Chris's Musings

The Fourth of July has come and gone.  The election is starting to gain momentum with the first Democratic debate, and hold the memes... the food fight is beginning.   Actually, it has been going on since 2016.  The vitriol and name-calling coming from the Left and the Right alike in America, even among church people, has been crazy.  I picked up this book in the past year because I was intrigued by the title and because if I wanted to see real change (especially in the way we as Christians in America view politics), then the change starts at home and with me.  How the Nations Rage, Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age is a challenging book to read, regardless of your political affiliation.  If you are the typical conservative evangelical, it is extremely challenging because it challenges us to think about how we engage and challenges our blind loyalty to the GOP (let's be honest, it's there), and some assumptions that we get from C...

As a preface, at the beginning of this year I had set a goal to read more, and read a more variety (I tend to read primarily for quiet times and devotionals).  This means that I step out of my box a little, and included with my goal was to write my thoughts on the book and the takeaways I got from reading it. In a busy first half of 2019 which included three international business trips, a move from Atlanta to Colorado, and all of the craziness of establishing life in a new place, I hadn't gotten to the second half of this goal until now.  I hope that if you find this blog, that it helps you and enhances your life in some way.   So here we go...  What is a Healthy Church?  By Mark Dever  This was one of the first books on my list for the year.  Amanda and I had learned that we would be relocating to Denver at the end of 2018, and one of our first priorities when we arrive would be to find a good church.  Spoiler alert:...

Last Friday night, I had an overnight layover coming home from Helsinki through Amsterdam.  I hadn't been into Amsterdam in a while, so I decided to take a train into the Amsterdam City Center to soak in the city a little, and sample my fill of cheeses (and I did buy a piece of Gouda to take home). Fun fact:  Gouda is named after a small town in South Holland where the cheese was invented.  It's near Rotterdam.  It's on my list of places to see now.  If you get a chance to go to Amsterdam for a day, it's a really beautiful city. One of the first things you see as you walk out of the Amsterdam Central train station is a building by a Catholic cathedral that has two inscriptions on it. God Roept U (in Dutch), and Jesus Loves You (in English) As a casual observer who doesn't understand much Dutch, other than the American connotation that it means that you and your date split the bill, I decided to run the phrase through Google Translate; expecting that...

In finishing a recent book read (which I highly recommend - Not God Enough by JD Greear), I ran across a thought that I want share, as well as noodle on it's implications for my life.  It's a thought about the third commandment. "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain." - Exodus 20:7 Many of us have been taught that this command (the third) is basically the "do not cuss" or use God's name as a cuss word command.  While I do believe that application applies (although I think that is actually a more serious thing), it's not the totality of this command.   "The name" of the Lord, in the ancient Hebrew context, reflects God's character and how we associate ourselves to Him.  In the book I've been reading, the author points out that we as Christians can take the Lord's name in vain by the way that many of us live.  As an illustration...

Today, I was in Mark 5 through my reading through the gospels.  Something struck me today and I wanted to share with you, my small blog audience. What struck me was the desperation (my word) of the people that were approaching Jesus.  For example: The demoniac in Gerasene met him immediately when Jesus got out of the boat, and was so tortured by the demons possessing him that people could hear him crying out loud and he would cut himself constantly with stones.  This is not in the text, but I wonder if that man, tortured as he was, fought his oppressors with every ounce of energy that was still his to meet the one who could free him from that hoard.  The legion of demons, on the other hand, were desperate not to get tortured when faced with the Son of God.  As a result, a bunch of pigs went hog wild (literally) and barreled off a cliff into the sea.  (Mark 5:1-13) The people from the town, when they obviously saw their bacon sales falling, went out to...

Yesterday, I signed off of my social media accounts for the summer (I plan to be back on for football season, because... well, football trash talk is fun at lest for me).  I'm taking the time spent mindlessly going through my feed, engaging in the debate (more like gossip) of the day, and spending time letting my soul refresh with music, with more time reading the Bible and God-centered books, and investing in Amanda's and my friends' lives.  In this season, I also want to re-engage with my writing, so you'll see more activity here. This is Memorial Day.  I woke up a little late and started to cook some breakfast with a Third Day Spotify station in my headset.  I woke up with " Your Love oh Lord " in my head (still one of my favorite worship songs) and was really encouraged and stirred through listening to the songs this morning.   Then one song, one that I've heard on the radio but really hadn't stopped to listen to too much, popped on my stat...

This year, I have been reading (not perfectly) through the Gospels and posting some of my thoughts on my Facebook feed. Today's thought was fairly long, so I amended my post on Facebook for space and readability. Below is my complete thought. Enjoy Misplaced Expectations - a musing of Matthew 27 Something struck me as I was reading this morning about the scene in front of Pilate's palace. This crowd gathered to condemn Jesus was massive, likely everyone in Jerusalem at the time. They were whipped into so much of a mob-like frenzy that Pilate, a notorious despot warned by his freaked out wife to find a way out of condemning Jesus (Matt 27:19), eventually weenied out to delivering Jesus to being crucified because he saw "that a riot was starting" (Matt 27:24). These people were pissed so much so that the only thing Pilate saw that he could do to calm them down and restore order was to give in and have Jesus crucified. Matthew records that this was "a...