On The Box: Roberto: One of the Evangelist's Unsung Heroes

On The Box: Roberto: One of the Evangelist's Unsung Heroes: By Tony Miano The above photo was taken on July 19, 2008. The occasion was the annual City of Glendale, CA, Car Show. I had drawn a prett...

Girl, come on , help a guy out.

The Meaning of Life.

In the two church services I attended yesterday both pastors overlapped and preached about “relationships” well sort of. They were two different churches two different denominations. The one more “renewed” the other very conservative. (The second one is the one I attend and the first is where a distant friend of mine just began pastoring, it was his first sermon there)

Both preachers I consider as friends and both spoke the truth.

In this day and age everyone has turned their back on the people around them.
Yes, we say we love them, “Hey we talk to them’ but, do you know them? Do you love them?

My question and I believe the question they both would ask is if we are just
“Smile and wave Christians."

Do we really practice love or do we just give it lip service.

The first sermon out of Ephesians 4:11 and onwards went about how we as a church should be a community. Only if we are truly a community of believers will we love one another and that love will be seen by all.

The second sermon came out of Genesis 1. The title really grabbed my attention “The meaning of life.”

The whole point of the sermon was that the meaning of life is Relationship.

First and foremost it is relationship with God and then with God’s people. That is why we are here on this green spec floating in space. We are here to know God and have a relationship with him.

Our priorities are totally bent. With the busy schedules we are taken away from friend, family and God. Everything is competing for our attention, so being the silly people we are, we abandon the very reason we exists. We shaved away the time we spend on relationships and sell Christ and our families and Christian fellowship to the TV, hobbies, work and selfish preoccupation with self.

I think back fondly too times when I was all consumed by the helping and getting to know others, evangelising, counselling and just being with others. When you invest in others, in true relationship (doing without expecting or wanting anything back), that is when you are the happiest, when you forget about yourself and just place your time and priorities on the altar.

We are only able to give all if we know the one who gave it all, Christ. He gave it all so that we can be able to stand in a relationship with Him. Only if we drink at His fountain of friendship and love, will our broken container fill up with living water.

We will never be able to fill the broken containers around us, we will have to direct/carry them to the fountain and there help them be filled and by so doing we will be filled to the brim, overflowing.

Quick update.

Wow it has been long since I last blogged anything.

It has been hectic.

Finally I’m registered for my MA in New Testament studies, really looking forward to what I will learn. I will specialize in the Gospel of Mark.

 So yes expect to see a lot more posts about the Gospel of Mark.

I’m planning to study the historicity of Mark and “Mark based on eyewitness accounts.’

 So if you have any suggestions please let me know.

I have also been watching a lot of the Way of the Master’s stuff. I dream of the day when I will have the opportunity again to do some street evangelism.

Who believes in fairytales?

Atheists believe that Christians believe in fairy tales.

So who is the one believing in fairytales?

Atheists mostly ascribe to the Big bang theory. So some explosions happened billions of years ago, they believe?

So what exploded, what went bang if there was nothing? How do you get to billions of years, so time always existed?

There had to be something that exploded? Where did that something come from? You do know that science has established there was a starting point.

So how did it start and where did stuff that set of this origin come from?

So we are to believe “Chance+Nothing+Time= Everything”

For there to be Chance there has to be more than one option, so in what way was there options?

So what caused Chance to take a specific option?

So how did nothing change into something?

So how did Time come to be, seeing that basically we calculate our time by the earth’s movement? There were no planets to move before the bang.

So Chance cannot be without something.

So something cannot be without Chance.

So Time cannot be without something.

His way or the Highway.

Recently I have found that many "Christians" are dropping out of the race. One thing I have found common among most of them is the notion that "someday God will intervene" or "something spectacular will happen."

They will think of things like:

The ministry will open up, some sin will be dealt its final blow or maybe they will experience complete joy and peace. Most fall by the way side because they had some expectation that was never fulfilled.

It makes me think of the phrase “What dreams may come?” I still have no idea what is really meant by it but, it’s a sentence which can make you meditate for hours.

Every single person ever created dreams of “that someday…”

When that day never arrives or seem that it will never arrive we go into a tailspin of doubt, bitterness and anger. All these emotions becomes overwhelming and saturates our very being, until it spills over into our actions and it just can’t be contained anymore. This is when harsh things are done and said.

The root of the problem is our expectations which are influenced by our misunderstanding of what Christ has promised and how we live in a relationship with Him.

We might be convinced that God has given us some promise.To us personally or to Christians in general and we cling to it for dear life, only find that it’s the Titanic and we sink into despair.

Our hope is lost our anchors rope gets cut because we have built our faith on sand and not on Christ.

We create our own dream-world where our besetting sin is defeated once and for all, where the monster of depression is given the death blow, or the day the phones rings and you land your dream job.

Christ has won the final victory on the cross against sin, by breaking the separation that it created between man and God. He gave death its final blow when He rose from the dead.

He has poured our glasses full until overflowing.

Turning against God and tossing His word aside because we have not received what we perceived to be promised is childish and rooted in pride.

God has promised and He will deliver but, only that which he promised.

That besetting sin we struggle with is like the AA guy says, is never completely killed until you are. If you are an alcoholic you will be one until you die.

If you are inclined to lie, you will fight telling a lies for the rest of your life. If you yearn for more, greed will always stalk you. If you lust has bitten you the poison will always be in your system.

While we are in this world we will always be surrounded by temptations and temptations will always be in our hearts. We are called to run the race to persevere till the very end. Christ never said it would be easy, he never said we will have complete freedom here on earth. Sin will always eyeball us and unfortunately we will fall into its trap and often set the trap ourselves.

We are called to arms we are instructed to put it on and never take it off.

Christ has given sin it death blow and it will die within us on the day of the Lord, when He returns, in the mean time we must fight unbelief, we must admit that this how it is.

We must fight daily for our faith and Christ daily gives it to us.

Our faith must not be built on our perceived ideas of how things should be but, rather on what the Bible say they are.

Importing things in our framework of faith that is not Clearly taught in scripture is folly of the highest order.

Let us say you struggle with depression and it keeps on coming back and meds does help but, it totally messes with your emotions and it does not add to your quality of life. Somehow in a prayer meeting you get convinced that Christ promises to take that depression away but, after years you still suffer from depression. Do you still hold to that conviction or do you consider that maybe you “heard” wrong? Do you allow this belief that Christ said He will cure you overshadow your whole relationship with Him?

Let us say you struggle with lustful thoughts and pray urgently to Christ and ask that he will take it away from you, you look at scripture and see that it teaches that if you pray according to His will and in His name He will answer your prayer but, after years lust still rears its ugly little head in your life. Do you start doubting Gods promises and question your faith?

We come to the topic of unanswered prayer mingled with “does God still speak to us?”

Or is our problem more basic than that?

We must go and search for our answer not in “Airy Fairy land” but, in the “Where the tyre meets the tar land.”

Our problem started and a more basic level, we came to the Bible with an “Extra-Biblical Theology”

We had been influenced with the humanist world where everything is man centred. While God is the focus and everything revolves around Him.

We have without noticing it been influenced with worlds view of how our lives on earth should work and what the purpose of life on earth is. We have come to see the physical world as the most important thing there is while the Glory given to God is the most important thing.

Some will say our spiritual lives are the most important, which in a sure way is true but, if not explained we also fall into heresy.

Our spiritual life and our physical life are to revolve around God. How we are spiritually in our relation to God is reveal in our physical life.

So if we build our relationship with Christ on the wrong doctrine we short-circuited the relationship and everything else falls out of whack.

Then if we pull the circle even smaller, on what do we base our doctrine. This is then the most important step.

If we build our doctrine on the wrong base we will ultimately expect the wrong things from God.

A false expectation from God leads to disappointment which leads to bitterness which leads to dark side.

Christians, who lose their faith, never had real faith because they clung to wrong doctrine or recognised the right doctrine but, rejected it because it did not square with what they wanted to believe.

The basis for our faith should not be our perception of what life should be like. Our faith must not be built on our own ideas on how God should be like. If we do this we end up with a man made God which is man centred instead of God centred.

God should not be understood by what we see in the nature and then try to use that as our basis on how God is. This will be total folly. Nature even if it was perfect is not God and we are also fallible so our perception is also messed up.

So we have to find a different source to find out what God is like and how we must stand in relation with Him.

This is where the Bible comes in. In this modern age the Bible has come under severe attack. Ever since it has existed someone has tried to show the Bible as false and lacking all credibility.

Mostly this attack on the Bible has come from sceptics who don’t want to believe. Some if not most attack it because they rebel against an authority over them.

So do we abandon our create expectations?
No we don't, our expectations actually underestimates God's ability. We must come in line with what He has truly revealed and stand firm on the true Biblical promises and test our preconceived ideas to what God has already revealed.

 

How He loves us.