Tag: Jesus

An Advent Devotional from The Tim Tebow Foundation

The Internet decided to recommend a Tim Tebow video for me last night… I know since many of my friends are from GA and TN, you might highly despise Tebow due to his college football career in FL, but this video has nothing to do with football.  I was not aware of his work in stopping child trafficking/slavery until watching this video. Due to this topic, you may not want to watch the video, but just read the following devotional I wrote in response to the video. 

Tim Tebow’s testimony of the darkness of child slavery made me think of Advent.  Many of the Advent hymns of the Christian Church speak to the darkness of the world that God’s people face and experience daily with the cry for Emmanuel to come to us.  John 1:1-18 speaks to Jesus being equal to the Father in divinity.  He is called the Word.  He is called the light of men. In him is life!  The Word, the Light, came into our world of darkness.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; he is Jesus of Nazareth.  Through Jesus of Nazareth, John and the other disciples who received saw Jesus’ glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

Jesus then speaks of his Church being the light of the world – a city on a hill in the darkness – a beacon of light drawing people to the life that is in him.  Tim’s testimony and work are demonstrations of God’s light and the triumph of good over evil. 

In the video, Tim Tebow wrestles with why God allows the evil that he has allowed.  And yet… he gives a great proclamation of God’s sovereignty in all situations and of his amazing love for sinners.  God knows your name.  God knows all your hurts. 

He’s coming again soon for his children to gather us all together to be with him face to face forever. 

Come, Lord Jesus, come!  Amen. 

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB-UMEwuy7I

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The 7 Signs (Miracles) of Jesus – Video Series

In John’s Gospel (his biography of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection) he records 7 signs. At Oak Road Lutheran Church in Lilburn, GA, we recently had a Bible study series in our Exploring the Faith Class that studied and discussed various parables and miracles of Jesus of Nazareth. Part of that series was looking at the 7 signs recorded by John. Below are links to videos that summarize most of the information and applications from these studies. I added a video making a case for there being more than 7 signs in John’s Gospel!

The First Sign – Turning Water into Wine

The Second Sign – The Healing of the Official’s Son

The Third Sign – The Healing of a Paralyzed Man

The Fourth Sign – The Feeding of the 5,000

The Fifth Sign – Walking on Water

The Sixth Sign – Healing the Blind Man

The Seventh Sign – Raising Lazarus from the Dead

Jesus Performed More Than Seven Signs In John’s Gospel

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44. God is not a _____!

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Reconnect Episode 44

Maybe when you see a fill-in the blank about God not being something, or someone, your mind runs to fill it in with something akin to the title of the 2007 Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is not Good. Maybe you’d fill in the blank by saying something like “God is not a merciful, forgiving God.” This is certainly what Richard Dawkins thinks, as he wrote in his bestselling book, The God Delusion:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

But that’s not what this episode is about at all! This episode looks at false views of God emerging from within the Church.

Christians, in our sinfulness, far too often approach God in ways that are contrary to how he is revealed to us in Scripture. Sometimes, these presentations might come from people who claim to be Christians, but are really not! They might be false teachers, or people who think they are followers of Christ, but in reality they are far from God, based upon their confessions of who he is, and, or, their approach to interacting with him in their day to day life.

In this episode, Stephen Puls, joins me again; this time to discuss some false views and approaches to God that we far too often see in the Church.

For instance, we might approach God as a Black Hawk helicopter God. We expect him to swoop in and save us from all of our trials and tribulations. But is such deliverance from all earthly afflictions promised in Scripture? No, it’s not. God is not a Black Hawk helicopter God.

Another example of a false approach is treat God as a magic genie! We simply approach him again and again for things that we need and want, and that’s it. That’s the bulk of our interaction with him. What happens when such prayers are not answered in the affirmative? Will our faith be shaken? Will others who are not Christians, laugh and mock our God for not responding to our prayers as we expect him to?

Sometimes we treat God as a vending machine. We expect to get blessings from him, but they come at an expense! We have to pay in some fashion to receive God’s gifts. We treat all of our dealings with God in transactional terms: I prayed; I went to Church; I went on that mission trip; so I expect x, y, or z, from you in return, God!

Stephen shares these and many more false views and approaches to God in this episode. And most importantly, he shares a true view and approach to God: God is an anchor God!

Show Links:

Another episode featuring Stephen Puls: “Religions, Atheism, and Wars!”

Andy Wrasman’s Blog Posts on “Who is God?”

Order Andy Wrasman’s book, Contradict – They Can’t All Be True

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Contradict Meme #1

I finally figured out how I can create memes quickly without have someone else’s url on it and with no additional costs to myself .  This means I plan on making plenty of memes.  They seem to be easy ways of promoting Contradict Movement.  Here is a meme I meme I made using the Contradict logo:

contradict meme1I posted this image to Facebook and almost instantly I received a question about who considers Contradict to be hate speech.

The following was my response:

I can provide an example of a person who essentially says that it is hate speech. The person says that it isn’t hate speech, but often times in this paragraph uses the word “hate” in application to Contradict and does in fact call Contradict a bully:

“Islam, Christianity, Buddhism etc. Most are “the only truth” to countless people. And it’s fine to believe that. But, what’s not fine is not allowing others to have their individual beliefs in the truth. Who cares if they’re wrong? Is it really hurting you? Only if you fight them. Only if you threaten. Only if you belittle, offend, annoy…There’s a saying that hate is like a burning coal you are intending to throw at someone. The only one who gets burned by holding onto hate is you. This isn’t necessarily hate, but it’s close-minded. The Contradict movement is, for all intents and purposes, a bully. And yet, look at how many previously bullied people who have now found God are getting behind it. And before you go and argue that Coexist people are bullies, too, here’s a reminder–they aren’t expecting you to do anything but let people live out their own lives, as ignorant to your version of the truth as they want. It is a wise man who realizes that action speaks louder than any amount of scripture reading and referencing ever will.”

This quote comes from the following blog url: http://dreamsandrevelations.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/coexist-and-its-copycat-brother-contradict/

Also most sites where this image has been posted have responses from naysayers asking why Christians have to hate other religions and why we can’t accept them all and have tolerance?

My brother-in-law works with someone who has a Co-exist sticker on his car. His co-worker parks next to his car with a Contradict sticker quite often. After work, his co-worker told him that when he sees his Contradict sticker all he sees is hate and asked him why he has to hate others. Basically I think the Co-exist-er hates knowing that my brother-in-law professes John 14:6 and thus places his hatred of my brother-in-law’s beliefs onto the message itself, making the message a message of hate because it does spur people towards hatred, just as Jesus said, “The world is going to hate you because of me.”

Another person chimed in to my answer, adding:

Like the guy admits in the quote they want to willingly stay in ignorance, and in actually they’re lashing out and calling you the “hater” because they know they have no ground to stand on when it comes to their claim that “truth is relative”. Most people result to name calling and labeling when they’re exposed, and when the call you the “hater” they’re actually projecting what they are and what they feel toward you.

Check out Contradict Movement!  You can watch videos, get linked to Facebook, get access to free group study guides, and even better, order stickers, shirts, mugs, magnets, and cell phone covers adorned with the Contradict logo. 

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What do all religions have in common?

Building off the last post, after hearing the difficulty of defining the word religion, how do you define what is a religion so that everything that we generally call a religion is included, yet everything we generally consider to be secular is excluded?

Reading Michael Molloy’s Experiencing the World’s Religions I learned that the etymology of the word religion is two words, “re” and “lig”.  “Re” means again; makes sense, reply, rebound, repeat, etc.  “Lig” means “to connect” or “to join,” as in ligament.  Together, religion means “to connect again.”

This concept is easily found in most religions.  They offer ways or processes of returning to some sort of original state of mankind that has been lost or severed from some problem.  For Christianity, the problem is sin that separated Adam and Eve from God and thrust them out of the Garden of Eden.  Their sin then was passed on to all men and the ultimate effect of our sin is eternal death and separation from God.  The way to “reconnect” with God and that original state of humanity before the “Fall” is through faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  Other religions offer a different problem, a different separation, and a different way or path of reconnecting with that original state of being.

Moving beyond the etymology of religion, Molloy says that instead of making a set definition that can encompass all religions it is best to simply list common characteristics of religions.  He lists 8 common characteristics and I address them in the following video:

After watching the video, post a comment giving examples of how the 8 elements are found within Christianity.  Also, ask yourself, does Atheism have these 8 elements?  If it does, then should it be considered a religion?  If it doesn’t, should it not be considered a religion?

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