Skip to main content

Not Ashamed

Jeremy Camp is a fave and this isn't the first time he's appeared on the 365.  I was listening to his most recent project the other day which happens to be a worship album and this song really struck me.  It's not the first time I've heard the song but you know how sometimes something you read or hear that is familiar suddenly impacts you in a new or fresh way?  So it was/is with this song and I wanted to squeeze it in on the 365 before we ended, which incidentally is only 3 (including today) days away. 
In today's culture it has become rather unpopular to state so definitively that you are a Christian, believe God's word is infallible, believe that Jesus is truly the ONLY way, and seek to live according to the standards God lays out in the Bible.  Oh I'm sorry, I should have said "in today's CHURCH culture" because that is where it has become, ironically enough, the most unpopular to be/say/do those things.  Today's song goes against that trend and makes a clear statement that there is no shame in what I believe, how I choose to live out my life, and how much of the Word of God I choose to take literally (that'd be 100% for anyone wondering).  It's not the world outside of the Church that is the problem when it comes to shame about beliefs, about Jesus...it's the Church.  Don't believe me?  All you have to do is look at, listen to, and watch the "big names" in Christiandome to begin to see what I'm saying.  Heck, all you have to do is listen to, watch, and look at the majority of people who you attend church with each Sunday.  Start talking about Jesus too much or too enthusiastically and you'll see them start to squirm from embarrassment and shame over the fact that God asks so much of us and they just don't think God should ask so much.  No seriously.  I'm being very for real here.  I know.  I sound mean and harsh and rude.  I promise you I don't say it with those kind of tones, I'm just being real and it's time we start being real.  It's time, as the song states, to stand and BOLDLY say that you, that we are NOT ashamed of Jesus Christ.  And if you are ashamed?  Well, let's talk.  I mean it.  I would love to talk about it with you.   

Not Ashamed

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment. 

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here .  Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing.   Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh.  Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color.  Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details.  Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think.  If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well.  In the end he wasn't able to find the ...