Inconspicuous Grace

Hard Prosperity

2012-01-27T14:57:00.000-08:00

I've been hearing a lot of preachers recently who proclaim a certain type of "gospel." This gospel tells its followers that blessings from God come in monetary and tangible ways. It claims that if you follow an obscure prayer in the middle of a book of genealogies from the Old Testament that God will "expand your borders", and it also claims that if you are obedient, faithful in church then God will bless you exponentially by material means. Before I go on I want to add a couple qualifiers. First there is nothing wrong with having money, owning nice things, or anything like that, unless that comes before your relationship with God. Secondly I do think that God can bless in tangible ways and that he does.

However the problem with this type of teaching is that it engenders a mentality of God almost as an amazing credit card rewards program. If you spend enough time and money (tithing) at church then you'll get that back even more. The real issue here is that this flattens the way that God does interact with his creation. By saying that if you believe in God and do everything right he will bless you monetarily is excluding the majority of Christians worldwide who are desolate, poor, and weak. It's like saying that God is like that father who is never around, and tries to compensate this by showering his family with expensive gifts. I've known people who have had parents like this and all they wanted was for their dad to be around. In the same way if we truly worship this awesome, all powerful, and amazing God as is revealed in Scripture then if the only way he interacted with us was through tangible blessings then I would react just like the child of that father. By saying, "Dad I just want to be with you."

Thankfully we know from the Bible that God is a loving father who wants to see us grow to be more and more like Jesus Christ our Lord. Going back to prosperity gospel preaching, sometimes the most loving thing you can do for your child is to discipline them. We see this concept more throughout Scripture than the type of blessing this false gospel proclaims. In Hebrews 12 the Scriptures say, "It is for discipline that you must endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline then you are illegitimate children and not sons." This is just one biblical example of this poignant and true concept, that if you are loved by God then he will discipline you. I don't know how this will come to fruition in your life, but I know it will, and I write this in the hope that you guard yourself against this pop theology that is grossly misaligned with the Word of God.

Spectator Christianity

2011-05-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-03T09:32:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-11T16:55:00.000-08:00

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?

Bigger Than Life

2010-11-12T19:45:00.000-08:00

What is the biggest thing you can think of? The Earth? The Milky Way galaxy? The universe? In Matthew 17:20, Jesus told His disciples that if they had the faith of a mustard, seed they could move a mountain. The cool thing here is that Jesus is using one of the smallest things they know of, a mustard seed, and contrasting it with the biggest thing in their world, a mountain. A mustard seed was smaller than a pebble, but it would grow to be a huge tree when planted. Where Jesus was at in Israel there were a lot of mountains, and to the first century people, a mountain was the biggest thing in their world. When Jesus said this, they imagined a pebble and a mountain.

It would be like today if Jesus was around He might say if you had the faith of a micro molecular cell, you could move the universe. Though that would be much more of a mouth-full than what he actually said. But you get the point; Jesus was saying that if you have enough faith in me, even if it isn’t a lot, you can move the biggest thing in the world. He was talking metaphorically here. It’s not like you’re really going to go up and move Mount Everest from its place. He’s saying that if you believe in Jesus, that even the mountains in your life can be moved with faith. This means that the bills piling up, that test you need to take, or that hard conversation that you need to have can be taken care of by faith in Christ. Faith means doing what Jesus says and believing that what he says is absolutely true. You can’t give only 50% of yourself to Jesus. When He calls someone He calls every bit of them. And He doesn’t promise it will be easy; but He promises He will be with you every step of the way, through the good and the bad. Are there mountains in your life that you need to give over to Jesus? All you need is a seed of faith.

Succesful Failures

2010-09-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

Have you ever met someone who is successful? I mean really successful. One of my bosses at a previous job was successful. He was a lawyer and had a thriving practice that he built. He made a lot more money than I could ever dream of making, yet there was something wrong. He was so caught up in his life that he never really enjoyed it... Or at least that's how it appeared to me. He is presently on his third marriage, he is hardly home, and he is always stressed out. Don't get me wrong--he was one of the best bosses I have ever had, but at the same time I look at him and don't want However, I continue to see people who are successful and am increasingly convinced that we have been lied to. Money is not wrong and having it isn't wrong, but if that is what your life's goal is then I think it's time to reexamine your priorities.

Stephen Covey said "You can climb the ladder of success and realize it's leaning on the wrong wall." Success isn't about making money or having a good life. Success... True success is following God's call on your life. Ephesians 1:18 says "Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, which is the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints". And then again in Ephesians 4:1 Paul says "I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." God has a purpose and calling on your life, and you will only be happy when you follow Him wholly. If you succeed at the wrong thing, you fail. In what areas of your life are you seeking to be successful? Where should you be succeeding? God's call on your life may be for you to find success in business, or in acting, or even in plumbing. Whatever it is that God has called you to... You have to follow the calling, otherwise you may wake up one day and realize that your ladder is leaning on the wrong wall. In what manner will you choose to be successful?

Fast Food Jesus

2010-08-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

Imagine your going out to eat after church on Sunday and you decide to try BurgerPrince instead of your usual pick of Cindy's. Now imagine going into the restaurant and ordering your food and the cashier handing you a spatula, apron, and a burger patty and pointing you towards the kitchen. That would probably be the last time you went to that restaurant. Why? Because we like to be served, we enjoy being waited on, it's human nature. That's why we don't mind paying extra for big screen TV's, country clubs, first class airplane seating, luxury cars, and lawn motors that mow your lawn for you(don't believe me, check out http://www.robotlawnmower.ca/). Let's be honest, we like to be served and treated like kings and queens. Whole marketing campaigns and business organizations are built on that one fact. We know what we want and we want it fast.

It can be scary when you see this attitude transferred to the church. I can't tell you how many times I have heard someone complaining about the sermon, the music, the media clip, the technical difficulties, what he said, what she said, etc. But I can count on my fingers (probably only on one hand) how many times someone has come to me and asked how can they serve in church. Jesus made it very clear that following him was not going to be a trivial pursuit. In fact, Jesus said "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."(Luke 9:23) Being a Christian was never promised to be easy. We're here to bring people to God and to serve each other. Problems within churches would decrease drastically if we would switch our mindset from how can I be served to how can I serve. You know God put us here to be sponges of sermons, teaching, and love. However, sponges were never meant to retain everything that they take in. We were never meant to keep this to ourselves. We are supposed to give it out. We love because Christ loves us. We forgive because Christ forgave us. We serve others because Christ came to us as a suffering servant. If we continue to have an attitude of how can I be served each Sunday, then we will continually leave unsatisfied. What is the church? It is a body of believers who display uncanny amounts of love due to their unity in Christ. Anything short of that is a distortion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Don't be a fast food Christian. Get in the kitchen and serve.

Giving Up

2010-08-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

I used to wrestle and the one thing I remember most about it is the workouts and how hard coach made us practice. It isn't the matches I won that I remember, or even really the matches I lost (though I remember those much clearer than the ones I won). It's the hard work during practices that I remember. I don't really know why, but I think it's because those workouts were influential in who I am today. Well, it wasn't the workouts so much as the way coach made us push ourselves past where we thought we were as a wrestler. The only reason I was good at wrestling is because I was able to push myself beyond exhaustion... beyond what I thought were my limits.

I think this applies to us spiritually too. There scriptures often use the analogy of sports to apply to our spiritual lives. In Galatians 2:2, Paul says that he is running a race that is not in vain. In Hebrews 12:1, Paul says to set aside anything that holds you down and to run the race of endurance. In 1 Corinthians 9:26, Paul says that he runs with purpose and not in vain. In 1 Timothy 6:12, Paul says to fight the good fight. But in Ephesians 6:13, Paul says to stand. Not run or fight, just stand. How come the sudden switch from these seemingly active actions to a passive action? Paul is saying that at that point of exhaustion in your spiritual life, where you have done everything to stand firm in what you believe, just stand. We may think that this is naive of Paul to say that after you have done everything to stand. We may be frustrated when we read that Paul says when you feel like giving up and just falling down and quitting- just keep going. Does he not know how hard it is to have your beliefs attacked, or to have your life falling apart at the seams, or to be so exhausted to the point of not wanting to get up in the morning? Does he not know what it is like to be laid off, or hurt by someone you love, or to be addicted to something that you just can't quit? The only conclusion I could come to is that he did know all of this, you can see that by looking at his life, he lost everything for Christ, but what kept him going, what kept him standing wasn't what he knew but who he knew. The only thing that kept Paul in the race, that kept Paul standing up for Christ was Christ himself. And that is the only way you will be able to stand even in the midst of everything the enemy and life throws at you. Will you stand for the one who died for you?

Somewhere Along the Way

2010-08-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

Last week I was at a restaurant with a couple good friends and we witnessed a kid about 6 years old slam himself down on the seat at a table next to us and angrily fold his arms in defiance. He did it in such a way that he believed his dad was going to be sorry he didn't get him that toy he wanted at the register. His dad calmly sat down at the next open table and said "Ok I'm gonna eat over here without you". The kid quickly moved to his dad's table and started eating his food, still angry. At first I chuckled to myself and kept eating my food, but later it struck me. How many times do we act like this? I cannot tell you how many times I have heard adults say to one another that they deserve to be happy, that they deserve to buy a bigger home, a nicer car, or a 53" flat screen TV. In fact, I have said these same things. But the hard truth of the matter is that we don't deserve any of these things.

I've noticed that many Christians have the "I deserve it" attitude. How did we get here? Somewhere along the way, we forgot our place before God. We forgot that we have done nothing to obtain grace. We don't deserve God's grace (that's why it's called "grace"). We don't deserve a flat screen TV. Men, you don't deserve season tickets. Ladies, you don't deserve chocolate. The only thing that we truly deserve is hell. I don't know about you, but I'm incredibly thankful that God hasn't given me what I deserve. According to Romans 8, God made us co-heirs with Christ. That's the complete opposite of giving us what we deserve! I hope that I can live my life as a reflection of the gift I have received. I hope that we can become increasingly aware of all that we don't deserve so that we can give Him the glory.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved. -Ephesians 2:4-6