You Belong Here

Last evening at the Evangelical Free Church of America’s Leadership Conference in Denver, I was reminded again of God’s many-faceted, many-colored church. We were privileged to hear from the head of the Evangelical Free Church of Sudan. He brought us greetings from our brothers and sisters in Christ who know great pain, suffering and betrayal, but who continue to follow Christ and preach Christ. The war in Sudan has been devastating, but God is building His church in spite of the carnage.

My daily times in Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus give the theological basis for our unity with Christians throughout the world. Regardless of race or color, God is calling all people into a new community in which there is no distinction before God or between each other. Yet we bring to God’s community our rich heritage of culture and language. In Ephesians 2, Paul writes:

But don't take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways had no idea of any of this, didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God's covenants and promises in Israel, hadn't a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything. The Messiah has made things up between us so that we're now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody. Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father. That's plain enough, isn't it? You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He's using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home. Ephesians 2:11-22 The Message

So whether we’re Swedish, Sudanese or Salvadoran, in Christ we belong to God and to each other.

Celebrating God's Faithfulness

Over last weekend, my wife, two daughters and I were privileged to join in the celebration by Community Bible Church of Huntington Beach of the 100th anniversary of their building being used as a church. There have been several congregations in those 100 years (and even several using it now), but it has always been a church. Several things stood out to me as we ate and hugged and ate and worshipped and ate and reminisced and ate… you get the picture. Let me share one of those lessons: God is faithful to His purpose and plan over time.

We always assume that this means things will work out the way we planned. I would suspect that not one of the several congregations who have used the building on 6th and Orange (or any church for that matter) began to use it with the idea that they would someday cease to exist. We all start our projects with the unspoken expectation that they will continue pretty much as they are now. And they will continue in their current form forever.

Christ promised to build His church. He didn’t promise that every local congregation would survive the follies of Christ’s followers. He didn’t promise that every local congregation would survive the changing of a neighborhood or the condemning of a building. He didn’t promise that every local congregation would survive it’s own “successes.” What He did promise is that His church will survive. And that is worth celebrating.

There is therefore...

I’ll never understand those people who think they can earn a relationship with God by doing more good than bad. Do they not have the kind of thoughts I have on a fairly consistent basis? Thoughts of anger, lust, frustration, pride, et.al. Do they not do the things I do on a fairly consistent basis? Get even, put people down, talk behind their backs, consider myself more important than they, et.al. G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Sin is the only major Christian doctrine that can be verified empirically.”

As Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome, “It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. “ [Romans 7:21-25 The Message] The next sentence is the key: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” [Romans 8:1 ESV]

Who am I? Where am I?

A recent response to my blog and my current study in Paul's letter to the believers around Ephesus have reminded me of the importance of knowing who I am where I am. How easy it is to look around us and take our cues from what the culture thinks is important. But the opening of Paul's letter to the Ephesians reminds them that they are "in Christ" even while living in (and around) Ephesus.

Historically there have been two unbalanced responses to the truth that we are in Christ, yet we live in the world. John Stott writes, "We tend either to pursue Christ and withdraw from the world, or to become preoccupied with the world and forget that we are also in Christ."

The tension for me is to live in Christ in the world. It is a both/and, not an either/or. My identity (who I am) is in Christ. My location (where I am) is in the world. My challenge is to be who I am where I am.

Quotidian Mysteries

According to the Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary, quotidian means "occuring everyday; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary." In her address given as the 1998 Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality, Kathleen Norris writes of the importance of the ordinary. This lecture has been published as The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work". Here are a few quotes to stimulate your thinking.

"The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance."

"Life is what happens to you when you are busy doing something else."

"Both laundry and worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems like the more useful of the tasks. But both are the work that God has given us to do."

"...the true mystics of the quotidian are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people and relentless daily duties that can consume the self."

Homecoming

My daughter arrived back in the United States on Monday. She has been in Germany for the past 10 months working at a school for children of missionaries. One of the things she has learned while there is what it means to be a resident alien. She has put down roots and built relationships even though she knows that Germany will not be her permanent home. She is a citizen of the United States, and while she loves so many aspects of Germany, it is not home. She is learning the language and the culture so that she might fit in on many levels, but her heart is here where her family and friends are.

This is a picture of all of us who belong to God. Our home is elsewhere. We’ve learned the language of our adopted country, we know how to get around in the culture, but our home is in heaven. Randy Alcorn points out the irony that home for the Christian is a place we’ve never been but for which we were created.

This is why so many Christians refer to death as a home going. And why, in heaven, it is probably referred to as a homecoming. While we live in and love the place we are, there is someplace better suited to us. A place that will, forever, be home.

Let Me Count the Ways

As of today, we've been married 32 years. 28 of them happily. Fortunately the other 4 have been spread out over the 32 years. It hasn't always been easy.

In an article entitled, When Marriage is Dying, Peter Leithart of Touchstone magazine contends that marriage is dying. It has always been about dying. Dying to your family of origin. Dying to being single. Dying to old ways of doing things and old plans that included only ourselves. That is the challenge of marriage.

And that is where the 4 tough years come in. It was in those seasons that one or the other of us (or both) refused to die to ourselves. It wasn't pretty, but by God's grace we got through it to better seasons where we got our eyes off ourselves and onto Christ where they belong.

The Rest is up to you

Charles Spurgeon wrote: "Rest time is not waste. It is economy to gather fresh strength. Look at the mower in the summer’s day, with so much to cut down ere the sun sets. He pauses in his labor — is he a sluggard? He looks for his stone, and begins to draw it up and down his scythe, with a rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink. Is that idle music? Is he wasting precious moments? How much might he have mowed while he has been ringing out those notes on his scythe! But he is sharpening his tool, and he will do far more when once again he gives strength to those sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before him. Nor can the fisherman always be fishing; he must mend his nets. So even our vacation can be one of the duties laid upon us by the kingdom of God."

One of the areas most of us struggle with in the 21st century is intentional rest. I'm not talking about "Amusing Ourselves to Death" as suggested by Neil Postman's excellent book. I'm talking about a Sabbath mindset (even if we don't actually take an entire day as a sabbath) wherein we remove ourselves from circulation in order to reconnect with God and reconnect with the significant people in our lives. What Eugene Peterson refers to as pray and play.

We must, as Spurgeon suggests, sharpen our tools and mend our nets in order to run the race set before us (talk about mixed metaphors). We are not wasting time when we take time to rest.