He Takes on Our Pain (2)

[continued]

Can you feel the urgency that God is displaying in His call for disciples who will be willing to pay the cost of suffering and grief for those who are suffocating under the burden of their own sin?

I fear that those who have at least been bold enough to stand up for their faith in Jesus for a time may NOT have courage to walk away from their insignificant distractions, their vines, and have some compassion for people who are one step away from destruction.

...

It's not that they haven't EVER shed a tear for someone like that, but it may be that they are sick of not having control over the situation so they just give up. They don't know what to do with the grief that they have inherited, so they swallow it and harden themselves. Soon they find themselves just going through the motions of many people would define as "ministry" but really is a hollow shell of routine or tradition.

Unlike Jonah, it wasn't that they lacked compassion. It was that they simply became fed up with not knowing what to do. In other words, pride reared its ugly head and stole them from where God wants all of us, the point of desperation.

I have some friends of mine that I see suffering and confused and wounded, and I'm honestly feeling some of their pain. I get passionately angry at whatever may be causing them to hurt, and that makes me want to do something about it. In the past, I would have at least tried to say something to them or more likely invite them to a church service, but that never worked. They either didn't come, or worse, came and left without having any ministry accomplished. When I did say something to them, any words I could muster would be misconstrued or taken only on a shallow level.

I think I know why now. Even when we get to the point of being willing to suffer with people, we are still flawed humans that need to be properly equipped by the Spirit before we can go gallivanting around people's lives solving their problems. Even though you may now legitimately care about your neighbor with cancer or your friend with depression, the facts are:

• You don't know their heart
• You don't know their full story
• You don't know what they do in private
• You don't hear their cries for help in prayer
• You don't see the depth of their needs
• You don't know what they are thinking when they are talking
  

In other words, you don't know as God knows. And knowing this leads you back to having to become desperate for the leading of the Holy Spirit in your ministry. My friends won't be helped a bit if I go crusading into their lives like some kind of medieval hero in my own understanding. They will be helped when I call on God to help them through the Helper, the Holy Spirit. When you are indeed desperate for the Holy Spirit's leading, you will become an intercessor simply because there's nothing else to do. Intercession, or standing in the gap for someone through prayer, evidences the level of suffering you are willing to endure for people.

No wonder Jesus was grieved to the point of sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane, He was baring the burdens of the entire world in intercession. He was beginning to take on the pain of all of our sins. Then He suffered the physical torture until he was crucified in a bloody mess of love.

I said yes when God called me to give him my life, but I had no idea what that meant I would pay. Maybe it's because if I did know, I might have escaped to the "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" lifestyle. Yet it is a privilege to suffer with Christ for people, and running from that will only lead to nowhere:

(Galatians 6:7-8) Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

My guess is that the more I am honored to bare people's burdens, the more I will be utilized by the Spirit to accomplish real ministry in their lives.

He Takes on Our Pain (1)

I've been having some excellent conversations with my new friend Scott Bane about real ministry. I have to say that lately I understand with much more clarity the verse where Jesus talks about the cost of being his disciple.

When you are intentional about sitting and learning at Jesus' feet, you can't help but eventually be led to what he was led to: sacrifice on behalf of those who are drowning in sin.

In Genesis 6, we see a population of people that didn't know right from wrong. The beginning verses are hotly debated, all for really stupid reasons. Some say the "sons of God" are fallen angels and some think they are some line of Seth or something. That's completely beside the point. Whoever these people were, the point is that their sin was so severe that it was to the point of no return. Yet God still had a heart that was grieved:

(Gen. 6:5-6) The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

They sinned. God felt pain.

In Jonah, there was an entire city of people (Nineveh) that are in a similar situation, but they are not beyond saving as the story turns out. God calls Jonah to deliver a message of destruction to them. He eventually delivers this message even though he doesn't want to, and somehow this city responds to the message. As a result they not only repent, they declare a fast for the people AND the animals. One verse later it reads:

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

What comes next is interesting because God is not done with Jonah, who at this point is pissed off because God forgives the sinful Assyrians instead of destroying them. God teaches Jonah an object lesson.

To paraphrase here's how it goes: God causes a vine to grow and give Jonah shade from the hot sun. Jonah grows a fondness for this plant. Immediately God takes the vine away by killing it. Unsurprisingly, Jonah starts complaining again and this is where God makes his point:

Jonah 4:9-10 But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" "I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

And that's how the entire book ends! The level of violence and corruption in Nineveh looks worse than Gotham city in the Dark Knight, but they are showing signs of repentance, and all Jonah cares about is a STUPID vine to shade his STUPID head.

...

Can you feel the urgency that God is displaying in His call for disciples who will be willing to pay the cost of suffering and grief for those who are suffocating under the burden of their own sin?

I fear that those who have at least been bold enough to stand up for their faith in Jesus for a time may NOT have courage to walk away from their insignificant distractions, their vines, and have some compassion for people who are one step away from destruction.

What's Your Gift?

I hate that question.

Some one asked me that question today, and I immediately dodged it. They didn't mean anything by it, but I think that's what you would call a loaded question. It assumes that everyone has one gift, and the corollary is: if you aren't used frequently in at least one gift you are doing something wrong. So if you answer that question, it's like you are admitting that all of that is true. (If that is true then Jesus was sinning until he was thirty because he wasn't healing or prophesying over anybody.)

What's more, if you agree with that statement to begin with, there is more negative side effects because what could possibly come from talking about gifts that the Holy Spirit is allowing you to be used in? Pride.

There is one concept that I really hope the Christian culture comes to terms with: no one cares how holy you are.

• They don't care about your Christian pedigree.
  
• They don't care how long you have serving in church.
  
• They don't care if you are a credentialed minister or whatever title you have been given by your Christian community.
  
• They don't care how many people have been healed after you prayed for them.
• They don't care how many hits your Christ-centered blog has.
• They don't care what caliber people you have prophesied over.

Recently I have declared war on titles. I hope I don't take it too far (email to keep me accountable if I do), but the reason is a good one I think. In my experience in Christian culture, I see a reoccurring cycle of self-definition that goes in the complete opposite direction of grace. Here's how it goes:

Stage 1. Seek God, and get saved through repentance
Stage 2. Get used by God in some way (feel validated)
Stage 3. Seek to be used more in some way (feel more validated)
Stage 4. Define your "gifting" with a title and find a place where they can be used most (feel most validated)

My problem with this picture starts around stage 2 when the believer starts learning that God desires to use them in His mission. Suddenly after being used once in this way, they become aware of the validating feeling they get when something good comes from their wanting to be used. They naturally enjoy this feeling and seek to experience it again and again.

Before they know it, they find themselves stuck in stage 3 where instead of seeking God, they seek more ways to make themselves feel good and have more "spiritual power." Without even considering the possibility that more power in the hands of an undeveloped person is dangerous, they will beat their chest and shed tears with passionate prayers for the Holy Spirit to give them more and more power. Soon everything in their spiritual life revolves around their own ministry. The result is an obnoxious Christian who loves talking about what their church is accomplishing for God's kingdom, and (indirectly) how much God needs them.

Any number of undesirable traits can be developed from here. The most notable are jealousy, arrogance, and a spirit of competitiveness. Soon they find themselves in the prison of their own ministry. The amazing thing is if this ministry were to be taken from them, they might even curse God and stop following Jesus!!

Isn't that insane? And all of that started with wanting to be connected with God. What in the world happened?? Somewhere there was a shift from depending on God to work through your weakness to depending on your usefulness to make you feel better. That sounds like every wack job religion out there: follow this list of rules to feel worthy like the rest of us worthy ones! POOF! Christianity becomes Religianity.

That's why I cringe when conversation turns to topics centered around what people have done or what they do for God. WHO CARES. Seriously, I'm glad you are being used by God. That's great, but don't think you are some kind of spiritual elite if God uses you to do something cool. You didn't deserve it at all to begin with. Nothing you did could earn being a son or daughter of Jesus, so stop giving off the smell that it did.

That's why people like Bill Mauer make movies like "Religulous" ...to take those people down a notch. He didn't produce it because he wants to remove all religion from the planet (why would he care?). He probably did it because he has met a few too many religious people who get their jollies from rubbing their holiness in his face. Thank God for movies like that, hah.

I love this verse: (2 Cor. 11:30) If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

What's the result of talking about our weaknesses? Humility (and sometimes laughter, lol). The exact opposite of pride!!

So what's my "gift"? My gift is Jesus Christ who made it so that I don't have to DO SOMETHING to feel validated. I have been made in the image of God, redeemed by God, and I am living a blessed life today only because HE is merciful. I suck at life. He rules at life for me. End of story.

Freedom from False Guilt

I was just thinking about guilt and what place it has in the Christian life if Jesus has really atoned for our sins on the cross. The word guilt has a few different usages, but I'm talking specifically about the feeling that arises within you when you have done something wrong or when you haven't done something you knew you should have.

I don't have so much trouble with former anymore, but the latter is trickier because there seems to be an infinite amount of things we COULD be doing. We COULD be doing more for the homeless. We COULD be giving more. We COULD be praying more. We COULD be better to our families.

Being a recent credentialed graduate of a Bible college, there is a great deal of pressure to "perform" because after gaining so much knowledge about how lost your friends/families are without Jesus, you feel like you're in sin if you're not swimming in the seas of everyone's burdens. This is especially hard if you have an overactive conscious. [That article gives some good illustrations of what that is.]

I was reading Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson and I came across something that God impressed upon him: "it's not about what you can do for Me, it's about what I have done for you." What a great reminder. You can spin yourself in circles forever with a list like "I could be doing this and that better..."

But that's a topic that is simply uninteresting to God.

Frankly, He doesn't give a rip what you can accomplish for Him with what little understanding you have. Many times I forget that what I do know of Truth, I have received from the Holy Spirit. So wouldn't it only make sense for ministry to be accomplish by the Holy Spirit instead of human effort?

If guilt is your motivation, then YOU receive the credit when you are done laboring because you were just trying to get out of a negative balance to begin with (some "credit" huh). Your goal of making yourself feel better is accomplished, and there is no need for more service until the balance once again becomes negative.

When service is done from a motivation of love, there was no deficit to begin with because faith in Jesus enables you to walk in righteousness. Your debt is paid so there's no guilt. When there is no deficit, and serving is done just to serve and loving done just to love, there are no limits except what the body can take. Jesus gets the credit for the ministry and what's more, its all done with PURE JOY.

Imagine that, a relationship with God that doesn't involve false guilt. I think that's more rare than it should be in most churches. In fact, the Church should be known for taking guilt away through good news, not for heaping more of it on people's shoulders. There is no greater gift than the gift of freedom, so why are we taking freedom from the very people we should be giving it to?

I'm done with that.

I'm sick of people with titles taking away my freedom (because someone has taken away their freedom in the past), and I'm sick of being made to think that I'm not helping people if I'm not trying to strip their freedom. That's not faith, and it's just wrong.

Faith to Wait (2)

What about the people who DO choose something? Does God abandon them to do it all on their own? Not completely from what I can tell.

As I recall from the Old Testament, it was the people who didn't want to trust God to lead them because they wanted a King.

1 Sam 8:4-8
4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have."6 But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."

God doesn't wipe out his people or forsake them even when reject Him as their king. He warns them of the consequences of their lack of faith. The verses go to describe Samuel's warning:

1 Sam 8:10-18
10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

God allowed them to have their king, but He knew that it wasn't the best way to go. Eventually it would fail them, but their lack of faith was too great.

I wonder if its not too much of a stretch to notice this pattern in our relationships with God today. How often are we demanding something that seems good to us instead of trusting God for the best?

Yes, working with the body of Christ is good. Outreach is good in theory, but how good is good next to best? It's not good at all, in fact, it may be bad. Jesus' ministry before he was 30 would have been bad because it wasn't the right timing.

The good news is, God still works through our lack of perfect faith. Sure, He is always encouraging us to trust Him more but the existence of sin means at some point our faith is incomplete. It's ultimately not about what we can do for God, it's about what He has done for us.

Yet, we should have a spiritual drive to grow our faith to its highest potential, and never to put a leash on what God can do with our measures of faith.

Faith to Wait (1)

Lately, I think God might be teaching me to wait for Him.

When we first start to truly understand the mission of God and its significance for every Christian who claims to love Jesus, many experience a tremendous amount of motivation to just get out there and do something.

The XXXchurch.com guys wrote a book and did a tour called starving Jesus or something all about our responsibility as Christians to get off the pew and out into the world. I like the book because it attempts to empower and encourage Christians who have given up on evangelism for any number of reasons. Every Christian should be a part of God's mission. Lately, though, I have found myself thinking about times in my past when I may have ventured out into some evangelism opportunity or mission field when it might NOT have been God's will.

That sounds crazy, but here's the logic: God's ministry in the books of Acts seemed to always get accomplished what it wanted to. The Spirit spoke, the apostles acted and people either believed or didn't believe. This makes me see a lot of today's church "outreaches" and say "why do a lot of them just seem like a waste of time?" Where's the effectiveness of the ministry in the book of Acts or the Gospels?

I've always really hated wasting things. I don't like throwing anything away, and when it comes to money I like saving more than spending. So maybe that's why I am careful with any of my investments, but honestly I think there are a lot of moments when we think we are doing ministry, but really our impatience has caused us to put words in the mouth of the Holy Spirit.

Look at the example of Gideon. He knows that God wants Israel to defeat the Midianites, but God wants him to do it HIS way not just anyway. God actually tells him to reduce the number of soldiers in his army. That sounds crazy in the natural mind, but when faith is brought in to the picture it makes sense that God would want the glory of being the God of the people who won an impossible victory. Here's the point: God is not intimidated by the Midianites. He could have defeated their entire army with one Israelite if He wanted to. Similarly, God is not intimidated by our oppositions in ministry. Its not a question of ability. It's a question of worship: Do you trust your numbers or do you trust God to see His mission succeed.

I would rather wait and pray for a year to have one God-ordained conversation than do a year's worth of outreaches with no effect. So I guess another question is do we really believe the Spirit WANTS to lead us in our desire to advance the Kingdom or are we content with doing something? And if He does, to what degree?

After Jesus rose from the dead, he didn't just tell the disciples to get out there and start talking up the gospel. He told them to wait for power from the Holy Spirit. And even after that, there were times of prayer and times of action. Prayer, action, preaching, prayer, and so on is the model I remember from Acts class. They were so dependent on the Spirit's leading. There was no human church planting guru telling them what to do. Acts 2:42 says they were devoted to fellowship, prayer, breaking bread, the apostles teaching (from the Spirit).

How does that compare today? I see very little of dependence on the Spirit and more dependence on the latest edgy church model. Don't get me wrong, whoever had initial success with that church model must have received it from the Spirit originally, but how does that give other churches the right to assume that's how He wants to do it through them?

I believe the Spirit wants to do something through me that is completely unique from how he does it in some famous guru who has written five books on the subject. Maybe what God wants to test me in is this: will I have enough faith to wait for His leading or will I choose to be content with doing something...

Disclaimer: I don't think that the Spirit has to tell us to take a shower every morning or what socks to put on. Where the Bible is clear on what to do, we must do it (loving one another and visiting the widow and the orphan), but when there are areas of our lives that are unclear (like the thousands of questions we have when planting a church) I want to be sure what I am doing is being called for by God and not my anxiety/impatience.

Dreams

The following is a list of dreams that I want to see happen in my lifetime. Its not an ultimatum to God or anything. He bought my freedom, so He can do whatever He wants with me. These bullet points are just what I find when I dig down to the deepest levels of my heart and soul...at least for right now:

• I want to see a large number of disillusioned Muslims find that the way to submit to and connect with Allah is through a relationship with Jesus Christ instead of 'righteous' acts.

• In love, I want to carry a light that exposes the idols that America's religious people worship yet refuse to acknowledge out of ignorance, tradition, or confusion.

• I want to be the head of a dangerous household to the enemy's works and effects (i.e. we all love Jesus desperately).

• I want to see the humor in every situation in life, and be able to break down walls with the ability to make myself and others laugh.

• I want to really learn (and live) the secret of having joy in every situation.

• I would like to master the art of storytelling.

• I would like to unlearn taking myself so seriously.