MTV Reality Show Highlights Abortion

Many thoughts come to mind while watching this. Obviously I'm filled with immense sadness that the life of an unborn baby was taken. I'm outraged that the murder of innocent babies is legal in our nation. It's also upsetting that MTV obviously has an agenda with this show and that is to make abortion more acceptable and the "loving" thing to do. It's also extremely sad that in our nation abortion is pushed as the "loving" thing and abstinence is ridiculed. Instead of encouraging abstinence we hand teenagers condoms and when they don't use them we encourage murder...

That being said, I wonder where the Church was in this? Obviously this couple has some kind of religious background. The girls mother talked about praying. The couple talks about God and he has a tattoo of Jesus on his arm...

The Church has a responsibility to teach the morals of God's Word more clearly. I think sometimes we assume that people know what is right and wrong. Ultimately they do because God has written His Law on our hearts - yet, sin has a blinding power. Just like in terribly wicked times mentioned in the book of Judges where "every man did what was right in their own eyes," this couple was doing what they thought was "right." The Church has the responsibility of teaching right and wrong. This includes clearly teaching what the Bible says about sexual relationships before marriage and the fact that all life is sacred.

The Church also needs to be ready to support and help women who are in situations like this girl was in. Situations where they are pregnant and don't know how they're going to support a baby. The Church needs to do more than shout at women going into an abortion clinic calling them babykillers. We need to be there to lovingly support and encourage women who are pregnant - and those who have made the tragic choice to have their baby aborted.

It has been said that "It is better to light one small candle than to sit and curse the darkness." May God help us who make up the Church of Jesus Christ to do more than "curse the darkness" of abortion. Somehow, someway, we need to "light a candle" and help show couples like the one featured in this video the Way.

Your thoughts?

Christian Perfection according to Adam Clarke

“The whole design of God was to restore man to his image, and raise him from the ruins of his fall; in a word, to make him perfect; to blot out all his sins, purify his soul, and fill him with all holiness, so that no unholy temper, evil desire, or impure affection or passion shall either lodge or have any being within him. This and this only is true religion, or Christian perfection; and a less salvation than this would be dishonorable to the sacrifice of Christ and the operation of the Holy Ghost…. Call it by what name we please, it must imply the pardon of all transgression and the removal of the whole body of sin and death…. This, then, is what I plead for, pray for, and heartily recommend to all true believers, under the name of Christian perfection.”

HT: Arminian Today

A Christmas gift for my three blog readers...

Not long after moving to Tarrant a couple of guys from the Church decided to try to record a message from the Pastor for the Church website. This is what happened...



Needless to say we had not really prepared anything beforehand for what I would say...I also discovered I do NOT have a future career in Hollywood!

The same two zealous men who talked me into this mess decided to make this video. If you visit our church website you will notice that the welcome video never got posted on the website. This could be because there were too many bloopers - or it could be because they were too busy making this blooper video to actually post the real thing... =)

So Merry Christmas from me - you may laugh at my expense.

Spiritual Formation according to Witherington and Wesley

More good stuff from Ben Witherington today on "A Normal Christian Life":

...There is no spiritual formation practice more important than the active loving of God with whole heart and neighbor and others as self. And the interesting by-product of such loving is that we become holy people, we become set apart for God, we become like God who is both holy and love. God is not holiness without love (thank goodness), nor is God love without holiness (praise God). God's love is always a holy, sanctifying, sin-conquering sin-exterminating love.

Sometimes what happens in discussions about Christian maturity and spiritual formation, is that instead of being encouraged, people get discouraged, because they think that they are being exhorted to become super-Christians, to strive for a sort of spiritual life which frankly they don't see themselves ever achieving. They are not working on sainthood, they are working on just being a good Christian person, and it's all they have time for. For those who feel that way, hear the good news---Spiritual formation is not an achievement, it is what goes on invisibly ever day in the life of the true believer, even when that believer is unaware of it. God in the person of the Spirit is at work in us every single day, transforming us...

Click here to read more

Something to think about...

...we do not have to do our spiritual formation alone. For one thing, God is already at work in us to will and to do. For another thing we have been joined to a body of believers by God's Spirit and they are all on the same pilgrimage. Spiritual formation is chiefly part of body life, part of things we do together. We should not be putting ourselves on a guilt trip if we don't have time to spend hours and days on a weekly basis doing certain kinds of supererogatory spiritual formation practices like fasting, or praying all night, or endlessly journaling, or the like. The good news is, the Spirit never sleeps and  is at work in us all the time and the Spirit is the primary agent of our spiritual formation we are not., In any case, what we do together with our fellow Christians is already the main means of our spiritual formation. Everything else should be seen as a supplement to, not as supplanting, our life in the body of Christ. - Ben Witherington

Read more here

Francis Asbury's admonition to preachers

As Francis Asbury drew closer to the end of his life his health was in terrible condition, however he refused to quit preaching. His traveling companion reflected, "Such was the shattered state of his lungs in the latter part of his life, that it afflicted him very much to preach: especially to large congregations. His cough was always greatly irrited by it."

Asbury said, "Ah! I may always calculate on losing half the nights sleep at least, after preaching in the day. But I will freely give that, to have an opportunity of inviting poor sinner to my blessed Savior." He was determined that nothing should have precedence over preaching to the lost. He advised his preachers: "Preach as if you had seen heaven and its celestial inhabitants and had hovered over the bottomless pit and beheld the tortures and heard the groans of the damned."