Every week at Chick-Fil-A, the men of Harmony Church gather to go through 1 Timothy, verse by verse, to see what implications it has for our lives. This past week, we went through 1 Timothy 2:8-15. At first the conversation started with some joking about the role of women in corporate worship, along with some imaginative hypotheticals as to why Paul would write this in the first place. We concluded by making some comments about country-club members wearing Estee Lauder. But then…verse 8 came back to us. Paul goes on and on about what the women are doing, but he hits the men. Hard.

For the women, they get outward things wrong. But men get a single internal thing wrong: prayer. The men of the church in the 1st century are just like the men of today. It’s so rare to see men gathering during corporate worship to pray in solidarity. So we asked the question of ourselves: what would would it look like for the men of Harmony to put this into practice? The answer was this: we address issues as they arise (not praying out of anger)…and we pray in public before the rest of the congregation.

So this Sunday, if you’re a man, show up to Harmony Church about 10-15 minutes early. And we’re going to pray. United. As men. And maybe the rest of the body will see it and be encouraged by it. Perhaps the Lord will hear our prayer and respond mightily. Or maybe nothing will happen and we will “simply” obey Scripture.

There’s one other thing about the Bible Belt culture that really gets under my skin. The odd thing is, the same thing happens in other cultures, but I’m nowhere near as perturbed by it. The thing is this: using “God” liberally. In our culture, everyone just loves to talk about God. “God loves me.” “Let’s pray to God.” “God is watching out for me.” “God is love.” So on and so forth. The issue is this: everyone is talking about a different God. In our overly-religious culture, God is no longer a proper noun, referring to the One True Trinitarian God.

It’s like if you and I were having a conversation about how awesome Michael is. Michael rocks. He threw it down. He led the way in his area. So on and so forth…but I’m referring to Jordan. You’re referring to Michael Jackson. Some statements (the aforementioned) apply to both. But eventually there’s going to be a statement that either you or I make that isn’t true of both: “As awesome as he was, Michael couldn’t sing worth a lick.” If you’re talking about Jackson, you’re going to be ticked. Even though we were talking about two different people the entire time.

“God” is the same way. My solution? As Christians, let’s talk about Jesus. Specifically. Let’s talk about His life. His death. His resurrection. When someone says “there is no God”, my response is this: “Ok, we’ll get to that later. What do you think about Jesus?” I want to talk about, live like, and worship Jesus. All the fruity, lovey-dovey talk can be for vague conversations about how you like sloppy wet kisses (!) and arms wrapped around you like warm winter socks.

My God has a name. His name is Jesus. I can’t talk about Him vaguely. Not in the least. I want Greenville to know who I worship.

This past Sunday, we started a six-week series through the book of Genesis, where we’ll hit on six major themes: Creation, Fall, Flood, Tower, Family, and Legacy. Obviously, being the first of the series, we went through Genesis 1 and parts of 2, examining the Creation story as told to us by Scripture. I’ve embedded the Powerpoint from the entire Sunday gathering, including the lyrics from Mark Lilley and Ray Hartsfield’s worship set (which was awesome). Here are a couple of highlights from the sermon that hit me personally:

• God speaks everyday.
• Just as God created the universe out of nothing, so He recreates our lives out of nothing.
• All things have been made through and for Jesus.
• Just as the Word of God burst forth at sunrise on a Sunday to bring creation into existence, so the Word of God burst forth at sunrise on a Sunday to bring new creation into existence.
• Mondays suck. (Had to be there for this one)
• Both the spiritual and physical worlds are good. One is not better than the other.
• Everyone has a creation story, even modern science. Only the one in Genesis has creation being birthed out of love, not chaos.
• Revelation 21-22 brings us back to Genesis 1-2…as if sin had never happened.

The slides are a little squished and the font is off, but deal with it.