Visual of the week

Step one: Picture Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin.
Here's some help if you're having trouble doing so:


Step two: Recall that God is rich not in terms of money, but in terms of mercy

Step three: Instead of picturing Scrooge swimming in his money...


...picture yourself swimming in God's mercy

Are you CCing God on your emails?

Sometimes I CC my boss on emails. Usually it’s because I want to make sure she sees certain information. Sometimes it’s because I need to use her authority to elicit a response from the person I’m emailing. Other times I CC her simply on emails showing what a good job I’m doing.

I was thinking about this in regards to how we treat the Lord. Am I CCing God on an email to the world? Am I CCing Him on an email just to show how great I am? Where do my motives lie?

Much of Scripture relates back to this idea of motive, to this idea of what’s in your heart. Matthew 5:8 tells us that “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Proverbs 4:23 tells us to “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”

Here’s to hoping He is the intended recipient of my emails, with the rest of the world CC’d. I’m meant to live as a vessel for him, to live as a living sacrifice. So my prayer today is for my heart to be guarded against pride, and for God to be the subject of my life, not just another audience member.

On Heaven

Was talking to my friend Sarah about this recently --

You know how the classic argument for going to Heaven says you'll make it there if you're a "good person"? And it has nothing to do with serving the Lord, believing in Christ as the savior, etc? Let's just say for a minute that such a view is accurate...what would those "good people" do in Heaven? Like, literally, what would their activities be? Continue with self-motivated activities? What would they do?

I knew this was going to happen

In December I wrote this post detailing both my pseudo-obsession with Jennifer Nettles and my hope that nothing happens to her. I love her without actually meeting her but I'm scared she's going to wander down the dark road of fame and fortune. In short, I said, "we're only about six months away from google searches where half the results for her name bring back sites called "Jennifer Nettles is hottttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It appears that particular prediction was, unfortunately, right on the money. Sugarland's "All I Want to Do" is the top music video on iTunes, ahead of slightly more famous acts like Michael Jackson, Mariah, Carrie Underwood and others.

Why is it so popular, you ask? Well, the whole thing starts with JN surfing in a bikini, then dancing in bikini, then...you get the picture.

So this is how it's going to be. Jennifer Nettles the hot girl. Sigh. Lord, please don't let anything happen to her.

Or, more accurately, please let her seek you when it all comes crumbling down.

Less people, more Bible part iii

As "luck" would have it, I was just directed to Matthew 12:36. I'd say it's fairly relevant to the two posts below:

But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.

Let's make sure we know what the heck we're talking about, okay?

Less people, more Bible part ii

There’s a great line in The Usual Suspects that says something like “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”

Let's take that a step further:
Sometimes I think the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us we know what the heck we’re talking about. We’d be a lot better served echoing The Word than our own words.

Less people, more Bible

In a bizarre sequence of events, I wound up on the phone last night with this guy Eric. I didn’t – and still don’t – know the man but he got my number from the Imago website and suddenly we were chatting for 42 minutes at 10:30 at night.

Without going into too much detail, I’ll tell you that Eric is pretty freaking bitter towards Christianity. He’s obviously been burned by Christians before – I believe his quote was “I don’t know how you can associate yourself with other Christians” – and isn’t too fond of preachers either (“All preachers are crooks”). It stinks to hear someone say these things.

This was hardly the first time I’d heard complaints like these. Notice anything about Eric’s complaints? They were about people. They were not about Jesus. That’s quite a difference. People will disappoint you. Jesus will not.

Even once we become Christians, we need to remember this. Instead of continually being tied down in what my Christian friend thinks or what s/he advises me to do, we need to consult God. As my friend Josh says, we need to focus more on the Bible and less on people.