Prayer for the Persecuted Church

Hey All,

Just in case nobody told you Sunday was prayer for the persecuted church day as well as remembrance day. It is the start of a week of prayer for those around the world who are persecuted for their belief in Christ. Now just in case you think that number is small here are some stats. Worldwide over 200 million Christians are persecuted for their faith each year approximately 100,00 of them will be martyred for their faith. Think about that as you freely go to church, bible study, walk around with one of the six bibles you own (ok that one might be just me), and announce your faith openly to anyone you choose to with no thoughts that you might be imprisoned, tortured, or maybe even killed and offer up a few prayers for your brothers and sisters around the world who don't live in that very enviable situation.

Osteen vs. Driscoll

Three minutes you may never get back, but something I think you should see. My roommate Leaha is a fan of Mark Driscoll and is planning to take me to see him teach live - since I missed his appearance at Willingdon (good thing though... watch it on Willigdon's site - all 1hour+ of it). Regardless of my feelings about Mark Driscoll and women in the Church he has some very valuable points about the state of our general faith in North America

The Emotional Bible

We had an interesting experience as staff here at UCM last week and so I thought I would write about it. It happened on monday as we were working on the study for this week which focuses on the story of Jesus and the blind man found in John 9. As we read, we found ourselves giggling and then full out laughing at the impertinent answers this man was giving the Pharisees. At one point he even goes so far as to jokingly ask them if the reason they are so interested in Jesus is that they want to become his disciples too. It reminded me again of just how full of emotion the bible is and how often we miss it in our desire to be "serious" about the bible. It's a shame really when we do that we remove so much from the human experience of the writers. We miss crying out in joy and in mourning with the Psalmist, we miss the joy of Paul as he writes to the Phillipians and we miss his anger as he writes to the Galatians. Pehaps most importantly we miss the emotional nature of Jesus we miss his laughter and good nature as he blesses the children and bounces them on his knee, we miss his compassion when he weeps over the tomb of lazarus, and we miss his zeal and righteous anger when he storms into the temple and throws out the money changers and merchants. In our attempts to be serious about the bible and treat it seriously, which is appropriate, we often try to strip away all of the humanity and emotion of the text but the truth is that the bible was written by real people. People with emotions, people who laughed and cried and sometimes even questioned God's decisions. People a lot like us.