Category: Christian Living

Pursuing a holistic expression of Christian faith that is true to the Bible and applicable for today’s world.

How to Show God Love

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date April 28, 2013

I’m a fan of Dr. Gary Chapman’s classic book The Five Love Languages. The basic premise is there are five ways people express and receive love. The five love languages are:

Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch

Though we may use several of these love languages or even all of them, we each have a primary mode we default to in order to show and feel love. This is our love language (and often couples use different ones).

It took me a while to figure out my primary one, but it’s words of affirmation—and being a writer, this makes a lot of sense. My inclination is to use words to express love to others and hear words as their expression of love to me.

Does love language apply to God? I think so and so does Dr. Chapman with his book God Speaks Your Love Language: How to Feel and Reflect God’s Love. I’ve not read this one yet, but it is on my wish list.

While I don’t want to presume to know what the book says about how to show God love and receiving love from him, my mind is already formulating ideas. Words of affirmation, quality time, and acts of service are all easy parallels to see.

The love language of gifts could be money, but I suspect there’s more to it. That leaves physical touch. Do we understand it as a metaphor or is there a more practical application? I don’t know.

What I do know is there are multiple ways to let God know we love him and multiple ways for him to show love to us. One way isn’t better than another, just different.

May we each love God the way he has wired us—and not be concerned if it’s different from other people who may show love differently.

How do you show love to God?

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

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Christian Living

How to Spend Time with God

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date April 21, 2013
2 Comments on How to Spend Time with God

We spend time with people we like. The more we like them, the more time we spend together. If we claim people as friends but don’t often see them, then they must not be too important.

The same is true with God. If God is important to us, we’ll spend time with him: not out of guilt but out of longing. Here are some ideas.

Pray

Prayer is talking to God. When we pray, we tell him what’s on our minds. We also listen to what he says.

We would never dominate our time with a friend, just talking about ourselves but never listening or always complaining but never being appreciative or always asking for favors but never giving any. Those are easy ways to lose a friend.

So it is with prayer: don’t do all the talking, rant, or just ask for things. Instead, listen, thank, and give.

Read the Bible

With friends we read their emails, subscribe to their blog, like them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter. If God is our friend, shouldn’t we likewise be interested in what he has to say?

Think

Taking time to just contemplate is not often done in our fast-paced culture. Yet we do think about friends. And for that someone special, we think about him or her a lot.

We call this daydreaming; we can’t help ourselves. As it relates to God, thinking about him is meditating; we contemplate God.

Give

I’m not talking about money. We give friends our time, attention, and focus (and sometimes money, too). So it should be with God. We carve out time to be with our closest friends. So too, God appreciates our time, attention, and focus.

Hanging Out

The Gen-X and Gen-Yers value “just hanging out with friends.”

In the same way, we can hang out with God: going for walks, listening to music, watching TV, eating out, taking him to the movies. In fact, God can do whatever we do and go where ever we go.

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Tags God, priorities

Christian Living

How Is God a Part of Our Lives?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date April 14, 2013
2 Comments on How Is God a Part of Our Lives?

Last week in “What are your priorities?” I wondered if God is a part of our lives. Does he have first place, given lessor attention, squeezed in, or an afterthought? Next is the contrast between our intention and our reality—which seldom match.

A follow-up consideration is “How is he a part of our lives?” Again, this isn’t a discussion about ideal theory but the real results of what occurs on a daily basis. Some considerations are:

Read about Him: If God is important to us, we should want to get to know him better. One way is to read about him. The Bible is the best source. Though frequency and quantity (such as one chapter every day) are noble goals, they’re also legalistic.

The key is focusing on quality, be it one verse or four chapters, occurring three times a day to once a week.

Talk to Him: Communication with God happens through prayer, but not the bow-your-head, close-your-eyes oration that happens in church or before meals. Prayer is casual interaction, informal and frequent throughout the day (and night).

Make Him Part of Our Actions and Words: We talk about what’s important to us and our activities confirm it.

What do our words and actions say about us? While God doesn’t need to show up in every sentence and deed, his persistent reality shouldn’t be far away.

Spend Time With Him: Western society doesn’t value silence, solitude, or meditation. Yet when we do these things with a focus on God, we connect with him, deepening our understanding of him and relationship to him.

Let Him Permeate Our Thoughts: Can God become part of our subconscious, residing near the surface throughout the day?

While it seems unlikely and impractical, Brother Lawrence serves as an example for us to aspire to (see The Practice of the Presence of God.)

Regardless of the priority we give God, we can always make him more fully part of our lives.

The question is do we want to?

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Christian Living

What Are Your Priorities?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date April 7, 2013

It’s a good idea to be aware of the priorities in our lives. We should periodically review what’s important to us and make sure our actions align with our intentions.

For example, if I consider watching sports to be a waste of time but devote hours to its pursuit, then my actions don’t align with my intentions. Something needs an adjustment.

Perhaps I would need to be honest and say I enjoy watching sports, thereby making it a priority (remember, this is hypothetical).

Alternately, I might need to skip some TV viewing in order to subject my actions into matching my intentions.

(For the record, the television can be a distraction for me, but it’s seldom sports.)

So if you were to make an honest list of the priorities in your life, what would they be? Perhaps the main categories might look like:

God
Family
Work
Hobbies
Rest

Then there would be subdivisions. For example, family might include spouse, children, parents, and so forth. Or work might consist of the 9 to 5 portion, expectations outside of the workday, and going the extra mile.

By factoring in variations and distinctions, our list of five or six key areas can expand to a couple dozen items with overlapping themes and intertwined considerations.

The next step is to compare our ideal list with reality. Does the way we spent our time match our priorities? If you’re like me, the answer is often no.

Contrasting actions with intentions isn’t a guilt producing exercise but an opportunity to better align our reality with our priorities.

For me the practical result is often the realization that I should scale back on television or need to cut out some non-essential activities.

The most important consideration, however, is where does God fit into our life? Is he a priority? Do our actions actually support that?

The consequences are eternal.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Celebrate Easter as a Spiritual Holiday

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date March 31, 2013

We’ve Lost Christmas as a Spiritual Celebration. Let’s Not Lose Easter Too

This spring some groups have banned Easter egg hunts—not the activity but the name. Concerned pundits decry this as political correctness gone awry or the timid majority kowtowing to the vocal minority.

Although “spring egg hunt” sounds lame, this new label doesn’t dismay me. What do eggs have to do with the resurrection? Let’s remove the myth of Easter so we can focus on the meaning.

With the significance of Christmas lost to commercialization and consumerism, the reason for the Easter season could suffer the same fate. May it never be.

I’m not sure which bothers me more, chomping off the ears of a chocolate bunny or biting off the head of a chocolate Jesus. Let’s forever sever all connections between the Easter bunny, Easter eggs, and Easter candy with our Easter savior.

This week, I’ve sent many an email signing off with “…and have a great Easter.” Saying “Happy Easter” seems cliché, being too easy to voice without thinking.

It’s not that I’m a non-conformist (well, perhaps I am a bit), but I do want to point people to the true meaning of Easter: a risen savior who overcame death to give us life.

Today, may we celebrate Easter with a God-honoring, Jesus-focused passion.

Have a great Easter!

Discover more about celebrating Jesus and his passion to save us in Peter’s new book, The Passion of Jesus. It is part of the Holiday Celebration Bible Study Series.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Tags Easter, holiday, Jesus

Christian Living

Happy Good Friday

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date March 29, 2013

At one time, my dad received his paycheck every other week, on the last day of the workweek. With a smile, he called each of these paydays good Friday.

Dad enjoyed good Friday twenty-six times a year. Some years the real Good Friday fell on one of dad’s good Fridays; other times it did not—and then he had twenty-seven Fridays he called good.

Although amusing, I used to wonder if it might be a tad sacrilegious to call payday good Friday. Dad received his paycheck on his good Fridays. All Jesus received on his Good Friday was death.

What’s good about that?

Though Good Friday starts with Jesus, it ends with us. On Jesus’ Good Friday, he began the means for us to receive a gift: eternal life.

Without Good Friday, there would be no Easter.

Without death, there would be no resurrection.

Without sacrifice, there would be no salvation.

Happy Good Friday!

Discover more about celebrating Jesus and his passion to save us in Peter’s new book, The Passion of Jesus. It is part of the Holiday Celebration Bible Study Series.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Tags Good Friday, holiday, Jesus

Christian Living

Can People Follow Jesus Within Other Religious Contexts?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date March 24, 2013

In Thursday’s post, Who Is a Christian Pharisee?, I talked about connecting—or reconnecting Christianity—with its Jewish roots—called Messianic Judaism. Although this thought may alarm some, there are ample justifications.

Old Testament Judaism foreshadowed and gave birth to Christianity, Jesus was a Jew, and almost all of his early followers where Jewish.

It’s only through a deeper understanding of Jewish tradition that we can more fully grasp the history and meaning behind Christian faith.

However, what about religions without that historical connection? I’m not talking about melding two disparate religions together but instead of a Jesus faith existing within the context of a different world religion.

The January/February issue of Christianity Today addresses this extensively and from that I draw encouraging conclusions.

Hindus, for example, tend to accept those within their faith community who worship Jesus, even those who worship him only, providing they do so within the context of Hinduism. (See “The Hidden History of Insider Movements.”)

For Muslims, it’s a bit different, but another article addresses Muslin converts to Jesus who remain in their Muslim culture, albeit more covertly. (See “Worshiping Jesus in the Mosque.”)

Other related articles in this same issue are “Why Evangelicals Should Be Thankful for Muslim Insiders” and “How Much Muslim Context Is Too Much for the Gospel?”

These concepts may be hard to accept and some may reject them outright. However, I embrace them with excitement, simply because more people are finding Jesus in more contexts.

Though these settings are far different from mine, they are no less viable.

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Christian Living

Are You a Minister?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date March 10, 2013

“Are you a minister?”

The first time someone asked me that question, I was shocked, appalled even. I shook my head and laughed, “Heck, no.”

This confused my inquirer. “Humph, I thought you were.”

Later someone else asked me the same thing, then another, and eventually a fourth. Now I’m no longer disturbed when someone wonders aloud if I’m a minister. Even so, the query still perplexes me.

I’ve pondered this with trusted friends; they’re not surprised. They offer possible explanations, which I don’t fully agree with:

You have a godly confidence.
You’re a man of peace.
When you pray, they feel God’s presence.
You’re kind and compassionate.
You possess a calm assurance about spiritual matters.

My friends think too highly of me.

What I do hope, though, is that when people see me, they see a bit of Jesus.

I’m not a minister, at least not in the traditional gone-to-seminary, lead-a-church, preach-a-sermon manner. I’m simply a follower of Jesus, the Christ.

May my actions always point people to Jesus.

Nothing would please me more.

What about you, are you a “minister?”

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Christian Living

Do You Feel in Love With God?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date March 3, 2013
2 Comments on Do You Feel in Love With God?

A year or so ago I made a bold statement to some close friends. As a group, we enjoy the freedom to ask pointed questions and the expectation to give honest answers; being transparent is our norm.

Yet, I surprised myself by proclaiming, “I’m more in love with God today than ever before.”

Yeah, it was brash—but I meant it: I’m having a spiritual love affair with God.

What caused me to declare my passion for the Almighty?

I suppose it was a convergence of things: an intellectual knowledge of my standing with him, the movement of his spirit in my life, a burst of clarity over what I read in the Bible, a sense of his presence in my being, and…euphoric emotion.

Yes, I felt in love with God. Now, I know it’s unwise to move by emotion or make decisions based on feeling, but I couldn’t deny what I felt that day.

Yet a few weeks later, the feeling was gone. Sure, I was still in love with God: my mind knew it, my spirit knew it, and my soul knew it, but I just didn’t feel it.

Then last week, while praying for God’s work in the lives of family and friends, that in-love feeling came back. Oh, glorious day!

When it comes to love—be it for God or for people—we can’t rely on our feelings, but when we do feel in love, it’s a wonderful thing.

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Christian Living

Who Do We Compare Ourselves To?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date February 17, 2013
2 Comments on Who Do We Compare Ourselves To?

Yesterday I posted in my Byline blog, “The Risk of Comparing Ourselves to Others.” Although my words focused on writers, the unwise practice of comparison is universal, applying to all people in all professions or pursuits.

Succinctly, when we compare ourselves to other people, we either elevate ourselves by degrading them or lessen ourselves by elevating them.

Neither pleases God. Even so, the temptation to compare is enticing.

Some days I feed my ego, looking down on those I deem to have less faith, bare little fruit, struggle more, possess less knowledge, pray or read their Bible less often, or aren’t as close with God. I become proud.

Other days I devalue myself, envying those who seem to have greater faith, produce more fruit, possess greater knowledge, struggle less, pray and read their Bible more, or enjoy greater intimacy with God. I become abased.

Pride and abasement are both sins. Neither honors our creator, who made each of us.

Instead, consider that the Bible provides a standard for us to pursue and Jesus gives an example to follow—and the Holy Spirit offers guidance as we do both.

In this world we’ll never achieve God’s standard, but we need to try—and to do so without comparing ourselves with others.

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Tags God, spiritual growth