Month: March 2010

Church and Work

Oasis’ Core Value #6 is Sanctification is all of life. This means that you will continually be sanctified through the working of God in your life through Christ Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, in a progressive work that lasts until your last breath.

Having said that, tonight I was thinking about Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and realized this pattern in my life that I am progressing through, and which I believe all followers of Christ have the opportunity to go through as well. This is a paradigm shift, a change in my way of thinking, my way of perceiving life…

Step 1. Start going to church after work

Step 2. Start going to work after church

Step 3.  All of life is “church”

Hmmm…

Relief and Redevelopment

In the vein of When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself

“Relief” can be defined as the urgent and temporary provision of resources to reduce immediate suffering from natural or man-made disasters. Relief is the first response that comes to most people’s minds when they see the suffering of others.

“Development” can be defined as a process of ongoing change in which people are moved closer towards being in right relationship with God, with themselves, with others, and with creation. As people develop, amongst other things, they are better able to support themselves through their own work.

– Source: Relief and Development: The Distinction is More Than Academic

Understanding relief VS development is important, since the original article pointed out that most people think of relief when they think of helping the less distressed, fortunate/poor, etc… If you apply relief to a redevelopment situation you are not doing anyone favors, but you are causing damage.

Have you ever heard the allegorical story of giving a man a fish VS teaching him how to fish? When you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. When you teach someone man how to fish you feed them for life. If someone needs relief, by all means give them a fish! However, if they are in need of development, you’d be  more helpful if you taught them to fish.

Jesus, Sovereignty & Free Will

Its an interesting thought that Jesus during His earthly ministry, both fully man & fully deity, was a model of the co-existence of the the sovereignty of God and man’s free will. Just as the sovereignty of God is a fact, and man having free will is a fact, its also a fact that Jesus, while on earth, was fully man AND fully deity. The implications of fully deity may be obvious, but the implications of being fully man just tonight hit me. While fully a deified son of God He also was able to sin.

In the past, when I thought about it (not very deeply considering tonight’s realization), I thought “Well of course He was perfect, He was the son of God!”. However, that thought, that statement fails to recognize the fact that Jesus was as fully tempted to sin as you or I. The devil’s temptations were not simply exercises in vain – God really put Jesus to the test, he was surely tempted as one could be who had His faith. It was not as if Jesus got an “automatic pass” simply because He was the son of God on earth… Satan wouldn’t have wasted his time if he Jesus was not subject to temptation and could not sin.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
– Matt 5:1 ESV

Now, if the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (according to the word of our Lord) then he MUST have been subject to temptation.