What’s going on in your world?

“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space…” –Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Let’s just go ahead and grant that space, the universe and everything is a wee bit difficult to wrap our infinitesimally finite–dare I say small?– brains around. Many of you have probably seen Cary and Michael Huang’s clever website illustrating the scale of the universe. Today I stumbled upon a website which visualizes the seven billion plus people who life on this planet: www.7billionworld.com.

Seven billion people. Each with their own stories, awkwardnesses, fears, hopes, dreams, plans, families, desires. Each loved, loving, hating, hated, at war, at peace, in need and provided for. It is staggering to think about and draws my mind to places I would not have imagined a picture of seven billion stick figures could have.

Why You Needn’t Use “Shouldn’t”

Been thinking about the Gospel of late (surprise!). Some thoughts…

Has anyone ever asked you why you shouldn’t do something you both know is wrong? If anyone ever asked me this type of question–and I can’t recall anyone ever doing so–they certainly didn’t disagree with my answers. And those answers of course were things like, “God says so”, “It is wrong”, “God doesn’t like it and I’m supposed to try to please him.” etc, etc. As I look back I cringe at the foundation being laid in my young heart.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, I want to share a little secret with you: “should” doesn’t matter any more and neither does “shouldn’t”. You know what this secret is called? The Gospel. This is Good News. Your value, your worth is no longer based upon your adherence to shoulds and shouldn’ts. Freedom in Christ means freedom from performance because Jesus has performed on your behalf. Often times our “gospel” just isn’t good news to people because it still leaves them enslaved and unsatisfied.

If your gospel is not identifiably good news that is freeing and satisfying, then it may not be THE Gospel and is at best only a partial Gospel.

A great blog post on the subject, and the occasion for today’s post can be found here: Gospel Motivation: Gratitude Fueled Obedience (Shouldn’t or Needn’t).

 

More stories. This time it’s personal.

A little while back I shared about stories and how much I’ve been loving them of late. Well, this time around it is time to share some stories from up here in Olympia.

The past two weeks have been a little out of the norm for us as we have been sharing and processing together some of the sweet stuff the Spirit has been doing among us. March 10th the elders told the story of the Spirit’s work among us these past six months.

Part of our time this week was spent listening to how God has been using one of the guys in the body up here in some cool ways as well. That recording should be up later in the week (the stories start about halfway into the recording), but in the meantime let me leave you with some quotes that I loved coming out of Sunday:

“If your life with God is mostly in this [church] building, God wants to turn that upside down”

“Obedience kicks comfort’s ass”

Thanks for sharing Scott. I hope you all are encouraged.

UPDATE: Here are the links for the two recordings I mentioned above in the post:

Reality Family Meeting – Paul Jones and Elders

Statement of Faith – Paul Jones (Scott’s introduction starts around 18:10)

UPDATE PART II:

Stephen and Wendy share God’s work in their marraige

Ephesians 2:11-22

Ephesians 2:1-10 is a heavy hitter among Christians. And it makes sense. Between Paul’s death-to-life language, the divine “But God”, the favorite “by grace you are saved” and the impact of being God’s poiema, the second half of Ephesians 2 can easily get swallowed up in the grandeur of the first half. This is especially the case for Western Christians. Whether Paul intended it or not, the first 10 verses of Ephesians 2 sound like they’ll play very nicely with our American individualist conceptions of salvation don’t they?

A couple weeks back I had the opportunity to teach through the second half of Ephesians 2, verses 11-22 at Reality’s Sunday gatherings. The more I prayed and studied for this message, the more convinced I became that these halves must be taken together to create a whole.  There’s something here that Paul wants us to remember that we easily forget in spite of all our common habits, habitations, salvation, song and God.

You can find the audio called “Remembering” in iTunes or here where it was released 2/19/13.