When God's mission is not compelling enough...

      When God's mission is not compelling enough good things become god things.  Several weeks ago one of the big stories within the sports realm was focused on a college basketball player who shoved an opposing fan during a game.  Sadly, it didn't surprise me that an athlete who is thriving on adrenaline and emotion in a close game against a rival would lose their control and shove a fan that had been badgering them all game.  What shocked me was who he shoved.  As I waited for the video to load (does that make me a bad person that I wanted to see the video of the incident?) I fully expected to see him shoving another college student from the opposing team.  However, that was not the case.  As the clip plays you see a man in his middle ages (maybe older) pointing his finger at the player and screaming.  I was shocked.  My first thought was how is it possible for a middle age man to get so worked up about a college basketball game where men half his age are competing.  How is it possible for a middle age man to think that it is ok to point, and yell in the face of a player from the opposing team.  How do we get to the place where this can even happen?  It is a basketball game.   In the middle of my self-righteous judgement God stopped me in my tracks and reminded me that anytime His mission is not compelling enough in my life good things turn into god things.
      After we put our faith in Jesus we have been given a mission.  We have been called to be about making disciples of all nations.  God's mission, which is to make Himself known, becomes our mission.  Our mission is to make God known.  Our life is to be about making God known to the ends of the earth.  That is a God sized mission and it is a mission that is so massive in scope that it can and should dominate our earthly lives.  It is a mission that countless people have given their lives for.  It is a mission that countless people have made huge earthy sacrifices for.  It is a mission that God was and is so passionate about that He sent His son Jesus here to die on a cross to clearly communicate that He wants to make Himself known, and He wants to invite people into a relationship with Him.  The problem is not with the mission.  The problem is that somehow we take this God-sized mission and we file it away under "church" and unless we are at "church" this mission that God has called us to is pushed to the side and forgotten about while we dive head long full of passion, enthusiasm, and support into a basketball game.  You see, the problem isn't the basketball is bad.  The problem is that God's mission is not compelling enough in our minds so instead of those resources going to God's mission, they go to basketball and all of a sudden a good thing becomes a god thing.
       When we treat things that are not ultimate things, as if they were, we look foolish.  I look foolish way too often and up until this point I can be thankful that my foolishness was not caught on national television.  I look foolish when good things become more important than God's mission.  I look foolish when good things affect my emotions more than God's mission does.  I look foolish when I look forward to mindless entertainment more than I look forward to participating in God's mission.  I look foolish when I am more concerned about what others think about me than what God think about me.
        So what do we do?  I don't know all the answers, but one thing I have been doing is reminding myself of God's mission in every area of my life.  Reminding myself that....
-God wants my marriage to be a part of making Him known.
-God wants my work to be a part of making Him known.
-God wants my leisure to be a part of making Him known.
-God wants my parenting to be a part of making Him known.
-God wants my neighborhood to a place where I am making Him known.
-God wants my family to be a part of making Him known.
-God wants my gifts, and passions to be used to make Him known.
-God wants my money to be used to make Him known.
-God wants my time to be used to make Him known.
      I wish I knew exactly how this looks in each of these areas but I don't.  What I do know, and what I need to keep reminding myself is that God wants to use ALL of my life to be about making him known.  When I forget that good things will become god things and I will look foolish.  When I remember that truth, good things (like enjoying a basketball game) never become a god thing and are seen as another opportunity to be a part of God's mission to make Himself known to all people.
     

Thinking that destroys our growth

       I have found that one of the desires that most (if not all) followers of Jesus have is the desire to grow.  We have a desire to be more like Jesus.  We have a desire to grow closer to God.  We have a desire to be more patient, to be more loving, to be more forgiving, to be more generous.  Those, and many others, are good desires for us to be having as Christians, however I have also found that many of us struggle to grow in those areas as well.  Let's take patience as an example.  We have the desire to become more patient (a good desire) so we resolve to be a more patient person.  We pray that God would help us, we spend time in the Word, we work to remain connected with the Spirit in order to obtain the "fruit" of the Spirit, in this case patience.  In many ways we begin to see growth in the area of patience with most of the people around us, BUT there is always that one person isn't there.  There is always that one person that makes us realize how not patient we are.  There is always that one person that makes us realize how not loving we are.  There is always that one person that makes us realize that we still have a lot of growing to do and here is where dangerous thinking can come in that will destroy our growth.
       "If only that person would change _____________, then I would be a much more patient, loving, kind, forgiving person.  If only my boss would change then I would stop gossiping about him/her.  If only my kid would change than I would be more patient with them.  If only my neighbor would stop doing ___________ then I would be able to love them more.  If only my spouse would ____________ then I would be a better spouse.  That thinking destroys our growth because we make our growth in Christlikeness dependent upon that person.  We think that person is the problem and not us.  When we think that way what in essence we are saying is I cannot grow anymore in the area of patience.  I am as patient as I can possibly be and now it is up to them.  We have killed the possibility of future growth.
       So what do we do?  We need realize that the only person we can change is ourselves (and only ourselves with the help of Jesus).  You can't change your boss, you can't change your spouse, you can't change your neighbor, you can't change your kid, you can only change yourself.  Since that is the case we need to stop blaming our failures in being like Jesus on others and confess our sin to God.  It is amazing how your perspective changes when you realize that the only person you are in control of in a situation is you.  You cannot control the anger of the other person, you cannot control the annoying attributes of the other person, you cannot control the attitude of the other person, but with the help of Jesus you can control yourself.  Just realizing this truth will help you to grow to be more patient because you won't be waiting for that person to change in order for you to be patient.  Instead, you will be working on your self.  You will be praying that God would help you be patient.  You will be focused on staying connected to the Holy Spirit and allowing Jesus to live through you more and more.  When that happens you will continue to grow, maybe not as quickly as you would like (especially if you really do struggle with patience!)  but you will continue to grow over time and become more like Jesus as He works in you to change YOU.
        I need to stop killing my growth.  I need to stop waiting for others to change and instead by the grace of God focus on me changing and becoming more like Jesus.  How about you?  Are you killing your growth?

Leaving a legacy of a faithful marriage.

        Came across an inspiring front-page article in our local newspaper a few weeks ago.  Here is a picture of the front page…

What a great celebration of marriage faithfulness.  What a great legacy that Edward and Ruth Bostrom passed onto their kids and grandkids, and great-grandkids, and great-great grandkids!  This article gave me pause to reflect on what my marriage right now is teaching my kids for when they get married.  I have a lot of questions and a few answers.

       The questions:    

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids the beauty of marriage?

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids the joy of marriage?

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids the challenges and struggles of marriage?

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids how to keep God at the center of the marriage?

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids the hard-work and sacrifice that both husband and wife need to make in order for marriage to work?    

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids that marriage is to be a picture of God's extravagant love for the church?                                      

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids that marriage was created and designed by God?

-Are Heidi and I showing our kids the importance of forgiveness in marriage?

-Am I showing my sons what it means to love and serve their future wife in the way Christ loves and serves the church?

-Am I showing my daughters a picture of a man who is worth being married to?  One who loves God, one who loves and serves his wife, one who takes initiative in leading the family towards God

The Answers

-God must remain the center of our marriage if any of the above questions will be answered with a positive reply.

-Our marriage and what makes it work over the long-haul cannot remain a mystery.  Our kids need to not just know that it worked, they need to know what made it work.  As they get older Heidi and I need to talk to them a lot about our marriage!  The good and the bad.  The joys and the struggles.  How to ask for forgiveness, and how to grant forgiveness.  How to love when the "feelings" of love are not present, and much more.

 -I need to begin praying now for the future spouses of my kids, for their future marriage.  I need to be praying that as they grow up they make choices that will increase the likelihood of a faithful marriage.  I need to pray.  I need to be praying a lot.

-Heidi and I need to continue to become more like Jesus.  We desperately need Jesus to continue to change us.  To make us more loving.  To make us more selfless.  To make us kinder.  To make us more patient.  To make us more gracious.  We need Jesus to continue to change us into people who can continue to give a better and better picture of marriage to our kids who are watching everyday.

There is no guarantee that my kids will get married.  There is no guarantee that they will never get divorced.  There is no guarantee that their life or the life of their spouse will not end long before they could celebrate 50 years of marriage.  I get that, but I want my kids to experience marriage as God has created it and desires for it to be.  I want them to experience marriage as a beautiful picture of God's unending love for the church.  I want them to experience a marriage that as a result helps both them and their spouse to be more like Jesus.  If you are married and you have kids, regardless of their age, you are teaching them about marriage.  They are watching us.  They are listening?  They are paying attention.  I was teaching my kids about marriage when I left home for work today, and when I get home from work I will be teaching again.  I want to leave a legacy of marriage for my kids!  How about you?
                                 

Picture of a changed life!

         I stumbled across a picture that was given to me after a sermon I preached awhile back.  The sermon was on living a life of thanksgiving and I focused on how the Gospel gives us the motivation to live a life of thanksgiving.  I talked about how Jesus changes everything!  Here were my five points.

1.) Before Jesus you were separated from God, after Jesus you have come into a relationship with God.          
2.)  Before Jesus you were dead in your sins, after Jesus you have become a new creation.
3.)  Before Jesus you were enemies of God, after Jesus you became friends with God.
4.)  Before Jesus you were under the wrath of God, after Jesus you became a child of God.
5.)  Before Jesus you were without hope for today and for eternity, after Jesus you have incredible hope      for today and for eternity.

         While I was preaching a young boy drew a picture of who we were before Jesus and who we are after Jesus.  Here was his picture on the back of the note sheet…. 

That sums it up pretty well!  We are a mess without Jesus, and when we enter into a relationship with Jesus he changes us, he makes us into a new creation!  Be thankful today for what Jesus has done in your life!  I am!

Faith Like a Child: You are dad!

      Becoming a dad  has opened up my eyes to some of the beautiful truths in Scripture that speak of God being our father, being our dad.  A couple situations that happened recently made me realize how beautiful it is that God is our dad.  On a Sunday morning when we were in church worshipping I was standing holding my three year old when she pointed at my name tag asking what it was and I told her that it told people what my name was.  She responding with a big smile and said, "daddy."  To my three year old that is my name, that is who I am.
     The other situation happened several weeks ago as we were playing at a park and my seven year old son was running around and playing with some other kids and I looked up to see him looking over the top of the play structure talking to his new friend, pointing at me, and saying, "That's my dad."  These two situations have given me pause in how to respond to the question who is God.  That is an extremely important question and it can answered in many different ways which are truthful and correct.  We can say God is creator.  God is holy.  God is just.  God is gracious.  God is love.  God is trinitarian.  God is glorious.  Those are all truthful statements of who God is.  However, as truthful as those descriptors are, sometimes they can be hard to grasp, to fully understand, and even harder to communicate to another person.  Maybe we would do better to begin answering the question "Who is God" by stating that he is my dad.  He loves me, he takes care of me.  When we see God working around us we can point to that and say, "that's my dad, he did that."  When we look at a beautiful sunset we can point to it and say, "my dad made that."
        God beginning in Genesis chapter three, where sin entered the scene and God's relationship with humans was broken, went on a relentless pursuit to restore that relationship.  The Bible is this massive love story where God is striving to make himself known to all people's and ultimately sends his own son to make himself known and to be able to restore the relationship that was broken.  God wanted to restore a father/son or father/daughter relationship.  More than God wants you to know that He is Holy, God wants you to know him as daddy.  More than God wants you to know that He is just, he wants you to know that he LOVES YOU and has done everything that needed to be done to restore this broken relationship.  It is in the context of a relationship that you will begin to understand what it means that God is creator, that God is holy, that God is gracious, that God is just, but the relationship is the starting place.  God is my dad!  God is my father!  That blows my mind!  "That's My DAD!"
     

Seeing our sin helps us to love well!

       It seems that within American Christianity we shy away more and more from talking about sin.  We have changed the vocabulary from words like sin, wickedness,  and evil, to words like mistakes, shortcomings, and "my bad."  Rarely do we talk about the magnitude of sin and sinners before a holy and perfect God.  Rarely do we pause to contemplate what it means to sin, what it does to our relationship with God and that is a problem.
       Last week as I was reading in the Gospel of Mark I read Mark 8 beginning in verse 36 where Jesus forgives a woman who had sinned much.  The context is that Jesus is eating at one of the phariseas homes and a woman who was described in the account as a "sinner" came in wiped and washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and hair and anointed them.  The Pharisees could not grasp why Jesus would allow a woman with the reputation of this woman to do this.  Let's jump into the story at verse 41, "A certain moneylender had two debtors.  One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  When they could not pay he cancelled the debt of both.  Now which of them will love him more?  Simon answered, 'The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.'  And he said to him, 'You have judged rightly.'  Turning toward the woman he said to Simon, 'Do you see this woman?  I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven- for she has loved much.  But he who is forgiven little, loves little.' And he said to her, 'Your sins are forgiven.'"
       When we begin to minimize the magnitude of sin before a holy God we minimize our love for God.  When we begin to redefine the words sin, evil, and wickedness we redefine our ability to stand amazed at God's incredible love and grace towards us.  If God has only forgiven a "pretty good" person that does not motivate us to live the kind of counter-cultural, upside down, life that the Gospel calls us to live.  However, when God forgives someone who is a sinner, who has offended God deeply, who is wicked, who is evil, (which describes all of us) that gives incredible motivation and reason for that person to love God, to follow God, to live for Him.  That person is not following Jesus because they have to, they are following Jesus because they want to!  Understanding who we are in our sin, understand the magnitude of our sins before the God who created us, is the key to stop living a Christian life feeling like we have to serve God and to start living a Christian life where we want to serve God.
        Let us continue to talk about sin.  Let us continue to reflect on and think about the magnitude of our sin.  Let us continue to realize more and more how sin looks to our creator and sustainer.  When we do we will see more and more clearly how sinful we are.  How wicked we are.  How evil we are.  As we see that we will also see the amazing, astounding, unbelievable grace of God that has forgiven me and as a result we will love much!
     

Faith Like A Child: Toys, suffering, and change.

        Having kids allows you to regularly catch glimpses of Biblical truth coming alive in new and refreshing ways.  It has for me and I enjoy sharing them on here.  The other day our three year old, Anaya, said something that was absolutely shocking.  Something that I would imagine has only been vocalized by three year olds on extremely rare occasions.  So what did she say?  She said, "I think we need to clean up the toys."  Not a common phrase in our household coming out of the mouth of our children.  However, she had a reason why she wanted to clean up toys.  She wanted to clean up the toys because she had just stepped on one of them and hurt her foot!  Any parent knows the annoying and painful experience of stepping on a toy, and now Anaya had experience it and that experience made her want to do something she usually does not want to do, clean up!  As I was thinking about her response my mind quickly jumped to thinking about suffering and God.
         Suffering is one of those universal experiences that we all have.  Everyone of us suffers from time to time in life.   Suffering can be the result of a variety of different factors, but suffering is universal, and that is why it is such a prominent theme throughout Scripture.  In the New Testament when suffering is spoken of it almost always comes with a promise that God is going to bring something good out of the suffering.  The suffering itself is not good, as Anaya experienced, but it did bring about a good change in her wanting to clean up toys.  That is one of the good things about suffering.  It changes us for the better.  Suffering teaches us that we are not strong enough.  That we are not good enough.  That we are not smart enough.  That we do not have it all together.  That we don't have all the answers.  That we can't do this alone.  Suffering teaches us all those things, and much more.  When we realize those things all of a sudden we become people who are no longer depend upon our own resources, but instead depend on the unlimited resources of God.  Which is why Paul was able to say with such confidence in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, "And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." Suffering is never good, but what God brings out of suffering for those who trust in Him is always good!