BibleScribbler

Picking your party According to William Barclay

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I’m reading William Barclay’s commentary on the letters to the Corinthians and his commentary on chapter 3 is amazing for 2019.

“This identification with some party is the acceptance of slavery by those who should be kings. In fact they are masters of all things, because they belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. The man who gives his strength and his heart to some little splinter of a party has surrendered everything to a petty thing, when he could have entered into possession of a fellowship and a love as wide as the universe. He has confined into narrow limits a life which should be limitless in it’s outlook.

Church, Part of a Complete Breakfast

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I have not gone to church on a Sunday morning the same way ever since I moved back to the United States. Granted, there were days in 1996-1999 that I bounced around from church to church, but that was for different reasons.

When I was in college, and then after I graduated, I spent a lot of time around people that lived the Christian life together on a day to day basis. Church, if attended, was only about 25% of the complete Christian life. The other 75% was daily prayer and Bible reading, evangelism out on the streets, and discussion discussion discussion with others about what we read, what we did, and what God was teaching us.

My wife and I now refer to those days at the “Cherry Court Days” as do many of the other people we were doing life with. I have heard pastors describe those days as “better than seminary” and others refer to it as a revival. Several of the people involved in that experience now work in the professional ministry 15 years later.

It permanently ruined many of us for any substitutes.

Fast forward to the present time, and my grumblings. My wife used to hate Sunday afternoons because we would go to church on Sunday mornings and I would gripe and complain all the way home. Eventually we quit going to church altogether and we began to try to exalt the Lord and seek Him in our day to day life. Some people worried about us, like we had fallen away. Others didn’t bring it up, because my criticisms were so visceral that I didn’t know how to explain them with grace. Some of my bros stuck by me even when I said some pretty negative stuff about the people they loved.

In that time, we grew in the Lord by leaps and bounds. We took responsibility for our children’s discipleship like youth pastors want people to do. We reached out to our neighbors, contacts, and our sphere of influence because we loved our Lord and we loved others beyond a scheduled event organized by someone we didn’t know at a location far far away from our front porch (where real life happens for us).

It was very very good. I should say it has been very very good, because we’ve only recently changed our act.

For the last year we have fallen in with a group of people doing that same thing in the neighborhood next door. The People of Praise is a covenanted Christian Community that shares life, time, possessions, and Jesus together on a daily basis. A little over a month ago we decided to join them and we began the 3-6 year process of discerning if joining the People of Praise will help us in our walk with Jesus.

One requirement to join the People of Praise: go to church.

Now the POP isn’t a church–it’s an ecumenical community. Everyone in the POP goes to their own church and is a part of their own church. In Evansville there are AOG folks, Catholic, Protestant, and Baptist folks. So here we are, my wife and I, what I would call disenfranchised program church folks. (A program church is what people used to call a megachurch, but now churches of all sizes follow the megachurch model whether they have 50-50,000 members.)

As were were “not going to church” we had visited a few places where our friends went on Sundays, and so we didn’t have to shop around.

We went, and we loved it. After I got home I realized why. You know how on the commercial for fruit loops, after the cartoon adventure and the toucan saving the day, they show a breakfast table of awesomeness and say “Fruit Loops is part of a complete breakfast” and they show eggs, orange juice, some toast, a glass of milk, and an apple? That is what Sunday morning church was to me. Part of a complete breakfast. It was sweet and awesome and I wanted 2 bowls but I wasn’t expecting it to be my complete breakfast. Where the Sunday morning church, even with it’s structured activities and programs, fell short, the para-church Christian Community filled in the gaps. And now I go to that church in a whole new way.

Links of interest:

People of Praise

OneLife church

Magicians Believe In What They Can't Copy

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The magicians tried with their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they could not; so there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said. (Exodus 8:18, 19 NASB)

It was when the Egyptian magicians could not imitate God that they surrendered and believed. This has a message for us too. If followers of Christ can only do the things that the magicians (people) of this world can do and nothing more there is no reason for people to surrender to our God. If we are worldly, divisive, mortal, selfish, etc. then we aren’t showing the power we have from God to live life to the fullest. There is no reason for people to believe we are any different with or without God.

Reading the Bible in a Year

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With the new year comes a new chance to get on a Bible reading plan. As a family and at the mission we are doing the Chronological reading plan according to the folks at ESVBible.org. If you have never read the Bible all of the way through, or if you’ve never had the adventure of reading it through in the order that it happened, I suggest you check this out.

ESV Chronological Reading plan at ESVBible.org

ESV Chronological Reading plan as a printable and checkoffable worksheet.

I want to plug reading the Bible at the website: If you buy an ESV study bible they give you a free unlock for all of the study Bible notes online. You can also use the notes section to write your own notes and then every few months dump them to Evernote for archiving. It’s really cool to be reading the Bible and come across a digital note you made 2 years ago (and not be distracted by 1,253 other people’s notes at the same time.)

The other thing is don’t let this reading plan be an opportunity for pride or shame. If you miss a day, press on, don’t give up. If you work 5 days ahead, shut up and praise the Lord. I’m currently in the 5th year of a “through the Bible” reading plan that was only supposed to take one year!

Nothing grows you spiritually like reading the Bible deeply and responding daily.

Jesus Didn't Do It

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John 14:10

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

This is hitting me more and more: Jesus never acted on His own, but only in response and in obedience and in union and sync with the Father. So often we talk about and think that Jesus was some kind of super hero with all kinds of power. He had no power exceptional to man. He was a man that lived in union and in obedience to God. SO God was pleased to do stuff through Him.

So often so much of what we do, even in our religious life, is motivated and moved by ourselves. What if we were propelled and motivated, not just into doing good deeds or living right, but into knowing the Father? What if that became the obsession and the focus of our lives, to the point that little else became a worthwile venture for us?

I’ll tell you what would happen. Everything that we do would take on new meaning, new joy, and a new appreciation.

When Jesus made wine, it was the best freaking wine those people had tasted.

When Jesus feasted and dined with people, all of the self-righteous people looked on and said He was a drunk and a partier.

When He was friends with somebody, onlookers were amazed at how deeply He loved them.

When He taught philosophy of life, people marveled and said that they had never heard anyone teach such amazing things before.

I think this is the normal Christian life that God offers us. We just need to get our focus off of second and third tier junk and refocus on the Author and Origin of that Life!