Grace in the Gap

There is a deep divide between the life we are called to by God and the reality of our everyday existence. I know what you are thinking; “You’ve been a Christian and a pastor for how long and you are just now getting this!?” Well, it is not that I am just now getting it, but I am seeing it more clearly.

God is holy and created us to live holy so that we can live with Him, because “without holiness no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14 NIV). And of course the problem is that since the “fall” of humanity, no one can live holy. It is not a matter of being hard, it is simply impossible. Our lives are filled with lies, dishonesty, sexual immorality, temptations, strife, hatred, greed and an assortment of other things we don’t need to mention. So there is a wide gap.

As God instructed an unholy people about holiness, He never stopped calling us to holy living because He has not stopped wanting a relationship with us. (See Hebrews 12:14 above again). Since holiness is not (at least post-fall) a natural part of our nature, God throughout the Old Testament laid out instructions and illustrations of what holiness would look like both individually and communally. The point of that instruction was to show humanity that 1) we are not holy by nature and 2) we cannot be holy in our own strength, even with detailed instructions. In other words, we don’t need more knowledge about holiness, we need more power for holiness. We are not unholy because of circumstances, we are unholy by nature. We aren’t unholy because we “sin” (unholy actions and omissions), we “sin” because we are unholy. 

The question, then, is what do we do with the gap between God’s requirements and our lives? Some have sought to moderate God’s requirements. They read the Bible and say that these requirements are not possible, therefore they are not accurate. Perhaps the Bible was written by men with their own agendas, or utopian, unrealistic thinkers. They want to bring God’s holiness down to our level. Others have sought to deny the reality of human existence. These people choose to look at the pain, suffering, and evil in the world and claim that it is an aberration from the norm. We see this every day as the media tries to explain away horrible events by picturing the perpetrators as “sick” or “not normal”.

Whatever route we choose, something must fill this gap. Many have chosen to allow religion to fill it. They have taken God’s descriptions of holiness and turned them into rules to be followed, religion to be adhered to. Religion, in this view makes, us holy. But religion does not really fill the gap. Religion can clean up the outside of our lives, but the inside is just as far from God as ever.

Jesus came to show us God’s answer to the gap: grace. According to Dallas Willard, grace is God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot on our own. Grace is not magic. Grace is God taking our faithful obedience and through the power of the Holy Spirit enabling us to live into holiness. Grace also fills the gap between our efforts and God’s requirements. Grace rewards us with love and acceptance when what we deserve is judgment and condemnation. So how are you filling the gap in your life?

Shallow Living

As any of you who stop by here know, I have not blogged in months. I think I know why. A friend and colleague of mine told me that she thought blogging would fit me perfectly. I was hoping she was right and started on the journey. But contributing something here quickly became burdensome. I do not want to waste my time or yours, so I don’t write anything unless I think I have something to say. Which, if you know me, doesn’t stop me when I am with you in person!

I think the reason I haven’t blogged in a while is because I have been living too shallow. The world pushes us to live shallow. The pace of our 21st-century American culture calls us to live everywhere at once, which spreads us so thin we become shallow. I have not successfully resisted this and so my life has become shallow in these past few months.

Jesus invites me into the deep with him. Jesus asks me to spend time with Him every day, not just a few “devotional moments” but time. There is no legalistic definition to this time. In fact, seeking to define “time with Him” is a sign that you are living shallow. What young lover tries to figure out the “right” amount of time to spend with his beloved?

Blogging flows naturally out of my heart when it is full but becomes a burden when I am empty. How are you doing right now? Is your heart full? Or is the deep well of your being close to empty? Are you desperately trying to figure out how to keep going until some future rescue arrives? Consider these words of Jesus:

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.” (Luke 6:46-48 NIV)

The fight against shallow living is a fierce one and not to be taken lightly. We cannot fight this battle alone. Who is helping you live deep?

Contemplating Heaven

I have been thinking about Heaven lately. I wonder what that means? Heaven has always been the goal of being a follower of Jesus, but in all of my years, I have never had more than a very dim (nearly dark) understanding of what Heaven would be like.

The progressive story of redemption contained in the Bible gives us only glimpses at best. I am afraid my picture of heaven may have been formed by cartoons as much as anything else. There was always someone or something in a cartoon that got crushed and then floated upward with a harp and wings. But I am beginning to believe that Heaven will be both dramatically similar and correspondingly antithetical to life as we now know it.

Here’s what I mean: The opening pages of Genesis take great care to help us understand that the Earth and all that exists here were created on purpose and were “good” in the eyes of God. The epitome of all this created goodness was the Garden and humanity was placed in the Garden to have fellowship with God, each other and the created universe. But there was one unique thing in this Garden. There was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity was forbidden to eat from it. This was the sole restriction of life that we know of in the beginning. The fruit of the tree was not special or bad, in my opinion. The fruit had no magical powers or special qualities. The issue was that God in His sovereignty had said we could not eat from it.

I believe Adam and Eve had the freedom to choose to obey God in a way that no human has had since. Adam and Eve were unstained and perfectly naive. But the enemy of God, Satan, caused them to question God; to believe for a moment that they could make decisions for themselves rather than obey God. In that instant, all was lost. For each of us, the moment we begin to believe that we can or should make decisions for ourselves apart from obeying God, we become lost.

BUT…God is a searcher for lost souls. The rest of the Bible describes God’s work to redeem and restore. The final word God gives us in the book of Revelation is that at the end of history, the Garden will return. I imagine it to be Heaven and I think it will look curiously familiar and gloriously different. God will be there and will be our Light. And the Tree of Life will be there and will bring healing to the Nations.

One thing will not be there, however: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of rebellion will not exist anymore. Everyone who reaches Heaven will be there because they have chosen to place their life in the hands of God, in the grace of our Lord Jesus. The decision to trust God comes prior to Heaven, and Heaven is then the eternal expression of that trust in a God who is good and loving and powerful and glorious and adventurous. I want everyone to be there. I want everyone to understand.

What Would Christmas Be Like If... ?

The other day, I was thinking about how to enjoy Christmas without presents. I know that saying this is almost trite these days. I guess lots of us have a love-hate relationship with the consumerism of Christmas. Many of us bemoan the over-commercialization of the holiday as we drink our lattes while walking from store to store looking for the best sales. But for some reason this year, I want to learn how to make the holiday about something other than gifts. But I have to confess that I am stumped by what to do.

Thanksgiving is centered on food and family, which seems to work great. But if Christmas is really all about the gift of God’s Son, how do we focus on this in non-consumerish ways? As I thought about it, something occurred to me. It is easier to share Thanksgiving with people outside of our nuclear families than it is to share Christmas.

Christmas morning for many of us tends to have a very narrow and intimate focus. We don’t invite friends or strangers to share it with us because somehow the intimacy of what we have come to know as Christmas would be lost. Plus, we would have to be prepared with gifts for these people and them for us. So the climate of Christmas has become strangely private. Because of this, it is difficult to imagine how to experience it without the exchange of gifts.

Maybe holding to Christmas without the consumer focus would require that we gather together as the church. After all, we are celebrating that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  We don't have eternal life individually but in the context of the community of faith. So what would it look like if, on Christmas morning, we all gathered at church and sang Christmas carols and people shared how God was at work in their lives? We could pray for and cry with those who are hurting so they wouldn’t be alone, and we could celebrate with others who are experiencing blessings and joy. After singing and praying and praising God for His love, we could all enjoy some food. Then we could all go home and relax as families.

Why do I think this wouldn’t work at all--and that I should just head over to the mall to do some shopping? 

Jesus + Nothing = Everything

I stopped into our wonderful Communication Director’s office the other day and noticed that written on her white board was the “formula” above. What do you think about this? I really love it! If we have Jesus--or, more accurately, if Jesus has us--we have everything.

The Bible says that God is the maker of all things and that nothing would exist unless God created it (1 Chronicles 29:11, Isaiah 44:24, Matthew 11:27, John 1:1-2, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:15-20). We know that Jesus is God in the flesh. So as we connect with Jesus, we gain all things since all things exist and have their being and purpose in Christ.

But the reverse is also true. Jesus + Anything = Nothing. When I try to make my life about Jesus + something else, I can end up negating the very gift of who Jesus is. The Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:8-9, “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, 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 is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

So often we look to Jesus not to have Jesus but to have what we think we can get from or through Him. The danger is that we can miss Jesus altogether. When I try to “add” Jesus to my desires for success or fame or peace, I find that I end up losing both. People who marry for money often find that they gain neither love nor money, only heartache and trouble.

Some of us have come to the conclusion that we are in desperate need of God’s grace offered to us in Jesus, but once we find the righteousness that comes by grace through faith, we often try to live relationally with God through good works. We try to “add” something to Jesus. We are now and always will be at the mercy of grace, but once we grasp that, we are totally free.

Hitting the Right Target

I want to share with you a quote from a book I have been reading, titled, “Deepening Your Effectiveness: Restructuring the Local Church for Life Transformation.” 

“The primary role of a senior pastor in every church of any size, whether a new church plant or an established congregation, is vision caster and culture changer.” (p. 107)

What do you think about that? It might surprise you to know that this book was written by two United Methodists, one of whom is a former United Methodist pastor! I have been reading this book at the request of our Annual Conference so I can teach the material to other pastors and leaders in the conference.

It’s surprising because the unwritten practice for so many years in our denominational leaders has been in many ways the exact opposite of this. We have developed a culture where the senior pastor was supposed to come and accommodate the existing church culture and find out what the church wanted to do and help them do it. We have some church members who have been so immersed in this practice that often when a pastor arrives who has a vision different than what they are used to, they merely dig in their heels and announce, “I have been here longer than they have and I will be here long after they are gone!” Ouch!

If the Church’s role is to make disciples for Jesus, then part of the role of the senior pastor and other leaders is to define what a mature “disciple” looks like. Then we must focus all of what we do around the intentional building of these characteristics into as many people as we can. I began this process with our staff some time ago and I would like to share these thoughts here. These characteristics are not new with me, nor is this an exhaustive list, but I believe it will help all of us to have the right target in our minds as we think about where our lives are heading and what we are “aiming” for.

A mature follower (disciple) of Jesus is a person who….
• Puts Jesus before self. (Mark 8:34-35)
• Puts Jesus before others. (Luke 14:26)
• Puts Jesus before possessions. (Luke 14:33)
• Prays effectively. (Matthew 6:9-13)
• Honors the Word of God through study and obedience. (John 8:31-32)
• Makes other disciples. (Matthew 28:18-20)
• Loves brothers and sisters in Christ. (John 13:34-35)
• Lives in unity with brothers and sisters in Christ. (John 17:21-23)
• Lives under the authority of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 1:8)
• Spurs on brothers and sisters in Christ. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

This is a humbling list! But what if we began to look at everything we are doing individually and corporately through this lens? What if we purposefully began to ask ourselves the tough questions about where we are effective and growing as disciples and disciplers, and where we need to make changes? What if...?

Doing All Right

Sometimes I feel stuck in my spiritual growth. I find I get to certain “plateaus” of comfort and just stay there. My sins aren’t too bad and my struggles aren’t too hard. I’m not growing, but I am “doing all right.” The effort or obedience needed to move to the next level is more than I am willing to pay or that I know how to give. The world around me doesn’t help much with this. In the area of spiritual growth, we tend to be far too easy on ourselves: “Well, not everyone can be Mother Teresa, you know!”

I considered running in the House of Hope 5k this weekend. My exercise schedule is erratic at best, but I had said that I wanted to run in a 10k before I turned 50 (which is rapidly approaching). When we talk about sports or physical fitness goals, very few of us discourage each other. We know how to “spur one another on” in these areas. In fact, many of us hire personal trainers to help us move along in our journey. We have nutrition consultants, financial advisers, insurance agents and even relationship experts to help us attain bigger and better things. But who do we turn to for encouragement in our spiritual life? In the area of spiritual growth, far too many of us are going it alone. We quietly struggle and eventually find a spiritual comfort zone that keeps us satisfied but is no longer productive.

I am convinced that this is where small groups and one-on-one relationships come in. We tend to see small groups as places to feed our minds. We learn in fairly academic ways more stuff about God and the Bible. But rarely do we “get in the room” together and talk about where we are growing, where are not growing and what we can do to spur one another on. I am going to tell you a secret: The reason far too many of us are stuck spiritually is a lack of intimacy. It takes intimacy with God and intimacy with other people to continue to grow spiritually. This is why Jesus said that all of the commandments are summed up in two simple relational statements: Love God with all you have and love each other as you want to be loved.

When two or more people learn to trust each other, intimacy can develop. Intimacy leads to vulnerability and vulnerability allows for loving accountability. The enemy of this is fear. Fear of being rejected. Fear of exposure. And fear of what it would look like to be more like Jesus. I guess if I want to get unstuck, I am going to have to face my fears and learn how to love. After all, love casts out fear.