Living as an Alien

Have you ever felt like you are "out of place"?

To be a disciple of Jesus means to be out of place in the world. We are like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. Our edges keeping us from fitting in.

 I wonder if we, as the Church, have missed this reality.

Our sermons, lessons, and books deal with how we can have our best life now and how to live a life of purpose, but we are seldom taught how to live as foreigners in a foreign land.

 Perhaps we are a little too comfortable with the world around us.

 An alien in a foreign country stands out because he is different.

 He speaks a different language (or at least with an accent).

 He dresses differently. He celebrates different holidays.

 He has different values.

 Christians are to live like foreigners in a strange land.

Our goal isn't to learn the language and the customs of the world, but to create a little out post of the Kingdom of God.

We are to live by the customs and values of Heaven.

The apostle Peter wrote:

Dear friends, I warn you as "temporary residents and foreigners" to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world. (1 Peter 2:11-12; NLT)

How does the apostle Peter want us to live?

As "temporary residents" and "foreigners"!

We are displaced!

We are not at home!

I want you to catch this: Being a part of God's kingdom compels us to live differently from the world. 

God isn’t interested in people who will merely confess their belief in Him.

The Bible tells us that at Jesus' return everyone will bow a knee and confess Jesus as Lord.

God wants people who, by faith, voluntary kneel before Him. Christians are God's people who live by faith.

As His people we are motivated by a different set of desires. As His people we live by a different standard. As His people we love the unlovely and help the helpless.

God expects His people not to abandon the customs of their home country, but to teach the customs of Heaven to others.  We do this by living differently than the world around us.

In his book The Barbarian Way, Erwin McManus wrote:

From the moment we become citizens of the kingdom of God, we become aliens and strangers in a world that chooses to live absent of God.  From the first step taken to follow Jesus, we are out of step with the rest of the world.  Once your life is in sync with the story of God, you become out of sync with any story that attempts to ignore or eliminate God.  You are a stranger to them, an alien among them, a nomadic wanderer who, while refusing to be rooted in this life, seems to somehow enjoy this life most. (p. 93)

Are you walking out of step with the world?

My great concern for the Church in the United States is that we are not really the Church. We are a caricature of what the Church is called to be.

It is true that many of us live by a different moral standard from the world, yet our hopes and dreams are wrapped up in the very same ambitions and desires of the world. Our dreams and desires center around success, money, happiness, and relationships.  The list could go on, but the point is that while we are morally different from the world we are not spiritually different from them.

 That my friends was one of the problems Jesus had with the Pharisees.  They looked good on the outside, but on the inside they were filled with dead men’s bones.

White washed tombs.

We need to quite fooling ourselves that to be different from the world is just about having the right moral standard.

Being different from the world primarily has to do with our desires, dreams, attitudes, and thoughts. This requires a different hope.

The hope for Christians is not that we get to live in Heaven with God for eternity. Rather, our hope is that through Jesus' death, resurrection, and return, everything will be made right. It is the belief that the Kingdom of God will one day reclaim all its lost territory.

A temporary resident doesn’t put down roots in the land he is living.  Instead he hopes and dreams for his home and thinks of the day when he will finally go home again.

Kingdom Stories: Parable of Counting the Cost

I have been doing a sermon series this summer on the parables of Jesus. This is the video summary of the sermon I preached on August 18, 2019.


 

The Parable of the Honored Painter

What does it mean to glorify God?

It can be explained like this:

There was a man who desired to be a painter. He spent many years painting magnificent pictures that beautifully captured sunrises and sunsets, rainbows and storm clouds, mountain peaks and oceans waves.

Finally came the day when his paintings were displayed in an art gallery. Person after person were struck by the beauty displayed in each painting. They stood in awe before the paintings, totally immersed in the painted scenes.

Then came the big moment when the painter was introduced to the crowd. People praised him for his skill and his eye for beauty.

The artist was honored with good reviews from art critics and money from those who wanted to place his paintings in their homes.

While people were taken in by the beauty of the paintings, they did not stand there and sing the praises of the pictures. They honored and praised the one who had painted them.

When we live according to God's will, truly bearing His image, we bring glory to God in two ways:

1. We glorify God by living the way He created us to live. Our faith displays the reality of our honor and trust of Him. 
2. Our good behavior causes other people to glorify God. The way we live provides evidence for God and His love for us, and thus give our neighbors to reason to praise Him.

People may appreciate our good behavior, but when the Creator is introduced, they will worship Him.

"Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world." 

1 Peter 2:12; NLT

Lead Like Jesus

“For the follower of Jesus, servant leadership isn’t just an option, it’s a mandate.” ~ Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges, The Servant Leader, p. 12

I know many of us don’t feel like leaders.

Even though I have been involved in paid ministry the majority of my adult life, I have had difficulty embracing the idea that I am a leader.

I could always embrace being a preaching and a teacher, but not being a leader. There was something leadership that I wanted to avoid.

Yet, I can't truly be a pastor without being a leader.

In order to talk about leadership it is best to begin by defining what leadership is. It seems everyone has their own take on the definition of leadership.

The way I understand leadership is that leadership is influence. We are leaders when we, in one way or another, influence the choices or beliefs of another person.

When looked at it this way we see that parents, teachers, authors, and even friends are powerful leaders in our lives. They provide leadership in our lives more often than people who wear the actual title of leader. I know that my parents have influenced me more than anyone else.

If leadership is best defined as influence then I would image that each of us is able to lead in several different ways, even though we don’t consider ourselves to be a leader.

Once we recognize that we have several opportunities to lead those around us, then it becomes crucial for us to consider the best way for us to lead.

As followers of Jesus we need to look to him to be our example of what leadership actually looks like.

Since that is the case, as Blanchard and Hodges point out in the above quote, we realize that we are called to be servant leaders, because that is how Jesus led.

One of my favorite passages is Philippians 2:

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
(Philippians 2:3-8; NLT)

Paul urged his readers to be humble and to look after the needs of others. In other words, to be a servant.

The example, according to Paul, that we are to follow is Jesus.

Jesus gave up heaven in obedience to his Father's will and out of love for us. He looked after our interest rather than his own. Paul wrote, "he took on the humble position of a slave..."

The way of Jesus was not one of power, even though he had that at his disposal, but of humility and service. This is the way God chose to influence the world.

If we are going to influence the world, the men and women we live around, we need to be humble and we need to serve. That is how we will have influence with them, because they will know that we have their best interest at heart.

 People will listen when they know the leader cares about them.

Lead like Jesus and serve those around you.