In a perfect world, I might be iOS all the way due to the overall polish and security focus.
Yet, the reality is that Android allows me to have certain hardware (like a simple, yet quite functional 10” tablet) that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.
And the experience is often just as delightful to me, albeit in a different way.
Today I was preaching at a local soup kitchen’s outdoor area, from John 11 (the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead).
Toward the end, I dramatically recounted Jesus commanding Lazarus to come out of the tomb. “LAZARUS, COME OUT!” I practically yelled, at which point someone listening interjected, “Are you even allowed to preach like that?
😮😂
Idk if it was because of my admittedly high volume level, or what, but I ignored the comment and finished my sermon.
I know I got animated and kinda loud today, but man, I was excited to proclaim the power of Jesus over death. I felt on fire because Jesus is the only shred of hope I have that means anything, and he means so much.
He is the love of God, the way of life, the truth that sets us free, the ground of the only hope that’s truly certain.
The people I was preaching to desperately need that hope—I desperately need that hope—and I felt desperate to communicate it.
I pray I’m allowed to preach like that, because sometimes it’s the only way I can.
“Holiness is to be recognized not by religious achievements or by a spirituality that is superior to the normal human condition, but by the development of a genuine human-ness, by a freedom that is unafraid to be, in Christ, the person God made us”
Finding a good email client is way harder than it should be on Windows. Windows Mail is fast, but buggy and weird. Outlook is overkill and doesn’t support Google Calendar. Mailbird was a resource hog (although there were some things to like there). Mailspring was super nice in some regards but not very flexible and tended toward bugs as well.
I don’t want to speak too soon, but I may have found a solution. I’ll keep you posted.
All 243 Riddles solved (with a lot of help from YouTube). Took this pic right before the final boss fight with Riddler and his robot henchmen.
The Batfleck films were terrible, but the suit was great and is fun to have in Arkham Knight.
How do you hate the sin in your life without hating yourself?
This can be so difficult.
I think the key is to realize that you are not your sin(s). Your sin is worth hating because it keeps you from being who you are meant to be, namely a person in union with God.
Yet, Godly hate is never vindictive or retributive in nature, but rather redemptive and restorative. God hates your sin because he loves you. Do you hate your sin because you love God?
I think it can be a mistake to attempt to muster up more hate for your own sin, because we tend to confuse a holy hatred toward sin and self-loathing.
Rather, I think we we should more often concentrate on cultivating a greater love for God. This is what will put your sin the right perspective and your heart in the right place.
“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13–14, ESV)
A tough pill to swallow for those of us that love tech and shiney new gadgets. But I think this is basically true.
No student of history can deny that people claiming to be Bible-believing Christians participated significantly in the establishment, propagation, and defense of one of the most heinous evils in human history, race-based chattel slavery, and they used the Bible to do so. This is a stain upon our history that we must own as a community. We must not only acknowledge that this was the case, we must actively repent! By repent I don’t mean that as individuals we should be apologizing for something our ancestors did, but rather, we should be actively and consciously moving the opposite direction of whatever led them to commit such terrible crimes against the law of Christ.
This way of repentance has both negative and positive dimensions.
On the negative side, it is appropriate to lament this great evil whenever we think of it. As long as it lives in memory we should seek to understand the reasons why Christianity at large tolerated such a void of morality and decency for hundreds years. We should explicitly denounce (which means to condemn) any way of thinking that leads to such things. At the same time, we must realize that these ways of thinking are transmitted culturally, and have yet to be completely eradicated, so we must also explicitly renounce (which means to formally give up) any such aspects of our culture that have crept into the life of the church universally or locally.
On the positive side, we must actively replace the ways of thinking that we are denouncing and renouncing with a way that leads to the truth about what the Bible says regarding the heart of God for all people. This was modeled for us by the great Christian abolitionists such as William Wilberforce, who believed (rightly!) that a careful reading of the Old and New Testaments reveals the heart of God for all people is freedom and flourishing that begins in the present.
If we read the Scriptures with an eye of discovering the heart of God revealed in Christ, we discover the ministry of the people of God is a ministry of reconciliation between people and God in the here and now!
Out of that comes a spiritual liberation that works its way out into the restoring of people to one to another in the here and now!
And out of that comes freedom that undermines every form of oppression in the here and now!
WAS NOT JESUS AN EXTREMIST FOR LOVE? M L K
