Category: Spiritual Growth

Here’s that lengthy quote I read last night:

“The King­dom of Heav­en,” said the Lord Christ, “is among you.” But what, pre­cise­ly, is the King­dom of Heav­en? You can­not point to exist­ing spec­i­mens, say­ing, “Lo, here!” or “Lo, there!” You can only expe­ri­ence it. But what is it like, so that when we expe­ri­ence it we may rec­og­nize it? Well, it is a change, like being born again and relearn­ing every­thing from the start. It is secret, liv­ing power—like yeast. It is some­thing that grows, like seed. It is pre­cious like buried trea­sure, like a rich pearl, and you have to pay for it. It is a sharp cleav­age through the rich jum­ble of things which life presents: like fish and rub­bish in a draw-net, like wheat and tares; like wis­dom and fol­ly; and it car­ries with it a kind of men­ac­ing final­i­ty; it is new, yet in a sense it was always there—like turn­ing out a cup­board and find­ing there your own child­hood as well as your present self; it makes demands, it is like an invi­ta­tion to a roy­al banquet—gratifying, but not to be dis­re­gard­ed, and you have to live up to it; where it is equal, it seems unjust; where it is just it is clear­ly not equal—as with the sin­gle pound, the diverse tal­ents, the labor­ers in the vine­yard, you have what you bar­gained for; it no knows com­pro­mise between an uncal­cu­lat­ing mer­cy and a ter­ri­ble justice—like the unmer­ci­ful ser­vant, you get what you give; it is help­less in your hands like the King’s Son, but if you slay it, it will judge you; it was from the foun­da­tions of the world; it is to come; it is here and now; it is with­in you. It is record­ed that the mul­ti­tudes some­times failed to under­stand.

Dorothy Say­ers, The Poet­ry of Search

I just received an email from a friend named Earl Creps

land of plen­ty movie

(he’s the direc­tor of the doc­tor­al pro­gram at my alma mater, the Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary).

Any­way, it’s all about how to read for per­son­al growth. I thought it was worth shar­ing an excerpt here. In case it’s not obvi­ous, he’s speak­ing with­in the con­text of spir­i­tu­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship.

I think points 3 and 5 are par­tic­u­lar­ly good.

Here are some keys to max­i­miz­ing the effec­tive­ness of your read­ing…

1. Read the clas­sics: dial up amazon.com and search for the works of
James McGre­gor Burns, Hen­ri Nouwen, War­ren Ben­nis, etc. While we can debate
“what’s a clas­sic?,” books of this sort will get you into the game in a
hur­ry.

2. Read the lat­est and skip the mid­dle: if you’re just get­ting into an
orga­ni­za­tion for­get what was writ­ten any more than 2 years ago [except for
lead­er­ship clas­sics] and read from here for­ward. Most of the stuff in the
mid­dle is derived from the clas­sics any­way.…

3. Trust your life to guide your read­ing: When I’m feel­ing fresh, I
read in my spe­cial­ties [self-lead­er­ship, emerg­ing cul­ture, pow­er min­istry].
When I’m tired, I read 90 degrees out from my spe­cial­ties [, i.e.,
pro­fes­sion­al lit­er­a­ture from oth­er fields such as tech­nol­o­gy or psy­chol­o­gy].
When I’m burned out, I read 180 degrees out from my aca­d­e­m­ic inter­ests
[e.g., fic­tion, his­to­ry]. Some­how, I always find more illus­tra­tions,
prin­ci­ples, and oth­er ulti­mate­ly use­ful mate­r­i­al in this “diver­sion­ary”
read­ing than just about any­where else. I also find it huge­ly refresh­ing. A
tired mind can­not absorb much any­way.

4. Any work is a “lead­er­ship” book if it’s read by a leader: the leader
of the future must be an inter­est­ing, well-round­ed per­son, not an
incom­pe­tent mys­tic or a cor­po­rate-clone tech­no­crat. Younger adults
espe­cial­ly are all about who you are, not just what you can do.

5. Putting it togeth­er: Read­ing in your field makes you com­pe­tent.
Read­ing out from your field [90 degrees] makes you broad-mind­ed. Read­ing
oppo­site your field [180 degrees] makes you inter­est­ing and cre­ative.

My major rec­om­men­da­tion for left-brain­ers: devel­op a read­ing plan that
includes 0, 90, and 180-degree dimen­sions.

My major rec­om­men­da­tion for right-brain­ers: start lis­ten­ing to your life
and read in response to it, dude.

Bless­ings,

Earl

I just ran across an online arti­cle by Heather Williams, who became a believ­er at Stan­ford: Over­haul at Stan­ford.

When I entered Stan­ford, I was not a Chris­t­ian. The world lay at my feet then, wait­ing to be rev­o­lu­tion­ized. I attend­ed polit­i­cal meet­ings, took class­es on racism and social jus­tice, and immersed myself at the com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice cen­ter. I believed in the pow­er with­in me to make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the world. I tutored under­priv­i­leged ele­men­tary school kids; I ran the day camp at a home­less shel­ter; I col­lect­ed left­over food to feed the hun­gry. Yet, the more I tried to change the world, the more frus­trat­ed I became. I con­front­ed bureau­cra­cy, apa­thy, and…sin. I began to think that maybe human nature need­ed a basic over­haul.

Dur­ing this time I was chal­lenged to read the Bible by a friend of mine. I had come to col­lege hat­ing the Bible. I thought it was sex­ist, homo­pho­bic and rigid­ly self-right­eous — the basic blue­print of intol­er­ance. You see, I grew up in the “Bible Belt.” Through­out high school, most of the Chris­tians I encoun­tered were more con­cerned about knock­ing some sense into me with the Bible than they were con­cerned about explain­ing to me what its pages con­tained. Most were vocal about their con­vic­tion that I was going straight to hell because of my lib­er­al agen­da. Yet, when my friend in col­lege chal­lenged my actu­al knowl­edge of the Bible (gar­nered from child­hood Sun­day school lessons and the lit­er­a­ture class exam­in­ing his­to­ry’s “great works” my fresh­man year), I real­ized that I knew very lit­tle about Jesus and His fol­low­ers…

It was pub­lished back in ’96, so don’t expect to see her walk­ing around cam­pus.

As promised, here’s the info from last night’s meet­ing:

The Eng­lish phrase “one anoth­er” is expressed as a sin­gle word in Greek: the reflex­ive pro­noun allelous. By find­ing each place that allelous is used in the New Tes­ta­ment, we can quick­ly sur­vey pas­sages that teach us how we should relate to one anoth­er. The fol­low­ing list is rep­re­sen­ta­tive but not exhaus­tive.

Greet One Anoth­er: 2 Corinthi­ans 13:12
Show Hos­pi­tal­i­ty To One Anoth­er: 1 Peter 4:9
Hon­or One Anoth­er: Romans 12:10
Live In Har­mo­ny With One Anoth­er: Romans 12:16
Serve One Anoth­er: Gala­tians 5:13–14
Com­fort One Anoth­er: 2 Corinthi­ans 1:3–4
Encour­age One Anoth­er: Hebrews 3:12–13
Moti­vate One Anoth­er: Hebrews 10:24–25
Teach And Admon­ish One Anoth­er: Colos­sians 3:16
Be For­bear­ing With One Anoth­er: Eph­esians 4:1–3
For­give One Anoth­er: Colos­sians 3:13
Con­fess Sin To One Anoth­er: James 5:16
Bear One Another’s Bur­dens: Gala­tians 6:2
Love One Anoth­er: 1 John 4:7–21

and here are some addi­tion­al resources we did­n’t cov­er last night

Do a search for every ‘one anoth­er’ verse in the NIV New Tes­ta­ment

Do a search for every ‘each oth­er’ verse in the NIV New Tes­ta­ment

Also see the arti­cle: “One Anoth­er” Com­mands of Scrip­ture, which is dull yet infor­ma­tive.

I found this very inter­est­ing: Atten­tion all you free load­ers and moochers, this is the thing you’ve been wait­ing for. Final­ly some­thing you get for FREE that is actu­al­ly going to help you. Imag­ine that!

Here is how X3watch works. Let’s say you’re brows­ing the Inter­net and you’re look­ing at porn. The soft­ware makes a log of the porno site and then every 2 or 4 weeks your two des­ig­nat­ed account­abil­i­ty part­ners will get an email list­ing all the skin sites you’ve been on. Oh no-bust­ed! Now that’s what we call real account­abil­i­ty. No more secrets dude!

Give me this pro­gram NOW! Click Here

Soft­ware brought to you by triple‑x church, some crazy Chris­t­ian guys who are tack­ling the porn indus­try head-on.

I just ran across an inter­est­ing par­o­dy of Chris­t­ian legal­ism. If you’re not famil­iar with the phrase, it gen­er­al­ly refers to fix­at­ing on an arbi­trary action as a proof that you’ve for­sak­en the faith and are on a greased slide to hell.

Any­way, this essay takes the same log­ic that can be used to jus­ti­fy tra­di­tion­al legalisms and applies it to snow­mo­biles. That’s right: snow­mo­biles are the dev­il’s play­things!

If you were raised in a evan­gel­i­cal church you might find this fun­ny. If you weren’t you’ll prob­a­bly just find it weird…

Last night Back in Jan­u­ary 2003 we talked about wor­ship, and I dis­cussed dif­fer­ent ways we wor­ship God. This list isn’t exhaus­tive, but it’s help­ful and so I thought I’d post it here for future ref­er­ence.

Singing: the book of Psalms, Eph­esians 5:19, Colos­sians 3:16
Music: 1st Chron­i­cles 13:8, Psalm 33:3, Psalm 150
Artis­tic Cre­ation: Exo­dus 31:1–11, Exo­dus 28, Ezekiel 4:1
Clap­ping: Psalm 47:1, Isa­iah 55:12
Words: Psalm 9:1, Psalm 73:28, Psalm 78:4–6
Laugh­ing & Rejoic­ing: Psalm 9:2, Psalm 126:1–3, Psalm 149:5, Zepha­ni­ah 3:14–17
Shout­ing: Psalm 95:1, Psalm 98:4–6, Psalm 100:1
Silence: Psalm 46:10, Habakkuk 2:20
Stand­ing: 1st Chron­i­cles 23:30, Psalm 24:3–6
Rais­ing Our Hands: Nehemi­ah 8:6, Psalm 63:3–5, Psalm 134:1–2; 1st Tim­o­thy 2:8
Bow­ing & Kneel­ing: 2 Chron­i­cles 7:3, Psalm 95:6, Daniel 6:10–11
Lying Pros­trate: Deuteron­o­my 9:18, Rev­e­la­tion 19:4
Leap­ing: 2nd Samuel 6:16, Luke 6:23, Acts 3:7–8
Danc­ing: Exo­dus 15:20–21, Psalm 149:3, Psalm 150:4
Speak­ing In Tongues: Acts 2:1–11; Acts 10:46; 1st Corinthi­ans 14:26–33

Inci­den­tal­ly, when I saw the mas­sive num­ber of Bib­li­cal ref­er­ences in this post­ing, I decid­ed to final­ly install Jonathan Fox’s Scrip­tur­iz­er plu­g­in for Move­able Type. Worked like a charm! If you use MT and quote from the Bible, I high­ly rec­om­mend this won­der­ful tool.

UPDATE: on 12/21/04 I added the Artis­tic Cre­ation entry (3rd one down) and struck through the com­ment at the end. Also, I’m not using the Scrip­tur­iz­er plu­g­in right now so the pas­sages prob­a­bly aren’t hyper­linked.

I just read a very inter­est­ing arti­cle by The Inter­net Monk explain­ing Why Every­body Hates Us.

It’s a thought­ful and well-writ­ten essay. Here’s a rep­re­sen­ta­tive excerpt:

Here’s my list of why evan­gel­i­cals are among the most dis­liked per­sons in Amer­i­ca:

1. Chris­tians endorse a high stan­dard of con­duct for oth­ers and then large­ly excuse them­selves from a seri­ous pur­suit of such a life. Jesus is the most admired per­son in his­to­ry, but evan­gel­i­cals are far more like­ly to devise ways for Jesus to be like us than for us to be like Jesus.

If it has­n’t struck you late­ly that you do the very thing you con­demn oth­ers for doing (Romans 2:1), urge oth­ers to do what you don’t do or excuse in your­self what you require in oth­ers, then you prob­a­bly don’t get this arti­cle at all.

I just ran across an inter­est­ing site that gives up-to-the-minute esti­mates of the state of world evan­ge­liza­tion. I don’t know how they arrived at their fig­ures, but I find it inter­est­ing: The Unfin­ished Task

Last night we talked about Appre­ci­at­ing God’s Gift of Sex, and I ref­er­enced a few dif­fer­ent resources and sta­tis­tics. Since this is a top­ic of such inter­est, I thought I should post some relat­ed resources in case you want to do some fur­ther reflec­tion.

Here’s the sound-byte ver­sion of my mes­sage:

Sex was God’s idea, and He’s giv­en it to us as gift. We need to under­stand how to receive His gift with respect and grat­i­tude. The first thing we need to know is that sex is fun­da­men­tal­ly rela­tion­al and not mere­ly recre­ation­al. The goal is inti­ma­cy in rela­tion­ship, and puri­ty paves the way to inti­ma­cy. Research shows that the best sex is monog­a­mous sex, and that if you’re promis­cu­ous, you’re actu­al­ly sac­ri­fic­ing qual­i­ty for quan­ti­ty. Main­tain­ing puri­ty in a pol­lut­ed world requires wis­dom and self-hon­esty, and God can restore our puri­ty when we have lost it.

Some of the pas­sages of scrip­ture that I ref­er­enced: 1st Corinthi­ans 6.12–20, Colos­sians 3.5, 1st Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 4.3–8, Matthew 5.27–30

, and Hebrews 13.4.

Here are some online resources you might want to check out:

First, some data:
* Cohab­i­tat­ing Does­n’t Lead to More Com­mit­ted Mar­riages, Study Finds
* Mis­sion­ary Cohab­i­ta­tion, Mis­sion­ary Cohab­i­ta­tion Part 2
* The Best Sex
* Lead­er­ship U Spe­cial Focus: Amer­i­ca’s Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

Sec­ond, some com­mon-sense via arti­cles by J. Budziszews­ki:
* Going All The Way (this is the con­ver­sa­tion I quot­ed from last night)
* Sex At The Edge of Night (why sex out­side of mar­riage is not a good thing)
* What If We Love Each Oth­er? (why “being in love” isn’t suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for extra­mar­i­tal sex)
* Ordi­nary Lust (prac­ti­cal tips for win­ning the war with­in)
* Who’s On First? and The Moves (arti­cles about dat­ing)

I hope these resources help you as you reflect on sex and devel­op­ing a Chrisian per­spec­tive on it!