No Apology for Apologetics! Life Lesson Corner Episode 2

Hello! This is the fist episode of Life Lesson Corner, my way of sharing some of the helpful things I've learned in life.

My apologetics ideology:

All work is a joint effort between God and man Ephesians 2:9-10

Acts 2:14ff &47 Peter preaches a sermon but “the Lord adds to the church”

 Paul heavily uses debate as an evangelism strategy Acts 17:17-18

Paul doesn't always use this approach 1 Corinthians 2:3-6

There is a Time for everything

Know your enemy, know yourself   Tsun tzu.

It is important to ask questions to guide their introspection.

You have to be genuinely curious and work to build the relationship.

Above all, LOVE them. John 13:35

I'm asking you to ask me about parenting, marriage, religious nuanced bible, leadership, and discipleship questions

Leave a comment here or Call in on Anchor

Sunday Sermon Review Episode 2

This is the show where I review a sermon! This week Pastor Bill Frasnelli preaches on God Held Captive to the Mission!

Pastor Bill Frasnelli at Jubilee Christian Center in Fairfax, VA

God Held Captive to the Mission

God held Captive Theme

  Israel loses Ark to philistines (1 Samuel chapter 4 and 5)

  God  allows  others to have power over Him

  God chooses to act through human agents whenever possible


 

Joshua and Caleb had a different spirit

  In sense of demeanor or manner

Numbers 13:25-33

Caleb quieted the people Numbers 13:30

  But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”

Challenge to cooperate Romans 10:12-15

      We are a team/a body that functions together

Challenge to action  Luke 14:23

        Go out and DO!

Challenge to advance.

       Make advancements for the kingdom

Challenge of Urgency Romans 13:12, John 4:35

Cooperate, act,  and advance: NOW

Don't just "have" a mission statement, but your mission should make a statement.

Acts 10:38 *I am very sorry, I misspoke. This is Peter preaching to Cornelius' family, not Paul.*

- God is with you



 

Princess bride: We are men of action; lies do not become us.  -Wesley

This sermon spoke to me in Anchor station and in Extreme church makeover

Consistently reminded of James 2

 And Ephesians 2:9-10

What are some ways you can take action for Jesus this week? Call in and let me know

Also, if you’re thinking sermon you'd like me to review Please call and recommend one!

Thank you so much for listening;

I'm Robert Pearson

The Book End Episode 1

This is the weekly show where I recommend a book that is transformative, inspiring, or just fun! Today's book is Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.

Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light        By:Brian Kolodiejchuk

On Amazon

On Audible

This book is:

  • Series of private letters and meditations of Mother Teresa with enough narration in between letters to give continuity and context.
  • Tells the story of beginning as a small Albanian girl and continues all the way to the Mother Teresa the world knows.
  • It tells how she started the sisters of  charity and the immense internal stifles she faced along the way.

The best Takeaways are:

  • It took ten years of humble pleading to start what would become her legacy. Be persistent Luke 18:1-8
  • Mother Teresa is humbly subject to the authorities placed over her, and waits for the Lord's timing. Such a powerful example of Romans 13:1-8
  • Faced a lot of inner darkness and had to follow the last word she had from the Lord. Be patient and use what revelation you have the best you can.

Definitely check this book out and please let me know what you think!

This book is awesome! You're awesome! God speed!

 

Life Lesson Corner Episode 1

Hello! This is the fist episode of Life Lesson Corner, my way of sharing some of the helpful things I've learned in life.

I am asking you to ask me about parenting, marriage, religious nuanced bible stuff, leadership, and discipleship questions. Ask questions via call in on Anchor or ask me on Twitter @lead2live

Two-fold Humility

Inward humility is what you think about yourself

Romans 12:3  Have an accurate assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.

Outward humility is what you think about other people.

Philippians 2:3, 4 Look out for the best interest of others.

 

What is not humility:

  •   Low self-esteem
  •  Perfectionism
  •  Being taken advantage of

Lessons from a Homeless Man: Part 2

When I was in Bible college, I volunteered in a homeless ministry. We walked the “mean” streets of Columbia, Missouri and just built relationships with the career homeless. The most dynamic one was a guy who we only knew as, “Preacher Gary.” He was a little eccentric and had more than a few strange ideas about Christianity. However, some of his ideas are surprisingly insightful, here’s one of them:

Preacher Gary always wore an all black dress shirt, black slacks and shoes. He was never seen without a black cowboy hat with “Jesus is Lord.” written in large, white letters. It was adorned with a small, metal crucifix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix) on the front.

His plain, yet distinctive fashion choice was precisely designed to show every onlooker, exactly what he was. Preacher Gary wanted everyone to know that Jesus is Lord, and that he takes his faith seriously. Now, if you ever asked why he dressed that way, he would begin in Genesis.

In Genesis 3:9-11 we have the account of Adam, hiding from God. Adam and Eve have just eaten the forbidden fruit, shamefully made clothes from the bushes, and leapt into said bushes when they heard God coming. At God’s approach, their reaction was to hide.

Preacher Gary would then take you to Exodus 28:33-35, where God is explaining how He wants the High Priest’s clothes made. God requires that the robe the High Priest wears will have alternating little, gold bells and pomegranate seeds all the way around the hem. The specific goal was so that the High Priest would jingle, everywhere he went.

Adam hid, God want’s his High Priest to be visible. Dressed in priestly garb of Gold and bright blue with bells and pomegranates around the hem. He’s an eyesore that jingles everywhere he goes. Hiding is impossible.

God doesn’t like it when you try to hide from him. He can see you anyway and you look ridiculous. He loves when you stand before him unashamed, trusting in his forgiveness. God purposefully designed the Priestly robes to make hiding from him feel more impossible and ridiculous than it already was.

Brought to the New Testament, God wants you to want to be seen by the world. In Matthew 5:14-16 Jesus says that you are a city on a hill, a bright light to be shared with all. Preacher Gary took this to heart, and made himself a uniform for being a Christian.

His reasoning was that the world should know you’re a Christian, just by looking at you. Jesus shouldn’t have to look for you when He returns. You should be immediately visible as a Christian. Looking at you, are you a Christian? How would anyone know?

Now, obviously you don’t need to dress funny to be a good Christian. The lesson here though, it to not be embarrassed of the old “Got Jesus” t-shirt in your closet. Maybe don’t wear clothes that have vulgarities on them. Moreover, we must show others our faith by our ACTIONS.

How we live and how we treat other humans determine how we are “dressed” before God and the world. We must be clothed with Christ. We must use our ACTIONS to showcase our faith.

Shame hid us from God and his renewed relationship with us calls us to be seen by all. A city on a hill, a beacon to the nations. Make your Christianity conspicuous and unmistakable. When the Lord returns, he shouldn't have to look for you.

Do Something

Seriously, get off of the couch.

Seriously, get off of the couch.

So much of modern Christianity talks endlessly about loving Jesus, but so often tragically misses the mark. Sure they profess that love is a verb, and love is more than an emotion. They often wax theological about ἀγάπη love and the golden rule, but miss one crucial step.

That step is best expressed as: So what? What are you going to do about it? How are you going to change your actions? What practical ways will your life change to match the love of God?

Jesus goes to great lengths to model unconditional love to his followers, and speaks extensively on limitless forgiveness and humble kindness. The critical element in all of this is: He models it. Jesus actually goes and does it; His actions express the love He has. After He walks the walk, only then does he talk about the lofty ideas.

Action is the key, all the good preaching and solid theology in the world is completely pointless without accompanying actions. Love is a pretty abstract concept, and it becomes even more abstract when you try to love someone you can’t see. What we need is a way to move from abstract concept to solid course of action in our tangible reality.

I am a firm believer in the power of the one sentence definition. If you can boil down an abstract concept to a single, concise sentence then you understand it well enough to act on it. This empowers you to almost effortlessly turn ideas into actions.

I get my one sentence definitions from compiling all the relevant scriptures on a topic. I then look for all the recurring ideas or phrases and boil them down into a single, logical sentence. My definition of Love is: a course of action based on what is best for another person.

This is powerful! I can now look at a situation, choose to love someone, and then know exactly how to act on that choice. I choose to do what is “best” for the other person, when I choose to love them. Here, best doesn’t just mean, “what they want,” but rather what allows the most personal growth and safety.

So the question is how can we show love for God? There are two verses that make this a simple answer, Matthew 25:40 and 1John 4:20. The first has Jesus saying that, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” The second says that if you don’t love your brother, you CAN’T love God.

The way you experience, and show your love for God, is by showing the love of God to others. You show this love by taking the course of action in every situation that encourages the other person to grow. You have to follow the Master’s example and show love to everyone, only then can you truly love God.

You can no longer just sit in church and merely say that you love Jesus. You must help your coworker move so you can show the love of Christ. You need to volunteer in your community in literally any way. You can not say that you love Jesus if you rest upon your laurels and do nothing.

How will you show love to Christ tomorrow?

I wish to express my undying gratitude for your focus and attention: THANKS COOL PERSON!

I have more of these cool things on my blog at lead2.live You’re awesome, and you matter a lot.

Prune Your Life!

I think we can all agree that distractions are generally a bad thing. They waste your time. They squander your energy. They exsanguinate your potential.

The worst part of it is, distractions are so easy to fall into and quite difficult to spot. In our increasingly digital world, they can be very hard to escape. This is why it’s important to employ a scorched earth policy when dealing with them.

Pruning is an agricultural technique that I am going to grossly oversimplify so I can make a point! Put very simply, pruning is where you take a fruit-bearing tree and cut off every branch that is dead, or even just doesn’t bear fruit. Sometimes it’s even a healthy branch that you just don’t want to grow fruit because it’s too short, or could harm the tree as it gets bigger.

The priorities for an apple farmer are: make apples, make bigger apples, and make more apples. So only the limbs with apples are important. The limbs are also cut in a pattern that makes it easier to collect the apples that grow. So the lesson is: know what’s important!

This means that anything that doesn’t contribute to the goal is pruned. Every single branch outside the plan is treated as expendable, if not detrimental. When you prune a branch it is cut off flush with the tree’s trunk so it doesn’t grow back. The lesson is: mercilessly remove distractions completely!

Lastly, trees grow very slowly; veeeeeery, veeeeeery sloooooowly. Pruning a tree properly starts early and takes years. This is not an overnight process and patience is a fundamental element of it. The last lesson is: be patient and stay committed for the long haul.

I hope this was both inspiring and empowering. I was going for inspiring and empowering. I want you to use this next week to try and identify 1 time wasting habit you could do without. Think of 3 ways you could cut this time-waster out of your life and do 1 of them.


What’s your worst distraction and how will you prune it? Tell me in the comments!

You'll never believe how hard this is ...

I’m going to try to convince you that you need to start praying, after you eat. Now hold on, I know that praying before the meal has a long and established tradition in Christianity stretching back to Jesus himself. I’m just suggesting that you consider another way.

The New Testament example is one of praying before the meal: Jesus gives thanks before the multiplying the loaves and fishes, before breaking bread at the last supper, and when He eats with His disciples at Emmaus. The apostle Paul also gives thanks for his food before he eats. It’s an important spiritual discipline that encourages a life of gratitude.

I found this verse a little while ago and thought it sounded like an interesting direction to go. Little did I know it has proven the hardest thing I’ve attempted in my life. So I’m reading Deuteronomy and I come across this:

 

And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Deuteronomy 6:10-12

 

Then, just two chapters later it says:

 

And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.

Deuteronomy 8:10

 

Moses flat out says, you need to remember to thank God after you’ve eaten and are full. So I said, “Yeah, no problem. I’ll start praying after I eat.” Boy, was I wrong. A surprising thing happens when you get done eating, talking, and laughing … you forget. In 5 years of trying to do this, I’ve remembered twice. Only twice have I gotten all the way through a meal, put my plate a way, then sat down and prayed. It is mind blowing how easy it is to forget to thank God, once you’re full, comfortable, and looking for desert.

It seems so strange that the hardest time to thank God is the one that should be the easiest. So I issue this challenge to you: After each meal you eat this week, stop when your done, turn your heart to heaven, and give thanks.

Pray Face

The Dangers of Distrac…..wait, what?

Distraction.jpg

          We live in a world of distractions. Your phone is one stop shopping for distractions. Scores for the game, actual games, the internet, and even other people. Normally this isn’t a big deal, but distractions can be very dangerous because they render the most powerful man helpless.

          The word distract comes from the Latin dis meaning “away” and trahere meaning “draw.” Distraction being something that draws you away from what's important. In the Bible the word only appears twice. The Greek word is περισπάω, περι the preposition for “around” and σπάω which means “draw” It's used for when peter draws his sword to cut that guy's ear off.

          You get the idea though, when your attention is drawn away from what’s important you’re left vulnerable.  The city of Ai learned this the hard way. When Joshua lead the Israelites to take Ai in Joshua, chapter 8, distraction was the tactic that God chose for them to use. The Israelites split off a small force that approached the city in the open and then ran away. The people of Ai were so incensed that they immediately sent out their entire army to chase after this small force that simply approached the city and left. When they did this they left the city defenseless. The just remainder of the Israelite army moved into the city, set it on fire and headed out to surround the army of Ai. The city of Ai was destroyed so completely that scholars still don’t know for sure where it was. Which is crazy because archaeologists have been able to find most ancient cities, even ones that were destroyed completely.

          The army of Ai lost sight of what was important. The job of an army is to protect their country, or in this case, city. Ai lost sight of that and instead of protecting the city, they ran out to go attack some “punks who were back for more.” They got distracted and were drawn out to where they would be vulnerable. Even a powerful, experienced fighter can be easily knocked out if the allow themselves to get distracted.

          In life it’s hard to tell if you’re losing the fight because the knockout’s don’t come all at once. It’s slow and it’s subtle; each little distraction leads to a little loss. Those losses build up over time until it’s overwhelming how often you check your phone, or how much time you spend on Facebook or surfing YouTube. Before you know it your focus is stolen from your family, your church, your life.

          In Mark 4:18-19 Jesus explains the parable of the sower, where the seeds fell among the thorns. Jesus says that the thorns represent the worries of the world which choke out the seeds and make them unfruitful. As Christians that’s our job, to bear fruit for Jesus. Getting your head full of these other things can wither your fruit. It steals nutrients (precious time, focus, and energy) from growing fruit and wastes it. Stay focused and stay fruitful.

Don't tear down that wall!

          I was reading through Nehemiah 1 recently and was struck by how Nehemiah mourned the loss of Jerusalem's walls and the scattering of her people. You see, walls are vital to ancient cities. They were your first and best line of defense against invading forces.

          If you didn't have walls you essentially didn't have a city. This is because basically any army could just roll into town, set up shop, and take over without a fight. The walls around an Ancient city structure and security from outsiders, defines the borders, and creates a safe place within it's walls.

          Taking this concept to the home, your leadership is the wall protecting the spirit of your family. Your leadership protects your family from negative outside influences, defines the boundaries of what is acceptable and creates a place where it is safe to relax and be at ease. Build your wall, lead your family.

Let God teach you.

Take a minute and read, Psalm 25:4-14. It's okay, I'll wait......

             Almost every other verse says that God will teach you. My mom always says, "If it's in the Bible more than two times, it must be really important." Now, I don't claim to know all the ways God teaches us and how all of that works. I do know this one, little way.

             "Before anything else and above everything else, humans are relational creatures."

-John Fuller

            God created us to be in relationships with each other. It's through those relationships that we can learn about our relationship with him. Throughout your life there will be moments when a verse or situation from scripture comes to mind at a critical moment in your life when your circumstances directly parallel the scripture. Those are the moments to look for and learn from.

             My oldest son was only a day old and I'm changing what was probably my fifth diaper. I'm an expert at this point and still can't figure out how to properly wrestle with a kicking newborn. They have a way of pulling their heels to their butt, get poop on them, then kick out and spread poop everywhere. He keeps kicking and all I can think to say to him is, "BE STILL!" and my brain finishes, "and know that I am God." When we struggle, sometimes we just get poop everywhere and we make it more difficult for God to help us. It's when we relax and let God lead that the best things happen. 

            That's my favorite learning anecdote, what's a time in your life when God taught you something through life?

A Love so Profound...

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                   So, my wife and I were at our local hardware store the other night when the sales associate, an older man named John, came over to see if we were "finding everything okay?" I was busy agonizing over which drill bit to buy when she strikes up a conversation with him.

                   Now, my wife, Ebony, has always had this God given ability to open up complete strangers. She tells him that we've been married for 8 years and he kind of chuckles to himself, as if to say, "That's nothing." I know this because it's the same chuckle I get when someone proudly says they've been married for 6 months, or even a year.

                   Well, now we're curious. My wife then asks the obvious question, how long have you been married? John gets this blank look on his face while he does the math. Slowly and deliberately he says, "43 years." That's awesome, and my wife and I are quick to tell him so. That's such a long time to be married. It's less and less common for marriages to last that long these days. Here's the most interesting part: when Ebony asks about John's wife and what she's like, he gets silent and just looks.

                   He had no words. He had been married so long and loved her so much, he didn't have words to describe it. She was just his wife, that's all he could articulate. He then went on to explain that he couldn't even explain how or why they got married. "We just fit," John said, "We just seemed to go together and it felt right." I can only hope right now that one day I might experience a love for my wife so profound it very literally defies explanation.

 

Father's Day

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I wrote this for a Father's day contest at my Church.

       Psalm 127 is possibly the greatest passage about family in the Bible. It cuts right to the heart of a successful life, and a successful family. "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." Which is to say that if God is building the house, those who build it need only calmly continue to work and God will make progress happen. 

        In Japan the way they teach children to play the violin at age 5 is to teach the mother violin in front of them starting at age 3. On page 29 of Men of Integrity July/August 2016 There is a devotional about praying with your family as a way of modeling Godly behavior and establishing His authority over your household. I feel that the author didn't use the best verses he could have, and falls short of explaining how powerful modeling really is (I know these are really excerpts from books and not originally written as standalone devotions).

         Modeling is so powerful it could be successfully used as your only parenting strategy. Deuteronomy 6:9 speaks of God's commandments,  "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." Teach with your life, all day every day. This is so important that God repeats himself in 11:19. When you sit, when you walk, when you lay down, and when you rise. Teach by living.

         I learned the heart of modeling in my first year of marriage while my wife was pregnant with our firstborn son. I'll start by describing what my dad was like when I was ages 5-7. He had a beard, long hair, wore a bandanna to hold his hair back while he worked, he worked third shift, and had a wretched short temper. I was married in the Spring of '08. By that summer I had grown a pony tail, grown out my beard, was working third shift at a factory, started wearing bandanna's to hold my hair out of my face and struggling with a lifelong short temper. I stopped one day and realized how effortlessly and unintentionally I became my father. It dawned on me that the man I am, is the man my son will most easily become. The man my daughters will be drawn to, for better or worse.

        I could use this, learn to overcome my temper so I could help my son overcome his. The easiest and the hardest way to parent is this: Be the man you want your son to be, be the man you want your daughter to marry. God will work everything else out.