Remix: God is Dead

When Friedrich Nietzsche proposed the statement that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” it came about because Nietzsche was an atheist and did not believe God existed. In one way he was showing that science had taken God out of the picture. Even though that may have been the original intent if you look at Christianity today the statement could also be applied that “God is dead” in regards to our faith. We are not saying that God is actually dead because we believe that He is alive! As Christians we often don’t really live like God is actually alive though. During the next few weeks we want to take a look at what we as Christians can do to revive our dead faith and become what God intends for us to be for Him.

If you look around at the world there are many Christians who seem to be living in this area of “dead faith”. They believe that Jesus is their Savior. The real issue is you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at their lives that they are Christians. We as a culture are in a place where becoming practical atheists while professing to be Christians seems to be the normal way to do life. This is something we as the youth must start to change so we can get back to the original intent of what we are all about.

There are many stances on how we as Christians should live. If we really want to get down to the core of what we are about we are supposed to be different. Somewhere along our lineage we have implanted in our mind that Christians are supposed to stay contained to their Christian friends, their Christian church, their Christian t-shirts and sayings, but Jesus was never contained. We live in a society of cookie cutter Christians who all look the same as everyone else. While we should make every effort to live differently in this world most Christians look exactly the same as the rest of the world. We must stop living like this because it conveys the message that we really don’t care about God, so as Nietzsche suggested we live like “God is dead”.

When we look at the life of Jesus Christ who we know was sent as God incarnate to save us from our sins there was nothing ordinary about His life. He didn’t just go to the places everyone else went and he didn’t do the things that the typical “good Jewish person” would have done. This doesn’t mean that Jesus did anything wrong but that the culture had gotten it all wrong. The Pharisees had lead the people into a very legalistic culture and if we look at our present day culture there are not many differences. There is a problem with Christianity when we are the ones who are legislating our religion, persecuting minority groups, and living like non-believers when we should be living like Christ.

The great thing is we still have a chance to make changes that will positively effect our generation. We are stuck in a cycle we must get out from under. Superchick sums it up well in their song Hero when they say:

Now it’s our time to pick a side.
So don’t keep walking by not wanting to intervene,
Cause you just want to exist and never be seen.
So let’s wake up, change the world
Our time is now

It is time for a revolution of our generation that isn’t afraid to love those who others won’t love. It is our time to make a change instead of allowing it to continue on the current path. Instead of living in our Christian circle we need to break out. We need to flood the world with a love they have never seen before, something no one ever gives. We need to spend less time on legislating religion and more time on actually taking time to love the people around us.

Christ spent most of His time hanging out with those people who were living in sin. He was the ultimate example of what we should look like. Be willing to do life with those who are far from God and just be different. We were not called to be like everyone else, but to be the ones willing to stand for the oppressed, the persecuted, the underprivileged, and the ones who have no voice to offer. We should not sit in our houses with all of our stuff and look down on those who are not like us.

The things of this world will fade and at the end of our lives it will not matter what people here say about us. The only opinion that will matter is that of our Heavenly King. Begin to look internally and see how your life is doing. Are you living out an untamed faith that is fully on fire for God? On the flip side of that are you living like God may as well be dead because you say what you believe but never act it out? Take some time to see where you are and look for our upcoming blogs about how we can make a difference to show the world our God is alive. Let us be different for the cause of Christ!

Dive Deep,

KC

Dive Deep Update: What’s been going on with Dive Deep?

Hello to all!

As you may have noticed over the past few weeks there has been a lack of blog posts on our site. I wanted to give you an update and let you know what the Dive Deep group has been up to recently.

Over the past few weeks most of our staff have been starting classes on various college campuses around the nation. This means for a little bit we had to focus on a few other odds and ends, but now that those are tied up we can get back to delivering a weekly blog post for all of you who support us. We have also had the chance to start up some really cool things on one of the campuses in North Georgia.

I am pleased to announce we have started a Dive Deep Ministries Toccoa Falls College campus group. Toccoa Falls College is a small Bible college nestled in the North Georgia mountains. There is a huge opportunity for us to grow our organization in reaching those on campus, and we are quite excited about what God is doing there. This group has already started a weekly event called “Prayer at the Falls” where students meet for worship, devotions and prayer. Our sole focus of the Dive Deep TFC group is to create a community of believers who live in a lifestyle of prayer and wish to grow deeper in Christ. On the other side of things we hope to help believers on campus learn how to share their faith with others and reach people for Christ.

Another endeavor we are embarking on is the making of our first music video! While there aren’t many details we can share now as we are still working on the specifics we ask you to pray for God’s blessing on this new avenue. We hope to use this video as a way to share our message much farther than we can by just talking about our faith. More to come on this as we get closer to finishing the video.

Starting next week we will be launching into our new series called “Remix” where we will be talking about some Christian stereotypes and common conceptions of Christians as a whole. Our purpose for this series is for us to begin to change the way Christians are viewed in society and align ourselves more with the original mission of Christ. To give you a sneak peak to next week’s post we will be talking about “Remix: God is dead”. Now before you begin sending in all of your objections, we would urge you to stick around and check out the blog next Monday for an in depth look at this topic and what we mean by that.

Thank you again for your continued support of our ministry and we look forward to reaching more people with your help!

Dive Deep,

KC

Sea of Faces: The Power of True Life

Over the past few weeks we have been talking about how we believe God would have us share His message to all people. We know in Christ we find true life.  That is the message we need to be conveying to everyone and not condemning others to hell no matter what the reality.  The biggest question we face is what’s next for us.  We have been investing and praying for this person or people and maybe they have come to Christ or maybe they are still be getting to that point.  Let’s make something clear.  We have spent a few weeks talking about a process that could take months, years or longer.  Just because it takes a while doesn’t mean you can’t continue to pour into a person’s life.  You continue to pour in because of your belief.  Sometimes after we help bring someone to Christ they get lost in the shuffle.   We want to talk today about what’s next for us in our mission to reach the lost.

For those of you who know someone or maybe you have recently come into the faith we rejoice with you!  We would love to encourage you along in the journey, so just drop us an e-mail at kyle@divedeepministries.org and let us know. It is truly amazing to be part of God’s big plan.  As a new Christian things can be pretty scary at the beginning of the journey.  We as Christians usually guide a person to the journey and  then say have a great day. This is something in  need of change.

As someone new to the faith you may begin to see some things you need to change but aren’t sure how.  There is not a formula or a set of steps which will work for everyone, but we do know God can help us though anything.  The biggest thing to do is to begin pressing into God.  You can do this by getting involved with your local youth group or church but even that is not enough.  Begin to read the word every day even if it is just a little piece.  A good place to start is in 1st Corinthians or the other writings of Paul.  Paul does a great job of communicating what life should look like as a Christian.

There is a tendency sometimes for believers to think they need to “renew” their salvation like they would a parking meeter.  After you have accepted Jesus as your Savior you don’t have to recommit every time you hear the message of salvation.  God has saved you and you can’t get away from Him now.  Now we aren’t saying recommitting is a bad thing but do it out of God’s spirit prompts and not out of guilt or shame for doing something wrong.  Unless you turn your back on God there is no need to recommit and even when you mess up God always loves you.

Along the journey of faith there is always a possibility to start back into your old tendencies. When this happens God has given you grace and freedom from it all. You just have to ask Him to help and restore you.  There is no amount of stuff that can get you farther along in the journey.  Even following all the rules won’t bring you closer to God. The only way to draw closer to God is to press into His love.

As a new Christian know that sometimes life will be hard like we talked about a few weeks ago, but God promises never to leave us.  He is always present and wants a deep relationship with us. In this deeper relationship with God you begin to find the true meaning of life.  To live an unhindered  life with the God of the universe on your side is an amazing experience.  Begin now to trade the things of this world for things God would have for you.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who have not yet tasted true life and freedom in Christ Jesus.  Continue to seek them out and love them where they are.  Allow them to see you as different and pray God opens the door to sharing the best thing that has ever happened to any of us.  Live with them and not above them.  Love them through everything even when they don’t want to be.  Let’s begin to remix the typical Christian and discover new things God will have for us.

I’ll be taking a few weeks off from blogging myself to transition into some new beginnings for me, but we have some great things in store. We will have some cool people doing some guest blogging for us, and we will launch our new series ‘Remix’ in September. There are some pretty cool things we believe God wants to do with us and excited we get to do this together.

In all you do always remember to Dive Deep!

KC

Sea of Faces: The Power of Pride

Last week, we dove into one of the most outrageous claims that people use to share the gospel, the prosperity gospel. If you haven’t read that post yet we encourage you to check it out by clicking here. This week we would like to continue talking about an all too common pitfall that we can hit when trying to share the gospel with others. The power of pride is overwhelming when we allow it to seep into our soul and it begins to breed all types of bad fruit. Pride can also lead to a legalistic and judgmental spirit which begins to destroy us as the body of Christ. If we are to truly show Christ’s love to all we must fight against these things in all aspects of our lives. We may never fully concur the issue of pride, but if we do not commit to fight against the tendency of pride we will destroy our mission.

Pride is when we decide that we are doing things the “right” way. It starts as a small thing like having pride about an accomplishment and believing that you did it all on your own. As you begin to allow this to grip you it roots itself deep in your soul and spreads throughout like a virus. When we are gripped by pride we feel like we have arrived. We are always the ones who are right. It becomes hard for us to communicate the gospel because when someone offers a different idea our pride lashes out and fights against showing God’s love. Even on the cross Christ was always about others not about himself. The root issue of pride is that we have an inward view and not an outward one.

In our state of pride we fall into the spirit of  judgment. We begin feeling as if we should be able to tell everyone else how to live according to our lives. Last we checked God is the only one who has the ability to judge people so why should we inflate ourselves to play God? In the movie Bruce Almighty the main character Bruce (played by Jim Carey) gets the chance to be God. He is given the ability to do everything that God can do and for a while it is fun. He feels like he is good enough (out of pride) to be God, but at the end there is a scene with God and Bruce that captures why we should not try to take God’s place in judging others. Bruce tells God that he doesn’t want the responsibility of Him, and God replies saying something along the lines of we all want God’s powers without the responsibility of them.

When we become judgmental and prideful we begin to assume the role of God. As Bruce figured out, playing God is not something that any of us could even begin to do correctly. We lose the grace that God has given us to pour out on others because we are so wrapped up in ourselves and can’t see past our own desires. Our mission is to love others, and we can’t do that with a judgmental spirit. God would have us to love others unconditionally and even when they don’t deserve it. He first forgave and offered grace to us. Let us not be like the man in the parable whose debt was forgiven and then demanded another debt be paid. Let us spread the message of love to all who are around us even if we don’t want to give it to them. Of course we will stumble. That’s where God grants us grace and mercy. Let us pass on what we have been given.

The easiest way to not fall into a spirit outside of God is to constantly dive into the Word and God’s love. If we know God’s word we will begin to see that there are things we may do that are different for us than others. God gives us a set of universal lines to follow for those of us that call Christ our Lord. He offers the Ten Commandments as our guidelines for living. One thing that many Christ followers think is that if we shouldn’t do it then the non-Christians shouldn’t either. God’s rules apply to us, and we can’t expect those in darkness to act like the Light. Even within ourselves God has given us some things He feels will best benefit us. If it’s not written in black and white within the Bible God grants us free will to determine what we believe He would want of us.

There are millions of people living in the dark and we have been given the challenge  to reach those people. There is a God-sized agenda we are responsible for and it is much larger than our pride or judgmental spirit. Our Savior came into this world not to condemn but to save it. Over the next week we urge you to search in your heart where the virus of pride may be resting and begin to work through that area of your life. Let us give grace and mercy to those who we don’t think deserve it. Give forgiveness when we feel like we can’t. Be about this cause that is greater than anything we can ever do. Let’s go be who Christ called us to be. Be the Light in the darkness!

Dive Deep,

KC