Happy Friday! I want to shoot for at least 30 verses here, so please leave a Bible verse!

What is your favorite Bible verse(s)? Do you have it memorized?

My favorite passage is:

Romans 12: 1-2

A Living Sacrifice

 ¹ Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I wouldn’t call myself a hymn person—per-say. Don’t get me wrong, I like hymns as much as the next Gen-Xer, but they aren’t my first choice if I want to listen to worship music. However, I feel like the language and tradition in many classic hymns puts much of our “contemporary” worship music to shame. And, no, this is not a post on worship styles—so don’t worry.

PLEASE HIT PLAY AND THEN CONTINUE TO READ!

One of the things that makes some hymns great, in my humble opinion, is how a piece of music, and the message within, will stand the test of time, and Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing has surely endured the test of time!

Written in 1757 (that’s 255 years ago, people!) by Pastor, and hymnist, Robert Robinson, Come Thou Fount has gained recent popularity being covered by bands like David Crowder and Jars of clay—just to name a few.

At the age of 17 Roberts, as the story goes, was involved with a questionable group of friends, and started sensing a needed change in his life. So he convinced a group of friends to go see the famous Methodist preacher, George Whitefield, so that he and his friends could heckle the minister while he was giving his message. unbeknownst to his friends Roberts had ulterior motives for the visit, and so did God.

That day Whitefield preached on Matthew 3:7.

After hearing that message Roberts left feeling a deep sense of conviction and dread. That message remained with Roberts until the age of 20, when he publicly declared that he would enter the ministry and live a life dedicated to the message of the cross.

Two years later, at the young age of 22, Roberts penned the hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

Come thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
I’ll praise the mount I’m fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love

Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by Thy help I come
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wondering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above

My favorite stanza from this hymn is:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above

This last verse may have been foreshadowing a season in Roberts life. Although unverifiable— the story goes that one day, many years after writing the hymn, Roberts boarded a stagecoach in which a young lady happen to be humming Come Thou Fount. When the lady asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming— he responded, “Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then.”

Do you have a favorite hymn? what is it? what is your favorite line from it? Do you know the story behind your favorite hymn?

Diner Christianity

We started a new series in The Underground this week called “Diner-Christianity.”  It’s a creative, conversational, out of the box, attempt for us to relate the characteristics of our faith journey back to different types of eating environments or establishments.

Another way to say it is, “If my faith journey is an eating establishment what kind of eating establishment would it be?” (I know, only in America, right?)

We launched the series on Sunday with the topic of “fast-food Christianity.”  The conversation and teaching focused on areas of our faith journey that look more like a trip to Taco Bell than the journey toward discipleship.  (However, I will quickly mention that I do hear angels singing the Hallelujah chorus every-time I order a Double-Double from In & Out Burger.)  I know, at times, I am guilty of fast food (drive-thru) Christianity, and here is one simple example of some of the things we talked about on Sunday.

Convenient!

Take a minute to think about two of the main reasons that we go to fast food “restaurants.”  We frequent places like McDonald’s because they are fast and cheap.  It doesn’t cost a lot of time or money to go through a Taco Bell drive thru, although there might be some weight and health issues at some other time.

Fast-Food Christianity is just that—fast and cheap, but with the potential for long term challenges.  With fast food faith you are “done” in an hour a week (church service) and your faith has little, if any, implication (cost) on the rest of your life, actions, dreams, finances, future or character.  Simply stated, there are times in my life where I want a faith that is quick, easy, and that doesn’t cost a lot.

Of course the challenge with fast food faith is that the Bible says, in several passages, that following Jesus has a very real cost.  Jesus himself talks about the cost at the end of the Sermon on the Mount where he tells his followers that people are going to persecute you “because of me.”

Matthew 5:10-12

¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

In Luke 14, Jesus implores the large crowds to consider the cost of following him in the same way a builder understands the implications of constructing a new building, or a king considering the cost of going to war. And, at the end of his recruitment pitch, (sarcasm) Jesus makes it clear exactly what the cost to follow him is—everything!

Luke 14:25-33

The Cost of Being a Disciple

²⁵ Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ²⁶ “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.²⁷ And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

²⁸ “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?²⁹ For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,³⁰ saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

³¹ “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?³² If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.³³ In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

Many times I want my “faith order” to look more like a “happy meal” than the mysterious, dangerous and scandalous meal that we see at the last supper. One of the real byproducts of fast food faith is that it reduces Jesus down to the part of  a loveable fast food corporate mascot (be it clown or king) and turns heaven into nothing more than the chintzy prize that comes with the meal.

Infographic by Assisted Living Today – Assisted Living Facilities

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have no doubt heard about the bills (Protect IP/SOPA) that congress is trying to pass that will potentially change the landscape of the internet forever. Some of the internet’s biggest names (Wikipedia, Word-Press, You Tube, Google, and others) launched an affective counter attack, by going dark, (shutting down their site) or by posting messages on their home pages, in order to raise awareness and force congress to stop these bills—before they become laws.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
At almost the same time Apple launched iBooks Author, an application that lets anyone publish an electronic book, to iBooks, for free. Yes, for free.

Why am I bringing all this up? Well, I am wondering if we are living in a special moment in history? Will our grandchildren talk about this era, where the internet is maturing, as one of the biggest game changers, in the human experience, since the printing press? How old is the internet in human years? is it a toddler? adolescent? 20′s 30′s 40′s? Is it all hype? And, my last question, with all this change moving AMAZINGLY fast, do we have a responsibility as people of faith? What is that responsibility? Do you see the internet as a way to fill the great commission or the great commandment? How will it change the Church?

Significance

I don’t know about you, but I have a constant battle that rages inside me for significance. I want to matter. I want to matter to God, to my wife, my kids, the people at church, my friends, my family, and even to perfect strangers.  But sometimes (more than I like to admit) I catch myself  going about the search for significance in the wrong ways. When I read this poem by Dr. James Allan Francis (1926) I am reminded that, sometimes, significance comes when we are being insignificant.

One Solitary Life — by Dr. James Allan Francis

Let us turn now to the story. A child is born in an obscure village. He is brought up in another obscure village. He works in a carpenter shop until he is thirty, and then for three brief years is an itinerant preacher, proclaiming a message and living a life.

He never writes a book.

He never holds an office.

He never raises an army.

He never has a family of his own.

He never owns a home.

He never goes to college.

He never travels two hundred miles from the place where he was born.

He gathers a little group of friends about him and teaches them his way of life. While still a young man, the tide of popular feeling turns against him. One denies him; another betrays him. He is turned over to his enemies. He goes through the mockery of a trial; he is nailed to a cross between two thieves, and when dead is laid in a borrowed grave by the kindness of a friend.

Those are the facts of his human life. He rises from the dead. Today we look back across nineteen hundred years and ask, What kind of trail has he left across the centuries? When we try to sum up his influence,

all the armies that ever marched,

all the parliaments that ever sat,

all the kings that ever reigned

are absolutely picayune in their influence on mankind compared with that of this one solitary life…

One Solitary Life: by Dr James Allan Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” © 1926 by the Judson Press of Philadelphia (pp 123-124 titled “Arise Sir Knight!”).

Religion Vs. Jesus
I know I have been posting a lot of videos lately, but I would really like to see what you thought about this one. Do you agree? Disagree? If any—what is your favorite line? If any—what line gives you pause? I would love to see a good dialogue on this one.

Do you fly much? Have you ever been stuck on the runway waiting for takeoff? Well, these Air-Trans passengers were stuck in their plane during an extended maintenance check, but what they didn’t know was that they were on board with the Indiana Wesleyan University Chorale. GIVE ME JESUS!

A friend showed me this video yesterday, and I have watched it at least 5 more times trying to pick my favorite line! What say you?

Most of you know that I am a BIG I Am Second fan.  Chris has a great story and I hope you will be encouraged by it.  What is your favorite part of Chris’s story? Do you relate to any of his story? Please support I am Second by visiting their website and spreading the word!

My name is Barry Hill—and I am second!