Archive - 2013

Did you miss the first radio interview last Saturday?

Did you listen and have been wanting to hear it again?

No worries – technology to the rescue!

Click here for the For Faith and Family interview about the book, Ruth: Replacing Superficial with Substance.

Oh yeah – and there’s a 15% discount!!!

I want a house with a yard for a garden and a patio lined with flowers. Right now, I have an apartment with four pots at the front door and a window planter. It doesn’t really feel like gardening when you have to fill your pitcher with water from the bath tub.

Nonetheless, I am excited to say that our sugar snap peas sprouted from the dirt yesterday. This morning, I marveled at the delicate leaves that are beginning to open. And, of course, I was thrilled to use them as a segway back into the blog series – Fruit Need Roots.

If you remember my garden last year, I grew the sugar snap peas in the window planter along with bell peppers. This season, I decided the peas needed more soil in order to get a bigger harvest. So they are planted in my biggest pot outside our front door.

Agriculturally speaking, that seems like a basic fact. I planted my seeds in dirt. But spiritually, there are profound implications. Is your faith planted in soil?

If you haven’t already guessed, we’re going to look at the Parable of the Sower from Matthew 13. Jesus describes three types of soils to His followers.

SOIL NUMBER ONE:

vs. 4: As he was sowing, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and ate them up.

vs. 19: When anyone hears the word about the kingdom and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the one sown along the path.

Some of us have a heart like this soil. We hear but we never listen. It’s not that no one has ever explained the gospel  to us– it’s that we never cared. Our Bible gathers dust on the shelf and our mind wanders as we doodle through sermons. This is a dangerous state to live in.

It’s even more dangerous to say, “I never have a heart like this path” or maybe even “I’m a Christian who has accepted the Gospel so this doesn’t apply to me anymore.” In my own life, I don’t think  my entire heart has ever been hardened away from God all at once (praise to the Father!) But I have had those lows in my relationship with God that I have not wanted to talk to Him. No matter how many Scripture verses or sermons I heard on the topic of prayer, I didn’t change my routine. I was doing just fine on my own.

I had a hard heart (and a hard head!) in that aspect of my life. So before we breeze past this first type of spiritual soil, take a moment to reflect on your life. Are there aspects of your life that you are withholding from God?

As we’ll continue to see, we’ll need every ounce of fertile soil in order to produce righteous Fruit of the Spirit.

Read the next post in this series: http://wp.me/p2xHae-97

The last blog series on boundaries in relationships was such a success I am going to kick off a new series: the fruit of the spirit.

We all know the fruit of the spirit’s not a coconut. But do we know what they really are? If you’re like me, you can’t just rattle off the list. Instead, you have to sing them: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

I have known that I am supposed to have these characteristics but I never really knew how. When someone was persistently frustrating, I would repeat in my head, “patience…patience…patience.” It was almost as productive as screaming in anger, “SERENITY NOW!”

Last weekend I had the privilege to speak to a youth group on how to cultivate these fruits as well as how to use them to tell others about God.

So keep an eye on the blog as we begin a conversation I like to call: Our Spiritual Fruit Need Roots.

Read the next post in this series here: http://wp.me/p2xHae-92

After the play, I interviewed the two leading ladies. One of my questions was, “What message do you think the audience left with?”

They said, “We’ve actually talked about that a lot. We think they just laugh.”

Kevin and I, however, discussed the moral lessons during the ten minute drive back home.

The plot of the play, or at the nutshell version, goes like this. Groom wakes up on his wedding day lying next to a woman in bed who is not his wife – more so  he does not so much as remember her name. We later discover that she is his best man’s girlfriend. After an hour of lying to one another in order to prevent the bride from discovering that he slept with someone else and also to make certain the best man doesn’t discover it was with his girlfriend, the play unravels in the last sixty seconds. The bride marries the best man and the groom marries this other woman.

All’s well that ends well. Or is it?

I’ve been thinking about entertainment all week. I know that I don’t fill my head with Scripturally-based messages with every movie I watch or book I read. But I am able to point out the messages that contradict Scripture and am able to explain why I disagree with them.

As a Christian who majored in English, I will readily tell you that I have read books with characters searching for whatever spiritual truth they could grasp or even create. I have not agreed with every character, just like I don’t agree with every person in real life. But we need to be able to communicate.

Here are a few of my personal thoughts to keep in mind when confronting culture:

1. The journey matters. This play clearly taught that as long as everyone ended up with a partner at the end, all was forgiven. Suddenly, no one cared that they had been cheated on and lied to. Fidelity in words and actions matter. Luke 16:10 reminds us that whoever is faithful in small things will also be faithful in the large things. Often, we are too focused on the big things in life. We think, “if only God made us millionaires, we would give all the money to missionaries and charities!” Or, “if only God would let me be the teacher, I would read and pray harder than ever!” God is not promising to give us these “big things.” Instead, we need to practice faithfulness throughout our daily walk.

2. We can never shut off our brain. As much as I want to say that watching a television show where everyone is living however they please does not affect me, I am allowing those thoughts to creep in. I am allowing a sinful lifestyle to become the norm. And not just the norm, but a common place matter that is so trivial we can laugh at.

3. Be careful what you recommend. I love to completely lose myself in a well-crafted fiction book. This year, I have completely enjoyed two recently released books. And yet, I don’t recommend them to everybody. Before you open your mouth to say, “Oh yeah, you should see that movie” you should consider the person’s background and personality. Even if  a book is marketed toward young adults, and even if I thoroughly enjoyed it, I may not tell a high school girl that she should read it. Books force emotional reactions from the reader that not everyone understands. It makes me think of Paul in 1 Corinthians 8. He says that he will stop eating meat if it makes a brother stumble (see context). In the same way, if I know a person isn’t strong in their faith, I’m not going to recommend they read a book whose main character also doubts the authority of God. I don’t want the book, or my recommendation, to cause them to drift further from the truth.

Not everything has to be “Christian.” But our minds and hearts must always focus on Christ. We cannot allow the pleasures of this world to take heart in our minds.