Loyal?

So first off to attribute credit where credit is due: Matthew Rock, please step up. I've been following his blog recently (i'll throw a link in at the bottom) and he's been discussing of late just exactly who we should be loyal too as Christians. 

We had TAKS today. It was boring and lame as usual yes, but it was Social Studies so the whole room finished in under and hour i'd say. After testing (i took a good nap though, an hour plus easily) we started watching legally blonde and i started to pay attention around the time they have the court scene where Brooke's daughter is about to get questioned by Elle Woods.  As the scene is introduced it show's Brooke's daughter swearing to tell the truth, hand outstreched over a Bible. Standard court procedure right?

but why?

I hope you'll agree with me that all humans just aren't truthful beings. There is a standard to be kept (however you define that) and no one has met it. If someone who had something to hide was put on the stand, would swearing over the Word of God really change their heart? I'd wager no. So why even keep the practice? We call ourselves a Christian nation, founded cheifly by the Puritans who came over long ago, but are we really still on track?

But that's not fully the road i want to wander down right now. The very fact that in this country you can go to court and be perceived as innocent is rare among all other countries. America gives us rights. But... here is the punchline. Should we be loyal to her?

Two thousand plus years ago when Christ came down from Heaven, did he ever once set out to establish ties to a political entity? no. I'm not promoting anarchy, for Jesus also did say to give to Caesar what is Caeser's. I'm talking about where our loyalties should lie. We say a pledge every morning to the glory of the U.S. of A. But we have no duty to her. when Jesus came he commanded us under the Great Commission to make disciples of all the nations. but hold on for a second and check out what the word nation really means. It does not refer to countries, but "people groups" if you will. A group of people who share common characteristics and practices. So when God told us to go out to the nations, he didnt mean send somebody to every country and then call it quits, he meant to go deeper into every smaller area of the world to tell of his good news, the Gospel.

The forgotten part of that verse i mentioned earlier: ...and give to God what is God's. God saved us from death. So are we not endebted to him first and foremost? I call for a reevalution of just exactly where we put our loyalties. It isn't necissarily a bad thing to be patriotic, but Jesus wasn't patriotic. He didn't give a rip. So don't we want to be like Jesus? When we cheer on America and support the "American Dream" don't we just advocate our superiority? is that not prideful?

 Jesus doesn't want us to be an American. 

He doesn't want us to be just a part of something cool, because no matter how successful you become, you will still be a number, a face in a sea of faces. Jesus wants us to be a part of something more than a political idealogoy. Christ wants us on his team, Children of God, men and women who seek after him and have a relationship with him that moves outward towards the people around them.

Next time we say the pledge think about what you're really saying. I've started not saying it of late to be honest. i don't see why we ever unquestionally threw ourselves at this entity we call Freedom in the first place. don't go throw your head into the sand and numb yourself to where you are in the world (location wise) but really take a second (right now would be a good time) and define freedom. define the land of the free. define brave. Here's mine:

Freedom: is 1 John 4:10 "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Because of that we are free to even live a full life.

The Land of the Free: Heaven, a place where sin no longer can touch us. We are white as snow and God rejoices over us for eternity.

Brave: Phil 3:14 (MSG) "...I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back." Bravery is living for Christ in a shattered world. and not just being a Christian, because that means nothing. I'm talking about following him with your heart and suffering for his cause.

I'll probably throw up more later. but tell me what you think about this

-matt

ps. the link to Matthew Rock's blog

http://matthewrock.theworldrace.org/?category=All_Articles

Automatic

Rather than sleeping like i should... i've decided to start blogging. Yeah, maybe not the wisest decision but tomorrow's only TAKS haha. I'm currently listening to Automatic by Stellarkart who i've recently been jamming to a lot recently. It's great stuff and just talks about pledging our allegiance to Christ.

Sure as a phoenix sunrise
And the yanks in the playoffs every year
You're absolutely faithful
I'm positively prone to disappear

But like I breathe
And my heart beats

I wanna love you like it's automatic
Make you into my good habit
You're the only one that really matters
Every minute everyday it's automatically ok
When I make it all about you

It's a mixed up messed up world with
An unsatisfaction guarantee

So I'm pledging my allegiance
To the one and only one
Who can set me free

Just like I breathe
And my heart beats

But I'm not a robot
Made with no thought
What's the point of living life without the will to choose
To run with the have nots
Or go with the sure shot
I'm with you

It's definitely not a complicated idea is it? Well at least when we look at it on a surface level. But deeper. Do we really want to love God automatically and make every day all about him? Of course not, we all have doubts. If we claim to never have doubted our faith it is a flat out lie. I'm not just being harsh here. The whole concept of a belief relies on the notion that we are going on faith and not on a more concrete object like sight. So when we have doubts, and we will, how do we get back to that cry?

I wanna love you like it's automatic. How do we get our hearts to instantly leap back to the Lord?

Let me hear some of your thoughts on that. I recall a passage from 1 Kings, more specifically Chapter 19 Verse 15. It's not a hallmark i'm-super-spiritual-memorize-me verse, but it simply says that Elijah went back the way he came. The preface to it: Elijah had been running from his enemies who were out to kill him because he totally pwned their entire religious system by killing all of their pagan priests and showing them a clear picture of God's awesome power and faithfulness. But when Elijah got scared and fell away from God, he went right back to where he came from.

God doesn't let us run away from our problems. He amps us up to be prepared to face them. And it usually isn't exactly in the way we expect. In the story of David and Goliath when David is preparing to face his foe, the King gives him all this armor and weaponry that is top-knotch and ready to wreck shop on anyone. That's how we think it should be done. Then God shows up, dresses David in his normal attire and sends him to take out the big man with a sling and a stone. (We think it to be fantasy most of the time, but actually it has been proven that a stone flung from a sling similar to David's would easily clear 90mph and totally smash a human skull to pieces.)

Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent right there cuz i was just listening to Ben earlier haha. But my point is this: We should want our love of God to be automatic. 1 John 4:10 says "and this is love, not that we loved God, but that he first loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." God has already loved us. We should want to love him. We have seen him do mighty works. We know that he is faithful. But why do we make our commitment to him a 50/50 deal? Our lives should scream Take All of Me!

longer than i had thought, but hey God laid it on my heart

-matt

Religious Symposium

Just got back from a Religious Symposium that was hosted at Klein by our Islamic club KIT. I gotta say it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be and I defintely learned a lot about other religions I didn't know. just ask me about it sometime.

the cool part for me was that the way the meeting was run each religion had a 5 minute segment to explain to the audience (a bit less than 100 ppl were there i'd say) what they believed. I got to go third following the Muslims and Catholics (they divided Christianity up into Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Mormons<-- more about them later). I took my segment to simply spread the Gospel, below is a bit of my notes...

· God created the world and it was good, it was in a state of perfect harmony and peace, shalom
· Man sinned against God, we disobeyed what he had commanded and we broke the perfect peace and left the world twisted and broken

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

· God out of his mercy and love and NOT out of anything we have done or could ever do came to save the world.
o Because we sinned against God and he is just and requires perfection there was NO WAY for man to get to him, not even by trying to follow ALL of his commands as closely as one can
· Jesus Christ came to earth
o Christ was God in the flesh,
Col 1:15 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”
o Christ came for the lost, the lonely, the refuse, the worthless and called them worthy
o He then was murdered. he was beaten til he was unrecognizable and hung on a cross to die even though he lived a perfect life and had wronged no one.

AND THIS IS THE GOSPEL
That although we did nothing to warrant it, Christ came to earth and bore our sins to the grave, dying for all that we had done as a sacrifice. Christ literally BECAME the sins of the world. The sacrifice of his blood, we are washed of our sins forever and declared blameless by God who sees not our wrongs but the one right, Jesus’ death. We were forgiven of all our sins, past, present, and future. By his death God made us right in his sight, Christ became the only bridge across chasm between man and God, allowing all who believe in him to experience eternal life in heaven at His right hand.

I had morre verse that i used like Mark 10:45, Matthew 12:34, 1 Cor 10:13 but that was my basic framework, i elaborated more as i talked. anyhow, It honestly has been way to long since I seriously was able to share the Gospel and to have an open forum like that was really great. The emphasis that I tried to support was that unlike other religions, Christianity is not a religon. Its a relationship with Christ. and that as good as we strive to be an as many things we do, we will never ever ever be good enough to be with God because he is holy and we are fallen. It was a bit humbling to study up on this message and really start to take to heart the fact that we are NOT good enough, and we never will be. I thank God for that.

I also began to understand other religions more. It finally made since that the crazy terrorists in the Middle East are in no way associated with Islam, they're just a sect that claims to be a part of it and Muslims are not extremists like those few are. And i never really considered that Buddhism or Hinduism were really still around to day or exactly what it looked like in a 21st cenutry setting, so I enjoyed hearing about that. Then came the Mormons.... We have some major differences in theologoy and they don't believe in the Trinity and also claim that above all God just wants us to be happy, whether or not that brings him the most glory. (Mormon's please correct me if I am incorrect but this is what I heard at the symposium) It was a bit ironic that the Mormons and the Christians sat on opposite sides of the pannel. But i learned a bit more about their beliefs and am able to affirm more today that they do not believe in the same Gospel that we Christians do. I also found some other interesting things about other religions, i.e. Muslims believe you don't have to be Islamic to reach heaven.

We answered some questions and the only one directed towards me was the question, "Why are there so many translations of the Bible?" which I think i did a good job answering. I went back and talked about the history of the Bible saying that it was written originally in three different languages, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew (I actually said Latin instead of Aramaic, whoops, but a friend did correct me.) And then I proceded to describe the methods that the more recent translations use mentioning that they all communicated the same thing but just used different wording (I should have mention a verse in two different translations here but I didn't think of it at the time, but I'll be ready next time.) such as the ESV being translated as more of a word-for-word translation and the NIV was based more of a thought-for-thought method. I made sure I emphasized that they said the same thing though, didn't want to wind up looking like we make up the wording we like best.

I'm sure there's more but thats what's coming out right now. Above all yall
ROMANS 1:16
I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL FOR IT THE POWER OF SALVATION FOR ALL WHO BELIEVE, FIRST FOR THE JEW THEN FOR THE GENTILE.
rep him always guys, peace
-matt