The Threads Blog

Revelation has always been a mystery to me. I have sat in on many different studies and heard many explanations through the years, and yet this book remains very mysterious. I am OK with that. In fact, I love it. I love scratching my head and wondering what in the world God is up to. I find it offensive when people try so hard to figure God out and get frustrated when they can’t. If we could see the big picture, and by big picture I mean all of eternity, maybe then we could begin to grasp some of the mystery. We however, are much like my wonderful 2-year-old daughter, only fixed on our next hit of hot chocolate to understand the big picture. This is why I embrace the mystery. For me, there is peace found in understanding that I can’t know it all, and there is hope in the fact that I rest in the arms of the One who does.

As I studied this week and explored this section of Revelation, I saw my face every time Laodicea was mentioned. This week we are exploring passion for Christ. Is seems a bit silly that we would need a lesson on remaining passionate for Christ, but apparently that need has been around for quite a while.

These are all headlines from the past few days I found in about two minutes.They simply serve as an example of what goes on. I could have found hundreds for each, but you get the point. These are relationships we would think exemplify love. For most of us young adults, we grew up during the divorce boom. We saw people in the church professing love one day and divorcing the next. Adultery, at least if you watch TV, has become mainstream and even expected. Porn has become common-place and is almost accepted as a viable job opportunity. Unfortunately these perversions are as common in the church as they are outside it.

Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This idea has been taught for as long as I can remember. It seems, however, the motive for teaching that truth was less about what my body should be like and more about what I should not do with my body. I very vividly remember spending many Wednesday nights and summer camps discussing the myriad of things we were to abstain from because the Holy Spirit resides in us. We were to keep the temple holy. Back then it meant not smoking, drinking, or doing drugs. As long as we did not do those three things, then we were ok I guess. This week, those lessons have been coming back to my mind. At the time I did not realize how weak those arguments were, but they did keep me away from those things. Looking back, I wonder why no one ever taught that eating too much or never exercising was just as bad. It seemed like the focus was on not doing bad things rather than doing good things. Why is it that not doing certain things is often our focus? This is the nature of our lesson this week.

“I should be making more money than this.” I just finished my tax return and had the same thought I have every year—I think my salary should be higher (sorry Threads). This is not a plea for a raise, especially with the dose of reality I had this morning. Sometimes, we just don’t get how richly we are blessed.