I tweet.  I like twitter for it's simplicity.  I like that you are forced to be pithy with your comments, you have 140 characters to make your point.  If you'd like to follow me on twitter, click here

You also have the opportunity to run into some entertaining characters that say, well, some interesting things.  Today I read someones tweet that asked the question, "Where would Jesus go to church?"  Now, looking at this persons other tweets it wasn't hard to figure out what point of view he was coming from.  This is a person who dislikes organized religion in any form and specifically doesn't like that Christians gather in a specific building for services.

First, I'm not going to judge this persons spiritual condition, it's not my job.  Really, I'm going to ignore them.  However, I think the question posed, paying no regard to their opinion on the matter, is an interesting question that I do have an opinion on.

If Jesus were to come down to the earth today, walk into your, or my, town, what church would he go to?  Well, none.  He wouldn't go to the church.  He didn't come for the well, afterall, he came for the sick.  That's why he hung out with tax collectors and sinners.

The early New Testement church didn't meet in church buildings, they met in houses.  In Acts 20:7-12 it talks about Paul teaching at a house until midnight and a young man falling asleep, falling from the second floor window, dying and being raised from the dead.  I'm sure Paul would have went into a church building if they were available, but in that day and age you couldn't just decide to build a huge building, so they taught were there was availability.

In the modern age, what is the purpose of the church building?  I'm talking about what it is intended to by, not what it has largely become.

Today the building is meant to be a training ground.  It is a place to learn, to be refreshed and a place for the faithful to come together for fellowship.  However, it has become a social club in many areas and like the old farmer said, "Us four and no more." becomes the attitude in the church.

We need to treat Sunday services as a corporate celebration of the greatness of Christ, a place to rejoice in the battles of the past week and a place to prepare for the battles of the next week.  A place where brothers and sisters in Christ hone each other like iron sharpens iron.

I believe that most churches get the first point above.  However, too many have no battles to celebrate and no battles for which to be prepared.  There is more back-biting than sharpening and people trying to build their internal political power.  There are to many people trying to advance their personal little fiefdom inside of the local church instead of advancing the kingdom of God in the world.

Jesus wouldn't come to the church today, not because we are so far off the mark, but because he would be out serving the lost.  He'd be serving the lost hoping that we, the church, would join him.  We can have our church services, but we can't have that be our spiritual life.  Those services are not to be the rule of your life, they are meant to be the culmination of your life's work, spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.

We, as the church, need to remember that being the church has nothing to do with a building, a name on a sign or a person who stands up behind the pulpit and speaks.  It has everything to do with bringing the good news to the broken hearted, bringing healing to the sick, bringing prosperity to the poor, bringing food to the hungry and visiting the fatherless and the widow.  If we do all of those things, when we enter the building on a Sunday morning or Wednesday evening we can go in to be armed, to be healed and to be restored ourselves, so we can go into the world and do what God has called us to do, to be what he called us to be.

At Family Fellowship Christian Center, I am on of the worship singers.  As we were in rehersal before service Sunday morning, it hit me, we are a great model for a team.  Are there things that we could do to improve, of course, but for the position we are in, we are a pretty good model.

First, our Worship Leader, at least when he's able to be in town, comes in from out of state when he can.  I wish that he were able to stay with us all the time, but his work doesn't allow that to happen.  Our team is made up of an Accoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Bass, Drums and 3 to 5 vocalists.

We all have busy schedules and with the leader being out of state, we aren't able to get together throughout the week, so we get together Sunday mornings and hour before service starts and we go over the songs that we are going to do for the day.  We are often learning new songs in that hour before service and we many times have that song in the set list.

When we have those days where we're learning new material, it's usually pretty stressful, as we learn the progressions, melodies and harmonies.  Each musician must discover what they are going to do to make their part special, the singers need to learn the words and discover their harmonies, to make it tight.  It doesn't always come together, but more often than not, everyone gets things ready.  We will often match the new songs with old stand-by's that we can skim over. 

Yesterday, as we were preparing, we had a new song, partnered with a couple old stand-bys and a couple newer songs that we had done before, but were still pretty new.  This caused a stressful environment during practice.  My personal opinion was that we shouldn't do the new song yet, because we hadn't had enough time to practice it.  There was also a verse in Spanish, which is great, with the exception that only one of the singers knows Spanish fluently and the rest of us needed to learn the pronunciation of the words so we could get the correct cadence...  Anyway, we eventually pulled the song from the worship set and played that when people were greeting each other.  It was a good place to put it and we let the one singer who speaks spanish sing that particular verse solo.

However, where we were having the stress and conflict in practice, by the time service rolled around we had put it all behind us.  To wit, we were a model of fluid movement and communication.

First, we all realize that we are not playing the music for us, or even the people that are there, we're playing it for God and His glory.  This allows us to come together with common purpose, even if some are not happy with the song choice or a particular arrangement.  We're not doing it for the song choice or arrangement, we're doing it for God and His glory.  We put aside any differences when we step up on the stage.

We're alos a teaching church, so the experienced musicians a leaders are not the ones directing, but we're there to help communicate to the one directing if there is any uncertainty.  Often this is done with a look or a hand motion.  For instance, if I see some doubt at that beginning of a song on when to come in, vocally, I'll make sure that I have the attention of the leader and we'll communicate with a glance.  More often than not it works and the people are none the wiser.  They would never know that there was almost a mistake made.  Sometimes mistakes are still made and we all have come to have each others backs, so even when a mistake is made, it is never disasterous.

The team doesn't always have to agree.  We don't always have to get along.  However, we have to have a common goal in mind.  We have to have an understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses.  We need to be able to use each others strengths to dispell each others weaknesses. 

I'm a former Rock N' Roller, I was in the hair bands and did the crazy thing that we got into.  However, that experience created within me the ability to get a crowd charged.  There are others who don't have that ability, so I'll do what I do to get people excited about entering into the presence of God.  Sometimes I'm too opinionated if I don't like a song.  Though I may express my opinion in practice, I don't care once we enter into worship, but sometimes I need to be put back into place during practice.

The tell, though, is what happens while we are woshiping.  Do people enter into the presence of God or do they look at us as if we were aliens?  We all have different abilities, talents and backgrounds.  Not everyone is a rocker like me, I'm not into soul or country like some of the others, but we all come together, different cultures, different interests, different abilities and work together to accomplish a common goal.  We do it every week, in and out. 

I wish many of the teams that I've been on in my professional career were more like the worship team.  Where we could have a common goal and work together to reach it, instead of working for our own individual goals.  We need to learn from the worship teams in the world and learn to have a common interest in everything we do.

My grandfather, Merle "Muz" Eutsey, died Sunday, October 4th at 4:50pm EST at the Westmoreland Regional Hospital in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

For most of my life, my grandfather and I didn't see eye to eye.  We could be in the same room and never really have a conversation.  When we did talk it usually ended with him expressing his displeasure at my career choices and me holding my tongue out of respect for him.  Not exactly the way to build a relationship with him, but it was the only way to ensure peace between us.

However, this is a tribute, not a rant.  For all of his faults I could enumerate, most of which are mirrored in me, I want to talk about his life and the good things about him.

First the overview of whom he was.  He was born in 1920, survived the depression, fought in Germany during WWII, was married twice had 2 daughters and 1 son and a stepson from marriage #2.  He worked in construction and as a timberman, and made wonderful pies.

The overview is nice, but not all was rosy for him.  The depression was obvious, its call the Great Depression for a reason.  However, while he was fighting for our country in Germany he would send all of the money he was making home to his mom and dad to put into a bank account.  With this money he was going to pursue his dreams after the war.  What he didn't know until he returned was that his father, being an alcoholic, was taking his money and spending it on the drink.  He returned home after his tour to no bank account, nothing financially to show for his sacrifice.  He was an American Hero, but he was financially busted.

However, it didn't stop him from working hard and providing a good home for my mom.  They even had the first TV in their neighborhood.  My Grandmother and he opened a diner in Acme, PA called Deb's, named after my mom's younger sister.  Debbie however, passed away at a young age of hepatitis, contracted after having part of her lungs removed (about the size of a silver dollar) due to pneumonia.  Let me take this moment to thank God for medical advances that could have saved her life if she were in that situation today.

Muz was, from all accounts, a relentless friend.  One of the kids in our neighborhood came from a rough family.  Not that everyone in the family was bad, but they didn't have the best home environment.  Muz became friends with him, inviting him to his house almost every morning so they could have buckwheat cakes for breakfast.  Being that we lived in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, there are still some mountain people that live up there, hillbillies, if you will.  One of the ladies had lost her husband and had been living alone for a few years.  Grandpap took her in as she got older and couldn't take care of her property anymore.  She lived with him for many years, eventually passing away while living there.  This isn't something that he had to do.  It was no mandate.  However, it is the type of man he was.

In his final days, after he went to the hospital for the first time in the decline that eventually took his life, he finally gave his life to Christ!  It's funny and sad that the last six months of his life were really the most important.

In May he went into the hospital due to dehydration caused by the flu (not H1N1).  In this began a pattern that took the six month since to actually finish the job.  He went in for the flu.  He started to feel better and suddenly got worse, it was the dehydration, and it had damaged the kidneys, so he needed dialysis.  OK.  He started to feel better, and then he started losing a lot of blood, bleeding ulcers.  Taken care of, he started to feel better, so they shipped him to the care home for rehab.  He's there for less than a day and he's rushed to Westmoreland Regional (instead of Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant which is the first hospital he was in) where he is said to be ready to die any minute as every vital started to crash.  One of the attending doctors states that it looked like an allergic reaction to a specific drug.  They find out that Frick Hospital had been giving him that particular drug.  The stop it, they cleans his system.  He then went back to the care home.  There were a few more scares, from CDEF to low blood pressure.  However, the worst was yet to come and it finally came this past Saturday.

My mom called me and asked me to meet her at the hospital.  She has a hard time walking and wanted my help getting her in.  Fortunately, our friend "Steve" was spending the night at our house, so I left Josiah with him and ran to the hospital.  Turns out he had perforated bowels, which was operable, but in his state of being he would never survive.  The decision was made to make him comfortable.  They applied the morphine drip which would effectively begin the countdown to the end.  His body finally shut down on Sunday at 4:50 pm.

One thing I can say about Muz, and probably one thing that changed my heart toward him at the end, was that he loved my boys.  He could never remember their names, but he loved them.  Even toward the end, he would always ask when they were coming in to see him.  He would light up as soon as he noticed them in the room.  Even the last time they saw him, two weeks ago.  He was starting to fade, be he knew they were there.  He was struggling with talking, but he did his best to talk to them.  No matter how he was feeling, at least for the time they were there, his state improved.

Muz and I had our differences, but we could meet on common ground with my boys.  Soon enough, we'll meet again on common ground.  When that time comes it won't be on asphalt and concrete it will be on streets of gold.  We won't be surrounded by death and decay; we'll be surrounded by life eternal.  In the grand scheme of things, isn't that the greatest tribute of all?

Green is book zero of the Circle Series, being the beginning and the end of the series.  Green focuses on Thomas Hunter, his family and the, relatively, small group of believers that gather in a future where spiritual reality has physical manifestation.  To give more information may give away plot points, which is not my goal.

Being a huge fan of Ted Dekker and specifically the Circle Series, this book was an appropriate conclusion of the series and, ironically, a near perfect beginning.   The story, occurring 10 years after White, is frustrating to people who've read the rest of the series, but that is a good thing.  It brings out this emotion because you see what is happening and you want to scream at the characters.

Mr. Dekker, indeed, knows how to capture spiritual truth and create a compelling allegory that will blow the mind of any reader.

After reading Green, I'm now compelled to go back and read Black, Red, White and then Green again.  Green, in light of the whole series, makes me hunger and thirst after the love of God all the more.

Ultimately, I would recommend Green to anyone who is a fan of The Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia, or anyone who is willing to learn through a singularly compelling allegory.   I am one of those and I would give this book, and the entire series for that matter, 5 big stars and a high five to Mr. Dekker.

Eph 3:14-21

14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ted Dekker does it again with another amazing book.

The Circle Trilogy has been my favorite series of books since I first read it, supplanting the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. When I first heard that Green was coming out and that it was going to be both the beginning and the end of the series, I was skeptical at best. How do you end a story and start it in the same book? Well, Ted pulls it off masterfully.

Green is the true beginning and appropriate ending to this absolutely life changing series.

OK.  The other day I promised to answer the question of, "Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden?"  Well, here it is.  First let me set up the way I would ask the question if I were face to face with God... (Fortunately, I didn't actually have to ask the question to Him this way, He already provided the answer in the word.)

Lord, what were you thinking?  You knew that Adam and Eve were no better than children, yet you placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden anyway.  You then told them not to touch it.  You know the nature of children, I'm a parent, I know what my kids would have done, the same thing Adam and Eve did, oh, Daddy doesn't want me to have it so it must be good, let's eat!  You had to know that they would fall and they would fail.  You had to know that you'd be kicking them out of the garden.  You had to know, because you know the beginning from the end!  What in the world were you thinking.

Well, first, the basic answer to these questions, yes, God does know the beginning from the end, He exists outside of time.  He did know exactly what He was doing and He knew Adam and Eve would do. 

Revelation 13 states that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.  That means that before God created Adam and Eve Christ was already slain. It means that the fall of man was part of the plan.  Let me explain:

God gave man the freedom of choice, however, in the garden there was only one possible sin, it was the simplest of choices, to eat or not to eat, to eat of the Tree of Life or from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

This was simple and we failed.  However, choice was something that the Angels didn't have.  They were servants.  They were not created as children, they were slaves.  When Satan rebelled and took 1/3 of heaven with him, he rebelled against his master, not against his father.

However, when Adam and Eve fell, when they rebelled, they did it against their father.  However, when they did it the caused a great divide between them and their father.  A divide that needed to be bridged.  He provided a way to push sin forward through animal sacrifice, but this was inadiquite to bridge the divide.  He waited for the right time to send His son to be the ultimate sacrifice.  It was the sacrifice of Jesus, a man tempted by everything that we are, but did not sin, that bridged the great divide, It was that act that brought us back into communion with our Father.

It was through Jesus that the choice to have relationship with God was given back to man.  This is the story of the prodigal son.  The son rebelled, the son fell, the son repented, the son returned, the father accepted him back and restored him to his rightful place.

God is good people, God is real good.

Genesis 2:8-9 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:16-25 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

18 The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 3 1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" 4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

9 But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" 12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

22 And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

I know that this is a long passage to read, but reading the WORD is a good thing :). 

There are a couple of things I want to point out in the passages above.  First we have God planting a garden and placing in it the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The part of the passage I skipped describes the location, somewhere near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Then the Lord states to Adam that he could eat from any tree in the garden with the exception of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  If he did eat from that tree it would cause him to "surely die".

We then see that God finds it not good for man to be alone, and that ends with the creation of Eve.  They were both completely innocent, being naked and having no shame.

Chapter 3 sees the serpent (Satan) approach Eve.  There are several reasons that Satan approaches Eve instead of Adam.  The Bible states that women are "as the weaker vessel", but I don't think that means that woman are weaker, men are to treat them as the weaker vessel.  However, since women and men are different, women will be tempted by different things than men.  Where men are more tempted by women, women are more tempted by baubles, by pretty things, by things that look attractive.

However, I think that is only one of the reasons.  I think the bigger reason is, God told Adam directly of the results of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Eve wasn't created yet.  She wasn't around.  She had second hand knowledge of the command, not first hand knowledge, like Adam.  That would be the equivilent of me asking my oldest son to tell my younger sons to do something.  The authority is still there, but it loses something in translation.  A command from a brother doesn't hold the same water as it does coming from the father.

So Satan questions God's command and Eve retorts with the words of God (see, she knew the command).  Satan responds that God was wrong, that she would not surely die. 

As an aside.  When God said you would surely die, he was meaning a spiritual death.  Satan was partly correct when he said that Even would not die.  He was implying that the fruit would not cause a physical death (though he knew it would be a spiritual death, that's the lie.)

Eve looked at the fruit and saw it was good to eat.  She saw that it was attractive.  She saw that it wasn't poison to the body. She saw a bauble and wanted it, so she ate, and gave some to Adam who was with her.

Adam blunder came just before Eve took the fruit and ate it.  Adam was there.  He was a witness to the conversation, and he let the serpent speak.  He let the conversation lead to the fall.  He could have, and should have, exherted his dominion over the serpent and told the serpent to be quiet.  He could have done it, it was his right, no, it was his duty.

So man falls and we continued to fall out of control until Jesus was murdered and resurected from the dead.  We as the human race continues to spiral out of control, but we, the individuals were given a way out.

My next post will be on the topic: Why Did God Put The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden?

It's a simple answer and it will blow you away.  If you have any thoughts on the topic, let me know.

The key leadership has been asked to research a few topics individually to help build a Bible Basics Curriculum. The first topic I was asked to research is the Fall of Man. These give me a good opportunity to write a couple posts on what I'm doing for the research.

The criteria of each topic are to have one scripture as a summary of the topic. For "The Fall of Man", it's Genesis 2:8 - 3: 22. That is the obvious passage and easy enough. The next is to have 3 supporting scriptures to back it up, for "The Fall of Man", that won't be too hard, though I haven't done the research to get them yet (one step at a time.)

The two topics that I've been give are the afore mentioned, "The Fall of Man" and "Healing and Devine Health". I'll probably be doing several posts on both of these topics as I do the studying. I've already gotten one heavy revelation from reading the Genesis passage. The next post will be an exposition of the revelation.

I hope you will enjoy this as much as I will. I also hope that as I go through the process you learn something about studying the Bible. I do wish I had my laptop at work today, I could do a much more in depth word study. That will have to wait until tonight. For what I post today, it'll have to be the non-Hebrew interpreted version of things.

While in service on Sunday, our pastor said something that I found profound.  It's not that I didn't know it, it's that I never thought about it.  The statement that he made was:"God exists outside of time."

I want to elaborate on that though.

Does God predestine who is going to be saved?  Many people will say yes, and many will say no.  This can decend into an argument that does not gain anyone anything.  The reality is both are right and both are wrong.  Since God exists outside of time, he can't "predestine" anything,  Predestination by it's nature is a statement of time.  Since He exists outside of time it literally becomes that He knows the beginning from the end.  It's not predestined, it's preknown.

Predestination, the doctrine, precludes that you have no choice to follow Christ, you either will, or you will not, the choice is not yours.  However, that would make humanity lower than the angels and the word of God says that We were created a little lower than Elohim.  We were created a little lower than GOd and a lot higher than the Angels.  We were created in the image of God, not the image of angels.  God gave us the choice to love Him.  It's only when you choose to love God that it is a true expression of love.  To be forced to love God is to be a Slave, not a Bond-Servant.

I give myself to my God everyday.  I choose to give myself to Him.  He doesn't force me.  Because I give myself to Him and He accepts me, that makes me a bond-servant.  I am bound to Him by choice, His and mine.

Because God exists outside of time and space, He can speak in the past tense of those things that haven't happened yet.  I am assailed by diabetes.  That is the current condition of my body.  However, the word of God says that By His stripes I was healed.  It also says that to those with clean hands and a pure heart, they are the healed of the Lord.  These are statements in the past tense of things that haven't happened yet.

This means that God looks at me and sees me as healed.  The only thing standing in the way of me becoming healed is getting it into my thick skull that I have been healed.  I also have to ensure that my hands are clean and my heart is pure.  That is what this journey of introspection is all about, to purify myself and sanctify my life for service.

I know this post seems to be all over the board, and it is so, but I have a lot going through me and sometimes it's hard to focus.  One of these days I'll be able to have the venue to put this stuff out a little more efficiently and not fall into scattered diatribe.  However, that day is not today.

God bless you, everyone!