Why Have Rules and Laws?

There are so many ways in which we legislate our lives with rules and laws.  For instance, diets create the laws, or boundaries, of what we can and cannot eat (although most of operate on the "see food" diet - if I can see it I eat it).  We decide what we can and cannot watch on television, how late we should stay up at night, how our day should be scheduled and what our friendships will look like.  These are all boundaries that we create. 

We cannot go anywhere without being under the watch care of boundaries set for us by laws, ordinances, regulations, religions or families.  Sometimes these are written laws (speed limits) or sometimes oral (you have to eat all your vegetables before you leave the table).  Driving (speed limits), workplaces (appropriate attire), eating establishments (no shirt, no shoes, no service) and parks (keep pets on a leash) all place boundaries on our lives.

Week 5 of the story offers a glimpse at not only what rules God has given for us to live by, but why we have those rules.  Imagine this new nation, now living on it's own after being slaves for hundreds of years, now building a community for living together.  They must have had at least unwritten rules for their life together in Egypt, but they were ruled by both the national rules of Egypt AND the slave masters who ruled over them with whips.  These were the models of what life together might look like now that they were on their own.

Along with that, if God was going to come and live with them (for the first time since Eden!), there needed to be an understanding how life was to be lived.  There has to be some common base of right and wrong.  How do we live life together in community?  Who decides these rules?

For Israel, God begins HIS community by creating the rules which will govern their lives.  As you read through them this week, and we talk about them on Sunday, we can see the wisdom and power of these boundaries for our lives.

An Apprentice of Jesus,

Kevin

Week Four Recap

Sunday was a good Sunday, but one of those where it seemed everyone was a little sleepy.  Thank you Jacob for leading worship.  And thanks to the whole tech team for all that you do each and every Sunday to make Sunday work.  There are so many people involved each and every Sunday and each one of them plays an important role in our gathering together.  THANK YOU TO EACH ONE OF YOU!

After seeing how God interacted with people during the Exodus (Chapters 1-17) I began to wonder what my interaction with God is usually like:

• Am I like Moses, who tried to talk God out of choosing him for a particular task, but ultimately said yes?
• Am I like Pharaoh, who saw the power of God but continued to fight against God?
• Am I like the people of Israel, who could never keep the memory of God's moving in their lives in front of them, so that when things did not go well their faith disintegrated into a cacophony of complaining?

I am sure I have responded to God in all of those ways during my life, but I hope that over time my responses to God have matured in the same way we have seen the faith of Abraham, Sarah, and Joseph mature over time.  If we do not see a maturing in our faith we need to be asking why this is so.

On this Tuesday I am praying for a maturing of my faith and yours.  God is as big and powerful as we have been reading during this past month.  Knowing that, and keeping that in front of us, is helpful in the maturing of our faith.

An Apprentice of Jesus,

Kevin 

Week Four - Moses

Tomorrow we look at the familiar events surrounding the Exodus.  There is so much to look at when we read about the story of God's deliverance of His people.  We usual preach or teach these events as separate events, but the more I understand God's upper story, the more they make sense as one story.  Everything that happens in Exodus 1-17 (and beyond) has to do with God working for the redemption of ALL people, even though God is seeking to free Israel from the Egyptians.

This part of the God's story deals with:

• God's calling of Moses to a specific task
• The power struggle between Pharaoh and God (is was only a struggle for Pharaoh)
• The painfully slow way the people of God would follow God whole-heartedly.
• Bringing back God's people to the promised land.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we will talk about this during worship and see how huge God is!

See You in the morning!

An Apprentice of Jesus,

Kevin

Week 3 Recap - Sept 16

Getting together at Judson is always a joy for me and worship is one of my passions.  So Sunday was great.  I appreciated the worship that Dave put together and loved Creig's song from "Joseph and the Amazing Technocolor Dreamcoat."  It really set up the story of Joseph for us.

It is so difficult for us to look at life through God's eyes.  I believe that what helped Joseph through his difficult times was an "upper Story" perspective.  God gave Joseph those dreams of a future which Joseph seemed to keep in front of him not make whose slave he was, nor what prison he was in.  He never seemed to curl up in a ball and quit, even when he ended up in prison for doing the right thing.

What do we do when things don't go well for us.  We complain, whine, get depressed (that's me!), ask God "why?", shake our fist at others and God, give up, fake it or even seek vengeance.  Of course we have our eyes on our own circumstances, lower story.  In Hebrews we are told to "run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith..."  What do you look toward during your difficult times?  Try looking at God's upper story, his plans, promises and purposes.  Life seems to be easier when we do that!

An Apprentice of Jesus,

Kevin 

Joseph Week 3

I am looking forward to tomorrow as Judson meets for worship.  Joseph will be our focus as God's Story is being revealed in the scriptures.  I wonder how often we feel that God's plans have been thwarted in our own lives by the evil of others, or by the temptations around us.  This is a sign of our own weak view of God.  Not only does God not see circumstances the way we do, but God is powerful enough to work creative solutions to the problems that we see as impossible to solve.

These 12 grandsons of Abraham didn't seem to always carry the same kind of faith that Abraham had, but God still had a covenant to keep and a plan to complete.  Nothing gets in the way of God completing His plans.

An Apprentice of Jesus,

Kevin

Another Awesome Week!

Sunday was exciting for the Mohrman family as Chris Mohrman (husband of Sherri) baptized two of their children: Katelyn Fazekas and Abby Mohrman!  Thank you Jeff for leading worship and all the Tech team people who had to deal with a number of glitches on Sunday.  We all appreciate your hard work!

In week 2 of the story God uses an elderly childless couple to begin His new nation.  It is beautiful to see the process of faith refined in Abraham and Sarah.  They had their roughest times of faith when they focused on only the story around them, what they could see and experience.  They sometimes didn't take into account that God is working in ways we don't anticipate.  And our greatest moments of faith come when we really trust that God will accomplish HIS purposes in HIS time by HIS power.  We, like Abraham and Sarah, sometimes think we have a better plan than God.  Why do we think we know better than God?

The good news is that God is patient as our faith is refined.  We don't have to stay in the place we are in faith.  Is there something that you can do today that is a step of faith in GOD'S plan for you?  Don't fear.  Don't doubt.  Don't change God's plan.  Just take that one step and see what happens.

An Apprentice of Jesus,

Kevin

God Builds a Nation - Week 2

I always look forward to Sundays.  It's just about the worship, but about being WITH God's people and seeing how Judson seeks to encourage all who come.  Looking ahead to this Sunday we have another baptism during the second service (awesome!), and will focus on Week 2 of the Story - God Builds a Nation, which is the events surrounding Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

That is a lot of material to cover in one morning (all the more reason to be involved in a connect or community group), but we will focus on the agreement, or covenant that God makes as he seeks to create a people who will be a blessing to all other people.  As the Old Testament continues to tell the story we will see how difficult it was for the people in God's nation to see themselves in this way.  They saw themselves as set apart for protection, not set apart for blessing others.  Sounds a little like the church, doesn't it?

When God calls us it is so easy to begin to have a sense of entitlement (You owe me, God) and isolation (I don't want to be around bad people).  We see the first part of the covenant - "I will bless you and make your name great," but forget the second part - "in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."  There becomes a tendency to ask God to continue to bless us, but a failure to ask God to bless all the families around us.  Even good Christians seem more concerned with what we receive from God than what God wants to do for others who are currently away from God.

Well, there is so much more we learn through this part of the story.  This is God's story.  How is your story connecting with God's story?

A Good Beginning

Sunday was a chaotic day of worship!  Thanks to Caris and her team for leading us and the Diaconate for all of the work they did with communion, baptism and praying for people.  Congratulations to Charles Schultz, Daniel Smith and Matt Nolan on their baptisms!  Make sure you pray for those who were sitting near you on Sunday.  We are in this journey together!

We looked at the beginning of Creation through the fall and then to the Flood, understanding that these events that are described are not just written to tell us what happened, but why things are the way they are.  Haven't you looked around and asked how things have gotten to be so horrible?  Where is God in the midst of all the evil that is in our world?  The first 9 chapters of Genesis reveal the answers to these questions, and begin to look ahead to God's answers for these problems.

We already have seen how easy it is for we humans to decide we know better than God what we need.  We eat that fruit from the garden daily knowing it causes death, yet rationalizing that God must not have meant it since the fruit is pleasing to our eyes, smells great and is good for food.  We quickly turn to our own desires and talk ourselves into thinking that it is God's will for us.  How wrong we are and the consequences are devastating.

But God does have a way for us.  We don't need to stay in this place.  The best that we can offer will not be enough to save us.  Adam and Eve were perfect and blew it.  Noah was blameless and fell short.  But God is working to bring all people back to him, with a great deal of patience.

The beginnings explain the predicament we find ourselves in and help us to understand why the world is in this place.  We also can see that God is working, even when we don't see anything happening.  Hang in their as you walk through this week.

An Apprentice of Jesus,

Kevin