The Love That Is True

This Christmas, wrap a box and put it under the tree with a tag to Jesus.  In the box, put a piece of paper for each person with their name on it.  When it gets chosen, have the youngest person open it, and then explain that they should write something on it that they want to give to Jesus this year.  This would be something like a New Years resolution, but doesn’t have to be something big.
Some ideas are:  fight less with my brother, help more around the house, pray every morning/night, read through the Bible, etc.  Then they can put it back in the box and wrap it back up and leave it under the tree as a reminder.

I was at the Borders going-out-of-business sale yesterday.  At first it was exciting, but then I realized how sad it was as well.

Between online retailers (that don’t pay sales tax or have cashiers), and ebooks (that don’t print books), it’s nearly impossible for the brick-n-mortar bookstore model to work.  Christian bookstores have been particularly hard hit, with over 60% of them going out of business in the last 10 years.

I suppose it was bound to happen, but it is the end of an era.  Will our children know what it feels like to browse through a bookstores?

We have had a lot of success with our book.  However, with any success there is always rejection along the way too.  We all know the stories of Abraham Lincoln and others that had more than their share, but continued on to do great things.

The interesting thing with some of the rejections we have had, is that they seem to always be about something different.  We don’t talk enough about this, or we talk too much about that.  Many times this is tied back to their specific denominational views.

That got me thinking that a lot of denominationalism is a reaction to another denomination, more than it is a calling from the Lord.  In my own life, I was a part of a denomination that had split from another denomination (they all have), and we wanted to show how different (and better) we were than the denomination we had come out from.

This makes me reflect on one of Jesus’ last prayer

“I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” – John 17:11 NIV

It is not wrong to prefer a certain style of church as long as it is Biblically based.  However, there is something evil in the denominational climate that makes us want to be different, and to highlight our differences.

We need to examine ourselves, and double check the things that we think make us different than other Christians.  Are we really being called by the Spirit of God to be this way, or are we just looking for a way to be different, or reacting from something in our past?