an adventure, a calling, a journey.

Our Wealth

What does our wealth consist in? What is important above all things?

Whatever our answer is it is important to be honest. You see we often know what the "right" answer is. But what is our truthful answer?

You see if something is wrong we can only fix it if we are honest about the situation. If we simply give the correct response without thought we have not evaluated the situation.

Of course our wealth consists in our relationship to God. God is our inheritance. Our relationship as children of God is the most important good any Christian can have.

God above all is our inheritance. The bible says many things which the Christian will inherit, but God himself is the most precious.

You see if we gain the whole world, but do not have God we have nothing. That is why the material joy of heaven perfected as it is falls short of God himself.

All that is good in the world is a taste of the even greater goodness found in God. Taste and see that the Lord is good is the challenge of scripture.

Weighty Matters

Recently I heard a criticism of a head of state/theologian from the past that he sometimes neglected church because of pressing issues. To be fair I am not extremely familiar with the statesman/theologian but the criticism struck me as wrong at least without a fair degree of nuance.

You see if we make a claim that someone has erred because they failed to do this or that sometimes it is simply helpful to look at scripture to see accuracy. You see of course that Jesus was criticized in many ways for something similar that he refused to not work on the Sabbath.

Of course I do not mean to suggest that man should in general work on the Sabbath and minimize the day. Or to suggest that Jesus did not take a theology of Sabbath seriously.

You see there is a need for a priority of things in life. The bible has many commands and many principles. There can be a certain friction at times if we refuse to think.

You see this is why the bible has a constant call to wisdom. It is not that there is anything wrong with the law of God in itself. You see it is the nature of living in a fallen world.

In professional work we always hear a call to prioritize. There are many important things but not all are of the same urgency. But you see we do not see this in much of Christian religion of the current time.

You see wisdom in a sense is a prioritizing of spiritual priorities. You see Jesus understood that the keeping of the Sabbath in a specifically ridged way was not always as important as love.

It is not ideal to work on the Sabbath but often it is right in a certain circumstance. You see we need to always think and allow for a faith which allows wisdom. So much theology is in a box today.

May we have eyes to see that wisdom is needed and a desire to understand the world in a way which requires us to use wisdom. You see we often simplify religion so much that we no longer need wisdom. And we have erred in doing so.

A Time for Unity

Unity is at times more important than truth. Paul speaks of issues which have an answer, but unity is more important than the answer.

You see truth at all costs is not Christian. Truth has value and some truth is of great value, but all truth is not equally important.

It is often odd debating with atheists who seem to view that any point of Christianity they object to can sink all of Christianity.

I do see the need to defend the whole faith, but the error in the atheist's approach is that he assumes that Christianity does not have a core and a periphery.

The reality is the Christian faith has an order of beliefs which is important. Not everything is worth dividing over in Christianity.

Some things are worth a good long discussion over but not worth dividing over. Some points are so minor they are not worth discussing if it would bring tension among brothers.

Redeeming Creation

Some Christians like to speak of renewing the world or redeeming creation. It is sort of right and on track. Implicit is the world is off track and needs to get on track.

For a long time I was very impressed by an approach of "renewing the world" or "redeeming creation." Ultimately I started to realize the issue is that the brokenness of the world was too great.

You see the Christian needs to exist more as an alien in a fallen world. He is more like an adventurer in an enemy land than most of us would like to think.

You see the Christian culture of this world is often more an enemy to true religion than a friend. To be Christian is to not reject God at many times.

I feel more and more that the United States of today is like Denmark in Kierkegaard's time. To be a Christian at that time was to Kierkegaard to be baptized in the church and not have rejected the churches teaching.

Thus Kierkegaard rejected that he was a "Christian" in such a limited sense and wished to call himself a follower of Jesus. I feel the tendency to abandon the term wrong but the impulse right.

You see today if someone states, "I am a Christian," in our culture the phrase has almost no meaning. There is a meaning of course but it could be an active faith or simply a vague affiliation with an ethic.

You see the phrase could mean so many things it has almost become meaningless. So what is Christianity?

It is faith in Jesus. It means to follow Jesus. It means to accept the teaching of Jesus that man is wallowing in sin and in need of a savor. It is to accept the solution of the cross that God has paid man’s sin and man has nothing to offer salvation.

Is there more to being a Christian, yes. But you see it is the siting under the teaching of the man Jesus. It is following the teaching his disciples left after his assertion to heaven as they clarified and expounded the truth of God.

And it is accepting all the previous revelation by God which Jesus said pointed to him. You see Christianity is something very specific and not general. And that is what we need to understand.

To be different - righteous

Christianity issues a challenge in the world to be righteous. To be righteous is to be set apart. Simply we are to be different than the world.

You see if we are different than the world we must first have a way in which to be different. This is what we find in the bible. Second we must understand the world in which we are in.

Also we must understand that often part of being righteous is to be skeptical of the teaching of Christians and the church. You see other Christians and the church are blessings from God, but they error.

Our brother in Jesus is a blessing to us but he is a sinner as we are and blind as we are blind. Often he is blind in different ways be we all see through a glass darkly.

We are all on the journey together and need to realize that our brother in his moment of giving wisdom may be more lost than we are in our state of needing wisdom.

Tough Times

When we go through difficult times in life it is often most difficult because we realize how few people are our friends. Some people we believed to be friends simply do not care about us.

Some friends we soon realize cannot remember a single thing about us. We would not have noticed or cared much had we not realized that they could not remember our pain.

Some friends prove to be sincere but are painful themselves because they cannot figure out how to relate to us in our state.

When we pass through the difficult time we sit and look at our friends. There are those who are true gold, those who have proved to be completely worthless and those that we are unsure of.

The interesting thing is that God wishes to actively be our friend when we are his enemy. Often those who are friends often do not care about use even when we do them God.

God is different he seeks us out even when we do him harm. Some people say that God cannot forgive them for their sins.

God forgave Nineveh, Paul, The prostitute, ect… The only condition is faith which is accompanied with repentance.

That is the issue in the end. We like the idea of grace but not repentance. This is the basis for the liberal God which has no relation the Christian God.

But religion on our own terms is not as nice as it seems. Because the law always serves our joy.

Of course God who is supremely happy created the law and man knew now misery before he disobeyed the law.

I suppose it is a great lie of this age that God does not wish for us to be happy. The bible states clearly that God wishes man to be happy, but God wishes to also set man straight on what true happiness is.

Rest as Christian

Christianity insists on the concept of rest as a Christian ideal. You will meet pastors who will affirm they have not had a day off for 3 months.

The rapid turnover in the American pastorate is easily a symptom of the overworked pastor. Interestingly pastors grow in their work over a long careers so experience pastors tend to be far more capable of effectively running a church than young ones.

This raises a question if one can accomplish less by attempting to do to much. I think the answer in the bible is, yes.

The concept of Sabbath is that 1 out 7 days is devoted to rest. Sabbath is both practical wisdom and faith based.

The faith element is a trust that with good we can provide for ourselves with 6 days of labor even when 7 seem needed. The practical element is that when we become worn down our work begins to suffer, so working for 3 months without a day off most likely dramatically affects the quality of ones work.

Even Jesus rested and withdrew into the wilderness. If we need an example of rest we can find one in Jesus who rested even though the needs of the world around him were endless.

Danger of Christian Scholarship

There is a great danger to Christian Scholarship. This is important for the academic to understand (as a warning to self) and the student (as a healthy suspicion of the academic).

The danger is that the bible only ever speaks to oneself. It wasn't intended to be studied ever in a primarily literary or thematic way.

The Christian scholar whose study of scripture does not contain an element of worship faces a great danger to his heart. To be honest we all find work difficult and at times tedious, but the danger is when we are approaching the word of God in this way.

To be honest I have always been a bit concerned by those who must study the bible every day or attend church every Sunday. There is a very good tendency in those things, but we must realize that we are entering into a the presence of God were God will speak to us.

I personally find there are moments where I'm not particularly interested in listening to God in this moment (maybe I am simply too tired). I actually consider that it is possible that to read scripture in some states where you are doing so out of duty can be detrimental to oneself.

If we are hearing God's word we must be prepared to listen. If we nod off a bit in church there is nothing wrong so long as we had really intended to listen in worship. But to simply come to church or scripture with no intent to listen is of great danger.

Christian scholars face this danger frequently. There is great pressure to study and publish a large amount of materials. But one must always remember the scriptures are always speaking directly to you.