What does it mean to “take up your cross”?

Posted on September 21, 2010 by admin

The believer’s cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness or tension – the bearing of which is demanded. The believer’s cross must be, like his Lord’s, the price of social nonconformity. It is not like sickness or catastrophe – which is inexplicable and unpredictable suffering. It is an the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing the Way in an unwilling world. -John Howard Yoder

The question I ask in the title of the blog has been asked since Jesus spoke those words 2,000 years ago. This quote resonated with me, in that uncomfortable, I-don’t-want-believe-it kind of way. Taking up your cross is a choice to look different in a world that begs to fit in.

Posted in Bible Thoughts | 15 Comments

Reviewing a Life Application Bible Study – 1, 2 & 3 John

Posted on September 15, 2010 by admin

So I recently received the 1, 2, & 3 John Life Application Bible Study
from Tyndale for review. It’s a little hard to review since it’s not an actual book…but it does look like it could come in very handy. I’ll be honest, I did not read through the entire thing, but I think a cursory skim gets the job done.

The benefits:

  • It’s small. This mean’s it is super easy to carry around. If you wish to study one book of the Bible, these little guys are the way to go.
  • It includes the full text of the Scriptures, plus WAY more background and notes than you get in your average study Bible.
  • It also includes 12 unique Bible study layouts for you to use in a small group setting (or personal use, should that be your cup of tea).

Again, this book (booklet, really) is only 70 pages and super thin. Sure beats the heck out of carrying around a massive study Bible with you everywhere you go. I will most definitely consider purchasing this type of item if and when I am ever needing some extra research on one book of the Bible. Way to go Tyndale!

P.S. I know this post feels very commercial.. It’s not. I get the book for free, but am under no obligation to give a positive review. If I hated it, I could tell you and keep getting books for free. I promise.

Posted in Book Reviews | Leave a comment

The Piety of Prayer

Posted on September 14, 2010 by admin

I’ve recently noticed something about prayer. At least the prayer that I grew up with and still mostly encounter up to this day. Please note that these thoughts include myself as well. I am just as guilty as the next person, and the purpose of this post is to journey together and learn what it means to converse with our Creator.

Prayer has become an incredibly pious act. Basically, that means it has become super religious. It does not look or feel like a conversation. What do I mean?

Here are some observations from the last time I prayed with a group of people:

  • We bow our heads. Yes, this is sometimes out of reverence, but most the time for me it is either habit or fear of looking someone in the eye during prayer.
  • Our voices get significantly quieter. I wonder why this is. Again, it could be reverence. But maybe we are simply not confident enough in our prayers to speak them loudly.
  • We become extremely solemn. Are we always sad when we pray?
  • We are afraid of laughter in prayer. I believe that God loves laughter. Yet when it happens during prayer, it is almost seen as a bad thing or as a distraction to the real intent.

What do you think? Have you noticed these things?

I want to experiment with prayer.

When I converse with my Heavenly Father I want to speak in a normal tone, like I would speak to a friend.

I want to be able to laugh and tell God good jokes I hear and funny things that happened during the day. I want to even give Him praise for those things, because He is the Creator of laughter.

I want to keep my eyes open, and my head held high so that I can see and acknowledge His beautiful Creation as I speak with Him.

Will you experiment with me?

Will you help me rescue prayer from piety?

Posted in Prayer | 18 Comments

I Will Not Be a World Changer

Posted on September 7, 2010 by admin

I recently finished a great book called Culture Making by Andy Crouch.

It’s all about how Christians engage culture and how we are to respond to culture.  His main argument is that the only truly effective way to do so is to actually be creating new cultural goods and environments. I just want to focus here, though, on one small point he made that made me think quite a bit.

Crouch correctly pointed out our desire to be people who change the world. This is especially true of my own generation of twenty-somethings. We are extremely ambitious, which definitely has its pros and cons. It’s good that we want to take initiative with things, but it can also be a little destructive when we settle for nothing less than changing the world.

In reality, however, we cannot change the entire world. By simple fact, that statement cannot be true. Some would say the Internet has changed the world, and yes, the Internet has changed the vast majority of the world, but there are still billions of people that do not even have Internet access.

What we can change is our world. We can and do have profound influence on the cultures we are a part of and that is ultimately what we must focus on. Take me for example: I have influence at The Gateway Church,  America’s Family Coaches (employer #1), InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (employer #2), Grinnell College, Des Moines and within my family and friends groups.

Within those groups, I have the ability change culture. Whether or not it goes beyond those places that I have direct contact with is completely beyond my control. You see if we focus on changing the world, our sights are too big to know where or how to start. We must concentrate on the things that are right in front of us, and slowly our ability to influence and change grows.

I will not be a world changer.

But I will be an influencer within my social location.

Posted in Book Reviews, Life | 14 Comments

Where Can Wisdom Be Found?

Posted on August 23, 2010 by admin

Everywhere. (That’s the answer to the question.)

Proverbs 1:20-21

Wisdom calls aloud in the street,
she raises her voice in the public squares;
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out,
in the gateways of the city she makes her speech.

So, I’ll ask again. Where can wisdom be found? This time, I’ll let Scripture speak for itself: “In the street…In the public square…in the gateways of the city.” Basically, all over the place.

Wisdom is not ONLY found in Scripture. It can be found even in.. get ready for it.. secular culture (gasp!). God created culture, right? He is the Creator of all things, even if we have perverted most, if not all, of them. This means, that at their core, must cultural goods have some semblances of wisdom within them. Yes, maybe you have to dig through lots of junk, but it’s there. Now obviously some bits of culture lack wisdom in and of themselves (pornography, tanks, etc), but there are many lessons to be learned simply by their existence.

If we cannot find wisdom in every sphere of life, perhaps we aren’t looking hard enough. Maybe we’ve put our blinders on and become arrogant enough to think that wisdom is only found in “Christian” things. I have news for you: everything, at its base,  is “Christian”. God created literature. God created art. God created motion pictures. God created food and automobiles and pretty much everything else as well. As I mentioned above, people have simply someone managed to mess it all up.

Wisdom can be found if we look for her.

She can even be found in the latest New York Times bestseller and last weekend’s number one box office hit.

Love and Peace,
Jeremy

Posted in Bible Thoughts | 11 Comments

The Globally Aware Christian

Posted on July 30, 2010 by admin

I’m gonna go ahead and say that Christians are generally less aware of what’s happening in the world around them than other people. That’s my experience at least. You may have a different experience, and if so, I’d love to hear it. I would say this also true of my generation in general. Part of it is simply the environment of college. It’s kind of inherently this bubble of ignorance that shields us from the reality of the world. Now that I’m out of that, I’ve discovered how necessary it is for all people to be aware of the news.

Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but I don’t think so. Shane Claiborne has said that Christians should be a people who hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. We are to be a people who respond to the events happening around us. During the great plague in Europe, Christians were known as the people who stuck around with those who were quarantined, even at the high risk of death. They cared for the masses, and became known as the people who saved. This is actually where the term “saved” comes from. Those Christ-followers saw a need, and responded. They did not just share the Gospel with the sick, they did the Gospel with the sick.

What are the events happening in the world right now that we must respond to? Immigration? It’s bound to be one of the hottest topics for debate in the next five years. The Bible tells us all over the place to welcome the foreigner and the stranger as one of our own. I don’t want to start a debate here and now, but how are we to respond? The Catholic church has responded beautifully, I think, and has made it known that their churches in the south will be open as sanctuaries for those who need it.

What about the oil spill? How are we to respond? What about the fact that more oil is spilled in Nigeria nearly every year than was spilled in the Gulf of Mexico? Clearly this is not what God had in mind for His creation.

There are countless other examples that I could point to. What if we spent less time with our heads down and nose pointed in our Bible and more time responding to the news with our Gospel in hand? (Don’t turn this around and say I don’t think it’s good to read the Bible. If you know me, you know that’s not true.)

Personally, I’ve semi-committed to just reading the news for a half hour or so every day. I make sure to not just scan CNN, but world headlines. America, contrary to popular belief, is not the center of the world. Awareness is the first step. In order to respond, we must first know what’s happening around us.

Will you join me in making an effort to be more globally aware?

Love and Peace,
Jeremy

Posted in Current Events | 13 Comments

Adjusting to Post-College Life

Posted on July 27, 2010 by admin

I’m sitting here in my dining room at 11:25am on a Tuesday. In sweat pants. Looking out the window as cars go by. This apparently, is what life after college is like.

Now I know that’s not true. But right now, for me, it is. I have two part-time jobs, one of them being mostly work from the home should I choose. It’s strange.

It’s strange to not have my friends by my side 24 hours a day.

It’s strange to not have every hour of my day planned out.

It’s strange that I can take time to relax on a regular basis and not feel guilty about it. (Still workin on this one.. I was trained for four years to think that relaxing meant you were getting behind.)

It’s strange getting paid to do things I used to do in my free time like checking blogs and social media, studying the Bible, writing, etc.

What was your hardest adjustment from post-college life?

Posted in Life | 16 Comments

Follow Me To Freedom

Posted on July 12, 2010 by admin

Didn’t realize it had been so long since I last blogged. Sorry about that. I just finished reading Follow Me to Freedom by Shane Claiborne and John Perkins. I did not receive it for free, so this is not a disclaimer. I actually bought it for a paper I wrote back when I was still in college (like three months ago) and I just finished it. (Come on, we all know that we’ve written papers for books we didn’t actually finish.)

It’s a really good book. It’s all about leadership and followership. I love the format, which is just a series of conversations between the two men ranging in just about everything from prayer to civil disobedience. Like all of Claiborne’s other books, it has the potential to mess you up inside. He challenges most assumptions Christians have about leadership and dwells in the land of gray (as opposed to seeing things in black and white).

Although they cover a variety of topics, the one thing that purveys throughout the entire book is theme of leaders entering into the pain and suffering of their followers. Christian leaders have almost tended to be too protected from their own people by board room meetings and planning committees. A great leader, the authors suggest, is someone who can deeply relate to the suffering of his/her people. Jesus was the ultimate example of this in coming to us to be a servant, not some highly exulted “leader”. God chose death for our sake. We must do the same. If we really want to be leaders, we must kill our selfishness and see the needs of those around us.

I loved this book because it really did read like a conversation. I had the privilege of hearing these great men speak together at a conference, and I could hear their voices as I flipped the pages. I had a hard time underlining things because you obviously can’t underline someone speaking.

Read it. It might not change your life, but it’ll probably at least make you think, which I’m sure is exactly what Claiborne and Perkins are hoping for.

Some snippets just from Chapter 1:

  • Movements require deep faith and revolutionary patience.
  • Jesus was always available and attentive to the interruptions and surprises. He was never so fixed on His vision for the Kingdom that He missed the folks right next to Him.
  • Before we can lead we need to have confidence in God.
  • There must first be leaders who can imagine a different world from the one in which they live.
  • The content of your character will determine the caliber of your relationships.
  • Stashing away our resources is not how we’re supposed to live. The best way to take away money’s power is to give it away. Keep doing that, and eventually it won’t be worth much.

Love and Peace,

Jeremy

P.S. If you don’t recognize the name of John Perkins, you should. Wikipedia him here. It doesn’t do a justice to his life, but he did incredible things for the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60s. He’s an 80-year-old man and the humility enough to write a book with a young dude who makes his own clothes. That is awesome.

Posted in Book Reviews | 19 Comments

Finding Purpose Beyond Our Pain

Posted on June 21, 2010 by admin

This is a book review for Finding Purpose Beyond Our Pain by Paul Meier and David Henderson. I received it as part of Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze program. I am in no way required to give a positive review.

Honestly, I wasn’t looking forward this book. The title killed it for me. I’m in a pretty good place in my life right now and I’m not experiencing any overwhelming pain or depression. I figured I would read it when and if that time came. The book was sitting on my shelf though, so I figured I’d skim it and give it a shot.

What I learned, mostly psychologically, was deeply beneficial. The authors both have their MDs and it shows. They bring incredible insight into what it means to feel pain and how to not only move beyond it, but find God’s purpose in it. Most of us, whether we admit it (or even realize it) are generally experiencing some form of pain in our everyday lives. It can be anything from the injustice in our world (BP oil spill, for example) to the simple feeling of worthlessness that comes over us when we waste a few precious hours of time.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of pain, I think of the big things. One of the biggest things in overcoming any pain, however, is realizing that we are actually experiencing it. Sometimes this is especially hard for Christians to do. We are so caught up in being the light of the world that we often just rush by the hurt in our lives. We also have this fear of admitting to people that we’re not in a good place, because Christians are obviously just supposed to have everything pulled together all the time. To really be light, though, requires that we know ourselves and know what God says and promises about pain. Here’s a hint: you probably won’t like what He has to say.

Reading this book not only gave me insight into my life right now, but I know has helped prepare me for the pain that will someday come. It’s inevitable, and I am okay with that…because I’m ready.

Love and Peace,
Jeremy

Posted in Book Reviews | 2 Comments

Where the heck is Grinnell, Iowa?

Posted on June 16, 2010 by admin

Grinnell, Iowa is a small town of about 10,000 people. It is almost exactly one hour straight east of Des Moines, where I will continue to live. Part of being an IV intern versus full-time staff is that you have another part-time job on the side. I’ll be putting in 15-20 hours a week on campus at Grinnell, and another 15-20 hours a week at my internship in Des Moines. Logistically, it’s a slight pain in the butt, but I couldn’t be more excited about this opportunity!

Grinnell College was founded in 1846 and was the first institute of higher learning west of the Mississippi. It is a private, liberal arts school with only around 1,500 students. It is regularly regarded as one of the best academic institutions in the entire country, and in 2004 was actually voted the “Best All-Around College” by Newsweek.

Grinnell is known for its academic rigor and passion for social activism. As I’m sure you can imagine, Christianity is not the norm on this small campus even though it is situated nicely in the Bible Belt. It is also an incredibly diverse school. Of the 15 students I’ve met so far, only two were local Iowans. Otherwise they were from Oregon, New Mexico, Texas, Maryland, Taiwan, Ohio and many other places I’m forgetting.

At Drake, the default religious stance seems to be “Christian”. At Grinnell, it seems to be “Atheist” or “Spiritual, but not Religious”. This might make my task of campus minister seem difficult, but I’m rather excited for it. It means that those who do claim Christianity aren’t doing so out of social pressure or conformity, but genuine love for Christ.

These students who are part of IV at Grinnell are hungry for Jesus, and it is my hope and prayer that I’ll be able to bring my skills to this chapter and help students be transformed.

Tomorrow of Friday I’ll give some more details about the chapter at Grinnell and more specifically what a couple of my roles will be.

Love and Peace,
Jeremy

Posted in InterVarsity | 18 Comments