Growth

SPECKA–bible study any place any time with anyone

/ Craig / 6 Comments

I’m always on the lookout for ways to promote study and application of God’s Word.  I believe we need to move our western romance with information or knowledge on toward speedy obedience when it comes to us and the Bible.  Please don’t hear me saying that I am against education.  I just think we get inoculated against the power of God’s Word to change our lives when we become dependent on a “studied person” as opposed to seeing every person empowered to open the Scripture and experience the shaping work of the Holy Spirit.  Here is a way to do that.

If you are using a narrative passage of Scripture have someone prepared ahead of time to tell the story.  Then have someone read the text.  Then make your way, one question at a time through the following questions:  SPECKA

S  is there any SIN to confess or avoid in this passage?

P  is there any PROMISE to claim?

E  is there any good EXAMPLE to follow or bad EXAMPLE to avoid?

C  is there a direct COMMAND to obey?

K  is there any KNOWLEDGE about who God is or how He works?

A  what is the APPLICATION?
     1st.  What are the general APPLICATIONS from this passage?
     2nd.  What are your personal APPLICATIONS from this passage?

 

Enjoy.  And if any of you do this by yourself or with a group of friends please give me feed-back on how it went.

grounds for violence–welcome to the wild wild west

/ Craig

Yesterday violence erupted again in my neighbourhood and someone lay dead on the ground for the second time in as many weeks.  For the most part I live my life from the space in between Main and Fraser in Vancouver.  I enjoy these two streets and the different stories they are telling about the City.  However my heart broke yesterday in hearing the account my neighbour told of taking children home and having to walk past the body of a young man absorbed in the darkness of lawlessness.  

This morning I sat a few blocks from the corner where he died and reflected on what grounds for violence he and others in his realm have.  The Lower Mainland is seemingly awash with those who would turn this western edge of the continent into their own wild playground.  What has consumed their conscience and heart?  Why have they abandoned the delight of life?  Have they been deceived by the attraction of power?  What vision of strength have they enshrined?  What honour has been constructed that must be preserved?  Do they truly want a life built on the survival of the strongest?  What lies has the Evil One weaved into the fabric of their hearts?

 Law is the tutor that highlights reality for the deadened conscience to recognize that something is wrong.  But what’s next? Changed hearts and restored relationships are possible from a Christian worldview through the grace of God in Christ Jesus His Son.  Into the grounds of violence God has planted a cross and empty tomb; He is shouting “you matter to me.”

This morning I prayed for our City in the tradition of Jesus a prayer that seeks to take back the ground and the lives of those sullied and sickened by violence, apathy, greed, denial, revenge, selfishness, bravado, and pain.  Perhaps you will join me in voicing again the prayer of all Jesus’ disciples:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliever us from the evil one.
Matthew 6:9-13

stepping into culture

/ Craig / 1 Comment

Our series at Cityview through the first six chapters of Danial has called us to think about how we engage culture:  to Live Like Strangers, in the world but not of it.  I want to encourage you to listen to this 18 minute talk by Andy Crouch at Q.  His talk stepping into culture reviews “postures” and “gestures” toward culture.  He ends with 3 good questions:  What are you cultivating?  What are you creating?  And Who are your co-creators?  I find Andy’s descriptions of different postures and gestures useful for helping me differentiate between the kinds of responses faith in Christ requires in daily living.

be a king…ask a question

/ Craig / 1 Comment

I regularly encourage my children as they go to school to ask a good question.  Questions accelerate learning.  Questions can take us into the frontier realms of the universe and our souls.  The failure to ask questions is evidence of decay and death.  King Solomon, author of many of the Proverbs in the Bible, says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”  (Proverbs 25:2)  So be a king; ask a question; see where the pursuit of understanding leads you.

Here are some questions that I use; they are listed in no particular order.

1.  What does _________________ (put in the person’s name) need from me in order to grow?

2.  How can my wife and I work together to advance the vision of family we have adopted?

3.  Why am I feeling the way I feel?

4.  What could I add in or take away from my work patterns/practices that would create more effectiveness?  or What small adjustment made as a habit  in the right direction would deliver an accumulative increase in effectiveness?

5.  What is the story and who are the main characters behind the sucess or failure I am observing?

6.  What adjustments in earning, saving, giving, or spending will make the greatest contribution toward my family’s values and vision?

7.  How does what I am doing fit into the Kingdom values, vision and mission of Jesus Christ?  and a related question:  Am I remaining obedient and faithful to the last word I had from Jesus?

8.  Did I honour Jesus Christ in everything today?

OK, your turn.  What questions or types of questions do you regularly ask?

nice churches and mean truths?

/ Craig / Leave a comment

Outrage calmly erupted at my breakfast table when, after reading from James 3:1-12 on the tongue, I addressed every person sitting there with me, “Your tongue is evil.”  The retort was, “That’s mean.”  My response was, “No, the Truth is not mean.”  

I feel that we are inundated with a cultural tide of tolerance that denies the truth for the sake of nice.  Our ability to take a stand within these rising waters will be directly related to our ability to hear God’s prophetic voice in His Word as a Word that reveals the truth about us.  Just as we may say in organizations, “Facts are our friends,” in the depths of our souls, “Truth is our friend.”

Daniel joined the ranks of the great prophets when he interpreted the dream of the great King of Babylon,  Nebuchadnezzar, and called on him to “Renounce your sins.”  The dream terrified them both.  Yet Daniel respectfully and fortunately with a liberty granted by the King pronounced the judgement and hope in God’s graceful vision to Nebuchadnezzar.  Then, he says, “Therefore, O king, be pleased to accept my advice:  Renounce yours sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed.  It may be that then your prosperity will continue.”  (Daniel 4:27)  King Neb did not heed the warning and suffered the full extent of the vision, but he also became the poster child of God’s sovereignty and grace.  He experienced the humbling power of God to bring down the proud, but he also experienced the graceful power of God to exalt the humble.   As Nebuchadnezzar shares in his testimony contained in Daniel 4, “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just.  And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.”  

For the follower of Jesus, Truth in the Word of God becomes intensely personal for it is the sword of the Spirit.  Declaring it does not exempt us from the challenge of “bearing fruit in keeping with repentance,” as John the Baptizer says in Matthew 3:8.  But if we value nice we will treat truth as meanness, and we will join in with the throngs who seek a broad road rather than a narrow path.  We will abandon our birthright of authority that is intended to accompany the obedience that comes by faith and the sacrifice that comes by love and the endurance that comes by our hope.  We will be nice churches–and no one will listen.

The call to honour the Living Trinue God by renouncing sin sounds mean when it challenges the accepted norms of our own goodness, but it is the sound that gracefully invites us to enter the fullness of life.