I hope this gets 20,000 hits…I have soemthing to write about relevance. I know this seems strange but I like old stuff as well as knew stuff. I like new forms of worship but I can appreciate the old way too. The thing that I have learned about relevance is that no matter how your doing things, when it comes to relevance, the only way that anything is relevant to you is when you force yourself to make it relevant to you. You can overdue this and become neurotic or even worse psychotic and make everything that happens relevant to you. Sometimes it is very easy to make something relevant. You just relate everything to your experience. Like right after a scary movie your scared. schizophrenics do this. They believe a lie and then everything in their experience proves that lie to them no matter what it is. But we believe Truth. This is nuerotic i know but my worst church experiences have been when church is about me….or at least when i think it is about me..I can borderline psychotic on this..you know when you go in and it sounds as if the preacher is picking on you…that gets to me and it is all because i am thinking in the back of my head “this is all about me” when it should be “all about Him.” I cannot go to church when I am like that. It is me. The times when the church is at its best in my opinion is when it has nothing to do with me but it is making Jesus look so Risen and so good that i lose myself in paying attention to the greatness of what He did said and gave. I gain conviction this way. Then when the Bible is elevated and what it teaches is presented i say …hey that is Truth and i can apply that to my current situation and i repent (change my mind) and decide to take steps in my life that would put the word of God into action. A quick way to get there is to take actions in your life that are sacrificial. When i went to Mexico and i was there the words of scripture just popped out at me. It is hard work because my tendency is for self improvement or goals and the like …the wrongs and rights… but it can be excruciating to make the Bible relevant to you. When you do the right…then it becomes relevant. The reason why is because it costs. Whenever there is something in your life that costs something….achievement ..marriage, kids missions, giving….usually right smack dab in the middle of the hurt and cost is Jesus. The greater the cost the more relevant the words of the Bible. It is not easy because usually when your doing it the world will call you irrational.
