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 ‘Thoughts’ 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. |
What kind of person are you?
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Are you a person who gives or takes? Do you give to those around you? Does your character overflow from your soul to touch others? What kind of person are you?
“For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.” (Gal 5:13 NLT) |
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? |
Climbing Life with God
In July I climbed to the summit of Mount Shasta at 14,179 feet. I came down with altitude sickness that made the climb grueling. Fighting nausea and fatigue, and on the verge of passing out on many occasions, the climb was made so much harder by the lack of snow which made bare the volcanic skree on which we slid and slipped our way to the summit. I must admit that I was very close to quitting, as nothing I could do from recalling scripture to determined brute anger could carry me past the physical limitations of altitude sickness.
Yet as hard as the climb was, it was an amazing experience that reflects life. The higher I got, the more I found that I could not rely on my own self or my own strength. The further I climbed, I realized I had to rely less on myself, and more on God. I also saw that while my body ached and life seemed unbearable that God was always around me. His beauty, His glory, His presence was around me in the sheer awesomeness and beauty of the mountain. I also saw that God’s love for me was present through the encouragement and support of the friends he had placed in my life on that climb. Sometimes when you want or hope for a great miracle, all you really need to do is open your eyes to see God’s glory and majesty that is already around you in love and support of friends that he has placed in your life to take the climb with you.
Where did the Mystery go?
Whatever happened to that passion for life that we had when we first committed ourselves to Christ? What happened to the endless zeal to seek out God that we once had? Where did that mystery go, that Christ first revealed to us in our wonder that was filled with hope despite uncertainty? Life was new, and we looked with hope to the new adventures Christ would bring us through despite the accompanying hardships and trials that we would be strengthened to overcome. But it is still there. It isn’t a thing of the past. The reasons for the zeal, the passion, and the excitement are still there if we just move past our legalism and rationalism. Proper living and proper doctrine are good things but not in themselves. Without the love of God that motivates one to such life, these things are merely the elements of a dead and pharisaic existence. No, God is there calling our hearts to that great mystery in Christ. God is tugging on our hearts calling us to that love which motivates us to zeal, passion and excitement. We seek to present ourselves as mature and rational people. We present a Christian faith which is emotionally calm and realistic. We stifle the passion and wildness of our hearts as something sinful and wrong, not recognizing that God is the author of our hearts. There is a wildness and passion waiting to cry out and to connect us to something much greater than we are. There is a wonderful story of God waiting to unfold within our hearts.
“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name… That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.” (Fredrick Buechner. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale)