Nick’s Walk

The goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God. Platt, David (2010-04-17). Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (pp. 46-47). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.  The earliest Americans were  a ragged group of individuals in a dangerous situation who realized that without God’s help they were lost. Through them God began to change the world. The earliest disciples were a ragged group of individuals in a dangerous situation who realized that without God’s help they were lost. Through them God began to change the world.  Somewhere along the line Americans and American Christians began to believe that they did it on their own. Since that time both America and the American church have begun to crumble. But the church isn’t crumbling everywhere. There are places were the church is flourishing. In those places, it is dangerous to be a Christian. The church is not popular, in fact, it is persecuted. Christians don’t have freedoms, or big buildings, or flashy pastors or much money. But they do have Jesus. The history of the children of Israel is a story of God doing great […]

In the classic, A Christmas Carol, Bob Marley’s ghost is condemned to wander the world burdened down by chains forged in life. Now there is plenty that’s theologically incorrect about that picture. But we are burdened during life with chains that are generally of our own making. We all struggle with sin, addiction, bad relationships, and excess baggage that hinder us. Some of these things are crippling and others are just annoying. We were created for relationship with God and nothing less will do. Yet there are needs which that relationship can only fulfill that we try to fill with other stuff.  We don’t always recognize these chains as bad things. In fact, we can get quite attached to them. We can delude ourselves into believing that chains are actually warm fuzzy things that we can’t do without.  Jesus is in the chain busting business. through His grace, we are led through a process by which we recognize our chains, he frees us from our addiction, and substitutes Himself to fulfill the need we were trying to meet when we first hooked up with the chain. If you’re not moving through life as smoothly as you wish, perhaps that […]

Someone who had lunch with my lovely bride recently commented, “Of course, I had to hear about the end of the world.” My wife tends to speak of the end times, but that’s a good thing. There is lots of focus now on prophesy and “end times events.” Often these discussions produce feelings of dread or fear. That’s understandable for the lost, but for those who are followers of Christ, the arrival of the end time is nothing but good news. The world is not going to “end” it’s going to be transformed. In the end the church will be lukewarm and persecution will increase; but toward the “end” the faithful will be taken away and then Jesus will reign over a new earth for a thousand years. Sounds good to me.  Toward the “end” many will drift away. It’s certainly painful to look at the decrease in church involvement in many younger people. I understand that many are following Christ outside of traditional denominations and churches, but “church” as we grew up with it, isn’t really “in.” But Jesus told us that would happen. Plus the church that we grew up with doesn’t completely match the church that Jesus […]

From the beginning of the church we have managed to separate ourselves, not from the world but from each other. We have dunkers and sprinklers, tongue talkers and the frozen chosen, high church and low church. We disagree on methods of worship, preaching and organization. Some of us believe in the megachurch and others think only a small church is consistent with the book of Acts. According to Christianity Today there are 38,000 different denominations. Now that’s fractured. Some of these differences are significant, but 38,000? Most of these differences have to be trivial. Of all the issues that divide us, I am convinced that the most significant one, maybe the only signficant one, is the separation between the comfortable church and the radical church. Nearly all of the church in America would have to be considered comfortable. The only radical churches seem to be in areas of either extreme poverty or persecution. We don’t have either in America, not yet. The comfortable church is man centered. It meets in a comfortable building. The meetings are designed to be comfortable. Prayer is about relieving the problems of life: sickness, what passes for poverty, depression. If the power of the […]

I recently read an article about missionary work in China, written by a Chinese Christian. It was a lesson in sharing the gospel. Before encoutering Christ, the author, Bob Fu,  believed that Christianity was an “opiate of the people’s spirit” that was a tool of Westerners to numb the creativity of the Chinese mind. This attitude is not unlike what we encouter today in our own society. Christianity in America is considered by many okay for the uneducated and disenfranchized, but of no use to the educated and sophisticated. Bob had been approached, unsuccessfully by the “give them a tract and a bible” crowd. He recounts:  “One day I went to the apartment of a teacher who had been in China for more than three years, and I saw him playing the guitar, crying as he sang. He told me he was homesick for his family in California, and I was touched by his openness — such a contrast to the stern, cold teachers I had had before. The kindness and love he and his fellow Christian teachers showed was not to change China, but to offer life-giving truth in an authentic manner. Today’s would-be missionaries to China could […]

“Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”8 Give up everything you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than “Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.”Platt, David (2010-04-17). Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (pp. 10-11). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. How often would you attend church if it looked like this? What if you had to walk miles to get there? What if you had to have lookouts to make sure “the government” didn’t know you were meeting? What if services lasted all day? What if attendance meant your family would disown, hate or kill you?Have you ever prayed until your tears pooled on the floor? Have you ever listened to a day long teaching and begged the teacher to come back tomorrow and stay longer? Have you ever had to hide a bible? Have you ever had to find someone who had memorized some book of the bible because you had no written copy. What have you given up to follow Christ? Whose relationship have you lost to have His? Who have you told about Him? How is your life […]

While going to and from church on Sunday I noticed that crews had been clearing tree growth from around power lines. (Notice how I cleverly snuck in the fact that I went to church on Sunday even though I was quite ill on Friday and Saturday. Thus establishing my spiritual superiority. I am so clever I amaze myself). The work of the crews reminded me that hurricane season is approaching and we are overdue having one that severely affects this area. I have to admit that I kind of enjoy hurricanes, not completely but there are positive elements. Storms are evidence of God’s power. I believe storms come from God. He does a much cleaner job of clearing away debris than road crews due. The work I saw on Sunday (when going and coming back from church) left trees looking misshapen and strange. Like a young boy with a bad haircut. God does a much neater job. Storms break our routines. It’s good to be shaken from our routines; no work and no school. We get stuck in our ruts and storms are kind of like snow days up north. Storms gather us together. During storms we usually gather […]

As the end times draw near, it will be tougher to be an effective Christian. We can’t stand alone. There will few enough of us as it is. Those of us determined to finish the race must be united, in our churches, in our communities and in our world.Unity requires Common Purpose, Communication, Competence,  Consistency and Jesus.Common PurposeAll who call themselves Christians are not on the same page. We can’t even agree who are Christians. For this discussion, let us say that unity requires coming together of all Christ’s disciples,  who believe our commission is to make more disciples for Christ. That should be simple enough.CommunicationWe must commit to talking to each other and not about each other. Communication is not just the job of leaders. We must all communicate at every level and between levels. Communication requires honest vulnerability. We have to admit that we are not perfect. That we really don’t like each other that much. But that doesn’t mean we can’t love each other. If we talked a little more with honesty and vulnerability we might find that we’re not as awful as we think. Competence Some of us are awful at our jobs. We need to […]