“We must have a seven-days’ religion, or else we have none at all. Periodical godliness is perpetual hypocrisy” – Spurgeon
Category Archives: Spiritual Life
Stop Avoiding Responsibility…
The other day I was at a seminar where the speaker said that many aging men he’s met say, “My life would be good if it weren’t for this one thing someone did back in….” He noted that such comments betray a failure on the part of those men to take responsibility for their own lives.
In his book, The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck speaks clearly about this tendency to avoid responsibility.
“This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. Since most of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree, lacking complete mental health. Some of us will go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality. In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, ‘Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.'” The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, pp. 16-17.
Peck’s dead on.
Easter Sermon — What the Resurrection Means
Easter speaks to us concerning what it means to be a Christian, and how that connects with the Resurrection of Christ.
Jesus isn’t special just because of his teachings. There have been many good teachers in history. Jesus isn’t special because he died. Lots of people died. The thing that makes Jesus special – the thing that makes his teaching, his death, and his life special – is his resurrection. The reality of his resurrection makes it possible for you and me to live exceptional lives. Christians are to live exceptional lives.
Now, I am sure you’ve met people who claim to be Christians, but their life doesn’t look that different from those who make no such claim. And, if you’re like me, that’s a huge turn-off. Pretending to be something you aren’t – that’s hypocrisy. I hate it. You hate it. Jesus hated it. He referred to people who pretended to be good as “white-washed tombs.” They looked good on the outside, but on the inside, they were filled with dead man’s bones. There was no resurrection to their lives. They were still dead in their sins.
A person who fails to demonstrate that Christ has made a difference in his or her life is likely not a Christian at all. Being a Christian is about being changed from the inside out. When Peter references the Resurrection of Christ he speaks of that change.
This sermon addresses the difference the new birth makes in our lives.
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