The desire to place God as the center and object of my devotions seems plainly silly that I was not already doing that.  But my new discoveries I attribute to God blessing me with the grace to see a better way.  Now I sound emergent, but ironically it is a connection with our church history and prior teachings that I has led me to a new love that I feel compels me to look at the world through God’s perspective, rather than my own.

I believe embracing a “Soli Deo gloria” or “glory to God alone” viewpoint as well as many other differences has made a tremendous improvement on my life, I pray others will ultimately think so as well as I try and live for God, and not for John.  Hopefully I will begin listing some of the observations and scriptural references that affected the change here on Worthy Journey starting this weekend, March 19th, 2011.  I pray it may be informative for others out there who desire to consider the differences between the Armenian and Calvinistic views as viewed by one from what he thought was the Armenian position.  My old position truly wasn’t, albeit it was closer than to Calvinism; which is where a lot of confusion and heated discussion erupted from.  Your welcome and desired to add your thoughts and comments within the process.

SPOILER: I don’t think most people are in jeopardy of being heretical except when they are taken to extremes, if you really are a full Armenian as described by the Remonstrants please consider reviewing them to see if you really are.  I was not. Though I do feel one is more prone to lead to a distorted view of our relationship to God and his will than the other.  But, I know several that seem to have a remarkably reformed thought process for disliking the label Calvinist so.

I would certainly not argue that there is any flaw in that assumption, helping people help themselves through education should work and be less prone to influence from potentially corrupt officials who might choose to not distribute raw funds. But what I don’t understand is why we choose to not pay attention to the millions of children here in our own neighborhoods that could benefit from some form of assistance in this regard as well.

This notion of programs that exist to assist others in a far off location brings me back to my opening comment. A friend of mine is a youth minister (Jason over at talkinthewalk.com)and has discussed on his site the issues of youth missions and the perceived need to have their missions in some remote location. The further the better it would seem if you talk tot he right people, and I have often thought it was easier to minister to those in far off regions where I am certainly the outsider or foreigner. I felt it would be easier to be like Jesus if I already didn’t fit in, that the difference between how I treated others and he way they were would be more obvious.

The embarrassing truth is I should have that same advantage here. Even though everyone (surely not so) seems to have what they need (materially at best) and I have plenty myself there are tremendous opportunities here locally. You don’t even have drive downtown, there are people living around me on all sides. I know I am speaking about getting to know the folks that live right next door to us, and they may even already be church attending individuals, but they may not. Within our own church itself why are we not thinking of spending our efforts to improve the lot of those we purport to love and care about. Most likely because we do not.

We are a nation of weekend warriors for christ. It is like we have formed a national guard unit that we hope will only be deployed once or twice a year in the battle to save the planet. We are in the front lines and don’t even realize it. The only reason I can see in myself as to why I don’t do more is selfishness. It sounds so harsh, and I don’t want to believe it, but it must be true. I care about me more than I care about you. That certainly isn’t Christ like, now if there were only one soda left on the counter I would let you have it. If you needed a ride to the airport at 11pm or even midnight I am your man, but that’s because I know you probably. We are going to have decide if we really want to be full-time Christians or just weekend warriors. And if I want to be a full-time Christian then I am going to have to start thinking about those that are around me that I don’t know and those I do know more than myself.

I am reminded of a song that says “more of you and less of me”, if we can just get that straightened out in our lives we won’t need to go out of town to make a difference. We will be making a difference year round everywhere we are, with or without a programed effort from our church to accomplish it. A small plug for a ministry at my church that I hope could be a part of this solution, small groups.

In a small group you can get to know people in a more personal and intimate way, but no program will substitute for the fact the answer lies in our own decision to become like Christ and place ourselves behind others. It is not an easy answer, but it is the one he gave me. First to Love him and his father will all my heart, no mention of me there. And then to Love others like I love myself. If that were true the local churches would be bursting with programs that went beyond the superficial. The momentum would be again like that of the early church bowling over governments, changing lives, and bringing the lost to the father.

Pray for our own selflessness.