Here is another success story from the World Vision Micro Loan program.
Another Lesson Learned
This morning, after our gathering, we were waiting for some food to be delivered. I was on the front porch of the house talking with a friend. Partway through the conversation the food that we were waiting for arrived, and help was needed to carry it into the house. Without thinking, I immediately left in the middle of the conversation to help. There were others there who could have helped, so it wasn’t like it was absolutely necessary for me to get involved. A bit later I thought about that and realized that I had abandoned my friend right in the middle of our conversation, and I wondered why I did that.
Part of it could be that I’m not a great conversationalist, so it was more comfortable for me to help out in a way that didn’t require talking. That’s something I need to continue working on, although I am better than I was. Part of it could be that I feel like I have a reputation as a servant to uphold. That is one of my gifts, and I do feel more comfortable behind the scenes than out front, so of course I don’t want people to think I’m being lazy. Regardless of the reason, I should have stayed on the porch and not abandoned my friend.
I think that a bigger reason is something that most of us deal with in our walk with Jesus, and that is the tendency to feel that we have to do something all the time rather than just be in the moment. I know that I sometimes will let things to do draw me away from spending time with the Father or with my brothers and sisters. A lot of evangelicalism, especially the fundamentalist branch, is built on “doing something for God.” Great churches are built on the efforts of the leaders and members. Christians are made to feel guilty if they aren’t involved in one of the programs of their church. Pastors burn out because they feel that it’s their job to build a great work. In the midst of all this busyness, churches find that their members are not being discipled and are not growing in their walk with God.
The thing is, many of the programs and things that we try to do for God can be done without the Holy Spirit. Huge, “successful” churches and ministries can be built completely on human effort. Some of those come tumbling down, some get even bigger, but they really don’t have much impact for the Kingdom. We bemoan the fact that people aren’t knocking down the doors of our churches, and young people are leaving as soon as they are able. I think one reason is that we have presented a gospel that claims to be all about grace and a relationship with God, but is really about working. Not for salvation, but to please God.
God invites us into relationship with him. He tells us to be still and know that he is God. God is our Father, not our employer. It is true that we serve God and others. It is true that there are things that each one of us is called to do. But, do we do them in our own strength or in the power of the Spirit coming from just being in a close relationship with the Father? It is out of that relationship that we walk in God’s love through our day-to-day. It is in that relationship that we learn the Father’s heart and find out where he is working so that we can join in. The closer we draw to our Father, the more sensitive we will be to his agenda, and the more we may realize that we need to let our agenda go. Our efforts will be to join God’s work rather than trying to get him to bless ours.
Joining in God’s work might just mean that we continue a conversation on the front porch and let someone else help with the other stuff.
TGIF
Summer is almost here officially. The temperature is climbing and each day brings a chance of thunderstorms. The school year is almost over, and I don’t know if the students or teachers are looking forward to vacation more. Monday is Memorial Day, and we Americans will honor those who have given their lives in service to the nation, before we hit the great sales and have cookouts where we eat and drink too much. Hopefully, we’ll reflect on our freedom and those who have died.
Here are the links of the week:
Over at internet monk, Chaplain Mike has issues with evangelicalism. Part 1 of the series is here.
A “what if?” question.
Getting real about hate.
Prayer is always subversive.
Evidently, there’s not an app for relationships.
Training pastors.
A place in the Son.
Do you want to die?
Don’t you hate it when people do a bad remake of a song.
This is funny.
A new sport?
Scot McKnight reviews After You Believe by N.T. Wright.
I wonder if he’s going to sell this on ebay.
Heel grabber, Part 1.
What makes it “church?”
Great church sign.
Extraordinary churches (HT: Scot McKnight).
Modesty.
Have a great weekend. Thank you for reading my blog.
Just a Sinner…
…saved by grace. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that description of a Christian. In the fundamentalist circles in which I grew up, that idea was drummed into our heads from the time we confessed faith in Christ. Along with that we heard Paul’s admonition to not think of ourselves more highly than we should, and Isaiah’s statement about our righteousness being filthy rags. We were taught that we really are nothing more than unprofitable servants, who serve God and others because that’s what we are servants.
There seems to be a bit of tension in the New Testament between the passages that speak of us as servants and the ones that speak of us as children and heirs of God. In our gathering last Sunday, we were talking about how we often see ourselves more lowly than we should, rather than more highly. If we see ourselves as merely sinners saved by grace and unprofitable servants, then our service becomes something less than following the example of our Master. It becomes something that we do because our lowly status compels us rather than the love of Christ.
It is true that we can do nothing to save ourselves, that we need the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to go through our day-to-day. It is also true that if we are in Christ, we are his friends. We are sons and daughters of the Creator. Hebrews 2:11 says that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. As we go through our lives we are being shaped into the likeness of Christ. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, individually and collectively. That doesn’t sound like people who are just unprofitable servants.
Jesus served. He is the ultimate example of what it means to serve others. How did he serve? Did he serve because he had to, because he was just a servant? No. Jesus served as one who was the Lord of all. He served completely voluntarily, giving us the supreme fulfillment of the two greatest commandments; love God, and love others as ourselves. That is how we are to serve, voluntarily in love because of who we are. Who we are is the image of Christ in this world. We are children of the living God, and we have the calling and privilege to join in God’s mission to restore all things. We don’t have to love and serve in a sniveling manner. A Christian who thinks of themselves too lowly does not serve sacrificially or lovingly.
If we see ourselves as God sees us, as beloved children who bear the image of Christ, we can then begin to serve as Jesus did. We can truly begin to love God and love others as ourselves.
World Vision Wednesday
Dirty water kills a child every 22 seconds. Thanks to the efforts of World Vision, some villages in Niger no longer have to worry about their water. You can read this success story here.
TGIF
It’s Friday again, and another work week has come and gone. I read a preview for Michael Spencer’s book, Mere Churchianity a couple of days ago, and it is a definite must read. I have posted many links to Internet Monk so some you know the quality of the writing and the heart of Spencer, who went home to the Father way too soon. Just from the preview I can tell that this book is important. Buy it.
Here are the links:
A time to sow.
Too much heaven? Part 3.
The people behind the special effects in “Heroes, Season 3.”
Is doubt an eraser?
The creativity of questioning.
Reaching the pinnacle.
Why it’s not about morality.
A tale of two pigeons.
Alan Knox on Hebrews 2:9-11.
Jesus loves me.
A new tip from Bill Kinnon.
Ecclesial imagination.
Between church and state.
I guess I’m part of the problem.
Well, that’s it for this week. Enjoy your Pentecost Sunday.
Gold
According to G. Gordon Liddy and others, gold is what will save us in these tough economic times. At least it will save our financial portfolios. Besides the question of whether you would buy a used car from that man (a few years ago, Liddy was pushing mutual funds), there are other issues with the pitch being made by the gold sellers, at least for those of us who follow Jesus.
The commercials are based on fear. Fear of the future, fear of the government, fear of losing the American Dream. In contrast, believers are told to not fear. We do not fear because we are children of the Creator of the universe. God gives us a spirit of adoption, not a spirit of fear. Jesus tells us to not fear those who can kill the body (I would add, or take our things), but to fear God. We are loved by a Father who tells us not to worry about the material things, because he knows even the number of hairs on our heads (of course, it’s easier for him to do that with some of us).
The other thrust of the buy gold campaign is security. In one ad, Liddy drops gold coins into one hand and say, “That’s the sound of security.” He’s telling us that his security is in a bunch of rocks that come out of the ground. I wonder what he would say if the price of an ounce of gold suddenly dropped to a much lower amount. Where would his security be then?
As humans, we tend to put our security into what we can see, whether it’s minerals, jobs, possessions, or people. It’s perfectly natural for someone to put his security in gold. For the Christian however, our security is to be in God alone. In Romans 8, Paul tells us that there is nothing in the entire universe that can separate us from the love of God. I think that counts as security, don’t you? All through Scripture, God’s children are encouraged to trust their Father to take care of them and meet their needs.
I really don’t have any problem with people planning their financial future. We do need to be aware of the danger of making things like gold, retirement accounts, and home equity idols that we put our trust in rather than putting our trust in the One who has promised to take care of us.
Besides, if the literalists are correct, when we get to heaven we’ll be walking on streets paved with gold, so it can’t be worth all that much. 🙂
World Vision Wednesday
Next month, the G8 Summit will meet. The leaders of the most powerful and wealthiest countries in the world have set certain goals regarding extreme global poverty. The Millennium Development Goals were developed in 2000 and the desired outcome is the eradication of extreme poverty by 2015. With five years left, the goals are still a long way from being met.
The question is whether the countries who signed on to the Millennium Development Goals will keep their commitments. To read more about this, and to find out what you can do, visit World Vision’s page here.
Delight and Desire
Psalm 37: 4 says, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” I was taught growing up that if you had God as your greatest delight, he would change your desires so they would be in line with what God wanted. and then those desires would be granted. This meant that our desires would become things like having bigger ministries, or other things that meant we were becoming better Christians. Another interpretation is that if we really delight in God, all of our wishes will be granted, even if those include a luxury car, a nicer house, and plenty of money.
Both of these interpretations have one thing in common. They both treat God as a kind of divine vending machine. If you put something in, you get something out. Usually the way you prove your delight in God is by doing more Bible reading and praying, by going to church more often, or by doing any number of practices. Any of these things are fine in and of themselves. The problem comes when we do them thinking that it will obligate God to do certain things for us. It doesn’t matter if those things are material or not, if we see them as payment for the things we do, we are wrong.
We were talking about this in our gathering on Sunday, and I got to thinking. What if delighting in God is the desire? God doesn’t put the priority on what we do, but rather on being in relationship with him. Jesus said that eternal life is knowing the Father, and knowing the Son. We are given life not just to live a moral life and then go to heaven when we die. We are given life in order to intimately know the Father and the Son. Everything we do comes out of that relationship.
When a married couple love each other, they each take delight in the other. That delight does bring about certain actions, but it is not the actions that bring about the delight, rather it is the other way around. The goal of the delight is not to get things from the other. Instead it is delight that is rewarded with greater intimacy, which brings greater delight, which brings…you get the picture.
I believe that it is that way in our relationship with our Father. When we delight in him, when our beings are wrapped up in getting to know him better and living in his love, God gives us the thing we desire, more intimacy with him. That causes more desire, which brings about more delight, and so on. As I look at Psalm 37, I see God blessing his people in ways that go beyond just material and physical.
For Josh
Today you graduate from UNCC with a Master’s degree in architecture. As you stated in your blog, the past three years have been more about how you’ve grown as a person than learning about architecture. You have certainly learned a great deal about architecture, both in theory and in practical terms. But what is most evident is your growth as a human being and a follower of Jesus.
We have always been proud of you as you have grown up. We have a son who shows love for God by a concern for those less fortunate. We see the Father’s hand in your desire to build affordable, sustainable housing so that people who have to live in public housing have a good quality place to live. We see Jesus in you in your plans to move back to Nashville soon in order to help in the rebuilding efforts.
You are a special son, and we are grateful to God for you. We pray that God will continue to guide you and give you success in what you do. It has been a joy to have you here the last three years and we will miss you. We know however, that you must go where you’ll be most alive and where you’ll be best able to use what God has given you.
We love you, Josh. Congratulations.