Lent 2020 | Day 13: “Spring”

The four seasons of the year are a constant reminder that in life there are different stages and phases. That there are ups and downs, that there is an ebb and flow to what it means to be a human being in this world. Every spring we see the return of life as we want to imagine it to be. The weather changes, the leaves turn green again, and the flowers begin to bloom. And through it all, we are reminded of the fact that we too can have a new spring in life, not in the sense that we grow younger or more energetic, but in the sense that in Christ, each new day is a new opportunity for us to come face to face with the glorious mystery that we have been made new. Every spring is a reminder of this joyous reality.

This spring, I encourage you as we march towards the celebration of Resurrection Sunday. As we prepare our hearts and minds to give glory to God for the glorious mystery of life after death. I want to encourage you to look back and see what God has done in this past year. Since the last time we celebrated Christ’s resurrection, what has God brought you through? What has God brought you to? What is it that God has done in these last twelve months, can serve as a reminder of his glorious grace, of his wondrous mercy, of his unending love for each and every one of us.

I think it is a good time to stop to reflect and consider that what God has offered to us is not only better and greater than we could have ever imagined, but it is worth our greatest efforts in order to see it in our lives. God’s purposes for us are always good. His will is perfect, and I encourage you and me to see this for what it is, a truly miraculous gift. A gift that we can receive anew every day and enjoy until we stand before Him in glory.

Lent 2020 | Day 12: “Drink”

In this season of Lent, as we move ever forward towards the resurrection of Jesus, let us take a moment and reflect on what it means to drink. To drink in that which is good, and sometimes to drink in that which is not as good for the sake of others.

One of Jesus’s most famous statements is when he says, “Not my will, but your will be done.”

The context of this statement actually occurs in the Gospel of Matthew (26:42). And in that moment, Jesus is praying that the cup of God’s wrath would pass from him. But Jesus says to the Father, as he prays in the garden of Gethsemane, that if this will not pass without him drinking the cup, then he would drink it. Jesus would submit his will to the Father’s so that the Father’s will would be done.

One of the things that we often fail to see in life is how many times we must drink the bitter water of suffering. Jesus did this as an example to us, of what it would take for us to receive salvation. But there will be times in our lives where we will confronted with the opportunity to drink something that we would rather avoid, but we choose to do it anyway. Knowing that if we do it in righteousness, if we do it as an act of service for others, then we will receive a reward for it.

But there are other times when we must drink that which we would rather not. This may be the result of another’s actions or maybe even our own. But the cup must be emptied. In those instances, it cannot be avoided. The truth is that sometimes regardless of the reason, drinking of the cup is a manifestation of our willingness to surrender our own wills, to the will of God.

What lies before us today is this: there are times we must see our act of drinking as a service to God, or what as an act of service to others. I want to invite you to join me in learning to trust in God ever more deeply so that we might truly enjoy the riches and benefits of the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ regardless of the cup we have to drink.

Lent 2020 | Day 11: “Journey”

Our focus for today will be that of “journey.”

Several years ago, I attended a youth retreat. During one of the breakout sessions, a friend of mine was leading a small group discussion on the idea of “packing for the journey.” It was a reference to preparing to take your faith more seriously. To live it our more intentionally.

I don’t remember everything that he said. But I do remember one of the things that he did. In the middle of the room was a huge tent, one that you would take when you went out camping. And around the tent, he had set up what looked like a campsite, minus the fire. The biggest impression that that example left me was with the idea that the Christian faith is a journey. And as with every journey, we must learn to prepare for what is ahead.

One of the key ideas that we talk about at our local congregation almost every week is the idea that we want to normalize the Christian life. What that means is that we desire for every believer to take into consideration what it is going to take to live a life that is pleasing to God and satisfactory to us.

The journey that we are on as believers in Christ, and as sojourners in this world, waiting for our time to be with God forever, requires us to take into account how we live our faith. We have to take inventory of what we must do in order to live a life that consistently reflects what we believe about God, about the gospel, and about ourselves.

The reality is that the journey that we’re on requires us to take into account the many things that will come across our path. We cannot anticipate everything, but we can prepare for almost anything if we would just consider the way that life is lived.

It is true, that the gospel life that we are called to live is one that is very different from the world around us. And yet there are many things that are consistent, even constant. We must seek every day to be prayerful, to read the Scripture. To be mindful of the fact that the call to worship is not something that merely happens one day a week, but happens every single day. We must learn to engage in this journey actively and not allow this journey to happen to us in some passive sense.

In this season of Lent, as we move diligently and intentionally toward Resurrection Sunday, I encourage you to consider the journey that you’re on and to ask yourself, “Am I doing everything that I can to be prepared for what might come.”

Lent 2020 | 2nd Sunday in Lent: “Celebrate”

Today’s the 2nd Sunday in Lent. Every Sunday in Lent is not technically a part of the season of Lent. It serves as a reminder of the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ because every Sunday is a celebration of what the gospel proclaims. So this Sunday, and every Sunday in the season of Lent, we will celebrate what it means to have been saved. So, rather than an extended devotion, I would like to offer you a song that can help us to focus our attention and to give worship to God for the sacrifice, ministry, mission, and purpose of His Son our Savior, Jesus Christ, as we celebrate the renewed life that we have in him. Let us celebrate today, for He is good and in all things he is faithful to us.

Lent 2020 | Day 10: “Saved”

I think many times in the church, we spend a lot of time telling people that they need to be saved. But we always frame it in the context of being saved from something.

I think there is something not completely consistent underlying this approach. It tends to be easier to cause people to fear, to get them to behave in ways that we may believe are more consistent with what God desires. However, I think this is wrongheaded, and maybe even upside down.

The reality is that we have been saved for something. We have been saved for relationship with God. We have been saved for relationship with one another. We have been saved so that we might do the good works that God has prepared for us (Eph. 2:10). This is why we have been saved.

We are the beneficiaries of a past reality so that we can enjoy a present comfort, and so that we can look forward to a future hope This is the wonder of living in Christ. That we have been saved, while we are being saved, which we properly call sanctification; until we are saved, which is glorification.

We are on a journey. There is no one on this journey who has arrived at their final destination yet. If they still breathe and walk on this earth we are called to continue in faithfulness. So I want to encourage you in this season of Lent, to remember that what we are moving towards is something that has already happened and that the reality of this final act can give us confidence in our daily lives. For who we are supposed to be in Christ is still being worked out by God’s grace and the Holy Spirit’s ministry. You have been saved. I have been saved. Let us rejoice in that today!

Lent 2020 | Day 9: “Testify”

What I find interesting is that I do not find it difficult to tell my friends and even perfect strangers to go and try this great restaurant. And yet, I think that there is something in us that keeps us from sharing what we have tasted and seen and experienced, because of Jesus, because of our salvation.

A friend of mine introduced me to a new restaurant in the city where I live. And ever since I had my first meal, I made a decision that I would try ten different things on the menu before I repeated one.

With each new dish I’ve tried I’ve discovered, I have grown to appreciate the flavors and tastes and experience that I have encountered with every meal. What I find interesting is that I do not find it difficult to tell my friends and even perfect strangers to go and try this great restaurant. And yet, I think that there is something in us that keeps us from sharing what we have tasted and seen and experienced, because of Jesus, because of our salvation.

The idea of testifying is something that we can over-spiritualize. It’s something that we may even take for granted. As believers, one of the greatest challenges that we have is overcoming our fear or anxiety with regard to being witnesses to God’s goodness in us and through us. The gospel of Jesus Christ provides us the perfect opportunity to share what we have seen, to share what we have tasted, to share with others who have never had the opportunity to see what we have seen or what we have tasted.

And so I want to encourage you as we move forward in this season of Lent, take some time and find a way and find a way to give testimony to what God has been doing in your life. If we do not take up the challenge of looking back and asking God to reveal what he has done, how in the world will we ever convince anyone else, that God is not only good but that he worthy of our lives.

Lent 2020 | Day 8: “Teacher”

The focus of today is on the idea of a “teacher.”

Over the course of my life, I have realized that my parents were a lot wiser and smarter than I gave them credit for. One of the realities that dawned on me when I became a parent was when I saw how many of the lessons that I had learned. Whether I acknowledge them or not, a lot of what I had been taught had become a part of who I was as an adult, and now as a father.

What I realized was that we don’t really know how well we have learned the lessons until we have to actually apply them. We might have the best teacher, and Jesus is the best teacher of all things that God requires of us, but until we begin to apply those lessons, until we see those lessons as necessary for how we live our lives, we will struggle to determine if we can trust this teacher.

I don’t know when it happened, but I do know that the moment I began to accept that my parents knew more than I did about how to live in this world, the easier it became for me to accept what they were teaching. And I think the same is true of our faith. The faster we can get to the place where we trust what the Scripture teaches us, when we trust what God has revealed in and through Jesus, and when we allow the Holy Spirit to take those lessons and implant them in our hearts and in our minds, we will find ourselves able to live out that which we find throughout Scripture.

We have the world’s greatest teacher. The question is, how well are we at being students?

Do We Look More American than Christian? Part 2

Part 2: Christian Celebrity

This past decade the death of cultural Christianity accelerated rapidly.

Statistically, the church is in decline, and most of that is evidence of the death of a version of Christianity where people merely attended for social reasons.
*see Barna’s statistics on Christianity.

While some are concerned by these trends, I think it’s a healthy thing for genuine Christianity to reemerge and for people to no longer put on a show or merely have “a form of godliness but denying its power” (Timothy 3:5). American Christianity for too long has suffered from being commandeered by the culture for its purposes. Though some forms of cultural Christianity are holding on for now (like in the political arena), they likely will soon die too as people no longer see Christianity as a viable way to gain public approval.

My hope for the next decade is this: The death of Christian celebrity.

We reap what we sow

The Christian celebrity culture has been an infection in the American Church. It is antithetical to Paul’s critique of the church in Corinthians: “When one of you says, ‘I am a follower of Paul,’ and another says, ‘I follow Apollos,’ aren’t you acting just like people of the world?” (1 Corinthians 3:4). It has molded and shaped pastors, churches, and denominations to be attention seekers, fame grabbers, and ultimately has resulted in the “cover-up culture” we are now reaping the results of [eg., Mark Discoll, Bill Hybels, the cover up of abuse in Southern Baptist churches, etc.].

Lest you think it’s only a “big church” problem – small churches fall prey to treating their leaders as celebrities too. In fact, the first “fall from grace” I had first-hand experience with was as a part of a church of less than 100 who treated the pastor like he was untouchable.

Ultimately the Christian celebrity culture is antithetical to the Gospel.

Seeking the biggest stage.

Publishing a New York Times bestseller.

Having your new worship song trend on iTunes.

Being an influencer on social media.

Garnering the largest financial support.

Being in a context where no one questions you and you are surrounded by “Yes Men.”

These are the things that Hollywood, Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley value. Not Jesus. And such a reality being normalized in the Church is detrimental to the work of the Gospel in the life of the person celebritized (yes, I may have just made up a word) and ultimately in the life of the people buying into their celebrity status as well.

The Bible is clear that the fruit of Christian celebrity is: immaturity, the appearance of godliness, dead religion, self-righteousness, and self-promotion (also called “conceit” [ESV]; vainglory [KJV], “empty conceit” [NASB], “vanity” [NET]). The very things Jesus hated most about the leaders of His people when he walked the earth.

Self-inflicted wounds

The harshest part of the reality of Christian celebrity culture is this: We created it.

You and me.

The people of the church.

We are buying what they’re selling us and thus perpetuating a reality that is ultimately harmful.

We are promoting Christian celebrities, willingly placing ourselves under their teaching, and giving our support to the very things Christ warned His people against.

Instead, we should be focused on the downward trajectory of humility Christ displayed for us and we are called to imitate [Philippians 2:1-11]. Willing to die to our own selfish ambition and take on the holy ambition of Jesus laying our lives down that He might lift us up.

So, this Lent, may we hear the words of Jesus afresh as we pray for the death of Christian celebrity culture both in our hearts and in the American Church:

Matthew 23 (Message version)

Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
“Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
“Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
“I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either. You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned…
“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds…”

Read the Rest of Series

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Lent 2020 | Day 7: “Spirit”

One of the most compelling encounters in Jesus’s ministry, recorded in the Gospel of John chapter 4, is his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. In it, you find a powerful exchange of God working to reveal himself in Jesus, to someone who had no context and had no real ability to really understand. But Jesus was patient and gracious and demonstrated something about what it means to serve those around us.

One of the things that I find most interesting about this exchange is the way that Jesus describes the reality of worship. In Lent, we spend a lot of time reflecting (and probably fasting) and considering what it means to trust in God in Christ. And what is interesting about these relationships and all of these related topics, is that something else is happening beneath the surface. God is not looking for us to merely conform our behavior to who he is and what he desires for us. God is looking for something else.

In John 4:23-24 Jesus said something that reminds us of realities we often take for granted, or maybe even do not consider at all.

23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (ESV)

The reality is that there is something else going on in our lives beyond the every day. God is spirit, and therefore the way we worship him must reflect who he is, as well as what he is.

God is not interested in our playing at worship. He is not interested in external demonstrations of worship. God is looking for the transformation that comes from the acknowledgment of the truth and how that impacts who we are in our everyday life. Our worship must be grounded in the truth of who God is. And our worship is expressed as we are changed and transformed by this reality.

Why is our evangelism broken?

A friend posted the following question on Facebook. I wanted to respond, but I did not want to blow up the thread. So, I decided to take some time to think about the question and respond more fully (mainly for my sake).

On to the question.

Should our focus lean more towards training church members to invite someone to church so they can hear the gospel or on training them to share the gospel without a church invite in mind?

Let me make a couple of observations right at the beginning.

I believe framing of the question is all wrong, but I understand (at least I think I do) why it is asked this way.
The problem the Church has to address is its insistence on defining/describing the church as a location.

I want to unpack my two observations a little more fully. This is an important issue and one that we have to work harder at addressing in the Church.

First, I believe the question is all wrong.

Why? Because it poses a question that God, Jesus, the Bible, the apostles, church history will NEVER be able to answer. And the reason the question won’t be answered is that it doesn’t actually identify a problem the aforementioned saw as an issue. The idea of inviting people to go to a location to receive information has been completely foreign to the life of the church.

The notion of “thought leaders,” “content matter experts,” “influencers” and gurus is a modern innovation. This is not the way that people generally looked for answers to their questions. Life was the great teacher. And the people you did life with were the primary source of learning and growing.

To go a little deeper here, the Church does not have a focus, it has a mission. Christians don’t do training, we engage in discipleship. We don’t invite people to church, we receive them into the body. The church is not the place to hear the Gospel, ~~it’s where believers receive instruction for Gospel mission~~ it’s when believers assemble to receive instruction for Gospel mission. Until we straighten out how we are thinking and talking about these issues, we will continue to have issues.

Second, we have to stop talking about the Church as a place. Period.

The Church is everywhere. And, there may be expressions of that one Church in local congregations. And, those congregations may meet in a variety of locations. But there is still and always will be one Church. No matter how messed up the people who make her up.

This is something I’m actually working on myself. I don’t want to invite people to church. I want to invite them to visit our fellowship, or to come and enjoy our community, or attend our gathering. Anything that makes the invitation about the people present.

We have to move away from using the concepts of marketing and branding as the lens through which we interpret the Church’s identity and purpose. These are tools. Tools that we should redeem. But when the tools become the means by which we understand who and what we are, it may be time to check our hearts!