Author: Allan (Page 447 of 492)

Outside The Box

August 6, 2008 / Allan / 1 Comment

“And Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.” ~1 Samuel 4:4

Eli’s unholy sons represent the unholy people of God in 1 Samuel 4. Their actions and their disregard for the Lord and for other people reflected the fact that God’s people at this time were all doing what was right in their own eyes. And when the Lord sends the Philistines in to defeat his people, the Israelite elders decide they just need to go get the ark of the covenant, the visible symbol of the presence of God, out of the Tent of Meeting and parade it into the next battle.

They had the box. But they didn’t have God. It never occured to them that God’s not in the box. God is outside the box. And he cannot be bought or sold. He cannot be persuaded or tricked or controlled or managed by manipulating a symbol or a ritual or a set of words and motions.

The lives of the people did not reflect the glory of God. The lives of the leaders were in open defiance of the covenant of God. And it didn’t matter if they brought in ten thousand thrones of God, he was not going to give them victory under these circumstances. It’s not wherever the box is, God is. God’s not in the box.

The Israelites were putting their faith in the symbol of their relationship with God instead of in the God of the relationship.

Whether I’m stealing meat that belongs to God or not using the gifts he’s given me; whether I’m taking things from people by force or not giving them what they deserve; whether I’m having sex with temple prostitutes or not changing the channel when I should. I can do what’s right in my own eyes as long as I have the box. I’ve got the symbol. I’ve got the ritual. I’ve got the building. I’ve got the proper interpretation of church government. I’ve got the right name. I’ve got the correct order of worship. I’ve got the box.

How arrogant and foolish. Why do we do this?

We build this box. We’ll take the name on the outside of the building, support it with one songleader (acappella), elders and deacons (in that order), weekly communion, baptism by immersion, and then we’ll close it with the lid of our favorite songs and favorite Bible translation. And before you know it, we’ve got God in this box. This is where he is. And we take this box into all our battles: our battles against Satan and our battles against each other. And pretty soon, when everything that’s right about God is in our box and everything outside our box is wrong, you open it up and it doesn’t matter what I do on Saturday night as long as I’m in here on Sunday morning.

Or worse, it doesn’ t matter how pure and genuine my neighbor’s relationship is with God and others, if he says the words out of order at the Lord’s Table, he’s wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me. Some of the things I’ve mentioned are important. Very important. And we uphold these things and teach them and stand strong for them. But just because we take ownership of certain doctrines and practices never means for one second we have a monopoly on God. We don’t. He’s not in the box. He acts in ways we’ll never understand. He moves in ways we cannot comprehend.

There’s an old story about Augustine walking along the beach one day when he came across a little boy running back and forth pouring water from a bucket into a hole in the sand. Augustine asked him what he was doing, and the boy replied, “I’m trying to put the ocean in this hole.”

Who are we to try to contain and control an infinite and eternal God in our finite minds and limited understanding?

Who do we think we are? Our God’s not little. He’s huge.

He’s outside the box. Way outside the box.

Peace,

Allan

The Church Is The Building, Too

August 4, 2008 / Allan / 8 Comments

They’re in the middle of the impressive task of installing the pews in our new worship center. And in just two weeks we’ll be assembling together in this beautiful building to worship our God and spur one another on in our lives of faith.

We say all the time that the Church is not the building, it’s the people.

OK. I’ll buy that. I believe that. Up to a point.

We shouldn’t carry that statement or that position so far that it discounts or nullifies the sacred nature of the actual place where God’s children meet him in sacred assembly.

The building is important. It’s OK to feel that way. There’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you do when you walk into our new worship center or into the old church building in Arkansas where you were baptized or into the church buildings in Tulsa or Abilene where you meet and worship with dear friends once a year.

Our church buildings are vital to our faith. Our buildings collect stories and develop associations that give great depth and breadth to our experience of following Jesus together. It’s in our new worship center where our two younger daughters will put on their Lord in baptism. A couple of them may wind up getting married in there. We’ll sing and pray together in there during the funeral of some very dear sweet person reading (or writing!) this article right now. We’ll send off missionaries together in there. We’ll laugh and we’ll cry together in there. We’ll experience birth and death and everything in between together in there. We’ll hear the Word of our Lord together in there. We’ll share the communion meal together in there. We’ll be convicted and moved, we’ll confess and repent, we’ll chase little kids around the aisles together in there.

And we’ll do all those things together in the presence of each other and in the presence of our Holy God.

Your grandmother’s house is full of stories. Your childhood home is full of memories. Your current space of residence serves as the comforting and stabilizing center of your family’s hectic schedule. Our church buildings serve the same important function of reminding us of who and what has gone before and pointing ahead to who and what is to come, all in the presence of and by the power of our eternal God.

Yes, the Church is the people. But the building represents the people and the stories and the memories and the provision and care of the God we serve.

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Our 20 pollsters for the inaugural The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys Top 20 College Football Poll are all in. 19 Texas residents and one from California. Eighteen men and two women whose formative years were spent in places as widely varied as Chicago and Broken Arrow and Mississippi and Ohio. Judging from our pollsters’ list of favorite teams, it looks like we have the Big XII, Big 10, SEC, C-USA, Mountain West, WAC, and Pac-10 Conferences completely covered. It should be a totally comprehensive poll. And legitimate. Until the first time ACU or Harding or UTA receives votes. Then it’s over.

I still need a logo for this thing. Submit your entries now. Design a logo for the KK&C Top 20 and email it to me at astanglin@legacychurchofchrist.org

Thanks for jumping in. Much more later.

Peace,

Allan

ONE More Slot!

August 2, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

There is only one more opening for weekly voters in the inaugural “The Kingdom, The Kids, and The Cowboys College Football Top 20 Poll,” or as it’s commonly known, “The KK&C Top 20.” Click on the green “KK&C Top 20” tab in the upper right corner of this page for more info. Nineteen are in. One to go. I’ll get all of you much more information once we nail down the last one.

Have a great weekend,

Allan

Sovereign Lord

July 30, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

“Sovereign Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” ~Acts 4:24

The Scriptures point clearly to the fact that our God uses governments and wars and elections and political manuverings and the rising and falling of empires to work his will in our world. Whatever the powers of this earth decide or do, our Father uses for the purposes of his eternal Kingdom. Those early Jerusalem Christians in Acts 4 understood this principle. After they’d been ordered to stop teaching and speaking about the resurrected Christ, they appealed to their Sovereign Lord to “stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” They pointed back to Psalm 2 in this prayer to acknowledge that the powers and authorities of this world are always opposed to God and his mission but that God uses those very powers and authorities to do his will.

Maybe they didn’t even realize how true their prayer was.

Shortly after the unified wording of this prayer, the powers of the world carried out the execution of Steven and scattered the new Church with persecution. And God used it to spread the Gospel and expand the borders of his eternal Kingdom. And our Father is doing the same thing today.

This coming Sunday, for the first time ever, our brothers and sisters in Christ will assemble in a public building in the capital city of the people’s republic of China. This Sunday, the legally sanctioned Beijing Church of Christ will meet to worship our Sovereign Lord.

God uses the Olympics.

There are over 15-million people in Beijing. There are over a billion people in China. And starting Sunday our own brother Aubrey Johnson from the Peachtree City Church of Christ outside Atlanta is going to be teaching and preaching salvation from God in Christ Jesus for seven straight weeks! In Beijing, China! Under government sanction! Under government protection! Bible class at 9:30! Worship at 10:30! Are you kidding me?!?

Prove our God is sovereign? He just did!

Again!

David and Olivia Nelson tell me Christians are fleeing Moscow by the hundreds because of new government restrictions there. God is going to use that. Manuel Calderon baptized eleven people into Jesus last week in Venezuela. He’s using that. Our teenagers here delivered over 700 lightbulbs last week to families in an apartment complex near our church. God’s using that. Dan Miller and Bruce Archer have established two congregations of new Christians at two apartment complexes in Mesquite. And God’s using that.

That smile you gave the clerk at the post office. That kind word you delivered to your waiter. The check you wrote. The cake you baked. The hours you volunteered. The child you helped. The senior you assisted. The big stuff and the little stuff. Our God is sovereign over all. All of it. And he’s using it for his purposes and his Kingdom.

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I have 17 spots available for college football pollsters to participate in The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys Top 20 College Football Poll. You can be a pollster. You only have to be a college football fan and commit to emailing me your Top 20 every Monday through the football season. Please see yesterday’s post or click the “KKC Top 20” tab at the upper right corner of this page for more information.

Happy Milestone-Birthday, Ro! Are you tired? Are you involved? Is that why you’re so tired? I love you.

Peace,

Allan

Information And Invitation

July 29, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

We were looking at 1 Samuel 3 in our men’s Bible Study this morning and contemplating God’s message to the boy prophet in the temple. God is calling Samuel in the early morning hours and Scripture says, after the second misunderstood call, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord.” It’s an explanation, really, of why Samuel wasn’t recognizing the call. What strikes me is that, although Samuel didn’t yet know God, God certainly knew Samuel.

And he called him.

And we see a dual purpose of the Word of God as the Lord speaks to him in the temple. God tells Samuel of the judgment against Eli and he invites Samuel into a relationship with him. God gives Samuel information, revealing himself and his will to Samuel. And he gives him an invitation to join him in what he’s doing with his people.

God speaks both to inform us and to form us, for information and formation. God’s words come to us as sovereign command. But they also teach us and draw us closer to him.

J. I. Packer wrote this about God’s Word in his 1973 book Knowing God:

“God, our Maker, knows all about us before we say anything; but we can know nothing about him unless he tells us. Here, therefore, is a further reason why God speaks to us; not only to move us to do what he wants, but to enable us to know him so that we may love him. Therefore God sends his Word to us in the character of both information and invitation. It comes to woo us as well as to instruct us; it not merely puts us in the picture of what God has done and is doing, but also calls us into personal communion with the loving Lord himself.”

God’s Word as fellowship invites us into personal relationship with him. As government, God’s Word maintains the relationship by telling us how to live.

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This next part of today’s post also serves as both information and invitation. I’m announcing today the formation of The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys Top 20 College Football Poll, or as it will come to be known, The KKC College Football Poll.

Here’s the information: 20 pollsters, regular readers of this blog, will submit their weekly Top 20 football teams to the poll by noon every Monday. The ballots will be counted, the votes tallied, and the KKC College Football Poll will be released to the public on the blog each Tuesday.

Here’s the invitation: you can be one of the 20 pollsters! The only requirements are that you are a college football fan and that you faithfully submit your votes by noon every Monday during the college football season. I’m taking the first 20 who respond to me by email.

Just email me the following information about yourself:

name
current city of residence
where you spent your formative years (from 6-12 years old)
the college you attended
your favorite college football team
the college football team you hate

Just email that info to me at astanglin@legacychurchofchrist.org

Again, I’m taking the first 20 pollsters. Once I get 20 emails, I’ll get in touch with you and give you a few more details. If I get more than 20, I could use the extras for alternates that we may need a couple of times during the season. The college football season begins in one month. On Thursday August 28, North Carolina plays South Carolina in Columbia, Oregon State is at Stanford, and Baylor’s hosting Wake. The next day SMU actually plays on ESPN against Rice in Houston. And then it’s a full slate that Saturday including TCU at New Mexico, Texas against Florida Atlantic, and home games for A&M and Texas Tech. So the very first poll, the preseason poll, needs to be out in a couple of weeks. The deadline for you to get your email to me to become an official pollster is Friday August 8.

I’m also looking for a logo we can use for The KKC College Football Poll. If you want to design one, email it to me at the same address.

Peace,

Allan

Don't You Know There's A King In Zion?

July 25, 2008 / Allan / 1 Comment

“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.” ~Psalm 2:6

Psalm 2 is the psalm most used by Bible writers, quoted or alluded to nine times in the New Testament. Psalm 2 forms the very center and focus of the Church’s first recorded prayer in Acts 4.

“Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together against the Lord
and against his Anointed One.”
~Psalm 2:1-2 & Acts 4:25-26

Like those very first Christians, when we pray Psalm 2 it allows us to personally realize and internalize the tremendous canyon between the world’s ways and the ways of our God. It puts the reality of this unbridgeable gap between our ways and the ways of “the nations” right into our hearts and minds and muscles and guts.

Eugene Peterson translates Psalm 2:6 this way, “Don’t you know there’s a King in Zion?”

Peterson expands on the idea in his book, The Jesus Way:

“The first generation of Christians took Jesus at his word when he announced that the Kingdom was at hand—a real (not ideal) Kingdom with a real king, King Jesus. The words and sentences of Psalm 2 dismissed the pretensions of all these other ways and let Christ the King permeate their preaching and prayers and following. They followed the resurrected Jesus with an air of triumph and praise. The gospel was not something private that they cultivated in the cozy security of their homes and hearts; it was public, the most powerful force in human history, shaping the destiny of nations as well as the souls of men and women.”

Following Jesus is a unique way of living. It’s like nothing else. There is nothing and no one like Jesus. Following him gets us little or nothing of what we commonly think we want or need. Following him accomplishes nothing on the world’s agenda. Following him takes us right out of this world’s assumptions and goals and straight to a place where we can “insert a lever that turns the world upside down and inside out.” Following Jesus has everything to do with this world, but almost nothing in common with this world.

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I’m preaching my first Gospel Meeting (they’re not called Gospel Meetings anymore, are they?) beginning this Sunday evening through Wednesday at the Keller Church of Christ. My good friend Kyle Bolton is the preacher there, a long time friend of the family that traces back to his parents and my parents and my grandmother at P-Grove.

Here’s the lineup:

Sunday: “The Challenge to Know God” God reveals himself to us at Sinai & Zion
Monday: “The Challenge to Trust God” Isaiah 46 and Matthew 8
Tuesday: “The Challenge to Obey God” Abraham and the binding of Isaac
Wednesday: “The Challenge to Share God” The parables of Luke 15

My personal theme for the week is “The Challenge to Preach Four Straight Nights.” I invite you to join us for any and all those evenings.

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Some of you have asked me lately, in emails and in person, why I’m not doing a 99-Days of Football on the blog this summer like we did last year. Well, we can’t do the exact same thing every year. Where’s the joy in that? Something much bigger and much better and much more interactive is coming soon. In fact, I’m planning on announcing it this Monday, July 28 on this blog. If you’re a hard-core college football fan, this will be right up your alley. If you’re interested in the 99 Days of Football, you can still click on the green tab at the top of this page to relive the glamour and excitement of last year’s countdown to football season. In the meantime, bone up this weekend on your college football scouting reports and predictions and join me back here Monday.

Have a great weekend.

Peace,

Allan

Author: Allan (Page 447 of 492)

Outside The Box

The Church Is The Building, Too

ONE More Slot!

Sovereign Lord

Information And Invitation

Don't You Know There's A King In Zion?

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