Modern BelieverCulture Changes. God Doesn't.

Pastors are busy people. Parents are busy people. Students are busy people. Pretty much everybody is busy. There are enough distractions in life already, should the computer take up any more time than it needs to?

Some of us already spend hours upon hours on the computer, because that’s what we do. Building websites, researching, asking for help, giving help. Us geeks tend to live on the web, and over time, have learned a lot of little things that add up to save a lot of time. For example, I try to keep up with all that is happening on Twitter and Facebook. But instead of sitting at their websites and refreshing the screen all day, I keep Tweetdeck open on a second monitor (If you only follow a few hundred people, you can probably check every 30 minutes and not miss anything). Quick glances are all it takes, and familiar pictures draw my attention quickly to those I talk to most.

Those of you who spend hours on the computer, but half of it is playing Farmville on Facebook, well, you just need to cut back on the gaming.

Zen Habits put together 14 tips to browse the web faster (and get back to your Bible sooner). Here’s my 5 favorites.

1. Use a fast, minimal browser. [I highly recommend Firefox or Chrome, Internet Explorer is the opposite of fast and minimal]

2. Use tabs, not windows.

3. Learn keyboard shortcuts.

12. Clear most of your toolbars. [You really don't need 7 different search toolbars, in fact, you only need the one built into your browser]

13. 1password or KeePass. [I use LastPass, there is no other way to remember all of my passwords]

A simple act of worship.

Have you ever tried to make someone worship “your way?”

Raise your hand if you’re guilty like me.

Wow. That’s a lot of you.

I grew up going to concerts and heading straight for the mosh pit area. We’d jump and push each other around and sing and have a great time. To this day, I enjoy a song that just compels me to jump. I’m not much for raising my hands in the air. I’ll clap sometimes, but you’re far more likely to find me using my hands to drum on something (once a drummer always a drummer).

Really though, sometimes worship is an act of getting down and dirty with God. Fred McKinnon recalls a story…

I will never forget this time I was at a Hillsongs concert in Jacksonville, Florida.  It was several years ago and I was with a group of friends … we were down on the 4th or 5th row.  Darlene Zschech was leading that fun song, “You Have Turned My Mourning into Dancing” … you know, the one where everybody is standing, spinning around, hands in the air, dancing, carrying on in radical praise …

And I was sitting.  Bent over, face in my hands, elbows propped on my knees … having an encounter with the God of the Universe. I forget exactly what we were talking about, but it was a more serious encounter where we were “having words”.  In the midst of this time, I remember it was like God called a “sidebar” … we’re just having dialog back and forth, and then totally non-related to our conversation, He calls it out …

Isn’t that really what it’s all about? Worship is like a conversation with God. Sometimes we’re just hanging out, having fun. Other times we go through some serious stuff, even as the world goes crazy around us.

Next time you’re worshiping, go ahead and do what you’ve gotta do. I may forget everything I just typed, but that’s my problem. Don’t let people like me stop you from getting real.

Churches are full of capable people. The problem is we get into a rut, doing the same old thing when we should be kicking it up a notch. Jesus trained 12 disciples to go out and conquer the world. They trained more people to do the same. You have been trained, it’s your turn to do some training.

Scott Williams identifies 5 signs you’re ready to take it up a level, starting with humility.

1. Every once in a while you question whether or not you have what it takes.

The grass is always greener on the other side.  After recently moving to a much bigger town and a much bigger church (and a very excellent church at that), I still have an eye on what the other churches around town are doing, and what people think of them.

The church I’m attending is doing very well, and is on a path that I think is very Biblical, and has been great for me personally too. Still I look at what others are doing and wonder if we can do something better.

Which brings me to the point. What are we thinking when we look around? What’s our reasoning? If we get angry, then why? No, really. Why? Are you like this pastor?

I am just sick of everyone around here talking about that church, and how many people they baptize and how many people get saved over there. There is no way they baptized over 1,000 people last year. Those numbers can’t be real. I have been in this town for 17 years and we can’t even get people to come to free concerts with free food, so I know they can’t be doing everything they say they are doing! Their numbers are inflated, they have to be!

I love Twitter.

Twitter has connected me to thousands of people from around the world. There’s only a handful that I have meaningful conversations with day after day, but all the tweets are of value in one way or another. But in the rapid fire world of 140 character replies, are we always paying enough attention to how we respond to others?

Take Chris Pirillo. He’s a very well known geek, and he hadn’t been to Church in awhile. He was invited to one to speak about social media, and being a geek, he tweeted about it on the way home.

Visit his blog, read through the responses he got to a simple tweet, and think about how you respond when a non-believing friend tells you they went to Church.

We are living in a day of unprecedented learning. For all the pitfalls and traps there are to fall into on the internet, it was created for education. Never before have so many people had so much easy access to so much information. If you have the desire to learn, you can access all the lectures and assignments from MIT (the degree will still cost you).

With the spread of academic knowledge, however, also comes the rapid spread of those denouncing all forms of religion.

Everywhere you go on the internet today, and I mean EVERYWHERE, there are debates going on about Christianity, and these debates can get incredibly heated. Some of the best minds and some of the best educated people in the world claim to have the answers. Atheists, skeptics, philosophers, preachers, bloggers and other self-appointed religious experts are constantly battling for the intellectual high ground.

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When skeptics attack most religions, they DO indeed have the intellectual high ground. For when one closely examines such “faiths” as Islam or Hinduism one does find that logic, reason and real, hard evidence are directly contradictory to these religious systems.

However, Christianity is the one faith that is different in this regard. It is our assertion that there is absolutely no conflict between Christianity and the truth.

Are you equipped? Do you have the knowledge, the knowledge of truth, to be able to back up your beliefs? If we are doing our part to further the Gospel, then it’s inevitable that at some point we will be faced with the tough questions requiring us to think a little harder than we’d like. Follow through to Evidence For Christianity to find some places online you can get some more info about it all.

Do you read your Bible regularly? I know my personal discipline leaves something to be desired. I could probably best be described as a binge reader, dig in like crazy for a week or two, but then maybe three weeks of a sort of skimming over the top kind of reading. David Plotz one day realized he had been oblivious to some things in the Bible, so he blogged through the Bible, and then wrote a book.

The full article is a good read, hopefully we can all be inspired to dig in more consistently.

In yet another cultural fail, an increasing number of couples are getting married, without the guy ever asking her father for permission. I’m an old fashioned kind of guy, and can’t imagine marrying a girl before getting her dad’s permission (better yet, before you start courtship). Prodigal has a great piece on this.

In thinking about all of this, I realized something: as a Christian, God is your father. Not just your father either, He is also your love’s father. If we, as humans, ask for the blessing of a human being (who is not able to wield any kind of supernatural blessing-power); should we not ask the blessing of our heavenly Father, the creator of the universe, first before all others? This requesting of God for His blessing and for the hand of the woman in marriage (because, ultimately, she belongs to God just as everything else does) should not be an event characterized by sheepish asking or sly wordplay — it should be an occasion of joy and of peace.

I think deep down inside, we all realize that we are go hold God above our wives and families. In practice, how many of us actually do? Something to think about as your day goes on. What can you do to help your spouse grow in Christ?

I’ve been through basic training. I won an all expenses paid trip to Iraq for a year. I’ve been in some crazy situations with some really tough guys, and some really wimpy guys. I’ve been there with a few Godly men, but mostly not. Growing up in modern America, and the portrayal of men on TV, there is a picture of what the modern man looks like. However, that contrasts with what the Bible shows.

Abraham—at an age when he’s supposed to be collecting social security—leads an elite team of commandos to rescue his inbred cousin Lot. Phinehas the priest takes a spear and impales an Israelite and his “from the wrong part of town” girlfriend, and God blesses him for it! David decides to go above and beyond the 100-foreskin requirement to marry Saul’s daughter, Michal, and decides to cut 200 Philistine foreskins!

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The final picture of war we have in our Bibles is when Christ returns, wielding a sword that comes out of His mouth, splattered with the blood of His enemies before He tosses them into the eternal lake of fire and sulfur (Revelation 19).

Al Lobaina discusses Jesus At War over at The Resurgence. It brought back the thoughts that I’ve often had of Jesus. Commonly portrayed as a slender guy, I wonder if that’s really accurate. He walked everywhere, and he was a carpenter before there were power tools. Wouldn’t you think he’d be ripped, even kind of a hunk? After all, he is the Son of God.

As you look around at today’s culture, and compare it to the Godly men in the Bible, what do we need to be doing now to get back to where we need to be?

What do you believe? Is Christ the only way to heaven? Can you get to heaven by being a ‘good person?’ If you were confronted with a question from a friend, “How do you know that’s the only way,” would you be able to answer? The Final Hour took a look at this.

Doesn’t it seem silly to say to people: “Out of all the religions in the world, you better pick the right one, because if you pick wrong you will not win the lottery to get into heaven”?

How could Christians believe this?

After all, didn’t Jesus teach understanding and tolerance towards all other religions?

Now what do you think?