Water to Wine: The Wedding at Cana

As I read John 2:1-11 for the first time in months, it strikes me as it always has ... a story I have heard many, many times.  So much so that it didn't move me as it should have this morning. It had become stale to me. So, in an effort to let God speak to me, I sat still following the reading only to have just that happen.

He spoke. 

And here's what He said:

• This was not yet His time, but his mother, Mary, knew who He was. It also struck me that even after He said, "What does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.", she went ahead, seemingly ignoring Him. Moms. 
• They used ceremonial purification jars. As usual, Jesus uses the Old Law to show that HE is the way to be purified. 
• The water transforms to wine.  From something created by God into something that is even greater.
• The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Once again, Jesus teaches us that God's ways are different - many times opposite - than the way the world thinks.  Good wine first, then the lesser wine? No, good wine then better, then best. It reflects our temporal life here on earth versus the life to come in eternity with Him.
• This story begins with "On the third day ..." This speaks for itself and is a foreshadowing.
• The miracle happens at a wedding. When we enter a relationship with Christ, a miracle happens. We are born again into a life eternal. The marriage is a reflection of the relationship we have with Christ, our bridegroom.
• Jesus is capable of anything in any situation ... if we simply trust Him.

Not so stale, eh? God is good.

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

The tithe is a test ... and the only question on that test is, "who owns it?"

I've heard people say, "We're under grace now. The Old Testament law doesn't apply to me anymore. So, I don't need to tithe."

Let's apply that logic to something else. "We are under grace now. The Old Testament law doesn't apply to me anymore. So I'm free to kill anyone I wish."

Sounds pretty silly when you say it, but you're effectively saying the same thing when you apply that logic to giving God the first of the first fruits of the blessings HE provided you.

It's a test. And the only question on that test is, "who owns what you have?" This test started long before the laws delivered by Moses came about. We can stretch it all the way back to Adam and Eve. He said, 'you may enjoy the fruits of every tree in the garden except for the one in the center'. And what did they do? Even non-christians know the answer to that question. And by eating the fruit from the tree in the center of the garden, the first humans effectively said to God, "we aren't just stewards of the garden, God. We own this Garden. We earned it through our own efforts. No acknowledgement if anything YOU've done is necessary."

And we're saying the same thing to God when we don't tithe. "I own this God. I am not merely a steward of the gifts you've given to me. I own them. I earned them."

Tithing is life, not law. The concept of acknowledging God's provision is throughout the Bible. It precedes the laws of Moses.

And, to take it further, Jesus said "you have heard, Thou shalt not kill. But I say, holding anger in your heart for your brother is as good has killing him." I'm paraphrasing of course, but apply this to the tithe, what do you believe Jesus is telling us here? That, based on the New Covenant, we are to give less than a Tithe or, rather, more?

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Romans 6:15

The Gap: How do we fill the gap between who we are and who we were created to be?

Being Christian requires proactive intentionality. It doesn’t just happen. It requires us to actively seek out God and his will in the situations of daily life, and to work each day to close the gap between the person we are and the person he created us to be. It is striving to be the-very-best-version-of-ourselves, and it animates us.

So how do we work on closing the gap? We do it by getting close to Jesus.

There are a hundred ways to rediscover Jesus, but I chose these four because I knew even the busiest person could do them. This is a path for busy people:

1. Read the four Gospels, over and over again, for fifteen minutes each day.
2. Practice The Prayer Process. This is a simple process designed to help you enter into a daily conversation with Jesus. 
3. Deny yourself. Find a handful of small ways to deny yourself each day.
4. Practice spontaneous prayer. Talk to Jesus about the events of your day as they are unfolding.

Our lives change when our habits change. God uses new habits to transform us. These four habits will have a beautiful and radical impact on your life if you allow them to sink their roots deep into your life.

(Taken from Matthew Kelly's "Best Lent Ever" series on Dynamic Catholic)

“Profile of the Lukewarm”, by Francis Chan

Would you describe yourself as totally in love with Jesus Christ? Or do the words halfhearted, lukewarm, and partially-committed fit better?

The Bible says to test ourselves, so I am going to offer you a description of what lukewarm people can look like. As you read these examples, I encourage you to take a searching, honest look at who you are now, and how you are living today.

Lukewarm people:

• Attend church fairly regularly. It is what is expected of them, what they believe “good Christians” do, so they go.
• Give money to charity and to the church… as long as it doesn’t impinge on their standard of living. If they have a little extra and it is easy and safe to give, they do so.
• Desire to fit in both at church and outside of church; they care more about what people think of their actions than what God thinks of their hearts and lives.
• Don’t really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.
• Are moved by stories about people who do radical things for Christ, yet they do not act. Lukewarm people call “radical” what Jesus expected of all His followers.
• Rarely share their faith with their neighbors, coworkers, or friends. They do not want to be rejected, nor do they want to make people uncomfortable by talking about private issues like religion.
• Gauge their morality or “goodness” by comparing themselves to the secular world. They feel satisfied that they are nowhere as horrible as the guy down the street.
• Say they love Jesus, and He is a part of their lives. But only a part. They give Him a section of their time, money, thoughts, but He isn’t allowed to control their lives.
• Love God, but they do not love Him with all their heart, soul, and strength.
• Love others but do not seek to love others as much as they love themselves.

* How many of these “lukewarm traits” resonated with how you’re living your own life? Pray for God to work on softening your heart, then choose one specific trait to work on (and pray on) throughout this week.

I am the man without any sense

In Proverbs 7 starting in verse 7, we hear of a foolish young man. A young man with no sense. He's easily lured into something he knows that he should not do. He is weak.

It's easy to stand outside of the story and judge him, until I realize that I am that senseless, foolish young man.

How many times have I done something even though I knew that it was wrong? I'd rather not answer that question, to be honest. And how many times have I drug my feet when I knew that I should do something? Again, I'd prefer to plead the fifth.

God does not provide this scripture to make us feel down about ourselves, or to shame us into using our own power to be better about these things. He provides us with this truth about our weakness to remind us then we need Him, that we need His mercy in grace.

I am reminded of my own failure. But this reality does not make me sad anymore. It gives me joy. It reminds me that I am not some self made man who can pull himself up by his own bootstraps. It reminds me that I need my Savior.

I settle in the reality that this is who I am: someone who very much needs God's grace and mercy. And this increases my appreciation and love for Him who has so selflessly given it to me.

Marriage is hard: we’re prideful

Have you ever seen the sappy Ryan O’Neal/Ali MacGraw movie romance entitled "Love Story"? MacGraw played a character who was dying, and at her bedside O’Neal, choking and tearful, said he was sorry. MacGraw then unloaded a line that has done a lot of damage to relationships and marriages everywhere: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Apologizing is hard work. Apologizing and changing your behaviors is even harder, and what makes it so hard is pride. Dating and marriage always to some degree involve each person’s struggling for control. When your behaviors are driven by pride, you want to win every argument, always be right, see difficulties as your partner’s fault, bring up your partner’s admitted failures of the past, and explain away or deny your own sins and weaknesses.

You need other people’s input and critique to know how you sound, how you look, how your actions affect other people. In humility realize that you aren’t quite as brilliant and infallible as you think you are: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you” (Romans 12:3).

When your spouse has an issue with something you’ve said or done, listen twice and think three times before you say anything. It may just be that the best thing you can say is, “I’m sorry.”

(From the Bible app)

If the theory of evolution is true, would that fact even undermine the design argument for the existence of God?

Sidenote:  The Theory of Evolution is still just a theory, even if many remove the words "Theory of" in academia, museums, etc. They will say that this is because the evidence is "undeniable" (Bill Nye), but it's still just a theory. By the way, God and creation and Christ are "undeniable", too, using the same measure.  Neither can be proven or disproven irrefutably.

From Dr. Scott Sullivan:

"The famous atheist Richard Dawkins once quipped that Darwinian evolution has made him an "intellectually fulfilled atheist". And it's no secret that atheists and skeptics often appeal to evolution as a sort of "refutation" of the existence of God, or at least, to support their view that God is not needed to explain the fascinating complexity we see at the biological level.

But is this true? Is it the case that evolution, even if it really happened, is a good reason to not believe in God?

Or, to ask a related question, if the theory of evolution is true, would that fact even undermine the design argument for the existence of God?

My answer is "no" to both questions.

My thesis is this: that even if we grant that evolution is true (and that may well be debatable) still, no harm is done to either belief in God or to the design argument itself.

In other words, my claim is that the truth of the evolutionary hypothesis is irrelevant to the rationality of believing in God and even irrelevant to the design argument itself."

Dr. Scott Sullivan grabs this subject by the horns in his latest podcast:
http://classicaltheist.s3.amazonaws.com/WhyEvolutionDoesNotShowThereIsNoGod.mp3