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10-31-11

The Reformation Polka

Here’s a lit­tle Ref­or­ma­tion Day humor.

by Robert Gebel

[Sung to the tune of “Supercalifragilistic-​​expialidocious”]

When I was just ein junger Mann I stud­ied canon law;
While Erfurt was a chal­lenge, it was just to please my Pa.
Then came the storm, the light­ning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,
I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augus­tin­ian! Oh…

Cho­rus:
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion
Speak your mind against them and face excom­mu­ni­ca­tion!
Nail your the­ses to the door, let’s start a Ref­or­ma­tion!
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and transubstantiation!

When Tet­zel came near Wit­ten­berg, St. Peter’s prof­its soared,
I wrote a lit­tle notice for the All Saints’ Bull’tin board:
“You can­not pur­chase mer­its, for we’re jus­ti­fied by grace!
Here’s 95 more rea­sons, Brother Tet­zel, in your face!” Oh…

Cho­rus:
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion
Speak your mind against them and face excom­mu­ni­ca­tion!
Nail your the­ses to the door, let’s start a Ref­or­ma­tion!
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and transubstantiation!

They loved my tracts, adored my wit, all were exem­pleror;
The Pope, how­ever, hauled me up before the Emperor.
“Are these your books? Do you recant?” King Charles did demand,
“I will not change my Diet, Sir, God help me here I stand!” Oh…

Cho­rus:
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion -
Speak your mind against them and face excom­mu­ni­ca­tion!
Nail your the­ses to the door, let’s start a Ref­or­ma­tion!
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and transubstantiation!

Duke Fred­er­ick took the Wise approach, respond­ing to my words,
By knight­ing “George” as hostage in the King­dom of the Birds.
Use Brother Martin’s model if the lan­guages you seek,
Stay locked inside a cas­tle with your Hebrew and your Greek! Oh…

Cho­rus:
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion -
Speak your mind against them and face excom­mu­ni­ca­tion!
Nail your the­ses to the door, let’s start a Ref­or­ma­tion!
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and transubstantiation!

Let’s raise our steins and Con­cord Books while gath­ered in this place,
And spread the word that ‘catholic’ is spelled with lower case;
The Word remains unfet­tered when the Spirit gets his chance,
So come on, Katy, drop your lute, and join us in our dance! Oh…

Cho­rus:
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion -
Speak your mind against them and face excom­mu­ni­ca­tion!
Nail your the­ses to the door, let’s start a Ref­or­ma­tion!
Papal bulls, indul­gences, and transubstantiation!

10-26-11

kingdom currency

I first heard the phrase “king­dom cur­rency” used by a friend while I was in Kenya. He was refer­ring to the body of Christ shar­ing out of the same pocket. That’s exactly how our mis­sion team func­tioned the whole month in Kenya. Some­times I paid for everyone’s bus tick­ets, and then other days dif­fer­ent peo­ple paid for all my meals. No one kept track of money, we just paid for things as it came along. I have no idea how much I spent on oth­ers or how much was spent on me. It was a unique way of liv­ing, but what I con­sider a bib­li­cal way.

Like I said, that was unique. There were dif­fer­ent vari­ables on that trip that made that type of liv­ing con­ducive. Here in the States it can’t work exactly that way. How­ever, that same con­cept of one purse is healthy. I love being gen­er­ous. I’m always buy­ing peo­ple cof­fee or help­ing out where I can. I never look at the total or take a receipt. I don’t expect peo­ple to pay me back or return the favor. I just want other believ­ers to have the same will­ing­ness to give from their pocket.

It’s such a touchy sub­ject. I know bud­gets are a good thing, and you can’t spend with­out keep­ing track of your expenses to some extent. I gen­er­ally know my lim­its, and I know I’m not going to go broke by doing sim­ple things like buy­ing peo­ple cof­fee or a meal. Chris­tians need to real­ize that what we have is ulti­mately God’s, and there­fore if we see a need, we need to be more lib­eral than we prob­a­bly are with our money. It’s king­dom cur­rency and I choose to live it out.

10-11-11

John Flavel on Finding God’s Will

John Flavel:

If there­fore in doubt­ful cases you would dis­cover God’s will, gov­ern your­selves in your search after it by the fol­low­ing rules:

1. Get the true fear of God upon your hearts. Be really afraid of offend­ing him. God will not hide his mind from such a soul. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant” (Psalm 25:14).
2. Study the Word more, and the con­cerns and inter­ests of the world less. The Word is light to your feet (Psalm 119:105), that is, it has a dis­cov­er­ing and direct­ing use­ful­ness as to all duties to be done and dan­gers to be avoided…
3. Reduce what you know into prac­tice, and you shall know what is your duty to prac­tice. “If any man do his will he shall know of the doc­trine” (John 7:17). “A good under­stand­ing have all they that do his com­mand­ments” (Psalm 111:10).
4. Pray for illu­mi­na­tion and direc­tion in the way that you should go.Beg the Lord to guide you in straits and that he would not per­mit you to fall into sin…
5. And this being done, fol­low Prov­i­dence so far as it agrees with the Word and no fur­ther. There is no use to be made of Prov­i­dence against the Word, but in sub­servience to it.

The Mys­tery of Prov­i­dence, 1678, (Carlisle, PA: Ban­ner of Truth Trust, 2006), 188–9, empha­sis mine.

HT: Jonathan Par­nell

10-03-11

“Victor-​​y”: A 14-​​year Old Converses with Death">“Victor-​​y”: A 14-​​year Old Converses with Death

09-26-11

live simply, live radically: making friends

All of you are prob­a­bly famil­iar with the hit work­out pro­gram P90X. Well they’ve come out with a new pro­gram called P90X+ for those who are ready to go beyond the orig­i­nal pro­gram for a greater chal­lenge. Liv­ing sim­ply is a stretch for some peo­ple but if liv­ing sim­ply isn’t rad­i­cal enough, I have some more chal­lenges for the “élite”.

Remem­ber, every­thing on this site is to help you live more ful­fill­ing lives that are extra­or­di­nary, break­ing the sta­tus quo. Do I have life fig­ured out? No, but do what you read, and it is guar­an­teed to work.

Meet strangers

I hear it all the time from friends that they strug­gle with mak­ing friends, find­ing peo­ple to do things with. Plain and sim­ple, they’re lonely. These are cool peo­ple, they’re not socially inept, but social­iz­ing just isn’t work­ing for them. It’s almost as if they expect rela­tion­ships to just hap­pen. Here’s the truth, 9 out of 10 times it’s up to you to make rela­tion­ships happen.

The major­ity of our rela­tion­ships are formed through com­mon activ­i­ties such as church, school and sports teams. The prob­lem with those rela­tion­ships is they’re usu­ally formed around one par­tic­u­lar inter­est, and those peo­ple you meet in those venues don’t usu­ally have much more in com­mon than that one interest.

So, get out there and start meet­ing peo­ple out­side your nor­mal venues. Wher­ever you go (ie gas sta­tions, cof­fee houses, restau­rants, etc) seek to engage peo­ple on a deeper level than the typ­i­cal transaction.

Peo­ple are wired to be self-​​centered (if you don’t believe me, than you’ve obvi­ously never spent much time around a 2yr old). To make friends you need to view oth­ers as more impor­tant than your­self and look at oth­ers inter­ests as more impor­tant than your own. I know you want a friend but you first need to be a friend before you can have a friend. When I meet some­one and engage with them, I treat them like we’ve been best friends. It’s not the cul­tural norm how fast and aggres­sively I pur­sue rela­tion­ships, but it works.

Take risks with strangers

When I meet some­one that I think has poten­tial, I make sure to get a num­ber, send them a quick text so I’m in their phone, and within a cou­ple days try to set up a lunch date or activ­ity. I love being gen­er­ous, so I always pay at our first meet up. It may or may not go any­where from there, but that’s ok. Some friend­ships last a week and oth­ers for years. It’s impor­tant to take life one day at a time and squeeze the most out of it. Don’t try to live a ful­fill­ing life for 10yr, strive just for today.

Remem­ber, treat strangers like they’re your best friend. To me that seems like how Jesus would’ve treated peo­ple. So share what you have freely with every­one, it’s not yours any­way. God gave it to you and he can take it away just as fast.

Don’t be afraid to invite strangers over to your house. Lis­ten, if you really want to be used by God and you say that you’re will­ing to be sent any­where, then this shouldn’t be an issue. How do you expect to be will­ing to be sent to the Mid­dle East with your fam­ily to preach the Gospel if you’re afraid of hav­ing strangers around your home and fam­ily here in the US?

Be con­sis­tent

Meet­ing strangers is a good prac­tice, but some­times hav­ing famil­iar­ity is good also. After all, one way to meet strangers is for friends to intro­duce you to their friends. So, become a reg­u­lar. Even if it’s 2mi out of the way, go to the same gas sta­tion. Even if you don’t feel like cof­fee one week, hit up a local cof­fee shop regularly.

Be con­sis­tent with ini­ti­at­ing activ­i­ties. Don’t invite some­one you just met out to lunch once and then expect them to ini­ti­ate the next activ­ity. With social media on the rise, it’s an undis­puted fact that peo­ple are get­ting worse at know­ing how to social­ize. Some­times we need to give peo­ple a lit­tle help.

Here’s the for­mula for mak­ing a best friend. Treat the per­son like they are your best friend, inter­act reg­u­larly and serve them.

Don’t be picky

I’m the worst at this. I want friends but I’m super picky about who I want to be friends with. You have to have the right looks, be on my “level”, be well con­nected, etc. I know, sounds pretty super­fi­cial, right? I’m just being hon­est and work­ing on it.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons from my brother, Jonathan. He is the man. Peo­ple flock around my brother, and it’s almost like he doesn’t even try. Here’s my the­ory about him. He shows no par­tial­ity to peo­ple. He’s kind to every­one (which I am too) but he goes beyond that and includes/​hangs out with the “unpop­u­lar” kids even though my bro ranks high on the cool kids meter. That says a lot about his char­ac­ter and I think other peo­ple notice and it makes him a very attrac­tive person.

This is an off the cuff blog post. It’s not meant to rank high on Google, but I hope it at least gives you some things to chew on. Set goals. Meet 1 new per­son a week, fig­ure out where you’re going to hang, etc. Now get out there and make some friends.