Sign The Blank Page

We’re getting into the very heart of Jesus in the Gospel According to Luke. It’s all about what it means to follow Christ.

I remember hearing a speaker one time (actually over 25 years ago now) say that what we typically tend to do is something like this -  We imagine a list of things that we are willing to do for Christ; (what I am prepared to do that I think will be enough to impress Him!) and then we kind of present it to Him as the expression of our devotion. The speaker (I can’t remember his name) encouraged us to picture Jesus’ response to our great gesture in a scenario that goes something like this …. we present Jesus with our list, signed at the bottom by our own hand just to make it totally official and binding, accompanied by all kinds of self congratulatory emotions… And what does Jesus do? He hands us back a blank piece of paper and says, “Just sign the bottom, then I will fill in all the details.”

In other words, when Jesus calls us to turn our backs on the ways of the world, to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow Him, He is asking us to sign a blank piece of paper. It’s true. How often do we hold back on committing ourselves fully to Christ for fear of what He might ask us to do? The truth is that we don’t know what He might ask us to do. But that’s the whole point. He wants us to be willing to do whatever, wherever, whenever.

This means that we must trust Him implicitly of course. To really follow Christ, we must let go of everything and everyone, even our own lives. It’s a lot like signing a blank page.

Luke 9:23,24

We’ve dedicated 34 weeks (Sept 8 to Apr 20) to read, preach and discuss the Gospel According to Luke. My text last Sunday included this infamous statement by Jesus –

“Then he said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.’”    Luke 9:23,24

How many times have I read those words. Yet they continue to challenge me to the core of my being every single time I read them. It’s like a mountain that you continue to run into but can never climb over. It’s just there, calling you ever upward. Has there been anything that anyone else has ever said that is anything like it? Not even close. Because He didn’t just say it. He said it, then He went and died. There is nothing in any faith anywhere at any time that is anything like this. Not even remotely close. They are ominous words that outweigh all others. They are counter intuitive. And they are immeasurable in their significance.

It occurred to me this week that this single statement made by Jesus serves as the foundation for the entire body of New Testament teaching on Christian living. It is the watershed from which flows all that it means to live FOR God; the very definition of ‘Christian service’; to deny oneself, to die as it were to oneself, and to sacrifice for Christ, only to realize that there is no such thing as a sacrifice for Christ. Because when we die is when we begin to live.  

10 Signs That You Might Just Be The Problem

10.  “There really is no problem and why is everyone making such a big deal about this anyway!?”

 9.  You must be right because any other conclusion would mean that someone else would come out ahead.

 8.  Your life would just be so much easier if everyone else would just get with the program.

 7.  You’ve already figured out who really is to blame for the mess you’ve gotten yourself into.

 6.  It is amazing how people just don’t seem to understand what is really going on here.

 5.  You must be right because otherwise you would have to admit you are wrong.

 4.  You must be right because you’re almost always right.

 3.  People just don’t understand how hard your life is. If they knew how hard your life was, they’d feel sorry for you and stop expecting you to be pleasant.  

 2.  You are the way you are and people just need to accept you for who you are, and learn to appreciate you for how you are, and stop expecting you to change and become a kind of person that others can get along with.

 1.  “What the heck is wrong with everyone around here anyway!!!???”

The Doing Of It

You may have heard the story about the two young boys sitting in a church service one Sunday. One boy was a regular part of the church family but the other boy was his visiting friend to whom church was a whole new experience. At the end, the pastor finished up his sermon and the new boy turns to his friend and says, “Is that it?”. And the other boy responds, “Nope, now we have to go do it.”

I love this story because it focuses the attention where it needs to be. Because most things in life are way easier said than done. But if we don’t actually get to the doing part, then we are not experiencing the truth in reality in our lives.And how often is our big problem our unwillingness to see things through?

But it’s tough isn’t it. Last winter and spring, we spent about 4 months re-envisioning the way we do church. ‘The Church Reboot’ which was a 7 week interactive series/work shop was a very meaningful time for us. We gained a renewed sense of vision for us as a church. And then we spent another two months fleshing out what God had shown us as the way to move forward. The tag line for the initial series was ‘reestablishing the priorities of our lives together around the passion of Jesus’. Very critical stuff. But this is most certainly one of those things that’s way easier said than it is done.

This week, at our Prayer Summit on Tuesday evening, Doug took us back to that weighty statement and challenged us to take note of just how big a challenge it really is. We have set this out as something important for us to do together. And yet, it will only happen to the degree that each of us as individuals are willing to make those necessary changes in our personal lives.

So, I want to take this opportunity to ask you, personally, how are you doing with that? Have you made significant changes in your own priorities so that they are more in line with the passion of Jesus? What does that look like for you? Or are you still defaulting to the way you have lived in the past, going through the motions, scrambling to handle a truck load of expectations because you think it’s easier than sorting through them? Have you made changes? Or are you unwilling to do the hard thing and say ‘no’ to someone? Who is that someone you can’t say ‘no’ to? Is it someone else or is it you? Or is it Jesus?

All There

“He’s not all there.”  It’s a common, colloquial expression we use; a derogatory way of suggesting that

someone is lacking in their mental capacities.

But moving away from the derogatory, Jim Elliot encourages us with these words:

“Wherever you are, be all there.”  Jim Elliot

A lot of people like this saying, but ‘wherever you are, be all there’ is not just a call to live in the moment or even an encouragement to enjoy life for all it’s worth.   

The fuller version of the quote is, “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

The expression ‘to the hilt’ is an old one. It’s an idiom which comes to us from the days when swords were commonly used. The ‘hilt’ of the sword is that defining line between the blade and the handle and to plunge a sword into its target all the way was right ‘to the hilt’. And so it means ‘all in’ (Our FBC Family Camp theme 2013 … Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, ALL your soul, ALL your mind and ALL your strength”)

To ‘be all there’ is to ‘be all in’. It is to fully engage yourself in what you perceive to be the will of God for your life at any particular time. As human beings we have the tendency to live our lives in a rather reserved manner. It’s like we don’t want to be spent. We don’t want to run out. But when you think about it, the grace of Christ is a limitless supply. And if we are living by the sufficiency of Christ then we cannot exhaust His spiritual resources. Sure, we only have so much time or physical energy or money ourselves. But when it comes to God’s love and mercy there is just no possible way we can expend it all. “His mercies are new every morning” and “His love endures forever”. Think about it.

Outside In

At FBC, we begin a new ministry year with a new theme. (By the way, did you know that the Jewish calendar year begins with what we know as September?) Our theme for 2013/2014 is ‘Outside In’. All of us have had some experience with being on the outside; of being an ‘outsider’, excluded somehow in some way. It’s not a good feeling at all; being shut out, devalued, held back, separated from, cut off.

The radical good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to bring us from the outside in; in from a life without God, into a relationship with Him and into His great family. The culture in Jesus’ day had a hard time with that. The tendency we have as people to think of ourselves as some elite group, or exclusive club, was very strong then as it is now. Outright hatred and violence are obvious forms but cliquishness and apathy are of the same spirit. Then along comes Jesus and right from the start He’s inviting the outsiders in! … Gentiles … Samaritans … women… children… tax collectors… lepers… people different from the rest of us … sinners of all types…. It got him into a lot of trouble. Some would say it’s what got Him killed. And they are right, because no matter how you look at it, the grace of Jesus cost Him His life.

The free grace of Jesus extended at His own expense to each and every single person on this planet is the most utterly compelling thing on earth. It is this aspect of the gospel which defines it and catapults it above any other religious idea known to man. We call it amazing grace and it is all of that and more.

This theme is prominent in the Gospel According to Luke and this ministry year, beginning September 8th, we will be going through the book of Luke each Sunday morning and in our community groups as well. It will take us 34 sessions and if you check your calendar you will see that, counting the Good Friday service, we will be finishing up the final chapter (24), which is the resurrection account, on Easter Sunday morning. It’s going to be a great journey together. This will be the longest book study that we’ve ever done together and there is quite a lot of excitement being generated about it. We are also encouraging individuals to be reading devotionally in the book of Luke this year so that we will all be immersed in the Word of God together, and making the very most of it, engaging on the personal level and on the group level, as well as hearing the same passages preached each Sunday morning.

Luke gives us an ‘orderly account’ of the ‘eye witness testimonies’ which he ‘carefully investigated’ even ‘from the beginning’ (see Luke 1:1-4) of the life and teachings of Jesus leading up to and including His death and resurrection. Luke’s clear intention, as stated by his own hand, is to report actual historical facts and events. And, of course, the events he reports on are the very realities that lie at the heart of salvation history - the gospel of Jesus Christ – by which God is calling us from the outside in.

Personally, I am pretty hyped about the potential this has for God to do amazing things for us and through us. As we see Jesus reaching out and lost sinners coming in, God will use His word to create and strengthen a mindset of outreach in our hearts and a lifestyle of living it out in our communities. 

Dreamer

Today marked the 50th anniversary of ‘The March on Washington’. The original march drew about 250,000

people fighting equal rights (and jobs) for blacks in America. Today, about 1/10 that number showed up in the rain in the US capital to commemorate what is understood to be the turning point in the American civil rights movement. It was once again a very full day ending with a speech by President Barack Obama at the Lincoln Memorial.

Yesterday, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put things in perspective when he made this statement to the Associated Press: “Tomorrow, just like 50 years ago, an African-American man will stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and speak about civil rights and justice. But afterward, he won't visit the White House. He'll go home to the White House.”

There has been some amazing progress made. That’s for sure.

The highlight 50 years ago today ended up being Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s  now famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. One of the amazing things about that which a lot of people don’t realize is that there were actually 21 speakers that day, along with a number of ‘entertainers’ including Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul and Mary. King took the very last spot of the day because no one else wanted it. Think about that! It had been a long day and a hot day and people were tired. King was slotted to speak for 4 minutes. His speech was written for him by Clarence Jones, a speech writer and attorney.

King stayed with the text in front of him for the first several minutes. I watched the speech again today and you can tell when he leaves his notes. One source I consulted said that it was at the point where Mahalia Jackson yelled out, “Tell 'em about the dream, Martin!” Apparently he had spoken about ‘the dream’ a few months earlier, but there was no mention of it in the text that lay before him that day. But he shoved the notes aside and from that point on we have what has become one of the most famous oratories in American history.

There is a great deal that can be said about the words spoken that day by Martin Luther King. Most people seem to want to ignore the Scriptural references in his sermon and his references to God. He was after all a Baptist preacher. Different parts of his message seem to resonate with different people. For me, one of the lines that I have always appreciated since the first time I heard it was this one:

“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I guess the reason that statement catches my attention is his reference to character. Martin Luther King Jr. was a freedom fighter, but he would never align himself with the ludicrous notion being preached as ‘tolerance’ in our day. That’s for sure.