Ep.981: What Makes a Church a “Good Church”?
Important foundation stones of a true Christian church
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CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Titus 2:11-12
Christians like most other people are creatures of habit. Although society has engineered dramatic changes in how we handle our lives, for many Christians the act of going to church remains a staple in their lives. We go to church to do what? Traditionally we have gone to learn about God, to have fellowship with those of like mind, to get away from the rat race of our lives and to remind ourselves about how to live in a Christlike fashion. Traditionally we have gone to church to reaffirm our faith – to strengthen ourselves to better stand for our core beliefs. As I said, times have changed...now it seems as though many of us go to church for different reasons. In many instances church has become a place of neighborly activity, social acceptance, goodness, activities entertainment and fun. Church is now a nice place to go to feel good about myself. So, are these changes unhealthy or bad? What’s wrong with feeling good about myself? What makes a church a really good church?
To get to the bottom of such a basic question we really have to decide whose answer we want to focus on. We could go with a broad-based opinion poll and find out what random Christians think makes one church better than another. At first glance this might sound like a good way of doing things, as we would be considering the thoughts and impressions of many who name the name of Christ. This approach would certainly provide an answer, but that answer would be fundamentally flawed as it would have its basis in what random Christians FEEL. While feelings are important to recognize and acknowledge, they should NOT be central in our understanding of what makes a church “good.”
If we don’t base our thinking on what Christians think and feel, what do we base it on? The Bible, specifically the New Testament. Think about it, the New Testament is the place where we find what the apostles did to set up “church” meetings and fellowship and how they did it. We can see where they met, how they were organized, what was important, who was in charge and how they got to be in charge. Now we might think that what the apostles did and how they did it is over 2,000 years old and certainly needs an overhaul to catch up with our digital age. Their way is surely outdated and no longer relevant – right?
Um, not so much…the apostles taught us the fundamentals of what God requires of each and every Christian and built the “church” structure around those fundamentals. Surely we don’t believe that just because we live here and now in a world of technology and advanced knowledge that God would require something different of us, do we? Check out our July 31, 2017 podcast, “What Makes a Church a Good Church?” and see just how relevant the teachings of the apostles are to our present day. The biblical answers to what makes a church "good" will probably surprise you. At the very least, I promise they will make you think about what you can personally do to make your own “church” experience far more valuable!
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Ep.980: Does Our Pride Make Us Prejudiced? (Part II)
The permeating destruction of prejudice and how to counter it
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CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Proverbs 16:18
Last week we began our conversation by saying that pride can be a tricky thing and prejudice can be an awful thing. We focused our attention on the pride side of the matter and its insidious way of taking over our lives. Now it’s time to talk about prejudice, and this is a hard conversation to have. For most of us, we can observe what we think is prejudice in others. We see a skewed view on some group or approach and we think about how unfortunate it is and wonder why they cannot see a bigger picture. Well, the bigger picture begins with these questions: How prejudiced am I in my view of the world and of others approach? Am I willing and able to recognize prejudice in my own thinking, and when I see it am I willing to attack it with the same passion that I feel about the prejudice of others? Prejudice needs attention and eradication, no matter where it’s found. How do we do that?
To even think about eradicating prejudice is monumental. Prejudice exists and comes to be in so many different ways that it is hard to know where to start. Think about it – we are all born into less than perfect circumstances with less than perfect parents who have had less than perfect experiences in their lives, sometimes due to their own less than perfect parents. The point is that imperfection breeds misunderstanding in our lives about what happens to us. This misunderstanding often breeds a mislabeling of what our experiences or other people actually mean and stand for and this leads us to a confused conclusion about it all. The end result is personal prejudice and this prejudice not only lives in us it ends up being a conclusion that we fight to protect. Kinda scary and kinda confusing, isn’t it?
Ok, now what? Well, I think the best way to understand and combat prejudice is to do two things. First we have to be willing to look inside of ourselves and honestly assess our own thinking, conclusions and positions against true and clear biblical principles of love, mercy, compassion and justice. By making ourselves the focal point of our prejudice investigation we are automatically removing some of our fallen natural propensities to judge – to potentially misjudge others. The second way to combat prejudice is to listen to someone who has fought this battle successfully. This is an enormous step to take because if you find the right example it will bring shivers of inspiration to you. We found such an example.
Our July 24, 2017 podcast, “Can Our Pride Make Us Prejudiced? Part 2” features the detailed story of a young woman who was born into, grew up and embraced the harsh and hateful belief system of the Westboro Baptist Church. In a TED Talk, she detailed her journey from being a five-year-old on a picket line holding a hateful sign that she couldn’t even read to her decision 20 years later to completely walk away. Her story epitomizes the power of true human compassion, and coupled with scriptural principle, it shows us how to stand up and fight against prejudice. You need to hear this. Everyone needs to hear this. Please take the time and then please pass it on!
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Ep.979: Does Our Pride Make Us Prejudiced? (Part I)
The disabling and devastating effects of pride on our everyday life
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CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Proverbs 16:18
Pride can be a tricky thing and prejudice can be an awful thing. Let’s focus on pride right now. On the one hand we are told to take pride in our work – well, at least when I was a kid that’s what I was told! We want to be proud of our children and to be proud of our country. We want to take pride in the things we own and we want to leave a legacy that we can be proud of. So, pride is good! Well, on the other hand, we can see how pride comes before destruction, how pride can skew our view of others and how pride creates temptation to be dishonest. We can see pride becoming obsession, and we can see how pride can create a lack of trust in others, a lack of compassion for others and a lack of credit to others. So, pride is bad! Obviously this is a subject that needs not only clear definitions but clear principles to establish clear thinking. There is only one solution – let’s see what the Bible says!
Even though pride has both a positive side and “the dark side,” you don’t get that message at all when you look at the Bible. In Scripture, “the dark side” of pride is most often featured and you rarely ever see a Scripture that even hints at the positive kind of pride. This may come as a surprise to many. After all, we are always talking about the Bible as our text book for life so it would seem appropriate that it show us how to have the right kind of pride in contrast to the wrong kind, right? Well, sort of. First of all we need to remember what the Bible is and why it was written. The Bible is both history and prophecy as well as a textbook of God’s dealing with humanity. It shows us His greatness and His plan. It really is all about Him as our Almighty Creator. The Bible details many of the wanderings of humanity as a result of sin and is always teaching us to circle back to focusing on God. You see its main message is to look up to Him in humility and put aside our own ways to adopt His. No room for pride!
In the midst of this looking up to God that the Bible teaches us, it thoroughly destroys the idea of “the dark side” of pride. It details pride’s insidious behavior, objectives and methods and teaches us how to first recognize them and then how to battle them. It teaches us that this battle is long arduous and deeply important. It shows us examples of those who have gone wrong and it focuses us on those who have overcome. The Bible also does deal with the positive side of pride – but in a very unique fashion!
Check out our July 17, 2017 podcast, “Does Our Pride Make Us Prejudiced? Part 1" and see how all of these pieces fit together to fashion a positive and wholesome Christian life and how the positive side of pride actually fits in. And by the way, Part 2 comes the following week all about prejudice. Don’t even get me started on that one – not yet anyway!
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Ep.978: How Do You Manage Failure? Part II
How failures from weakness and choice derail us, and what to do
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CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Luke 22:32
Failure, as everyone knows, is an unlooked for and unwelcome commodity in life. It disrupts our plans, impedes our progress, upsets our feelings and is generally intrusive to our lives. As a result of failure’s glowing resume, we often do whatever we can to avoid it, and when we experience it we often try to soft-pedal its impact or even hide its presence. All in all, these descriptions of and reactions to failure are really quite unfortunate. Failure gets too bad a rap. It is judged too harshly. A few weeks ago we began a journey towards a better understanding of failure. In that journey we began to see the place that failure holds in our lives and the value that it can bring us. Let’s get back to it, for success begins when we understand our failures!
In Part 1 of this podcast we talked about failure due to a lack of knowledge and failure due to immaturity. When you think about it, these two types of failure are the easiest to deal with as they can be overcome in well defined ways. If you have a lack of knowledge, you just need to find the right knowledge for next time. If you are immature and fail the remedy is well defined but not necessarily easy. Grow up some and find success. Either way the path to success passes through the manageable obstacles of time, learning and practice.
The next two paths to failure are a different story. Next on the list is failure due to weakness. This is a situation where you already know better, you have already been able to do better but you fail anyway. This kind of failure is more personal, because it hits you in a way that can be embarrassing and humiliating. No more can you use the excuse that you didn’t know or you hadn’t yet learned. No, this time you have a more complete responsibility in the failure. Dealing with such failure requires not only greater humility but it also requires greater effort as now you not only have to add to your knowledge and experience base you now also have to take some things away in order to beat it. Not easy, not fun, but oh, so necessary.
Before introducing the next and by far the most difficult path to failure, we need to put the question out there – is our eternal destiny judged based upon our weaknesses? If you think the answer is yes, then I would ask you to listen in, as our conversation deals directly and scripturally with this, and our answer is different. Most importantly, we believe our answer is biblically sound.
Finally, we explored the most difficult type of failure - failure due to choice. Here we have and understand the knowledge we need to succeed, we are clearly mature enough to recognize and follow the path to success and we have proven to be strong enough to get through the obstacles along our way. The trouble is...we don’t want to. We decide on a different path and a different approach that suits our ego and preference. What then? Check out our July 10, 2017 podcast, “How Do You Manage Failure? Part 2" and find out. This really is a “need to know” matter!
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Ep.977: Does America Show Us the Nature of God?
The God-honoring foundation of America’s National Parks
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CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Romans 1:20
241 years ago the course of world history changed. On July 4th, 1776, the 13 colonies adopted The Declaration of Independence, proclaiming to be "The United States of America."
Since then the United States has risen to become a world power and has been the source of many amazing world innovations. One innovation that seems to never be talked about or even noticed is this country's profound contribution to recognizing, appreciating and preserving the wonders of the natural landscape. Nature. It covers the world with its intricate complexity, unfathomable beauty and breathtaking majesty. For most of us, our park system doesn’t feel like an innovation. It feels like a common, scarcely noticed commodity. "Yeah, we have national parks – cool." Today we stop for a moment and ask how did these national parks come to be? What was the motivation for their existence? What does all of this have to do with Almighty God?
To help us drill down to understanding the connection between God and the American National Park System (and yes, there is a BIG connection), we brought in friend of CQ – Tom Gilbert. Tom is a devoted Christian who spent his adult life working for the National Park System. He knows a thing or two about its history and objectives. What he revealed about how these parks came to be was not only fascinating but surprising as well. Before we crack open the door of proof (which our podcast on this subject clearly does), let's state a factual conclusion about the founding of our national parks: Christians were the main movers to develop America’s national parks and their primary reason for doing so was to make the wonders and awe-inspiring aspects of God’s creation accessible to the average American.
Think about that for a moment. These parks were preserved so America could praise and honor God as they observed the magnificence of the natural world! These parks were founded so we could see God in a whole different way than in the Bible. They were chosen lands to showcase nature in all of its pristine beauty. In those days the miracle of nature, commonly called “God’s Second Book,” was recognized on a national scale as an important part of what the United States of America stood for. These sentiments were not only seen in the establishment of our national parks but were heard in the verses of many American anthems. Look up the words to “America the Beautiful” and see what that song is really all about.
It is tragic how we today have truly lost sight of God and His role in our lives. We need to fight that tragedy. Start by checking out our July 3, 2017 podcast, “Does America Show Us the Nature of God?” Listening can only feed and strengthen your passion for the greatness of God. Once strengthened, go and ask some folks about the founding of America’s national parks. Then share with them the “why” behind it all. God speaks through nature, so let us speak of God through nature as well!
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