Book Review: Saints, Sufferers, and Sinners by Michael Emlet

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
If someone asked, "who are you?" how would you answer? Every person answers this question about their identity. We receive our first identity from our parents on our birth certificate. Our identity includes our gender, race, and first and last name. Our identity shapes how we view the world, think about ourselves, and relate to other people. The Bible uses a variety of identity language to describe believers (i.e., sinner, saint, child of God, forgiven, and redeemed). As described in the title of his new book, "Saints, Suffers, and Sinners: Loving Others as God Loves Us", Michael Emlet uses three terms to describe a Christian's identity. The three identities saints, sufferers, and sinners are not separate categories but are true realities of all believers. These three categories are woven together in each believer. These realities teach us how God loves us and how we should reciprocate that love to others. Emlet calls these "signposts for wise love." He emphasizes the order of...
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The Sound of Solitude

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
Mount Baldy (elevation 10,064 ft) “All our miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone [with God].” Blaise Pascal It is hard to escape the noise of everyday life. In Los Angeles, you cannot escape the morning traffic or the evening police car chase. There are the routine sounds we hear: working in a busy office, talking with coworkers and friends, listening to music or a favorite podcast, sitting in a coffee shop, eating dinner with friends, or watching the latest series on Netflix. There are the constant sounds we hear: text messages, emails, tweets, calendar reminders, to-do list alerts, breaking news, and spam phone calls. There are also the sounds of our busy hearts: our anxious thoughts, and our endless desires. All these sounds often turn into noise that is hard to escape. I often long to be in solitude to escape the noise of normal everyday life, so that I can think and refocus. I...
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Book Review: Reset by David Murray

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
I enjoy reading books because it helps me slow down and think. I recently came across “Reset: Living a Grace-Paced Life in a Burnout Culture” by David Murray that helped me to think more deeply about slowing down. At the beginning of the book, Murray says, "Slow your pace or you'll never finish the race." The Bible calls believers to run the race (1 Cor. 9:24-27) and Murray addresses the problem of allowing the race to turn into burnout. He wrote this book primarily for those who are exhausted and weary in a culture of burnout.   Although he writes primarily to Christian pastors and leaders, the principles of this book can be used by anyone who feels the effects of exhaustion. There is a funny illustration, but a little too true about life today. "Doing, doing, doing; producing, producing, producing; more, more, more; longer, longer, longer." Murray focuses on grace as the motivating factor for all of life. If grace does...
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Why do I complain so much?

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
A week ago, my family visited a local farm to pick strawberries. As we left, I bought each of my kids a flavored popsicle for the drive home. They enjoyed it for a few minutes until I heard from the back of the car that my son wanted a napkin because he did not like it. My ten-year-old daughter told my eight-year-old son, "You never like anything, it's too hot, or it's too cold, it doesn't taste good, you are never satisfied." At that moment I did not know whether I should commend her for her skillful assessment of the human heart or to comfort my son who had just received a tongue lashing as he had his heart exposed. Over this last year it seems that complaining has become so normal that we do not realize we are doing it all the time.  Can you believe the traffic? I cannot believe I have to wear a mask outside. These politicians...
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The House that Sanctifies Me

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
There are many tools in God’s toolbox that he uses to sanctify his people. Some of those tools include other people, a specific verse, a sermon, suffering, and circumstances. The Lord knows the right tool to use at the right time. Over the past ten years the Lord has used a home as one of his primary tools to sanctify me. My wife and I were excited to finally buy our first home. We had our first child and were looking for a place to settle down after moving around a couple of times. We looked at many different homes and eventually found one that fit our budget. We knew the house would need some work; we did not realize how much work we were getting ourselves into. After a couple of months in the home, I received a call from my wife at work, “there is a leak in the bedroom ceiling!” My excitement of homeownership quickly turned into despair. I...
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Book Review: Where Prayer Becomes Real by Kyle Strobel and John Coe

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
How is your prayer life? This is a question that can bring up feelings of shame and guilt. We often do not spend enough time in prayer or we forget to pray. Sometimes we might feel like God is not listening to us and other times we feel like we are talking to ourselves. We might think we need just the right words for God to listen to us. Prayer is not a skill we master but a practice that we grow in throughout our entire lives. A new book to help us grow in our prayer life was released in March 2021 called, “Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul” by Kyle Strobel and John Coe. In the opening chapter of the book Kyle Strobel shares what he learned about prayer from John Coe, “prayer is not a place to be good, it is a place to be honest.” This is a major theme of the...
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Do you consider yourself an influencer?

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
One of the most well-known influencers is Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. He is widely known for creating a successful electric car company and then becoming one of the world’s richest people in the world. He is not only known because of Tesla, but also for his viral tweets. In December 2020 he tweeted “One word: Doge.” Have you ever heard of Dogecoin? Dogecoin was a cryptocurrency created in 2013 as a joke. The cryptocurrency was trading for less than a penny last year. Dogecoin jumped after his tweet and at one point was up over 700%. The joke turned into a market cap today of over $6 billion dollars! His influence fascinates me, and it made me think about how we influence each other. Most of us do not have that type of influence on social media, but we all influence people through normal everyday conversations. This began all the way back in the Garden of Adam and Eve. In...
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Do you have an iPhone, or does your iPhone have you?

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
I came across a news article this morning that talked about a Digital Detox Challenge. I am reminded about how much technology is part of everyday life. I am not against technology by any means, I was part of the generation that grew up when the internet was gaining popularity. I am in the age group that can be part of Gen X or Gen Y (Millennials), depending on whom you ask. Wikipedia is the authority on all truth, right? The article I read this morning talked about a contest where they choose people to take a 24-hour period without any technology. They will pay $2,400 and even supply a safe to lock up your devices! There is a lot to say about how gamification, financial incentives, and preventing access can be tools for temporary behavior modification. Long-lasting change comes by aiming at the heart, which I will cover in future blog posts. All that to say, this sounds like a...
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Facing the Unexpected

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
James 4:13-15 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”  The verses above have often come to my mind over the last year. Life in a fallen world is full of joys and disappointment, fulfilled expectations and unmet expectations, dreams fulfilled and dashed dreams. Life in a fallen world during a pandemic adds another dynamic, the constant reminder that life is short, and we have limited control of our circumstances.   How can these verses bring perspective back into our lives? One truth that we should remember is that the Bible does not always explain the circumstances of life, but the Bible...
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The Age of Skepticism

by Roger E. BayramianNo Comments
Do you have a favorite conspiracy theory? There are so many to choose from over the last year: the pandemic, stolen elections, Pizzagate, and vaccines. It seems that conspiracy theories are more common today and they come out much more quickly after a major event. We live in a unique time in history where there is a combination of misinformation and untrustworthy leadership. This is not new for humanity, but the speed of news spreading is new. Social media has allowed us the ability to create an online presence to share information with a community of people we may never meet in person. Along with that is the ability to say anything without anyone verifying the facts. Over the last year, I have listened to stories of those who have believed in conspiracy theories, those who regretted what they believed, and others who held to their beliefs even when proven false. (By this I mean that there were theories of events...
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