Hard Thinking

While @ Camp Canaan I read on a book by N.T. Wright called Evil & the Justice of God.

This book does the one thing that I need a book to do: provoke me to thought. Here was the issue posed that has gotten the brain firing, "What did Jesus' Death do about Evil?" We know that Jesus died a substutionary death for individual sinners. But what about evil @ large? Did Jesus deal with that?

Admittedly, Wright isn't my stripe of Christian. He has been fuzzy on his view of the atonement
but he writes to compel for thought. For that I can appreciate his works.

Out of town

Due to being @ Camp Canaan for the week there won't be any blogging.

Be strong. Put down the gun.

24 minutes to midnight mind dump

Mind Dump...Some random thoughts two dozen minutes for midnight.

1. June 16th around 4:30 p.m. God sovereignly made a huge change in my thinking.

2. Due to the smart people around me I realize we will be stuck unless we take 2 tim 2:2 seriously.

3. Another thing God is doing is bringing fun back to FBC. I don't know how fun factors into the life of other churches, but it is huge with us. Quote from a visiting lady at our VBS commencement, "You guys (the church) seem to have so much fun. I can't imagine my
(religious leader) doing these kind of things."

4. My wife is gone for the week. I'm already moody.

Vacation Bible School

Tomorrow we finish up Vacation Bible School. VBS reminds me of all the things a church can do right.
1. We teach a simple lesson. I think VBS is some of my best 'preaching.'
2. We set the atmosphere. We decorate, decorate, decorate.
3. We get excited.
4. We program in fun. Candy throwing, water gun shooting, prize giving, stupid human tricks fun.
5. We take breaks then we come back to the lessons.
6. We plan to give and not focus on getting during the service.

Every year I promise myself that I will learn more from Bible School. Maybe this will be the year.

Always check your weapon...

On Sunday mornings I try to use an object lesson to make the sermon a little more memorable. This Father's Day I believe I succeeded.

I was preaching on 'Reverse Engineering' or raise your kids with the end in mind.

The object lesson was a pellet gun that had been busted but Eli and I had taken it apart fixed it and re-assembled the gun. The point was I couldn't assemble a gun from scratch. Yet, since I reverse engineered it I was able to be successful. Unfortunately, the gun was soon malfunctioning again. So, I thought I took a broken empty pellet rifle into the pulpit.

While talking I mindlessly pumped the gun and squeezed the trigger. To my surprise the gun fired the one pellet that was in it! The pellet almost took out the piano player, ricocheted off the wall missing the 150 year old stained glass window be a few feet and landed in the lap of one of the teenagers sitting up front.

The silence of the stunned congregations was broken with Eli, my 7 year old jumping to his feet with his hands in the air yelling, "Woo-hoo it works!"

This will be one of the never ending parade of Sunday's that won't soon be forgotten @ FBC.

Slowing down and heading for third

The Dutys spent this weekend at the Holiday Inn in Lexington.

My oldest son, Zak plays for a select baseball team called the Cincinnati Redhawks. We had a 3 day tournament played at the fields of Georgetown College and the University of Transylvania.

Z had a good weekend at the plate. So it was exciting in the 4th game of the Tourney he crushed a ball into right field. He was rounding second and heading for his 3rd triple in 3 days when he realized the runner in front of him hesitated. Long story short, Z hesitated waiting for the runner to go home and Zak got thrown out a third.

I told Z he should have just gone into third. If the runner in front didn't make it home it was the runner's mistake.

Philosophically, how often are Christians and especially churches barreling around for extra bases but somebody else slows down? They hesitate. They aren't sure if they should keep going. What happens? The momentum gets killed. Opportunity is lost.

The thing in baseball about trying to stretch a big double into a close triple is faith.
Faith that the third base coach can read the play well. Faith that the runner will commit all the way.

In the life of the believer that same principle applies. Faith that the stretching God is calling us to is actually from God. Then there's the big question of faith to be fully committed. Are we willing to go in hard and fast?

Life is constantly driving us to that 5 letter word, f-a-i-t-h. In fact, 'without faith it is impossible to please God.'

My random best of's for June 7

Miracle... Jesus' raising of Lazarus in John 11. He wasn't just dead. He was a pile of goo. Jesus did a lot when he commanded his liquefying innards to reconstitute and order a perfectly healthy Lazarus out of the grave.

Rock flute solo...Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull. One of the best songs...ever.

Guitarists...For emotion: Stevie Ray Vaughn. For brilliance: Yngwie Malmsteen.

Bible translation: English Standard Version.

Painfully, fascinating fiction book...The Martyr's Song by Ted Dekker.

Anonymous people...The Antioch church founders who preached to the Greeks in Acts 11. The nameless martyrs 'of whom the world was not worthy' in Hebrews 11.

Smart people...Jesus (most intelligent man that ever lived). Einstein. Richard Feynman.
Steve Jobs. Nikola Tesla (incredible).

Conquering...

I imagine in all of us there is an innate desire to conquer some hill. In this we fight with a contradiction within ourselves; we want to scratch, claw and fight for every inch of the hill. On the flip side we want it to be easy, simple and stress free. It's as if there is a war between hard earned self-respect and laziness. Unfortunately, most lives illustrate that the ease-lazy road is the road often taken.

Jesus spoke in Luke of counting the cost. I wonder if the real issue isn't 'laziness vs. effort' but rather we just can't find anything we consider worth paying the cost? Are we a generation that has lost it's ability to recognize value and worth? Are we becoming the 'oh, well...' generation?