Some interesting thoughts from Ezine Articles. This is in regard to a previous post I did about Christian blogging. There are many great things being done in the blog world, but also many tragedies and character assassinations.

1 Corinthians 10:31 tells us to do all things to the glory of God. As Christians, we must ask why we do the blogs we do. Are they do to being honor to the Name of the Lamb, or are they done to vent, to air grievances in a way not seen since the Festivus episode of Seinfeld (Frank Costanza), or are they done with a grudge. I submit if you are not doing it to the glory and honor of God, as an ambassador of God through the ministry of the Gospel, I say to cease and desist. Nothing infuriates me more than reading cowards using the internet as a bully. Dr. Pittman was right, this is the new grumbling from the pages of the Gospels.

Here is the article in its entirety, submitted for your consideration.

Everyone knows that controversy sells news and it also creates interest on Blogs, but if you allow your blog to turn into the latest Hollywood paparazzi soap box, you will find your readership change. How so you ask? Well, you will soon notice the intellectual level of your comments decline and the types of folks you attract may not be exactly what you had in mind.

If you watch the evolution of bloggers and see a few of them rise to fame only to fall in failure there seems to be a common theme. They go overboard on the controversy and often resort to copying ideas and re-writing content. The problem with this is that they will take a news article and embellish reality, then another blogger copies them and does the same and so on. Eventually they are slandering folks all in the increasing pressure to create content.

As their blog goes out of control and as they make more and more enemies, they set themselves up for future lawsuits and become alienated as they crucify innocent individuals, many of whom their blog viewers actually favor. These sorts of tactics always end the same way, but the need of some bloggers to become famous, appears to trump their ethical nature and integrity. Personally, I have one comment to bloggers like this; "You Ought to Be Ashamed of Yourself!"

Blogging slander is wrong and it destroys what the internet is all about, it hurts social networking and only proves that humans are little more than chimpanzees playing out their normal everyday primate politic games. Think on this.

The URL: http://ezinearticles.com/?Blogging-And-Slander---You-Ought-To-Be-Ashamed-Of-Yourself!&id=1176643

Faithfulness

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— 38 of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
Hebrews 11:35-38

How often do we take seriously the call from Christ to take up our cross? What do we expect to get when we seek to follow Him with all our being? I think we must look to those who have gone before us to see what exactly is in store for those who truly follow Christ. Our precedent is not a life of comfort, ease, and peace. Rather, we see from those who truly stood for the cause of Christ a life of hardship, difficulty, and in many cases persecution. While we do not live in a closed country where the Gospel is a crime, we do see many instances of God-fearing, Christ-honoring people who endure hardship for the sake of Christ.

So many times, I believe we as Christians in America expect our walk with the Lord to be easy. We do not understand the difficulty being associated with the Gospel means for us. It puts us diametrically opposed to the cause of the World, and it places us in direct opposition to forces much stronger than we could ever conceive. We find ourselves on the front line of a tremendous battle, where the casualty count is high. We forget that we live in a world where more martyrs are made than ever before in Church History, and that we live in a world where husbands and fathers are brutally tortured for bearing the cross of their Lord.

So it should come as no surprise to us that when we remain faithful to Christ, we do not have an immediate and guaranteed claim to blessings and fortune (and if any preacher has told you this, he has lied to you). We have an inheritance and we do have great blessings, but those are found in Christ and not in the things of the world. The examples we are to follow from Scripture lead us to one conclusion, faithfulness to Christ will undoubtedly lead to personal hardship, spiritual warfare, and great opposition.

I have shared before that the past year has been the most difficult I have ever endured, and I do not nor can not rescind that stance. I have felt hardship and opposition in an entirely new way, and in the midst of it all I consider it a joy to have been found worthy to suffer for the sake of the Gospel. I have sought to be faithful to the teaching of the Word and the growth of His people, and while there have been glorious moments of rejoicing, there have been many more moments of personal angst. And for that I am thankful.

I encourage you to pray for and support your pastors and leaders. They have/are/will endure/d great hardship for the sake of Christ. They deal with things and carry a weight many other people will never know or understand. And it is my prayer that the people I serve with would never know the full depth of my weight I carry. Stand behind them, support them, love them, submit to them when they give instruction. Follow their faithfulness, and heed their instruction.

May the Lord find us faithful, and may we consider all things a loss for the surpassing greatness of knowing Him, making Him known, and living in the joy of our salvation in Christ

Lenten Season Begins!

As we approach the coming celebration of the highest holiday in Christianity, Resurrection Sunday/Easter/Paschal, we prepare ourselves by spending 40 days in preparation both individually and corporately for celebrating the defeat of the Curse. Individually many people choose to forsake something of worth as an act of sacrifice and fasting, and corporately many churches are teaching series based on the Passion of Christ. For example, we are taking our students through a biblical look at Jesus as the Lamb of God as seen throughout Scripture. Tonight we start with the provision of a sacrifice in Eden for the sin of Adam and Eve and the future-looking promise that one day a sacrifice was coming that would defeat the Serpent and reverse the curse God had placed on the earth.

A thought for meditation today comes from the hymn "The Church's One Foundation"

The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav'n He came and sought her
To be His holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.

Elect from every nation,
Yet one o'er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

'Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace for evermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly,
In love may dwell with Thee.

Eat Drink and Be Merry...

Happy Fat Tuesday all! Today is the day that people "get it out of their system" before the observation of Lent as a preparation for the Paschal/Easter season. It is a day that New Orleans and other cities will become so drunk and stuffed that they wake up tomorrow looking forward to giving up something for 40 days. Truth be told, one time I did a 30 Hour fast in high school and we went to Gattiland before to stuff ourselves full of pizza, suicides, and breadsticks in order to get through the "eternal" time between meals we would have to endure. So I have no room to talk when I talk about the sanctity of a fast for the Lord.

Anyway, that said, I hope and pray many of you are considering walking away from something that is causing tension or difficulty in your faith walk, and giving it up for the Lenten season as an act of worship and sacrifice unto the Lord.

Tomorrow begins my voluntary withdrawal from Facebook and soft drinks, so I am sitting here at my desk enjoying a Coke Zero and Friend Updates for the last few hours before I walk away from them in order to devote myself to prayer, meditation, Scripture study, and personal piety. Buckle up, here we go!

My arms still hurt!

Friday we went back up to Kentucky for a couple days and while we were there Carrie and I helped her parents with the cleanup task in the wake of Ice Storm 2009. Seeing the pictures gave us an idea of the extent of the destruction, but it paled in comparison to what we felt and saw when we got to the Jackson Purchase area (the part of KY hit hardest). It reminded me of the scene in Band of Brothers when they are in the Bastogne woods after the German bombardment with trees down everywhere, snapped in two, and debris everywhere.

The morning started with a hefty breakfast of pancakes, coffee and bacon (which I believe I ate my body weight in). We got going around 8:30 with gathering limbs and burning them in what had to be the biggest bonfire this city boy had ever been around. A couple hours in, I began to hurt in places that have never hurt before, and muscles were aching that I didn't know I had. Carrie and her mom did a wonderful job gathering pine needles, small limbs and sticks, and giving us encouragement as we took trailer load after trailer load of timber to the fire.

By the end of the day we carried... well I lost count... trailers of debris and the property began to take on a sense of normalcy despite the damaged trees. It was a pleasure and honor for us to be able to come alongside them and work. It was hard and demanding work, but far more satisfaction and joy in knowing that we were able to be a blessing to them!

The casualty count for the day
Scott - One nasty scratch across my back, burn holes in my shirt from sparks, a sore back and shoulders
Carrie - Trembling hands from having to hold a rake tightly all day, a sore back from constant scooping and bending

Let's just say that night we had no problems resting :)

Some Disciple Now Thoughts

We had a great time with Disciple Now 2009 with our youth, talking about the issue of purity and in particular going with a "True Love Waits" theme. Special thanks to Scott Yackel and Cary Beth Duffel for giving up their weekends to invest in the students as small group leaders. Also, props to Will Cranford for leading worship, Casey Frye for being a very needed help. And lastly thanks to the lovely Mrs. Douglas for all her work and encouragement through the weekend.

The format was different from what was normal for the church, going to a small groups model where our students were able to dialogue and discuss issues with their leader in the comfort of a host home. Thankfully we were able to have good discussion with very sensitive and relevant issues that are very different from the high school world I came from.

The highlight of the weekend for me personally was our "Late Night" worship session at the home of some youth parents. By late night I mean 10 PM, know that's not late for most of you but when you regularly get up at 4:30 in the morning, anything past 9:30 is pushing twilight hours! It was awesome to see our students in a relaxed, "non-church" atmosphere praising the Lord with their voices. I hope it was as significant for them as it was for me.

I do pray that the cards signed, the commitments made, and the lessons learned from the weekend will translate into a renewed mind and dedication to living a life saturated by Christ.

Oops

Would like to thank all of you who gave such good feedback and encouragement after preaching this Sunday! It is a pleasure, an honor, and a deeply serious task to expound the Word to God's people, and I appreciated your prayers and support.

Sorry we went a bit long in the second service, not going to lie it comes from my Puritan influences. I should have done the A-Rod and said that my cousin who will be unnamed said it was a good idea, but like A-Rod that would be a lie. Forgive me as an eager young minister who thinks everyone else in the world cares as much about Puritan-like preaching as I do :) Looking forward to doing it again sometime!

SDG
Scott