September | 2016 | Pedestrian God

Paralyzed in Sin

Sep 21 2016

This past Sunday, our middle school girls’ class studied the passage of the paralyzed man whose friends lowered him through a roof to Jesus. Since we were all very familiar with this story, we decided to retell it from each viewpoint in the story – the paralyzed man, his friends, the crowd, the scribes, and Jesus.

And we collectively admitted that we are not as passionate about bringing our lost friends and family to Christ as we ought to be.

To get to that realization, let’s look just 5 verses before this story. In Mark 1:40-45, a man with a serious skin disease came to Jesus on his knees and begged for healing. Jesus healed him, warned him not to tell anyone, yet the man proclaimed his healing widely anyways.

So Mark gives us this wonderfully enthusiastic story of a man healed. And then instantly transitions to the story of the paralytic man. (If you’re not familiar with this story, read Mark 2:1-12).

We know very little about the paralytic. He doesn’t say anything. We don’t see him fall before Jesus and beg for healing. We don’t even know if he knew who Jesus was. All we know is that his friends so desperately wanted him to know Jesus and His healing that they were willing to carry him onto the roof, tear a hole in it, and lower him to Jesus. Nothing deterred them from their passion to bring their friend to Jesus – not other people or physical barriers.

Book Review: Unashamed

Sep 07 2016

When Lecrae Moore watched his son take his first step, he knew it would be followed immediately by a fall. One step. That’s all his son could take. In the process of learning to walk, falling and injury were expected. This is how Lecrae’s faith in God developed also. One step followed by tumbles and stretches of time refusing to get back up.

But today, Lecrae is known for his commitment to his faith and as a hip-hop artist. Among numerous accolades, he is a two-time Grammy Award winning hip-hop artist whose studio albums and mix tapes have sold nearly 2 million copies. His 2014 album, Anomaly, debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200.

Many of us know the Lecrae who achieved musical success. In his recent autobiography Unashamed, Lecrae recounts the painful years of his life spent for his own glory.

Lecrae writes openly about his rebellious childhood filled with poverty, physical and sexual abuse, drugs, and fights. But through a college Bible study, he came to know a personal relationship with God. It was a shallow faith that he packed full of legalistic rules.

In fact,he threw away his secular CDs and taped the empty cases together into a 5 foot pillar in his room to brag about how great of a Christian he was since he sacrificed so much. Reflecting back, Lecrae calls it “a monument to my own self-righteousness.”

Archive - September 2016

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