Monthly Archives: May 2012

Salvation: An Ongoing Process

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Recently, I read the portion of scripture below:

“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Romans 5:9-11 emphasis mine)

We tend to focus on the death of Jesus. He died for our sins. Then we celebrate Easter and shortly after that, he goes directly to heaven. Are we forgetting that Jesus didn’t just die for us, but that he also lived for us?

His sacrifice wiped the slate clean, restored us to zero when we had been at negative one zillion. But the goal isn’t to stay at zero. It’s to start counting up. To build on the second chance, to seize the opportunity.

Accepting Jesus’ sacrifice isn’t the finish line we often treat it as being: “Accept Jesus and you’ll end up in heaven”. It’s a beginning.

When God found you, you were laying in a roadside ditch – crippled and unable to help yourself. He picked you up and healed your legs. The worst thing you can do now is sit back down and wait for the end of your life. It’s time to start using the legs he healed. To go on the journey that he’s been calling you toward all along.

That journey is about restoring this world, not escaping it. To be part of his movement to make all things new. To bring light to the darkness, hope to the despairing, freedom to captives.

If you’ve accepted Jesus death as payment for your sins, then I want to say ‘Congratulations, welcome to the family. We’ve got a lot of work to do, so roll up your sleeves and let’s get busy.’

The Only Thing That Counts

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So check out what I found in the Bible yesterday:

Paul is talking to the church in Galatia about how you can’t earn God’s favor.

Sometimes, I feel like my life isn’t perfect because I’m either doing something wrong, or there’s something I’m not doing, or there’s some spiritual secret I haven’t grasped yet.

But I have to remind myself that even if I one day got it all together and became perfect from that moment forward, God wouldn’t owe me a dang thing.

If I act super spiritual for a week, God isn’t up in heaven saying, “well, I guess I have to give him that thing he’s been asking for now.”

If I’m going to let God utilize me, it’s going to be the imperfect version of my that exists now and always will exist.

This is what Paul is trying to hammer home to the Galatians: stop trying to make yourself perfect for God. When you make him part of your life, you become perfect in him.

And that’s when Paul says this:

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6)

Bang.

That’s God’s grading rubric. Did your belief in God lead you to undertake actions based on love?

I think I subconsciously keep a running score on my own Christianity that’s based on how well I’ve avoided sin and done the ‘holy’ things: praying, reading the bible, etc.

I’m not saying that avoiding sin and praying and reading scripture is bad or worthless; I’m saying that’s not what God is primarily after. Those things will come out of a life of faith expressing itself through love.

The best results come when you’re doing things the right way, not when you’re trying to make the outcome look good.

Hope and Fear

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Have you ever been to the place where hope and fear are wrestling for control of your emotions?

I’ve been living at that intersection for a while now.

I’ve been waiting on the opportunity to begin working at a job that has more meaning for me than the corporate job I’ve been at for a number of years. “Waiting” may not be the best word here. “Frantically trying to find something else but not being able to force anything to happen” would probably be better.

Yesterday, I was at a really low point. I felt like everything within me was driving over the cliff of depression and anger and frustration.

Somebody on my twitter feed put up a quote by a character on The Wire that said: ”A life, Jimmy. You know what that is? It’s the [stuff] that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.”

I felt like my life was a prison sentence to mundane mediocrity. I wanted somebody to blame for the fact that my life isn’t the fairy tale that I’d like it to be, and God is an easy punching bag.

He’s all powerful, so anything that goes wrong is his fault! As these thoughts kept filling my head, I realized how childish I was being. I also recognized the voice of the enemy, telling me to ‘Curse God and die’.

I apologized to God for being immature and I worshiped him. I thanked him. I asked for help and mercy.

On the way home, a thought came to me. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” I knew it was scripture, so I looked it up. It’s Proverbs 13:12.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Eugene Peterson, in The Message puts it like this:

“Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heartsick, but a sudden good break can turn life around.”

I had no idea why the Holy Spirit was telling me this. I have been living in a place of unrelenting disappointment for many months. I knew I was heart sick. For God to confirm, ‘look, I know that being in a depressing rut for a long time will really hurt you’ didn’t make me feel any better.

Heck, I had been chastising myself for wanting something better. “God has me here, so I need to learn to be okay with it. I need to learn how to be content in the midst of frustration” was my attitude. But the Bible said something completely different. Constant frustration will make your heart sick. You need fulfilled dreams to be happy. This sounds more like something Barbie would say in one of my daughters cartoons than what we expect from the Bible.

Yet here was the Holy Spirit, bringing this very thing to mind.

Later that evening, I got some really good news. Not good enough to let me quit my job immediately, but good news. A door opening really wide.

I have felt like a plant that was in a too small pot and not getting any water or sunlight, and this news felt like water and sunlight. I believe the day is coming soon when I’ll be moved to a bigger pot so I can begin to grow into the tree God wants me to be.

I’m deeply grateful to serve a God who cares about me, even though he doesn’t owe me anything.  A God who knows how much we need hope, and showed up yesterday after my time of testing to give me what I haven’t earned.

Weakness and Strength

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In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about his health situation. You know, when he has a “thorn in his flesh”, and he asks God to take it away. But God refuses Paul’s request. Instead, God tells him, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” (verse 9)

We talk about this a lot in Christianity. That in our weakness, God is strong. I was on a retreat around this time last year, finishing my degree at Regent University and we were having a group discussion. One of the girls in my class asked, “Can God work through a weakness without it becoming a strength?”

I thought it was an interesting question. I have had many areas of weakness that God has transformed into a strength. God does that kind of thing all the time, I think – If we let him.

But what about working in a weakness, where the weakness never becomes a strength?

I told her about my autistic daughter, Elle. God has used her to speak to many people, not least of all myself and my wife, yet her disability still exists. In the difficult struggles we’ve had with her, God’s grace has been all the more abundant. Grace to handle the trials, and to press forward in her treatment and development.

God hasn’t ‘fixed’ the situation, but he’s been present to meet the needs which have arisen out of it.

We know, from reading the Bible, that God is making all things new. He’s busy setting things right. That started with Jesus’ sacrifice and it will be set to completion when he returns. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, a perfect reality.

But here and now, there is still brokeness. The Fall still echos in us and in all of creation. We have been called to work among the imperfection. And while we are partners with setting things right, sometimes what we have to work with the brokeness before it has been fixed.

I will never be perfect on this earth, yet God chooses to work in me and through me. I am weakness personified, yet God has no plan B. Though I am still flawed and imperfect and fallen, God’s glory comes through when I let it.

Instead of throwing away this world and all that is in it, it seems like he’s taking all the loose threads and weaving a beautiful tapestry. He shows his greatnessbecause he uses the broken, the imperfect, the flawed. There is no such thing as a person who isn’t good enough for God. Because the weaker we are, the more we recognize we need him, and the more he shows up.

It’s only when we get a fat head, thinking God owes us a debt of gratitude that we end up full of ourselves and bereft of his presence.

Let us all, as Paul says boast only in what the Lord has done.

The Complete Christian: An Oxymoron

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I’ve heard people use the phrase ‘complete Christian’. He or she is a complete Christian. The idea being that they’ve put it all together and they are as close to being Jesus as they can possibly be.

Personally, I think this is kind of silly. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12 talks about how we are all parts of the same body. If I’m a toe, I may be the best toe that ever lived, but I’m still just a toe. I’m not a complete body. I can’t set off and do great things on my own.

I wonder what your Christianity looks like. I’m sure it has some things in common with my Christianity, but I hope it isn’t exactly the same. I say that, because I know I don’t have it all figured out.

I believe we’ve made Christianity the art/science of ‘having all the truth’ or ‘being right about everything’, when in reality, it’s designed to be a seekingafter the truth.

We’ve made it a destination, when it has always been a journey.

‘Christian’ isn’t something you are as much as it is always something you are striving to be.  The word Christian was originally a pejorative term meaning ‘Little Christs’.

God wants us to seek him, he says this repeatedly in the scriptures, and it’s pretty clear that while we won’t fully discover him on this side of eternity, we’re supposed to keep looking.

When we stop looking, we stop finding.

We seem to fear people coming to different conclusions within the same church – we think that having different conclusions will lead to division and church splits, so toeing the line becomes all important.

As a youth minister, one of my primary goals is not to teach my teens what to think, but rather how to think. I’d rather my kids find out what it is they actually believe instead of having me tell them what I want them to believe…and I believe that kind of attitude leaves room for the Holy Spirit to work!

This is my Christianity. Get your own.

Getting People To Buy Into Lies

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If you want people to believe a lie, make it something that they want to believe. Something that makes their life easier. Here’s some good examples:

  • You can lose weight by taking a pill.
  • You can get rich quick on the internet by only working a few hours per week.
  • You just have to go to church to make God happy.
  • Evangelism is just warning people that they’re going to hell.

People want results without having to invest the time, energy, and discipline it actually takes. So if you just promise to give results without work, people will flock to it!

If there was a pill that actually kept you think and gave you ripped abs, don’t you think everybody would take it? Of course! So the fact that not everybody is thin and has ripped abs tells you there is no such pill, right? And yet if you watch TV for an hour, you’ll probably see at least 3 commercials advertising products that make getting in shape seem simple, quick and effortless.

When people want results without investment, they are willing to ignore the reality all around them that shouts the truth. They buy into the lie because it’s more attractive.

Losing weight is going to mean eating differently, eating less and working out more.

Getting rich (if that’s even a good thing) will require time, energy, effort and taking risks.

Jesus didn’t say anything about ‘going to church’ making up the Christian faith. He did mention something about ‘take up your cross and follow me’ (Luke 9:23)

Evangelism requires you to live a life that bears witness to God, not just spout words that do.

But all these things are tough. They can’t be easily checked off a checklist and forgotten about.

So write a book about how living for God will make everyday like the weekend. Or how if you pray a certain prayer from the Old Testament, God doesn’t have any choice but to give you what you want. They love that kind of stuff.

None of that will help foment a Christianity that actually makes a difference in this world; that works to restore this world to the perfection it had when God created it, but hey – we can’t have easy and get results. But we can keep telling people they can!

God of the Meek and Lowly

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Leviticus 12 talks about the sacrifice an Israelite woman is supposed to make at the temple after having a child. It says that she should sacrifice a year old lamb, or if she can’t afford a lamb, a pigeon or a dove instead.

Fast forward to Luke 2: Mary has just given birth to Jesus. The bible tells us that when Joseph and Mary take the child to the temple in order to present him to the Lord, they brought along two birds (v. 24).

I find it very meaningful that God himself stipulated what he preferred (a lamb), but made allowances for those who simply couldn’t afford it. And when he himself came to walk upon the earth, he chose for his family people who couldn’t afford “the best”.

God isn’t trying to hob nob with the rich. He’s not attempting to get money out of them. God doesn’t look at Warren Buffett or Bill Gates and really wish they’d share some of what they have with him.

When God gave the greatest gift that would ever appear on this earth, it was given to people who couldn’t even afford a lamb. He came to a meek and lowly couple that were willing to listen and obey God.

God’s not looking for what he can get out of you. He’s looking to see whether you’re making a place for him in your life. Money can’t buy that. Only a humble devotion to the creator can.

Christian Love

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The Roman Emperor Julian (332-363) hated Christianity.

He hoped instead to restore the glory of the ancient Roman religion, which worshipped a multitude of deities in the temples and shrines that filled the city.

But Julian saw a problem with convincing the multitude to turn its back on the recently authorized faith: the power of Christian love in practice.

Here’s how he said it: “[Christianity] has been specifically advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers…[The Christians] care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.”

In other words, how could a pagan religion hope to gain followers when Christianity is setting itself apart as being far superior through its actions and results?

My how things change.

Is there anybody who looks at American Christianity and thinks first and foremost of the charity it carries out? Of the kindness it shows to the poor and destitute?

It’s far more likely they’ll think of Christianity as being a group of people who want power through politics, don’t like homosexuals and think kids need to be sheltered from secular music and movies or even education.

Who in their right mind would want any part of that? I know I don’t.

Those of us who really love God would say that’s just junk you have to ignore when you’re trying to be a part of the Body of Christ. But from the outside looking in, how can you know that the loudmouth politician, television preachers and bully pulpit pastors don’t speak for everyone?

Instead of gaining clout through the methods of this world: coersion, marketing, spin control, PR campaigns, etc…can we try the method Jesus recommended? Leading through serving?

The whole point of washing the disciples feet in John 13 was to show them that Christians were expected to act differently. Embracing service rather than power.

When Paul talks about living lives that no government could outlaw (Galatians 5:23), he’s again hammering this point home.

Instead of trying to grab power and attention from the politicians and the wealthy, lets serve the poor and powerless.

Let’s give people an alternative to what they see happening in a broken world, not more of the same.

Then, perhaps, some people may begin to say “There is something different about Christians. Something better than what I have going on.” This, I believe, is the example Jesus gave us and the mission we should be undertaking.