There are plenty of us that have brushed up against Christianity and have been left with an uncomfortable feeling. We have tried it and it left us feeling stale and lame and some of us decided to stay away based on those feelings. We refer to it as “searching” or “seeking” or “on a journey”, but what ever it is,it is totally normal to the human experience.
This experience is true for so many people. And because it is, then where has the church failed? Where did we blow it? When did we start mindless ideas that left people empty, angry, and ultimately separated from God? How has the church failed in our modern culture?
No one the bible is committing to the argument that God exists. The assumption is that He does. No one has to prove if reality exists, because it does. So then we don’t have to argue that God exists because He is the ultimate reality. So the writers of the bible were people making observations about what was already reality. Statements about God are assumptions about ultimate reality.
Jesus exposes us to the deepest levels of our existence. We have to remember that the religious right of his time was not Christianity, it was Judaism. Everything that he then taught was revolutionary to that contemporary religious order. So Jesus was not coming to just start a religious order that he thought was better. No. He came to expose things as they really are. Not through the eyes of religion, but through the eyes reality. Jesus is not calling us to a religious structure, he is calling us to how things are.
So as a “Christian”, we then should be people that are in tune or in harmony with how reality is at it’s deepest level. He didn’t come to create a new thing and then sit separated, he came to show us how it really is. We don’t have to defend reality.
CHURCH
The issue with religion is that religion says, something scared has to take place in order for something to be spiritually “Holy”. But the question is what makes that thing any Holier then the other thing? And the answer is….(wait for it, wait for it) it is not. We miss the power of God if we think that He is limited to ritual. This misunderstanding of ritualistic Holiness ends up harming us and confusing God’s plan, purpose, and presence in His creation. Holiness and Sanctity are everywhere and we are not awake to it. He is everywhere and we are asleep. He is always in the place and we are the ones that just showed up.
Jesus was teaching us to be in tune to what is always happening around us. The idea is that you might live a better life if you understood that He is involved and concerned with every area of your life. Every interaction, every conversation, every place, every person, every mess, every time, every problem, every location. God is always doing something. It’s not a view that He is involved with the things that are “churchy”. He doesn’t get bored with one thing and moves onto another thing and forgets about the first thing. If He is not done with me then He is not done with you. If He can be here then He can be there. He is always working. Life in Christ is about being fully awake to the work of God in all things. (John 5:17)
“The purpose of worship is not to escape from this world, into the other world, but to open oneself to the meaning of Christ in the Common.” Church is not supposed to be a bubble that you run to, to hide from the world. It is a place where you go to learn how to make every place a sanctuary. We are to learn how to be like Christ in unChirst like situations. Worship is to help is realize these depths of our world. If worship doesn’t do this, then it is an empty ritual.” (John Robinson-Honest to God)
CHURCH!
The Reformation of the church gave us the “5 solas” of the church: Sola Fide, Sola Christo, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura, and Soli De Gloria(Faith alone, Christ alone, Grace alone, Scripture alone, to God be the Glory). The 21st century has brought us a new “sola” that is described in the Neo-Reformation as Sola Cultura (Culture Alone). Sola Cultura has caused much argument within the modern church because of the belief that it should be separated from the other Solas.
Scripture has no power if culture is not present. Scripture is the story of the supernatural God, intersecting with real people within their culture.God power can never be denied because the whole earth is filled with the significance and weight of who God is. Truth is everywhere. So we should not surprised when God’s truth pops up in all places, and all cultures. We are called to confirm truth where ever it pops up. No matter where it comes from, even if it is not from the places that we think are of God. God’s word even contains words from people who didn’t believe in the one true God that our bible is written about.
Acts 17:28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.
As some of your own poets have said,’We are his offspring.’
Relation is the best teacher. Scripture, Jesus, and the One true God are all foreign concepts to them, but Paul uses relation to argue his point about the One true God. He not only affirms what the Greek poet said about “their gods”, he spins it and claims it for the one true God.
The reality of God so profound, so wide, and so deep that we can take statements that are not in relation to the one true God and spin them to affirm and testify of the truth of God.The history of the church is filled with ideas that came from contemporary understanding at the time, to be used to better understand the world that we live in. Why? Because, “all things are ours”, and we are of Christ, and He is of God, and He made the whole world and we just live in it! The depth of God is everywhere!
CHURCH!
Since June 25th , 2009, billions of people began and are still mourning the death of a cultural icon, who they had never met, but were inspired by. His death has proved that Michael Jackson was such a mega star being more popular than Barack Obama, and more recognized than Oprah Winfrey, proving that he is and was the most recognized individual on the planet. Michael Jackson was a cultural icon that transcended four decades, and transcended geographical and geo-political boundaries.
Michael Jackson is one of the most celebrated musicians of modern times. He is one of the only artists to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. He has sold 109 million copies of his most popular album “Thriller”. At its peak, Thriller was selling over 2 million copies a week, thus earning Michael a Guinness World record for most albums ever sold. He was crowned the title the King of Pop, because of his influence in the record industry. Never before Thriller did the record industry grade artists by album sales, until then artists were graded and paid from sales of singles. It has been said that Michael Jackson is the first African American artist to have mass cross-over appeal. Regardless of your likes or dislikes to the lifestyle and personality of the Gloved One, we all have this indescribable feeling when we heard his music. No matter what your background or affinity of music is, Michael Jackson has provided a soundtrack to our lives that has span four decades. So it is no wonder that millions of people were shocked and overwhelmed by the headlines that Friday morning in June that read “The King is Dead.” But,the King is not dead! The King of Pop may be gone, but there is another King that is alive and his reign is forever!
God is waiting for His people to return to Him. God says that He will open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, if you just return to him. Your breakthrough is only gonna come when you return to him. The Invisible King can only make things happen if you submit to His kingdom. You have to allow the invisible king to take a seat on the throne of your life, and let him drive the devils out of your life and establish His lordship in your life.
I want my king back. I need the king back. I need Him back for my family. I need the king back for my job. I need the king back for my situation. I need the king back in my finances. I need the king back in my mind. I need the king back on my campus. I need the king back in my health. I want you back!!
CHURCH!
The style of the beginning of Genesis is as a Mesopotamian poem. There is a rhythm that is created in this poem. “It is good” continues to pop up time and time again. The “good” is woven into the beat and rhyme of the scripture. The scriptures even end with a new rhythm, “it is very good”.
Death, destruction and curse are temporary invaders. The story begins in Chapter I; not in Chapter III. The story begins with good, not with curse. Sin, death, corruption, curse, and exclusion are not the way God intended things to go. These things come in later in the story, after God claimed that everything was good. The world with these temporary invaders isn’t how God made it; it isn’t the way God intended it to be; and it isn’t how it will be forever. So that means, there is no amount of human sin can push out the good. This is because sin was simply a second thought. God made it and said “IT IS GOOD!” The world was already good before anything contaminated it or invaded it. This statement only holds true if you believe the story begins in Chapter I and not Chapter III. If you believe that the world was good before it was invaded, this should make a huge difference with the way that we live on earth today.
Everything that God created is good. He will continue to prove the things that he created are good. We see this happen from time to time in places that we would not expect. Don’t completely write anything off, because God will always prove that something He created is still good. If we believe that the story starts in Chapter I and that the resurrection is a reality, then we believe that life can come out of any dead situation. We want to reclaim the good, where ever we find it.
The Resurrection Story is about the pivotal moment in time where death, destruction, disease, pain, hurt and any other temporary invader gets ousted. The invaders have been removed so that we can live the why we should have if we had never been invaded. Now that the invaders are gone lets get on with the life He intended. Let’s CELEBRATE as we go UPWARDS.
We believe that the world the Lord God created is good; and that He creates people in His image and no amount of darkness can erase that divine imprint. Because we believe that all of life is sacred, we look for God’s fingerprints everywhere. We celebrate the divine in the daily; pursuing lives of hope, gratitude and worship. God invites everyone, everywhere into this way of life, and we believe that it is the best possible way to live!
CHURCH!
