Are you self-important?

A friend of mine from Mexico told me a saying that I like a lot. If someone is acting self-important, full of themself, thinking they're all that, you say to them "Do you want me to go kill a chicken for you?" As if to say, "Do you really think you're so important? Shall we have a feast in your honor?"

We tend to make ourselves, our problems, our issues the big deal. My dad says "The definition of 'minor surgery' is 'surgery somebody else is having.'" One of the points of our new sermon series is this: God is the big deal. His will is the one that matters. Things that are big on his radar screen are the things we ought to care about and orient our lives around.

Let's let Jesus Christ become greater, and ourselves become less (John 3.30). In the words of Psalm 34.3, "Come, let us tell of the LORD’s greatness (or let us magnify the LORD); let us exalt his name together."

God in HD

I'm really looking forward to our new sermon series from the book of Malachi. We'll hear how God is bigger than we think. He's more holy, righteous, loving, etc. The more clearly we see who God really is, the more we burst open the boxes we keep God in, the more we can respond in appropriate ways. If our view of God is small, then it's easy for us to minimize his influence in our life. But the bigger our view of God, the more full-orbed our understanding of his magnificence, the more all-encompassing he can become in our life.

It's kinda like when I walk into my father-in-law's house and his 52-inch Plasma screen TV is turned on. No matter what it's tuned to, the HD images is hard to ignore. I want God to be that way in my life. I want to be totally engrossed in God's Word, captivated by his power and glory, and attentive to his Holy Spirit.

By the way: if you want to see our amazing intro video to the series, visit http://calmastoast.blogspot.com

Many thanks to Dale Patterson for his great work on the video!

How strange are you?

So we've spent four months studying 1 Peter, learning how counter-cultural we should be. We should be shocking to our culture, because of how seriously we take the claims of Christ and his instructions on how to live life. We've learned about how our marriages, our relationship to governing authorities, our response to trials in life, and more ought to show others the values of God's Kingdom.

So how strange are you? In 1 Peter 2:11 we are called "aliens," "foreigners," "sojourners," "pilgrims," "strangers," or "exiles," depending on your translation. Romans 12.2 tells us, though, that the pressure of the world, our normal tendency, is instead to "conform...to the pattern of this world." We know this to be true when we see teenagers all rushing to dress like each other, or suburbanites struggling to "keep up with the Joneses," or our language, preferences, and habits reflect our fallen world more than God's Kingdom.

There are so many places where we are asked to hold firm, not compromise to the world. Ephesians 5.1-20, Colossians 3.1-17, and more attest to the tendency to drift towards those around us, to live according to our old nature than our new nature.

One of the tasks of the Church is to call its people to ever greater degrees of faithfulness to our task. We ought to remind each other often that we are strange. We ought to encourage one another when the world dampens our resolve, stand by one another when things get tough in our marriages, at our places of work, in our parenting. We ought to cheer each other on, not gloat when we see yet another failed marriage or Christian leader leaving ministry in shame. We ought to be accountable to one another so these shipwrecks are prevented before they happen.

Let's be strangers together. Let's walk boldly with Christ, practice radical obedience to his commands, and help one another as aliens and strangers.