Luther

Martin Luther was a very brave man who changed the direction that the Roman Catholic Church was taking everyone in the 1500s. He was a reformist who stood up against the Catholic Church in hopes of sharing the truth to the people.
 Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, November 10,1483 and died there on February 18, 1546.  He did not have a very good home life.  His father beat  his mom and him severely. He admitted that it was him home life that made him pursue the monastery life style. This was a big part of his life because without his father being hard on him and his mother, he may have not ended up where he did. I think this shows that God had bigger plans for him and He used hard times in his life to bring GREAT things out of it.  Many times God does this to us and we just have to trust Him like Martin Luther did. The movie did show the relationship he had with his father while he was in the monastery.
Not long later Marting Luther began his lectures.  They started off already criticizing the theology around him. I think this is very brave of him.  He is not worried about what others think of him, or if people like him.  He just tells them what he feels lead to tell them.  The movie makes it seem like he was really focused on reaching the peasants with his messages.  He would walk around the villages talking to them and introducing himself to them.  I thought it was interesting to see everyone that came to his church and the vast variety of types of people there were.  It looked like there were rich people and very poor people.  The movie kept showing him with this woman and her mentally handicapped daughter.  It made it seem like not very many of the priests would go around talking with the peasants and that Marting Luther was a very kind man and knew what was the right thing to do. Another time I saw this character of him was when he was walking through town and there was a teenage boy that hung himself and Luther climbed up there himself and got the boy down.  And not only that but then he went against the church's belief that the boy could not be buried in there because he had committed suicide and had the boy buried in the cemetery. Since the grave person wouldn't dig the grave for boy Martin Luther went and dug the grave himself. Whether these stories are really true or not, they would not just make him look that way for no reason. He had to be caring and loving.
One thing that he really stood up against was indulgences.  Indulgences were a Roman Catholic Church invention to earn money.  What better way to earn money from people without a riot than to guilt them into it? And what is the best way to guilt them into giving money? By telling them that they can save their dead family members from spending more time in purgatory.  The person who came up with this was a genius.... a very bad genius.  But Martin Luther did not stand for this.  He wrote a list of things that the church was doing wrong with indulgences and posted it on the door of the church and sent one to the archbishop. These were the Ninety-Five Theses. In the movie someone got ahold of one and made alot of copies of it and handed it out to people.  People began to love Luther and what he stood for. 
God used Martin Luther in a BIG way. I think that he was so brave. He risked his life for God and did not even try to do it in secret. He didn't go around whispering to people that indulgences were wrong. No he went and marched up to the church doors and nailed a critique of them... (not a pleasant one) on the door. That is brave.
(www.newadvent.org & www.ccel.org) And the "Luther" the movie.

Don't Waste Your Life

      Chapter 8 talks about the idea of being in the world but not of it.  Many times people take this the wrong way and say that we should not be in the world at all (or the secular world).  We need to understand that God is not telling people to quit their secular job, just to be careful with how we act and to work with God in secular jobs.  John Piper gives many goals to strive for when you are working in a secular world.  A few of them are:

• "We can make much of God in our secular job through the fellowship that we enjoy with him throughout the day in all our work."  This means that throughout the day we should thank God continuously for everything He does for us, and to have Him there with you at all times.  He is always with you, but you need to acknowledge His prescence.
• "We make much of Christ in our secular work by the joyful, trusting, God-exalting design of our creativity and industry."  John Piper talks about how animals are very hard workers and they can do amazing things just like humans.  But the difference is animals are not working for God. But is there really a difference? Or... are we just like animals, working for ourselves to get food, clothing, and shelter? We need to have a better purpose.  We need to work for God.
• "We make much of Christ in our secular work whe it confirms and enhances the portrait of Christ's glory that people hear in the spoken Gospel."  We need to be lights in our secular work, sharing through our actions and our hard work the glory of God just as well as the Gospel.  What are we doing for Christ if we go to work just to get what needs to be done done.  We need to strive for more.  We can not be mediocre. We have to be examples.

   In conclusion, it is not wrong to have a secular job.  It is not wrong to be in the world.  It IS WRONG if we do not do anything different than the non-Christians.  We need to be examples to those around us. We need to stand out and be deliberately different. 

Secret Millionare

This show was very moving.  It shows people with millions of dollars giving a portion of their time and money to help people in need.  But something that I found more meaningful than the millionaire giving a little of his money and time, were the people who had their ministries already.  Like the Alexandria house, the basketball courts, and Amine.  These people do not have millions of dollars.  The lady from the Alexandria house and the men at the basketball courts live on skid row. EVERY day they are there. EVERY day they are possibly risking their lives for their communities.  EVERY day they are sacrificing their time and efforts to pour out their hearts to people.  Yeah its great of this guy to come in and give so much money, but I think the true heroes are the people living there. This reminds me of the story of the pharisees and the poor woman who were tithing.  A millionaire comes in and gives 100,000 dollars and is there for a week and gets a whole show about him, while the people living in Skid Row hardly get recognized for giving their whole lives.  Don't get me wrong I think that there needs to be both of these types of people and I can't judge either of them.   However it seems to me that love goes farther than money in the long run.  I imagine and hope that John continues to work with the homeless and help with their needs.  I do NOT think that we NEED to be recognized for what we do for Christ, but it shows what the world thinks of this topic.  To God goes ALL the glory!!

DWYL 6&7

In chapter 6 John Piper talks about forgiveness alot and how God has forgiven us.  And how forgiveness from God, gives us God.  Without forgiveness of our sins, we could never have God.  Our ultimate reward of forgiveness is getting God.  Not being able to live for eternity in heaven and not having to go to hell.  Not because it makes us feel less guilty.  HE is our treausure.  When we have sin in our lives a wall goes between God and you. Causing your relationship to not be as good as it could be.  When we repent and are forgiven the wall comes down.  In chapter 7 he talks about how we need to live to prove that He is more precious than our earthly goods.  This means that if people looked at me, what would they think was important to me. I believe that the person would think that I am consumed with worldly stuff. How i look, what I have, what people think of me, the grades I get, if I am good at sports, and many others.  I think that if people looked at how much I watched tv and was on the computer and then how much I was in the Word they wouldn't think i was different than the rest of the world.   I hate this because God tells us that we should feel like aliens in the world.  I know that I do not feel like an alien in Enid.  Maybe somewhere far away, but we should feel like an alien in our home town.  I feel like if we are going to feel like an alien we need to be different. Not necesairly strange to where no one wants to listen to us, but they need to know we are different.  I think a way we can do this is to change our influences.  We are influenced from things all around us of the world.  Such as tv and internet, or even the music we listen to. I think that is the biggest problem with tv.  It is influencing our thoughts without even knowing it is doing it.  It affects me in many ways.  I want to look like the girls on tv. Skinny, pretty, and rich.  It makes us want worldly goods and not the riches of heaven. We want tangible things that we can touch.  It also distracts us from what we need.  We want to watch a show, so we put off our homework. Then when it is time to do our homework and after that it is way to late to do anything else so we sleep. We need to have time for God.  HE is our treasure. Not worldy junk. 

Lord Save Us from Your Followers

We watched a movie in Bible class called Lord Save Us from Your Followers.  It was all about evangelism in America and how we do it wrong as Christian's.  It shows this guy walking around in a white suite thing with some sort of religious/ anti religious bumper stickers all over it.  It caught people's attention really fast. The guy would walk through a town and ask random people questions about what they believed about Jesus and which bumper sticker was their favorite.  It was surprising about how many people didn't know that much about Jesus. A lot of them knew He saved us, but that was about it.  Growing up in the Bible belt, I really don't notice how many people there are that do not know anything about God.  I am not saying that everyone is a Christian in the Bible belt, but most people do know some things about Jesus.  Also in the movie a group of teenage evangelists went to a place very close to homosexuals hearts and protested against them.  My personal opinion gathered from reactions of people to protesting is that is does not really work.  I think one of the main things it causes is more anger and resentment toward the church.  People who are protested against cannot feel loved.  They probably feel somewhat humiliated and for sure mad.   I think the best way to get your point across to them is to start a relationship with them and minister to them through what you do, say, and how you treat them.  The movie also showed the guy in the bumper sticker suite go to a homosexual parade and gathering and set up a confessional building for those who wanted to confess their sins.  That was not the only reason that they put a confessional there.  Through the confessional, the man was able to talk to these homosexuals and tell them that he was truly sorry for what the Church has done to them, and what even he himself had done to them.  I thought this was a very good idea.  Way more people were probably touched by his loving manner of evangelising compared to the method of protesting where it just made everyone want to fight.  I think people should watch this movie to see some effective and maybe some not so effective ways to evangelise.  Think about it this way... if someone was very rude to you and hurt your feelings, would you want to be like them? Would you think oh man, I wish I had what they have? NO! You would probably be pushed away from them with your unappealing attitude.  But if someone came up to you humbly and started having a genuine conversation with you, you are much more likely to want to be like them than the other person.  This movie was a very good movie and it really opened my eyes to the feelings of others.

Jesus Camp

At first when I began to watch the movie, I thought these people were crazy! Then I began to realize that much of what they are saying is the same thing I believe, they are just more radical. I do not agree with everything that they think, but in some ways I want to be like them. All the kids are so on fire for God and they seem like they would do anything for Him. Like the little girl who gave the tract to the lady in the bowling alley, or the boy who got up in front of all those kids to preach, or even the lady to devote her whole life to ministering to kids. I would have a hard time doing any of those things. I wish I would get out of my comfort zone like those kids did. But that is too uncomfortable and scary. Which is ridiculous when you think about what all God has done for us and not sharing it. All it is is selfishness. I was really convicted of this while watching this video. I thought if a little 8 year old girl (maybe) could go hand a tract to some stranger, I can talk to a friend about God. There were many good things about this video and the people at Jesus Camp. They were taking a stand for what they believed in. They strongly disagree with abortion, as do we. But they are trying to do something about it. They went to the white house to petition and they committed to pray for the decisions of government. Yeah, somethings they did were kind of crazy and maybe not completely right, but they are doing a lot of things right that I do not.
There are quite a few things that they did that I do not agree on. Like when the little girl was talking about "dead churches" and how if the people at the churches don't stand up and raise their hands during worship time, that God isn't there. I think that what she said is definitely not true. God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. You do not have to stand up and raise your hands to be Christians. Also another thing that I am not sure about is when the kids started talking in tongues. In the Bible in 2 Corinthians, it talks about when someone is speaking in tongues, there needs to be a translator present. In this video and at this camp there was not. There were just a ton of kids speaking in tongues. I don't think tongues is necessarily a bad thing, but I think that people need to be careful doing it. Another thing I am weary of is when the main lady said that Christians have a "spirit-man" living inside of them, and when the read the Bible, pray, or spend time with God, their "spirit-man" gets stronger. I can understand kind of what she meant, maybe that we each have a relationship with God and when we do those things we get closer... I don't know, but I am not sure what she meant by "spirit-man". And in one part of the movie it showed a kid laying on the floor convulsing. It never explained it though and I want to know why. One last thing I disagree on is when the little girl was bowling and told her ball in the name of Jesus to get a strike. This makes me think that the girl heard people throw around that term WAY too much. I hope she doesn't think that you can command something in the name of Jesus and make it happen.
One last thing that we do need to keep in mind is that this was only an hour and a half so movie. And think of much we have not seen. I am pretty sure that if I were the directors of this movie I would have chosen the craziest things I could find possible. We have probably missed a ton of stuff. It could have been different than what the movie portrayed completely. We should not judge them, we should just pray for them and that they will be teaching the correct doctrine and  that we do also.

Don't Waste Your Life. Chapter 3

#1. Boasting in the cross only happens when you are on the cross. This means pratically in my life right now, that I need to look at the world with the cross in mind. If I look at the world with the cross in mind, my whole view point on my life would change. To boast in the cross, we need to sacrifice ourselves, put ourselves on the cross. Until we do that, the only thing we will be boasting in is OURSELVES.

#2. I died, and yet I live. Some people read this and have no idea what it means. It is confusing. But I think it means that when we accept Christ into our heart, we are dying to ourselves. We now are dead to ourselves, but in return we become alive through Christ. He is in us. And since He is in us, we are now alive. Some key words that I think help differentiate the "I's" are in bold. "I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me."
  -Galatians 2:20

#3. Living by faith is really hard for me. I want to trust God, but I find myself worrying. I have faith that God will fulfill every one of His promises. I trust that He will do what He says. I do not live by faith in ALOT of things: school, health, and many others. I really would like to change and have faith in EVERY part of my life.