To An Unknown God

Many may know the story of the Unknown God...

In Acts 17 it talks about Paul visiting Athens. He is completely shocked by all of the idols that the people of Athens had. Because this upset him so much he started preaching the stories of Jesus and reasoning with the people of Athens. Now the people of Athens were very up to date on all the trends at the time (theological ideas included) I would say they were the Orange County of the ancient world.

The idea that was most trendy at the time was Epicureanism, the idea, simply, that the goal of life was to obtain happiness and pain and pleasure are associated with good and evil. Those people who followed Epicurus' ideas were those in which Paul was trying to reason with. Wanting to keep up with the latest trends, they were curious about what Paul had to say, but did not understand his way of teaching.

In Athens there were twelve main gods and an uncountable number of smaller gods. There was also an entire temple and altar dedicated to Agnostos Theos, an unknown god. They were so worried about offending or forgetting a god they covered all their bases by having an altar to an unknown god. To help the people understand his God and the story of Jesus, Paul used this "unknown god" as a way to relate. He claimed to them that he knew this unknown god, "What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands" He goes on to say how God is not dependent on us, but we are dependent on Him.

This is all great and full of rich history, but what can we take out of this story of Agnostos Theos? Well, Paul tried to reason and preach the gospel in their synagogues the way that he thought was best and they did not understand. He then used something, an object common and familiar in their culture to explain his God to them. I personally think this was wonderfully creative, and it worked.

There is so much we can learn from this story! When we tell people about the story of Christ, and share our love for the Lord it is important to talk in a way that they will understand. This is something Christians often times forget. If we start sharing the gospel with someone using what are commonly known as church-words like "baptized in the spirit", "Presence of God", and "Holy fire" they will be as lost as the Athenians were when Paul first started preaching. We must bring the stories of God to them in a way that they understand, using words and cultural familiarities that they can relate to.

So I encourage you to remove the church language out of your daily vocabulary, especially when you are talking with those who may not be regular church attenders, and non-Christians. You just might find that it is easier to talk to them and relate to them if you do this.

I also encourage you to read the story yourself and see what you think about this story! Acts 17:16-34

The Numbing Effect

Today we are faced with death, violence, war, poverty, and tragedy on a daily basis. What popular video game these days doesn't involve death, war or violence?! How many times have you past a homeless person while you are driving somewhere? When is there ever a day when the news does not report a horrible tragedy. All these things are horrible, heart wrenching, life changing forever type of events. Yet we are faced with them everyday and have become numb to them.

Death doesn't seem like a big deal because last night you killed 20 people playing your video game.

Hearing about horrible violence on the news doesn't break your heart now that you have seen all those violent and horror movies.

You don't see poverty as a very serious problem. The fact that over 17% of children in Tarrant County live "in poverty" doesn't make your heart sink.

We are so numb to the serious chaos that we live in. We have poisoned, numbed our brains with all the junk we put into it that we so often overlook the real problems because we DONT EVEN NOTICE THEM! I just wonder...why doesn't our heart break when we see a report of a violent crime on the news? Why doesn't the mere statistics of poverty make us want to jump off our couches and help? It saddens me that these real, serious problems in our world rarely budge us, that we are so numb to these things because of all the junk we place in our heads.

One of my favorite lines in a song is "Break my heart [Lord] for what breaks yours" and that is my prayer for us all. That we stop being numb and simply overlooking the serious problems of our chaotic world and that God gives us the desire to do something about it.

New Life

"You are fearfully and wonderfully made"

In a certain faith tradition when a couple has a new baby the mother speaks a special prayer into the baby's ear the first moment it is born. This is done so that the prayer is the first thing the baby hears after he or she is born. I was so touched by this tradition that I decided to use it. I spent many nights praying and thinking about the perfect prayer to whisper in my son's ear when he was born. I wanted it to be specific to him and special to the both of us.

The prayer that God gave to me was perfect and it stemmed from a thought that I had throughout my entire pregnancy. How can anyone who has had a child deny the existence of God. It seemed like in every step of my pregnancy I was in awe of God's wonder and majesty and power because of this little miracle growing inside of me.
I can tell you one thing...I grew more in my faith and grew closer to God in those nine months before Ian was born (and the three months since) than I have in the past five years. It was like God was letting me take part in a tiny part of his creation. And that tiny role that I had was so huge...it changed my life forever.

If this tiny part of creation that I was able to be a part of radically changed my life so much, can you imagine how HUGE the power of God is? I can't! I can barely fathom the creation and birth of my son...an entire universe is too crazy big to image! How amazing is that?!

So I pray that you get to touch and understand a tiny piece of God's creation. I also pray you understand how tiny that piece is and as a result gain understanding about how GREAT the power of God really is. How AMAZING!