Monthly Archives: August 2015

Pastor Wrinkles: Unintended Consequences Pt. 4

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

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Our discussion continues regarding the fall of man and the nature of original sin. Today we are talking about the loss of rest. If you missed our previous three discussions and want to answer the questions posed in them you can find them

HERE for part 1

HERE for part 2

and

HERE for part 3

Now on to today’s discussion…

It is true, as we have said,  in the fall from grace we lost assurance; We lost our authority; But we also lost our REST-

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;  through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow  you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are  and to dust you will return.” Ge. 3:16-19

I just talked with a friend who came back from vacationing. She was highly stressed and chose to take a spiritual healing retreat at a Christian conference center. She spent a week resting and praying and rejuvenating and then came back to work. Three days later all her stress levels are back. How many of you have been there? That is the power of the fall. God intended that our work itself would refresh us. Before the fall work was a vacation and now even our vacations most times feel like work. We have lost our rest. It is an inside problem. It is the way we look at work not the work itself. It is what work tells us about ourselves and the world not the work itself.

How many of you have said this, “I love what I do I just hate the stuff that goes on around what I do? Or I  love what I do I just wish I felt like it was making a difference?”  That is the power of the fall.

Here’s a question for you. Hebrews 4:6- 11 says,

So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. 7So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted:

“Today when you hear his voice,

don’t harden your hearts.”e

8Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. 9So there is a special restf still waiting for the people of God. 10For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. 11So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

What does this teach us about the possibility of having our rest restored?

Pastor Wrinkles: Unintended Consequences Pt. 3

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

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Today we continue our discussion about the Fall of mankind from the stand point of Genesis chapters 2 and 3.

If you missed our previous discussions you can catch them

Here

and Here

Here is today’s discussion topic

 As we stated yesterday, in the fall we lost our Assurance but we also lost our “Authority”

Psalm 8  explains how we were meant to be when it says,

What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?[c]

5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e] and crowned them[f] with glory and honor. 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their[g] feet: 7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, 8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,  all that swim the paths of the seas.

But the writer to the Hebrews states the obvious truth,

What are mere mortals that you should think about them,

or a son of mana that you should care for him?

7Yet you made them only a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honor.b

8You gave them authority over all things.”c

Now when it says “all things,” it means nothing is left out. But we have not yet seen all things put under their authority.

You see God intended that the Earth would be under our authority. But it is not! We lost control at the fall and now we are at the mercy of the Earth. Anyone who has ever lived through an earthquake or a tornado knows that truth. Controlling the fish of the sea?… just talk to all the people who have lived through being half-eaten by sharks this summer. Ask them how much control over the fish of the sea they feel they have.

We lost our authority at the fall and from that point to this we have been desperately trying to get back what God intended to be ours.

How does Psalm 8 make you feel in light of the knowledge  that we have lost authority?

Share Your World 2015 Week #31

Posted on by under For Family & Fun

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Time to SHARE MY WORLD again. Each week I try to answer five questions posed on Cee’s Photography site. You can check out Cee’s site and the sites of her other contributors by clicking the “SHARE YOUR WORLD” icon above.

Here the questions for week 31

Would you rather take pictures or be in pictures?

I don’t mind having my picture taken but I do seem to have kind of any angry face. I don’t usually feel angry but most candids of me have me looking a little grumpy.  I do like taking pictures though. So if I had to choose I would probably be behind the camera rather than in front but either way is just fine.

Where do you like to vacation?

Any place where people cannot contact me.

If you had to describe your day as a traffic sign, what would it be?

“65 MPH” or “Beware merging traffic”. Life is as usual full speed ahead and lots of things are coming together making life’s traffic patterns a little confusing just now. It’s a real good time to be paying attention.

List at least five favorite first names.

I like Joseph (surprise! surprise!), Malachi, Isolde (I really like that one), Nathaniel, David and Abigail

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I am grateful we had two great services on Sunday and that my sermon came off without a hitch. I am also grateful I got the next edits of my book to my editor. This next week I am looking forward to taking my son to pick up his VISA at the Korean consulate. Two weeks and counting folks and he will be in Korea!

Pastor Wrinkles: Unintended Consequences Pt. 2

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

Sunset Prayer

Yesterday we started a discussion around the fall of man from my latest sermon entitled “Unintended Consequences”. If you missed the first part of the discussion it can be found

HERE

Here is pt. 2 of that discussion:

Read Ge. 2:15- 3:19

At the moment of their disobedience (eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as shown in Ge. 3) something changed for Adam and Eve. Call it genetic. Call it spiritual. Nobody really knows, and truth be told it was probably a bit of both things, but something changed in the moment they disobeyed. They lost their significance, their sufficiency and their security, BUT they also lost something else as well. Adam and Eve at the point of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lost their “Assurance”

Much is made of the fact that before the fall Adam and Eve were naked and after the fall they needed clothes. Many people say that God did this to keep them from lusting after one another. Well that may be a problem today but I don’t believe that was Adam or Eve’s problem back then. First, they were married. Second the issue mentioned around nakedness in the Garden is not lust but shame Ge. 2:25 says “they were both naked in the Garden and felt no shame.” The reason they sewed fig leaves together in Ge. 3:7 was because suddenly they were ashamed.

Shame is a lack of self-assurance. The word used for shame in Ge. 2:25 is the word “Buwsh” which means “to be disappointed in yourself in front of another person.”

Before the fall Adam and Eve did not judge themselves or feel unworthy in front of each other. After eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil their eyes were opened. Suddenly they began to judge everything around them and instead of seeing the good in things they started seeing the bad in things.

All our disappointment in who we are comes from the fall.  Every time you call yourself  “fat”, “ugly”,  “weak” or “stupid”, every time you look in the mirror and want to cover up some blemish you are experiencing the power of the fall.

God’s intended world had people filled with confidence and assurance in who they were created to be. His thought was that men would succeed at whatever they put their hands to and feel confident in themselves as they did it. Instead, the fall has us constantly fighting the fear that we are not enough and that at any moment the true us will show up and we will fail.

On a scale of one to ten how much has the fall affected you in your self-assurance?

Pastor Wrinkles: Unintended Consequences Pt. 1

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles
The crucifix at Kylemore Abbey

The crucifix at Kylemore Abbey

I was given the honor of preaching the sermon at Cornerstone Church last Sunday. Here for your perusal is the first excerpt from my notes…

As I begin I have to give credit where credit is due to my lead pastor Barry Risto for helping me with this sermon. He may not know he helped me, but up until last week I had several directions that were gnawing at the edges of my mind for this sermon.  No matter how I tried though, I could not settle on any of them until Pastor began to preach his sermon. He spoke about some of the things humanity lost in the fall of mankind, when Adam and Even ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He preached using the letter “S” and explained that when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden something changed in the human race. We lost certain things we were meant to have because we became at that moment changed and controlled by the power of sin. In the fall we lost our “significance” our “sufficiency” and our “security”.

As my pastor preached the Holy Spirit began taking me down rabbit trails and out of that came this sermon “Unintended Consequences”. As Pastor preached using the letter “S” last week to describe what was lost in the fall, this week I am going to describe the fall of man from the stand point of “A.A.R.P.”

We don’t spend much time thinking about the fall from grace that happened in the Garden of Eden. Few people, maybe none of us, really understand just how much fell apart in those moments when Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Some people don’t even realize we have lost anything at all. They consider the world a thing of beauty that is getting better and better, but the truth is, that mind-set denies reality and shows no understanding of what sin has done to mankind, to our world and to the very fabric of reality itself.

When Adam and Eve sinned they let the power of sin into the world and as Pastor Risto taught last week at the moment of their disobedience to God they lost their significance, their sufficiency and their security. But they lost even more.  I guess we need to start by letting the story tell itself.

The Bible tells us that at the very beginning of the world, God made one man and one woman who were to become the father and mother of all mankind. I believe this is actually how it happened. Call me crazy. Call me a red-neck. Call me gullible or whatever else you want. This is what the Bible teaches, so I think this is what actually happened. Anyway, God put the man and the woman in a place called the Garden of Eden and then the Bible goes on to tell the story this way

Genesis. 2:15- 3:19

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”… Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame… Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

What do you think Adam and Eve hoped to gain in disobeying God?

Mud pies in the slum: My story

Posted on by under Uncategorized

I love this testimony.

GodGirl's avatarIt's a God thing...

When I was younger and kind of “finding myself” in terms of relationships and career, my biggest idol was peer acceptance.

I thought that if I ticked all the right boxes in terms of saying all the ‘right’ things, making people laugh, and generally being seen as clever and successful, I would receive the acceptance I craved.

I would never have considered myself “dead in my sin” but I think part of me was dead to the “colour” and life-giving power that could be found in a deep and rich and engaging relationship with God…

I like the CS Lewis quote from his book the Weight of Glory:

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the…

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