Sin

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

Few words are as loaded as the word “sin”. It’s taken to mean everything from isolated acts of behavior to a pervasive state of soul and comes packed with all sorts of emotional baggage. Some say smoking is sin. I know lots of people who’ve never smoked but who take sin to a whole new level.

Two critical things come to mind in my attempt to dust off this word, dial it back to it’s original meaning and restore it to usefulness. First comes the whole “feeling bad” part. Obviously, that’s unavoidable. But there are different kinds of “feeling bad”. 2 Corinthians 7:10 reads, “For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.” The test is the result. Feeling bad for it’s own sake is not going to move us in helpful directions.

The other one has to do with two critical “wires” easily crossed in our thinking. Ancient Christianity is about rooting out the sinner inside yourself and the saint in everyone else. Too often it becomes about the opposite. In Matthew 7:3, Jesus challenges us to memorize a simple fact of perspective: log-sized flaws in us look like specks while speck-sized flaws in others look like logs. It’s a truth we’ll never be able to escape.

So what are they? Sins are dead ends. Empty paths. Unfulfilled promises birthed in the blinding heat of some initial flush of feeling. But it all comes to nothing. And then you wake up old, and used and forgotten and useless. Not even good for sin, anymore, because you don’t even have the zest of the young. It’s a pleasant tickle in our throat as we swallow slow acting poison. Sin has to do with motive as much as deed, our intentions as much as our actions.

Something to think about.

This Sunday, we’re continuing in our remote control pulpit answering questions you’ve been submitting (see below). Visit our website for directions or tune into our podcast through the week.

I hope to see you there,

Chris

THE THOMAS LOBBY
I've got a brand new Sunday routine because my old way of doing things had me missing out on going to church myself. I've always had a passion to grow a church from the lobby out. So I'll be there from 9.30 on each Sunday, coffee in hand, ready to love life. Join me.

CONNECTING
I’m getting asked how we connect more often with those in our “digital congregation”. Well, it may be crazy to publish an address on the web, but I guess I’m like that. Please don’t think you’re wasting my time or that it’s “special” to connect with a pastor. It isn’t. A pastor is a person with a job at a church. That’s all. I’m not hidden behind two secretaries and three layers of privilege (and never will be). Use the “contact us” page on our website or connect with me through MSN Messenger (cswiersma@hotmail.com). Let’s do it.

THIS SUNDAY
The other side of miracles. Last week we talked about finding faith without them, this week we'll talk about the role they still play today. You can visit our website for directions or tune into our podcast through the week.

Christ

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

Our mind centers on what’s loud or what’s new. It’s the means by which it survives in a world which is simply too big to take it all in. It’s a filter. We’d be overloaded without it. Right now you’re surrounded by more sounds than just what your mind is focusing on. It moves some things to the front of the line (“Hey – what’s that? Could it be a threat? Something new?”) and other things far to the back (“Heard it before. Never mind.”). The problem is, not everything loud or new is worth focusing on. And some of what’s older and quieter is worth drilling deeper and deeper.

Consider Christ. Many of us are so familiar with the sound of that name that we immediately check it off a list at the back of our minds. “Heard that. Check. Move along.” Then we downgrade the intensity of our listening, not because we think He’s unimportant, but because we’ve reached a feeling of saturation. “Heard that. Check. Move along.” As though there could be nothing new or revolutionary, or something we’ve heard before but need to hear again at a much deeper level.

There’s a puzzling verse in Isaiah and again in Matthew 13 which effectively says this: our hearts can grow dull so that we are ever hearing but not understanding, ever seeing but not really perceiving. It means we can be looking right at a thing, but never really process what it means. It’s what happens when our mind rushes to familiarity too soon. “Heard that. Check. Move along.”

But have we really? Are we hearing without really understanding? Are we seeing without really perceiving? Should we override our mind’s aversion to familiarity and force it to re-center on Christ and consider Him all over again, as though for the first time? Consider Him, His legend, His story, His sayings. Consider all over again what it might mean as you go about your daily this-and-that.

Jesus appeared to two disciples walking on the Emmaus road and simply talked with them as they walked along. Later, after He’d left them, they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us… while He was talking to us…?” Could your heart burn, too?

Just a thought.

This Sunday we’ll be looking at the question, “Where have all the miracles gone?” Haven’t you ever wondered why it doesn’t feel like God does as much in our world as He did in Bible times? Is there an explanation? You can visit our website for directions or catch up by tuning into the podcast.

I hope to see you there and I hope you bring someone with you.

Chris

CONNECT
I’m getting asked how we connect more often with those in our “digital congregation”. Well, it may be crazy to publish an address on the web, but I guess I’m like that. Please don’t think you’re wasting my time or that it’s “special” to connect with a pastor. It isn’t. A pastor is a person with a job at a church. That’s all. I’m not hidden behind two secretaries and three layers of privilege (and never will be). Use the “contact us” page on our website or connect with me through MSN Messenger (cswiersma@hotmail.com). Let’s do it.

SICK OF IT (IN A GOOD WAY)
Like a kid at the end of a diving board for the first time, I’ve been thinking about it, moving towards it and almost done it a few times. Now I’m going to take the plunge. I’ve been aching over a new approach to teaching. And every Sunday, I almost try it but then lose my nerve. But I had a purpose in mind when we started this church and I’d like to see it through. “Pee or get off the pot” as my dad used to say. So this Sunday I’m going to pee. Or maybe I’ll get off the pot. Maybe you won’t be able to tell which I did (that’ll be worth a laugh).

WHERE DOES IT GO?
We’re also getting asked about funds as in “What do we do with them?” The short answer is operating expenditures. We run at a small surplus only because we receive a monthly subsidy. I’d love to move past that so the subsidy could go to start another church plant in Western Ontario. What makes a difference? Even an extra 20 bucks a month would help. If everyone in our local congregation did that, we’d have almost $20,000 more by the end of the year.

THIS SUNDAY
See devotional above. Hope to see you there. You can visit our website for directions or tune into our podcast through the week.

Useless

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

They exist at such regular intervals along our life’s wall-space that our eyes hardly ever actually see them anymore. In fact, as an exercise, why not take a break from reading this and find the closest one to you right now – I’m speaking, of course, about a receptacle. It’s a small grouping of three holes, two of them slotted, one of them round; one set above another maybe 12 inches off the floor covered with a small plastic plate and they literally litter our lives. It’s the familiar face on 117 volts of alternating current and it’s the hub of life for all things electric.

Now as important as receptacles are – and as meager as our lives would be without them – they are absolutely nothing without the things we plug into them. No one ever had their life significantly improved by the installation of receptacles, alone. And of course, as is often the case, the vice is versa’d so to speak (I made that up based on “vice versa”, putting it in a kind of past tense – do you like it?)… The “vice” is “versa’d” in that all the things we plug into them are likewise completely useless on their own, as well. So, our lives are improved by receptacles AND the things we plug into them.


And now consider this: all the work you do and all the effort you expend and in fact, every choice you make in your life is as meaningless as an empty receptacle unless it is “plugged in” to some sense of purpose. Work is supposed to be a 117 volt source of change into which we plug some vision of the way things can be in the future. Have you thought much about that? Or are you a wonderful wall socket, full of potential, just sitting there, quietly buzzing, crackling with 117 volts of what could happen, if only you’d plug something into it. Work without purpose is meaningless.

So… What have you plugged into it?

This Sunday, we’re turning a corner into a new kind of question for our series, “Deep Questions, Messy Answers”. For the past 4 Sundays we’ve been dealing with issues of certainty (“What about Heaven and Hell”, “Is Jesus the Only Way” and “How can we be sure?”) and this Sunday we’ll start to focus on lifestyle questions with “Do you always get a second chance and if so, how many?”

I hope to see you there and I hope you bring someone with you (because the seats are starting to fill up!)

CSW

THIS SUNDAY
What about second chances? How many do you get? In what areas can you get them? What do you need to know? You can visit our website or tune into our podcast.

NEXT SUNDAY
Where have all the miracles gone?

YOU'LL KICK YOURSELF
6 months before I left Edmonton, I made a new connection with someone who'd been there all along. It really made me kick myself for not starting that relationship sooner. Just a thought.

BIG NEWS
Have you wondered if there is a plan? In between this and the next series, let’s talk about a vision for the next 6 months.

Ancient Bones

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

Flipping through Discover magazine’s top 100 science breakthroughs of the past year, I came face to face with “Little Lucy” (she made it to number 37). She’s described as a “3-year-old female Australopithecus afarensis” and has become the oldest remains of a child “hominid” ever found. 3.3 million years is the estimate. She’ll become one more among many sets of bones which testify to an ancient mystery on a very old, very busy planet. Fascinating. What do you make of it? Do you think these skeleton’s are the imaginative improvisations of misguided paleontologists? Do you chalk the whole thing up as some elaborate and misguided bit of nonsense? Or are bones like these the work of the devil? (I could hardly even get myself to write that – but it’s out there, folks.)

I talk to literally hundreds of people each year – mostly young adults – who find their faith shaken in the face of these and other ancient mysteries for which they have been ill prepared. This past weekend’s conference in Edmonton was no exception. Sunday schools have given them a pat view of the universe based on felt board depictions of a blue-eyed Jew in long flowing robes and little else. That faith doesn’t so much crumble after high school or in University as it is torn limb from limb like a lamb among dinosaurs. Literally.

The problem isn’t that we haven’t tried to provide answers, because we have. It’s that we haven’t given them (or ourselves) a context for mystery and wonder. We’ve led them to believe there’s an answer for everything and we can find it. I find that idea at odds with the force of teaching in scripture on faith (Hebrews 11). I find it at odds with the concept of a God who is completely beyond us (Isaiah 55:8), a race of people “fearfully and wonderfully” made ((Psalm 139:14) and a universe that still takes our breath away even after we’ve stared into it for as far back as our collective memory goes. Who ever said it all needs to add up? Is that what faith is? Math? “Bean counting”? You just add it up? I think we should be finding things that don’t fit, and can’t be explained.

No doubt there are pastors who will be angry that I won’t provide some slick paragraph designed to cast doubt on the fields of archaeology and anthropology and expose every Museum bound stack of bones as some sort of fraud. Well I think THAT would be a fraud. I have a context for those things I can’t explain. I embrace the enigma. My faith budgets for mystery and I don’t need to have all the answers – and indeed some won’t be provided until after the fact anyway. Paul writes about a God-story that can look foolish and still be powerful (1 Corinthians 1:18). He also writes that the search for Him is not simply a matter of wisdom and signs (v 22) but faith – with parts of each but then a little beyond as well.

As a result of all this, we can join with the rest of the human race in drawing one huge exclamation mark behind the things we are uncovering through science and discovery and also celebrate the one who holds all the answers in Himself. We can look deep into the face of a mystery with unshaken faith and say simply, “wow – it really is amazing, isn’t it?”

This Sunday, we’ll be looking further into faith, certainty and these kinds of things with the question, “How can we be really sure?” This ends a triplet of questions which began on January 7th (you can visit our website or tune into our podcast.). Next Sunday we’ll be picking up a few questions in a totally different direction for the remainder of the series.

I hope to see you there, and I hope you bring someone with you.

CSW

REMOTE CONTROL PULPIT
For the first 6 weeks of the new year, the teaching segment is completely at your disposal. Have you ever wanted something said to the people you live and work beside? Have you ever wanted to ask a question of your own? The whole series will be available for free on CD and DVD so it can travel around. Hit reply to submit a question.

THIS SUNDAY
Rounding off a triplet of questions about certainty. We began with, “What about heaven and hell?”, then 2 Sundays ago, “Is Jesus the only way?” and next Sunday will be, “How can we really be sure?” You can visit our website or tune into our podcast.

NEXT SUNDAY
Good behavior, bad mistakes and second chances with the questions, “Do you always get a second chance? How far is too far? How do you know when you’ve gone there?”

ARE YOU SURE IT DOESN'T MATTER
The single hardest part in beginning any new endeavor is trying to convince people that the little things only they can do actually matter. Pray, invite, come. It’s how you build a great church.

BIG NEWS
Have you wondered if there is a plan? In between this and the next series, let’s talk about a vision for the next 6 months.