Acts 17:16-32

I love this part of the Bible because it shows us how Paul engaged the cultures that he encountered and how he lived a missional life. There are a couple observations I'd like to make:

1. Paul was waiting around in Athens for his friends to show up. Instead of just chillin' and taking in all the wonderful sights of Athens, he becomes "greatly distressed" to see the amount of Idols in that particular city. Paul doesn't see his Christian faith as something that he "does" during particular times (Sunday mornings? Thursday nights?). His faith is a deep part of who he is, even when he is on "vacation".

2. Paul was very aware of and "greatly distressed" about culture. He studied the people's lives, their objects of worship, their poetry and philosophy, etc. (v. 23, 28). It is interesting to me how Christians usually take one of two hardcore black and white stances when it comes to living in and engaging culture.

The first stance is avoidance. These Christians tend to avoid culture in order to keep the evils of the world from corrupting them. These Christians may homeschool their children (for the purpose of keeping their children away from the public school secular world), avoid secular media, interact only with other Christians, listen only to Christian music etc. Some Christians have even created their own "Christian" subculture so that they don't have to be "corrupted" by the worlds culture. Christian music, Christian books, and Christian clothing are great examples. Instead of being aware of and engaging secular culture to further the gospel, these Christians are avoiding culture. They are not living missional lives because they are not aware of the culture in a way that they can understand and interact with people that need Jesus. (And they are probably not even interacting with them in the first place!)

On the opposite end of the pendulum is acceptance. These Christians have no problem living within culture because they completely accept the values and lifestyles of the culture. There is little or no difference between them and the culture. They are not "greatly distressed" about the idols within culture because they themselves have the very same idols. They may not be distressed because they may think that "all paths lead to the same place" and that everyone is okay as long as they follow "their truth" and are happy. They are not living missional lives because something other than Jesus is the first priority in their lives.



I can understand the "great distress" that Paul felt in Athens from personal experience during my vacation last summer. Lindsey and I stopped for a few days in Las Vegas and I was feeling the distress. It almost made me sick to see the things that were going on there. The problem is that I felt the distress but I didn't know what to do with it. Even now I'm trying to think of how I could have best engaged people in Las Vegas the way that Paul did in Athens. Any thoughts?

God is bigger than my left foot.

For nearly 25 years I have put both my socks and shoes on starting with my right foot for fear of bad luck.

While getting dressed this morning, I stopped as I began to put my right shoe on. I began to think about how ridiculous this daily ritual was.

I could just picture satan proudly gloating as his demon of deception controlled me like a puppet. This thought infuriated me and I quickly stood up to declare,

"satan, you have no power of me...God is bigger than my left foot and he is bigger than you!"

I sat back down, put my left sock and shoe and and proudly put on my right shoe, and here I am safe and sound. No BAD LUCK?

RIDICULOUS? YES. BUT HOW OFTEN DO FALL VICTIM TO THESE DEMONS?

As I sat at my desk this morning reflecting on the ridiculous run-in I had with satan while getting dressed, I wondered what God tells us to do to overcome satan's demons. Here's what I found:

• James 4:7 - Submit yourself to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
• 1Peter 5:8,9 - "Have self control and be alert. The devil prowls around like a lion looking to devour. Resist him and stand firm in the faith, because you know your brothers throughout the world are fighting the same war."
• Matt 28:18 - Jesus said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
• 1John 3:8 - satan is a defeated foe.

I wonder how many other ridiculous demons we allow ourselves to deceived by?

Is God Bigger than your left foot?

I stumbled across this great teaching on "story" by Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz). Check it out here.

Self-preservation in the church

How many churches are functioning to preserve themselves rather than to be effective at making disciples and to be faithful to God? Check out how Jesus ministered. We don't see him begging and pleading with people to follow him. Instead, we see Jesus telling people to drop everything and follow him. We see Jesus telling people that they must sell all their stuff and give the money to the poor and then follow him. In Luke 10, we see Jesus telling his disciples to enter a town and tell people the good news; and if they aren’t receptive, get up and leave town (and wipe the dust off your feet and tell them that they are in for a world of hurt). It's like the gospel was never meant to stay put and be safe. Maybe the gospel is meant for so much more; like to invade every area of our culture and every part our lives. Jesus never made it safe. Jesus never made it easy. It was what it was. It was simple. Either follow Jesus or follow your own way. What's your choice?

You Say You Want a Revolution...

Revolutionary business cards

Last night Alan, Angie, Lindsey and I designed and printed up some business cards to promote Encounter. It was funny debating on how they were going to look. We ended up just printing off a bunch of designs. We decided on the logo a few weeks ago. We're looking for a building to meet in on Thursday nights (preferably old and dilapidated). If you have any ideas, make sure to comment.

Homeless... in America.

I grew up in the Bay Area of California. Because of this I’ve seen my fair share of homeless people walking the streets. It was amazing to me to see a plethora of muti-million dollar homes and at the same time see homeless people begging on the street corner. California was the state with most homeless people in 2005, about 170,000, followed by New York, Florida, Texas and Georgia, according to a report by CBS news. That number seems rather low, but whatever.
I am in no way a "homeless information guru". I do not claim to know wild stats or information about how many homeless people there are in the United States and so on. I was simply fascinated with an observation I made when I was younger. I then revisited this finding on a vacation last summer to the Pacific Northwest and have been pondering it ever since.
I do not remember ever seeing a person who is Hispanic and homeless. This may be my bad memory but the point is that there aren't very many out there.
In Portland and Seattle Ben and I ran into quite a few homeless people. And it was then that I asked myself, "Self. Have you ever seen a homeless person who is Hispanic?" I really did shock myself. Because I then asked myself, "why not?"
Growing up my dad would occasionally hire Hispanic day laborers to do work on our property or at his company. My dad would drive down to "the place" where the day laborers would hang out and pick up a few for $10 an hour. All of the day laborers were Hispanic. But then... there was this homeless Caucasian bum who lived downtown that would always be out on a corner with the sign "will work for food". And I would think, "Why doesn't he just go hang out with the day laborers and work for food that way? Does he need a special invitation or something?" My point in this is that people who are Hispanic are not afraid to work. Is this why we don't see any people who are Hispanic and homeless?
I was looking around on the San Francisco Chronicle website and ran across a breakdown of homeless by their ethnicity. They found this to be the break down from March, 2007:
31% black
28% white
4% hispanic
Looking at those percentages makes me wonder "why?" Why are there so many homeless people in the United States and why are they homeless? Do the percentages mean anything? Or are my observations meaningless?
No matter what ethnicity a homeless person is I think that as a community of believers we need to do something. I do feel overwhelmed at times. I am simply only one person with a small income to play around with. How do we bring the percentages of homeless down? The deeper question that I have been thinking about is How do we help homeless people without enabling them? Or is that something we don't need to worry about because God is sovereign?

"What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families."
Isaiah 58:7

For some reason I find this hillarious...

Ebenezer...Raise my what?!?!

Have you ever been caught singing through the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," run into the word Ebenezer, and thought to yourself "What is an Ebenezer and why am I raising mine?" Its a very valid question because you don't find the ole ebenezer very often in todays vocabulary. I love the hymn Come Thou Fount and wanted to incorporate it this week where I lead worship, but I didn't want folks to feel ignorant of what an Ebenezer was as we sang it.....SOO I made this slide to show on the screens between the first and second verses.

Then again....

In my worst nightmares there are stuffed bobcats.