Michael Kelley's Blog, page 242

A Satirical Look at the National Debt

Be sure and watch to the end.

(HT:Z)

An Introvert's Prayer on the Day of Community Group

Father -

Tonight Jana and I will host a group of wonderful people in our home. I'm so thankful for these people, for they are Your people. They love you and they love us. They are considerate and polite, always thankful to us to be in our home. They have, in every way, accepted our hospitality with grace.

Nevertheless, it's going to be a difficult evening. It always is for an introvert like me. Mud will be unintentionally tracked in. Something will likely be broken by accident. A kid (likely my own) with slippery fingers will spill some food. And you know my sinful heart, that it would be much easier and more comfortable for me to be by myself, happily sitting in solitude.

I am fighting with myself today, as I do most Wednesdays, and my selfish desire for convenience is strong. And that's really what it is. I hide behind my introverted personality to mask my selfishness. Forgive me.

I pray, in faith, against the desire to rush people out so that I can watch TV. I pray that when the meeting is over, you would help me extend the same grace to my tired family that I do to the people in my home. You know how often I have snapped at my kids or gotten angry with them as the hour draws late. I want badly to fight this; please help me.

Help me fight with the power of the gospel. Help me to remember that it was inconvenient for You to send Your Son to the earth. Help me to consider Jesus who was the means by which You extended hospitality to me at my time of greatest and mot helpless need. Help me to remember that through the cross, You have taken me into Your own home and given me a seat at your table.

When I was a stranger, You welcomed me in through the gospel.

Save this introvert from his selfish desires. Thank you for the gift of my friends, my church, who not only aid my sanctification with their words and teaching and prayer, but with their very presence.

In Jesus' Name,

Amen.

An Older Brother Worthy of the Honor

I loved this post from Jared Wilson:

His brothers said to him, "Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?" So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

– Genesis 37:8

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James

- Jude 1a

There is a lot wrapped up in this simple greeting, the opening line of Jude's epistle. Jude is the brother of James, by which he means the James, James the apostle, the brother of Jesus. So this Jude is the Jude who is the brother of Jesus. But he doesn't identify himself as such. He calls himself James's brother but Jesus' "servant."

Jesus' kid brother doesn't say, "I'm Jesus' kid brother," but "I'm Jesus' servant." Again, so much is there…

Keep reading.

I STILL Have a Dream.

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of Lincoln Memorial, capping a historic March on Washington:

It's a dream that has not yet been realized. Not even close. But it's a dream that must be, for as Paul pointed out in the book of Ephesians, the validation of the gospel is at stake.

What is the gospel apologetic in the book of Ephesians? What did Paul point to in order to show the power and reality of Jesus Christ?

It's not what you might think.

It wasn't an apologetic of logic – an effort to prove with tangible facts and step by step reasoning why the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus makes sense. Neither was it offering first hand testimonies of encounters with the risen Savior. Neither still was it recounting his own encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road and pointing to his own dramatic change of life as proof of the gospel. Those are all fine things, but that's not what Paul held up as the validation for the gospel. Not in this book.

In Ephesians, the gospel apologetic is the church itself.

The church at Ephesus was a racially diverse congregation. Jews and Greeks worshiped alongside each other, and that last point is key. There wasn't a Jewish worship service at 9 and a Greek service at 10:30, each with different music and different communication styles. Instead, there was one, unified congregation. That's not to say they didn't have their troubles; they certainly did. But they were together under one head. That, according to Paul, is the most convincing evidence that the gospel is real:

"But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah. For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility" (Eph. 2:13-14).

Interesting, right? Not logic. Not personal testimony. In Ephesians, it's the unity of the church – specifically, the racial unity – that validates the reality of the gospel. Makes you wonder whether our churches are validating the gospel in a similar way.

Look around us, and there are still walls. Still hostility. Still division. And so the call to live out the dream resounds again today.

Fridays Are For One Question

This week I read an article about the most influential worship albums of all time. Here's the list they came up with:

10. Passion: Better Is One Day

Passion Band

(1999)

9. Pray

Andraé Crouch

Warner

8. Beautiful Things

Gungor

Brash Music

(2010)

7. Facedown

Matt Redman

Sparrow/sixstepsrecrods

(2003)

6. United We Stand

Hillsong United

Hillsong/Integrity Music

(2010)

5. Change My Heart Oh God

Various

Vineyard Music

(1996)

4. Live From Another Level

Israel Houghton

Integrity Music

(2004)

3. A Greater Song

Paul Baloche

Integrity Music

(2006)

2. Arriving

Chris Tomlin

Sparrow/sixstepsrecords

(2004)

1. Cutting Edge 1&2

Delirious?

Furious?

(1994)

I've owned, or at least heard, most of these albums, and I don't have an issue with the top ten. But for today's question, I'd love to know your opinion:

"What is the best worship album of all time?"

7 Daily Sins

If you're not reading my friend Jared Wilson, you probably should be. Here is a fine video for his new Bible study called "Seven Daily Sins."

The study is is available now for purchase online.

Why Didn't Jesus Ever Answer Questions?

Several weeks ago, I posted an article about the fact that many times, we ask theological questions in order to mask personal questions. My conclusion was that there's a lot of value in simply asking, "Why do you ask?" instead of just answering the question even if you know the answer.

One commenter took exception with the post and pointed out that answering a question with a question is an annoying practice.

I get where he's coming from, especially if you're in a trigonometry or history class, because in those classes, all you really want is the answer. You're dealing in the realm of facts and you're an objective party to those facts.

But theology is different. Or at least it should be.

Theology isn't just for libraries and classrooms; this is real life stuff. It is, in fact, the realest of the real. Every theological truth has a personal implication. What you believe impacts the way you live, otherwise you don't really believe it. Conversely, we often pose theological questions either because some circumstance has jarred our real life, or from a negative standpoint, we are doing something we know we shouldn't be doing and are looking for a theological loophole to continue that behavior. In the second instance, we use theological questions as a cover to hide behind rather than addressing the specific behavior and the faulty belief that is motivating that behavior.

In either case, there is no such thing as ivory tower theology. Theology is about life. Always. Because God is about life. Always.

But don't just take my word for it. Think about the example of Jesus. Think about how frustrating it must have been at times to have a question, ask it to the Son of God, and in return, get a story. Or another question. Or a teaching that only seems to vaguely relate to what you were asking about. Why did Jesus do this? Why didn't He just answer questions directly?

Perhaps it's because of the above truth, that Jesus understood more than any of us ever will that theology is about life.

Perhaps one case study will help. In John 4, Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well. They began to talk, and she wanted to take the conversation into the realm of theological hypotheticals, asking Jesus about where the true place of worship whould be. But the Son of God would have none of this theoretical bologna.

Jesus told her to get her husband. In so doing, He exposed the behavior in her life that she was most ashamed of, her point of greatest vulnerability. Jesus took theory to real life in the blink of an eye. He's still doing the same thing. We mustn't think that we can play silly thinking games with Jesus. He knows our hearts. He knows what's really behind the question. So ask the question – but be ready, because Jesus might just ask one back.

The Hobbit

I'm a little late to the party on this one. Lucky for us we've got a whole year to get excited.

Christmas in the Nursing Home

I first met the man who would become my father-in-law on Thanksgiving Day, 1998. I had gone with my girlfriend, Jana, to her hometown in eastern New Mexico, to eat lunch and hang out with her family. I was met at the door by a bear of a man – 6 feet 2 inches, 225 pounds. He was a lawyer in their town and regularly biked upwards of 90 miles on Saturdays. He had hands like a bear and a voice to match. He probably said 7 words to me that day, and my lasting memory is when I "helped" him put up the outside Christmas lights on their house. We walked out together, he dumped a box at my feet, and promptly put on his headphones to listen to the Dallas Cowboy football game and went to another part of the yard.

Intimidating? Not really. More like wet-your-pants scared. But, as Jana would later tell me, Joe went to her later that evening after I had gone home and told her he thought I was a good boy. So I must have hung the lights okay after all.

My love and respect for Joe grew as time went on. I found a gentle man who loved the Lord and loved his family. And as I heard more and more of his story, it only served to make me appreciate this quiet man more. Here was a guy who faithfully served his church as a Sunday school teacher for decades. He was a man who worked days as a coach and teacher and nights as a clerk at a gas station to provide for his family. He chucked it all when his three daughters were young to move to Kansas and go to law school. Then he moved back to New Mexico and eventually opened up his own law practice, one in which he worked side by side with his wife where they both regularly helped people who couldn't pay them, working for hams and chickens if they needed to. When Joe was appointed by the governor to be a district judge, no one was really surprised given his reputation of strength and honor in the community.

That was right around the time when Joe was diagnosed with a particularly fast-moving and devastating breed of Parkinson's disease. The bike rides stopped. The shaking and shuffling started. And with them came the occasional hallucination and confusion.

This Christmas, like the past four, when we went to visit our families, we did the thing that has become the ritual for so many people in our aging society – we spent some time at the nursing home that now houses Joe. He is weak and frail, a shell of the man he once was. He has occasional lucid moments, but those moments are rapidly diminishing. Surrounded by the other residents, we looked again in the face of a terrible disease and we were forced again to confront head on the truly broken nature of the world.

And we were left thinking that it should not be like this. Not to this good man. Not to a 60-year-old father and grandfather. I looked in the faces of my 3 children and realized that this is the only Papa Joe they will ever know. They'll never know what it's like to see him standing. They'll never feel him lift them over his head up into the sky. They will only have the stories Jana and I will be able to relate to them in the years to come.

And as we left to drive back to Tennessee, the only thing I could think to say quietly to Joe might be the same thing you thought if you spent any time this Christmas in the nursing home:

"Jesus is going to fix this."

And He is. When He comes back, He's going to make war on His enemies. He is going to rout sin and disease. He will bring them to ruin and put things as they should be. Then – and only then – will we see the real Joe again.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

Fridays Are For One Question

Ever had a Twitter misfire? You know what that is – it's an ill advised status update, one made without thinking, or one with unfortunate typographical errors. Ever done that?

I have. Yesterday. If you were following me on Twitter, you'd know that I was at Passion 2012 this week, an amazing conference where college students – poor, college students – gave over 3 million dollars over the course of 3 days to make a significant dent in ending slavery in the 21st century.

But, thanks to my fat fingers and the wonderful autocorrect feature on my Iphone, I ended up tweeting the following:

"Just saw poor college students give over $3 million to end ham trafficking."

Yes, we gave sacrificially to create free ham. Fail.

So today's question is in that regard:

"What's your worst Twitter / Facebook misfire?"