The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Ministry (Page 11 of 35)

Full Time Work

May 12, 2016 / / 0 Comments

HardWork

Today I’m speaking downstairs at our weekly Loaves and Fishes gathering, I’m finishing up the sermon for this Sunday, re-reading the passage in Mark I’m teaching in our Bible class, writing questions for the small groups discussions, and visiting a dear church member who was moved into hospice care last night. While you’re slaving away at the office or the construction site or the airport or the school, I’m at the church building doing God’s work. Right?

WRONG!

We are all doing God’s work, together, every day, seven days a week.

Sometimes we speak in ways that make what I do as a preacher “full-time Christian work” and what you do as a member of the Body of Christ “part-time Christian work” or “weekend Christian work.” You must know that you are a full-time Christian banker or plumber or homemaker. You are a full-time Christian truck driver or repair man, administrator or salesperson. When we are at our work, we are at the same time at God’s work. Just like our Lord Jesus.

You realize that most of what Jesus did he did in a secular workplace: in a farmer’s field, in a fishing boat, at a wedding feast, in a cemetery, at a public well, on a country hillside, in a court room, at dinner with friends and family, while walking along a road, in the marketplace. Sometimes in the Gospels Jesus shows up in a synagogue or the temple. But he mostly spends his time in the workplace.

The Fourth Gospel identifies Jesus as a “worker” 27-times. It quotes our Lord as saying, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”

Your work does not take you away from God, it continues the work of God. Our God is always in his workplace, your workplace, working. And once we recognize that, we can more easily see ourselves — all of us — working in our workplaces in the name and manner of Jesus to his eternal glory and praise.

Peace,

Allan

A Promise From the Future

April 13, 2016 / / 0 Comments

HardWorkAnt

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.'” ~Revelation 14:13

It’s a promise from the future that impacts our every moment in the present: Your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Not at all.

You know, salvation is not a private thing. God saves us in order to work through us to save others. And everything we contribute to the cause — everything! — is used by God toward that great and ultimate end. Just like the parable of the talents, what we use to his glory, whatever it is, will be multiplied and used. Like the cup of cold water given in his name, it will be rewarded. Our deeds will follow us into eternity. Our efforts for the Lord are going to last forever.

We are building for the Kingdom. All of our work matters. Every minute of your day is packed with heavenly potential. Every action is loaded with eternal consequences.

To his enduring praise and glory!

Peace,

Allan

Flesh and Blood

March 23, 2016 / / 0 Comments

“The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” ~John 1:14 (MSG)

JesusDisciplesFeet
God doesn’t wave a magic wand and cast a spell on the earth to restore it to its original condition. He doesn’t judge the world as beyond salvation and destroy everything. God comes to us. That’s his answer. That’s our God’s strategy. He enters our humanity with us, he puts on our skin and bones and blood, and participates in our problems. Immanuel. God with us. Jesus joins our mess.

This is how God works in the world. He takes on our humanness. He became one of us. The Son of God not only died for our sins as a human, he lived here as a human, too! He got hungry and tired with us. He laughed and cried with us. He bled. He sweated. He experienced joy and pain with us. He got surprised and he got frustrated. He was tempted. He struggled. He was betrayed by his best friends. He had to make hard decisions. He lost loved ones. He became one of us with us. This is God’s strategy.

Entering. Sharing. Engaging. Participating. All in.

That’s very, very different from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. All the other world’s religions worship a god who stays in the heavens, who has removed himself from creation and demands that his people come to him. People are required to find secret knowledge and spiritual codes and work and strive and struggle to get to these gods. But our God comes to us. He comes here to us.

JesusHealsBlindIt’s important for us to know that Jesus is both 100% God and 100% man. I can’t explain it all, I certainly don’t understand it all. But the Scriptures declare it, the Apostles’ Creed affirms it, and Jesus’ life on earth proves it. He is both God and man. And this is critical to our Christian faith.

If Jesus wasn’t a man, then he didn’t really enter our mess. He came here, yes, but he remained above all the dirt. He didn’t really enter or share or participate in the ugliness of what is our situation. He wasn’t human, he was God! It was easy!

And if Jesus wasn’t God, then he didn’t really sacrifice anything to come to us. He didn’t risk anything. He didn’t really put anything on the line. And it didn’t really make an eternal difference. It didn’t matter in the long run. He wasn’t God, he was human! He was born here, he didn’t have a choice. And then he died. It was unfortunate, that’s all.

No.

Jesus the Messiah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Creator and Lord of Heaven and Earth, equal with God the Father from before the beginning of time, left his home in glory and put on our skin and bones in order to enter our mess. He entered your mess. He did. Jesus Christ entered your situation, he shared in your experiences, he carried all your burdens, he participated in your problems. He got very intimately involved in your situation at a tremendous personal cost. That’s the Gospel! Praise God!

Christ Jesus put on our flesh and lived with us. He entered the fray. And so we disciples of Christ today enter the fray with our money and time and resources and energy and talents and houses and everything we’ve got. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Christians shine light into darkness, we bring life out of death. We join in the problems. We jump into the ugliness. That’s why so many hospitals are named Methodist and Presbyterian and Baptist-St. Anthony’s — because Christians have been entering the mess and sharing and carrying and engaging and participating since that very first Easter Sunday.

It’s obvious that this is the way of our Lord. God’s Church is not called to just hang on until the uncleanness is destroyed. We’re not called to just pray about the mess so God can take care of it. And we surely don’t lock ourselves up in a gated monastery and ignore the problems. We enter it. We engage it. Heaven and earth, God and humans, present together in the redemption and restoration of the world.

Peace,

Allan

The Personal Way

March 7, 2016 / / 0 Comments

JesusHealsBleedingWomanPeople matter to Jesus. Individual people — men, women, and children; young and old; rich and poor; educated and ignorant — mean a whole lot to Jesus. We find Jesus in the gospels calling crowds and feeding multitudes. But the main image is of Jesus with individuals. He heals individuals. He comforts and encourages individuals. Nothing’s abstract with our Lord. It’s not theory. It’s not impersonal. The Jesus Way is clearly a very personal way to be.

We’re carefully considering the Gospel of Mark here at Central. And I’m impressed by this picture Mark paints of a very personal Jesus.

On the opening page he presents Jesus as taking Peter’s mother-in-law by the hand and helping her up. He touches the man with leprosy. He calls Levi and then eats dinner with him at Levi’s house. The bleeding woman touches him and he calls her “daughter.” He takes the dead girl by the hand, it says, with her mom and dad there in the room with him. “Little girl,” Jesus says. On and on Jesus is touching people, hugging people, eating with people, meeting with people. Jesus’ Way is personal.

And we don’t always think about it. We write checks. We build buildings. We create programs. We serve on committees. And those are all really great things. Praise God for those wonderful things! But I feel like there are fewer and fewer visits in one another’s homes. I think there are fewer and fewer face-to-face conversations. Fewer touches and hugs. Fewer confessions. Fewer prayers lifted up together through streams of tears. Fewer and fewer deep, close, personal relationships.

JesusHealsSketchIn the gospels, Jesus doesn’t stand on the edges of the scene. He never waits for something to happen. He grabs people, he walks toward situations. He makes things happen.

The way of Jesus is in bearing the burdens of others. Carrying the pains of others. Sharing their hurts. Not avoiding it. Not shielding yourself from it.

You can never go wrong showing up at somebody’s house to pray. That is always the right thing to do. You can never go wrong showing up at a funeral to cry. That is always the right thing to do. You can never go wrong showing up at a hospital to sit with somebody. That is always the right thing to do. And you’ll take it home with you. You won’t be able to shake it. It’ll keep you up at night. It’s heavy and it’s hard. It will burden you. It’ll impact you.

But it’s so like our Lord.

It’s so like Jesus who did not one time shy away from entering your mess and carrying your burdens. He walked toward you and your mess, he never walked away from you. He came to us and waded right into the middle of the tragedy of our lives to love and heal and restore. And it cost him. It cost him his life.

Peace,

Allan

Bringing the World to a Halt

December 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me… I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.” ~Matthew 25:35-40

CupColdWaterYou can stop the world with these acts of mercy in the name of Jesus. You can bring the whole world to a screeching halt when you do these little things to bless others with the grace of our God that maybe they’ve never experienced.

You’re not going to stamp out illiteracy, but you can read books once a week at the elementary school in your neighborhood. You’re not going to solve the problem of world hunger, but you can buy a hot meal for those two guys down at the corner. You can’t stop all sex trafficking, but what if you threw a birthday party for a prostitute?

Seriously. What if your Bible class or your small group threw a birthday party for a prostitute? Can you imagine? That would interrupt the world. That would make the world pause and take notice and pay attention. Those kinds of things give the world a sign that there’s another reality here.

You can’t say anything to this world with an act of power. Big, loud acts of power and numbers and strength don’t say much. Jesus Christ stopped the whole world when he died. On a cross. The kinds of things that make a real difference have to come out of our weakness and submission, out of forgiveness and sacrifice and service.

A cup of cold water doesn’t sound like much. Apparently, it means a whole lot to Jesus. It’s not what you do, it’s what God does with it.

Peace,

Allan

Nouns and Verbs

December 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” ~John 20:21-22

CrossRoadsThe Father sent the Son here on a mission. God perfected Jesus through his obedience, he protected Jesus and provided for him, he confirmed him and filled him with the Holy Spirit. And he promised ridicule and rejection and even death. But God sent the Son here to serve and to bless the world. Now the Christ tells us, “I’m sending you to do the same things in the same way.” And he empowers us. He breathes on us and gives us his Spirit.

What are we afraid of? Why do we hesitate or hold back?

Mission is not one of the Church’s programs. As followers of the King, mission is who we are. All of us are sent by God in Christ to be a blessing. To serve. To rescue and heal and love and bless just like Jesus who says the student should be like his teacher and the servant should be like her master.

Student and teacher. Servant and master.

You know, it’s a lot easier to just be a fan of God. I can be a great fan of God. Jesus is the mascot. Weekly worship and a Bible study now and then is the show. The church is the audience. And I can get my religious fix when I want it.

Or I can be an admirer of Jesus. I can read a lot of books about Jesus, I can learn a lot of Scriptural language and I can quote Jesus and become a real Jesus expert. He’s so great!

Or I can be a believer in Jesus. I can memorize all the doctrines and recite all the theological truths and win a lot of arguments.

No. The student should be like his teacher. The servant should be like his master.

Here’s where I get into trouble. See if this is true for you. When I read the Scriptures, my tendency is to pay more attention to the nouns than the verbs. When we put the nouns first, when we concentrate on the nouns, we spend all our time translating and defining and exegeting and interpreting. And we go back and forth with different contexts. The culture was like this. The name of the mountain means that. This word in the original language implied something else. And we don’t have to land anywhere or do anything. Nouns in the Bible are tough. And if we emphasize the nouns, they can actually separate us from the Story. They can create distance between us and the script.

Verbs, though… verbs are every day and easy. Verbs are cross-cultural. They’re timeless. You don’t need a translation. There’s no distance. We share the verbs with all peoples for all time. We share the verbs with Jesus. The fastest way to make a script out of Scripture is to emphasize the verbs.

God tells Abram to go. He tells Moses to speak. God tells Joshua to lead. He tells Isaiah to prophesy. Mary, give birth to the Savior of the World. Paul, take Christ to the Gentiles.

God has put his Church on a mission. He’s put you — you forgiven and saved and Holy Spirit-indwelled Christ-follower — he’s put you on a mission. We’re in a position right now, you’re in a place right now, to do more for the Kingdom of our Father and to proclaim the Good News of salvation in Christ Jesus than has ever been done in your community before! That’s the call. And that’s our Lord’s expectation.

Pick your favorite Bible story this weekend — I don’t care which one, just pick one. Now read it out loud and pay special attention to the verbs. Maybe try employing a couple of those verbs into your prayers this weekend. Become more like the student, more like the servant our Lord is calling you to be. You’ve got his Spirit inside you. What’s holding you back?

Peace,

Allan

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