The Age Old Story

In the few years I've been in ministry I've noticed a pattern in our churches. I see people wearing out, burning out, or sinning out of ministry and gospel community all the time. Why does this happen? Is it because they weren't living out the Bible, or weren't praying enough? Is it because they didn't have enough gospel accountability in their lives? Or is it because they just weren't truly Christians at all? 

I don't think those answers account for what I see happening in churches everywhere. I think we've been inadvertently preaching the wrong message to one another. The mantra of "try harder" and "do more" isn't peace on the ears of those who have given their all in trying to live out what is taught in the Bible. A friend of mine was reeling in pain after his marriage fell apart and he told me that some of the most hurtful advice that was given to him was from Christians. One person told him to "just do what the Bible says." It's not that easy is it? The weight my friend felt and the weight that so many people feel in the church is the impossibility of living out the commandments of our Lord. 

We need to get back to the gospel. The gospel in essence is that because of what Jesus did we are able to live the way he lived. Not by trying harder, not by doing more, not by living better. The glorious impossibility of the gospel is that we can't do it on our own. We can't, so to those who feel burned out, or worn out, or sinned out I give you a message of hope. We need the gospel more than ever. We need to preach that age old story. It hasn't changed because we haven't stopped needing to hear it. Paul in Galatians 6:9 tells the Galatian church to not grow weary in doing well, and the way we do this is to reap the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Paul is saying the way that we prevent ourselves from wearing out when we are doing good things or are in ministry is to plug into the Spirit for our source of strength.

This is the gospel, he doesn't give a reason such as do more, or read the Bible, or pray more, but instead he says live without your power and instead to live in the power of God. The moment we realize that we can't do it alone, we truly understand the gospel. See the most beautiful thing about the gospel is just that, that because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross we are now eternally accepted by God and we no longer live under the weight of trying to earn acceptance from him. Instead we can live our lives free in the power of the spirit. This is the age old story, it hasn't changed, and we still need to hear it. 

I am initiating a blog series to, well keep myself on track with blogging. I'll be going through the epistle of Colossians found in the New Testament and giving practical application from whatever verse we look out. So stay tuned in and I hope you get something out of it.

Colossians was written to a very diverse church located in a central marketing hub. Colossae was located in the Lycus valley and was one of three major cities in that area. This city was important because this was a marketing and business hub at the time of Paul's writing. Paul never physically went there, but his influence reached there through Epaphras, who most likely heard the gospel from Paul in Ephesus and carried it to Colossae. Colossians is an amazing book because it deals with the reality of the gospel and the application of the gospel. The book is summed up in the phrase coined by Pastor Tulian Tchividjian in his book which is entitled, "Jesus Plus Nothing = Everything." The false teaching that Paul was exposing in Colossae was that of Judaizing Christians who taught that faith in Christ alone was not enough and there had to be some physical obedience from the faith. The error here is that the gospel teaches the exact opposite. We don't have to try to live up to some standard of moral perfection so that God might love us because he has already accepted us and saved us before the foundations of the world. Our wills and desires changed due to our status before God, not in order to achieve some kind of status. This is the power of Colossians that we will explore in our study of this wonderful epistle. What does it mean to live as if all we need is Jesus? I implore you to find out by applying the principles found in Colossians.

My dad is a pretty strong guy, always has been. When I was a kid I used to argue with my friends all the time about who's dad was stronger. I was always so confident that in a fight my dad would win against anyone. I see this as the idea behind Romans 8:31 which says, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?." "These things" refers the copious amount of pages that Paul (the writer of Romans) had just spent on the theology of salvation, i.e. what God has done to save us. In response to these truths he resounds that we should not fear anyone since God is for us. Literally Paul is presenting a rhetorical question of if God is for us is it even possible that anyone could truly be against us. This is a great verse, but I think that we all face times when we have advisories or conflicts in our lives so how do we apply this to our life?
The biggest way we can actively apply this to our lives is through faith. I believe that the biggest reason that we get caught up in conflicts is that we don't believe that God can and will deliver us from them. Secondly we don't apply biblical principles to the situations. Over and over again in the gospels Jesus shows and explicates a different way of dealing with enemies and conflicts. Instead of being antagonistic we should be loving, caring, and helpful to our enemies. Lastly we don't realize the power of God. It's unbelievable to me that so many Christians still see God as this benevolent yet far-off deity who doesn't intervene in human affairs. The sad tragedy is that most of us live our lives in fear of worldly consequences when we should be concerned with eternal ones.

Hard Prosperity

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

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.