Jesus

Faith in a Modern Age

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

“He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

‘You have answered correctly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’

-Luke 10:27-28

What does it look like to truly follow Christ? I think so many times for us we wonder if what we are doing is the right thing, if we are allowed to do or say different types of things, or if we can associate with certain people. We need to stop. We need to break free of the mindset that faith is a set of rules. Faith with Christ is a relationship, an authentic relationship shared with the creator of all things. It’s so easy in the church world mindset that we have to follow a certain list of rules in order to be allowed in the club. Following Christ is not about earning enough gold stars to go to heaven, it’s about a relationship of love with the king of kings. This can be difficult. We live in a modern age where following Christ can be pushed to the side. We have endless entertainment and can post pictures of our bible on Instagram without ever actually reading it. The crazy thing is, this has been a struggle since Jesus came onto the scene. No they didn’t have hours of shows to stream on Netflix or some Jesus and coffee aesthetic to keep up with on Instagram. What they had was the core of the struggle, what does it look like to truly follow Christ?

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Counter Culture

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Culture is all around us. We are exposed to each of our cultures on a daily basis; the messages and ideas are thrown at us constantly, and we don’t even pick up on all of it. It’s so ingrained in each of us that these messages don’t even phase us anymore, things become normal. In our normalcy we become numb. I bring up this idea of culture because I study culture at my university. I am a communication studies major (not communications, you’d lose a hand if you said that to any of the professors), and in this field I am able to look at how messages are communicated to each other, and culture comes from this communication. A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication. Culture influences us, culture changes the way we think and culture has us accept things that they are normal, but we are weird. When you become weird, you can never go back to being normal.

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Triumph in Turmoil

/ Joshua Thomas / 1 Comment

“And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

Life can be really tough. We go through many trials and things we don’t understand, and if we’re honest, it’s hard to see the silver lining in everything. I know for me this is a hard concept to grasp. God tells us in scripture that he will use all things, but that idea of “all things” isn’t always the most joyful of times in our lives. I love that quote above from Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, because it is a picture of how God uses the tough times in our lives. You see life is full of blessings and good times, but it is equally filled with turmoil. The word turmoil means a state of great disturbance, confusion, or uncertainty. I think many times in our lives we are filled with disturbance, confusion, and uncertainty. Yet in all of it we can have triumph in the turmoil, because our God has already conquered the world, so we can stand strong through it all.

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Real Love

/ Joshua Thomas / 4 Comments

Ahh yes. Love is in the air, the Valentine season is upon us. This time of year is always fantastic in my family. My parents were married on Valentine’s Day and each year my dad gives my mom a decorated heart shaped box, our house is filled with them and it’s a beautiful sight to see. This time of year is great but it asks a question, what is love? (*cue the song “what is love” by Haddaway). We talk about love and loving things, but what does it mean to have a real love? Last week we uncovered the fact that we all have potential weirdness inside of us, meaning that we are in the family of Christ and that means we have been set apart. Part of being weird is an understanding of what real love is and what that looks like. The best part is, we don’t have to wonder what real love is. In children’s ministry we have been looking at love and our memory verse encapsulates what real love is. In the NIRV (one of the most down to earth bible translations) 1 John 4:10 says, “Here is what love is. It is not that we loved God. It is that he loved us and sent his Son to give his life to pay for our sins.” Real love is Christ dying for us.

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Let’s All Be Weird

/ Joshua Thomas / 6 Comments

I’ll never forget the first time I read a comic book. My dad and I were at my grandparents’ house, where he found an old box of comics that he had as a kid. The first one I read was The Amazing Spider-Man #132, “The Molten Man Strikes Again!” Pretty exciting stuff. I remember reading that and loving it, Spider-Man was a hero who stood up for people even when he faced terrifying villains (even though we’ll probably never see Molten Man in a movie). From this moment I knew I wanted to stand up for people, wanted to reach others for the kingdom of God. My parents always showed my sister and I the power of God in their lives, which in turn we were able to see the power of God in our own lives. In my life I have learned to view the world through this lens, a lens that says I can be a hero and that I can make a difference. That’s not normal, that’s weird.

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Remove the Mask

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For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.

Luke 8:17

We have a problem. One that affects every aspect of our lives and keeps us from true freedom. That problem is sin, or in other terms, a separation between us and God. In this sin we choose selfish desires and do selfish things, we live in a world that says anything you want is okay and totally fine. We create masks to fit in, to be someone we aren’t. As leaders and followers of Christ, we create these masks as well. Sometimes we put on our, “of course I read scripture in the morning like an inspiring Instagram post,” or, “I’ve never done something as bad as that.” The one that I think hurts us the most is, “I’m fine,” when we are most certainly not fine. You see we feel like we have to be a certain way or like certain things to be a follower of Christ, we think we have to be perfect people. The truth is, God used broken people and he wants to use you. If you’re saying to yourself, “I’m not broken, I follow all the rules I’m supposed to,” this post is for you. If you’re also saying, “I feel like I can’t be who I am to really follow Christ,” this post is also for you. God made us unique and special, he made us to live in the light, and he doesn’t want us to hide behind our masks any longer.

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Responsibility for All

/ Joshua Thomas / 1 Comment

The past few weeks for our world have been incredibly distressing. There have been mass killings, anger, and hatred from all over. In America we are in the midst of a presidential race, one in which both sides are fueled by hatred of the other, with us as citizens being caught in their crossfire. We’ve seen our own people turn on each other because of choices by sinful men. We see the media like CNN and Fox News have a constant stream of these events causing myself and others to fear, while they also push bias onto us. Our world is chaotic, it is a lost place, and it needs Jesus. I wish we lived in a world that was peaceful and we never had to struggle, but the truth is, we will never obtain that on our own. This all steams from the first sin, when Adam and Eve chose to live independently from God. That choice created a disconnect, one that separated us from God. In that, the world was introduced to sin, so God chose to send his son much later into the world. Jesus was fully man and fully God, and in so he died for us and rose again. Because of that act, we can enter back into a relationship with Christ. I hope you have made that choice, and if you have, it has left you with a responsibility. You see, while Jesus was on earth, he taught everyone he could about the word and how to act. His teachings on the way we should be, is the responsibility, and it is one we all must follow if we want to see change.

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Overcoming the Second Son Mentality

/ Joshua Thomas / 1 Comment

This past week I had the opportunity to go on our church’s high school mission trip to Fuge Camps in Louisville, Kentucky. I always love being able to do this, it’s such a great time to build relationships with students and be intentional on showing them the power of community and serving others. It was incredible. I was able to serve children who come from low income housing and have families who are either split or having to work long hours. We were all put into different groupings to serve areas of the city, each student being placed exactly where God wanted them to be. That was a great little revelation about the week, just how God places us exactly where he wants us to learn and grow. The week was filled with service, community, and spiritual growth for both the students and leaders. To be completely honest, I wasn’t expecting much for myself other than building connections with students, silly me. God had something else in store for me. I was with children during the day that just need a chance and to know they are loved by God, something that I have a desire for every child to know. It was so powerful to see this day care center be intentional about preaching the gospel to the kids and letting them know that only God defines them. I went from this service time of fun and filled with bizarre experiences (like seeing a gross horse, but that story is for another time), and then went into a service time of the pastor speaking to the students and into me. Leading up to camp I had been reading through the parable of the prodigal son, and come to find out, the pastor would speak directly from that parable, not a coincidence. The parable from Jesus is of a young man who asks for his inheritance and goes off the deep end with partying, ending up losing it all and coming home. He is then received by his father and thrown a party. His story is not mine. My story is that of the second son.

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