Time Travel: What is your target? Part I

Time is something that has been on my mind a lot lately.

Recently our dog died.  My wife had surgery to repair a tendon after falling in a hole three months ago.  During both of these events the clock kept spinning.  It is funny because even as I type these words on Blogger I pause to reflect on the words I've just typed.  There isn't a pause button for me to hit so the clock continues to spin and that spinning isn't felt by you the reader unless I mention it here on the pages of my blog.  My point?  What is my point?  You must take it on faith that there is feeling in each and every word I put on this page.  Some words are more painful and difficult to type than others.  As you read this (I hope you read to the end) you will be bringing your own thoughts and experiences to this blog.  Maybe you have had similar experiences and if you have had some degree of those experiences I hope this blog gives you comfort in your time of grief and sadness.

Time.  What is it?

The first view of Time:  It is a fixed point or series of points that have been going on for centuries (some faith is involved here because no one I know or have even heard of on earth today was there when the first second, minute, or hour passed by on the clock).  The beginning and end are unclear and what you choose to do as the clock spins may or may not have any significant value for anyone other than you.

The second view of Time: It was constructed by the God of the Bible.  Realizing that maybe you haven't read the Bible or been given the Biblical view of God I will pause here and explain how God reveals himself in the Bible.  God is a Trinity.  God has three unique and separate persons in the same being.  God is Father, Son / Jesus, and Holy Spirit. God and all that he is and does will fill more space than Blogger would allow me to use and wouldn't do accurate justice to who the person of God is.  Please leave a comment if you would like to talk further about God and the personhood/personal God is.  References to God creating time are found in Genesis and the Acts of the Apostles:

• Genesis 1:5: “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
• Acts 1:7: “He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”

So with that brief description of time,  why is it important to talk or think about time, especially if your mind is made up about time?  It is that very question that drove me out of blogging stagnation and inactivity.

Everyone who reads this text has something in common.  We (me included) is destined to leave planet earth. Mom if your reading this please excuse for my bluntness but we will all die.

• Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 “1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;”

Okay, so I've reached common ground with the human race.  We will all die, and where I needed to or not I've included a verse from the Bible to prove that I agree with the Bible here too.

At this point I'm going to break.  This is Part I of "Time Travel: What is Your Target".

Please come back for Part II of "Time Travel: What is Your Target.  In the second part of this blog we leave our commonalities behind us and we make choices.  Choices of how we will spend our ride here on planet earth watching the clock spin.  

Quotes

“Conviction is worthless until it converts itself into conduct.” - Thomas Carlisle

Thank you Julie Roys and Chris Fabry!

Thank you Julie Roys and Chris Fabry!

Passion can cause many results.  So many times, in my life passion about my ideals has caused me to be insensitive to the person I’m trying to share those ideals with.  You see a good discussion or debate is very exciting (to me).  It is for those reasons (passion and debate) the discussion that Chris Fabry (@chrisfabry) and Julie Roys (@reachjulieroys) recently had on Chris Fabry Live touched my heart.

You see their discussion centered around God, love, life, grace, law, and the future in an episode of Chris Fabry Live Titled Law and Grace at Graduation.
The reason for the discussion is timely and extremely relevant and the way they handled themselves should not be overlooked.  It is obvious that professing Jesus as their Lord and Savior and the display of their lives puts that truth in view for the whole world.  Examples of their love for both God and their neighbor include considering and giving light to how Jesus would have handled the subject matter at the center of the discussion.  Both Julie and Chris were respectful giving the other one time to speak their points. Both Julie and Chris genuinely wanted to hear what the other had to say on the subject at hand.  Praying together to end the episode.  Wow, thank you for displaying what a healthy Christian discussion looks like!

If you would like to hear the discussion please check out the recorded podcast of Chris Fabry Live on Moody Radio.

Get This Off My Chest || Spoken Word (+playlist)

Theology Matters

Theology what is it?  

Dictionary.com in their Cultural Dictionary defines theology as the disciplined study of religious questions, such as the nature of God, sin, and salvation.  That is some pretty heavy stuff!  I'm guessing if you are like me you may not have given much thought to theology.  That was me until I realized while casually sitting in my Connect/Sunday School class discussing different denominations and different religions.  You see being that there are so many expressions of what people call christianity as well as other religions like Mormonism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, etc... it has never been more important to know and understand what it is you believe.

Now you might still be dwelling on what I mentioned in the paragraph above.  Why in the world where they discussing other religions and not focusing on the religion they went to church to celebrate????  That is a great question.  We were discussing the Bible and specifically the book of Galatians chapter 5.  Galatians as a book is written to people who at one time believed in Jesus alone as their Savior.  What I mean is that the believers in Galatia proclaimed that there wasn't anything they could do to make their relationship with God (the God of the Bible) close or right. They needed a savior and the depended on Jesus' perfect life and sacrificial death on a cross as the payment needed for their offence against God.  Fast forward to when the book of Galatians reaches them and you will find that there was a group of people who were saying yes that's right you do need to believe that Jesus death and resurrection is a great start but you need something in addition to that to finish the job.  In the time the book of Galatians was written the specific issue was that of circumcision.  But fast forward 2000 years and it could be anything anyone wants to add to Jesus finished work on the cross as an add on.

Jesus plus religion isn't good news.  You may have heard the Gospel of Jesus called the Good News of Good.  The Good News is simply this.  God did what was necessary for people to be brought into a right relationship with Himself all by Himself.  There isn't anything any of us can do to add or make Jesus sacrifice better or more complete.  Face it, it doesn't matter when you began to look for God in your life, I'm willing to say that you weren't born seeking after Him.  How many of us looked to test what our mother, father, or adult figure wanted for us in our early life.  Why do you think it would be any different on a spiritual level.  If anything, it would be even harder to want and turn to God because you can't reach out and touch Him or interact with Him as you would another human.  And that's the point.  As a Christian the Good News is just that as a matter of Faith. 

As you read this I'm not sure who you are specifically or where you go to church or if you go to church.  I want to encourage you though.  Whatever you are currently doing or not doing know why you are doing it.  Don't take what I'm saying as the last word on Christianity or anyone else for that matter or if you are a Muslim, Mormon, or Jew know why you believe what you do or you may find yourself in a compromising when asked what it is you believe about Theology or how you define studying God.

Renewing Our Mind

“We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.”

--John Stott

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God Keeps His Word!

God will always fulfill what he says he will do in his Word.

“It is fashionable in some academic circles to exercise scholarly criticism of the Bible. In so doing, scholars place themselves above the Bible and seek to correct it. If indeed the Bible is the Word of God, nothing could be more arrogant. It is God who corrects us; we don’t correct Him. We do not stand over God but under Him.”

--R.C. Sproul

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