Discovering God’s plan, His unique will for you and I, our destiny—whatever you want to call it—is a journey. One just like sports teams take to mature and become championship quality. It’s not as basic as whispering a few prayers and poof! Now we know what to do.
So what can we learn about this journey in discovering God’s will for our lives?
By the very fact that it’s a journey, I’m sure it takes a lifetime to learn. But following are a few thoughts I have about the journey thus far.
Has the emergent church movement impacted Anabaptist young people? Does it matter if it has?
In recent years, I have noticed an increasing amount of people who struggle with faith, God, confusion in their walk with Him, or disillusionment with the church. Is this the result of the emergent church?
While I don’t like naming specific people in criticism, I was recently asked about my take on the emergent church movement and how I thought it is impacting Anabaptist youth and decided to write about my concerns with Rob Bell and Brian McLaren’s teaching.
Do you understand the purpose of the church? Or do you just kind of go with what others have told you?
Even though I grew up in church I still have questions about it. And even though I would say I have an understanding of what the purpose of church is, I tend to go off of what others have told me. Not that it’s entirely wrong to do that, but I’d like to study what Scripture has to say about church by doing what I can to take the Bible at face value without reading through the lenses of what others have said.
That’s why I am embarking on a Biblical study of the church and its purpose, how it should function, and the relationships therein.
The biggest turnoff to people about the Christian church is the politics that take place when it becomes institutionalized.
My generation is especially exhausted by inauthenticity in spiritual leaders and those who are too spineless to stand for what’s right when doing so means losing constituents. But religious politics isn’t played only at the leadership level. In fact, it begins as young people in the youth group. It deepens through cliques at Bible school and culminates in the jealous battle for favor and attention over “ordinations weekend.”
In today’s post we look at twelve symptoms of religious politics and how you and I can rise above such cowardly games.
Prayer meetings across our nation are deteriorating, while health campaigns are increasing. Something is out of order. There is no doubt that we value our health and wealth, and the emotions that surface when they are threatened expose the fact that we value it more than we should.
But what about those who do struggle with chronic illness? If you are living in constant pain, is it wrong to seek relief? What does it mean to seek first the Kingdom of God when you are faced with chronic pain?
It seems to me that those who have struggled at length with health issues understand something about God that the rest of us don’t. What is it? What do they know that we don’t? What do they have that we don’t have?
We hear about God’s son all our lives and, yes, we can quote verses about who He is and why He came to earth and died and rose again, but it’s easy for the story to become rote and soon the deep, earth shaking truths glide over our heads while our hearts wrestle with the faith conflicts we experience every day while living on this earth.
Too many people are doing okay on the outside, but feel lost when they’re hearts ask scary questions. Questions such as, “Why Jesus?” “Who is God, really?” “Am I truly saved?” and “Have I ever actually known God?” aren’t that acceptable in Christian culture. We’re supposed to have that all figured out. Yet, the more I hear people’s stories, the more I realize many of us—those that look like good Christians—are wrestling with these very issues.
This Easter season I needed to take a look and remember who Christ is, what He did for us, how He did that, and how we can experience Him personally.
Some will tell you that “in God’s kingdom, up is down and down is up,” insinuating that what makes sense to our minds is not right in God’s kingdom and what is right in God’s kingdom doesn’t make sense to our minds.
They get this thought from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Jesus tells us that when someone slaps you on the right cheek, instead of slapping them back (as the world would do), turn the other cheek to them so they can slap it also. If someone takes your outer coat, instead of grabbing it back and yelling at them (as the world would do), Christ tells us to give them our sweatshirt as well. The Sermon is full of these paradoxical instructions calling us to do things differently than what comes natural in the heated moment.
But it gets taken out of context.
You’re tired of Christianity just being about going to church and paying your tithe. You’re frustrated with Christian leaders telling their people to “take up their guns,” when Christ calls us to a life of love and service.
You want to change that. You want to see Christ actually lived out in the church. You want to live a meaningful life for Him, but there is a problem: you feel lost as to how to bring about such change.
In America, Christianity runs so deep within our heritage that, anymore, most Christian people use “Christianity” as they would their nationality, yet many people don’t know what it actually means to be a “little Christ,” much less how to be one.
Five times a day, the descendants of Ishmael cry before Lord. And God hears it. God hears their cry and calls us, the partakers of the free gift through that one man Jesus Christ, to His answer to their cry and share it with them.
But we don’t go.
Churches in America send one missionary per million Muslims. We are neglecting the call of Christ on our lives as receivers of the abundance of God’s grace and of the free gift of righteousness.
So God is sending them to us.
In droves.
I have remarkable friends. Remarkable because they are intelligent, good-looking, serve people, love God, and seem to get a kick out of me. They also ask great questions.
One of the questions I often hear my remarkable friends ask is “Why does everything have to be about being Anabaptist?”
Much of my generation is tired of the “us” vs. “them” mentality of the Anabaptist church. In fact, I believe it’s one of the primary reasons young people choose to leave. Too often, the focus is on our differences from the rest of the evangelical world and why they are wrong and evil and how we should keep away from them. That gets exhausting for young believers who simply want to follow Christ.
This weekend marks fourteen years since two airplanes careened into the World Trade towers in downtown New York City. It’s been seven years since the Great Recession impacted our economy. There is a lot of speculation among Christian communities about what might take place this year.
Was God sending America a message back in 2001, and again in 2008? If so, what will it be this year? Will America finally collapse? And if America collapses, does that mark the beginning of Christ’s return?
What would it be like to walk into Walmart and be able to buy a music CD from a girl wearing a head-covering? Or to have an Anabaptist author publish a NY Times Bestseller?
How do we best serve people?
Think of a restaurant. How does the owner of a restaurant best serve his customers? Does he offer only water because that is healthiest and he wants his customers to be healthy? Maybe he’ll throw in Coke because he knows that if you don’t like water you probably like Coke.
Author Asher Witmer knows what it’s like to want freedom from sexual sin only to continually fail. We’re often told we need more personal discipline, that we need to think godly things instead of fleshly things.
What if I told you that discipline won’t solve your problem with lust?
Our male sexuality is given by God for advancing beauty and goodness. But somewhere along the line it becomes something that causes devastation and guilt. The good news is we don’t have to live with guilt. In Live Free, Asher Witmer shows us how we can find freedom from sexual sin, live with nothing to hide, and be able to fight for others.
