Category: Spiritual Growth

In a thor­ough­ly dis­gust­ing inci­dent, A cus­tomer in an inter­na­tion­al ham­burg­er chain out­let in west­ern Swe­den lost his appetite when he dis­cov­ered the restau­ran­t’s toi­let seats were being washed in its dish­wash­er along­side the kitchen uten­sils. (source)

Yuck. Some things just don’t mix.

Reminds me of James 3.10–12, And so bless­ing and curs­ing come pour­ing out of the same mouth. Sure­ly, my broth­ers and sis­ters, this is not right! Does a spring of water bub­ble out with both fresh water and bit­ter water? Can you pick olives from a fig tree or figs from a grapevine? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty pool. (NLT)

J. Budziszews­ki has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle over at Bound­less about what it means to “not judge.”

“Zack, where Jesus instructs his dis­ci­ples ‘Judge not,’ what do you think He means?”

“What is there not to get?”

“You did­n’t answer my ques­tion.”

“It means don’t — judge. Don’t make judg­ments. Don’t sit in judg­ment. Stop judg­ing peo­ple.”

I laughed. “It’s a good thing you don’t write dic­tio­nar­ies. ‘Judg­ing’ means sev­er­al dif­fer­ent things. Would­n’t it be good to know which one Jesus was talk­ing about?”

“He did­n’t say, so He must have meant all of them.”

“In that case, you’re guilty.”

“But I told my friends not to judge. I con­demned their judg­men­tal­ism.”

“Did­n’t you judge that Anton did­n’t mean what he adver­tised? Did­n’t you judge that Cleo was­n’t try­ing to be sleazy?”

“But I was­n’t, like, sit­ting in judg­ment.”

“Sure you were. You judged them ‘inno­cent.’ ”

does­n’t that just make you want to read it all?

Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia phi­los­o­phy prof Dal­las Willard was just inter­viewed by Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine.

He had some inter­est­ing things to say: I encour­age you to read the arti­cle. One excerpt which I thought was par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to us at Stan­ford: You know, what we need to do as Chris­tians is to learn to think care­ful­ly and well. And that means, as Paul says, try all things, put every­thing to the test. But you know, we’re real­ly quite lazy men­tal­ly as Chris­tians. We don’t feel, I believe, that God is real­ly on the side of think­ing or think­ing on the side of God, and as a result, we don’t dis­ci­pline our­selves to think. Now, I must tell you there are a lot of young Chris­tians who are com­ing through the uni­ver­si­ties now who are good thinkers. I think we’re real­ly going to see a change in the future on this. J.P. More­land has a won­der­ful book: Love God With All Your Mind, which is a beau­ti­ful expres­sion of the right approach to these issues. Then we don’t have to wor­ry about mod­ernism or post­mod­ernism, or any­thing else. We just put every­thing to the test. (read the whole thing)

UPDATE: this is an urban leg­end! Read the debunk­ing.

A man suf­fered a heart attack when he hired a pros­ti­tute from an agency and his daugh­ter showed up at his door. His wife was quite upset when he got home and explained the whole sor­did affair. Read it online: “Hi Dad, Says Call-Girl At The Door”.

Broad­en­ing out from the imme­di­ate sto­ry; remem­ber, it’s always some­one’s daugh­ter (or son).

UPDATE: this is an urban leg­end! Read the debunk­ing.

With sto­ries of cor­po­rate scan­dal and greed steal­ing head­lines across the coun­try, Pres­by­ter­ian Col­lege hunt for eagle one the free down­load pres­i­dent John Grif­fith want­ed to prove peo­ple still have a social con­science.

So he ran­dom­ly gave 100 fresh­men $50 bills they could spend any way they want­ed, with the require­ment that the stu­dents report back on how they spent the mon­ey.

One fresh­man wound up pay­ing for a dozen Hait­ian girls to go to school for a year.

Read the rest of this amaz­ing sto­ry.

What would you do if you received $50 and were just told to stew­ard it?

“And if you are untrust­wor­thy about world­ly wealth, who will trust you with the true rich­es of heav­en?” (Luke 16.11, NLT)

Here’s a mes­sage from Unit­ed in Christ: Chris­t­ian Broth­ers and Sis­ters (CBS) pairs incom­ing Stan­ford stu­dents with old­er stu­dents to form a sib­ling fam­i­ly that offers each of its mem­bers the oppor­tu­ni­ty for encour­age­ment in his or her own walk with the Lord, fel­low­ship with fel­low believ­ers, and con­nec­tion with cam­pus min­istries. John 13:34–35

Chris­t­ian lit­tle sibs:
— receive encour­age­ment and guid­ance in the adjust­ment to life at Stan­ford in a pos­i­tive, per­son­al, and fun man­ner that glo­ri­fies God.

- build rela­tion­ships with their broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ by hang­ing out infor­mal­ly as a sib fam­i­ly.
— meet fel­low Chris­t­ian class­mates by accom­pa­ny­ing their sibs to cam­pus-wide events that bring togeth­er the entire Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly at Stan­ford.

If you’d like to be a lit­tle sib, email the fol­low­ing to hconnell@stanford.edu.

1. Name
2. Year in school (besides fresh­men, trans­fer stu­dents are also wel­come as lit­tle sibs)
3. Res­i­dence next year
4. Home­town
5. Aca­d­e­m­ic inter­ests
6. Activities/hobbies
7. Do you have a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Jesus Christ?
8. Why do you want to be a CBS lit­tle sib?

I could­n’t help but laugh when I ran across this news arti­cle. I quote:

Count­ing toi­let roll sheets proved a suc­cess for a vig­i­lant British work­er who won his employ­er thou­sands of pounds in com­pen­sa­tion after he dis­cov­ered that some rolls were not as long as they should be.

Turns out the rolls were less than 2/3 the size they were adver­tised to be. When you use 40,000 rolls a year that adds up quick­ly! In this case, it added up to near­ly $30,000.

It put me in mind of Jesus’ para­ble of the shrewd man­ag­er, which he goes on to explain in Luke 16.10–12: “Unless you are faith­ful in small mat­ters, you won’t be faith­ful in large ones. If you cheat even a lit­tle, you won’t be hon­est with greater respon­si­bil­i­ties. And if you are untrust­wor­thy about world­ly wealth, who will trust you with the true rich­es of heav­en? And if you are not faith­ful with oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey, why should you be trust­ed with mon­ey of your own?”

In one of the most remark­able news items I’ve come across in a while, a sick African child receives an unex­pect­ed oper­a­tion.

Man­taine Min­is, 6, was liv­ing in a hut in a remote vil­lage in Kenya, in need of life­sav­ing heart surgery, when the improb­a­ble hap­pened one day in June. A group of stu­dents and par­ents from the Lan­g­ley School in McLean was on safari at the Masai Mara Nation­al Reserve, where Man­taine’s father is a game war­den.

That’s when some­one from the vil­lage told a Lan­g­ley teacher about Man­taine’s heart prob­lem. From there, things seemed to unfold quick­ly.

The teacher, Joseph Leku­ton, knew that one of the par­ents was a Fair­fax Coun­ty heart sur­geon. He also knew that peo­ple of the Masai vil­lage, who did­n’t own much, had sold 14 cows last year to raise mon­ey to donate to relief efforts in the Unit­ed States after the Sept. 11 ter­ror attacks.

So he helped launch a camp­fire dis­cus­sion about the Masai gift and about what a group of peo­ple from an Amer­i­can sub­urb could do to return a kind­ness.

I’ll let you read the rest of the sto­ry on your own, so I’ll close by quot­ing Jesus in Luke 6.38: If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full mea­sure, pressed down, shak­en togeth­er to make room for more, and run­ning over. What­ev­er mea­sure you use in giving–large or small–it will be used to mea­sure what is giv­en back to you.

Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine has a great essay on how your doubts can build your faith. Here’s an excerpt:

Doubt in our faith can lead to the gate­way of spir­i­tu­al growth. Doubt calls us into deep­er exam­i­na­tion. It draws us onto the path of undy­ing curios­i­ty for real Truth. As Fred­erich Buech­n­er said, “my doubts keep me mov­ing.”

…

Bri­an McLaren, in his soon-to-be-released book Adven­tures in Miss­ing the Point, writ­ten with Tony Cam­po­lo, address­es the ques­tion of allow­ing doubt to take hold. Some­one asked Bri­an, “Well, won’t an open­ness to doubt lead to spir­i­tu­al insta­bil­i­ty and inse­cu­ri­ty?” “Yes,” he respond­ed, “but couldn’t an unwill­ing­ness to ques­tion lead to false secu­ri­ty that could be even more dan­ger­ous?” Being coura­geous enough to ask “why” (or even “why not”) can lead to a deep­en­ing of faith. Jesus nev­er said to us, “I will nev­er leave you or for­sake you … well, I take that back: I’ll only leave you when you start to doubt and ques­tion. And when you doubt, I’m out­ta here.” I believe Jesus, when He said He would nev­er leave us or for­sake us, He meant He would stick by us at all times, even in the tough times, the times when we won­der if he is even lis­ten­ing at all. Doubt can be painful, but it has the poten­tial for an incred­i­ble spir­i­tu­al break­through.

sort­ed by prox­im­i­ty to cam­pus

High­way Com­mu­ni­ty
across the street from cam­pus

Men­lo Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church
about 2 miles from cam­pus (Men­lo Park)

Path­way Church
about 3 miles from cam­pus (Palo Alto)

Grace Pres­by­ter­ian
about 3 miles from cam­pus (Palo Alto)

Abun­dant Life Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship
about 5 miles from cam­pus (Men­lo Park)

Penin­su­la Chris­t­ian Cen­ter
about 7 miles from cam­pus (Red­wood City)

South­bay Chris­t­ian Cen­ter
about 7 miles from cam­pus (Moun­tain View)

Vine­yard Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship of the Penin­su­la
about 7 miles from cam­pus (Palo Alto)

Gen­er­a­tions Church
about 8 miles from cam­pus (San Car­los)

Mid-Penin­su­la Vine­yard Chris­t­ian Church
about 9 miles from cam­pus (San Car­los)

Com­mu­ni­ty Church of San­ta Clara
about 10 miles from cam­pus (San­ta Clara)

Ful­ly Alive Com­mu­ni­ty Church
about 11 miles from cam­pus (Red­wood Shores)

Abun­dant Life Assem­bly of God
about 13 miles from cam­pus (Cuper­ti­no)

Neigh­bor­hood Church
about 15 miles from cam­pus (San­ta Clara)

Jubilee Chris­t­ian Cen­ter
about 17 miles from cam­pus (San Jose)

Bethel Church
about 19 miles from cam­pus (San Jose)

Three Cities Assem­bly
about 20 miles from cam­pus (Burlingame)

Inter­na­tion­al Assem­bly of God
about 20 miles from cam­pus (Burlingame, meets Sat­ur­day nights)

Cross­roads Com­mu­ni­ty Church
about 25 miles from cam­pus (San Bruno)

The Riv­er Church Com­mu­ni­ty
about 25 miles from cam­pus (San Jose)

Fam­i­ly Com­mu­ni­ty Church
about 30 miles from cam­pus (San Jose)

Non-Eng­lish Speak­ing Church­es If you’re an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent or are just want­i­ng to hone your lan­guage skills, you might also want to con­sid­er these. sort­ed by prox­im­i­ty to cam­pus

First Fijian Assem­bly of God
(650) 566‑9920
about 5 miles from cam­pus (Palo Alto)

Cal Star Chris­t­ian Assem­bly (Japan­ese)
(408) 296‑2480
about 18 miles from cam­pus (San Jose) (also has Eng­lish ser­vice)

Ara­bic Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship
(650) 372‑9518
about 20 miles from cam­pus (Burlingame)