Wednesday, September 28, 2011

I Thessalonians 5: my thoughts on holy kisses, reader thoughts on purity, "Courageous"

Received interesting comment from a brother on yesterday's entry -


"An inner purity check that has helped me to  "flee fornication" is how dare I be responsible to help another being along the road to hell when, instead, I should be showing them the Way to heaven. I know I can be forgiven for my personal failure, but how shall I stand before God for a soul, for which he died, lost, even if in small part, because of my putting appetite before his work?"
And received this comment about "Courageous", which opens this weekend at Essex Cinemas, from our a missionary friend:

"I would like to add an emphatic encouragement to Guy's announcement about the movie which will be showing in Essex on Friday. I want to encourage all of you to pray for people (yourselves included) to attend and for hearts to be moved. 

Guy's friend is right that people MUST see the movie on the first weekend and even as many as possible the first day. The cinema should be full. We work with enough people in the movie industry here in France and have learned that the first weekend is all that counts as far as success. We'd heard that before but we know it for certain now. 

I believe that all of us believers who go see movies long and pray for purer movies with Christian values, ones that tell the truth in a wholesome way. In our work with artists we encourage dreams of talented people who want to use their talents for God's glory. That is what Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, GA has been doing for a few years. We can confirm that their motives are to honor the Lord.

We as fellow believers understand that Christians often wait for reviews before seeing a movie. Of course we do it for reasons of purity, and also we are sometimes unwilling to spend our money on weak movies that proclaim to have a Christian message. We don't want to waste our money--period. We pass the word around and take our time to see movies. Many of us wait to buy the DVD and we share them not wanting to spend too much money. I am sad to say that our patterns will never help movies that have good values and pure messages become successes. Movies have to be successful to be able to make more of a particular genre. The quality will improve as more movies are made...And the cycle continues.

So PLEASE do go see the movie on Friday and even again during the weekend. That is what counts. It may not be your favorite movie. You may want to see different types of movies with a Christian message but this is the best way to start!

And finally, a thoughtful reflection of my own on Paul's encouragement (I cannot say "command") for the brothers to greet one another with a holy kiss:
Blecch! Blleecchh! I know it's cultural and not sexual but BLECCHHH!!

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