bierkergaard

I recently purchased the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible. The reason why is that I need spiritual formation. After many years of being a Christian, I have hit a plateau of sorts. It either means that I have it all figured out and I am now at the apex of Christian understanding OR I need to keep climbing and not just walk along flat ground coasting. Easy paths are not necessarily good paths. I suppose it also depends where the paths are leading. No need to take a harder path than necessary. A friend of mine who does wonderful ministry in Alaska ( http://www.lightshineministries.org/ ) recently wrote that if we are bored as Christians it means that we are not engaged in work that God is calling us to. I feel a ministry that God has called me to is to write. When I was a kid, I had a fascination with writing something and then publishing it. I still recall an after-school club in elementary school where we wrote and published a magazine of sort where my piece was about Hank Aaron bre...

Several months ago our pastor asked my wife and I if we would be interested in doing a mission trip to Germany this summer (to teach English to German youth). There would also been an opportunity to do some sightseeing and the like. Our pastor loves German culture and food and I am of German ancestry and love beer...it would have been a great fit. Lina just loves to travel so she is pretty much game if it gets her out of town. The trip is right now. Lina and I were at least somewhat interested until our Pastor got back to us that the people who our church's team would be working with in Germany thought that we were too old! The fact that I work with teens seemed to be lost on the decision-makers. Honestly, it didn't really bother me to not go (except the "old" part) because I need the summers to do schedules at work. I stress out when I am away over the summer and the other school counselors are busy with their student's schedules...leaving little room for my work...

I read this on a website today from a pastor: From http://www.newhope.bc.ca/99- 01-24.htm Eugene H. Peterson in his book titled, "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction" says, "In an age of thirty-second commercials, thirty-page abridgments and instant banking, it is not difficult to get a person interested in the gospel, but terribly difficult to sustain the interest." People say, "When its convenient I'll try to make time for God. If I have the drive and enthusiasm I'll get up for church. We are a nation with the mentality that if it's demanding, drop it! We start diets but lack the discipline or the desire to see them through. When home work becomes a hassle, the school drop out rate climbs. When marriage gets boring, and conflicts become more than "occasional," instead of sticking with it and working it out -- we toss the marriage away as if it were an old pair of shoes! The concept of a long obedience in the same direction repels us. ...

Matthew 5:48 Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Perfect (teleioi). The word comes from telos, end, goal, limit. Here it is the goal set before us, the absolute standard of our Heavenly Father. The word is used also for relative perfection as of adults compared with children. "The word rendered here perfect by St. Matthew, is elsewere by St. Luke rendered merciful, Luke 6:36, implying, that charity is the perfection of a Christian's graces: he that is made perfect in love, is perfect in all divine graces, in the account of God. " (William Burkitt). I struggle with this verse in Matthew in the sense that I know that perfection is not possible, in and of myself. Religion can lead a person to depend on their own righteousness, to stand with the belief that I can get myself to heaven. So, Jesus is stopping this construction of the steps to heaven at the first brick. Like the Tower of Babel, we want to get to heaven under our own effort and work...

My dad made an interesting comment the other day....he said that he knows a lot, perhaps too much, about my lawn and garden. Since I write about these two things a lot in my blog, and he reads my blog, he is going to hear a lot about my lawn and garden. Kind of like if you lay out in the sun too long on a summer day without protection, you are going to get sunburned. But, yardwork and gardening are the primary ways I relate to the more physical nature of life. I am not mechanically-inclined (but declined) and don't play a musical instrument. So, the yard and the garden become rich fodder for observations about life in general. I have to wonder if our inability to follow the Gospel is somewhat because we are so detached from the cycles of life and growth in the realm of agriculture. Farmers are spiritual people...you have to be. You can only do so much when you farm to get good crops; other things, like rain, are out of your control. I know that with modern agriculture, even some of...

I have changed the subtitle of Bierkergaard from "Where philosophy collides with real life" to "Where theology collides with real life." Contact all the major media outlets! Both philosophy and theology can become esoteric, irrelevant, and impractical. Lina and I heard another sermon on infant baptism vs. believers baptism where the speaker truly did not succeed in answering the 'So why does this matter?" question. I think it does matter but the speaker dedicated himself for the first third of his sermon to the "How" which really is not as important...and then when he got to the "Why," the sermon devolved into thoughts lacking linkage to the present day realities. I think that the baptism issue does come down to the difference between predestination versus free will and I will leave it at that. No time to get into this now. I know, 'Chicken!" Retreating to life of the mind without an awareness and application to the world reall...

2nd Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Lina and I returned on Sunday from Washington D.C. The reason we were in our nation's Capitol was to attend her Aunt's funeral in Arlington National Cemetery (she was married to a military man who had passed away about ten years ago). This was the first time I had visited Arlington National Cemetery. The service was quick...the staff at the cemetery approach their duties with machine-like precision. Besides the GPS taking us to the entrance of Ft. Myers, where I had to execute a fairly complex U turn with some other letters thrown in (and) all of the inhabitants of the car having to produce I.D., the funeral was so perfunctory and orderly that it almost seemed like it diminished Lina's Aunt's life in a way. I was almost expect to hear "Next" like some fast food place... While we were in D.C., we visited the Holocaust Museum. In light of the recent tragedy t...