More of the Rock and thoughts on Christian life

To be honest with you, there isn't much to say about The Rock this week. It went pretty well. There were a few technical difficulties, but nothing too glaringly bad. I still wish I had more prep time because it feels like my time is rushed running through the service with people. Ed Courtney talked on Freedom/Obedience. Basically the talk focused on how in Christianity, we tend to take extremes on our lifestyle. Either we live in freedom and basically think "Let sin increase so grace may increase" or we live in obedience and we talk bad about people that are sinning. We need to balance these two mindsets.

I find myself leaning towards the obedience, but more and more I desire the freedom mindset. I hope that I can continually balance them.

Something else God is whacking me over the head with is how messed up I really am. We atalk about the refining fire and the Biblical analogies of God putting us through a refining fire to be able to be purified like a precious metal. On top of that Paul writes that we must build a solid foundation of stone and precious metals rather than one of hay and wood. The metals and the stones do not burn in the refining fire and the pass the test. The wood and hay burn up and the foundation is lost. In the same way the fire refines the metal and the stone. It makes them more pure. It however gets really HOT! We don't talk about that part. A refining fire burns...so much so that we get burn scars that remind us of it. But it refines us, makes us more pure and I think more Christ like. Let's take the analogy one step further. Fire is used to cauterize wounds. So the wounds that we currently have that are bleeding (read: hurts that we can't seem to get past) can be cauterized when God throws us into the fire. We are going to hurt, and there will be scars, but God can help to slow or even stop the bleeding.

That strikes me as pretty awesome...