myopic pilgrim

My wife and I were having dinner and behind me I could hear a woman (on her mobile phone I think) talking about Jesus. From what I could pick up, she was speaking against those who would thump others with Bibles.

I know I’ll be forgiven… You just have to say ‘Jesus died for my sins’ and believe it. You don’t have to go around… [proselytizing, being holy... I'm not sure what she was going to say.].

Now I’m a sola fide, sola gratia guy for sure, but statements like this make me want to talk a little more about working out your own salvation, being justified by works, and how those who are born of God do not sin. In our haste to make converts, we neglect to make disciples.

Do you see different meanings for “Christian” and “disciple?” Is it valid to worry primarily about a person’s destiny, even if it means their Christian life goes uncultivated? How do we guard people from thinking if they say would just say the magic words (even if they do really, truly believe it), they are disciples of Jesus?

Have you ever heard someone say that worship (in this case the singing and such on Sunday morning in the sanctuary of the church) is practice for what we’ll do in eternity, as if eternity was something that happened much later. This goes hand in hand with receiving eternal life when you’re born again. One day we’ll get it in our hot little hands. Is that when eternity will begin for us? One day you’re walking down a street. A bus swerves into you and bam you’ve stepped off the curb and stepped into eternity. This is if the Lord should tarry from his Return at which time he’ll set up his Kingdom to mark the beginning of eternity.

Eternity to my mind is not just forever. We represent time as a line, or more specifically, a ray (a line with a definite beginning extending forever in one direction). Eternity is more like a sphere that engulfs that timeline and extends forever in every direction.

Okay, I admit that’s pretty geeky. But for me it means that the life I receive from Jesus changes my life here and now, not just in the hereafter. My life expands. My capacity to live—to really live— increases. To say I’m just practicing for later on diminishes what Jesus accomplishes now.

And don’t get me started about how we think of worship as only singing to God.

We’ve all heard mobile phones going off during a service. They’re usually a distraction. I’m happy I haven’t heard anyone actually answer the phone and start talking (not so when I’ve been at the movies). When I was at Living Stones they had a slide before the service that said something like:

Please turn off your phone. If it rings during the service, it better Jesus. And if it is, would you pass the phone around; some of us would like to talk to him

I thought it a humorous way to remind people to turn of their phones. Which is the right thing to do, right? Turn off your phones. What if phones weren’t a distraction during the service, but rather part of our worship and service to God? Read the rest of this entry »

Did I mention the planets aligned for us? Pray God continues his work in creation.