Toward Being Thankful

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Robert Franklin

So it is Day 5 in the 40 Days in the Word experience for me. Each day is a joy to spend in God’s word, reviewing truths I know and confessing forgetfulness of truths I learned previously but forgot.

Today’s verse is,

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4.6, NIV

My application,

My gratitude is often overwhelmed by anxiety.  Being anxious limits my ability to be thankful.  My conversation (prayer) with God leaves me without peace because I take ownership of things that belong to Him.  Just like a two-year-old I insist, “Me do it” even when I know I cannot.

“Anxiety” is the key word.  Defined, it means

..an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physiological signs, by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it…

I suffer from the projected outcomes of situations.  I am able to extrapolate with reasonable accuracy the outcomes of present situations; situations I know for certain I cannot control.  God does control the future.  I am commanded to come in the reality of my present, offer it honestly to God in conversation and then thank Him for my present and that He is managing my future.

What a blessed challenge.

What causes you to be anxious?  Do you have trouble remembering to honestly talk to God about what is concerning you?  Do you struggle with being thankful for your present?

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Uncomfortable Application…

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Robert Franklin

For many at Main Street this is Day 3 in the 40 Days in the Word experience.  Others are just beginning, some have yet to commence.  I am so pleased the excitement is building and some of the response I have heard thrills my heart.  God’s people are finding His Word again, ancient and still eerily relevant.

The verse for Day 3 in the Pronounce it method:

For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. Philippians 2.13, NIV

My application:

I am so busy with work, I neglect the truth that the work is not my own, but God in me.  I also must remember that it is His work in others and not my own.

Oddly enough, I was anxious to share God’s message to me for yesterday’s verse…but was too busy to write.  That frustrated me immensely since writing is one activity I enjoy doing.

What kind of things to you enjoy but don’t do because of the obstacle of  “work” or “busyness”?

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40 Days in the Word

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Robert Franklin

Today marks the first “official” day in Main Street’s 40 Days in the Word experience.  Some have already started, others will begin later this week, but the family here is beginning 2012 spending time with God day by day by allowing the truth of His ancient word to speak to our modern hearts.  For the first seven days we are practicing the “Pronounce It” method of devotional study.

Today’s verse is Philippians 1.6, “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (NIV)

My personal application,

I must refuse to be stressed about accomplishing things for me.  I must trust God has the ability and tenacity to see all things through.

I am by nature a long-range planner. I like to look sometimes years ahead and make choices today that should impact or direct me to my intended destination.  I struggle with “being confident” in God to shepherd me to where He wants me to be at the time I am supposed to arrive.  My struggle often results in impatience, or worse, in an attempt to assert control over my life’s direction.

How do you trust God to complete the good work that he started in you?

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Pretend

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Robert Franklin

Once upon a time there was a people who fed on imagination. God gave them the gift of perceiving reality.  God gave them the strength to resist being mired down by the difficulties of the day.  This people drew from the Well of Creativity and invented and improvised and immersed themselves in all “the possibilities” imagination could inspire.

The Adversary hated this flourish of resemblance to the Sovereign of the Universe, so he set into motion a scheme to destroy imagination.  From his trunk of untruth he withdrew a powerful and insidious weapon.  It is called Pretend.

Pretend should be a beloved child of imagination, but like many children, Pretend grew up to be an ugly, rebellious and violent adult.  Rather than take its place as the respectful subservient, Pretend forcefully supplanted the immeasurable possibility.  Like a voracious weed, Pretend took over the garden of the human mind.

The calendar tells us that it is the Holiday Season.  Does anyone recall that “holiday” means a period of exemption or relief?  Only a very few!  Instead we bow low to the god of Pretend.  We pretend to be happy, we pretend to have money, we pretend to experience wonder, we pretend to love (or at least care for) each other, we pretend to be generous, we pretend to have time.  We work diligently, fervently, passionately for Pretend.  The color of imagination dims day by day under the glaring glitz of all our activity.

Is this Peace on Earth?  Good will to those whom God favors?

This season is the Season of Advent.  Expectation of celebrating the arrival of the gift of Love and the return of the King.  My family at Main Street will together imagine the great possibilities of excusing Pretend.

    God’s voice is glorious in the thunder.
We can’t even imagine the greatness of his power.

–Job 37.5, NLT

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Heaven is for Dead People

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Robert Franklin

To the modern Western mind, there are fewer more boring places than Heaven.  Who would want to go there anyway?  Maybe it is a nice place for dead people, but anyone who really wants to live…I mean really live will avoid heaven at all costs.

Don’t believe me?  Ask Kenny, he sings it better than anyone I know:

Everybody want to go to Heaven…

John Eldredge speaks to the predominant mindset of the “Christian” group,

Nearly every Christian I have spoken with has some idea that eternity is an unending church service…We have settled on an image of the never ending sing-along in the sky, one great hymn after another, forever and ever, amen.  And our heart sinks.  Forever and ever? That’s it? That’s the good news? And then we sigh and feel guilty that we are not more ‘spiritual.’  We lose heart, and we turn once more to the present to find what life we can.”

Heaven is regulated to the corner of life-that-is-no-more.  “____is in Heaven now,” is a quasi pithy aphorism people attempt to share with those in mourning in some hope it may be of comfort.  If we Westerners were more honest, we would instead say, “I am sorry for your loss; bummer [your loved one] is in Heaven. Tedious existence, I hear.”

All that talk of a “better place” is really a bunch of nonsense.    In order for heaven to be “better” than here, a person must here be racked in pain, or horrifically disfigured, or completely disabled.  To suggest that someone dead goes to hell, well that wouldn’t be polite at all, so that option is removed.  We only tell the living, “Go to hell!”

Since Westerners are in-practice and philosophically sold out entirely to materialism, we know we simply stop existing when we die.  Heaven is the spoonful of sugar that makes the reality of nihilism a bit less tart.

My friends at Main Street are going to journey with me for the next six weeks on a quest to discover whether or not Heaven is worth our attentions at all.

Maybe it is just a good place for dead people.

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Just Tell My Why!

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Robert Franklin

When my children were little, we had a “Why? bucket.”  It was really just a plastic cup I conscripted from the kitchen cupboard, but we made it work.  The purposes for the Why bucket were many, but two were primary:

  1. Invite my children to question the happenings of the world in which they lived.
  2. Assist my children in assigning a value to the privilege of questioning.

For instance, if we told our children to do something and it didn’t suit them well enough to just obey, they could respectfully ask why they were told to do a task.  While they were preschoolers, an answer would cost them a nickel (inflation hit during the school years).  We would simply respond, “Go put a nickel in the Why? bucket and I will answer your question.”  Even at their young age we could see the mental wheels turning, “Is the answer going to be worth a nickel?”  Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t.  It was their choice.  Yes, every now and again we were petitioned for refunds!

Modernity made answers to questions perfunctory.  We either are disinterested in questioning or we expect answers without effort.  In either case assigning value to the ability to question is lost to our culture.  This is a contemporary tragedy.

God made us inquisitive.  We are wired to investigate what we don’t know and evaluate conclusions we make.  To ask, “Why?” is a primordial gift that makes human.  Modern humans most often succumb to the arguments of the loud or the eloquent or the powerful and accept information without consideration, or even worse, “Why?” is asked only to demonstrate belligerence or rebellion.

Throughout human history, God revealed himself in such a manner as to answer our questions.  He is not the God who just says, “Because I said so…” (although that is always the prerogative of the Sovereign of the Universe).

For the next six weeks my friends at Main Street will consider ancient stories handed down from generation to generation for the purpose of revealing the character of the God and answering some significant “Why?” questions.

This week’s question is, “Why Can’t We Do Whatever We Want?”

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:

though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red like crimson,

they shall become like wool.–Isaiah 1.8 ESV

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