Passions.

God has placed a passion in my heart to see His name and fame proclaimed with boldness and in truth. A few years ago I felt God’s call into vocational ministry. While unsure of His calling at the time, I decided to trust and obey Him. I could not be more excited for the plans He has for me. I could not be more humbled by this calling. There are so many times that I ask God why He chose me because surely He could have picked someone better, someone more faithful, someone more loving. Every time I think such things, He affirms to me that He is God and I am not. I am ever humbled by His call and ever grateful for His assurance.

I have a passion for seeing the Good News of Jesus spread all over the world. Nothing makes me happier than seeing believers living out their faith and convictions. In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us to be lights shining brightly for Him. If there is one thing that I get more excited about than anything else it is seeing people simply doing what God has called them to do. When we love God and shine for Him wherever He has us we will be beautiful reflections of Him. It is not the pastors and preachers that are the trustees of God’s word. Teachers, businessmen, musicians, athletes, scientists, homemakers, and artists are all preachers in their own right. The way they live their lives and the example they give preaches the Gospel for we are the image of the Invisible. It is to this end that I wish to devote my life to the Church, pouring into the lives of whomever God allows me because most life change actually happens outside of the sanctuary.

I want to experience God work in unimaginable ways. I want to see lives transformed by His love and mercy. I want to see a stagnant Church rise up and truly live out the Faith they currently claim. Imagine what would happen if we simply did what Christ called us to do. Let’s be the Church. Let’s proclaim Christ in everything and be unashamed of the grace that has saved us.

The Glory of God

After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this." At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.

And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!"

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

"Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created."

- Revelation 4 (ESV)

Isn't that a beautiful picture of God? I think we often focus too much on the nature of God as our father and friend and forget to realize His holiness. God is holy and incredible beyond comprehension and we need to stop, realize, and recognize His awesomeness. God is truly awesome. I am in awe of Him.

Straining forward to what lies ahead.

I absolutely love Paul’s letter to the Philippians. From the way he begins his letter, referring to himself as a servant of God (the only time he doesn’t refer to himself as an apostle), to the constant theme of humility, this letter is truly special. I spent last week at Hume Lake Christian Camps with the high school students from High Desert Church and in my own time with God, He really impressed upon me Philippians 3:4-14.

“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 3:4-14

Paul had it all. He was the Jew of Jews. I mean, if you could be anyone or have any advantages, Paul was the guy you’d want to be. And yet he considers it all rubbish for the sake of Christ. Paul gets it! He really does! This part of the passage has always struck me in a mighty powerful way, but I’ve always read that and then glossed over the verses immediately following Paul’s powerful declaration. As of late, God has really stirred in me a passion for verses nine through fourteen.

I absolutely love how much Paul emphasizes that salvation is through faith alone. He goes on to say that “righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Woah.

Now that’s devotion. That is the type of faith I long for. I think it can be easy for us to read a passage like this and be quick to say that we want the same thing as Paul (after all, that’s what a good Christian3 should do, right?). I wholeheartedly believe that our response needs to be yes, that we do wish to be like Christ in every way, but the gravity of such a response is so amazing.

After seeing thirty-four students give their lives to Christ last week at Hume Lake and after seeing many more make new commitments to Him, Paul’s comment that each day he has to continually strive to live the life God has called him to is encouraging. Here we have Paul, who we often put up on a high pedestal (and rightly so) and he says that he has not achieved the devotion to Christ he wrote about. He says that it is something he strives after each and every day, to grow closer and closer to Christ so that he would be more and more like Him.

I feel like verse fourteen sums it up perfectly, “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

May that forevermore be in my heart and on my lips.

Pouring water on an already doused flame.

How do we know for sure that our place in eternity is set? Can we be completely sure that even though we profess with our lips that Jesus is Lord that we are Heaven bound? We think we are. We say we are. But in reality, are we?

Matthew 7:21-23 has been on my heart as of late. “‘Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

Wow.

Think about it. Jesus is saying that just because people say they believe in Him, that doesn’t mean that they are going to spend eternity with Him. Even though people have “[prophesied] in [His] name, and cast out demons in [His] name, and [done] many mighty works in [His] name,” He will reply, “I never knew you; depart from me you workers of lawlessness.”

Wow.

That’s tough stuff. It has me thinking about what it truly means to be a follower of Christ. This passage teaches us that empty words and deeds are just that: empty. They mean nothing. They are like pouring water on an already doused flame.

God did not become man and be teased, tormented, accused, spit on, whipped to the point of utter exhaustion and agony, have the sins of the world thrust upon his soul, and murdered via cruel capital punishment so that we could come to Him with empty praises and empty deeds.

He deserves so much more than that.

I think the majority of people who call themselves Christians want to be saved from the penalty of their sin rather than the sin itself.

I once heard Francis Chan say that he sometimes will sit in the foyer of his church and ask himself the question, “I wonder how many of these people will actually be in Heaven someday?” This isn’t a judgmental question. It is an important thing to ponder. If we really thought about it, how many people do you and I know that will actually be in Heaven when their time on Earth is over? It’s not my place to say who should or shouldn’t be in Heaven; that’s God’s job. It saddens my heart, however, to think that there are so many people who have yet to really realize just what Jesus has done for them and they are fully content with bringing Him empty words and deeds. Is it even possible that they think that what they bring to God is sufficient because that is all they know? There is an idea. After all, why would you offer empty praises if you knew, in fact that they were empty?

However, I believe that if someone’s approach to God is empty, even if they know no different, then (as hard as it is to say it) they were never a true believer to begin with.

In Romans 8:14-17, Paul says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba! Father! The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

If a person’s life doesn’t bear the fruit of a being radically changed by Jesus, then there is something terribly wrong. Paul is very clear that when we are redeemed from our enslavement to sin, the Spirit leads us. “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Our words and our deeds should be like those of Christ not because something requires them to be, but because the Spirit is at work within us.

When I think of the fact that many people who say “Lord, Lord” will not enter Heaven, I often think and wonder if I am one of those individuals. I think that even in reading a passage, such as Matthew 7 and Romans 8, when your heart turns and you have to wrestle with God’s words, I think that that you are indeed a sincere believer in Christ. If reading His words bothers us, makes us think, and makes us want to grow, that is evidence of the Spirit at work within us.

Therefore, we must run to Him at all cost. We must throw aside that which does not matter and focus on the only thing that does. Like the man who sold all he had to buy a field with buried treasure, so too must we do the same for the sake of knowing Christ and truly being His child.

Missional Living - The Anecdote to American Complacency

American Christianity.

We live in a unique nation, where the large majority of its citizens claim to be Christians. There are little to no threats against American Christians. We are able to practice our beliefs without fear of persecution or prosecution. Unlike our brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia, Laos, Turkey, The Maldives, North Korea, and China (and the list goes on and on), we do not have to fear being punished and possibly executed for our beliefs. We do not know what it means for our faith to matter.

The greatest challenge facing the American Christian Church today is safety. By this I mean that we are content living life in such a way that we don’t ruffle too many feathers. We spend far too much time trying to keep our lives at some sort of equilibrium that we totally forget what this life is all about.

Jesus’ Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:18-20, stands as a constant reminder of what our purpose here on earth is. The verses read this way, “‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’”

We know in our heads that the cause of Christ is important, but because of the culture in which we live, we fail to realize the gravity of what Christ accomplished on the cross. Thus, the Church in America has become complacent. We must remember the Great Commission and Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations.” What does this look like practically in our lives? It can look like any number of things, from becoming a missionary to showing love to our next door neighbor. We are all Christ’s ambassadors and as such have the responsibility to be His witnesses wherever we go. We must be missionally minded. When we realize that our sole reason for being here is to witness to others, it changes the way we live our lives. We no longer can think of a trip to the grocery store as simply a way to quench our hunger, but rather an opportunity to share the gospel. This does not mean that we are to live as nutty evangelists on the side of the street calling people to repentance. What it means is that we must view every encounter and every moment as an opportunity to build relationships. It is easier to think this way when we are in the mission field, but in the comfort and safety of the States, it is easy to not think missionally and become the complacent individuals we find around each and every turn in America today. Some may say that to live missionally requires risk. Risk is the essence of Christianity. Paul risked everything, yet he kept preaching the Gospel, even from his cell in Rome. It has been said that without risk there is no reward. Think then what the reward or mission of the Christian is. The answer to this is to love others as Christ loves us and them. We are to be Christ to the world. For this to happen there is an element of risk that is involved. Jesus encountered much risk, yet He never lost sight of the people He came to save and neither should we.

It is easy to be unsure about living the missional life because it is something few of us have experienced for any real amount of time. It is in this instance where the final sentence of the above passage begins to take hold of our lives. In it Jesus says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” That is so wonderful! It is in the knowledge that Christ is with us always that we should find solace. He is the only place where true safety is found. When we risk ourselves for the sake of spreading the Gospel, we may experience suffering or at the least, discomfort, but I find solace in the fact that Jesus is with me to the end of the age.

My point in writing all of this is not to say that I wish Christians in America experienced suffering, rather that American believers would not take their faith for granted. My challenge is for us to get outside of ourselves and step out beyond our comfort zones. We need to stop hiding behind our churches and our schools and realize that there are people all around us who need to hear the Gospel. The Church does not exist solely for believers. It would be naïve to believe that believers are even the main focus of the Church. The Church exists to equip believers to go beyond themselves and reach their worlds for Jesus Christ. It is the Church’s responsibility to push its members to live missionally.

Just because we live in a “Christian” nation does not give us license to just sit by in the hopes that someone will reach out to those around us. We need to live missionally and to do this requires we take some risks.

Love

Love.

It’s a word we see everywhere. From music to magazines to books to clothing, love has been a central theme for some time now. One of my friends from back east recently exclaimed that it seems like everyone in California has a shirt with the word love on it.

So, what is this word? What makes it so powerful? Why is it so popular?

I believe love is actually a tough term to pin down. Ask any number of people what love is to them and you will get as many different answers as people asked.

I think the main reason for the disconnect and misconceptions people have about what love is stems from our postmodern culture. Ever since the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, Americans have confused love for sexual cravings and desires of the flesh. We are told that our love is manifest in the ways we engage one another physically and in accepting this, we have confused love for a feeling. But is this truly what love is?

I would argue that there is more to love than this.

Throughout Scripture, we are called to love God as He loves us. The Shema of Deuteronomy chapter six echoes this theme. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut 6:4-5) This shows us that love is not something that we do purely with our actions, but rather something that we must commit ourselves to wholly. True love, that being which comes directly from God, takes wholehearted devotion. God loves us in this way. The question then becomes, do we love Him the way He loves us?

In a word, no.

It’s not that we don’t want to love God. I genuinely believe that we as Christians do. The problem is that we do not want to give all of ourselves over to Him. This is a trap that we all fall into. It is so easy to say we love God with all we are, but in reality, do we? Like I said, we want to serve God, so why don’t our actions mirror this desire? It’s because we have bought into culture’s understanding of what love is. The type of love that we see displayed in the media and in our own worlds revolves so much around us taking bits and pieces and only giving parts of ourselves away. This is why we cannot fully understand the type of love that God has for us. His love is unconditional, but ours cannot be because in our nature we are conditional beings.

The question then becomes, how do we get closer to God’s understanding of love. How can we learn to love Him more and therefore feel His love more richly? The answer is prayer. Prayer is the most powerful tool a Christian possesses. The mere fact that we can come before an all-powerful, all-knowing God and have a one-on-one conversation with Him truly astounds me. Our prayer life is how we draw nearer to God. As Francis Chan says, prayer is an integral part of loving God. “It is a remarkable cycle,” he says, “Our prayers result in more love which naturally causes us to pray more, which results in more love…” We need to love God with the same love that He has for us. I know this is difficult (near impossible, since He is perfect and we are far from it), but just because something is hard doesn’t mean we should shrug it off, especially when it comes to God and true love. We have to make a conscious choice, each and every day, to try to love God and others more than we ever have. It’s not impossible to live a life sold out in love for God. The trick is to pray and seek God’s love every day.

So, as we continue our journey of living the life God has called us to, remember to live life defined by one word:

Love.