I'm Worse Than I Thought

As most of you know, I have been attending Coram Deo regularly since the beginning of October.  This has been one of the best decisions in regards to spiritual formation.  Spiritual formation is a new term for me, I had always called it my "walk with Christ" or "growth in my faith", but it is something that Coram Deo does not take lightly.  They did an entire sermon series on it back in 2006, shortly after the church was started.  I have been making my way through the sermons on the website, though not in a particular order, and I am about half way done with the Spiritual Formation series.  I would highly recommend it to everyone.  Listen to them here.  If you only can listen to one, listen to Jesus' Master Principle.

I had always thought that if I really wanted to change my behavior and obey Christ (which I do) all I needed to do was to try harder.  If I just prayed about it more and tried really, really hard to stop, I could.  This approach has been an utter failure.  I have made very little progress.  While prayer and effort are important in the fight against sin and temptation, they are a band-aid for the real problem.

Bob Thune, pastor at Coram Deo, talks about how really our sinful behavior comes down to heart idols.  That sounds stranger than it really is.  Idolatry is replacing God in our lives with something or someone that we think would better fulfill a need that we should look to God to fulfill.  Matthew 12:33 is an illustration for this principle of looking to the tree (our heart) as to why there is bad fruit (sin in our lives) and that we need to change our heart to change our behavior.  While we are unable to change our heart on our own, or even at all, Scripture shows us that God uses our discipline as a means for Him to transform us.

Bob used lying as an example.  The heart idol behind it may be approval.  We seek other people's approval of us instead of God's approval of us.  We are wanting them to fill that void instead of having God complete us.  Therefore, the heart idol is other people's approval, because that idol should be replaced by God and God alone.  If we begin to find our approval in God and not other people, we will have less desire to lie.  This hit home because lying is one of my struggles.

I challenge everyone to listen to these sermons, or at least Jesus' Master Principle, and really look at the sins in your life and prayerfully consider what the heart idols behind them are.  I will be doing this and sharing on this blog what God reveals to me.  I hope you will do the same.

Bible Reading 2011

I have had a great time this year doing the chronological reading plan in a year from BibleGateway.com with my brother.  However, since I mentioned that I had a problem with reading too much without internalizing it, I am going to slow things down this next year.  I am going to read through the New Testament in a year, a chapter at a time, repeating the Gospels and Romans.

The Gospels and Acts will be in canonical order, but the epistles will be in the order that they were written.  I want to follow the theology of the New Testament as it developed.

I am posting this because I would like you to join me.  Every morning, after I read the chapter, I will post a few comments and thoughts on it.  I would like people to join me and, after they read the chapter, leave a comment.  The goal is to be reading the Bible and discussing it on a daily basis.  I doubt I am the only one that has a hard time focusing and internalizing what I read.

To help, I have created a pdf with bookmarks for your Bible here.  If you are more tech savvy and want the iCal, it is here.

If you are willing to join me this next year, please leave a comment below.  Let's keep each other accountable and grow in our appreciation and knowledge of the Gospel.

Why I am Blogging

The primary purpose of this blog is a selfish one. I have a bad habit of simply reading through things at a high speed and not even bothering to slow down and really take it all in. This applies to Scripture as well as other books. My thoughts are that if I was forced to slow down and write what I am thinking, I will actually think about it. This is not ground breaking by any means, but I have tried journaling and that has failed miserably. So I thought since I am an open book, for the most part, why not just put my thoughts out there for everyone to read? At the very least I will be able to look back on things that I have read and my thoughts that I have had.

I do not want this to be me talking and a few people randomly posting comments. My goal is to have a dialogue with anyone that is willing and to have mutual edification. If I wanted to just hear myself talk, I wouldn’t bother typing it out. Please, feel free to always comment, even if it is just to tell me how dumb you think I am.

God’s grace to you!