Category: performance based religion

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Church Signs: “The Bible is Chock Full of…

…New Year’s Resolutions. “

I’m not against making resolutions at the beginning of a new year (although I don’t make them), and I’m definitely not against the Bible. I do have a problem with trying to mix the two. It is true that there are commands in the Bible and we are told that there are certain things that characterize followers of Jesus.

Trying to improve in certain areas of our lives is a good thing. As an athlete, I was always trying to improve my skills. As a coach, I never let my players rest on past accomplishments. In many careers, if you’re not improving, you’re going backwards. It’s good to try to be a better husband, father, etc. There is nothing wrong with trying to be a better human being.

Where I differ from what seems like most of American Christianity, is seeing the story of the Bible as a story, not of what we can or need to do, but of what God has done. A great deal of evangelical preaching is on how to be a better (fill in the blank). Fundamentalist preaching is about what we need to do to stay “right with God.” I beg to differ with both.

That kind of preaching can be inspirational, but it is not the gospel. The gospel is not about what we can do. It is about what Christ has done. Ultimately, there is nothing we can do to improve our standing with God, nothing we can do to make him love us. All we can do is put our total trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross. There is no amount of resolutions that can ultimately make us what we already are in Christ.

Again, let me emphasize that I am not against making resolutions, having goals, or trying to improve in areas of our lives. I can think of more than a few areas where I can use some improvement. I just don’t see the “gospel” of self improvement in Scripture. Your mileage may differ. Feel free to disagree.

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Church Signs: Show God Your Faith…

…and He Will Show You His Faithfulness.

I saw this sign the other day on my bus route and my first thought was, “Boy am I glad God showing his faithfulness to me doesn’t depend on my faith.” Unfortunately that is the message that seems to come from many sides of the Christian world, from the prosperity preachers who say that if you have enough faith God will give you anything you want, to those who will tell you that if you are living right God will reward you.

It’s so easy for us to want to think that we can somehow earn God’s faithfulness. We want to pretend that we have some sort of goodness that will induce God to show his favor to us. We think if we pray (ask, seek, knock) hard enough and long enough, God will do what we want. Been there, done that. I can remember being absolutely convinced that if I really, really believed that God would let me have a certain job then I would get it. Well, God had something completely different in mind, but the initial disappointment was enough to knock me back a bit on my faith journey.

Sometimes we think that our good behavior will convince God to be faithful. That one doesn’t work either. Of course, maybe it’s because I haven’t behaved too well, at least according to some. Reading the Bible and praying more than another won’t make God sit up and take notice of us so he can reward us. Most of the time, that way of thinking will only turn us into insufferable bores.

God shows his faithfulness to us because he is a loving and faithful Father. At the cross, our sin was taken care of  and Christ’s righteousness was given to us. We became children of God who have the same standing as Jesus. As the Father is faithful to the Son, so the Father is faithful to us. This faithfulness doesn’t depend on us, but depends soley on our position in Christ.

Maybe part of our problem is we have somehow gotten the notion that it’s all about us, about our ideas and wants. Like little children, we want what we want and have a hard time with what we consider “inferior.” We have a hard time trusting our Father to be faithful, even when he has shown his faithfulness again and again. I know I have had to relearn that lesson multiple times.

Should we pray and tell God our desires? Absolutely. Should we live in a way that glorifies God? Of course. But, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking those things will cause God to smile on us. Instead, we should trust our Father to be faithful and trust that everything he does is good and loving. The more we can put our trust in our Abba, the more freely we can live, knowing that we are being taken care of by the One who created everything.

God will show you his faithfulness. Period.

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Too Much Grace?

“You’re encouraging people to sin.” “Folks are just going to use that as an excuse to live any way they please.” These are just some of the complaints aimed at those who teach grace. If you have been a reader here for any length of time you can guess that I am going to disagree with those who say we should ease up on all this grace talk. I agree with what Robert Ferrar Capon once wrote.

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

I believe that when we look at the whole of Scripture, we will see that the message of pure grace is the message of Jesus. During Jesus’ time on this earth, he made it clear that there is no way we could ever be right with God by keeping the Law. The letters written by Paul and the other apostles also are insistent that it is God’s grace and mercy that brings us to him and makes us his children. 

Now, there are some who preach what they call a message of grace, but which is really a message of license. They say that because of God’s grace a Christian is completely free of all sinning and is never convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit. It is true that the Spirit doesn’t pound us down and burden us down with condemnation, but it is also true that we do sin. The conviction is not a judgmental thing but is more a reminder that we are not living as a child of God, but it is still there. When we are called on what we do, whether it is the Spirit or another person, it is not necessarily an accusation from satan.

I believe that an individual who truly has been captured by God’s amazing grace, and who truly understands it, will agree with what Paul wrote in Romans 6. We don’t sin so that there will be more grace. Grace does not mean that we can just do anything we want and God will just let it slide. God’s grace is so powerful that it leads us to want to do whatever our Father wants us to do. The desire of our new heart is to love God with every fiber of our being, and to love others as Christ loved us. Sin is still present in us, and though it is not our nature any longer, we still sometimes choose to do those things that are wrong.

Folks who get grace are not against the Law. Rather, they appreciate the Law because it shows us how desperately we need someone else to do what is necessary to make us right with God. Jesus has fulfilled that Law, therefore it is not an external rule in our lives. Instead, by God’s grace, we have an inward law of love that works in us so we can live like the children of God that we are.

The grace of God is amazing, wondrous, and powerful. It saves us and makes us children of God. It causes God’s love to fill us and overflow onto those around us. As we are filled more and more with that love, we become more and more like Christ. 

That’s pure two-hundred proof grace. Drink deeply.

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Blast From the Past: Free!

This was first posted on February 24, 2011.

I read a couple of posts this morning that started the wheels turning in my head (that’s what the squeaking noise was). The first post was by Dan Edelen here, and the second was by Jeff Dunn and is found here.

As one who grew up and served in conservative Christian circles, I have constantly bumped against walls that were put up to keep us from engaging in certain behaviors, or to make us do other things. I’ve always been anti-legalism, and over the years cultivated an image as a bit of a rebel. Unfortunately, the image was many times driven by a desire to do what I wanted rather than what God wanted. I was more anti-legalism than pro grace.
I am learning that a reliance on God’s grace and love is what should define my life. The posts mentioned above are part of that learning. I am learning that Romans 7:5-6, Galatians 2:19-21, and Colossians 2:20-23 are good passages to live by. I am learning that my Father loves me no matter what I do or don’t do. I am learning that Jesus took away all my sins: past, present, and future. Not only that, but the power of sin has been broken by Christ.
Sin is no longer the defining force in my life. I still sin, but I also have a Savior that has freed me. When I do sin, it’s not because sin is controlling me. It’s life. It’s part of being a man who is still learning how to follow Jesus and live in God’s grace. Fortunately, my Father doesn’t condemn me, he is not disappointed with me. He sees me as his beloved son. He teaches me and leads me, and continues to fill me with his love.
I’m learning that I am not in control of my life, God is. No matter hard I try, I can’t please God more. I can’t do things that are going to influence God to bless me. It’s not up to me.
I’m learning that I am a dead man. I have died to sin and its power. I have died to this world. I am dying to the opinions of other people, because the only opinion that counts is that of the One who calls me child. That last one will take some time.
I want to be as Jesus, who only did what the Father told him to do. Jeff Dunn says that folks accuse him of being “all grace.” I’ll gladly accept that label. Dan Edelen writes, “Anymore, the only rules I impose on myself on this walk of faith are, am I loving the Lord, and am I loving other people.” That sounds good to me. Jesus himself said that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love others, and that everything else hangs on that.
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Happy All the Time?

I remember different times in my life when I heard people say that Christians are always supposed to be happy all the time, or at least give the appearance of being happy. The rational behind this was the desire to “keep a good testimony.” In other words, it was to make those outside of the faith think that, because we had Jesus, we never got down or discouraged. This was an attempt to show that Christianity “worked” and was worth trying. There are still those who preach that today, as well as those who preach that if anything negative happens to you, it is nothing but an attack from satan and can be thwarted by positive thinking and speaking. Neither of these ways of thinking match up with what Scripture tells us.

All through the Bible, there are instances where God’s people mourned and lamented. There was mourning for their sins, and there were lamentations when bad things happened. The Psalms are full of prayers that are cries to God for help in trouble and tragedy. I can’t recall any passages in Scripture that command us to be happy all the time. What you do see are warnings that we will suffer, that life is not going to be a walk down a tree lined lane into heaven. Look at the people Jesus hung out with. They were folks who had a hard life, who were the downtrodden and oppressed. Jesus never told them to put on a happy face because following him made your life problem free. He never told them to make positive pronouncements that would make them better. In fact, Jesus told those who wanted to follow him that they had to give up everything and die in order to follow him. Honestly, giving up my desires, my wishes, my life, is hard. It doesn’t always make me a smiling, happy person. Sometimes I do it with a frown and a grumble.

The idea that we need to put on a happy face as a good testimony is also wrong. We do a disservice to the cause of Christ when we give the impression that Jesus makes everything peachy. We are afraid to show grief because we are supposed to believe. We are afraid to get angry because our life is supposed to be wonderful. We ask each other how we are doing, and then don’t give an honest answer because we don’t want folks to think that we’re not trusting God. So, we tell everyone that our lives are wonderful, while families fall apart, faith is shattered, and lives go down the tubes. And then we say, “I never knew. They seemed so happy.” It is not the presence of a smiling face and assertions that everything is great that testifies to the grace and glory of God. It is when we are able to say through the pain and the tears, “I believe God is good. I don’t know why this has happened, and I hurt, but I know my Father cares for me.” A smiling face can hide deep despair, while asserting trust in God through tears shows a depth that can only come from the Spirit.

When we are open about our pain and heartache, we open the door to comfort from those who have been through similar things. We come to see that we are not alone. This helps us to see that our Father really is in control and really does love us. This can bring deep, abiding joy. It is this joy that shows that following Jesus is worth it.

Maybe you are going through some tough things right now, and your pain is more than you can bear. God knows. He experienced imaginable grief at the cross. Don’t be afraid to let your hurt show. Be honest to the Father about how you are feeling. Find some brothers or sisters that you can be open and vulnerable with. Let God use them to bring you comfort and grace. We are children of a good, loving, perfect Father and we are on this journey together. Take the masks off. Don’t be afraid.

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What is the Good Life?

A few weeks ago in our gathering, we were looking at the Gospel of John, chapter 5. In this passage we find Jesus in Jerusalem for a feast. While there, he healed a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to get well. We could restate that question as, “What is the good life?”

There are at least three answers to that question. Each of us has our own. The first answer came from the man himself. “I don’t have anyone to help me.” I can’t do it. He was looking for someone else to provide for him.While I would guess that he did want to get well, it’s also possible that he had become comfortable in his condition and was content to just lay there and let others take care of him. Perhaps he had given up. His idea of the good life was to be physically whole and it just wasn’t happening. Many times we get the idea that the good life involves good health, a nice house, late model car, and smart children who do well in school. In other words, the American Dream. Those are good things that God sometimes blesses us with. Jesus did heal the man. However, that is not the good life.

The second answer comes from the religious leaders. They told the man that he was breaking the Sabbath by carrying his mat after Jesus healed him. Their idea of the good life was following the rules, being a good, religious person. They believed that rigidly walking in lockstep with the law and all of their addendums would lead to God’s favor. In their thinking, Israel would be restored to its former glory when everyone started keeping the law.

Looking over the religious landscape, there are churches and organizations that would give either of the answers above. On the one hand are those who preach that God’s favor comes in the form of material blessings. Others preach that “being right with God” by following certain rules is the way. While God does provide for his children and there are commands in Scripture, those things are not the good life. One can have material things or follow the rules, and still not have the good life. One can have little and not follow all the religious rules, and have it.

Jesus gives us the third, and best, answer. He found the man that he healed and told him to stop sinning. Now, Jesus was not telling him that following the rules would bring the good
life. In verses 16-30 Jesus states that the good life is the life to come and could only be found in him. Jesus says that the Son gives life to whomever he pleases, and that those who put their trust in him have crossed over from death to eternal life. This life is not just some far off, future thing. It is life that is right now. It is the abundant life that Jesus promised to his followers. That is the good life and it is available to all who believe, whether wealthy or poor, healthy or sick. It is a life for those who realize that they can’t keep enough rules to make God accept them and who fall entirely on the grace of God through the finished work of Christ on the cross.

The invitation is there. Come, live the good life.

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Increase or Decrease?

In the Gospel of John, chapter three, we have the account of John the Baptizer’s disciples coming to him and informing him that many of the people who John had baptized were now following Jesus. It seems from the passage that there was a bit of jealousy among John’s followers.

John’s response was that any position a person had was given to that person by God. He stated that he had already told them that he was not the Messiah,  but was sent to be a messenger for the Messiah. He went on to say that he was happy to see Jesus being made much of, just like the best man at a wedding receives his joy from the happiness of the bridegroom. John then made a statement that can be instructive for us as we seek to follow Jesus. He said, “He must increase. I must decrease.”

That statement goes against everything we have been taught by the culture around us. Even Christianity has succumbed to the thinking that it is all about us. The recent statement by a mega-church preacher is simply a clear admission of what is the basis for much of the teaching that goes out in evangelical churches and over the airwaves. Of course, those churches are full and those preachers have a huge following because we like to hear that we are at the center, that God’s purpose is to make us happy, that the most important thing is becoming a better person.  We make celebrities of those who tell us these things and put them on a pedestal.

When John was preaching at the Jordan River, his message was not one of happiness, prosperity, and becoming a better you. It was a message to the people to prepare them for the arrival of the King. John told the people that they needed to change their minds about the way to live and follow this Messiah. Everything was now to be oriented around the King. This message is still for us today.

The gospel is not accept Jesus as personal Savior so you can escape earth in a rapture and stay out of hell. It is not come to Jesus so he can give you all your desires. The message is that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised King, who has inaugurated his kingdom and who will one day restore all things. Follow this King. Give up your desires, your petty things of this world, and live a new life that puts the King up front. The King calls us to die, and in that death find the full life that he promises.

It is in the upside down nature of the Kingdom that the way to fulfillment and wholeness is in abandoning our lives and grasping onto the life of the one who is the Life. May John’s attitude be ours as well.

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Blast From the Past: Delight and Desire

This was first published on May 18, 2010.

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.

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Worth What God Paid?

I once heard a preacher ask his audience if God was getting out of them what he paid for them. In other words, was God getting his money’s worth. I’ve been thinking about that idea a bit. Knowing the context of the sermon, I’m sure this preacher was asking his audience if they were “living right,” if they were doing all the right things that a Christian should do, if they were being a “good testimony.”

In one sense, the answer to that question could be, “no.” The price that was paid to redeem us is far beyond anything we can ever repay, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to insure that God is getting a good return on his investment. The good news is that we don’t have to repay God, or do anything to make sure we are worth the sacrifice. This frees us to simply live our lives, knowing that  God is not checking a ledger to make sure returns match up with costs.

In another sense, the answer to the question is, “Yes!” The work that Jesus did on the cross redeemed us, and brought us into the family of God. That work gave the Father many sons and daughters on which he can lavish his love. It was with joy that Jesus went to the cross, not trepidation that we somehow would screw up and cheapen his sacrifice. He knew that what he did would reconcile us to the Father and make us co-heirs with him.

Because of what Christ did on the cross, we are now united to him. He is in us, and we are in him. We died with Christ, and we are raised with him. We are new creation. When the Father looks at us, he sees us in Christ, therefore he sees beloved children in whom he is well pleased. God knew exactly what he was getting for his “investment,” and decided in ages past that it was worth it. While it is not yet clear who we really are, and while we don’t always act like it, the truth of the matter is that we are cleansed, redeemed children of the Creator of the universe. We are united with Christ and there is absolutely nothing that can tear us away from that.

So, yes. Because we are in Christ, you and I are worth every bit of the sacrifice that the Father made on our behalf. May we live in that reality in our day-to-day.

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Church

The other day, a friend posted something on Facebook to the effect that the church needs to detox from religion and awake from its spiritual numbness. This is a common thought among many who feel the church has drifted away from what God intended. As many of you know, I have been critical of church in many ways, and I would agree with my friend’s statement. Having said that, I want to focus on what I think is a solution, or at least what is being done correctly.

I want to make a distinction between the Church as the body of Christ and church, as a local assembly or institution. The Church was given a mission. If we are in the body of Christ, we are commanded to love God by following Jesus, to sacrificially love others as Christ loved us, and to make disciples who also love God and love others. That is what we are called to do. How that will play out can and will vary according to time and culture. The basics remain the same. I believe that the church at times has done an excellent job of fulfilling the mission. There have been times where the church has failed miserably. There have always been local assemblies that have done what they were called to do, and there have been local assemblies that have failed. We tend to think of the first century church as the ideal,  but a good bit of the New Testament was written to correct problems in various churches. The local assemblies of the early church had some serious problems, ranging from division over leadership to major sexual sin. Down through the centuries church history has been up and down, as assemblies and institutions have drifted away from the mission. The Church, however, has always been there, advancing against the gates of hell and bringing the kingdom of God to bear.

Things are really not much different today. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The church in the West has gone of the rails in many ways. Part of the reason is Christianity has become Christendom, and the mission of the Church has been lost in the mission of one side or other of the political aisle. We have been caught up in culture wars, building empires, gaining “influence,” and divisions over personality, tradition, or practice. Much of what is done is not very different from
what a number of other organizations do. Many gather each week to hear a motivational speech, or a
diatribe telling them how they must try harder and do better.

What I believe the church needs is not more preaching on 5 steps to be a better __________________, more ranting about getting rid of the “sin” and getting “right with God,” or more talking about influence in a particular kingdom of this world. I don’t care how big your church may be, how wonderful you’re weekly speaker is, or how many programs you have. If you are not making disciples who go out and give the good news of God’s grace and what Christ has done, you’ve lost me. I believe that the church needs to be reminded of what we were without Christ, what Christ did for us on the cross, and what we now are because of that amazing grace of the Father. We need to be taught what it means to follow Jesus as we walk through our day-to-day and try to love God and love others. We need to be in each other’s lives, not just one or, at most, two days a week. We need to be discipled and taught how to disciple others. We need to live life together in a community that is gospel-centered and concerned with joining Jesus in the mission of reconciliation. We need to see, and be, examples of sacrificial love for our neighbors. We need to rest in what Jesus has done, not in
what we do. These things can be done in a variety of local assemblies, from a mega-church with missional communities within the church, to a house church that is out and about in their neighborhood, to everything in between. The assemble can be part of a denomination, or an independent. Traditional or contemporary, or some mixture. As I have learned, you can find the Church within the church.

I take comfort in Jesus’ declaration the hell itself will not stand against his Church. Not because we are such great folks, but because we are the body of Christ. It is Christ that lives in us, and it is Christ
that is accomplishing the mission that the Father gave us. Does that mean we will always get it right?
Nope. It does mean that God can redeem even our poor efforts to do his will. The Church is there. It always has been and always will be. I do believe that the time is coming when the church as we know it will fade away, and the Church will be much stronger.