Month: May 2014

Categories
Serving Others

Short Unoriginal Post #1 – Lowering Yourself

a blank note with a pen resting on itSo this is a short post. I won’t be wordy (or at least not “too wordy”). And I won’t even use my own words. Thus the title – Short & Unoriginal! Here is a quote today from Matt Chandler’s Book “Creature of the Word.”

“…because we have always lived in the chaos of sin, the kingdom of God feels backward and counterintuitive to us. In the kingdom, the hungry are full. The poor are rich. The mourning are blessed. And the powerful are servants.

He said to them, “You’re right in calling Me Lord and Teacher, because I am.”

Jesus was addressing Peter’s prevailing view that serving would cause Jesus to lose His stature as the Holy One. “I am beyond you. I am the Alpha and the Omega. I have always been, and I will always be. I can tell it to stop raining, and it will. I can tell it to start raining, and it will. I can tell dead people not to be dead, and they’ll listen. I can tell sick people they’re no longer sick, and any illness will leave them. And yet I do this to set an example for you—that in the kingdom of God… we do not use our power or influence selfishly. We do not use our position to keep from serving those under us. Rather, we use that power, position, and ability to actively lower ourselves and serve those under us and around us.”

Short & Unoriginal – but good stuff!

So go out today, intentionally plan on lowering yourself, and serve those around you.

Categories
Ramblings

How My Plans Turned Into Lies

It’s not that I planned to be a liar!
It’s just that old “best laid plans of mice and men” situation.
We all know that the best of intentions don’t always succeed… and my plans are no exception!

Approximately one year ago I started a blog. I started out posting on facebook, and then some church members asked for it to be emailed because they weren’t on facebook. So I started doing both. Someone else told me they preferred twitter. So I then added in some tweeting. And then someone else (my brother, more specifically!) wanted me to put it into a blog…

So I did.

Since that time I have written 122 blogs. This one will be 123. That means I have averaged just over 2 a week, which is not too bad for an initial attempt. The bad part was the inconsistency… some weeks were “heavy” weeks with a blog almost every day, and some weeks I didn’t post at all.

The reasons for the irregularity… well there are mucho…
I am often too wordy. I am a perfectionist. I have another job. I am still learning how to maintain a website…Take your pick from any of these and/or write up some new ones. (And you can already tell from this post that the “too wordy” description is probably the most accurate!)

In writing the blog, what I find is that I not only want to create original posts with helpful content, I also want to fully express each idea. But I have discovered that doing so takes a lot of effort!

a path through the woodsAll this has been realized by me before, and on those occasions of clarity, I have said that my plan would be to post more consistently by not worrying so much about polishing up my ideas. So several months after making that statement, I find that once again what I said I would do did not happen. (Yep, that makes me a liar. But not a malicious one!) So I’m gonna try once more to live up to what I have intended to do. With the hopes that one year from now, my average will be at least 3 posts per week. We’ll see if this new plan becomes reality!

And thanks to all of you who have encouraged me to keep posting!

It has been an enjoyable journey for me, and I look forward to seeing where the path will take me next.

Now stay tuned for a short post today!

Categories
Relationships

How To Market and Sell Jesus

When I first read the quote that I have included below, the words definitely resonated with me. It is because I feel the same way. I know people who love Jesus. I know people who want to share the joy they have found in Jesus with others. But there is a tension in how to do so. You might be one who also struggles with this. We have a hard time doing that thing that preachers call “sharing your faith.” When we are instructed to do this, we feel like we are being asked to go sell a product to people who haven’t asked for the sales pitch. stuffed penguins at a carnival booth representing our feelings of trying to market and sell JesusWe feel like telemarketers on a cold call or like carnival hawkers trying to entice a stranger to come win a stuffed penguin. And so we get awkward trying to market and sell Jesus.

But Jesus doesn’t need us to be His marketing agent nor a salesman for Him. Instead, we just need to let our honesty about our joy and belief in Him to flow out of us naturally. We just need to change our conversations slightly to point people in the direction of Jesus. Jesus can take care of the rest. Instead of becoming the pushy salesman or the marketing agent trying to come up with a cute jingle that’ll “hook” someone into wanting the “Product,” we just need to be honest with people about our feelings for and about Jesus. Jesus doesn’t need your marketing and sales skills. He is way more capable than you of drawing people to Himself. Here is an illustration of the point from Miller:

…when I share my faith, I feel like a network marketing guy…. Some of my friends who aren’t Christians think that Christians are insistent and demanding and intruding, but that isn’t the case. Those folks are the squeaky wheel. Most Christians have enormous respect for the space and freedom of others; it is only that they have found a joy in Jesus they want to share. There is the tension.

In a recent radio interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity. I told him that I couldn’t do it, and moreover, that I didn’t want to defend the term. He asked me if I was a Christian, and I told him yes. “Then why don’t you want to defend Christianity?” he asked, confused. I told him I no longer knew what the term meant. Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent. To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend. By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry. I won’t do it. Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers. How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people?

I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me. The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes. When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together. He told me how much he didn’t like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe Jesus was the Son of God.

So how do we market and sell Jesus to others? We don’t. Instead we strive to live out an imitation of Christ in our lives and we honestly share the joy we have discovered in the fact that Jesus likes us. We can trust Jesus to be big enough to handle the rest.

How have you had similar experiences with feeling like Miller, like his friends that thought Christians were pushy, or like the radio host?

Categories
Christian Living

You Are Not Free To Do What You Want

Have you ever looked through an old window whose glass has become distorted with age? glass windowWhen we look at the world through an aged window or through the side of a glass bottle, our vision is distorted due to the fact that we have added an inconsistent filter between us and the world we are viewing. An inconsistent filter gives inconsistent images… leading to wrong ideas about the “shape” of something. To see things properly, we have to change the filter we are looking through.

And bottles aren’t the only inconsistent filter!

Our own families, our education, our culture, our society… all of these are filters that prompt us to “look at” (& think about) the world around us in a certain way. How we think about people, about money, about entertainment… these filters color our perception and understanding. And unless we are aware of this, we won’t even know that we are looking at things through a lens that distorts.

So what we end up doing is looking at everything, even the Word of God, through the filter of American society, instead of looking at American society through the filter of God’s Word.

And since we are using a distorting lens, we Christians in America end up distorting the truths of God’s Word. We have somehow molded our understanding of the Scriptures around our American beliefs, such that we have distorted God’s teachings to help them “line-up” with American society. This leads to us having inconsistent lives and beliefs. And then we wonder why people who aren’t Christians have a hard time understanding God’s Word. What are some ways we do this?

  • When we pray more for the poor physical health of other Christians than we do for people who don’t yet know Jesus (and therefore already have “poor” spiritual health), then we have distorted why Jesus came to this earth.

  • When we are more focused on our entertainment (watching our TV, reading our novels, engaging in our outdoor recreational activities) than on reading God’s Word and talking to Him about it, then we have distorted how to develop a deep relationship with God.

  • When we consider our disobedience to God as “not that bad” because we are comparing them to the “worse” sins of others, instead of deciding to see how close we can have our lives line up with Jesus’, then we have distorted what it means to be a disciple.

  • When we have become so fixated on money and image that we will give our waiters and waitresses 20% tips so they think we are nice people, and buy houses and cars and “stuff” that cost exorbitant amounts to impress people we don’t know, and go into debt just so we can keep up with the “Joneses,” though we don’t even come close to giving 10% of our income to God, then we have distorted our understanding of God as provider and have worshiped the idol of the almighty dollar and the American dream above our Heavenly Father.

  • When pastors learn to become professionals who can run a church as a CEO and have everything their hearts’ desire without ever really seeking God’s face for direction, then we have distorted what it means to be a shepherd of God’s church.

  • When we believe that discussing politics, boycotting places that don’t share our beliefs, and calling & writing our senators about their political agendas are more important than telling our neighbors about Jesus and more important than discipling less mature Christians, then we have distorted our understanding of the Great Commission.

  • When we are more fixated on pleasing ourselves, on obtaining the American dream, about having blessings and comfort and security, then we have distorted what our freedom and liberty in Christ are all about.

    • You are not free to do whatever you would like.
    You are free to do whatever Jesus would like.
    You were bought with a price… by Him.

    What will you do to help reorient yourself to a healthier (and less distorted) Biblical understanding of discipleship?

    Can you think of other areas of Christianity that we have distorted?

    Categories
    Worship

    I’m Just Too Busy. So Are You.

    a close-up of a watch signifying that we are too busyWe sure do stay busy around here. Work takes up a lot of our time. And then, of course, the commitments to our family require us to block out additional time each week. And then if I own anything, then that house, yard, car, etc. will “own” me as well, as I’ll have some things that I have to do to maintain the upkeep of these items – more time needed. That doesn’t leave much time for me to do the things I was wanting to do this week, but I’ll find a way to carve out a few hours for exercise, recreation, entertainment, and relaxation here and there. And all of that will fill up the hours of my entire week. And so what I find is that I am busy. And what I have found out, is that since I am so busy…

    I’m Too Stinking Busy to Pray
    You probably are too.

    I mean, where can I find extra time to do that “devotional” that my pastor keeps telling me to prioritize? Where can I find a few extra minutes to stop and have some real prayer time with God? I don’t have an extra minute, and I am already tired from all that I am doing. It seems that here in America we have become so busy that we’ve “elbowed” out the possibility of having any time left for a serious relationship with God. So I give him a minute here to read a quick Bible verse attached to a devotional. And I’ll spend a little time telling Him what I need for the day as I drive into work, in between thinking about how to get the kids to their after-school activities and what I need to pick up from the grocery for dinner.

    It seems we have forgotten that God desires a relationship with us. Instead I seem to just give him my leftovers. Leftover minutes here and there. Not enough for a real relationship with a human… much less the God of this universe.

    The great reformer Martin Luther has been attributed with stating: “I generally pray two hours every day… except on very busy days… On those days, I pray three.”

    When I read the first part of my sentence, I think, “Sure, but Martin Luther wasn’t busy. That’s why he had the time to pray. Back in those ancient days, he didn’t have much to do but to contemplate on God.” But that is not the truth. Martin Luther was a very busy man – defending his theology, translating the Bible into German, writing books, preparing sermons, teaching students, leading a Reformation – certainly no less busy than I am today… and probably even busier. However, instead of following Luther’s example and spending MORE time in prayer during the busy days, I tend to pray less. He believed he was too busy NOT to pray.

    Instead of coming to the recognition that “I am too busy not to pray,” I sacrifice my time with God for getting all these other things in my life accomplished.

    And anyway, does prayer really even make a difference?

    Well, we say that it does. But our lack of doing so may be “telling” as to what we really believe about the answer to that question. Why do we take these two things that we say make a difference (reading the very Word of God and talking to Him about it), and yet spend so little time doing them?

    Perhaps…
    “Our failure to think of prayer as a privilege may be partly due to the fact that we can pray at any time. The door to prayer is open so continuously that we fail to avail ourselves of an opportunity which is always there.” We know that if we don’t pray today, then there is always tomorrow. We know that if we decide we are too busy to read the Bible today, then there is always tomorrow. But if we are too busy for prayer and Bible study today, then guess what? It is likely that we’re also gonna be too busy for it tomorrow.

    Do I really believe that my prayers could actually make a difference in this world and in my life? do you? We agree that we should pray, but we don’t talk about the fact that our prayers can actually change things. Jesus did.

    In regard to the work to be done in “the harvest,” Jesus indicated that there are so many people that need the Father’s love. And that there is a shortage of compassionate disciples. But instead of telling people to Go out and Work Harder. Jesus said… So Pray About It! Pray that the Father would send out more workers.

    Our model is “Do More.” Jesus’ model is “Pray More.”

    Jesus believed that prayer mattered. He knew that by praying to the Father, the Father would work on peoples’ hearts and would move them to desire to serve.

    God’s Word says that prayer makes a difference. Jesus said the prayer makes a difference. Do you really believe that “your prayers will determine anything?” If you do, then make a commitment –
    Parents, that you will begin to have a regular time of prayer and Bible reading with (and for) your children. If it is really a priceless book and prayer can change their lives, then your children need you to share that with them.

    Spouses, that you will begin to have a regular time of prayer and Bible reading with (and for) each other. This is one way to help “divorce-proof” your marriage.

    Carve out the time in your busy day to take time with the King of the Universe. You need it.

    You are too busy NOT to pray.

    And it will change the world.
    It will change your family.
    It will change you.