Waggle Dance

At the risk of hyper-spiritualizing my choice of snacks, I was eating some microwave popcorn, realized my hand had gotten too greasy and salt covered to touch the keyboard, and it hit me: Microwave popcorn is a lot like sin! I’m not saying that it’s a sin to eat microwave popcorn, but there is some interesting similarities.

I had come home to the smell of buttery popcorn drifting through the house, a result of someone’s afternoon snack. I managed to resisted the immediate urge to pop a bag into the microwave. But the buttery scent, and more importantly, the memory of that smell, persisted. My nose twitched, my mouth watered, my stomach growled.

So,where is this great analogy? What can popcorn possibly teach us?

1. Sin attracts.
   Sin often has an attractive scent, an pleasing sound, and enticing look. How man men would be addicted to porn if all of the women looked and dresses like Queen Elizabeth II?

   

   How many of us would be guilty of glutton if ice cream and brownies tasted like liver and onions? How many of you would play the lottery if the maximum pay out was $1.49 ? Would I have popped another bag of popcorn in the microwave if it smelled like a wet dog or looked like lima beans - I think not.

2. Temptation lingers.
   One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves that we have “beat temptation”. Resisting temptation is a good thing, but God has a better plan - “Run away!” 1 Cor 10:13 promises that God will always provided a way of escape (run away!) when faced with temptation. Paul says to “flee from idolatry ( 1 Cor 10:14 )”, “flee immorality”(1 Cor 6:18 ), “flee from youthful lusts”(2 Tim 2:22 ). Temptation tends to linger, if not in the air like that buttery popcorn smell, it lingers in the place or situation we encountered it. Thinking it’s okay to see how long we can resist or how close we can get to sin without giving in is another kind of sin, called “pride”. Whether it is a website with pornographic ads, or a restaurant with a hopping bar scene, every time we go back, the temptation is going to be there, waiting.
3. We choose.
   In the end, “to sin or not to sin” is a choice. Yes, the flesh is weak. Yes, the enemy deceives us. Yes, we are subject to all manner of temptations, but we are responsible for our sins. We can not divorce ourselves from our flesh - what “it” does, we do. We can’t blame the enemy, the Devil didn’t make us do it. We can’t blame Adam and his gift to us of a sin nature. We bare the full responsibility for our transgressions against a righteous God.
   As I look at the greasy finger prints on my touchpad, I can try to blame Orville Redenbacher, But, those are clearly my finger prints - no need to call CSI.

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Our cell group has begun the ten week series from Mark Virkler and Communion with God Ministries, How to Hear God’s Voice!
It’s based on four, simple principles or keys:

1. Still yourself down,
2. Fix your eyes on Jesus,
3. tune to spontaneity,
4. and write.

I couldn’t help be reminded of the Kim Hill song, Be Still and Know, based on first part of Psalms 46:10:
Be still, and know that I am God . . .

I have been hearing it pretty regularly when things get crazy or frustrating, I feel the need to remind myself that “God is in charge”, not me, and to take a moment to let Him know that I had forgotten that fact for a while, but I remember now . . .

And I hear that phrase like a little voice, like a tune had just played on the radio, but still lingers:

Be still and know that He is God, be still and know.

It seems a bit strange to consider that the Creator of Everything would speak to my heart in a small, still voice. Maybe a big. booming voice, or better yet, as a message passed on through someone more qualified to speak to the All Mighty. But, then again, His word says that, by my faith, I am in Christ Jesus, and that His Holy Spirit is in me, so I am surround, inside and out by two-thirds of the what is God.

I remember seeing, someplace, how shepherds, when a lamb died, would skin it and wrap a lamb that had been rejected or orphaned in the skin. That way, the mother of the dead lamb would see the orphan as it’s own and allow it to nurse. When the camouflaged lamb had fed for a while, the mother’s milk would have altered it’s smell enough for the mother to accept it as it own, and the skin wouldn’t be needed any longer.

I think God’s relationship with us is something like that: It is only by accepting the atoning death of His Son, by being in Christ, that God can allow us in His presence and it is by the Holy Spirit in us, that we can hear His responses back to us. Perhaps the metaphor breaks down a bit at the casting off of the old lamb skin, for we want to continually abide in Him, in Christ, but I think I get it.

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After searching for a suitable worship slide system for our church, I decided to write my own using the S5 presentation software and Ruby on Rails. Check it out at the OpenWorship project site. It’s still early, but I can build a presentation (using rails scaffolding) and display it, so thats a start.

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Just got back from the New England Cell Conference with author Joel Comiskey. A cell church is a body made up of many smaller groups for “evangelism, community, and discipleship with the goal of multiplication” of the cell or group. The conference was very fast paced and most of us left with our head spinning a bit, but little doubt it was the right way to go.
I also got my touch pad on my laptop fixed (whoopie!). Thanks to Gnome Keyboard Accessability, I was able to work some using the keypad as a mouse, but the pad is way easier.

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