I get Joel Osteen's program where I am. So when I want to get amused I turn on to the channel he is in and I watch his program. I feel awful because I am doing this now-a-days to be entertained rather than be edified. I can not help it but the kind of attitude that happens to me is - "Let's see what weird stuff is he teaching this time".One time I tuned in and I did hear Joel's story how God helps him find parking spots. I have some incidents of the same. In fact some little things I asked God to help me, He does. One time I was in Singapore for work. I was with a work mate. We went both to a shop to buy some camera accessories, and guess what, the store gave me a discount but they would not give him. I have heaps of these God favors you stories, it will bore you.
Just recently I was rebuilding a PC which I bought for $100, from a student. I upgraded it with some of my plug-in peripherals, guess what when I switched it on, it started beeping, a sign that something was wrong. You know I know a bit about hardware but the thing just beeped and beeped and I could not determine where the problem was. I took out the hardwares I plugged in and it still beeped. I was doing this for 30 minutes and I was at my wits end. I was getting anxious of the possibility of having to send this PC to a "real" computer technician to get it going and I was thinking I would be spending more than a couple of hundred dollars in addition to already that I shelled out. It was hot in my home office and I was sweating, figuring out what was wrong. Finally I blurted out - "Lord help me ". I do not know what went into my mind that I found myself trying again by jiggling fit the screen connection to the graphics card. It was not that tight and secure. I tried it tightening the screws, it worked. That did it. God answered my prayer. It is now running the free system I also like to use - Mepis. (You see I made a vow, I will never use Windows XP/Vista etc unless I am doing something for a client).
So I go back now to this "parking spot" request to God. I have no doubt God answers big and small requests according to his will. But let us assume that you are in a pickle, you are late for an important appointment, and you got to the place where you need to be and there is no parking spot, so you pray to God and still no parking spot can be found? What will you say? By the way Joel teaches - I probably say - "God, what is with you, you are so great you created this whole wide world, put stars in the sky and the mountains and the hills, you own the cattle there and yet ....you won't even give me a puny little parking spot, you are nasty"! I suspect, his making spiritual out of every incident in life, I believe, will easily make one a cynic. Well, not him perhaps but those that swallow his teaching.
17 comments:
Well, I guess when you don't have a God who baptises you into his death so you can share in his resurrection, but one who saves you based on your decision and becoming a better you, when you don't have a God who gives you the pledge of your salvation in the very body and blood shed to win it -- you gotta have something, so why not the Parking Lot God!
And speaking of Vista, I gotta add another gig of RAM to the 1 gig that came with my new computer running Home Premium. My 256 migs runs ME on my old computer (which I am using now) faster!
Heads up -- big post on the Hertz Chumash coming. Won't be at the supermarket with Joel's books though!
PS -- when I was in England, parking lots as we call them here in the US were car parks, and parking ramps were multi-storey car parks. What's the Aussie usage?
PE,
It is car parks here too, very perceptive...
P.E.
Joel's is typical American can-do mentality transported to the Bible, no?
Remember the new book "Become a better you"? Meaning you **can** become a better you.
Huh?!! You are still running smoking blazers- ME? And faster too?
PE. Microsoft reminds me of Mother Church - it is big, monolithic, pervasive and tells you what **it** thinks is good for you ;-)
OK, I will check you post on Hertz Chumash, I do not know what it is but I am sure I will get some good edumacation (LOL).
LPC
PS. Did you see my comment on the Runza- they are yum, thanks for this.
Joel's God is the God who now demands so that he will give. Luther's God is the God Who has demanded and been satisfied and *now* gives ...
Same goes for Piper's God. Maybe his book, Future Grace is reminiscent of Osteen's ...
Nicely put Bro. Jason.
I do have the book Future Grace, but the grace of God there is hard to believe in since Grace for its own sake is hard to hold on to. Sometimes I think in the book's manner of speaking it presents grace as gratia infusa
Really we do not look at grace anymore separate from the ultimate grace of God - who is -- Jesus for you.
LPC
You watch Osteen for entertainment? I will sometimes catch him surfing the channels, find myself strangely drawn to watch, but then end up being nauseated by his saccharine demeanor.
Kurt
The computer I have used since 2001 is a Toshiba laptop with ME, an 850 MHz Intel PII and 128 MB RAM to which I popped in another 128. It does seem to surf and noot up faster than my new Toshiba, with Vista, a 1.8GHz AMD and a gig of RAM! I'm ordering another gig!
Glad you liked the runza!
I think that the megachurch Gospel is hardly the Gospel at all, but a religion suited to the mentality of white suburban America and their wannabes -- which in many ways is not classically American either, though it thinks it is!
Pr. Kurt,
I got some sick sense of finding entertainment, I know. Yes, Pastor, we must remember, he pays himself for being nice ;-) (and I guess those 24,000 people are doing that too)
PE.
Get into the Lutheran thing and buy a Mac ;-)
We are copying J Os here. Ministers here specially from charismania are now adding some description to their business cards to the effect that they are now called "life coaches" also.
J Os brand of Christianity is indeed being exported to 3rd world countries.
LPC
I would dearly love the chance to meet with Osteen. I have the gift of ripping pasted on smiles off people. When a pastor or anyone else is constantly gushing I wonder what they are hiding.
An old song says:
"A smile is just a frown turned upside down my friend."
By the way have you tried the new Osteen toothpaste? "Your best teeth now!" :P
Bro, there is one thing I would be willing to buy from Mr. Osteen if he were selling...toothpaste!.
Imagine the money he can have if he got hired to endorse Colgate.
It isn't even 9am here in Omaha, but Sunday morning TV cable religion is in full swing. Joel Osteen, Ed Young, Jimmy Swaggart (my favourite), EWTN, and three other guys I don't know, plus a local Baptist megachurch service. Oh yeah, and Robert Schuller's kid too!
Funny thing is, while channel surfing, I came across a secular "life coach" type show, and it took a few moments before I realised this wasn't another televangelist. That says something.
Whatever happened to Paul and Jan?
I heard that one group of Evangelicals laid hands on a broken dishwasher and prayed for healing. On this occasion none was forthcoming.
Fancy that.
P.E.
I can not help but chuckle loud when you mentioned Paul and Jan. I do not have them in my cable (FoxTel), but ... there is a special cable channel which is strictly Christian I heard. I will see if they carry the Paul and Jan team... I need all the entertainment I can get (so to speak).
DP.
Have you heard of God filling tooth cavities with gold yet?
LPC
"Well, I guess when you don't have a God who baptises you into his death so you can share in his resurrection, but one who saves you based on your decision and becoming a better you" (Past Elder)
What a dumb statement, Mr. Past Elder. Infant baptism is a false doctrine. Only believers, who made a choice are baptized, and this baptism is water baptism (in which is spirit baptism) according to Romans 6. Baptism is not something that God does out of nowhere. It is something that a minister of Christ does on a believer at their request (which request follows a choice) and in which God then does His work per Col 2:11-12.
Ego,
How does an ana-baptist deal with say a 10 year old born blind, deaf and mute, will you baptize this person since it can not communicate its choice to you?
God send his Son to die for you before you were born as a gift, stop inserting yourself as if you have something to contribute to to that.
LPC
Ohh, and let me make it an acute story for you. Say the child was born with a defect and immediately went to a coma after birth, alive but comatose. It went to say its 8th birthday.
LPC
Ego Makarios,
You said:
"Infant baptism is a false doctrine. Only believers, who made a choice are baptized, and this baptism is water baptism (in which is spirit baptism) according to Romans 6. Baptism is not something that God does out of nowhere. It is something that a minister of Christ does on a believer at their request (which request follows a choice) and in which God then does His work per Col 2:11-12."
Free choice is THE false doctrine. Bound choice is the biblical and Reformational doctrine. This is why salvation is by grace ALONE. Baptism as a Gospel Sacrament proclaims, enacts and applies the Gospel to believers. Therefore, Baptism cannot contradict the Gospel. If it does, then Baptism has not been *correctly* understood. What is the Gospel? The Gospel is that Jesus has died on the Cross for sinners. Therefore, Baptism reflects God's work to man, NOT man's response to God.
Remember, you cannot separate the Word preached from the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. All of these were instituted by Jesus to be given to the Church through the ministerial priesthood. That is to say, these are GIFTS to be received by the Church. This is why credo-baptism only is legalistic, much like Rome's Sacrifice of the Mass.
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