Jesus did speak of such a place, Hell, and the Greek word used was Gehenna (which translated to English is Hell). It's a place that the folks of that time and culture understood perfectly. Jesus used this place to aid in illustrating His point, that those who make bad choices and don't put God first wind up in a place such as this. People who worship false gods or set stuff like money as a higher priority that God ultimately end up in a Gehenna.
From the sermon/message of my pastor Rob, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, anywhere you have a condition where people are suffering (starving, sick, death, disease, greed, lust, etc...) there is a Hell or Gehenna on earth.
Now, the flip side of this is of course Heaven. At the very core to His kingdom of Heaven is love. I've concluded and confirmed that love is the decision to put others first. When I say "I love you" to my wife, I'm telling her that she matters more to me than I matter to myself. The best and loudest example of His perfect love is Jesus on the cross. Jesus is saying that we matter more to Him than He matters to Himself. Yeah, He just loves us sooooooooooooooo much! In here is a condition of Heaven on earth. Jesus taught us to pray saying to our Abba that His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. So yeah, bring Heaven on earth. So who aids Him in this...we do! Yes, the church! We help bring up there down here. The church is a force in this world, so where there are hungry...we bring them food. Where there are sick, we bring them healing/medicine. In a nutshell, we extend the love of God around this world with such acts. God enables us to do so. So we, the church, have it within us by His grace and power to charge at the gates of Hell and tear them down!!! While many may run from these gates, the church runs at them.
It's really a state of being contingent upon our choices. IF we so choose, we can be in Heaven (by Christ's love and power, of course). Or, if we choose we can be in Hell. C.S. Lewis wrote it that basically God doesn't send anyone to Hell. Nope, we get there on our own. So choose wisely...choose Jesus.
I'm praying for us all and may the grace of God abound in us all.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Election 2008: Vote for principle
If you only follow this years' election coverage from the major news networks on TV, you are led to believe that there are only two candidates running for President of the United States: John McCain and Barack Obama. McCain is with the Republican party and Obama is with the Democratic party. However, these aren't the only choices. There are in fact six major candidates!
Now I'm not going to say "You should vote for _________". What I will say is always vote for principle. Vote for the person whom you agree with and feel can do the job right. Don't just vote because this person is going to win. Don't just vote for the person all your friends are voting. No, vote for principle.
One candidate I want to mention is Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. I won't put everything here. I'll let you read about him for yourself on his campaign website. I just want to say that I'm a bit upset and disgusted with the major news networks. They only focus attention on McCain and Obama. This to me is biased and irresponsible. The First Amendment of the Constitution gives liberty to the press. So why doesn't the press fully take advantage of this? My guess is $$$. Greed seems to be the motivation for news networks these days. Maybe it's just me, but news networks these days air stories they know will give them the best chance at gaining profit. So instead of making it known all the candidates running for President, they only cover the ones with the most $$$ to buy the airtime. YUK! So if you don't do the research yourself to become an informed voter, you can easily enter the polls on election day thinking McCain and Obama are the only choices.
All I want to say is this, be informed and vote for principle.
Now I'm not going to say "You should vote for _________". What I will say is always vote for principle. Vote for the person whom you agree with and feel can do the job right. Don't just vote because this person is going to win. Don't just vote for the person all your friends are voting. No, vote for principle.
One candidate I want to mention is Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. I won't put everything here. I'll let you read about him for yourself on his campaign website. I just want to say that I'm a bit upset and disgusted with the major news networks. They only focus attention on McCain and Obama. This to me is biased and irresponsible. The First Amendment of the Constitution gives liberty to the press. So why doesn't the press fully take advantage of this? My guess is $$$. Greed seems to be the motivation for news networks these days. Maybe it's just me, but news networks these days air stories they know will give them the best chance at gaining profit. So instead of making it known all the candidates running for President, they only cover the ones with the most $$$ to buy the airtime. YUK! So if you don't do the research yourself to become an informed voter, you can easily enter the polls on election day thinking McCain and Obama are the only choices.
All I want to say is this, be informed and vote for principle.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Grace
I'm currently reading a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel. The author, Brennan Manning, brings to light a reality of God that in today's culture seems to be obscured. I say obscured because I didn't grow up in the church, so as an outsider looking in my observation of the church was a group of people who are condemning and judgmental. In order to be acceptable "thou shalt ______" (fill in the blank). This is the first impression I had of the church. One had to jump through the religious hoops to be acceptable, otherwise you were out! Aaah, but, when I actually take a look at the Gospel I see a completely different scene. I see Christ, God the Son, giving it all up for the world. I see One who loves so much that He accepts us right where we are at...a ragamuffin. What is all this anyway???
GRACE
Yes, this is the grace of God. This grace comes out of His abundant and outrageous love for us. This grace is also somewhat foreign to many of us. When you grow up conditioned to believe that there is nothing free and that you must earn everything, grace is indeed something that could very well be a hoax. Nonetheless, grace is real and when one experiences His grace you can't help but let it overflow towards others. We don't have to earn it, we certainly don't deserve it, and we usually don't even ask for it. However, grace is offered to us in spite of all that.
yeah...breath that in for a moment. No preconditions or prerequisites. No auditions. No hoops to jump through. All we have to do is merely accept it.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." --John 3:16
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." --Eph. 2:8-10
Brennan Manning writes that repentance actually comes after redemption. I used to think I had to repent first. Nope, duh, read it again. We are saved by grace through faith. Faith also means complete trust. God loves us first...100%! Then His grace is offered. In the wake of His grace is the invitation to trust Him. He is always asking this question, "Do you trust Me?" It seems to me that we are all wired up to trust another in the wake of grace. It may not come quickly. It may in fact take years. But once we begin to trust in Him, then we are on the journey of repentance.
2 Corinthians 5
(16) "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. "
(17) "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
THERE IT IS! It's so simple. Repentance is a product of redemption. This is why we cannot save ourselves. We must be redeemed first by Christ and then we begin to do good things and take our next steps towards Him and the abundant life He offers.
I'm praying for you all.
GRACE
Yes, this is the grace of God. This grace comes out of His abundant and outrageous love for us. This grace is also somewhat foreign to many of us. When you grow up conditioned to believe that there is nothing free and that you must earn everything, grace is indeed something that could very well be a hoax. Nonetheless, grace is real and when one experiences His grace you can't help but let it overflow towards others. We don't have to earn it, we certainly don't deserve it, and we usually don't even ask for it. However, grace is offered to us in spite of all that.
yeah...breath that in for a moment. No preconditions or prerequisites. No auditions. No hoops to jump through. All we have to do is merely accept it.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." --John 3:16
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." --Eph. 2:8-10
Brennan Manning writes that repentance actually comes after redemption. I used to think I had to repent first. Nope, duh, read it again. We are saved by grace through faith. Faith also means complete trust. God loves us first...100%! Then His grace is offered. In the wake of His grace is the invitation to trust Him. He is always asking this question, "Do you trust Me?" It seems to me that we are all wired up to trust another in the wake of grace. It may not come quickly. It may in fact take years. But once we begin to trust in Him, then we are on the journey of repentance.
2 Corinthians 5
(16) "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. "
(17) "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
THERE IT IS! It's so simple. Repentance is a product of redemption. This is why we cannot save ourselves. We must be redeemed first by Christ and then we begin to do good things and take our next steps towards Him and the abundant life He offers.
I'm praying for you all.
Home Improvement
Finally! The little home improvement projects that were a must are now complete! First there was the steps of the front porch. They were a precast concrete, but were crumbling apart. So with the help of my dad we built new steps out of wood. In order to do this, however, I had to switch the storm door to make it swing inward rather than outward. This was all done in August.
Second, the toilet in the bathroom was positioned in such a way that when you needed to sit down on it for good ole #2 your knees would be pressing up against the bathtub. Not a real comfortable situation. So I purchased a new toilet with an elongated bowl shape and new flooring. Again with the help of my dad we removed the old toilet, flooring, and drain plumbing in the basement specifically for the toilet. Then we installed the new flooring, the new toilet positioning it to be parallel with the tub, and intalled the new drain plumbing in the basement. Aaaah, much better. My wife especially appreciates it. This project was completed in September.
Finally, after dropping Comcast last June my wife and I only had a small UHF antenna outside that only recieved a couple of local channels. We had NBC and CBS without trouble, but ABC and FOX were another story. So I purchased a new outdoor antenna from Radio Shack along with a rotor and cable and a high gain signal amplifier. Again with the help of my dad we got that installed just this past weekend. Now, with the digital converter box, we get all the local channels and can even pick up Chicago. The catch is there is a tree limb that is caught when the antenna is rotated around to the west. The challenge is that limb is rather high up. I think my dad and I will come up with a simple solution to this challenge.
Aaah the joys of home ownership...or should it be stewardship? After all, all this stuff is owned by God anyway. I just get to use it for a time. So yeah, I suppose a more acurate description is home stewardship.
Second, the toilet in the bathroom was positioned in such a way that when you needed to sit down on it for good ole #2 your knees would be pressing up against the bathtub. Not a real comfortable situation. So I purchased a new toilet with an elongated bowl shape and new flooring. Again with the help of my dad we removed the old toilet, flooring, and drain plumbing in the basement specifically for the toilet. Then we installed the new flooring, the new toilet positioning it to be parallel with the tub, and intalled the new drain plumbing in the basement. Aaaah, much better. My wife especially appreciates it. This project was completed in September.
Finally, after dropping Comcast last June my wife and I only had a small UHF antenna outside that only recieved a couple of local channels. We had NBC and CBS without trouble, but ABC and FOX were another story. So I purchased a new outdoor antenna from Radio Shack along with a rotor and cable and a high gain signal amplifier. Again with the help of my dad we got that installed just this past weekend. Now, with the digital converter box, we get all the local channels and can even pick up Chicago. The catch is there is a tree limb that is caught when the antenna is rotated around to the west. The challenge is that limb is rather high up. I think my dad and I will come up with a simple solution to this challenge.
Aaah the joys of home ownership...or should it be stewardship? After all, all this stuff is owned by God anyway. I just get to use it for a time. So yeah, I suppose a more acurate description is home stewardship.
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