I did not come to this conclusion uninformed or as an attempt to justify my own lifestyle.  I have never been a partier or a regular weekend drunk.  As a matter of fact I actually did my research on this topic because it was designated to me by my professor in a preaching workshop class during college.  At the time I was on staff at a Baptist church where drinking alcohol would have got me fired.  At that time I had never had a drop of alcohol.  Sufficient to say, I studied the subject of alcohol with absolutely no bias.

I don’t think the same can be said for most people who argue a position of complete abstinence.  Most of them are emotionally tied to the issue and are or know someone who had an addiction or abuse problem in the past.  They have tear-jerking stories about a loved one who ran themselves into poverty and destroyed their family as a result of alcoholism.  These stories are sad and are great evidence as to why the Bible condemns drunkenness.  But this reasoning is built more on emotional appeal than actual, Biblical truth.  People in these situations are no more able to be impartial than someone who knew a hunting accident victim is on the subject of gun control.  To them the subject is personal and because of that they are no longer able to discuss it logically.

This is a case where experience is a horrible source for opinion.  Because one person had a bad experience with alcohol is not just cause to condemn everyone who uses it in an appropriate way.

Can alcohol be used for wrong?  Absolutely!

The same can be done with our words, our music, computers, guns, etc.  Many of the Bible passages that condemn drunkenness also condemn gluttony, but no one’s arguing that food is sinful.  We cannot condemn everything that has the potential to be used for bad – especially when it is something the Bible does not condemn.  Doing so is legalism and leads to self-righteous churches that condemn watching television and protest funerals.

Your conscious may not allow you to drink alcohol with a clean conscience.  This may be the result of your past, your personality, or your upbringing.  But enforcing that self-imposed standard on others is wrong.  (Just as insisting everyone should drink would be wrong).

Drunkenness is sin.  Demanding everyone completely abstain from alcohol is legalism.  Both are condemned in the Bible.

Alcohol, like many things in life that can be abused, are to be partaken of with moderation.

Let’s start with the Biblical words.  The word wine in the Bible carries both literal and figurative meaning.  In the Old Testament it was basically understood to be fermented grape juice.  It was most likely naturally fermented, but alcoholic non-the-less, as evident by Noah getting drunk from it in Genesis 9.

In the New Testament the most common word translated as wine is the Greek word oinos, which means fermented grape juice.  The fact that this word implies fermentation is accepted even by sources that oppose social drinking.  It is also the word used for Jesus’ first miracle in John 2, again evident by the mention of wedding guests becoming drunk.  There is also the Greek word sikera which is usually translated strong drink.  A Bible dictionary defines sikera as intoxicating liquor, usually made of grain, fruit, and honey.  Both oinos and sikera are used in Luke 1:15 where an angel predicted the birth of John the Baptist and commanded he abstain from all forms of alcoholic drinks.

A lot of misunderstanding and wrong teaching comes from confusion of these Biblical words.  Most who hold the teetotaler position claim these words were not referring to actual wine, the drinks were not fermented, and these words were only used because there was no suitable words to describe the drink that was actually closer to modern day grape juice.  This argument is simply inaccurate.

Why would there be a commonly used beverage with no word to describe it?  And actually, there is a Greek word for unfermented grape juice.  It’s the word truz and is used rarely in the New Testament but is not the word in any of the passages listed above.  So, if there was a word for unfermented grape juice, and the “wine” used in the Bible was not actually wine, then why was the word truz not used?  Common sense tells us this is because the wine and strong drink referred to in the Bible was actually a fermented, alcoholic drink.

That being said, how can passages such as Proverbs 31:4-6 and I Timothy 5:23, which encourage wine to be used for enjoyment and medicine, be so misunderstood?  Claiming the Bible teaches alcoholic abstinence is poor Biblical hermeneutics.

The Bible clearly condemns drunkenness in passages such as Proverbs 23:29-35 and Ephesians 5:18.  Alcoholism is even used a punishment in the books of Jeremiah and Revelations as others are “given over to” this sickness.  But a moderate use of alcohol was considered normal and even encouraged for everyday Christians in Bible times.  In Matthew 11:18-19 Jesus was even accused of being a drunkard.  Because we know Jesus was sinless and the Bible condemns drunkenness, we can believe that Jesus was never actually drunk.  It is unlikely though that Jesus’ enemies would have ever thought to accuse him of being a drunkard, or that anyone would listen to their accusation, had Jesus not at least been known to drink in moderation.

Any passages used to teach a complete avoidance of alcohol (mostly in Proverbs) are in the context of teaching for a drunkard who needs to avoid the temptation to relapse.  Other passages that give warning about alcoholism also teach about partaking of too much food, a portion of the principle left out by most who teach alcohol is sin.

Based of this information, as well as deeper personal study I have done on this issue, I have to conclude that the Bible does not condemn social drinking for those whose conscience allow them to do so.  Like our words and music, alcohol can be abused in a way that makes it wrong, but in and of itself is nothing to be condemned.  For whatever reason though, some denominations within Christianity have drifted from the Biblical position on this issue and use their new, legalistic view as a source of condemnation for others who do not abstain.  For more on this I would encourage you to read this article by Thomas Kidd that tracks the history of alcohol in relation to evangelicals and asks where this disconnect began.  And as always, please feel free to share your thoughts, whether in agreement or opposition to the position I have laid out.

Why is that?  Why do we immediately feel guilt when we discuss the health of our relationship with God?  When were we trained to believe it’s more spiritual or humble to say things like, “It could always be better” when asked the question above?

Would you think someone ungodly if you asked them how their relationship with God was and they simply replied, “Good?”  Would something strike you wrong about their answer?  Would you assume they were lying or think them arrogant?  Why is that?

There’s nothing wrong with saying that things are good between you and God!

I sensed God tell me this one night during my devotional time.  I was peering over my journal, pressuring myself to pray the right things, apologizing to God for not being as close to him as I thought I should be.  There was a feeling within me that said, You’re good.  It’s ok.  Stop beating yourself up.  You are active in church, you are seeking Me regularly, and you are going to the Bible with your struggles.  You’re doing well.  It’s ok to believe that.

It was like my eyes were opened to a way of thinking I had never been aware of before.  I grew up thinking it was holy to belittle yourself and arrogant to suggest you were anything more than a sinner who can’t keep all the rules.  This is a form of thinking I believe God is constantly trying to reset in my life.

Don’t lie to yourself.  Don’t say things are fine if they are not.  Don’t use my words to overlook a habitual sin God wants you to deal with.  But chances are, if you’re regularly seeking and worshipping God, He’s happy with you!  He wants you to be happy too.  He gets more glory out of you enjoying your relationship with Him than He does when you’re beating yourself up for everything that’s not a part of your spiritual walk.

It’s ok.  You don’t have to fake humility.

So let me ask you again, how is your relationship with God?

We talked about sin, discouragement, financial troubles, depression, guilt, stress, and several other things that can distract and dominate our lives.  These are the things that cause us to say, “Not good” when someone asks us how we’re doing.

The gentleman (whose name I cannot remember) then lumped all of these things, these feelings and distractions, into one category and labeled them circumstances.  Whether it’s sin, a bad economy, a failed relationship, whatever, it is a present reality in our daily lives that affects us.  It’s our circumstances.

He then taught me that the key to sustained joy and spiritual growth is to keep my gaze on God and a glance on my circumstances. 

 So often we are obsessed with the circumstances going on in this life and allow them to be our complete focus.  We are gazed on to what tragic thing is happening in our lives.  These circumstances dominate our thoughts and feelings.  Occasionally we may glance to God to pray for wisdom or deliverance, but then we immediately put our glaring focus back on what lies around us.  This method simply provides depression and steals our joy.

Rather, our gaze should always be on God.  He is the consistent One.  He does not change.  Our circumstances change but not our God.  He should be the one who gets our gaze – our focus, our attention, our belief.  From time to time we must take a glance at what is around us in order to know what we’re up against, but God must be the one who gets the first and most of our attention, our energy, our time, and our effort.

As in driving a car, we keep our gaze out our front windshield just as our focus should be on God.  Occasionally we must check our mirrors, just as we must glance at our circumstances, in order to know what’s behind, beside and all around us.  But keeping our eyes on our mirrors would cause us to get off course and end up in danger.  Our glare must be focused on Christ.

We glance at our circumstances in order to not be in denial of reality, but those things don’t define us.  Our gaze is on God.  We only glance at our circumstances in order to not give them too much weight.  And even when those circumstances are bad, we are able to withstand, because the subject of our gaze is so incredible that it provides a joy that cannot be taken by simply a glance.

• Katy and I have really enjoyed leading our new small group.  This is allowing us to form deeper relationships with some great young couples.
• I’m contemplating going back to school to finish my Master’s degree.  This most likely would mean I take a class or two at a time online.
• Our time-line for planting Freedom Church is still on hold but the church’s website is up and you can now give online.  There have already been a couple donations from the site.
• Katy and I have been having some great conversations lately as we are learning how to effectively deal with conflict and are discussing our dreams about life and family.
• I’m pretty excited that we will be taking a week off at Thanksgiving and going to visit my family in Ohio.
• We really feel a burden to be more involved in ministry and are currently praying and seeking just what that may look like for us in the near future.

As always, your thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

Anything new going on in your life?

Then I moved out and began living life as a single man.  For several years as an independent single man I took care of most of my own needs and I slowly got out of the habit of saying “Thank you.”  I realized this a couple years ago when a coworker brought in lunch for our entire department and as I was eating she called me out for not thanking her.  I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself for having become so ungrateful.

God recently brought this to my attention again.  I strive to be so self-sufficient and able that I deny my need for others and therefor don’t acknowledge what they do for me.  This is not an issue of dependence though as much as it is spiritual health.  Someone with a proper view of God will always be aware of all they have been given.

Thankfulness is a characteristic of a heart returning to God.

 Being grateful/thankful is the first step in worship.  It is our reaction to the initial realization of all our blessings.

In September I heard Steven Furtick deliver a great message (which you can watch here) on gratitude.  One of the things he said was “Gratitude begins where our sense of entitlement ends.”

What we think we deserve and see as our right, we will not be thankful for.  If we think because we are Americans we are entitled to a job we will never be thankful for that job.  If we think we should be married because it seems like everyone else is we will not be thankful for our spouse.  I could go on.

For me, these thoughts about gratitude came together to remind me how much I need to be thankful.  I need to acknowledge and recognize what God and other people have done for or given to me.

Are there blessings in your life you think you’re entitled to and that attitude is keeping you from being thankful?

“Why can’t it be easier?” is a thought that often crosses my mind when dealing with my own spiritual growth.  In the past years my life has contained no shortage of dramatic changes: moving away from home, graduating, moving again, getting fired, having to look for a new job, moving once more, and the beginning or ending of various relationships.  Whether by choice or force, some of the shifts in my physical life have brought immediate and dramatic change.  My spiritual life, however, has not followed suit.

As dramatic as they were, none of the above experiences, nor even my own salvation have brought about a drastic spiritual step forward.  I don’t know that I’ve had a dire, all at once, life changing spiritual experience.  Not because the actual experiences have been absent from my journey, but the trend I’ve observed in my spiritual walk is that it takes work, moves slowly, and is even at times longueur.  So I’ve come to believe it’s not necessary to have a life-altering experience to act as a catalyst for moving quickly forward in spiritual growth.

When we were young we were taught that if we earned it, it would mean more to us (usually a lesson about money). I notice time and effort being required for spiritual progress cause growth to be more meaningful, personal, and last longer.  I used to pray for God to pick me up and instantly transplant me to a spiritual step closer to Him.  For Him to do so would probably result in little commitment on my part.

It’s difficult for me to hear testimonies of people having a God encounter through a divine situation, supernatural occurrence, or even disastrous event and it lead them to an “a-ha moment” or 180 degree change.  “Why doesn’t that happen for me?” I ask myself.  To receive my answer and realize what God has been doing in my life, all I have to do is look back.

Looking back over the years I see growth from where I used to be.  There has been drastic change in my attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.  The gifts, abilities, and opportunities that have come into my life almost went unrecognized because they came by what I considered to be such gradual arrival.  Also as I look back and recognize the distance I have come, I see traces of the occurrences in my life that have one by one brought about a slow shift in thought or deed.

Sometimes still I’m inclined to make a commitment to change an area of life based on such simple means as a movie, song, sermon, or conversation.  But such shallow and immediate triggers aren’t deep enough to bring about lasting change.

I cannot have a four minute song stir my emotions and cause me to jump to an entirely different way or focus of life without soon falling back into the practices I’ve become accustomed to in the past.  Even sermons often come with pressure for an immediate response when the story of our lives should prove such compact information in a short time are not significant for yielding all at once change on the major issues and practices of who we are.  We are not so simple a creation that we can be swayed or reprogrammed with such little intent or effort.  All together the situations of my life, as well as their consequences, have connected in a way for me to become more like Jesus.  Surely God uses major events, but only to point us back to our walk with Him.  That is the process of spiritual growth.

I don’t always like this process.  It still causes me to sometimes wonder if God is at work.  But every time I ask God for immediate results I imagine He grins, then perfectly arranges the situations of my day to day so I develop a habit that leads to  deep and lasting change.  So rather than looking for a dramatic situation that will give me spiritual growth, I’m going to continue walking with God, believing that the everyday events of my life are capable of producing eternal results.

There are a lot of things that make Andy and Matt great preachers.  They are solid Bible teachers, they are great at connecting with their listeners, and they live lives of integrity that back up what they say from the stage.  However, there is something more I have noticed about these men and is the reason I say that when it comes to listening to preaching, they have spoiled me.

In listening to Matt and Andy, I no longer hear what I hear from a lot of other preachers.  They don’t make the same kind of jokes.  They don’t settle for the same kind of illustrations.  I truly consider theirs a finer kind of preaching.  As part of that I do not hear them using:

• Corny jokes
• Shock effect to get attention or stir anger
• Self-deprecating humor just to get a cheap laugh
• Information without application
• References to their wives as demanding or domineering
• Consistent insistence on how hot their wives are (something I wrote about here)

Sadly, these habits are common place for most preachers, even those liked and respected by many.  To me, such things cheapen the sermon and distract from the message.  Then again, I may just be saying that because I’m spoiled.

I have a pretty good number of followers who are subscribers to my blog and receive updates on new postings through email.  I also have generated more traffic to my site by linking many of my posts to my facebook and twitter accounts.  Surprisingly to me, this got more people reading my posts but still produced very few comments.

What did begin happening however is people gave me feedback in different ways.  Since I know about half my readers personally, it was not uncommon to be at work or church and have someone come up to me and tell me they read my blog and give me some feedback.  Some people emailed me their comments about what they read on my site.  Others gave comments via twitter or text.  And some people would click on the link I posted on facebook, go to my site, read my post, go back to facebook, and type in their thoughts there.  Again, this frustrated me.  I would think, why don’t they just leave their comments on my site?

I had to realize that for whatever reason, most of my readers just did not (or do not) want to leave public comments attached to the posts they read.  This did not mean that they were not giving me feedback though.  And that’s what I ultimately wanted.  It would not be wise of me to condemn others when they email me or give me their input in person.  Yelling “put it on the blog” would probably not get me the response I want.  Among the unique people who read what I write there is a trend of giving feedback in a more private and sometimes more personal way.  It would be counterproductive for me to fight this and try to force on them the model I want.

Rather I am embracing this trend.  I now send every new post out on twitter and link most of them to facebook.  I try to encourage conversation when people tell me they read my post.  If I’m getting what it is I want (feedback) it doesn’t really matter how I’m getting it.  I can’t be so concerned about which method or form I think is “right,” it’s more important to know what works!

In your work or relationships are there any new trends you are still trying to put into old molds?  Do you need to forsake what you think is right for the enhancement of what works?  Be on the lookout for how people and processes change and embrace them.  Fighting to keep things the same does not provide greater outcomes.

I believing addressing the poor of our culture and speaking of them the way Fox News did crosses moral boundaries and is more than just a political issue.  I often hear conservatives and Christian politicians get fired up about the issues of abortion and homosexuality, claiming they are a spiritual issue and not a political one.   If they want to claim that abortion (a term not in the Bible) is a spiritual issue rather than a political one, then clearly caring for the poor is also a spiritual issue.  And one where we are failing.

Jesus never spoke to the issue of abortion and great links have to be made between his words and Old Testament passages to claim he opposed homosexuality.  While these issues may be moral ones, even more clear is the truth that Jesus had a lot to say about the poor and what our obligation is toward them.  Jesus spoke more about the poor than any other “political” issue.  He talked about the poor when teaching about time, when teaching about money, when teaching about serving, and when teaching about the kingdom of God.

Labeling today’s lower class as those looking for hand-outs is a form of arrogance.  The truth is that removing all forms of government handouts would create uproar from both the rich and the poor.  The upper class actually enjoys forms of a higher level of government benefits.  To see one person abusing the system or using food stamps in a way you find inappropriate and claiming this to be true of all those in the lower class is poor logic and shows you are out of touch with the poor in your community.  It also means you believe people should be assisted, given to, or blessed with conditions when this is not taught in Scripture.

Truly the Bible teaches that a man should eat after he has worked, but the word work does not necessarily mean possessing a job.  To claim the poor are poor because they are lazy is a huge generalization and no more true than that every working person is a hard worker and rich.

What the Bible teaches is stewardship.  Those of us who have been blessed have been blessed to be a blessing.  Along with all we have, we have been given the responsibility to care for those who have not.  This is true materially, emotionally and spiritually.

When considering the poor, allow me to ask a question:  Is it easier to be generous, perhaps even careless, with something that we earned or something that was given to us?

The argument we are taught as young children is ‘if you earn it you will appreciate it more.’  I think this same reasoning is behind political conservatives who suggest poor people are looking for hand-outs and abuse their government assistance.  However, the idea that we earn or deserve what we have is a complete farce.  The Bible says we are to recognize every good thing we have as a gift from the Father.

It is true that we are much more likely to hold loosely and give away things that are given to us and that we don’t actually see as our own.  However, this is not a reason to blame some poor people for being irresponsible, but to be free with our own possessions when it comes to meeting the needs of others.

You and I are much more likely to hold what is “ours” with open hands when we realize it’s all simply a gift from God.  The money and possessions we have, we have because God allowed it.  Even our talents and skills that we think created our wealth are in reality blessings God chose to give us.  A simple reading of the book of Acts will show that our possessions, resources, and abilities are meant to be leveraged for those in need through the context of ministry.

If there are people in our communities in need, it is our own fault.  And if it’s our fault, it is also our responsibility.