A Good Knight

Why does a knight serve his king? (I'm talking about the mythical medieval knight here.)

The reasons are plenty. A knight could serve his king because of the pay, the position it would put his children in, the fun parties, the celebrity status, the power over people associated with the position, family traditions, or a variety of other selfish reasons. There are many ways that a king can get knights to serve him. But none of them would really stick - well, maybe family tradition might. Another king could come along and offer more pay, offer higher societal positions for the knight's children, bigger parties, a higher seat at the table, or more power.

So what is a king to do if he wants a knight that is truly loyal?

He would have to offer a vision of the way he wants to shape the world that would cause the knight will put aside his dreams for higher pay, the societal status of his children, his enjoyment of the most grand parties, his celebrity status, his power over others, and even the traditions of his family. The knight, the kind a king would want, would put aside all his selfish ambitions to help the king bring about his plan for the world.

Does God want any less of us than a king wants of a good knight?

He offers us the opportunity to join with him in making our houses and our neighborhoods a better place. All he asks is that we buy into his vision of the world. We need to put on the breastplate of faith and love and wear the helmet of the hope of salvation (1 Thes 5:8). In the end, we need to put aside all of our selfish ambitions, surrender our hearts and desires to God, and begin to work on shaping the world into the world he planned for it to be. Anything else is just serving for the wrong reasons.

And God is different than a king. A king can be tricked by outward appearances, posturing, and traditions. God cannot. He can see straight into our hearts and see if it is really His.

Change Starts with Recognizing Our Condition

All growth is change. And most growth starts with the recognition of our need to improve. On this Good Friday, I am reminded of Christ's sacrifice for me and everyone else and the subsequent failure on my part to always respond to Jesus' loving action properly.

Nehemiah, a servant of the king of Persia, heard of the state that Jerusalem had fallen to despite the recent ritual revival that had occurred there. Nehemiah responded to the sad situation with weeping, mourning, prayer and fasting. Nehemiah 1 records one of his prayers.

Today, I have updated that prayer for our situation. If you want to read the real prayer, go to Nehemiah 1. Here is my prayer on this great day.

O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the church. I confess the sins we Christians, including myself and my local body, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the command to love our neighbors as you taught.

Please remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.'

We are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by the great sacrifice of Jesus. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. May our lives give you glory. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of others.

Then Nehemiah went to do the will of God, risking his life, facing scorn and danger, and leaving the comfort of the king's presence - all to bring glory to God. In the end, Nehemiah's struggle was not in vain. None of his success would have happened if Nehemiah was not able to see that the reality of the world was different than the reality God intended. So often we also realize this but justify it away. Nehemiah did not do what we have the tendency to do. He followed the revelation by mourning, fasting, and prayer over the Israelites fallen state. When we strive for that which is better and are willing to change ourselves, God can be glorified.

So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God (Nehemiah 6:15-16).

They realized that God was at work. Let us mourn, pray, and fast that the world will realize that God is at work in their midst, and may we be the people willing to be used for that work. But be assured, we will have to change for that to happen. All growth is change.

One Faith, One Body, No Lines

There is one faith and one body, but God does not see the denominational lines that we have drawn. Just because one worships at a church that has a book of doctrine (that you might or might not agree with) does not exclude that person from the body of Christ. Likewise, just because one worships at a church that does not have a book of doctrine does not mean they are automatically part of that body. A church without a book of doctrine like our churches still have a lot of unwritten doctrines that are extra-scriptural. God is glorified in the lives of faithful Lutherans and he is glorified in the lives of faithful Nazarenes just as he is glorified in the life of a faithful non-denominational Christian.

Everyone usually goes to the church that they think are doing things the best and have the best grasp on Scripture. But for pride and self-glorification, people argue that their sect is the best and put others down rather than try and build one another up. This is nothing new. It was happening in Corinth.

Paul addressed it in 1 Corinthians 1.

"I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ."

Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power."

Those who claim to follow Christ alone can be just as divisive as those who claim to follow Christ the way Luther did, the way Wesley did, or the way that any other human did. It is arrogant to think that we follow the Scripture alone without any influence from our forefathers. I read the Scripture the way that Alexander Campbell taught that Scripture should be read, that is a different way than the way that Martin Luther or John Wesley read it. But that does not mean that my faith is far greater than a Lutheran, a Methodist, or a Nazarene. My intellectual pursuit of the faith might be different, but we will not be judged by our intellectual pursuit. Rather, we will be judged by whether we have a heart that is totally surrendered to God.

Isaiah 29:13 states:

"The Lord says: 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men."

Israel was God's people. There was no group that was more God's than them, but they were still out of step with God. Their title or ethnic origin had nothing to do with whether they were right with God; God wanted their hearts. Likewise, God wants our hearts, anything short of that is not enough. We can give him our hearts whether we are in a Catholic church or in the middle of the woods alone. The key to the healthy Christian life is that we realize nothing but total surrender of our heart makes us right with God. There are acts of the faith that we will participate in when we surrender, but I do not think that God looks down and decides who has given him their heart based upon what church they attend or how they read the Scripture.

The law stated and Jesus repeated, "But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul."

Anything less than our whole being surrendered to God does not make us right with Him, not the name of the church we attend nor the lack of formal doctrines and creeds.

The sectarian lines that we have drawn in the sand wash away in God's eyes. Being part of one sect or another does not outweigh a heart that is totally surrendered to God.

So let us not be like those who divided the church by claiming to follow Christ, Cephas, Apollos, or Paul. Let us follow Jesus with our whole heart, not being judgmental, and loving those that we encounter every day. Let us help everyone we encounter to take their next faith step, whether that is their first or the next one after a life of total surrender of ninety years.

Christmas, Ahmadinejad, America, and Christ

Iran's President Ahmadinejad gave a speech proclaiming

"If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers...If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over. If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime."

I think his reading of the New Testament is a little skewed. I never really saw Jesus attack political authorities. He did go after the religious establishment, but not the political leaders.

If Christ was on Earth today, he undoubtedly would teach love your neighbor and give unto the United States what is the United States' and to God what is God's.

The Great Temptation

Now that I am moving to a position that is paid through fundraising, I find myself tempted to make decisions to please others (and raise funds) rather than do what I would normally do.

The major one is on deciding what church to attend in Oxford. When we visited, I really connected with the church we visited. I spent a year visiting churches three years ago. I know what it is like to experience a church for the first time. I know what I am looking for in a church. When I was hunting for a community to become a part of, none of the churches seem to have more than a few of the points I was looking for. I am conscious that I am overly critical, but this church hit the spot. It's the church I was praying to find three years ago. It just happened to be three hours away.

One of the key goals in my campus ministry will be to train the students how to function in a church, whether that is a house church or a traditional church is not important, but being part of a church outside of the campus ministry is an important element of discipling. In four years, they will be out of college. Having had a good time in campus ministry will have helped them remain faithful in college, but it will not have laid the foundation of life in a church body that will be essential for the rest of their lives. I do not want to ignore that.

Because this church is nondenominational and not Church of Christ/Christian Church, I began to wonder whether deciding to go there would hurt my fundraising. I came to the conclusion that the question of whether it will be good for fundraising or not should not influence the decision of where we go to church. Despite the fact that I will have tons of fellowship and interaction with other believers through the campus ministry, my family will not. The church needs to be an extension of my training up my children into who God wants them to be and it should exemplify what God wants his church to be. I want my children to follow Christ with all of their being and to believe that the body assembled is important to the world. Many people think that the church is irrelevant; that is the result of many churches being irrelevant. I want my kids to see God's glory shining through His collected people. A healthy church helps in doing that.

Combining my desire to introduce students to a healthy church environment and my responsibility to raise my family in the Lord, I am left with deciding that I will do what the Lord wants rather than to please potential partners who need to believe in me and my ministry.

This is the biggest example of this temptation in my life, but it is cropping up all the time. I have decided to take the stubborn road of just doing what I think is best in regards to my ministry and my life rather than doing what I think will make me most appealing to others for raising money. It does become somewhat more difficult in that fundraising is part of my ministry. The partners I find through fundraising are people I want to diligently pray for and minister to if they need it. I will not be able to do the ministry without them. But I need to just focus on God and what he wants of me. If I do something to please men rather than God, I begin to place my trust in men and my witty wisdom. If I follow Him, He will provide.

It's not about pleasing myself or others; it's about pleasing God.

Rich Mullins wrote in his song, My One Thing:

Save me from those things that might distract me
Please take them away and purify my heart
I don't want to lose the eternal for the things that are passing
'Cause what will I have when the world is gone
If it isn't for the love that goes on and on with
My one thing
You're my one thing
And the pure in heart shall see God

There Is A Good

I have noticed lately that our society's newest fad belief is that good does not exist. This belief is not all that new in the history of mankind, but it seems to be gaining ground in our culture. Video games are being filled with decisions where all the options available to a player are a bad choice or a very bad choice. There is no good option. This message is not contained only in the medium that probably has the most influence on the teenage minds in our nation.

It manifests itself in politics where we usually vote for the lesser of two evils. We settle on the church we attend because it is most in line with what we want to be part of despite its faults. One of the workers at Clem's believes that people only do loving things for selfish reasons. We never seem to have a choice between that which is good and that which is evil.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and a frequent guest on NPR, stated when asked about war being a moral endeavor, "The world rarely offers us a choice between the moral and the immoral. It's usually a choice between the immoral and the more immoral. That's why moral decision making is so tough."

I struggle with this concept. Reality screams that life is not a choice between good and evil. We are inundated between choosing the lesser of two evils every day. I can see the sense in believing there really is no good. Life does not appear black and white. My struggle might be the result of having allowed myself to be absorbed into our culture rather than to stand as a witness in it.

This belief that there are only lesser degrees of evil is going to be a prevailing thought that we are going to have to tackle in the coming years if we are going to help people become disciples of Christ. We must know and have our lives testify that there is good.

"In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

"Which ones?" the man inquired. Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.' " "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?" Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:16-26)

I must find the good path and walk in it, yet the only good I can do is reflect God's goodness through the life I live. There is good. The question is whether we are faithful enough to sacrifice our own desires and bring it about.

Our Dislike Of Death Bed Conversions or A Total Misunderstanding of Grace

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, 'You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.' they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, 'Why do you stand here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You go into the vineyard too.' And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.' And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?' So the last will be first, and the first last."

To summarize briefly, the master hired workers early in the day and went out later in the day and hired more. Those who worked just a short while received the same day's wage as those who worked the whole day. In Jesus' parable, those who worked the whole day were angry about those who worked just a short while. A direct parallel at the time of writing would be teaching that kingdom of God is open to the Gentiles, as it always was, along with the people of Israel, who had been the people of God for a longer time. A modern parallel would be the people who have grown up in the church their whole life being frustrated with the elderly lady accepting Christ in the last moments of her life. We see jealousy over those who got what they really did not deserve by those who felt they earned it.

Last Sunday I heard a sermon on this parable. The preacher never addressed the source of jealousy. He just shared his own struggle with being jealous over death bed conversions and admitted that his jealousy was wrong. He will work his whole life for the Lord while the person who comes right at the end receives the same blessing; that's frustrating to my friend who preached and to others of a similar mindset. In the frame of worldly reason, that just does not seem fair. I think the source of this frustration is a misunderstanding of two things: the life God has planned for us and God's amazing grace.

When I look back on my years of wandering, I do not look fondly. I do not think those times were great despite the festiveness of the world being exemplified in the way I lived. I look back and wish that I could have been in love with the Lord the whole time. My life in the Lord is much better than that life ever was. I missed out on a lot by wandering aimlessly.

We find ourselves jealous of people in the world when we feel that the people in the world are living a life better than the one we are living in God. When we do not strive to experience God every moment of every day, we often miss out on what God's intention for our life is. Oftentimes we are not living in the joy and peace that God wants us to live in, and our sad, selfish spiritual life creates in us a secret love for the world. Eventually, this secret love, if left uncheck, might morph into indulging those secret loves with the possible cost being our faith. Whether we indulge in it or not, the secret love for the world is only there because we do not experience the Christ-like life to the fullest, the life God has desired for us to live.

When we experience God to the fullest throughout our days, we will not be jealous of the people that come late in life and receive the same eternal reward as we receive because we know that the time we spent working for the Lord is also a great reward. We were happy to work because we love the privilege of being a follower of Christ. And we should be overjoyed, like the Lord becomes, to have more workers no matter what stage of life the new worker is in.

After the sermon, I went over and talked to my friend about what I just shared here. An elderly lady was there and she shared, "If you have a giant cup and it is full, you will be just as happy as those who have a small cup and it is full." She was implying that those who are faithful all day will have a giant cup while those who are faithful just a short while will only have a small cup. This idea that she will be rewarded more in heaven for her life of work compared to the reward a recent convert would receive is a complete misunderstanding of grace. What she fails to see is that her works are not what makes her right with God. Her works are, in themselves, a blessing from God. We are privileged to be involved in his work. She is only right with God because God is infinitely graceful despite our failings. Our misunderstanding of the grace of God and an overestimation of our righteousness is what leads us to think we are more deserving than others. None of us are more deserving. It is only by grace that we spiritually breathe.

If we live in the realization that our life in Christ is a better life than the other lives we could be leading and that our life in Christ is solely available through the grace of God, then we will not be jealous of people who come late in life and lived the way they wanted nor think that our reward will be greater than them because of our life of service. May we live life to the fullest in the grace and love that Christ shares with us.

Refusing to Be Involved with Churches of a Different Christian Persuasion

My response to a question from Jule from my last post, Following God to the Best of My Ability Versus Expecting Others to Follow God Like Me, became somewhat lengthy so I made a new post. I have not made this my post for this week because I have something else that I want to get out of me.

Jule asked how the "Don't worry about the speck in your brother's eye when you have a plank in your own" and "Iron sharpens iron" relate to what I wrote.

Here is my attempt to meld everything together.

This whole subject has been on my mind because our leadership just refused to host the community Thanksgiving service. Some comments were made about people in the other churches not being our "brothers in Christ." Our church has never hosted a community service but I thought I would give them a chance, so at the Antwerp ministerial meeting earlier this month I volunteered our church after being asked if we would be willing to host it. I attend as our churches representative because I believe in inter-church involvement and we were not participating. I have since had to call up the leader of the group and tell him our church would not host or even participate since the community is on a Sunday night and we have services then. That situation has forced me to think this through.

What I wrote is my failed attempt to work through the verses and explain to the leadership that we can fellowship with people who might have a different take on following Christ. In the end, I think they just didn't want the conflict that hosting would cause within our church. What I find amazing is how different the church of Christ/Christian church is in different parts of the nation. Some are ultra-conservative while others are liberal. Antwerp is ultra-conservative, although other neighboring towns are even more conservative.

The context of the "speck" verse (Matthew 7) does seem to encourage us to help one another out despite being the pillar for the practice of total tolerance and individual spirituality. Jesus warns that we must be vigilant to not use a different standard of judgment for others than we use for ourselves, but he does not tell us to let our brothers and sisters do their own thing without us noticing their faults. Verse 5 reads, "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." We should not go around helping people with something we struggle in, but we do need to go around helping. We need to "see clearly" so that we can "remove the speck" from our brothers' or sisters' eyes.

We need to be growing in Christ all the time. If we are not, we will never really be able to help a brother out. If we see a brother struggling with something we struggle with, we should pray for strength to fix ourselves before attempting to fix our brother. Sometimes it is easier to see our faults in others rather than in the mirror. Jesus abhorred hypocrites (Matthew 23), but that does not mean we are not supposed to help a stumbling person out. As the proverb says, "Iron sharpens iron." If we are left alone to our own vices and our own form of spirituality, we will eventually lose our usefulness. Believers need one another. We need to not shirk our responsibility to our brothers and sisters in the name of tolerance, yet we must always remain careful to not be judgmental.

A Piece of Amish Wisdom

There is an Amish lady in our home school group named Martha. Martha shared the following words of wisdom with Lindsay yesterday. She shared it with me this morning. Martha says it is not original. It probably isn't, but I have never heard it.

"If your cup is filled with sweetness, then when circumstances bounce and jar you, you will not spill anything but sweetness."

Following God to the Best of My Ability Versus Expecting Others to Follow God Like Me

Each of us should be following God with complete sacrifice, but our journey of sacrifice is limited by what we understand that God wants from us. If you think the command to the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor is a command to all Christians, then you better sell all your possessions and give them to the poor. If you think that the command to the rich young ruler was a command specifically given to that one man with the understanding that Jesus' command to that ruler does not apply to all Christians, then you do not need to sell all your possessions and give them to the poor. Sorry is the man who believes the command to the rich young ruler applies to all Christians, yet he does not sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor. Each of us will be held accountable if we do not live out the faith as we understand it.

We begin with prayer and dealing honestly with Scripture. However, even two people who deal honestly with Scripture might not come to the same conclusion on what Scripture means based on their understanding of the context of the situation or the experiences of their lives that the Scripture is inevitably filtered through. That does not mean that there is not absolute truth. What it means is that we currently "see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). If Paul's knowledge was limited, then it would be arrogant to assume that our knowledge is perfect. Paul's conclusion is the key. "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13). In the end, the most important thing is that we are people of love.

We need to follow the truth as we understand it to the best of our ability and not be judgmental to those who are following the truth in the way that they understand it. We should not ignore others who follow differently, nor should we bash them, whether to their face or in our fellowship circles. "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently" (Galatians 6:1a). In light of Paul stating that we do not fully know, we also must deal gently with those who are struggling to live out the faith as we understand it. We deal gently because we must not be arrogant or prideful about our understanding of the truth. In the end, we might realize that we are the one with the inaccurate understanding when we confront a brother in sin. The key here is that we actually have a gentle conversation with our brother. We do not ignore our differences, but we deal with one another gently in the hope that the end result will be that we are both built up in Christ.

Paul does give the warning, "But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted" (Galatians 6:1b). When dealing with a brother's sin, we must be careful that we are gentle and open to the fact that we might have the wrong understanding, but we also need to remain firm in the faith as we understand it.

Paul made the point in his letter to the Romans that people will be judged based upon their faithfulness to the knowledge they have (Romans 2:5-16). Earlier, in the first chapter, he set out that everyone should have a basic knowledge of God through nature. We can automatically say that those who do not believe in God are not our brothers or sisters in Christ as there is no excuse for a lack of belief in God. After believing in God, we will be judged based upon the knowledge we have. This means that the man who does not know he should be baptized as an adult will be judged based upon his knowledge and faithfulness to God in areas that he does know. This means that often brought up mythological man living in the center of Africa who never has heard the Gospel will be judged based upon his faithfulness in the knowledge he does have. This means, for those who believe that speaking in tongues in essential to salvation, that those who do not speak in tongues are fine with God as long as they are faithful in what they believe God expects of them. We must deal with one another gently, in love, with the possibility that we might be wrong yet always remain firm in the truth as we understand it.

As teachers, we are to help transform people's understanding of what God expects of them into action. It is not healthy for a person to believe God expects something of them, yet they refuse to live it out. We are also in the important yet precarious situation of shaping people's understanding of God. I can guarantee that we will teach errantly at times, but we need to teach to the best of our ability with the understanding we now have.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

A Letter to a Searcher who gave up on the Church because of Christians

Here is a letter I wrote to someone who claims they are no longer Christian because of Christians. I post it here in case it helps anyone else going through the same struggle. I assume I will also be critiqued by those who disagree with my approach. That is fine because I hope it will make my approach better.

****

Hi #######.

I originally did not respond when I read your note because I figured others would say the same thing. I see that they have not. Some have been harsh. I am sorry for that.

I also experienced the same thing as you explain in your post. I gave up Christianity because of the people in the church and began a period of searching. The thing I noticed near the end (or should I say near the beginning) of the search was that I was searching for the truth with the rule that the truth could not be Christianity. Once I gave that rule up, I came back to Christianity but not the institutional church. That does not mean I gave up on Christ's Church, and I still find myself currently in an institutional church.

Your experience may differ as you might not have excluded Christianity from your searches. I think the biggest obstacle for most Christians is overcoming what they were shown to be Christianity by their local church. So often it is not about love, but about so many other things. I am sure you know that Scripture teaches that all of the other things are worthless if they do not lead us to love. Christianity is beautiful in that way.

Christianity, pure and in its true form, is amazing. It just baffles me that it is somewhat difficult to find people, especially groups of people, living it out. I am not saying that all of those wallowing in an ineffective Christianity are not saved because part of true Christianity is an understanding of grace and sharing that grace with others. I find myself wallowing in ineffective Christianity far too often. Thankfully there is grace.

Anyway, I wanted to pass along a passage that I found encouraging during that period of time. It was from Isaiah 5. In it God is stating that he has tried everything to make his people, Israel, the people he intended for them to be. But they still were not that people. God then tells others to judge him by who he is and not by those who claim to follow him.

1 I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.

2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.

3 "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.

4 What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?

5 Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.

6 I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it."

7 The vineyard of the LORD Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are the garden of his delight.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

Personally, I would like to be a person that God could say, "Look at him and see me." I might not be there yet, but that is what I strive for. Grace covers my failings.

We need to be lifetime seekers of truth, and I admire you for that. I believe firmly in Jesus' teaching that if we seek, we will find. So many people just take what is spoon-fed them. Here's to seeking.

With Blessings,
Regan

Carrying Our Cross In a World of Selfishness

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.'"

Our cross.

Trusting God has been an issue of mine since Lindsay and I lost our twins. I struggled with believing that God has what is best for my life in mind. I have come to the conclusion that he does not, and I am fine with that. When I use the word "best," I am talking about the things of this world that are idolized - health, success, entertainment, popularity, and, possibly, my individual spiritual life. In light of that, he does not have what is best for me individually on his agenda. What is best for me is not what is always best for his Kingdom. His Kingdom is on his mind. If sacrificing me will further his Kingdom, then that is what needs to be done. If I am a faithful servant, then I am fine with that and spiritually I will always be secure.

Does that make God cold and heartless? I would not say that it does although it does teeter on it from our perspective. It rocks our selfish and individualistic view of life and the world around us. We are selfish from birth, nourished from bottles of selfishness as we grow up, and continue to indulge in selfishness as adults. We are so selfish that we fail to notice it. We want what is best for us, and we are focused on going after it. But Christ tells me to take up my cross. No longer am I supposed to look out for what is best for myself. I take up my cross and become a servant to others. Only in killing my interests will I actually find true spirituality. I think we all know the Christian language surrounding this concept but to actually live it makes us freaks in our churches and the communities we live in.

Rich Mullins once wrote,

"It seems that I always am and always have been an outsider. I've never really fit in. I was always too religious for my rowdy friends--they thought I was unbelievably hung up--and too rowdy for my religious friends--they were always praying for me."

I still struggle with why Luke and Logan had to die before breathing their first breath, but I need to be completely fine with God sacrificing soldiers for His Kingdom. God might not have directly caused their death (and he might have), but he could have prevented it. The responsibility is his; that is always the way it is with death. God has the power to heal and prevent death. We can try to comfort ourselves with saying it is better for the person dead to be where they are now, but that really brings no comfort to my selfish self. In that mindset (and my tendency to bring things to logical extremes), then I should kill little children and faithful Christians so that they can also be better off. What I have to reach is the point of being a faithful soldier who is focused on a cause bigger than just myself and content with whatever that brings my way.

My cross.

The Church Made Simple

Church should be simple, not this complex machine of committees and programs that it has become. I am pretty "lazy" when it comes to doing traditional church as I do not go to our church's Sunday evening or Wednesday evening services; I only spend four to five hours there every Sunday morning in a leadership meeting, teaching a Sunday School class, attending the "service," and sharing in a fellowship meal. I have friends who keep busy going to the church every time the doors are open. Church wears them out. Keeping busy going to church takes away time that they could be visiting a neighbor or helping another person by taking up at least one morning and two evenings every week.

There are some in my church, and possibly yours, who think if you are not there when the doors are open, then you are not being faithful to Christ. It is presented as if attendance at another educational function is essential to being faithful disciples. If you catch some of these people who do not miss a service when they are in the right mood, they will actually tell you that. I have been present for some of these unity-building moments.

Church is not something that should keep us busy through education and worship; church is the relationships between people living out the call to be disciples of Christ. Instead of becoming a tool to help us follow Christ in our homes, neighborhoods, and places of employment, church has developed into a mammoth assortment of programs that keep us busy from actually loving those around us that are not part of the church. Church has moved from being the relationship between the people of God to being an institution that must be maintained.

For many who desire church to be different, they change the word "church" to words like "fellowship" or "community" and label their buildings as "Christian Centers" or some other name. If changing our vocabulary helps us to be the church, then our vocabulary should be quick to go. But if we change only the vocabulary and leave the practices in place that have actually took the church on a scenic detour from where we need to be, then we are only playing word games. I can hear the argument that we need to call things by their biblical names. We need to note that "church" is just a translated word from the Greek "ekklesia." If "church" has morphed into meaning something in our culture that is not really what the "ekklesia" of the Bible is, then a vocabulary change would be useful. It does nobody any good to keep calling a biblical idea a word that has lost the biblical meaning.

"Church" has become associated in people's minds with singing, sermons, lessons, Sunday morning, programs, and all other various activities. Maybe a vocabulary change is needed because it should be associated with prayer, apostle's teaching, relationships, eating together, loving, and sharing. The essentials of church have been replaced by ancillaries. We can stop singing, having sermons, meeting on Sunday mornings, and creating programs and still be healthy churches.

Nor is it necessary to be a large group to be the church. "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them" (Matthew 19:20). That section of Scripture is in the midst of a section on the power of believers when they gather together. Being a disciple is not to be done alone but along with others on the journey together, but it does not have to be done with fifty, a thousand, or ten thousand people. The problem is that we have so narrowly defined what that communal journey is to look like that we have made it corporate. A corporate journey is one in which the leaders discover the path through prayer and conversation with one another. The leaders follow that up by passing the direction down from the top. A communal vision is one discovered by the people through conversation and prayer with one another and then shared. This is then lived out in fellowship with one another.

One of the major problems of corporate church is that it financially and time-wise costs much more. Is it possible to have all of the assets, which require maintenance, and the regular expenses of an institutional church, not become distracted by them, and remain focused on the mission of Christ in our community and around the world? It might be possible, but the default seems to be distraction. Most churches spend the majority of their money on the maintenance of the institution of church, on their leaders and on the building they meet in. The institution becomes the goal rather than being disciples. It is a very rare church that spends over 50% of their money helping people rather than on the maintaining the institution. I know some will say that the maintenance of the institution is helping others, especially when it comes to paid ministers. I might have to concede that, but the goal needs to be something other than the maintenance of the institution. What I have found is that megachurches and house churches use a smaller percentage of their budget on the maintenance of the church compared to all of the churches in between.

Jesus said that the world will know his disciples by their love for one another. We somehow have lost the desire to emphasize love. Proper doctrine that does not lead us to be more loving is a waste of a teachable moment. A building that does not cause us to be more loving is a total misuse of God's resources. We have lost site of the goal in the midst of church. Bells, whistles, and all other sorts of distractions are meaningless if they are not tools to equip us to be more loving. We lose focus in maintaining the institution and it becomes a mean in itself rather than the tool it should be. A lot of time with have a lot of time and money invested in tools that have lost their effectiveness.

Let the institution fall. Let the saints rise up and begin to love one another and all who they encounter.

An Examination of Fellowship (Koinonia)

What does the word "fellowship" mean?

The word translated “fellowship” comes from the Greek word “koinonia”. In the New American Standard, we also find “koinonia” translated as “share”, “participation” and “contribution” on different occasions throughout the New Testament.

Some times translations do not adequately get the point across of the word they are translating. Fellowship is not one of those cases; fellowship is a great translation of the Greek word “koinonia”. It is just the combination of two words put together that in their essence really do grasp the original meaning of the word. Unfortunately, the word "fellowship" has become so common that it no longer strikes us at being the combination of two separate words. With fellowship, we have the word “fellow,” and we have the word “ship”. "Fellow" is not used commonly in today's culture unless you are from the Deep South; however, it is used in university settings. A fellow in a university is someone who is considered an equal in a group of peers. When you become a fellow at a university, you become part of a group of equals. A fellow is someone that is an equal. There is no superior in a fellowship.

When you combine fellows and put them on a ship together, you have a group of equals on a ship heading in the same direction together. People on a ship have to work together to get where they are going. This is not your typical ship though. It is not a ship with a hierarchical structure; it is a ship of equals. The key to being a fellowship is that we are going somewhere together and our success on that journey depends on us working together. If the ship sinks, all of the fellows on the ship sink. A fellowship is a group of equals in a situation together.

Koinonia, the word translated fellowship, was used in Greek times as a union between people. It was most often used to describe the relationship of people who were in business with one another, but it was also used to describe the bond between two people in marriage. This means that fellowship with one another is not something to be taken lightly. It is not something that can be lived out with just a simple handshake. It is not something that we can have with one another just because we share doctrinal concepts. It is not attained through just gathering together at a specific buildin. It is something that has to go much deeper than that. Koinonia, as shown in its traditional use describing business partners and marriage partners, shows a bond between people which is focused on the idea that the success of one is linked with the success of the other.

Imagine if you would that Sam, Shannon, and I opened up a business. Let's say in our case it is a restaurant. Shannon would be the cook because of his propensity to not grow facial hair like Sam and me. I would run the floor, and Sam would do the bookwork and ordering. Say we shared ownership in the business, making us financial partners. The financial success of Sam would be dependent upon my success in serving the customers and training others to do a great job serving the customers. My success would be dependent upon Shannon making meals and training others to make those same great meals. We would be in the business together and our success or failure would depend upon each one of us doing our jobs well. That, in a nutshell, is what koinonia or fellowship is – it is a link between people in which they share mutual dreams, actions, and respect. The success of each person is intimately linked with one another.

Koinonia is a family relationship of sorts. Not an unhealthy family like many that we see around us, but a healthy family. The Bible describes our relationship with other believers as a family in various places. In 1 Peter 2:17, Peter describes us as the “family of believers”. In Galatians 6:10, Paul describes us as the “family of faith”.

The Steiners are an amazing family in our church. You might know a family like them. What is experienced in their family is a great example of what it is to be a family. People look at the Steiners and want to be a Steiner. They see the fun the family has together at family gatherings and want to join in. That is fellowship. The main difference between the fellowship which the Steiner family shares to the fellowship we are supposed to have is that the Steiner fellowship is based upon a shared bloodline and is exclusive to people who are either born into or married into the family. (And I am not saying there is something wrong with a healthy biological family like that – Their fellowship is one that I wish to emulate with my family.) But our fellowship among us as brothers and sisters in Christ should be just as great or even greater than any biological fellowship. But is it? Are we the type of people who share our lives together in a way that others long to be part of our community? Do we know each other intimately like a family? The main difference between the fellowship Christians should experience and the fellowship of the Steiner family is that our fellowship is not exclusive to bloodlines; it is inclusive to anyone who is seeking God or has decided to be washed in the blood of Jesus.

Our fellowship should be much greater than the fellowship experienced by a biological family. It should be a fellowship that other churches would long to emulate and people would want to join in on, but that is not our goal. Our goal is to just be faithful and be the group of people God intends for us to be. Being Christians is not just adhering to a set of doctrinal statements, but it is living our lives together in such a way that we exhibit the lives that Christ intended for us to live. This life lived would give credence to the authority of Scripture and the doctrines we share. Let us strive to be the people Christ intended for us to be.

A Fair Christian

Knowing that I am close to being in the top 10% of the richest people in the world, even on my measly income, I need to take seriously the passages in Scripture that address the rich. If you're a fellow American, you probably make more money than me right now, so you are even richer. We like to imagine that the rich people are Bill Gates and the Clintons or McCains, but in the larger scope of the world, we are the rich. I can go down the street right now and buy fruits from all over the world. My family owns two cars while many throughout the world own none. Everyone reading this has internet accesss, if not high-speed internet in the convenience of their own home. We have a television with a digital converter box. I could say that I am poor because I do not have a new high-definition television like the one sitting in front of me as I type this at my brother's house, but I would be lying. I am economically poor for the time being according to our government's definition of who is and is not poor, but I am still an economically rich man through a lens that looks at all nationalities.

This has led me to contemplate how I use my money as a rich person, which is what I am as a poor American. Do I use my money indiscrimately and give money to regimes and corporate interests who use corporate slave labor or do I wisely use my money to help economically liberate people around the world? Am I loving with my consuming?

Do not take this as a buy American rant. That is not what this is. It is more of a buy fair rant. Fair trade means that the people who manufacture or produce the product that is branded "fair" were given a livable wage for their work. This is not wealth redistribution or an attack on capitalism as it is not government-enforced. It is actually using capitalism to bring about fairness. The companies that buy their products will pay above market value in order for the producers of the product to receive a livable wage. As consumers in a capitalistic society, we can consume in such a way that we add to oppression in poorer nations or we can help them to prosper. Our collective dollars have a powerful voice because they are a medium through which we have an international voice.

And our spiritual obligation to use our money to liberate rather than oppress is something we can not easily brush aside.

James 5:1-6

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.

We have a responsibility to not fatten ourselves and entertain ourselves while repressing others.

We need to connect with the idea that we are God's ambassadors here on earth. A United States ambassador is a representative of our nation in the nation where they reside. They conduct the day-to-day business of the United States with the government there. We, as Christians, conduct the day-to-day operations of God here on earth. Our churches should be like embassies where the people of God gather together and experience life like it is at home. As an ambassador of Christ, we must speak out against slave labor and oppression, but can we do that if we are just consuming products that enable the oppressors?

The concept behind the year of Jubilee helps me to grasp this. The year of Jubilee (in Leviticus 25:1-17), the practice instituted by God in which all the land would be given back to their original owners every fifty years, emphasizes that our material possessions are not our own; they are God's. The principle laid out in verse 17 still applies today: "Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the LORD your God."

As Christians, we are not to take advantage of other people. We are to be instruments executing God's will here and now. Part of that responsibility deals with us consuming responsibly. Using the excuse of ignorance on how our products travelled the road from production to our home no longer flies. We are responsible if another human was oppressed to produce a product we consume. We have brothers and sisters all along the path of production who need our help in making sure they have a livable wage. Let us not shirk our responsibility to God, which we can honor by loving our fellow man.

A Different Leadership Experience

I preached at the Payne Church of Christ three weeks ago. In my visit there two and a half years ago, I preached to about fifty people. In this recent visit, I preached to nine. The shocking thing to me is that the people are so loving and so kind, yet the church is dying. It is a blessing to be around them but for some reason corporate failure has set in.

I left scared and with an urgent burden on my heart to pray more diligently and to approach our church about change. It's only a matter of time before our group of forty-five becomes a group of ten. We have not experienced any numerical or visibly spiritual growth since we arrived there. A church that refuses to change slowly loses (or quickly in a split) each family or individual who wants change. Eventually, all that is left is those individuals who like things the way they have always been done. The end is death to a local body. We need change now before the gangrene sets in.

It was with this overriding conviction that we must change and we must change now that I went into our Sunday meeting. I was nervous. I did not know how it would be taken, but I had prayed for it a lot. After some good discussion, the leadership decided to gather together Tuesday night for a special meeting on change. I was encouraged by their thoughts and action.

Then came Tuesday. I was again nervous, but it was mixed with excitement. I showed up at the church early and prayerfully waited for the others to come. One of the elders began the meeting with some Scripture reading and a serious call to prayer. We prayed for a lengthy time, followed by singing "Be Thou My Vision" together. It was a great experience with the Spirit present at the meeting.

The only official things that were decided at the meeting were little things. The leadership, who has been operating for some time without a paid minister, decided to meet together for a weekly "staff" meeting on Sunday mornings before church. In this meeting we will make sure that all of the people in the church are being adequately ministered to, that we are taking advantage of every opportunity that arises to minister to the community, and, pray together. They also appointed me, at my request so it is really no big thing, to go to the community ministers' meeting as our church's representative so that we can remain in touch with the other churches on a formal level. The last decision was one to create a building maintenance committee so that the leadership meetings do not turn into maintenance meetings, which they have the tendency to devolve into.

I am amazed at how some men can enjoy sitting around talking about pipes, duct work, holes, and wiring, but these guys could spend a day doing that. When they asked me whether I would be a deacon around a year ago, I answered that I would as long as that did not mean being a deacon of building. I want to do ministries and help the community, not focus on the maintenance of the building. If they had room for a different sort of deacon, then I would be willing. Although maintenance is an important thing, the church I was youth pastor at only used the deacons for maintenance. Being a deacon should be so much more than that.

Those decisions seem like little things, but each one represents a huge step. Meeting together for prayer was rejected when I proposed it around three months ago. Now they were willing. Being involved with the other churches is a huge step because there is a tendency in the conservative wing of the church of Christ to think that all other churches are evil, they are going to hell because of false doctrine, and we should not interact with them. Creating a maintenance committee will free the leadership up to tackle the issues that need to be addressed in the future.

The greatest ideas were ones that we left the meeting with the plan to pray over. The discussion over whether to cancel Sunday night was one of the major areas of disagreement during the meeting. One individual was set on it not being canceled despite knowing that it is a cultural creation and not really all that relevant anymore. He just likes it and would like to do it despite the fact that it is grossly ineffective. Due to a transition in our leadership of operating on consensus rather than voting and forcing the sole dissenting voice to come in line, his opinion needed to change or else we could continue to have Sunday service the way it has always been. In the middle of the discussion, someone proposed moving our Sunday evening service to the local nursing home. I thought it was a great idea. The nursing home has the dilemma of ministers not showing up when they said they would for their Sunday afternoon service and this would give them a permanent service with a fixed time for the elderly at the home (and their families along with anyone in the community) to go to. One of our leaders was going to discuss this with them this week. This seemed to make everyone excited about the possibilities. It would mean canceling Sunday evening classes, which might face some resistance, but I have been surprised by things already.

The other issue that we are to pray about is when and how to implement helping those financially burdened in town to replace their sidewalks. Our town council recently began to enforce mandatory replacing of cracked and dangerous sidewalks. For instance, my parents just spent over $3000 to comply. Many people in this community do not have that sort of money. With the deadline for compliance quickly approaching, our church is going to tackle replacing the sidewalks at some of the houses. We need to figure out how to uncover who really cannot afford to fix their sidewalks and what is the best way to go about it. But the very fact that it came up during the meeting and was well received is a great thing. Now we have to iron out the details and get active.

So if you would, please keep our church in your prayers. This is a crucial time in its history. We need to change and not stop changing. We need to start being a place that the Spirit of God is present and that is bringing people from the community into His presence. I am excited at the beginning steps, but it must continue.

I Pledge Allegiance

Recently, the abstract discussion of whether I would say the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States came into reality in a different way than I had ever thought of when I sent my children to a VBS and my eldest son to church camp. At the VBS, Lindsay informed me that they learned the Pledge of Allegiance and did it at the final show, which I could not attend due to work. At church camp, they always start the day off with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Pledge to the Bible, and the Pledge to the Christian flag. I regret not training him beforehand to not say the Pledge of Allegiance, but can I really expect my six and four years olds to not participate in the Pledge when the people in charge tell them to?

I don't regret it because of what America is; America is a pretty good nation. I regret it because of my son pledging allegiance to any entity other than God. His loyalty to this nation should only go as far as they do not interfere with his being obedient to Christ and loving others. If his loyalty to the kingdom of God ever collides with a temporal kingdom on earth, I hope that I have trained him to always keep his loyalty to God. One cannot have two allegiances.

So I feel guilty. I allowed my child to say what I hope is a lie. I do not want him to pledge allegiance to any temporal entity. I pray that his only allegiance will be to God, and I pray for wisdom on how to handle such situations in the future.

Are We Really Loving People?, Part Two

While a college student in the 90s, Shane Claiborne sought to find a modern-day living example of a totally-committed Christian to model his life after. This pursuit led him to attaining an internship under the tutelage of Mother Teresa at her mission in Calcutta. He shared the following story of a conversation he had while serving the poor in Calcutta.

"Mother Teresa was one of those people who sacrificed great privilege because she encountered such great need. People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like. Sometimes it's like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo. She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery, like a beautiful wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never forget -- her feet. Her feet were deformed. Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But I wasn't going to ask, of course. 'Hey Mother, what's wrong with your feet?' One day a sister said to us, 'Have you noticed her feet?' We nodded, curious. She said, 'Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck with the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them. And years of doing that have deformed her feet.' Years of loving her neighbor as herself deformed her feet."

Combine this story with a few Bible verses, and I see that I have a lot of room to grow.


I John 4:16-20

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

James 2:14-17

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

One struggle that I have in reading these passages is the much smaller world we live in now. I can watch the news in the evening or find updates throughout the day on the internet of people struggling around the world. No longer do humans just see the needs of those they encounter throughout the day. The world is smaller. The needs of the people in Darfur are known to us, maybe even moreso, than the needs of our neighbor down the street. We are at an amazing point in history where we can use the resources that God has given us to make this world better, or we can just continue claiming to be Christians while consuming material goods like everyone around us while we ignore the plight of humanity in our neighborhoods, in the inner cities, and around the world.

Our love of God is shown by our love to others. Our faith in God is shown by our love to others. And the reverse is true. If we do not love others, we do not have faith in God. If we do not love others, we do not love God.

Some will try to avoid having to love a person in need by arguing that these verses apply to only loving brothers or sisters in Christ. That sounds an awful like like the lawyer who was trying to get away from having to love their neighbor.

You might have heard the story about the man who felt that he was overcharged by their lawyer. The client who felt his legal bill was too high asked his lawyer to itemize costs. When he was handed the statement it included this item: "Was walking down the street and saw you on the other side. Walked to the corner to cross at the light, crossed the street and walked quickly to catch up with you. Got close and saw it wasn't you. -$50.00.

Jesus also had to interact with a lawyer, and in this case it was one who was trying to figure out the letter of the law that Jesus was teaching, but the lawyer was going to be disappointed because Jesus did not give a law that could be followed like the laws of the land. When Jesus gave the difficult teaching that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, he did not just limit it to brothers and sisters in Him, to people who love God or are part of our church, or the friends we like. The world loves people who they like, who are in organizations that they participate in. Jesus used the broad term "neighbor." Like any good lawyer, the lawyer wanted Jesus to define that word. There is this human tendency, I find it in myself, where we like to have a list of exactly what we have to do to get saved rather than focusing on total surrender of our life to Christ. The lawyer, apparently having the same struggle, asked, “And who is my neighbor?” That is when Jesus shared the story that we have heard many times of the Good Samaritan. A story that teaches that the neighbor is the one who shows mercy when he sees a need. Instead of giving an easy checklist for the lawyer to complete, Jesus told him that he needs to love anyone that he sees who has a need.

In the passage we read earlier, John took this one step further and said that we do not even love God if we do not love others. James said that if we do not love others, then we do not have faith. If we claim that we are followers of Christ, then our lives better be an example of loving actions or we do a disservice to the image of God. If we limit our faith to confessing Christ as Lord, being baptized, abstaining from obvious sins, attending church every time the doors are open, diligently doing morning devotions, and understanding the great and mysterious theological teachings of the Bible, we have missed the life Jesus has called us to live. We cannot be Christians if we are not committing acts of love to those we see in need.

We like easy Christian checklists that we can complete and be satisfied with. Take tithing for instance. Tithing is an Old Testament practice that we like to carry over and make into a New Testament law, but that should not be. We cannot just give a percent of our money to the Lord and think that we have done his will. The New Testament teaches that much more is expected out of us. It is our responsibility to use God's resources as he would have them be used.

1 Peter 4:8-11

"Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen."

We see in Scripture that it is those who give cheerfully and sacrificially that are held up as examples. The church in Macedonia is exalted in 2 Corinthians 8:1-7 because of their sacrificial giving. Paul wrote, "They voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints."

Luke 21:1-4 shares the familiar story of the poor widow who gave sacrificially while the wealthy man gave his much larger gift. Giving out of our abundance is not as blessed as giving sacrificially.

Peter said that we are to serve with whatever gift we have received. Paul and Luke pointed out that making sacrifices is a key part of Christian love.

We must ask ourselves, “If Peter, Paul and Luke were right, how are we doing?” If giving has changed from no longer being just a tithe and we are to live in the understanding that all of our resources are God's resources, then that makes a great demand on how we use our money. We need to ask ourselves questions like, "Would God like me to use the money he has put in my care to buy myself another shirt, or would he like me to feed the person who hasn't had a meal for days? Would God like me to buy a better car just for appearances because the car I am currently driving runs just fine, or would he want to provide someone with a way to get a better job and feed their family? Would God like me to use my extra income to buy a vacation home, or would he want me to give a home to a homeless family?

The answer, in light of the sacrificial teachings of Scripture, seems pretty obvious but the biblical answer is very hard to swallow. It goes against everything our culture has tried to teach us since birth, or at least World War II if you were born before then. We are to use our money, not for selfish pleasure, but to be a blessing for others. That is the primary purpose of God blessing us. God has not blessed us so that we can indulge in our prosperity. It is just the opposite; he has blessed us because he has chosen us to be his hands and feet bringing about his will here on earth.

Are We Really Loving People?, Part One

"He who despises his neighbor sins, but blessed is he who is kind to the needy" (Proverbs 14:21).

We can commit all kinds of loving acts while not truly loving those we do those acts for. For instance, I could be a politician loving someone for the purely selfish reason of getting their vote, a doctor helping someone because of the money, a family member helping someone out of obligation, or a rich person giving to the poor to clear their conscience. In cases like these, love becomes a legalistic action to either earn our salvation, make us feel good about ourselves, or give us some personal gain.

Genuine love starts in the heart. If we do not have a heart that wants to love our neighbor, then any discussion that we might have on how to use our possessions and love others will just be an exercise in legalism. It is tough to find authentic love in a world of selfishness, but let's look at the way we love ourselves. That seems pretty authentic.

If we are hungry, we get ourselves a meal to eat. Most often, we feed ourselves something that we really love. If we are cold, we buy a nice coat, gloves, a hat, and a scarf to keep ourselves warm. If we are adventurous, we take a nice vacation to a place that we have never been before. If we like routine, we take a nice vacation to a place we have been many times before. Whatever the case, we spend a lot of money to spend a week or two away from our normal life. If we are bored, we buy new video games, books, music, or whatever our entertainment of pleasure is. If we need a place to sleep, we usually spend as much money as we can possibly spare on the nicest house available for our budget. Sometimes we even go over our budget and get ourselves in trouble. The same goes for if we need to get from one place to another; we usually do it in the most expensive car that we can possibly afford. If we want a fun evening, we buy tickets for a concert, a play, a movie, a nice restaurant, and an overpriced coffee as we sit and talk about helping the world. If we have kids, we decorate a room in expectation of their arrival, buy them plenty of clothes, toys and other sorts of unnecessities. We really pamper ourselves.

Jesus taught, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

It would take a lot of time, energy, and resources to love others as much as we love ourselves because we really do love ourselves. We spend most of our time focused on how to love ourselves better. How can we get that new car, that new house, that next trip, or even smaller things like my next meal, more stylish clothes, or the coolest gadget. We describe our selfishness as personality and style. Our selfishness becomes who we are. Sometimes it broadens from just being selfish about ourselves to being selfish about our family, but it is still focused on how do we make ourselves feel good. I have failed to mentioned the most twisted form of selfishness, which is wallowing on how unhappy we are.

All of this selfishness hardly leaves us with any time or resources to actually be loving to those in need, whether they are next door, across town, or around the world. To reach the point where we are willing to sacrificially to do that, we have to start with a transformed heart where we surrender our life to God. Once we give our will over to God, we will have to do it over and over again, every day. Selfishness is like a snake that will keep creeping up and slowly take our life away until we are wrapped up in meaningless busyness.

I find Jesus to be a great example of what it means to be selfless. He was focused on getting humanity out of the predicament they were in rather than to find another moment of pleasure for himself. He did not answer our situation by saying, "They got themselves in that situation; they should get themselves out of it." He saw our need, loved us like he would love himself, and brought us out of our need. We need to do the same for others. Shane Claiborne, in his book Irresistible Revolution, wrote, "Redistribution is what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines." Let us be like Christ and fall in love with the rest of humanity.

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"If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20).

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:14-17).

God's Prison - Relying Only on the Bible

To some, the Bible is where God is contained; it is the only source of truth about God. Whether it is a well-used copy or an old dusty tome on the coffee table, it just needs to be opened up for the individual to experience God. To know God, one just has to read the magical words.

Adherents of this view seem to teach, although not always deliberately, that God quit working with man once the New Testament was completed in its writing. All that we need to know is contained in Scripture, and through Scripture is the only way that God works. The Bible has, for all intents and purposes, become God's prison.

This view comes from a twisted and out-of-context interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:9-11:

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

In this view, God no longer needs to interact with humanity because he has laid out his word in Scripture. The perfect, Scripture, has come. The Bible contains all that is needed to attain salvation, which is usually the ultimate goal of these adherents.

Professor William Cook of the State University of New York uses the illustration of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Donald Duck's three adventurous nephews, and the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook to describe the results of this view of Scripture. Whenever Huey, Dewey, and Louie, had a problem to any sort of issue, they could open up the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook and it would tell them what to do in that specific situation. The Bible is no Junior Woodchurch Guidebook.

When I was a lost freshman in college and struggling with whether to surrender my life to Christ, I spent much time thinking, reading the Bible, and praying. Some might be able to make that jump of faith based upon some passage of Scripture, but for me it was difficult because I did not understand why I should believe the Scriptures. It seems rather silly to say, but God revealed himself to me through Tom Hanks' Apollo 13. After seeing that movie, I was ready to surrender my life to Jesus. And I did.

Some might argue that Apollo 13 is not a firm foundation because it is not the Word of God, meaning Scripture. I could not tell you because I have not seen the movie in a long time. I do not hold it up as Scripture, but I do know that God spoke to me through that movie to spur my heart toward him. He was not confined to the Scriptures but he was living and breathing in every aspect of my life. He still is if I would only pay attention to it all the moments of my day.

We can learn about God, and more importantly, know God, from movies, books, conversations, through loving the lost, or any other moment of living. Every aspect of our life is a window into God if we would only look.

This is not to belittle the role of Scripture but to highlight the role of living. Scripture still has a role to play. Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15-17:

How from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Sometimes it seems we have morphed the passage into saying:

How from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are the only thing able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Only Scripture is God-breathed and is the only useful tool for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

This view of God working through all things is derided because it is dangerous and can lead to all sorts of strange beliefs. The Apostle John addressed this problem in 1 John 4:1:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

We are to test those spirit that we encounter throughout the day against the Scripture. There is no truth contrary to the Scriptures, but that does not mean that Scripture contains all truth. It might be dangerous to encounter God throughout the day, but that is the danger that is.

Let us realize that God is unlocked from the Scriptures. When we do that, we will begin to encounter God every where we go in everything thing we do. The Scripture is useful to check our understandings against and to derive understandings from, but it is not the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook or God's prison. God is free. God works through all things, whether it be a bush, a donkey, or a wrestling messenger like he did in the Old Testament, or through a movie, a book, a neighbor, a homeless man, or a prisoner like he does now; God works through all things. Let us have the eyes to see Him.