Categories
Serving Others

Your Mission, If You Choose To Accept It…

“It is the duty of all men to repent and believe the gospel, therefore it is also the duty of those entrusted with the gospel to carry it to the whole world.” (William Carey)

Have you completed the first duty? How about the second?

(Begin humming the Mission Impossible Theme Song)

Over 200 years ago, William Carey wrote about five main objections that people had regarding missions to the “heathen” lands (today we might call them “foreign” lands). The five main objections people had were:

1. The long distance that must be traveled,
2. The barbaric nature of the native peoples,
3. The danger that would be incurred by those going,
4. The difficulties of raising and maintaining support, and
5. The unintelligible languages the native people would speak.

We might still want to raise some of these same objections as to why we are unwilling to fulfill this second duty or mission of ours. Carey’s general answer to all of the objections: the merchants of his day were willing to take these same risks in the hopes of making money. He said: “It only requires that we should have as much love for the souls of our fellow-man, and fellow sinners, as the merchants have for the profits arising from the sale of a few otter skins, and all these difficulties could be easily surmounted.”

Wow. Exactly.

Many people (including some of us) have been more serious about the mission to make money than we have been about the mission to take the gospel message to those different than us. Willing to face more risks. Willing to tackle difficult obstacles.

God, forgive us for being so willing to overcome many difficulties for our finances (and for our pleasures), while being so quick to give You insignificant excuses for why we won’t obediently take Your message to others.

Help us choose to accept our Mission.

Categories
Christian Living

The Death of Temptation

If there is one thing I’d like to see the grim reaper take – it’d have to be my temptation.

Ugh… But I still find that temptation is very much alive in my life.
As I have grown more spiritually mature, I do find that I am quicker to recognize the temptation and flee from it early, but I still have the desire within me to flirt with temptation for too long, allowing it to lead me to sin.

My attitudes, my thought processes, my grumbling and complaining, my desire to please me.
It doesn’t take much, and that temptation grabs hold, and I enjoy the feeling for just a bit too long, and then… blammo… sin. and guilt. and shame.

But could it possibly be different?

I recently read that through the power of God in transforming us, we can actually experience the death of temptation. That the power of temptation should be fading in our lives. I have been learning that this is true in my own life. It is not that temptation has disappeared, but as I stand strong against temptation in an area of my life today, it becomes easier to stand strong again tomorrow. And after I do it two days in a row, the third day is even easier. And so on and so on.

“True salvation should always…encourage a conscious rejection of ungodliness and lead to holier living. A profession of Christ must be accompanied by a choice of godly living.”

That is the normal pattern of the Christian life. Are you normal?

“God doesn’t measure normal in relation to the world…. When God speaks of normal, He speaks along these lines: Jesus is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. He is the most normal person ever to walk on planet Earth. You are a Christian, my child. Are you walking normally like My Son, Jesus?

“…Too often we call God’s ways confining and much too hard and tight. Why not just call them what they really are — normal? We must be fervent and anxious to become normal — as defined by Jesus, not by us.”

“Wherever the Spirit points, choose change. And above all, intercede for yourself.”

Great point. Jesus, in His moments of greatest temptation in the garden, also prayed for Himself. We should pray for God to make us more normal!

And what should we be praying for ourselves?
“Do you know what my deepest cry to God has become, the cry that burns, the one that draws sobs from my heart and tears from my eyes every time? Oh God, please don’t leave me like this. I want more of You. Please don’t leave me like this.”

(quotes from Arterburn, Stoeker, and Yorkey in Every Man’s Challenge)

Categories
Worship

You Are As Close To The Lord As You Want To Be

Lo Siento… (I am sorry).
I’ve been “off the grid” for two weeks. But that is often what happens when I go out of the country. It is not that I don’t have internet access as much as I don’t have time to post when on an international mission trip. But I had a great time in Mexico with friends I had not seen in a year, as well as being part of the very first worship service at a church plant in Uriangato, Mexico.

Anyway, back to today’s post…

“You Are As Close To The Lord As You Want To Be.”

Yowch!

Can that be true?
Definitely not.
It can’t be.
It can’t be my fault.
I mean, I want to be closer to God.
But then why aren’t I?
Is God moving away from me as I am trying to draw near to Him? No. That can’t be it.
Maybe it is true.
Maybe I am as close to the Lord as I want to be.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

The scriptures seem to be clear that God doesn’t move away from us, rather we move closer or further from Him.

If I want to be closer to Him, then it is on me to spend more time talking to Him, reading His Words to me, worshiping Him. He is as close to me as He can get – in that He has put His Holy Spirit within me. So it is up to me as to how much I choose to interact with Him.

If I truly want to be closer to God, then I will be closer by making the necessary changes in my life to spend more time with Him.

Guess it’s time to make some changes.

How about you? Are you close enough?

Categories
Relationships

Defining Love

How do you define love?
“Always giving the other person everything they want”?
Sounds good to me! Start sending me gifts!

As a parent who loves your children, do you always give them everything they want?
Of course not.
When the tantrum breaks out on the floor at Walmart, do you say – “Well, I didn’t know you wanted that toy/candy/live animal so badly. I love you, and you want it, so yes, I’ll buy it for you.”?
I highly doubt it!
We can easily see how that is not love.

Love is always doing what is best for the other person, and that might mean telling them “no” to something they want.

If a pastor, minister, or church leader loves the people in his church, will he always give them everything they want?
No. Sometimes, the loving thing requires that he share with them the truth – and that can hurt.

God condemns the priests long ago telling them:
“Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost.”

Many ministers in America today have “left the weak and crippled to limp hopelessly on in their sin, unaware that they aren’t walking normally.” By not wanting to offend anyone, we are not being loving neighbors, because it isn’t loving to only give someone what they want. “We must also give them what they need—the truth.”

…We have all these happy, friendly churches with happy-looking people happily doing work for God, and yet, beneath the surface, nothing is making sense. Husbands aren’t sacrificing for holiness and right living, wives are giving up, and behind every whitewashed wall are dead-men’s bones.

…somewhere along the way, we decided to stop defining holiness too clearly because we didn’t want to seem too different from other people, scared of what people might think and scared that we might hurt our relationships at home. Now we have our wish—we don’t look much different at all, and we’re too often limping along in the same fog as the lost.

Why are we scared to share? Many people wonder: “what if I seem irrelevant to them?” “Why not consider a far more frightening question – What if we are irrelevant? In our rush to seem relevant, what if we lose our saltiness as Christians and lose our purifying effect on our culture? That is true irrelevance.”
(Arterburn & Stoeker – Every Man’s Challenge)

So let’s all stop worrying about being irrelevant. Let’s stop worrying about whether everyone likes us. Let’s worry about how to tell people the truth in love (though with gentleness & reverence). Sometimes that might sting a bit, but it is the only right thing to do if we love someone else.

Categories
Christian Living

Good Things vs. God Things

How do you tell the difference between something good and something of God?
Are they always one and the same?

I get involved in plenty of good stuff. In fact, a lot of the things I do could be considered good things. You too.
But if they aren’t the things that God wants me to do, is it the right use of my time?

I remember a discussion in seminary class about whether we should pray about every single thing. Some students argued that we should pray about every single decision. Others said not every decision is one that God cares about. The example given was in regard to the purchase of a vehicle and that God probably doesn’t care whether you purchase the yellow or the blue car. That God allows us to make some decisions on our own and doesn’t really care one way or another about some of the small things.

Maybe.

But I sure like this explanation on how to determine the difference between good things and God things:

“One of the ways I can tell if something is a good thing or a God thing is very simple. Did I pray about it? Did I even take the time to reflect on this purchase or that conversation, accepting this job, or deciding to watch that movie? If I haven’t prayed, then I may not have brought God into the decision-making process at all. No, the possession or activity may not be evil, wrong, or destructive, but if I’m not even aware of how I can use it to honor God, I’ll probably miss the opportunity.

“In the church today, many of us are preoccupied with “good things.” We want God to make us feel good, and we want to be entertained by the services. If one church doesn’t make us feel just right, we go somewhere else. God wants us to grow beyond the infant stage of thinking that all of life is about us. As we mature, we learn that God has a purpose for us that is far bigger, far grander, far more meaningful than anything we can imagine.

…“Many of us need to stop doing some of the good things we’re doing right now so we can focus more of our time, energy, and passion on Christ. I know men who have chosen to go fishing less often, women who resign from a club or organization that was absorbing their time, and students who dropped out of cheerleading or a sport because they realized these activities stole their hearts away from Jesus” (Thomas Young – “Do You Want to Go to the Mountain?”).

Are you possibly involved in some good things that aren’t God things?
It sure is easy to do.

How do you determine the difference between a good thing and a God thing?

…a true Christian must be willing to sacrifice everything in this life for the sake of the next. – Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language