Healthy Sinning?

There was an article on MSN’s newspage recently that was entitled: “Why Being Bad is Good for You.” And, after that, it got worse. When I clicked on the link (as soon as I read the title I immediately thought to myself, “You need to read this and see what they’re talking about, because it is probably worldly wisdom that is in no way Godly wisdom,” and I was right) the page that it went to entitled the slideshow “7 Healthy Sins.”

I proceeded to move through 7 photos depicting 7 sins, which each had a paragraph or two attached explaining how the sin was healthy. The article talked about how things like gossiping, and envy, and swearing (just to name the first 3) can be healthy for you and should be encouraged in moderation. I read the author’s comments, and I agree that their thoughts were very logical, and (from a worldly perspective) they seem very wise.

However, I am not looking from a worldly perspective. Nor am I interested in gaining a worldly perspective. The point of view that I value says:

He who conceals his hatred has lying lips,

and whoever spreads slander is a fool.

When words are many, sin is not absent,

but he who holds his tongue is wise.

The tongue of the righteous is choice silver,

but the heart of the wicked is of little value. (Proverbs 10:18-20, NIV)

… and:

A heart at peace gives life to the body,

but envy rots the bones. (Proverbs 14:30)

… and a ton of other passages against these and other sins that the world would try to tell you are really no big deal. 

The problem (once again, and as always) is that those who don’t know God don’t get it. For example, let’s stick with the topic of gossip. The article suggests that gossiping now and then relieves stress. Now, it is true that holding your feelings and frustrations and anger in until you pop is not healthy. You need to be able to work things out, and sometimes that means talking things out. However, that does not require gossip. The right perspective makes all the difference. If I really care about someone, then I should be able to talk to them about the problem. If I am not close to the person, then I should be able to let their words slide off my back. Either way, no need for gossip.

As I deal with kids and teenagers almost every day at work and at church, similar issues of complaining, tattling, whining, gossiping about others happens all the time. And almost without exception, I tell them the same thing: I don’t want to hear about the other person. I don’t want to encourage gossip by encouraging them to share it with me. I do want to help them work on their own issues. They can’t change the other person. But they can work on changing their responses. That’s where I move them to.

Do you knowingly and willingly allow sin into your life because someone somewhere convinced you its healthy? Do you indulge in guilty pleasures? Do you do something, or eat something, with a small smile as you think or even say out loud that what you’re doing is ‘bad’?

What do you think God thinks of that? Talk to Him about it. He’ll forgive you and He’ll help you with it. And I promise you that you’ll be much healthier than those people who gossip to let off steam.

noteworthy

I (Sherann) was cleaning out my desk today when I stumbled across this post-it note.  Not really sure when i wrote this, but this is what it says:
if we spend our time reading, acknowledging, watching, and posting about the Hunger Games on fb... then wouldn't it be awesome if we spent time reading, meditating, and acknowledging His Word?  As I stated before, I'm not sure why i scribbled this, but IF we can adamantly post about the Hunger Games or anything else that consumes us for that matter, then why.. why don't we adamantly post or talk about what God is doing in and through our lives?  Why do we value the temporal rather than the eternal?  Why do we make idols and not surrender to the One who truly deserves our absolute allegiance?  Truth is...we are human.  we make mistakes, we lie, we cheat, we are selfish, we are greedy, we are everything that causes us to bring a great division between a HOLY, PURE, RIGHTEOUS God who doesn't even have an ounce of sin in Him.  We... are unworthy.  But to the Father... we are worthy.  Worthy enough that He would choose to send His ONE and ONLY Son into the world; taking on every characteristic and physical attributes just like you and just like me. And as the Word became flesh, He "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Phil 2. 6b-8)
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Jesus who became human humbled himself to die a horrible death for... me? a human?  Yeah. He did.  Why?  Because He loves you.
Let me make something clear.  I'm not going against the Hunger Games (I really enjoyed the trilogy). But, let me ask you...What are you consumed with?  Who are you talking about the most?  Perhaps, the girl sitting across the room or the guy that sits next to you in 3rd period?  If you think about it... whoever or whatever you talk or think about will reveal what you value the most.

I love this verse found in Psalm 145.5-6, which states:
 "On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.  They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness."

I don't know about you, but I want to do just that!  I want to meditate, speak, and declare His great Name! What about you? 

At the end of the day, He is worth it. And noteworthy.


soli deo gloria.

check out this awesome video by Jimmy Needham

                    

A Challenge to Challenge

Can we talk about God’s Word again? Just briefly. Cause then I'm gonna give you a  challenge to go out and do!

I know. I (Aimee) have mentioned reading the Bible many times. And Sherann has mentioned it many times. What can I say?! His Word is good!

I just feel like I need to say this. Lately, I’ve been hearing about a lot of painful things happening in the lives of people around me. People that I love very much. And I just keep thinking that if they just read the Bible, that they would find the comfort that they’re looking for.

I know it isn’t always that cut and dry. And I’m that Sherann is the only one of my friends who reads her Bible. But, lately, I have had a friend confide in me, and I’ve noticed that it directly connects with what I just read in the Bible that morning. Or it connects with what I read the following morning. And, of course, I’m sharing what I read. But I still keep thinking: if more of them spent time reading His Word, they’d see it for themselves.

I’d like to offer you a challenge. In fact, it’s a challenge to challenge others. I challenge you to challenge your friends to read the Bible. If you really believe that the Word of God can do them nothing but good, then this challenge should be no big deal.

For our youth group, the other leaders and I are preparing a Bible-Read-A-Thon for our kids this summer. We are challenging them to read the Word. They will earn money for every page that they read and that money will go to help them pay for camp at the end of the summer. 

What can you do to encourage those around you to read their Bible more? What ideas do you? Share them with us all here or on our Facebook page.

But most importantly: read your Bible. Share it with others. And challenge them to read also.

Prayer for the Nation(s)

Last Thursday was the National Day of Prayer. I (Aimee) had to work, so I wasn’t able to attend any of the lunch time events that were happening around in different cities (Oh yeah! It’s a whole big thing. Google it and you’ll see that events happen all over the place). Instead, in my small group that meets Thursday nights, we spent time in prayer. And then, our pastor talked to us about leading prayer in church that coming Sunday.

So, Sunday morning, I and five other young adults stood up one at a time and led our church in prayer. We started with our community, then grew to include Southern California. Then we prayed for each of the continents. 

It was powerful. There is so much need all over the world, we had so much to share about each of our regions, and I’m sure that we each could have shared more than we did (personally, I probably only shared about half of all of the information that I gathered). 

Spiritual warfare is happening everywhere. Darkness is fighting for control everywhere. And we can sit by and do nothing, pretend nothing is wrong, and go about our lives as if everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. OR, we can acknowledge that this world is not the way that it’s supposed to be, we can allow our hearts to break for the suffering in the world, and we can lift them up in prayer.

Have you ever tried praying for strangers? I promise that it’s only weird at first. Like with everything else, and just like with prayer in general, it gets easier with time. 

I want to encourage you to pray for the nations. Start with your own community and work your way out. City, to state, to country, to continent … and on and on. You don’t even have to know the details of what’s going on to be able to pray. You already know that there’s suffering, brokenness, hunger, disease, crime, etc. Pray for comfort. Pray for hope. Pray that God would lift up His followers to go out to the needy, whether their across the world, across the country, or across the street. 

We’re all called to missions. Did you know that? I learned that about 10 years ago. We aren’t all called to leave our homes and go out overseas. But we are all called to reach out to the broken people of this world who don’t know Jesus. That’s what missions work is. And that can be in your own hometown. And it can begin with prayer (in fact, prayer should be all over!).

I would also encourage you to do some research to open your eyes to what’s going on in the world around you. Operation World is a good place to start (www.operationworld.org).

Then … pray! And look at what God will do!

Confirmation

For several reasons, I (Aimee) have been home most of this week rather than out working. I’ve spent the time working on my writing and doing different projects for my church. Perhaps nothing terribly exciting for anyone but me. And that’s ok. Cause what it’s meant is that I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with the Lord this week. 

Reading my Bible at my leisure.

Taking time to stop and pray.

Praising Him with music.

It’s been pretty powerful. One of the neatest things that has come out of all of this has been that I’ve been able to encourage Sherann. 

As I’ve been going about my different activities I kept coming across things that made me think of Sherann. So I would send her a quick text message or a note on Facebook. The confirmation that she needed was being revealed to me so that I could share it with her, so that she could know that it was from God and not just her imagination.

Have you ever had that happen to you? Either you discovered that you were confirming something for someone else? Or God was confirming things directly to you?

What was it like? How did it make you feel?

Or are you ignoring His communications? Many of us are guilty of that from time to time, if not often.

If you’ve been looking for confirmation from God, but haven’t been getting it, then let me offer you a story. 

Once, there was a flood. Authorities told people to evacuate while they still had time. A man refused to leave his home. And he went inside and prayed for God to save him. “It’s ok,” he told his neighbors. “God will save me.”

The flood waters rose and the man went to the second floor of his home to escape the water. He sat by his window and prayed for God to save him. Just then, a rescue boat came by and offered to take the man away to safety. “No thanks,” he said to his would-be-rescuers. “God will save me.”

The flood waters continued to rise and the man was forced to his roof in order to avoid being swept away. He kneeled on his roof and prayed for God to save him. Just then, a rescue helicopter came by and offered to take the man away to safety. “No thanks,” he said to his would-be-rescuers. “God will save me.”

Then, the flood waters rose, the man was swept away and he died. The man went to Heaven. He approached the Lord and asked, “Lord, I prayed and prayed. Why didn’t you save me?”

The Lord answered him, “I told you to evacuate. I sent you a boat. AND I sent you a helicopter. You didn’t get the message!”

Are you getting His messages? Are you open to hearing from Him? Are you paying attention? He’s talking to you, I have no doubt. You just need to listen.

Sacrifice

As you might have noticed by now, Sherann and I haven’t posted anything in a while. We haven’t given up. We’ve just been … busy.

As for me, I’ve been consumed with thinking about sacrifice. What does it mean to sacrifice? How can I best honor God’s sacrifice for me? Knowing that God made a HUGE sacrifice on my behalf that I in no way deserve, what does that tell me about God?

Do you ever think about things like that? Do you ever stop to think about how much God loves you? How undeserving we all are of His love and His mercy, and yet He gives it to us willingly?

This year, World Vision offered a new series for Lent that dealt with sacrifice (www.worldvisionacts.org/lent2012). There were challenges and videos and art work and so much more than I want to take the time to list right now. For example, with a small group from my church we considered the definition of sacrifice. We thought about what in our lives could be sacrificed to bring us closer to God. What could we sacrifice to further the Kingdom of God.

Personally, I decided that sacrifice is tied to love. We don’t sacrifice for people or causes that we don’t love. I also realized that it’s generally connected to mercy and compassion. We sacrifice because we feel these things and want to make a difference for the people and/or the causes that we love. Also, sacrifice has to be voluntary, and it has to hurt. If someone makes you give, it’s not a sacrifice. If you give something that it doesn’t hurt you to lose, it isn’t sacrifice.

I’ve been struggling with this as I consider how much to sacrifice. All of me! Of course. But that’s not exactly what I mean. I definitely don’t need as much stuff as I have. And I’ve been working on get rid of stuff. But what about my clothes (of which I don’t have tons excess) or my books (which I use to draw closer to Him). It can be confusing. Especially when I consider how much more I have than so many others. And that some of my stuff holds me back because I fear losing it. The way I see it, that last one is a pretty good indication that I should get rid of things.

Do you ever struggle with materialism? Do you struggle with whether God would be pleased or disappointed with a purchase?

There are so many aspects to sacrifice: sacrifice of things, of time, of money, of me … All I know for sure is that I can never repay God for the sacrifice that He made for me. But I also know that I want to show Him how grateful I am every single day.

Time

 Did you know that near the end of his life, Moses gave the people of Israel the instruction to read the book of the Law out loud to everyone in the community every few years to ensure that everyone hears it and understands it? Did you know that this is not the only place where the people are told that they should read over the book of the Law on a regular basis?

God wants to be sure that His people are reading His Word so that they know what it is that He has told them to do, so that they can know Him better, and so that they can understand His love. 

With all of that said, how often do you open your Bible? Is it daily? A couple times a week? Sundays only? Not even Sundays?

Ok. Now I want you to think about something else…

Did you know that there are hundreds of countries around the world where people are subject to sanctioned theft, imprisoned, tortured, and/or killed simply because they were caught with a Bible, let alone if they were caught reading it? And most of these countries are poorer that us, which means that people are reading after working ridiculously long hours for ridiculously low pay just to put food on their tables for their families.

And you don’t have time to read your Bible?

Really?

If you read your Bible regularly, then I would ask that you pray for those who don’t and for those who are persecuted for it.

If you don’t read your Bible regularly, then I would suggest you pray about it and see what God has to say. But, if you just open your Bible and read, I think you’ll find His answer.