Many believers understand being ‘not of this world’. Yet perhaps we’ve forgotten that while we are not of this world, we are to be in this world. Too many live as if they are outside of this world. Perhaps more people would be reached, and more love would be spread if we stopped trying to live outside of this world. When was the last time you had a conversation with someone who did not look like you, did not think like you, did not hold the same convictions as you? If you have, did you judge them? Did you assault them with “truth”? Or did you seek to understand them? Did you seek to love them? Church is meant to be a lighthouse to the lost, a hospital for the sick, not a social club for a specific class of elite. So how do you portray God’s love to this world?
Archive for the ‘Ministry’ Category
In the World - But Not of the World
Trust - Key to the Heart
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| Trust is the key to a person’s heart. We live in such an unsafe world of hurt. Negative messages attack us from every side. If you want to touch someone’s heart you must earn their trust. Before they will let down the walls they have built up, they must feel safe. You cannot make another person do anything, but you can help to create a relationship of safety, of trust. Love is about serving others. Love is others-focused. Love is about meeting the needs of others. Love someone, serve them, meet their needs, and you will create that trust. You will earn the key to their heart. |
Balancing Community and Isolation
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| Luke 5:16 “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray”Today we often call attention to Jesus’ habit of slipping away into the wilderness to pray alone. (Luke 5:16) This seems to have great appeal to our modern culture of individualism and isolation. Everything we do is about the individual. Marketing targets the individual consumer promising individual pleasures and fulfillment. The individual seeks to find meaning in his life, to find what he can gain, and to probe the depths of his soul. In faith we seek longer quiet times, reading the bible by our selves, and praying in solitude. Yet perhaps comparing this individualist culture to the culture represented in this passage is like comparing apples to oranges. The culture of Jesus’ day was about community. Prayer, reading, study, was done in community. For Jesus to seek alone time with God was a rare and special thing. Today Individualism and isolation is the norm of our society as we grow ever distant from community in our extreme individualism. I believe it is good to seek alone time with God to pray, study and talk to God, yet I believe we are perhaps missing something in our application of this scripture. I believe this passage shows us a balance between communal faith experience and the individual faith experience. We need both and in a faith built around communal experience Jesus sought to spend individual time with God. Yet with so much emphasis on the individual in our culture today, especially when the standard prescription for spiritual growth seems to be to dive deeper into isolation through closet prayer and study, that perhaps this scripture should inspire us to seek to balance our communal and individual experience of faith, rather than using it as a reason to dive deeper into self-focus, isolation and individualism. |
Uncontainable
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| May “Your roots … grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:17-18
God is truly uncontainable. He cannot be contained by the boxes we try to set around Him. We try to limit God according to rules and systems by which we think He should work. However God is beyond our ability to limit him, nor can anyone constrain His love or presence from us. If we truly knew how deep His love is for us, would we really try to contain Him, and would we really regulate who we think is deserving of His love? If we were to truly see how much we are all in need of His love, and that His uncontainable love is more than sufficient to touch each and every soul in this world, how would this impact how we love? Shouldn’t our love for others be a reflection of his uncontainable love? |
Take up Your Cross
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| Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” Mark 8:34
Take a look at your life. How much of your life is an excess? How much of what we do or have is a choice of indulgence and preference? Are you truly denying yourself and taking up the cross? Or are you selectively choosing inconveniences that you can endure for brief moments for the sake of ministry? What does it truly mean to take up the cross and follow Jesus? Perhaps our culture has confused sacrifice for discomfort. |