Lately, God has been showing me the importance of my role as a mother. This might sound ridiculously obvious to some, but sometimes we get so bogged down in the “everyday” that we lose sight of what we’ve been gifted with. The other day, upon opening to the dedication page of the book I had just received, I was moved to read this: “To My Mother.”
Author: <span class="vcard">Liz Smith</span>
1) Jesus had nowhere to lay his head (Matt. 8:20), yet many of our church buildings have become little (some not so little) country clubs complete with swimming pools, cafés, bowling alleys, and Frisbee golf parks, built to entertain ourselves and draw in the world with the world’s methods. Even our most conservative churches today are not immune to the lure of fabricating comfortable little kingdoms in the name of Christ, putting faith in “if you build it, they will come,” and completely ignoring the teaching of God’s word to the contrary (Matt. 6:19–20; Phil. 3:19–20).
Recently, someone told me that an individual’s Facebook posts have nothing to do with their spirituality. The discussion arose because we both know a man, elected to the position of deacon at his church, whose Facebook “likes” and “follows” consisted of pages of either obscene jokes and language or scantily clad women. To be fair, the primary purpose of most of the pages in mention was not to publish obscene language and scantily clad women. The overall theme of the pages was guns. But what goes along with guns in the eyes of the world? Women in bikinis that are three sizes too small for their ample bodies and the soldier’s favorite cuss word that can be used as an adjective, adverb, noun, and verb all in one sentence.
Two summers ago, over the Fourth of July weekend, I visited a friend in the hospital. As I walked into the ICU room, the TV mounted on the ceiling glared into the darkness. The movie Jaws was playing, which I suppose has become standard fare for Independence Day television viewing. The patient was sleeping, so I sat down and began to watch. It had been several years since I’d seen it, and I picked up at (of course) the Fourth of July scene on the beach.
If you’re familiar with the movie, this is a very tense scene. The beach had been closed because of recent shark attacks, but the City of Amity had made the decision to reopen for the Fourth since a large shark had been caught and destroyed. The beach was the town’s only industry, and without tourism dollars, the town couldn’t survive the long winter months. So of course, the beach was packed with residents and tourists celebrating the holiday.
But there was a problem. No one was going in the water.
by Gale Carter, Founder and Executive Director, D.O.L.L.S., used with permission
I ask, “With what confidence will your family bury you?” because this past week I watched as one of the D.O.L.L.S. ministry’s dear young ladies was faced with the unspeakable reality of having to bury her mother. Hannah’s mom passed away very unexpectedly, due to a blood clot after a small surgical procedure. No one saw it coming. It happened less than twenty-four hours following sweet Hannah’s eighteenth birthday.
I was so struck by Hannah’s response to her mother’s passing. In a Facebook post she posted a day after getting the horrific news, Hannah said:
God is good. Man is not good. Christians still sin. Christians make mistakes. Christians make dumb mistakes. Christians make really dumb mistakes. Christians have a less-than-perfect theology (despite what they…
The question of whether women should be deacons in the Christian church has been hotly debated for centuries. While most conservative churches do not ordain women as deacons, there are some that do allow females in the diaconate, although those that I know of personally have a warped church government—the pastor is hired by popular vote (and can be kicked out the same way), and the office of elder is non-existent; thus, the deacons run the church. This is unbiblical on at least two fronts—women should not be in authority over men (1 Tim. 2:12), and deacons are to serve, not rule. So, should a woman be ordained as a deacon, and if so, what does that look like according to the Bible?
Modern conveniences have certainly been a blessing in our lives. Washing machines, microwaves, running water, and other mod cons, as our British friends would say, all help us get our daily chores done in a fraction of the time it took our grandparents. We have much more leisure time on our hands, even if sometimes it doesn’t always seem like it. So what does that have to do with your inbox clutter, you might be asking?
Well, to be blunt, our leisure time has gotten in the way of our relationship with the Lord.
Self-sacrifice has been the predominant thought popping up in my mind the last few days. What does it really mean to give Jesus all of ourselves? What does a life look like that is totally sold out to God?
I’ve been captivated by a beautiful version of the Elizabeth Prentiss hymn “More Love to Thee” sung by Fernando Ortega. This same hymn was sung by North Korean Christians in 1974 as they were being steamrolled to death by Communist government agents, simply because the believers would not deny Christ.[1] Minutes before, they had also witnessed the hanging of their own children, committing them to heaven rather than renouncing their belief in Jesus.[2]