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Daughter of the King

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Daughter of the King

Tag Archives: Christianity

Boring Stories

12 Wednesday May 2010

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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change, childhood, Christianity, church, friends, God, gospel, growing up, Jesus, life, love, Metro South Church, salvation, Shrink the Church, story, Unite

For all my friends who find their stories boring: research shows that they are not!

For your pastor dad using you in his sermons.  For how you learned to walk between church pews, I’m thankful.  For Krista, my new Unite friend and her church-knowledge of Jesus made real and alive when she was sick and bedridden.  For your homeschooling that I slowly understand and always used to judge, I am thankful. For your internship hundreds of miles from here, away from everything you know.  For the youth camp, the musician, the act of love that made the person and work of Jesus Christ “click” for you – I am so thankful.

Like they say about dumb quesions, there are no boring stories.

God, Potential Control Freak

01 Saturday May 2010

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Belief, Christianity, control, Donald Miller, faith, family, future, God, God's will, life, plan, salvation

I didn’t know a lot of legitimate info about Jesus until I went to college.  But before that I had a self-help season of life late in high school where I tried to quit being such a rebel for forty-five seconds and be “good”.  There was one boy who took me to his church after, or before, I cut his hair in the bathroom of his parent’s house.  This friendship may have been one of my first major exposures to Truth on the road to Christ.  You didn’t need all about Pete and his probable obedience to the Spirit leading to my eventual salvation, but consider it my free gift to you.  He’s the reason I know about this Donald Miller blog post, which rings true to the whole issue of God’s will this-n-that.

God’s will is sticky territory; honey spilled all over the carpeted floor and paper towel shoes on your feet.  But it’s there for us to walk across, even in our helpless paper towel shoes.  Miller makes some simple, yet fantastic points, which touch on some main doctrinal “must’s” when it comes to God’s will.  And he gets real with it and remembers to be practical, a detail I’m learning to value more and more.  Check it out.

UnEdited

29 Monday Mar 2010

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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Tags

choice, Christianity, church, conservative, God, godliness, Jesus, liberal, life, lifestyle, Metro South, morale, unedited, youth

I listened to a sermonette this week by one of the youth pastors, Adam, at a church in Downriver, Michigan, MetroSouth.  It was about how those we teach and disciple will live the unedited version of our lives. Because of this, we teachers must consider our choices and actions and live extra-above reproach so that the example we set cannot be adulterated.

Main Point?  If we live out these medicated kinds of moral choices so that we can sorta walk the liberal line, the youth that we lead with unmedicate our choices and live totally raucous lives, no line-walking in sight.   Adam says something to this effect towards the end of the sermon, “God has not called us to just live the edited version of what the world offers.  God has called us, as followers of Christ, to live lives that are radically different.  He has called us to a life that doesn’t even have a hint of the stuff of this world.”  He’s so right about this.  There’s a million chunks of Scripture that say so.  When I heard him say this with such conviction, I felt convicted.  Sometimes, I edit the way I live so it’s not totally out of line, but so that it still sort of “fits” with the regular life.  As I considered these instances in my life and listened to Adam, I thought: Not good.

That’s the part where I agree.  He spoke of the Pauline Scripture where Paul boldly says: Be like me, cuz I’m like Christ.  Whoah!  What a claim, right?  But, that’s the way.  I should be strving to live confidently so much like Christ that I can say to my youth gals or my camp cabin or whomever, “Do it like this, this looks a lot like Jesus!”

So by these standards, I’m off the charts.  I go to the bars, I forget to filter my mouth, I flirt far too often, I read edgy material, and, and, and.  Some of this is sin; it’s struggle, but some of these things are choices I make for very specific reasons and here’s the part where I’m not sure I agree with Mister Adam.

Because here’s the thing – if I don’t ever venture near “the line”; if I and all of the Christians like me live so straight edge conservatively as far as my moral choices go, then there’s no one who loves Jesus living in the “gray area” with a buncha folks who don’t care a thing about Jesus.  To say it gently, that’s very bad news for the Kingdom.

I wholeheartedly disagree that Jesus doesn’t want those “gray area” folk to know that He loves them like crazy!  He does, and they need to know.  And the only way that’s gonna happen is if someone (maybe someone like ME) goes into that scary gray area and lives with them and loves them.  To do that means creating real and lasting realtionships with these people.  It means sharing their interests and loving what they love.  It doesn’t mean I give up what I believe to do so – that wouldn’t make any sense.  But it can mean bending in the areas where I am strong of conscience and, without sinning, and still glorifying God (glorifying Him even more!) meeting some of these people where they are in order to share the love of Jesus Christ.

Maybe the point of disagreement I have with Adam is not in action, but in audience.  I’m not a youth leader in any capacity right now.  I think he’s right about how they watch us and emulate the things we do.  I think the “rules” for youth camp counselors are heightened for these very reasons.  That makes sense.  But the whole discussion changes when we expand the audience to talk about everyone and about real life, doesn’t it?

These lines become gray and fuzzy and the decisions are so much less black & white than I expect them to be.  It’s why I have alays re-evaluate the choices I make and quit trying to make everyone else’s choices for them.  Here’s to living a mostly unedited life.

Misunderstanding and Messy Spirituality

16 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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apologetics, Christ, Christianity, church, creation, evolution, Genesis 1, God, Jesus, The Reason for God, Timothy Keller

Who can blame me, it’s what I was taught. Thriving through science courses, it’s all I knew. I thought I had no reason to question it…no one asked. Just like so many people I love. No reason or care to question it. Some so adamant about its truth won’t even enter a conversation that has a “Christian” overtone. It may [gasp!] mess with evolution. But the truth is: I know how they feel, I was hung up on it too.

I was hung up hard on evolution. Skepticism was a by-product not half as attractive as it sounds. I distinctly remember sitting on the bed in Chandler’s dorm room one afternoon. Kelly and I both had huge biology textbooks open on our laps. And the questions came for hours.  Not all honest and curious, either.  Some were scathing and accusing – as if the chasm between the two beliefs was Chandler’s fault.

Why is it that we think: In order to understand Christ, we must allign with what we see as His “rules and regulations” before chummin’ up with Him? Who tells us these lies? I believed it.  Believed every word of it, and it made my humble path to understanding a messy pile of spiked hurdles. But let me share two quotations with you. The first is simple: “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints”.  Cheesy, yes – but you act like all the folk in the hospital should be well. That they should be decidedly “nicer” and more “charitable” than you.  What a misunderstanding.

Do you believe that the messy, mistake-ridden Christians that you know are alright? Or are you sitting back with your arms folded, waiting for them to get it right, and choosing some other foggy belief over Jesus until you SEE them get it right with your own eyes? I know someone who’s sitting like this right now, waiting for me to figure it out. Good luck to both of us.

And here’s the other. Timothy Keller says, “What can we conclude? Since Christian believers occupy different positions on both the meaning of Genesis 1 and on the nature of evolution, those who are considering Christianity as a whole should not allow themselves to be distracted by this intramural debate. the skeptical inquirer does not need to accept any one of these positions in order to embrace the Christian faith. Rather, he or she should concentrate on and weigh the central claims of Christianity. Only after drawing conclusions about the person of Christ, the resurrection, and the central tenets of the Christian message should one think through the various options with regard to creation and evolution” (94).

Why have you let yourself be distracted?  Your search was courageous and true.

Magic (Nothing about) Christian(s)

12 Thursday Mar 2009

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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Tags

Bob Dylan, books, character, Christian, Christianity, Jesus Christ, literature, Magic Christian, music, novel, story, Terry Southern

There’s a book by Terry Southern. The margins are thick, lots of white space, less than a hundred pages of goings-on. It’s called The Magic Christian, a name which is a whole hearted misnomer at face value.

The little white novel is said, though verified to what degree – I can’t be sure, to have been the book that Bob Dylan used to have with him all the time as he was getting cleaned up and, however nominally, faith-based. He’d carry it under his arm maybe as a pretense, or maybe because he was leafing through it for a third or fourth time, who’s to say? But I thought reading it might give some insight further into his elusive character.

As it turns out, the book is a thousand surprises. It hardly carries my curiosity page after page to find out how the absurdities of this character, Guy Grand, will come to mean anything at all. My curiosity, you see, is strong.  And it’s not quenched by a monotonous plotline with no peaks in the action, or in my below-sea-level of intrigue.  It’s just that, too many pages of this Guy Grand and his antics without explanation begs some questions.  The protagonist is strange.  No, it’s something more than that, further off the charts than your day-to-day out of place person. If I knew him, I’d hear people call him out of his mind, and say he’s lost his marbles. Insane! Ridiculous! Unbelievable! Asinine! We, today, wouldn’t tolerate his games for even a second.  Yet he carries on in these frivolous pranks of his, unexplained, and without clear motive or resolution.

I can’t tell if he thinks they’re a good idea.  Or if he thrills at fooling America’s brightest bulbs.  Why doesn’t he earn a reputation for failure?  Can his money really buy such a clean slate time and time again?

For example, to simplify the particulars of my favorite trick: he buries hundreds of thousands of dollars, in bills, deep within a city block-long pile of warm manure and urine mixture.  And after painting a sign that says “free money”, he pays off the police to turn their heads for the morning, gets on a plane, and flies across the country to his home. No motive as far as I can tell, just a lot of money and some kind of unearthed desire towards the impossible.  And the chapter, of course, ends without the faintest explanation.

The “Magic Christian” doesn’t appear until the final few chapters of the novel.  It’s a boat.  A yacht or Titanic sort of enterprise that Guy Grand buys, as he does repeatedly to large corporations and organizations throughout.  Passengers have to apply for a spot on the cruiseship.  It’s only for the most elite.  But, there’s an element of facade to all of that, because Guy stows away half a hundred outcasts and weirdoes below deck, for release among the pristine passengers a few days into the trip.  He creates a plot of kidnapping and abuse through this video feed of the boat’s captain which, as planned, pushes passengers to see the mental health doctor aboard ship, who must be in on the plot.  But, for what, I cannot discern.  Guy Grand, himself, is on the boat as it turns into total chaos, but he just ignites protests among the unknowing passengers.  On and on it goes, until the boat returns home and Guy, as he has done for each prank thus far, pays off anyone who knows the truth in order to keep things hush hush.

So why this clustermess of a story under the arm of this legendary singer-songwriter?  I toyed with the idea that he sees some tongue-in-cheek parallels between the facade and the truth of Christianity, but I can’t even find the details to put together that simple theory.  I could be Dylan’s sincere view of Christianity, unreflective of Christ in any way, which would explain a pretty little thing or two.  It could also be that the whole situation lacks a single connection, and I’m tearing my hair out for nothing.  The book has nothing to do with Christians, Dylan’s never read it, he never even carried it like they say.  But.  I can’t shake a feeling that there’s something beneath the vanity of Guy Grand’s ideas.  I can’t get at it just yet, and can’t fathom how Dylan had it figured out.

Facebook Friends

08 Sunday Feb 2009

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Christian, Christianity, computer, culture, facebook, friends, high school, social networking, society

I purged my facebook friends for about 15 minutes the other day.  For someone like me, who’s been a hater of the ‘book since the day I signed up for an account under the peer pressure of my at-the-time boyfriend and best friend, that’s far too long to be spending on that website.  Or, to be politically correct about it…that social networking tool.  Hardly.

I deleted probably 50 facebook friends who were, of course, not really friends of mine at all.  Most were kids I knew in high school, or knew of, or thought could’ve maybe existed.  Honestly, I graduated in a class of over 900 kids at the very-former World Music Theater, former Tweeter center, soon to be demolished-pile-of-building.  I played games with the “S” folk who sat by me, mostly trouble makers that lived in my neighborhood who pulled my extra tassles and honors ribbons in jest the entire ceremony.  Kids walked across that stage, millions of miles from my row 720 seat, who I thought were younger than me, who I thought graduated before I began as a freshman, who I have never seen before, and who I was sure played sports for a neighboring high school.  And, yes, they all tried to facebook friend me at some point after college.  Even the one kid who I know was in jail the entire time I was in college.  Yes, such good friends we were.

So far, none of these 50 or so former facebook friends of mine have noticed their defriending, or they don’t much care, because none have requested re-friendship.  Maybe they know I’m right, and our cyber connection was really all we ever had. 

Right after this personal downsizing, I read this article written on facebook’s 5th anniversary, which oddly illustrates my stance quite well. 

Is facebook anything more to you than connectivity?  Even with the positive aspects acknowledge, can they ever outweigh the superficiality?  Like we really need any more of that in today’s culture.  Skip facebook today, call someone you love instead.

*

Blessed

29 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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blessed, blessing, Christian, Christianity, definition, English, etymology, God, history, pagan, perspective, religion, words, worldview

The adjective “blessed” has a trillion parts to its definition, as most English words these days.  I gravitate to the familiar synonyms, phrases like: sacred, holy, worthy of adoration or worship.  I’m looking through the lens of a worldview that trusts that God Almighty gives and takes away.  So He’s the dude doing the blessing.   Thus, my innards get slipknotted when folks are blessing and gettin’ blessed outside of the sacred.  How dare they?  It’s true, though, there’s some skewing of perspective in my preunderstood approach.

So it goes, the etymological history of ‘blessed’ tells are pretty tight-knit story.  It originally comes from an Old English verb which means, to bless, wish happiness, consecrate.  The Germanic equivalent connotes a consecration with blood, like a Catholic-style sprinkling, I imagine.  The Anglo-Saxons used the word [and consequently the process] in pagan services, worshipping false gods and forces, and “blessing” the folk with symbolic things like animal blood.  Here’s the switch: when those very people, the old school pagan worshippers, converted to Christianity, the word “blessed” became somewhat syncretistic, acquiring slightly new meanings as the translations of the Latin Bible began to have an influence. 

Brilliant! [light bulb turns on]  So connotation for ‘blessed’ tends to be Biblical, not because it began that way and was defined as such, but because it was a tag-along into new ventures after already having held meaning.  So when we’re blessed by the sovereignty of God in various ways, it’s legit.  We’re not sprinkled with anything, but the positively connotated term is true.  Our situation has become more holy and happy because of an outside force.  But my investigation has broadened the boundaries.  Because, I guess, since ‘blessed’ came from pagan roots, pagans can be blessed just as well.  A blessing doesn’t necessitate the inclusion of God, even though every time I use it, it will include such an assumption.  To be blessed separate from the power of God just refers to the way something is favored or fortunate, brought increased happiness or content.  Something that urges thankfulness.

Still seems odd to me to be thankful to nothing.  Can thankfulness have no direct object?  I suppose it can, but I’ll assure that mine never will.  My thankfulness will always have direction.  My blessings will come from somewhere.

Love Wins

21 Sunday Dec 2008

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christianity, emergent, emergent church, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, love, religion, Rob Bell

Relational Concepts [relationalconcepts.org] just put out a new article on the phrase sprawled across Michigander bumper stickers and the ideas behind it. Does love really always win?, I remember asking when I lived in Michigan and saw the stickers all the time. My mind skipped to Jesus turning the tables in the temple, wondering if love was winning there, or if Jesus had another immediate purpose, or if that isolated incident was far out of context, or if choice D, all of the above would be right-er…

It’s a mushy view of the Gospel that love always wins. Imbalanced at the least, I’d say (like ragamuffin).   It’s oversimplifying to a fault.  And it’s sort of a reconstruction of the image of Jesus Christ, which is severely detrimental to Christianity because people don’t have a solid picture of the historical Jesus as it is.  Why y’all gotta go messing it up further?

Love is one characteristic among many that needs to be balanced and in solid interaction with the rest of God.  I won’t ever lie to you, unbelieving friend, and tell you that it’s all gonna be okay, or that I’ll be there no matter what, or that love wins with this God I love, all the time.  I’d rather give you a Bible and let you see the full story for yourself.  Start in the gospel of John, maybe.

I largely digress…

Wielding Words Well

12 Friday Dec 2008

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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atheism, Christian, Christianity, God, Jesus Christ, words, writing

I won’t ever go into professional blogging.  I’ll mess around with it some more, but I won’t stay here.  I’ll never stop crafting words, and finding new tools to use, but it won’t likely be on your computer screen.  Books and bundled things are becoming slowly old school, but whatever I do will make a pass at keeping the offline alive. 

And though I worked for Expedia for about as long as it took me to realize that selling those knife sets in high school was a scam, I don’t think I was very good at those online summaries either.  Here, however, if a writer who knows the tone, the ins and outs of the demands of online writing.  Writers, take note(s).  Atheists, rebut if you must, but you should also be taking notes.

This kid’s brilliant : Jim on science and religion via Barnes and Noble excursion.

Crossing the Chasm in Music

02 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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Bob Dylan, Christianity, God, Jesus, Johnny Lang, music, Rascal Flatts, salvation, Stevie Ray Vaughn

In spouting random Bob Dylan information all weekend, I learned from my musician friends that he’s not the only rock ‘n’ roller to have surrendered his life to Christ.  In long hair and fringed leather vest, a man many years my senior talks about being a fan of Stevie Ray Vaughn decades ago.  That when Stevie got saved, his music escalated in quality, his lyrics were infinitely better, the performances he gave were energized and rich.  If you don’t believe, then that is quite the coincidence.  And if you do, it’s obvious that the Lord gifted him and enriched his talent when he chose to glorify Him.

Johnny Lang is a Christian too.  I didn’t hear it much in his music until the other day.  There’s not just “religious flavor” in That Great Day.  It’s a straight narrative of the expectancy of Christ’s second coming.  That convinced me it’s not a hoax, I suppose.  Because “spiritual” and loosely “religious” folk don’t study the Bible like that.  The New Agers are all about what feels good and right, and calling it supernatural.  Not Johnny.

And Rascal Flatts, if blues and rock ‘n’ roll isn’t for you, they’re Christ-followers too.  Knowing that, I listen to the music about their wives with a new ear.  It’s not like every other song about a woman, it’s a celebration of a marriage covenant that they don’t believe in dissolving. 

I pour these artists out the headphones of my ipod and the speakers in my car, supporting and advancing the cross-over that they’ve made into their career.  Not everyone’s cut out for ministry, contrary to many a conservative belief.  There’s no shame in alternative careers.  They’re not even alternative…for those who are gifted, they are second-to-none!  These guys may be spreading the love of Christ even more than the textbook church folk.  Because I know unbelievers who aren’t turning off Bob Dylan, Stevie Ray, Johnny Lang, Rascals and others like them, running scared from religious terminology and jargon.  And that ministry is exactly in the spirit of the Great Commission. 

The biography said that Bob Dylan met controversy and changes in audience with his “Saved” album, for that very reason – because it was inaccessible to anyone turned away from Christ.  The cross, and anything pointing to it, is foolishness to those who don’t believe.  But if these artists have succeeded in bringing the truth of Christ across the chasm that separates us, there’s something to be said about that.  I know about their lives and the rest of their careers, and they’re no Jesus.  No more or no less than me.  The Lord does use the strangest things to spread the Word.

I have to admit, I didn’t buy it at first.  Cummon, I thought, Bob Dylan?  Really, now?  But I’ll tell you what intensely elates me about the possibility of truth: I don’t need to go to a single other concert here on earth if these musical geniuses are going to be rockin’ out in Heaven.

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