Browsing Tag

love

Servant

Controlling Our Inner Freak

People love to watch a control freak melt down.  A popular reality show about overly controlling brides-to-be is now in its sixth season (what reality show isn’t?)   The show’s description reads:

“Who among us has not met a Bridezilla?” This reality series from WE takes us inside the hectic wedding preparations of brides-to-be who are determined to have the perfect wedding–no matter how many tantrums they must throw to achieve that dream. Every episode we meet a new bride who is more selfish and controlling than the previous one. This unique reality show, shows the life of brides-to-be and how they fight with their friends, family and future husband to get anything they want for their wedding and for it to be just the way the like it!”

One word: wow.

All of us have a little bit of a control freak in us.  We want things our way, on our time table, and we want to control.  Control freaks.  We have all seen them.  Crazy bosses, celebrity selfishness, bridezillas, and overbearing friends.  The need for control and power is in every aspect of our culture.  From government to Google, someone is always looking for power.  Someone is always looking for control.  There is a little control freak in all of us.  Things have to be just so, we feel possessive about our groups, property, or relationships.  But why?  Why do we have this innate need to be in control?

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John Piper

Why You Should be Upset with John Piper

ORIGINAL POST: Last week in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) made waves with their new progressive policies concerning homosexuals and now allow:

  1. Non-celibate gays to become clergy
  2. congregations to choose to do to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same gender relationships.
  3. people in such publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church

The ELCA is not the first mainline denomination to change their policies on such controversial issues.  The United Christ of Christ and Episcopal Church have made similar policies.  Every mainline denomination is struggling with how to take a stand for or against homosexuality in the church.

What should have made just as much news was well known Reform Baptist pastor and author, John Piper‘s statement concerning the tornado that hit during the ECLA’s meeting:

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afeature, marriage

Does God Promise You a Spouse?

Does God promise you a spouse in the Bible?

...that was the question that Rob Eagar over at thelife.com proposed recently.  His post tried to answer this question in the affirmative.   Many evangelicals through the years have often painted a picture that God promises a spouse to all believers.  Except there is one problem, no where in scripture does God make this promise.

Eagar said:

Does God promise us a spouse? The Bible says “yes” by describing Christians as the spiritual bride of Christ. Our true spouse is Jesus. Yet, many of us say, “I’m glad to be spiritually married to Christ, but I can’t feel Him. Wouldn’t it be better if I could enjoy God’s love with someone else? I want Jesus with skin on.” So, we pray for God to bring us an earthly mate.

This type of theology has created a generation of frustrated Christian singles.  No where in scripture does God promise a wife or husband to a believer on the sole basis that they are a Christian.   Christians are not the spiritual bride of Christ.  The spiritual bride of Christ is the Church (ecclesia).  Some would say Christians make up the church, thus Christ is our bride.  Maybe (that is pretty loose theology), but not in the erotic sense.  However, scripture is clear where we get this “bridal theology” from, such as  Ephesians 5:25:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Here, Paul speaks about the love that exists between a husband and wife and mirrors that love in non-erotic language (Paul uses agapate to describe this love) to describe the relationship between the Church and Jesus.  Agnieszka Tennant, writing for CT, posted this article about the over use of love language with Christ.   Her most telling quote reveals the trouble with the over use of the love language of God:

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twitter

I’m Not Sold on Twitter in worship

A variety of news outlets  have commented on the growing trend in churches: Twitter Worship.  Time, New York Times, and Switched have covered the movement.  If you do not know about this trend, I’ll try to explain it in two sentences.  Using the social networking site, Twitter, worship attendees interact with the sermon, worship, and music.

Some churches even display “tweets” on their projection screens and the pastor interacts with the micro comments during the sermon.  The UMC Board of Discipleship has a good overview of the pros and cons of using twitter and other technology in worship.   Even Josh Harris questions the use of Twitter during worship.  Despite the popularity of Twittering, many have asked the question, “Is Twittering during worship really worshipful?”  I am a pretty technology dependent person, but I’m not sold on Twitter worship.

This is a difficult question to answer because there are some things to consider:

  • Twittering in worship attracts younger worshippers.  A segment of the population that is greatly prized by churches.
  • A Twitter worship service can attract the unchurched or non-Christians.
  • Using Twitter creates more of an interactive worship experience, which is something that people want need.
  • People are quickly becoming more connected through technology, thus connecting through technology can be a way to reach people for Christ
  • Twittering during worship is encouraging people to be reflective about God.

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