Read Malachi 3:6-12
When I was a pastor in Altoona I arrived home from the church one night and found the door between my garage and basement open. (My garage was underneath the house) I thought it strange, but figured the wind must have caught it because I left the garage door open, so I kept on going. When I got to the top of the stairs I found another door open, so started to worry that maybe someone had broken in. As I looked around the kitchen, dining room and living room I realized that everything was in order, so I kind of laughed at my paranoia and moved on. When I walked into the study I had at home – it was completely torn apart. My computer and printer were missing, papers and books were thrown everywhere and in each of the three bedrooms every closet and dresser drawer had been ransacked. After the police came and took my statement and went over everything, everyone went home and I was left in the house alone. If you ever been robbed or burglarized, you know the real problem is that your stuff is gone – it’s that you feel violated. It took me a long to time to get to sleep that night and when I finally did fall asleep, I was fully dressed with my shoes on and I laid on top of all the covers. When you are robbed you feel taken advantage of and it’s hard to feel secure and it’s hard to trust others again.
I was thinking about that incident again this week when I read in Malachi God talking about being robbed. You might think that the last person to be robbed would be God – but that’s what He says – you rob me. Now the natural question we might ask is the same one the people of Israel ask, How do we rob you, God? And God says, through your tithes and offerings. If we look at the history of Malachi, we see that it was written at a time when the people of Israel had just returned from captivity in Babylon. The people had been held as slaves and prisoners for 70 years in a foreign land and they had just recently been able to return to Jerusalem where they rebuilt the Temple and the city walls. While they were beginning to return to their old way of life and establish once again their faith, their commitment to God was still pretty weak. So while God called for a tenth to be returned to him - the people were not giving it all to God. And the offerings of animals they were giving where not the perfect and unblemished ones he called for, they were blemished and imperfect. God was getting the leftovers not the first fruit. He was getting the runts of the little not the first born and strongest. The people were robbing God because they were taking from God what rightfully belonged to him in the first place, but beyond the insufficient and imperfect offerings, what really offended God was the way he was being treated. God was being taken advantage of, God was being violated and the relationship God sought to have with his people was being strained and broken. Ultimately it’s not the offering that God wants, it’s the relationship. Think about it, God didn’t need the lambs or the grain or the new wine given in the offerings. God didn’t need it and God didn’t want the stuff – God wanted the hearts and lives of his people. God wanted his people to come to Him and place their faith and trust in Him. That is what the full tithe was all about, it was not a financial issue, it was faith issue.
The law of the tithe in the OT wasn’t given because God needed the stuff – it was given as a practical example of what it means to love and trust God. When God says, I want you to love me and trust me with all your heart and soul and mind and strength – he doesn’t just send us off to figure out how to do it – God gives us practical ways to work this out and the tithe was one of those ways, and when we fail to give God what he calls for, in essence we are saying, God we don’t love you enough to say thank you for all you have given us, and we don’t trust you enough to place our complete financial situation and future into your hands.
More than anything – God wants us to know that he loves us and God wants to show us – even prove to us – his love. Look at the passion of God’s words in Malachi 3:10-12
It’s as if God is begging us to come to him with our tithes so that he can show us just how much he loves us. Tithing helps us develop a deeper relationship with God because we come to God being vulnerable and needing God to show himself and prove himself trust worthy. So tithing is still not a financial issue – it is a faith issue. Tithing isn’t about giving money to keep the church doors open or the lights on, it is about loving God and allowing God to love us. So let me just lay it on the line – do we love God enough to tithe?
Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Church in Chicago, says that tithing requires from us a heart check – a gut check and a faith check. So here it goes – it’s heart check time – do we love God enough to tithe? It really is a matter of the heart. The Bible says we are to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength – do we? Do we love God enough to step out and return to Him just a portion of what He has given to us? Remember – the reality is that it all belongs to God in the first place, it has all come from God and so our tithing is really not giving to God it is giving back to God – so do we love God enough to give back just a tenth of what he has given us?
As we reflect on this, we need to think about all God has done for us. God has not only given us life and then generously worked to sustain our lives in this world – God has also given us the gift of his son, Jesus Christ. God has given us what was most precious to him so that we could be forgiven and enter once again into a relationship with God. When we look at the cross and the empty tomb we know that God has wiped clean the slate of our lives. God makes us part of his spiritual and eternal family and he opens to us the door to eternal life. God has given us all of this, but there is still more.
Through the church God has given us a new family that is here to support us and help us in this world. Through the Holy Spirit God gives us joy and love to experience here and now. God gives us so much and while the thanksgiving season is a time for us to verbally say, Thank You God! Tithing is a concrete practical way for us to show God that we do love him. So let me ask again, Do we love God enough to return him just a portion of what he has given us? Are we willing to stop living for ourselves and start living for God? Do we love God enough to live by the principles he has given us and not just give but give cheerfully and with open hands and with the confidence that God will provide for us in the future? It’s heart check time for us and there is no easy way to say this, do we love God enough to tithe?
If you say Yes, then it’s a gut check time – if your heart is saying, I want to step up and do this, then you have to sit down and figure out how. If we never follow through on what our heart is telling us to do – we are not only robbing God – we are mocking him. So if we want to step out in faith and trust and begin to tithe, then we have to first sit down and figure it out what it is we need to return to God. So let’s get specific for a moment. Tithing is returning to God 10% of our income. Since all of our financial situations are different – I can’t tell you what this figure is – but God can. Sit down with all your financial information: your wages or salary, your investments and pensions and all others sources of income and before you do anything, pray about what God wants you to give. A lot of people ask me if they should tithe on their gross income or net? I don’t know, let God show you. Do we include interest and dividends and what about gifts and investments? I don’t have the answer – but God does and so we need to ask him. Just don’t put off doing something – do what brings you peace – do what feels right in your gut, it may not be easy – but step out and do it.
As you figure out your tithe, I want to give you a word of caution, for many people their tithe may be significantly higher than what they may be currently giving. I think it was Scottie and LeAnn who said they were putting their $20 in the offering plate, but when they sat down to figure out their weekly tithe, it was considerable more than $20. If you do the math, working 40 hours a week at a minimum wage job would require you to give more than $20 a week in a tithe, so giving God the full tithe may seem like a big financial step, maybe even an impossible one, but it is exactly these impossible steps of faith that lead us closer to God and God is just waiting for us to take this step of faith. I picture God as the mother or father who is just waiting with open arms for their child to take that first step. They can’t do it for their child but they know it will be the best thing for them, and when they take that first step – they are right there to celebrate and support, to embrace them or to encourage them in another step.
Let me also say that I know there are some of you that are really struggling financially right now and you may not have enough money at the end of the month to pay our bills. Here’s what I would ask of you – sit down and figure out your tithe. It may not be very much, but if you can give it to God – God will honor you and God will provide for you. Now one of the ways that God provides for us is through the people of God called the church, so if you tithe and yet you still have financial needs – would you please come and talk with us so that we can reach out to support you. Here’s the truth of God’s economy – if everyone would tithe – there would be no one in need among us because we would have all the resources necessary to provide for those in need.
If we get our hearts right and make the decision to tithe, and if we do the gut check and work out the details – then we are ready for the faith check. The faith check is following through and giving back to God the full tithe. It’s writing that first check and placing it in the offering, and then it’s doing it week after week, month after month, year after year. You can’t just give once and then be done – tithing is a lifestyle where we consistently put God first and the truth is that tithing may require us to change our lifestyle. Maybe we don’t eat out as much, maybe we don’t buy as many new clothes. Maybe we forgo the latest technological gadget, maybe we buy one less gift during the holiday season or find ways to give gifts that don’t cost anything. Tithing may require a change in our lifestyle – but it will be a change that will bring us more joy because it will be a change that will bring us closer to God.
Tithing is also something we need to revisit again and again in our lives. If you have been tithing for many years, let me ask you to sit down again and simply ask God what he wants you to return now. There will be those moments in all of our lives when God will call us to go beyond what we think we can do. Jesus called Peter to step out of the boat and walk on the water. God called Moses to leave behind his sheep and go out to lead the people of Israel out of slavery and into the promised land. God gave Malachi a message that challenged the people. God may be calling us to go deeper in our giving and practice sacrificial giving – giving more than 10%. We won’t know what God wants us to return to him, until we ask.
Tithing takes a heart check – do we love God enough to do this. It requires a gut check – we have to sit down and figure out exactly what God is calling us to return to him and it requires a faith check as we make the lifestyle changes needed to give and then continue on in a life of tithing. The end result of it all is this for us is simple, God’s blessing, so much blessing that we will not have room in our hearts and lives for it all. The blessing may not be a financial win-fall – it may be a peace that passes our understanding, it may be more stable families, it may be a joy that knows no limits. There are so many different ways that God wants to bless us. Will we open up our hands to receive God’s blessing by first opening up our hands and returning to God the full tithe?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
A Great Cloud of Witnesses - All Saints Day
Read Hebrews 12: 1-3
In many churches, the first Sunday of November is celebrated as All Saints Day or All Saints Sunday and it’s a day for the church to remember all those men and women of faith who have gone before us. This kind of celebration can be traced back to the year 270 AD when there was a commemoration of All Martyrs, and in the year 411 AD there was a call for a general commemoration of All Confessors. Unlike a martyr who died for their faith, a confessor was a man or woman who was persecuted for their faith but didn’t die. So the idea that we set aside a day to remember those men and women who, for the sake of Christ and the church, have sacrificed and given so much is almost as ancient as the church itself. Every year when I think about all saints day I wrestle with this question, what is a saint?
Is a saint someone who has lived such an extraordinary life of faith that they are truly one in a million? Are saints people like Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II? Is a saint those unique individuals who have led countless numbers of people to Christ and increased the faith in millions, like Billy Graham? If we go back to the NT, when the word saint is first used it is not to describe those who are extraordinary, it is used to describe all those who trust in and believe in Jesus. Paul often uses the word saint to refer to the believers in a particular city, like the saints in Ephesus, or the saints in Corinth. The word saint comes from the word Sanctus which means holy, so we could say that a saint is a holy person, but do we think of ourselves as holy?
A survey conducted by the Barna Group a few years ago reported that most Americans do not consider themselves to be holy. While 3 out of 4 people believed that it is possible for someone to become holy, only half of the adult population said they even knew someone they considered to be holy. So while Paul considered all believers to be saints – holy men and women, we have a hard time thinking of ourselves that way, but maybe that’s because we have the wrong idea of what a saint looks like. Here’s a story of what I think a saint looks like:
The great pianist and composer Ignace Paderewski was performing at a high society concert in America. A young mother brought her young son in hopes the he would be encouraged to work harder at his piano lessons. While she was talking with her friends the young boy became bored and focused on the beautiful grand piano on the stage. The boy slipped away from his mother, headed for the piano where he immediately sat down and began to play of all things - Chopsticks! The audience turned its attention to the boy and soon an uproar began in the hall. People from all over the auditorium began to cry out, “Who brought that child to the concert?” “Where is his mother?” “Get that boy out of here!” Paderewski was waiting behind the curtains to come on stage when he heard the uproar and he quickly assessed the situation, walked out on stage and without a word of introduction he stooped over behind the boy, reached around both sides of him and began to improvise a counter melody to harmonize with and enhance Chopsticks. As the two of them played together, Paderewski kept whispering in the boy's ear: Keep going. You’re doing great. Don’t stop. Keep it up! You’re OK. Keep going.
While there is no evidence that this is a true story, I think this defines the life of a saint well because saints are those who are willing to embrace others and help bring them life. Saints are those whose faith and love help others experience all the joy and fullness of life that God has to offer. Saints are those who inspire us to keep going in our faith when we want to give up. They are those who love us when we don’t know where we are going, encourage us to take steps of faith and try new things when we are filled with doubt and insecurities, and they are the ones who show us the love and power and life of Jesus. William Barclay said a saint is someone whose life makes it easier to believe in God – and they make it easier by surrounding us and lifting us up in many different ways.
Willard and Irene Isley are saints. They reached around and welcomed a student associate pastor into their home where they loved him, fed him and cared for him during a year of ministry and it was their faith and commitment to God and the church which helped to inspired that student to see that the life of a pastor really was not that bad, in fact, maybe it was the life and work that God was calling him to embrace. Bill Dickey and his wife are saints because they loved their church enough to say it was time to close their doors and merge with another congregation that had a vision of what it meant to be the people of God. They loved the children and grandchildren of their congregation enough to see that they needed to join with another church where vital life and ministry was taking place. Margaret Lauver is a saint because every time the minister came to visit her – she prayed for him. She didn’t say she would pray for him, she prayed for him and with him, and at 98 years old, her faith and trust in God continues to bless those around her. Saints aren’t extraordinary people – they are very ordinary people who simply reach around others to help bring the music of life and faith into their lives. They provide support and encouragement to those who may want to give up or give in.
What is important for us to remember about saints today is that even when their walk of faith is finished in this world, their lives continue on with God and their influence continues on in our lives. Hebrews 12:1 says since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses and those witnesses aren’t just those who are physically present with us today, they are all those who lives of faith continue to inspire us to walk more faithfully with God. It is the lives of all the saints whose words of love and faith whisper through the ages to tell us to keep going.
But you know, there is another saint in that story of Paderewski, the saint is not just the great pianist who stepped in to redeem a bad situation and save a young boy and his mother from embarrassment and shame, the saint is also the little boy. Being a saint isn’t about living an ideal or perfect life, it’s about perseverance. Being a saint means we just keep going, and we keep striving, and we keep walking with God.
The little boy in this story wasn’t perfect. He knew he shouldn’t be on the stage, or anywhere near that piano. He knew he shouldn’t be playing chopsticks, and yet when Paderewski arrives and begins to play the counter melody, the boy doesn’t run away. He could have turned and bolted off the stage and out the door in shame, but he didn’t, he kept going and most likely he kept making mistakes. Being holy doesn’t mean being perfect, it does mean we keep going. We will make mistakes in life. We will fail miserably and we are going to want to run away, away from God and away from others, but the music of faith is made when we are willing to keep going. The joy and the fullness and the abundance of life and faith are found when we keep going.
Look back at Hebrews 12 and notice how it begins – therefore. That word ties Hebrews 12 directly to the passage we find before it and what we find in Hebrews 11 is what many people call the role call of the saints. In Hebrews 11 the author goes through all the men and women of faith who had come before them and in essence says, look because we are surrounded by all these saints, this great cloud of witnesses – we can keep going. But if you look at the list of saints – they were not perfect, in fact, they were pretty ordinary people who had their successes and failures in life.
Noah – yes he built the ark and saved the animals, but later on he got drunk and failed God. Abraham was the father of faith but he failed God many times during his life. Gideon tested God several times before he was faithful and did what God asked, and David failed miserably after he became the king of Israel. Rahab is even listed as a prostitute. What all these men and women show us is that the key to faith isn’t perfection but perseverance. We will go through ups and downs in life, we will succeed and we will fail miserably, but we become saints by persevering. A saint isn’t someone who is perfect a saint is someone who doesn’t give up on God, and doesn’t give up on themselves. I don’t think I can say it enough, a saint isn’t someone who is perfect a saint is simply someone who doesn’t give up on God, and doesn’t give up on themselves.
This All Saints Sunday let’s change our perception of what a saint looks like and realize that it’s not about being perfect, it’s not about being exceptional, it’s not about being extraordinary, being a saint simply means being willing to keep going. We give thanks for all those saints who have surround us today and all those who have embraced us with their faith and love, Drawing upon their faith and trust in God, let us strive to be saints by not giving up in our own walk with Jesus. Together with all the saints who have gone before us, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Let us consider Jesus, who endured such opposition from sinful men so that we may not grow weary or lose heart.
In many churches, the first Sunday of November is celebrated as All Saints Day or All Saints Sunday and it’s a day for the church to remember all those men and women of faith who have gone before us. This kind of celebration can be traced back to the year 270 AD when there was a commemoration of All Martyrs, and in the year 411 AD there was a call for a general commemoration of All Confessors. Unlike a martyr who died for their faith, a confessor was a man or woman who was persecuted for their faith but didn’t die. So the idea that we set aside a day to remember those men and women who, for the sake of Christ and the church, have sacrificed and given so much is almost as ancient as the church itself. Every year when I think about all saints day I wrestle with this question, what is a saint?
Is a saint someone who has lived such an extraordinary life of faith that they are truly one in a million? Are saints people like Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II? Is a saint those unique individuals who have led countless numbers of people to Christ and increased the faith in millions, like Billy Graham? If we go back to the NT, when the word saint is first used it is not to describe those who are extraordinary, it is used to describe all those who trust in and believe in Jesus. Paul often uses the word saint to refer to the believers in a particular city, like the saints in Ephesus, or the saints in Corinth. The word saint comes from the word Sanctus which means holy, so we could say that a saint is a holy person, but do we think of ourselves as holy?
A survey conducted by the Barna Group a few years ago reported that most Americans do not consider themselves to be holy. While 3 out of 4 people believed that it is possible for someone to become holy, only half of the adult population said they even knew someone they considered to be holy. So while Paul considered all believers to be saints – holy men and women, we have a hard time thinking of ourselves that way, but maybe that’s because we have the wrong idea of what a saint looks like. Here’s a story of what I think a saint looks like:
The great pianist and composer Ignace Paderewski was performing at a high society concert in America. A young mother brought her young son in hopes the he would be encouraged to work harder at his piano lessons. While she was talking with her friends the young boy became bored and focused on the beautiful grand piano on the stage. The boy slipped away from his mother, headed for the piano where he immediately sat down and began to play of all things - Chopsticks! The audience turned its attention to the boy and soon an uproar began in the hall. People from all over the auditorium began to cry out, “Who brought that child to the concert?” “Where is his mother?” “Get that boy out of here!” Paderewski was waiting behind the curtains to come on stage when he heard the uproar and he quickly assessed the situation, walked out on stage and without a word of introduction he stooped over behind the boy, reached around both sides of him and began to improvise a counter melody to harmonize with and enhance Chopsticks. As the two of them played together, Paderewski kept whispering in the boy's ear: Keep going. You’re doing great. Don’t stop. Keep it up! You’re OK. Keep going.
While there is no evidence that this is a true story, I think this defines the life of a saint well because saints are those who are willing to embrace others and help bring them life. Saints are those whose faith and love help others experience all the joy and fullness of life that God has to offer. Saints are those who inspire us to keep going in our faith when we want to give up. They are those who love us when we don’t know where we are going, encourage us to take steps of faith and try new things when we are filled with doubt and insecurities, and they are the ones who show us the love and power and life of Jesus. William Barclay said a saint is someone whose life makes it easier to believe in God – and they make it easier by surrounding us and lifting us up in many different ways.
Willard and Irene Isley are saints. They reached around and welcomed a student associate pastor into their home where they loved him, fed him and cared for him during a year of ministry and it was their faith and commitment to God and the church which helped to inspired that student to see that the life of a pastor really was not that bad, in fact, maybe it was the life and work that God was calling him to embrace. Bill Dickey and his wife are saints because they loved their church enough to say it was time to close their doors and merge with another congregation that had a vision of what it meant to be the people of God. They loved the children and grandchildren of their congregation enough to see that they needed to join with another church where vital life and ministry was taking place. Margaret Lauver is a saint because every time the minister came to visit her – she prayed for him. She didn’t say she would pray for him, she prayed for him and with him, and at 98 years old, her faith and trust in God continues to bless those around her. Saints aren’t extraordinary people – they are very ordinary people who simply reach around others to help bring the music of life and faith into their lives. They provide support and encouragement to those who may want to give up or give in.
What is important for us to remember about saints today is that even when their walk of faith is finished in this world, their lives continue on with God and their influence continues on in our lives. Hebrews 12:1 says since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses and those witnesses aren’t just those who are physically present with us today, they are all those who lives of faith continue to inspire us to walk more faithfully with God. It is the lives of all the saints whose words of love and faith whisper through the ages to tell us to keep going.
But you know, there is another saint in that story of Paderewski, the saint is not just the great pianist who stepped in to redeem a bad situation and save a young boy and his mother from embarrassment and shame, the saint is also the little boy. Being a saint isn’t about living an ideal or perfect life, it’s about perseverance. Being a saint means we just keep going, and we keep striving, and we keep walking with God.
The little boy in this story wasn’t perfect. He knew he shouldn’t be on the stage, or anywhere near that piano. He knew he shouldn’t be playing chopsticks, and yet when Paderewski arrives and begins to play the counter melody, the boy doesn’t run away. He could have turned and bolted off the stage and out the door in shame, but he didn’t, he kept going and most likely he kept making mistakes. Being holy doesn’t mean being perfect, it does mean we keep going. We will make mistakes in life. We will fail miserably and we are going to want to run away, away from God and away from others, but the music of faith is made when we are willing to keep going. The joy and the fullness and the abundance of life and faith are found when we keep going.
Look back at Hebrews 12 and notice how it begins – therefore. That word ties Hebrews 12 directly to the passage we find before it and what we find in Hebrews 11 is what many people call the role call of the saints. In Hebrews 11 the author goes through all the men and women of faith who had come before them and in essence says, look because we are surrounded by all these saints, this great cloud of witnesses – we can keep going. But if you look at the list of saints – they were not perfect, in fact, they were pretty ordinary people who had their successes and failures in life.
Noah – yes he built the ark and saved the animals, but later on he got drunk and failed God. Abraham was the father of faith but he failed God many times during his life. Gideon tested God several times before he was faithful and did what God asked, and David failed miserably after he became the king of Israel. Rahab is even listed as a prostitute. What all these men and women show us is that the key to faith isn’t perfection but perseverance. We will go through ups and downs in life, we will succeed and we will fail miserably, but we become saints by persevering. A saint isn’t someone who is perfect a saint is someone who doesn’t give up on God, and doesn’t give up on themselves. I don’t think I can say it enough, a saint isn’t someone who is perfect a saint is simply someone who doesn’t give up on God, and doesn’t give up on themselves.
This All Saints Sunday let’s change our perception of what a saint looks like and realize that it’s not about being perfect, it’s not about being exceptional, it’s not about being extraordinary, being a saint simply means being willing to keep going. We give thanks for all those saints who have surround us today and all those who have embraced us with their faith and love, Drawing upon their faith and trust in God, let us strive to be saints by not giving up in our own walk with Jesus. Together with all the saints who have gone before us, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Let us consider Jesus, who endured such opposition from sinful men so that we may not grow weary or lose heart.
Building an Authentic Faith - People
Dwight Moody was one of the most prolific evangelists of the 1800’s and the founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. The story is told of Moody going to visit one of the prominent citizens of Chicago one winter day and during their conversation the topic of church membership and involvement came up. "I believe that I can be just as good a Christian outside the church as I can be inside it," the man said, and he went on to tell Moody that he really didn’t have to go to church or be involved with the people of God to be a person of strong faith. Moody didn’t say much during the conversation but instead walked over to the fireplace where he removed one single coal and placed it on the hearth. Without saying anything the two men sat together and watched the ember slowly die out. After a moment the man turned to Moody and said, “I get your point.”
The point is that our faith can not survive outside of a strong community. To build an authentic faith, which is what we have been talking about these last few months, we need people, we need the family of God to surround us and support us and challenge us to go deeper in our walk with Jesus. Without the fire – the ember dies out, without the fire of God’s people burning around us, without the passionate faith of others encouraging us and stirring us up – our faith will slowly die out. For an authentic faith, being part of the church is not an option – it is a necessity. That God wants us to live as part of a larger community is the example we see all through scripture.
Let’s just start by looking at God. We talk about God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Do you notice something about the Trinity – there are 3 of them, three persons, a little family or community. God himself is relational and we see that each person of the Trinity works to bring about community. Think about the creation story in Genesis, the first thing God does is create a world that can sustain human beings, and God creates a world that can sustain life so that God can have fellowship, and if we are created in the image of God then we also are created for fellowship with God and with one another. And what was one of the first things God said after he created Adam? God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” God did not create us to live in isolation. We are not put together physically, mentally or spiritually to be alone, again, since we are created in the image of God we are created for relationship so our faith will not be as strong as it can be until we are part of a larger community of faith we call the church.
Then think about Jesus – what is the first thing Jesus did when he entered into public ministry? One of the first things Jesus did was invite people to join him. Jesus formed a team – a community to travel with him and live with him, and Jesus began to form a community that would love one another and care for one another. The disciples were really the first church and they were created by Jesus not just because God knows we need community but I think Jesus created that little team and family because Jesus needed to have that sense of community. For Jesus to do all that he was going to have to do in the weeks and years to come – he knew he was going to need the relationship of friends to sustain him.
Even the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, understands the importance of relationship and works to form a community. We heard from Acts 2 how this new community of Jesus followers were getting themselves organized and growing – but if we look back to the beginning of Acts 2 we find that it is the Holy Spirit that forms this community. At the beginning of Acts 2 the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples and they are given so much courage and power and strength that Peter stands up and preaches a sermon that causes 3,000 people to join the church. The Holy Spirit is drawing people together and forming communities of faith because God knows that people will only grow in faith and reach their full potential when they are connected to others as part of a larger community, or family, or church.
Like Moody, I get frustrated at times when people say they can be a Christian and not be part of any faith community or church. While it’s true that you can believe something about God and Jesus without being part of a church, I’m not sure we can fully live out what we believe without the help of others, and I am convinced that we will never experience the fullness of joy and the passion of purpose without being part of a larger community of faith and this is because God created us to be in relationship and fellowship with one another, and until we are – we are not complete. God said it’s not good for us to be alone – that doesn’t mean we are to all get married (at least I don’t think that’s what it means, you might have guessed that since I am single) but I do believe it means we are not to live out our faith by ourselves, we need to be part of small groups and family groups and larger groups that will help shape and strengthen our faith.
Not only does this passage from Acts 2 tell us that we need to be part of a larger faith community – it also shows us what this community needs to look like. We see from Acts 2:42-47 that we need to be connected with other disciples of Jesus who as a group can helps us do 4 things: look in, look up, look around and look out.
We need to be part of a group that will help us look in to our own hearts and minds and lives. Turn back to Acts 2:42: They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. Are we looking in? Are we devoting ourselves to learning more about God and how to follow Jesus? Are we learning how to live a faithful life as a follower of Jesus in the world today? Are we learning about ourselves? Are we learning from others, are we challenging ourselves with new ideas? This is all a part of what it means to look in.
How we look in is also important? While it’s great to sit down and read a book – it is even better to sit down with others and read a book ,or a book of the Bible, so we can ask questions and find ways we can process and apply what we are learning. The single most important part of my spiritual life, and the one thing that has consistently helped me to grow in my faith, has been participation in small group Bible studies. I became a Christian through a small group Bible study at Michigan State University because it was there that I was able to not just read the gospel of Mark and learn about Jesus, but I was able to ask questions about what it all means and more importantly what Jesus means for my life today. I had people challenge me and explain things to me and they were patient with me when asked the same questions over and over again. Small groups have remained an important part of my spiritual development. When I was in seminary what kept me grounded and growing was a Bible study through a Presbyterian church. Since then it has been Sunday School classes, Disciple Bible Study, and a Men’s Bible study that have helped me keep looking inward to show me how much I still have to learn and how far I still have to grow. Beyond the Sunday School classes and Bible Studies we already offer, we are hoping to develop new small groups that will in part help us learn and grow in our faith and if you are interested in being part of a small group, please let me know.
We also need to meet with others and look up to God in worship. Again in Acts 2: 42 it says, They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and to prayer. The breaking of bread they talk about here was their celebration of communion, so the breaking of bread and prayer was their worship. If you think about it, worship in the early church was pretty limited. They didn’t have any hymns or songs about Jesus – they didn’t have any traditions or rituals to take part in other than the Lord’s supper and prayer, so that’s what they did and they did it together. Look at Acts 2:46 and 47, it says they continued to meet together in the temple courts, they met together for public worship and public times of prayer and praise. Corporate worship is important, and for these early followers of Jesus it gave them strength to keep following Jesus in a hostile environment. We still need these public times of worship to remind us who we are and what we believe. Worshipping with others grounds us in our faith in ways that nothing else can and the world is still a hostile environment today so we still need to come together.
We also need to look around – we need to look around at others in the church and build relationships of love and support. We need the fellowship of one another. Again, look at Acts 2:46, they ate in homes together with glad and sincere hearts. It is important for us to eat together in one another’s homes – it is fundamental to the growth and development of our faith and if you don’t believe that, then think about this. In the June 2006 issue of Time magazine there was an article that said children who eat with their families are healthier, happier, and better students. Children who regularly eat meals with their parents are 40 % more likely to get A's and B's in school than kids who have two or fewer family dinners a week. There is something about eating together that is beneficial to us – we learn better, we feel better about ourselves, we feel more connected. The value of eating together is significant and I don’t think this goes just for children and education. There is something spiritual about eating together. Think about it, the Passover meal which was the most holy worship time for the Jewish people took place at a family dinner. It was in the course of a meal that Jesus said to his friends, this is my body given for you and this is my blood which is shed for you. We will grow in our faith when we eat in small groups together where we can lean from one another and get support and love and encouragement from one another. What is sad, however, is that almost 2/3 of all people rarely if ever invite people into their homes for dinner. Family meals and having friends over for a dinner is a tradition we need to recovery both for the sake of our families and our faith.
So together in small groups and large groups we need to look in and learn, we need to look up and worship, we need to look around and develop relationships of ongoing fellowship and support, and then we need to look out to those beyond the fellowship and those beyond the church to welcome them and invite them in. A church or any type of faith community is only healthy if we are seeking to welcome others. Look at how this passage in Acts 2 ends, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Now the Lord could only add to their number if the church was willing to welcome new people in. If a church doesn’t have the desire or the vision to grow, not only will it not grow – it won’t survive.
While it’s not our job to change people’s hearts and lives, notice it says that it is the Lord who added to their number, it is our job to welcome people into the community of faith and make room for them at our tables and in our small group bible studies and in our services of worship. As important as the church community is to our faith – it can never become an exclusive club where people aren’t made to feel welcomed – it needs to be, we need to be such a welcoming community that people will want to join us.
We were created for relationship and community because we are created in the image of a God who is in himself relational and who in some ways is himself a community. So an authentic, passionate and powerful faith can only be developed and lived out in the context of a community of faith who can help us look in and learn, look up and worship, look around and fellowship and look out in order to welcome others in. If you are not feeling connected to those around you today or if you are not feeling well connected to God - then get involved in some kind of small group that will help develop and strengthen your faith.
The point is that our faith can not survive outside of a strong community. To build an authentic faith, which is what we have been talking about these last few months, we need people, we need the family of God to surround us and support us and challenge us to go deeper in our walk with Jesus. Without the fire – the ember dies out, without the fire of God’s people burning around us, without the passionate faith of others encouraging us and stirring us up – our faith will slowly die out. For an authentic faith, being part of the church is not an option – it is a necessity. That God wants us to live as part of a larger community is the example we see all through scripture.
Let’s just start by looking at God. We talk about God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Do you notice something about the Trinity – there are 3 of them, three persons, a little family or community. God himself is relational and we see that each person of the Trinity works to bring about community. Think about the creation story in Genesis, the first thing God does is create a world that can sustain human beings, and God creates a world that can sustain life so that God can have fellowship, and if we are created in the image of God then we also are created for fellowship with God and with one another. And what was one of the first things God said after he created Adam? God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” God did not create us to live in isolation. We are not put together physically, mentally or spiritually to be alone, again, since we are created in the image of God we are created for relationship so our faith will not be as strong as it can be until we are part of a larger community of faith we call the church.
Then think about Jesus – what is the first thing Jesus did when he entered into public ministry? One of the first things Jesus did was invite people to join him. Jesus formed a team – a community to travel with him and live with him, and Jesus began to form a community that would love one another and care for one another. The disciples were really the first church and they were created by Jesus not just because God knows we need community but I think Jesus created that little team and family because Jesus needed to have that sense of community. For Jesus to do all that he was going to have to do in the weeks and years to come – he knew he was going to need the relationship of friends to sustain him.
Even the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, understands the importance of relationship and works to form a community. We heard from Acts 2 how this new community of Jesus followers were getting themselves organized and growing – but if we look back to the beginning of Acts 2 we find that it is the Holy Spirit that forms this community. At the beginning of Acts 2 the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples and they are given so much courage and power and strength that Peter stands up and preaches a sermon that causes 3,000 people to join the church. The Holy Spirit is drawing people together and forming communities of faith because God knows that people will only grow in faith and reach their full potential when they are connected to others as part of a larger community, or family, or church.
Like Moody, I get frustrated at times when people say they can be a Christian and not be part of any faith community or church. While it’s true that you can believe something about God and Jesus without being part of a church, I’m not sure we can fully live out what we believe without the help of others, and I am convinced that we will never experience the fullness of joy and the passion of purpose without being part of a larger community of faith and this is because God created us to be in relationship and fellowship with one another, and until we are – we are not complete. God said it’s not good for us to be alone – that doesn’t mean we are to all get married (at least I don’t think that’s what it means, you might have guessed that since I am single) but I do believe it means we are not to live out our faith by ourselves, we need to be part of small groups and family groups and larger groups that will help shape and strengthen our faith.
Not only does this passage from Acts 2 tell us that we need to be part of a larger faith community – it also shows us what this community needs to look like. We see from Acts 2:42-47 that we need to be connected with other disciples of Jesus who as a group can helps us do 4 things: look in, look up, look around and look out.
We need to be part of a group that will help us look in to our own hearts and minds and lives. Turn back to Acts 2:42: They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. Are we looking in? Are we devoting ourselves to learning more about God and how to follow Jesus? Are we learning how to live a faithful life as a follower of Jesus in the world today? Are we learning about ourselves? Are we learning from others, are we challenging ourselves with new ideas? This is all a part of what it means to look in.
How we look in is also important? While it’s great to sit down and read a book – it is even better to sit down with others and read a book ,or a book of the Bible, so we can ask questions and find ways we can process and apply what we are learning. The single most important part of my spiritual life, and the one thing that has consistently helped me to grow in my faith, has been participation in small group Bible studies. I became a Christian through a small group Bible study at Michigan State University because it was there that I was able to not just read the gospel of Mark and learn about Jesus, but I was able to ask questions about what it all means and more importantly what Jesus means for my life today. I had people challenge me and explain things to me and they were patient with me when asked the same questions over and over again. Small groups have remained an important part of my spiritual development. When I was in seminary what kept me grounded and growing was a Bible study through a Presbyterian church. Since then it has been Sunday School classes, Disciple Bible Study, and a Men’s Bible study that have helped me keep looking inward to show me how much I still have to learn and how far I still have to grow. Beyond the Sunday School classes and Bible Studies we already offer, we are hoping to develop new small groups that will in part help us learn and grow in our faith and if you are interested in being part of a small group, please let me know.
We also need to meet with others and look up to God in worship. Again in Acts 2: 42 it says, They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and to prayer. The breaking of bread they talk about here was their celebration of communion, so the breaking of bread and prayer was their worship. If you think about it, worship in the early church was pretty limited. They didn’t have any hymns or songs about Jesus – they didn’t have any traditions or rituals to take part in other than the Lord’s supper and prayer, so that’s what they did and they did it together. Look at Acts 2:46 and 47, it says they continued to meet together in the temple courts, they met together for public worship and public times of prayer and praise. Corporate worship is important, and for these early followers of Jesus it gave them strength to keep following Jesus in a hostile environment. We still need these public times of worship to remind us who we are and what we believe. Worshipping with others grounds us in our faith in ways that nothing else can and the world is still a hostile environment today so we still need to come together.
We also need to look around – we need to look around at others in the church and build relationships of love and support. We need the fellowship of one another. Again, look at Acts 2:46, they ate in homes together with glad and sincere hearts. It is important for us to eat together in one another’s homes – it is fundamental to the growth and development of our faith and if you don’t believe that, then think about this. In the June 2006 issue of Time magazine there was an article that said children who eat with their families are healthier, happier, and better students. Children who regularly eat meals with their parents are 40 % more likely to get A's and B's in school than kids who have two or fewer family dinners a week. There is something about eating together that is beneficial to us – we learn better, we feel better about ourselves, we feel more connected. The value of eating together is significant and I don’t think this goes just for children and education. There is something spiritual about eating together. Think about it, the Passover meal which was the most holy worship time for the Jewish people took place at a family dinner. It was in the course of a meal that Jesus said to his friends, this is my body given for you and this is my blood which is shed for you. We will grow in our faith when we eat in small groups together where we can lean from one another and get support and love and encouragement from one another. What is sad, however, is that almost 2/3 of all people rarely if ever invite people into their homes for dinner. Family meals and having friends over for a dinner is a tradition we need to recovery both for the sake of our families and our faith.
So together in small groups and large groups we need to look in and learn, we need to look up and worship, we need to look around and develop relationships of ongoing fellowship and support, and then we need to look out to those beyond the fellowship and those beyond the church to welcome them and invite them in. A church or any type of faith community is only healthy if we are seeking to welcome others. Look at how this passage in Acts 2 ends, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Now the Lord could only add to their number if the church was willing to welcome new people in. If a church doesn’t have the desire or the vision to grow, not only will it not grow – it won’t survive.
While it’s not our job to change people’s hearts and lives, notice it says that it is the Lord who added to their number, it is our job to welcome people into the community of faith and make room for them at our tables and in our small group bible studies and in our services of worship. As important as the church community is to our faith – it can never become an exclusive club where people aren’t made to feel welcomed – it needs to be, we need to be such a welcoming community that people will want to join us.
We were created for relationship and community because we are created in the image of a God who is in himself relational and who in some ways is himself a community. So an authentic, passionate and powerful faith can only be developed and lived out in the context of a community of faith who can help us look in and learn, look up and worship, look around and fellowship and look out in order to welcome others in. If you are not feeling connected to those around you today or if you are not feeling well connected to God - then get involved in some kind of small group that will help develop and strengthen your faith.
Building an Authentic Faith - Possessions
I want to try a little experiment. Think about one thing you own that you really love. Maybe it’s your house or car, maybe it’s a vacation home or boat, maybe it’s a big screen HD TV with Stereo Surround Sound or a new computer, or maybe it’s an antique heirloom that has been passed down from generation to generation. Picture this thing in your mind and now imagine God asking you to sell that this week so that you can give the money to a neighbor who is in danger of foreclosing on their home. Could you do it? Can you even imagine doing it, or does it seem too hard, maybe even impossible? This was exactly what Jesus asked the rich man to do in Mark 10, except that Jesus wasn’t taking the man through a spiritual exercise or experiment, he tells the man to go and sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor. (read Mark 10:17-31)
The rich man comes to Jesus wanting to deepen and develop his faith. Because of his actions, we can see that he genuinely wants to build an authentic and powerful faith. He runs up to Jesus and falls on his knees in front of him. He not only is eager to hear from Jesus but he humbles himself and takes the place of student, on his knees in front of the teacher eager to learn. He wants to be guided, and he wants to know what he has to do to inherit eternal life. I believe this man is sincere and eager to develop his faith and so Jesus starts by outlining some of the basics in a life of faith: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, honor your father and mother.
All these I have done since I was a boy, the man responds. He’s been a good and faithful person his entire life, he grew up in the church and he has tried to do the right thing and live the right way and honor God in all he does. Again, there is the sense that this man is sincere and that he really wants to live a faithful live and Jesus responds positively to his authentic desire to grow, it says Jesus looks at him and he loves him and Jesus loves him enough to get to the heart of the matter. One thing you lack, Jesus said, go sell everything you have and give the money to the poor – then come follow me. Jesus knows that the one thing keeping this man from a vital faith was his possessions, his wealth, and my fear for many of us today is that the one thing that keeps us from following Jesus with all our heart and soul and mind and strength is our wealth - our possessions. While we strive to follow God’s will and live a life that honors God in all we do, we have a hard time letting go of all the stuff we have accumulated in this world. We have a hard time letting go of our possessions.
Now let me be clear that owning stuff is not bad and the reality of this passage is that if we actually went home today and sold everything we had on e-bay – tomorrow we would all be in need of someone to take care of us. There is simply no way we can sell all our possessions and give everything away without becoming a burden on our family, friends, church or society – so simply giving everything away is not the answer. So what is the answer? The answer lies where it did for the rich man –it lies in our heart – what is our attitude toward our possessions and our wealth? Being a follower of Jesus means that we need to look at our possessions and wealth through the eyes of faith. Following Jesus needs to shape our material lives, not just our spiritual lives, so we need to adopt certain attitudes about our wealth and possessions.
The first thing we need to understand is that everything that we have really does not belong to us – it all belongs to God. Psalm 24:1 says the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. I think this means that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. All that we have belongs to God, our homes, cars, clothes, mutual funds, Big Screen HD TV’s with Surround Sound, it all belongs to God and we need to begin to look at things from this perspective. We live in a culture that says we own things and our possessions belong to us and we can do with them whatever we want, but what if things really weren’t ours? What if we saw everything as belonging to God? How might our lives change? My first thought is that we might be more open to sharing and using our possessions for God’s glory.
This is the attitude we find in the early church. If we turn to Acts 2 we get a glimpse of what life in the early Christian community was all about, it says the believers were all together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions they gave to anyone as he had need. What allowed them sell their possessions was that they didn’t see their possessions as really belonging to them individually – everything belonged to God and so everything was to be used for God’s purpose and to help God’s people. If we begin to look at our possessions differently then we might begin to use them differently, we might accumulate things differently and we might even let some things go.
So our attitude towards our possessions needs to change: we have to see that it all belongs to God, and then we can’t love our possessions more than we love God. If God were to call us to sell that favorite possession – could we do it? Do we love the item or do we love God? It’s not an easy question. When I thought about the things I love the most – they were family items that had been handed down through generations, they were things that had come from my grandparents. They hold special value for me far beyond money – they hold memories and family traditions – but I still have to ask myself, do I love those things – as wonderful and precious as they are – more than God? This is not an easy issue and the good news for us is that Jesus knows it is not an easy issue.
Go back to the story of the rich man. After Jesus called him to sell all he had and give the money to the poor it says the man went away sad because he had great wealth. He was sad because, for whatever reason, he loved his stuff – just like we do. And as Jesus watches the man walk away he turns to his disciples and says, how hard it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Jesus knows it’s not an easy road for us, he understands, but notice that he also doesn’t change the rules. When the rich man walks away, Jesus doesn’t run after him telling him that he only has to sell half his stuff, or a quarter of it. Jesus doesn’t change the rules, he is firm and he is firm because he knows that this man loves his stuff more than he loves God and Jesus knows that is the bond that has to be broken for our faith to really flourish.
Jesus knows it’s hard for us to wrestle with letting things go in this world because he knows we are creatures of this world and we naturally love the things around us. It’s not that we don’t want to love God more than anything and everything – we do and we strive to – but it’s hard and our love for the things of this world just creeps back in again and again. There are times when, just like the disciples, I think that it’s just not possible for me to love God above everything. There is just no way we can turn off all our feelings toward our possessions and when we finally get to that place of acknowledging that we can’t do it – we begin to find the answer, because the truth is we can’t do it. Jesus said, with man this is impossible, but not with God, all things are possible with God.
The change in attitude, or the change in our hears that is needed when it comes to our possessions has to come from the work of the Holy Spirit. God is the one who needs to shape our hearts. God is the one who can help us let go of our love for the things of this world and gain a new perspective on all our belongings. Remember that it was after the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples that they had everything in common and sold their possessions and gave to those in need. None of that happened without the help of the Holy Spirit and we will never be able to fully change our attitude toward our possessions without the help of God’s Spirit. So if we are struggling to let go of our love for the stuff we have accumulated, then we need to ask God to change our hearts so that we can love him more.
Not only can’t we love our possessions more than God, we also can’t trust in them more than we trust in God. In Luke 12 Jesus tells the story of a man whose crop yielded such a great harvest that he tore down his barns and built bigger ones to hold all his grain and all of his goods. Once he had accumulated this great wealth he relaxed and felt secure for years to come. But then God told him, you fool this very night your life will be demanded from you and what good will all your wealth do? As we have seen in the past few weeks, all that we work to accumulate in this world can be gone in one day’s worth of trading on the stock market. Talk to anyone who has suffered the devastating lose of a fire, or those who lost everything in Hurricane Ike or Katrina. If we trust in the things of this world to meet our needs – we will be lost in the days to come because the things of this world are temporary. So again, what we need to do is re-orient our hearts and minds so that we won’t trust in our own strength, ability and bank accounts to meet our needs but in God and God alone. This radical shift of thinking doesn’t come naturally – again we need God’s help and we need to ask for God’s Spirit to guide us. But we also play a part in the reorienting our lives and one specific thing God calls us to do to help shift our thinking is to work toward tithing.
The word tithe simply means one tenth, or 10% and the idea of tithing comes from the OT where people were to return to God 10% of their harvest or their livestock. It’s not that God needed the grain or the meat, it’s that we need to be able to give because when we give the tithe to God we are saying in a concrete way that we do trust God to meet our needs. If we can’t do this then I’m not sure we can really say it.
I would invite you this week to figure out what percentage of your income you give to God and if it isn’t 10% ask God to show you how to increase the amount you give by 1%. If you give 3% give 4, if you give 4% give 5. If you will make the commitment to grow in this way – God has said he will commit himself to providing and caring for you. Tithing is not a financial issue, it is a faith issue and because tithing is a percentage giving – everyone can do it. If you have a minimum wage job – you can tithe, if you are at the other end of the spectrum – you can tithe. If your income this week dropped dramatically because of the stock market – you can still tithe.
Sometimes in our faith it’s hard to give sure fire concrete examples of how we can build an authentic and vital faith – but here is one. One clear way we can proclaim that everything we have belongs to God is to return to God a percentage of what he has given to us. One way to say we love God more than the things of this world is to begin to let go of some of the things we own and give them back to God. And one clear way to say that we trust God more than we trust in ourselves and our possessions is to work toward tithing.
Building an authentic and vital faith will have an impact on how we look at our possessions. For many of us this will be the hardest faith issue we will ever deal with, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we should start today by taking one step forward. Can we ask God to help change our attitude, to change our heart, and can we ask God to show us how we can change our giving.
The rich man comes to Jesus wanting to deepen and develop his faith. Because of his actions, we can see that he genuinely wants to build an authentic and powerful faith. He runs up to Jesus and falls on his knees in front of him. He not only is eager to hear from Jesus but he humbles himself and takes the place of student, on his knees in front of the teacher eager to learn. He wants to be guided, and he wants to know what he has to do to inherit eternal life. I believe this man is sincere and eager to develop his faith and so Jesus starts by outlining some of the basics in a life of faith: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, honor your father and mother.
All these I have done since I was a boy, the man responds. He’s been a good and faithful person his entire life, he grew up in the church and he has tried to do the right thing and live the right way and honor God in all he does. Again, there is the sense that this man is sincere and that he really wants to live a faithful live and Jesus responds positively to his authentic desire to grow, it says Jesus looks at him and he loves him and Jesus loves him enough to get to the heart of the matter. One thing you lack, Jesus said, go sell everything you have and give the money to the poor – then come follow me. Jesus knows that the one thing keeping this man from a vital faith was his possessions, his wealth, and my fear for many of us today is that the one thing that keeps us from following Jesus with all our heart and soul and mind and strength is our wealth - our possessions. While we strive to follow God’s will and live a life that honors God in all we do, we have a hard time letting go of all the stuff we have accumulated in this world. We have a hard time letting go of our possessions.
Now let me be clear that owning stuff is not bad and the reality of this passage is that if we actually went home today and sold everything we had on e-bay – tomorrow we would all be in need of someone to take care of us. There is simply no way we can sell all our possessions and give everything away without becoming a burden on our family, friends, church or society – so simply giving everything away is not the answer. So what is the answer? The answer lies where it did for the rich man –it lies in our heart – what is our attitude toward our possessions and our wealth? Being a follower of Jesus means that we need to look at our possessions and wealth through the eyes of faith. Following Jesus needs to shape our material lives, not just our spiritual lives, so we need to adopt certain attitudes about our wealth and possessions.
The first thing we need to understand is that everything that we have really does not belong to us – it all belongs to God. Psalm 24:1 says the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. I think this means that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. All that we have belongs to God, our homes, cars, clothes, mutual funds, Big Screen HD TV’s with Surround Sound, it all belongs to God and we need to begin to look at things from this perspective. We live in a culture that says we own things and our possessions belong to us and we can do with them whatever we want, but what if things really weren’t ours? What if we saw everything as belonging to God? How might our lives change? My first thought is that we might be more open to sharing and using our possessions for God’s glory.
This is the attitude we find in the early church. If we turn to Acts 2 we get a glimpse of what life in the early Christian community was all about, it says the believers were all together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions they gave to anyone as he had need. What allowed them sell their possessions was that they didn’t see their possessions as really belonging to them individually – everything belonged to God and so everything was to be used for God’s purpose and to help God’s people. If we begin to look at our possessions differently then we might begin to use them differently, we might accumulate things differently and we might even let some things go.
So our attitude towards our possessions needs to change: we have to see that it all belongs to God, and then we can’t love our possessions more than we love God. If God were to call us to sell that favorite possession – could we do it? Do we love the item or do we love God? It’s not an easy question. When I thought about the things I love the most – they were family items that had been handed down through generations, they were things that had come from my grandparents. They hold special value for me far beyond money – they hold memories and family traditions – but I still have to ask myself, do I love those things – as wonderful and precious as they are – more than God? This is not an easy issue and the good news for us is that Jesus knows it is not an easy issue.
Go back to the story of the rich man. After Jesus called him to sell all he had and give the money to the poor it says the man went away sad because he had great wealth. He was sad because, for whatever reason, he loved his stuff – just like we do. And as Jesus watches the man walk away he turns to his disciples and says, how hard it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Jesus knows it’s not an easy road for us, he understands, but notice that he also doesn’t change the rules. When the rich man walks away, Jesus doesn’t run after him telling him that he only has to sell half his stuff, or a quarter of it. Jesus doesn’t change the rules, he is firm and he is firm because he knows that this man loves his stuff more than he loves God and Jesus knows that is the bond that has to be broken for our faith to really flourish.
Jesus knows it’s hard for us to wrestle with letting things go in this world because he knows we are creatures of this world and we naturally love the things around us. It’s not that we don’t want to love God more than anything and everything – we do and we strive to – but it’s hard and our love for the things of this world just creeps back in again and again. There are times when, just like the disciples, I think that it’s just not possible for me to love God above everything. There is just no way we can turn off all our feelings toward our possessions and when we finally get to that place of acknowledging that we can’t do it – we begin to find the answer, because the truth is we can’t do it. Jesus said, with man this is impossible, but not with God, all things are possible with God.
The change in attitude, or the change in our hears that is needed when it comes to our possessions has to come from the work of the Holy Spirit. God is the one who needs to shape our hearts. God is the one who can help us let go of our love for the things of this world and gain a new perspective on all our belongings. Remember that it was after the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples that they had everything in common and sold their possessions and gave to those in need. None of that happened without the help of the Holy Spirit and we will never be able to fully change our attitude toward our possessions without the help of God’s Spirit. So if we are struggling to let go of our love for the stuff we have accumulated, then we need to ask God to change our hearts so that we can love him more.
Not only can’t we love our possessions more than God, we also can’t trust in them more than we trust in God. In Luke 12 Jesus tells the story of a man whose crop yielded such a great harvest that he tore down his barns and built bigger ones to hold all his grain and all of his goods. Once he had accumulated this great wealth he relaxed and felt secure for years to come. But then God told him, you fool this very night your life will be demanded from you and what good will all your wealth do? As we have seen in the past few weeks, all that we work to accumulate in this world can be gone in one day’s worth of trading on the stock market. Talk to anyone who has suffered the devastating lose of a fire, or those who lost everything in Hurricane Ike or Katrina. If we trust in the things of this world to meet our needs – we will be lost in the days to come because the things of this world are temporary. So again, what we need to do is re-orient our hearts and minds so that we won’t trust in our own strength, ability and bank accounts to meet our needs but in God and God alone. This radical shift of thinking doesn’t come naturally – again we need God’s help and we need to ask for God’s Spirit to guide us. But we also play a part in the reorienting our lives and one specific thing God calls us to do to help shift our thinking is to work toward tithing.
The word tithe simply means one tenth, or 10% and the idea of tithing comes from the OT where people were to return to God 10% of their harvest or their livestock. It’s not that God needed the grain or the meat, it’s that we need to be able to give because when we give the tithe to God we are saying in a concrete way that we do trust God to meet our needs. If we can’t do this then I’m not sure we can really say it.
I would invite you this week to figure out what percentage of your income you give to God and if it isn’t 10% ask God to show you how to increase the amount you give by 1%. If you give 3% give 4, if you give 4% give 5. If you will make the commitment to grow in this way – God has said he will commit himself to providing and caring for you. Tithing is not a financial issue, it is a faith issue and because tithing is a percentage giving – everyone can do it. If you have a minimum wage job – you can tithe, if you are at the other end of the spectrum – you can tithe. If your income this week dropped dramatically because of the stock market – you can still tithe.
Sometimes in our faith it’s hard to give sure fire concrete examples of how we can build an authentic and vital faith – but here is one. One clear way we can proclaim that everything we have belongs to God is to return to God a percentage of what he has given to us. One way to say we love God more than the things of this world is to begin to let go of some of the things we own and give them back to God. And one clear way to say that we trust God more than we trust in ourselves and our possessions is to work toward tithing.
Building an authentic and vital faith will have an impact on how we look at our possessions. For many of us this will be the hardest faith issue we will ever deal with, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we should start today by taking one step forward. Can we ask God to help change our attitude, to change our heart, and can we ask God to show us how we can change our giving.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Building an Authentic Faith - Peace
Matthew 14:22-33
The author C.S. Lewis has said that the problem in life isn’t that we want too much, it’s that we settle for too little. Not only is this true in life but it is also true in our faith, the problem isn’t that we want too much from God, it’s that we are willing to settle for too little. Building an authentic faith means that we are able to do & be more than we ever thought or imagined. When we follow Jesus, the possibilities before us our limitless. In Phil. 4:13 the apostle Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. God gives us the strength and the power to do all things & yet how often do we step out in faith to do those things? The abundant life that Jesus came to bring us and the passion for living that Jesus offers aren’t found when we play it safe & settle for the easy & comfortable road in life. An authentic faith is found when we are willing to step out in a radical response to God’s call & embrace all that God has for us. What are the possibilities that God has for you today? What are those things God is calling us to do that seem impossible & how can we make them a possibility? I want us to look at the story of Peter walking on the water & learn from his example how we can stop settling for too little & start embracing all of God’s possibilities.
The first thing we learn from Peter is that he is the one who asks Jesus to allow him to do the impossible. Look at Matthew 14:28 Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Jesus hasn’t said anything about the disciples coming to him on the water, in fact it appears as if Jesus is making his way toward them, & my guess is that the disciples are thinking that once Jesus is in the boat, everything is going to be ok. But Peter doesn’t want to settle for Jesus coming to him, Peter doesn’t want to play it safe - he wants the adventure of walking with Jesus. Peter’s desire is to go where Jesus goes & to do what Jesus is doing, & so he takes the initiative and he asks Jesus to fulfill that desire. Are we willing to ask God to help us fulfill our dreams, our goals and our desires? In Psalm 20:4 it says, May God give you the desires of your heart and make all your plans succeed. Last week we talked about passion & our passion in life can become a possibility if we will ask God for his power. Peter asked Jesus to allow him to come to him on the water – his passion was to be with Jesus & to do what Jesus was doing, so he asks for that possibility & Jesus gave him the power. We can do the same thing. We can ask God for his power so that our passions can become a possibility. We don’t have to settle for too little, in fact I believe God is waiting for us to ask him for more – more of his power, more of his love, more of his strength and purpose for plans for our lives.
But most of the time we settle for too little in life & in faith because we will only step out and do those things we know we can do on our own. When we are only drawing upon our own strength & power we are not living life to the fullest & we really aren’t living by faith. The fullness of life & faith only comes when we step out & do those things we know that we can’t do on our own. The fullness of faith comes when we ask God for his help so that we can do the impossible. The same principle is at work in the church. Too often we will only attempt to do those things we know that we can do on our own & yet what we fail to understand is that God is calling us to do and be so much more. Will we as a church make the choice to enter into mission and ministry that we know is impossible without God’s help? That is the first step to an authentic faith.
What keeps us from taking this bold step of faith both personally and as a church is fear. It might be a fear of failure, a fear of looking foolish. We might be afraid that no one will step out with us, or we might be afraid of what people will say around us. Fear can keep us from the possibilities God has for us. It was fear that kept 11 disciples in the boat. The disciples are afraid & they have every right to be, they are clearly in a dangerous situation. Their boat is out in open water where it is being battered by the wind and the waves at night. The last thing they would have expected would be for Jesus to come walking toward them on the water, so when they see a shape approach them they aren’t thinking Jesus –they are thinking ghost. Things have suddenly gone from bad to worse, first they are struggling in the middle of the sea at night in bad weather & now they have to contend with a ghost. So yes they are afraid & they cry out in fear. Even after they know it is Jesus, their fear causes them to settle for the safety of the boat.
Peter, however, is able to rise above his fear. It’s not that he wasn’t afraid, Peter was just as afraid as the rest of them, but instead of allowing his fear to cause him to shrink back & play it safe – he used his fear to help him step up & take a risk. If we are going to be afraid anyway – why not go all the way & step out in faith? Living a life of faith today is scary. It’s not easy to follow Jesus every moment of every day, so the question is what will we do with our fear? Will we allow it to take hold of us & cause us to choose the easy road & seek the safety of a comfortable life or will we take hold of our fear & in the face of it trust God to take us even farther? Gary Haagan, the author of Just Courage and one of the leaders of the International Justice Mission has said, Jesus came not to make us safe & comfortable but brave and courageous. Jesus knows that life can get difficult & even dangerous, he knows the fear we face, which is why he came to give us strength and courage. Are we willing to ask God for this strength? And then are we willing to receive it & use it when God gives?
Peter asked for the opportunity to walk on the water, & when Jesus said come – Peter got out of the boat & went. If we are going to ask God for strength & courage, we better be prepared to use it. One of the biggest problems we face is that when God gives us the go ahead – many times we don’t go. When God invites us to come & walk with him on the water, when he provides us opportunities to do more than we ever thought or imagined we could do, we don’t get out of the boat.
Now I think Peter was willing to get out of the boat and attempt to do the impossible because he was first willing to step out of the boat & walk with Jesus along a beach. This isn’t the first time Jesus has called Peter to come & walk with me. When Jesus first called Peter to follow him it was to leave behind his life as a fisherman, & Peter did. He stepped out of his boat & walked along the shores & the hillsides of Galilee. It was a step of faith. Peter gave up the security he found in his life as a fisherman & followed Jesus in a radically new life and it was that step of faith which gave Peter the courage to take another step of faith & climb out of the boat. Likewise, it was this step of faith & getting out of the boat to do something that was impossible that gave Peter the courage to later reach out and heal the sick.
In Acts 3 Peter & John are going to the temple when a man who had been lame from his birth asked them for money & Peter says, I have no silver and gold, but what I have I give you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk. And then Peter did what I’m sure to him was the impossible, he reached out & took the man by the hand and raised him up & immediately the man’s legs became strong. Now the reason Peter was able to provide this miracle of healing was because he knew that at another point in time when he placed his faith & trust in Jesus he had also been able to do the impossible and walk on water. Embracing all the plans God has for us is a journey that begins with small steps. The more we walk with God, the more we step out in faith, the more opportunities God will give us to do those things that seem impossible. When we start small & are faithful in the little things, God will then lead us to greater things.
What is it that God is calling you to do today? What is the step of faith he is inviting you to make? Maybe it’s to trust him for the first time. Maybe it’s to step up and really learn what God has for your life. Maybe it’s to go deeper & take some real risks in following Jesus. Maybe God is asking for more of your time & he wants you to realign your schedule & make more room for him. Maybe it’s to commit yourself to spiritual growth through a small group Bible Study. Maybe it’s to explore the possibility of getting involved in mission, there’s a group going to South Dakota next year – is God asking you go with them? What are the possibilities God is laying before us? What are those things that seem impossible to us right now but can become a possibility if we take one step of faith today to help get us there?
What is the step of faith God is asking us as Faith Church to take? I am always challenged by the reality that even as a church we often won’t step up & make the decision to do something that maybe on paper simply looks impossible, but we know in our hearts is God’s purpose & plan for us. Are we willing to lay the desires of our heart before God with the courage to work for them when Jesus says come? Can we overcome our fear, & trust that through Christ all things are possible for Faith Church?
The last thing we all need to remember is that stepping out to do the impossible is really, hear me on this, it is really a no-lose situation because even if we fail, all we have to do is ask God for help & God will save us. Isn’t that what we learn from Peter? He gets out of the boat & starts walking on the water & then after a few steps he get’s distracted, he starts to doubt & then starts to sink, but as soon as he cries out for help – Jesus is there to save him. If we step out in faith & everything falls apart – it’s ok because God will reach down into our lives & lift us up & then God will honor our step of faith. Peter used his experience of walking on the water with Jesus, as feeble as it was, to help him do even greater things. God redeemed his sinking & he gave him a greater victory. God can redeem our failures, what He’s looking for is our faith.
An authentic faith doesn’t settle for what is safe & comfortable & easy, it embraces all the possibilities God has for us & even gives us the strength and the courage to step out and do the impossible. An authentic faith doesn’t just believe that with God all things are possible – it steps out in faith to do those things. So let us step out in faith.
The author C.S. Lewis has said that the problem in life isn’t that we want too much, it’s that we settle for too little. Not only is this true in life but it is also true in our faith, the problem isn’t that we want too much from God, it’s that we are willing to settle for too little. Building an authentic faith means that we are able to do & be more than we ever thought or imagined. When we follow Jesus, the possibilities before us our limitless. In Phil. 4:13 the apostle Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. God gives us the strength and the power to do all things & yet how often do we step out in faith to do those things? The abundant life that Jesus came to bring us and the passion for living that Jesus offers aren’t found when we play it safe & settle for the easy & comfortable road in life. An authentic faith is found when we are willing to step out in a radical response to God’s call & embrace all that God has for us. What are the possibilities that God has for you today? What are those things God is calling us to do that seem impossible & how can we make them a possibility? I want us to look at the story of Peter walking on the water & learn from his example how we can stop settling for too little & start embracing all of God’s possibilities.
The first thing we learn from Peter is that he is the one who asks Jesus to allow him to do the impossible. Look at Matthew 14:28 Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Jesus hasn’t said anything about the disciples coming to him on the water, in fact it appears as if Jesus is making his way toward them, & my guess is that the disciples are thinking that once Jesus is in the boat, everything is going to be ok. But Peter doesn’t want to settle for Jesus coming to him, Peter doesn’t want to play it safe - he wants the adventure of walking with Jesus. Peter’s desire is to go where Jesus goes & to do what Jesus is doing, & so he takes the initiative and he asks Jesus to fulfill that desire. Are we willing to ask God to help us fulfill our dreams, our goals and our desires? In Psalm 20:4 it says, May God give you the desires of your heart and make all your plans succeed. Last week we talked about passion & our passion in life can become a possibility if we will ask God for his power. Peter asked Jesus to allow him to come to him on the water – his passion was to be with Jesus & to do what Jesus was doing, so he asks for that possibility & Jesus gave him the power. We can do the same thing. We can ask God for his power so that our passions can become a possibility. We don’t have to settle for too little, in fact I believe God is waiting for us to ask him for more – more of his power, more of his love, more of his strength and purpose for plans for our lives.
But most of the time we settle for too little in life & in faith because we will only step out and do those things we know we can do on our own. When we are only drawing upon our own strength & power we are not living life to the fullest & we really aren’t living by faith. The fullness of life & faith only comes when we step out & do those things we know that we can’t do on our own. The fullness of faith comes when we ask God for his help so that we can do the impossible. The same principle is at work in the church. Too often we will only attempt to do those things we know that we can do on our own & yet what we fail to understand is that God is calling us to do and be so much more. Will we as a church make the choice to enter into mission and ministry that we know is impossible without God’s help? That is the first step to an authentic faith.
What keeps us from taking this bold step of faith both personally and as a church is fear. It might be a fear of failure, a fear of looking foolish. We might be afraid that no one will step out with us, or we might be afraid of what people will say around us. Fear can keep us from the possibilities God has for us. It was fear that kept 11 disciples in the boat. The disciples are afraid & they have every right to be, they are clearly in a dangerous situation. Their boat is out in open water where it is being battered by the wind and the waves at night. The last thing they would have expected would be for Jesus to come walking toward them on the water, so when they see a shape approach them they aren’t thinking Jesus –they are thinking ghost. Things have suddenly gone from bad to worse, first they are struggling in the middle of the sea at night in bad weather & now they have to contend with a ghost. So yes they are afraid & they cry out in fear. Even after they know it is Jesus, their fear causes them to settle for the safety of the boat.
Peter, however, is able to rise above his fear. It’s not that he wasn’t afraid, Peter was just as afraid as the rest of them, but instead of allowing his fear to cause him to shrink back & play it safe – he used his fear to help him step up & take a risk. If we are going to be afraid anyway – why not go all the way & step out in faith? Living a life of faith today is scary. It’s not easy to follow Jesus every moment of every day, so the question is what will we do with our fear? Will we allow it to take hold of us & cause us to choose the easy road & seek the safety of a comfortable life or will we take hold of our fear & in the face of it trust God to take us even farther? Gary Haagan, the author of Just Courage and one of the leaders of the International Justice Mission has said, Jesus came not to make us safe & comfortable but brave and courageous. Jesus knows that life can get difficult & even dangerous, he knows the fear we face, which is why he came to give us strength and courage. Are we willing to ask God for this strength? And then are we willing to receive it & use it when God gives?
Peter asked for the opportunity to walk on the water, & when Jesus said come – Peter got out of the boat & went. If we are going to ask God for strength & courage, we better be prepared to use it. One of the biggest problems we face is that when God gives us the go ahead – many times we don’t go. When God invites us to come & walk with him on the water, when he provides us opportunities to do more than we ever thought or imagined we could do, we don’t get out of the boat.
Now I think Peter was willing to get out of the boat and attempt to do the impossible because he was first willing to step out of the boat & walk with Jesus along a beach. This isn’t the first time Jesus has called Peter to come & walk with me. When Jesus first called Peter to follow him it was to leave behind his life as a fisherman, & Peter did. He stepped out of his boat & walked along the shores & the hillsides of Galilee. It was a step of faith. Peter gave up the security he found in his life as a fisherman & followed Jesus in a radically new life and it was that step of faith which gave Peter the courage to take another step of faith & climb out of the boat. Likewise, it was this step of faith & getting out of the boat to do something that was impossible that gave Peter the courage to later reach out and heal the sick.
In Acts 3 Peter & John are going to the temple when a man who had been lame from his birth asked them for money & Peter says, I have no silver and gold, but what I have I give you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk. And then Peter did what I’m sure to him was the impossible, he reached out & took the man by the hand and raised him up & immediately the man’s legs became strong. Now the reason Peter was able to provide this miracle of healing was because he knew that at another point in time when he placed his faith & trust in Jesus he had also been able to do the impossible and walk on water. Embracing all the plans God has for us is a journey that begins with small steps. The more we walk with God, the more we step out in faith, the more opportunities God will give us to do those things that seem impossible. When we start small & are faithful in the little things, God will then lead us to greater things.
What is it that God is calling you to do today? What is the step of faith he is inviting you to make? Maybe it’s to trust him for the first time. Maybe it’s to step up and really learn what God has for your life. Maybe it’s to go deeper & take some real risks in following Jesus. Maybe God is asking for more of your time & he wants you to realign your schedule & make more room for him. Maybe it’s to commit yourself to spiritual growth through a small group Bible Study. Maybe it’s to explore the possibility of getting involved in mission, there’s a group going to South Dakota next year – is God asking you go with them? What are the possibilities God is laying before us? What are those things that seem impossible to us right now but can become a possibility if we take one step of faith today to help get us there?
What is the step of faith God is asking us as Faith Church to take? I am always challenged by the reality that even as a church we often won’t step up & make the decision to do something that maybe on paper simply looks impossible, but we know in our hearts is God’s purpose & plan for us. Are we willing to lay the desires of our heart before God with the courage to work for them when Jesus says come? Can we overcome our fear, & trust that through Christ all things are possible for Faith Church?
The last thing we all need to remember is that stepping out to do the impossible is really, hear me on this, it is really a no-lose situation because even if we fail, all we have to do is ask God for help & God will save us. Isn’t that what we learn from Peter? He gets out of the boat & starts walking on the water & then after a few steps he get’s distracted, he starts to doubt & then starts to sink, but as soon as he cries out for help – Jesus is there to save him. If we step out in faith & everything falls apart – it’s ok because God will reach down into our lives & lift us up & then God will honor our step of faith. Peter used his experience of walking on the water with Jesus, as feeble as it was, to help him do even greater things. God redeemed his sinking & he gave him a greater victory. God can redeem our failures, what He’s looking for is our faith.
An authentic faith doesn’t settle for what is safe & comfortable & easy, it embraces all the possibilities God has for us & even gives us the strength and the courage to step out and do the impossible. An authentic faith doesn’t just believe that with God all things are possible – it steps out in faith to do those things. So let us step out in faith.
Building an Authentic Faith - Passion
Luke Brinker is a retired UM minister and he and his wife Theda were members of my congregation in Lewisburg. Luke was a big supporter of Sunday School and he would often ask me if he could give a plug for Sunday School during worship and I would always say yes. Luke would then speak powerfully about how important Sunday School was, how good the classes were and how much he and others would love to see people attend. The thing about Luke is that he didn’t just stand up and make the announcement – each and every week Luke would make his way through the people before worship, after worship and during the greeting time and he would personally invite people to stay for Sunday School. Luke would call people during the week to invite them, and I know for a fact that a lot of people ended up in Sunday School because of Luke.
Luke would always apologize to me for being so vocal about Sunday School and I would continually tell him that he didn’t need to apologize because I loved his passion. One day Luke took me aside because he didn’t really understand what I meant when I said I thought he was passionate about Sunday School - so I tried to tell him that for me passion is enthusiasm and energy; it’s excitement. Passion is such a strong feeling about something that you work relentlessly to see it happen. More than any other quality of faith, what I am drawn to the most is passion.
The author Mike Yaconelli defines passion as being fully alive, or living with expectancy, anticipation and enthusiasm, and he says that the mission of Jesus was to introduce us to the passion of living. A genuine faith needs to be a passionate faith; it needs to be a faith that is fully alive. A passionate faith is a relationship with God where we fully anticipate and expect God to move and do great things in us and through us. A passionate faith brings life and joy and power not just to ourselves, but even to those around us, and the best example of what this passionate faith looks like is found in 4 un-named people in the gospel of Mark.
Mark 2:3-5.
Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
Notice that what Jesus responds to is not the faith of the paralyzed man, it says that Jesus say their faith, not his faith. What Jesus sees is the faith of the 4 friends who have carried the man to the house, lifted him up to the roof and then dug through the roof so they could lower their friend to Jesus. It’s clear to me that what Jesus sees in these men is passion, the fully expect Jesus to heal him and Jesus is so moved by what they have done that he does heal their friend not just physically but spiritually as well. Jesus is so moved by the passion of these people that he brings a fullness and wholeness to this man’s life. These 4 friends are passionate and they show us what a passion is all about.
First and foremost a passionate faith sees the power and love there is God and a passionate faith believes that God can and does and wants to help us. These 4 men worked so hard to get their friend to Jesus because they believed Jesus not only could do something to help, but that he would. They would not have gone to the lengths that they did if they did not think Jesus was able to help their friend. A passionate faith starts by seeing the power in Jesus. A passionate faith understands that God’s power and love can and does change people’s lives.
A passionate faith not only sees the power in God it also sees the needs in people. These 4 men know that their friend is paralyzed. They don’t think about coming to Jesus for themselves, they aren’t thinking about what Jesus can do for them – they are thinking about what Jesus can do for their friend. Luke Brinker was always thinking about others. Luke could see the spiritual needs in people and he believed to the very core of his being that Sunday School would help bring people closer to God who in turn would help people in life. A passionate faith is always thinking of ways and finding ways to bring people to Jesus even if it means our own needs go unmet.
Virginia Smeltzer was in her 80’s when I was the pastor in Altoona and while I was there we made a lot of changes to one of worship services and we introduced a lot of new music. As you can imagine, there was a lot of discussion about this, and one day Virginia stopped me in the hall of the church and she said, I want to share with you my thoughts on the new music. I said OK, and then I braced myself for what was to come. Personally, she said, I don’t like it, but when I look around and see the young people singing and enjoying it, I realized that this is what we need to do and we need to keep singing it. That’s a passionate faith. Virginia could see the needs of the youth and young adults around her and she willing to say, it’s not about me – it’s about bringing others to Jesus, so let’s do what we need to do to get them there.
In so many ways I want to be as passionate as Virginia and I can only hope and pray that when I’m in my 80’s and not liking the new music of the church that I’ll be willing to say, it’s not about me, it’s about bringing people to Jesus. A passionate faith that wants to help and reach out to others can be seen in lots of ways. Maybe it’s an 80 year old woman being willing to sing contemporary music – maybe it’s a motorcycle ride through the hills of central PA to raise money for ministry that will reach our youth, maybe it’s inviting people to Sunday School, maybe it’s being willing to step up and teach Sunday School. While it can be expressed in so many different ways, a passionate faith is always finding ways to bring people to Jesus, even if it calls for sacrifice and even if it calls us to work hard.
That’s something else we see in these 4 friends, they worked hard. Look at all the obstacles they had to overcome to get their friend to Jesus. First he is paralyzed so they have to carry him to the house where Jesus is staying. When the crowds are so large that they can’t get through, they don’t give up they get creative and this is the part I love. You have to wonder how they came up with this idea to lower their friend through the roof. What a crazy idea – what a creative idea – what a great idea, but it meant they had to work hard. I can’t imagine it was easy to carry a paralyzed man up onto the roof and most roofs would have been made of hardened clay and twigs so digging through by hand would have been difficult – even a little dangerous. But they do it and again that’s passion. Passion is creativity, it is risk taking, it is working hard until you get the job done, and it’s not letting anything stand in your way, not even the criticism of the people.
While it’s not recorded in the story here, you have to know that the homeowner could not have been very happy to have his roof destroyed. Maybe he was yelling at them from inside the house to stop but he couldn’t get to them because the crowds were so large, or maybe Jesus just looked at the homeowner with some understanding and reassurance and somehow told him it was going to be ok. And what about the rest of the crowd that was also trying to get to Jesus – you have to believe that not everyone was happy as this scene unfolds – but the 4 friends didn’t care – they were focused on getting their friend to Jesus, so they kept going. They didn’t let negative criticism stop them.
Will we work hard and do whatever it takes to bring people to Jesus? In many ways Faith Church is a passionate church and our passion is seen as we welcome students after football games, and send people out on mission trips, and support those in need within our own community. We have not let obstacles stand in our way of doing what we can to bring people closer to God and we can’t stop now – we have to keep taking risks, and we have to keep thinking creatively, we have to keep moving forward to bring people to Jesus. I’ve been wondering this week what the next creative risk taking step is going to be for us. Somewhere out there (maybe in one of you) is God’s plan for us to do something outrageous so that we can bring others to Jesus. My hope is that when the plan is identified and we know it is of God, that we will not allow any obstacles to stand in our way and that together we will commit ourselves and work hard to make it happen.
And that’s the last thing I want us to think about as we look at these 4 friends – they were in it together. They worked together to help their friend get to Jesus. One man couldn’t have done it alone. A passionate faith is not a lone ranger faith it intentionally seeks to draw others in. Actually I think passion itself just draws people together. We have all been around those people who are so enthusiastic and energized about God’s plan that we can’t help but want to be with them and work alongside of them. Again think of these 4 friends. We’re not sure which one came up with the plan but which ever one it was spoke about it with such passion – such enthusiasm and expectation about what Jesus would do that the other 3 were eager and willing to go along with him. Passion is a like a flame that simply ignites everything around it so that the fire burns brighter.
And I think this is how passion is stirred up within us. I’m not sure we can set out today to just be more passionate, I don’t think we can will it to be within us – passion is caught from others who are fully alive. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with people who are excited and enthusiastic about their faith and who eagerly anticipate God moving within them and around them. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with Jesus who is the author of life and faith and who introduces us to the passion of living.
Luke would always apologize to me for being so vocal about Sunday School and I would continually tell him that he didn’t need to apologize because I loved his passion. One day Luke took me aside because he didn’t really understand what I meant when I said I thought he was passionate about Sunday School - so I tried to tell him that for me passion is enthusiasm and energy; it’s excitement. Passion is such a strong feeling about something that you work relentlessly to see it happen. More than any other quality of faith, what I am drawn to the most is passion.
The author Mike Yaconelli defines passion as being fully alive, or living with expectancy, anticipation and enthusiasm, and he says that the mission of Jesus was to introduce us to the passion of living. A genuine faith needs to be a passionate faith; it needs to be a faith that is fully alive. A passionate faith is a relationship with God where we fully anticipate and expect God to move and do great things in us and through us. A passionate faith brings life and joy and power not just to ourselves, but even to those around us, and the best example of what this passionate faith looks like is found in 4 un-named people in the gospel of Mark.
Mark 2:3-5.
Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
Notice that what Jesus responds to is not the faith of the paralyzed man, it says that Jesus say their faith, not his faith. What Jesus sees is the faith of the 4 friends who have carried the man to the house, lifted him up to the roof and then dug through the roof so they could lower their friend to Jesus. It’s clear to me that what Jesus sees in these men is passion, the fully expect Jesus to heal him and Jesus is so moved by what they have done that he does heal their friend not just physically but spiritually as well. Jesus is so moved by the passion of these people that he brings a fullness and wholeness to this man’s life. These 4 friends are passionate and they show us what a passion is all about.
First and foremost a passionate faith sees the power and love there is God and a passionate faith believes that God can and does and wants to help us. These 4 men worked so hard to get their friend to Jesus because they believed Jesus not only could do something to help, but that he would. They would not have gone to the lengths that they did if they did not think Jesus was able to help their friend. A passionate faith starts by seeing the power in Jesus. A passionate faith understands that God’s power and love can and does change people’s lives.
A passionate faith not only sees the power in God it also sees the needs in people. These 4 men know that their friend is paralyzed. They don’t think about coming to Jesus for themselves, they aren’t thinking about what Jesus can do for them – they are thinking about what Jesus can do for their friend. Luke Brinker was always thinking about others. Luke could see the spiritual needs in people and he believed to the very core of his being that Sunday School would help bring people closer to God who in turn would help people in life. A passionate faith is always thinking of ways and finding ways to bring people to Jesus even if it means our own needs go unmet.
Virginia Smeltzer was in her 80’s when I was the pastor in Altoona and while I was there we made a lot of changes to one of worship services and we introduced a lot of new music. As you can imagine, there was a lot of discussion about this, and one day Virginia stopped me in the hall of the church and she said, I want to share with you my thoughts on the new music. I said OK, and then I braced myself for what was to come. Personally, she said, I don’t like it, but when I look around and see the young people singing and enjoying it, I realized that this is what we need to do and we need to keep singing it. That’s a passionate faith. Virginia could see the needs of the youth and young adults around her and she willing to say, it’s not about me – it’s about bringing others to Jesus, so let’s do what we need to do to get them there.
In so many ways I want to be as passionate as Virginia and I can only hope and pray that when I’m in my 80’s and not liking the new music of the church that I’ll be willing to say, it’s not about me, it’s about bringing people to Jesus. A passionate faith that wants to help and reach out to others can be seen in lots of ways. Maybe it’s an 80 year old woman being willing to sing contemporary music – maybe it’s a motorcycle ride through the hills of central PA to raise money for ministry that will reach our youth, maybe it’s inviting people to Sunday School, maybe it’s being willing to step up and teach Sunday School. While it can be expressed in so many different ways, a passionate faith is always finding ways to bring people to Jesus, even if it calls for sacrifice and even if it calls us to work hard.
That’s something else we see in these 4 friends, they worked hard. Look at all the obstacles they had to overcome to get their friend to Jesus. First he is paralyzed so they have to carry him to the house where Jesus is staying. When the crowds are so large that they can’t get through, they don’t give up they get creative and this is the part I love. You have to wonder how they came up with this idea to lower their friend through the roof. What a crazy idea – what a creative idea – what a great idea, but it meant they had to work hard. I can’t imagine it was easy to carry a paralyzed man up onto the roof and most roofs would have been made of hardened clay and twigs so digging through by hand would have been difficult – even a little dangerous. But they do it and again that’s passion. Passion is creativity, it is risk taking, it is working hard until you get the job done, and it’s not letting anything stand in your way, not even the criticism of the people.
While it’s not recorded in the story here, you have to know that the homeowner could not have been very happy to have his roof destroyed. Maybe he was yelling at them from inside the house to stop but he couldn’t get to them because the crowds were so large, or maybe Jesus just looked at the homeowner with some understanding and reassurance and somehow told him it was going to be ok. And what about the rest of the crowd that was also trying to get to Jesus – you have to believe that not everyone was happy as this scene unfolds – but the 4 friends didn’t care – they were focused on getting their friend to Jesus, so they kept going. They didn’t let negative criticism stop them.
Will we work hard and do whatever it takes to bring people to Jesus? In many ways Faith Church is a passionate church and our passion is seen as we welcome students after football games, and send people out on mission trips, and support those in need within our own community. We have not let obstacles stand in our way of doing what we can to bring people closer to God and we can’t stop now – we have to keep taking risks, and we have to keep thinking creatively, we have to keep moving forward to bring people to Jesus. I’ve been wondering this week what the next creative risk taking step is going to be for us. Somewhere out there (maybe in one of you) is God’s plan for us to do something outrageous so that we can bring others to Jesus. My hope is that when the plan is identified and we know it is of God, that we will not allow any obstacles to stand in our way and that together we will commit ourselves and work hard to make it happen.
And that’s the last thing I want us to think about as we look at these 4 friends – they were in it together. They worked together to help their friend get to Jesus. One man couldn’t have done it alone. A passionate faith is not a lone ranger faith it intentionally seeks to draw others in. Actually I think passion itself just draws people together. We have all been around those people who are so enthusiastic and energized about God’s plan that we can’t help but want to be with them and work alongside of them. Again think of these 4 friends. We’re not sure which one came up with the plan but which ever one it was spoke about it with such passion – such enthusiasm and expectation about what Jesus would do that the other 3 were eager and willing to go along with him. Passion is a like a flame that simply ignites everything around it so that the fire burns brighter.
And I think this is how passion is stirred up within us. I’m not sure we can set out today to just be more passionate, I don’t think we can will it to be within us – passion is caught from others who are fully alive. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with people who are excited and enthusiastic about their faith and who eagerly anticipate God moving within them and around them. Passion is ignited within us as we spend time with Jesus who is the author of life and faith and who introduces us to the passion of living.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Building an Authentic Faith - Pardon
John 4:4-26
There’s a part of me that understands this woman at the well. At the beginning of my sophomore year of college I went through a difficult time. I was turning away from God and making some poor choices and the last thing I wanted was to be around the friends I had made through Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship. I got up and walked out of a fellowship meeting one week, I stopped going to church and I avoided my friends as often as I could. While I was running in all kinds of directions, what I was really doing was hiding. I was hiding from my sin and from my self and the choices I was making. Some people hide from their sin and their failures by running, some hide in alcohol or drugs, some hide in reckless spending and shopping, some hide in destructive relationships, but the more we try to hide from our sin and from our self, the more we end up in deeper and darker places of despair and isolation.
That’s what we see going on with this woman at the well. She comes to draw water at the 6th hour, or at noon, because she didn’t want to be seen by the other women. Drawing water was a daily chore for women and they wouldn’t do it during the heat of the day - they would do it in the cool of the morning. Every morning women would travel to the well together, draw their water and then return to their homes together, but this Samaritan woman came at noon because she didn’t want to be seen by the others. Maybe she was tired of the stares and comments. She was hiding, hiding in her sin and hiding in her shame.
We come to find out during her encounter with Jesus that this woman has been married 5 times and the man she currently lives with is not her husband. She has made some poor choices in life and to avoid the stares and comments of the other women, she didn’t travel with them in the morning – she waited and then would come alone to get the water she needed at noon. Not only was she hiding from others, she was hiding from herself, after all if she didn’t have to face the other women she didn’t have to face the reality of her own situation. For me, as long as I kept running I not only didn’t have to face others, but on some level I didn’t have to face myself.
While our circumstances might be different, the reality is that we all spend a lot of time hiding, we hide who we really are from others, we hide from ourselves and yes, we even try to hide from God, and we hide because we don’t want to come to face to face with the reality of our sin, but living an authentic faith as a follower of Jesus Christ means we stop hiding from our sin and we confront it by coming face to face with Jesus. Look at what happens when the woman arrives at the well, notice who’s there – it’s Jesus, and while she could have laid low and kept on hiding, she didn’t. When Jesus asks her for a drink and engages her in conversation – she could have run away, but she didn’t. Authentic faith doesn’t hide and it doesn’t run from sin – it is willing to confront it and that’s what Jesus does. He helps this woman confront the reality of her sinful life. Jesus is the one who says to her, Go call your husband and come back. When the woman says I have no husband Jesus is able to help reveal to her the reality of her life – that’s right, he says, you have had 5 husbands and the man you are with now is not your husband. Jesus confronts her with the reality of who she is and he’s not there to judge and condemn her he’s there to simply help her own up to her sin - so that she can be forgiven and move beyond it.
An authentic faith is willing to confront the reality of who we are. As followers of Jesus we can’t ignore our sin and pretend like it doesn’t exist – we have to be willing to name it, confront it and confess it. It’s a painful process, but when we are alone sometime we need to sit down and honestly evaluate our life and we need to ask ourselves “how do I treat God and how I treat others?”. We need to think about our interactions with people, and the choices we make every day. And we need to ask ourselves, "How do we spend my time, my money, my energy?"
What are the things we pursue in life? Where do our hopes and dreams lie? Do our attitudes line up with the will of God? Do our actions reflect the life of Jesus? How do we answer these questions?
I don’t know about you, but there are many ways that my heart and my actions don’t line up with God’s will for my life. Just this week at the United Methodist Women meeting we saw pictures of children from Uganda who have nothing – literally they have nothing. We heard stories of how these children will wander with the cattle through the garbage dumps to see what they can find to eat or wear or use and I once again came face to face with Jesus who said to me, Andy, what you are doing with your resources? There are children who have nothing and you have so much – what are you doing?
It’s not an easy exercise but can we sit down and write out our sin, can we put it down on paper? Greed, lust, pride, self-centeredness. It’s not fun to name them, but can we be honest and own up to our sin? Gossip, anger, bitterness, jealousy. An authentic faith doesn’t hide from sin – it confronts it and names it and owns it and confesses it to God. Now once we are willing to do this - the door is opened for God to forgive. Once we confess our sin, we aren’t left holding on to it, because God pardons –God forgives. You’ll see as we keep going through this sermon series that I use “P” words: the first week was people, last week was profession and so when I wanted to talk about forgiveness I decided to use the word pardon, but one of the things I came to realize about the word pardon is that you only receive a pardon after you have been found guilty. A pardon comes only after the crime has been named, so for us to receive the pardon of God, or the forgiveness of God, we have to be willing to name our sin, but once we name it – God forgives it. Are we willing to receive God’s pardon today? Are we willing to accept and embrace God’s gift of forgiveness?
Look at John 4:10 – Jesus says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Jesus goes on and says, 4:14 – whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed the water I give will become a spring welling up to eternal life. This living water which is a gift from God – it’s called grace and forgiveness because it is God’s forgiveness that leads us to eternal life. It’s God’s grace that gushes forth within us to bring life, so will we accept it?
Accepting God’s grace begins with simple words, it begins in faith and trust saying, God I know I am a sinner, please forgive me. But then these words, this prayer and the desire to be forgiven, needs to bring freedom to our lives and many times that freedom doesn’t come until we are willing to forgive ourselves and allow God to take away our guilt and shame. If we don’t forgive ourselves, then like the Samaritan women we will continue to just hide. So how do we fully receive God’s grace and learn to forgive ourselves? How do we begin to experience the freedom that comes with God’s pardon?
The first thing we need to do is stop listening to Satan and start listening to God. You know the word Satan means accuser and I am convinced that Satan, as the accuser, is alive and well, and it’s his voice that constantly tells us that because of all we have done we can never be loved or forgiven by God. There are times that voice is so loud and clear that we can’t hear anything else. It’s time we stop listening to Satan and start listening to God.
Listening to God is the whole point of the 60/60 experiment. I’m excited that there are over 25 people who have told us that they are doing the 60/60 experiment and the whole point of the exercise is to help us hear more consistently the voice of God. If you haven’t been here the last few weeks the 60/60 experiment is our attempt to at least once every hour for 60 days intentionally think about God. I have set my watch alarm to go off once an hour, others have posted notes or are trying to think of God when the phone rings or when they get into their cars – whatever the prompt is, the point is to tune into the truth and the will of God. I might suggest that if you are doing the 60/60 experiment - that this week when you are prompted to think about God, instead of telling yourself that your life matters to God and God loves you – tell yourself that you are forgiven. When the alarm goes off name a sin you struggle with and then tell yourself – I am pardoned, I am forgiven.
Another way we can stop listening to Satan and start listening to God is to turn more consistently to the word of God. Daily Bible reading, weekly Bible studies and Sunday School helps us tune out the lies that surround us and help us refocus our hearts and minds on the truth of God’s grace. You can also get a prayer partner to help remind you that you are forgiven. I had a roommate for a while and we agreed to remind each other every day that we were forgiven by God – it was a powerful time where we each experienced more of the freedom and power that comes with God’s grace.
So an authentic faith confronts sin and it accepts the pardon God offers, but then it must – it absolutely must go one step farther. An authentic faith also pardons others. An authentic faith forgives others. This is what we say we will do each time we pray the Lord’s prayer: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. or Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus drives the same point home pretty clearly in his sermon on the mount.
Matthew 6:14-15: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. One of the forces which hold us back in our faith and one of the forces which I think holds back the church from being all God calls us to be is our inability to truly forgive others. We might say the words, I forgive you, but we don’t act on it in any significant way. We say the words but then we hold on to bitterness or continue to work against those we have issues with. Our inability to forgive one another blocks God’s grace from flowing freely into our lives and into our church and this keeps the power of God from being experienced and revealed in our world.
My guess is that most of us right now could think of someone that we are struggling to forgive. It might be a spouse; it might be a parent or child, a brother or sister, a coworker or even a friend who has betrayed us. What I want us to do is picture this person in our mind and ask God to show us how we can forgive them. What will it mean for us to offer forgiveness? What will we do this week to seek reconciliation? We can’t just talk about forgiving others – we need to get specific and then get serious about doing it.
Building an authentic faith doesn’t just accept God’s pardon for our sin – it offers a pardon to those who have sinned against us and when we allow God’s grace to flow freely through our lives not only will our relationships be strengthened, but we will be changed and our faith will grow strong.
There’s a part of me that understands this woman at the well. At the beginning of my sophomore year of college I went through a difficult time. I was turning away from God and making some poor choices and the last thing I wanted was to be around the friends I had made through Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship. I got up and walked out of a fellowship meeting one week, I stopped going to church and I avoided my friends as often as I could. While I was running in all kinds of directions, what I was really doing was hiding. I was hiding from my sin and from my self and the choices I was making. Some people hide from their sin and their failures by running, some hide in alcohol or drugs, some hide in reckless spending and shopping, some hide in destructive relationships, but the more we try to hide from our sin and from our self, the more we end up in deeper and darker places of despair and isolation.
That’s what we see going on with this woman at the well. She comes to draw water at the 6th hour, or at noon, because she didn’t want to be seen by the other women. Drawing water was a daily chore for women and they wouldn’t do it during the heat of the day - they would do it in the cool of the morning. Every morning women would travel to the well together, draw their water and then return to their homes together, but this Samaritan woman came at noon because she didn’t want to be seen by the others. Maybe she was tired of the stares and comments. She was hiding, hiding in her sin and hiding in her shame.
We come to find out during her encounter with Jesus that this woman has been married 5 times and the man she currently lives with is not her husband. She has made some poor choices in life and to avoid the stares and comments of the other women, she didn’t travel with them in the morning – she waited and then would come alone to get the water she needed at noon. Not only was she hiding from others, she was hiding from herself, after all if she didn’t have to face the other women she didn’t have to face the reality of her own situation. For me, as long as I kept running I not only didn’t have to face others, but on some level I didn’t have to face myself.
While our circumstances might be different, the reality is that we all spend a lot of time hiding, we hide who we really are from others, we hide from ourselves and yes, we even try to hide from God, and we hide because we don’t want to come to face to face with the reality of our sin, but living an authentic faith as a follower of Jesus Christ means we stop hiding from our sin and we confront it by coming face to face with Jesus. Look at what happens when the woman arrives at the well, notice who’s there – it’s Jesus, and while she could have laid low and kept on hiding, she didn’t. When Jesus asks her for a drink and engages her in conversation – she could have run away, but she didn’t. Authentic faith doesn’t hide and it doesn’t run from sin – it is willing to confront it and that’s what Jesus does. He helps this woman confront the reality of her sinful life. Jesus is the one who says to her, Go call your husband and come back. When the woman says I have no husband Jesus is able to help reveal to her the reality of her life – that’s right, he says, you have had 5 husbands and the man you are with now is not your husband. Jesus confronts her with the reality of who she is and he’s not there to judge and condemn her he’s there to simply help her own up to her sin - so that she can be forgiven and move beyond it.
An authentic faith is willing to confront the reality of who we are. As followers of Jesus we can’t ignore our sin and pretend like it doesn’t exist – we have to be willing to name it, confront it and confess it. It’s a painful process, but when we are alone sometime we need to sit down and honestly evaluate our life and we need to ask ourselves “how do I treat God and how I treat others?”. We need to think about our interactions with people, and the choices we make every day. And we need to ask ourselves, "How do we spend my time, my money, my energy?"
What are the things we pursue in life? Where do our hopes and dreams lie? Do our attitudes line up with the will of God? Do our actions reflect the life of Jesus? How do we answer these questions?
I don’t know about you, but there are many ways that my heart and my actions don’t line up with God’s will for my life. Just this week at the United Methodist Women meeting we saw pictures of children from Uganda who have nothing – literally they have nothing. We heard stories of how these children will wander with the cattle through the garbage dumps to see what they can find to eat or wear or use and I once again came face to face with Jesus who said to me, Andy, what you are doing with your resources? There are children who have nothing and you have so much – what are you doing?
It’s not an easy exercise but can we sit down and write out our sin, can we put it down on paper? Greed, lust, pride, self-centeredness. It’s not fun to name them, but can we be honest and own up to our sin? Gossip, anger, bitterness, jealousy. An authentic faith doesn’t hide from sin – it confronts it and names it and owns it and confesses it to God. Now once we are willing to do this - the door is opened for God to forgive. Once we confess our sin, we aren’t left holding on to it, because God pardons –God forgives. You’ll see as we keep going through this sermon series that I use “P” words: the first week was people, last week was profession and so when I wanted to talk about forgiveness I decided to use the word pardon, but one of the things I came to realize about the word pardon is that you only receive a pardon after you have been found guilty. A pardon comes only after the crime has been named, so for us to receive the pardon of God, or the forgiveness of God, we have to be willing to name our sin, but once we name it – God forgives it. Are we willing to receive God’s pardon today? Are we willing to accept and embrace God’s gift of forgiveness?
Look at John 4:10 – Jesus says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Jesus goes on and says, 4:14 – whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed the water I give will become a spring welling up to eternal life. This living water which is a gift from God – it’s called grace and forgiveness because it is God’s forgiveness that leads us to eternal life. It’s God’s grace that gushes forth within us to bring life, so will we accept it?
Accepting God’s grace begins with simple words, it begins in faith and trust saying, God I know I am a sinner, please forgive me. But then these words, this prayer and the desire to be forgiven, needs to bring freedom to our lives and many times that freedom doesn’t come until we are willing to forgive ourselves and allow God to take away our guilt and shame. If we don’t forgive ourselves, then like the Samaritan women we will continue to just hide. So how do we fully receive God’s grace and learn to forgive ourselves? How do we begin to experience the freedom that comes with God’s pardon?
The first thing we need to do is stop listening to Satan and start listening to God. You know the word Satan means accuser and I am convinced that Satan, as the accuser, is alive and well, and it’s his voice that constantly tells us that because of all we have done we can never be loved or forgiven by God. There are times that voice is so loud and clear that we can’t hear anything else. It’s time we stop listening to Satan and start listening to God.
Listening to God is the whole point of the 60/60 experiment. I’m excited that there are over 25 people who have told us that they are doing the 60/60 experiment and the whole point of the exercise is to help us hear more consistently the voice of God. If you haven’t been here the last few weeks the 60/60 experiment is our attempt to at least once every hour for 60 days intentionally think about God. I have set my watch alarm to go off once an hour, others have posted notes or are trying to think of God when the phone rings or when they get into their cars – whatever the prompt is, the point is to tune into the truth and the will of God. I might suggest that if you are doing the 60/60 experiment - that this week when you are prompted to think about God, instead of telling yourself that your life matters to God and God loves you – tell yourself that you are forgiven. When the alarm goes off name a sin you struggle with and then tell yourself – I am pardoned, I am forgiven.
Another way we can stop listening to Satan and start listening to God is to turn more consistently to the word of God. Daily Bible reading, weekly Bible studies and Sunday School helps us tune out the lies that surround us and help us refocus our hearts and minds on the truth of God’s grace. You can also get a prayer partner to help remind you that you are forgiven. I had a roommate for a while and we agreed to remind each other every day that we were forgiven by God – it was a powerful time where we each experienced more of the freedom and power that comes with God’s grace.
So an authentic faith confronts sin and it accepts the pardon God offers, but then it must – it absolutely must go one step farther. An authentic faith also pardons others. An authentic faith forgives others. This is what we say we will do each time we pray the Lord’s prayer: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. or Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus drives the same point home pretty clearly in his sermon on the mount.
Matthew 6:14-15: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. One of the forces which hold us back in our faith and one of the forces which I think holds back the church from being all God calls us to be is our inability to truly forgive others. We might say the words, I forgive you, but we don’t act on it in any significant way. We say the words but then we hold on to bitterness or continue to work against those we have issues with. Our inability to forgive one another blocks God’s grace from flowing freely into our lives and into our church and this keeps the power of God from being experienced and revealed in our world.
My guess is that most of us right now could think of someone that we are struggling to forgive. It might be a spouse; it might be a parent or child, a brother or sister, a coworker or even a friend who has betrayed us. What I want us to do is picture this person in our mind and ask God to show us how we can forgive them. What will it mean for us to offer forgiveness? What will we do this week to seek reconciliation? We can’t just talk about forgiving others – we need to get specific and then get serious about doing it.
Building an authentic faith doesn’t just accept God’s pardon for our sin – it offers a pardon to those who have sinned against us and when we allow God’s grace to flow freely through our lives not only will our relationships be strengthened, but we will be changed and our faith will grow strong.
Building an Authentic Faith - Profession
Mark 8:27-38
One of the most important questions we must answer in our lives is the one asked by Jesus in this passage from Mark: Who do you say that I am? How we identify Jesus not only gives shape to what we believe, it needs to give direction to how we live. An authentic faith not only knows that God loves us but it understands what it means to profess Jesus as our Savior and Lord. But before we look to answer Jesus’ question, let’s first look at where and when and how he asks the question.
It says Jesus and disciples were travelling into the region of Caesarea Philippi. This was an area several miles north of the Sea of Galilee and it was ruled by Philip who was the brother of the Roman governor Herod. Since it was an area with very strong Greek and Roman influences it was not a place often visited by Jews, and this is the only account we have of Jesus ever travelling in this region. What is important for us to know about Caesarea Philippi is that this was an area linked to visions and epiphanies in Jewish tradition. During the time between the end of the Old Testament and birth of Jesus, what is know at the inter-testamental period, this area was where the Jewish leaders Enoch & Levi experienced visions, and so Caesarea Philippi became known to the Jewish people as a holy place. Even though by the time of Jesus it had come under Greek and Roman dominance, the Jewish people still thought of it as holy ground where people were more closely connected to God and where people received messages from God. I think Jesus wanted his disciples to be in this holy place when they first answer this question because he wanted them to be confident that what they were seeing in Jesus and what they were saying about him wasn’t just their own opinions, who they professed Jesus to be was truth coming from God.
It’s not an accident where Jesus asks this question, he specifically takes them there for this reason, and it’s not an accident when Jesus asks. Jesus asks the disciples to profess who he is only after they have taken part in some significant activities with Jesus. In Mark 6 we see that Jesus included his disciples in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, and again the disciples were included when Jesus fed the 4,000 in Mark 8. What’s significant about these 2 feedings is that the disciples are not just passive observers to the miracle of Jesus, they become active participants. They aren’t just listening to Jesus teach or watching him heal and perform miracles, they are involved in the actual work he is doing. In the feeding stories Jesus instructs the disciples to tell the people to sit down in groups, and then Jesus has the disciples distribute the food, and it’s as they are giving out the food that it is multiplied. The disciples are working alongside Jesus in performing the miracle, they are part of it and so they get to experience for themselves Jesus’ power. It is this kind of experience that helps the disciples understand who Jesus is and it helps them profess with confidence that Jesus is the Christ.
Now let’s look at how Jesus asks the question. Notice that he starts by asking a rather general question, Who do people say that I am? What are other people saying about me? What Jesus does with this question is give the disciples an opportunity to just talk about who he is, after all Jesus already knows what the people are saying about him. He doesn’t ask this question because he needs to know the answer, Jesus knows the answer, he knows what people are saying, he asks the question to give his disciples an opportunity to talk and to begin to wrestle with their own questions, and you have to believe they had questions. They have seen Jesus feed the multitudes twice, walk on water, calm a storm, heal the sick, and he just restored sight to a blind man and as he does all these amazing things, you know they have to be asking themselves “who is he?” In fact, in Luke’s account of Jesus calming the storm the disciples do ask themselves, who is this that even the wind & the seas obey him? They have lots of questions and now they have been given the opportunity to talk about it all with Jesus.
So they tell Jesus that the people are saying he is John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other great prophets. While it’s all an interesting conversation, Jesus ultimately isn’t interested in an interesting conversation about what others are saying, he does all of this to provide an opportunity for his disciples to profess their faith, so Jesus then turns the question back to his disciples and this time makes it personal. What about you? Who do you say I am?
And that’s the question we all have to ask ourselves. Who do we profess Jesus to be? While it is interesting to talk about Jesus and what he has done, and while it is fascinating to have theological debates about what we know of Jesus from the Bible and other historical materials, the real question we need to come to terms with is who do we say Jesus is? Forget about what someone else says, forget about what we read in commentaries or hear in Sunday School, what is it we profess? Who do we say Jesus is? The answer to this question makes all the difference.
While the Bible is full of titles given to Jesus, and we saw again this morning the great video about who Jesus is, what I want us to do is look at just 2 titles, for me the most important 2: Savior and Lord. In many ways these 2 titles help us define Peter’s profession of Jesus as the Christ because the Christ means the Anointed One. The Christ, or Messiah, was a leader who one who was coming from God to save the people of Israel & set them free from oppression. So in many ways the Christ was coming to be a Savior & Lord. What do we mean when we call Jesus our Savior and Lord?
Let’s start with Savior – Jesus is our Savior because he is the one who saves us from sin. Sin separates us from God. God has called us to live in relationship with Him and we fail in that relationship every day. Paul says in Romans that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and then he says, the wages of our sin, or the consequence of our sin, is death. The death we are talking about is not a physical death - it is a spiritual one, our sin cuts us off from the source of all life which is God and there is nothing we can do to restore that relationship on our own. Through Jesus, however, we can be brought back into a relationship with God. The message of the cross and then the empty tomb is that through Jesus we are forgiven and we are raised with Christ to a new & eternal life.
That’s the message of John 3:16 we heard last week, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sin and when we believe in him, when we trust in the work of Jesus on the cross, we will not die in our sin but experience forgiveness and eternal life. When we accept the work of Jesus for ourselves, when we place our faith and trust in the cross – we are professing Jesus to be our savior. Making Jesus our Savior really is as simply as saying, God I trust in the work of Jesus on the cross to forgive me of my sin &I trust Jesus to restore me into a right relationship with you. If you have never asked God for this forgiveness – you can do it today and profess Jesus as your Savior.
Jesus has come to be our Savior, but he also comes to be our Lord & this is where what we profess needs to give shape to what we do and how we live - because we can’t call Jesus Lord and then keep on living our lives as we did before. Professing Jesus as Lord means being willing to allow Jesus to give direction to our lives. A lord is someone who has authority over other people and when a lord gives direction – people follow. So calling Jesus Lord means we need to give him authority in our lives to guide us & direct us & then be willing to follow wherever he leads, but let’s be honest, this is not easy. Look back at Peter. He called Jesus the Christ, but then he wasn’t willing to follow Jesus when he explained what it meant for him to be the Christ. For Jesus, being the Christ was going to mean suffering & death, to which Peter says, no way, this will never happen to you. Peter didn’t want to go where Jesus was going, he didn’t want to do what Jesus was going to have to do.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t just rebuke Peter, he shows him, and he shows all of us that if we are going to call Jesus our Lord then we must be willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. Calling Jesus Lord means being willing to sacrifice what we may want in order to do what God wants, and this refocusing of our lives on the will and the way of God needs to penetrate every aspect of our life. From our relationships with family and friends, to our need to forgive, to the service we offer to those in need, to the use of our resources and money, our time and talents – everything we do needs to be shaped by what it means for us to call Jesus our Lord. Calling Jesus Lord means going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does.
If you still have doubts about who Jesus is, or if you are struggling to be able to call him Savior or Lord, then think about putting yourself into a position where you can make that call. Remember, the disciples weren’t able to profess Jesus as the Christ until after they had worked with Jesus. It was because they had spent time with Jesus and had even been part of his miracles and experienced his power that they were able to make the profession they did. If you are still struggling with what to call Jesus, don’t turn away from him, turn towards him & walk along side him and do the things that Jesus is doing. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurture the children, care of the sick, join a Bible Study, commit yourself to the 60/60 experiment where you reorient yourself on the will and the way of God, like the disciples, step out in faith in some way and allow yourself to experience the power of God. Knowing Jesus as our Savior and Lord doesn’t come by being a passive observer and no amount of knowledge will give us the assurance we need. Authentic faith that proclaims with confidence that Jesus is Savior and Lord comes by being an active participant with Jesus.
Who do you say that I am? An authentic faith says Jesus is Savior not because we read it in a book or heard it in a sermon; we profess it because we have experienced the saving power of Jesus for ourselves – we know we are forgiven. An authentic faith professes Jesus is Lord and then works hard to go where Jesus goes and do what Jesus does – even when it means that we deny ourselves and take up a cross.
One of the most important questions we must answer in our lives is the one asked by Jesus in this passage from Mark: Who do you say that I am? How we identify Jesus not only gives shape to what we believe, it needs to give direction to how we live. An authentic faith not only knows that God loves us but it understands what it means to profess Jesus as our Savior and Lord. But before we look to answer Jesus’ question, let’s first look at where and when and how he asks the question.
It says Jesus and disciples were travelling into the region of Caesarea Philippi. This was an area several miles north of the Sea of Galilee and it was ruled by Philip who was the brother of the Roman governor Herod. Since it was an area with very strong Greek and Roman influences it was not a place often visited by Jews, and this is the only account we have of Jesus ever travelling in this region. What is important for us to know about Caesarea Philippi is that this was an area linked to visions and epiphanies in Jewish tradition. During the time between the end of the Old Testament and birth of Jesus, what is know at the inter-testamental period, this area was where the Jewish leaders Enoch & Levi experienced visions, and so Caesarea Philippi became known to the Jewish people as a holy place. Even though by the time of Jesus it had come under Greek and Roman dominance, the Jewish people still thought of it as holy ground where people were more closely connected to God and where people received messages from God. I think Jesus wanted his disciples to be in this holy place when they first answer this question because he wanted them to be confident that what they were seeing in Jesus and what they were saying about him wasn’t just their own opinions, who they professed Jesus to be was truth coming from God.
It’s not an accident where Jesus asks this question, he specifically takes them there for this reason, and it’s not an accident when Jesus asks. Jesus asks the disciples to profess who he is only after they have taken part in some significant activities with Jesus. In Mark 6 we see that Jesus included his disciples in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, and again the disciples were included when Jesus fed the 4,000 in Mark 8. What’s significant about these 2 feedings is that the disciples are not just passive observers to the miracle of Jesus, they become active participants. They aren’t just listening to Jesus teach or watching him heal and perform miracles, they are involved in the actual work he is doing. In the feeding stories Jesus instructs the disciples to tell the people to sit down in groups, and then Jesus has the disciples distribute the food, and it’s as they are giving out the food that it is multiplied. The disciples are working alongside Jesus in performing the miracle, they are part of it and so they get to experience for themselves Jesus’ power. It is this kind of experience that helps the disciples understand who Jesus is and it helps them profess with confidence that Jesus is the Christ.
Now let’s look at how Jesus asks the question. Notice that he starts by asking a rather general question, Who do people say that I am? What are other people saying about me? What Jesus does with this question is give the disciples an opportunity to just talk about who he is, after all Jesus already knows what the people are saying about him. He doesn’t ask this question because he needs to know the answer, Jesus knows the answer, he knows what people are saying, he asks the question to give his disciples an opportunity to talk and to begin to wrestle with their own questions, and you have to believe they had questions. They have seen Jesus feed the multitudes twice, walk on water, calm a storm, heal the sick, and he just restored sight to a blind man and as he does all these amazing things, you know they have to be asking themselves “who is he?” In fact, in Luke’s account of Jesus calming the storm the disciples do ask themselves, who is this that even the wind & the seas obey him? They have lots of questions and now they have been given the opportunity to talk about it all with Jesus.
So they tell Jesus that the people are saying he is John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other great prophets. While it’s all an interesting conversation, Jesus ultimately isn’t interested in an interesting conversation about what others are saying, he does all of this to provide an opportunity for his disciples to profess their faith, so Jesus then turns the question back to his disciples and this time makes it personal. What about you? Who do you say I am?
And that’s the question we all have to ask ourselves. Who do we profess Jesus to be? While it is interesting to talk about Jesus and what he has done, and while it is fascinating to have theological debates about what we know of Jesus from the Bible and other historical materials, the real question we need to come to terms with is who do we say Jesus is? Forget about what someone else says, forget about what we read in commentaries or hear in Sunday School, what is it we profess? Who do we say Jesus is? The answer to this question makes all the difference.
While the Bible is full of titles given to Jesus, and we saw again this morning the great video about who Jesus is, what I want us to do is look at just 2 titles, for me the most important 2: Savior and Lord. In many ways these 2 titles help us define Peter’s profession of Jesus as the Christ because the Christ means the Anointed One. The Christ, or Messiah, was a leader who one who was coming from God to save the people of Israel & set them free from oppression. So in many ways the Christ was coming to be a Savior & Lord. What do we mean when we call Jesus our Savior and Lord?
Let’s start with Savior – Jesus is our Savior because he is the one who saves us from sin. Sin separates us from God. God has called us to live in relationship with Him and we fail in that relationship every day. Paul says in Romans that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and then he says, the wages of our sin, or the consequence of our sin, is death. The death we are talking about is not a physical death - it is a spiritual one, our sin cuts us off from the source of all life which is God and there is nothing we can do to restore that relationship on our own. Through Jesus, however, we can be brought back into a relationship with God. The message of the cross and then the empty tomb is that through Jesus we are forgiven and we are raised with Christ to a new & eternal life.
That’s the message of John 3:16 we heard last week, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sin and when we believe in him, when we trust in the work of Jesus on the cross, we will not die in our sin but experience forgiveness and eternal life. When we accept the work of Jesus for ourselves, when we place our faith and trust in the cross – we are professing Jesus to be our savior. Making Jesus our Savior really is as simply as saying, God I trust in the work of Jesus on the cross to forgive me of my sin &I trust Jesus to restore me into a right relationship with you. If you have never asked God for this forgiveness – you can do it today and profess Jesus as your Savior.
Jesus has come to be our Savior, but he also comes to be our Lord & this is where what we profess needs to give shape to what we do and how we live - because we can’t call Jesus Lord and then keep on living our lives as we did before. Professing Jesus as Lord means being willing to allow Jesus to give direction to our lives. A lord is someone who has authority over other people and when a lord gives direction – people follow. So calling Jesus Lord means we need to give him authority in our lives to guide us & direct us & then be willing to follow wherever he leads, but let’s be honest, this is not easy. Look back at Peter. He called Jesus the Christ, but then he wasn’t willing to follow Jesus when he explained what it meant for him to be the Christ. For Jesus, being the Christ was going to mean suffering & death, to which Peter says, no way, this will never happen to you. Peter didn’t want to go where Jesus was going, he didn’t want to do what Jesus was going to have to do.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t just rebuke Peter, he shows him, and he shows all of us that if we are going to call Jesus our Lord then we must be willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. Calling Jesus Lord means being willing to sacrifice what we may want in order to do what God wants, and this refocusing of our lives on the will and the way of God needs to penetrate every aspect of our life. From our relationships with family and friends, to our need to forgive, to the service we offer to those in need, to the use of our resources and money, our time and talents – everything we do needs to be shaped by what it means for us to call Jesus our Lord. Calling Jesus Lord means going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does.
If you still have doubts about who Jesus is, or if you are struggling to be able to call him Savior or Lord, then think about putting yourself into a position where you can make that call. Remember, the disciples weren’t able to profess Jesus as the Christ until after they had worked with Jesus. It was because they had spent time with Jesus and had even been part of his miracles and experienced his power that they were able to make the profession they did. If you are still struggling with what to call Jesus, don’t turn away from him, turn towards him & walk along side him and do the things that Jesus is doing. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurture the children, care of the sick, join a Bible Study, commit yourself to the 60/60 experiment where you reorient yourself on the will and the way of God, like the disciples, step out in faith in some way and allow yourself to experience the power of God. Knowing Jesus as our Savior and Lord doesn’t come by being a passive observer and no amount of knowledge will give us the assurance we need. Authentic faith that proclaims with confidence that Jesus is Savior and Lord comes by being an active participant with Jesus.
Who do you say that I am? An authentic faith says Jesus is Savior not because we read it in a book or heard it in a sermon; we profess it because we have experienced the saving power of Jesus for ourselves – we know we are forgiven. An authentic faith professes Jesus is Lord and then works hard to go where Jesus goes and do what Jesus does – even when it means that we deny ourselves and take up a cross.
Monday, September 8, 2008
The 60/60 Experiment
I first heard of the 60/60 experiment at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit last month. John Burke, lead pastor and founder of Gateway Church in Austin, Texas, and author of the book Soul Revolution (Zondervan Publishing, 2008), mentioned it during his talk and the program is outlined in his book. Here's a brief summary taken from the book Soul Revolution, this was handed out to the people of Faith Church on Sunday.
The 60-60 Experiment
For the next 60 days, try to stay in a continuous, honest conversation with God.
Set a watch or alarm to beep every 60 minutes, and/or put up sticky notes & reminders around your home, car & office, as a reminder to stay connected.
Try to turn your thoughts back to God all throughout the day, as often as you can. This simple conscious contact with God isn't easy, but it's all you have to do - everything else will begin to fall into place over time.
Even if you're not yet convinced this is true (that God is real or that God loves you), try it. Every 60 minutes, stop and remember "God is with me right now and God loves me!" Remind yourself that your life matters to God and let that thought propel you to ask God, "Show me your will in this next moment.”
Begin the experiment today and see if this isn't the path to a far more satisfying life and a more authentic faith.
For more information on the 60/60 experiment I would encourage you to get a copy of Soul Revolution, or find more information at the Gateway Church website www.gatewaychurch.com link to Soul Revolution.
I'm excited to see what this does for the people of Faith Church, I'm already enjoying and learning from the experiment myself.
~Andy
The 60-60 Experiment
For the next 60 days, try to stay in a continuous, honest conversation with God.
Set a watch or alarm to beep every 60 minutes, and/or put up sticky notes & reminders around your home, car & office, as a reminder to stay connected.
Try to turn your thoughts back to God all throughout the day, as often as you can. This simple conscious contact with God isn't easy, but it's all you have to do - everything else will begin to fall into place over time.
Even if you're not yet convinced this is true (that God is real or that God loves you), try it. Every 60 minutes, stop and remember "God is with me right now and God loves me!" Remind yourself that your life matters to God and let that thought propel you to ask God, "Show me your will in this next moment.”
Begin the experiment today and see if this isn't the path to a far more satisfying life and a more authentic faith.
For more information on the 60/60 experiment I would encourage you to get a copy of Soul Revolution, or find more information at the Gateway Church website www.gatewaychurch.com link to Soul Revolution.
I'm excited to see what this does for the people of Faith Church, I'm already enjoying and learning from the experiment myself.
~Andy
Building an Authentic Faith - People Matter to God
Today we are going to begin a journey of looking at what it means for us to build an authentic faith. When I looked up authentic in the dictionary it gave this definition, not false or copied, I liked that, not copied. How we live out our faith can not be copied from others. While we can learn from the example of others, if we try to follow Jesus exactly like someone else– we will end up disillusioned & disappointed. The Christian faith is not a religion of rules – it is a personal relationship with the living God & each one of us needs to figure out for ourselves what it means to faithfully follow Jesus. Over the next 2 months, what I want us to do is look at several encounters that people had with Jesus not so we can copy them, but so we can learn from them how to develop, strengthen & live out our own faith.
As we begin our journey today we need to start where all faith needs to start – not with an understanding of ourselves, but with an understanding of God. In his book Soul Revolution, John Burke says, unless we believe God is above all, loving & good & for us, we won’t be willing to seek him. This makes perfect sense. Why would we want to develop a relationship with God if we didn’t believe that ultimately God is loving, good & for us? So the foundation on which we need to build our faith is this underlying truth, people matter to God. Our lives matter to God. You & I, we matter, God is for us & yes, God loves us. The entire bible is simply the story of God’s patient & faithful love for his children. It’s a story that time & again shows us that God is for us & that God does loves us. We heard of God’s love for us a few weeks ago from Isaiah 43:1-5.
1 But now, this is what the LORD says— he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead.
4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life.
5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.
The Bible is full of passages that speak of God’s love and probably the most familiar one is John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Notice how it all begins - For God so loved the world. It’s because God is for us & because our lives matter to God that God was willing to send Jesus to save us. That our lives matter to God is also the message of John 3:17. I always feel a little sorry for John 3:17 because it doesn’t get the same recognition, and yet the truth is it is equally as powerful a verse and it also shows us how much God loves us. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. God didn’t send Jesus to condemn us & judge us – God didn’t send Jesus to give us a bunch of rules to follow, God sent Jesus to save us & to show us the way to experience all the fullness & abundance of life, & God did this because God is for us. God did this because our lives matter to Him, he loves us. I was sharing with the new member class this past week that I continue to be humbled & amazed by the thought that the God of the universe, the God who created the mountains, set the waters into the seas & placed the planets into the sky cares about me. God cares about what happens to me, he cares about what I’m going through, he cares about our lives & if you don’t believe this, if you don’t believe that God loves us, if you don’t believe that our lives matters to Him, then look with me again at Mark 1:40-42.
40A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are willing, you can make me clean."
41Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!"
42Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
A man with leprosy came to Jesus… now let’s just stop here & remember that people who had leprosy didn’t matter to anyone. Because leprosy was such a contagious disease anyone who suffered with it was literally cast out of their homes, churches, schools & all of society & they were forced to live in communities with other lepers away from everyone. They could not see their family & friends, they were not allowed to worship in the temple with others & anytime a person even came close to a leper it was the responsibility of the leper to shout out “unclean, unclean” so that the healthy person would avoid them. So while lepers not only suffered with the pain of a physically debilitating disease, they also had to suffer the humiliation of social isolation. Lepers had no value, their lives simply didn’t matter - to anyone.
So it’s a man who has been told that his life is worthless who comes to Jesus & says, if you are willing, you can make me clean. If you want to, Jesus, if you are willing, if you care anything at all about me, you can make me clean. The man is taking a huge risk here because what he is asking Jesus is this, in a world where my life doesn’t matter to anyone, Jesus, does it matter to you? And Jesus answers with a resounding, Yes, your life matters!! I love what Jesus says here, I am willing. Jesus doesn’t reach out & heal the man because he feels obligated or compelled to do it. He doesn’t heal the man because he pities him or because it’s the right response in order to be faithful to God – Jesus heals the man because he wants to. Jesus heals the man because when he looked at him he didn’t see a leper, he didn’t see a man whose life had no value, he saw a child of God whose life mattered. By choosing to heal a leper, Jesus is making a statement about the value & worth of all people. All people matter to God, not just those who are clean & healthy, not just those on the inside of society, not just those who have standing, or who live the right way, all people matter. All people are loved by God & God chooses to reach out to us all.
Do you know that your life matters to God? Can you say with 100% certainty that God loves you & that even if you were the only person to ever life, God would have still sent Jesus to die for you? Do we understand deep within our heart & soul that there is simply nothing we can do to change God’s love for us? In a world where we are so often judged by our performance & where love is so often conditional, the unconditional love of God is often hard for us to accept, but until we do, I’m not sure we can build any kind of solid & enduring faith because the foundation of all faith is the understanding that our lives really do matter to God. When we grab hold of this truth, then, as John Burke says, we will be willing to seek God. Once we know that God loves us we can move forward to build an authentic & powerful faith that will change our lives & change our world, but nothing happens until we set this truth in our hearts & minds, so I want to invite you to join me in something called the 60/60 experiment so that we can set this truth as the foundation of our lives.
For the next 60 days I want to challenge us all to try & stay in a continuous & honest conversation with God where moment by moment, day by day we open ourselves to hearing God say, your life matter to me. Since this kind of relationship & conversation with God for most us does not come naturally, we will need some gentle reminders that God loves us. Again, John Burke, who helped developed this experiment has said, we need something to interrupt our habit of not giving God a second thought most of the day, so we can turn & allow God to break in and lead & guide us.
The 60/60 experiment challenges us to at least once every hour think about God & remember that God is with us & that God loves us. One suggestion on how to do this would be to get a watch that you can set to beep every hour & when the alarm interrupts your day remind yourself that God loves you, tell yourself once again that your life really does matters to God & that He is there to help you through whatever circumstance you find yourself in at that moment. I have been doing this for over a week now & I have to tell you that it has been an interesting experience. Many times I have heard the alarm go off at just the moment I needed some reassurance that God was with me. Once the alarm went off as I was reading an email from a friend of mine who was making a big change in her life. I immediately responded to her & told her I knew God was in her decision & reminded her that God that God loved her. What I have begun to see is that the times the alarm has gone off have not been random moments during the day, but God directed moments. They have reminded me that my life matters to God & that God is with me.
Alarms are just one way to go through the experiment, you could also try using post-it notes as reminders & you could place them in on your computer, mirrors, in your car, at work, place a small dot on your watch. Train yourself to think about God when you hear a clock chime, the phone ring, whatever might interrupt your routine use as a moment to remind yourself that God is with you & more importantly that God is for you. If doing this once every hour seems to be too much for where you are in your walk with God right now, then try thinking about God 3 times a day, or even twice, once when you get up in the morning & when you go bed at night, but keep doing it for 60 days so that by the end of October you will know with certainty that God is with you & God is for you & loves you. Knowing that our lives matter to God will begin to change us & it is that first necessary step to a more authentic & powerful faith.
As we begin our journey today we need to start where all faith needs to start – not with an understanding of ourselves, but with an understanding of God. In his book Soul Revolution, John Burke says, unless we believe God is above all, loving & good & for us, we won’t be willing to seek him. This makes perfect sense. Why would we want to develop a relationship with God if we didn’t believe that ultimately God is loving, good & for us? So the foundation on which we need to build our faith is this underlying truth, people matter to God. Our lives matter to God. You & I, we matter, God is for us & yes, God loves us. The entire bible is simply the story of God’s patient & faithful love for his children. It’s a story that time & again shows us that God is for us & that God does loves us. We heard of God’s love for us a few weeks ago from Isaiah 43:1-5.
1 But now, this is what the LORD says— he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead.
4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life.
5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.
The Bible is full of passages that speak of God’s love and probably the most familiar one is John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Notice how it all begins - For God so loved the world. It’s because God is for us & because our lives matter to God that God was willing to send Jesus to save us. That our lives matter to God is also the message of John 3:17. I always feel a little sorry for John 3:17 because it doesn’t get the same recognition, and yet the truth is it is equally as powerful a verse and it also shows us how much God loves us. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. God didn’t send Jesus to condemn us & judge us – God didn’t send Jesus to give us a bunch of rules to follow, God sent Jesus to save us & to show us the way to experience all the fullness & abundance of life, & God did this because God is for us. God did this because our lives matter to Him, he loves us. I was sharing with the new member class this past week that I continue to be humbled & amazed by the thought that the God of the universe, the God who created the mountains, set the waters into the seas & placed the planets into the sky cares about me. God cares about what happens to me, he cares about what I’m going through, he cares about our lives & if you don’t believe this, if you don’t believe that God loves us, if you don’t believe that our lives matters to Him, then look with me again at Mark 1:40-42.
40A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are willing, you can make me clean."
41Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!"
42Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
A man with leprosy came to Jesus… now let’s just stop here & remember that people who had leprosy didn’t matter to anyone. Because leprosy was such a contagious disease anyone who suffered with it was literally cast out of their homes, churches, schools & all of society & they were forced to live in communities with other lepers away from everyone. They could not see their family & friends, they were not allowed to worship in the temple with others & anytime a person even came close to a leper it was the responsibility of the leper to shout out “unclean, unclean” so that the healthy person would avoid them. So while lepers not only suffered with the pain of a physically debilitating disease, they also had to suffer the humiliation of social isolation. Lepers had no value, their lives simply didn’t matter - to anyone.
So it’s a man who has been told that his life is worthless who comes to Jesus & says, if you are willing, you can make me clean. If you want to, Jesus, if you are willing, if you care anything at all about me, you can make me clean. The man is taking a huge risk here because what he is asking Jesus is this, in a world where my life doesn’t matter to anyone, Jesus, does it matter to you? And Jesus answers with a resounding, Yes, your life matters!! I love what Jesus says here, I am willing. Jesus doesn’t reach out & heal the man because he feels obligated or compelled to do it. He doesn’t heal the man because he pities him or because it’s the right response in order to be faithful to God – Jesus heals the man because he wants to. Jesus heals the man because when he looked at him he didn’t see a leper, he didn’t see a man whose life had no value, he saw a child of God whose life mattered. By choosing to heal a leper, Jesus is making a statement about the value & worth of all people. All people matter to God, not just those who are clean & healthy, not just those on the inside of society, not just those who have standing, or who live the right way, all people matter. All people are loved by God & God chooses to reach out to us all.
Do you know that your life matters to God? Can you say with 100% certainty that God loves you & that even if you were the only person to ever life, God would have still sent Jesus to die for you? Do we understand deep within our heart & soul that there is simply nothing we can do to change God’s love for us? In a world where we are so often judged by our performance & where love is so often conditional, the unconditional love of God is often hard for us to accept, but until we do, I’m not sure we can build any kind of solid & enduring faith because the foundation of all faith is the understanding that our lives really do matter to God. When we grab hold of this truth, then, as John Burke says, we will be willing to seek God. Once we know that God loves us we can move forward to build an authentic & powerful faith that will change our lives & change our world, but nothing happens until we set this truth in our hearts & minds, so I want to invite you to join me in something called the 60/60 experiment so that we can set this truth as the foundation of our lives.
For the next 60 days I want to challenge us all to try & stay in a continuous & honest conversation with God where moment by moment, day by day we open ourselves to hearing God say, your life matter to me. Since this kind of relationship & conversation with God for most us does not come naturally, we will need some gentle reminders that God loves us. Again, John Burke, who helped developed this experiment has said, we need something to interrupt our habit of not giving God a second thought most of the day, so we can turn & allow God to break in and lead & guide us.
The 60/60 experiment challenges us to at least once every hour think about God & remember that God is with us & that God loves us. One suggestion on how to do this would be to get a watch that you can set to beep every hour & when the alarm interrupts your day remind yourself that God loves you, tell yourself once again that your life really does matters to God & that He is there to help you through whatever circumstance you find yourself in at that moment. I have been doing this for over a week now & I have to tell you that it has been an interesting experience. Many times I have heard the alarm go off at just the moment I needed some reassurance that God was with me. Once the alarm went off as I was reading an email from a friend of mine who was making a big change in her life. I immediately responded to her & told her I knew God was in her decision & reminded her that God that God loved her. What I have begun to see is that the times the alarm has gone off have not been random moments during the day, but God directed moments. They have reminded me that my life matters to God & that God is with me.
Alarms are just one way to go through the experiment, you could also try using post-it notes as reminders & you could place them in on your computer, mirrors, in your car, at work, place a small dot on your watch. Train yourself to think about God when you hear a clock chime, the phone ring, whatever might interrupt your routine use as a moment to remind yourself that God is with you & more importantly that God is for you. If doing this once every hour seems to be too much for where you are in your walk with God right now, then try thinking about God 3 times a day, or even twice, once when you get up in the morning & when you go bed at night, but keep doing it for 60 days so that by the end of October you will know with certainty that God is with you & God is for you & loves you. Knowing that our lives matter to God will begin to change us & it is that first necessary step to a more authentic & powerful faith.
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