I’ve been reading the book Radical by David Platt over the past few weeks, and it has transformed the way I see the church, but more so, the way I see myself and how I few my walk with Jesus! I am ashamed to say that I have bought into the American dream, and lost sight of some truths from God’s Word.

One of those beliefs was really brought home to me this morning. I was convicted a few days ago about giving away some of the clothing that I have to a very poor family that are neighbors to us. You see, Jesus tells us over and over again that we are to give selflessly, and that we are to give out of the abundance He has given us. But what struck me in a very difficult way this morning was that we are to give sacrificially, meaning, giving when it hurts.

Some of you will judge me for what I am about to say, but before you do, look through your own closets, and at your own heart, and ask the Holy Spirit to search you, as it says in Psalm 139.

I started going through my closet and dresser to give things away, and at first it wasn’t that difficult. I mean, I have (had) over 50 T-shirts and probably at least that many dress shirts, and I’m sure I have over 10 sweatshirts. So, when I started pulling things out, of course I started with the stuff I don’t wear. No sweat, right? But God didn’t let me stop there.

He asked, “Brian, that was easy, but what about the clothes you like, the stuff you actually really enjoy wearing? Are you willing to give any of that away?” Hmmm, great question Holy Spirit! And my first answer was more argumentative than I would like to admit. But then I relented.

As I slowly started pulling things from hangers, as God would whisper, “That one, and yeah, that one too,” and with tears running down my face as I asked for forgiveness for my greed, I began to feel a peace and a freedom that I just cannot explain!

When it was all said and done, a fourth of my shirts and pants were gone. I’m not saying that it’s still not a painful thing, but when I finally surrendered my “stuff” to God, it got a lot easier.

So, what are you holding on to? Is it clothing, or is it some other material thing? Or maybe you are holding on to a relationship, or a business that you just can’t let go of.

I’m sure He has more to teach me on this topic, but I want to give until it hurts, because in giving, I am blessed by the One Who holds it all in His hands. And in giving, I am doing the will of my Father God!

Let Him search your heart, and whisper in your ear, “Yeah, it’s time to let go of that, and that and…!”

The temptation when writing on a subject such as sports is to take just the verses that apply directly and interpret them literally and expand from them. The main verses come from Paul when in First Corinthians 9:25 he says “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable reward.” And Second Timothy 2:5, “An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.”

Truthfully, I could probably write a pretty decent article or two just on these two verses. I could even expand to talking about war, since that is the closest thing we see in ancient culture to what modern sports today have become. And there’s no doubt, I will speak on these.

But there’s a larger issue. Taking verses out of their context only creates a legalistic, semi-biblical perspective. Instead, we need to understand the Gospel in a deeper way to truly understand what role sports should play in the life of a Christian. And with that, let’s not forget about the role it plays in the church, the unbeliever, and the world as a whole. These are all issues I find myself curious about. I hope you will travel with me through the Gospel to find out what God has purposed sports for in His world.

I feel that even in a Reformed context (where people generally are more lenient and not as legalistic) that the enjoyment of sports is looked down upon. If someone is a sports addict, others immediately think “how could you be addicted to that? That’s dumb! It’s just a bunch of immature men throwing or hitting a ball or crushing each other for no reason.” Perhaps that’s you.

Perhaps you came to this book hoping to confirm your previous bias that sports are bad, evil, and a creation of the Devil. Or maybe you came as a woman hoping to provide biblical truth to your husband/boyfriend/fiancé as to why he should stop focusing so much on sports.

I’m not going to deny that it’s possible to become addicted to sports. And I won’t say sports addiction isn’t wrong. But I’m also not going to bash the sports addict, in part because that’s me, but also because sports are not the problem. The heart is the problem. We ALL have hearts that long and desire for things other than our Savior Jesus Christ.

There’s so much to write on the subject of sports. But organizing it is very difficult. At least with a topic like sex, there’s a whole book in the Bible pretty much concentrated on the subject. The Song of Solomon is a kind of checks and balances for anyone writing about sex. An expositor can look over the Song of Solomon and ask himself, “is this what the Bible really says about sex?” There is no such book that acts as a checks and balances for the topic of sports.

Where must we start when we talk about such an issue as sports? Well, just like any other issue we must start in the Word of God. But we aren’t going to start with the verses that mention directly athletes. Doing so would put us in a position where we go to the text for what we want it to say. Instead we must start with a basic understanding of the Gospel.

In Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, John Piper outlines the basic reason why sex is a gift from God to be enjoyed by his people. He uses a number of verses, primarily coming from Paul’s epistles, which speak of “all things”. Note he doesn’t start with verses that talk directly about sex. He starts talking about sex as being among “all things”. I wrote a paper on the subject of sexual pleasure in a class I had my final semester at San Diego State University. I used Piper’s argument to argue for sexual pleasure being okay in a Christian context. My primary argument was that sex is among “all things” and that all things are to be done for the glory of God.

Perhaps my favorite line in that entire paper is the following: “The church is not a group of old curmudgeons hoping to eliminate all pleasure and joy.” When we try to eliminate pleasure in sex, or pleasure from watching and/or participating in sports, we are acting as a bunch of old curmudgeons trying to eliminate all pleasure and joy. And when we do that, we are playing God. It is not our job to eliminate any person’s joy, whether they love Jesus or not. It is our job to point them to the true joy that exists when we see the cross of Christ as our lone hope.

My greater point is that just like in sex, where “all things” means we are to enjoy sex as a glorious gift from God, sports too is among all things. Sports is a gift from God. I think that’s clear since he gives young men and women tremendous athletic abilities. Just think about Kevin Durant and LeBron James, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, Stephen Strasburg and Albert Pujols, just to name a few. While all of those guys are ultimately great because they work very hard, they are all supremely talented. You might make the case that those guys are the most talented men to ever play their respective games or positions.

And in women’s sports today, you are seeing many women who are super talented, maybe even more talented than some men in previous generations. I don’t believe any of this is an accident. Nothing that happens on this earth is an accident. It is true that everything happens for a reason (which you of course hear a lot from famous athletes when they get hurt or traded, etc.). I mention that because God is sovereign. He is totally 100% in control of all things. He gave these men and women these amazing talents for a reason. I believe it was not to simply bring themselves joy or to make them famous, or worst of all, make them think they are something special. It was undeniably meant to show off His glory. It was meant to say, look at the talent developer that I AM!

Hi everybody,

I’m new to this site. In fact, this is my first true blog. I’ve written for some websites before, but it was more informational. I wrote for a site called Bleacher Report for awhile, but that as the name probably implies, was about sports. This is my first time writing about Christ on a public forum such as this one (not that I’ve never included Christ in my writing, just not as the main emphasis).

Anyhow, the point of my blog I hope is to really speak gospel truth. I am starting a book tentatively called, “What Does The Gospel Say About Sports?” I am extremely excited about that right now. This week I have written five pages for it. At the same time, I’m teaching some Chinese foreign exchange students how to speak English.

Right now despite some difficult circumstances I am resting in the blood of Christ, and finding my joy in Him each and everyday. My hope is you will too. To follow are the opening paragraphs of this book that I plan to publish someday. I am more than happy to post sections online for free since I am not writing for the money but to see lives turn to Jesus. I hope my writing can bless you and others. Here is the opening excerpt from my book:

Growing up all I wanted to do was play sports. I was 100% convinced my career would entail something in sports. For awhile I thought it would be as a sports journalist or broadcaster. For a brief time, I then fooled myself into thinking I was good enough to become a major league pitcher.

When I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I took most of the necessary steps to become a professional football coach. I went to coaching seminars, networked, and even coached at the high school level for the necessary experience, as I finished college. I even took a one thousand dollar class to improve my overall knowledge of football as well to learn to scout and understand the business of football.

Let’s just say I put all my cards in pursuing a career coaching football. Even today, I have moments where I want to coach or scout. Heck, at this moment I still scout college players for fun. But I honestly believe that now I scout for fun instead of it being because I’m holding onto it as a career option. Then again, I even have moments where I desire to give pitching one last try.

But why? Why do I still desire to sacrifice all that I am just to throw a ball in front of thousands of people? Why do, or why did I ever, desire to work 100+ hours per week preparing a bunch of young adults to play a game? And is that desire bad?

The primary purpose of this book is to answer these kinds of questions and more. Is there room for athletics in the life of a Christian? What about the fans? Are we as Christians selling out or forgetting the Gospel when we pledge allegiance to a favorite sports team? Is the primary purpose of sports to serve as an analogy to the rest of life? In short, how are we to view sports as a people radically changed by the Gospel?

Hays’ “Homosexuality”

(To be accompanied with Richard B. Hays’ “The Moral Vision of the New Testament”)

                The word homosexuality holds much prevalence in today’s news, societal issues, including homosexual marriages and civil rights for gays and lesbians, and even more importantly, within the church. Right off the bat, I want to bluntly answer some major questions regarding the acceptance of homosexual behavior within and without the church. It has been a common practice for the church to administer the four parts of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Let us not neglect this practice, and be sure to sift the issue of the acceptance of homosexual behavior through scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Towards the end of his chapter on “Homosexuality”, Hays answers seven heavily debated questions in the fourth section, the section that tells us, matter of factly, how to live out the text of the New Testament in today’s church community. Hays’ list of questions and answers are as follows: “(a) Should the church support civil rights for homosexuals? Yes. (b) Can homosexual persons be members of the Christian church? Yes. (c) Is it Christianly appropriate for Christians who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation to continue to participate in same-sex erotic activity? No. (d) Should the church sanction and bless homosexual unions? No. (e) Does this mean that persons of homosexual orientation are subject to a blanket imposition of celibacy in a way qualitatively different from persons of heterosexual orientation? (Nuanced answer, explanation required.) (f) Should homosexual Christians expect to change their orientation? Yes (nuanced answer, explanation required.) Lastly, (g) Should persons of homosexual orientation be ordained? Yes (also nuanced, explanation required.) These are the questions and answers that Hays eventually determines to be true and right. Beginning at the end of Hays’ chapter on “Homosexuality” is quite startling, is it not? I want you to see the importance of being able to back up the questions and answers that you, as an individual personally accountable to God, eventually decide to be most important and true. Let it stand that we, as Christians, would be causing a deficiency if we gave these matter-of-fact answers without explanations. Without scripture, tradition, reason and experience to back them up, Hays’ answers become senseless.

                Speaking for myself, and more importantly for the author of this text, I say that we, and the rest of the church, are called to be people of truth, rightly dividing the scripture. The Bible’s stance on the issue of homosexual behavior is “univocal.” With one voice, the entire canon speaks against its practice. The issue at hand is not, whether or not homosexual behavior is a sin. Scripture attests to this. The issue the modern church faces today is one of content and approach. What scriptures in the canon apply to its stance on the practice of homosexual behavior? Which scriptures do not apply? Exactly what do these scriptures say? How should the scriptures temper the approach that we use in everyday conversation with our fellow Christian, yet homosexual believers? How do these answers tie in with Hays’ hard, end-of-chapter questions I presented at the beginning of this discussion?

                First, let us approach the issue through scripture. How does the first portion of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral answer our questions? To demystify one common reading of Genesis 19: 1-29, Hays writes that it, “is actually irrelevant to the topic” of homosexuality. The book of Ezekiel states, “‘This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy’ (Ezekiel 16:49).” Now to address the more topic-relevant scriptures, Hays cites the Old Testament scripture of Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 and the New Testament scriptures of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Timothy 1:10, Acts 15:28-29 and Romans 1:18-32. It seems as if Hays moved, in scripture from least topic-relevant to most topic-relevant, so let’s pass by the less topic-relevant scriptures for length’s sake and for time’s sake and move on to the scripture that Hays says is most relevant to the topic, Romans 1:18-32. The scripture reads, “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their own error.” Ok, it’s obvious that this text is “unambiguously and unremittingly negative in” its “judgment.” Though, as Hays states, “the genius of Paul’s analysis…lies in his refusal to posit a catalog of sins as the cause of human alienation from God. Instead, he delves to the root: all other depravities follow from the radical rebellion of the creature against the Creator (1:24-31).” The sin of both Jews and Gentiles alike (the sin of replacing Yahweh with other gods) invokes God’s wrath, which in turn causes this “catalog of sins,” in which Paul also, in other texts, places homosexuality. Hays even goes as far as to quote his homosexual theologian friend, Gary, who announced the uneasiness he experienced when faced with the contemporary homosexual community. His main concern was the common homosexual practice of flaunting one’s sexuality and allowing it to take a higher importance and prevalance than one’s relationship with the Father.

                Romans 1: 18-32, I believe, calls the church away from regarding men and women who practice the sin of homosexuality as blasphemers destined for hell. Homosexuality is a sin, and it is important for us to remember, that amongst the other sins talked about most in the New Testament, homosexuality is not mentioned very much. Sins of economy, sins of pride, and lust in general are mentioned and warned against much more frequently. I believe that, as Hays writes, “The “logic underlying Paul’s ‘sting’ expose of self-righteousness in Romans 2:1” says that “we should not leap to” the “condemnation of others, for we—no less than those who are engaged in ‘the dishonoring of their bodies’—are under God’s judgment, and they—no less than we—are the objects of God’s deeply sacrificial love.” “The cross models the way in which the community of faith ought to respond to them: not in condemnation, but in sacrificial service.” The cross also “marks the end of the old life under the power of sin. Romans 6:12-14 reads, “Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Law and grace should never be separated from each other in the issues surrounding homosexual behavior.

BE SURE TO READ THE NOTES BELOW:

–Homosexual practice considered to be a natural biological phenomenon…”no one in Christ is locked into the past or into a psychological or biological determinism.” (alcoholism—many are genetically inclined to become addicted to alcohol…are they allowed to make excuses?)

–letter c—Romans  6:1…

Living the homosexual life is living in sin, though, we are all sinners living in sin. Yes, homosexuals are expected to cease homosexual activity, but Homosexuals are called to “a life of disciplined abstinence, free from obsessive lust. (Exactly the same standard would apply for unmarried persons of heterosexual orientation.)”

–inspirational and flooring quote from Hays’ homosexual friend, Gary (who eventually died of AIDS) : “Since All Saints Day I have felt myself being transformed. I no longer consider myself homosexual. Many would say, big deal, you’re forty-two—and are dying of AIDS. Big sacrifice. No, I didn’t do this of my will, of an effort to improve myself, to make myself acceptable to God. No, he did this for me. I feel a great weight has been lifted off me. I have not turned ‘straight.’ I guess I’m like St. Paul’s phrase, a eunuch for Christ.”

–letter g: “Strictures against homosexuality belong in the church’s moral [standards], not in its ordination requirements.”

Short and sweet (maybe).  I’m reading The 10 Dumbest Things Christians Do, and I have ONE question for those who have professed Christ (and really, it’s not really something requiring an answer on MY end, but instead more of a charge for self-examination):

Are there any ways by word or by deed you’re slinging mud on the Bride of Christ, His church?

Think about it.  Ask God to show you if there are.  You may want to check the book out too (written by a pastor named Mark Atteberry), it’s worth it to keep “Christians” from causing people to reject Christ.

So I don’t really know what I’m going to write on here but I figured that this sort of thing might be a little fun. Back when I was in Elementary School, I read a book called “Dear God, It’s Me Margaret”.  I can’t remember who wrote it, but it was really, really good! Shortly after reading that book, I started a journal where I would write to God too. I have done this a few times over the years. I pray all day almost every day so I regularly talk to God, but I think that sometimes I can really express myself by writing Him a letter. I do this in class sometimes 0:-) … I find that when I actually write to Him, it is pretty therapeutic. I can almost become more in touch with myself at the same time as expressing myself to God. When I saw this site I decided maybe I can write to Him on here and just express myself electronically. I know God will only need me to pray to Him to hear anything that I have to say, and I know that He already knows everything I want to tell Him without me actually realizing that I do. God knows all, but I still want to write to Him.

Well, I just decided that I would write  a lil somethin’ short a sweet. I am thinking I’ll just write to Him on here and share my thoughts and feelings with everyone else who may be apt to read this…

Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

By Francis Chan

This is an amazing book.  I’m not even sure how to begin describing it.  So, I will transcribe the description on the back cover of the book:

Have you ever wondered if we’re missing it?

It’s crazy, if you think about it. The God of the universe – the Creator of nitrogen and the pine needles, galaxies and E-minor – loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss.

Whether you’ve verbalized it yet or not…we all know something’s wrong.

Does something deep inside your heart long to break free from the status quo? Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of do’s and don’ts – it’s falling in love with God. And once you encounter His love, as Francis describes it, you will never be the same.

Because when you’re wildly in love with someone, it changes everything.

This book was really a call to action for me to love God wholeheartedly and care more about other people.  You won’t be the same after reading this book!

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