The Huckabee Momentum

Mike Huckabee, running for the GOP nomination, has been running a strong grassroots campaign. It was said that the Evangelicals in Iowa helped him to earn a come-from-behind win in the Iowa caucus. Here are some videos to catch you up to speed on Mike Huckabee...


HUCK / CHUCK NORRIS FACTS




EVOLUTION DEBATE



DEATH PENALTY, ABORTION, AND JESUS




VALUES




PUTTING IRS OUT OF BUSINESS




JAY LENO APPEARANCE

Nudity Is The Point: Part 3 of 3

Spiritual nudity reflects a healthy relationship with God.

Spiritual nudity causes us to run towards God with all our junk.

Spiritual nudity causes us to run towards a Christ-following community so that we can verbally experience grace and truth through other people. This type of experience causes change and healing. Community is the pipeline of living water coming straight from God Himself. Exposing yourself and your junk in community is the physical manifestation of one’s inward relationship with God. Just as one person eats bread when they are hungry, so a person enters into community when they are hungry for God.

Sadly, most people never experience this type of healing and empowering community.

A teenage girl whose father left her when she was little will listen to the enemy’s lie that says if she would just date a punk who will give her acceptance through sex, then her void would be filled.

A successful businessman who feels like the next step up the corporate ladder will add value and respect to his life, listens to the enemy’s lie that says if he gets another promotion, then he will be valued more in society.

A Christian missionary who feels like his identity can be measured in how successful he is at ministry can buy into the lie that God will accept him more if he just works harder.

A college girl who spends all her time gossiping about celebrities or her friends buys into the lie that if she talks about the negatives, then it will make her feel better about herself or make her look better to others.

A fraternity guy who doesn’t want to show up to the spiritual group on campus for fear that his friends will make fun of him buys into the lie that his brothers’ acceptance of him will be more valuable and satisfying than God’s acceptance of him.

If I were to include you in the next example, what would I write?

What are you going after in the world today because you aren’t receiving it in community right now?

Out of pride are you pursuing success so that you can manipulate the system and make people say that they are proud of you? Or are you showing up in a community of people that say that they are proud of you simply because God is proud of you? Are you in a sexual relationship because it is easier to manipulate the system by making someone say they love you rather than showing up to a group of people who will tell you that you are loved because God is love? Are you giving into peer pressure, manipulating the system to make people accept you rather than entering into a community of people that will tell you that you are fully accepted even before you do anything good or bad?

When Adam and Eve ran from God and communion with Him, He pursued them… and he is pursuing you.

May you turn around and walk towards love and acceptance and value through the community of God's people close by. Are you ready to walk into the light? Are you ready for spiritual nudity?

Nudity Is The Point: Part 2 of 3

All Christians have the potential to be great counselors if we can master one great truth: A broken relationship with God is the diagnosis for every problem.

An healthy relationship with God leads us to:

1) Find satisfaction in God alone
2) Become secure with how we were uniquely designed
3) Feel fully accepted in every situation and season of life
4) Not feel ashamed when we mess up because God has credited Jesus Christ’s righteousness to those of us who have accepted it
5) Run toward God
6) Become naked spiritually – not covering up our attitudes or actions

A broken relationship with God leads us to:

1) Find satisfaction in people and things rather than God Himself
2) Become insecure with our physical and spiritual make up
3) Feel that we aren’t fully accepted exactly the way we are
4) Feel ashamed when we mess up because of our world’s judgmental attitude
5) Run from God
6) Cover up our attitudes and actions

This type of broken relationship with God will also isolate people from engaging in a healthy Christian community. Fears of judgment and rejection will keep us away from the bright light of an authentic, transparent, family-like community.

From my vantage point, looking at how one person interacts in a Christian community can tell me a lot about their relationship with God.

If a person is in a healthy unbroken relationship with God, spiritual nudity is something to be desired and embraced. If I see a student coming to a small group meeting, confessing their brokenness, taking off their mask, and exposing their true attitudes, I can tell that they have a lot of confidence in God’s character (that God will forgive them, accept them, and heal them through Jesus).

Recently, I did an online survey of the students I work with. I asked them why they weren’t currently coming to our fraternity and sorority community groups. A few students told me anonymously that they felt like they were insecure about their knowledge of the bible or that they were ashamed of their past and felt like they would be exposed and not accepted.

These answers confirmed my suspicion that these students were giving in to the same lie that Adam and Eve believed in the beginning – that running from God and covering themselves up would lead to safety. The truth, on the other hand, is that God wants all of us to run to him naked, knowing that He is waiting to aggressively forgive, love, and accept us. .

Nudity therefore is the point that God wants us to embrace.

In Part 3, we’ll look at some concrete examples in our society of how people reject spiritual nudity and why they do so.

Nudity Is The Point: Part 1 of 3

For years people have been wearing clothes.

Our attire has evolved from leaves to leather since our first parents, Adam and Eve, entered the scene.

When Adam and Eve sinned for the first time, they felt ashamed, not only emotionally but physically – spurring them to grab a few leaves and run for cover. I would argue that this physical act of “covering up” is a demonstration of what is going on inside the heart.

For some reason, for the however many years that Adam and Eve lived in the garden before they sinned, they felt no need to wear any clothes. We have to ask ourselves, “Why?”

Donald Miller, in his book Searching For God Knows What, says that he thinks Scripture teaches us that “Man is wired so he gets his glory (his security, his understanding of value, his feeling of purpose, his feeling or rightness with his Maker, his security for eternity) from God, and this relationship is so strong, and God’s love is so pure, that Adam and Eve felt no insecurity at all, so much so that they walked around naked and didn’t even realize they were naked. But when this relationship was broken, they knew it instantly.”

Once the relationship between Adam and Eve and God was broken, they continued to drift into insecurity more and more. They began to believe that what they did was so terrible that God could not possibly forgive them. So they ran and hid.

Perhaps counseling people in our world should be simpler that most people think. What if the majority of all our problems can be traced back to the idea that we have a broken relationship with our Maker and therefore are trying to find security and value in other things besides Him? What if the reason for the lusting of business success, popularity, or money can be traced back to the fact that we are cut off from the Source of Life and therefore are desperately trying to fill these huge voids in our lives.

What if a college student went on a drinking binge not because he or she was trying to take their satisfaction to the next level, but because they didn’t have any satisfaction in God and His way of doing things in the first place? What if a college girl had sex with a random fraternity guy not because she was intentionally trying to do evil, but because she didn’t feel like she was accepted and loved enough by God?

Maybe every act of sin or evil can be traced back to the fact that a broken relationship with God propels us into a life of filling the holes in our heart with things or people other than God - a life that causes us to put on our clothes and enter unsafe territory.

In part 2, we’ll contrast the characteristics of a “relationship with God” and a “broken relationship with God.” We’ll also connect these characteristics to spiritual nudity – the wonderful thing that Adam and Eve had going before the Fall, the kind of thing that God desires for us right here, right now.