Lisa notes

Secular or sacred?

By LisaNotes October 23, 2013 Book quotes 12 Comments

If you’ve been saved by Jesus, you’ve been set apart for his use, making you sacred. There is no more secular. That’s truth.

This is one of my very favorite books on the sufficiency of Christ and the beauty of grace, for so many reasons. 52 perhaps?

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Excerpt from 52 Lies Heard in Church Every Sunday

Lie #21 – There are secular and sacred things in life

What comes to mind when you hear the word sacred?

Many people would immediately think of church buildings, Bibles, clergyman, and everything else that could be considered religious. For them, the word secular encompasses everything else in life, which would basically be 95 percent of how people spend their lives and energy.

This is how this mind-set operates: Church life is sacred, but work life is secular. Our prayer life is sacred, but our entertainment choices are secular. On and on the list could go. It’s an artificial distinction we make, but it’s not true. And neither is it healthy.

We don’t have two lives—a “spiritual” life here and a “regular” life there.

Our life in Christ is one unified lifestyle, and it is who we are wherever we are. It may surprise you to know that you don’t move in and out of secular and sacred arenas in your lifestyle. It’s all sacred.

. . . Remember, we are in Him, and that is always true. Jesus Christ continually engulfs your life just like the air that sustains you physically.

Where you are, He is. When you go to church, He’s in you. When you go to work, He’s in you. Even if you were to go to a place not compatible with the righteous nature you have in Him, He would still be in you.

. . . Because you’re in Christ, everything about your life is sacred. Our role as believers is to allow “Christ in us” to move into every sphere of our lives, bringing His influence to homes, families, businesses, governments—even churches.

You don’t live in a defensive mode. You have every reason to invade this world and know with confidence that the very gates of hell cannot prevail against the Christ who is in you.

– Steve McVey

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My book review of 52 Lies Heard in Church Every Sunday

My reading list October ’13

By LisaNotes October 22, 2013 Books I Recommend 12 Comments

These are the books I’m currently reading and have just finished from last month. Every 4th Tuesday we share our nightstands here.

JUST STARTED

Pastrix
The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
by Nadia Bolz-Weber

My book review here

This spiritual memoir is written by a now Lutheran pastor who came from Church of Christ roots. It’s not for the easily-offended. But it is for the spiritual seeker. I love how she writes with humor and insight. It’s one of those books that I hate to put down.

Make a Difference
Growth in Leadership
by Dr. Larry Little, Melissa Hambrick-Jackson, David Rupert

My book review here

When I heard my blogging friend David Rupert at Red Letter Believers helped write a book, I knew I had to read it. Good decision! I’m over halfway into it and it’s been fruitful on many levels. Never mistake that you have to be a leader in the corporate world to profit from leadership or business books. I’ll post a review soon.

A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. Le Guin

This novel is about sorcery and magic and dragons and mages. It was mentioned in a book on Centering Prayer in a chapter about Welcoming Prayer. (Yeah, that’s often how I decide what to read next. You, too?) It’s fine so far (but to be honest, it’s clearly not my favorite genre). I’m hoping it gets more spiritually insightful as it progresses.

Glorious Ruin
How Suffering Sets You Free
by Tullian Tchividjian

Since this is my month for the spiritual discipline of feeling our pain, this Tchividijian book was a must-read (especially when it came up free for the Kindle). An excellent book for any month! He focuses on the Who in our suffering instead of the why or how.

STILL READING

You’ll Get through This
Hope and Help for Your Turbulent Times
by Max Lucado

Of course it’s good; it’s Max Lucado. He’s a master storyteller again in this book. He weaves stories about Joseph from Genesis with modern-day stories of others in similar (well, sort of) circumstances, and shows how God’s faithfulness back then is equally trustworthy today.

Transforming Grace
Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love
by Jerry Bridges

Still slowly working through this one. I don’t want to read it quickly because I want to absorb as much of it as I can. Bridges has a way of reaching down deep into new understandings of grace and the Bible and God. He shows how we want to obey once we understand grace, not the other way around of having to obey first in order to receive grace.

FINISHED FROM SEPTEMBER’S NIGHTSTAND

Safe House
by Chris Ewan

This is a clean novel that’s full of twists and turns and mysteries. Because I don’t read much fiction, I want the novels I do read to be entertaining. And this one was. It kept me reading chapter after chapter and losing track of time. It had a little violence but not too much and not too gruesome.

I’m Not Gonna Lie
And Other Lies You Tell When You Turn 50
by George Lopez

This was a mixed-bag for me. Parts of it were funny; parts of it were a little sad. It was easy to read and at times I did laugh out loud so overall I’d give it a thumbs-up, but I wouldn’t even think about reading it again. Next time I’ll just watch Lopez on TV.

Grace (Eventually)
Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott

If you already know you like Anne Lamott’s free-flowing writing style, pick up this book. You’ll enjoy it and benefit from it. She does here what she’s good at–telling stories from her life and drawing spiritual implications from them, some easy, some hard, some successful, some failures. I love her honesty and her wit. I don’t agree with all her theological or political opinions, but she’s spot-on in her understanding and application of grace. That’s enough for me.

Walking in Freedom
A 21-Day Devotional to Help Establish Your Freedom in Christ
by Neil T. Anderson

This devotional contains great truths to remind you of who God is, of who you are because of him, and of how you can walk in freedom because of that in your everyday life. It keeps it short and simple, but it uses lots of scripture so you aren’t short-changed by its brevity.

The Bible according to Peanuts
by Robert L. Short

Don’t be tempted to think this is just a book of comic strips. While it does contain plenty of those (which reminded me of how insightful a cartoonist Charles Schulz really was!), it also contains great insights into the Bible and our interpretations of it. There were a couple of things included I still need to think more about and study through, but that’s a good thing. I highly recommend this book along with The Gospel according to Peanuts to remind you of God’s greatness and grace.

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What’s a good book you are reading or want to read?

My books on Goodreads
More nightstands

Are refined sins still bad ones?

By LisaNotes October 22, 2013 Book quotes 4 Comments

When we define sin as only what other people do, we’re sinning ourselves. Even our “nice” sins are still bad. Read more from Jerry Bridges on our “refined sins.”

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Excerpt from The Discipline of Grace

A large part of our problem as evangelical believers is that we have defined sin in its more obvious forms — forms of which we are not guilty. We think of sin in terms of sexual immorality, drunkenness, lying, cheating, stealing, and murder.

. . . Most often our sin problem is in the area I call “refined” sins.

These are the sins of nice people, sins that we can regularly commit and still retain our positions as elders, deacons, Sunday school teachers, Bible study leaders, and yes, even full-time Christian workers.

What are some of these “refined” sins?

As I looked at my own life, one of the first that came to mind was the tendency to judge others and to speak critically of them to other people. That this sin came to mind so quickly surprised me, because I don’t think of myself as a critical or judgmental person.

Perhaps that is part of the problem.

This seems to be such an acceptable vice among believers that we don’t even recognize it unless it is flagrant—and always in someone else.

. . . Which of us, then, does not offend frequently with our tongue?

The real problem, however, is not our tongues but our hearts.

Jesus said, “For out of of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). So it would not be sufficient to win control over our tongues, even if we could. We must recognize the sin in our hearts.

What are some other “refined” sins that we can commit and still be respectable among our Christian friends? Some of the more common ones are in the area of interpersonal relationships. These would include resentment, bitterness, an unforgiving spirit, impatience, and irritability.

. . . One of our problems with these so-called refined sins is that we have become too comfortable with the whole concept of sin. Because we do sin so frequently we learn to coexist with it as long as it doesn’t get too out of control or scandalous.

We forget, or perhaps have never learned, how seriously God regards all sin.

– Jerry Bridges

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Chapter by chapter notes from The Discipline of Grace

Lessons from a prayer labyrinth

By LisaNotes October 21, 2013 Pain, Prayer 17 Comments

We drove up the windy road to the top of Monte Sano Mountain. Here it was still. Hushed. Beautiful.

For months we’d been meeting inside, down in the valley. For an hour once a week, we gathered to talk, to laugh, then to pray in silence, centering ourselves in God’s presence, consenting to his will, not ours.

But our field trip this morning was getting us out. Up.

Not to sit, but to walk.

At first glance, the prayer labyrinth seemed small. And confusing. More like a maze to get lost in rather than a journey to get found. The grass slightly obscured the rock sides and I wondered if I’d see where the turns were.

One sister stepped in. We waited. Then another sister. One by one, we each entered at our own pace, quietly, methodically, walking in between the stones, turning in and out as they directed.

It seemed so orderly to have been birthed out of chaos.

Out of a deadly tornado actually.

On Palm Sunday 1994, Reverend Kelly Clem was worshiping with her church family in Piedmont, Alabama, when hail began falling outside the sanctuary.

Then it got worse. A tornado swirled in, ripping the roof off the sanctuary and slamming it back down on the north wall.

Twenty people were dead.

Including little Hannah, the four-year-old daughter of Kelly and Dale Clem.

Much grief followed. Pain. Even now.

But as healing began to rise out of the suffering, so did a desire to help others walk through their own circumstances in life.

Years later, the idea for the prayer labyrinth was seeded, planted, and now full-grown by the Clems on the mountain outside the church building where Reverend Dale Clem ministers.

As I now walked it with my friends, I silently thanked God for my own healing—some I could recognize and some still in progress. I asked to accept pain I still wrestle with, and praised for chains he’s broken off (hallelujah!).

The prayer labyrinth was showing me the path from suffering to sense can remain a mystery. That’s okay.

I don’t have to explain every answer. I don’t have to force beauty from ashes. I don’t have to see over the weeds.

I can love God when I see something good come out of bad. And when I don’t.

Because in this moment—in this step—is where his Spirit is.
And together we keep walking.

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Relationship with the Bible? Or God?

By LisaNotes October 21, 2013 Bible, Book quotes 5 Comments

You don’t need a relationship with words on paper (the Bible); you need a relationship with the living Word in your spirit (God).

Scot McKnight makes that plain in this excellent book about looking at our Bible with fresh eyes to more clearly see the awesome God it points to.

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Excerpt from The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

I bring it all together into one central focus now: A relational approach believes our relationship to the Bible is transformed into a relationship with the God who speaks to us in and through the Bible.

If we distinguish God from the Bible, then we also learn that in listening to God’s words in the Bible we are in search of more than a relationship with paper with words, namely, a relationship with the person who speaks on paper.

Our relationship to the Bible is actually a relationship with the God of the Bible.

We want to emphasize that we don’t ask what the Bible says, we ask what God says to us in that Bible.

The difference is a difference between paper and person.

Let me put this now one final way: God gave the Bible not so we can know it but so we can know and love God through it.

. . . We must begin an entirely new conversation that gets us beyond the right view of the Bible to one that seeks to answer this question: “What is our relationship to the God of the Bible?”

I suggest that the answer to that question, and one that comes to mind immediately for the one who reads the Bible attentively, is simple: Our relationship to the God of the Bible is to listen to God so we can love him more deeply and love others more completely.

If God’s ultimate design for us is to love God and to love others, we can only acquire that love by learning to listen to God.

Listening and loving are intimately connected.
– Scot McKnight

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Don’t try harder; enjoy more

By LisaNotes October 20, 2013 Book quotes 5 Comments

Looking at the ugliness of sin is one way to fight off temptation. But there’s a better way: focus on the beauty of Jesus.

Don’t try harder; enjoy more.

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Excerpt from One Thing

I’m not suggesting that understanding the nature of God isn’t essential. Of course it is! Theological ignorance won’t take us very far, at least not in the right direction. Excitement uninformed by truth invariably leads either to idolatry or fanaticism. If we don’t know the God we enjoy, we may end up enjoying the wrong God!

But knowledge alone isn’t enough.

Declaring God’s glory to others is also important but, again, there’s something even more fundamental to our existence. For evangelicals who’ve been raised to believe that theological precision is an end in itself, this may be a hard pill to swallow. For others who’ve reduced Christianity to obedience, it may sound self-indulgent.

My point is simply that passionate and joyful admiration of God, and not merely intellectual apprehension, is the aim of our existence. If God is to be supremely glorified in us it’s critically essential that we be supremely glad in him and in what he has done for us in Jesus.

So, here’s why you are: to relish and rejoice in the revelation of divine beauty.

. . . Let me go even further and say that when it comes to satisfying our spiritual appetites, there is no such thing as excess.

There are no restraints placed on us by God. There are no rules of temperance or laws requiring moderation or boundaries beyond which we cannot go in seeking to enjoy him. We need never pause to inquire whether we’ve crossed a line or become overindulgent.

You need never fear feeling too good about God.

That’s not to say our sensual appetites should be left unchecked. The Bible is full of prohibitions and restrictions on how and to what extent we indulge our fleshly and bodily desires. But no such rules exist for our spiritual appetites.

Many think of religion in general and Christianity in particular as a sour and depressing attempt to suppress human desire and deprive us of the delights of life. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Christianity forbids us no pleasures, save those that lead to temporal misery and eternal woe. Please read that again. God has forbidden you nothing that is conducive to your ultimate satisfaction and delight. Nothing!

. . . The essence of loving living as a follower of Jesus isn’t in trying harder but in enjoying more. I’m not saying you can change without trying. I’m saying that enjoyment empowers effort.

Pleasure in God is the power for purity.

– Sam Storms

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