Three Star Night

Edit: I actually DID have this ready by midnight!   I'm so mad that it didn't auto-post haha.  Well, enjoy!

I love nail polish.  (Stick with me here.  I'm going somewhere with this.)  I admit, makeup and coffee are my two money-spending vices, but I try to curb my spending by finding good sales.  Today, I saw that Urban Decay had a sale on one of its nail polish sets- just $10!  That's a fantastic deal!  The drawback?  $7 shipping.  Granted, the sum of $17 would still have been significantly cheaper than the original price for the set, but I wanted an even better deal.  Immediately, I used my mad Google skills to find Urban Decay coupon codes and found - to my dismay- that they had a 25% code two days ago!  But that didn't stop me.  I tried every expired code I could find.  In fact, I looked at the five top hits for "Urban Decay coupon code" until I realized that half the codes were from April, and the results started to repeat themselves.  By the time that I decided that I exhausted all my options, I was able to buy the on-sale nail polish without feeling like I was settling.

Apparently buying nail polish is like picking a spouse, or so the debate goes.  In the past couple weeks, I read 3 blog posts from major authors on the topic.  Some say that it's of utmost importance to know what you want, and don't stop until you get him/ her.  Others say that this sort of "pickyness" will leave you single until the metaphorical pond of fish is depleted, and you'll miss someone good who is right in front of you.  The cumulative sum of advice is essentially: have standards! but not too high!

The same is true for church-shopping, really.  There's a remarkable amount of similarities between looking for a spouse and looking for a church (and buying nail polish).  Find a church with community and strong teaching!  But don't shop around too much or else you'll never get established!  The difference, of course, is we are commanded to be a part of a church body, but we are not required to find a spouse.  And as much as I might think I need nail polish, I really don't need that, either.

How good are you at knowing what you want?  Are you too picky in your preferences?  What would you consider a happy medium between the two?

Lawyers and Shrinks

Today's story comes from the dark, scary world of BIGLAW. What's BIGLAW, you ask? BIGLAW firms are the "Goliath National Banks" of the law firm world, the "Big Bad," the "Dementors" that suck out whatever's left of a person's soul after three years of law school. The People's Therapist is a blog by a former BIGLAW lawyer-turned-psychotherapist for lawyers because, let's face it, lawyers can use a good dose of psychotherapy after being crushed by the system.

The Bubble of Worry

The People's Therapist gave a few anecdotes about BIGLAW:
- Someone who, after working the entire weekend and coming in early on Monday to finish a memo, broke down after receiving a call from her 92-yr-old grandmother (who she hadn't seen in a year) an hour before the deadline
- Someone who took an extended weekend to rush his mother with a perforated appendix to the hospital and kept her hospital bracelet for proof that the emergency actually happened
- The need to go outside and look at trees just to remember that there is an "outside" and that trees exist.

He gives a list of things that lawyers worry about, the bubble of worry that they live in. But I'm not entirely certain that these are special to lawyers. In fact, I'm sure they aren't because I can name non-lawyers plagued with the same problems.

* Two hundred thousand dollars in student loans is within the normal range.
* You have to earn six figures or you are a failure.
* You can’t take a vacation just because you “have” a vacation. It must be “convenient.”
* Leaving the office at 5 pm shows a serious failure of commitment.
* Taking a weekend off shows a serious failure of commitment.
* Working night and day and doing your best shows a serious failure of commitment.

What's your bubble? What is your cage? What do you worry about? Do you feel like a failure and can't meet expectations? What have you forgotten or pushed aside?

Remember who you are

Confession: I can't see this phrase without hearing Ghost Mufasa from The Lion King say it in my head, but that's beside the point. The advice that The People's Therapist gives is to remember who you are. Remember your priorities. Remember that people matter and that you matter. Remember to visit the people you care about. Remember that trees exist.

The Gospel: A Step Further

This is great (humanist) advice, but let me go a step further. Who are you? If you're a Christian, you're a child of God. You have been bought at a price. You are no longer a slave to sin, a slave to your job, a slave to your worry, a slave to your bubble or to your cage or expectations and deadlines: you are a slave of Christ, and weirdly enough, being a slave to Christ means that "for freedom you have been set free." Yes, there's a yoke, but his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and all who are weary and downtrodden can cast their burdens on him, and he will give them rest.

Not only that, but if you have fellowship with Christ and abide in Christ, you will find that there are lots of brothers and sisters also abiding in Christ. If they abide in Christ, and you abide in Christ- guess what- you all abide in each other, too. Just as you can lay your burdens on Christ, you can lay your burdens on your brothers and sisters, and you can carry their burdens as well. Fellowship is a beautiful thing, and if you don't believe me, spend some time in 1 John.

The Solution

If (when) you are busy and you are stressed and you feel that the world is against you: remember who you are. You are a child of God and a sibling of other believers. When you are busy and stressed, go to God. Go to church. Go to small group. Remember who you are, and surround yourself with people who can remind you who you are.

What if you feel you're simply too busy and stressed to go to God or go to church? Stress and worry and busyness are indicators that you need to go to God all the more. If your life is too crazy to accommodate what is important, The People's Therapist has something to say about that as well:

If things get that bad...you can leave. To [expletive] with loans and “career” and all that. If this place is killing you, you can depart...If this environment is toxic for you, you need to get out.

I've talked about how my Sunday school was wrong, but there's one thing that has always stuck with me. It made sense to 10-yr-old me, and it makes sense now, but don't you dare let the adult in you rationalize it away:

If you're too busy for God, you're too busy.

Photographer: avatarshark of flickr under CC2.0. As always, I'm not sure why someone would build on this as opposed to the original photo, but if anyone is so inclined, this new work is released under a corresponding CC3.0 attribution and share-alike license.

Photographer: pbody of flickr under CC2.0

For any of my real-life friends wondering how my 7-month church search is going:
"Oh, you are getting a professional degree?  I stay home and homeschool my kids.  The Bible tells us to."

I have nothing wrong against people who feel called to homeschool their kids.  I think it's great that they are so involved in their kids' lives, and it is an excellent way to shelter your kids from being exposed to certain types of temptation and various doctrines at an early age.  Homeschooling does what it is supposed to.  My old prayer partner and the sweetest person I know was homeschooled.

Totally OK with homeschooling!  Totally NOT OK with adding things to the Bible that aren't there and expecting others to do the same.  If you feel it is sin, it is sin to you.  If the Bible is silent, and you don't feel it is sin, then it is freedom in Christ.  It is for freedom that you have been set free.

Preface: For the purposes of this post, I’m working within a framework where the issues at hand are ones of preference, not major doctrines or sin issues.

There are three people I never want(ed) to be:

1) The person who disagrees with the small group leader on almost everything.
2) The person who feels that they’re not getting much out of church services and meetings.
3) The person who becomes bitter and 1) stays, badmouthing the church and creating division in the local church or 2) leaves, and badmouths the first church at the next church and creating division in the global church.

You can’t really help being the first two if it happens.  You might agree with the doctrine of a church, but you might not agree with the doctrine, emphases, or practices of your small group leader.  The probability of this becomes higher as the church’s standards for leaders or number of people available to be leaders become lower.  You also sometimes can’t help it if you aren’t getting much out of services and meetings.  (Of course, one needs to be careful here.  Sometimes our own pride and our sin get in the way of what the Spirit wants us to hear.)  But if a certain style or philosophy of preaching or small group meetings isn’t to one’s taste or expectation, even someone attending with a good faith effort to learn and glean from the messages and fellowship may be left with not much to work with.

However, you can help not becoming the third person.  It’s really easy to become the third person after becoming the first two, but don’t.  Seriously.  Just don’t do it.

If you become one of the first two people, you might want to seriously consider quietly switching churches.  Or, as with my case, you might sincerely and inexplicably feel you're supposed to stay with a particular church despite realizing you’ve become one of the first two people (or both).  In that case, you should listen to the prompting of the Spirit.  But whether you stay or whether you go, bitterness and impatience and badmouthing has no place in the heart of a Christian, and it definitely has no place in the church.

Things essential to keep in mind:

1) The church doesn’t exist to cater to your individual needs and expectations.  The church exists to glorify God.
2) The church is full of sinners.  Don't expect people to rise to your definition of perfection.
3) You’re a sinner, too.  Shocker.
4) Not everyone approaches Christianity with the same presuppositions about Christian living.  Differences in approach are not always wrong or bad.  Be Bible-based and open-minded.
5) Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but consider others better than yourselves.
6) You exist (among other things) to serve the people in your local church.  If you think you're so high and mighty and better than your current church (which you aren't...see #5), then go and serve others using your "superior" experience and knowledge.
7) Jesus is really, really, really patient with you.  Any amount of patience that the aforementioned service calls for is a peppercorn compared to that.



As I said before, I love my new church and I love the people at my new church.  I have been given the opportunity to fellowship with a lovely group of women who love the Lord.  It's just that we don't always agree or approach the Bible or Christian living in the same way.  This list contains things I need to remind myself of, but I don't think it's limited to people who are in my position.  Really, this is a very small list about Christian living in the church in general. 


Have your views ever conflicted with church leadership?  How did you handle the difference(s) between you?  How do you feel about your current church?  What about the local church do you need to remind yourself about?

This was a bit of a tradition back at the Community Group my friend and I led. We would take turns, not every week, but once in awhile, to give the Gospel narrative, and a different person would do it each time. We called it "The Gospel According to [name of the person speaking." Don't get me wrong, we weren't changing or adding to or detracting from the Bible. We weren't speaking authoritatively. But rather, we were framing the Gospel narrative in a way that was personal to us and in a way that we hoped would be personal to others. By having different people give the narrative, we encouraged every member of the group to think about the Gospel for themselves, and to be ready to share it. We were also able to get different viewpoints and different nuances of the Gospel from each speaker.

All my posts this week (and a lot of my posts recently) have been about identity. It wasn't intentional, and it wasn't something I deliberately sat down to think about, but rather it was just the first thing that came to mind when I sat down to write my posts a couple hours before they were "due." Anyway, I haven't really had anyone in my life to properly remind me of the Gospel lately, so I decided to remind myself.

Edit: Wow, in writing this, I realize that I've gotten rusty :(

The Gospel According to Jo

Identity

Before there was Time, there was an entity who simply was. He "wased" with Himself, and indeed, He existed in three persons. Three persons who were not each other yet were the same. We call this entity God. God was not an entity who was a power or "the bright side of the Force," but He was a community of Persons. And within this community, each Person felt and gave love, one to another. God simply was who He was, but at the same time, in their interactions together, each Person sort of defined the other. And God was very joyful as a result of this interaction.

Out of that joy he created what we call the universe. And on a certain planet (much more complex and much more dearly loved than a mere watch) he created and placed two humans. And the two humans shared in the joy that God had in Himself. They were defined by the Goodness of God and their interactions with each other. And it was very good.

But our first parents were tempted. They were told that they could have identities outside of what God had given them. That they could be wise. That they could have knowledge. That they who "merely" partook of the joy of God could in fact be like Him. And they believed the tempter. The sought this identity and gained it, but found that the tempter's words were shadows of the truth. As a result, they became shadows of what they should have been. Defined apart from the joy of God, they were now also subject to His wrath, for they had destroyed a very good thing. And God, though joyful within Himself, was very sad and betrayed that these people rejected Him.

Because our first parents sinned, everything changed. They who had partook of not only God's joy but His eternality (though they had a beginning) would now know death. And the Earth they lived on would know death. This death would define them. Death would cut short their relationships with each other, and in doing so, would change their identities. And death would further damage their relationships with God, forcing them further away from His grace and into His eternal judgment. Death would enter their human relationships, with one exploiting the weaknesses of the other. Toil to work the dying land would define them. Toil to bring life into that same dying world would define them. Whether they laughed or cowered in the face of it, death elicited a response from all of humanity. And it got the last say.

But God had mercy. Christ, one of the Persons of God, became a man. He identified with us, so we could find our identity in Him once again. He spoke to us and healed our infirmities. And the more we interacted with Him, the more he changed us. He experienced our Death, but He conquered it, both spiritually and physically. He took upon Himself all of our sin, all that which separated us from God, all that brought death to our bodies and souls, and suffered our punishment. He died, but He did not stay dead. Rather, He came back to life, and in doing so, paved the way for our own resurrections, both spiritual and physical.

Through Christ, we can again find our identities in God. We become transformed by His goodness. His Spirit lives inside of us, reconnecting us to Himself. He identifies us as His children, His people. As His children, we also find our identities in each other, in our siblings-in-Christ, in the Church. As His people, we have assurance that this world is not our home. And these identities are not transient ones to be cut short by death, but instead are ones that continue into eternity. This is the promise to those who believe.

Is this something you believe in? Why or why not? If "yes," how would you articulate the Gospel? What is the Gospel according to you?

Don't forget to enter for the free Sproul book if you haven't done so already! I know that there were some issues with the commenting system, but don't worry, I'm keeping track of the comments, even if they aren't displayed anymore. Anyone who comments will be given a number, and that number will be used for the givaway on Monday.

Church Grafting

There's been a lot I've been wanting to talk about, but I haven't had enough time to sufficiently think about them. For the next couple weeks, my "Free Friday" posts are probably going to be a bit half-baked, so I ask for your patience. But if you want to help me develop these ideas, feel free to chime in!

Church planting is the new hip cool thing in modern evangelicalism (except "evangelicalism" is neither new, hip, nor cool anymore, but I'll use it for lack of a better word.) Of course, there are different ways churches are planted, but it generally goes something like this: you have a large or decently sized church, say, in Simi Valley. And members of that church feel called to go do church somewhere else, not because they don't like their Simi church, but because God loves people in...I don't know...West LA, too. So they gather up a team and get a couple pastor/ elders, usually younger guys either straight out of or not to far out from seminary. They move to West LA and plant a church.

It's no secret that church plants are generally in urban areas. I actually read an article awhile back on how rural areas need Jesus, too, and how church planters should consider planting in the country. I thought that was a valid point.

But are we limited to church planting?

What if there are already existing churches in a particular area? What if those churches love Jesus, too? But what if they're struggling a bit, not in purpose or joy or love or dedication, but what if their numbers aren't as good? What if they're missing entire generations of people under 40? 50?...60?

Do we go to the areas where these churches are and set up new churches? Church plants, in addition to being urban, generally attract the young urban. And maybe I'm making gross overexaggerations. This isn't something I've exactly studied in detail. Do we just hope the older churches will be able to get enough members of their own to be viable for a few more years? Or do we let them die out?

Church planting isn't for everyone. What if you're simply not called to lead in that capacity? What if you're not a pastor? What if you're not...a guy?

Is it possible to have a movement of church grafters? People of a certain age willing to leave their churches in favor of filling in age gaps of churches form another certain age? Would it be possible to set up a database of "personal church ads" or something? "Older church seeks young, vibrant adults" "Younger church seeks experienced Christians"

Of course it's easy to see 1) how this will be a logistical nightmare and how 2) how this, if implemented, will present a ton of problems. Ones that immediately come to mind are: who do you let use the list? and what happens when a group of "grafters" disagree with the leadership of the new church?

But problems aside, do you think an argument can be made for what I'm going to call "church grafting?" A move to strengthen existing churches through diversity of membership as an option aside from church planting?

Photographer: bump of flickr under CC2.0.
Text: Part of a quote by D.A. Carson in Holy, Holy, Holy
Note: I don't want anyone to misinterpret the lack of the Dunny's face for a complete removal of individual identity and personality. Please don't take my comics literally like that :)

Edit 8/27: Just noticed the image didn't work after working for a few days. Reuploaded and restored.

Thankfully, God has provided for me to continue on with my education and start new things in life.  Sadly, it seems these opportunities are not within walking distance from my current home church, which is awesome and is family.  I've been a member for two years but have been attending and/ or listening to sermons for a total of four.  It's filled with people I love and people that love God and has basically been the place where I have been growing, been ministered to, and have been ministering.