Liberate Te Ex Inferis

Consider it all joy my brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind because the testing of your faith develops perseverance.

In WoW terms, that means that you are going to pull “Agro” from enemies and demons when you stand strong and walk around in territories where you don’t belong, meaning this world which is not our home.

Today we learned about friends that are facing trials of false witnesses who have made allegations against them and their family.  Satan has taken notice of their family and they have pulled Agro from the minions of Hell.  Well, congrats T & M.  Well done.  If you were sitting on the sideline, doing nothing, demons would not take notice of you, they would not attack you because you would not be a threat to them.

Be thankful, take heart and rejoice because these who come against you are insignificant and scared of the one who lives within you, who commands legions of Angel Armies, and who has all power to overcome anything that comes against you.  Even in his sleep, He would triumph over them.

Stay strong and remain faithful by putting on the Full Armor of God; His word and prayer, because these are the strongest armor you can wear, and you have an abundance of it.

When we joined the new Sunday School class at church a few years ago, shortly afterwards I was invited to a “Business Meeting” with several of the other guys in the class, where we would meet at someone’s house and play poker.  That’s cool, I like to play poker and I am happy to play with guys from church who share the same beliefs that I do.  So when I get there and we start playing, 2 of the guys light-up some cigars.  “I’m in heaven” I thought.  Good times.

Since then the game has blossomed into a once-every-6-weeks-or-so type of situation and I have hosted it at my house several times now too.  So this past weekend we had a game and I invited a couple of people from work who don’t attend church.  One of them has actually started to come to church with me and joined last week.  The other guy has only played with us once, but after the last game he says that he is interested in playing again.

I like stories like this where people are willing to break out of their “baptist shell”  I grew up in a baptist church, but I am not a baptist, and frankly I can’t stand it when baptist preachers drone on and on about being a baptist.  Who cares?  We need to get back to the Bible and we need to be accepting to all people and show them the joy that believers have, especially when fellowshipping together.  Jesus associated with the lowest of the low in His day, and we should do the same, being friends to ALL people and welcoming them into our homes and into our lives.

I’m kinda tired of this life
I’m kinda tired of this church
I’m kinda tired of this facade
And of misplacing value and worth.

Lately as I look around me, I find that I am guilty of something that I have always considered rather vein and shallow. I find myself putting on facades and masks so that others around me don’t see the real me. And I am not talking in the direction you might think. No. I am talking in the direction of my true self and true feelings being hidden from those others of my same beliefs.

I don’t put on a mask at work. I tell people at work who I really am and what I really believe. I find that easy, surprisingly. You wouldn’t think that it would be, perhaps I am truly getting old as I often tell my wife that I am, but I really have come to the place in life where I just tell people who I am and let them decide to like or not like me. I like to see if this “tolerance” thing that the world talks about from a soap box really works and if they truly believe it, because if they do… they will “tolerate” my viewpoint even if I don’t tolerate them. But that is another story.

Church is the different story. Lately, I feel that I must not act like my true self at church. I can’t explain why. Nothing has happened recently to change my feelings.  It is just something that has happened gradually over these past few months.

So once more I feel out of place and uncomfortable at church.  I’d much rather just have some friends over, eat dinner, drink a beer and read the bible together.  Maybe some sort of home group or something.  But one day at a time, I’ll just wait and see what God has planned.

Yesterday morning Dr Terry spoke about why King David was called “a man after God’s own heart” David was a murderer, an adulterer, and a ruthless warrior, though these events came later in life and didn’t define the character that built him. Still, God knew these things about him before they happened, and yet the Bible still calls him ‘after God’s own heart’. So why? Short version; because he was always engrossed in God’s Word, through study, prayer and psalms.

Dr Terry spoke of a study done by Fuller Seminary that surveyed its Seminary students with basic questions of Christianity and Bible beliefs. The questionnaire had several questions, but Dr Terry was only really interested in 3.

1) How many minutes per week do you spend in prayer?
2) How many Bible verses do you read per week, on your own time?
3) How many times do you attend a church service, per week?

Mind you, these questions were sent to either Seminary students or seasoned Christians, not the general population or newly converted. The answer shocked Dr Terry, though in my skepticism, I can’t say that I was all that surprised.

Answer to #1 - 32 seconds/week
Answer to #2 - 1/3 of a verse, per week (ex. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave’)
Answer to #3 - 2.25 times/week.

People, we cannot live like this. We cannot say that we believe the things in the Bible yet never read, study or memorize them, hiding them in our heart. We cannot be effective witnesses, effective ’salt of the earth’ with these kinds of statistics. Sure, we read commentaries and other books by C.S. Lewis or John Piper, Billy Graham, Max Lucado, Charles Stanley, etc.. And with all due respect to these men, they are not Bible authors. Yes, they have good things to say that we should want to read, but this isn’t a replacement for Biblical Study.

You cannot expect to lead the life of a Redeemed Saint and ignore these fundamental commandments that God has given us.

Some friends of our who used to attend our church, but moved to another church locally to serve on staff, just learn that they lost their 37-week old unborn child. The mother had to give birth to a still-born baby last Sunday. Here is an excerpt from the email I received on this..
Under the circumstances, they are doing fine. Physically, they are still recovering & they both desperately need to rest. Emotionally, theyhave their ups & downs, but they are incredibly strong. Despite their
sadness & hurting hearts, they are praising God & giving Him the glory.
What an amazing testimony!

Now, I have never experienced this type of situation, nor do I know what it is like to be a parent, so I cannot relate to the types of feelings and emotions that they must be experiencing right now. And the purpose of my post is not to downplay their disappointment and suffering over this event, I have the utmost respect and share in the sorrow of this family that are my friends, but I must write a point of view that my Faith allows me to have during trials like this.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

Now, should we rejoice in this event? Obviously not. Should we be saddened? Yes, it is only natural. Should we be mad at God? Why? Because he gave us a life, something that only He could do, and then took it away, only to be with Him in heaven? This child will never experience pain, suffering, sadness, remorse. He will never know heartbreak, will never be tempted by human sexual perversions, will never have any addictions to drugs or alcohol. He will never have to fight in a war, only to be dismembered or killed. He will never have to experience a divorce. He will never know betrayal. He will spend his days in the loving arms of his Heavenly Father, who Himself called the child home, and didn’t have to accept him from a pre-determined murder at an abortion clinic.

This does not mean that we would not have happily watched James grow and become a Spiritual leader, husband and father as we would have expected him to, it simply means that God had other plans for him, to spare him the suffering in this lousy, rotten, twisted-ass world, and to call him home to Heaven earlier than planned by his earthly parents.

We should all be so blessed.

This morning was “Promotion Sunday” which means the beginning of a new year, in case you have never attended a Baptist church. They like to act like it follows a college semester or school year or something. Old habits die hard, I guess.

So to signify promotion Sunday, along with John Meador’s 1-year anniversary with FBC Euless, they launched both a new website and new logos, designs, team and class names for the church. It’s a whole new look and feel and for the most part I think that it is really good.

I like the new logo, but I don’t care for the Easter-Egg, Pastel colors that they chose. I would have preferred a slate gray/ navy blue/ silver / black / or dark red theme. I am sure they care about my opinion Either way, I think it brings a nice change to the look and feel of the new website and change can be a good thing when it means growth, and this church definitely has grown over the past 2-3 years.

It’s going to be exciting to see what comes about in the next several months in the life of this church, a place that tries so desperately to move forward and progress with growing times, but seems to get in it’s own way so often. For the most part, FBC Euless is one of the most progressive Southern Baptist churches in the DFW Metroplex. But as of late, it has taken a few steps backwards into the more traditional Baptist role that we are used to seeing in this area. I think the new website and it’s features are a good contradiction to that, and I am glad to see them, other than the fact that the site doesn’t seem to like Firefox.

The resignation of Claude Thomas , some three years ago, didn’t discourage or bring down this church body, but empowered them to the extent of “let us show you that we follow God and not a man of God” and that is exactly what has transpired here, with the paying off of a $6.5 million mortgage debt in this period of time. Whatever happens next should be worth blogging about.

For the last few months, I have been attending a class on Sunday mornings led by Dr Jack Terry at FBC Euless.  He used to be a professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary and his teaching style reflects that of a college professor.  Since I have always wanted to attend Seminary but never got the chance to, Dr Terry’s class has been incredibly interesting to me over these past few months.  So I thought that I would write a blog and share some of the insightful things that are discussed in this class, because they are so interesting to me.  So look for more posts on this subject, perhaps not every week, but several times that I find something I can write about

My wife and I decided to change it up a little this morning and go to the 2nd hour service at church. Normally during that hour, we are in Bible Fellowship (Sunday School) class, but today we wanted to try something different.

So we go into service and they have this guest singer that is some famous southern gospel artist who has traveled with some well-known people. I didn’t recognize his name. And regardless of what you see in the movies, we are not all hicks down here. Just because I was born and raised in Dallas, TX, doesn’t necessarily mean that I love Southern Gospel or even Country music. There was a time when I liked Country quite a lot, but I rarely listen to it now. And I cannot remember ever really liking Southern Gospel music.

So we sat through a few songs, which turned out to be relatively painless afterall, and onto the message. Thank goodness. I know that some people like the worship music and the singing before the service, but frankly to me it seems like all fluff. Just get on with it, for crying out loud. I came to here the Word of God preached, not to hear 400 year old hymns and music that makes me think I turned 85 yesterday and forgot my own birthday because I am so old. Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with this type of music or worship style, it simply isn’t for me. If it works for you, then great. But give me some loud rock-n-roll worship music and see how many more lost people you will reach because they don’t wanna listen to the tired Baptist Hymnal songs, no matter how many times you re-write them over and over again.

Anyway, the service was great and the message was good. I just wish we had something that was more up-to-date from the music standpoint.

This is something that I wrote in my Chat Forum on April 17, 2006.

http://faithchatter.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=624

I always hear stories about angels being here to help us or protect us from our own stupidity, and I always like to think that if I ever saw one, I would try and recognize him if I could, which I realize is probably futile, but the thought of trying appeals to me.

So this morning I am driving to work and before I get more than 5 miles from my house I hear a loud POP come from my truck and smell something burning, the kind of smell that comes from an electrical burn. At the same time the truck died, so I though it had backfired or something happened to my distributor.

I pull over to the side of the highway, behind a white car that was already sitting there, apparently also broke down. This is all happening at the beginning of rush hour traffic, about 6:45am. The burn smell starts to get stronger and I notice smoke coming from under the hood, so I pop the hood, get out of the truck and open the hood and see flames coming from my carb.

I tried to find something to smother the flames with in my cab, but all I could come up with was a backpack, so I emptied it and started hitting the fire with it, which had begun to grow. The small pack didn’t do much to the fire except maybe slow it down a bit, so I honestly thought that my truck was history at this point. I went back to the cab and started gathering all the items I could to take out of the truck before it became an engulfed inferno, which is when I had the thought to call the Fire Dept, but in rush hour traffic, I doubted they would get there in time to make much difference in saving my truck.

Just as I was dialing, I saw a figure walk up to my truck and douse it with a fire extinguisher. I couldn’t see from the cab to the front of the truck beause the open hood was obstructing my view, so I moved back to the front and found the guy who had been in the white car broken down in front of me. He successfully killed the fire and told me that he had 2 fire extinguishers and that I could have the one he was using now. I thanked him as he handed me the extinguisher and walked back to his car.

Now at this point in time, I was honestly more focused on the fact that my truck was safe and wasn’t a ticking time-bomb on the side of the highway next to me. Paying more attention to the engine than the stranger, I didn’t get a chance to say anything further to him because he walked back to his car, got in and drove away.

I called my wife, asked her to come get me; then called a tow truck and scheduled them to come get the truck and take it to my home. I had to get back into the cab to make these calls due to the highway noise. After making these calls and taking a deep breath, my mind wandered back to the stranger with the fire extinguisher.

Why was he stopped on the side of the road? He didn’t need help because he got right back in his car and drove away.

Who carries 2 fire extinguishers with them in their car?

I wish that I would have had a better chance to thank him. Maybe some day I will.

For several weeks now on my Christian Chat Forum, located at www.faithchatter.com, there has been some discussion of proof of God and that He exists. Proof that the Bible is accurate and correct. Proof that God is real, that He loves us and that if we believe in Jesus, He will save us.

While I could sit here and quote you references on the internet and link to a dozen sites that list physical, scientific proof that God exists and that proves the Bible is correct and accurate, it really doesn’t either start or stop there. Simply because Christianity is based on Faith. Without Faith, Christianity is meaningless. I heard a preacher say one time that if you could squeeze the Bible down into one simple theme or statement, one message that it gives to the world, it would be “The just shall live by FAITH”

Proof isn’t enough. And the reason is because proof really doesn’t prove anything, anyway.

• Smoking causes cancer. There is medical and scientific proof behind this, yet people still smoke cigarettes all the time. The proof doesn’t convince them.
• Driving an automobile while drinking is highly dangerous and prooved to be unsafe to other drivers on the road, but this doesn’t stop people from doing it.
• Governmental controlled healthcare that forces you to see a doctor when and where the government tells you doesn’t work. It has been proven. Ask any American that has lived in Ireland. Yet that is what the democratics (for the most part) push for every election term.
• The banning of handguns will not solve the problem with crime in this country. Banning heroin and cocaine didn’t solve the drug problem we have, why would banning handguns decrease gun crimes? This was tried several years ago in Australia and the result was an over 30% increase in the crime rate shortly afterwards. Go to www.google.com and search for “Tihart” and “gun control” and look at the many articles that are written about this Representative in our government. Criminals love unarmed citizens, it makes the crimes easier to committ. There is proof all over the world of this fact, yet certain political groups spread propaganda each year promoting handgun bans. The proof isn’t enough.
• Jesus was beaten to a bloddy pulp, so much so that he was unrecognizable. He was crucified, He died and was buried and He rose from the dead 3 days later. He appeared to all of his 11 disciples and to his mother, plus over 500 people after His resurection. There many documents, both Biblical and historical that prove this fact. The event happened and it changed history, so much so that our calendar today reflects the very event of Jesus’ life. Yet people do not believe. What more does it take? Raising someone from the dead isn’t even enough, people still don’t believe even with this proof.

Christianity is based on Faith, not proof. Proof is good, but it isn’t enough and we Chrsitians do not put our faith in proof. Science and Research are good things. Scientific and Archaeological proof has proved over 90% of the Bible correct, historically. This isn’t enough. Don’t come looking to Christians, asking for proof of their faith and expecting them to give you the answers you want. We will do the best we can, but we can’t answer everything. God and the Bible can answer more than we can; that is why our Faith lies there.