I read the above statement on the back of a truck today and thought it was fantastic…. And then I decided to think this clever little saying through a bit more.
How do we make social change when things are already on such decline?
How do we resist certain laws, for example lets pretend gay marriages are made legal in Australia. How does a person resist the law if it has been passed? A law that I am very doubtful would be revoked once made official. Perhaps we could be more aware of our leaders’ values and convictions before electing them. Or make more of an effort to love people out of their sin and into the fathers’ arms before their united lost voice gets so loud that the leaders feel they have to cater to them in order to win votes. Please note that I am not attacking Homosexuals. That is no way to treat any one in a sinful state. infact It marvels me that we Christians somehow think that the best way to show people their misled ways is to distance ourselves from them and condemn their life choices until they come to know God’s grace.
I have only recently become very interested in the way our country is run and while still knowing very little I do know that it was foolish of me to find no interest in who and in which direction our country is been led. But having taken notice of not only the power and responsibilities that our leaders have but also the input that I am capable of having if I would just care enough to have a say, I have gained a rather passionate mind towards Australian and international politics.
There is a show called ‘The West Wing’. It is a show about the West Wing of the white house in Washington and from this wing of the building the United States of America is virtually run. Decisions of huge ramifications are made daily, often good ones, sometimes not. The show has opened my eyes to an incredibly important industry, that of managing countries. I cannot fathom the things that go through the minds of the prime minister of Australia and his associates, let alone the president of America and his.
The amount of anger that is shown them is huge and is widespread regardless of how small the decision to be made. I think if I have learned one thing so far is that the prime minister is never right and never wrong. With such a mixed culture to look after he certainly has his work cut out for him. I bet it does not help that people are often more worried about what his bank account looks like then whether he is doing a good job or not. There is one thing I am certain will never be seen, A leader who is liked by all. Or a leader who can make right decisions and be praised for them by the majority of the people without condemning personal habits, past wrongs, and the possibility deceitful motives. A leader can only do so much, at the end of the day I believe it is the countrymen who make the decisions. Think about this. If Australia was 80 percent Christian, it would not cross the prime ministers mind to pass a gay marriage law, or promote the idea in order to be elected. However, if our Country was 80 percent gay then things would be entirely different again.
All that to say this, if we want to prevent a downward spiral of national governing then we need to remove our focus from the man at the top and put it back to the people the that steer this mans decisions. We are responsible with the truth we have been given to free people from sin and show them to our father who will then lead them in their hearts toward holy living and righteous pursuits. Don’t fight the passing of laws, fight the devil and fight sin, before a majority of people become so consumed with sin that they will govern this country. If we can win that battle then we can change laws. God is sovereign and his kingdom can reign no matter who is running the country. When his kingdom reigns in power and people come to know him on a mass scale crime will all but vanish, bottle shops will go out of business, marriages will be healed, teenagers will honour their parents, families will be reunited and God’s love will free all. I can only imagine what would happen to the top if that happened down the bottom.
Perhaps we could reword the saying that I began this writing with to say the following:
As the kingdom of God becomes bigger, injustice will drop as though on the opposite end of a seesaw.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
I May be trodding on some toes here...
I am tired of seeing people make decisions based on how they think there congregational leaders will react. Why do so many Christians think they are ok by God as long as they are ok by “the Church”? I hate to say this but in my experience I have personally been more “right” with my father when I have not been so “right” in the eyes of church structures and denominations, for the reason that my focus is not been skewed toward pleasing a certain “culture” or “theology”. My mind and heart are free to be grown by God in a truly spiritual way, they way he wants us to grow, IN HIM. People believe heresy comes from leaving the church “Covering”, I believe and history shows that the majority of the time it comes from within the denominational empires we have created, and even though unintentionally, it happens on a big scale. It is interesting to note that if we take a look at the word covering in the New testament it appears once in regards to a woman covering her head...it seems we have uncovered another nice made up rule to keep people from putting their trust in God instead of man.
What if instead of wondering how they will be viewed by their church people asked their God directly how he would have them live? That’s were individuality and diversity come from, the individuality that he birthed in each one of us. But instead of celebrating it and allowing it to reach into every culture, sub culture, man woman and child on the planet as we are capable of, we conform it to the same set of convictions and boundaries given us by a few leaders overseeing thousands of smaller leaders overseeing thousands of cattle all coming under a denomination that spends so much of its time attempting to be relevant to its surrounding culture that it creates a culture that is worthless.
God must have a lot of spare time these days because the church is doing his job for him, instead of relationship with Father we are living relationships with “Church”. We aim to get people transformed by our clever antiques and smooth rhetoric but forget to mention that they need not conform to the robotic culture we have created; they just need to let God love them and transform them by that love. Unfortunately the flood of pressure to act accordingly comes before God ever intended to bring conviction and teaches new Christians to do right by man and God will be happy with them. Without meaning to we are leading them away from an intimate trusting relationship with God.
I love the place where my wife and I go for fellowship, I love the people, I love the relationships I have with them. If we don’t feel like going, we don’t. We have no fear of what people will think of us because a persons spiritual temperature cannot be gauged by their church attendance. When people think it is they go only out of obligation and rot away with a slow resentment toward the judgement of others.
The truth is when you feel no obligation and you find a place where real brothers and sisters that are walking in relationship with father meet, it’s very hard not to feel like meeting with them at every chance you get. A good indicator of whether people are living in this way is to ask what happens more when they meet, gossip or confession? I know that sadly this is a distant feeling for many reading this and that’s why I am writing it. Not out of anger, but a desire to see people living freely in Christ, the way he intends. The wonderful thing about finding like minded people is that we celebrate our differences. We don’t bash each other into submission against our convictions and our peace before God.
Why have so many of us stopped trusting our Hearts. In the heart is where the spirit of God dwells, he guides us and loves us and if we let him, will be one with us like he is with Jesus. That is what the bible clearly states. He frees us from the shame of sin and teaches us to run to him in our darkest moments knowing that our healing, freedom, deliverance and strength is in him. Yet we are so suspicious of our own emotions that we chose to follow a set of rules given by the denomination we follow or the ‘pastor’.
What happened to Been free from Shame, free to love as he loves us, To often I see people manipulating other peoples sense of shame to bring them into a stricter less satisfying walk with a God that they misunderstand because of the route they we taken on to get to where they are. Denominations are rebuked in the bible and for the reason that they breed disunity. Often these days they used to let us presume things of others and stifle the persons gift of individuality.
Think about this, what is your first thought when someone tells you they are a ‘Baptist Christian’? Do you think of another Baptist person you have met and elate them to that persons walk with God, understanding of life, and theologies? I know I used to before I came under conviction for been so presumptuous. How insulting to God that we would take thousands of people who come under a certain title not given them by God and assume they all are just like the one prude we met at the pub who we disagree on. We are so damn closed minded and missing so many incredible opportunities for authentic relationship with the body. Not only are we boxing people into boxes we feel comfortable about, we are boxing ourselves into close mindedness.
How can our body stand united when we have separated our selves at each limb and still feel too close for comfort most the time? We Christians are a bunch of Hippocratic, shameful, controlling, self righteous and arrogant people in existence, and it seems like that is the only common thing between us.
We may as well rip every scripture to do with love out of our bibles because we have raped the definition over and over again to the point where we perceive love the way the world perceives it. This makes me very sad. God’s love exists that we may experience it and let it live in us and expand our thinking and help us show grace to others, but we don’t seem to get it ourselves. We have moved so far from it because we have been taught so often that we are only allowed that love if we live right, but not a single one of us does.
AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!
What if instead of wondering how they will be viewed by their church people asked their God directly how he would have them live? That’s were individuality and diversity come from, the individuality that he birthed in each one of us. But instead of celebrating it and allowing it to reach into every culture, sub culture, man woman and child on the planet as we are capable of, we conform it to the same set of convictions and boundaries given us by a few leaders overseeing thousands of smaller leaders overseeing thousands of cattle all coming under a denomination that spends so much of its time attempting to be relevant to its surrounding culture that it creates a culture that is worthless.
God must have a lot of spare time these days because the church is doing his job for him, instead of relationship with Father we are living relationships with “Church”. We aim to get people transformed by our clever antiques and smooth rhetoric but forget to mention that they need not conform to the robotic culture we have created; they just need to let God love them and transform them by that love. Unfortunately the flood of pressure to act accordingly comes before God ever intended to bring conviction and teaches new Christians to do right by man and God will be happy with them. Without meaning to we are leading them away from an intimate trusting relationship with God.
I love the place where my wife and I go for fellowship, I love the people, I love the relationships I have with them. If we don’t feel like going, we don’t. We have no fear of what people will think of us because a persons spiritual temperature cannot be gauged by their church attendance. When people think it is they go only out of obligation and rot away with a slow resentment toward the judgement of others.
The truth is when you feel no obligation and you find a place where real brothers and sisters that are walking in relationship with father meet, it’s very hard not to feel like meeting with them at every chance you get. A good indicator of whether people are living in this way is to ask what happens more when they meet, gossip or confession? I know that sadly this is a distant feeling for many reading this and that’s why I am writing it. Not out of anger, but a desire to see people living freely in Christ, the way he intends. The wonderful thing about finding like minded people is that we celebrate our differences. We don’t bash each other into submission against our convictions and our peace before God.
Why have so many of us stopped trusting our Hearts. In the heart is where the spirit of God dwells, he guides us and loves us and if we let him, will be one with us like he is with Jesus. That is what the bible clearly states. He frees us from the shame of sin and teaches us to run to him in our darkest moments knowing that our healing, freedom, deliverance and strength is in him. Yet we are so suspicious of our own emotions that we chose to follow a set of rules given by the denomination we follow or the ‘pastor’.
What happened to Been free from Shame, free to love as he loves us, To often I see people manipulating other peoples sense of shame to bring them into a stricter less satisfying walk with a God that they misunderstand because of the route they we taken on to get to where they are. Denominations are rebuked in the bible and for the reason that they breed disunity. Often these days they used to let us presume things of others and stifle the persons gift of individuality.
Think about this, what is your first thought when someone tells you they are a ‘Baptist Christian’? Do you think of another Baptist person you have met and elate them to that persons walk with God, understanding of life, and theologies? I know I used to before I came under conviction for been so presumptuous. How insulting to God that we would take thousands of people who come under a certain title not given them by God and assume they all are just like the one prude we met at the pub who we disagree on. We are so damn closed minded and missing so many incredible opportunities for authentic relationship with the body. Not only are we boxing people into boxes we feel comfortable about, we are boxing ourselves into close mindedness.
How can our body stand united when we have separated our selves at each limb and still feel too close for comfort most the time? We Christians are a bunch of Hippocratic, shameful, controlling, self righteous and arrogant people in existence, and it seems like that is the only common thing between us.
We may as well rip every scripture to do with love out of our bibles because we have raped the definition over and over again to the point where we perceive love the way the world perceives it. This makes me very sad. God’s love exists that we may experience it and let it live in us and expand our thinking and help us show grace to others, but we don’t seem to get it ourselves. We have moved so far from it because we have been taught so often that we are only allowed that love if we live right, but not a single one of us does.
AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!
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