Censored!

I’m writing today from the campus of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School outside of Chicago, where I’ve come to take a class. More on that later. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to post comments on anyone else’s blogs because all Blogger sites as well as Bloglines are blocked by the school’s Internet server. I can only post to my own site via email. At least I hope it works.

I guess they don’t want their students wasting time on such frivolous activities. Or maybe some powers that be have decided that blogging is not an appropriate medium for communication. By the way, if you haven’t read Greg and Dee’s comments to my previous post, please do so. They both make some excellent points.

Related to that discussion, in yesterday’s lecture Dr. Grant Osborne talked about how too much of today’s preaching and evangelism is “market driven.” Jesus delivered the message that God gave him. He didn’t do market research to find out what his audience wanted to hear. In application, here is as close as I can get to Dr. Osborne’s exact words:

“We are called by God to deliver the message he has given, not what people want to hear. The ‘market’ part has to do with how the message is presented, not the content.”

In a different vein, in preparation for our move to the States next year, I’m reading The Art of Coming Home by Craig Storti. One paragraph in the Introduction blew me away with its simple truth. Storti says,

“Moreover, simply because reentry can be frustrating, lonely, and generally unpleasant at times is not to say that it is a harmful experience or a negative one. After all, frustration, loneliness, and unpleasantness are very often the precursors of insight and personal growth. Maybe reentry doesn’t always feel good, but then feeling good isn’t much of a standard for measuring experience.”

I wonder whether it would be possible to count the number of times each day we receive messages that tell us we are to measure our experiences by the “feel good” formula. How often have I been guilty of evaluating worship, prayer, meditation, or fasting by how they make me feel? OK, I’ll just tell you – a lot. May God help me to judge, and choose, my experiences by a higher standard.