InsideOut People

I have begun to be a contributor on a collaborative blog www.insideoutpeople.com seeking to encourage conversation and life change in being authentic followers of Christ who are making a difference in their immediate community and the global community. I want to encourage you to go there and check out what the other contributors have to say, it is challenging on all levels.

We were asked to each give a perspective on what it means to be an inside out person. I want to share my posts here as well as encourage you to go there to read others.

“Full of It”

What are you filled with? What am I filled with?

At first that seems like a difficult or weird question to answer. But if I ask someone else to describe you or me, they are probably going to use some words that begin or end in “full”! And honestly on different days I might be described in different words…one day I may be described as “joyful” but another, “spiteful”, or “full of love”, or “playful”, or acting in “hurtful” ways, etc.

We describe each other like this because we see the things coming out of a person as what describes the stuff that is on the INSIDE. What’s on the inside COMES OUT, one way or another. We can pretend for awhile (and we all have done it), but the stuff in there will spill out. So what’s in there??

“…Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” -Colossians 1.27b-29

So the biggest concerns for me are…

first, is Christ in me and is he my hope?

second, is HIS energy working powerfully within me?

and third, HOW am I working and struggling with his energy spilling out of me to others?

If Christ is in me people should be able to call me “Christful”. Certainly it is less complex to say that someone is “joyful” rather than “Christful”. But the more you and I get to know the Christ of the story (the living Christ understood through the Scriptures), the more we become like his character, his thoughts, his heart, his everything! Are people seeing you and I spilling over with Jesus and describing us as full of Him? Are we living out the life of Jesus in other lives, with those who are hurting and those who are rejoicing?

This describes the basis for my understanding of being an Inside Out Person and describes my mission, my purpose, and my cause for my life and all the relationships in my life. I need others in my life to challenge me and encourage me to be living this way! So join us as we go through the ups and the downs of seeking to be Full of it!

Mandy’s Monday - God’s Rule in Relationships

I have been so encouraged and challenged while working through Colossians in Study & Share this semester! It has always been Brian’s favorite book of the Bible and so each time I spend time in it I feel like I am getting to know him better as well

Last week I had the privilege of teaching Study & Share on the passage Colossians 3:18-4:1. Now if you are familiar with the book you may realize immediately that this is the passage that lists several relationship “rules” - wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives, children obey your parents… Not an easy passage to cover in my mind, and sometimes not a popular one either. But I found my time there to be a real blessing!

In Colossians 1 Paul greets the Colossian church and then begins to tell them how amazing Jesus is! (He is the first born from the dead, He is preeminent and in Him all the fullness of diety dwells!!) Colossians 2 has that amazing passage on Christ’s work at Easter bringing us from death to life. (You who were dead in your trespasses…God made alive, canceling the record of debt, nailing it to the cross, setting it aside!)  With Colossians 3 Paul explains how we are to live a life that is alive in Christ.  If you are like me, even though you are alive in Christ there are times when we choose to live in the coffin. Paul tells us how to get out! (Put to death - slander, immorality, anger… put on - compassion, kindness, humility…) AND THEN comes the instructions for our personal relationships in the home.  The Lord Jesus wants to affect every area of our lives, so that we might be fully alive in Christ!

Following the Lord’s instructions in our relationships, allowing Him to rule in our relationships is really choosing to trust Him and not ourselves.  When we realize our ultimate faith and trust are in the Lord, it puts our earthly relationships into perspective.

I am not going to share everything I was encouraged by, I will save that for the pod cast.  So check back if you would like to listen

If you have not done it recently, read all the way through Colossians in one sitting and soak it in!  Seeing it in its entirety is GREAT!

Mandy’s Monday (on Wed.) - I Just Wanna Celebrate! Part 2

If you have not seen the comment my Aunt left on Part 1 of this post, you ought to go give it a read. I found it inspiring!

So here are the descriptions I found in Colossians that address what happens to the believer through and at Easter:

(insights taken from Colossians 1:13-14; 19-22; 27; 2:13-15)

Our Condition Before:

Domain of darkness

Alienate

Hostile in mind

Doing evil deeds

Dead in trespasses

Uncircumcision of flesh

Record stood against me

Legal demands

What God did at Easter Through Jesus Christ:

Delivered us

Transferred us

Forgiven us

Reconciled us

Made peace by the blood of the cross

Presented us

Made known

In us

Canceled our debt

Set it aside

Nailed it to the cross

Disarmed the ruler & authorities

Put them to shame

Triumphed over them

Our Condition After:

Kingdom of his beloved Son

Redemption

Forgiveness of sin

Reconciled

Holy

Blameless

Above reproach

Hope of glory

Alive

Trespasses forgiven

Canceling record of debt

AMEN!! I JUST WANT TO CELEBRATE!

Mandy’s Monday (I know it is not Monday - so lets just pretend) - I Just Want to Celebrate! Part 1

I am aware that Easter is done and gone, but I have to revisit it in this blog. I had wanted to share these things before now and life just got in the way - you know how it is!

For Easter my friend Shannon Diller put together an Easter mix and passed it out. I just love Shannon’s musical mixes. The girls and I really enjoyed his Christmas two cd mix as well! So on the Easter mix is the song “I Just Want to Celebrate” and it has become my theme song these few weeks. I play it two or three times in the morning while dropping my kids off at school, to set the tone for the day and get everyone pumped (of course my girls tease me for always playing the same song!)

What do I have to celebrate - well let me tell ya

Leading up to Easter I was preparing to teach at Study & Share a review lesson on Colossians 2:6-23. When I realized that I would be teaching the week of Easter I was really excited! Colossians may not be the normal place you would turn to read and study on the week of Easter but oh it fits beautifully!! We can go to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and read about what happened to Jesus at Easter, but when we go to Colossians 2 we discover what happened to us at Easter. If you want to look at it personally here is what I sugest you do:

Read through the following verses Colossians 1:13-14; 1:19-22; 1:27; 2:13-15

Do so THREE times making a list of:

1st Descriptions of us before placing our faith in Jesus

2nd Descriptions of what Jesus and God did at Easter

3rd Descriptions of us after Easter and placing our faith in Jesus

Then compare the before and after!! Wow now that is something to CELEBRATE!!

At Easter I went from being dead in sin to alive in Christ! I just want to CELEBRATE another day of living!!!

Next week I will share the descriptions I found in Colossians, but I will wait in case you would like to look at it on your own first.

Side note - here is another reason I am celebrating these days - Yesterday was OPENING DAY in baseball - WOO HOO!! Now that does not compare with Colossians but it sure is a lot of fun! - Go RANGERS!! (I even got to hear my favorite radio commercial while listening to the game.)

Mandy’s Monday - Milk and Cookies Part 2

Last week I was thinking and teaching about milk and cookies - yum!! Especially if they are homemade cookies right out of the oven. In fact I just ate such a chocolate chip cookie before starting this post. (Isabelle is suppose to be bringing snack to school tomorrow and it will be…cookies!) The analogy is this, applying the Bible to your life is the sweet ooie gooie goodness in following the Lord just as warm homemade cookies with milk are oh so good to eat!!

I want to share with you the four steps to application as well as nine questions to ask of any passage you are reading and studying. These steps and questions come from Howard Hendrick’s book Living By the Book (I misquoted the title of the book last week - sorry Howard!)

Four steps to Application

1. Know - You need to be sure you know what the scripture passage is saying. This is where your time in observation and interpretation is key! If you have the wrong interpretation you will have the wrong application! You also need to know yourself and be honest about your strengths and weaknesses. This will allow you to respond to the Holy Spirits prompting that a truth in Scripture is for you personally!

2. Relate - You need to relate God’s word to your life - every area of your life!! Don’t be caught compartmentalizing!

3. Medidtate - Weave the truths of Scripture into the very fabric of your life (the everyday stuff). Think about it as you go along and let it seep into your mind, heart and actions!

4. Practice - Make a plan for how you will apply the truths you have discovered and then put it into action. Seeking accountability from someone would do great wonders here!!

Nine Questions to ask: (I reworded these to try to make them more teen friendly)

1. Should I copy this example?

2. Is there a sin to run from?

3. Is there a promise to treasure?

4. Is there a prayer to pray?

5. Am I being asked to obey something?

6. Does something have to happen first?

7. Is there something I should memorize?

8. Is there truth to be remembered?

9. Am I up for the challenge?

If you would like to listen to the lesson you may do so below. Two warnings before you begin - 1. the mic goes out and so there is a break in the audio and 2. I was teaching to Jr. High and so I got a little silly at times

May the Lord help us to apply His treasured word in our lives that we might be more like Him and enjoy the yummy cookies He offers in life!!

Mandy’s Monday - Milk and Cookies! Part 1

I must start with saying that I am sorry the last Mandy’s Monday was back in January - how horrible is that!! Hopefully, you did not give up on me completely!

Yesterday I had the privilege of teaching in the Junior High Sunday School class and it was great fun! I have always enjoyed this age group. Calvary’s Student Ministries had been going through a super series (meaning that all three age groups (Jr. High, Sr High and College/young adults) were studying the same thing as well as the small groups). And the series was a look at how to study your Bible titled “Hungry”. The idea was that as Christians we need to learn how to study the Bible on our own in order to be able to “eat” and fill our own hunger. This is not to say that we do not need the church!! It is just to say you need to be involved in the filling of Scripture in your lives and not just relying on others to teach you. We used material from Howard Hendricks’ book How To Study Your Bible as inspiration and direction. Our approach was to motivate students to observe, interpret and apply the Bible to their lives.

So to what I got to teach- I was asked to teach on the final step in Bible Study which is application. I was pretty excited about this because it is just so important. We do not read the Bible or even study it for the purpose of knowledge, but for life change!!

Applying the truths of the Bible is the milk and cookies in life! Just think about it for a minute. If I got out a recipe, measuring cups, flour, butter… and had it all out on the counter and then just stared at it I would not be enjoying the cookies! The same is true with Bible study - if I observe the passage and dig into all these tools to understand it better but I never apply it to my life I am missing out on the oooie gooie goodness! There is not much yummier to eat than warm cookies right out of the oven. And you dip them in some milk and it is a little bit of heaven right there in your kitchen. When you read the Word, contemplate it and then allow it to change your life in thought and action - well that is just a little bit of heaven right here on earth.

Psalm 34:8 reads “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the person who takes refuge in him!” There is the challenge and the reward - take refuge in Him, taste and then you will see that the Lord is good - better than milk and cookies!

I hope to have my lesson available later this week for those who would like to listen, however I will go ahead and warn you that the last fourth of the lesson is missing because my mic went out and therefore the recording stopped.

I will include 4 steps of application and 9 questions to ask along with the audio. So check back - I need to go make some cookies and think through how I can bring a little bit of heaven into my life tomorrow!

The Air We Breathe, The Theology We Teach

Culture & Theology

Culture is something always present and always changing, it is something we create, yet it daily shapes us. People who are made in the image of God interact with the world that God made and culture is what results. So where there are people there is culture and where there are fallen people there is fallen culture. Culture is like the air we breathe, we take it in and we send it out, only sending it out a little different that we received it.

Our culture, then, is a collection of ideals and beliefs, values and assumptions that make up a kind of master plan for living and interpreting the life which we collectively and individually live. We take in culture from past generations, live in it, adapt it and adapt to it, and then pass it on to generations to follow.

It is only natural that this “air we breathe” is going to affect our understanding of, belief in, and practice of theology. This is why in Franke’s definition of theology it is stated that theology is a “contextual discipline”. Not only do we receive God’s inspiration in our cultural context, but we also realize that is was given in a different ancient context. This is the hard work of the task of theology, to provide “critical and constructive reflection” so that we and others can “live as the people of God” in our immediate and global culture.

I do not think that we are ever able to completely separate our thinking or theology from the culture in which we were raised. At the same time I believe that there are some understandings of truth that can be universal to all people. However, we must be very careful to not arrogantly assume that we have the final understanding of those universal truths.

I came across an example of how the gospel so intertwined with rational thought through a modern dependency on technology and science has left many disillusioned in its aftermath. In the book titled God’s Breath: Sacred Scriptures of the World, the authors seek to return people to spiritual thinking instead of religion based on rationality. They observe, “As we arrive at the end of a century dedicated to the external world – when technology and science has made an effort to explain everything and promises to solve our problems – the gaps and weaknesses of this wholly secular endeavor are beginning to show. People are turning with new passion to what they call “spirituality.” (emphasis mine) To make it clear, I reject the philosophy of what this book offers as the answer to the current condition of humanity:

“For millennia seekers of truth have found God in a handful of sacred texts. Now God’s Breath gathers together selections from seven of the world’s major wisdom traditions. The title comes from a Zen saying, “To understand God is to listen. Listen to Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha, but don’t get caught up in the names. Listen beyond them; listen to God’s breath.” (from back cover)

However, I believe they have rightly identified the condition of our culture and are seeking to answer it from a faith voice rather than a humanistic path. I do think that we can show the Bible of the Old and New Testament as a superior document to all the others and preserve it as the document that is truly God breathed. I am not sure that this is the question that many in the emerging culture are asking though.

So here is the critical and constructive task ahead of the church. How do we answer the truth questions which are being asked in our time through the lens of post-modernity instead of the view of modernity?

I must state again that this is no easy task, because theology surrounds us daily; inside and outside of the church, theologies are spoken and lived out and are both accurate and inaccurate. Phyllis Tickle writes in God-Talk in America that “more theology is conveyed in, and probably retained from one hour of popular television, than from all the sermons that are also delivered on any given weekend in America’s synagogues, churches, and mosques.”

We need to make theology something more common in the market places, and train people how to think through a theological process or grid. I am suggesting that the task of learning and doing theology is like developing a filter through which we breathe in the air around us. We don’t live in a vacuum (although many in the church try to live in their own bubble) and we have to come to terms with the fact that our culture affects ALL areas of our life. It shapes our pace of life, our agenda for life, our priorities, our relationships, and our spirituality. This air filter that I am suggesting is a world-view that is grounded in the biblical texts, historical traditions of the church, ever adjusting to the pollutants in the spiritual air around, but allowing one to breathe and live and make a difference in their culture. Bill Romanowski says that “a worldview describes the way the world is, while also providing a model for the way the world ought to be.”(Eyes Wide Open)

I see that there are three options on how to deal with the air around us:

1. Stop breathing, otherwise known as attempting an isolation mentality. This leads to a death of suffocation and a loss of impact on those around you.

2. Breathe deep, poison and all. This also leads to a death, not from suffocation, but from deadly toxins which take your life resulting in a loss of impact on those around you.

3. Breathe deep through a filter. This is called redemptive interaction. To look into my culture, interact with it, and redeem our cultures commonality through the gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe this is what Jesus was speaking about when he taught us to be salt and light to the world.

“Not far from the kingdom of God”

Mark 12.28-34

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

So much in this small passage! And it’s not simply good things, but things that are “important”, “most important”, “greatest”, and “more important”. I noticed a lot of grand words like “all”, “most”, “no other” and nothing greater. Of course running in the background of my mind is the work of Scot McKnight in Jesus Creed, having taken a class with him and heard much about how this is crucial to the life of a follower of Christ. The beauty of this interaction is that Jesus reaches to Deuteronomy and Leviticus and brings them forward to his current day in such a way that silences all other questions… “from then on no one dared ask him any more questions” (v.34). Did they not dare ask him questions because of his answer or his indictment to the teacher/scribe?

With all this however, the phrase and concept that occupied most of my thoughts is, “you are not far from the kingdom of God.” Jesus makes a statement of preposition in relation to the kingdom of God. I thought through other prepositions and wonder if they can describe how people are existing in relation to the kingdom of God…in, around, near, away from, part of, far from, out of, above, under, etc. It seems then, to be “not far from” the kingdom is to understand that love is the greatest commandment…so possibly to be in the kingdom of God is to move from understanding the wisdom to living it out, actually acting and thinking in the way of loving God and loving others. Moving from a understanding and knowledge concept into a being and living mode. This all led my heart to 1 Corinthians 13.13 “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

So I asked the question, “who is far from the kingdom of God?” Possibly those who think that offerings and sacrifices are most important, or those who think that obeying the law is most important, or those who value human wisdom and philosophy as the highest pursuit, or those who keep records of wrongs done to them…I think I could go on and on with listing the pursuits of humankind OTHER than love. Of course this demands a GOD understanding of love rather than a humanistic understanding of love, a commitment to God and others beyond all self-interests and human wisdom.