Pastor Matt's Blog

rest

all of this talk of discipline in the Christian life is good but perhaps i have neglected to emphasize one thing that is very important to me- REST and PLAY

without making this more profound than it is i observed that i often feel guilty about not getting more done in any given day.  Sometimes my day is overwhelmed with calls emails and meetings of various types and to simply read the Bible and pray seems enough.  After all this it is easy to feel guilty about a few hours of "chilling out" but we forget one simple fact.

our Savior Himself though totally surrounded by people and responsibilities was also on foot most of the time, with no cell phone and no email.  Topping this off we see him walk to lonely places to pray.  When i go pray i feel i have gone out of my way if i take 10 minutes getting where i a going but Jesus on foot very likely took hours traveling just to pray.  This is amazing to me being connected as it were almost all of the time- it is truly out of this world.

The point is many of us need to be disciplined about resting, time in the Word and prayer.  Not just a bit but serious time.  Perhaps I will take a day off every month to go to a mountain :)

what do you think?

Mosab Hassan Yousef--> Barabbas Road Church

Joseph has much to teach the Christian community in regards to Islam and faith but for today i think there is much to see in the very fact of his fame.  He is in interview after interview speaking about the radical change in his life and its impact in the world.  

Culture is affected by and through Disciples- yet the church attempts to make change through social programs and such.  When is the Church going to wake up and realize that Ephesus was turned upside down, not because people painted schools but because people made real disciples of Jesus Christ.  Real disciples cannot help but change the world around them.  If the Church truly wants to impact the world let us remember the great commission and begin to really make disciples.  Let us stop being distracted with social programs as a goal or mission of the church and begin to see them as results and by products of real disciple-making in action.  If we really want to effect La Jolla and Pacific Beach we need to affect the people.  But to do that we need to first begin with ourselves- we need to truly be disciples and not just Christian converts.  

 Let us remember that the great culture changer and the key in the so-called culture war is not legislation, policy or even fighting terror but in making disciples of Christ- God let us remember the Great Commission.