The Knee Team

Are you joining the Knee Team over at A Place Called Simplicity?

I am!

Let's all remember to pray for each other regularly.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
- Galatians 6:2

What Are You Preparing For?

I often surprise people. One of the ways is that I don't have my wedding planned out. I don't really have a dress planned. I don't know whether I want a church wedding or a garden wedding. All I know is that I don't want lots of people and I do want to be able to eat the food.

This surprises people because there are few things I want more than to get married (and have kids). Yet I don't have any wedding dreams.

You see, I don't want to have a wedding. I want to be married.

So many people prepare for their wedding. They plan out every extravagant detail - the dress, the food, the guest list, the flowers, the bridesmaid's dresses... there are so many details that they have planned. And then the honeymoon! Where to go? How long?

But they haven't worked out who will take out the trash.

The thing is, so many marriages run into issues because they haven't prepared for their marriage. They have no idea of their roles, what they other person wants and expects, or even where their marriage is headed. And so, too often, it's headed for the rocks.

I don't care about a day. It's one day. Sure, it'll be nice if it's beautiful and memorable and I can tell the children about it (in a good way) for years to come. But the important thing is the years after it.

That's what I'm preparing for.

(And I'm still unattatched, in case you all are thinking otherwise! Just pondering.)

God Helps Those

Supposedly the best known Bible verse in America is “God helps those who help themselves.” Which is funny. Because that verse isn’t in the Bible. That theory isn’t even in the Bible.

God does not help those who help themselves. God helps those who can’t help themselves.

God helps the widow, the orphan, the refugee.

Just goes to show how different our ways are from God’s ways.

Born A B***h

At my work, I get to meet a fair few gay people. They've all settled down and had families (duh, otherwise I wouldn't be looking after their kids). As a result I sometimes get asked why the "typical" Christian position is that homos*xuality is not acceptable to God, and why if God created everyone (another frequent phrase is "born that way") that it is still not okay.

My repsonse is that I was born a b***h, that doesn't make it ok in God's sight. And it doesn't mean that I can't change through the power of His spirit.

I was indeed born a b***h. People actually don't realise how nice I am to them when I could so easily rip them to shreds. But that isn't what God wants from me. And so, by His grace, I strive to do better.

We are all born sinful. Each and every one of us. That is why we need a saviour - and what a mighty one we have in Jesus!

Do You Have Ears To Hear?

…when Jesus said to Peter, “Come,” He didn’t say, “Peter come.” He said, “Come.” All 12 of the disciples could have come, but only Peter did. The man who has ears to hear is the man who will step out. Eleven men had a story, while only one man had a testimony. Eleven men had a doctrine about the power of God, and one man had an experience with it. We must choose to step out of the boat in this hour. I believe that God is looking for a company of people to step out of the boat. Will you be that person? Will we be that people?

Adam LiVecchi in So You Want to Change the World. Pg 81.

The Healing Prosperity Gospel

I've spent most of my life being sick, getting sick, or recovering from being sick. I sometimes say that I have had seven near death experiences... and then I made it out of the birth canal. (That's true. And I have had more than a few more since.) I am one of those people who never has any sick leave, who rocks up to work looking like they need a month or two off, and who generally is not well.

I no longer go up the front when people ask for people to be prayed for for healing.

It's not that I don't believe God can heal me. It's that I don't want to hear the comments. I've heard some good ones.

From being told the story of everyone anyone's ever met who had "allergies" who was prayed for and was healed ("so I'll pray for you and then you can eat meat"... except I'm a vegetarian by choice), to being told that "God will heal the hole in your lungs when you have enough faith", to "You should be praying for your pwn healing and not getting us to do it for you", to "I read this book and we should be able to heal everybody because Jesus healed everybody," I really have heard them all.

The thing is, God does not always choose to heal. He wants what is best for us. And sometimes, what is best is not physical health. We have taken what the world has deemed to be good and just Christianised it.

Health is a blessing. No one who's been sick would deny that. But God's ways are not our ways. His ways are higher.

Anything less than that is nothing short of a prosperity gospel, which insists that because God loves us we need to be healthy, wealthy and wise, and that anything less proves we are not Christians / in sin / in the wrong church / etc. It's just not true. God's ways are different. They are higher.

And we follow Him in sickness and trial just as much as in health and prosperity. Because we love the Giver and not the gifts. Because He is our God, and nothing else matters.

From Persecution Project

I love the Gospel message and the Gospel witness. It runs completely counter to everything our “old nature” tells us to do. The world says, “Live for yourself.” The Gospel says, “Die to yourself.” The world says, “Feed your self-esteem.” The Gosepl says, “Feed your soul by esteeming others.” The world says, “Make time for yourself.” The Gospel says, “Spend your time helping others.” The world says, “Look out for no. 1.” The Gospel identifies “No. 1″ as “not us.”

When people live according to Gospel precepts, the world changes. The world changes, because it doesn’t know what to do with such a crazy way of life.
By Brad Phillips, PPF President. Read the whole thing here.

God's Ways

Christians need to be praying for those who are as yet unsaved, including those who are our personal enemies and the enemies of Christ. After all, we were all once enemies of Christ. People were no doubt praying for our conversion, and so we need to pray for all those who are not yet part of His kingdom.

And while I mainly pray for those who are close to me, I have prayed for some of the more contensious of the enemies of the kingdom. Usually I pray that they be saved in some kind of dramatic way that completely undermines their previous atheist / Muslim / etc position.

One of the people I prayed for was Osama bin Laden. Obviously, he wasn't saved.

At first when I found out I was put out. It would have been a massive "scoop" for God if, in His povidence, He had saved bin Laden. What a wasted opportunity.

Obviously, God feels differently about wasted opportunity. And recently, reading the newspaper, I found out a small portion of the reason why.

Bin Laden had illict materials on his computer.

That's right. Bin Laden, who accused the West of being decedant etc, etc, had the same sort of materials on his computer.

God's ways are indeed better than our ways. There will no doubt be many in the Islamic world who will question the ways of Islam as a result of this. And many, no doubt, will come to God because of it.

Words

It's so easy to say things that are less than God's standard for speech. It's so easy to fall into the pattern of the world with our mouths.

It's one thing to not swear. Some of my non-Christian friends restrain from swearing. (Though I fail in this area.) But proper Christian speech needs to be much, much more than that.

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."
Ephesians 4:29

We are not to say ANYTHING that is going to effect those around us negatively. Wow. No complaining. No gossip. No passing the day. And if we take this to the fullest extent, we can only speak what will actually build others up. So no small talk, sports talk, wasted time and breath talk.

It's easy to think that it would be better to take a vow of silence so that we don't fail in this area. I mean for me, I do ALL of those bad things. As I stated above, I swear on occasion! Maybe being silent would be better.

But that is not all that we are commanded to do. Look at this verse:
"speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord," (Ephesians 5:19).

We are to keep speaking, to ourselves, to each other, to the non-Christians we meet. We are just supposed to use every word that comes out of our mouths for the glory of Him who is the Living Word.

Day by Day

Day by day
Day by day
Oh Dear Lord
Three things I pray
To see thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
Follow thee more nearly
Day by day

From the musical Godspell