The Point.

So I have been having the HARDEST time trying to let get my brain get to a point where I can just chill. This is what I have come up with since I am now just starting to emerge from a haze of other peoples theology and books up the yin yang and seminars and lectures and MORE BOOKS!!!!. lol.

I love books and reading since I started to dive into something that was deeper than just me. ( more on this later maybe). I started to understand how importance it is to be reading other peoples interpretation of an issue or a way that they saw and applied something, and whether or not it was affective and useful to them in their situation. This is invaluable experience and is important that we need to be reading.
That being said it also just as important and probably more important that we also take the time to let that information become our own. Not that DA Carson's interpretation of the eschatological return of Christ will become my own, necessarily, or Allan Hirsch's view and application of Biblical discipleship NEEDS to be mine after I have read his book on it. But rather that we need to take some time to mull over what has been read and let it filter its way into how we think and always always be weighing it against scripture.
I think that a lot of this comes down to how we see the world, and as a Christian a lot of it comes down to how we see scripture in light of how I see the world.( more on that later, once I get myself organized here)

I've been reading John and just letting myself unwind and get back to reality, aka scripture and stop reading opinions and view points. A good friend and a big brother to me told me recently that it's important to always be reading something if that is what you like to do, but always keep one foot in the Gospels ( Matthew, Mark Luke or John) and the other in whatever else you are studying at the time. we need to always be reading the words of Jesus because that is what everything else is based on. I think that this is an incredibly simple and very true statement.

In John it talks about how when John is doing his thing and dunking people in the river. Jesus comes to see him. John says one small statement and with that one statement he gives up everything that his life's work has accumulated. All the time that he spent chilling out in the desert and eating bugs will begin to come to a close with one statement. " Behold the lamb of God". This statement causes John's disciples to leave him and follow Jesus.

I think that this speaks volumes to all parties involved. 1. John. and 2 the disciples.
1. John recognized the point and he did not hold onto his little posse like so many leaders today could be easily accused of. I went to a small small conference recently here in Ontario and the premise was the idea of house Churches. The speaker ( the only speaker) said that house Church "was the only Biblical way of doing Church". One of his main reasons for this was that pastors tend to cling to the pulpit just like a factory worker will cling to his union rights and the contractual obligation of the company to keep him employed and because under this accusation pastor are doing this, the Church suffers because Church leaders are afraid to say what needs to be said and do things in the manor in which they need to be done out of fear that the congregation wont give them a nice Christmas bonus. All though I did feel that the speaker was nuts there were enough people, granted stillnot that many but enough that the mentality of the pastoral position needs to be discussed in this sense.

2. Is the disciples. They recognized what John was talking about and that the teacher is not better that the student. They didn't stay with John and try to justify it somehow. They followed the message and not the messenger. Jesus is the message and they got that. They would have to be fools to just let him walk by and NOT FOLLOW HIM.
I sometimes have to ask myself if sometimes I follow the messenger and not the message. How closely could they really have been listening in the first place if they didn't, they would have missed the whole thing that John had been talking about anyways. The mark of true disciple in their context or ours, is that disciples follows the message regardless of how charismatic and intriguing the messenger is.





Anyways that's all for now I am done my middle of the night rant, comment if you like.