Living Above the Sun Ministries

"When you send forth your Spirit they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever, may the Lord rejoice in His works. Create in me a pure heart, Oh God. Renew a steadfast Spirit in me. This is what the Lord says: 'Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind..." -Psalm 104:30-31, 51:10, Jeremiah 17:5-10 We live in the age of self. We have always been about self, but now more than ever before, Self is King. Self is god. Self is gospel. It's subtle, and sneaks into our mindset. Facebook memes fill the news feeds of millions of how important self is. It's a thin line. We don't reject ourselves in the way of not taking care of ba...

"By the Word of the Lord the Heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. By His great outstretched arm of power. There is nothing too hard for you." -Psalm 33:6, Jeremiah 32:17 God our Creator, our Father, the only One true God who eternally reigns as God... God who has no beginning, who IS. God who is unconstrained in being, the absolute greatness of all things seen and unseen. God who we depend on, and He depends on nothing. God who said, "I AM WHO I AM" to Moses. God of the Ages, Holy, Ancient of Days are a few of His names. That's the best I can do to describe Him to you, that is not even scratching the surface...that is no where near the surface, or close to even picking up a pen up to write. You know the majesty of the 7 wonders of the world? When sunsets catch our view and breath? When the ocean waves crash and rush to you? When the moon looks like we can touch it, or is in just the right spot? So many thin...

" Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." Psalm 51:10 This topic is one that has been churning a while in my heart. I can remember sitting on the beach a few years ago with my pad of paper, and my Bible. Feet buried in the sand, as the surf reached my chair, I was staring out into the ocean pondering the works of creation, and the Creator. This post will serve as an introduction and overview to the new series outlining how believing Creation from nothing is the very foundation of understanding the Bible, and God. If you get creation wrong, you will get everything else wrong in scripture. Every single truth we read in the Bible points all the way back to the beginning and Creation. In order to correctly understand Jesus and His crucifixion we have to look at Creation. Creation points to Salvation, the Resurrection, and the Second Coming. It confirms everything Jesus said about Himself, and Jesus' miracles confirmed Him as Cre...

There is a question I have been pondering, "How do we reconcile Ecclesiastes with Culture as being Redemptive?" By now you know this ministry, Living Above the Sun, is founded and rooted in the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Since 2012 I have given my life to studying this book in all it's wise sayings. Also, in studying culture and theology, the more I am provoked to ask questions and study deeper. The book of Ecclesiastes is one of philosophy, law, and theology. Reading the book by itself alone will be depressing, but read it with the rest of the Bible and it's stanzas reverberate through the Old Testament Cannon, and into the New Testament! In just 12 chapters, King Solomon captures life and asks, "Does it matter?" Life does matter, and what we do with it under this big sun matters. What do we value? What do we worship? Who is our King? In the depression of vanity, nothing worthy of life under the sun, what could be the contrast? The sandpaper tha...

"These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect." -Hebrews 11:39-40 True faith has the courage to count on Salvation, this is why it is the pinnacle of all of faith. From Able to all the great prophets of old never received salvation, or the new covenant. They never knew personally, THE Messiah, but they believed in the promise of a Redeemer, the promise of Jesus, and of a new covenant. What makes them courageous? What put these great men and women on faith into the hall of fame? Faith believing Salvation. 1 Peter 1:10-12 tells us: Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glor...

"Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan." -Ephesians 1:11 Does everything in the world take place according to the will of God? Questions such as these relate to, and address the providence of God, and thus you have proposed a theological question. Apparently the founders of the state of Colorado believed that everything takes place according to God's will. The state motto affirms: Nil sine Numine, "Nothing without providence." The state seal pictures the all-seeing eye of God. Can we today believe that everything in our state, nation, and world fits into the divine plan> Are God's eternal purposes actually being achieved in our perplexed world? God's purposes in the world often include judgement as well as evident progress. Whether we can or cannot see them, the Creator's plans are being realized throug...

"And if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it." -1 Peter 3:15 According to Charles Malik says we as Christians face two tasks in our evangelism, and that is, "saving the soul and saving the mind." In other words converting people not only spiritually but intellectually. The church is lagging dangerously behind in the part of being intellectual. In 1980 Mr. Malik rose to the podium to deliver the inaugural address at the dedication of the new Billy Graham Center on the campus of Wheaton College. In his speech he stated the following: I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start...

The world stands on the brink of disaster. Its need for the church is more evident than in more optimistic times. Christians know the Lord has called them out from the world to send them on an urgent mission. But many are confused as to the precise nature of their task. Is it social work or evangelism, or both? I read in the Charlotte Disturber this morning. Apart from the murders, rapes, missing persons, and Britney Spears coming to town, I was disturbed yet again by a church news article. Right smack on the front headlines "Churches putting out the diversity worship mat. Their mission: Comeback of the neighborhood church." So why did this disturb me? Well, you should read the article. There were a few things in the article that bothered me. It's been my prayer that would not allow me to get stuck in my ways at church. To not get upset when I don't get to sit where I want, to bear with music, and other such things. One thing that we MUST learn as Chris...

"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth." -Genesis 1:1 In 1215, the Catholic church spread temporal creatio ex nihilio as official church doctrine at the Fourth Lateran Council, declaring God to be "Creator of all things, visible and invisible,...who, by his almighty power, from the beginning of time has created both orders in the same way out of nothing." God brought the universe into being without a material cause. There is no preexistent material, only God who created. "In the Beginning"- bereshith indicates absolute beginning used equally in Isaiah 46:10. "Create"- bara, a word used only with god as its subject and which does not presuppose a material 'substratum.' "The Heavens and the Earth"- eth hassamayim we'eth ha'arets, this is a Hebrew expression for the totality of the world, or universe. Darwin in his "Origin of the Species" has other ideas. There are some questions to ask, and...

1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. 9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people...

"Through pride the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every vice, it's the complete anti-God state of mind." -C.S. Lewis One of things I love about Spring and Summer other than pollen and sneezing every 3 seconds is being able outside after being in hibernation for the winter. I enjoy getting up and going out on the deck and listen to creation wake up and "talk" to each other. I'll take my Bible with me and whatever book I'm reading and sit and meditate on things. For a while now I've known I wanted to write on pride but have been waiting for God to reveal what about pride to write. I started to really think about it in Theatre Appreciation class (what else is new right? I told you that class changed my life). We watched "Oedipus", and my professor kinda lectured that Oedipus' major character flaw was pride. Then I got to thinking, pride sneaks up on us sometimes and we don't even know it's pride that is affecting...

Working at McDonald's something I have come to realize is that on both sides of the counter we each don't know the first thing about each other. The customer doesn't know anything about me, and I don't know anything about the customer; all we see is the surface. This reality hit me last night as I was working the front counter. After taking a frail looking man's order, another customer came in that knew him. Overhearing their conversation at the counter I came to learn that the frail looking man had advanced lung cancer...all the while having 2 packs of Menthol Marlboro's hanging out of his shirt. Then the customer doesn't know anything about me. All I am is a crew member at McDonald's. They don't know I write this awesome blog, or study Theology and Philosophy. They don't know I'm involved in my church, or go to school. At times it bothers me, because there are some people who look down on me, and look at me like I'm stupid, and...