a: awesome-sauce brenneman

q: If Dave and Abby had a baby, what should they name it?

Umm, anyway... In the story of Cain and Abel, God was pleased with Abel's offering because he brought his best. In a fit of jealous rage, Cain kills his brother. Was he really that surprised that the Creator of the universe was not impressed with his leftovers? (C'mon son.)

In Sunday school, I challenged everyone to consider what their talents were, what they can bring to God. Many said they didn't know what they were good at, perhaps that's because you were put on the spot... but maybe it's something else. Maybe more of us are like the last servant in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 (check it out here or get out your Bible).

God created Cain with the skill to work the land, just as God creates each of us with a specific set of skills. He is like the man in the parable, entrusting his valuables to his servants while he is awhile. Are we going to take what God has given us and use it according to his purpose so it can be multiplied or will we be like the last servant and be too scared to do anything but hide it in the ground?

Consider someone like our old friend Dave (Brenneman... you know, that guy who used to pastorally assist at our church... the one with freakish, Goliath-esque height and a cheery disposition... yeah, that guy). What if Dave never responded to God's calling to become a pastor? Rumor has it, he doesn't much like talking in front of people... I can't imagine that one with a fear of public speaking would be all that good at or comfortable with speaking publicly. Yet he did and I know my life is certainly changed for it. There are very few other people who exemplify the joy and kindness of Christ as authentically as he does and the overall genuineness and passion of his faith is inspiring. But think if he had been too scared like the last slave, all the insight he shared with us in his sermons would only get passed on to Abby and digging a hole to bury his talent in would have been torture for his back. None of us would have ever had the opportunity to see the love of Christ lived out the way he does it so I know I, for one, am glad Dave's not a sissy. 

Our willingness to surrender our less than perfect selves, allows God to do incredible things in and through us.

We don't have to be the best or even all that good... we might even be terrible, but when we give God our best, He does His best in us.


Xx

get that weak sauce out of here.

So Adam and Eve are in the garden, having themselves a good ol' time. They can do and eat whatever they like in this perfect paradise, with one exception. They can't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ...So what do they do? They eat from the tree of course.

When we're reading this story, we so often assume that very little time had passed between when Adam and Eve were created and when they eat the forbidden fruit. But how accurate is this assumption? Consider Genesis 4.

It starts with Eve conceiving and then giving birth to Cain. In the very next verse she's having his brother. By the third verse, Cain and Abel are already grown up and off doing manly things. If time can pass that quickly in a matter of 3 verses, we really have no idea how much time Adam and Eve had been living it up in the garden.

God never said they couldn't eat from the tree of life (so maybe they had been snacking on it's fruit all along?!) and it also doesn't say that Genesis 3 was the first time the serpent tempted Eve. All we know was that he was more crafty than any of the other animals. Whose to say he hadn't been bothering Eve for years (and years and years and years!)?

In light of this perhaps we should reconsider our basic assumptions about the nature of humanity and our ability to resist temptation. We so often sell ourselves short because we have it in our minds that we are weak. Adam and Eve only resisted for like 5 minutes, so what chance do we have, right? Wrong. Hold out a little longer. Sure, it's not easy and temptation has a habit of constantly nagging us until we finally cave but we can do things to set ourselves up for success.

Change your situation... Walk away, stop hanging out with that particular person or group. Keep yourself busy. Spend time in prayer and studying the Bible (note: that is different than just reading it). Talk it out with someone... I could go on all day, but you get the point.

Stay strong, friends.

Xx

the elephant in the room.

In Genesis 2, man and woman are created. This chapter ends with the verse: “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

In a very literal sense, being naked meant they weren’t hiding anything. They were open and bare before God and before each other. Because this was the way in the garden, we know that something about this is how God wants it to be for us as well. So… God wants us all to become nudists!?

No… at least not literally. Unlike the first man and woman (before the fall), we try to cover ourselves, to hide our imperfections and our weaknesses, not only from God but from each other. By doing this, we cover who we really are and thereby cheapen God’s grace. We are not perfect, but God does not expect us to be. He wants to work in us despite our weaknesses, so that in us, His strength is all the more on display.

Until we admit to ourselves and to God that we’re not fooling any one behind our figurative designer threads, then there’s always going to be this great, big elephant in the room keeping us from any kind of real intimacy with God or with each other.

Keep it real, friends.

Xx.