What Does "Come Into My Heart" Mean Anyway?

The church norm for the past 20+ years has been to have an "altar call" at the end of services where non-believers are asked to raise their hands if they want to "accept Christ." If they raise their hands, they are led in a call-and-response prayer where they copy the Pastor's lead to "ask Jesus to come into their hearts."  

Many people consider this a pivotal part of the service and get frustrated if the Pastor doesn't include this in every gathering. The number of people who raise their hands gets promoted; everyone considers it a great service if many people raise their hands. The success of the pastor or service is quantified by how many people raise their hands.

This has just been a normal part of my up-bringing and faith, but just recently I took a second look...I considered it instead of just accepting it as a norm. And I'm no longer sure if this is a healthy way to quantify the presence of the Holy Spirit, or the success of a Pastor, or even the salvation of a new believer.

I don't think conversion ususally happens in an instant. I in no way doubt it can, but I don't think it's the norm. I also wonder if saying a simple prayer, that's likely not even genuine or understood because it's just a copy of the Pastor's words, is the gateway to salvation.

Love, Acceptance & Forgiveness: Enough Said!

I read Jerry Cook's book, Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness, approximately 7 years ago because my pastor at the time, Jim Bolin, often referenced the book and I was so overwealmed by my pastor's love, acceptance and forgiveness of people.

Almost every week, he would so geniunely teach at the pulpit that we not judge each other because: "you don't know where she comes from or what God's doing in him." He would entice on a regular basis, "If you come around here, we're going to love you. No matter who you are, what you've done or how you look, smell or behave, we're going to love you." And he would explicitly demand, "We're going to love and accept people, and if you don't want to love people, you're in the wrong place. This church is going to love people." It didn't take me far in my reading to realize that my humble pastor was almost directly quoting Jerry Cook.

I came across the book again last week and heard he wrote its second edition last year. So I picked it up again and am flying through it. There are probably more sentences underlined and highlighted than not. And if I were to include a quote of every line I loved, I would probably end up typing out the entire book.

I highly recommend this book! Look out for an update of this blog entry for more quotes to follow.

Does it really matter?

"Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter."

Tim Kizziar

Worship in Motion

It’s hard to get outside of your comfort zone. It’s hard to make yourself uncomfortable. It’s hard to put yourself out of your safety box and to actually see the world as it is. Go to the world. Instead of, I think sometimes…the church system as a whole, we like people to come to us, and you know, the thing…Jesus did, is He went out to the world… I think we, as being the light of lights, should be going to the world, and spreading hope in such a impacting and explosive way.

Daniel Bashta

Watch this awesome feature that 700 Club did on Daniel Bashta & how he's putting his worship in motion: http://cbn.com/vod/index.aspx?s=/vod/700Clubi_060209_WS'
(and keep watching even after the feature until 12:40!)

Here's this musician's website: http://danielbashta.com/. Check out his song, "Like a Lion" ...it's awesome!! David Crowder just produced his song on the latest Passion CD.



A few other great quotes:

There are all these dreamers in this generation and society has done a good job of trying to kill the dreamers….and in my life, I believe, in our lifetime, through the great commission, and to see the great completion happen, there’s gonna be a resurrection of dreamers. And my prayer is that I’m a part of that army and I truly see revival happen in my life first and see it happen in my community, my neighborhood and see it explode and echo throughout the world."

"God is looking for a generation that will be His army and put their worship in motion."

I think it's definitely true: we are a generation of dreamers. Church is evolving because dreamers are daring to dream bigger and beyond. I'm praying with Daniel Bashta to continue to see this resurrection of dreamers, to see our worship put in motion, to be a part of this army!

The Prodigal God

I have recently discovered this awesome book: The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller.

Timothy Keller uses the Parable of The Two Lost Sons (Luke 15) to show God's perspective on the church vs. unchurched. He points out how the parable wasn't to show the waywardness of the sinner but actually, the "waywardness" of the religious people even though they were living according to the Bible! Keller argues that the point of the parable wasn't to create categories between the prodigal son and the good son but rather to shatter our categories of who we think are the righteous vs unrighteous.

Keller says, "[Jesus] is on the side of neither the irreligious nor the religious, but he singles out the religious moralism as a particularly deadly spiritual condition."*

I like what Keller has to say. We need to not judge others' relationships with God based on the normal views of religious actions vs lack of religious activities. We do not know what God is doing in people's hearts, and simply the outward appearance is no way to determine one's salvation.

Is it even up to us to determine another's salvation??

I think it's truly only up to us to encourage others in faith and let God do the knowing.

Above judging others' spiritual conditions from afar, Keller challenges our view of Jesus. Similarly to the message Andy Stanley gives in the video I posted on 6.21.09 (in the blog entry titled, "Jesus Liked People Who Were Nothing Like Him"), Keller points out that Jesus often got along better the unreligious people of his day more than the religious people!

Here's an excerpt from the book:

"The crucial point here is that, in general, religiously observant people were offended by Jesus, but those estranged from religious and moral observance were intrigued and attracted to him. We see this throughout the New Testament accounts of Jesus's life. In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (as in Luke 7) or a religious person and a racial outcast (as in John 3-4) or a religious person and a political outcast (as in Luke 19), the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus and the [religious person] does not. Jesus says to the respectable religious leaders 'the tax collectors and the prostitutes enter the kingdom before you' (Matthew 21:31).

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect! The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to [the liberal and unreligious], they must be more full of [the closed-off and piously religious] than we'd like to think." **

*Keller, Timothy. The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith. Pengiun Group: New York, NY. 2008. p. 13
**p. 14-16

Holy Discontent

“There are a lot of Christ-followers who haven’t taken the time to figure out what their holy discontent is, and so they’re doing a gradual slide into apathy and complacency—and that is unconscionable in a broken and lost world.”

Bill Hybels