Matt is a Hand Tattoo Person now... There is no going back.

Well, I'm a guy with a tattoo on my hand now. There is no going back. Tattoo number 5 is done and in the exact place I want it. 

I went with the Hebrew word, Shalom, which many know means "peace".  It was the topic of my final sermon (which I will include a link to, once it has been uploaded) before I stepped down as a pastor of Edgewood Church.  It is also a word that exemplifies, not only what I've aimed for in my life, but also what I long for the most in the next. The Brown-Driver-Briggs' Hebrew Dictionary defines this word as:  

1) completeness, soundness, welfare, peace (a) completeness (in number), (b) safety, soundness (in body), (c) welfare, health, prosperity, (d) peace, quiet, tranquillity, contentment, (e) peace, friendship, (e1) of human relationships, (e2) with God especially in covenant relationship, (f) peace (from war), (g) peace (as adjective)

In other words, it is the making of everything right in a world where everything is wrong. 

A Christmas Sermon for Pagans

Strand Magazine published this Christmas Sermon by C. S. Lewis in December of 1946. The title: A Christmas Sermon for Pagans.

Farewell Old Friends

 

Farewell old friends. 

I thought many of us would make it to the end together, but so few are remaining on board and so many are jumping ship.  More and more every day. 

And unlike so many others... I cannot... I will not... jump ship with you, thinking that Christ will come with me.  There is not a relationship on this planet that I would bend the law of Christ to maintain. Not a one. 

And it is not simply my love of Christ that compels me. I will also seek to maintain my lack of Christian / Familial fellowship with you, my fallen brothers, out of the vague but essential hope that this visible, tangible broken relationship with me, as you cling to your sin, might help you to see the invisible, but more real and more broken relationship with the Father before it is too late. 

Oh, if only other believers would but take the same approach, hoping to make it clear to all that friendship with the world is enmity toward God. 

Farewell old friends. I hope you know that when you return to the Father, I will be running down the road with him to greet you and not sulking in the fields. 

I know he lives.

 C.R. Wiley - From The Household and the War for the Cosmos

"I hate to say it, but even the piety of Wesley and Whitfield was a downgrade of the real thing. This is because by the eighteenth-century piety’s sphere had already contracted. It is a well-documented story, so I won’t go into detail, but I think I can sum it up succinctly. By the time of Wesley and Whitfield, what had once been regarded as public truth had been reduced to private convictions. Authority in general had eroded due to revolutions in politics, the sciences, and even economics. To meet the challenge evangelists were forced to stress direct, very personal experience of the supernatural by everyone. The second-hand Truth contained in catechisms and confessions was no longer enough. Even eyewitness accounts of the risen Christ were not as trustworthy as a “warmed heart.” This is how we ended up with a hymn like “I Serve a Risen Savior.” In that song the line that is supposed to persuade you to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is, “You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!” What we are left with today is heart religion, because now the heart is the only place Jesus can be publicly acknowledged to live. Ironically, many people think that this is the sum total of Christianity, and the notion that this is actually a downgrading of the faith is inconceivable."