No Ordinary Thaw

Last week we had a foggy start to one of our days. Then around 8am it all froze almost within minutes to the trees turning everything into a winter wonderland!

Check out the Frozen Fog up close!

Just incredible!

susy

Just a quick heads up on the weather here, mainly for those reading who don’t live here.  (For people living here, this could be just a dreadful reminder.)

Recently, the weather has been absolutely near record-breaking.  We’ve endured several days of -18° F with wind chills in the mid -30° F range… -35° F.  The last several nights have been -18° F and -25° F air temperature for the overnight lows and -35° F to -40° F with wind chill. You breath in the air and it’s chilly in your lungs. Headaches form when outside from the sheer cold. It’s still fun, but the length of time you “enjoy” it is much shorter and you are literally scrambling for indoor cover. If the electricity were to go out, it would be instant life and death circumstances.

Maybe we’ll come up with something — I don’t know what yet — to try and convey how all this feels (to all you chickens who won’t move up here!)

We’re due for some balmy weather in the 20′s (+20° F!!) for the weekend. Surf’s up!

We subscribe to an online newsletter by a man named George Barna who produces what is called The Barna Report.  I just received his latest newsletter and it’s extremely telling.  And sad.  And unfortunately very true.  We see evidence of this daily all around us.  A new “attitude” among people who call themselves believers who essentially, more and more, “pick and choose” what they will “believe” and what they will subscribe to, submit to and ultimately be obedient to.

If I were to highlight what I thought was striking and telling about this report by Barna, I would have to highlight most of the article, so maybe you can just read the whole thing for yourself if you are interested.  We have to be very careful out there spiritually with what we call and accept as authentic; not everything is if not, unfortunately, a lot of it.  We don’t realize how influenced (Jesus would call it “leavened”) we are by the way unregenerate people who are Americans and merely “call” themselves “christians” (note George’s reference to that phenomena in the opening paragraph — “if you are born in America, you will grow up basically as a ‘christian’ by default”) yet espouse to the satanic gospel of “tolerance” built on the fulcrum of my right to individualism — which is really a message about forming a strong disposition towards any absolute truth or life-changing conviction.

Well… See what you think.  This sort of approach to “truth” is really quite pervasive.  We have to set our minds and hearts to not live this way:

Retitled: American Christians “Pick And Choose” What To Accept And Believe…

PS. Isn’t that the very beginning of the Christian walk anyway?  To get ourselves off the Throne of Decision-Making and to put Christ on it?  If I’m still “deciding” then at the very least, Jesus isn’t the Lord of my life and very likely means I don’t even belong to Him.  Instead, most of what we call “christianity” today is about espousing to a core set of “beliefs” (in which *I* will decide what those are as well!), and then essentially living my life however I want to live it.  (And if anyone out of care and love for the Truth and therefore for me questions any of it, then they are “judging” and “legalaistic.” :-()  That’s not “christianity” though it IS the thing a lot of people in America tend to grow up and align themselves to.

God help us all and save us from that kind of “gospel.”

In our review of Reimaging Church (a followup book written after Pagan Christianity, both by Frank Viola), I stated that Frank’s “answer” to the problem of an American religious system, that is more fashioned after pagan traditions than it is the Reality we read about in the word of God, falls quite a bit short of what God intends and wants for us all. The answer isn’t about “I didn’t used to be able to ‘say’ anything in ‘church’ and now I can!” and “Now we sit on couches instead of pews.” While it is definitely true that part of the solution entails untethering ourselves from being spectators and lining up in rank and file to run through a pre-planned program of “events,” it’s SOOOOO much more than that!!

We received a letter this week written by another believer in North Carolina who we do not know personally. But that believer’s perspective is exactly what we mean when we say there is a difference between a fad or a “thing” that we call “house church” in today’s American religious system and what the LIVES were like of the people in the first century who happened to meet in houses… Does that make sense?! There’s a BIG difference between those two things, and there is a “fad” going around called “house church” that is still far short of what God wants. This person sees the difference, and, tied to the things we said about the book, Reimaging Church, this is a perfect and well worded example of that huge difference:

You know guys, you’ve made far more effective arguments against “house church” than anyone from the institutional church like Ben Witherington or those guys. And that’s coming from HouseChurch.com (!!!!) and a group of believers who meet in homes and are not bound by the traditions of religion.

I used to think that having neat, little meetings in a “house church” was what it was all about. After all, it says that Aquilla (sic) and Prisca met with other disciples in a house. Priesthood of all believers, open and participatory meetings. No clergy, holy buildings, bulletins, robes, stained glass or tithes. Frank Viola books exposing the false practices. AMEN!
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I was talking to a colleague at work and he was marveling that it was 2009 already.  Crossing the threshold into the new millennium seems like it was just a couple of years ago.  “Life is a vapor” shows itself to be more than a trite “memory verse.”  All the more reason to get serious (and have fun while doing it!) about the nature of why we’re here and to stop playing “reindeer games,” huh? :-)

We really didn’t do so well with this blog last year.  Susy still hasn’t quite “gotten the hang” of this whole blog thing.  (She blames it on her computer of course, but she has an Apple Powerbook, so THAT doesn’t make any sense!?!! :-))

On the home front, for those of you we know living below the Mason-Dixon line, we’ve already had a good amount of snow — much more than in our two past winters.  And before this winter was ever “officially” here (eg. before December 21st), we had a week of -30 degree weather (wind chill — about -18 air temp.)  Not bad huh? :-)  Anything above freezing for the rest of the year will feel just balmy.  Ice on the lakes is already over a foot thick.  The children recently drilled through it and went ice fishing.  Not enough snow accumulated here in the Twin Cities yet to do any snow shoeing however.  Bummer.

We’ve been blessed by a lot more of God’s provision, teaching, help and Wisdom and we’ll do better sharing some of those things that have really encouraged us this last year.  We’ve read about and even run into a good number of people who are beginning to sense the Joy and the Fullness (and the Power) God has always intended outside of man-made religious settings; something we’ve enjoyed and grown in for 20 years now.  It’s been fun just getting to Know Him in the midst of caring relationships DAILY.

To that end, we just got a new book from a guy named Alan Bunning called simply “The Church.”  Seems like quite a  fellow in a lot of ways.  Feel free to read ahead of us if you want.  He published his book on LuLu.com (a digital book publishing site).  We’ll do a review when we’re done.  300+ pages, so it might take a while.  But it looks pretty good do far.  So many people all over the world are seeing these things! :-)

Blessings… chris