A Love Story about Story

(The following is the introduction to the sermon I will be preaching February 27, 2011 at Hopewell GBC.  I will try to put the sermon audio on the blog next week.)

            You may disagree with me on this point, but I believe that everyone loves stories.  These may be oral stories shared between friends, books, TV shows, or movies, but we all love stories.

            If you were to walk into my church, or many like it, before a Sunday morning service in the fall, you would see groups of men talking.  If you approached one of these groups and listened to the conversation, hopefully not in an awkward stalkerish way, you would, more than likely, hear them telling stories of their hunting exploits from the past week.  One guy would be telling the rest about the giant buck, so huge it must have been some kind of mutant, which he just barely missed.  Maybe guys at your church are not into hunting, but they probably like to tell some type of story about their adventures. (Story telling and love of story apply to women, too.  Male examples just come to my mind quicker.)

            So, what is it about stories that make us love them so much?  While there can be a multitude of answers to this question, one major answer is that we love to get caught up in the emotion and characters of the story.  We put ourselves in their shoes.  We feel what they feel.

            Back to the hunting stories.   The guys that tell the best hunting stories are the ones who can paint a mental image in your head and put you in the tree stand with them.  When they tell you about seeing the monster buck, you can see its massive rack in your mind.  As they tell you about their heart pounding out of their chest when they raised their rifle, your heart begins to pound.  They describe putting the crosshairs right over the heart of the deer and you can see the brown fur through the scope.  Finally, they tell you how they pulled the trigger and, even though their gun has a muzzle velocity of over 2,500 feet per second, the bullet hit a floating leaf and was knocked a foot off course. You stand there and feel their disappointment and know that, if it was you, that deer would have been dead in the back of your truck.

            Even though we get caught up in hunting stories, books, TV shows, and movies, we find the Bible boring.  This should not be the case.  The Bible is filled with stories.  God did not give us a giant book of rules and procedures.  God gave us a book of stories and letters about real events and real places.  The Bible begs us to become completely wrapped up in its stories. 

We must go beyond just a Sunday School look at Bible heroes and the moral of the story and relate to the real people that lived these stories.  When we put ourselves in the shoes of the Biblical characters and feel their emotions and struggles, they we will begin to see the amazing things an amazing God did through extraordinarily normal people.

One amazing story takes place in Genesis 22.  Read it and get wrapped up in the story of Abraham.  Then hear me speak about it Sunday or listen to the audio here next week.  (I had to include a shameless plug.) Also, feel free to add a comment below with your favorite Bible story and why it impacts your life.

(An excellent book of the importance of story in our life is A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story by Donald Miller.)

Secrets to finding a Spouse

The Deuce.  Here comes my second blog post.  Hopefully I can improve on the last.

                Before we get to today’s topic a side note, it is interesting how God changes our plans.  I had a topic picked for this post and all last week I planned to write it. However, I never had the chance to sit down and write.  I also have a list of topics I want to write about but this topic isn’t on it.   Earlier this week, in my devotions, I read this passage and felt compelled to write my thoughts.  God’s plans are many times different than ours. 

                So, today I will write some thoughts on finding a spouse.  (I choose the term spouse over significant other because dating should be about finding a spouse not just a temporary partner.) As a single guy, hoping to be married some day, Genesis 24 really stuck out to me and the Holy Spirit pointed out some intriguing observations.  Since most of my readers are single young people or parents of single young people, I thought it would be beneficial to share these observations with you.

                In Genesis 24, we see that Abraham is getting old and it is time for his son Isaac to find a wife.  So, Abraham sends out his servant to find and bring back a wife for Isaac.  This is the first lesson to be learned from this passage.  Abraham was involved in helping his son find a wife.  While I don’t advocate arraigned marriages, it is still important that parents are involved in the dating/spouse finding of their children. 

I can look back at some of the girls that I have liked and now wonder why I even thought they would be a good possibility.  It is easy to get caught up in appearances and/or emotions and make mistakes.  It is easy, especially when you are young, to be look for traits in others that really are not important.  (For example, once you graduate, no one cares how popular you were in high school.)   Parents can give a more unemotional and wise assessment.  Parents you need to be involved.  Singles you need to listen to them, I say this to myself as much as to others.

My second observation is a simple one but very often not followed.  Notice from where Abraham wants Isaac’s wife to come.  Abraham does not want Isaac to marry a girl who is from the pagan nations that surround them.  Isaac’s wife is to come from Abraham’s people.  I would definitely advice against marrying someone from within your family.  Besides the birth defects, it’s just weird, unless you are from West Virginia.  You should, however, choose a wife from within your spiritual family.  2 Corinthians 6:14 explains that Christians should not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever.  If you question this, find any believer who is married to an unbeliever and ask them about the problems it creates.  They will have no struggle in finding problems that their differing beliefs create.

My cousin, Matthew, made the third observation.  If we look at verses 7 and 12, we see who is in charge of the search, not Isaac, not Abraham, but God.  Both Abraham and the servant seek God to lead them to the right women.  Who best knows us but God? (Matthew 10:30, Ps 139:13)  Who knows what we need better then God? If you are looking for a spouse, pray, pray, and pray some more.  Parents pray for your children’s future spouse.  As is the case in every area of life, we need wisdom and wisdom comes from God.  (Prov. 9:10)

My fourth and final observation is from the servant’s prayer. (Gen. 24:13-14) In the prayer, the servant clearly defines some parameters for Isaac’s spouse.  The servant does not just look for a super hot girl, though there is something to say for finding your spouse attractive, the daughter of a rich sheep herder, or any girl that will acknowledge his existence.  He asks for a girl that will give him and his camel water.  This may seem odd at first but this action would have shown some important character traits.  Getting water at this time was not as easy as opening the faucet.  This woman would have to lower a bucket into a well and then pull the heavy bucket back up once it was full of water.  Even for a ripped guy like me, a full bucket of water is not light.   If the woman was willing to draw water for the servant and his ten, yes ten, camels, then it would show that she was compassionate and hard working, great qualities to find in a wife.

                Setting parameters, especially spiritual ones, is foreign to many people, so, what parameters should you set? For guys, Proverbs 31 is a good place to start.  For girls, 1 Timothy 3 is a good start.  These passages give you a good idea of what spiritual qualities to look for.  Also, tailor qualities to the passions and interests that God has given you.  My personal qualifications for a wife include being a Godly woman, having a passion for Christ and the Bible, knowing the Bible, having a passion to work with youth and young adults, being active, and enjoying the outdoors. These are just a few qualities but should give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

                So, there you have the secrets to finding a perfect spouse.  Not exactly, these are just a few thoughts from one passage.  There is a great deal of effort that goes into relationships.  What advice do you readers have about finding a spouse?

                Most of all though pray and trust God for He is good and He is wise.

Social Media and the Glory of God

            Thus it begins.  I am now entering into the blogosphere, where anyone with an internet connection can pretend that they are a journalist or an author.  I’m somewhat surprised that I’m here. I never really liked reading and writing when I was younger.  My senior year of high school I slept every day in English class. (Students don’t follow my example here.)  However, as I went through college and now into graduate school, I have gained an appreciation for the written word.  Then, after reading my friend Ben’s well written and thought provoking blog (http://benrussell.tumblr.com/), I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at it.  So, here I go.  I just wish I had a Macbook and I was drinking a cup of coffee, those seem to be essential blogging tools, but I will try my best.

            For my first post, I decided to tackle the issue of social media and the glory of God, since that will give some insight into my purpose in writing this blog.  “Social Media” has become a popular buzz word in the media today because of the explosive growth of websites such as Facebook and Twitter.  If you use these websites or others like them, you understand how much of an impact they have on your life.  If you don’t use these websites, you probably aren’t reading this blog.

            I have always been somewhat reluctantly dragged through the different incarnations of the social media revolution.  During my late high school and early college years, MySpace rose to prominence.  I was adamant that I would never get a MySpace.  My cousin, however, had different ideas and created a MySpace page in my name and forced me to take control of it.  Later in my college years came the advent of Facebook.  Again I refrained from bowing to the trend, until I found out some cute girls had Facebook and I quickly joined.  Finally, last fall, my cousin wore me down and I got a Twitter.(@blong85)  Now I have a blog and my immersion into social media is complete, until they create something new.

            Now that I have bored you with my social media history, let’s look at a passage from the Bible.  In 1 Corinthians 10:31, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to do all that they do for God’s glory.  The entire chapter discusses whether certain actions, eating food offered to idols, was sinful or permissible.  Our verse above is the end of that discussion.  Paul gives his readers a principle to guide their actions.  They are to ask themselves if their actions are bringing glory to God.

            This brings us to the point of this post.  Everything we do as followers of Christ should bring glory to God.  So, if social media is going to be such a large part of our life, how can we use it to bring glory to God?  How can social media be used to deepen the faith of believers and reach out to the lost?  How can social media make God’s name be great? And, as we should do in every area of our life, how can we make Jesus look really good through our use of social media?

            There are many don’ts of social media that could be discussed; inappropriate pictures and conversations, relationships we should not enter into. These things either cause us to sin or, at the least, hurt our testimony by our involvement in them. 

In this post, however, I want to focus on some does that I have tried to implement.  First, I use Facebook in the youth ministry that I lead to disseminate information to leaders and students.  This has been very helpful in keeping proper communication.  Second, I started tweeting thoughts each day from my devotions.  I hope those tweets, along with this blog, challenge people to dig deeper into the Bible and apply it to their life.  Finally, I use Facebook messages to keep in contact with my accountability partners throughout the week, so, we can check on each others progress and encourage each other. 

            Now I leave it to you.  How can you use social media to bring glory to God?  If you come up with some good ideas, please let me know.