tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post9043317555695571231..comments2023-10-15T08:43:06.368-04:00Comments on One Beautiful Life: ~ Dawn ~http://www.blogger.com/profile/17701787237614349980noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-85890853383849058242012-11-28T00:21:59.826-05:002012-11-28T00:21:59.826-05:00Thanks for truth!Thanks for truth!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-69195133977908906722010-12-27T19:14:17.431-05:002010-12-27T19:14:17.431-05:00Your heart is beautiful. Don't let worldly opi...Your heart is beautiful. Don't let worldly opinions diminish it. Keep shining brightly !!!!Bryan Kaiserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06628642756001099510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-4121739668281502602010-12-22T08:55:51.255-05:002010-12-22T08:55:51.255-05:00Dawn, your desire to fallow God's ways is so e...Dawn, your desire to fallow God's ways is so evident. You and your family bless me so much! People are challanged, perhaps even uncomfortable when they see your desire to please Him. <br />I believe the the key word is "to please Him". We are all good at giving lip service, but how many of us are willing to truly ask God "what pleases you, Father?" <br />We justify things with good intentions and we say that our heart is pure, but according to whose standards? <br />"The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" (Jer 17:9)<br />God is the only one who can search our heart. However, He does that according to His standard, not ours. He says "I am the Lord, I change not" (Malachi 3:6) that means what did not please Him in the beginning, will not please Him in the end. <br />God was not pleased with the golden calf, even though it was presented to him with their best intentions. If He tells us not to fallow the customs of nations, then I am taking His word for it. He is God and I am not. <br />I have no right to judge others, there is plenty of wickeness in my own heart, but I want to desperately obey and please my Father! If He says that He does not want us to worship Him this way, then I say "yes, Sir!" I want to stand in front of Him on a judgment day and say "I tried my hardest to obey you and please you" instead of telling Him all the excuseses why I thought the things I was doing were a good idea. <br />"They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men."(Matthew 15:9) How many rules do we fallow that are thought by men? Was Jesus saying this only to pharisees? Let's be honest!<br /><br />I pray for all of us to be drawn to seek Him more than ever before! That means, decisions have to be made. "But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD"(Joshua 24:15)<br /> We have the same decision to make. "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!!!" <br /><br />Love you so much!<br />AggyAggyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05788258850971304193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-30613989436890767562010-12-21T09:42:54.282-05:002010-12-21T09:42:54.282-05:00Part II:
There is nothing more beautiful about ou...Part II:<br /><br />There is nothing more beautiful about our faith than its redemptive nature. Our faith redeems worshipped trees and transforms them into reminders of a Savior who came for all the pagans. Just as that Savior has redeemed each of us—I was born nothing but a tree-worshipper. I am now an heir to heaven. Christmas is a celebration of Jesus, who redeems me with my pagan roots, and then gives me the freedom to redeem any culture, pagan roots and all. Christians are called to claim it and proclaim it. We can engage our culture, and even enjoy our culture. It doesn’t matter what we use to celebrate—we are allowed to eat meat that was just dedicated to a pagan idol five minutes earlier, we are certainly free to enjoy a Christmas tree.<br />Whether or not a Christian celebrates Christmas has little or nothing to do with the quality of their faith, and it means nothing about a Christian’s walk with Christ. There are Christians who strive to reject the commercialism and materialism of Christmas, and don’t celebrate it, or at least don’t celebrate it for a time. There is nothing wrong with that. But using Christmas as a faith platform does pose a problem. Our faith is not about what date something happened or whether we use all the same words as the early church (the Bible doesn’t use the word “trinity” either) or any minor cultural issue. Our faith is about the heart, about sin and man’s inability to procure any kind of salvation for himself. The focus of Christmas is Jesus, the Answer to our heart’s dilemma. Being judgmental of how people celebrate the season moves the focus to legalistic concerns about human behaviors that are simply not important in Christ’s grand scheme to redeem the world, one culture at a time.<br />Just as we enjoy Biblical freedom to celebrate Christmas, Easter, and anything else in whatever culturally relevant manner we like (minus orgies), we also enjoy Biblical freedom to express our faith in different ways. Christians do not need to look alike, act alike, or really do anything alike other than proclaim that Jesus is God. We are all members of the same large dysfunctional family (and we are all dysfunctional). It is important to remember that discussion and debate is natural in a family, and it shouldn’t be seen as a personal attack. No debate on Christmas trees affects the fact that you are my sister and I love you.<br />--Ryan Straderjoelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04833602035350058836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-45619110349409005212010-12-21T09:41:50.925-05:002010-12-21T09:41:50.925-05:00My response got so long I had to break it into two...My response got so long I had to break it into two posts!! So here is part I:<br /><br />I will have to express an opposing view on Christmas, and I hope you will understand why. Everything I am saying is for the purpose of amiable discussion. I say it all with love for all my brothers and sisters, no matter what their view. But the freedom we have in our faith is very important to me, and I am inclined in this instance to speak up in defense of it. <br /> In our faith, there is no distinction between the spiritual and the secular. We are supposed to bring the gospel to people, regardless of culture. This necessarily requires engaging culture, and enculturating the gospel to some extent. We are not to accept or integrate sin into the gospel, and the Bible is clear on what those sins are: homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, drunkenness...the orgies that were mentioned would be out of the question. But beyond that, Christians enjoy freedom to adapt and use whatever cultural means are at hand to express the gospel to lost people. There should not be any such thing as a “Christian” culture and the attempt to create such a thing is not Biblical. Christ never tried to encapsulate himself in a group of Pharisees, or people that concerned themselves with behaving in a religious manner. He surrounded himself with sinners and pagans, and then he spoke to them in parables…stories that were culturally relevant and illustrated truth. Paul spoke to the Athenians using culturally relevant material, including a pagan altar and referencing non-Jewish writers that the Athenians would have known. I love what Paul the Ultimate Missionary says in Corinthians 9: “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” Paul would not have shied away from celebrating Christ’s birth for any reason…if some kind of holy tree, holy shrub or holy lantern is the symbolism that speaks to a people, then it’s fair game. Effective missionaries today continue to emulate Christ and Paul in this way. Today I was reading about Hudson Taylor, a missionary to China, and he spoke of “becoming” Chinese. He embraced everything Chinese in an effort to communicate Christ’s love to a lost culture. I am sure there are many Christians who looked at his determination to enter the Chinese culture and were disparaging about it…but actually he was following the example of Christ and Paul.<br />Christmas and Christmas trees are just another example of this. Yes, originally decorated trees were worshiped and the early church adopted the trees into celebrating Christ’s birth. They were not worshiping the tree, just as Christians today (or at least none that I have met) are not worshiping the tree, or any pagan deity. The focus is Jesus and celebrating his birth. There are pagan roots to countless things—the books you read, the movies you watch, even hymns. A friend pointed out to me today that Be Thou My Vision is set to the music of a Celtic pagan song, and A Mighty Fortress is set to the tune of a drinking song that was popular at the time. When I was in college, I read this re-write of the gospel that a missionary had written for some Icelanders he was trying to reach. He re-cast Jesus as an Icelandic tribal leader. He was not trying to pass it off as Scripture, he was just telling the gospel story in a way that his audience could relate to. This is what Christians are meant to do—enter culture, interact with culture, bring Jesus to the cultural discussion, redeem the culture in his name. If we refuse to redeem any cultural items or practices, then we slowly have to withdraw from culture, reject the example of Christ, and eventually reject our Biblical mandate to bring the gospel to lost people. We end up hiding out in our “Christian” culture, and we make ourselves incomprehensible to the people we are supposed to be sharing grace with.<br />(continued in next post...)joelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04833602035350058836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-63180021092070960282010-12-20T14:00:40.742-05:002010-12-20T14:00:40.742-05:00Dawn,
Thanks for some food for thought. We celeb...Dawn,<br /><br />Thanks for some food for thought. We celebrate (tree, gifts, food) for Christ's birth. It is a great time to pause in our lives and give special attention to our God and Savior, just like we celebrate the lives of our loved ones with a special birthday. I agree with you that the consumerism of our society is totally missing the point, but to say that Christmas is of the devil is missing the mark by a long shot. For Christians, Christmas is a joyful time of year that has nothing to do with idols, Satan or sin. <br /><br />But i still love you and value your friendship,<br />joelAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-72663150565880181902010-12-20T09:47:28.139-05:002010-12-20T09:47:28.139-05:00Wow Dawn, that is a lot to think about..I had alre...Wow Dawn, that is a lot to think about..I had already been thinking that we need to change our Christmas ways and give more to others than we give to ourselves..This year we started a "secret Santa" where we give notes and handmade gifts to each other in our stockings instead of store bought gifts. We also greatly reduced the amount under the tree..baby steps..thank you for sharing!Chris Garrisonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14116503939648493003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32198919.post-31593772775978468602010-12-18T11:19:22.754-05:002010-12-18T11:19:22.754-05:00So, you put all together the reasons why we should...So, you put all together the reasons why we should not participate in the way we have come to celebrate Christ's birth. I've been having mini conversations about this with some people, but really couldn't explain it this well. <br /><br />I love that this time gets our family together, and gives us a reason to celebrate Christ, but I too would love to remove the paganism out of this gathering. The alternate argument from my family is that we don't worship the Christmas tree, it's just a decoration.. Still losing that battle of some of the symbols, but hopefully someday, we can make it just look like Thanksgiving:)jennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05808195681307681212noreply@blogger.com