Category Archives: Faith

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Articles having to do with faith, worship, theology, Christianity, and other world religions

How to Show Nintendo Wii Your Love // Video

January 2, 2009 – 8:23 am · Popularity: 10%

This video put me over the top for this Christmas.  They put it up on YouTube (or posted online) so I figure it is fair game all around.  Is this really how much we love our things today?  I am sure the family was happy they got their son something he would like and were excited themselves, but this video was pretty disgusting to me.  This was this boy’s true reaction to receiving a gift of plastic and metal, something the world has created into a level of importance like few other things this Christmas.  Maybe I am seeing it totally wrong, quite possible.  I have a tendency to over-analyze anyway, but to me this video showed where our hearts really are in the world today.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the Wii or Nintendo or anything like that is evil or wrong, heck, I bought my wife a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, but thank goodness she didn’t have this reaction.  It is the reaction we have in our heart, the importance we place items and objects, especially when we give them priority over our Lord for one, but our family, and our sanity.  Anyway, here it is… be for warned, lower your speakers.

So… what do you think?  Not sure what I could give Deb that would make her have that reaction, but then again, she already has the best gift of all, and we tried really hard to focus on Jesus this Christmas, not just the Nintendo Wii.

Update: New Nintendo Wii Video

Seth Godin’s blog picked up this video from the post here, this is a collection of more of the same from the video I posted above. I think Seth is correct, it has reached critical mass.

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in House | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

Receiving a True Gift Does Not Create an Obligation

December 30, 2008 – 5:16 pm · Popularity: 12%

Now that the Christmas holiday is over and the gift giving has basically gone back to normal, I have a few observations.  As simple as we try to make Christmas, it seems to get more complicated each year.  To try and simplify things at our house this year we went back to the German tradition of opening all our gifts (which is basically one each) on Christmas Eve after we got home from our church service, then have a relaxing and calm Christmas Day.

Throughout the several weeks leading up to Christmas I started noticing a common and expected behavior repeated over several people and basically saying the same thing.  When they were given a gift there was an expectation of something in return.  This is not new of course.  Many times when someone gives you something they expect something in return, or when you receive something, you feel obligated to return the gift with something of the same.

I am not sure where this “tradition” got its roots, perhaps it was just customary of the culture or something we have come to expect.  Something with strings.  If this is the government talking, yes, I would expect strings.  Many times close friends or family put strings on things, but not always.  To me, there is not much that follows the example Jesus gave us less than giving a gift with an expectation attached to it.  God didn’t do this to us did He?

One of the most famous verses in scripture is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son”.  If we briefly break apart that sentence, we see that God did what he did out of “love”, and He “gave”.  The word gave or give appears in scripture so much that you can’t even get out of Genesis without those two words being mentioned over 50 times.  The example God gives us is to give out of love, and expect nothing in return.

So, if you received a gift from us this year, I do not want to receive an obligitory gift in return, and don’t expect one either.  If you feel like giving someone something, great, and if someone wants to give you a gift out of love, accept it for what it is and don’t add the obligation or expectation of something in return.  Personally I would rather receive nothing that a gift given in expectation rather than love.

By Scott Fillmer | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

When Love Comes to Town, We Will…

December 29, 2008 – 10:22 pm · Popularity: 14%

brian johnsonThis past Sunday we were privileged to have Brian bring the message to us and he spoke around John 3:30, He must increase, but I must decrease.  It was a thought provoking message but it left the details on how we are to carry this out in our lives something for us to think about and tackle on our own.  There were and are many applications for this, but I started chasing my rabbit trying to think about why, and somehow landed on the song, “When Love Comes to Town” by U2.  If everything we do and have comes from the Lord, and our actions are to glorify the Lord, then how do we do this.

To do this, we must not take His glory for ourselves.  Not something very easy to accomplish, especially when you take today’s culture and modern technologies into consideration.  We do almost everything for ourselves, with ourselves in mind.

Driven and drilled into us from day one in our great country (for those who live in the U.S.), life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which sometimes seems like the pursuit of ourselves.  The American dream, to own a house, 2 cars, have 2.4 kids, a good career, and a full 401k.  For some reason, “when love comes to town” reminded me of the reason for Christmas and even moving on into Easter, and the love He showed for all of us when He became flesh, and is why He deserves the glory.

The point of this message (at least in my interpretation) was to bring the Christmas season series to a close and bridge into our new and upcoming series on bringing our spiritual life alive, but I think we use the example we were given and use love to accomplish this.  For God to increase, I must decrease, for me to decrease, I must do this out of love.  To me, matters of faith start from the heart.

I was there when they crucified my Lord
I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword
I threw the dice when they pierced his side
But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide

When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that train
When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that flame
Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down
But I did what I did before love came to town

As the year comes to a close, I always start thinking about a recap of where, what, when, and how of this year and what is coming up next year.  This year and leading into next year, to bring my spritual life “alive”, I must decrease. [I am not sure why we only do this at year end instead of all year long, but it just seems like a natural break where we mark a point in time that has an end and a beginning at 12:00 midnight at on December 31st.]

Some random thoughts on how I can try to extend this into next year:

  • read more
  • do less for my reasons, more for His reasons
  • work as if no one will ever know or see the results of my labor but God Himself
  • remember I am working for His glory, not any one person
  • give more :: time, money, effort, support, attention
  • give up more :: control, of self…
  • don’t give up when… I feel like it
  • appreciate :: time, life more (not to be confused with Time Life)
  • serve more
  • make a don’t do list, and don’t do the things on my don’t do list

I like top ten lists but all the items above can be narrowed down to “love”, and I did what I did before love came to town.  Happy New Year everyone.

By Scott Fillmer | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Merry Christmas to my Blogroll

December 25, 2008 – 4:13 pm · Popularity: 19%

This is usually one of the busiest days for getting from place to place with family functions, but for us, it is normally a nice quiet day here at the house. Today was similar. I was able to take a nice bike ride and enjoy some quiet time here at our house. I do this every so often but for Christmas today I wanted to highlight some of the blogs I read that are based somewhat on or about our faith in Jesus. So are you on the list? If not, please let me know, I love to add new blogs to my feed reader and it might be I just haven’t come across your blog yet.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day

Some here is some Christmas link love for some of the blogs I read.

Click to continue reading “Merry Christmas to my Blogroll”

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in Journal | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

50,000 Pairs of Shoes in 50 Days // Update

December 22, 2008 – 10:37 am · Popularity: 16%

150_150Christmas is fast approaching and soon (for some) the gifts purchased up to this point will translate into a lousy January, but if you haven’t finished quite yet, please consider the 50,000 Shoes campaign.  I wanted to give a quick update to my post back in November called Soles4Souls Blogging Challenge, 50,000 Pairs of Shoes in 50 Days. As b/ said in his post, there are so many worthy charities around this time of year, but one that is truly worthy is spending just $5 for 2 pairs of shoes for someone who doesn’t have any shoes.

I was listening to a song called “The Christian” this morning when I was getting ready for work, and it made me think, is how people see Christians, or perhaps how we see others who call themselves Christians?  The third verse really stood out to me (in bold below) as I thought about the 50000 shoes campaign and how easy it should be for us bloggers to meet the goal put forth by Anne Jackson (they are even giving away really cool stuff like a Nintendo Wii and a MacBook).

What good does it do to just talk.  I love when I find people who have taken their blogs or websites and have actually done something worth wild.  Even if they don’t reach their goal it was great to see how many shoes have been donated from total strangers across the Internet.  Consider these verses below.  They may not have anything at all to do with shoes, but this (secular) song points out how we put ourselves first.

It’s a hell of a time to be thinking about heaven
Didn’t you forget the golden rule
You’ve been acting like Jesus owes you a favor
But he’s a little smart for you to fool

You complain how you forgets the gospel
You remind them seek and you shall find
Maybe youth will have a time for seeking
After they clean up what you left behind

You were right there when the plate was passed last Sunday
That’s the second time you’ve been to church all year
Could you really call yourself a Christian
If charity cost half as much as beer

You pray a little more as you grow older
You get religion as your hair turns gray
But you don’t need to worry about hereafter
Just worry what you’re going to do today

Cause it’s a hell of a time to be thinking about heaven
Didn’t you forget the golden rule
You’ve been acting like Jesus owes you a favor
But he’s a little smart for you to fool
Yes my friend I think you’ve blown your cool

—- The Christian, [Buffett]

After reading Tony Morgan’s post about 50,000 shoes called All Talk and No Action?, where he talked about the correlation between words and action, I was quite disgusted, or more like disappointed I guess.  At that point, over 3500 blog posts had been written about the 50,000 shoes and only 1500 of those posts translated into the action of actually purchasing a pair of shoes.  That means not only did not all the blog writers donate, but they also didn’t get any of their readers to donate either.  We are talking $5 here, less than that cup of coffee at Starbucks or that 12-pack at the grocery store.

Just a quick look this morning found these blog posts from just the past few hours and days.  Let’s be bloggers of action, not just words.

My blog has approximately 100 subscribers.  If each one of us donated $5 that would translate into 200 pairs of shoes.  Deb and I are going to go ahead and make another Christmas donation and I would ask my readers if they were led to give to a worthy cause this Christmas check out 50,000 shoes.  I know Anne Jackson personally (although briefly) and I know she has put a lot into achieving this goal.  You can’t go wrong by giving someone a pair of shoes who doesn’t have any.

By Scott Fillmer | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Can Technology Yield a Better Prayer Life

December 21, 2008 – 6:31 pm · Popularity: 14%

In short, I would say, no.  There are so many things technology can do, especially with networks like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and all the others we know and love, but I am not sure if prayer is one of them when you look at the traditional definition of prayer, communicating with God.  There are sites like WeTheChurch that use technology with a basis of prayer, but aren’t they ultimately communicating with other readers about what they have already communicated with God?

How about Twitter.  Prayer, praying, and pray are all pretty active on Twitter and show in the graph from Twitterscoop.

Prayer on Twitterscoop

Another one I like to look at is Google trends.  Anything that is technology certainly has Google’s mark on it somewhere.  But this is a stretch, most of this is talking about prayer, not actually in the act of praying.  The graph looks much different if we compare it with two terms most popular in the world, prayer, money, and sex.

Google Trends on Prayer

Prayer is a conversation or communicating between us and God, right?  If so, that means (for purposes of this post) that all created technology is basically a means of communication between people.  It may be between our wallet and the bank or the TV station to satellite to our living rooms, but more times than not, it seems to be a means of communication between ourselves.  We could stretch it and look at things like the movie Contact, or the SETI Institute (which does employ about 150 scientists) but so far we have been unable to use technology to communicate directly with God.

I have been going through a book given to me by the author called Six Prayers God Always Answers (I love the tag line, “Results May Vary”) and in one passage she talks about what constitutes prayer.

It seems our prayers well up around the things we love–a child, a spouce’s beauty, our own lives… then consider these expressions:

“God, help me.  I’ll never do it again.”
“God, are you there?”
“Save me, God”
“Please God”

People thoughtlessly invoke the name of God into the mundane (”Oh my God!”) and the profane (”Jesus Christ”).  Believers are offended–convinced it is disrespectful, even blasphemous.  Nonbelievers toss it up to a slip of the tongue… but what if these were really prayers? … Could Jesus see these outburtsts as a cry of a wounded brother or sister?  How do we know what is in the heart of those who utter such words?  Do we even know our own hearts?  God is the judge of these prayers.

This passage has nothing to do with technology in prayer, but it opened up my thinking a bit to what we here on earth consider to be prayer, so why can’t we use technology in prayer.  We use all kinds of technology in church and prayer is a big part of church so they must come together at some point.

What do you do that you consider to be prayer.  In one of the shorter verses of the Bible we read in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (NASB) “pray without ceasing” or even shorter in the NIV 17 “pray continually”, so there has to be more than just the Sunday version of the Lord’s Prayer to be able to achieve this command.  What is so great about prayer is that we can pray anywhere, anytime, in a ton a different ways.

We can certainly use technology to bring us to prayer with God, like writing a blog post or in a journal, (many prayers were/are written down) but they don’t communicate directly with God alone, because prayer comes from the heart.

By Scott Fillmer | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

What is Faith Without Love

December 19, 2008 – 12:00 pm · Popularity: 11%

I have asked this question many times before, but happens when we have faith, but no love in our heart?  Does it not become an empty faith, or is it just something we do to go through the motions, or is it actually possible to have faith without love for one another.  Hard to deny this in the life of Christ, and the cliche we hear a lot is having the love of Christ in your heart, but isn’t it a command given to us in scripture.

I will be the first to say this is very, very, very, very hard sometimes, and may seem almost impossible other times, but it is still written out in many places, like John, Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians to name a few:

  1. John 13:34
    “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
    John 13:33-35 (in Context) John 13 (Whole Chapter)
  2. John 13:35
    By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
    John 13:34-36 (in Context) John 13 (Whole Chapter)
  3. Romans 12:10
    Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
    Romans 12:9-11 (in Context) Romans 12 (Whole Chapter)
  4. Galatians 5:13
    You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature ; rather, serve one another in love.
    Galatians 5:12-14 (in Context) Galatians 5 (Whole Chapter)
  5. Ephesians 4:2
    Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
    Ephesians 4:1-3 (in Context) Ephesians 4 (Whole Chapter)

My question is always, how do we/you show that love to one another?  Sometimes it is as simple as writing a thank you note to a fellow brother like this below.

thank you note

Getting a hand written note is almost unheard of today, so to me, receiving a note in the mail from a brother was very special and showed his love for my family.  There is something about having to take the time to write with an actual writing instrument like a pen or pencil (something I rarely do) and addressing an evelope and putting it in the mail.  The love shown is of course time.  I was told once by a pastor that kids translate love as time spent.  I think we all do this.  Some don’t recognize this as valueable, but any time anyone spends time for you or with you, they have just given you the most precious thing that they have the power to give you.

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Doing Simple Christmas with Living Water International

December 1, 2008 – 8:05 am · Popularity: 24%

Donate to Living WaterOur church started a new series yesterday called Simple Christmas (see Advent and A Christmas thought) marking the beginning of the Advent season, and what started on Black Friday as the Christmas shopping season.

Today is Cyber Monday as it has been called, the day when online retailers do their big sales and discounts that the B&M stores did on Friday.  One of the ways Deb and I are going to celebrate Christmas this year is In keeping with the series theme we started on Sunday we are going to make a few donations to Living Water.  So, if you were expecting to get an actual physical Christmas present from us this year, this might be it.  Our church already knows the impact a well can have (see Day 1 and Creative Chaos 14 // Allowing God to Work in Your Church), when our church raised over $30,000 to dig a well (and much more) for a sister plant church in Uganda.  Anyone involved will tell you it was an incredible experience, and it doesn’t take much to make a difference.

This of course isn’t the only way to make Christmas simple again.  The idea is to keep our focus on Jesus this Christmas and not the chaos and craziness that goes along with the Christmas shopping frenzy and that might be something totally different to your family than it is to my family.  Since Deb and I are in a house of two (minus the dogs), we don’t normally go nuts for any holiday, but our focus is not always on Jesus either.

Merry Christmas everyone.

By Scott Fillmer | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Economy, Big 3 Auto Bailout, and the Church // Part 3

November 24, 2008 – 6:56 am · Popularity: 15%

This is the last and final, part 3 of this particular topic.  If you missed the previous two posts, check them out at part 1 and part 2.

The Church: A Response to a Bad Economy?

I spend a good bit of my day running around on the Internet, and many places I stop are with people of faith, churches, organizations and groups trying to raise funds, in a “bad economy”.  There are usually two responses.  One (to me) Biblical, and one not.  One based on fear, the other based on belief.  One worried about their 401k balance, the other excited to see a time when the need for the church among the un-churched is growing.

Cross on I-40 in Oklahoma

Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

What happened just after September 11th 2001?  People ran to the church.  Some because they were scared, some because they didn’t know where else to turn, some came back after a long time away, but the number of people attending church (doesn’t mean it was meaningful by the way) went up dramatically.  What makes hitting people where it really counts (in their 401k’s) any different as far as possibilities within the church to help others?

I took this photo below at “Ground Zero” a few months after the terrorist attacks on New York city.  They still had not torn down the last few damaged buildings that are outside the photo here, and this “cross” was still standing as well.  It was incredible to me to see a cross, carved out of mangled steel, standing above all the mess that was ground zero.  It was an unreal time of horror, terror, and despair in our country, and yet, Jesus didn’t change, the world did.

Cross from the Twin Towers Wreckage

My church at the time in 2001 (a 35,000 member church) was trying to decide if they should start a $40 million building campaign in the middle of the 911 economic turmoil.  They decided to follow God and not the economy and great things were done.  Why should the church back down when times are bad?  Be responsible yes, but fearful????

People are scared, people are fearful.  Why?  Uncertainty.  If we are Believers… why are we living in fear and uncertainty?  Because we can’t buy the normal $500-$1000 of Christmas presents this year?  We have the most certain thing in the world.  A risen Savior.

If you like the cross as a symbol you need to drive out I-40, past Amarillo, past Oklahoma City, and look at one of the largest crosses I have personally ever seen (first photo above).  It is a magnificant symbol right on the interstate for all to see.  We should be like this cross on I-40 in Oklahoma.  Big, bold, tall, ready to reach out and help those who are hurting and searching.  We should be excited to be in these “times”, they are new times of new opportunities.  As the Church, let’s not watch this opportunity pass us by and wonder why we didn’t make use of this special time in our history.

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Auburn United Methodist Church Gives Out 500 Thanksgiving Dinners

November 22, 2008 – 9:05 am · Popularity: 15%

If there is one place where the Church should be involved and actively participating is helping those who need help.  I had a chance to visit the operation area of the Auburn United Methodist Church food bank on Thursday and they were preparing to give away 500 turkey dinners, 800 bags of fresh corn, milk, eggs, potatoes, and everything else you see in the boxes in the photos below.

I snapped this one shot with my phone on my way out, it was really neat to see this many meals lined up, but also a reminder of how many people were going to be here on Friday to pick up these boxes.  If you ever want to help out AUMC does this every Friday, I am sure they would love to have help boxing things up even when it is not Thanksgiving.

Auburn United Methodist Church Food Bank

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