Spectator Christianity

We don't workout enough. I don't mean going to the gym and getting "ripped" on tread mills, benches, and stair climbers. I mean that we don't work out our spiritual lives enough.  Many of us are complacent spiritually.  We take in every Sunday and even read our Bibles a couple times a week, but we're not working out our faith into our day to day lives. We become spectator Christians, watching the game from the couch, but not getting involved. In 1 Corinthians 8 the Apostle Paul says "All of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows some things, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God". You see when you just possess knowledge, but don't put it into action, you become puffed up, you need to exercise this knowledge.  This is what Jesus meant when he said that if we loved him we had to obey his commandments.

It is so vital that we put into practice what we know, what we learn.  If we just go to church every week, but never take it out into to our jobs then we are still just spectator Christians.  I am writing this because I don't want us to be filled with knowledge of God, but never love the people of God.  Earlier in 1 Corinthians Paul said "The kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power" (1 Cor. 4:20) We have to get out of spiritual complacency, out of the idea of talking about our faith, and into the mindset of living out our faith.  I tell my middle school students all the time that Christianity is not about doing or not doing something, but instead Christianity is about being someone.  So who are you going to be?

Backward Progress

I used to skateboard when I was in middle school, and I remember the first time I ever dropped in, which is when you go down a ramp at a skate park. It took me awhile, but it clicked when I realized that I had to go down in order to go up.  You see, in skating your natural reaction when going down a steep ramp is to pull back as you going down, but this makes you fall.  So the only way to make it all the way down is to lean into the board. It’s kind of a backwards principle, but it is true for your Christian life too.    

The Bible teaches that to become first you have to be last. In Mark 10, Jesus says, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave to all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” It is clear that Jesus had a different way of thinking of success than most of us do.  If you looked at Jesus from a worldly perspective you would think He was a loser. He left home at the age of 30, never had a girlfriend, and didn’t have a job. But He knew the truth about what it meant to be first eternally. If you want to succeed in life, you have to be last, you have to be a servant. This is the backwards way of looking at life that changed the ancient world. Imagine what would happened if we all decided to serve each other and put others before ourselves? What would your work, home, or family look like? Everything changes in every aspect of our lives when we realize what Jesus was saying. How about you? Are you going to be first here...or first in eternity? 

God In The Silence

A couple weekends ago myself and a few of the other Heirborne leaders had the privilege of taking the middle school students to Camp Timber-lee in East Tory, WI.  We go to a camp every winter for our annual snow camp, it's a really cool tradition that the students love. This year was no exception, the students had a great time and many of them encountered God powerfully. For me where I saw God in the biggest way was the very first night on a toboggan. Now for those of you who are reading this and hail from warmer areas of the world, a toboggan is basically a wooden surfboard flattened out and bent at the front. Here's a picture of one: Anyway I had never been on the toboggan shoot at Camp Timber-lee so that's one of the first things I wanted to do. When I was sitting on the toboggan at the top of the hill looking down it looked like a pretty gradual decline, which would made for a really lame toboggan hill, so I wasn't all that anxious. I had it under control. However; as I started to move it became all the more apparent that my judgment was wrong and that the hill was actually much much steeper than it seemed. See after that gradual decline I talked about it practically dropped off at a 90 degree angle. It turned out to be the best toboggan hill I have ever been on, but the really cool thing wasn't the hill. What took me back was that when the hill leveled out at the bottom the camp designed it so that you would shoot out onto the frozen lake This was my favorite part of the whole weekend because I saw God out there on that frozen lake. After the noise of the trees around me on the hill and of me screaming subsided I realized I was on a toboggan and I was surrounded by God. What I mean was that when I got out on that lake all I saw was darkness in front of me, snow beside me, and the shining stars above me. In that moment there was complete silence and I saw God all around me. I don't mean I literally saw Him, but I felt Him. Everything else in my life took a backseat and I had peace.

I sat there for a second just taking it all in and I thought about life. Aren't we in similar situations often? Don't we feel like I felt at the top of the hill, that life is manageable. That life is a "gradual decline" and that we can handle it ourselves. But it's when we are flying down the hill screaming that we want God there, that we cry out for Him, and just as he showed me on that lake that He is there in the darkness shining through. I don't know what you are going through, but I can promise you that God is with you every step of the way. It may take silence for you to realize that, or it may take something much much louder and more painful to get your attention, but He is there. I can promise you of that much.

Do What You Were Made To DO

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who I am or more importantly who I am supposed to be. I have the awesome privilege of being a student at Moody Bible Institute and get to take a lot of in depth classes. One of these classes is one leadership and through the exercises it has forced me to really think about who I am supposed to be in Christ. On top of that this week is Founders Week at MBI, which means a bunch of top notch Bible teachers come in for a week and speak on a variety of topics. One of my favorite messages I had the chance to listen to this week was from Chip Ingram, a pastor of a church in California, and he did a phenomenal job speaking on this subject.

With all this coming from different angles on the same subject I think God has been trying to teach me what it means to be who He made me to be. You will never be more attractive or a better person than when you are who God has made you to be.  In Romans 12:3 it speaks on this issue of being the who that God made you to be.

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment”.  

What do you think about yourself? Most preachers will translate this to mean thinking of yourself greater than what you are, which is a common mistake we humans make, but I believe the principle in this passage is not to think about yourself higher, or lower, than you actually are. To think soberly is to see yourself as God sees you, this is the true you. I am afraid that some people will get to heaven and realize that they spent their whole lives trying to be someone that they are not. You will never be a better person than when you are doing what God has made you to do. You may be good at other stuff, you may be great and very gifted, but if you are not in the exact spot where God wants you than you will not find satisfaction.

It is so important that we take the time to seek the Lord on this subject because if you don’t understand how you fit into the puzzle of life than your whole life will be trying to jam into a spot that you have no business being in. So take some time this week and pray that God reveals that to you. And I pray that you gain the courage to change the things in your life you have to change to be who God has made you to be.

True Evangelism

A few weeks ago Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc, announced that he would be taking a leave of absence due to health problems.  In the past Jobs has had health problems such as a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2004 and liver transplant surgery in 2008, so many people attribute his sudden leave to these prior health issues. However; Apple and Jobs refuse to comment specifically on the issue. This news had many people fearing for the worst for the worlds leading computer company, Apple. One of the reasons that Apple has been so successful throughout the years is because of the dynamic and visionary leadership of Steve Jobs. So some consumers are afraid that Apple will cease to be Apple if Jobs has to leave, or worse, dies.

A few years ago Jobs himself talked of death in his Standford Commencement address. He said:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition"


 Reading the words of Jobs had made me think a lot about life and what it is about. His words sound good and are good, but they're not complete by themselves. What he is preaching is the gospel of our secular generation. It's probably the foundational concept of life in 21st century America is based on for most people. And Steve Jobs is truly an evangelist for this post-modern gospel. What this made me think about is what are we evangelists for? What gospel does our life promote? Jobs gave this commencement address after he was diagnosed with cancer. What is interesting about that is that when you are in pain, people listen to you. I don't care who you are, if something tragic is going on in your life people listen to you. If you are about to die people listen to you. Why? Because the perspective of someone going through unbelievable pain is important.

Whether you want it or not when you go through pain you are given a microphone, and with that microphone your life's gospel or message is broadcasted to everyone around you who can hear it. So, what is your life about? What is your life's message? I hope it is the message of the true gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know it sounds really good to talk about being yourself no matter what other people say and that is a good thing, but the only thing that is worthy for us to devote our lives to is the gospel of Jesus Christ. With that microphone that you will have when you are in pain I hope you shout the name of Jesus with it, with your life I pray that you declare Jesus is Lord.

Focus...focus

I've been thinking lately about what is really important in life.  I feel we can often get tangled up in so many things, important as they may be, that just aren't the thing.  In Revelation 2 Jesus writes this to the church at Ephesus:


  “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: these are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place."

This passage speaks to me, even haunts me, all the time. It has had significant meaning in my life because it reminds me to focus on the one thing that is worthy for us to be living for. I have a friend back in Maryland that I grew up with, he was the type of guy that everyone thought was gonna do great things with his life, and he wanted to. But somewhere along the way he got caught up in stuff of this life. I was there with him for awhile, but by the grace of God I was saved from that lifestyle. What I am trying to get across is that we have to focus on why we're here. This life has a lot to offer, but in the end what Christ wants from your life is your love and devotion to Him. Don't let the other stuff get in the way.

The friend I mentioned is now at a Bible school in the D.C. metropolitan area and he's doing very well, but it was only after he got the stuff in his life that was distracting him that he was able to fully follow Christ. What is holding you back?