Every night as I check on my almost 4 month old daughter I take some time and pray for her. I pray for health. I pray for safety. I pray for sleep! I pray for strength and guidance as her daddy to raise her right. I thank God for her. It’s easy. She’s my baby girl! It comes natural. I don’t struggle at all to pray for her.

But as I was praying for her last night I realized that I have not been following Jesus’ words. In Matthew 5 Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those that hurt you. I’m not doing that. There is a boy (maybe even not born yet) out there that right now is my enemy. As terrible as that is to say, I am NOT ok with the fact that my baby girl is gonna have boyfriends and one day get married. She is my little baby that has mommy and daddy as her whole world! Any boy that wants to mess that up is not a friend of mine…right now. I mean that’s down right persecution if you ask me! Dang boys.

So I realized as painful as it may be, I should be praying for all of her future and that includes boys. I am told to love my future son-in-law and pray for all those boyfriends that are gonna hurt my heart (and possibly earn a plot of land in our backyard). It’s not easy. I don’t wanna go there. I don’t wanna be ok with that. But I have to. Jesus told me to.

It’s time to man up.

What about you? Who are you supposed to be praying for that you are struggling to bring up with God?

Unfortunately I am not filthy rich and don’t have the luxury of traveling all over the world going to conferences and hearing from many of the outstanding leaders of our time.  But thanks to Twitter, I still get to hear/read all the great quotes from them!  Recently there was a conference called Q (that I really don’t know anything about but I’m gonna learn more about) and a Twitter friend of mine posted a quote from Andrew Marin (also a person I know nothing about).

“I plead with you today stop being the gatekeeper and start acting like Jesus.”

It’s such a simple idea.  It’s something the New Testament modeled for us.  If every church around the world stopped and asked if it was acting as a gatekeeper or Jesus (assuming of course that the goal of every church is to act like Jesus) imagine the impact the Church would have on the world.  Communities would be changed.  Our relationship to anyone not following Jesus would change.  The love of Jesus would spread like wildfire.

• The Church is not a club.
• The Church should not require membership in order to be loved.
• You don’t have to pay 10% of your monthly earnings to get in.
• Anyone and everyone is welcome.

Does your church act as though it is the bouncer at the door of a strict club or does it treat people like Jesus and love on everyone that walks by?

When you read Luke, as Jesus is entering into Jerusalem everyone is singing His praises.  But the Pharisees freaked out and tried to stop it.

Some Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, get your disciples under control!” But he said, “If they kept quiet, the stones would do it for them, shouting praise.”

Luke 19:39-40

I have always wanted to see that.  Rocks crying out to God.  That just seems so far beyond what I can understand and imagine, yet so insanely awesome.  But they won’t.  Not yet.

The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead.

Romans 3:19-21

Do you see the amazing privilege that we have here?  The created world is being held back.  The entire world wants to do something that we have the choice to do.  They want to worship God.  And we have a choice.  Worship Him without being held back or live for ourselves.  Unfortunately I do the latter far too much.  I want to worship Him more.  I need to worship Him more.  (By the way, worshipping is way more than learning G, C, D and Em on the guitar and playing every worship song.  It is much more than going to church and singing two fast, one slow, one fast…or verse one and two, skip verse three and end with verse 4…just depends on what church you go to.)

I want to worship/honor/praise/trust Him…

…with my attitude.

…with my family.

…with my road rage.

…with my tweets.

…with my life.

He deserves so much more worship than I give Him.  The rocks know that.  They want to let it rip, but it’s just not their time yet.  Maybe we should start learning from them.  Maybe I am dumber than a rock.

Caption please.

As we have been reading through the Gospels on our YouVersion daily reading, I have gotten a chance to see some things that I hadn’t really noticed before.  This past week I saw one that really confused me.  I haven’t done any research at all about this, but I thought I would ask anyway.

One of these things that has been interesting to see as we read through the Gospels is the timelines.  It’s a little weird reading the different points of view because they don’t always tell the same story or with the same detail.  But the one that stuck out to me the most was the story of Jesus going into the temple, seeing all the madness of the people selling animals and loans, and driving them out of there.  I am confused about when this happened.  In Matthew (Matthew 21:12-17) the story is told after Jesus and the disciples come to Jerusalem for the Passover just before the crucifixion.  But in John (John 2:13-16), the story is told toward the very beginning.

So what’s the deal?  I don’t know that the timing really makes a difference because that isn’t point of the story.  But I’m still curious.  Any ideas?

In any given situation there is something to be learned.  If you are in a tough situation, maybe you are there to learn patience.  Maybe it’s humility.  Responsibility.  To be teachable.  How to lead.  Likewise even in the best situations there is still more to learn.  How to handle success.  Pride.  Humility.  And the list goes on.  But you must be open, looking and willing to learn from these situations.  Sometimes that means swallowing a ton of pride and being able to listen and learn from the little guys.

The volunteers, not just the staff members.

The assistants, not just the department heads.

The pastor with a smaller church, not just the mega churches.

The church in a different denomination, not just your little club.

The small blogger, not just the site with 100K hits per month.

Whoever it is and whatever position they are in or you are in, you have to be able to learn and stay teachable.  We are never done learning.  If we were done learning we would have it all figured out and be perfect.  I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna happen.  In the Scriptures John 9 gives us a good example not learning from the little guy.

The man replied, “This is amazing! You claim to know nothing about him, but the fact is, he opened my eyes! It’s well known that God isn’t at the beck and call of sinners, but listens carefully to anyone who lives in reverence and does his will. That someone opened the eyes of a man born blind has never been heard of—ever. If this man didn’t come from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.” They said, “You’re nothing but dirt! How dare you take that tone with us!”

John 9:30-34

This man was blind and didn’t have all the religious training and knowledge that the Pharisees had, but he was healed by Jesus and now had something to share with the rest of the world.  The Pharisees chose to ignore the supernatural healing and love Jesus had for this man and they were not open to learn from him.  He was a nobody.  How could he teach them?  They were so much better than him!

Truth is he was willing to learn and they weren’t.  He had an open and available heart.  They did not.  Examine yours today.  Are you open to learning from the “little guy”?

So I wanna hear your thoughts about this.  This is for all you Bible scholars out there!  Today I had a conversation with a friend about a certain set of Scriptures in the Bible.  I disagreed with this person’s standpoint but I wanna present the information in an unbiased way before giving my opinion and want to hear yours.  This is strictly for the sake of satisfying my interest and not at all to bash someone else’s thoughts.  Just wanted to be clear on that.

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke we are given the story of a man (or two men in one version) in who is demon possessed. The man, demons and Jesus have a confrontation and Jesus casts the demons out of the man and into a herd of pigs (cracks me up that they are a herd).  The basic argument (using the term argument loosely…maybe discussion would be better) is this: Did Jesus command the demons out of the man and fail to succeed and therefore had to command them again or did Jesus command the demons out of the man and they left?

I’m told that the New American Standard Bible is the version that is closest to the original Greek so I will use that.  Here are the different passages (not all the same length because some are quite a bit longer than the others).  Matthew is the only one that says two men.  Just thought that was interesting.  

The italics are in the version of the Bible and were not added by me.  Just FYI.

• Matthew 8:29-32 – And they cried out, saying, “What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” Now there was a herd of many swine feeding at a distance from them. The demons began to entreat Him, saying, “If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.” And He said to them, “Go!” And they came out and went into the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters.
• Mark 5:6-13 – Seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and bowed down before Him; and shouting with a loud voice, he said, “What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God, do not torment me!” For He had been saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” And He was asking him, “What is your name?” And he said to Him, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” And he began to implore Him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. The demons implored Him, saying, “Send us into the swine so that we may enter them.” Jesus gave them permission. And coming out, the unclean spirits entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank and into the sea, about two thousand of them; and they were drowned in the sea.
• Luke 8:28-33 – Seeing Jesus, he cried out and fell before Him, and said in a loud voice, “What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me.” For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had seized him many times; and he was bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard, and yet he would break his bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert. And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They were imploring Him not to command them to go away into the abyss. Now there was a herd of many swine feeding there on the mountain; and the demons implored Him to permit them to enter the swine. And He gave them permission. And the demons came out of the man and entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

So the question is did Jesus command the demons to leave the man and fail to do so resulting in having to command them again or did He command them once and succeed?  What do you think?  Where does that leave you?

(Ha!  I couldn’t leave that one out!)