Success

September 10, 2008 in religion | Tags: , | 1 comment

Webster’s Defines it as: a: degree or measure of succeeding b: favorable or desired outcome; also: the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence, or the accomplishment of aim or purpose.

This word has been close to my heart for the past two months or so, as I have gone through some real transition this past year. Getting married and now expecting our first child, I’m reevaluating what is important. I suppose everyone goes through this at many different points on their journey. But it is a very important part of our walk.

How do we define success? The answer will direct our life’s walk, what we decide to pursue, and how we spend this little time we have here on the earth. The definers in our lives shape much of how we look at things. Our parents, partners, and hero’s help shape the way we see things. Our culture, church and schools help shape our identities and ways of thinking. But lately I’m being challenged to go back to the Word of God to define for me what success looks like.

It’s not hard to see the contradictions between our idea and God’s. If Jesus is our example, then our restless pursuit of happiness and material comforts falls miles short of God’s plan. Paul nails it in Philippians 2 when he says, “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus… but made Himself of no reputation.” One translation says He emptied himself of His privileges, or his rights.

Jesus said himself, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.” He measured success as: Am I being completely obedient to the Father’s divine will. What if we started to measure our lives this way, rather than to the standards of our western culture. What if we started defining our churches this way? Producing obedient lovers of Jesus rather than passive masses. So lets work together at redefining this way of thinking that has led us to where we are now.

Us and Them

September 2, 2008 in religion | Tags: , | 2 comments

I’ve been interested recently as I have been seeing just how much this idea or mindset has permeated our church culture. “Us” being the Church, and “Them” being the world or non-believers, or gays, or liberals, or anybody else who doesn’t believe like we do, worship like we do, or have church like we do.

 It’s find it easy to fall into this where I am, a growing congregation with tons of vision and lots of ministries. It’s become easy for me to write off others who maybe aren’t doing some of the things that OUR church is doing. Being so busy with OUR fathers business, other churches don’t matter, especially THEIR vision, or THEIR people or THEIR calling.

 Peter and whole gang of disciples had this same issue. “WE are God’s chosen people.” And they were, it’s just that God wanted to pour out His Spirit on ALL flesh. So God had to put Peter into a trance and challenge his thinking radically. Acts 10:9-16 recounts the story. “Rise, Peter, kill and eat…What God has cleansed you must not call common.”

 Then men came from Cornelius’ house and summoned Peter. The Spirit told him to go, and listen to what he says when he gets there. “You know how it is unlawful for a Jewish man to keep company with, or go to one of another nation.”  You see God wants a pure people. But their purity was a result of their actions, their affiliations, and keeping of rituals and the like. I recently heard Bill Johnson explain it this way. “The Old testament can be summed up to the power of sinfulness. You touch the leper, you become unclean.  But the New Testament is about the power of Holiness. You touch the leper, the leper becomes clean.”

 So the Spirit had to dislodge Peter from his traditions and religious laws to open a door for the entire Gentile world to receive from God. How pivotal is this portion of the Bible! History hinges on this passage. Maybe the Spirit has been speaking to you about what is really clean, and what you need to do to open a new door for a community to come into the fullness of His Kingdom. There seems to be a fresh awakening of social activism and a desire for connection with the world outside our four walls.

 Its interesting how the Jews thought of the Gentiles, and now us gentiles think about “the world”.

 But I believe it starts with us contending to rid ourselves of this “Us and Them” way of thinking. I was thinking about this the other day, how before I met Jesus, there were certain events and things that happened that led me to the point of making a decision for Him. I was on a path of head-on collision with the Kingdom of God. There were people praying for me, standing on my behalf before God’s throne. And then I had an encounter with His love that radically changed my life. But I was on the journey just the same before I encountered His love. Luke 16:16 says that the Kingdom of Heaven is preached and everyone is pressing into it. But we see not all men pressing into it, so we dismiss it and put it off in the millennial Kingdom that is to come. But what I’m seeing is that everyone is on a journey, and they don’t even know that they are about to encounter the greatest lover of all time. So rather than write off those “gentiles”, we need to do like Peter, go into their homes and expos and pride parades, and show them a better way. The way of Love.

Discipleship

August 29, 2008 in religion | Tags: , | 2 comments

“Your view of Discipleship is different than Mine.” I heard the Lord say one day as I was driving to work one day. “Kinda random” I thought. As I began to think about it I realized that it was quite true. “Your idea is get a bunch of people in a room, get a book and teach them what you know. My idea is Come follow Me.”

 Unfortunately He was right. My view of discipleship has much been formed by the modeling of Pastors and leaders and church life as i have known it for the past 10 years. Of which has included small groups, which for a season I knew them as “soap box” meetings (one person ranting on and on about this or that), Sunday School classes (a small group with one person teaching about this or that) and Church Services (a larger group of people listening to one person talk about this or that).

 The commandment of Jesus to “make disciples” seems to keep coming around every few years or so to the forefront of our churches and leadership teams which makes me wonder, what in the world does that look like?

 

Jesus style of leadership seems to place high value on relationship, community, and love. Whereas unfortunately these days the going trend seems to be a much more mechanistic, hierarchal approach. Placing high value on bottom lines, security of the structure, and protecting the “man on top”, we lose the very relationships we were designed to foster. As Jason Upton’s father-in-law said recently “We don’t need more CEO’s in the church, we need more Fathers…”

 CEO’s vs. Fathers

More and more we are seeing churches and people rallying around fathers than shared truths. Whereas in times past we united around doctrines, these days people are longing for relationships that empower and release rather than limit them with requirements and laws.

 

The CEO wants to know what you can do for him. The CEO is concerned with you keeping the Party line. The CEO requires your allegiance.

 

The Father wants to know what he can do for you. The Father empowers you to think for yourself. The Father wants you to cultivate a culture of honor…

 

The Jesus style of  disciple making doesn’t seem to make much sense in today’s fast paced, hard driven society. His approach of sharing life, using nature as object lessons, and befriending “sinners”, would take too much time, energy, and commitment for most people. But still His ways are higher than ours, and until we find our way into His, ours will continue to produce what we’ve always produced.

Burned out?

August 23, 2008 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 1 comment

Or just plain tired? 

seems i hit this place at least once a year. always about the same time of the year… could be the vegas weather, or the schedule of conference/services, but my focus has shifted from what i’m paid to do, to a desire for home.

i suppose as an artist there will always be those longings for expressing exactly what’s going on in my heart, and never seeming to find the right words. Unfortunately my emotions continue to betray me, and i end up spouting off some random lines about community and relationships and lack thereof, which in turn get me into meetings with people who i’m sure love me, but may or may not understand me… but it seems a simple trip north cures most of it.

What Does God Expect???

August 20, 2008 in religion | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

I was driving the other morning thinking and this question came up… God, what do you expect of me? I listened for a while, and searched my heart for some scriptures, and the answer I came up with was a bit disturbing. “Nothing”… Nothing? How can this be? All that you did for me and you expect nothing in return? I’ve often asked God, what do you want from me. It was a cry coming from a broken surrendered heart that’s given all that is known to give.

But here’s the switch, No where I can remember does the scripture say that we are expected to do anything for Him. We have Reasonable acts of service, but not Expected acts of service… Jesus said if you love me, keep my commands. So our service or work or doing, comes not from our ability to please God, because He’s already pleased, but from a heart of love. Just like any relationship, if you come in with high expectations, you will be severely disappointed. Even the best marriage counselors teach that you must lower your expectations to a reasonable level, then your mate will always go above and beyond… Even in my own relationship, if my mate never changes for the rest of her life, if she never gets any better at being a mom, a helpmate, a spouse, I am totally okay with that. Because I didn’t get into the relationship expecting her to change. I chose her for who she is… not even for who she will be, or could be. But my love for her is so unconditional, she doesn’t have to change for me to approve. Now were there some things that needed to be changed when we first got together? Yeah, but it wasn’t me being conditional with my love that caused her to change. Her testimony even this morning as we talked was that my Unconditional love moved her to a point that she wanted to change. My desires became her desires because she wanted to be one with me. I believe that God’s love is enough to cause us to change. It is His Kindness that leads us to repentance. NOT His disappointment.  I haven’t found the scripture yet that says He gets disappointed with us. Maybe I just haven’t read enough. But here’s the point. We do because we love. Not because we have to. Not because if we don’t we won’t be thought good enough. We can never be good enough. If we could why would we need a savior? What I’m not saying is that we stop doing good, but that we look at our motives and the way we motivate people to serve and connect with God. If we let them see His great love, just like my bride, we will be motivated not by fear, but a desire to be one with this great love. There is a lie that we’re not doing enough for God. True we need to be stirred to good works, but I don’t think the writer of Hebrews was talking about going to more church services, or having to feel condemned for missing a prayer meeting.

            Jesus is calling us up to Him, not to the church, or to service, but to Himself. His call is to Know Him first, then serve man second. When we continually mix those up, we end up tired, confused and torn. May we get back to putting Him first and serving Him out of a true heart in full assurance of faith. Not because it is expected of us, but because of our response to His great love.


 

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