We had a cool idea that will be played out in the following weeks:

Let’s LiveBlog our Saturday Night gatherings!

So, with the magic of Twitter, we tried it out this evening.  There’s a Twitter feed on our home page and you can, of course, just go to twitter.com/openhouseky to follow along with us each Saturday night.  Hopefully, we’ll find a more user-friendly way for you to view the feed in the upcoming weeks…until then, we hope you join us in person or on the website soon!

This past Saturday we talked about temptation at Open House.  Steve Peralta emailed me an article that is worth reading regarding temptation (it’s down below).  The article speaks of how our minds are “thermostats” and we “set the temperature” to fit our own needs.  The assumption is that apart from God’s truth there is no way to know if we are being tempted or not.  While I agree that God’s truth does give us a way of measuring the overall truth, the author is supposing that all areas of life with God are black and white.  I don’t think they are.  We live in a lot of gray; that even the Scripture doesn’t give us clear guidance on…so is temptation relative or absolute–do we set our own “thermostats?”  It depends.  I think there is enough room within the “climate of God” for us to have differing “temperatures” that could be temptation to us personally, but not temptation at all to another person–and all the while, both of us can remain within God’s will.

You see, temptation can be both relative and absolute.  On Saturday the issue of drinking came up…is drinking a sin–is it a temptation if we want a drink?  I think this falls into the realm of God’s massive “climate.”  It can be both a temptation and not one at all.  The Scripture no where discourages drinking in and of itself, but strongly discourages drunkenness.  Can we really say that drinking is a sin?  Jesus was accused of being a drunkard and facilitated people drinking.  If drinking is a sin, Jesus is a sinner.  But that doesn’t let the person who wants to drink to get drunk off the hook – drunkenness is clearly a sin.  We are told to not be drunk with wine, but filled with the Spirit.  It doesn’t let the non-drinker off the hook either.  What are the motivations for not drinking?  Is it a temptation to find God’s favor by not drinking? A legalistic religious form of tradition? It could be.  Or it could be a wise decision based on alcoholism in the family, or just a desire not to drink.

This is the reason why we must learn to live a life “filled with the Spirit” as Jesus did.  It is in the gray areas that we learn to trust in God “to lead us into all truth.” Sometimes our opinions might be different than that of others, but remember, it’s possible that we can have two very different ideas–even about temptation- and still both be right.

Mike Steele

Flashbacks can be good and they can be bad. Sometimes they can be really bad. I had one of those “really bad” types a few days ago, and it was not pleasant at all.

About two and a half years ago, I found myself in the midst of the worst pain I have known in my almost thirty years of life. Through the intricate web of youthful activities I involved myself in as a teenager and during my early twenties, I managed to weave for myself a lower back condition that I have to deal with every day. There are things I know not to do. There are things I simply can’t do. There are things I decide to do anyway and pay dearly for over the course of the following weeks (i.e. – roller coasters at Cedar Point). And it all came to a head some thirty months ago.

After a simple day of cleaning at church, I knelt down to straighten two speaker wires on stage and felt a sharp pinch in my low back. Having had some moderate back pain before, I figured I had just “over-done-it” and my back was letting me know.

Not the case this time.

No, not at all.

This time, I had finally placed the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. Only, it wasn’t a proverb or set of instructions I had messed up…it was my back.

After crawling through the sanctuary and laying on my back for about twenty minutes, I made the brilliant decision that it was time for me to go home. So, I hobbled out to the car and started the fifteen minute trek home. Not a long time in standard, just-heading-home dialect. But in “slipped-disc world,” that was an eternity to put unneeded pressure on an already injured area.

It only continued to get progressively worse from there. I could fill this post with a play-by-play of the next few day in order to get my point across that I really, REALLY hurt myself badly. But that is not the point here. Do know, however, that my next week of work was completely missed. I slept on my living room floor every night. I spent a day army crawling on my stomach to get around the house. I couldn’t stand but for ten seconds at a time before collapsing to the floor in agony. And capping off the whole experience was the fact that my Dad had to hold me up in order that I might use the restroom. This was no game. It was serious and it was incredibly painful.

And up until a few days ago, I really didn’t know where to place this whole experience in my mind. It was awful and I’ve learned what not to do in order that I don’t have to go through all that again. But it still was horrible. I figured it was to be placed forever in the “Life Just Sucks Sometimes” file. End of story.

But that is not the case.

In The Bible, God tells us that He “causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28) The key word in this is ALL. That means all. Everything. Good, bad, or ugly, all means all!

Now, back to a few days ago. I am at the office, ready to leave, and weary from a long day. A new patient calls in, gets directions, and heads our way around 3:00pm. So I’m thinking to myself, “This will be good thing. New patients are good. We’ll get her in and out well before 5:00pm, and that is also good. She just needs to get here so we can get rolling on this and I can go home.”

The next two hours found us still waiting for this person to show up. She had no cell phone and only a loose grip on the directional fortitude it would take to navigate herself here from Hodgenville. And on top of that, we were having a storm roll in. In simple terms…she was horribly late. And I was ready to leave.

Lo and behold, five o’clock rolls around and she rolls up into the parking lot. Apologetically, she explains that she was very lost and is so glad she finally found us. I, on the other hand, was getting more angry with this woman by the moment. She was late, ignorant, and causing me to stay severely overtime on a day that I just wanted to go home.

So, the at-least-one-hour-long new patient procedure began. Paperwork (slowly), consultation (slowly), exam (slowly) and x-rays (even more slowly). I just swallowed down the fact that I would be at work until 6:30 and dealt with it. My tone quickly changed, though, when I performed the examination on her.

After one particular test, her back went into spasm, a severe and incredibly painful reaction to the pinching of a nerve. You see, she was dealing with precisely the same issue I had a few years ago. And in that moment where her pain became completely tangible, I was shell-shocked. My heart broke completely. I saw in the agony on her face the exact same pain I had once felt. The pain that I would never wish upon my worst enemy. The pain that I can still remember with such precision that it can make me nauseous.

And as this occurred, my heart did a 180. From angry and impatient to kind and willing to do whatever was in my power to help this woman. From self-centered and judgemental to giving and understanding.

What provoked this? Where did this come from?

Simple. An honest response to a familiar situation. I could truly empathize with this woman, and God used that to leverage kindness and humility in my heart. Where I was so caught up in my time and my wants and my needs, I found myself humbled once God used a past hurt to open my eyes to someone else’s similar pain.

And that’s the point. Situations that cause pain, fear, worry and doubt are so quickly discarded as unnecessary and useless. We plead with God to remove them and protect us from them. We hope “it will never happen to me.” And I’m here to tell you, you can hope in one hand and crap in the other and see which one gets full first.

Problems will come.

Pain will come.

Fear will come.

Worry will come.

So what will you do with them when they do? Will you discard them as annoyance? As irritation? As a something that disrupts your happiness and contentedness? If I’m honest, that’s what I do. But I’m learning in my life to find God’s work in the midst of the difficult stuff. When I’m sweating and sick to my stomach and tired and achy and weary and worn down, I’m learning that it is in those times that God is teaching me something. And in my poor devotion to Him, I fail to see it most times. But sometimes, I get it. Sometimes I learn. I see His devotion and faithfulness to me right in the middle of my lack of faithfulness to Him. I see His goodness in response to my weakness. I see a God who truly causes all things to work together for my good. I see faithfulness in unfaithfulness…and it blows my mind.

- Robby Payne

Last week we began a series of posts dealing with “Quiet Time.” We discussed the importance and motivation of our approach in coming to the text with both sharp minds and pliable hearts to meet Jesus.

This week moving forward and zooming in a bit I want to focus on the art of listening. If you’re like me, that can be difficult. Think about it—when is the last time you really sat still and intently listened to someone? It takes a great deal of patience and restraint to allow someone to do the talking while we are on the receiving end. So how can we learn to listen to God when we open up the Bible?

I want to talk about two different kinds of listening that play a role in us discerning God’s voice.

1) Active Listening

2) Passive Listening

What do I mean by these terms? At face value, one of these seems to be preferable to the other, right? Especially if you are a woman! We all want an active listener when we are talking. They are the listeners that make great eye contact and affirm what you are saying by restating facts that you have shared with them. They give gestures that show they are interested in what’s being said. Active listeners tend to be empathetic and relate to the one sharing with them. They can restate the conversation that you just have had in detail. On the other hand we have the passive listeners. The ones who are texting as you are talking, or cutting you off in mid sentence to share a point that they think is important. It is sometimes distracting when you are speaking with a passive listener, because you don’t think they are getting any of the fine details that you are trying to share. In fact, more often than not, if you have them tell you the conversation back to you they get the gist of what you have said, but miss the points that are necessary to fully understand what’s going on. Even though active listeners are great there are often times that the main point is completely missed in a conversation, because they get so hung up on the details. Likewise, passive listening only misses the real meat of a conversation. We need both.

Our reading of the Bible needs to have a regular diet of both flavors of listening to get the full “taste” of Scripture. If not we can become imbalanced in the way we read and lose the ability to hear from God as clearly as we would like. Let me give you an example of passive and active listening: Let’s say that I am beginning a study of the book of James and I am an active listener so the details mean everything. I focus on every word in detail and all of a sudden I come to James 2:24, that tells me that I am not saved by faith alone, but works are required. Immediately I log that away in my brain that I have to do good things in order to be saved in addition to trusting in Jesus. In fact, in Christian history some people have negated the book of James because of this very reason. In the same breath if I approach this same passage in a passive way as I skim read through the book of James I will quickly come to the conclusion that that can’t be right because my general understanding of the Bible tells me that Jesus is the only way. So I choose to skim over it and not think twice about it. I don’t take the time to listen to what’s being said.

In both situations there are great flaws. One zooms in too far and can’t see what is really being said, and the other zooms way out and misses the main point of the text…which is what we want to get in order to be good listeners. However, if we take both an active and passive listening mentality into this passage it begins to make more sense. By having a passive ear to this book I can see that James is writing people to inform them of how those who are already Christians should be living. This is an important backdrop to have as I study the rest of the book. By actively listening to this text I can zoom in on James 2:24 up close and realize that my understanding of this specific passage has to come from the understanding of the general writing in James. By doing this I can clearly see that James is simply saying that real faith produces actions not to earn faith, but as an expression of faith.

When we read in our study we have to develop a habit of reading the Bible with a general and specific understanding. Together they can help us position ourselves to hear from God. It is then that we can begin to have a true listening heart to what Jesus has to say to us. This is one step in becoming a good listener of the Bible.

About five years ago, I stumbled upon something that altered my perception of coffee forever.

Eight O’Clock Coffee – Columbia – Whole Bean.

I say stumbled because honestly, I would never have looked at this little, unassuming bag of coffee beans and thought, “That looks like a great coffee.”

It doesn’t.  It’s maroon (I think…I’m color-blind, so I’m not so sure) and has the company’s logo on the front.  That’s about it.  There are no flashy designs.  No “Best Coffee You’ve Ever Had!” stickers or signs on it.  It pretty much looks like it has for the past 150 years (though I hear they are looking at making a “new look” for their 150th anniversary).  And I think I just picked it up on a frugal whim because it was recommended by a friend.

You see, this particular brand of coffee has a great selling point…it’s ridiculously cheap!  As a matter of fact, I picked up a 12oz. bag last week for a whopping $3.64 at Wal-Mart.

Yes, I said $3.64!

You pay at least that for the decrepit awfulness we all know as Taster’s Choice.  I cringe at the thought of “crystals” you mix into water to create a more dirty water that masquerades as coffee.  It’s also cheaper than the sadly-roasted and poor-tasting Folgers and Maxwell House coffees that so many are fooled into thinking are the benchmarks for “good coffee.”  But that is altogether beside the point, so I’ll move on.

The point here, however, is this stuff is dirt-cheap.  And so am I, so we make a great team!  (I prefer frugal, but I have to just be honest sometimes.)  And for this paltry price, you would never expect to be ushered into a truly great coffee-drinking experience.  I didn’t.

But as I enjoyed my first cup of a thousands-cup relationship with this coffee, I was truly impressed.  I couldn’t believe the quality.  Just the right amount of body.  Smooth.  Complex.  Satisfying.  Flat-out, a stellar cup of coffee.

As time went by, I found myself recommending it to others, bragging about the inexpensive alternative to Starbucks and other over-priced “gourmet” coffees.  I found plenty of people switching to Eight O’Clock after trying it and willing to come to my defense as I attempted to tout this poorly-named but full-bodied roast to coffee snobs much like myself.  You just can’t argue with taste.  You can’t argue with quality.  You can’t argue with good-ness.

But you can write it off.  Everyone’s tastes are different.  ”I like what I drink, you like what you drink.”

“Don’t push that ‘try mine and see’ stuff on me.”

A polite nod and grin as if to say, “That’s real nice that you like it.  I’m sure it’s great.  I’ll try it sometime.”

These are all responses I recieved when telling folks about this great discovery.  I had no facts.  Just opinions.  Just feelings.  Just a hunch that what I had happened upon here was really worth telling others about.

But that all changed about two months ago when my sister-in-law brought me a magazine that is a food-version of Consumer Reports.  You know, the famous magazine where they test and rate everything under the sun?  Well, this magazine does that with food products, and there just happened to be an article in there about coffee.  Sounded interesting, so I dug in and got right to the coffee section.

There before me were all sorts of coffees pitted against one another.  Big brands.  Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts…you name it, it was there.  And this was a panel.  No one-sided, opinionated choices here.  It was a taste-test done by committee.  It was sure to prove which was best.

And guess who won?

Eight O’Clock Coffee – Columbia – Whole Bean!

Yeah baby!  Sweet!  I was substantiated!  I was proven!  I was right!

But, to be honest, it didn’t change anything.  Yes, my original opinion had been backed up and I could feel pretty good about the fact that I had peddled this stuff for the last five years, but what real difference did that make?

None.

My personal experience and gut-feelings were still the exact same.  My consumption levels are still the exact same.  My message to people about the killer coffee with the small price tag remains the same.

Strange.

We watched a video entitled “Everything is Spiritual” a few weeks ago at Open House.  And in it, Rob Bell does a wonderful job of giving many facts that basically beg you to debate that there is no God.  You walk away from this video so amazed at our Father.  So amazed at His ability to create.  So amazed at the sheer size of The One who made the universe.

But as exciting as facts and numbers and proofs for God can be, it can never really create faith in God.

We find what we want to find, I suppose.

And we are left with what we experience in our lives.  We are left with what we know deep down in our soul.  We are left to decide about this God not because we are convinced of his reality, but because we are confronted by it.  We tell others because we know this Savior is the most amazing thing we have ever experienced, not because a panel of experts say that he is.

While all the facts and apologetic reasoning substantiate our faith, we can never attempt to make it the cornerstone of our faith.  We must realize that all the searches for answers to all the questions about Jesus are not bad, but they are not the reason and are not the purpose of our faith.  Jesus is the reason.  Jesus is the purpose.  Jesus is the Cornerstone.  To quote a great line from an artist I love to listen to named Jimmy Needham:  ”Christ is what Christ offers.”

That’s it.  May we not ever confuse the greatness of the Gospel simply with answers to life’s questions.  May we never get lost in the rat-race of trying to have the answer to every question about God.  May we always be satisfied to live in the middle of God’s mystery.  May we be willing to share about Jesus not because we can prove He is the only way, but simply because we just know He is.  And may we always see the truth of Jesus for what it is:  Personal, powerful, life-changing, and utterly compelling.

– Robby Payne