Sermon Audio from St. Timothy CPC

I had been asking Jesus for an opportunity to preach, and out of nowhere St. Timothy Cumberland Presbyterian Church called me because my pastor (who has never heard me preach) recommended me. I almost said no because of time constraints (I was learning Greek this summer), but remembered that I'd been praying for this opportunity, so...

After meeting with a committee, we landed on preaching for six weeks through the Book of Galatians. Not exactly light fare, but the challenge was going to be fun. After the second week, I asked the sound guy if we could record the services. He agreed (thanks, Frank).

For all interested, here's some preaching on Galatians.
ht: Sermon Cloud

Galatians: To Christ Through Abraham - 3 of 6 | listen or download
Galatians: Why the Law? - 4 of 6 | listen or download
Galatians: Resisting Slavery - 5 of 6 | listen or download
Galatians: 6 of 6 | coming soon

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If your husband hates Christmas...

The only time I've really written on Christmas, it was full of complaints. A re-write is in order.

CHRISTMAS PAST
When I was younger, Christmas was one of favorite holidays. We'd either be in New Orleans or Thibodaux with a set of grandparents and other assortments of extended family. We had the staple of presents, football, decorations, drinking, and food that is typical of most white, suburban American kids. My family did a bang-up job making Christmas special.

What I loved the most was seeing all of these people coming together. And it usually was not just five or six people getting together, it was a ton of people. By the time we began opening presents, the party had reached its zenith and it was sometimes difficult to squeeze through. I can vividly remember 20 or 30 people on several occasions.

CHRISTMAS PAIN
It made me very comfortable to know that I was a part of this big family, and never thought that this seemingly endless stream of people would dry up. But when my parents split in 1985, and then all my aunts and uncles divorced before 1990, Christmas shrank and became much less comfortable. Before long, I didn't like Christmas that much.

In college and early adulthood, I would often tell people I didn't like Christmas because it was over-commercialized and hollow. The underside of it was that it hurt to think about what Christmas had become for me, and how I wished I could go back to the big family parties of my childhood. As the disillusionment and frustration set in, I became more content to despise Christmas and blow it off.

Bigger than all that (and more than I can adequately discuss here), Jesus wasn't really in Christmas for me. I just never saw the connection between my walk with Jesus and how my family celebrated Christmas. I honestly didn't know if Jesus cared about Christmas.

CHRISTMAS JESUS
Fast-forward to now, with more than ten years of the Bah-Humbug pattern in my wake, and I'm tired of my Christmas ritual. I'm looking forward to Christmas again, but my hope is not in toys or even large families. It's in Jesus.

The greater portion of my spiritual walk this last semester has been to understand what God intends for my family and how I fit into that equation. From God's Word (including Deut. 6:4, Ecc. 3, Eph. 5) I have been shown how God intends for families to embody a culture that will both point my children to Jesus and prepare them to live in a real world (a lot like a church, really).

Specifically relating to Christmas, my gift as a father is to show my children the gospel story and celebrate it with them in a way that is fun and instructive. Through the way our family celebrates Christmas (and a myriad of other family "institutions"), I can display God's love for us in Christ and our response to His great Love.

So, if you're the wife of Christian Christmas-hater dad, take heart and pray for your man.

And if you're a Chrisitian Christmas-hater dad, wake up and smell the eggnog (yum). Christmas might be jacked up and commercialized, but it's an opportunity to display to your family Christ's gospel story in the midst of the hollow gift-giving and well-wishing of the season.

Merry Christmas.

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Knowing and being certain

As my Dad flew through town a couple of months ago, we briefly got on the subject of certainty and relational truth. As always, the debate was very respectful and fun. In the middle of it, I happened upon a really great truth and now I'm attempting to process it a little.

It came up that someone could know God, but only in a personally interpreted way, the same way I know my friend, Dallas. In this case, I could not make absolute claims about this friend like "Dallas is a gracious person." I could only truthfully say, "Dallas is gracious to me." It would always center on my perspective, and not on Dallas himself. In terms of knowing God, it was said that I can know God personally, but I cannot be certain of who He is. That's where I had a problem.

Stuck inside the cage of our own perspective, we can never know anything about God. We cannot be certain because we can never have all the facts about Him. I do not believe either of these statements because of one word: revelation. And even though I know it's not that easy, it is the beginning of understanding that we can make know God [and things about Him] outside of anyone's perspective, including our own. To illustrate this, I'll use a simple, three-person relationship consisting of Ann, Ben, and Cal. This is their [fictional] story.

Ann and Ben are great friends. Ann and Cal are also great friends. Ben and Call don't know each other as of yet. One day in a chance encounter, Ben and Cal meet and discover that they both know Ann. This is where the trouble begins.

Ben declares, "Ann is one of the mildest people I know. She wouldn't even hurt a fly." Ben then tells a story to illustrate his declaration. Cal interjects, "Really? The Ann I know is extremely violent and everyone is constantly fearful of her." Cal then shares a story about one of Ann's violent tirades. Ben and Cal go back and make sure they're speaking of the same person, and that the stories they told were recent, and they were.

The questions arises for both of them, "Who is Ann?" This is not merely one mood of Ann, but a totally different persona. Relationally, this is a problem that only Ann herself can rectify. Either she is an impostor to some degree, or one of her friends is wrong. There is no other option.

Back to reality. One person might say something like, "God would never let someone hurt themselves" while another says, "God just allowed my mother to commit suicide." Either God is an impostor to some degree, or one of them is wrong about God. There is no other option. The answer begins with revelation. Relationally, God is the only one who can clear His own Name, and He has... in revealing Himself to us through Scripture.

I know this isn't a complete treatment of this problem, but it's a beginning. The road I go down from here involve questions like: why is Scripture so difficult to interpret? What has God revealed about Himself in Scripture? Moreover, what about those who don't believe Scripture, what are they to understand? All really good questions. Hopefully, I'll get some good answers.

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Writing Right with a Dragon

My friend Paige Gmaz is a teacher, a really good special ed high school teacher. She's so good that she's helping one of her students get to college. Here's the story and how you can help him go to college.

Paige's Proposal: Writing Right with a Dragon
[same proposal as an event on Facebook]

Right now [as of 10pm on 11/15/07] his need is down to $290.

Paige is going through DonorsChoose.org, an organization that tries to be "a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack." One obvious route is helping great teachers [like Paige] get special funding for their students.

So, take the plunge all you people that read this blog with some extra cash. All you have to do is click the link. You could even give a mere $5 to help Paige out. Think about it.

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