bekahcubed

Photo Albums:

• Candlemaking, a party in two parts (May/June)
  

Laugh out loud funnies:

• Nudist spotting by the Meanest Mom’s children
  

  “On our way to soccer practice on Saturday morning, my daughter leaned forward in her seat and tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘The people in the car next to us don’t have any clothes on,’ she whispered.”

  This woman is HIL-ar-ious!

Projects to try:

• Lazy Daisy Pillowcases
  
  Photo from The Long Thread

Thought-provoking posts:

• On “Friending” old flames on Facebook:
  

  “My love for my husband may be bright and burning like the sun, but having dated means that other small stars are visible in my sky, perhaps especially when the sun’s light occasionally wanes. Before the Internet, these stars were far away — I had no idea where these men lived, or how to find them if I wanted to. Now, they are as close as the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling above my sons’ beds. “

  I’ve heard the statistics about divorce suits that name Facebook as a marriage-ending factor, I’ve seen people fall into inappropriate relationships via Facebook. This is a good article reflecting on that issue. Now I just wish someone could answer the dilemma of the single woman on Facebook. How can single women make sure that they are being wise, both with their own hearts, and with those of their friends and acquaintances on Facebook?

• On the Professional Weaker Brethren:
  

  “I remember Chuck Swindoll talking about this saying: ‘Be careful, there are some people out there who are ‘professional weaker brethren.’

  ‘Kristie, I have scruples with this make-up thing. Maybe I cannot find a verse or a solid principle upon which to rest my theological head, but you need to be sensitive and understanding to my hang-ups for the sake of my spirituality. One more year and my scruples will be gone.'”

  I’ve known a lot of these. Of course, there is a corollary, the believer who has been a believer for a long time but who uses the “weaker brethren” passage as an excuse for imposing his personal legalism (that by now he knows is actually unscriptural) upon others. “Yes, I know the Scripture doesn’t forbid drinking alcohol, but some weaker brothers have a problem with it, so you should never drink.”

  Someone expressed concern that my brother and sister-in-law had secular music (gasp!) at their wedding reception for us to dance to. I remember my mom taking the concern into account, considering the person who had expressed that concern, and concluding: “That person should have known better.” This person’s faith was not being harmed by the inclusion of secular music in the wedding dance. This was not a case of a new believer who has not yet discovered the freedom that is in Christ Jesus–this was an old believer (that is, one who has been a Christian for a while) who was using the “weaker brethren” passage as an excuse to remain sinfully legalistic.

  HT: Vitamin Z

Videos worth seeing:

• Preaching the gospel every week
  

  What can a pastor do to begin to preach the gospel? from Journey-Creative on Vimeo.

  This video is framed as advice to young pastors, but I think the basic principle for Biblical understanding is useful for “lay people” too. Bryan Chapell suggests that readers of Scripture ask of a passage “What’s the problem? And how is God showing us that He fixes the problem?” This emphasizes the gospel in Scripture and avoids the trap of “duties and doctrines” that we often fall into in Scriptural interpretation.

  HT: Vitamin Z

Related to previous posts:

• How should a Christian respond to Glenn Beck?
  Russell Moore offers a well needed rebuke to the church for embracing moralism as gospel and thereby denying the true gospel for the sake of our political interests.

  “It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined ‘revival’ and ‘turning America back to God’ that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.

  Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we’ve relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We’ve tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership as long as with it there is sufficient political ‘conservatism’ and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.”

  This subject has been increasingly interesting to me after reading Greg Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation. See my review and my reflections on the book for more thoughts on the subject.

  HT: Tim Challies