Home or Hotel ~ No service? from Rowan Vansleve on Vimeo.

Untitled from Rowan Vansleve on Vimeo.

Untitled from Rowan Vansleve on Vimeo.

Openchurch.cc Food bank from Rowan Vansleve on Vimeo.

What am I doing? Why am I here? What is the point of this? How is this going to help me in my life, or in my future? We all have asked ourselves these questions at some point, I know that I have. Sometimes these questions have led us to be angry with God, want to give up, or try and make things happen on our own, that’s were they have led me on occasions.

This week we discussed how to ThinkDifferent about our purpose, and it was a right on time topic. So many times in life we can become discouraged because we think what we are doing is pointless, especially when it is related to our job. I think this is because we tend to confuse our job, work, or career with our purpose.

We go to work, or go through life, just living out the mundane existance. I wake up, go read meters, come home, he go clean an office, come home, and we go to bed, then we wake up and do it again… oh yeah there is family, kids, pay bills, clean the house squeezed in too. It is like that movie Groundhog Day, only it doesn’t involve Bill Murray so it’s not funny.

This is where the opportunity to ThinkDifferent comes in. Instead of looking at life as mundane and the same old some old, we can look at the monotony as an opportunity for God to use us. As we look through the Bible we find that it is full of stories and examples of God using mundane objects, people, and situations to accomplish the extraordinary.

Just like He used Moses’ staff to show His power, or 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed over 5,000, or a flask of olive oil to save a family. Let’s look for opportunities everyday for God to use us and the mundane things about our lives as a tool to further His kingdom.

In our everyday life, lets look for the opportunity to service a supernatural God!

Lets remember to ThinkDifferent this week and “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think…” Romans 12:2a (NLT)

Untitled from Rowan Vansleve on Vimeo.

As we discussed last week, much of our life is played out in our minds long before it ever comes to the real world.

But there is somewhere deeper and more powerful than our thought’s, sometimes it’s deeper, much deeper.  Sometimes the thoughts and then the actions played out in life are directed by the things that live in our heart and soul. These are deep held beliefs, with roots in love, hate, joy, and anger just to name a few.

If what we think, and what goes on in our head determines how we live, then the heart is the gateway to the head.  The heart is where we store our values, beliefs, and morals, and therefore were our thoughts get pre-screened, before the become words, actions, or habits.  The bible puts it this way in Matt. 15:16-20(MSG) “…what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart.  It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing.  That’s what pollutes.  Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands-that’s neither here nor there.”

The bible is so strong on this matter, it speaks of the heart as being the cornerstone of who we are. A portal to our thoughts, actions and emotion the bible also calls us to “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” Prov. 4:23(NLT).

The wounds of life can sit like stones in our hearts, shaping our values and beliefs, and ultimately our thoughts. The Bible tells the story of Naomi, who’s husband and two son’s both died leaving her alone. In response she demands, don’t call me Naomi, call me Mara because “the Lord has made life very bitter for me.” Ruth 1:20-21.  Mara is the Hebrew word for bitter…. Naomi’s tragedy defined her, it lived in her heart and defined her.

What is living inside your heart, take a quick check up:

• Ask God to show you and help you to let go.
• Then take ownership of your heart and your mind. The Bible tells us to “Take every thought captive before it takes you captive.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV)
• The third thing we can do is forgive and let it go.  There is a popular older saying “Forgive and forget.”  This is such a key because “If you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” Matthew 6:14.
• Lastly, remember we all need help, make sure you talk to someone.  The Bible teaches us “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls for he has no one to help him up.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NKJV)

This maybe a friend or  someone at your church, but sometimes we need professional help. Counselors are a wonderful resources as we empty our hearts.

This is not normal!!! This is how we can ThinkDifferent, and remember as we go through our week “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think…” Romans 12:2a (NLT)

A few months a one of the young ladies who is a part of our leadership team at Openchurch was speak at a family service, just days before the service a local pastor invited me to coffee. Over coffee he reprimanded me for allowing a woman to speak at our church, an unmarried woman at that!

As I sat, pretending to listen, I wondered how in this day and age, we could have such twisted thinking about women. So the following paper was written. On a side note, the young lady in question preached a powerful message and had one of the largest responses we have ever seen.

“Just Because You wear a Different Uniform, Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Play Too!”

By Justin Daigle

It is now the year 2010 and we as human beings and more importantly the followers of Christ have come so far since the days when it was a few Jewish people who believed a revolutionary idea. Since the days of the book of Acts we have progressed, regressed and then progressed again. Yet there are still some things that just seem to have not totally unstuck themselves. These things are called ideas. Not good ideas but bad ideas. And I’m not talking the kind of ideas like “I just invented the snuggie,” I speak of ideas as concepts, beliefs and preconceived notions. Some of these ideas stick with us like gum on the bottom of our shoe. We can get rid of most it by dragging our shoe across the curb but it always leaves just enough for you to have to take a flathead screwdriver to the bottom of your shoe afterwards. The idea that seems to stick to some is the idea of the role of women in ministry.

Why? What is it that gives some people the thought that a woman should never be allowed to lead a church? This topic is to be quite honest, a little foreign to me since I accepted Christ at a church that belonged to a denomination that was started by a woman, on top of that my own great grandmother was ordained in the 30′s as a minister when this concept was even less acceptable than today. The thought that people actually believe women should never be allowed to teach in a church is just not feasible to me. So that said, I do not in any way profess that I am not biased on the issue. I am in fact giving a case for Women and their Christian Rights.

So where does this idea come from? This idea is based primarily on two verses in the Bible written by a guy named Paul.

“…women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.” 1 Corinthians 14:34

“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” 1 Tim 2:11-12

People for hundreds of years have taken this to mean that women are therefore in any circumstance not allowed to preach or teach (they also loosely justify this forever thing based on the depiction of the fall in Genesis). Here is what I think. Please don’t just take my word for it, search the Bible for yourself and ask God to show you His heart for women and the role they have in His church.

The first point is context. Often times when going about the business of interpreting scripture we have to try and understand what the author is saying by first grabbing onto who he was talking to and when he was talking to them and then the culture and practices of the people he was talking to. Paul was talking to a bunch of people that had a preconceived idea that women were nothing more than property. Not necessarily treated like a chair or a pet, more like how we deal with kids as a society. They are considered the responsibility and near property of their parents. This way of thinking pervaded the entire ancient world and the thought of women having any outright public control would have been a scandal (the Romans thought it so wrong that when a small kingdom under their control had a queen take over they had the Queen flogged and her daughters raped to teach them a lesson about the role of women and power in the Empire).  This then plays into Paul’s comments to the women in the congregation, he did not want to make this new way of thinking considered any more of a cult than it already was. Thus we must look at this within the context of our culture, which says that women can be educated and are not property. We do this all the time with the Bible. For instance, the Bible is fairly passive when it comes to its stance on slavery, yet we in no way would ever bring ourselves to say that it is justified in the Bible, yet for some reason it’s okay to believe that women are less than men and should not preach? That my friends, is what Jesus referred to as, “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24).  It is the idea that we find ways to justifying what we want (like swallowing a camel) and reasons to deny others the right to grow into what God wants you to be (straining gnats). But I digress…

The other way to see what the Bible really says about women in ministry is to look at the whole Bible and not base everything solely on 1 or 2 verses. Paul, who wrote the verses in I Corinthians and I Timothy also mentions women who obviously had leadership positions. Phoebe was a deaconess (senior church leader) and he commends her to the Roman church and tells them to do whatever she asks. In the very next verse he mentions Priscilla and how she and her husband have been a great help to him. Paul makes these types of mentions all throughout his letters.

Lastly, we need only look at what God has been doing in the last 100 years to see how He feels about women. As I stated above the very denomination that our church belongs to was started by a woman named Aimee Semple McPherson. She started the denomination after another now very famous denomination told her she couldn’t go out and do things like preach and teach men and do miraculous things like heal people. Why? They disqualified her because she is a woman. Now, because of people like her, a woman can go and become ordained and not be looked down upon because she is guilty of not being a man. On top of all of that, we need only look to our own church to see very capable women do everything from leading ministries in our midst to teaching us to making decisions in the daily life of the church. Yet, believe it or not, this has only come about in the last one hundred years. Kinda weird isn’t it?

As you look through the Bible, women are equal in four specific areas, which I believe point to her ability to minister: Equality in creation (Genesis 1:27-31)-God created both man and woman in the divine image and declared that it was good.  Equality in redemption (Colossians 3:11)-God allowed Jesus to take our sin upon Himself and bear our punishment, because of this, all of mankind is redeemed (men and women) if they believe in and call on the name of Jesus.  Equality in ministry (Luke 8:1-3)-Jesus lifted women up, included them in His ministry and taught them alongside the Disciples.  Jesus also calls all people who believe in Him to proclaim the life-saving news to others.   Finally, Equality in empowerment (Acts 2:16-18)-The Holy Spirit has been poured out on all people, both men and women.  I believe, these four areas create a level field in which men and women are both equally able to minister and lead in the church.

If there is anything to be gained by this please take the time to think about what your beliefs are on this topic. If you are of the thought or persuasion that women should not be in ministry then let this challenge you. If you already believed it was right but didn’t know why then you are now informed. If you find people who believe that women should not be in ministry than use this as a resource. Thank you.

This past weekend we started our ThinkDifferent series, where we are taking a look at how we think about things in life. We are examining everything from finances, work, relationships, and thought process, to try and see how we can ThinkDifferent as a community, and therefore impact our community in a greater way.

What is we lived it? from Rowan Vansleve on Vimeo.