Focus On God

And Another Thing . . . Focus

As I sit down to write this blog, on my desk are two computers, an iPad and an iPhone. I am looking at four different screens and I have an expectation for each one. I know a text will be coming through any moment. And now I see a new Groupon.

Focusing is a challenge.  We are surrounded by images and ads and shiny things.  Everywhere we look we have multiple opportunities for distraction. Years ago, only the aristocracy could afford entertainment and background music in their homes.  Today, nearly every life comes with a soundtrack; in fact, I am listening to one of my “playlists” as I write this.

Ps 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”  That truth was written before there were noisy combustion engines; before the printing press and ubiquitous literacy; before artificial light.  When David, the shepherd, wrote these words, if a person were to act on his advice and become still, the sounds of nature and silence were much more likely to come rushing in.  God would come into focus.  God is everywhere, but we can miss him if we never stop; if we never choose to become still and look for him. 

If people who could never travel faster that the speed of a horse needed to be encouraged to slow down, how much more do we need these words today?  If people with no access to mass communication, whose worldviews were shaped primarily by the things they saw and experienced in their small communities, are encourage to be still and know God, how much more do we need to take these words to heart?

God told Moses in Exodus 3:14 that his name was “I am.”  Jesus said in John 8:58, “before Abraham was, I am.”  The place where we encounter God is in this moment.  The present is the only place we can be, so it is the only place we can be with him.  Each breath; each second is an opportunity to encounter God.

Satan’s main strategy in each of our moments is to direct our focus somewhere else.  To essentially say, “Hey, look at this. Keep going. This is funny. This is upsetting. Worry about this. Puzzle over that. Don’t stop. Faster.”  His intention is to distract us so that we miss the moment God has for us. He can distract us with relatively benign things, or he can double down and direct our attention to self-gratifying or even evil things. But his overarching goal is to get us to think of anything besides Jesus.

Jesus says in John 12:32, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” In John 14:6, Jesus says, “"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” When a person sees Jesus, they are drawn to him. When a person encounters Jesus, they find life.  John 10:10 tells us that Jesus came that we might have life to the “full.” The enemy’s strategy is to get everyone to look any place except the place where Jesus is lifted up.

The truth of David’s Psalm remains forever. Be still (stop moving, clear your head of distractions), and know that I am God (embrace the truth that brings clarity and life to everything else).

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now.

Tell It Like It Is

And Another Thing . . . Testimonies

John David Webster spoke about how he became a Christ follower at last night’s Gathering. As I watched JD share his story, I looked around the room and saw several people wiping away tears. I saw others smiling and nodding in agreement. As he shared some of the painful parts of his story, I saw several empathetic looks; I did not see anyone sneering or judging.  His story was familiar—not in the details, necessarily, but in the journey. We have all started in or found our way to lost places.  We have all discovered that the lost places were painful and scary and damaging to our life.  Any person who has found their way to a faith relationship with Jesus will feel a crescendo in their spirit when someone like John David begins to talk about how he cried out to God. Tears come when he describes how God hears and saves.  People who have not found their way to faith are presented with a dilemma, because the story resonates.  The testimony sounds credible and seems to be existentially true. 

I think that testimonies are a great argument for faith. When I was young, apologetics were the thing. The rational argument and objective proof were seen as incredibly important tools for defending the faith. 1 Peter 3:15 says, “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” When I was a teenager this verse was used to establish the need for a well articulated apologetic, or defense of faith. Through most of church history, however, this verse meant tell me the story of how you discovered God. Tell me about your journey to faith. Our “hope” was born out of an encounter with the person of Christ, not out of a set of propositions.

Apologetics are less compelling today because most people do not really believe in objective truth.  They believe in personal truth. Apologetics are a wonderful study for new believers because they offer a strong support for the faith that they have recently found, but many men and women who have been termed “seekers” by the church culture, view rational arguments as spin. They believe that every group can make a rational argument for anything, and ask, “Are those facts the ‘real’ facts?” Our culture has heard “point and counterpoint” so often that they doubt everything and believe that all such activities are mostly a commercial for your cause. In our culture, the reason is less compelling than the person. The personal story of a journey to faith, a testimony, is compelling, even if all of the reasons are not. People believe the truth of a changed life much more than they believe arguments.

Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Doctrine is a church word that means the principles and truths of faith. What we believe is very important. In fact, according to John 8:32, truth is what sets us free.  But truth statements are a less compelling starting point in our culture. Changed lives are always compelling. Matt 5: 14-16 says, “You are the light of the world.  . . . let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

St. Francis of Assisi is commonly attributed with saying, “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.”

And that is all I have to SAY about that . . . for now.

Taking It To The Streets

And Another Thing . . . Culture

The culture has quit coming to church, so we are taking the church to the culture. Jesus would have been amazed at the way we cloister. Cloistered means enclosed. Monks who lived in monasteries with enclosed inner courtyards were said to be cloistered.  They cut themselves off from the world and tried to spend their time meditating on God inside the protection of this sequestered environment. Of course, “the world” is not really an external thing; it mostly resides between our ears and behind our eyes. We carry the world in our hearts and heads. We can change the external stimulation, but, for most of us, an internal fire still rages.

Our modern cloistering is different from what the ancients practiced. Many today have resolved to cloister God rather than themselves; to cloister faith life solely within the walls of church services and calendars.  The attempt is not to lock ourselves off from the world, as much as it is to lock God away into a small manageable corner of our life.  Places we can visit and then leave. We cloister, enclose, compartmentalize the part of our lives we let God into, and take no notice of him as we pursue our “secular” lives in the world. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” God will not be cloistered inside of our church services or our designated “holy times.” We can find God in those moments because he is present everywhere.  God is in our worship services, just as he is in our workplaces, hospitals, courts, malls, jails, houses, cars, showers, bars, restaurants, streets, sidewalks, . . . you get the idea.  The last thing Jesus tells his followers in the book of Matthew is, “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” 

We cannot cloister God. He is always everywhere.

Psalm 139 says:

 ⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?

   Where can I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

   if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

   if I settle on the far side of the sea,

¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,

   your right hand will hold me fast.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

   and the light become night around me,”

¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;

   the night will shine like the day,

   for darkness is as light to you.

New International Version (NIV)  Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica

When the people of God gather, they are called the church.  When we say we are taking the church to the culture, we mean that we, God’s people, are going to join him where he already is. He is everywhere and the church needs to expand the number of places where we seek to reveal him.

Rich Mullins once wrote,

And go to the city and sing out the song

For the walls of the Temple will be shaken

And the music will transcend the concrete and the chrome

And the minds of the children will waken

                                          O Come All Ye Faithful, Rich Mullins, Sparrow 1983

The message was never meant to be kept inside our walls.  Let’s shake it out of our temples and into our streets.

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now!

When Love Came to Town

And Another Thing . . . LOVE

During Christmas, Christ-followers have traditionally examined four virtues: Hope, Joy, Love and Peace. At this week’s Gathering, we were all about Love.

What is there to say about love that has not already been said? It is the thing we most treasure; our loves are the deepest part of us. When we speak or think of love generically, we can detach from or be analytical about it. Love, as a topic, can even be boring!  But when it is not a topic, but rather a description of our emotion, we are incapable of indifference. Love is passion—a passion that is frequently at war with reason. People in love are often encouraged to “keep their heads,” or to not “do something stupid.” Love puts us at risk. Love is wild. Love is alive.

God is Love. C.S. Lewis, describing Aslan (the lion who represents God in the Chronicles of Narnia) says, “He is not safe, but he is good.” The love of God is not a safe thing. It is a good thing. Rich Mullins used to say that “God has terrible taste.  He loves everybody.” His taste is bad enough to extend to each of us, as well as to all the people we do not like, all the people we are indifferent about, and all the people we do not know. Psalm 100:5 says, “For the LORD is good, and His love is eternal; His faithfulness endures through all generations.” God knows all. God loves all. And God loves first.

God is “all in” with us. He doesn’t wait to see if we “get him” or if we can bring something of interest to the table. He loves us first. He gets us and commits right away – even before we are born. He gives us joy. He lifts our head. He gives us something interesting to contribute to his world. And he saves us. He loves us so much that he gave the dearest piece of himself, as a sacrifice to rescue us from a life without him. 

Christmas is when we celebrate the start of this story.  We celebrate that God successfully entered our human condition. We celebrate that heaven and earth intersect in a baby who will grow up to be the spitting image of his father. Jesus is the perfect expression of God’s love for us.  As we examine Jesus, we begin to notice that God’s love is different from ours. His love is wild and risky and alive, but it is also filled with reason and choice and intention.  His love is a decision of his will and an expression of his heart.  He intentionally moves in love toward us and intends that his love will transform us into his image. 1 John 4:10 says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

This is God choosing to bless the world through a baby, containing the full measure of his love in a tiny infant-sized bundle of miraculous expectancy.  No wonder angels sang.  Love stories always come with a soundtrack.  In fact, according to Revelation, they have not stopped singing. One day we will join them.  Maybe we should join them now.

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now.

Joy, Joy, Joy!

And Another Thing . . . Joy!

“Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” Those words have become so familiar that they may have lost much of their impact—becoming just a song we sing each year in between holiday shopping trips and putting up our Christmas decorations. But those words represent much more than just something nice to sing. Joy came to earth. Jesus’ entry into the human story was an unimaginable turn of events.

As the story is told, God, in Jesus, leaves wherever it is that he was and comes to hang out with us. The painter steps into the picture to shape the image from the inside. John says, “the Word became flesh.” The artist became paint. Improbable and impossible and way beyond reasonable expectation, yet this is the story of Christmas. Jesus comes to break death’s power over us, and he begins his impossible task by participating in the miracle of incarnation. The creator becomes a created thing. The eternal God becomes clothed in finite flesh. No wonder people doubt the Bible. If you don’t doubt it at least the first few times you hear what it says, you are probably not paying attention. It sounds like a fairy tale, but as Fredrick Beuchner writes, it is “a tale that is too good not to be true.”

Jesus leaves heaven and comes to earth and brings with him the nature and character of God. The story of his life reveals what these attributes look like when they are played out in the theater of human events. Jesus expresses the character of God through his love. He “so loves” that he winds up laying down his life to give us hope. His hope leads to joy, and his “perfect love casts out fear.”(1 John 4:18) The opposite of joy is not sadness, but fear. Nehemiah 8:10 says, “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Joy’s strength overwhelms the strongholds of fear the enemy has erected on earth. Joy laughs at fear. Joy allows us to move with confidence in the callings we are compelled to establish. Joy is present regardless of the circumstance. Jesus says in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

Joy to the world, the Lord is come.  Experience joy, because the Lord IS come.

Joy to the world! The Lord is come; 

Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

                                             Isaac Watts, 1719

And that’s all I have to say about that . . . for now!

The Basket, The Princess, The Hope

And Another Thing . . . Hope

Moses’ mother’s name was Jochebed. (On Sunday night I said it was Miriam, but that was his sister’s name.) We don’t know much about her other than the outside-of-the-box plan she came up with to save her son—a plan that wound up working so well it changed the course of human history. The Pharaoh at the time of Moses’ birth was concerned about the number and increasing power of the Jewish immigrants in his land. Since he was the head of a strong central government, he chose to solve his problem of immigrant proliferation by having all the Jewish baby boys killed at birth. This is not the sort of solution that would have worked well in a democracy, but it was definitely in the wheelhouse of ancient dictatorships. 

Jochebed decided to comply with the letter of the law, if not the spirit, and “cast” her son “into the Nile” – only her cast included a floatation device, a basket transformed into a tiny boat. She put her son into the part of the Nile where the Pharaoh’s daughter liked to bathe, hoping that Pharaoh’s daughter would see the boy, like him, and keep him as her own. She positioned Miriam to watch the whole drama transpire. This turned out fine, but could have been traumatizing had the boat somehow capsized. Jochebed hoped nothing bad would happen—a hope that was realized when the princess saw Moses and took him in.  Miriam then ran up and asked if the princess needed a wet nurse for the boy, then went and got Moses’ mother to be his caregiver. It all worked out wonderfully.

We don’t know whether Jochebed was moved by faith, or desperation, or inspiration, or some combination of the above. We do know that God’s hand was on Moses and that he was being protected and lifted up. God is the source of our hope. He sometimes moves in our lives in such a way as to make desperate measures seem like reasonable alternatives. One of the largest ironies of the story is that Moses became the son of the Pharaoh who had ordered him killed. Joseph, the man who started the whole Jews-in-Egypt adventure, when he finally confronted his brothers who had sold him there in the first place, says in Gen 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” This is the dualistic dance that God has with evil in the world.  Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Satan often cooks up a nasty circumstance, then God moves in the lives of his people to make it a “good.” 

This is why our hope is in the Lord. He embraces us in our times of trouble and invites us to join him in overcoming the world (John 16:33). He is the one who catches us in the midst of our dark circumstance, our slavery, and winds up turning us into Palace dwellers; into King’s kids. Romans 15:4 says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”

Moses was rescued and wound up talking to God in a burning bush, delivering the Children of Israel from Egypt’s oppression. He called down plagues, walked on dry land across the Red Sea, received the Ten Commandments, and saw God in the “cleft of the rock”. When it was all over, God buried him.

All Bible stories are there to teach us that: 1) God is there. 2) He is active. 3) He will rescue us. Look at the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, David, and many others. All faced desperate circumstances.  All were rescued, lifted, helped, saved, elevated and improbably secured. God saves us. He gives us hope. The significant and difficult piece to the puzzle, though, is that our hope is in Him, and not in ourselves. We are called to wait and trust, while He works things together for good.

Psalm 43:5 says, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” 

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now!