EVERY STORY IS A MIRACLE

In her book, Accidental Saints: Finding God in the all the wrong people, Nadia Bolz-Weber writes of how she thinks that "we're in a time in the life of the church where stories of failure are so much more important than stories of success" (203).  That goes against the grain for a lot of folks in the church, doesn't it?  We're always promoting the folks that succeed, getting them up-front to tell their stories. 

I'm not sure Jesus is always in that, though. The Church is filled with ordinary "Jars of clay" (See 2 Corinthians 4:7), who struggle with their humanity and their faith, every day.  These folks will, most likely, never be invited to share their story on some great stage.  Not everyone among us has bestseller stories.  We'll never be asked to go on tour, telling our story that sets audiences on fire with motivation.  That's too bad, too, because our Scriptures tell us that God shows up best in weak people, everyday folks who have stories of a thousand different kinds; real people who are broken and bruised and wounded and beaten down by life and who go about their lives, as best they can, with their eyes fixed on Jesus (Heb. 12:2), seeking to be faithful to the God who has come into the "earthen vessels" of their humanity and poured into them the "treasure of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:7).   

The problem with "up-front and paraded sainthood" is that those who don't have dramatic stories are shuffled out of the way so that those with great stories can take center stage.  Also, where did we come up with this show-and-tell Christianity?  Shouldn't it be that if Jesus has so changed your life that it merits, in the eyes of some, notoriety, promotion, books and speaking tours, that it would better serve the kingdom by getting down in the trenches and living out the implications of the Faith among the hurting, the disenfranchised, the broken and lost? 

Don't get me wrong. I love a good story. I love a solid rock testimony.  I love what Jesus does in the lives of people, and I thoroughly enjoy hearing all about it.  I just feel we need to be extraordinarily careful not to disenfranchise believers whose stories aren't the dramatic kind that can wow an audience. 

The truth is that all of our stories are dramatic if Jesus has succeeded in wooing us to the Father so that the Father can pour into us the wonders of His amazing grace.  Every story is a miracle; every one of them.  Each story is so miraculous that on the day any one of us embraced the embrace of God and came into the open arms of our Savior, heaven rejoiced (see Luke 15:10). 

We have the treasure of Jesus Christ in jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7) which means that everyone of us in Christ can sing with John Newton,

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now I'm found;

was blind, but now I see."

And Jesus said on our behalf, "Amen."

A MARVELOUS WONDER

A Devotional Thought

Being the people of God is a marvelous wonder. 

We live by faith and stake our lives on our faith being rooted and grounded in Truth, as that Truth is realized in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

We do what we believe God calls us to do and we live on the basis of the integrity we see in God revealed in Jesus.

We take the Bible seriously and read it as divine revelation.

We take creation seriously and seek to be stewards of the world into which God has placed us.

We take people seriously and seek to make a fair playing field for people of all races, creeds and colors.

We take morality seriously and seek to lead lives that reflect the goodness of God.

We take ethics seriously and seek to live honorably and nobly in our spheres of influence.

We're not perfect but the One who is, has taken hold of our hand and is leading us forward.

We may make mistakes but the One who doesn't lives within us holding us to a strict accountability that leads us to admit it when we fail, face it down, own it, and then do all we can to get it right.

We seek to live in response to God and not in that place of micro-managing God.

We seek not to bring God down to our brain's ability to comprehend Him, but to allow God to expand our capacities up so as to live in His infinite and creative imagination and power.

In the end, we are just folks who have become captivated by what we see when we look into the eyes of Jesus.  In response we have joined up with Him, taking one step at a time into the future.  It is an awesome journey and quite a ride.

In her 1971 book, Eighth Day of Creation, Elizabeth O'Connor shares this about the church she attended at that time, the Church of The Savior in Washington, D.C.

When we describe "Church" we like to say that it is a gift-evoking, gift-bearing community—a description based on the conviction that when God calls a person he calls him into the fullness of his own potential.  This is why "Church" implies a people; no one enters into the fullness of his being except in community with others persons.  No Community develops the potential of its corporate life unless the gifts of each of its members are evoked and exercised on behalf of the whole community. (Eighth Day of Creation, Word Books: Waco, Texas, p. 8)

In light of the fact that each person in the church is to exercise the gifts the Holy Spirit has given him or her, how would you define this aspect of being the Church.

Any thoughts?

BY THIS

With social mediate ablaze and blogs ablaze and emails ablaze and books ablaze we hear everyday about how badly, over the years, the church has gone about being the church in America.  The church hasn't left a great image in the minds of many people.  In fact, the church seems to be its own worst enemy when it comes to living for God in the cultures of America.  We just haven't made God look good.  We stumbled some where along the line and began to drive people away from God and His church instead of living so as to draw them to God and His church.  That's just sad, any way you spin it.  All of this has gotten me to wondering about what it means to be the church.

I wonder what it means to be Christian. 

I wonder what it means to have a personal and profound faith in God but to live out that faith with unclenched hands and with open heart. 

I wonder what it means to live in the mind and spirit of Christ. 

I wonder about how to stand for the truth of Scripture without judging people who don't see things the way we see them. 

I wonder what it means to be ambassadors of Christ instead of Defense attorneys for Christ.

I wonder how to lavish out the grace that has been lavished on us who claim Christ as Savior and Lord. 

I wonder what it means to speak the truth of Scripture but to do so with weeping hearts, baptized in the outlandish grace of God, instead of alienating, by our words and actions, those who do not love Christ and who have no heart for God.

I have always loved the heart of Paul as he went about his calling to reach people for Christ.  I Corinthians 9:19-23 The Message paraphrase of Eugene Peterson comes to us this way.  It is the apostle Paul's testimony.  I think we can learn something from it. 

Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!

"To be in on it" with God and His people requires a heart yielded to God.  Jesus taught us to pray, "Your kingdom come.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10).  Truth is, if we are to pray these words then we must live these words out, also.  Living for God, as ambassadors of Christ, is fulfilled only as the people of God take on the job description outlined by God.  We are not here to debate people into a relationship with Christ.  We are not here to defend the reality of God.  We are not here to throw the Scriptures into the faces of those among whom we live.  We are not here to arm wrestle people into submission to Christ.  We are not here to win arguments.  We are here to be the ambassadors of the one who "emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race" (Charles Wesley).

In John 13:34-35 Jesus gave us our marching orders.  The order from the One for whom we are ambassadors is "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 

"By this."  That's it.  Just, "By this."  "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."  Argument doesn't prove our faith.  Debate doesn't prove our faith.  Picketing doesn't prove our faith.  Preaching doesn't prove our faith.  We need these things from time to time, but when we exercise them we had better drench every word, every act, every attitude, every nuance, every tweet, every Facebook post, and every movement in love, Jesus' love, the love that Jesus expressed on the cross of Calvary.  The apostle Paul said it succinctly in First Corinthians chapter 13, "If I…do not have love…I am nothing…I gain nothing" (see verses 1-3).

May we live in the spirit of the love of Jesus.  In an age of much skepticism may we be known for the love of God in us.  People may or may not come to the Christ we love so much, but if they don't may it not be because when they looked at us our lives turned them off to God.  Instead, may our lives be a fragrant aroma of Christ.

LIVING THE GOOD LIFE

How do Christian persons live in their world as living witnesses, the kind of witnesses God can use to draw people to Christ?  We live in a word oriented world but our witness for Christ must go deeper than our words.  Our lives speak far more authoritatively than our words.  Influence might just be the best way God touches the world.  Think about this for a moment.

In his book, Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller describes his thoughts about Jazz music.  He writes,

   “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
   After that I liked jazz music.
   Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

"Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself."  What if we took this as a lifestyle mandate and lived the Christlike life in such away that people might come to love Christ because of the way they watch us love Christ. 

This raises the questions as to what people see when they watch us.  Do we make God look good or do we make God look angry and judgmental, even vindictive?  Do we leave the impression with the watchers that the Gospel really is good news or do we leave them with the impression that God is simply out for His pound of flesh? 

Missionary E. Stanley Jones once said that people are saying to Christians (he was speaking specifically of Christians in India), "If you will come to us in the spirit of your master we will not be able to resist you."  I don't know about the "we will not be able to resist you," part but with all my heart I believe our lives must reflect the life and spirit of Jesus or we will simply be "a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal" (I Corinthians 13:1).

And, the world already has enough resounding gongs and clanging cymbals.