Q&A from Genesis

For the next few posts, I'm going to focus on some of the unanswered questions from last week's Q&A on Genesis. For context, listen to last week's sermon, Origin of Humanity, on iTunes. Comment back if you have more questions.

- HT

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Q: Biblically, how do you view the choice of how many kids to have by married couples? Keep multiplying until bodies are unable? Or limit the number?

A: The Bible doesn’t give us any direction on this. I think you just need to go with your gut. Children are a blessing from the Lord and the Scripture says, “Blessed is the man who has a quiver full of children.” (Psalm 127:3-4) In our family, we’re about to have our third child and who knows, we might have four or five. Or we may just stop at three. Pray with your spouse and God will give you direction. The Bible tells us to be fruitful and multiply, but God doesn’t give us a quota. If you have one kid, that’s fruitful. If you have ten kids that’s hella fruitful.



Q: If we are to be fruitful, than why does God allow miscarriage?

A: First of all, if this has happened to you, as I know it has happened to many women in our community, I grieve with you. I can’t imagine the pain you’re experiencing and have experienced. What is interesting is that many holy women of the Bible were unable to have children. The Bible is filled with couples calling out to God to give them children. And sometimes God did and other times He did not. I’m not sure why God allows miscarriage. But, I am sure that things like miscarriage are a result of the fall and the effects of sin on humanity. You must remember that there is no passage of scripture indicating that your miscarriage was a direct result of your personal sin. Just as the starving child in Africa is not suffering for his own personal sin, he’s suffering because of the sins of humanity and as a result of the fall. We should turn our anger to sin and not to God. God is good and always does what is right. Even when it doesn’t seem like the best choice to us, we can never put ourselves in the position where we—as creatures—think that we are wiser and more righteous than the Creator. Often when people are angry with God, it is because they assume that God has done them wrong, which is a form of self-righteousness because we are saying we are more righteous than God. So, when it comes to horrible things like miscarriage, we must know that God grieves with us in our pain. Scripture says that God keeps every one of our tears in His bottle (Psalm 56:8). This means that God is collecting our tears because they are precious to Him. If miscarriage is a result of the fall and sin in the world, then we must remember that our Savior came to take away sin by entering into our pain and suffering as we do. God, in the midst of our pain, brought redemption. It’s possible that redemption for you would be to try for another child. It’s possible that redemption for you would be to adopt a child, saving the child from living without parents just as Jesus saved you from living without a heavenly Father.

This week, we will begin our new series through the book of Genesis. This is an exciting new chapter (or 50 chapters) for the LS Community. The book is not only the first to appear in the Bible, but it brings weight to the old adage that you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been. Genesis is a look at what was, what is, and what is to come because it examines the person and work of God, who Himself was and is and is to come.

For the first couple of months we are going to camp out on the first few chapters of the book in both Large and Small Group Gatherings. Here’s a highlight to be aware of—on Sunday, March 1st, we’ll host a forum in which we will bring in some experts to talk about creation, evolution, science and the age of the earth in response to some of the issues that Genesis provokes. Next, we’ll look at some of the pre-historic narratives like the Noah and the Flood and the Tower of Babel. These stories have been hijacked by a lot of cheesy Christian media, but we’ll try to cut through the junk and get to the meat. After that, we’ll move to The Patriarchs of our Faith—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. The lives of these men and their interactions with God truly inform our own… probably more than we’d like to admit at times. This whole process will take us until September.

You may not see the name of ‘Jesus’ recorded in the Book of Genesis, but He’s written all over its pages. This will be a great series to invite unchurched people to as it will talk about the beginnings of many things which will naturally unfold questions about the Gospel.

So come. Learn. Do Mission. Join us as we press forward by going back to the start.

Keystone Campus

A new chapter in the History of the Living Stones Community began this weekend.

This Sunday morning at 10am, Living Stones launched its first Sunday morning gathering at the Keystone Campus with around 150 people in attendance. It was absolutely amazing. What does this mean for the Living Stones community? A lot of things.

This gathering is not only another way for Living Stones to continue growing and proclaim Christ, but it provides whole new campus/church in the center of the City—a vastly unchurched region. Will there be anything different about the Keystone Campus from the Robb Campus other than the location? Essentially, Keystone will continue to echo what you’ve come to expect from LS. I (or whoever is teaching that week) will preach the same sermon in the morning at the Keystone Campus as in the evening at the Robb Campus. Bands, however, will vary between campuses on any given Sunday. One of the 4 LS Bands will lead us in worship at Keystone and then another of the 4 will lead in the evening at Robb. What do we need to do? We desperately need to open around 100 seats at the 7pm Robb Campus gathering and around 50 at the 5pm gathering to continue to make room for people to come hear the good news about Jesus.

So—if you are not already moving to the Keystone Campus, would you consider it?

Rest and Reflection

I have heard it said that if you don’t Sabbath yourself, then God will Sabbath you. So, I got sick this week. I sat around the house reading, watching movies, thinking, praying. It was awesome. Now it’s not that I like being sick. It usually drives me nuts that I can’t get anything done, but on the other hand God will allow me to get sick when I haven’t taken time to really reflect and pray and read to hear his voice. When I don’t take time to just sit and be – not do – be. So the past few days I have been able to get my arms around my thought life, my emotional life, and my spiritual life. It’s so easy to just forget that Christianity is not a faith of “do,” but it’s a faith of done. So for the past few days, I have sabbathed (not in the Old Testament sense, but in the rest sense) and remembered that I am a child of the King. Do you ever notice how the Bible is always telling us to “remember?” So, I remembered.

Jesus, Jobs & Egoists

Question: How do you serve Jesus when you hate your job?

Answer: It depends on why you hate your job. Do you hate your job because you are lazy and would rather play your Wii in your mom’s basement? Do you hate your job because you have a greater vision for what God is calling you to do? Are you working toward it? Maybe your job sucks because you are not doing anything to work toward that goal.

When I was working for UPS and was a janitor at the church, I didn’t like either job, but I did it while we planted Living Stones and while I went to Bible College. I was working toward my dream—so cleaning crap off toilets didn’t look so bad in the short term (after all, it was great training for cleaning up crap within the church!). This went on for 5 long years. But I wouldn’t trade anything for the character that was built in those years. It was all God’s prep for my current position.

Regardless of your occupation, the Scriptures command that “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23). If you are hating your job and whining about it… stop! God has given you a way to make income, which is something to be thankful for—especially these days.

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Question: If God is so loving and compassionate, why is it that most of the Christians I meet are the most self-centered people I know?

Answer: Why are some Christians some of the most self-centered people you know? Because they are not obeying Jesus… Are you?

Remember—God saves sinners! This means that those in the church are both fallen and redeemed at the same time. Be patient with them the same way God is patient with you. Spend more time praying for them rather than criticizing them. Ask God to show you how self-centered you are so that you will be more prone to forgive. The only way to survive in a world of ‘hypocrisy’ is to cast out the hypocrisy in yourself and ask God to do through you what you don’t see being done through others. Although self-centeredness if not okay, there is no room for self-righteousness on this issue. It’s only by His work on the cross that we can love others in the first place.