Blog of Scott Dudley
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December 09, 2006 Prayer and Need Prayer reminds us of our daily need for God, and helps us trust that God will meet those daily needs. When we say, `Give us this day our daily bread, ` what we are acknowledging is that no matter how rich, or educated, or smart we are, everything we have comes from God and we need him. We are not selfmade people. When we pray, `deliver us from evil, ` what we are saying is that we are not spiritual heroes; we cannot be good on our own. We acknowledge that we need Jesus if we are going to be good. Prayer reminds us that we are the creature, not the creator, and that's important because otherwise we start to try to handle everything ourselves, and usually get in trouble, sort of like I did when the three drunk men came into my college group. Prayer reminds us of our need for God, and it is a place where we find confidence that God will take care of our needs and meet our needs. Now, as I just said, prayer needs to be more than listing our needs, but a big part of prayer is asking for things. God wants us to bring our needs and our requests to him, he wants us to do that, and when we do, we will find confidence that he will meet our needs. Maybe not our wants: but our needs. Notice we ask for daily bread, not monthly cake. It's what we need, bread, and it's as we need it, daily. We can't store it all up for years and years because then we'd never have to back to God again and probably wouldn't. We get what we need as we need it.

By: Scott Dudley - December 09, 2006 - Public Category: Prayer Comment Helpful? Favorite Violation

December 09, 2006 The Honesty and Insight of Children Some friends of ours have a little three year old girl. You know how when toddlers get upset they can't always control their emotions; they can't calm themselves down because they don't have the emotional skills to do that yet" Well at one point this little girl was just getting more and more upset about something, just spinning out of control. Her mom kept trying to calm her down, kept saying, "Relax, calm down." Finally the little girl started screaming at the top of her lungs, "I can't. I can't get nice by myself." That's a profound statement, isn't it" I can't get nice by myself. So what the mother did is just picked the little girl up and started to calm her down. We cannot get nice by ourselves, but if we yield ourselves to Jesus we can get better than nice. We can become good. Not phony good, but really good, from the inside out.

By: Scott Dudley - December 09, 2006 - Public Category: Jesus with Little Children (1) Comments Comment Helpful? Favorite Violation

December 08, 2006 Becoming a Different Person There's a man I know very well who for years had a real anger problem. He would explode at his family, friends, he'd nurse a grudge. When angry, he could weave a tapestry of profanity that was amazing. It was an art form for him. I remember once being at his house for dinner and his three year old son was refusing to eat lasagna. The son kept saying, `I don't like dirty noodles` ''because of the sauce''. `Get the sauce off.` I remember this man turning purple with rage, saying, `I am not a noodle cleaner.` Well, he recognized that this anger thing was poisoning his life, giving him all kinds of stress, wrecking his relationships. Along the way he got hooked up with a great church, ended up in a Bible study with the pastor, which I know probably sounds awful to most of you, but he liked it, and that's the point. He started to engage with God at a heart level in worship, and really experience God's love and God's blessing, and then he learned some creative, little steps of discipline, to handle his anger, not suppress it but address it, and how to resolve conflict in healthy ways. He followed those little steps of discipline and the power of the Holy Spirit in his life. Through those things he is dramatically different, it is night and day. He's calmer, he addresses conflict in healthy ways, hasn't turned purple in years. He is being transformed from the inside out. It's not that he's just suppressing anger; he's a different person.

By: Scott Dudley - December 08, 2006 - Public Category: Fresh Start/Forgiveness (1) Comments Comment Helpful? Favorite Violation

December 08, 2006 Rely on the Holy Spirit If we know Jesus, his spirit lives inside of us and gives us the power to become authentically good people. Now that doesn't mean that his spirit is going to overtake us and turn us into zombies, and force us to be good, or take away every temptation, which is just another word for choice, because then we wouldn't be humans, we would be puppets. So the spirit is more subtle. His power comes in those nudgings you get that say, "Do this" or "Avoid that", or the way he calls certain scriptures to mind. Or it comes in the ways that over time our desires begin to shift, so that even if we still repeat certain sins or bad habits, as time goes on we want more and more to break those sins and bad habits. And even if we don't want to be good in a certain arena, over time the Holy Spirit can help us at least want to want to be good. And that's a first step. Receive God's love, turn to Jesus, follow the grand positive, rely on the Holy Spirit.

By: Scott Dudley - December 08, 2006 - Public Category: God's Spirit Present With You (1) Comments Comment Helpful? Favorite Violation

December 08, 2006 Jesus transforms us Jesus offers us way more than sin management. He promises that he can transform us, inside out, to be authentically, naturally good people. We can live the eternal kind of life now, in this life. Up there can come down here in our hearts. That's what Jesus is on about in the passage we read. He says, `Don't think I've come to get rid of the law, the law is good. It's just not enough.` He says, `I've come to fulfill it, to complete it, to help it accomplish what it is meant to accomplish, which is the transformation of us.` Then he goes through a series of examples where he says, `You have heard it said , but I tell you ,` and he contrasts the difference between simply obeying a rule, and being a transformed person. Most of the examples he uses involve our two favorite sins, sex, and violence. He says, `You have heard it said, `Do not kill anybody, ' but I say to you, if you even get mad at someone and call them a name, then you're not living the eternal kind of life.` Maybe you've obeyed the rule outwardly, but inside you still have all this gunk. You have heard it said, `Do not commit adultery, ' but I say, even if you harbor a lustful fantasy that is a prison, that is a hell that you'll be in, it will drive you crazy, and it demeans the other person because you are just taking one part of them and not all of them. And you're not living the abundant life; you're not having the joy you could otherwise have, because you are consumed with anger, or lust, or pride, or whatever it is.`

By: Scott Dudley - December 08, 2006 - Public Category: The Fulfillment of the Law Comment Helpful? Favorite Violation

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