Perserverance

Perseverance from Taylor Robinson on Vimeo.

Max Lucado's Fearless Intro: Why Are You Afraid?

We just started our small group studies based on Max Lucado's book: "Fearless". This video is from his website and is an in depth introduction to the study. It's about 29 minutes long. If you don't have time to watch the whole thing you can pause it and then resume watching it later or just quit watching it and come back later and click the progress bar to pick up where you left off.

Fearless Intro: Why Are You Afraid? from UpWords Ministries on Vimeo.

Fear or fearless?

Sometimes events in our lives can lead to painful days and long, sleepless nights. God does not, however, leave us powerless. David recognized that when he wrote "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." Ps. 4:8

Fear

This is from Max Lucado's new book "Fearless": (Jesus') most common command emerges from the "fear not" genre. The Gospels list some 125 Christ-issued imperatives. Of these, 21 urge us to "not be afraid" or "fear not" or "have courage" or "take heart" or "be of good cheer." The second most common command, to love God and neighbor, appears on only eight occasions. If quantity is any indicator, Jesus takes our fears seriously. The one statement he made more than any other was this: don't be afraid."

Who Do You Serve?

Here's a short but thought provoking video from Muddy Rivers Media titled "Who Do You Serve". Makes me think also about how I serve, not just with words but more importantly how I spend my time, what I do and what I spend time thinking about.

Being a Christian in the Business World

As our church is getting ready to focus on evangelism this year I was thinking about my experiences in the corporate world and the evolution of political correctness. I worked for several large corporations (including 2 Fortune 500 companies that went bankrupt in the 80's). I was in positions where I marketed high tech products to corporate customers. In the corporate world that I observed everything was gender, race and religion neutral. Corporations strive to have a mix of employees that models the general population. And, after assembling this mix of people discourages, and even prohibits, them from speaking about any differences. AOL was a bit different. They strongly encouraged the formation of social lunch groups with a specific focus on race, religion and sexual orientation. But the company treated everyone equally and race, religion and sexual orientation was not discussed outside of the lunch groups.

In the corporate world how does one go about evangelising without offending a coworker, manager or customer? One engineer that I occasionally worked with had a pretty good idea. He always carried a small bible in his shirt pocket and about a half inch of it was visible above the top of the pocket. He never mentioned his religious beliefs but his mannerism and the visible bible said he was open to discussing them. What are some other ways we can evangelise?

Crowded Pews and Lonely People

The title of this post is also the title of a 1975 book by Marion Leach Jacobsen. Something triggered a thought about that book title the other day and I remembered that I had bought it years ago. It's not on my bookshelves so it either got lost in a move or it's in the bottom of a box somewhere. I did a quick online search and found the book is for sale online but but couldn't find any reviews of it. I also found a post on MyDerbe's blog about having a feeling of loneliness in church. I think there's enough evidence to indicate that we're not alone in feeling lonely in a crowd. But why do we sometimes feel lonely around people we know? Maybe it depends on how well we really know the people around us. It's difficult to discuss having had a feeling of loneliness in a crowd of people we share a common interest with because it can bring to mind unacceptable words like "looser", "misfit", "unpopular", etc. And, it also raises the question of "why do I attend church if I don't feel like I fit in?". All negative things. Most people, especially those that have attended church in the past, would probably agree that attending church is good for them, but that's not the complete answer. People used to take cod liver oil because it was good for them but it's not too popular today. Yes, it's really made from cod fish livers - never really thought about that when I was a kid. Another answer to feeling like you don't belong is to get more involved and this is a good answer. There should always be lots of opportunity to regularly get involved but due to schedules and available opportunities this can dwindle down to an occasional childrens' church or helping serve communion. I wonder how it was in the first century church? Would anyone have felt lonely attending church in each other's homes? Maybe so. Maybe it's human nature. I think one important thing to keep in mind is that when you occasionally feel a little lonely sitting in the pew there are probably others around you that feel even more lonely. Maybe next time say something, ask them a question, see what happens. But, is this the complete answer? Is there any scripture or description of the first century church that can help with this?