This world is messed up in magnitude, but there is a more amazing God who has invited us to know him, linking arms with us that we might be amplifiers for the beauty of Jesus to all peoples.
He is not only a global God — he’s a galatic God. He is bigger than anything we can imagine. We don’t have a clue, really, about who we are dealing with. The universe was one of God’s thoughts.
These are some of the thoughts that Pastor Louie Giglio shared at the Desiring God 2011 National Conference. His text was from Psalm 148: 1 – 5
Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts!
Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created.
In the message he helps up to remember that God tends to direct our attention to things greater than us to lead us to worship. We don’t understand the expanse of the worship that constantly surrounds the throne of God. I hope that is short clip from his message will help you to realize the heavens are already doing what God is calling us to do everyday. Enjoy!
I hate getting Facebook inbox messages. Here’s why, I already have 3 email addresses that I use for various reasons and those are hard enough to keep up with let alone adding another one. As a matter of fact I almost dropped Facebook all together when that started adding email addresses to the site. That being said every once in a great while I have some meaningful conversation through my inbox or someone sends me a video that will turn my day upside down. The other day I received this link from my wife from a local spoken word artist named Brent Rice. I honestly don’t know much about him but I have heard of Alea Lovely, a local videographer and photographer, who shot this video.
After watching this video I ended up watching it over and then once again and every time I was challenged in a different way. Given the caliber of this work I will defiantly be looking for mare content by this artist in the upcoming days. Here is my wish for you, no matter what your relational status I want you to experience and pursue this type of love. It’s a standard that I [personally] may never achieve but my aim is firmly set that way.
As my little girl continues to blossom into the amazing young women that God created her to be I wanted to extend a “pre-emptive strike” so to say. Enjoy!
Ezekiel Azonwu is a resident poet at P4CM which is a ministry looking to Intentionally Impact the world for Christ. They build you up spiritually and teach Biblical subjects in a creative way that can be understood by all. They constantly deliver powerful and compelling word of mouth and this piece does not disappoint. Throughout the poem half of me was smiling and nodding my head, the other half was wincing in pain while evaluating my own life. In the end our enemy does not care if you look right on the outside to the rest of the world, or about your church attendance, he is looking to destroy you by letting you be [well]…. almost.
There’s an ongoing war within [our] culture. It’s the war for manhood. The older I become the harder it becomes to see a proper example of Biblical manhood. Much like the culture the chairs and pews are overwhelmingly filled with ‘boys who can shave’. Let me give you an example actually taken from the people I interact with daily.
What is the difference between a 16 year old that lives at home with his parents, plays Xbox 360 all day, doesn’t have a job, dates around without any form of commitment, and has little or no responsibility outside of which fast food joint he wants to take his date for dinner and a 25 year old that bunks with dudes, pays $100 in rent a month, works part-time, and doesn’t shower very often?
You’re exactly right; the answer: age.
I know what you’re thinking. The aforementioned descriptions might be a little extreme and probably not ‘completely’ accurate in most cases, but the picture painted here should be pretty clear.
Adolescence is often seen as the stages between puberty and legal adulthood. In our culture, this would be about 18 years old. When a young man turns 18 he can buy tobacco, vote, and purchase rated R movie tickets. Pretty sweet huh? Yep. Well, it seems that way.
In today’s culture, boys can become men without any ‘rite of passage,’ so to speak. All it takes is… well… age. I am seeing ‘men’ who are in their 20′s and 30′s reflect the lifestyle of 18 and 19 year olds. And we call it manhood. This is pathetic!
Confusion over what manhood is has plagued our cities, families and lives. The concept of a biblical man has been lost in our generation. Unfortunately, many churches struggle to provide for its members, much less those beyond their walls, with a tangible definition of a real man.
Mark Discoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, gives some pretty good insight into this.
Historically, a guy would go through two life phases: boy, then man. The transition from boy to man was comprised of five sociological variables that happened almost simultaneously or in very close succession:
1. Leave your parents’ home (Gen. 2:24);
2. Finish your education or vocational training;
3. Start a career-track job, not a dead-end-Joe job;
4. Meet a woman, love her, honor her, court her, and marry her;
5. Have children with her.
But here’s what’s happened. Rather than moving from boy to man by this succession of sociological transitions, we’ve created something called adolescence. It’s a third life stage in the middle between boy and man. We don’t know what to call them so we just call them guys. These are boys who can shave.
Today, adolescence starts somewhere in the teen years and continues indefinitely. There is no foreseeable end. The problem with adolescence is guys don’t know when they’re ever going to grow up and be men, and no pressure is exerted on them to do so.
Lyrics below…
[Lecrae]
Momma want some more Obama in me the hood want PAC hip hop wanna see the
Common in me. And since this a senseless contradiction I end up a misfit tryina fit In. This ends when I stand up and see the hands of the standard: holy is
The lamb huh(holy is the lamb) Now we holding you to man up cause we were made
In his image start looking at what you came from.[KB]
Right after Adam every atom in our anatomy had to make adamant after what
Adonai is against. Let me take you back to the tree in Eden, if you read it you’ll see that eve was deceived but Adam is the one who let it in.(Man up) Standing Leading no, we ain’t leading we (Bump that) Basically little boys with
Muscles and a mustache! The femininity, we need a remedy, the God-Man, a
100 percent (strength) masculinity
[Trip Lee]
Where the men at, seems like they all lost, none of them are on the scene,
Seems like they died off. They extinct but my dream is to rise up, we
Chasing the prize of the King the divine boss, but we fell away, now we
UnGodly we lose and we really got the blues like Navi, I wanna celebrate the dudes that’s beside me fellas lets elevate we through with the lobby
[Tedashii]
Go ahead I say boy Get your shine on. and if a sucker try to block you get your 9 home and
What I heard you gotta do to be a man now, stand up for yourself so I took
It in my hands now. And that’s the problem man we busy trying to solve it
All the while we walking dead man somebody bring the coffin, boy drop
Peach fuzz now you think that your a man cause you feeling yourself you
Need to man up!
[Sho Baraka]
Sex and models, and tipping bottles back a pile of excuses right next to
Your bottle caps. A rolodex filled with names that you aim to
Please next to the stack of money, building up a heart of greed. Ice on his
Neck give the jokers a cold shoulder, you drunk off pride plus you loving
The hangover. You gotta whole lotta stuff that won’t amount to gain life
Will never make sense cause you never made change
[PRo]
You got it Twisted sick like a fever, little man live to stack doe
Keebler. Man up! Get up out of the treehouse leave the cookies alone it’s
Time to eat meat now. Trying to show you a new way to live now, no charge
You can call it a freestyle. without Christ you know how your man is, was
A boy in a mans body like Tom Hanks in BIG.
[Andy Mineo]
Being a man got nothing to do with age. You can be a boy till the day you
Lay in your grave. None of us behave in the image of who were made, cause
We’ve fallen away it’s better known as depraved. Running from
Responsibility really we crave the easy way out of places that call us to
Pull our weight. Man there going through everyday decisions are made,
Responding to the call God’s giving em from the…
[All] Man Up!
[Andy]
Let the process begin, separate the boys from the men
[All] Man Up!
[Andy]
Doesn’t matter how you started, partner, it’s about how you end
[All] Man Up!
[Andy]
Jesus is the model follow us we gon’ follow him
[All] Man Up!
[Andy]
We-we the last of a dying breed it’s time that we
Jon is a passionate communicator, innovative thinker, and the leader communities that call participants to lives that make much of the glory of God. Jon endeavors to be a resource enabling people to effectively reach their community by leading biblically faithful and culturally relevant lives. His greatest joy outside of Jesus is being married to his wife Heather and being a dad to their children. That being said, the articles and opinions expressed on this blog are solely mine and do not represent Blue Valley Baptist Church or Concord Baptist Church (Jefferson City).
Raised between two completely different worlds of the suburbs and the inner city of Kansas City, Jon....learn more
Last meeting w/ some dear friends for the last time. :-( This Saturday morning time has been so fruitful & encouraging to my life. Thank you 16 hours ago
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