The-Not-As-It-Should-Be World Revisited

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.  For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.  Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. Romans 8:18-23 (NLT)

      A little over a year ago I published a blog article titled Heartbreak, Groaning, and The Not-As-It-Should-Be World. In this post, I talked about "suffering with Christ" as walking along with people as they experience the not-rightness of our fallen world. I opened the post by pointing out that "In fact, the first few chapters of the book of Romans spell out how all the world has become affected by this not-right-ness, to the point where no person can claim to be as they should be, and the result is death. Death in both body and spirit, spiritual deadness resulting from being disconnected from the source of all life, God, and ultimately, subject to decay and physical death as a visible demonstration of the effects of this not-right-ness.

Chain Reaction - May Synchroblog

        I know its happened to you. Well, unless you never drive a car or you live in a place where there is no traffic at all. You are in a line of cars traveling the same direction and one of the cars way ahead of you, perhaps a half a mile or more ahead suddenly slows or stops and then all the cars behind them suddenly slow way down or stop. All along the line of cars, brake lights flash, tires squeal, and tempers flare up. This exact thing happened to me just the other day as I was sitting in traffic, a car somewhere about 15-20 cars ahead stopped for some unseen reason, and all the cars between us did the same, then me and my rather large truck also came rather suddenly to a stop.

Does Eternity Start Now?

  








  "Eternity is now"

 
    We hear the words from our Christian friends, we see them on motivational posters, we may even hear them preached from a pulpit, but do we really understand what the implication of this very simple yet profound thought is? Jesus spent a lot of time talking about life, particularly in the Gospel of John, where life is a major theme of the book. The word for life zoe is very often paired with another word, aiōnios, a word that is translated eternal or everlasting or without end. and so we have Jesus over and over again promising to those who believe in Him, a life that is without end or eternal. But at what point does this new life start. Does it start with the point of initial faith, or do we have to wait until the disposition of our physical bodies before we can experience this life unending that Jesus is referring to?

How Do We Bear Fruit? (April Synchroblog)

                                   
 

                                           But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in
                                           our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,  
                                           goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, and self-control. 
                                           There is no law against these things!
                                                                                               - Paul of Tarsus 

     When we think about spiritual fruit, particularly the "Fruit of the Spirit", we tend to think of DOING, spiritual fruit has become synonymous with some action or activity.  Often, we look for these outward actions as evidence that they have genuinely repented of their sinful ways. In fact, when we do not see these things in the life of a believer, we tend to push them to WORK HARDER, to try harder or to DO MORE to produce the fruit that proves the genuineness of their faith. But is this really a correct understanding of what fruit is and what it means to bear fruit - well, lets look at the context of the above quote from the Apostle Paul.

3 Things Christians Can Learn From Other Religions (March Synchroblog)

             One of the reasons that I love to participate in the monthly synchroblogs, is that they force me out of my comfort zone to blog about topics that I would not normally blog about otherwise. This months topic is no exception, in fact, this is one of those topics that good Christian bloggers avoid altogether. I mean, what have you learned from other religions? Really, everyone knows that the correct answer is nothing, because we cannot learn anything from false religions. Of course I do not really believe that, but talking about learning from other religions is risky, people can begin to accuse us of buying into false religions or worse. But if all truth is God's truth, than we have a responsibility to look for all truth as it reveals God. I am sure given time, I could come up with a pretty extensive list of things that other religions can teach us, but I have come up with three that I think are pretty important.

God is There! (January Synchroblog - Charity)

It has always been my custom to dislike new years. The last several years for me have been full of hardship, loss, difficult times and unwanted experiences. The thought of a new year is always scary! What if it is harder than the last one?? What if there is harder stuff, bigger messes? I always tell myself new years are scary because they are unknown, at least the mess of the old year was a familiar one. In case it isn't obvious, my natural bent is toward the negative. I am definately a glass half empty (and probably rotten) kind of person. With all of that in mind, I was surprised to get to the end of 2014 without the usual dread of the new year. I actually came into this year feeling a sense of hope, a sense of God being up to something greater in this new year. What has changed?

2014 - A Year of Changes (January Synchroblog - FedEx)

    

        If there is one thing that I would say has characterized my last year, it has been change. Some of those changes were easy, some of them not so much; some of those changes were clearly for the better, and in some cases, are still looking for the good. I hear people say all the time that they hate change, and I really do appreciate that sentiment, change is difficult, it causes us to leave that which is known and forces us into that which is uncertain. Despite, all this, I don't hate change, I admit I am not always enthusiastic about changes in my life, but I have learned a lot through these changes.

       2014 started out with a major change for my family. In January, we lost our house to foreclosure and were forced to move out of what had been our home for nearly seven years. This was not just one change, it was a whole series of changes, we had been used to owning our house and now we rented from another owner. We had to ask permission to work on our house or to make changes. We moved several miles farther away from our home church into an unfamiliar neighborhood. Our neighbors changed, as did the routes that we had to drive to go about our regular business. Even now a year later, we are still dealing with settling into our new house and there are some items that have not been unpacked and found new homes.