Tag: Christian Living

Mr. Suave’s Purity Performance

Posted on by RKM in Church Practices

As I mentioned previously, interactions among Christians are significant to the spiritual health of a believer and further our fellowship together is a manifestation of our unity. These interactions are to be guarded and be pleasing to the Lord. We are sometimes so preoccupied in delving into political and social wars especially against the sexual revolution with the expectation to change the direction of the wind that we forget about cleaning our own room first. If we are going to push the sexual purity narrative against the sexual immoral, it needs to first happen within your heart and the walls of your local congregation.

Continue reading “Mr. Suave’s Purity Performance” →
Advertisement

Fire Starters

Posted on by RKM in Church Practices

Experiencing the great bride of Christ on earth is a wonderful encounter that has enriched me in many ways in my life. I’ve been a churchman for many years and take pride in partaking in the beauty of God’s assembly especially its head. The body of Christ is an ongoing growing body that has yet to reach maturity and let’s face it, it has a long way to go. When we consider the local church, there are many ways which it has matured since the days of the apostles, but in other ways it has stayed the same. But the survival of a local church relies upon maturity, or we end up with a nursery rather than a church! Some need to be more spiritually grounded than others or else how do we exercise the great commission? I say spiritually here because this is not about age, but about wisdom and scriptural/spiritual soundness. When Paul wrote to the local churches (and to some of his helpers), he didn’t do so to convey to them a bunch of trivial slogans but wanting to share the inspired wisdom of his age. He understood human interactions well enough to write a manual on ecclesiastical comportment in 2023. The apostle wrote for his day and God knew it would apply for the rest of history.

Continue reading “Fire Starters” →

Putting Your Pistols Back in Your Holsters

Posted on by RKM in Church Practices, Guest Posts

Guest Post by: The East Side Monergist

Recently, I read a piece by Carl Trueman titled Yes I am a Christian, just like those over there that really hit home in terms of the mindset among evangelical/protestant circles. So much of what I’m reading and seeing happening these days in Christendom is just reinforcing and incentivizing a need to be more gracious with each other as Protestants. We need to really look at different traditions with more focus upon unity rather than distinctives simply for the sake of solidarity and unity and strength based on first order issues. Over and over again, we’ve been spoiled or sinful or graceless enough to splinter ourselves and have become foolishly divided by secondary and tertiary order issues that we can’t even truly claim to be a part of or include others in the same faith. We spend so much time treating our brothers in the faith as though they are heretics and maybe even unworthy of the title Christian altogether all the while we see agnostics, atheists, wiccans and satanists grow in unity and solidarity. We are fighting our way into being arguably the smallest and most divided faith system in the world.

Continue reading “Putting Your Pistols Back in Your Holsters” →

An Intro to Discipleship

Posted on by RKM in Church Practices, Discipleship

Through my many years of church membership, I’ve taken the bait to address internal hot topics with my brothers and sisters in Christ which at times have created a few fires that almost consumed my precious soul. While I never intended it to, it often blew up in my face! This is often the case because people are either a little too edgy when confronted with a different view or they see you as an intellectual windbag who they’re not going to let you get away with pushing your views. Of course, it could also be that I rub people the wrong way, but I’ll leave it with the Lord and pray that perhaps I’ve matured. The essence of these theological conversations was significant and, in my mind, worthy of address. We need to be concerned about what we believe and discuss amongst ourselves especially those items that have ecclesiastical significance.

Continue reading “An Intro to Discipleship” →

More on Unity

Posted on by RKM in Church Practices, People of God

In my previous post on Edwardian prayer, I stressed the point that if the church is to have an impact in invigorating our troubled nation, it requires us to understand the significance of unity. In case someone hasn’t tuned in, we have little of it in both our society and even in our local ecclesiastical gatherings. I know I sound like a broken record, but I’ll drop the needle anyway, we love to focus upon what divides us rather than what unites us! Union between God’s people is crucial to the success of any work especially any external facing ministry. Brethren, linking arm in arm with faithful gatherings of believers has a greater impact upon the Great Commission than beating each other up over something like sprinkles and dips. The Psalmist saw the beauty of this unification: Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brothers to dwell together in unity! (Psalm 133:1) and I hope you do too. Now, let’s consider that the enemies of the church are doing just that, they’re uniting. They’re gathering around the campfire largely based upon identity politics. These distinct identifiers are creating a unison based upon distinctiveness from their enemy, which, if you’re not aware, is basically you and your church. They are making strides because they created a unified assault, and the morale is on the rise. While I believe that this unity won’t last, simply because there is no logical foundation to keep it together, we still must take this movement seriously. Movements that have no brakes lead to their own demise, but they tend to take everyone else with them. But our fate doesn’t need to be like theirs.

Continue reading “More on Unity” →

Beavers & Deceivers

Posted on by RKM in Church Practices

One of my work colleagues was the proud father of two very nice boys. While they were growing up, they had a close relationship and part of what created this family tightness was their ability to play tricks on each other. One day, when the two boys were young, they were working on a school project on curling. My friend, a proud Canadian, decided to help them with a little historical insider content. He went about explaining the history of curling in quite some detail. He persuaded them that when the game was created, they didn’t use stones to slide on the ice because those weren’t invented yet. Instead, these innovative men from the north used to trap beavers, freeze them, and use them for their curling matches. He persuaded them that our curling forefathers would flip the frozen beaver on its back and use the tail as a handle to launch the beaver to the set goal. The next day, they presented their dad’s edition of the history of curling at school and things didn’t go quite so well. Let’s say that when they came home with death glares, their dad knew they’d taken the bait.

Continue reading “Beavers & Deceivers” →

Eve In Exile Documentary

Posted on by RKM in Recommended

While we are all at times left in the dark about exactly how we fit into the world, Christian women experience this in a radical way. With the rise of the feminist revolution, many women who desired a more biblical approach to life were left feeling ashamed in their traditional femininity. Rebeka Merkle and the good folks at Canon Press put together a wonderful documentary on the restoration of femininity for the Christian lady. Eve in Exile is based upon her book with the same title which deals with a return to traditional female life. To watch the documentary, you’ll need to subscribe to Canon+.