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‘Glory’ Category

  1. Strength for Man and Glory to Jesus in the Midst of Indescribable Loss

    January 24, 2008 by admin

    This weekend a local talk show host who is a very outspoken Christian, Rick Burgess, and his family experienced something that no one ever wants to have to go through – the loss of a child.  Rick, who is one half of the award-winning Rick and Bubba Show, lost his two year old son, Bronner, in a swimming pool accident in the backyard of his home.  When the accident happened, Rick was out of state in Gatlinburg preaching at a youth conference.  Rick and his family have allowed the Holy Spirit to work in and through them and are following God’s leading to take this tragedy and turn it into an opportunity to proclaim the greatness and grace of Jesus Christ.  It has been frequently said that it is easy to be a follower of Christ when everything is going well, but a Christians faith shines forth the brightest in the midst of indescribable pain and suffering to be able to stand up and say that Jesus is worth it all and He is the only one who completely satisfies.  I want to leave you with three video clips from the heart of a father sharing at his son’s memorial service that the Holy Spirit is using to do just that:

    A Father’s Heart: Part 1
    A Father’s Heart: Part 2
    A Father’s Heart: Part 3

    The strength of Jesus Christ is perfect when all our strength is gone.  He will provide the words when there are none.  Keep the Burgess family in your thoughts and prayers in the coming weeks.

    Category Christian Living, Evangelism, Faith, Glory | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Culture of Worship

    January 20, 2008 by admin

    This post was written in the spring of 2007:

    A few days ago, I was listening to one of my friends share with a group of high school students at Hoover High School’s First Priority.  He was sharing about Satan being the ruler of this world which is something that I have heard spoken upon millions of times over the course of my life growing up in church and a Christian school.  This time, however, he had a new perspective that I had never thought of before.  He was talking about Satan using culture to get our focus off of God.  He said that media tells us who to worship, what image we should shape ourselves into, and how we should live.  I had never thought of worship in this way before.  We constantly worship people, images, clothes, music, friends, and the list goes on.  We worship anything that we put before God on the throne of our hearts and lives.  All of our sin tends to flow from misplaced worship.  When we take Christ off of the throne of our hearts and lives and replace Him with something else that we deem more of a priority that is when we begin to fall back into sin.  When the Word and my relationship with Jesus take a backburner to something else, that in when I am falling into sin.  When pleasing God, worshiping God, and serving God are my focus, I am in tune with the Holy Spirit and His daily leading of my life.  When I drift away from that as I so often do that is when I am going to live a life that does not reflect Christ.  I am reflecting what is on the throne of my life whether that be my ego, my friends, my desires, or my Savior.  It is a daily decision to follow Christ.  The question is: Who will I worship today?

    Category Christian Living, Glory, Sin | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Book Review: i am not but i know I AM

    January 8, 2008 by admin

    i am not but i know I AM 

    In i am not but i know I AM, Louie Giglio presents a great book about the sufficiency of Christ and our insufficiency.  He bases his entire book off of Moses’s encounter with God in the burning bush.  Giglio uses this illustration to go on to discuss us living in light of God’s glory and greatness.  He discusses that God has a story that is going on according to His divine plan and that we can go along with that story and further promote God’s greatness or we can focus on our own stories in order to gain glory for ourselves.  Those readers who are familiar with the Passion movement, a college ministry focused on the glory and greatness of God founded by Giglio, will see familiar themes in this book.  He goes on to discuss how we can serve in God’s kingdom for His glory and fame.  The highlight of this book for me is when Giglio describes the name that God gives Moses to tell Pharaoh when he would be asked who has sent him.  The name that was given is I AM.  He uses this to talk about God’s sufficiency in the midst of our failure and insufficiency.  He goes on to talk about the greatness of God.  He discusses how Jesus coming to earth was in order that He could be perfect and live a perfect life on our behalf.  This book continues on focusing on the sufficiency and greatness of God.  This is a great word study book on I AM and is also a great encouragement to any Christian who sees themselves as a failure.  Giglio, in this book, brings together the greatness and grace of God in a book that is encouraging and empowering.

    Category Book Reviews, Christian Living, Glory | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Dust on the Mirror

    January 4, 2008 by admin

    There has been a recurrent theme that the Holy Spirit keeps bringing to my mind and heart.  It is this idea of the fact that we, as Christians, are called to reflect the glory and holiness of Christ in and through out lives so that people around us can see the beauty of the Savior in and through our life.  The theme that keeps coming up regarding this is things that create dust on our life mirror reflecting the glorious image of Christ to the world around us.  This theme has come up in a book that I was reading about becoming holy and set apart for God.  This book talks about how we allow dirt to get into our minds and hearts whether that dirt comes from things that we expose ourselves to on TV, in movies, or online.  These are things that fill our mind and distort our view of morality and the world around us.  We subtly begin to believe that if something is seen as acceptable to people around us or people on TV that it is therefore acceptable to God.  This theme was brought up again on Sunday when I went to hear one of my favorite preachers, Dr. Calvin Miller, speak at a church.  He was talking about Sodom and Gomorrah and the sinfulness and wickedness of those cities and then compared them to our culture.  He talked about how lightly we view sin in the world around us and how our standards begin to become more and more lax with regard to what media we expose our minds and hearts to.  This was really convicting in light of everything else that God has been teaching me on this topic.  Then I turned on my iPod today to get my daily dose of preaching podcasts, Francis Chan was preaching on when we desire sin more than God.  He looked at the picture in the book of Jeremiah of the people leaving God, the Fountain of Living Water, to turn to their own cisterns that do not hold water.  He went on to talk about fixing our gaze on Christ and how Satan likes to wave hooks of temptation in front of us, but we must keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.  I know so often in my life, I get my gaze off of Christ and bite one of Satan’s hooks.  Then this theme came up again, I was listening to another podcast from a church who has been dealing with unfaithfulness and sin in a former pastors life that had just been made public.  The current pastor was preaching on how we deal with sin in church leadership.  He came back to this theme of being accountable to others and that we are called to reflect the glorious image of Christ.  God, make me someone who presents a untarnished picture of Your glory and holiness to a watching world.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, dust away all of the dust that I have allowed to collect on my reflection of you.

    Category Christian Living, Glory, Grace, Sin | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Soli Deo Gloria

    January 3, 2008 by admin

    This post was written in February 2007 after the Colts won the Superbowl.

    Colts Prayer 

    “To the Glory of God Alone!”- this is a Latin phrase that became one of the cries of the church through the ages.  It is often seen engraved in churches and seen in writings of the church fathers.  This is something that we, however, easily forget.  We seem to cry out to God when our lives are not going well, and we want his help.  We so often forget to praise Him and give Him thanks for the awesome things that He has done in our lives.  This picture (above) amazes me every time I look at it.  Tony Dungy, the Colts Head Coach, has a reputation of being a man of character and a follower of Jesus Christ both on and off the football field that is encouraging to all believers in Christ.  He maintained that character through both the good times and bad with a grace and Christ-likeness about him that has had a great impact on anyone who knows his story.  He lost his son to suicide a few years back and through that time of tremendous sorrow and trail remained strong and a strong influence for Christ.  He trusted in God amidst the struggle.  That is when people look at us as Christians the most.  It is easy to believe in Christ when you are being blessed and everything is right in the world.  It is hard, however, to trust God when you feel like your world is being ripped apart around you.  Tony was being watched by an entire world of sports fans, and he handled his pain and grief holding His Savior’s hand.  This was encouraging and made a huge impact on people who were watching.  Now that everything is grand in Tony’s world, being the first African American coach to lead a team to a Super Bowl victory, he does not forget to praise the God who not only held his hand in the hard times but raises his hand to celebrate the victory that He has provided.  And so as Tony and his players bow a knee in the locker room, they remember “Soli deo gloria!” 

    Category Christian Living, Faith, Glory | Tags: | No Comments

  6. Beauty of the Beach

    September 9, 2007 by admin

    I have had the privilege of spending the last two days in Panama City.  It has been an interesting trip in that I have been surrounded by God’s beautiful creation.  There is something about spending time watching the sunset over the horizon and then sitting on the beach with your feet in the water being lapped over by waves.  I look at the beauty and design of the world especially the beach, and the only way that I can respond is in worship.  It is so neat to me that the closer I get to God’s beautiful creation, the closer I feel to God.  The interesting part of this whole experience is that in my breaks from the beauty of God’s creation I am reading a book by one of the world most well-known atheists, that proposes that God clearly does not exist but rather the world functions by the evolutionary process of natural selection.  As I was walking on the beach tonight and looking at the sunset, I could not help but think of the author of the book I am reading and other educated scientists who propose evolution and natural selection as the controllers of the universe and how they would respond to this glorious picture of beauty.  Let me paint you two pictures of this picture and let you see which picture is more beautiful:

    Picture 1 (The Perspective of an Evolutionary Scientist): “There is the sun.  It is a collection of chemical gasses that are operating at a specific temperature that is the necessary temperature to allow the process of evolution to have functioned on the planet earth.  The earth is set in a rotation around the sun that is fundamentally necessary for the earth to have sustained life.  It is just a hot ball of gasses fulfilling its function in the overarching cycle of evolutionary natural selection.”

    Picture 2 (My Perspective as a Worshipper): “There is the sun in all of its beauty.  I see the sun setting over the horizon in a beautiful way which the Author of Beauty created it to be.  It is their performing its lone purpose which is to display the beauty and give the world a glimpse of the glory of God.  The Psalmist had it right when he said that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God.’ I will join with all of creation in praising the name of my glorious God!”

    I think that we can get to a place that we become so educated that we miss the beauty of God’s creation.  Worship thrives on wonder.  I do not want to become so educated that I miss the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.  As the Psalmist said “the heavens are declaring,” the question is are we listening!

    Category Beauty, Glory | Tags: | No Comments

  7. The True Source of Wisdom and Strength

    July 10, 2007 by admin

    We each come to everything that we face in life with strengths, gifts, and some amount of knowledge.  In most circumstances, we use the skills, gifts, and knowledge that we have in order to do our best and to succeed in what we are trying to accomplish.  Serving Christ, however, does not operate on these principles.  Like many things presented in the Bible, serving God is done in a way that is truly upside down compared to what we are used to seeing in the world around us.  2 Corintians 3:4-5 NKJV reads this way “And such trust through Christ toward God.  Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God”  This verse flies in the face of each one of us being capable to serve God and do ministry.  So we face this battle daily of whether we are going to try to run things in our own strength and wisdom or whether we are going to allow the Holy Spirit to provide the knowledge by working through us.  Martin Luther makes some comments on this struggle in a sermon that he gave on this text.  In that sermon he says with regards to his role as a minister of the gospel:

    “Of ourselves – in our own wisdom and strength – we cannot effect, discover nor teach any counsel or help for man, whether for ourselves or others.  Any good work we perform among you, any doctrine we write upon your heart – that is God’s own work.  He puts it into our heart and mouth what we should say and impresses it upon your heart through the work of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, we cannot ascribe to ourselves any honor therein, cannot seek our own glory as the self-instructed proud spirits do; we must give to God alone the honor…”

    Luther goes on to say that “Man’s achievements, Man’s reasoning and power are of no avail save in so far as they come from God.”  I want to be a person who lives and serves others in a way that it is not my suffieciency and knowledge that is coming through, but it is the work of the Holy Spirit that is done in such a way that only He can get the glory.  I want to not be driven by my “wisdom” and “strength”  I would much rather tap into the source of all true wisdom and strength.

    Category Christian Living, Glory, Grace | Tags: | No Comments

  8. Trusted with His Glory

    June 23, 2007 by admin

    I was listening to a preaching podcast the other day, and there was this question that the speaker raised that has been on my mind and heart ever since I heard it.  He was talking about the person that God will use.  He said that God uses people that He can trust with His glory.  So the question is “Am I a person that God could trust with His glory?” This question hinges on several things.  First off, the issue of giving God the glory for everything that He does in and through you.  It is a temptation for anyone in ministry to take the credit for God’s work.  This comes under the aspect of humility where my self-worth is based.  Is my self-worth based in my relationship with Jesus and the fact that I am loved by Him or do I have to perform to prove my worth by making myself look good by what God has done through me?  If my self-worth is based in my relationship with Jesus, I will not be interested in stealing glory from God.  Secondly, I think that part of this is will we use the opportunities that He has given us to do every part of it with excellence as an offering of worship to Him.  I think that it is really easy to half-way do ministry to get by and not doing the best you can and seeking to persue excellence.  This is the problem with many things that are considered Christian.  It is done in a manner that does not include the investment of time, energy, and prayer that an offering of worship to God should.  Thirdly, I think that someone must be a vessel that can most clearly reflect God’s glory.  This gets back to personal purity and holiness.  Everyone who has attempted to do this knows that this is something that only the Holy Spirit can do.  We cannot perform “good” without the Holy Spirit working in us.  Even the “good” deeds that we do will be wrongly motivated when we attempt to perform on our own.  My prayer is that God would make me into a person that He can trust with His glory.

    Category Christian Living, Glory | Tags: | No Comments

  9. Rethinking Missions

    May 29, 2007 by admin

    I am reading through a book called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. This has really been causing me to stop and think about many different issues that Rob raises in the book. One thing that he said in regard to missions really struck me:

    “So the issue (of missions) isn’t so much taking Jesus to people who don’t have Him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in our midst.” – Rob Bell in Velvit Elvis

    This statement was almost shocking. So often growing up in church, you would hear the classic missionary story of these people called by God to bring Him to a heathen land that had never heard His name. This statement flies in the face of that mindset, but after reflecting on it, I think that Rob is onto something. When we have the standard missions mindset of the gospel being ours to bring, we put the focus entirely on us and put us in a place where we are almost above those to whom we are seeking to impact. The midset pictured in this statement totally refocuses missions. It brings it to our job as a missionary sharing the gospel to people becomes pointing out God as the source of all beauty and order that the psalmist said that the heavens were declaring the greatness of. God is the source of all order and beauty and the reason the universe fits together. We are simply to be willing to point to the order and beauty in order to show people how to have a realationship with the Creator of all that beauty and order. When we are just pointing out the God that is there, it takes so much of the pressure off of us to explain this incomprehensible God to others. What a great privelege we have to look for opportunities to introduce people to our awesome and loving God!

    Category Beauty, Evangelism, Glory, Missions | Tags: | No Comments

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