Category: Dealing with sin
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The real Charlie Brown
(Click here for a video of John reading today’s Catch. Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other notorious sinners. (There were many people of this kind among the crowds that followed Jesus.) But when some of the teachers of religious law who…
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One more reason why church should be like an AA meeting
Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. Hebrews 13:13 “Hi, my name is John, and I’m a sinner.” “Hi John!” That’s the way church should begin. Before the Call to Worship; before the opening hymn — even the Invocation. Church should start with, “Hi, my name is John, and…
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Where grace meets disgrace
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. Hebrews 13:12-13 What happened? According to this verse there is something disgraceful about meeting Jesus outside the camp. Did we miss something? Do you feel like you…
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Breaking camp
We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. Hebrews 13:10 An altar is a place of slaughter. The lamb or bull that was brought in as a sacrifice for sin would be slain on the altar and the blood was spread around in various places as the…
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‘You really gotta get out more’
Thanks to Sandy, Toni, Gail, Nick, John, Liz, Lyn, Phillip, Merlyn, Bob, Lisa and Jill for their comments on yesterday’s Catch. As Phillip pointed out, we are all very busy and don’t always get to all our emails so that some people don’t respond just because they never saw it. I realize that, and that…
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“Outside the camp”
We are focusing our attention on “out” this week. When we say “out,” what do we mean? Actually we mean a lot of things; more than we can talk about in one day, but here’s a good start. By “out,” we mean out in the marketplace, the secular world, the culture at large. Out beyond…
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What took you so long?
“I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes.” (1 Corinthians 4:3-5) Here is what to do with…
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Bad start
You know what I just caught myself doing this morning? Putting down someone else’s ministry. Now how is that helping anything? It’s not. It’s only making me feel better for a while, especially when this guy is bigger than me in my eyes. So if I can bring him down, I can stand taller without…
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Better than we could possibly have imagined
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. (Romans 12:3) I want to draw your attention to Billy’s comment after yesterday’s Catch. It’s a…
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Grace that is greater than all our sin
“Gee, it’s worse than I thought.” “Yeah but the cross is bigger than I thought.” Jim posted the observations above on our website following Tuesday’s Catch where I commented on what my sin must have looked like to me 45 years ago compared to today. The picture above was on the back of the album,…
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God loves us because He loves us
I noticed in the comments from yesterday’s Catch that there was an overwhelming sense of wonder as to what God saw in us that was valuable enough to make us worth saving when we know how messed up we are. And that made me think again, why does God love us? Is it something in…
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Just like everybody does
Inside A change is happening on the inside And it makes no sense for me to hide What I don’t want you to see Come see Everything that lies inside me ‘Cause amidst the mess I’ve made of me You might see the Lord From the song, “Inside” by John Fischer You wouldn’t believe how…
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The rainbow and the saguaro
Chandler and I are making our way home today from Tucson, Arizona where we have been visiting this weekend with one of our Vanguard members, Mike High. Mike is a career Air Force fighter pilot and instructor, and Chandler has recently been looking into the Air Force as a possible career. We came to spend…
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Serious business
Well here I am late again because the subject matter of these Catches is like Nathan pointing his finger at me like he did to David, saying “You’re the one who has sinned.” I started out this Catch with a statement of sin being underrated among Christians. Well I can truly say I am in…
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Amazing Grace
“Are not the gods just?” “Oh, no, my child. Where would we be if they were?” (C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces) by Marti Fischer There was once a time when I got distressed about the existence of evil/sin in the world and wondered why God didn’t run the world right.
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Step into the light
There are three comments currently posted on yesterday’s Catch. There would have been four had not our good friend Robert from Seattle alerted me to the first one that is no longer there. The first one was from my wife, Marti, and she had some strong reactions to my Catch yesterday, and she let me…
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Taking every thought captive
“As the salt flavors every drop in the Atlantic, so does sin affect every atom of our nature. It is so sadly there, so abundantly there, that if you cannot detect it, you are deceived.” ~ Charles H. Spurgeon Notice how we don’t like to talk about sin? In some ways it feels like an…
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Dirty feet
[When the Catch comes out late, it’s usually because the subject matter has been giving me trouble. It also means the version you are about to read has gone through many revisions, usually indicating earlier versions were rejected by my greatest critic, my wife, as not being sufficiently honest. With a subject like “sin” this…
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What ever happened to sin?
“The word ‘sin,’ which seems to have disappeared, was a proud word. It was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. It described a central point in every civilized human being’s life plan and life style. But the word went away. It has almost disappeared—the word, along with the notion. Why? Doesn’t anyone sin anymore?…
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The worst exchange
The worst exchange of all was thirty pieces of silver for the life of Christ. Thirty pieces of silver for the creator of the universe. Thirty pieces of silver for the savior of the world. Thirty pieces of silver for the only begotten Son of God. It was a bargain to say the least. Thirty…