Face Reality

I am an introvert. That is one of the reasons why I spend so much time pondering.  

All my pondering often leads to introspection. I am constantly evaluating my life.

One of my goals is to live as consistently as possible. I am always examining my thoughts and my actions to see if they line up with what I claim to believe. 

This is both good and bad. 

On the one hand, it helps me to live with integrity, which is a key part of following Jesus. 

On the other hand, it puts a lot of pressure on me, because I can see all the areas where I fall short of my ideals.

When it comes to following Jesus it is good to spend time evaluating the condition of our hearts and the way we live. 

The apostle Paul wrote:

Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. (Romans 12:3; NLT)

Paul taught that we need to have the proper understanding of who we are. 

This requires that we take time to honestly evaluate ourselves. The warning Paul gave is that we don't think of ourselves better than we are. We shouldn't put a positive spin on things, rather we accept our strengths and victories as we admit to our weakness and failures. 

For a healthy life we need to do both. We need value the positive things and confess the negative things.

Too often people fail to examine their lives and ask the tough questions. They try to keep the status quo and not rock the boat, and the result is that they remain stunted in their maturity. Some of our most profound times of growth occur when we take stock of our lives and begin the hard work of making the appropriate changes.

What is true on a personal level is also true on a group level. 

Churches stagnate and die because the members don't want to take time and to face reality. The crisis the Church in the United States is facing right now is, in part, due to the reality that we have wanted to keep the status quo rather than seeking ways to connect with people living in a post-Christian internet age.

This failure to honestly examine things is also true in the nation as a whole. We can talk about a health care crisis or a financial crisis, but we never ask the tough questions that need to be asked that help us understand the root of these crises. We don't want to know what truly caused the problem, we just want the government to make it go away.

My point in all of this is to remind us that as long as we are dealing with superficial issues we will continue to miss the core problem. Whether it is in our personal lives, in our churches, or in our nation, we need to look beyond the superficial and examine what really matters. 

While this is harder to do in the short term it will pay huge benefits in the long run. Effective solutions are those that actually deal with root problem.  By not addressing the real issue, we are just wasting time doing things that ultimately will not matter. 

We need to face reality if we hope to become the people, the church, or the country God created us to be.

Listen to Jesus: Teach Us to Pray

Last Sunday I began a new sermon series entitled Listen to Jesus.

 This series will take a look at 6 teachings from Luke 11-15 as we explore how are able to bear the image of God in this world. The only person qualified to teach on this subject is Jesus, and that is why we need to listen to him.

 

Discipleship Happens in Community

Change is hard.

We grow comfortable with the way things are, so when our circumstances or our environment changes it can be hard to accept.

Change is also hard when we want to make changes.

We convince ourselves that we are in control, but when we seek to make a change in our lives, we discover that we have engrained habits that are hard to break.

This raises two important questions:

What is the process of change?

How can I become the person I desire to be?

I have tried to change but it seems I have made little progress. It seems that the same sins and struggles that plagued my life five years ago still haunt me today. I have tried writing out a plan, enlisting the help of others, and just gritting my teeth as I try to "white knuckle" it through. 

Nothing seems to work.

When we feel like we are making little progress presents a huge problem for the Christians. 

Why is it a problem for a Christian? 

It is a problem because a lack of progress leads to discouragement, and discouragement leads to people giving up.

One of the keys to change is to know all our effort is making a difference. When we are able to see progress we begin to feel like there is hope for transformation after all.

Hope is crucial for the success of change.

There is nothing more discouraging in our journey of faith than feeling like we faking the whole thing. 

We compare our lives to the Christians we know and it seems like they have thing together, and so we come to believe that we are doing something wrong. While these people are the real deal, we are just imperfect copies.

How do we help people to change?

I believe part of the solution, especially when it comes to spiritual formation, is discipleship. 

Discipleship is not about adding another class or series of classes that explain church doctrine or what is expected from church membership. It is also not about handing people a list of "spiritual" disciplines that they need to add to their lives (though disciplines do play part in discipleship).

Discipleship requires community. We need to have a group of people who model Jesus’ love for one another, encourage each other, and help one another. While change is ultimately is a personal decision, it has a better chance of success when other people are involved.

One of the failings of the Western church has been a lack of discipleship. 

There are many reasons for this, but at the top of the list focus on the Sunday worship event. A lot of time and money are put into producing a large event that hopefully draws a crowd, but there is little intentionality that is put on making disciples. The one answer churches continue to come back to is that discipleship happens in small groups.

As wonderful as Sunday morning worship and a once a week small group are, they are not enough to bring transformation to the lives of people. This is one of those places where the values of the culture are going to go against the values of the Kingdom.

Americans tend to fill every waking moment with activity, but for Christians we need to slow down and work into our lives time to spend with people. 

I know that this is not easy to do. As a pastor I know people need a spiritual community that is integrated into their way of life. This cannot be programmed to fit into their schedules. It needs to be an organic thing that emerges from the desire to be in fellowship with God and people. We are talk about real relationships that encourages faith, that challenges beliefs, and provides opportunities to love others.

The bottomline is that change is next to impossible because we try to go it alone. We need the encouragement that comes from a loving community for transformation to become a reality.

Discipleship is the key to change, and discipleship happens within the context community.

How to Read the Bible: Character

The Bible is a gift from God to His people. 

 

We know that it is important to read the Bible, but there are many places in the Bible that are hard to understand. There are also parts that seem rather boring and we loose interest.

Since the Bible doesn't always make sense to our modern western ears means that we need to take time to understand it. 

The Bible is a collection of books written in different literary styles. In fact, many books contain more than one type of literary style within it. 

This is important because we don't read poetry the same way as we read narrative. Understanding the literary type helps us understand what God wants us to know.

About a third of the Bible is narrative, which makes it the most common literary style found in Scripture.

In order to understand narrative we need to understand the basic plot. Often when we read the Bible we pluck sections out of their context, looking for some eternal truth that we can apply to our lives, and in the process we miss out on the bigger plot of the story.

Another feature of narratives is character development. Every good story is about people, and their development within the story draws us into the narrative and makes us care about what is going on.

To be honest, it is hard to relate to Biblical characters. Their world is alien to us. We live surrounded by technology, which prevents us from experiencing the natural world around us. The people described in the Bible were outside people. They were herders who cared for animals and lived a nomadic existence. 

This is just one of the issues we face as we come to read and understand the Bible.

How can better understand the characters written about in the Bible?

 

 The characters in the Bible show us what humans are like. They are a commentary on human nature, a reminder that we are a complex mixture of good and bad motives and actions.

While the Biblical authors provide minimal detail when describing these people, especially in terms of modern day novel authors, the details they provide are important and give insight into their character.

Another key feature is the name of the character. We don't always think about the name of a person, but for the authors of the Bible names were very important and shed light into who the person was.

A frustrating feature of Biblical narrative is that the thoughts and motives of people are rarely shared. In the stories we read and watch the authors typically provide us glimpses into the minds of their characters.

Instead, the Biblical authors provide the details of what happened without moral commentary. This forces us to ponder about what was right and wrong in that situation and how we would have responded.

The Bible is not a collection of nice children's fables that provide a moral at the end of the story. We have tried to do that when teaching the Bible to children, and have ended up watering Scripture down.

The Bible is not a children's story. The narratives in the Old and New Testaments are filled with complicated characters, who often make the bad choice. Over all, these are not people we want to imitate.

What we want to do is to pay attention to the failures of these characters and why they made those decisions. This helps us to think about our actions and the reasons behind our failures and our faith.

We also want to pay attention to how they turn to God and experience God's grace and love. These are the moments that allow us to see God's character and the love He has for us.

The more time we spend reading and meditating on Scripture the better it is able to guide our lives.