A House Church in the East Valley

This morning as I was waking up, after having a dream in which nothing was working out right for me, I had this sudden impression…that we all long for acceptance, that God has long been preached and taught as a God of rejection, that we had better get it right or we would suffer the eternal punishment of the Eternal Rejecter…that only a few would choose God (or be chosen by God, depending upon your theological bent) and the rest, the masses, would encounter His rejecting wrath forever and ever and ever. All of this has been accepted as truth since the days, that is, the establishment, of the institutional church, where men take authority over other men using the message of an angry, rejecting God to line others up behind their cause.

All the while a loving God, a God of acceptance, has wanted His creation…”all” of His creation to know that He is a God of acceptance, “not” rejection…that He so “loves” the world, the whole of creation, that He sent His very own Son to do for the creation what only He could do…that is reconcile the creation, the world, to Himself, not counting their wrong doings, their sins, their
“rejection of Him”, against them.

And that is the point…it never was about God rejecting the creation but the other way around. The creation is the one doing the rejecting. It is a loving,
accepting God that thankfully wins over our stubborn, stiff-necked, rebellious,
rejection of Him.

In the parable of the prodigal son, we are either like the younger son, who
rejects the Father and goes it alone only to find out that it was much better
to be in the presence and care of his loving, accepting Father than to be “on
his own”, even if it meant being only a servant. How incredible He finds the
love, the acceptance of the Father to be, when he himself ceased to reject,
operate his life independently, of the Father. The older brother, on the other
hand, went a different route. Like the younger brother, he did “not” feel the
acceptance of the Father. Rather he felt that if he only did everything right,
then he would find acceptance. This he attempted to do for so long a time only
to be told that the Father’s acceptance of him, which was there all along just
as it was with the riotous living younger son, never depended upon his “getting it right”. Rather, it has always been and always will be, about the acceptance of a loving Father, a loving God, who will not give up on His creation until all stubbornness, all rejection of Him, is done away with, that He might eternally lavish His love upon the creation…the creation that He loved “and accepted” all along.

Are you employed or under-employed.   I’m not talking about your job but your spiritual life.   According to Webster, employ means to use or make full use of.  As a Christian, are you making full use of the Holy Spirit that’s available to you?  Or are you under-employed in the Spirit? 

Jesus has provided all believers with this Spirit.  He said in John 14:26:

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

I believe that many Christians today are under-employed in their spiritual life.   They are just not making full use of the gifts that God has given them.  We need to be over-employed with the Holy Spirit.  I’m in that camp much more than I want to admit.  Fully employ the Holy Spirit and remember Jesus’ promise.  Let His Spirit guide you every minute of every day.  Amen.

Thanks John S. for the word he recieved and shared with us Wednesday night.

Follow Him.

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing His praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With Him mayst rise:
That as His death calcined thee to dust,
His life my make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound His Name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let Thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with His sweet art.
– George Herbert

The house church in the east valley wishes everyone a very blessed and worshipful Easter 2011.

Read a fictional account based on a true story here.

How many people know the significance of the year 1913?   Everyone should know that the 16th Amendment to our Constitution was ratified that year.  It reads:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

It’s interesting that the quote “nothing can be said to be certain except for death and taxes” was a phrase coined in a letter by Benjamin Franklin.  Even though this republic began with no taxes, he must have imagined that we would get to that point evenually.    We went all the way to 1913 before our leaders decided that they needed more money to run the government.  Maybe its time to repeal the 16th Amendment.   Or maybe we should just put our trust in Christ.  Or maybe both.

Thanks to Kansas Bob for his post and graphic.

I love the tall pines in northern Arizona.  We try to spend as much time as possible up there during the hot summer down in the valley.

Do you live your life through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or the tree of life?  (Think of Genesis) During our meeting tonight, this idea that we should be living our lives through the tree of life and not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil hit home with me.  Am I spending too much time thinking right and wrong about my life and not enough time thinking about the life of freedom God has given me through Christ?   I can be honest and say yes I am spending too much time focusing on right and wrong and not enough focusing on the victorious life.   Thanks John S. for your insights.

To do this, you really have to live an intentional life, which was another subject discussed tonight.  Thanks, Chris for showing us that it really is possible to live intentional in everything you do.  Lord, help me to be more intentional in every part of my life.

 On a trip to beautiful Box Canyon near Florence last April.

One of the really great things about house church is the opportunity to explore new ideas.  To be really ‘out of the box’.  Open only to the Holy Spirit’s leading, always validated by scripture.    Many times, we are drawn to compare the way different translations deal with certain subjects.  And then compare that with the Greek words used as well as the context.   This has been very freeing for all of us in this group.  Most of us have shed preconceived ideas about doctrine and replaced it with an attitude of searching and listening. 

Although ‘out of the box’ for several years, we remain Christ-centered in everything.

In recent weeks, this church has been discussing the ‘hope’ of universal reconciliation, or the idea that God will eventually redeem all of mankind.  For most of us, this falls outside of our traditional belief systems.  We are from southern baptist, calvinist, and pentacostal traditions.   Since we have been meeting in house church, we have studied reformed theology.  Now we have been introduced to universal reconciliation or UR for short.  UR does not reconcile with any of those traditions. 

After reading a number of books and studying the Bible, I now see UR as the real ‘good news’ of Christ.  Like many, although I’m not sold out completely, I really pray for it to be so.  

Tonight, I discovered a very good summary defense of ‘universalism’ on Richard Beck’s post in Experimental Theology here.  If there is any interest, he has a series on musings on universalism that expands on the earlier post.

Last night in the east valley, it was rainy.  The kind of rainy we get here in Arizona.  The off and on type.  It made sitting outside at the Paradise Bakery very impractical. 

But inside, we found a very large room in the back of their dining area with lots of square tables perfect for a meeting.  So the regular four of us and John S brother Ron who is visiting from Indiana found a quiet and comfortable place to sit and sip our coffee while sharing with each other.  We shared for about 2 hours and just before closing time, we had some prayer.  There were so many things to pray for, it was hard to think about where to start.   

For next week, we will probably try the Paradise Bakery again and try to meet in the outside area and see how things go.   This Sunday, this house church meets at John and Debbie’s home in Mesa.   Post a comment if you would like to visit.