Facebook stock IPO is for sale. It is amazing what social media has done. But what about spiritual media?
Log on to heartbook — God’s spiritual media.
Click the box that says: “Keep me logged in.”
The password is Jesus Christ.
Read His many posts on your heart’s wall.
Chat with Him. Obey what He tells you to do.
I recently read about non-church when I heard about a Japanese man named Uchimura Kanzo. He started meeting with a group of friends in a small Christian gathering in Japan in the early 1900s where everyone was equal and everybody had the opportunity to teach and share with each other. His life was never the same. He described his experience as non-church and began to talk and write about it. Soon there was a non-church movement in Japan.
I personally discovered a non-church group (unrelated to non-church in Japan) when, as a freshman in college, I attended an informal gathering of believers at The University Of Tennessee, Martin. My life has never been the same.
In my experience non-church involves believers relating to each other as family, rather than as members of an institution. It is heart-felt rather than organizational. It follows the Holy Spirit’s leadership rather than a set-in stone plan.
Non-church is more about personal connections between people rather than ritual, entertainment, performance, or tradition. I have found non-church to be somewhat like a support group and to follow the biblical instructions in First Corinthians 14:26.
Throughout history many people have independently discovered non-church in various parts of the world: such as; John Wesley and the Methodist Class Meetings in England; Watchman Nee and other house church leaders in China; the underground church in Russia; George Fox and the early Quakers in England.
Experience a non-church gathering for yourself, right here in Nashville @ 225 Berry St., 37207; Thursday nights @ 6:30 and/or Sunday mornings @ 10:45; meeting @ The Salvation Army Berry Street.
Here’s a great description of an early Methodist Class Meeting in the early 1800s in Middle Tennessee: click here.
Two highways, different directions: Should I choose my way which is based on my wants, my feelings, my viewpoints, and/or my cravings? Or should I choose the Most High’s way that requires me to live above the fog of self-focus, rogue emotions, and personal opinions?
This choice isn’t new. It is ancient, represented by two trees: Tree 1) personally and continually experiencing and following God’s life; Tree 2) living by the human analysis of good and evil. Tree 1 is the Most High’s way. Tree 2 is my way (or your way) — the human way. Jesus Christ called tree 1 the narrow way and tree 2 the broad way.
Here are some orientation questions to help you determine which way (or tree) you are living your life by:
* Do I think, say, and do what I want to, or do I think, say, and do what God wants me to?
* Do I live by my own opinions (and/or popular culture), or do I live my life according to God’s will (as best as I know it)?
* Do I evaluate things according to how I feel about them or according to what the Bible says about them?
* Do I stay within my comfort zone or do I follow and obey Jesus even when it makes me uncomfortable?
* Am I led by the flesh (human desire) or am I led by the Spirit (the active guidance of the living God)?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Touching His hem, according to her example, heals hurts. Although this may sound like gender confusion, it’s not. It refers to an actual event where an unnamed woman receives a supernatural healing when she touches the hem of Jesus’ robe. (Read about it in the New Testament, Mark 5:24-34.)
She had been bleeding for 12 years and had spent everything she had, on doctors, but instead of getting better, she got worse. Then she heard that there was a man who was working miracles. So she sought Him out, pressed through the crowd of people around Him, and touched His clothes. Immediately she knew that she was healed.
Jesus stopped in the crowd and asked: “Who touched me.” Everybody thought that was a crazy question because the crowd had their hands all over Him. (Many people were touching him physically, but only this woman touched him spiritually.)
Then the woman fell at His feet and told what had just happened to her. Jesus told her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.”
Healing happens when you spiritually touch the living, present Jesus Christ. His power flows into you and changes your life. It’s overwhelming and transformational.
I try to touch Jesus every day. It’s not a physical touch, because His body is not here. But like the woman, who touched His clothes, not His body, it is a spiritual touch — the touch of faith.
His Spirit is here — living and active across the world. And His Spirit can be touched. Untold millions of transformed lives (including mine) throughout the past 2,000 years of history (His story), shout the fact: “Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”
So go ahead and be like this woman. Dream the Him-possible dream! (And the hem-possible dream!)
Need help touching the resurrected Christ? Press through the crowd of stereotype and ritual and discover the Jesus who said: “I am with you always.” Check out a church meeting with no program or agenda except to sing worship songs and then allow Jesus, Himself, to personally direct the meeting — Sun. at 10:45 am and/or Thurs. at 6:30 pm at The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry St., Nashville, 37207. You have nothing to lose but your hurts.
If Christ is really alive and present when we gather in His name (as the New Testament says He is) why can’t He direct a church meeting, without human programming and control? Perhaps the answer is: We won’t let Him. (Quench not the Holy Spirit.)
After all, who is the best preacher/teacher around? It’s not someone on TV or who has his/her picture on the cover of a book, or someone who pastors a church. No. The best preacher/teacher is the Holy Spirit, Himself!
That’s what the Bible says. “You need not that any man teach you. But the Holy Spirit who dwells within will teach you all you need to know.” –1 John 2:27
“How often the Holy Spirit accomplishes more in one instant of revelation than in years of (human) teaching and preaching.” –a quote by DeVern Fromke
The truth is, Christ is alive and active. The Holy Spirit is present with us whenever we meet in Jesus’ name. He can and will personally direct a church service, if we will give up our human control and allow Him to have His way.
At The Salvation Army Berry Street in Nashville, we try to allow God to be God by setting aside our agenda. Then the Spirit directs and people responded to what He tells them to do. It is such an amazing thing to experience!
See it yourself: 10:45 on Sunday mornings and/or 6:30 on Thursday nights — 225 Berry St., 37207.
I was asked to write a diversity case study for a course I am taking. Here it is:
Sue, a black female, owns a company with 30 employees and hires Betty, a white female who has been the 2 year mistress of Bob (a local business man who still lives with his wife Joyce), to be her administrative assistant.
On Betty’s first day at work, an employee, George, a white homosexual who is Joyce’s brother, walks into Sue’s office and says: “I’ve got to talk with you. Your new assistant, Betty, well, uh, she’s doing terrible things. She’s my brother-in-law’s mistress and is breaking my sister’s heart. You’ve got to get rid of her.”
Sue responds: “Now, George, I’m sorry you’re having a hard time accepting my new assistant, but she is a great person and very qualified for the job. And you know, we have to be tolerant and accepting in the work place; it’s the law. Just try to be more open-minded, George.”
George turns and walks out of Sue’s office. He is very hurt by what he (perhaps because of his low diversity maturity) perceives to be a rejection of his beliefs and concerns. Matters get worse the next day when George sees a picture of his brother-in-law, Bob, hanging on the wall in Betty’s office. Even more hurt, George begins to tell other employees about Betty and the tremendous pain that her affair with his brother-in-law is causing his sister Joyce.
Abdul, an African Muslim employee, feels so sorry for George that he goes to talk with Sue. “In my home country,” Abdul says, “adultery is serious and harmful act, not tolerated. I feel wronged with Betty here, but it worse for George. I don’t agree with what George does, but he not talk about it at work. I feel his pain he feels for his sister. George told me he quit if Betty keep working here. I thought America more fair than that.”
What should Sue do? She has built her company on diversity, not just inclusion. What many see as George’s sinful behavior is accepted and tolerated in her company. Should Betty’s be, too?
As an avid reader of church history, I’ve noticed a consistent trend in Western religion. It seems to disengage God — treating Him as a figure to occasionally honor rather than as a living power source.
Let me explain. A car has a powerful engine, however, if you start a car and leave it in park or put it in neutral, nothing happens except for the noise of an idling engine, because the engine is disengaged from the drivetrain.
When I read the history of much of Western Christianity (or attend contemporary church services), disengaged power seems to be the story: a powerful engine (God) is disengaged from people and institutions that call themselves Christians. There is a lot of noise, but little that impacts daily life.
However, when I read the New Testament book of Acts, I see an engaged God pouring His power through simple, humble people. Also, throughout the history of Western Christianity, you can find fringe groups (often called heretics) that actually engaged God as present reality rather than as mere theology, for example: Catholic mystics, Waldensians, Anabaptists, early Quakers, many Catholic monastics, Moravians, early Methodists, early Pentecostals, early Salvationists, and many smaller, independent groups. Their early histories read like the book of Acts.
So why would anyone want an engine that is continually disengaged from the drivetrain? Isn’t time we shifted our gears and engaged the living God on a daily, moment-by-moment basis?
Need help engaging the living God and plugging your life into His awesome power? Drive down to 225 Berry St., Nashville, TN, 37207 and experience God’s power engaged as people show and tell what God is doing in their lives at The Salvation Army Berry Street.
God’s not like a TV where you passively sit back, like a couch potato, and watch professionals put-on religious performances.
He’s got more apps for you than there are for your iPhone.
So listen directly to the living God. Load the apps that He has specifically made for you — apps for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and much more.
Begin to directly relate to and interact with the Spirit’s apps and experience life in absolutely amazing new dimensions.
Need help using God’s apps? Check out spiritual apps in action at Nashville’s non-traditional, participatory church — The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry St., 37207, on Sunday mornings @ 10:45 &/or Thursday nights @ 6:30.
Why does contemporary society approve of consensual casual-sex but disapprove of consensual obesity? (Both cause health problems and can be labeled as epidemics.) Both result from being gone with the whim.
If there can be safe casual-sex, why not safe obesity?
Here’s A Curious Question: Isn’t “Same-Sex Marriage” An Oxymoron?
President Obama’s comment about same-sex marriage made me think.
An oxymoron can be defined as a figure of speech which combines incongruous or contradictory terms.
Since marriage has been defined for millennia as a relationship between a man and a woman (and as far as I can tell, never in history until the late 20th Century been thought of by any culture on earth as between two people of the same sex); doesn’t that put the phrase same-sex marriage in the same category as these oxymorons — deafening silence, icy hot, pretty ugly, cruel kindness, a definite maybe, original copy, silent scream, sweet sorrow, a mournful optimist?