Presby-Musings

During this hotly contested national election, it has occurred to me more than once that our nation has become what some might characterize as "hopelessly divided."  Cable news channels routinely pit guests with opposing views against one another while a supposedly neutral talking head "moderates" their discussion. It's all carefully scripted to make sure that the viewers get to see what they want to see.  Television plays to its intended audience.  If you are liberal and you want to see conservatives get trounced on air 24/7, tune in to MSNBC .  If you are conservative and you like to see liberals get their comeuppance, watch Fox News .  And so it goes. So how do Christians fit into all of this division?  Aren't we supposed to be "one in Christ?"  The fact of the matter is that we aren't.  Christians are just as hopelessly divided as anyone else, and both liberal and conservative Christians claim to have the authoritative interpretation...

This week I'm beginning a new sermon series based on the bestselling book by Craig Groeschel , The Christian Atheist : Believing In God, But Living Like He Doesn't Exist.   More than a few of us Christian-types  say we believe in God, but we live like we don't.  Over the course of the next three weeks we'll be examining some critical areas where Christians stumble and become Christian Atheists--people who claim to believe in God, but who live like he doesn't exist. This week we're going to be exploring what it looks like when you say that you believe in God, but don't really know God. There is a big difference between believing and knowing . Lots of people claim to believe in God, but how many people really know God? And can you really know God?  Is that possible?  Can you know the unknowable, describe the indescribable, define the undefinable? I think that you can.  The key to knowing God comes down to knowledge.   Check this seriously ...

For those of you who might be struggling on Christian etiquette.  I'll be happy to provide you with some do's and don'ts to help you out.  This is the kind of guy that I am.  I'm THAT guy. Todays Lesson:  Lunch Prayer Christian-y people are often compelled to pray over their food in restaurants and fast food establishments---and mostly by other Christians, who happen to be dining with them.  Or their nonChristian friends who know that they are Christian-y, and sort of expect them to, even if it's a bit awkward. Here are some truisms... Truth #1:  When dining alone, Christian-y people will probably forego the lunch prayer.  It's not that they aren't grateful to God for their food, it's just that they don't want people to think they are holier-than-thou, especially when they probably butted in front of someone in line to get their food or yelled at the counter crew for screwing up their order. Truth #2:  When dining alone at Chik-FilA, C...

This week I am concluding the sermon series "Together," which has been focused on the core values of my church: Worship , Pray , Grow , Love & Serve. As I shared in the first sermon of this series, the reason why I've been preaching on this is twofold:  1) the last time I preached on our core values was two years ago and we've added over 150 members since then.  2) If you don't pay attention to your core values, they cease to be... core values. For the final installation of this series we'll be focusing on the last of our core values---what we call "The Five Things:" Serve. We've been asking seriously difficult questions of each of our core values over the past few weeks, and these questions have led us to some challenging places. This week the question that we are going to be asking of our final core value is simply this:  Are we building bridges of love that will hold up the truth? Read this passage of Scripture from the New Test...