Posts Tagged ‘christian’

It’s a line from Pee-wee Herman in his movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure… and it doesn’t mean that all of us have gigantic backsides, although it sounds pretty funny when you think of the possible double meaning! He’s trying to explain something to his friend Simone and the conversation goes like this:

Simone: I know you’re right, Pee-wee, but…

Pee-wee: But what? Everyone I know has a big “But….

This isn’t the word butt, rather b-u-t. The one small, three-letter word that has all the power to dismiss, discount and disregard everything that came before it. People can hear the truth, they can be given all the guidance, direction and wisdom that they need to live right and make the proper choices. Yet in the quick and swift utterance of this one word,  believe they’ve exempted themselves and that they are not required to heed the truth. After all, their big but quickly erases everything.

There is a misconception, a mistaken way of thinking among Christians when it comes to having sex outside of marriage.  Here is what many people think:

• The best circumstance to have sex in is within the bounds of matrimony or if you are not married, to remain sexually pure.
• The next best scenario is having sex with your boyfriend/girlfriend…but while you really shouldn’t do it, most people will give a pass to those who do. Because after all, you love each other, it’s just so difficult to wait; you can’t really control yourselves when you feel so strongly about one another.
• Then the lowest and most unacceptable sex (in most people’s minds) is prostitution—those who get paid to engage in sexual acts.

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One of the first words that a child learns is “no”.  A small toddler knows what it means and it is an early entry in their verbal vocabulary as they wobble around repeating, “No, no, no” everywhere they go.  Even a dog will quickly learn the word when you are training him.  Yet while it is one of the earliest concepts that humans acquire, and extraordinarily simple to understand, many people never grasp the word or learn to act on it.

It is imperative that we get the whole idea of “NO!” drilled into our heads, learn to deny selfish desires and feelings, and do the right things in life. If you don’t get this, you will live a life that is nothing but a series of disasters that leave a wake of destruction in your path.

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by Mark Gungor

Why does the Church seem to be so impotent today?

As I look at what we Evangelical Christians have accomplished over that last decades, I cannot help but be stunned at how far we have “dumbed down” the Christian message.  For the last fifty years, we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on crusades, television and radio broadcasts, concerts and outreaches trying to get as many people as we possibly can to “believe” in Jesus.  We have told millions of people that if they just “acknowledge Jesus as their savior, they will be saved!”

Really??

We have convinced millions of people that all they needed to do was “repeat this prayer after me…” and Christ would transform them from the kingdom of this world to the Kingdom of our glorious God.  That “it doesn’t matter what you do – just believe”.  That once they let those magic words ooze over their tongue, push past their teeth and bubble over their lips, they would now would become real Christians.

Really???

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If you do a search for “forgiveness” on Amazon, you’ll get a list of over 4700 books, so apparently it’s a hot topic. Everyone gets hurt, offended or betrayed in life, and we all have to deal with forgiving others. Often the lack of forgiveness is like a big, black cloud that hangs over the heads of people, keeping them tied up and held in a prison of anger and bitterness.  Countless people ask me how they can forgive someone—usually their spouse—for some transgression that has been committed against them. It is not at all unusual to hear people say that the specific thing they are struggling to forgive happened 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago, yet they are still dealing with the memory, the pain and the inability to work through it. Many relive the event in excruciating detail as if it just happened yesterday, saying they can’t, won’t, or don’t know how to forgive the person.

While non-Christians may have their own steps and formulas on how to forgive, from a Christian world-view I can explain it very quickly and to the point. Quite simply, the Bible teaches that if we won’t forgive other people, then God will not forgive us.  In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches His disciples “The Lord’s Prayer” that says, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” (Debt means sin or offense.) Then in verses 14-15 Jesus continues and says, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”(NIV) Seems like a very straight-forward concept, yet many Christians don’t get this and even when they hear it, they don’t believe it.  There may be things in Christianity that are debatable—such as finer points of theology, speaking in tongues, what is the proper form of baptism, how to interpret the end-times scriptures—but not this. Forgiveness is pretty black and white, fundamental Christianity 101; if you don’t understand forgiveness you don’t understand Christianity. (more…)