It's Time to Celebrate!

Many people seem to think that Christianity, and religion in general, is boring. They even think that God is there simply to take our fun away. If your catholic then you spend time in confession to get forgiveness for all the 'fun' that you had. In truth it is the exact opposite. God is the creator of fun, He is the one that originally celebrated and has continually directed His people to celebrate. Read Leviticus, once you get past the dry details you will realize that those details are outlining feasts that the Israelites were supposed to have every year. God was planning parties for His people! The problem is that everything God creates, the devil tries to counterfeit, and in this case the devil has been quite successful. He has propagated his version of fun so well that millions of people throughout the world feel that it is the only way to celebrate. But as the Bible says sin is only pleasurable "for a season". (Hebrews 11:25) God knows how to have lasting fun, fun that won't make you sick, or get you thrown in jail.

Partying God's Way

So how do we party God's way? We can start with the obvious, don't get drunk and don't do drugs. The Bible shows what is already clear in society, getting drunk leads to 'debauchery'. Debauchery basically just mean immoral behavior. We lose control of ourselves and do things that are stupid, harmful, and wrong. You don't need alcohol to have a good time, and you definitely don't need to get wasted to have a good time.

Another principle that leads us to partying God's way is don't have fun at the expense of others. Proverbs tells us that 'death and life are in the power of the tongue'. In other words, what you say can either kill someone or bring life to them. Often we think we are 'just joking' or 'just having a little fun', but what we are really doing is emotionally killing the person we are talking about. This is not the way to have fun.

Celebration in Society

So how is celebration an entire sphere of society? First of all, the way our holidays are celebrated is often directed by our society. In the United States our holidays are often directed by commercialism. Rather than remembering and focusing on the reason for a particular holiday we are directed by the stores and advertisements to buy whatever the new item is that the stores want us to buy. Think about what is often the first thing to come to mind when we think of holidays:

Christmas = gifts, Thanksgiving = food, Easter = candy eggs, Valentines day = candy hearts and pre made cards, etc.

You can always know what holiday is coming up by looking in our stores. As Christians we need to make it a point to remember what the point of the holiday is. It's okay to buy things but let's not have that drive our celebration. Holidays are meant to remind us of something much more important than what we can buy.

Other Forms of Celebration

Other forms of celebration in society include sports, movies, t.v., music, plays, etc. In other words, entertainment. We need to demand Godly principles in our entertainment. Over and over we are seeing morality in movies and t.v. decrease and decay. This directs our society. We need to demand morality in what we watch and listen to and we need to stop watching and listening if it's not edifying or building up. Be careful what you let in to your spirit because without realizing it you will follow it.

Public Communication ... with Integrity

Communication is key to any society, it's how we talk, relay information, and keep everyone informed. Especially in a country as large as ours, we wouldn't have a clue what goes on without the media. For this reason media is one of the areas of society that has to be transformed by the Word of God before our nation as a whole will be changed. Just like I talked about with government I am not implying that we need everyone in the media to be Christians, I am also not implying that we need more Bible preachers on t.v. What I am implying is that we need our media to be run by Biblical principles. Specifically we need our media to be run with integrity.

Communicating the Truth or Selling a Product?
Too often we have news networks who simply want to gain more viewers or sell more newspapers. They aren't looking to transfer information as much as they are looking to sell a product. For this reason they aren't looking for the truth but often end up looking for a conspiracy. People love a conspiracy, people love to watch bad news, and for this reason our media loves to twist and stretch stories in order to make it more interesting to the viewers.

The first thing that we need to demand from our media is truth. We need to demand the same as our courtrooms do: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We need to demand integrity from our media as they communicate the news to us. This is true in regards to all aspects of the news whether it is politics, entertainment, sports, or just general events.

Where is the Focus?
The Bible tells us to "hate what is evil, cling to what is good" (Romans 12:9), but for some reason human nature tends to seek out and cling to the evil, to the bad. This thought came up with the recent school shootings in Connecticut. People were wondering why we show the shooter so often rather than the victims. We often make the shooter famous but don't show the victims or the heroes.

Mr Rogers, the former kids show host, was quoted talking about his mom and how she taught him to "look for the helpers." This is what we need to do and this is what we need to demand from our media. In the wake of a crisis the media needs to start looking for the helpers. they nee to focus on the ones doing good rather than on the criminal. That is what we need to be showing the nation as an example.

Also we need to demand from our media more stories about the good that people are doing in the world. If someone murders a bunch of people then it makes national, and usually international, news within minutes, but if someone saves a neighbor from a fire it often barely makes the local paper. If someone helps a homeless person get a job and place to stay it is even less likely to get any media attention. Again let's get the heroes in the paper and in the news rather than the criminals.

By changing the way we communicate we can change the way people respond to events. By focusing on the heroes we can create more heroes, but by focusing on the criminals we will create more criminals. Let's demand more from our media. If you are in the media then please be one that is an agent of change. Use your position to change the spreading of information in our country.

Biblical Economics

Here we are, continuing our series on The Book That Transforms Nations by Loren Cunningham. For a summary of what we have already talked about take a look at my last post. After moving from family, to church, to government we are on to the economy. A part of transforming a nation is bringing Biblical principles into the economy, into the way the nation handles finances. Money is a touchy subject with people and many people don't realize how much the Bible has to say about this subject. If you are one who has never looked to the Bible for financial advice you should check out this post 250 Verses About Money.

It's hard to imagine having the ability to change an entire nation's economy. We all know how we are in a recession, and we know how much debt our nation is in. According to the U.S. National Debt Clock we are well on our way to approaching 17 trillion dollars in debt. So the question is: What part can I play in turning our economy around? Of course we can advocate for more responsible decisions from our politicians and we can make educated decisions in voting but sometimes it feels like there is nothing that we can actually do, especially between election years. However, there is one thing that all of us can do. Each one of us can make the decision to revolutionize our own finances.

There are many programs, classes, and books out there meant to help individuals and families to get their finances in control but the class that my wife and I took is Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey. If you find yourself sinking in debt and barely making it to each paycheck it might be worth it for you to find one of these classes but here are the basic principles, all taken directly from the Bible:

Dave Ramsey's success is based on what he calls baby steps. The principle is that we take little steps towards financial peace, take it slow and steady. The baby steps are as follows:

Baby Step #1: Build an emergency fund of $1000

Baby Step #2: Pay off all debt except your house

Baby Step #3: Continue building the emergency fund to 3-6 months of income

Baby Step #4: Invest 15% of income for retirement

Baby Step #5: Start college funds for your children

Baby Step #6: Pay off home early

Baby Step #7: Build wealth and give!

The idea is that you have a budget and you stick to it, and every extra dollar that comes in goes toward the step that you are on. So get started doing your part to revolutionize the economy, revolutionize your finances. As Dave says "Live like no one else today, so that tomorrow you can live like no one else!"