Tag Archive - Spirituality

427

September 21, 2008 in Church, Preaching, Spirituality with 8 Comments

That is the number of how many people were baptized at our 8 weekend services the last two days. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it in my life. I am so humbled just to be a part of it.

Image and video hosting by TinyPicWe have been in our “Carried Away” series and have been looking at what it means to follow after Jesus Christ. What is truly amazing is that we have especially focused on the cost of following Jesus. And 427 people decided it was worth it.

What stood out to me the most was the look on each person’s face. It was evident as some of them cried, some looked nervous, some were super excited… that each person had a story and a past. And each of those stories was probably radically different. I saw people come from my small group, I saw people that I’ve never had the chance to personally meet, even people from our own Third Format band! I’m pretty sure our Sunday 3F service made history by baptizing a family of four at the same time! But each person had come to the same conclusion in that moment: that they wanted to surrender their life over to following Jesus. I will cherish this memory for the rest of my life.

Injustice at the Olympics

August 19, 2008 in Culture, Spirituality, Sports with 2 Comments

So I’m about to write one of the most vulnerable posts ever. I have been watching a lot of the Olympics lately. Including women’s gymnastics. (Insert your laughter here…unless of course, you have been watching it too). And there have been a few unsettling things.

  1. How can China make up ages for girls who are like 9 years old? Seriously, we are supposed to believe that they are all 16?
  2. The jacked-up scoring system. Anybody watch Nastia get silver even though she tied a Chinese girl? Poor Bela Karolyi. I think he is on the verge of a repeated heart-attack as he has to watch what is happening.

So I’m seriously laying in bed right now and I’m surprisingly bothered by what I saw tonight. It reeks of unfairness and injustice. Why is nobody doing anything about this?

Then that I realized that God could probably care less about who gets which medal and that there are no end to the things that are going on worldwide that are bothering Him much more than I feel right now. Yet I’m not really thinking of any of that. And honestly, I can’t remember the last time I laid in bed pissed off about something like that either. God reminded me of Revelation 6:9-11

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants and brothers and sisters were killed just as they had been.”

Talk about injustice. Here I am bothered by women’s gymnastics. So I realize that I still have a ways to go until my heart lines up with Jesus’ heart. But I pray that moments like these would push me to care more and more about the things that God cares about.

To Write Love On Her Arms

August 5, 2008 in Church, Culture, Preaching, Spirituality with 1 Comment

This weekend we brought in Jamie Tworkowski from “To Write Love On Her Arms.” I interviewed him in our Third Format services and it was a very powerful weekend. We about doubled in our attendance and we showed a lot of people that the Church isn’t afraid of talking about issues like depression and suicide.


In addition, it was great to hang out with him and get to know him and his heart for people. You can tell he isn’t from Arizona because he’s wearing a long sleeve shirt in August (see pic below – this was taken before he stole my water). I love how TWLOHA are being the Church to people that have been turned off to the Church. If you haven’t checked out what they are doing then I would highly recommend you stop reading this and check them out. I’m serious. Click here.


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A Deal With God

July 2, 2008 in Chaplaincy, Church, Spirituality with 4 Comments

I was on a ride-a-long last Sunday with one of my friends from Third Format who is a Gilbert officer. He introduced me to his closest friend in the force and we got to talking over some food. I asked him about his view of God and he told me that he and God had an agreement. Intrigued, I asked him for the details.

He told me that he agreed to not talk bad about God and that God wouldn’t talk bad about him.

Wow. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry tears of remorse for such a broken image of God. Yet this implied fear/anger toward God is not unique to him. As I’ve reflected on that conversation since then I’ve been reminded of how many people out there live in isolation from a loving God who wants nothing more than to reconcile Himself to them. And it’s usually “Christians” who push them away. How do we be the church for people like this?

Memorizing Scripture – Pt. 2

June 15, 2008 in Bible, Spirituality with 0 Comments

I’ve blogged before on my desire to memorize scripture, you can read my previous post here, and I’ve stumbled across something that will help me do this much more efficiently.

Many of you commented on my post last time about your own desire to do this. Yet the conversation always turns to the difficulty in disciplining yourself in this area. I recently read about software that helps you with spaced repetition (don’t I sound smart) and memorizing things for the long haul.

I recently downloaded a free software called Anki that basically helps you like flash cards. You make files of what you want to memorize and it quizzes you. Depending on how easy or hard it is for you to recall each card it then determines how long until you need to be quizzed on that card again. This is a much more efficient way to spend time memorizing and hopefully will help it to last in your head for years to come. They figured out an algorithm (there’s a word I never thought I’d use after again after my high school math classes) that tracks how we memorize and then apply it to whatever you are working on. Download it for yourself and let me know what your thoughts are on it.

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