For those of you who prefer to converse with God through worship and song:

Here is an article that looks into what Pastors really think and feel.
The author pretty much nails it!
Here is the link, or find it below:
http://pastormatt.tv/2014/04/09/10-things-pastors-hate-to-admit-publicly/

#1. We Take It Personally When You Leave The Church.
It’s just a straight up fact. We pastors eat, drink and sleep the local church and with that have a deep desires to see it thrive. Therefore when you leave to another church because…

• you’re bothered by a recent decision, but didn’t ask about it…
• the new church has a bigger and better kids wing, youth group, worship team, building space, (fill in your blank)…
• your friends started going there…

… it hits us personally.
For us it feels disloyal, shallow or consumer driven. People affirm that church is a family, thus when you up and leave because the church down the road has Slurpee dispensers, a fog machine or it’s just cooler, well it jams us pretty deep.

#2. We Feel Pressure To Perform Week After Week.
The average TV show has a multimillion-dollar budget, a staff of writers and only airs 22 weeks out of the year; that’s what we feel we’re up against. Where the pressure is doubled comes from the previous point. We know there are churches near by with a multimillion-dollar budget or a celebrity pastor who have the ability to do many more things at a much higher level. From this a sense of urgency is created in our mind to establish the same level of quality, option and excellence to meet the consumerist desires of culture.
Now if this were exclusively in the hopes of reaching new people this wouldn’t be so bad, but increasingly pastors feel the need to do this just to retain people who may be stuff struck by the “Bigger and Better” down the way. Continue reading ‘10 things pastors hate to admit publicly’ »

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity)

“We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

(C.S.Lewis, ‘ The Weight of Glory ‘)

This song pictures the great multitude of those who will enter God’s eternal kingdom (see Revelation 7:14).
We will all be singing then… but for now it is a joy to here these men sing.
I went to school with the fourth guy who sings – second from left in the grey suit – Kevin Pauls.
Is it any wonder that he beat me for the star role in our school musical “Grease”.
I just couldn’t compete… thankfully when singing on that day I won’t have to!
Enjoy!

See more of the the mind-warping animated GIF art of Paolo Ceric here.

This was sent to me by MUB.
Think he’s trying to tell me something?
Thanks MUB!

How to Inherit “An Embarrassment of Riches”
by Alex Green

Turn on the TV today and you’re likely to hear stories about war, disease, corruption, terrorism, political dysfunction and nuclear proliferation. It’s easy to feel down, even depressed, about the circumstances we live in.

Yet the national media delivers the world through a highly distorted lens, emphasizing the negatives and ignoring or glossing over the many positives. So today let me offer an alternative view, the seldom-told story of your amazing world – and just how much you have to be thankful for…

Throughout most of human history, physical survival was the overriding problem confronting people. The bulk of each day was spent seeking food, water, shelter, warmth, and safety. Men and women lived lives that were, in Thomas Hobbes’s famous phrase, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Nobody worried about retirement because almost no one lived to be old. By 25, just about everyone was dead, usually of unnatural causes. We battled the elements and hunted and scavenged to survive. As a species, we existed on the brink of starvation in a world filled with danger. Even 200 years ago, more than 6,000 years after the advent of agriculture, the vast majority of the world’s population experienced the present standard of living of Bangladesh. Continue reading ‘How much you have to be thankful for!’ »

(Borrowed from Richard J. Vincent, God In The Ordinary)

If we lived in light of God’s presence we would see God in everything. Every aspect of life would be transformed.

4. When we see God in everything, we expect to meet – to hear, to experience, to touch – God in everything. Where do you expect to meet with God? Many Christians assume that God’s only means of revelation is the Bible and thus the only real place to meet God is through Bible study. But God loves to reveal himself. Sacred scripture itself speaks of other means through which God reveals himself.

• God reveals himself through creation. “The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). The angels around God’s throne constantly cry out, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3). Creation reveals truth about God’s glory, wisdom, goodness and holiness.
• God reveals himself through human beings – image-bearers of God. All human beings – Christian or nonChristian – are able to communicate important truth about God. No other creature reflects God as greatly as human beings. Even the most depraved human still bears the image of God, however dimly. How much more those who are in the process of being transformed from glory to glory into the likeness of Christ? (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18)
• God reveals himself through providence – a big theological word that simply states that God meets us through the ordinary routines of daily living. Ronald Rolheiser labels providence, “God’s conspiracy of accidents.” All things – the good and the bad alike, including interruptions, irritations, delays, unexpected events, etc. – can be means through which we experience God, for God is always present.
• Finally, God reveals himself fully and finally in the personal revelation found in Christ Jesus. The Spirit of God intimately manifests the presence of Christ to us so that the resurrected Christ meets us and transforms us. There is absolutely no place in all creation where God’s presence cannot be known.