Posts (page 2)

Ezekiel 18:13
He lends at usury and takes excessive interest. Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he will surely be put to death and his blood will be on his own head.

This Sunday I was back with the band at the same congregation I wrote about two weeks ago. This time I was determined to worship God regardless.

The sermon title was "Heart of Worship." We even played the song of the same name. Then the sermon started and it was not worship at all. It was not Christian at all. It was Americanism.

The pastor was careful to say it was his "personal opinion" several times, but more than that he said it "wasn't the ramblings of an old man," but the word of God. He concluded saying an important word from the Lord had been spoken.

I applaud his desire to call the Church to action, something I do all the time, but he was calling them to action for this nation, the United States of America, not to the service of the Lord Almighty. He was so misguided. While he claimed to speak the words of the Lord, he was spouting conservative lies, and demonstrably so.

At one point the pastor said, "If you still have any optimism left, I'm not done." I leaned over to my friend and asked, "What does the Bible say about fear?" For the entire sermon was fear mongering. "They're going to come for us!"

Let me briefly explain the sermon now before I go on:

The pastor said this nation was in shambles morally. I absolutely agree. This nation is corrupt, sinful and perverse. But the pastor disagreed as to why it was thus. I think it is because humans are sinful, corrupt and perverse, but he says it's because this nation has "rejected God." We've taken prayer out of school. We've made it difficult to be a Christian.

This is not true at all. America has certainly rejected God, but it is a heart matter, not a legislative one. Prayer wasn't taken out of schools, compulsorily pray was simply forbidden. If it's difficult to be a Christian in this country, I certainly haven't seen that. You couldn't run for public office anywhere except the most liberal cities without claiming to be a Christian.

He went on to say he remembered a time when every American from coast to coast had the same moral fabric. That's a load of crap, to be blunt. I remember a friend's grandfather telling the stories of the homosexual orgies in the 1940s. In World War II, 80% of soldiers that went overseas visited prostitutes. Films were made to warn of venereal disease, and condoms were distributed. In the 1920s you had a time more decadent and immoral as any. The early 1930s had celebrities named John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, and Baby Face Nelson. The founding fathers visited whores, raped their slaves, and any other number of sins. The first colonists were also immoral and opportunistic (save the few Puritans).

He said the 501(c)3 muzzled pastors. I agree. He is one of the few pastors I've heard ever say this. But the reason he is upset is because he wants to be involved in politics. I believe the Church should speak into the world, but shouldn't be tied up in politics which distorts the Gospel.

He pulled out the regular Christmas argument. Christmas is a secular holiday, get over it.

Before long he compared Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden (claiming it was a slip of the tongue). He said Russia was going to turn against us, China has a huge army that can shoot our satellites out of the sky, and Iran is building a nuke and their president wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and then come after us. Obviously "us" is the USA, not the Church who he should be speaking to. Iran also doesn't have a nuke, and they don't have a weapons program. Our own National Intelligence Estimates prove this. The president of Iran has no control of the military. And the USA spends more on its military than every other country in the world combined.

He even said San Fransisco's leaders ("Who never met a pervert they didn't love," he said, as if Christians are not called to love perverts) kicked the military recruitment stations out of their city. "The same troops who are in Iraq, Afghanistan and all over the world fighting to defend their right to do just that." [Paraphrase] Somehow this is a Christian issue? Our troops are not fighting for our rights. They might think they are, but if our troops were fighting for our rights, they would be at the White House! Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, et al are not a threat to our freedoms.

Islam cannot coexist with other religions, he claims, and they've taken over much of Europe and "have a stronger foothold in America than you even realize." This of course contradicts the reality on the ground. Indonesia has radicals, but the vast majority of Muslims there are living peacefully side-by-side their Hindi, Buddhist, and Christian neighbors. India has the highest population of Muslims in the world, and the Christian persecution comes from the Hindis. It is this myth that all of Islam is the radical Wahhabi, not the mystical Sufi, nor the Sunni or Shiite brands.

The pastor said the nation is going to hell and the Church is sitting inside their buildings apathetic. I absolutely agree! Problem is, he's preaching moralism, not the Gospel. Making people live morally isn't going to save them from destruction.

But in the end, what it comes down to is he failed to preach the Gospel at all. The Gospel is not about freedom of worship, forcing people to live according to some arbitrary moralism, and American's national security.

The Gospel is universal, and can be taken to every part of the world to change lives and redeem creation. You cannot take any of this sermon to a non-American congregation with any relevancy. It's so out of touch with reality to begin with, but when it doesn't deal with real Church life, godliness, salvation or worship, it's rubbish! You can't go to Indonesia and tell their Church they're apathetic because their country isn't ruled by Christian values. They need to stand up for themselves because they aren't wished a "merry Christmas" in December. They ought to protest in the streets because the Ten Commandments aren't in the courthouses.

Or maybe we should go to Calcutta and have the Church there stand up for their rights. But make sure they keep the government from creating any programs that might help the suffering and dying. We don't want any socialism! Instead, make sure the schools in Calcutta have compulsory prayer every day.

I think he should study the Bible more, and newsmax.com less.

I got up just before seven this morning. It's Saturday, but because I wake up this early every day, it's part of my cycle.

I went directly outside with my chainsaw and cut up a tree that's growing all over my yard. Too bad I have a yard trimmings bin just big enough for one branch. I have a pile of branches now that I need to get rid of.

After that I went to meet a client about a website plus whole business look. I was there for about three hours. I got paid some good money, so that was nice. I'll be busy hammering that out now.

I came right home and took a little time off to read through my new Time magazine.

I then worked on a dress for Nicole. It's almost done. It's black with a white floral pattern stitched on it, and I've used three small red piping cords for the straps. I may be adding a red band under the bodice to add more color to it. It's the first dress I've ever made. It looks nice, Jen likes it. It took me five hours. I'm slow. And I still need to sew in the zipper and hem it.

I didn't do the dishes.

Tomorrow I'm getting up at six to perform worship for three services. Then I'm headed to a lunch, followed by a dinner.

I'm a busy person right now. But I still make time to mope about thinking about how much of a loner I am.

"I believe that someday we are going to have a woman president, possibly during my life, and I've often thought the best way to pave the way for this was to first nominate and elect a woman as vice-president. But I think McCain made a serious mistake when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. In my view, he guessed wrong in deciding to take a governor that almost nobody had ever heard of and try to put her in line for the presidency ... I don't know who among the Republicans might have been a better choice, but it was obvious McCain picked Sarah Palin simply because he believed there was a 'gender gap' where I was concerned and she was a woman."

Ronald Regan in his 1991 memoir, "An American Life" - I just changed "Democrats" for "Republicans," "congresswoman" for "governor," "Mondale" for "McCain," an "Geraldine Ferraro" for "Sarah Palin."

I don't go into prayer with an agenda too often; but then I pray far too infrequently. This past Sunday was one of those times where I began praying and the Spirit convicted me; these guys in the band know this all to well from me because when we pray I tend to get splayed.

The story doesn't begin on Sunday though, it begins over a month ago when I was planning on booking a band from New York to play out here. I met with a few guys from a local congregation about hosting the event in their building. I like these guys, they're real and they have a great congregation. There is no paid staff, no head pastor, and they're very open to where the Spirit moves without regard to agendas and schedules.

Unfortunately the booking fell through, but one of them (Tom) suggested we do a night music and a speaker brought in from Hawaii. I agreed. There was confusion about this event, and every time I talked to Tom he had a different plan than the previous time. I planned on one artist performing, but they canceled about a week before the event. I ended up unknowing what was going to happen at the event with nobody to play.

In a bind, got my band to play. This band is led by Brandon (my brother-in-law) on vocals and guitar, Josh on drums and myself on bass. We decided on a relaxed acoustic set, but we also asked my father-in-law (Harold) to play with us. He had taught Brandon and raised him to be the musician he is today. This was very cool.

So right up to the point where we started playing on Saturday night, I had no idea how the event would go. And we started playing worship music. Brandon would just pick a song to play and we would go into it. Harold would lead a few songs too. After what seemed like a normal length set (30-40 minutes) we were done after an intense two-and-a-half hours.

This was an incredible, free time of worship and the very intimate setting was emotional and captivating. We were all blown away at the end.

Now to Sunday night, after what seems like a whole essay was writ.

More Than This was scheduled to play on Sunday night (the following day). The format was similar, we played acoustically with Chad joining us on Cajone. The difference was the venue. This congregation has a huge facility, strict time schedules (even counting the minutes down on a clock at the back of the room) and they're not the charismatic type. After the high of Saturday we were all feeling like we were constrained and we wouldn't be free to worship as we did the night before.

And then we prayed. And the Spirit convicted me. Worship is not about where we are or how much time we have. It is an attitude of reverence in the presence of grace. I thanked God for the opportunity to worship Him, and begged forgiveness for my spirit of spite.

And then we worshiped, and it was also incredible. It was powerful ... and it was 25-minutes on the dot.

So the Democratic National Convention is going on in Denver, CO. Because it's tens of thousands of those damned liberals I bet they're all celebrating their new gay marriages, having all kinds of abortions on demand, and getting super high off all their drugs.

On the floor of the convention, (you know, post-abortion) they're probably planning how they're going to surrender the country to Iran. I bet they're giving out commendations to all the terrorists they love so much.

And worst of all, I bet none of them are wearing flag pins.

I definitely don't recommend Sid Meyer's new Civilization Revolution. Brian rented it this weekend and I've probably put more hours into this game in two days than I have into any other game (including Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4). It wasn't that, it's the fact that it has invaded my life and consumed me. Last night I dreamed about playing the game turn-by-turn. It's an obsession and I must break it before I lose my job.

Brian has also been staying up all night to play this game. I told Cameron at work to stay away, but it was too late, he also rented it and stayed up until 2:00 last night playing as well.

Last night's Project Runway sucked. All the people on the show are boring and only a couple people did anything uncomfortable. And then it came down to the to worst outfits and they kept the one with zero thought, effort or creativity over a boring one that had three pieces and quite a bit of effort.

And this morning I heard a new track from Foreigner. It sucked. If I didn't know it was Foreigner I would have though it was just another random back ripping off Maroon 5.

Daisie did not have a stroke, but they thought she did because she was mostly paralyzed and couldn't talk. She has MRSA. This is pretty serious, but they have her on some new treatment that's supposed to work.

So that's the update.

Nicole and Brandon's grandma Daisie just had a stroke. We're not sure at this time how serious it is.