All posts in category Life

Who Are You?

Who are you? This is a question that is often asked as one is just starting to get to know people. How do you identify yourself primarily? Are you a Christian? A college student? A Starbucks barista? How do you identify yourself?

I read an article today titled ‘Facing the Truth‘ that encourages one to view themselves as they truly are: fallen and in need of a Savior. It says:

But you see, the story we tell ourselves is skewed. There comes a time when we need to sit and take account of how we’re spending our lives, like at the doctor’s office or with the budget, and be reminded that we are not who we think we are. We need Jesus more than we allow ourselves to admit.

“We are not who we think we are.” So many people refuse to admit that they are fallen and daily in need of a Savior. In the hours I’ve been awake today, I have sinned more times than I can count and am worthy of eternal damnation. But thanks be to God that I have a Savior who took the penalty for me and continues to extend grace to me.

Do you realize your need for a Savior on a daily basis? Are there things in your life that you need to let go in order to better realize that need? And if you’re not a believer, what is keeping you from putting your complete trust in Jesus? You will not realize how great your Savior is until you realize how great of a sinner you are.

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on May 9, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blog, Life, Theology
Tagged , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on May 9, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/09/who-are-you/

Practicing for Heaven

Do you ever practice for anything? I have at least one practice every week for music on Sundays, and usually I have two practices. When I was growing up I practiced basketball for hours on end and my parents forced me to practice piano. These days my practice generally falls into two categories: reading and music. I read so I can grow in my knowledge of God and I practice music because I love it and because it’s part of my job.

Have you ever thought about anything on earth that we are practicing for heaven? My dad wrote a couple pieces recently on music (The Church’s Corporate Singing: Reflecting the Now and the Not-Yet-Ness of the Kingdom, and The Singing Church: Praise, Prayer and Proclamation). I also just recently finished reading ‘Rhythms of Grace‘ by Mike Cosper, a fantastic book I strongly recommend if you think through anything related to worship. Through my dialogue with my dad and reading that book I was reminded that singing songs together today is practicing for what we will one day do in heaven. 1 Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter says, “As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” So many things people on earth put so much stock in today will eventually pass away, and what will remain? God’s love.

Revelation also paints a picture of us singing praises to our God, starting in Revelation 4 with the four creatures and twenty-four elders, continuing in Revelation 15 singing the song of Moses, and finally the great multitude in heaven praising God in Revelation 19. We are a people who sing praises to our God, and we are a people who will be singing praises to God for all eternity. Preaching will someday be done, because we will be in the very presence of God! Teaching will someday cease because God will reveal himself to us! But singing is something we will get to do for all eternity. So do you regularly sing praises to God, or are you too worried about what those around you will think? Do you view singing as a way to practice for heaven?

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on May 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life
Tagged ,

Posted by mikethestrand on May 8, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/08/practicing-for-heaven/

Always Content

One thing that’s been on my mind a lot recently is that I’m turning 25 this year. Now I know in the big scheme of things and compared to many of the people that I spend a good deal of time with, that isn’t very old, but I sure do feel it. “I feel thin, stretched, sort of like butter scraped over too much bread,” in the wise words of Bilbo Baggins. This has led to the beginnings of a quarter-life crisis for me: what am I doing with my life and why? One of my reactions to that is to begin my seminary training, but the other thing I’m learning to do is to always be content. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” I know so many people who complain about living in Cheyenne, Wyoming which isn’t the thriving metropolis of a Denver or Minneapolis. Yet as Mark Driscoll says, the boring seems to follow them wherever they live.

I found an article titled ‘40 and Content,’ that gets this exact point. The main thrust of the article is: “Question: Instead of obsessing about changing the world, what if we just gave ourselves to living in glad obedience to Jesus in the trenches of an ordinary life?” That is a great question! In Paul David Tripp’s book ‘What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage‘ he says that life isn’t made up of a number of big choices, but of thousands of daily little choices. Being healthy isn’t one big decision to work out once and be done, but a daily decision to work out and eat healthier. Can you be content with an “ordinary” life lived in complete surrender to God?

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on May 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Life
Tagged , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on May 8, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/08/always-content/

On Avoiding Christian Scholarship

On an incredibly exciting note for myself, I am planning to begin my seminary education this fall! Cue the obscene amounts of caffeine and late nights. One of the things I struggle with in my pursuit of higher education is how to apply a text to my life and not just allow it to be an academic pursuit. Throughout most of my undergraduate education (pretty much until my final year of school) I was simply trying to get a passing grade in my classes until it suddenly struck me that I need to be applying what I learned to my life! (See Luke 12:48)

I found a very interesting post titled ‘On Avoiding Kierkegaard’s Indictment of Christian Scholarship‘ that is worth reading. Kierkegaard begins by saying,

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in this world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

What a scathing review of the academic pursuit of a believer! Yes, it is incredibly convicting to be alone with the New Testament, but because of my academic training and some very godly teachers, I have a proper lens through which to view the Scripture I’m reading. I know so many people who have a wrong interpretation of Scripture that ends up dictating their life (God helps those who help themselves, don’t judge lest you be judged). Without a proper background and training it’s so easy to pick and choose the pieces of the Bible you want to apply.

So I’m going to enter into seminary with a different perspective than I entered my undergrad work: with my eyes wide open to see how God wants to further rule in my life as I attempt to apply Scripture to my life. May He alone get all the glory!

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on May 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Life, Theology
Tagged , , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on May 8, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/08/on-avoiding-christian-scholarship/

Dual Hard Drives in My Mac

With technology changing faster than I can keep up, there is one new piece of technology I recently installed in my computer to help clear up some space and give me a MUCH faster computer. I got a solid state drive.

For those of you who don’t really know how computers work, your hard drive is your most fragile piece of the computer, and generally the most prone to fail. The way standard hard drives work is by spinning and using magnets, but when you use a laptop you’re generally moving around which can bump parts of the hard drive and cause it to fail. Today, solid state drives get rid of those spinning parts and operate much faster than a regular hard drive. BUT those solid state drives are generally much more expensive than regular hard drives. So what is the answer for someone on a pastor’s budget? Dual hard drives! I found on lifehacker (a tech blog) an article about how to have 2 hard drives installed in a MacBook Pro and I thought I’d give it a shot and I am already blown away!

The basic premise of doing this is to put all your apps and operating system on the solid state disc and leave all your files that take up much more space on the regular drive so you get speed of the solid state drive without sacrificing the space of a regular drive. You do lose the use of your CD drive in the process, but for the 2 times a month I use it I thought it was worth it. My programs are opening faster, my computer starts faster and I cleared up almost 50 GB of space on my hard drive. I would strongly recommend this for anyone who uses their computer for more than word processing.

You can order the CD drive replacement here, and I would recommend getting the bay for the optical drive, which lets you plug your CD drive into a USB plug and still use it. The solid state drive I bought was a Samsung drive that I found on NewEgg for $80. Let me know if you have any questions about this!

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on May 7, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Life, Technology
Tagged , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on May 7, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/07/dual-hard-drives-in-my-mac/

Saying ‘NO’ to Facebook

Many things have changed in my life over the past month, one of them being that I have given up facebook. I thought this would be a very difficult change for me to achieve, but it’s actually been a lot easier than I expected. So here are some things I’ve seen improve in my life through not having facebook.

First, I’ve become a lot more intentional at keeping up with my real friends. I had something like 900 “friends” on facebook, of those 900 friends, I actually regularly stay in touch with about 40 of them (including family and people who live very close to me). Not having facebook has forced me to get better at maintaining the relationships with those that I truly care about, and I am so grateful for things like texting that allow me to stay in touch with them very quickly.

Secondly, I’ve found myself getting a lot more creative. I’ve had to come up with new things to do to replace the down time I had where I would just sit and check facebook. It’s been very refreshing to not always wonder what’s being said, or who mentioned me in a comment or who has the newest pictures up. Tied in to this, I’ve been reading quite a bit more. There are so many resources out there that I’ve been trying to delve into that I have finally found the time to do.

Third, and most importantly in my mind, I find myself being much more present when I spend time with people. I don’t have facebook to fall back on if things get boring or there is a lull in the conversation, I need to force myself to be all there and focus on the person I’m spending time with.

So for you: do you find facebook taking over your life? How have you found ways that you can maintain real significant relationships with people apart from facebook? Do you think giving up facebook is a good thing to do?

1 Comment
by mikethestrand on May 3, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blog, Life, Technology
Tagged , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on May 3, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/03/saying-no-to-facebook/

Preparing Your Hearts and Minds

What do you do to prepare yourself for the gathering of God’s people on Sunday? Do you even take any time to prepare for this special meeting, or are you too concerned with getting there on time with everyone’s clothes on and hair combed?

One of the things I’ve been pondering lately is how I can help people to prepare for Sunday worship. Should we encouraged people to read and ponder the passage that will be preached the next week? Should we give thoughts for people to think about throughout the coming week? And if we do this, how many people would actually put in the effort to read and prepare?

It seems to me that many people assume that the only person who needs to prepare for Sunday’s worship service is the pastor. Yet Luke 8:18 says, “Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.” Those in the congregation need to attentively and actively listen.

A blog titled ‘Let the Word of Christ Dwell in You Richly‘ has the following example of this in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Bonhoeffer ran an underground seminary for theological students during the oppressive years of Nazi Germany. He was a very intelligent man who possessed immense critical capabilities. But in his homiletics classes as he listened to his students preaching, he always set aside his pencil and listened intently with his Bible open before him – no matter how poor the sermon was.

He believed that the preaching of God’s Word ought to be attended as if he were listening to the very voice of God. That is how I try to listen too – always looking to the text, always engaged, always thinking, always praying.

Jesus has called us to be sure we really hear the Word of God.

How attentively do you listen to the sermons in your church? How do you prepare for the Word to be preached? And if you do not do either of these things, why don’t you?

–For more on how to listen to a sermon, check out this blog.

1 Comment
by mikethestrand on May 1, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Theology
Tagged , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on May 1, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/01/preparing-your-hearts-and-minds/

Contextualization in the Church

The Gospel Coalition has a wonderful article today titled, ‘Don’t Throw Out Your Nice Suit Just Yet.‘ One of the most helpful paragraphs is:

It is interesting, then, to see church leaders intentionally get rid of these more traditional elements in order to contextualize the gospel. Churches all across our nation emphasize casual worship, and their pastors often sport graphic tees, jeans, and flip flops on Sunday mornings. They believe this approach will best reach a generation turned off by “churchiness.” However, while these churches may be contextualizing their church services for one particular demographic, they do not necessarily reach an entire generation.

This is where I think it’s very helpful to have multiple people on staff. One person cannot effectively reach an entire generation of people, but multiple people can. Tied into that, I don’t think that means that EVERY senior pastor needs to wear a suit when they preach, I think they should let their personality shine out in the way they dress. For me, I’m most comfortable in a button-up and jeans with a nice pair of Sperrys. The other two pastors wear slacks and button-ups every week! (I don’t really know how they do it!)

So yes, let’s not forget that not everyone is used to jeans and a T, but let’s not completely do away with them either. Wear what you’re comfortable wearing and praise God that he loves you not for your outward appearance, but for your heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on April 12, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blog, Church, Life
Tagged , , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on April 12, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/04/12/contextualization-in-the-church/

Waiting

Waiting it hard. Waiting is difficult. Waiting takes patience. Waiting is something God has been working on in my life over the past week. I don’t always know why God does what he does when he does in my life, but I’m learning and striving to trust him in the midst of the struggles. As Relient K said, “I struggle with forward motion/we all struggle with forward motion/cause forward motion is harder than it sounds/every time I gain some ground I’ve gotta turn myself around again” And David wrote in Psalm 37, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!” Be still and wait. In our culture that is so difficult! We have access to more information online than previous generations had in entire libraries, yet how often do we simply sit and wait?

I read a blog today titled ‘The “Right Time” God‘ that was really helpful for me this week. One of the most impactful things for me to read was:

But we see, in hindsight, see that God was not inactive during that time, but instead knew the right “when.” We know this of course. Of course we do.

Except we don’t.

We think we do, but our impatience and frustration betrays us. In fact, I wonder today how much sin might be avoided in my life if I really believed in the perfect timing of God. Every time I think I must manufacture an opportunity I show that I don’t believe.

I’m thankful God doesn’t work in my time table, and I continue to pray and trust that God will work things our for my good and his glory!

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on April 11, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blog, Life
Tagged , , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on April 11, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/04/11/waiting/

Lead the Church and Family

I found a fantastic article today titled, ‘Leading the Church While Leading Your Family.’ I was again reminded how grateful I am for my dad who, although he didn’t always put the family first, he still does his best to put us first. I’m grateful for the example of my dad and pray for the strength to put my family first when I, Lord wiling, have one. One of my favorite things from the article is:

Fourth, little things really do matter. Every night when I would say goodnight to my children, I would usually pray with them and then my last words to them were, “I love you. I will always love you and there is nothing that you can do that will ever make me stop loving you.” (There were times I would have to add, “But don’t push it!”) I did this night after night, year after year, until when I started in they would say with a sigh, “Yeah, I know Dad, and there is nothing that I can do that will ever make you stop loving me.” And I would respond, “And don’t you ever forget it.”

I wanted them to know that what I attempted to do imperfectly was done for them perfectly by God through Christ. I wanted them to know their acceptance and security was not rooted in their grades, awards, achievements, and success as the world defined it. They heard this before solos, piano competitions, spelling bees, basketball and soccer games, final exams, college entrance exams, and every night before bed.

One day I was at a track meet for my youngest daughter. I was screaming loudly as she ran her event when my other daughter called from college in great distress. She was facing a test of monumental importance that would determine the success or failure of her entire degree program, and she felt that she was cracking under the pressure. Four years was resting all on this! I reminded her that she was not sufficient for this, but that her confidence and rest was in Christ. I was eleven hours away. With my fist pumping the air for my youngest who was crossing the finish line in record time, I cried with my other daughter and prayed with her to rest in Christ. Then I said again. “Remember, I love you, I will always love and there is nothing that you can do to ever make me stop loving you.” She knew I would tell her that and just wanted to hear it.

What would your family say about you? For those of you who are single, what about the people in your church and your siblings and parents? Is Christ leading and guiding all your relationships?

Leave a comment
by mikethestrand on April 5, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships
Tagged , , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on April 5, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/04/05/lead-the-church-and-family/

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »