Not even sure what title to give this one....

       A while back on a Sunday evening I was sitting in my comfortable recliner, in my comfortable house, scrolling through my twitter feed on my iPhone 5 when the news of 21 Christians being beheaded comes across the feed and as I read more and learn more about what happened I was saddened, I was hurt, I was broken-hearted for what had happened, and I prayed...

      Than an hour later I was eating a DQ blizzard in my comfortable recliner, in my comfortable house, with my wife and my parents.  The next day my life goes on filled with comforts and relative ease.  It doesn't seem right.  It seems shallow.  It seems costless.  It seems unfair.  Where is my persecution?  Where are the ones who are going to hate me?  Where is my cost?  Where is my sacrifice?  How do I harmonize that my brothers and sisters in Christ are being martyred, beheaded, persecuted, and hated around the world, and I am eating a blizzard?  Saying a quick prayer for my persecuted brothers and sisters seems shallow, giving 10% of my absurd amount of wealth seems shallow, being a nice person and maybe occasionally sharing Jesus seems shallow.  All the phrases and quotes that those of us who are Christians in America who are privileged, filthy rich, and have filled our lives with comfort and entertainment, seem offensive.  

       I'm restless.  I'm confused.  I'm processing.  I'm divided.  I'm torn.  I'm discontent.

What Taco John's can teach the church

           Last Thursday an article and picture were put in the local paper here in Brookings, SD introducing myself as the new pastor at Bethel Baptist Church and inviting the community to the installation service this past Sunday.  When I came to work on Tuesday I found an envelope in my box from Taco Johns, and here is what was in it...

             It was simple.  It wasn't elaborate.  It wasn't extremely costly or difficult.  In spite of that.... it left a really good impression (and soon to be a yummy impression too!) Sometimes we get too caught up in wanting to do "big" things for God and miss out on countless daily opportunities to do things that are simple and easy BUT leave a good impression!  Yes, we will be called as followers of Christ to also do hard things where we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow but let us not miss out on the everyday opportunities to leave a really good impression.  Are we so focused on trying to hit a home run that we miss out on opportunities to lay down a bunt and advance the runner?  Our Gospel proclamation can never be only "good deeds" but our good deeds should be plentiful as we strive to leave good impressions that will make speaking the Gospel in our communities more impactful!

             What can you do in your neighborhood, work-place, local store, and community in order to leave a really good impression of the Gospel?  Now go do it!  

Gospel and loving our enemies

       As we continue to look at how knowing, grasping, and cherishing the Gospel helps us to live out the life Jesus calls us to live we are going to look at the command to love our enemies.  Matthew 5:43-44, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbors and hate your enemy.'  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."  We are commanded by Jesus to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  That kind of love is not our natural response.  We don't naturally love our enemies.  We don't naturally pray for those who persecute us, but that is what Jesus is calling His followers to do.  

       How does knowing, grasping, and cherishing the Gospel help us to love our enemies?  The Gospel tells us that because of our sin we are God's enemies.  Romans 5:10, "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of Son, much more, now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life."  Do you see what Paul is saying here?  He is talking to Christians and reminding them that before they were reconciled to God they were enemies of God.  That doesn't get talked about a lot today.  It doesn't feel very good to be told that unless we have put our faith in Jesus we are actually enemies of God.  However, that is what the Gospel proclaims. It proclaims that we who were once enemies have been reconciled to God by Jesus and that is GOOD news!  We like to think that before Jesus we were pretty good people, but that is not what the Bible says.  The Bible says that we were enemies with God and anyone who is an enemy of the God of the universe is not a pretty good person.  That is a person who is in desperate need to be restored and reconciled to God and that is exactly what Jesus did when He took the punishment, death, and wrath upon Himself that you and I deserved because we were the ones who were God's enemies, not Jesus.  

       Friend, that is the Gospel and that is indeed God news.  Do you see how this connects to loving our enemies?  The Gospel shows us how the God of the universe was able to love and reconcile us while we were His enemies and that should be our motivation for loving our enemies.  Loving our enemies is doing exactly what God did for us.  The more we realize the desperate state that we were in before Jesus the more willing we will be to offer that same kind of love, grace, and mercy to others that God offered to us.  You don't have the capacity to love this way in and of yourself but that is exactly why God gave us the Holy Spirit so that we would have God's love dwelling within to give to others.  Knowing, grasping, and cherishing the Gospel helps us to love our enemies.

Gospel and living a life of gratitude.

   It is so easy to complain and honestly I am pretty good at it!  Most of us seem to be pretty good at complaining and do not find difficulty in finding multiple things every single day to complain about.  However, as followers of Jesus it is very clear that we are not to complain.  Philippians 2:14 states, "Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world."  Do all things without grumbling.  That is hard, really hard, but it is what we are called to do!  Did you see what this verse says will happen if we do all things without grumbling or disputing?  You will shine as light in the world!  Why?  Because everyone is complaining and grumbling all the time!  

 We are looking at why it is so important to get the Gospel right because when we get the Gospel right it helps us live out the radical life that we are called to live, and living a life without grumbling and arguing is a radical life.  Instead of complaining we have been called to live a life of thankfulness, Ephesians 5:20, "Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. "  So how does the Gospel help us move away from a life of complaining to a life of thankfulness?  

In the Gospel we see grace; incredible, amazing, astounding, incomprehensible, undeserved, unearned, grace!  The Gospel tells us that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to restore our relationship with God.  Nothing.  We can't be good enough, we can't go to church enough, we can't read our bibles enough, we can't pray enough, we can't tell enough people about Jesus.  There is nothing we can do to restore our relationship with God.  We broke the relationship through our sin and we are powerless to restore it.  That is a pretty helpless place to be.  It is our fault that it is broken and we can do nothing to fix it.  Here is where the Gospel enters in.  God did for you what you could not do for yourself.  God restored the broken relationship by sending Jesus to die in your place, in my place!  That is incredible!  Not because you are good, or deserving, or worthy, but because He LOVES YOU!  WOW!  Let that sink in and I guarantee you the more you grasp what God has done for you the more gratitude and thankfulness will come bubbling up from deep within you and overflow into the life that you live day by day.  

So what do we do when we catch ourselves in those complaining moods?  Tell ourselves the Gospel message.  Tell ourselves what Jesus did for us.  Tell ourselves how God restored the relationship that we broke and that we could not fix and don't stop preaching the Gospel to yourself until gratitude and thankfulness begin to take over the complaining and grumbling spirit that you found yourself in.  

Why we have to get the Gospel right

       We HAVE to get the Gospel right.  What is the "Gospel" that we have to get right?  It is the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord!  The Gospel is Jesus in our place.  The Gospel is Jesus taking on Himself the punishment, death, wrath, and consequences that you and I deserved.  The Gospel is God's grace given to us which is wholly underserved.  That is the Gospel that we have to get right!  We have to get it right because it is the only way by which we can be saved.  We have to get it right because it is the only way that others can be saved.  We have to get it right because in coming to grasp, know, and cherish the Gospel more and more we find the power to live rightly!
        After a person puts their faith in Jesus we are called to live a life that is very much counter cultural.  We are called to live a life that goes against the flow of our culture, and if we are honest goes against our natural tendencies and desires.  Think about some of the crazy demands that Scripture calls us to; deny yourself, forgive everyone, LOVE your enemies, store up your treasure in heaven, take care of the least of these, consider others above yourself, love the hard to love, be content in ALL circumstances, live in a place of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.  We could go on for awhile listing the way in which we are called to live as followers of Jesus but that list should be sufficient to remind of us the counter-cultural way we are called to live.  I would argue that our failure to live the way we are called to live is in-part connected with our failure to cheerish, know, and grasp the Gospel.
         Over the course of the next several posts I want to demonstrate how grasping, knowing, and cherishing the Gospel more and more gives us the ability to live out the calling that God has on our lives more and more.  In order to do this we will look specifically at the following in light of the Gospel; forgiveness, loving those who are hard to love, denying self, and living a life of gratitude.  My prayer is that as we journey through these specific examples we will see more clearly than ever before why we need to grasp, cherish, and know the Gospel.

Faith Like a Child: The "One-Another's" of Scripture

       The other night I looked down the hallway to see my two year standing on top of a chair that he had pulled out of his room and having opened the hall closet was attempting to reach something.  I went to see what mischief he was getting himself into and he told me that he was trying to reach a bandaid for mommy's "owie."  He had noticed a small scratch on my wife's leg and wanted to get a bandaid so that he could take care of her!  It was awesome to see his care and love for his mom as he took the initiative to help her and as he was carefully putting the band-aid on her "owie."  At first I was surprised that he took the initiative in taking care of his mom as it is not always the typical response of a 2 year old.  However, I shouldn't have been that surprised because day after day he is the recipient go great care, concern, and love that his mom showers upon him and when someone is daily impacted by another's love, care, and concern, it become natural for that person to also demonstrate love, care, and concern for others.  This led me to think about all the one-anothers in Scripture.
       There are a lot of "one-another's" in Scripture that call us to relate to those God has placed in our lives in a certain way.  We are called to; love one another, be devoted to one another, honor one another above ourselves, live in harmony with one another, serve one another, be kind and compassionate with one another, forgive each other, and many more!  If we are honest with ourselves these things do not necessarily come easily for us.  Maybe we do a decent job with the "one-another's" with the people that we find it easy to get along with, but how do we do with the "one-another's" when it comes to people who are not as easy to get along with.  The reason Ty was able to care for his mom, is because he has experienced her care time and time again.  If we are going to carry out the one-another's in Scripture we need to see how God, through Jesus, regularly loves us, serves us, is kind and compassionate to us, forgive us, and much more.  When we live in that time and time again it becomes natural for us to demonstrate those things to others.  If you are struggling to live out the "one another's" that are found in Scripture the best place to start is by realizing how God is living out each of those in your life on daily basis.  To daily notice how God is loving you, serving you, being kind to you, forgiving you and so on.  As we do that we will begin to notice that we are growing in our ability to love, serve, be kind, and forgive others that God has placed into our life.
       Ty cared for mom because mom has cares for him.  We love, serve, and forgive others because God has loves, serves, and forgives us.

The Christian trump card.....

       We have a Christian trump card!  A card that we like to play in order to effectively end arguments and debates that we find ourselves in.  A card that we also use to fight against conviction from God and to refrain from having discussions with others about the choices they might be making.  What is that trump card.....  legalism!  Countless times in discussions I have been in with others either I or they have used the phrase, "but I don't want to be legalistic" and that seems to effectively end the conversation.  We also use the trump card to avoid conviction from God especially in the areas of entertainment, possessions, finances, dress, etc.  We feel that God is calling us to make changes, big or small, in these areas and as a way to avoid that conviction we think and/or say, "but I don't want to be legalistic."  The other way we frequently play this trump card is in discussing difficult issues with another person and we begin the conversation by saying, "I don't want to sound legalistic, but...."  I believe that the legalistic trump card instead of guarding us against legalism actually hinders our growth in Christlikeness and thinking carefully and deeply about how the Gospel ought to impact every area of our life.  

       What is legalism?  Legalism is the process by which we define our relationship with God by the rules we follow.  Our relationship with God is defined by the things we avoid.  If we don't drink, sleep around, cuss, watch R rated movies, dance, gamble, etc then our relationship with God is good. However if we, or anyone, does those things we become judgmental and assume there is no way that person is in a relationship with God because of the things that they are doing.  Legalism is based upon works and we should rightly rebel against any system of thought that moves our relationship with Jesus away from grace.  "For it is by grace that you have been saved, that not of yourself, it is a gift of God lest anyone should boast."  We are right to argue vehemently against any form of legalism  because it is not the Gospel that Scripture proclaims where we are saved by grace.  However, our fear of legalism has made it so that any rule that was promoted by those who practiced legalism we assume to be a legalistic rule in which we no longer have any need to follow.  The difference between legalism and the deeply thinking about how the Gospel impacts every area of our life is the starting place.  

      In legalism the starting place is the law.  We start with the law and we become so afraid of offending God or harming our relationship with Him that we focus a lot on the rules.  There is an underlying belief that God will love me more if I do the right things and avoid the bad things and that if I don't do that God will love me less.  In deeply thinking about how the Gospel impacts every area of our life we start with the Gospel.  We start with the truth that we are saved by grace through faith alone.  We believe that after we put our faith in Jesus that God cannot love us more or less than He does right now.  We believe that on the cross Jesus took our sin upon Himself, and gave us His righteousness.  We believe that He paid the debt we owed and took the wrath of God against our sins upon Himself.  We start with the cross, we start with grace and that makes all the difference, even if we come to the same conclusion.  

       Let me give an example using movies.  Legalism begins with the law by looking at the commands that God has given us (do not murder, do not commit sexual immorality, etc) and if a movie contains the things which God commands us to not do they come to the conclusion that it is sinful to watch those movies.  Gospel thinking begins with grace and the cross.  It affirms that watching a movie or not watching a movie will not change my eternal standing before God.  It affirms that if I refrain from watching this movie God will not love me more and if I watch this movie God will not love me less because our justification is not tied to our behavior.  Sadly, that is often times where we stop.  However, because the nature and magnitude of the Gospel we must go further.  We must begin asking questions such as; what is my motivation in watching this movie?  How does my freedom to watch this movie work with my understanding that not everything is beneficial for me?  How my freedom to watch this movie work with my understanding of not causing my brother of sister in Christ to stumble?  Will watching this movie help or hinder me in thinking about life the way God desires me to think about life?  Will this movie help me pursue Jesus or not?  Will this movie help me in becoming more like Jesus?  Why is it that I so badly want to see this movie?  Deeply thinking about how the Gospel impacts all areas of our life might bring us to the same conclusion that legalism might lead another person too, however that does not make it legalism.  The Gospel is to big, too beautiful, to magnificent, to glorious, to not impact every area of our life.  It should impact not only what we watch and listen to, but also how we watch and listen.  It should impact how we spend our money and how much we pursue material possessions.  It should impact how we dress, how we talk, and much more.  Too often I desire to live a Gospel life that allows most of these areas to remain untouched, but the Gospel doesn't allow that to be an option.  The Gospel did what the law could not.  The Gospel changed us from the inside out, but it is indeed changing us on the outside.  

       We need to be careful to not confuse legalism for deeply thinking about how the Gospel impacts all areas of our life.  They may, or may not, come to the same conclusion but where they began makes all the difference.