Make Sense Out of Life

In one Cell group this week we studied 1 Corinthian 7 and in another the little letter to the slave owner, Philemon. Both studies revealed the practical nature of grace. In 1 Corinthians 7, sex is the issue. In Philemon, forgiving a major theft and violation of criminal law is at issue. Sex and forgiveness. I’ll bet we never see a TV show by that title! Paul was helping new believers make sense out of life.

After watching “Everything is Spiritual” last Sunday night, I realized how easy it is to forget that everything is spiritual. We create grace waves that swim through our networks, or we perpetuate offenses and crap. When Obama invited a couple of dueling personalities, the cop and the Harvard prof, for a couple of beers, he admitted that some things didn’t make sense except around a casual, friendly conversation.

Madonna has run to Kaballah. It made sense out of everything, she said. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. George Harrison, of the Beatles, said the same about music,  “I’ll give up this sort of touring madness certainly, but music-everything is based on music. No, I’ll never stop my music.”

Yet, even knowing everything is spiritual, one cannot make total sense of this world. Harrison retreated into a world of drugs and alcohol his entire life. Madonna is rich and famous, but her problems are still with her. In “Everything is Spiritual,” Rob Bell pointed out the fights between different theological camps as examples, and God looks at both and says, “Yep!”  As Christians we can only make sense out of life when we see a Jesus, who is Savior and Lord. Donald Miller writes in “Searching for God Knows What,” “It wasn’t until I read the gospels that Christianity made sense. As surprising as it sounds, Jesus saved my faith!” Today, find some sense.

Christian String Theory

The vows I took as a husband to Rhonda 24 years ago on Aug. 24, 1985 seemed doable. For some reason, we memorized the vows. Seemed repeating them after Pastor Sherwin was a little too much of him and not enough of the romance, our eyes locked romantically, lips moving, hearts burning with joy at those binding words. The rub? I bumbled my vows and left out “for richer, for poorer.” Does that mean I am exempt on that one?

The last four weeks, Rhonda’s been sick, coughing so hard her neck is sore and she has a strained rib. She’s slept in another room for a week so that I could sleep without her barking next to me thinking Armegeddon was close. Our second trip to the doctor proved she had pneumonia, a little spot of crackling in one of her lower right lobes. She starts antibiotics today. If they work, which they will, she’s cough free this week! If they don’t…

Our story is small. Take Mary and Charles, friends, elders, fellow Journeyites. Mary has nursed Charles back to health over the last five weeks. It was touch and go for a while from his infection. He’s been weak. She has trouble sleeping. They were in church for the first time in four Sundays last night. They’ve been married 28 years. They brim with love and thankfulness together. A beaming, emotional, Charles stood last night to thank everyone for praying, and especially the Wednesday night Cell Group for spending an evening with them at their home. “O the bliss that fills my soul!”

Our friends Marge and Eddie, in Florida, have suffered through Marge’s marriage-long hip injury and wheelchair dependency. Eddie dutifully, and usually, joyfully, moves the wheelchair in and out of the car, up and down curbs and bends his will to hers to get stuff for her. They’ve been married at least thirty years. Duty and love, serving and sickness.

Scott and Linda, in Muskegon, MI, old High School friends, keep us posted on her cancer treatment and various repercussions. The pain and anxiety plow through the optical fibers to friends on Facebook, garnishing typed words of encouragement and prayer for all to see.

Some marriages don’t survive these sicknesses. In these sicknesses, pressure for intimacy and the carefree romantic life, tiptoeing through the tulips, drives people insane for normalcy. The stress destroys frivolity…and possibly fidelity.

On the other hand, something else emerges, something grand and deep. A power creeps in, seeps in, overpowers in the night, or after day seven, or in the middle of an emergency room visit. That power isn’t a hope that intimacy will be met or a resolution is near. The emerging power is like a sweeping mist overtaking the surface of a deep, clear lake. Soon, the lover is in an envelope of mist, a power from outside, a shortening of sight to what is close at hand. A job must be done. A person is in need. Focus. Care. Help. Serve. Listen. The options are cut. The romantic notion of friendship dies. Now, thin misty threads of true love form, spidery strings, sticky and strong, powerful, to buckle down, to save the one closest to you.

I’ve seen it. I’ve tasted it. That mist is sweet. The bonds are stronger. The vows held, “in sickness and in health,” and we are ready to face the onslaught to our other vows, but together, strength in numbers, two can chase a hundred, where in sickness, one is bound in deep, misty love to lonely serving.

Praise God, Mary and Charles! Hang on Scott and Linda! Be strong, Dale and Joann! Stay the course, Shelby and Dave! Focus, Tom and Rhonda!

“Finally, these three remain, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love!” 1 Cor. 13

“Christ’s love compels us.” 2 Cor. 5:14

Big Chicken Witnessing

Why did the rooster cross the road? Because he wasn’t chicken.

What do we say when we witness? Three times this week in our cell groups this topic was discussed. I’m going to try to flesh out what happens in witnessing.

In a word, witnessing is discernment. Some people don’t want to talk to us about religious things so we must be discerning and gracious. We don’t know what another person believes so we have to ask and ask and ask. Many Christians can’t articulate what the gospel is, and all of us must continually probe the depths of all that the gospel brings. Thus, the gospel must be discerned.
Discernment also takes place during the conversation. Unfortunately, most of us are more concerned with being heard! Most Christian witnessing tools emphasize what we must say. Thus, Christians are afraid to witness because “I don’t know very much!” What we are afraid of is the fact that other people might find holes in our beliefs or knowledge, but don’t we want to get stronger in faith? Don’t we want our holes to be filled? Don’t we want more of the power of the gospel at work in our lives?
Most people are not good discerners or listeners in conversation! We match story for story, belief for belief, and sickness for sickness. More excitingly and more satisfying is the listening and asking questions approach. Unfortunately, we have to suspend our own stories and beliefs, deny our egocentrism and our need to be loved and heard. People have so many interesting life events and faith histories when I actually listen for them. I’m fascinated by the assumptions people make about Christianity so I ask people how they came to these assumptions.

Some atheists are believers and don’t know it! They speak more about God than some believers. They know what God isn’t like because they believe that their God wouldn’t act in certain ways or make them do certain things. Some atheists know more about the Bible and the gospel than church people. I’m almost always amazed at how much thought and study some of my unbelieving friends have put into their beliefs.

But don’t be intimidated. Ask more questions. We might be afraid of looking foolish because we don’t know what the other person knows, but that’s a little like not going to the doctor because he might give us bad news. Witnessing is going to help us to know what we are supposed to know. Witnessing helps us discern what we know and what we don’t. Thank people for their honesty, their study and thought and their discussion. You’ve been helped by it.

Discernment about the gospel means we must discern and believe in our deepest self that the evidence is true. The gospel must be discerned in a nutshell. What are we believing and asking people to believe? Paul does a nutshell presentation for the Corinthians (and for us!) in 1 Cor. 15:1-7. The core of the good news (the gospel) is that “Christ died according to the scripture, he was buried and he was raised from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures.” Every word of that phrase has to be unpacked. All the projections into life must be discerned. Before we can so boldly say religious sounding phrases to people, we must have discerned the power of this core message of the gospel. Paul is so sure of this he says, “This is the gospel!” We must know and say this to people! Several pastors in my life in the last few months have confirmed that without an excitement about this gospel there is no witnessing. It’s simple isn’t it? the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus? That’s it. That’s the gospel. This is what we believe or reject!

Discernment means we move from the known to the unknown to know, i.e. to discern. Witnessing is starting where we are, jumping into unknown territory so that because we are on a mission of discernment, we have more confirmation of what we have believed. Paul says to Philemon, “I want you to be active in sharing your faith so that you may know every good thing you have in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus, Born in the Land of Adultery

Reading and studying Hosea with our Tuesday night group, I realized at the end of the study that the visual illustration God wanted the people to see extended into the future to Jesus. In Hosea 1, God asks Hosea to marry an adulterous woman (prostitute). They have three children together named, “Scattered,” “Not Loved,” and “Not My People.” The people of the Northern ten tribes, Israel, are told that God no longer loves them nor wants them. He is no longer their God. The three children visually demonstrate God’s severing of ties with Israel. Everytime Hosea, Gomer, his wife, and all within earshot, heard the names of the children being called to supper were reminded that God was done and finished with loving these adulterous people.

But in verse 10 he switches gears to give some hope! “One day you will be united with Judah as one people. and one leader will come from you and will raise you up from the land!” After the Assyrians, Babylonians, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great and finally the Romans terrorized and raped the land of Israel in succession, our GREAT GOD fulfilled his pledge to Israel, his bastard child of adultery. (I know this sounds so ungodly and strong, but get the picture God is painting for his people, ok?) Jesus came to earth, born in Bethlehem of Judea, the southern kingdom, but Jesus  lived in Nazareth of Galilee, part of the Northern ten tribes of Israel (part of Naphtali or Manasseh?)! What the people destroyed and divided because of their adultery with idols God reunited by sending his son. There’s more.

Hosea again predicts the miraculous coming of Christ by saying, “In the place where it was said to them,  ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” Jesus, born in the “land of adultery” did more than reunify north and south. He “gave them the right to be called ‘children of God’,  children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John 1:12-13 It was said in those days that nothing good could come out of Galilee. The stench of their curse lingered through the centuries. But God prophetically spoke into existence the power to be called, once again, sons and daughters of the living God, through Jesus!

Hosea concludes the opening prophecy with this powerful resolution: Hos. 2:1    “Say of your brothers,  ‘My people,’ and of your sisters,  ‘My loved one.’ Such is the power of God to reach into something he himself cast away as evil and redeem it for himself. There is hope for all of us!

Leadership Pepper

Winston Churchill and his only bodyguard, Walter Thompson

You made ‘em giddy up, Joe. How you got thirty folks to follow you to Or-gun with only a horse, side arm and a rifle makes me think you was a great leader, Joe!

Naw, not really, Hoss. I just did my job to get them folks a new home in Or-gun.

Joe, not many of us followed you, but you got us all there safe and sound. We will be forever grateful to you for leading the wagon train. We did have a few scares, like that one over the Missou-rah River. Lost two wagons and six oxen, but you kept us goin’.

The way I remember it, Hoss, you doused me with some peppery words ‘‘bout keepin’’ on and ‘don’t let the folks down now by quittin’’. I don’t think I could have rode another mile without that pepper shakin’ you give me.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ah, leadership. Some mysterious mix of qualities that can smack of arrogance and self adulation, but comes off as confidence and charisma. The good leaders just do a job and some folks come along to help. Great leaders need pepperin’ once in a while.
Winston Churchill’s body guard, Walter Thompson, guarded the British bulldog for 38 years. He knew more state secrets than anyone other than Churchill, but he also knew the depressions and insecurities of that great leader. He gave countless pepperings of encouragement to keep going, to get out of bed and even to get dressed. Who would have known that such a relationship was such a huge asset to such a great world leader?

And the amazing thing is that the great Winston Churchill listened to his “lowly” bodyguard!

Leaders never go the distance alone. Great leaders have great leaders around them. Great leaders help others to be great leaders. The best organizations have people willing to pepper their boss and keep on going themselves. What may look like confidence and charisma covers an anxious load of self doubt and insecurity. Ask anyone who has ever lead anything!

Demonstration of the Spirit’s Power

Paul said to the Corinthians, “I did not come with persuasive words or eloquence, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” Oh, how we need to know what he meant! How we need to see the demonstration in transformations and wonders explained only by the Spirit’s and gospel’s power!

I saw the power at summer camp. Singing around the campfire, slapping mosquitos, looking intently at the dancing flames, faces glowing, the darkness looming behind, no one strong enough to look at each other. We waited for the spirit to move, someone to stand, someone to break into tears, convicted, wanting to follow Jesus. Just a few minutes before campfire we were kicking and stomping each other, but the Spirit moved, we all knew campfire was life or death. God massaged our teenage hearts and we all vowed undying love and devotion to Him. 12 year old boys stood, stammered out, “I’m going to go home and talk to my mom about Jesus,” break into tears, and fall back to his seat, with the other boys and a counselor patting his back, and the rest of us clapping and cheering. We sang with moxie, “I have Decided to Follow Jesus….No turning back, no turning back.”

I stood, too. I meant it. I knew I was so imperfect, a sinner, and I still know that! I committed myself to serving Christ, and I meant it! I still do, but in those days of the Viet Nam war, and missionary slide shows, I saw myself in a jungle with a machete, leeches sucking on my thighs and a Bible hanging by my side. “No turning back!” The Spirit’s power demonstrated!

At Apostle Johnny Washington’s tent meeting in Jamaica, Brooklyn in 1978, I saw the Spirit move. Shaking and jivin’, stuttering in tongues, twirling, falling over, money flowing to the front, the Spirit’s power came all over everyone but  two white boys in the front row. This 20 year old white boy didn’t feel the demonstration of the Spirit’s power, but I saw it. My inner city friends lived it, and loved me, changed me!

I preached to the seagulls on the shores of Lake Huron once while in college. I preached through the book of Philippians. I was in tears I was so in the Spirit.

I stuck myself in the quietest, most lonely place near campus during college, the local cemetery, just so I could get a demonstration of the Holy Spirit. Reading Colossians 1 and 2 out loud in the dark by a family’s crypt just about gave me a heart attack of the good kind as the Spirit washed over me, reminding me of the God who was Jesus whose death on the cross ridiculed the powers that stood against me. I was a changed man! I was full of the Spirit, full of life, running as fast as I could, studying Biology and all the sciences, but the joy of the Spirit’s power slaughtered any notion anything else in life was close to equal.

About ten years ago, I was in our small Presbyterian church in Canada near our cottage. A guest preacher, about 110 years old was speaking. I expected nothing great, but he was full of the Spirit. He loved God and it showed. As he spoke the Spirit’s power washed over me. I knew God’s love, his power, and full of life, I began to weep–NOT in a Presbyterian church! He spoke with quiet passion about a personal God who was my God, and I knew that God’s power was changing, transforming 40 year old me.

The Corinthians were enamored by the pompous rhetoric of its philosophers and religious logicians. They were enamored by all the glory of the temple beauty and, bluntly, sexual liberties. The polished preachers and the sexual libertarians were winning the hearts of the Corinthian Christians. Ecstasy washed away the message of the resurrection. Paul reminded them the source of life and power was in Christ, in His Spirit.

We Americans are enamored by the glitter of gold, sex and the trappings of success, but the Spirit’s power is where? As my good friend Charles always says, “every pastor must have a button on his ego labeled “build”.” Churches buy into the American way in order to get more people, but where is the demonstration of the Spirit’s power?

Jim Cymbala, pastor of The Brooklyn Tabernacle and author of “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” asked an interviewer if he could state the number one sin the church in America. He went on to say that most people would say something like internet pornography or the divorce rate being the same as the secular world or several other things. But the number one problem Cymbala said is that its pastors and leaders are not on their knees crying out to God, ‘Bring us the drug-addicted, bring us the prostitutes, bring us the destitute, bring us the gang leaders, bring us those with AIDS, bring us the people nobody else wants, whom only you can heal, and let us love them in your name until they are whole.’”

Bible Study Tool

The picture is a screen shot of how I’ve been doing Bible Study in my Quiet Time. The program is a Mac specific study tool called Accordance. I’ve had Accordance

Accordance screen shot of highlight tool.

for seven or eight years, and had a precursor program prior to that called Mac Bible. I’ve had to slow my reading each morning to do the color highlighting. Now that I am reading through four very long narrative passages in Jeremiah, Judges, Acts and Mark, my reading is taking close to an hour each day. My study notes take more time. At this stage of life, so much of the truth of God and  work in history is shining through the text in more vivid detail. I highly recommend the M’Cheyne Bible reading guide to get through the Bible in a year, and see so much of the vivid details and faith strengthening truths he wants you to see each day.

What’s good about this method is that I was losing my desire to read through the Bible in a year. I was becoming lethargic and did only cursory readings. I discovered this highlighting tool on vacation when my girls accidentally took my Bible with them back to Johnson City when we were leaving for Canada.

Now, if only someone could tell me where there is an electronic prayer tool!

The List God vs The Relational God

Anyone who worships the List God will vehemently deny it. Their List God is absolute, unquestionable and provable by a plethora of verses. I’ve been working my whole life to destroy my belief in the List God. I used to have a stronger belief in List God, but today, thanks to some severe encounters with the Loving God, my false assurances are waning.

The List God wants us to check off  a variety of ways to worship him:

Using correct language: Bishop vs pastor, spirit filled vs just born again, wine vs grape juice

Correct Church: women in leadership vs not, elders vs deacons, traditional vs everything else, women wear headcoverings or not

Correct doctrine: predestination vs free will, pre or post tribulation, 144,000 Jewish evangelists vs symbolism

Correct Lifestyle: alchohol, abortion, swearing, the death sentence

The List God won’t let the Love God operate freely. Too much is at stake. People might not have the right thoughts or actions. Satan is so deceptive. The List God loves to make people feel better about themselves: check, check, check. I did that and that and that. Whew! I’m OK! Thank you List God for your blessings!

But that’s not the Loving God Jesus showed us. He died at the hands of those who worshipped the List God. He seemed too liberal, too easy on sin, too wishy washy. Paul, too, said only one thing matter: you are a new creation. Circumcision (the leading indicator of those of worship Mr. List God) didn’t matter one bit! Just be a believer in what Jesus did. Bingo! The Loving God steps out of the darkness. No list in hand or red lettered in his Bible. He says, “Follow Me!” Not much of a list!

The good news is that lists don’t count! Woo Hoo! His holiness is my holiness! The blind who follow the List God seem so sure and confident that perfection is possible while following the List God. Truth is stranger than fiction. Lists don’t count! Jesus, the anti-List God, revealed a greater power to change people, the power of the grace and love of the Loving God. Follow Him!

2Tim. 1:8   So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God,  9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life — not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,  10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Have You Ever Thought About the Incarnation?

Can we wrap up the Incarnation in a nutshell: God became man. There. Done. Christians like everything wrapped up in tidy packages so we can feel better, have more confidence. My goal today is to ask you to take a question about the Incarnation to someone you know and to someone you don’t know. I want you to ask two people the question: Can you explain the Incarnation? See what happens. Try it!

It might help to know what the incarnation means. It means, in a nutshell, God becomes a man, literally, embodied by flesh. And we are not the only people who believe in incarnation. Hindu’s believe in the incarnation of Vishnu. He is an avatar. Buddhist’s believe that the Dali Lama is the incarnation of the Buddha. Rastafarians believe that Hallie Salasi, the Emperor of Ethiopia, is an incarnation.

God inhabiting a human body presents some problems, however. How do we fit God into such a small package? Or is he the watered down God?

Lately, I’ve not got into a huge debate over the Incarnation. It seems that most people today have backed up further to whether or not God exists. People are skeptical of our superstitions. The church has sold out for money and power again, thus, in some people’s minds, invalidating our basic beliefs, even that God exists. This week I heard, again, the term, “practical atheist” of which many so-called Christians could be called. Practical Atheists means that a person walks through a day without the mystery of God or his power, grace, presence experienced. God doesn’t matter, really. My job, my kids, my cleaning, my trip matter.

So, why bother talking about the incarnation? What’s the power in it?

About the first time I debated with someone about the incarnation, I was a college sophomore. My new roommate was a Muslim. He violently rejected that God could be a man, and backed up his evidence that Allah was only one God. He said the death of Jesus proved he was not God. God cannot die! God is infinite.

That conversation sent me on a crash course to discover truth. I read the Bible, of course. I began to examine creeds and confessions. I read church history. I was on the sixth floor of the Grad Library studying Chemistry when I found four hundred year old Catechisms and read through so many wanting to hear their truth. (Chemistry was far inferior to Incarnation!) I wanted to know the truth, and ever since then, that powerful search has fueled my wonder and amazement in worship, in raising my kids, in ministry. I can say that the mystery is as real today as back then, but my circle has been drawn ever wider. The Muslim friend’s circle is still the same size. His fear of mystery shrunk his world. My love for mystery opened up a new world.

Every time we meet someone who is a non-seeker or a Muslim or a Jehovah’s witness, Mormon, Jew, practical atheist, they have chosen to not believe in the Incarnation. They have chosen a smaller circle. We Christians are the odd ducks, really. We open ourselves to disappointment or to doubt. Incarnation is one of the central beliefs we carry around in our suitcase of beliefs, and it’s not easy to believe! It’s easier to believe that moles can become the size of elephants or sunflowers in Kansas grow taller than skyscrapers. The fact that God was wriggling around in poopy diapers is harder to believe than Christopher Columbus’ belief that the world was round! But the mystery of Jesus being both God and man, wrapped up together, with no boundaries or as separate beings, blows our minds, and puts us places we couldn’t go otherwise.

The incarnation is proof that God is in our world. Jesus becoming flesh proves God loves His world. Jesus becoming a human being destroys the belief that this is all there is. Jesus and God together in one person is anti-materialistic, anti-fatalistic, and anti-Marxist, Nietzsche, Spong, Freud, Shaw, Dawkins or Hitchens. The incarnation of God is opposed to my Christian/Buddists, who want to hold both religions as nice philosophies. The Incarnation is not “nice.” It’s “in your face” and changes the way a person thinks about all of life! The incarnation tells us that not all is lost or evil. That God can do anything and will. However, not many people are all that interested in thinking about the Incarnation these days, let alone believing in God.

Go ahead and ask a couple of people. See if you can set off a few ticking bombs of truth to change a life or two!