@ozzy what do you mean? 😂 I’m missing something. 😂 @dan@social.danielmrose.com

@ozzy from micro blog. I can cross post from @dan@social.danielmrose.com to sharkey which is nifty

The sunsets here in Panama City Beach are just something else!

I’m reading: The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey, and it is so good. I read it ages ago, but the timeliness of it remarkable.

I think I will start sharing some quotes and brief thoughts from it and other books.

📚 micro.blog/books/978…

@ozzy I am guessing it’s on Sharkey’s end because follows work everywhere else.

@ozzy this was cross posted from micro! So, even though micro can’t be followed from here I will finally be active. 😂

I feel like the combination of micro.blog and write.as is going to be a match made in fediverse-heaven.

We had quite the feast for Super Bowl Sunday yesterday. The best part? Leftover chicken nuggies from Chik-Fil-A for lunch today!

Psalm 110:1-4; Exodus 19:7-25; Hebrews 2:1-4

It’s crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift off.

In high school there as a class that I took called, Math Analysis. It was pre-Calculus. The teacher taught us through projects. We did a project with satellites and orbits that was super hard and really interesting.

I couldn't tell you any of the math. I don't even really remember much beyond what I've told already.

What I do remember is that if our calculations were off by even a fraction of a percent then our satellite would crash. You see, when you drift off course, even slightly, over thousands of miles the results are a significant deviation.

We experience this on a lesser scale all the time, don't we? I mean, how many banners have you made in your life where your kerning was off just a bit and you ran out of room? Oh, just about every single one? Me too!

The author of Hebrews reminds us that the same thing can happen with the gospel. We can begin to drift off and lose our way. We can end up down a dead end that leaves us confused and lost.

I'm reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey right now. He wrote this, “Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.”

As I look around our world today it seems that we Christians have perhaps lost the grip on the message of the Gospel. We clamor for a top down, externally imposed goodness. This loss has left us graceless, merciless, compassionless, and simply unkind.

I am reminded this morning that I must hold tight to the gospel message lest I drift. The drift though small can leave me lost in a dead end.

— Discuss...

—

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found this helpful, insightful, interesting, or even just kind of average, would you please share it with your social feed?

If you aren't receiving these posts in your inbox please subscribe right here:

Psalm 110:1-4; Exodus 19:7-25; Hebrews 2:1-4

It’s crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift off.

In high school there as a class that I took called, Math Analysis. It was pre-Calculus. The teacher taught us through projects. We did a project with satellites and orbits that was super hard and really interesting.

I couldn't tell you any of the math. I don't even really remember much beyond what I've told already.

What I do remember is that if our calculations were off by even a fraction of a percent then our satellite would crash. You see, when you drift off course, even slightly, over thousands of miles the results are a significant deviation.

We experience this on a lesser scale all the time, don't we? I mean, how many banners have you made in your life where your kerning was off just a bit and you ran out of room? Oh, just about every single one? Me too!

The author of Hebrews reminds us that the same thing can happen with the gospel. We can begin to drift off and lose our way. We can end up down a dead end that leaves us confused and lost.

I'm reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey right now. He wrote this, “Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.”

As I look around our world today it seems that we Christians have perhaps lost the grip on the message of the Gospel. We clamor for a top down, externally imposed goodness. This loss has left us graceless, merciless, compassionless, and simply unkind.

I am reminded this morning that I must hold tight to the gospel message lest I drift. The drift though small can leave me lost in a dead end.

Discuss...

—

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found this helpful, insightful, interesting, or even just kind of average, would you please share it with your social feed?

If you aren't receiving these posts in your inbox please subscribe right here:

2016 was a watershed moment for the Evangelical movement in the United States of America. It was a moment that had been building for decades. It did not come out of nowhere. Kristin Kobes Du Mez outlines the rise of this moment in her excellent work Jesus and John Wayne, I would recommend reading it if you would like the historical background. The Evangelical movement had to make a decision about a singular question and that question was whether it would embrace a tribalistic identity or if it would choose an identity that transcends tribalism. It unequivocally chose the former.

I want to let you in on a little secret, the clamor for tribalism is nothing new.

Humanity loves to divide and separate along tribal lines. There is safety in knowing who the “them” is. If we are going to be safe we need to know who our enemies are. Who are the people that are “out to get us?” Who are the dangerous people that are trying to destroy the very things that we hold dear?

One of the most popular television shows over the last number of years is Yellowstone. It's a drama set in Montana around the largest private ranch in the state and the never ending quest of people to steal it away from the Dutton family. The whole show is centered on the need to identify who the newest enemy is and how protect “mine” from the enemy. I think what makes this show very attractive to so many is that it taps into the innate need to know who our tribe is.

Us vs Them. In vs Out. Me vs You.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary the popular usage of the term “tribalism” could be understood this way, “a very strong feeling of loyalty to a political or social group, so that you support them whatever they do.”

In our world today we are seeing more and more people walk away from faith because of many in the church who care more about protecting the institution or the “tribe” than about truth. In the 70s and 80s we saw people leave the Catholic Church in droves because of the priest sexual abuse scandals. The crime perpetrated by the priests was evil all on its own, but what drove people away was the cover up. In the 2000s we are seeing the same kind of thing happening in the Protestant church, particularly in Evangelicalism. The institutions have been exposed to be covering for the awful things that are done by many in positions of leadership.

When a faith tradition decides that protecting those in power and the institutions they represent is more important than the people they are called to care for should we be surprised that there is a walking away?

I'd say there should be an expectation of it.

Why is this happening? Why is there such a protection of the institution and its leaders?

It is because we have decided that we are in a war with “those people.” When you're in a war you need rally around “our people.”

When we Christian-wash the failures of these movements and try to pretend that they aren't happening or we try to minimize them, we do great harm to the cause of the gospel. When we acknowledge them and bring them into the light then there is some hope in disentangling ourselves from the tribalism that is inherent in the hiding.

The deepest problem with tribalism though is that it is antithetical to the way of Christ.

Jesus in one of my favorite stories from the Gospels is talking with a Samaritan woman and he has just proven himself to her as something of a prophet and she says,

Oh, so you’re a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?”

“Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God’s way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.

“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

Do you see how Jesus challenges the entire underpinning of tribalism? He dismantles the “us vs them” by saying, “But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.” All that matters is the worshiping in spirit and truth.

The Apostle Paul makes it more explicit in his letter to the Galatians, “In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.”

We have to disentangle ourselves from the various tribes that we find ourselves in. I imagine that if Paul were writing this today he might have put it in political terms, “In Christ's famil there can be division into Republican and Democrat, socialist and capitalist, male and female. Among us you are equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.”

The beauty of the way of Jesus is that it transcends the various tribalistic aspects of any particular culture.

If you've grown up in the church and you're looking around at the tribalism that you see, know that it isn't the way of Jesus. It is right and good to disentangle yourself from the political tribes and even religious tribes that claim to be the “Jesus way.”

Remember, ”...the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.”

The way of Jesus transcends the tribes.

Evangelicalism is not the Jesus Way. Progressivism is not the Jesus Way. Liberalism is not the Jesus Way. Conservatism is the not the Jesus Way. Fundamentalism is not the Jesus Way.

From each of these (and more) there are aspects of truth and we include them in our journey but then we transcend them to worship God in spirit and truth.

The process of disentangling ourselves from our tribes is hard and it is painful. It will leave us lonely for a season. It my break our hearts. We will likely lose relationships. But, at the end of the day moving from “us vs them” to a “Cosmic We” is so worth it.

When we disentangle from the tribe we can find the path toward loving neighbor, loving enemy, and loving God with all of who we are.

Discuss...

—

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found this helpful, insightful, interesting, or even just kind of average, would you please share it with your social feed?

If you aren't receiving these posts in your inbox please subscribe right here:

Psalm 50:1-6; 1 Kings 14:1-18; 1 Timothy 1:12-20

I’m so grateful to Christ Jesus for making me adequate to do this work. He went out on a limb, you know, in trusting me with this ministry. The only credentials I brought to it were violence and witch hunts and arrogance. But I was treated mercifully because I didn’t know what I was doing—didn’t know Who I was doing it against! Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me. And all because of Jesus.

For some of us pastors this is something we need to be reminded of regularly. I know I do.

There are two ditches that I find on either side of me as I consider my calling. On the one side is whining. Often, when I meet with colleagues there is a corporate time of whining about our calling and congregations. It's like Mr. Costanza's Festivus comes to church. There is a temptation to fall into a bit of despondency because our callings are related to people. People are never finished and people are always messy. When you never have closure you can get frustrated. This is part of the reason that Eugene Peterson would read The Brothers Karamazov every year. He needed a reminder that people's lives are fascinating.

The other ditch is one of arrogant power. We pastors can develop a bit of a god-complex. There is this sense that we speak for God to God's people and therefore the people ought to obey us. This, unchecked, will of course lead us to a place of spiritual abuse. We often hold our authority over people. When this happens it is ugly and causes serious harm.

Paul had the answer to staying between these two ditches. That is, in a word, gratitude.

Pastors, in my opinion, have the greatest job in the world. We get the opportunity to be part of the life of people. There is a presence we get to have as they learn to live the life of faith. We walk alongside them during the overwhelming joys of weddings and births. We also get to hold people's hands and put our arms around their shoulders during the painful times of their lives. We are always there in the background of their lives.

A simple presence during the good, the bad, and the mundane.

This is a beautiful thing that we are called to.

This calling is all grace.

None of us deserve it.

Each of us called to serve as ministers of the gospel do so by the gracious working of God through Christ.

What an honor! What a responsibility! What an absolute joy!

All by grace.

Oh, that I would consistently see my calling through the lens of gratitude. I need to continue learn this valuable lesson that Paul teaches Timothy here.

— Discuss...

—

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found this helpful, insightful, interesting, or even just kind of average, would you please share it with your social feed?

If you aren't receiving these posts in your inbox please subscribe right here:

@Joe woof. That isn’t cool.

Psalm 50:1-6; 1 Kings 11:26-40; 2 Corinthians 2:12-17

Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. >Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is >recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with >life.

I often wonder if this is true of me.

There are few things in this life that I desperately want. When I die, oh how I would love it to be said of me that because of Christ I gave off “an aroma redolent with life.”

So often I find myself staring into the mirror seeing my shortcomings and failings to love well. The lack of love is so easily apparent. Thankfully, there is a grace that knows no bounds that has been offered to me through this Christ whom I seek to follow.

This little passage is such a good reminder that words matter. How we live matters.

It's also a reminder that when we seek to live this way there will be people who won't respond well. They will see the pursuit of love and will find is distasteful, a stench.

But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.

How can I be sure that I'm speaking life? How can I know that the words and way I live are honoring and pleasing to Christ?

This is a terrific responsibility. Is anyone competent to take it on? No—but at least we don’t take God’s Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets to sell it cheap. We stand in Christ’s presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. We get what we say straight from God and say it as honestly as we can.

It's that last little bit that jumps at me, “say it as honestly as we can.”

There's no “but” tagged onto the words of Jesus. There's no attempt to package him or mitigate him for our comfort. No, when we are speaking the truth in love it is not going to be a cheap, watered down, Christ. It is going to be the message of the cross and resurrection that is laden with grace, mercy, compassion, empathy, and love.

I suppose this is the means by which I can evaluate myself. Is the way I live and the words I speak bookended with grace and love?

— Discuss...

—

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found this helpful, insightful, interesting, or even just kind of average, would you please share it with your social feed?

If you aren't receiving these posts in your inbox please subscribe right here: