Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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The way to find rest

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 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28, NASB)

Come

Rest AreaThe command to come implies movement, you cannot stay where you are. If you are in need of rest you must move, you cannot stay still. It will not get better without action on your part. But that action needs to move you in closer proximity to Jesus.

To me

To Jesus and to Jesus alone. Jesus is the only place to find lasting rest.

All

No-one is excluded from this promise. Anyone can come.

Who are weary and heavy-laden

Who is not weary and heavy laden? Many of us work hard at maintaining the illusion that we have it all together, but let’s be honest. We don’t have it all together.

Too much of life is outside our control. We may influence, but we cannot control what goes on around us. We get tired from the burdens that we find ourselves carrying.

And I will give you rest.

We can find rest by coming to Jesus with our burdens. The last lines of the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” provide some insight as to what we can expect from Jesus:

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

No qualifications

Notice that the the only qualification that is required to obtain rest from Jesus is to come. All we have to do is show up and the rest ours. Why then do we seem to always come to Jesus as a last resort after trying all the other stuff we “know” that we should do?

Just come!

Miles Stanford on Appropriating Blessing

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“Let us cease laying down to the saints long lists of ‘conditions’ of entering into the blessed life in Christ; and instead, as the primal preparation for leading them into the experience of this life, show them what their position, possessions, and privileges in Christ already are. Thus shall we truly work with the Holy Spirit, and thus shall we have more, and much more abiding fruit of our labors among the people of God.” – Miles Stanford in The Green Letters

The Green Letters
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It is far too common for church leaders to intimate that spiritual blessing is conditioned upon proper behavior. While statements like, “if you give of yourself more, you will experience blessing” or “service is the way to fellowship” are often well meant, they inadvertently damage a believers rest in the promises of God.

The only condition for receiving God’s blessing is to be in Christ. I am blessed because of my relationship with Jesus Christ and it is upon this relationship alone that blessing is conditioned.

Miles Stanford
Miles Stanford

I may not act as if I am blessed. I may not perceive that I am blessed. But if I am in Christ, I am blessed none-the-less. No-one can take that blessing away.

The problem is that I need to remember that this blessing is mine and live as though it is mine. As Miles Stanford states above, I have position in Christ, I have possessions in Christ and I have Privileges in Christ. If you are in Christ they are your blessings also.

We don’t need to earn these blessings; We could not earn them if we tried.We simply need to live as though they are ours.

Because they are.

A new theme for Attempts at Honesty Christian Blog

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August 2013 Update: This month, 8Bit, the publishers of Standard Theme, announced that they are closing shop and Standard Theme will not be supported after September 2013. The good news is that there are many good options available. The bad news is that I paid for lifetime support for Standard Theme and did not expect to have to change. But it was not meant to be. So, if you are looking for a good WordPress theme, there are many to choose from. I strongly recommend that you think twice before buying that lifetime support upgrade . . .

September 2014 Update I am now using the Genesis Framework with the Mobile First child theme. The Genesis framework is fast and there is a lot of support material (including child themes) available.

Standard

Approximately 15% of the traffic to Attempts at Honesty comes from mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. To make the blog more readable on these devices, I had been using the free version of a plugin called WPTouch.

The free version of WPTouch works well for smart phones, but does not provide any improvement to the experience of iPad users. With the growth of iPad use, I knew that I needed to make a change. My choice was to purchase the paid version of WPTouch or to move to a responsive theme.

A theme is considered responsive when it renders the web page in a manner that is appropriate for the screen on which it is viewed. It does not matter whether the page is viewed on a mobile device, desktop or laptop computer, a responsive theme provides a readable version of the blog geared for that device.

After weighing the pros and cons of the paid version of WPTouch vs. a responsive theme, I thought that the responsive theme would provide a better experience across the board. So the question then became, “which theme?”

There are hundreds of themes available for WordPress. If you do a search on “best responsive WordPress theme” you will find several comparisons of themes. After reading a bunch of opinions in favor of this theme or that (all of theme good themes), I chose to purchase Standard Theme for Attempts at Honesty.

Since I haven’t tried the other themes, I cannot say that Standard Theme is the best, but I can say that it is a great option for someone like me who does not have the desire to write code or customize every aspect of the blog. It literally took me about 15 minutes to download and install Standard. For the basic theme there are only a few options that need to be selected. It only takes a few minutes to work through these choices and after that the theme is up and running and looking great.

Standard also has the ability to build child themes to provide for additional customization. I have not yet explored this option but may play with some tweaks of the blog moving forward.

If you are reading this on a mobile device, please take a few moments and provide a comment below providing feedback as to the look and functionality of the theme on your device. I’m especially interested in hearing from tablet users.

Also, any suggestions for improvement to the look and functionality of the blog would also be greatly appreciated.

My reluctant New Year’s Resolutions

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ResolutionsI’m not a big fan of making a list of resolutions every year. My experience is that they are likely to be broken or forgotten before the end of January. Resolutions are the product of good intent, but often lack commitment and a plan for achievement.

In spite of my aversion to resolutions, I did come up with five for 2013. These are things that I have been thinking about and working on anyway, so I might as well make them resolutions and share them with you. Here they are with some explanation:

  1. I resolve to be open to have my plans changed so that God can bring about something better. Instead of being locked in on what I think I need to accomplish, I want to be available for those around me. People are more important than accomplishment. I do not want to miss out on any opportunity to learn or grow or help someone else.
  2. I resolve to pray more. Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:15-16, “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. (NASB) I find lots of ways to waste time; prayer is a much better use of that resource.
  3. I resolve to go slower and deeper in my Bible reading. Rather than work on reading the Bible in a year or some other fairly aggressive reading plan, I choose to read smaller portions and spend more time meditating upon them. My current plan is to read one chapter per day. At this pace, I will read through the Bible in a little over three years.
  4. I resolve to be a better steward of the body God has given me. Age and heredity have recently conspired together to force some dietary changes. In addition, I need to be more regular in getting aerobic exercise. Though I am healthy, there are a couple of indicators going in the wrong direction. I hope to show improvement in those indicators by the end of the year.
  5. I resolve to read 12 good Christian apologetics books this year. I would really like to read more than this, but I thought one per month is a reasonable objective. If you have any suggestions as to books which should be on my list, feel free to make a recommendation in the comment section.

What about you? Did you make resolutions? If so, feel free to share them in the comments.

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