FreshBread

Dear Friends,

On Monday I asked you a tough question……Are your beliefs (religious, Christian, beliefs) absolute? I want to continue the dialogue! I have copied and pasted 4 responses from those I have gotten. Let’s use them to continue our discussion. I would ask you to keep a couple of things in mind as we do this:

1. These are people’s thoughts and opinions…..please respect them……we are not trying to prove we are RIGHT and someone else is WRONG….but we want to learn why we think the way that we do.

2. God is active in the wrestling process.(Genesis 32:24)

So let’s discuss what has been written…..refer to them as Response #1, #2, #3, #4. What do you learn, what questions do their responses raise? Drop me a note at Scott@FreshstartChurch.com. Tomorrow I will post some of the dialogue and then on Friday I will give you my take on the “Absolutes” Have a great day!

Response #1:

Are my beliefs absolutes? No. God’s Word is absolute. His commands to love him and love others are absolutes. But I am constantly changing. Just this morning I was griping about having two or three more meetings today. Barbara reminded me that I am learning how NOT to do things, or at least having it reinforced. I have come to the belief that anything that interferes with time with people is evil! Is that an absolute? No, it a part of my growth as a Christian leader, a change in focus and values. God, and his absolutes, don’t change. We change as we grow in grace and are progressively conformed to his image.

Response #2

I know that since I came to Jesus that I am maturing as a Jesus follower. I do not believe that any ‘beliefs’ I have had have been shown to be ‘wrong’, but Jesus has, and is, showing me different ways of Loving, caring, and thinking as to what it means to follow Him. Are my beliefs absolute?………… I would have to say yes, “that Jesus Loves me way beyond my ability to understand,….. that if I trust God, and allow Him, He will use me to His Glory and Kingdom in the way He knows is best……..that if I Love the Lord with all my heart, if I love my neighbor as myself, I am a Jesus follower.”

Response #3 -

The only thing I absolutely believe is that Jesus is the cornerstone of my faith. And that Jesus spoke very highly of His Father.

Response #4-

I believe that we must live in God’s world…which is His Word. When we do not spend time in His word then the trappings and discussions of the world we live in can cause us to change our beliefs. After all, our beliefs are a free choice in my view.

Dear Friends,

I want to give you something heavy to think about today (since it is a holiday and many of you will not read this until Tuesday, I will wait till Wednesday to give you some of my thoughts). So here goes:

Most of us would say we believe in absolutes, even those of you who say you do not believe in absolutes. Well, you do, because your belief that there are no absolutes…well that is an absolute. Anyway, nobody would argue that if you drop a 50lb weight from the roof of a 10 story building and it is absolutely going to fall…..gravity is kind of absolute. Anyway, here is the question for today!

Are your beliefs (religious, Christian, beliefs) absolute? Are they firm and unchanging or do they change as you grow? THINK ABOUT THIS BEFORE YOU ANSWER, not because I believe there is a right or wrong answer, for I think there may be many thoughts and answers to my question, but how you answer says a lot about how you see the Christian faith…..so think before you answer.

Now I probably scared everyone from sending me your thoughts, but after a week off from the bread I’d love to know you are still out there and reading…..So send me your thoughts to Scott@freshstartchurch.com.

This weekend we are going to start a POWERFUL SERIES called , “Is this what Jesus had in Mind?” We’ve got something special in the auditorium, and I hope you will bring a friend with you as we wrestle with God’s thoughts together.

Hope to see you then! Talk to you Wednesday!

Scott

ps. Wednesday night we will be diving into Genesis 6-9. DON’T MISS IT!

OK…..let’s finish our discussion about the Sabbath……

First of all, here is what we have learned. The Sabbath was important to God! He molded Sabbath Rest when he created the World:

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested [a] from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

What is interesting is that there seems to be a difference between stopping work……and resting from his creative work? In John 5:17 Jesus reminds us that God is ALWAYS AT WORK!Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”

There seems to be a difference in resting from his creative work and resting from the work of GOD, that might be worth wrestling as we seek an understanding of the Sabbath.

It is very clear that the Old Testament Jewish Sabbath was on Saturday (Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday). The Christians (most likely in the time of Constantine) changed that to Sunday; the best reason given today is Sunday is the day that the Lord rose from the dead….(but personally I just think that is an attempt to explain why we do what we do.) HOWEVER, I do not think a literal day is what God had in mind. Yes he commanded that in the beginning, but I believe that is part of the teaching process. To hold on to a literal day would run in the face of the FREEDOM that Christ won for us. However, I do not believe that Freedom is found outside of the Kingdom of God which would be finding ourselves living out Kingdom Values. Sabbath Rest was command by God, practiced by Jesus, and I believe what God has in mind for us.

In my life Sabbath Rest is practiced in several ways. On Tuesdays, I keep a different kind of schedule in what I do…..I shut down the ‘creative” part of my work and enjoy the “fellowship” of my Lord and the family he has blessed me with. In addition to that, at various parts of each day…when I sense overload or burnout coming on, I leave my office and desk and try to walk around the building listening and resting in the presence of God. LIFE IS SO MUCH CLEARER when I practice the Kingdom Value (spiritual discipline) of Sabbath Rest. It is my prayer that you will work that out for yourself, with the Lord’s help and though your rest may look different than mine, you are allowing God to work through you in the POWER OF REST!

Have a Great weekend…I hope you can join us Sunday as we will finish up our message on Kingdom Living and celebrate the Lord’s Supper together! See you then!

Scott