hairball
3rd May 2007
I started reading Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell’s 1st book a couple days ago. I was recommended to by a couple of people & I believe it’s a great book so far. It’s hard for me to put it down, but Nicki is reading it along with me and I have to wait for her to catch up before I read any further.
When I began to read the first chapter and he started to talk about how the Christian life is like a trampoline, I thought this was just going to be a dumb illustration that he was using to just make himself sound intelligent. Because honestly, you can use pretty much any object or method to relate to the Christian life. My friend Jared & I used to joke about this all the time. And on a side note when Rob Bell mentioned the trampoline thing, I remembered a joke that one of my college professors, Ken Schenck, read in a class one time. “If you ever open up a store that sells trampolines, you might not want to call it ‘Tramp-o-land’, you might get the wrong kind of customers”.
Anyways, but after reading this chapter I loved it. I think it was one of the realest interpretations of how God wants us to live life. I’m still letting it marinate in my mind & I think I might read it again. At the end of the chapter, he basically concludes by saying God just wants us to jump and to enjoy life & to include others in jumping with us. It just made me smile when I read it. It’s simple, but it’s true. God wants us to have joy, that’s what gives him joy. I think this makes life easier.
Because I couldn’t wait any longer, I read the 2nd chapter “yoke” (this is why I have to wait before I read any further, Nicki has to catch up). This chapter was hard for me. I felt like a little kid in front of a cake who’s parents are telling me to smash my hands & hands into it, but I hesitate because I’m not sure if it’s really okay. What he says about scripture & current prophets is hard for me to go along with. I think it’s because I’ve been taught for so long that scripture is the sole source of truth & that everything comes second to that. But as I read that chapter everything in my head was being convinced of what he was saying. I mean we do bring our own interpretations & perceptions of what scripture tells us, that’s why we have denominations in the Church. But this is still hard for me to swallow. It’s still soaking in my brain. I need to read it again. I love how it’s making me challenge what I believe.
There’s 2 more weeks of weekly youth programs. We just had our ‘salvation night’ last week in middle school and a few students wanted to accept Christ into their lives. That was cool to be a part of that, but I still felt weird preaching the ol’ salvation message. The overall point of my message was pretty simple, God has this perfect house that we all want to be in, but we’re too dirty to get in. Even if we try to clean ourselves, we’re still not clean enough. It’s only through Jesus that we can be clean enough to get into God’s perfect house. That’s why we need Jesus
Now I believe this is a true message, but it’s incomplete. Like I’ve been saying for the past couple months, salvation is more than just a ticket into heaven. We’ve been having a bunch of middle school kids (who I was pretty sure weren’t Christians) coming to our weekly program, which was awesome. So I felt like we needed to offer the opportunity to become followers of Christ. But I think the true complete message of salvation can’t be fully communicated in a message or a weekly youth program, but it must be lived out alongside these students & besides that I can’t preach what I’m not doing now. I think that over the next few months we’ll begin to learn together what salvation is really about.
Pete
I started reading Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell’s 1st book a couple days ago. I was recommended to by a couple of people & I believe it’s a great book so far. It’s hard for me to put it down, but Nicki is reading it along with me and I have to wait for her to catch up before I read any further.
When I began to read the first chapter and he started to talk about how the Christian life is like a trampoline, I thought this was just going to be a dumb illustration that he was using to just make himself sound intelligent. Because honestly, you can use pretty much any object or method to relate to the Christian life. My friend Jared & I used to joke about this all the time. And on a side note when Rob Bell mentioned the trampoline thing, I remembered a joke that one of my college professors, Ken Schenck, read in a class one time. “If you ever open up a store that sells trampolines, you might not want to call it ‘Tramp-o-land’, you might get the wrong kind of customers”.
Anyways, but after reading this chapter I loved it. I think it was one of the realest interpretations of how God wants us to live life. I’m still letting it marinate in my mind & I think I might read it again. At the end of the chapter, he basically concludes by saying God just wants us to jump and to enjoy life & to include others in jumping with us. It just made me smile when I read it. It’s simple, but it’s true. God wants us to have joy, that’s what gives him joy. I think this makes life easier.
Because I couldn’t wait any longer, I read the 2nd chapter “yoke” (this is why I have to wait before I read any further, Nicki has to catch up). This chapter was hard for me. I felt like a little kid in front of a cake who’s parents are telling me to smash my hands & hands into it, but I hesitate because I’m not sure if it’s really okay. What he says about scripture & current prophets is hard for me to go along with. I think it’s because I’ve been taught for so long that scripture is the sole source of truth & that everything comes second to that. But as I read that chapter everything in my head was being convinced of what he was saying. I mean we do bring our own interpretations & perceptions of what scripture tells us, that’s why we have denominations in the Church. But this is still hard for me to swallow. It’s still soaking in my brain. I need to read it again. I love how it’s making me challenge what I believe.
There’s 2 more weeks of weekly youth programs. We just had our ‘salvation night’ last week in middle school and a few students wanted to accept Christ into their lives. That was cool to be a part of that, but I still felt weird preaching the ol’ salvation message. The overall point of my message was pretty simple, God has this perfect house that we all want to be in, but we’re too dirty to get in. Even if we try to clean ourselves, we’re still not clean enough. It’s only through Jesus that we can be clean enough to get into God’s perfect house. That’s why we need Jesus
Now I believe this is a true message, but it’s incomplete. Like I’ve been saying for the past couple months, salvation is more than just a ticket into heaven. We’ve been having a bunch of middle school kids (who I was pretty sure weren’t Christians) coming to our weekly program, which was awesome. So I felt like we needed to offer the opportunity to become followers of Christ. But I think the true complete message of salvation can’t be fully communicated in a message or a weekly youth program, but it must be lived out alongside these students & besides that I can’t preach what I’m not doing now. I think that over the next few months we’ll begin to learn together what salvation is really about.
Pete
posted by Pete at 12:00 PM
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