agri.church

So, we wrapped up the justice series on Sunday, but I’ve still got a few things bouncing around in my mind (surprise, surprise) and I thought I’d write them down.

After talking about injustice for five weeks, I am absolutely - unquestionably - convinced that things like poverty and AIDS and genocide should be eradicated. But…you know what? If I’m being honest, there is still a part of me that does not believe that it can be eradicated. I mean…we’ve all seen the pictures and heard the statistics. Can we really make a dent? Injustice is just a part of life, right?

Take hunger. Every day, 800 million people go to bed hungry and 24,000 people die from not having enough food (that’s one every 3.6 seconds). This is tragic, but it’s just the way it is, right?

It is tragic, but it isn’t the way it has to be. It would take roughly 13 billion dollars a year to end hunger for the earth’s poorest citizens. A large sum of money, to be sure, but every year 18 billion dollars is spent on pet food in the U.S. and Europe. This year, Americans spent 4.96 billion on Halloween. Halloween!!! Now, I’m not saying that we should all get rid of our pets - but I am saying that a lack of money doesn’t seem to be the problem.

Or check this out. A drug called cortimoxazole - used to treat AIDS - costs just 3 cents per day per person. Is providing this amount of money beyond our reach?

So…I guess there’s a part of me that doubts that I…or we…can do anything. But that’s beginning to change. God is doing something to my heart and mind to help me believe that not only should injustice be overturned, but it can be. Change can happen. It is possible.

Well, it’s hard to believe but we’ve reached the end of this five-week blogging adventure. Andy and I have never been this consistent in our blogging and we’ve got to say that we’ve really enjoyed it. But we’re wondering - have you? What did you think? Whether you were an occasional or everyday reader, it would be such a huge help to hear from you.

Were the posts helpful or unhelpful? In what way? Get specific if you can. Did you read 100% of the posts, 50%, 25%, etc. What would have helped you read more? Did you find yourself using some of the tools/ideas we suggested? What could we have done differently that would have helped you grow in your understanding and implementation of the spiritual disciplines?

I know….I know….you’re wondering right now, “If I am honest with these guys will they still like me?” Actually, we’ll love you. Seriously. We appreciate constructive feedback and so your thoughts - critical or commending - would be a gift. You can let us know what you think by clicking on the comment link just below this post or by e-mailing Andy or I. Thanks so much for reading!

The people of the early church faced terrifying persecution and pain. Their reputations, jobs, and even their very lives were often at risk because of who they followed. And yet, joy is an irrepressible theme throughout the New Testament. We read about individual people and entire communities who have a joy that can’t be snuffed out. But how can this be? With all of the hardship they had to face, shouldn’t joy have been driven out of them?

Maybe it should have. But it wasn’t. And I think that the early church’s indestructible joy had something to do with the fact that they never forgot that in the end, the groom gets the bride.

I was at a wedding not too long ago when, let’s just say, things didn’t go as planned. The attendants didn’t walk down in the order they had rehearsed. When the ushers tried to roll out the aisle runner it got stuck - took forever - and nearly tore in two. They stumbled through their vows. The unity candle didn’t light. And yet, as the ceremony ended there was an irresistable and indestructible joy present. How could this be? Well, at the end of the day, the groom got the bride and the bride got the groom.

The book of Revelation gives us a picture of how things will be at the end of time:

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

Heaven’s groom gets the bride.

Are you lacking joy in your life? Then begin to discipline your mind (read Romans 12:1-2) to view life from a biblical perspective. Yes, in this life there is pain and hardship. Yes, there is loss and suffering. But this is not how things will always be. The groom gets the bride. There is a day coming when we will “see the wedding of which the greatest weddings on this earth have only been a dim forshadowing. Then God will dance with his people. Then joy will reign undiminished and uniterrupted (Ortberg)”

You can have joy now because of the joy to come. But you must discipline your mind. Begin today.

This morning I want to suggest a practical way you can grow in joy. You may cringe at the idea. It may seem unorthodox. And I doubt our culture will approve, but hear me out: UNPLUG YOUR TV for a week.

I know that in our family turning on the TV after a long day of work and responsibility can seem like the wisest thing to do. But when was the last time you walked away from a night of vegging in front of the TV to say, “Wow, I feel amazingly refreshed.” “I have new joy and energy.” “My relationships have deepened in a whole new way.”

Now, don’t misundertand. I’m not suggesting that television is evil. I mean, common’ - how else would I be able to watch the World Series this weekend? But what might happen if you were to unplug for a week (or at the very least - seriously limit your TV watching)? My guess is that you would have no choice but to find new ways to spend your time - ways that would bring joy (aka life) to your life.

So what hobby have you considered starting but haven’t. Consider no more. Wondering when you’re going to have the chance to hang out with the people who bring you joy? Here it is.

All of the spiritual disciplines require that we make intentional choices - the discipline of celebration is no different. You must choose to change. So unplug for a week. Take the risk. You might be surprised at how little you miss it.

Dallas Williard, who I highly respect when it comes to the conversation of life transformation, writes this:

“Failure to attain a deeply satisfying life always has the effect of making sinful actions seem good. Here lies the strength of temptation…Normally, our success in overcoming temptation will be easier if we are basically happy in our lives. To cut off the joys and pleasures associated with our bodily lives and social existence as ‘unspritual’, then, can actually have the efect of weakening us in our efforts to do what is right.”

In other words, joy makes us strong.

When God’s joy fills us something happens to the way we view life. No longer does yelling at traffic or coveting your neighbor’s Porsche seem like things worth doing. Nor does cutting corners at work or pursuing your own agenda at the expense of others. When God’s joy is in us we see that there is a better way to live. The joy of the Lord brings strength.

How strong would you say you are today? Are there times when temptation overwhelms you? Are you able to see the life that Jesus offers?

Take some time today to have an honest conversation with God about these questions. And as you do, ask God for what you need to become more joyful.

(This week we’ll be discussing the discipline of celebration - a discipline that helps instill God’s joy within us)

You’ve heard of the seven deadly sins. It’s a list of the worst of the worst - sins that must be avoided at all cost, and I’d agree. Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth are the exact things God wants to eliminate from our lives. But today, I want to add another to this list - a sin that usually slips under the radar - the sin of joylessness.

John Ortberg writes, “The Bible puts joy in the nonoptional category. Joy is a command. Joylessness is a serious sin, one that religious people are particularly prone to indulge in. It may be the sin most readily tolerated by the church.”

Whether or not you’re ready to throw joylessness in the sin category, I hope we can agree that at the very least joylessness is not part of the life God has planned for us. In Galatians, God gives us a picture of what our lives will produce when we are being transformed and led by the Holy Spirit and joy is at the top of the list. Jesus tells us that one of the very reasons he came was so that our joy would overflow.

Take an honest assessment of your life today. Is joy overflowing or is there room for more? If there is room for more joy then maybe the first thing we need to do is admit that this is a problem and commit ourselves to practicing the discipline of celebration.

We must get serious about joy. I hope you’ll join me this week as we do so.

Just wanted to pass on a couple more sites:

StudyLight.org and crosswalk.com both have many helpful tools but I think that their interlinear bibles (english translation intermixed with original languages) are particularly helpful. Give it a try (you’ll likely need to install the appropriate fonts from the right hand sidebar). I find it often helpful to have the two text versions available line by line instead of having to hover over every word (ie zhubert).

I also think that the BibleGateway.com has value due to it shear number of translations and available audio.

There are lots of other tools available at these and other sites.  But I encourage you to resist just heading to a commentary site or picking one up off a bookshelf.  Also, if you have a choice, use a Bible with out study notes for your personal study.  Because with all these tools at our disposal, it can be tempting to just let others do all the work for us… I truly believe that there is no substitute for time spent in God’s word. It takes time for our hearts and heads to soften to what God wants to say to us. So do what ever it takes to carve out the time to study scripture…

and go forth my padawan learners, and know what you see… do not see only what you know…

Next up is a little piece of software called the sword project. For those of you who may not want an online tool, you can download the base software, and some handy modules. Some modules include greek and hebrew texts, lexicons, dictionaries, a personal notes tool and more. It only includes public domain stuff at the moment but if you choose carefully you can put together a helpful tool for studying the bible. You can add strong’s numbers and lexicons to find out what the original word meant.

For mac users like me, go here for macSword. Then download the same modules from the main Sword Project site

I have found it very handy, particularly for keeping some personal commentary notes on passages. I also use it instead of carrying around my Greek and Hebrew texts… It has a decent seach feature, not super powerful but nice and fast. Don’t miss the Jewish Publication Society’s Old Testament translation! Sometime I fire up it up just for the JPS OT…

Be careful with the commentaries available, most of them are very old. You may not expect this to be a particularly bad thing but an unbelievable amount of manuscripts have been found (or been made public) in the past century (even the last 25 years), and this has helped lead to a clearer understanding of textual variants for instance (when one manuscripts varies from another a little). Also like any document they are anchored in a certain historical context. So Matthew Henry’s commentary (just to name one) is certainly helpful, but let’s keep in mind the context in which it was written just like we do for biblical writing

well, it’s past ‘tomorrow’ but you all knew I couldn’t match Chris’ gift for faithful communication Thank you Jesus, that we have Chris De Blaay at the Branch!! I’ll see what I can do to make up for it by posting a few different tools throughout the next day… quit smirking, it might happen…

First up, zhubert.com. This site is just plan brilliant! I mean it. You could spend hundreds of dollars on bible software and not get the usability of this site.

zhubert “for fellow students of the bible in the original languages”, and when Zack says languages… he means greek (at least at the moment). Hopefully if you have a modern computer and operating system (ie XP or OS X) you should see the Greek New Testament when you click on this link. Try hovering over a word and watch a box show up with it’s lexical meaning and its gramatical parsing… Why wasn’t this around three years ago when I was taking Greek, WHY oh WHY oh WHY…

If you see a bunch of crazy characters when you click over to the site you may need to install a compatible font. See the rest of Zack’s tutorial for more helpful info.

Now, this site is not for everyone (at least not right away). But I think this is such a potentially powerful tool that I wanted to feature it first. There is so much more to the site like creating your own translation, flash card / vocabulary tools, concordance, yada yada… and it’s just one guys labor of love, amazing. THANK YOU ZACK!

First of all, do you think that dude over in the sidebar looks like me? (if you’re getting this in your email, you’ll have to actually fire up your browser - sorry) That’s the best I could do with the available options at weeworld.com I think it’s pretty close And of course, I don’t actually have a vespa, but they didn’t have the option to put me next to a beat-up VeeDub…

Anyways, on to studying the Bible… I think it’s really important to spend time in the word for yourself BEFORE you go to other helpful tools like commentaries and study notes. This is where the strength of the Great Aunt Marie™ method of Bible Study come in. If you Reread, Rewrite and Respond to the passage that you’re studying you will have spent a significant amount of time with the scripture on your own.

Why is this important? Well, because we all too often don’t really try to understand what we read for ourselves. Think about it. Often we read a passage and we immediately think back to what others have told us it means. It happens to me and I’m guessing it happens to you. This is a problem. To move to deeper levels of understanding in Bible study, we must put aside what we think we know or what others have told us.

As you study scripture, try to imagine you are reading it for the first time. Try not to let your preconceived conclusions come into play to early. Or as Abraham Joshua Heschel says: you must know what you see, not see what you know!

we’ll get to some helpful tools tomorrow…