Let My People Think!

Wow...a couple of weeks ago a good friend of mine, Bert, suggested I listen to Ravi Zacharias's podcasts and wow, I now have a new favorite podcast.

Ravi has two podcasts, one called "Let My People Think!" and "Just Thinking". They are 30 minutes weekly and 15 minutes daily respectively, and cover a variety of topics many of which are apologetics. When Ravi isn't speaking, there are some great guest speakers worth listening to. Recently at the beginning of April, apologist Michael Ramsden had a great 4 part series on "Just Thinking" on "Conversational Apologetics" challenging listeners to have answers to questions that people commonly have in questions. This series really got me thinking and looking at my life and how I respond to questions and comments those around me make.

Since this is currently my favorite podcast, I highly recommend spending the 15 minutes per day listening!

Providence

I find the Gospel of Health and Wealth absolutely amazing. I understand that people want to believe that their situation is a direct result of their own actions, but completely ignoring other teachings in the bible to come up with this belief just seems odd to me. Look at Jesus's own life, he was beaten and crucified. Or Stephen, who was full of the Spirit and in sync with God when he was stoned. How does that align with Health and Wealth?

I think the most important thing that the H&W gospel have right is God's providence. That is, that God is sovereign over all events in our lives in history. One of the verses that the H&W Gospel hinges on is Romans 8:28. That is:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Does this mean that everything in your life has to be good for you? No! Look at Stephen, the best sermon preached by the new church was by Stephen in Acts 7 and he gets stoned for it. I have no doubt that this was for the good of all of God's people, but it doesn't mean that everything in life will be for your personal good. We can have faith in God's providence than we can know that any trials in our lives will be for the good of all of God's people. That's the heavenly perspective I am trying to ingrain in my life.

BTW, if you are looking for a great resource on the web for bible searching and studies, check out bible.crosswalk.com.

Tithing time

One of the key phrases that our pastors at Crossroads Fellowship here in Raleigh like to say is to "tithe your time, talents and treasures." I have been thinking about that a lot lately. It took me many years, but I am confident that we have the treasures pretty well understood. But, talents and time?

Let's think about time in a week. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and what is one-tenth of that? 16 hours and 48 minutes in a week. Woh! Maybe on the monthly level it would be better. One-tenth of 24 hours for 30 days? 72 hours! 3 days! Let's see, in a good month I can count an 8 hour day at Habitat, four small groups at 2 hours a piece...--struggling--...6 hours at church...maybe 30 minutes a day so thats another 15 hours. Totaling: 37 hours.

Well, now that I have another New Year's resolution to work on...

Pregnancy confirms my Pro-life stance

I have heard a lot of arguments over the past about the fact that I am a male especially means I don't have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. And, I have never tried to disagree with those...but words my wife spoke last night have been echoing in my mind as the glaring reason to be pro-life when taking religion out of it. Here is roughly how the conversation went with my wife, Heather, who is 25 weeks pregnant:

Heather: -- painful sigh --
Erik: What's wrong?
Heather: Just the baby kicking.
Erik: Does it hurt?
Heather: It often doesn't hurt, but its just very unexpected. Not being able to prepare for the kick always causes a little reaction.

This conversation reminds me that the unborn baby has its own brain and moves itself. The woman is not able to control the baby like she can the rest of her body. Our baby girl is 25 weeks old...still the age that abortions are legal. But, from Heather's statements like this one, the baby obviously has a mind of its own. When we saw her on an ultrasound at 8 weeks, she was moving on her own and had a heartbeat that is unique from Heathers. She had her own body parts, heart, and movements.

I think having gone through the father side of now Heather's second pregnancy continually reiterates my belief that the unborn baby is a unique creation from God and it is our responsibility to protect him or her. I am not trying to tell the woman what to do with her body, but protecting the unborn baby's life. My religious beliefs further reiterate the sanctity of life.

Have a Merry Unsantatized Christmas

Our singles / college pastor, Bryan Finley, did our Christmas service today at our church. Eventually, you should be able to hear it here. It was a great sermon and talked about how many of our rituals and traditions have us sanitizing Christmas to become something other than what it is about. When he said sanitizing, I at first thought he said "Santa-tizing" thanks to that wonderful southern accent I am still getting used to. Santa-tizing is also a very applicable word, since its making Christmas about Santa and gifts instead of about the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Santa-tizing is exactly what happened in Vegie Tales movie entitled "The Toy that Saved Christmas." But, its far worse than just making Christmas about gifts or even giving, but making Christmas about families and as Bryan quoted one radio host, "Christmas is what makes our nation great." Christmas is not any of that, but about what makes our God great. He came into this world humbly and humbly offered Himself to all of us. And we celebrate Christmas as the day He came to earth for us.

So, I say have a Merry unsanitized and unsantatized Christmas!