41 Things Your Doctor Won't Tell You

So this is totally off-topic, but hey it's my site. This article is wonderful. Funny part is that I first read it in my doctor's exam room.

http://www.rd.com/living-healthy/41-medical-secrets/article75920.html

End of Entrust

Our men's group has just ended. It was set from the beginning to only be a six month group. I must say, I'm sad to see it end. Each of us felt that this group had something unique. Linden asked me to put my thoughts in writing, so I'm posting them here as well.

After thinking about it, I think what I liked can be summarized like this:

It allowed for an open, personal interaction without fear of judgment or embarrassment so we could support each other through our walk with God.

Those points:

1. It was open. We were committed to being upfront and honest. We were with the intent of sharing, not just going to a bible study or going along with our wife. We wanted to be there and talk.


2. It was personal. We didn't just discuss scripture to learn. We wanted to learn about each other and God. Some groups I'm in, or have been, we weren't really trying to get to know the others and weren't sure we wanted them to know us.


3. No fear of judgment. It was established early that we are who we are. Each of us shared something during this time that was personal and exposed a more intimate side that we just as easily could have hidden.


4. No fear of embarrassment. This was private and confidential. We knew that what we shared wouldn't go outside this group. It was a safe place to open up.


5. Support through our walk with God. We were there to share this portion of our walk together. We had the purpose of bearing each others burdens and deepening our faith.

Looking at this list, this is what I would hope happens in each small group. However, it hasn't been the case for me. I may not have seen this modeled before. Or I had, but didn't know what to do to continue it. Either way, this really struck me.

I really hope to find another group like this again soon. We're all thinking about where God has next for us. I may try to get another group together, this time with some new guys. Maybe a few of the originals. We'll see.

Online Ministry

The following is an except (slightly modified) from one man's blog I read. I don't know him. I found it and added it to my reader because I found the things he shared to be both funny and poignant.

Often, it feels like God calls us to do something for Him and we do, and it's like a note we put into a bottle and then promptly throw into the ocean of life.

That guy at work He calls us to reach out to switches jobs and we never hear from him again.

The neighbor we walk through a divorce moves to another town and disappears.

Our prayers for people line the shore like a thousand bottles floating away from us without resolution or closure.

But sometimes they come back to us. Sometimes, God blesses us with the gift of knowing exactly how He used what we do for Him. And that can be a very beautiful thing.

The other night, I shared a story my counselor had told me on my site, 97secondswithgod.com. It was a short story about how God loves when we wrestle with Him because it's impossible to wrestle with someone far away. We feel guilty about it, because we think we should trust instead of wrestle but He sees it as a sign of intimacy.

Here is what a reader said on my site in response:

Jon,

My wife has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, and it looks like she's entering the beginning of the end. As you might imagine, I've been wrestling with God quite a bit lately.

When I read your words just now I broke down and cried because the guilt, frustration, fear and anger were instantly replaced by the image of a loving God.

Thank you so much.

God is weird. A man I've never met, in Oregon, a state I've never been to, dealing with a disease I've never dealt with, got the bottle he needed. I threw it out into the
ocean and God sent it across the country.

This is the strength of online ministry. God's truth is truth whether shared in person or online. You can read something life-changing in a book or on a web site. God can speak to you through anything.

This is why I think it's important to use the Internet to reach people. We take God where the people are. They are online.

RSS Readers

If you're reading this blog in an RSS reader, you can likely skip this post. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then this is for you.

Most blogs and other pages with regularly updated content publish what's called a feed. This feed is the content of the blog in a standard format. This means that if it's from Blogger, LiveJournal, Fox News or any other page, it's source format doesn't matter. Once it's standardized, it can be read and displayed in any number of feed readers our there.

I use the Google Reader and find that it works very well. I currently have 99 subscriptions to various blogs, news sources and websites. Checking each of these sites by hand would be impossible and very frustrating. Using a feed reader, I'm able to have any new posts sent directly to me. No more checking a site every day for it to be updated just once a week.

To use the Google Reader, all you need is a Google account. Then copy the URL of the website you want to subscribe to into the 'Add Subscription' box. Now you don't have to keep going to different sites, you can just look in one place for all your updates.

Need more help, shoot me an email or leave a comment and I'll get you details.

The Limits of our Mind

Monday I was watching a repeat of Star Trek:Voyager, when an exchange between two characters made me think.

In the world of Star Trek, there is technology which allows for the creation of holographic places and people. On Voyager, Captain Janeway has recreated Leonardo Da Vinci and has been studying from him. In this episode, Da Vinci has been taken out of his recreated Florance, Italy and has seen the marvelous technology of the present day. This is causing the great thinking and inventor much confusion as he tries to comprehend what he has just seen.

Janeway: Let me ask you something. If you were something other than a human being. If you were a different kind of animal. If you were a small bird, a sparrow. What would your world be like?
Da Vinci: I should make my home in a tree, in the branch of an elm. I should hunt insects for food, straw for my nest and in the springtime I should sing for a companion.
Janeway: And you would know nothing of the politics of Florence, the cutting of marble or mathematics.
Da Vinci: Of course not.
Janeway: But why not?
Da Vinci: My mind would be too small.
Janeway: As a sparrow your mind would be too small. Even with the best of teachers?
Da Vinci: If Aristotle himself were to perch on my branch and lecture till he fell off from exhaustion, still the limits of my mind would prevent me from understanding.
Janeway: And as a man can you accept that there may be certain realities beyond the limits of your comprehension?
Da Vinci: I could not accept that. And I would be a fool.

Da Vinci is made to realize that just as human things are more than an animal can comprehend, so there may be things that his human mind can't comprehend.

This is so true for us as well. God created our mind. Being created in Him image, it is more like Him than any other animal is. We can think, reason, feel, create and dream. I think that our mind was created such that we could recognise God and know Him.

However, knowing and comprehending are too different things entirely. God has an eternal mind, ours is limited and finite. We can never get all that God is into our minds to fully grasp Him entirely. We can get bits and pieces, but then we'll forget those as we discover something new.

So we will never fully understand God, and that's ok. We should be able, like Da Vinci in our TV show, to accept that limitation. Much like a child accepts that their father knows and understands more than them, so we should trust God.

The Peter Principle

In yesterday's post, I included the Peter Principle as an example of one of those natural laws that people notice. I like this principle and decided to expand on it a bit.

Peter Principle
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

The principle works like this. Say you get a job at a company making widgets. Your job is just to drill the hold at the center. Simple as it is, you find you like your job. You like working with your hands and do good, precision work. Your supervisor notices this and promotes you.

Now you're cutting the edges. There's more detail here and you need to pay closer attention to measurements and the like. But still, you're good at it and enjoy using your hands. You start to notice how the different size widgets work together. Being mechanically inclined you see opportunities to make product better. This works and your manager is impressed and promotes you.

As the supervisor for the team creating these new widgets, you still get to work with your hands. You enjoy teaching the members of your team the best way to do what they do and working out the bugs in the new product. Now, however, you do have to deal with managing people. You don't really enjoy that aspect of it, but it's a necessary evil of the job. Your team has the highest production numbers of the company and the front office is impressed and promotes you.

Unfortunately now your a manger. You took the job because it feels good to be recognized. That and the money was good and you like being able to provide well for your family. You also wanted the chance to continue your work on a larger scale. However, gone are the days of working with your hands. The only think you touch anymore is a computer keyboard. You're in meetings most of the day, people management is all you do plus all the financials which just scare you. You work hard, but only do an average job since you're now outside your true area of expertise. The company owner notices and decides not to promote you.

You've now reached the level of your incompetence. You don't do poorly, but you no longer shine. The work you now do involves a new set of skills which don't match the ones that got you here. You'd have been better off as a worker or supervisor, but now it's too late. Companies rarely have mechanisms in place to put you back into a job where you were the most fulfills and productive and even if they did you'd be seen as a failure.

The lesson here is to actively learn who God has made you to be. What are your skills? How do you think about things? What makes you feel fulfilled. God has created you in such a way that you have a place, a niche. The goal is to find fulfillment there, and not in moving into areas outside what God has created you to do.

Upgrade Your Faith

Everyone's familiar with those popular sayings that always tend to be correct. The most famous of which is

Murphy's Law
If anything can go wrong, it will.

In science, there is

Occam's Razor
All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best

This rule keeps scientists hypothesis from becoming to complex and convoluted. Works well in the legal arena.

Peter Principle
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

This is very true in business. The idea is that you do a good job and you get promoted. That is until you've been promoted to a level where you can no longer do a good job and get stuck there.

Moore's Law
The number of transistors per square inch will double every two years.

This is big in my industry, IT. The idea is that computer speed and storage capacity will double every two years. It's held true since 1965.

To that end, I've held my own law about computers.

Jason's Maxim
You don't need to upgrade your computer if you don't upgrade your expectations.

I've found that most people who are frustrated with computers are frustrated because it seems they're always slow. These same people buy a computer just for "email and Internet", then try to load the newest MS Office release two years later, plus play WoW. They're the one's wanting their computer to do more and getting frustrated that it can't.

It's like buying a sports car when you're single, then being angry that five years later it can't hold your wife and two kids.

I've seen people run an old Mac Classic for 15 years and it runs just fine, because it's only ever done what they wanted it to do.

So let me ask you this. Is the same true for your faith? Do you you find that your faith needs an upgrade? It just won't cut it anymore. You want more. It did fine five years ago, but now you find it lacking.

Maybe you've upgraded your expectations. Maybe five years ago, you just wanted to stop cussing as much and have a more pleasant home life. Now you're seeing that other people have great experiences with God and you want them too. Your expectations have grown. You're not content with just cutting out the weekend drinking and sending in your tithe check. You want bigger movements of God.

Good.

I don't think God wants us running our old Mac Classic faith for 15 years. He wants us to want more.

Upgrade your faith.

Take Them to the Father

I had to call a woman the other day for a pretty simple church matter. I had only ever talked to her once. When I called, she had been crying. She's going through a really bad spot in her life right now and the burden was just overwhelming. You can tell she's desperate and simply hurting in nearly every way.

I had forgotten to call her two days running now, so I couldn't help but think that God must have had me call at that moment for a reason. I must have been there so do something. I don't know what.

I froze. I couldn't think of anything to say. I had absolutely nothing to offer her. I wanted to help, to fix some small part of what was happening. I felt that I should be able to offer some kinda of relief from a least a portion of her burden. But I had nothing.

This really bothered me. I'm called to pastor and this has to be a huge part of pastoring. What do you do when people come to you and you feel helpless.

The only thing I could think to do was to offer to pray for her. Now I know the power of prayer and I've seen prayers answered in very awesome ways. Prayer is a very valid and probably the best thing we can do, especially if we don't have anything else we could do.

I'll admin though, that seemed like such an empty thing to say. So many Christians will say, 'I'll pray for you.' and you wonder if they ever did. So while we did pray for her, I feared that it would just sound like a quick way off the phone.

So I shared this last night at our men's group and the best answer came out. It's not my job to have the answers or solutions for her. I do not have that responsibility. That's God's job. So my job is to point her to the Father. I can offer to pray with her, right then, and together we can take her burdens to God.

Now God may lay on me to do something more to help. That's fine, but that comes God. I'd be doing something He has led me to do, not something out of my own feeling of obligation.

That really made me feel a lot better and took a lot of the fear and burden from me. I love this group.

1 Peter 1:13-25

Our small group splits up the facilitating between different members. Last night was my night, so I prepared a few thoughts just to help us work through the passage. I thought I'd post them here.

Be Holy

13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Peter is again putting out a call to be self-controlled. A righteous lifestyle is important. Nothing done well is ever done casually. Make purposeful strives to live as God would have us live.

This can be done, knowing that it is not our living in which our hope is placed, but in the grace of Jesus.

14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."

Reconciled with God, we now live in a Father/Son (Daughter/child) relationship with Him. We therefore obey Him as a good Father and seek to please Him out of love.

We are called to be holy, not simply live sinful lives under grace. God loves what is good and hates what is evil, we should as well.

17 Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.

We recognize that it is not from man that we should seek approval, but from God. God’s judgement is just and a reverent fear of that judgement is warranted.

18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

It isn’t out good behavior, self-control or the approval of men (even those in the church) that has saved us, but the sacrifice of Jesus.

For some, the life handed down from our forefathers is the church. Without Jesus, even a church life is empty.

20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

Our salvation was always in God’s mind. There is nothing in our lives which Jesus cannot cover.

21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. 22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.

Does that mean we are purified through our obedience. No, but through our obedience to the truth that Jesus is the only way to the father.

23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable,
through the living and enduring word of God.

24 For, "All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25 but the word of the Lord stands forever."
And this is the word that was preached to you.

Our salvation and the spirit within us is not perishable. We can hold fast to the hope that God is eternal.

Back to Basics

What does it mean to have a relationship with Jesus?

This phrase gets bounced around by Christians so much that it's easy to think everyone knows what that means. "It's not about religion, it's about relationship." In one ear and out the other. About as effective as "Know Jesus, know peace. No Jesus, no peace."

Karl Marx said that "Religion is the opiate of the people." and I'd argue he was right. In our world today, religion is much more a vehicle for forcing order and conformity among other for the promotion, power and position of a few. God honestly requires obedience, but it is far to easy for human leaders to redirect that to themselves.

When most of us think of church, we think of rules and rituals. Go on Sunday morning, sit in your pew. Don't drink or smoke or run with women who do.

At best, most religions are about an attempt to win, earn or otherwise deserve a right position with God. Adherents try to win favor, seek forgiveness of sins, ask for blessings or just self-punish as a way for God to accept them.

There is, like in most things, some truth in this. They recognise that God expects obedience, they failed, and need to either pay the price or seek forgiveness.

If that is religion, then how is Christianity different? For starters, it doesn't place the expectation that humanity can pay the price for it's own sin. The price of sin is death and separation from God, so the idea that you can pay that price to reconnect with God is like selling your car to afford the gas. Christianity recognizes that someone else would have to pay your debt for you in order for you to see any benefit.

That's what makes Christianity unique. Jesus died on the cross and paid that sin debt for you. Nothing I do in response to my faith (including going to church, prayer, and obeying God) is an attempt to pay that debt and reconnect with God.

Then what is it? It is relationship. Jesus took care of the religion, so now I'm reconciled to God and can have a relationship with Him. I can speak to Him without guilt. I can seek His will for my life and petition Him for myself, my family and others through prayer. I know that even when I fail, God still loves me and I'm not rejected again.

My living out my faith is not done to gain His favor, but out of a right Father/Son relationship where I obey my Father and seek to please Him out of love.

I really don't think anyone wants religion. They 'do' religion hoping for that relationship with God. Our job is to tell folks that 'religion' is so 2000 years ago.

Jesus Online

We've just about finished our church's new website. There's just a few more graphics, then the daunting task of moving it from test into production. It's a nice looking design and I hope the new layout will encourage more use. Hopefully it will improve communication in our congregation and make some things easier.

However, it's not our congregation that's worrying me so much. It's those out in the communities we serve that don't yet know Jesus. Especially my age and younger, teenage through their twenties. People that age are increasingly dependant. It what marketers call 'Web First'. The Internet is the first place they will go to learn about anything new. If we as a church can't connect to this generation online, we may miss our opportunity to connect with them at all.

Two phrases keep going through my head. "Communication is the burden of the sender." and "Print is dead." If we expect to reach the lost today, part of that will be online.

1 Kings 8:56-61

This was in our morning devotional:

1 Kings 8:56-61
56 “Praise be to the Lord, who has given rest to his people Israel just as he promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave through his servant Moses. 57 May the Lord our God be with us as he was with our fathers; may he never leave us nor forsake us. 58 May he turn our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep the commands, decrees and regulations he gave our fathers. 59 And may these words of mine, which I have prayed before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, that he may uphold the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel according to each day's need, 60 so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God and that there is no other.
61 But your hearts must be fully committed to the Lord our God, to live by his decrees and obey his commands, as at this time."

Just a few thoughts:

Verse 56: The Lord is faithful in His promised. All He has said has come true. Nothing has failed. God will be faithful to us in what He promises. Just remember that the Lord's promises are often qualified, "If my people... I will". So often we think that God has failed us when really we have failed God.

Verse 57: God is always with us. He is steady. He will not leave. So often we think "God is close." or "God is far from me right now." It's like a boat tied to a pier. The pier doesn't move, but the boat is tossed by the waves and moves in and out. We're the ones who move away from God.

Verse 58: We need to be turned to Him. If He is always with us, we're the ones who need changing. We need to follow Jesus and keep His commands. It's about living in obedience to God through a righteous lifestyle. Not to win our salvation, but out of a repentant heart.

Verse 59: God will meet the needs of His people. I just like the way God says it "each day's need". Don't expect God to reveal some long-term provision plan.

Verse 60: That "each day's need" speaks to all people as a testimony that God is true and faithful. It testifies to who He is.

Verse 61: Now all of this falls under the note that we must be fully committed to God, by our lifestyle and obedience. Not perfectly committed, but fully. In the long jump, every competitor is fully committed to going to furthest, however all but one will make it. They were still fully committed even in their failure.

Happy Independance Day

Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy and safe Independence Day.

During this time, I ask you to reflect on one thing.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that
they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

This country is founded on the principle that God is the creator, and that He created men to be free. The Continental Congress did not feel they were taking the authority into their own hands, but that the authority to throw off the chains of England came from Almighty God.

I fear we've lost that, anymore. We fail to recognize that it is in God that all authority and government lies. Our hope and our future does not lie with the government, but with God. Many people are so discouraged with the direction our country is going. But the future is not in the hands of the politicians, but in the hands of God.

So on this 4th of July, offer up a prayer for this country. Pray for our leaders, whether you like them or not. Pray that we follow the course God would have for us. That He defends and provides for us. That we would humble ourselves before Him and He would forgive us our sins as a nation and bless us. Give thanks to Him for providing a country of great freedoms and pray that those freedoms not be taken from us.

God bless the USA.

The Failure of Peter.

(The idea from this post came from Brandon Donaldson over at lifechurch.tv)

So we know that Peter denied Christ three times. He also preached the first sermon after the Resurrection at Pentecost where 3000 gave their lives to Christ. It seems like such a huge change in such a short amount of time. A true testimony to the grace of God and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

But there's another lesson here if you look at the story.

Mark 14:27-30
"You will all fall away," Jesus told them, "for it is written:
" 'I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.'
But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee."

Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not."
"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times."

Here Jesus tells the disciples that when He is taken, they will scatter. He will be abandoned by those who follow Him.

However, Peter doesn't abandon Him at first. Peter follows behind to watch. He's in the Temple courtyard when he gets approached and recognized as a follower of Jesus. It's then that he denies Christ.

So the only reason he had the opportunity to deny Jesus is expressly because he choose to follow Him when others didn't. The others might be able to say that they "never denied Christ" but that's only because they'd already given up.

Those of us who choose to follow Jesus more closely, who take bigger risks and try to go the extra mile will pay the price of that devotion. We will tempted in ways that others are not. And our failures will be all the more grand because of it.

However, look at the positive side of it. He did have a heart to follow Jesus. He loved Jesus. Because of that, he was also in a place to preach that sermon and be used by God in a great way.

Being one who gives a deeper devotion to following Jesus means that we will have bigger opportunities to fail, but also that we will see God work in bigger ways.

Its a trade off that I'm sure Peter was happy to have made.