Hello everyone.
Back at work.. Kinda slow again. That's okay. I've been thinking about blogging again. This one will be kinda heavy, because a lot is weighing on my mind.
I guess I could start off with some not so heavy stuff. Being married to Zane is the best decision I have made. I am constantly laughing and having fun. For example, this week, I have been sick. He did everything. He cooked. Let me lay in bed and watch Heroes (it's been awesome). And I drank probably 20 packets of earl grey tea in a week. DANG. Anyway, that servant. I love him.
We had another snow day this past week. His meetings and my work day was cancelled. It was a wonderful Friday. We literally did nothing. And I think to kick my sick week in the butt, I took a 2 hour nap with Tobias.
But we are simple folk. We have been putting puzzles together. After about and hour or so, Zane gives up because he is bored. :) I keep on though, I like the challenge. When we do 300 piece puzzles, they take about an hour, two hours tops. Saturday night we worked for over 2 hours, and then went to bed. We also have been thinking about planning future trips. By we, I mean me :) Zane just says okay to planning, because everything we have ever planned has been changed about 1000 times. So nothing set in stone yet, obviously.
Now for some heavy stuff.
We tried Northstar yesterday. The pastor did the state of the church. It started off interesting because we could not find a parking space at all. It reminded me of Highlands. We walked in, and it was a bit disorienting because it is set up exactly like the church we tried last week. Both meet in a school. Obviously whoever designed and constructed Christiansburg Middle School also designed and constructed Blacksburg High School. His state of the Church really made me miss Highlands. He was asking for money. He told people they needed to join and not attend. If they just wanted their "Sunday fill" then they needed to do that somewhere else. It was interesting and different. Zane and I talked a lot about what they were saying and how they approached things.
A college girl came up on stage and (the way I heard it) was pretty disrespectful of her pastor in front of 500+ people. It made me sad. But as Zane pointed out, I come from a military family and a church that demands respect (which is a good thing). We also lived in the South, deep south, and where we live now is not so much a respectful in a Southerner's eyes way of living. I'm not giving them an out or an excuse, I just think it's different here. Zane and I got to talking about some of the things he said. Which led to a discussion about Jesus, my favorite.
The pastor said "Paying for someone's coffee behind you is not evangelism. Proclaiming with your mouth is evangelism."
We were a little perturbed by this comment, because we have the Acts of Kindness cards at COTH, and on the defense, we were like "UM YES IT IS!" But we broke it down a little more, and said COTH doesn't think that just paying for someone's coffee is evangelism. It actually doesn't do anything for the person unless they are connected back to the church or connected back to Jesus. Then Zane said something that made me fall in love with him a little more. "When I try a church, I like to compare it to the first church." Hello. If that isn't good, well I just don't know what is going through your head.
We talked about that some, but then it lead into what the church does today, like how we try to reach the lost. This subject we talked about for a while, because majority of the time, street preaching won't do anything. Preaching like that belongs in a church, because most people walking down the street might not be debating or yearning for something spiritual or Jesus or anything, and then if someone who proclaims to be a Christian comes up and did that, they would be immediately turned off. Jesus didn't do that. Zane is the gospel genius. He loves reading about Jesus. I like the prophets. But when I have a gospel question, I ask Zane. Did Jesus yell at people to repent or turn from their wicked ways or they would burn, or did he loved the sinners? We were a little spotty, so correct me if I am wrong, but Jesus would yell "Repent" to the Pharisees, but to adulterers or tax collectors or anyone who was not religious he would love the fire out of them. To his closest compadres, he told them they had little faith and things they needed to fix, but that is because these people had committed their lives to Jesus. They weren't on the fence, they jumped in full force. He didn't tiptoe around His followers, but he loved those that probably in the world's eyes today, deserved the least amount of love and probably deserved (by today's standards) to be told to "turn or burn".
I think a lot of people have it backwards and that is why Christianity is such a turn off. "Turn or Burn" seems to be the message to the lost and "unconditional infinite grace" seems to be the message preached to "Christians". I think it should be a little bit of the opposite. The lost need to be loved, not rejected. They don't need to be scorned or shouted out that they are sinners and their lives are heathenistic or anything like that. They need to know that they were thought about on the cross. That Someone loved them enough to think about them on their dying day, and say "This was for You. If I could change anything about that day, I wouldn't, I'd still do it for you. If you were the only person to ever walk the earth, I would do it for you."
And to the Christians who purposefully sin. Knowing they are wrong, but don't really care, because they have the mindset that "God forgives me. God will forgive me for this." There needs to be revival in the Jesus sort of sense, that call out people who have committed their lives to this. That proclaim on facebook to be Christians, but there are aspects of their lives that need transformation. I think people of the church tiptoe around other Christians for fear of "judgement". We are called to help people out, call them out. Say that is a sin, it is hurting your relationship with God. That is wrong. It's not judgement, it's love.
I know this is not the case in some circumstances. And I'm still debating posting this.
But on my way to work, I was reflecting on what a great weekend Zane and I had together, and reflecting on our conversations, and I got to thinking about identifiers. When someone thinks about you, what is the first thing that comes to their mind? And is that satisfying for you?
For me, I want people to know me as the girl madly in love with Jesus, and who loves her husband and China more than most people. I think stuff like this is rather important. It shows what is important in your life. Where you place your stock, it shows what comes first in your life. The point is not to be super spiritual. It was just a thought. What's my legacy? I guess is the question. Do people know what I am passionate about?
Okay that's enough. This post is all over the place full of emotion. And if you see it, it means Zane approves of the content and I posted.
Belle
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