Month: March 2016

The Day After

easter, christ, risen, needinc, gary, davis, sundayYesterday marked the annual celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, called Easter and/or Resurrection. It is celebrated often alongside the Passover Commemoration, coinciding with the lunisolar calendar, used by the Jews of the first century, to celebrate the pass-over of the Death Angel in ancient Egypt.

 

But what about the day after Easter?

 

At that point in 30 AD, only 2-3 women had actually seen Jesus. Announcing this to His disciples, the men found their report incredulous. Skeptical and confused, they remained hidden.

 

In Western Culture today, Christians merely go back to their everyday lives with little to no change. Back to business-as-usual. Unless you live in a monastery, the dominant culture of our time has supplanted the formerly prevailing “Christian” underpinnings with the bottom line of progress and profit. Very little Christian influence remains in our nation’s preferred secular-religion-free society.

 

The Resurrection of Jesus should remind us of some characteristics that should pervade our lives as genuine Christians. Like the reminder that we are truly forgiven; forgiven for our rejection of His Godhood, our ignorance of what He wants from us and of what He wants to give us. We should be reminded that our imperfections are being made perfect, that we don’t need to feel so guilty when we are already forgiven. We need to remember that the penalty of eternal separation from the God who made us is no longer an option. We are now saved from that fate…, and from ourselves.

 

So the next time your world seems to be coming apart at the seams, remember Jesus on the Cross. Remember that He is in charge of your life, bringing together the various streams and roadways to merge in the perfect pattern for your fulfillment, AND for His glory. Never separate them: they are woven together within you.

 

But the day after, take some of those remembrances and reasons to celebrate along with you. Know your place in our world and move with grace.

HE IS RISEN!

The Christian Way?

dr, gary, davis, highway, christian, way, politics, religionIf you’ve ever driven across this nation’s highways you know that at times roadmaps, GPS, and Road Signs, and actual roads seem to be at odds with one another. My proof for this? LA. ‘Nough said.

The same convoluted mess can often be found among the many theological/political roads the Church has followed over the last two millennia. Os Guinness puts it well in his book RENAISSANCE (2014).

“Whenever God has not given us clear and authoritative instructions as to how we are to conduct our lives, we are free to pursue our own solutions within the guidelines of the principles God has given us. But that means that our best solutions will always be a Christian way of doing things. They are not the Christian way.

 “In light of God’s principles, we can say that certain ways of doing things that contradict those principles are not Christian, but we can never say that one way alone is. In that sense, there is no one ‘Christian economics,’ any more that there is one ‘Christian retirement plan,’ one ‘Christian political party,’ or one Christian anything… .

 “This caution applies equally to our attitudes to cultures. Doubtless all Christians have their favorite periods of Christian history; which to them represent the golden age of faith. The Orthodox prize the age of the early Fathers. Catholics talk reverently of the medieval world and ‘the great age of faith.’ Protestants elevate the Reformation and its ‘recovery of the gospel and the Scriptures.’ Evangelicals take great pride and courage from the First Great Awakening and its potent combination of the preaching of the gospel and the spawning of myriad social reforms. And Pentecostals and charismatics hard back to the Azusa Street revival and its triggering one of the greatest and still continuing missionary advances in the history of the Christian church.

 “Yet all these periods were at best more or less Christian, and today their flaws, their blind spots, their unintended consequences could be enumerated along with their undisputed blessings.” (122-123)

Navigating one’s faith journey along today’s spiritual and ecclesiastical highways is just as fraught with individualistic potholes and theological blind spots as in previous generations. Do not be so presumptuous as to assume my way is best.

Constantly return to the Scriptures in the context of fellow believers to learn afresh the principles God has given us live healthy lives before him.  Let me leave you with this—a line from a song written by Hillsong United, sung by Taya Smith. “I touch the sky…, when my knees hit the ground.”

 

You have my prayers,

Gary

Treadmill

The Treadmill. Once you get moving on one it’s hard to stop. You know what I mean. That daily routine you repeat day after day. Not that it’s a bad routine; but it may not be a necessarily good way to live, day after day after day.

Some of us come to hate our jobs, our family life, even our own lives. We just get bored with the same ol’ same ol’. Frustrated! Isn’t life supposed to be more than this?!?

well, yes.

But how to make it more is the trick. Here are some ideas that have worked for me—

  1. Sleep! Start your day the night before. Then get up at the same time every day. (Except on vacation.)
  2. Breathe in…, breathe out. Start your day with stretching, breathing exercises, even walking a mile.
  3. Drink lots of coffee. It has produced great energy in laboratory rats before it killed them.
  4. Quiet your soul in prayer; 5+ minutes at least.
  5. Listen to heart-thumping, heavy base music on your way to work. Classical music (which I love) just doesn’t get me pumped for what lies ahead.
  6. Drink apricot-mango juice. It will clear the crap out quite well.
  7. Process work frustrations with a friend, not your partner. Show up at home ready to serve.
  8. Sell the kids if you have them…, or at least get a baby sitter so you can have one night OUT a week. AND, one Saturday a month, escape your present environment. Go…, anywhere. Just leave, with or without the kids.
  9. Drink tea…, and carry on. Or, for some of us, a good dram of single malt scotch. Jus’ sayin’.
  10. Before you go to bed that night, say you are sorry for whatever you did today to wound another person. And mean it. Call them from bed if you have to. You want to start tomorrow with a clean slate.

I realize these ideas will not work for everyone. Sometimes they don’t even work for me. But if you want your life to have a little more oomph, a little more pizzazz to it, YOU have to make it happen. No one else will.

Back to the Treadmill…, with more gusto, less crap!

For what it’s worth,

Gary