The Theologian's Table

In my last entry, I talked about my strategy in dealing with anxiety. Mainly, it's summed up in trusting the goodness of God. There are a couple more things though that help me fight anxiety and the one I want to talk about today is worshiping God. More specifically, I want to highlight two worship songs that have helped me immensely, then try and explain why they have helped me, and what I think worship accomplishes for us. The first worship song that I want to highlight is called Fill My Cup, which is fairly new, and its actually from Lee University's worship band on their debut album. Musically, the whole song has this calming effect, but what impacted me the most was just one line of the song, "in you[God] I'm made whole." There are so many theologically significant things I can say about this, but it mainly points me back to what Scripture says about our beings residing in God's care. Psalm 139:13 says, " For it was you who formed my inward par...

Millennials Find Jesus - J Ward - Flickr There have been a lot of noisy articles and blogs out there about how my generation of Millennials have been leaving the Church, or how the contemporary worship model is not cutting it for them anymore. Popular Christian bloggers, such as Rachel Held Evans, have written  why they left their traditions, whereas mainstream news outlets have only speculated on the issues of the church and Millennials based on statistics from the Pew Research Center . Luckily, for the 5 whole readers of my blog, I have decided to add my voice regarding this subject! My church-going history has been somewhat diverse, it went from Pentecostal to Baptist to Anabaptist to Non-denominational (Baptist lite) and currently back to something resembling Pentecostal. The latest transition has been transformational yet challenging as my wife and I decided to leave the non-denominational church we have attended for the past two years. We are now struggling to find a ...

Flickr The largest obstacle preventing us from reconciling conflict is the lack of involving God in healing the problem. We may pray that He will sort it out, but we ignore the wisdom He provides through Scripture and the wisdom He gives to people that can counsel us. We run from our problems because we fear they are too big for us even though God tells us not to be afraid and that His perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:8). We tear down our supposed opponents with words and violence and forget about cultivating the fruit of the Spirit. We forget that God solved the most important conflict of all, reconciling us back to him through the blood of Jesus. Managing conflict isn’t something to ignore, or even win. Scripture admonishes us to seek reconciliation. Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount that even before we go worship God at the temple (church), if one close to us is angry with us then we should first “go and be reconciled,” (Matt 5.24 NIV). Also, the Apostle Paul wri...

Green Environment - Stephen Dun - flickr My Christian Ethics class has been enjoyable and challenging time as it has forced me not only to think critically about today’s issues, but to reflect critically on how the Bible relates to today’s issues. The final subject the class focused on was the environment and if Christians should care for it as much as some secular environmentalists do. There is of course baggage that comes with the image of an environmentalist, the granola crunching, sandal wearing, dread-locked, bongo drummer holding a “Save the Rainforest” sign that was probably made out of a tree cut down in the rainforest. There is, however, merit in their compassion for the health of our planet. I have found two things that outwardly caring for our planet accomplishes for the believer in Christ. Love Thy Neighbor The first is that caring for the environment is an extension of "loving thy neighbor" (Matt 22:39). When believers question the status quo at...