I noticed something odd yesterday. I had picked up a couple followers of my blog since the last time I had checked. That's awfully nice of them, so I figured I at least owe it to them to actually write something on here every once in a while. Just to show I care.
I was listening to a song today by Chris Taylor called "I Don't Need to Know." I was hoping to be able to get it to play on my blog, but they don't have it on playlist.com. It's a pretty good song, though, and I especially like some of the lyrics in the chorus:
I don't need to know all the things that I know you know
Just the simple fact that you loved me before I was born
Every piece of me that I lose along the way
You pick them up and make me new
You make me new
I'm graduating from Ozark in a little under three months. I have been thinking about this fact on a more regular basis lately. Not so much because I want to, but because it keeps sneaking into my mind when I let my guard down. I would rather not think about the truth that very soon I'm supposed to be an adult and I have to have some idea about where I'm going from here. In these sorts of life-transitions, I think all of us want to have a lot of questions answered. We want to know what life is going to look like. Will I go to grad school or go get a job? Where in the country will I go? Will I live by myself or have a roommate? Will I go ahead and get cable TV or not? Will I have any money? Who will I marry? Will the nursing home I'll probably be living in by that time let me have the ceremony there, or will I have to do it somewhere else?
I have a lot of questions that I would really like answers to. Right now, the future looks so hazy, and that can be frightening. I try my best not to worry or to be anxious, but it's a lot easier to talk about that than actually doing it. If only God would drop his will for my life like a brick on my head, I would be able to breathe much easier. Uncertainty feels like a precarious position.
What Chris Taylor recognizes in his song, though, is that we don't need to know everything. God does know, and he's a good God, and we can trust that he'll work things out. It's like a child with his father. When you're a little kid, you don't need to know every detail about the future. You don't ask questions like "What will I be doing three years from now? What is the exact economic process that ensures that I have plenty of mac n' cheese to eat at dinner? How can I best invest my future assets so that I can retire comfortably?" No, instead, the child knows that his father has everything under control. It's not the child's responsibility to have it all figured out. Maybe that's partly what Jesus meant when he said his followers need to be like little children.
There is a story about a guy named John Kavanaugh who worked with Mother Teresa for a while as he tried to determine what to do with his future. When he met with Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him, and she asked what he wanted her to pray. He replied that he wanted her to pray that he have clarity. However, Mother Teresa refused to pray that he would have clarity. (She could be such a jerk sometimes.) Kavanaugh told her that she seemed to always have clarity, and that he simply wanted to have that same sort of clarity in his own life. Then Mother Teresa said, "I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."
I don't need to know everything. I would really like to know everything. But I don't need to. It's not my job to have the entire course of the universe spread in front of me like a flowchart. It's my job to follow Jesus. To wake up each day and see how I can best serve him before I go to bed again. I know that God loves me, and that's enough. He's got the rest under control.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
The Noticeable Church
I do hope that all of you have finished mourning the Steelers loss in the Super Bowl from last Sunday. I know it's hard, but I think that we can get through it if we support one another.
This morning I started reading a book that my friend Charlie got for me called Killing Cockroaches by Tony Morgan. I'm not very far into the book yet, but I really like what I have read so far. The book is all about church leadership, which is a valuable and important topic, but isn't really one that I get into very easily (which is unfortunate, considering that I hope to be a church leader sometime in the not-too-awfully-distant future. The thing that I really like about Killing Cockroaches is that it does not follow the structure of most books. There are not really chapters; instead, there are just a ton of short blips, each only a page or two. Also, instead of establishing lists of leadership principles that should be put into practice, Morgan just tells a lot of stories and asks some questions. This is helpful, I think, because stories and questions stick. Enumerations of principles are difficult to keep in mind, but stories and questions are often have influence that lasts longer and that might even change behavior. (Check this out to see more of my feelings on such things.)
One of the questions that Morgan asks that I thought was especially poignant was this: "If your church shut its doors today, would your community notice?" (15). In this section, Morgan talks about how a couple in his church gave their car to a young woman in the congregation who was in need of a vehicle, and he references how the early church in Jerusalem would sell their possessions and share one another and truly care for those in need (Acts 4:32-37). This is the kind of church life that gets noticed. The thing about the couple at Morgan's church, and the thing about the church in Acts, is that they were engaged--they were engaged with one another and engaged with the surrounding community. One of the reasons the early church was always been persecuted is because they didn't just fly under the radar, trying not to make a scene. They were noticed.
As leaders in the church (or as members of the church, in fact), it would be helpful for us to constantly be asking ourselves the question that Morgan poses. There are many churches that are doing really incredible things in the community to share the love and gospel of Christ, but sadly, there are also many that are so internally focused (what can we do to feed ourselves?) that their presence makes no impact on anyone who hasn't gone to that church since they were babies. That's not how it should be. If your church and its people vanished tomorrow (now I'm treading dangerously close to rapture theology. Whoops), there it should leave a dent in your city. The church should be as noticeable as a unicorn running through a shopping mall. Not because it pridefully draws attention to itself, but because it restlessly loves with the love of Jesus, and that love is counter to anything the world has ever seen before.
Happy Valentine's Day.
This morning I started reading a book that my friend Charlie got for me called Killing Cockroaches by Tony Morgan. I'm not very far into the book yet, but I really like what I have read so far. The book is all about church leadership, which is a valuable and important topic, but isn't really one that I get into very easily (which is unfortunate, considering that I hope to be a church leader sometime in the not-too-awfully-distant future. The thing that I really like about Killing Cockroaches is that it does not follow the structure of most books. There are not really chapters; instead, there are just a ton of short blips, each only a page or two. Also, instead of establishing lists of leadership principles that should be put into practice, Morgan just tells a lot of stories and asks some questions. This is helpful, I think, because stories and questions stick. Enumerations of principles are difficult to keep in mind, but stories and questions are often have influence that lasts longer and that might even change behavior. (Check this out to see more of my feelings on such things.)
One of the questions that Morgan asks that I thought was especially poignant was this: "If your church shut its doors today, would your community notice?" (15). In this section, Morgan talks about how a couple in his church gave their car to a young woman in the congregation who was in need of a vehicle, and he references how the early church in Jerusalem would sell their possessions and share one another and truly care for those in need (Acts 4:32-37). This is the kind of church life that gets noticed. The thing about the couple at Morgan's church, and the thing about the church in Acts, is that they were engaged--they were engaged with one another and engaged with the surrounding community. One of the reasons the early church was always been persecuted is because they didn't just fly under the radar, trying not to make a scene. They were noticed.
As leaders in the church (or as members of the church, in fact), it would be helpful for us to constantly be asking ourselves the question that Morgan poses. There are many churches that are doing really incredible things in the community to share the love and gospel of Christ, but sadly, there are also many that are so internally focused (what can we do to feed ourselves?) that their presence makes no impact on anyone who hasn't gone to that church since they were babies. That's not how it should be. If your church and its people vanished tomorrow (now I'm treading dangerously close to rapture theology. Whoops), there it should leave a dent in your city. The church should be as noticeable as a unicorn running through a shopping mall. Not because it pridefully draws attention to itself, but because it restlessly loves with the love of Jesus, and that love is counter to anything the world has ever seen before.
Happy Valentine's Day.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Plan A
I could make up some lame excuse for not having written for a little while, and I could say that I have simply been too busy with school and such. But all of that would be a lie, because the truth is that I went to one class all this last week. All day Tuesday, the sky dumped absurd amount of snow and other wintry precipitation all over Joplin (as well as all over a large chunk of the country, from what I hear), and this resulted in three snow days in a row for me. It has been snowing some more today, but not as furiously as it was earlier this week. Right now large flakes are gently floating down from the clouds, and it's all very beautiful, in fact. It's the kind of a snow that is featured on Christmas movies.
This week I have been reminded of an important fact in several different settings. In my Sunday School class last Sunday, we were studying Isaiah 53, which is well known because of how vividly it describes the way in which Jesus would lay down his life in order to take on the infirmities and sorrows of his people. This is an incredible passage of Scripture that should be read and reread over and over again. Tucked within it, though, is a significant little idea. Verse 10 says of the suffering servant, "Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and thought he Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand." It's God's will that all of this would happen, even hundreds of years before it actually would. Just hold on to that idea for a moment.
A couple days later, I was reading the first chapter of Ephesians, where Paul describes how God has blessed us with "every spiritual blessing in Christ." Verses 4-5 say, "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will." These are some pretty loaded sentences, and they immediately raise all sorts of theological questions concerning predestination and God's foreknowledge and such. This is fertile soil for a theological debate. Here's how I read it (though I haven't studied this passage in depth): God chose us (the church) before creation, and he predestined us (the church) to be adopted as his sons. This was God's will from the start. To bring the church to himself. Not that he picks and chooses who will be saved and who will not, overriding any sense of personal decision. But God does love and choose the church. Again, hold on to that.
Finally, in my Romans class this morning, my professor talked about how, in the first few chapters of Romans, Paul develops the argument that all people, Jew and Gentile alike, are under sin and are in need of Jesus. There is no room for spiritual superiority here, because all are on equal footing--both the pagan who indulges in every sinful desire and the judgmental Jew who believes he is safe because of he pedigree. What my professor pointed out is that it was always God's plan to justify sinners through Jesus.
So what does all of this point to? It shows that God's intention and will from the beginning was to rescue the church through faith in Jesus. It is not as though God's original plan was to only save Israel, who would maintain the sacrificial system for all of eternity, but that he later changed his mind because he could see that wasn't working out very well. God's purpose didn't fail, forcing him to scrape together some sort of second-string scheme. What biblical history shows us is that God's intent from all of eternity was to send Jesus to die on the cross and to form the community of the church. The church is not God's "Plan B." It was in his mind from the beginning.
It is popular today to get down on the church. A lot of people, even a lot of Christians, like to bash the church every opportunity they get. But let's remember how deeply God loves and cares for the church. We are adopted as his own children through Christ. The church is like a bride, and it is unwise to insult a person's bride. Especially when the groom is Jesus himself. No, I certainly think the church needs to be critiqued from time to time, and we need to constantly be reforming ourselves and growing more into who God would have us be. But let's be careful of getting too down on the church, and let's remember how it fits into God's plan for the world. At the same time, this should create within us an incredible sense of gratitude and self-acceptance. No words can adequately describe God's love for us. He chooses us first. We're his first pick. He doesn't take us because no one else is around, or because those he really wants are unable. God loves the church. He loves us. And that's a fact worth being pumped up about.
This week I have been reminded of an important fact in several different settings. In my Sunday School class last Sunday, we were studying Isaiah 53, which is well known because of how vividly it describes the way in which Jesus would lay down his life in order to take on the infirmities and sorrows of his people. This is an incredible passage of Scripture that should be read and reread over and over again. Tucked within it, though, is a significant little idea. Verse 10 says of the suffering servant, "Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and thought he Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand." It's God's will that all of this would happen, even hundreds of years before it actually would. Just hold on to that idea for a moment.
A couple days later, I was reading the first chapter of Ephesians, where Paul describes how God has blessed us with "every spiritual blessing in Christ." Verses 4-5 say, "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will." These are some pretty loaded sentences, and they immediately raise all sorts of theological questions concerning predestination and God's foreknowledge and such. This is fertile soil for a theological debate. Here's how I read it (though I haven't studied this passage in depth): God chose us (the church) before creation, and he predestined us (the church) to be adopted as his sons. This was God's will from the start. To bring the church to himself. Not that he picks and chooses who will be saved and who will not, overriding any sense of personal decision. But God does love and choose the church. Again, hold on to that.
Finally, in my Romans class this morning, my professor talked about how, in the first few chapters of Romans, Paul develops the argument that all people, Jew and Gentile alike, are under sin and are in need of Jesus. There is no room for spiritual superiority here, because all are on equal footing--both the pagan who indulges in every sinful desire and the judgmental Jew who believes he is safe because of he pedigree. What my professor pointed out is that it was always God's plan to justify sinners through Jesus.
So what does all of this point to? It shows that God's intention and will from the beginning was to rescue the church through faith in Jesus. It is not as though God's original plan was to only save Israel, who would maintain the sacrificial system for all of eternity, but that he later changed his mind because he could see that wasn't working out very well. God's purpose didn't fail, forcing him to scrape together some sort of second-string scheme. What biblical history shows us is that God's intent from all of eternity was to send Jesus to die on the cross and to form the community of the church. The church is not God's "Plan B." It was in his mind from the beginning.
It is popular today to get down on the church. A lot of people, even a lot of Christians, like to bash the church every opportunity they get. But let's remember how deeply God loves and cares for the church. We are adopted as his own children through Christ. The church is like a bride, and it is unwise to insult a person's bride. Especially when the groom is Jesus himself. No, I certainly think the church needs to be critiqued from time to time, and we need to constantly be reforming ourselves and growing more into who God would have us be. But let's be careful of getting too down on the church, and let's remember how it fits into God's plan for the world. At the same time, this should create within us an incredible sense of gratitude and self-acceptance. No words can adequately describe God's love for us. He chooses us first. We're his first pick. He doesn't take us because no one else is around, or because those he really wants are unable. God loves the church. He loves us. And that's a fact worth being pumped up about.
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