Conformed or Transformed?

I just finished this book by Bill Wiese. Bill is a realtor that experienced 23 minutes in hell one night. He and his wife Annette share their story. Whether you believe he actually went to hell or not, I pray that it will open your eyes to Scripture. May we each avoid hell and be inspired to share the gospel with others so that they, too will avoid hell. Bill shares his story in the video here.

"If we dont radiate the light of Christ around us, the sense of the darkness that prevails in the world will increase." -Mother Teresa

I took a Missions Trip to Mexico back in 1990 and David Roller was the missionary there. Since then, he has changed positions a few times and is now one of the Bishops of the Free Methodist Church. He has posted an interesting concept he came up with on his blog and I wanted to share it with you.... I had a cool idea recently while studying Acts 15. As a part of their ruling on the Gentile Christians, the Council of Jerusalem said, "we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God." And I thought, "what a great principle!" I know that it's a time-honored tradition to make it difficult for people to decide to follow Jesus (and He sometimes did too, like the rich young ruler). But Jesus usually made it easy, made it attractive to follow Him (free fish, free healings, free kingdom of God). I thought about our traditional altar calls ("every head bowed, every eye closed...") and how they made it hard to come to Jesus. Then it came...

He is risen! He is risen indeed!!! Today we celebrate our risen Lord! We started out our worship service this morning with the song "My Redeemer Lives". What a great way to start! We also sang "He Lives" and "Because He Lives".....see the theme? Then we ended with "Worthy is the Lamb/Crown Him with Many Crowns" set. Music is powerful and I know that the songs touched me today. We focus so much on the fact that Jesus died this time of year and on Sunday we always celebrate the fact that He has risen, but the thing that hit me today was the fact that we should be living our lives daily in light of the risen Lord. How does the risen Lord change who we are on a daily basis? Does it make a hill of beans difference to us? Why is it that we only celebrate once a year? Celebration. What would that look like if we celebrated the resurrection every day? When we celebrate a birthday or a birth of a new baby, we tell those around us. You Grandparents and som...

'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.

What a great day! It started out so rocky that I knew that Satan was busy at work trying to thwart the good that was about to happen. I offer to take any of the men and women in our transition/shelter to church every Sunday. Anyone who wants to go, I will pick up that morning. I had a gentlemen who just got out of prison and said that he would not ever go to church. He has been a member of the white supremacy group before he went to prison and he wanted nothing to do with church. I told him that I offer it up to everyone and there's no pressure, but if he wanted to go, he was welcome. As we were driving down the road, he said "Hey, about that church thing, I think I'll go, if it's still ok." I was grinning from ear to ear on the inside. I didn't know if he would change his mind before Sunday came, but this morning...he was ready to go. And I found it funny that he came with the Korean man that we have in our house. So, backing up a bit....Brian was g...

Today I started back working with the Teens. It was good to be back, and they were happy to see me too! (or maybe it was the doughnuts that they were excited about, hmmm???) I shared a story from the book Jesus Freaks, a book about being a martyr for Christ. We discusssed whether or not they would still come to church if they knew that they could go to prison or be tortured for coming. Many said "no" they would not come and others said "yes", but probably more because it was the right thing to say rather than what would really happen. At this point, God isn't calling us to be a martyr here in our comfortable USA, but we are called to be witnesses. We then moved the discussion to the mustard seed. A tiny seed when planted, but fully grown, one of the biggest trees in the garden. Do we have enough faith that we trust God can change the heart of one of our friends....or even our enemies? I asked them to think of a friend and pray over that mustard seed. We then wen...

Wow, how quickly a week goes by! I just spent some time reading email updates from two of our missionary friends, the Yosts in Sonora, Mexico and Blake Wood in Cairo, Egypt. I was touched by the impact they are having on their communities. Every day is a new adventure and is focused on "doing something that has kingdom value". Wow! It's the Christmas season and I am looking forward to a few days of spending time relaxing with our immediate family, but also with extended family. Even though I have been prepared for Christmas for a while and everything is wrapped and under the tree, I feel the "stress" of Christmas. I do not feel like I have focused and reflected with thanksgiving on the reason for this season sufficiently......nor focused on doing things with kingdom value. Points to ponder: What if every day was spent looking for opportunities to do things of eternal worth? How would your priorities change? Would that mean drastic changes for you? How many thing...