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CaffeinatedLife
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Name: Jeff
Birthday: 8/7/1972
Gender: Male
Interests: In addition to my family, I am passionate about being a follower of Christ, communicating to youth culture what it means to be one, the Chicago Cubs, and Starbucks coffee, which makes everything more enjoyable. A more recent addition to my list of passions is Mac computers; I don't know how I existed for so long in a Windows world.
Expertise: Technological gadgets of all kinds (computers, handhelds, gizmos, etc), leading worship from my Taylor guitar (not really an expert compared to some, but lots of experience and TONS of enjoyment there), and sports of all kinds.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  illinoisdyd
Member Since:
2/25/2005
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| Caffeinated Life - Episode 6
Keep it hot (or cold)
As much as I love coffee, I’m not able to stomach lukewarm coffee. For some reason, it just doesn’t seem to go down. I like my coffee piping hot – barely drinkable.  Some people (especially in warmer parts of the country) like it iced. But I don’t know anyone who likes lukewarm, room-temperature coffee. The thought of trying to get the stuff down makes me gag!
I’m sure most of you can see where I’m going here. The spiritual parallel is pretty obvious.
Revelation 3:15-16
"I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth!”
The NLT takes it easy on us by using the word “spit” although that is still pretty strong. The actual translation is closer to “spew” or “vomit”. Living a lukewarm Christian life turns God’s stomach.
 Now any of you reading this who are like me - in that I like to analyze everything - would have a problem with this passage. You see, I could never figure out why Jesus would want any Christian to be cold in their relationship with him. Cold brings to mind words like distant, turned-off, and lifeless. Hot, sure I could understand that. Who wouldn't want to be fired-up in their relationship with God? But cold? No way! So I did a little research into this passage.
It turns out that the city of Laodicea was located along a main Roman thoroughfare, so it was highly trafficked. It was one of the most influential cities in the empire due to its extreme affluence. They had a booming textile industry and had made significant breakthroughs in early forms of opthamology - including a healing salve to put on the eyes. The main thing the city lacked was a fresh water source. The only source of water it had was from hot springs many miles away. By the time the water would get to the city, it was tepid, lukewarm, and very unpleasant. Cold water was refreshing and invigorating. Hot water from the springs was medicinal and was known to bring relief for a variety of illnesses. But lukewarm water was absolutely worthless – it had no value. More than that, it was downright unpleasant!
God doesn't want anyone to be distant from Him - He never intended this passage to even intimate that. What God does want is for His body to be full of life and ready to be used by Him as light and salt in this world. Believers who are useless to God turn the stomach of God! So what could cause us to slide into "useless" territory? Let's look back at a Scripture from the last blog entry...
Titus 1:15-16
“Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are defiled. Such people claim they know God, but they deny him by the way they live. They are despicable and disobedient, worthless for doing anything good.”
Keep the filters up and you will have a good start. Let me give you a couple other areas to keep watch over (taken from a sermon I heard a few years ago from Herbert Cooper)
Several things will cause a Christian to slide into lukewarm territory:
Moral compromiseLack of a devotional lifeLack of church attendanceAllowing sin to stay in your lifeLosing an others-focused life
Stay close to the fire. Live where things are happening. Turn up the heat on your relationship with God and live life far from the lukewarm.
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| Caffeinated Life - Episode 5
Use a good filter
Until I started making my own coffee, I never realized how important the filter is. Some coffee purists say that paper filters give an undesirable taste to the coffee and recommend a gold, permanent filter when brewing. Others say the exact opposite, that paper is less offensive. Still others say that using a French press gives the best coffee flavor (my personal choice) and use the filter built into the press. In any case, the filter keeps the grounds from getting into your coffee and making it nasty.
It is essential in our spiritual lives to have a filter in place as well. A filter to keep impurities and garbage from entering our lives.
Titus 1:15-16
“Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are defiled. Such people claim they know God, but they deny him by the way they live. They are despicable and disobedient, worthless for doing anything good.”
This is one of those passages of Scripture that you read or hear and kind of wince, because God hits us right between the eyes with the truth. When our minds and consciences are defiled, we become worthless for doing anything good. And if we are not constantly examining (filtering) the content we are allowing into our lives, we are not going to be living lives that are pleasing to God. Scripture goes so far as to call these people despicable and worthless. Ouch. All the more reason to have a good filter in place.
In a culture that is increasingly media dependant, we need to be wary of media culture when it comes to our relationship with God. We need to examine the music, the movies, the television, and the Internet content that we willingly subject ourselves to. Now I’m not going to tell you watch this, but don’t watch this. Listen to this, but don’t listen to this. That would be legalism. I believe God gave us a conscience for a reason, that we would use it!
All I ask is that you would write down this next Scripture on a 3x5 card or use a dry erase marker and write it on your bathroom mirror. Put it somewhere prominent, and use this as your filter for your life.
Philippians 4:8
“Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”
Let that be the filter that you place on our heart, on your mind, on your soul. In every area, be constantly asking yourself, "Is this true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise?" If the answer is, "Yes," then you should be in safe territory. If not, you might want to re-examine the media diet you're on.
Set an example for the people God has placed in your life. You are leaders! Be able to say as Paul did to the church at Corinth…
1 Corinthians 11:1
“Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.”
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| Caffeinated Life - Episode 4
Make it fresh daily
Up to this point, we've been talking about the dangers of not living Caffeinated Christianity. We're switching gears a little bit now and I'm going to focus on the steps we need to take to stay caffeinated. In this episode - make it fresh daily. Few things are more distasteful to me as day-old coffee, except for maybe two-day-old coffee. The longer a pot of coffee sits, the fouler it becomes!
Starbucks goes so far as to put its coffee on timers. After one hour has passed, whether one cup has been served from the pot or it has nearly been drained, they toss it and brew it fresh. Why? They are that concerned that every customer coming into the store has the freshest coffee experience possible. The question I have then is this, if Starbucks is so concerned with keeping its coffee fresh and is willing to throw out the old stuff just to make sure it is the freshest possible, why are we willing to go days or sometimes weeks without spending time with God and keep our relationship with Him fresh?
In Ephesians 5:18, Paul gives us the command to “Be filled with the Spirit.” This is one of those occasions where the translation comes up short due to the differences in English and Biblical Greek. A better way of saying what Paul was trying to get across is to “Always be being filled.” In other words, don’t let the pot get stale. Make it fresh every day!
And it's not just going to affect you - OTHER people will be affected when you don’t have a regular experience with God. By not having a fresh experience with God on a daily basis, you are not just causing your relationship with God to suffer, but also affecting friends, accountability partners, people you are mentoring, and people you are reaching out to. If you are not fresh, how can expect to be the influencer that God has called you to be?
In the words of Rob Bell, "Is what you are giving being scraped off the bottom or poured off the top?" | | |
| I'm back.
After two (or more) months away, I have returned to the land of Xanga and also to my podcast (for those who are involved in both arenas). I will have a new podcast releasing this Friday. If you've never been a part of Casting Influence, check it out at the website.
The last few months have seen the arrival of our new baby, Hannah Grace Kossack, the completion of and moving in to our new home, and LOTS of travel.
But the chaos has come to an end and tomorrow will see the release of a new, real blog entry, and not just the "Here I am - back from the dead" variety.
See you then... | | |
| Caffeinated Life - Episode 3
You may not even know the difference!
As much of a coffee connoisseur as I like to think that I am, you can put a cup of decaf and a cup of coffee in front of me, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two just by drinking them.  How can you tell then? You have to wait and see the results. You have to see if there is any effect. You may be living a decaffeinated Christian life. You may be living a life without power and without influence, but you may not even realize it. So how can we tell? What do we have to do to find out? You can tell by your fruit. What is it that is coming out of your life? Are you rubbing off on others, or are they rubbing off on you? Do you have the caffeination effect on the lives you come in contact with?
Is the fruit of the Spirit evident in your life? Melissa (my beautiful wife) from time to time decides to take a risk and send me to the grocery store. Usually this is a final option type of situation, but occasionally she will let me go. She doesn’t let me go on a regular basis for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I always come back with things we don’t need. I think guys do this a lot. Although we may think we’re more practical in other areas, when it comes to food, I at least tend to be pretty impulsive. It’s not uncommon for me to hear as Melissa is looking over my purchases, “But Honey, we don’t need rocky road ice cream and caramel topping, and we certainly don’t need four bags of jalapeno potato chips.” Incidentally, I very rarely tend to “overbuy” in the area of healthy foods. But the other reason she doesn’t like me to go is that I don’t have the best judgment. Take fruit for example. Selecting the right fruit is not one of my strong suits. She could send be to the store to get a couple of oranges. Of course, in my mind, the biggest oranges must be the best oranges, so I’ll pick up two big ‘ole oranges. These things make grapefruits insecure. Then when I get them home, we cut into them, and there is no juice, no “meat” to the fruit. It’s all white junk with none of the good stuff. But from the outside, they looked fantastic!
And here is my point. A lot of Christians can look good on the outside. They can do the right things, and act the right way, and say the right words. Jesus looked at the Pharisees and saw this kind of God-follower. In fact, he referred to them as "whitewashed tombs," looking good on the outside, but only death is within. So how do you really know if the good stuff is inside? Not until what’s inside is forced to come out. With fruit, this is when they get squeezed. In similar fashion, when we get squeezed, the real “us” starts to come out. When the pressure is on, when life gets hard, when our spouse or parents get on our nerves, when our parents are acting irrational, when our boss turns up the heat, when tragedy comes into our lives. It’s when things get hard and we get squeezed that we find out what we’re really made of.
Galatians 5:22-23
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Is that what comes out of your life? You want to know how to tell if you are living a Caffeinated Christian life, filled with power, and ready to make a difference for Jesus? Examine your behavior when life throws you a curve. Is your life filled with fruit, or are you dry inside?
Philippians 1:11
“May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation – those good things that are produced in your life by Jesus Christ – for this will bring much glory and praise to God.”
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