It is the place where the worship is a time to be entertained
Where the tithe is whatever change you have in your pocket
Where the message is something to make you feel good about yourself
Where the hymn of commitment is “I Surrender Some.”
Where Instead of “Standing on the Promises” we are merely sitting on the premises.
Monthly Archives: June 2007
New Car Christianity?
Imagine that I gave you a new car. It’s a nice car, it runs well. You’d be excited wouldn’t you? A nice new car to drive around. But there are a few conditions.
- You can only have the car one morning a week. The rest of the time it stays at my house and you can not use it.
- Oh yeah- by the way, that one morning a week I will come to your house and pick you up. You can ride in the passenger seat. We will only go where I want to go, and after a few hours, I will drop you off again until the next week.
Yet this is what many of us do in our relationship with God. It’s not a car we give to God, but our life. But we place conditions.
- You can only have my life for a few hours on Sunday.
- I’ll keep control, You are just a passenger.. you cannot make decisions. I’ll decide what church things I will attend and you can be there with me. Then after you have had your joy ride with me I’ll take my life back and see you again next week.
Is this your life?
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
New Gorilla
A man was looking for a job and he noticed that there was an opening at the local zoo. He inquired about the job and discovered that the zoo had a very unusual position that they wanted to fill. Apparently their gorilla had died, and until they could get a new one, they needed someone to dress up in a gorilla suit and act like a gorilla for a few days. He was to just sit, eat and sleep. His identity would be kept a secret, of course. Thanks to a very fine gorilla suit, no one would be the wiser.
The zoo offered good pay for this job, so the man decided to do it. He tried on the suit and sure enough, he looked just like a gorilla. They led him to the cage; he took a position at the back of the cage and pretended to sleep. But after a while, he got tired of sitting, so he walked around a little bit, jumped up and down and tried a few gorilla noises.
The people who were watching him seemed to really like that. When he would move or jump around, they would clap and cheer and throw him peanuts. And the man loved peanuts. So he jumped around some more and tried climbing a tree. That seemed to really get the crowd excited.
They threw more peanuts. Playing to the crowd, he grabbed a vine and swung from one side of the cage to the other. The people loved it and threw more peanuts. Wow, this is great, he thought. He swung higher and the crowd grew bigger. He continued to swing on the vine, getting higher and higher-and then all of a sudden, the vine broke! He swung up and out of the cage, landing in the lion’s cage that was next door.
He panicked. There was a huge lion not twenty feet away, and it looked very hungry. So the man in the gorilla suit started jumping up and down, screaming and yelling, “Help, help! Get me out of here! I’m not really a gorilla! I’m a man in a gorilla suit! Heeelllp!”
The lion quickly pounced on the man, held him down and said, “Will you SHUT UP! You’re going to get both of us fired!”
Unfortunately, when it comes to spiritual lives we are like a man in a gorilla suit. We are very quick to change what is on the outside and make ourselves seem something we are not. We come to church in our Spirituality suit like the man went to the zoo in his gorilla suit. Our relationship has become a religion and we are simply acting our part.
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
Questions for Youth
- Who are your heroes?
- Name one person in the church you look up to or respect and why?
- Name one peer you look up to and why?
- What spiritual question do you find most puzzling?
- If you could change one thing in the church or about the church what would you change?
- What was your most meaningful spiritual moment? Why?
- What is your biggest struggle as a Christian?
- When? Where? How did you accept Christ?
- Have you been baptized? Why or why not?
- What is your greatest strength as a Christian?
- What is your greatest weakness as a Christian?
- What part of the Christian walk do you find most difficult for you to do?
- What types of people do you have the most difficulty relating to?
- What is your parent’s most common complaint about you?
- What is your most common complaint about your parent?
Evaluating a Youth’s Spiritual Walk
Do you evaluate your youth program simply by the numbers attending? What is a good measurement? It’s something to think about. How do you evaluate the effectiveness of your youth program?
Here are some other options…. YOU DECIDE!
- By church activity participation?
- By the fruits of the spirit displayed by the youth? (Gal 5:22-23)
- By comparison to your own spiritual development?
- By how Christlike they are? (I Cor 11:1)
- By the fact that they have grown in their faith, making visible progress?
- By the way they treat others?
- By what they talk about most?
- By their priorities?
- By how they respond to me when I bring up spiritual things?
- By spiritual depth?
- By consistent spiritual disciplines like Bible reading, quiet times, prayer?
- By the types of questions they ask?
- By feedback from parents?
- By their service to others and in church?
- By spiritual knowledge?
OTHERS? Share your comments..
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The Law is Good
As I was nearing home after my morning walk, I noticed that a parking ticket was perched on the windshield of a car parked down the street from my house. Poor guy, I thought, that’s twenty-eight bucks out of his pocket. Then it occurred to me that it was then Tuesday between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m. Parking is prohibited along this street during those two hours each week so that the large city street-sweeper can swoop through and clean the street.
Uh-oh, I thought, did I forget, too? Did I leave my car on the street? I quickened my pace. I peered ahead. Yes, my car is on the street. And there is that blasted yellow citation envelope on the front windshield! Doggone it, they got me–again!
Don’t the police have anything better to do? Are there no more criminals to catch? Can’t a citizen park his own car in front of his own house without being harassed?
I was fuming. I yanked the envelope off the windshield, tempted to tear it up. In fact, several years ago, I had done just that, but I learned the hard way the folly of that reaction. (When I went to pay my annual vehicle registration fee, I had to also pay double fines for the two citations I had angrily torn up.) So, I was not in a pleasant mood as I strode into my house with my $28 parking ticket firmly in hand.
Still trying to calm myself down and to put this irritating event into better ‘perspective,’ I mentally reviewed the reasons for the parking regulation I had violated (and which was clearly posted on signs along the street). When I first moved here some years ago, my neighbors were angry because city officials had allowed this street to become very dirty. The residents wrote letters, circulated petitions, made phone calls, held meetings, lobbied, and agitated. They demanded that the city do something about it.
They got action. The city started cleaning the street every Tuesday morning between seven-thirty and nine-thirty. It was also, of course, made illegal to park on the street during the cleaning time. Signs to that effect were posted.
I began to realize that the law which had ‘bitten’ me was not bad, but good. If I wanted a clean street in front of my house, then I had to get my car off the street when the sweeper came to do its job. The law was for my good. It was certainly no fault of the law that I kept forgetting to do my part.
This is true in life. How many times we rail against the laws of God. We often feel that His laws cramp our style, deny us pleasure, block our freedom. It is more than just humor when we say, ‘Everything fun is either immoral, illegal, or fattening.’
But, in truth, we know that God’s laws are for our own good. They are written into the very fiber of our beings. They are there because God loves us.
When we sin, we don’t really sin against law, we sin against love. God wants us to be happy. Happiness and holiness go together. You can’t have one without the other. The psalmist says of the happy man, ‘His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.’ (Psalm 1:2)
‘Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.’ (Psalm 119:18)”
Donald Russell Robertson – “Dear You”
Read More:
Dear You
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
Celebrate the Presence
Let me not wait for the right place, the right time, to celebrate Your presence. Let me go rejoicing through my days, abiding in You and delighting in You, praising You now and forever.”
B. J. Hoff- “Faces in the Crowd”
Reminding God of His Promises
God’s promises were never meant to be thrown aside as waste paper. He intended that they should be used. He loves to see His children bring them up to Him and say, ‘Lord, do as thou hast said.’ We glorify God when we plead His promises. Do you think that God will be any poorer for giving you the riches He has promised? He has said, ‘Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as wool’ (Isaiah 1:18). Faith goes straight to the throne and pleads, ‘Lord, here is the promise. Do as thou has said.’ Our Lord replies, ‘Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ Our heavenly banker delights to cash His own notes. Never let the promise rust. Do not think that God will be troubled by your persistence in reminding Him of His promises. It is His delight to grant favors. He is more ready to hear than you are to ask. The sun is not weary of shining, nor the fountain of flowing. It is God’s nature to keep His promises; therefore, go at once to the throne with ‘Do as thou hast said.’
Charles Spurgeon- “Morning and Evening” (Whitaker House)
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
The Secret
We need to learn this secret of the burning heart. Suddenly Jesus appears to us, fires are set ablaze, and we are given wonderful visions; but then we must learn to maintain the secret of the burning heart–a heart that can go through anything. It is the simple, dreary day, with its commonplace duties and people, that smothers the burning heart–unless we have learned the secret of abiding in Jesus…
Oswald Chambers – “My Utmost for His Highest”
Learn More: My Utmost for His Highest: An Updated Edition in Today’s Language
I’ll Always be There for You!
It’s a fascinating story that comes out of the 1989 earthquake which almost flattened Armenia. This deadly tremor killed over 30,000 people in less than four minutes. In the midst of all the confusion of the earthquake, a father rushed to his son’s school. When he arrived there he discovered the building was flat as a pancake.
Standing there looking at what was left of the school, the father remembered a promise he made to his son, “No matter what, I’ll always be there for you!” Tears began to fill his eyes. It looked like a hopeless situation, but he could not take his mind off his promise.
Remembering that his son’s classroom was in the back right corner of the building, the father rushed there and started digging through the rubble. As he was digging other grieving parents arrived, clutching their hearts, saying: “My son! “My daughter!” They tried to pull him off of what was left of the school saying: “It’s too late!” “They’re dead!” “You can’t help!” “Go home!” Even a police officer and a fire-fighter told him he should go home. To everyone who tried to stop him he said, “Are you going to help me now?” They did not answer him and he continued digging for his son stone by stone.
He needed to know for himself: “Is my boy alive or is he dead?” This man dug for eight hours and then twelve and then twenty-four and then thirty-six. Finally in the thirty-eighth hour, as he pulled back a boulder, he heard his son’s voice. He screamed his son’s name, “ARMAND!” and a voice answered him, “Dad?” It’s me Dad!” Then the boy added these priceless words, “I told the other kids not to worry. I told ’em that if you were alive, you’d save me
and when you saved me, they’d be saved. You promised that, Dad. ‘No matter what,’ you said, ‘I’ll always be there for you!’ And here you are Dad. You kept your promise!”
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, “Chicken Soup for the Soul.”
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.