A Good Lingering!

This past month has been really busy. I have participated in The Journey to Bethlehem (see my last post) programmed and run lights for a large Christmas program at a church with a full rock band doing TSO songs and some acoustic and a Capella acts. I have also been working at the local mall selling calenders and games. Then on Christmas Eve I ran lights for the Christmas Eve services at All Shores Wesleyan Church, which consisted of a folky acoustic styling.

Needless to say, on Christmas Day I was pretty tired. And yes, we did have family over to our house so I got to do some cleaning before they came.

After all of this I chose to spend Christmas Day away from my computer and specifically away from email and social media. I feel like we often rush through Christmas. We get our gifts, spend 1 hour at church on Christmas Eve talking about Jesus, and run around between family events and parties.

I have heard mixed reports of what the Church as a whole has done with this focus in the past. One has suggested that the early church spent very little focus on His birth. They were more concerned with His resurrection. Another suggests that, at some point in time, there were groups that would spend weeks focusing on the birth of Christ.

Through this season I have tried to keep up with a reading plan from All Shores reading short scripture 6 nights a week. Some weeks I have done better than others and sadly this week was one where I didn't keep up as well.

I want to encourage you to do a couple of things as time moves away from Christmas 2014:

1. Don't move to quickly. Take some time to ponder Christ's birth this week. I know it isn't easy to make time for things, but don't just move on with an attitude of "I did that, now let's go to the next thing"

2. At the same time, keep Christ's ultimate mission in mind. Jesus came to "seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10). In Luke 4 He quoted Isaiah 61 for his mission statement:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

3. Seek to join Jesus in His mission.

Flash and Power

Hey guys. Sorry I haven’t gotten a new blog up in a while. We have been busy with moving into a new house and I have had some problems connecting with wifi at our new house.

So I’ve been thinking about a recent episode of “The Flash”. No, this is not the cross over episode, although that is a great episode. Yes there are SPOILERS in this post. A meta-human that feeds on electricity starts causing massive trouble around town. In an encounter with them Barry loses his powers. You see this guy drained so much energy out of him that they paused. As they went on to explore the issue with his problems, he came and attacked Star Labs, sucking power from the city and allowing the Clock King to cause a terrible situation at the police station, putting several lives in significant danger, including Iris.

Back to the Flash, they decided to try to charge him with electricity on the bar of the treadmill. You see a slight little vibration in Barry, but he still can’t run. As the night goes on, the situation gets more dangerous. Eventually, Caitlin Snow checks him and finds that he should indeed have his speed. His cells are all operating at the normal “Flash” efficiency. She challenges him to believe it. Then, Doctor Wells calls out the meta-human and gets into trouble, of course. 

Right at the point in which Doctor Wells would be killed, Barry gets his speed back. He didn’t receive back his belief until someone was in absolute danger. He had his power all along, but he lost his trust in himself. Barry has a lot of pressure on him. The pressures of the department for his job, his desire to have Iris in a deeper relationship. His desire to help people and save lives as the Flash. As soon as he lost his powers he doubted himself. When his body was physically recharged, he still doubted. 

As followers of Christ, we are the same way. We fall into a sinful pattern such as lust or an angry attitude and we feel like we can’t get out of it. 2 Peter 1:3 &4 tell us:

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

God has already give us the ability to rise above these sins. We just need to trust Him for the power. We need to believe it. Now, this power does come “through our knowledge of Him who called us”. God doesn’t give us rules He won’t empower us to follow. We often fail to use this power. Often we simply don’t think it is available. We think God is so sick of our sin, why would He give us any power? But, the reason He makes His power available to is to get away from that sin. God loves redemption. To come and die for our sins but NOT provide the power to overcome the patterns they lead to would not fit with His agenda.

There is one more side to this: the more we sin, the more likely it will negatively affect those around us. Sometimes we don’t wake up to the need to change until someone around us is really hurt by it. When it comes to lust and a single person, we often don’t even realize that lust now will affect our spouse later as it affects our expectations and desires. Flash didn’t get working again until someone’s life was in danger. Don’t let things get that far.

With Great Power...

Found at www.unleashthefanboy.com.

Hey guys.

Tonight the growth group I lead for my church was discussing spiritual gifts. Interestingly, this discussion took place as part of an 8 week series on surrendering to God. I know this seems like a strange context for talking about spiritual gifts, but it really isn't. It was exciting to see how we were all exploring out gifts and where we might fit in.

Often times when we discuss spiritual gifts we don't look at the larger picture. Like a certain web-head, we focus on our own, individual situation. We look at our gifts without considering where we fit in the full plan of what God is doing currently or His great plan for all time.

Have you recently read any of the passages that discuss these gifts? The Apostle Paul often discusses them during the same time as he discusses unity in the Church.

Read 1 Corinthians 12-14 or Romans 12. God gives us these super powers but He has certain expectations. Both of these passages discuss spiritual gifts, church unity, and love. These 3 things are fully inter-connected.

If we think our gifts are useless, we fail to serve. If we think our gifts are the most important, we disrespect other members of God's people.

Think about Spiderman:he is a solo hero. He is not a team player but yet he has joined with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers. His uncle told him that (you know this line so say it with me) "WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY." We often think of that responsibility as it stands in relation to him and the citizens of NYC. But what about the responsibility of it in regards to the other heroes? What about his place in the scheme of the Marvel Universe? We found out how hard that is in the Civil War storyline, right? [spoilers] He joined one side, disagreed with them, got in a sticky situation, got rescued, and joined the other side.

We don't always agree in life. The Avengers movie showed how easy it is to showboat and how difficult to come to a place of cooperation. But what happens when that cooperation does come to it's prime? When we trust God and use our gifts as directed by Him instead of insisting that some gifts are better or more necessary. 6 Heroes defeated a full army led by an Asgardian, despite the huge size of the army.

Do you know your spiritual gifts? If not, get on the training ground and play around. Start serving and you will find your gifts over time. You might want to take a spiritual gifts assessment. Talk with your pastor. Find out how your gifts fit into what your church is doing. I would also remind you that these gifts tend to be useful outside the church as well.

With great redemption comes great mission. Get out there and serve!

Training or Gifting?

Geeksaresexy.com has this great cartoon up right now about the difference between Japanese heroes and American heroes.

Ryu (yes, that Ryu; from Street Fighter) decides to prepare to protect Earth from alien attack. He makes a point about how he'll train really hard, even carrying a bolder to do so. As he is fighting aliens, he feels overwhelmed. Way to many for him to fight alone. In come 3 heroes, from our 2 biggest hero houses, DC and Marvel, to help him. As he compliments them on their skills, they all admit that they haven't really trained that much. Iron Man just has cool gadgets and money, Spidey got bitten by a spider, and Superman was born with it.

This is a huge over-generalization, right? Look at the X-Men. They have a huge room devoted to training and even a whole school. Wildcat has a purpose in DC comics of training younger heroes and vigilantes. Think about our other heroes, that we label under other things. Catniss Everdeen trains on various techniques before going into the Hunger Games.Luke Skywalker has to train with Yoda and Obi-wan.

On the Japanese side it doesn't seem so off, though. Almost all Asian heroes that I know of have a lot of training and a strong emphases on preparation. I am sure there are exceptions, though. Feel free to let me know of any.

This week we celebrated Veterans Day. A day when we remember men who trained hard and worked hard to keep our nation free. Now, in some cases, such as Word Wars, the training was quickened a little bit. And in other cases, such as the Vietnam War, soldiers arrive to a theater of operations to find out they need to learn a whole new set of lessons from soldiers who have been there for a while.

As Christians, we are told to train. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4:8 that physical training is of some value, but the training in Godliness holds much more relevant value. This is one of the reasons we have the Bible. To train in righteousness. In 1 Corinthians he tells us about the proper uses of spiritual gifts. These gifts are given to all followers of Christ freely, but we don't always look for them.

You see, real heroes have a mixture. God freely gives all his followers gifts to use in fighting spiritual battles and in serving. Yet we still need training. We need to learn how to use those gifts, when to use the gifts, and we need to learn wisdom. But it isn't only training.

In the cartoon mentioned above, Spiderman, Superman and Iron Man somehow all come at once to aid Ryu. What did Jesus do when He sent the disciples out to teach? He sent them out 2 by 2. They went out as teams. Paul's treatment on spiritual gifts in his letter to the Corinthians comes in a context of unity. He discusses order in worship during this time as well as the beauty of the diversity of the Body of Christ.

In order to be real super heroes, we need all of these. We need training. We need natural talents and spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit. We need each other. That is the recipe for true heroism.

**Quick Note: This Saturday, Nov. 15, is a gathering at Cornerstone Univ. 6:00pm. Come join us for a chapel service and some gaming after that.**

Arrow Family

So last night I got to watch Arrow live instead of waiting and catching it online (which often happens for me). I don't watch a lot of CW shows but I do like the DC shows. One of the themes that really stood out in this episode was family. Specifically, sticking with family even when you don't see eye to eye.

Felicity's mom comes to visit and we quickly learn that they are very different people. Her mom comes from Las Vegas and she looks the part. Their hobbies and interests are different (Mom comments on how she was never as interested in all the tech stuff that Felicity loves).

That same episode we find Oliver and his sister disagreeing over a funds source she is using until she gets the club back running again. In the middle of all this I think it was Thea who tells Oliver that they have to stick together because they only have each other. She pleads with him to meet her half way.

One thing stands out: you stick by family because family is what you have. Hebrews 10:25 tells us we (as fellow followers of Jesus) should not give up meeting together. The writer encourages us to encourage each other instead of giving up on each other.

That person you have in your family (or in your Bible study group) that drives you crazy. You don't get to give up on them. We are all family in the Kingdom of God and if we give up on each other, what happens to the Kingdom?

For those in the West Michigan area, don't forget to meet up with us on the 15 at Cornerstone Univ.

Nerd Chapel and Cornerstone Unite!

Nerd Chapel is excited to announce a new partnership with Cornerstone University. CU will be cooperating with Nerd Chapel to host a monthly experience currently called Nerd Chapel Live! Each night of this will begin with worship and teaching before a time for table top gaming.

Our first night will be November 15 (a Saturday night). This will be in the Chapel at the Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (a school of CU).

I looked for couple months for a location in Grand Rapids for this. Grand Rapids sits as the easiest gathering point for West Michigan within an hours drive of several other cities and I felt it would be a nice, central location. This will be open to anyone but CU felt that they could use something like this for their student population so they agreed to host it!

Our first one will be at 6:00pm Saturday, Nov. 15. We plan to start it as a monthly community in January. If you are in the West Michigan area, we would love to have you come out for it! The Seminary building will be hosting us in their chapel. The building is off Leonard St. NE. right by E. Beltline.

We are looking for a worship leader so we can do live worship. The message for this first "preview" event is inspired by "Pacific Rim" and is titled "Drifting with God."

I hope you can make it!

Visit the Cornerstone site if you are looking for a college to attend or just want some more info on this place.

Fighting gamer gate

Hey there Adventurers of the King!

So I had considered giving you some thoughts about Halloween this week, but I feel like gamer gate is becoming to much of a deal to ignore. Notice I do not honor gamer gate with capital letters. With reports of threats regarding both death and rape toward women who are into video gaming, including the outspoken Sarkeesian woman and also famed and talented actress Felicia Day. I am a little baffled by this. I have always appreciated when I found something in common with a girl. I don't quite understand this whole control mentality.

The reason I am writing about this is because I feel that movements like this, which are blatantly seeing women as less than men and as sexual objects to be controlled, are often influenced by a spiritual force. In Ephesians Paul tells us:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)

One of the most famous video game characters of all time, Samus Aranus from Metroid was a woman. Then you have Laura Croft and Cammy/Chun-Li from Street Fighter. All of these are capable of handling themselves in battle. We should respect women who enjoy the hobbies we enjoy and in life we should fight alongside them and not against them.

Is there a place for men to be the leaders of our culture? Not if we use gamer gate to do it. When we do lead, it must be with respect, inclusive toward the women in our lives, and filled with gentleness. There are other ways for us to be powerful, such as helping the people around us or supporting causes like International Justice Mission which fights both African land stealing (which often targets single mother families) and sexual slavery.

Jesus raised the bar when it comes to treating women respectfully. He treated them as equals (for an example see John 4). After his resurrection it was women who were the first to carry the news, not men.

Anything which threatens rape is pure evil. Here is a few thoughts for fighting against this:

1. Pray against it. Pray for a change of heart in the men trying to control video game and nerd culture.
2. Men, treat women with respect. This means we control our eyes, our minds, and our hands. Most of us, including myself, have had times when we faltered. We simply need to get up, be a man, and change. But this also means that we should be inclusive toward the women in our lives, not exclusive. 
3. Women, please don't give up. Find ways to enjoy your hobbies even if a few men don't like it.