Saturday, October 20, 2012

Week 3 with Jonathan Morrow


I feel like I am going to end up apologizing each week at the beginning of my blog but I promise I will try really hard not to this next week! That being said I feel like I have so much I want to talk about and so little time to get it all down. I just finished watching the Vice-Presidential debates; first off I keep forgetting Missouri is not on Eastern Time… so I missed the first hour of the debate. So now I get to go back and watch the whole thing again before I can talk about how much I dislike Joe Biden. Also I have a soccer game tonight at 11:30 which should be interesting since I haven’t played soccer in years.

All right! Now that that’s out of the way let’s get down to the good stuff…

This week we had Jonathan Morrow, the author Think Christianly and several other books. This man is incredible. He spent three days going over how to defend our faith. Let me say that I already love this stuff. It’s something I just get stoked about.

Right off the bat we hit the ground running. We started by asking the question, “Does truth exist?” We talked about how claims of truth can be split into 2 categories: subjective and objective. Basically we discussed how people are entitled to their own beliefs BUT they are not entitled to their own truth. Then we went into what our job as believers is during apologetics, which is to: Respond to Objections; Make a Case, and Give Hope. As we discussed this I felt convicted because I know that in the times I’ve discussed the Bible with people who don’t believe in it or question things about God, I usually skip the last and definitely most important step. I get into the heat of the argument/debate so strongly that I end up losing focus on why I am having this conversation and will just try to show the person why they are wrong and feel as if I’ve accomplished something. Which I have done - I showed the person I was speaking to that I can argue with them, but they know nothing more of the Lord.

We also learned several arguments that we can make which will lead to proving the existence of God and in turn give us an opening to share more from Scripture. One was the “Kalam Cosmological Argument” which is actually very simple and just deductive reasoning. Here’s a simplified version of it.

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause

2) The universe began to exist

3) Therefore the universe has a cause

From here we can move the conversation to how if time began it must have come from something timeless; if matter began to exist it has to come from something immaterial, etc. 

It’s so much more complicated, but I love that instead of starting with conflict you focus on things that anyone would agree on and then you can take things step by step and create minimal confrontation to make your point. Not that I am against confrontation, but once people get heated they tend to stop listening to the message you are presenting and are focused on doing the same to you and you end up gridlocked.
 

We also looked at arguments for God’s existence from the angle of design. How things came to be. I thought the coolest example he gave us was Mt. Rushmore. He asked us if we knew who created it, and when none of us could answer, he asked if we could still be certain that it was created or was it just a happenstance of nature. He extended this metaphor to the world - just because we can’t say we saw God make the world doesn’t mean that we can throw away an Almighty Creator of the world.

I love history, and we discussed just a few things to support the existence of Jesus and His resurrection. We have recorded accounts from Roman officials of Jesus’ death and the “strange doings” that happened after. Then the fact that every one of Jesus’ disciples died for this belief in His resurrection - why would men do that who knew it to be a lie? Another thing was that Jesus first appeared to women. At this period of history women’s testimony meant nothing, so if you were going to have a believable story of a risen Lord you wouldn’t use the word of women.

Honestly I have like 15 pages of notes of stuff; I have so much left to process. I love what we went over and I think it has given me a greater boldness for defending my faith.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Week 2 with Mike Aleckson


I apologize in advance for the terrible intro but I’ll be honest, I have no idea how to do this nonsense with a “blog.” So that’s going to be my intro… moving on.

This week we had Mike Aleckson come speak to us. He was a business man who felt called by the Lord to go into full time ministry and now works at Compassion International. He also spent some time working at KIVU, which is pretty cool because I went there back in the day.

Anyways, he has spent the week with us going over a historical timeline of the Bible. It’s crazy because he used to teach as a college course over this material and he was attempting to take a whole semesters worth of material and package it into three days. It’s a bit like drinking from a fire hydrant but it has been awesome! I love history already and for the first time in years I get to listen to the history of the Bible from someone who actually believes in the inerrancy of God’s word.

This whole week I have learned a lot but here are 5 things that really stood out to me this week,

1)      We discussed the Messianic Expectation starting in Isaiah, Daniel, and all the way through the Jews time of exile. I think that sometimes it’s hard for me to understand how the Jews of Jesus time couldn’t see that he was their Messiah. I can only imagine that for hundreds of years being told that I would one day have a savior who was going to be like King David then seeing some peaceful man would be hard to change that mentality. I think this knowledge will help me to speak one of my good friend who is Jewish and be able to better articulate why Jesus was the Messiah and understand why he doesn’t believe that.

2)      We spent some time talking about Matthew 5:48 which says “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I’ll be honest this was a verse again that was hard for me because I know that I can never be perfect, I mean impossible right? We learned the original Greek word in this verse for “perfect” is “teleion” which means to strive and work towards your goal that you were created for, to become more like God. Not that I feel like this means I don’t have to strive to be “perfect” but I need to strive to become more like the Lord and because of that I will be closer to His unattainable perfection.

3)      Another really awesome thing was that we talked about how our “psyche” is our dealing with our soul, which includes both our logic and emotions; these 2 things are therefore deeply connected. The reason I think it’s cool, is because in our JBU health course we had just read an article about basically the same thing. I know that I need to take better care of my body and spirit and I can do that by working in the other area. That last statement may not have made a ton of sense but basically the more rested I am the better decisions I will make, the better I can focus on spending time with the Lord reading his Word and praying. Inversely I know that when my life is right with God my physical abilities have always exploded and have been the times I’ve bee most successful in my career.

4)      Also this is something I knew beforehand but it was just a reaffirmation of my thoughts. In the Abrahamic covenant God tells Abram about he will make a great nation from his seed and they will be his people and be blessed etc. Also the Lord says that He will bless those who bless his people and curse those who curse them. I think that America is on a knifes edge, we have always been Israel’s greatest advocate and I believe that our nation has been blessed because of this. Those in leadership of our nation do not respect Israel and would see America no longer support Gods people. It’s scary to think about losing the Lords blessing on our nation and I will continue to try and get people, especially Christians to understand why we need someone to lead our nation who will support Israel.  

5)      One of the last things that we spoke about was heaven and how when the Lord returns and creates a new heaven and earth, will he destroy everything or will he keep those things which are honoring and good to Him? Because if so wouldn’t we want to live our lives in a way that what we pour ourselves into won’t be turned ash at the Lords coming. I know that I don’t and wherever I end up working or doing with my life, I will do all I can to honor the Lord with it, so that he can use it in His new kingdom.

Sorry if my points all seem boring and long winded, I love all the old stuff, meaning of words and the way history progresses and then looking at how I fit into it. I can’t begin to explain how grateful I am to have the chance to come to Link Year and be blessed by others teaching. I look forward to seeing how the Lord shapes and fits me into His eternal plan.