DownshoreDrift

We've been going through T.W. Hunt's study, The Mind of Christ on Wednesday nights and it has been incredible. It is a very clear study on how to put on the Mind of Christ, take thoughts captive, and reflect the character of Christ in all that we think, say, and do. Many are being confronted with wrong motives, struggling relationships, and bubbling pride. Often, it is hard to see the root causes of many of our problems, and it is easier to gloss over them through rationalizations and excuses. We don't think that our pain or struggles really has anything to do with US, and self righteousness can easily replace Christ's righteousness and dependence upon Him as our life.

A couple of weeks ago, as part of our study, we ran across this gem of a passage in James 4:1-3:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from the desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

That passage hit me like a ton of bricks. When I fight and quarrel with others, it has nothing to do with them, but it has everything to do with me. You can disagree with people and strive for justice in unjust situations. That is Godly. But, much of the strife in our lives has to do with us wanting to get our own way or to get something out of someone that is better left alone. It is motivated by our own desires. We want respect from others, so any slight is a provocation to battle and hard feelings. We want to get our way, so anytime someone supersedes us, we lash out. Our whole culture is built upon pride and arrogance, and those same attitudes often characterize our churches and denominations. But, it takes two to fight. Jesus did not succumb to this sin, because the world had no hold on Him. He strictly looked to the Father for His identity and sufficiency. He did not look to man for anything, so He had no reason to fight for respect, position, or to get His way. He entrusted Himself to God.

How many times have you been hurt by someone and then lashed out? What were you fighting for? Love? Respect? Position? To protect yourself? If we would take those desires to God instead of letting them battle within us, how much more peace would we have? What do we gain from fighting for victory over others? Does it make our relationships better? Our marriages? Our churches and families? What if we gave those situations to God and looked to Him and asked Him to meet our needs? What if when we were hurt or overlooked we brought our pain and rejection to God who bore it upon the Cross? We would be healed and filled with peace and power enough to bless those who curse us! We might actually begin to live out the Sermon on the Mount.

I know that I have written a lot about SBC issues the past week or so. But, the core of the problems that I have been talking about is relational. If we really knew each other, we could trust one another, even with some differences. If it were possible to sit down and talk to one another without trying to get our way, we might be able to hear from the Lord on issues. But, we all want our way. We grasp power and use it as we see fit. The Word of God no longer speaks authoritatively because we rationalize our actions and declare that we are in the right. At the end of the day, it is our selfishness that guides us, rather than genuine care for others or fidelity to Scripture and the Holy Spirit. The same problems pervade our churches, homes, and communities.

Why do we argue, fuss, and fight? Because of the desires that rage with each of US! My desires. Your desires. We must submit these to the Lord and allow Him to be preeminent. We must surrender to Him and ask Him to move and work as He sees fit. This doesn't mean that we should not stand up for what is right, whether that be personally or communally, but it does mean that we should always submit our desires to the Lord in every situation. Not our will, but His will be done. If He is truly sufficient in our lives, then why are we always looking to other people or things to meet our needs?

Well, Christmas is almost here. This will be my last post until after Christmas. I've got family coming in tomorrow and LOTS needs to be done to get ready and to finish up all of our Christmas preparations. My wife would not be happy to see me sitting on the computer while she does everything, so, this is it until next week. I'm also looking forward to our service on Sunday and our Christmas Eve Candlelight Communion Service (I love that!).  SOOO,  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! 

We've been trying to make Christmas more spiritual and missional this year. Instead of just focusing on ourselves and receiving, we have tried to find ways to connect with neighbors and friends and serve them. Later this evening, my family and I are going into our neighborhood to deliver little goody packages with a scripture verse on them to all of our neighbors. We don't know the vast majority of them because everyone is so private. We thought this would be a great way to get to know them, pass on a blessing, and start to build some relationships. My wife and children spent the whole afternoon yesterday baking all types of cookies, brownies, fudge, etc., and they had a blast. Please pray for us as we do this. I am trying to teach my kids that Christmas is a great time to reach out to others and bless them, even if you don't know them. They're pretty excited about it.

Along those lines, a group from our church went Christmas Caroling on Wednesday night (see image on left - that was us! Yeah right!). This was the last event in our Time to Serve. We did not have our normal service, so around 40 of us went to the apartment complexes near our church and sang a few songs. Some folks came out to listen, but even though many people were home, people tended to not be very responsive, except for a few (including a Muslim family). I was kind of surprised. How often do you have Christmas Carolers show up near your house? I guess not often enough. We were walking back toward the church, and I was a little disappointed, honestly.

But, then I had a thought. We were walking on the street back toward the church and passed a restaurant/martini bar named Dabbo's. It occurred to me that they might let us come in and sing Christmas carols to their patrons (I'm thinking of an Irish Pub type of thing). I told the group to wait and I went and asked if they would have us. They said "sure!" and told us to come in. There was no one in the restaurant, but there were about 10 people in the bar area. It was a pretty nice place filled with an older crowd that was dressed nicely. We all crowded in (kids and all) and sang our Christmas carols and told them Merry Christmas. Many of the patrons sang along with us. We then gave out little flyers that had some of our church information on it with candy canes attached. In return, they gave us money! I rushed up and kept telling them "NO! Keep your money! We didn't come here for money! We're trying to bless you!" They insisted. They were so happy that we came in, they took up a collection for us and told us to use it for a good cause! It was spare cash they had in their pockets, but it ended up being $30! I went back to the church and assigned it to our benevolence fund. We regularly have people coming to the church and asking for food or gas, so those folks in the bar will help feed some folks in the coming weeks.

So, I thought that was pretty cool. It just shows me that God always has surprises for us when we step out in faith and incarnate the gospel. The Incarnation of Christ into a lost and hurting world has been my running theme this Christmas and I am so excited about what God has taught me. Our God is a missional God and He sent His Son cross culturally to our planet to bring us the Kingdom of God. We have so much to rejoice over and so much to tell people about.

Again, please pray for my family and I as we try and build relationships with our neighbors tonight. We're going to around 25 houses and are praying for friendships to develop with people that we only see in passing. We hope to follow this up with neighborhood get togethers as the year goes on, but everyone is so isolated and private, we thought Christmas would be a great time to break the ice.

I wish each of you a merry Christmas. So does my wife Erika, and my 4 children. Merry Christmas!!!

Over the past couple of months, I have been thinking a great deal about trusting God in the midst of suffering.  I have felt compelled to preach and teach on trusting the Lord even when things begin to fall apart.  I have taught through the letter to the 2 Corinthians in my Sunday School class and have mentioned this many times on both Wednesday night and Sunday morning.  I have noticed in my own life how at the first sign of trouble, my heart often fails and I start to fall to pieces.  "Where is the Lord?" I ask.  Somehow, I think that I deserve special treatment and my life should be good at all times.  But, God has been challenging me with the question: Will I trust Him when suffering comes?  Is my life built upon the rock or upon sand? What am I really putting my hope in? 

Jesus said in Matthew 7:24-27,

                                                                                                                                                                                  ^{(Tooth of Time, New Mexico)}

²⁴"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

When the storms of life come, we find out if we have put our faith in the Lord, who is the Rock, or if our faith is in what we can control and acquire for ourselves - sand.

Last night, we talked about what it means to rest in the Lord - to find our life in Him, and not in our performance.   The Bible is full of injunctions to rest in God, but how often do we fill our lives with activity, just to be doing something? How often do we chase after our own desires and live for temporal pleasures or to please others, while all the time, God has a life of balance, meaning, and rhythm available to us if we would just ask and look to Him.  Basically, if we are lead by the Spirit, He will lead us where He wants us to go, and even if we die, we will find our lives "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).

Our main text last night was Psalm 23.  In this Psalm, we looked at God's provision of care for us.  He MAKES us LIE DOWN in green pastures.  He leads us beside still waters.  He RESTORES our SOUL.  What a beautiful picture of God's restorative work in our lives. While we are running here and there trying to get things done, God wants us to rely upon Him.  Another beautiful passage is Isaiah 40:25-31.  Here we see that God sees our lives and He knows our ways.  He gives rest to the weary and we can go to Him to exchange our weakness for His strength.  Here is this passage:

Isa 40:25-31

25 "To whom will you compare me?Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One. 26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:Who created all these?He who brings out the starry host one by one,and calls them each by name.Because of his great power and mighty strength,not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,and complain, O Israel,"My way is hidden from the LORD;my cause is disregarded by my God"? 28 Do you not know?Have you not heard?The LORD is the everlasting God,the Creator of the ends of the earth.He will not grow tired or weary,and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary,and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORDwill renew their strength.They will soar on wings like eagles;they will run and not grow weary,they will walk and not be faint.
NIV

You might be wondering, with this topic, why the pictures up top?  They came from a recent transmission from the Hubble space telescope and it looks like a giant eye.  On another blog by a campus minister from Pennsylvania named Kiki Cherry, I was challenged to think of this as the eye of God.  Not that this constellation of stars is really God's eye, but it just gives a picture of the immensity of the universe. Yet, God sees my little life and endeavors to give me strength.  How can I not be thankful? How can I not receive from Him all He has for me? How can I not take Him up on the gracious offer to walk in His Spirit, go where He goes, and allow Him to lead my life? The God who created the heavens and the earth holds my life in His hands.  Why should I grow weary and lose heart?  My life is not dependent on me - it is dependent on the Lord God Almighty.

Last night we did something different in our Wednesday night Bible Study.  I divided everyone into groups and assigned scripture passages to each group to read over, discuss, and share with the larger group their observations.  I used the same passages as I used with my LIFE Group on Monday night because God has been speaking to me about having faith in Him that goes beyond what I am capable of doing myself.  You know, we often encounter situations that are beyond our ability to control or handle on our own.  In those moments (and really, everyday), we have an opportunity to believe God and trust Him, or to either go it on our own and just muddle through the best way we know how.

Well, the passages were mostly out of Matthew, but I thought I would list them for you for your own study:  Matthew 9:18-26; 9:27-34; 9:35-38; 10:1-10; 11:3-6; 11:28-30; 12:15-21; 12:22-29; and 2 Corinthians 12:9-10.  Click on the scripture passage to read it.

As we read and discussed these passages, the themes of God's power and our faith being expressed through prayer emerged.  A danger in our lives is that we become discouraged in prayer because we see prayers not being answered. It is easy to become fatalistic and say, "Well, God is going to do what He is going to do, so what's the use?" When, in reality, God wants us to always keep praying, even if the answer is "No". God does do miracles each and every day.  He does act on our behalf and He is involved in our lives.  It is us who do not believe, or we are so filled with the flesh that we cannot see with spiritual eyes His work and blessings all around us.  This is why we daily need to be renewed in our minds by God's Word, so we can see Him more clearly.  If we are praying in faith, then when the answer is "No", just like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, we can know and receive God's grace and know that it is sufficient for us.  If we just accept the situation without believing God, then we are pretty much on our own, living from our own understanding and resources.  It is a pretty simple concept and when God says for us to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17), maybe He knows what He is talking about!

We are going to have a time of prayer in our church on Sunday night, January 22 from 6- 7:30.  I want to encourage each of you to come and really believe God to do great things through our body this year - things that we could never do on our own or with our own resourses.  He really wants us to believe in Him and ask Him to perform His work through us according to His will.  Will you join us? We have lots of ministry plans for 2006, but without seeking God's guidance and power first, it is just a bunch of stuff. Let's come together and seek the Lord and ask Him to empower our lives, our families, and our ministry as a church so that what we do, we in God's power, for it is "'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty" (Zechariah 4:6).