Discipleship | Discipleship at Messiah

“God’s Children Bear A Family Resemblence”

Posted on 7/9/13 by On the road with Jesus.

I John 3:2 we are God’s children now; …we will be like him.

All important events in the life cycle are connected to certain rituals which most of us know and in which we readily share. For instance—when a baby is born:

“Who does she/he look like?”
“He has his Dad’s nose.”
“Her face is shaped just like her mother’s.”

Now, often that is not a fact so much as expectation. We look for and expect a child to resemble its parents and family members. As a child grows it usually exhibits more and more traits of family. It may not be so noticeable to those who see it every day but is often obvious to others.

So when John says we are God’s children, it raises some expectations. If you were reading this in the Greek text, it would say “NOW we are God’s children.” The emphasis is on the “now.” In context, it is clear that those who are trusting Jesus belong to God’s family.

To say we are God’s children has powerful implications. Not the least of which is that it establishes our identity. To know who you are, to have a sense of identity, may well be one of the most important factors in your mental and emotional health. If you do not have a sense of identity, if you do not know who you are, chances are, you have some real problems in your life. This is especially important in our day, because we live in a world where there is a tendency to treat a person as an object, to manipulate a person, to see a person as disposable, to see one as useful only as he/she serves me and my ends.

To have a sense of belonging, to have a sense of identity is also vital to our spiritual health. Often when someone introduces me, they tell my name but add something to that. He’s our neighbor, a pastor at Messiah Church, Alana’s husband. And the less they know me personally, the more likely they are to do that, to identify me by my function, my job.

Probably you have been identified, not by who you are so much, as by some relationship—Joe Blow’s wife or Susie Blow’s husband, or by some job you perform.

But when we say we are God’s children, it establishes our identity, not by our function or even just our relationship but OUR NATURE. The CHRISTIAN LIFE IS NOT SIMPLY TAKING ORDERS FROM GOD OR EVEN FOLLOWING JESUS’ EXAMPLE. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS LIVING OUT A NEW NATURE, being part of a new kind of people. Obviously as to “behaving like God’s children” most of us have a ways to go. The child is not yet what he/she may become. But the genes are there and with normal growth and development maturity will come.

And we have that amazing promise: “We shall be like Him!” “Not yet but shall be” is essential to being human. There is always the tension between what I am (performance) and what I shall be. As Gordon Allport has said, “All people are in transit.”

Are you anxious to be like Jesus? Keep trusting him and following and it will happen.

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A New Song

Posted on 7/3/13 by On the road with Jesus.

Psalm 40:3- “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.”

How much, how often do you praise God? For most of us (myself included) it’s not nearly enough. Part of reason for that I suspect is that we see praise as motivated by good things happening to us, things going well for us, etc. Certainly it is important that we are grateful and express that. But praise for God goes beyond that. It is an important part of our discipleship.

It is clear from Scripture that praise pleases God. Here are just a few examples:

“For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise” (I Chron.16:25)
Psalm 33:1- “it is fitting for the upright to praise him.”
100:4- “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.”
The last 5 psalms begin and end with “Praise the Lord.”
150:6- “let everything that has breath praise the LORD.”
I Peter 4:11- “so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ”

Praise has a profound effect on us. It makes God real and triggers joy in my heart. Few things so rejuvenates us as to praise God. When the New Testament describes the church it is this way: “We’ll be praising Christ, enjoying each other.”( Phil 1:26 msg) Does that sound like the church you know? What about you personally?

Besides that, it does something to those around us. It makes Jesus attractive. I’m not talking about some of the mindless examples—slogans, or trite phrases that seem artificial and forced. From Charles Wesley’s first hymnbook (1737) this song was sung:

Let every Land their Tongues employ,
And hymns of Triumph sing.
…
Release his Praise with awe profound,
Let Knowledge guide the Song.
Nor mock him with a solemn Sound
Upon a thoughtless Tongue.

Phillipians 1:10-11 reads:

You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God. (msg)

It has been said, “God is preparing the whole universe to be an orchestra of praise and adoration to his Son.” (FB Meyer)

I read about the conductor of an orchestra of 500 who missed the piccolo and waited for it.

God is waiting for your voice to join in! Praise the Lord. Let all that have breath praise God.

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Me First! ?

Posted on 5/21/13 by On the road with Jesus.

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake. I Peter 2:13.

Over the years I have received two criticisms which I consider to be two of the best compliments I ever got. One was that I talked “too much about Jesus.” I only hope that I have talked as much about Jesus as that suggests. The other was that I had “quit preaching and gone to meddling.” In this case, I believe that, in the best sense of the word, the Gospel is meddlesome. It has to do with where we live. Peter certainly thought so. This verse is the heading for a section (2:13-3:12) on a Christian’s relationships. It identifies a basic relationship principle: submit. (Do not read this as “submit to evil” or unhealthy domination. It is qualified by “for the Lord’s sake” and the other’s best interests.)

The title of a little book by Paul Tournier, names the fundamental human dilemma—To Resist or to Surrender. He says,

“Whether it is a farmer selling a cow at the fair or two theologians discussing doctrine, an adolescent who is trying to extract a privilege from his unwilling parents or diplomats who are negotiating war or peace, there are always two interests, two convictions, and in the last analysis, two wills which confront each other” (Tournier, To Resist Or To Surrender, 13).

The prevailing emphasis in our culture is on assertiveness and the Biblical text seems so naive when it makes submission the foundation stone of human relationships: others first, give vs receive, serve vs be served. Some sample Bible verses echo it:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Eph 5:21)
Honor one another above yourselves. (Roms. 12:10)
In humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of your should look not only to your owns interests, but also to the interests of others. (Phil 2:3b-4)

Conventional thought says, “if you don’t watch out for yourself no one else will.” The Bible says, “yes—the Christian will.”

Since we live in a day, as someone has said, “The words of the Christian community have outrun its exemplary living,” we need to renew our commitment to this principle. (IB,113).

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A Life Worthy of the Gospel

Posted on 5/15/13 by On the road with Jesus.

Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.-Philippians 1:27

Dallas Willard died last week. Though I did not know him personally and never met him, I consider him to have been my mentor. His writings never failed to stir my heart and challenge my life. Two of his books, The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart were especially significant to me. Just last year I led a Sunday School class study of The Divine Conspiracy.

In that book, he used the image of a bar code to illustrate a major problem among the Christian community. He said that a lot of people had the bar code that said “Christian” but whose life really was something different.

It is sad but the lifestyles of many people deny their labeled identity as Christian. Lifestyle is the result of character. It is the form or expression given to a character when lived out in a world. The dictionary defines “style” as a manner, a method, a way, a practice, a habit, as a characteristic behavior. It has to do with a pattern of life, not just isolated incidents, not just a particular choice or action but a pattern of choices and actions. Our jobs are involved, our leisure, how we spend our money, the food we eat, the goods we consume, the house we live in, how we raise our children. Everything about our lives suggests a certain style of life.

A classic example is found in the movie “Chariots of Fire.” the story of young men preparing for the 1924 Olympics. One is a Scottish missionary to China. His name is Eric Liddle. Liddle qualifies for the Olympics, but on the ship with the British Olympic team in route to Paris, he discovers that one of the races he is to run will take place on Sunday. He refuses to run. He is pressured from ever quarter to change his mind even to the point of bringing in the Prince of England to persuade him to run “for the honor of the country.”

Eric Liddle’s refusal to run was not just an isolated incident or sudden whim. It was a logical development from his pattern of life. It was in fact predictable.

Now the manner, the style of life has always been a major concern for Christians and it is clearly reflected in numerous New Testament passages. These are just a few samples:

-To the Corinthian Christians- “you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealously and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving like ordinary men?”
– In Ephesians Paul raises the question in terms of conduct, talk, and labor.
-The book of Phillipians says, “I hope…Christ can be honored in my body. (1:20).
“As Christians we are to be “Lights in the world” (2:15).
-We read about some who by their conduct are “enemies of the cross of Christ.”
-Those at Colosse are asked, “Why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? (Col.2:20)
-“Give up living like pagans” (Eph.)
-There are those who profess to know God “but deny him by their deeds(Eph. 1:16)
-In Titus we read that we ought to live so that in “everything you may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (2:10).

From the beginning, there was never any doubt that those Christians were different. Their style of living set them apart from the rest of the world. But we are called not only to lives that are different, also life worthy of the gospel of Christ..

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Wineskins

Posted on 5/10/13 by On the road with Jesus.

And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. -Mark 6:22

In his book, Aquachurch, Leonard Sweet wrote, “If you’re doing church the same way you were a year ago, you’re falling behind and failing.” Never has change come so quickly to a society and the Church is not exempt from the consequences. Yet for many of us the Church is where we seek refuge from the dizzying pace of life. It is where we look for stability and security, something familiar and comfortable. And there is nothing wrong with that. For God in Christ is our stability and security.

However, the containers in which we experience God in our life and share it with others have to change and adjust, flex and give or we lose him. Jesus was talking about that when he said “you can’t new wine in old wineskins.”

Our problem is that we sometimes have trouble separating the wine (Jesus) from the container. That is often why we have trouble keeping up with and accepting the changes necessary to be faithful. It doesn’t matter where it’s in music, or forms of ministry or worship.

It can be scary. But it’s also exciting to have an opportunity to share Jesus in new and different ways. For be sure of one thing, Jesus is still the greatest need people have.

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Loving Life

Posted on 4/26/13 by On the road with Jesus.

Whoever would love life… -I Peter 3:10

          How important is life to you; to most people? Who wants to die?
The rather normal and expected answers are that everyone (unless something is wrong with them) believes life precious and clings to it.
        So the text which says “whoever wishes to love life” seems strange to us. The suggestion that ordinary, normal, healthy people may not love life is met with disbelief.  Is Peter so out of touch with reality? Or, is he talking to people for whom life is so painful and difficult that anything would be better?
          At first glance, the latter seems to be a likely explanation—these people are in the midst of, or at least facing terrible persecution. This is an underlying theme of the whole letter. Certainly that would be an important message for people for whom life has dealt a cruel hand.
          However, giving that its due credit, when you see the solution he suggests, it becomes clear that this applies to everyone not just a hand-full of persecuted first century Christians.
          It is a fact that not everyone loves life. In the Bible, the writer of Ecclesiastes is direct: “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Ecc. 2:17)
          Peter wrote in a day of much cynicism about life and it is a growing attitude in our time. Earnest Hemingway expressed it when he said, “I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into.” For many, life is characterized by frustration and boredom.
Do you love life? I don’t mean do you want to live as the better of two alternatives. It is one thing to say we love life in the abstract and quite another to love the particulars of our life.
          The pursuit of satisfaction in life is major preoccupation of an affluent society. Some seek it in success. Others believe possessions, things deliver what they long for. Years ago I read this story:

A wealthy man moved into a new house, next-door to a Quaker. Quakers believe in plainness and simplicity. The Quaker watched as the moving company unloaded a great amount of furniture, clothes, and decorative things.
Finally, he walked over to his new neighbor and said, “Neighbor, if thee hath need of anything, please come to see me and I will tell thee how to get along without it.”

To those early Christians, persecuted and suffering, Peter tells the secret to loving life whatever one’s circumstances: “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.”
In short, do good. Goodness is not just what you ought to do, it is also the best way to live. It is living in tune with God and His ways, it is living the way we were intended, the way we work best. What you say and do, the way you relate to people is the key to loving life.
The kind of goodness called for begins with love for Christ. “In your hearts give Christ a unique place.” I Peter 3:15 (Barclay)
Do you want to love life? Make Jesus Lord of your life.

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Living In the Present—For the Future

Posted on 4/12/13 by On the road with Jesus.

“Wait.” “Now is the time…now is the day.” -Acts 1:4, I Corinthians 6:2

Do you remember the Fram oil filter commercial. A mechanic tells about a major repair job on a car, and suggests that if the owner had spent a little more on a Fram filter it could have been avoided. And then, he holds up a filter and utters the ultimate advertising wisdom, “Pay me now or pay me later.”

It is a classic human dilemma—tension between having it now or later, living for the present or the future. For almost all of our early lives, there is someone telling us to wait for something:

            wait until you’re old enough to go to school
            wait until you’re in High School
            wait until you’re married
            wait until you’re through with your education
            wait until you have a good job
            wait until you have some security to get married

There are right and wrong times to wait. Some years ago this story appeared in Reader’s Digest:

An Air Force TAIL-GUNNER was being court-martialed. “What did you hear in your headset?” demanded a superior officer. “Well,” replied the airman, “I heard my squadron leader holler, ‘Enemy planes at five o’clock!'” “What action did you take?” persisted another officer. “Why, sir,” replied the gunner, “I just sat back and waited. It was only 4:30.”

There are some people who live their whole lives in the waiting mode. They never seem to “experience life.” Totally goal oriented, so much so that when they get there, satisfaction, fulfillment seems to allude them.

On the other hand, there are competing voices saying do it now. Our desires often want it now, want immediate gratification. Our environment, advertising says, “Have it now, buy now, pay later.” “Grab all the gusto you can.”

When life is lived on this basis—pursuit of immediate gratification, we are robbed of the most important things in life, like character, meaning, joy. These things only come with time.

Some might suggest that this is a non-issue from a Christian perspective. All Christian living is future oriented, is lived for future results/rewards. And in one sense that is true but it is short of the whole truth. You will find both “wait” and “now” in the Bible:

The problem is that we are inclined to want to put off what we ought to do now and to want now what can only come in time. How can we live making the most of the present but also building for the future?

Know that life as God intends it is both an experience to be appreciated/ enjoyed/ lived now and a goal, destination to be anticipated. The living now and the future are part of the same parcel. The secret is trusting God and living with sensitivity to God’s timing.

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The Awful Gift

Posted on 3/19/13 by On the road with Jesus.

I have set before you life and death….Now choose life. –Deuteronomy 30:19

We all probably have received a gift of something which we didn’t really want. That ugly picture which Aunt Sally gave us, she expects to see hanging on a wall every time she visits. Some gifts, ugly or useless in themselves we cherish because our son or daughter (or grandchild) made it. Usually, a gift is appreciated, valuable or not, if we know the motivation is one of love or care for us.

Did you know the most awful gift you’ve ever received came from God and was motivated by pure and perfect love. It was also incredibly expensive. That’s crazy you say. We know “every good and perfect gift comes from God.” God doesn’t give bad gifts. However, awful is not the same as bad. In fact, the awful gift is also a wonderful gift.

What is this awful but wonderful gift? It is the freedom to choose against God, to reject God, to choose not to believe God, to trust God, to love God. In fact, it is the freedom to choose death. It is wonderful because it means we can also choose for God, to love and serve God. You can’t have one without the other. To freely choose God is greatest of all choices, but that means it is possible to make the awful decision to “go it” without God.

And make no mistake, ultimately it is always a choice. What’s your choice? Click here for help on choosing.

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Too Good to Be True

Posted on 3/7/13 by On the road with Jesus.

The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ,…The people were all so amazed. Mark 1:1, 22a

A computer lease we were looking at “seemed too good to be true.” It was.

We all know the feeling—something is so wondrous so great, so joyful, that it just couldn’t be true.

Such things just don’t happen in a mixed-up, disappointing, sin and sorrow-filled world. And that is exactly the feeling created in anyone who really begins to “breathe” the atmosphere of the New Testament. The news about Jesus seems almost too good to be true.

To be sure, the watered-down version that many have heard from their youth up and which the church too often seems to teach isn’t so hard to believe. This collection of religious sentiments somehow (we’re not quite sure how) built around the person of Jesus who was a very good man, is not hard to believe and creates no feeling of wonder and amazement and certainly had little power to transform lives. But the unedited biblical version is a different story.

Get this—Jesus is the Son of God. Even the demons recognized they were not dealing with just another human being, exclaiming, “You are the holy one of God!” As Jesus came to John for baptism in the Jordan river, there is an accreditation, an approval expressed by God the Father: “You are my son, and I am delighted in you.” God among mortals! And we think, “That’s too good to be true.”

But notice the impact Jesus had on those who heard him, those who walked with him, those outside as well as within his circle. As they heard his teaching, saw him in action, it seems Mark “ransacked” the Greek dictionary trying to express their amazement, astonishment, wonder, awe in the presence of this person. It’s too good to be true!

In what is said to be representative of a typical day in the life of Jesus, he casts out demons, heals Peter’s mother-in-law who was sick with a fever, reaches out to touch one legally untouchable and cures the incurable leper. His loving compassion and power which heals, and his wisdom which enlightens are amazing.

Then it begins to dawn on us what the NT is trying to say, “that is what God is really like.” This Jesus, whom the whole world looks to as the epitome, example of love, concern, the best in human kind, is what God is like! He is not just a man but God among men! It’s all too good to be true!

Just like the man who saw Jesus heal his son of a spirit which caused him to fall into the fire and go through horrible agony, when Jesus asks, “Do you believe?” responds, “I believe, help my unbelief.” We begin to understand a little of what the man was trying to express. I do believe! I want to believe! But it’s too good to be true!

While we’re trying to catch our breath, get our minds around the idea, “God is like this,” we are brought to our knees by the this: Jesus is one of us. His life becomes a pattern for me/you. As surely as Mark will not let us forget that this is God’s own son, so likewise he will not let us escape the fact that He was a real human being.

He sets the pattern for every true disciple (Jesus follower). A decision to trust God, acceptance of a calling/mission and dedication to it, set the boundaries of life. And with that, there is the equipment, power of the Holy Spirit descending on Him, to give Him the ability to perform the mission. So, we make our choice, dedicate ourselves, and God fills us with His spirit and empowers us. But we think, “it’s too good to be true.

In his powerful book, A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken tell how he and his wife, became Christians.

They considered themselves pagans. They began by believing the Christian gospel had nothing to say to them. Over a period of time, Vanauken and his wife began to consider the meaning of the gospel. Not taking that way easily, He said,

“we discovered much more than we had expected: The personality of Jesus emerged from the Gospels with astonishing consistency. Whenever they were written, they were written in the shadow of a personality so tremendous that Christians who may never have seen him knew him utterly: that strange mixture of unbearable sternness and heartbreaking tenderness.

What was happening seemed to happening against his will. But as he read and thought and talked with these Christians what seemed almost too good to be true was becoming harder and harder to escape. Vanauken saw the issue and saw it clearly:

Christianity had come to seem to us probable. It all hinged on this Jesus. Was he, in fact, the Lord Messiah, the Holy one of Israel, the Christ? Was he, indeed, the incarnate God? Very God of very God? This was the heart of the matter. [Did] he rise from the dead? The Apostles, the Evangelists, Paul believed it with utter conviction. Could we believe on their belief? Believe in a miracle?

He goes on to describe his growing excitement. As he began to think that it all might really be true, it began to dawn on him that the highest aspirations and deepest longings of his life came together at the person of Jesus Christ and the gospel. And almost against his will he is driven to Jesus.

As he read the New Testament, the incredibly good news broke through—and hoping against hope, for it was just too good to be true: Vanauken them came to a turning point: “I could not go back….I had encountered Jesus….It was a question whether I was to accept Him—or reject. (When I saw that) I could not reject Jesus.”

When you really meet the Christ in the pages of the NT, the sheer excitement of it all makes it seem too good to be true. Mark’s whole gospel is predicated on the conviction that once he tells you what Jesus did and said you will know who He is—God’s own son, but also one of us; our savior but also our example.

HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT JESUS?
IT IS TRUE, YOU KNOW!

If you do not know Him, you can invite Him into you life now. click here for how.

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This Is True Grace

Posted on 2/27/13 by On the road with Jesus.

After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,…will himself RESTORE (PERFECT) you. I Peter 5:10

One evening, G.K. Chesterton and some writers were discussing what single book they would choose if they were stranded on a desert island. One writer quickly said, “The complete works of Shakespeare.” Another responded, “I’d choose the Bible.” When Chesterton was asked, he replied, “I would choose Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.”

Now what Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding would be to a person stranded on a desert island, the Bible is to those whom Peter says are “strangers in the world.”

All through this letter of 105 verses Peter has talked of what it means for them to live as followers of Jesus:

Joy in midst of sadness,
holy,
submissive,
loving life,
and stewards of the grace of God.

He sums it up in a final and wonderful encouragement to stand firm, because God will “exalt you” (v 6).

Then he adds one more basic necessity for spiritual victory, to come out of a world like this intact: v10- “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,…will himself RESTORE (PERFECT) you.

It is not easy to live as strangers in the world. There are pressures—our internal weaknesses, circumstances, others, even persecution. Most of all Peter reminds us of the enemy of souls, who like a roaring lion prowls looking for victims. Living in a world where we are strangers and which is often hostile can take its toll—deterioration, wearing and tearing.

Who of us have not retreated from engagement with life, the worse for wear—wounded, damaged, broken. What congregation has not known conflict, division, in the struggle to be God’s people.

But Peter reminds us, restoration is God’s special work. God is not a throw-away God. He puts things back together, restores, perfects. Frazzled, at loose ends, in pieces? God will repair to perfection.

What is special here is the emphasis—it is God’s personal work. God does not leave this to instrumental means, but it is His own “personal active ministry to His people.” And it is true grace. Peter was exhibit A. This could not have been lost on those to whom he wrote. They were too near to it.

When the struggle, the battle has taken its toll, God’s word to us is not just “try again”, “try harder” but grace, “true grace” which is all we need.

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)

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