Barb at A Formers Leader’s Journey wrote a post called Un-Churched Communion. Here she discusses a podcast she listened to that forever changed her view on the Lord’s Supper. I encourage you all to check out her post.

Cheryl at Women in Ministry recently had a radio interview with Matt Slick about her view about 1 Timothy 2:11-15. She was unable to make concluding remarks, so she concluded on her blog in a post called The rest of the story – 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and Matt Slick. She also links to original interview in MP3 format for everyone to listen to. Her view is definitely not the most common view and I think she needs to do a little more research, but it is worth mentioning.

I encourage you to check out both of these blogs. They will challenge you in important ways.

A few weeks ago Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church wrote a post called Distractions to Worship? In it he wrote,

Consider the situation where you are sitting among a group of believers, listening to someone teach. The teaching is very inspiring and challenging. You are really enjoying it. Beside you, a baby starts crying. Can the crying baby distract you from worshiping God? If we assume that you can only worship by listening to the teacher, then the baby would be a distraction. If we assume instead that the way you respond to the crying baby and the baby’s mother reveals your obedience to God, then you can continue to worship – even if you cannot hear the teacher.

This started to make me think about how we handle “distractions.” In Alan’s example, the baby becomes the distraction. Often times we remove distractions from us when we meet. We have children’s church, we have the nursery, we have contemporary services vs. traditional services, and the list could go on. None of these things are bad, or evil, or anything, but often they are created to remove distraction. We have children’s church because children get bored in real church, so we deal with the children by removing them from the situation. Babies tend to poop and cry and make all sorts of noises, so we send them to the nursery. Older people don’t really like contemporary music, so we have singing time with hymns and a separate singing time with newer music for the younger generations.

As I said, none of these things are wrong, in and of themselves. However, is it possible that these things tend to hide our sin? When your children get rambunctious, you’ll get an evil eye or two. Someone will surely gossip about how they could not hear the sermon, how misbehaved your children are, etc. By removing the children, the people do not have to deal with their sins because they can act like perfect little people. The same goes for the other examples I listed above.

As I have been contemplating these issues, I started to wonder what else we use to hide our sins. It occurred to me that legalism is the biggest thing, I think we also use doctrine to hide our sins, man-made rules and regulations, even our buildings can be used to hide our sins.

I suggest you ask yourself how you are hiding your sins.

I pray that God would reveal to us our sins and the devices we use to try to hide them from others. I pray that we would be more transparent before his Church and before Him, that we would confess our sins instead of hide them. I pray that He would strengthen us and those who we encounter to be more open to forgiving, guiding, and urging each other to love and good works. Most of all, I thank Him for all that He has done in our lives through His sons work on the cross and escape from Death.

Dr. David Black asks, “Is this how the Lord Jesus planned for His church to operate . . . ? Perhaps our difficulties are self-induced.” in his an excellent article called Recovering Paul’s Perspective on Pastoral Leadership.

Please read Dr. Black’s article. I think it will benefit you, even if you already agree with the point he is trying to make.

So the question is, are the Church’s current difficulties self-induced or something else?

I have been invited to be a contributor of a new Christian blogging community called Life in the Journey.

It is a blog dedicated to sharing the abundant life that Jesus has poured on us and the journey that we are all on with him standing at our sides. I encourage you all to add it to your blog rolls, and also, please take part in the discussions. We would love to hear from you, whether you agree or disagree with what is said.

I will still post here, but when I post anything over there, I will only link to it from here.

This post is inspired by a recent post of Alan’s from The Assembling of the Church called Grace to be Wrong. Alan’s post is about having the attitude of grace when confronted with people who disagree with us. Since I have begun my journey with Christ, I have learned the importance of adopting this attitude of grace. I am not claiming that I have mastered it, but I definitely recognize it.

Something that I have been meditating on a lot lately is that Jesus tells us that his burden is light (Matt. 11:30). Given the little observations I have made while a Christian, through various conversations, church visits, seminary classes, convention news, etc. It seems like we keep trying to make Jesus’ burden very heavy, even to the point that Jesus has little to do with it. It is not just the full-time vocational pastor – who in most cases takes on the full load of 100+ people – it is everyone. It is our flesh that turns God’s grace into a heavy burden. And most of the people do not even recognize the burden they are baring. In my opinion, this is part of the reason why we see people rejecting the attitude of grace – they think that their heavy burden is a litmus test for true Christianity but this is antithetical to the good news of Christ.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us that he planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the increase.

My wife and I have made our very first attempt at planting a garden. We tried to till the ground (best we could). We dug little holes and put the seeds in just as we were instructed. We have watered the ground just about every day. However, doing these things could have in no way guaranteed growth. But we are not required to grow the vegetables, we are only required to obey the simple instructions given to us.

This realization has changed many things for me. For instance when I teach, I go just simply teach. I have realized that it is not my duty to get peoples attention, it is not my duty to make people change, it is not my duty guilt people, etc. What then is my duty when I teach? Well, I believe the only requirement to teach is to actually teach. Of course teaching should be done in a loving, edifying, and understanding way.

If people do on consider the council of God, than that is between them and God. We have do not bear that burden for them. When Paul preached at to the Athenians some left, some wanted to hear more, and some stuck around. I do not see any evidence of Paul spicing up his sermons to get more numbers. He presented the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

This does not just apply to teaching either, it applies to all things we do as Christians. We need to realize that God is in control and we only need to worry about obeying him in what he has called us to do. Beyond what God has asked from us is a burden we put on ourselves and is not at all from God.