@ the crossroads

In the book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, author Philip Yancey writes this line: “Throughout the Bible, in fact, God shows a marked preference for ‘real’ people over ‘good’ people.”  Despite the current drastic overuse of words like authentic and real to communicate the nature of relationships in various circles, I believe Yancey’s point is worth pondering.  The pursuit of being good often blocks people from truly experiencing the goodness and grace of God because grace is received, not earned through a life based upon doing the right things.  Loving actions are very important, don’t mishear the point and charge me with heresy, but the starting point for goodness is not an action on our part, but a divine initiative from the Father carried forward through Christ and his work on the cross. 

If the starting point for experiencing God’s grace were our consistently good behavior, we would be forever doomed because none of us could measure up to the impeccable consistency necessary to be in relationship with a perfectly holy God.  We would be in a dark spiritual place; we would be living behind bars.  Thankfully, the beginning point of grace reception is confession of our sin-diseased state, a humble dependency to receive the kingdom of God as a child, and a recognition that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.  Through the acknowledgment of our real condition, and through the placing of our faith in Christ, freedom is unleashed, and we then begin to realize that the loving, compassionate actions flow from this new grace-identity in Christ.

Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus speaks these truths powerfully:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.   ~Ephesians 2:4-9

One of the goals of parenting is to provide loving guidance and instruction for children so they mature in a healthy way.  However, in the process of parenting, one must be careful not to quench certain aspects of child-likeness: exuberant faith, awe-struck wonder, and passion.  Maturity is not synonymous with stuffy sophistication.  In fact, for Jesus, real spiritual maturity contains childlike characteristics.  When his disciples were trying to keep the children away from Jesus, he responded to their actions with these words:

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.  (Mark 10:14-15)

Earlier this evening I was walking around the neighborhood with my daughter, Abbie.  Every few steps she would turn to me and say, “Daddy, watch me dance,” or, “Daddy, I’m going to do a cartwheel.”  While as an 8 year-old she is showing daily signs of maturation, Abbie is definitely not becoming a cold sophisticate.  Her maturity is connected to passionate living and vibrant faith. 

One of the greatest challenges for adults is this: to grow up in the faith without becoming cold, stuffy, and cynical.  One of the greatest antidotes for stuffy spiritual sophistication is this: play with a child. 

Don’t miss Underground this Sunday, March 15 from 5-7:30 p.m. @ Crossroads.  Here are some of the details…

When? Sunday, March 15 from 5 - 7:30 pm

Where? Crossroads Community Church

What is Underground?  Underground is a special event designed to raise awareness and support of the Persecuted Church.  Currently, large numbers of Christians around the globe are being persecuted for their faith in Christ.  We can help!

What to Bring?

Last names A-M: side dish or salad

Last names N-Z: dessert and/or chips.

We will be eating dinner outside “picnic style” so please bring your lawn chairs along.

Crossroads will be providing hamburgers, hot dogs and drinks but we need your help to fill in the holes!

The goal of our first Underground event is to raise $500!

All donations will go to 3 areas:

1) sponsoring a persecuted believer

2) providing medical relief kits

3) providing Bibles

 We need everyone’s support to be able to do this - we will be selling underground t-shirts for $12 and collecting donations for the dinner.  Don’t miss this opportunity to help the Persecuted Church

In high school and college, I was a member of various cross-country teams.  During pre-season training, it was common to run 8-12 miles each day in order to adequately prepare for the races.  Long distance runners often talk about “hitting the wall,” a moment in a race where the human body is pushed to its breaking point, the energy reserves are tapped out, and there is simply nothing left in the physical or emotional tanks.  From the viewpoint of a runner hitting the wall, the race is simply over.

Life often throws us unexpected curveballs that can knock the wind out of us, making it very difficult to press forward in a courageous way.  Job loss, financial setbacks, physical disease, emotional distress, and broken relationships can all seem like insurmountable walls.

The disciples of Jesus hit the wall in Mark 9.  They had tried unsuccessfully to drive out an evil spirit from a boy.  Mark tells the rest of the story like this…

When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit.  “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”  The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out.  The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.”  But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.  After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”  He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”  (vv. 25-29)

Somehow, in the course of following Jesus, the disciples had become self-reliant.  The power source of God’s Spirit was left behind in favor of the pursuance of self-glorification.  A preoccupation with self will always lead to a wall because our human resources for dealing with the challenges of life are incredibly small compared to the immeasurable power made available through reliance on God’s power through prayer.  In runner’s parlance, Jesus would be telling the disciples, “In the race of faith, the way of avoiding the wall is through reliance on God’s strength–not your own.”

What wall are you trying to face today in your own strength?  Remember, the struggles of life are overcome through prayer and an ongoing cultivation of God-reliance.

The paradox of prayer is that it asks for a serious effort while it can only be received as a gift.  We cannot plan, organize or manipulate God; but without careful discipline, we cannot receive him either.

~Henri Nouwen

The majority of who we are as individuals lies underneath the surface, just like an iceberg.  Rarely do we take the time or energy to really explore those deep, submerged areas of our existence; however, our spiritual and emotional growth process depends upon our willingness to explore the depths.  There is a tremendous complexity in human beings and Jesus wants to bring peace (shalom) to all the various areas of our lives: emotional, social, physical, intellectual, and spiritual.

We must fight off the temptation to separate our spiritual growth from our emotional maturity (or from any other areas listed above).  However, as a pastor I often see how the stunting of our emotional maturity will directly hinder our spiritual growth.  Spiritual and emotional maturity go hand-in-hand; they run parallel. 

This Sunday I will be teaching from Mark 8:22-26.  This passage describes a process healing in the life of a blind man.  Jesus’ miracle in this particular man’s life occurs in stages.  I love this story because I believe it reflects so accurately how God often chooses to grow us–over time and in seasons or stages.  There is always more of the iceberg to explore and assess.  The goal of plummeting the depths is to offer all of the revealed pain (discovered through exploration) to our Savior, the One who offers healing, restoration, forgiveness, and grace. 

Peter Scazzero, in his book, The Emotionally Healthy Church: A Strategy for Discipleship that Actually Changes Lives, writes:

The sad reality is that too many people in our churches are fixated at a stage of spiritual immaturity that current models of discipleship have not addressed.  Many are supposedly “spiritually mature” but remain infants, children, or teenagers emotionally.  They demonstrate little ability to process anger, sadness, or hurt.  They whine, complain, distance themselves, blame, and use sarcasm–like little children when they don’t get their way.  Highly defensive to criticism or differences of opinion, they expect to be taken care of and often treat people as objects to meet their needs.

On Sunday I will be encouraging everyone to take an Emotional/Spiritual Health Inventory that will prove to be a valuable growth tool.  You can get a jump on things by following this link  and filling out the inventory. 

Let’s not allow what is underneath the surface to hold us back in our lives of discipleship.

Spiritual lives, just like physical bodies, can become flat-lined and, consequently, in desperate need of revival.  The cold, deadness of our souls, often produced by a stockpile of sin and bitterness from the past, can only be awakened through the movement of God’s Spirit.  One of the conduits of the Spirit’s flow into hard hearts is the act of confession.  The word confession is not a popular one today because we live in a society that is more accustomed to passing blame than accepting personal responsibility.  However, the Bible communicates the importance of ongoing confession in the growth and development of one’s spiritual life.   

The Hebrew word yada means to praise/confess something about God.  This same word also means to confess sin.  In other words, when we confess something about God, we are also making a truth statement about ourselves.  He is perfectly sinless, we are not.  He is the Creator, we are the created.  He is infinite, we are finite. 

The people of Israel experienced revival under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra and one of the characteristics of this spiritual resuscitation was confession.  “On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth and having dust on their heads.  Those of Israelite descent had separated themselves from all foreigners.  They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers” (Nehemiah 9:1-2).  At the core, confession means taking responsibility for one’s thoughts, words, and actions.  John Ortberg, in his book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, writes:

To confess means to own up to the fact that our behavior wasn’t just the result of bad parenting, poor genes, jealous siblings, or a chemical imbalance from too many Twinkies.  Any or all of those factors may be involved.  Human behavior is a complex thing.  But confession means saying that somewhere in the mix was a choice, and the choice was made by us, and it does not need to be excused, explained, or even understood.  The choice needs to be forgiven.  The slate has to be wiped clean.

We are all tempted to make excuses prior to moving toward true confession.  I find the following excuses for not coming in to work quite humorous:

*I can’t come in to work today because I’ll be stalking my previous boss who fired me for not showing up for work.

*I can’t come to work today because the EPA has determined that my house is completely surrounded by wetlands and I have to arrange for helicopter transportation.

*I am stuck in the blood pressure machine down at Wal-Mart.

*I just found out that I was switched at birth.  Legally, I shouldn’t come to work, knowing my employee records may now contain false information.

If you have allowed sin to pile up in your heart, take a few minutes today and be revived in God’s presence through honest confession.  Don’t let excuses keep you from experiencing life.  King David wrote these words in Psalm 32:3-5,

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.  Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.  I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’–and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

This morning I was reading a bit from the works of Jeremiah Burroughs, a Puritan preacher from the 1600’s.  In Gospel Fear, Burroughs wrote about the mysterious nature of sowing the Word of God into people’s lives.  Sometimes it seems to “take”, and other times it would appear that the seed is caught in a hurricane-force wind, never to be seen again.  How do we handle this mysterious nature of sowing without becoming frustrated when people seem non-receptive to God’s truth?  Burroughs encourages us by pointing us to the words of Ecclesiastes 11:5-6:

As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.  Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

Burroughs writes in Gospel Fear, “Go on and preach again and again, and let the Word of God be presented before the hearts of the people.  Though it has not wrought at one time, yet it may work at another time.  Yea, though you should grow weaker and weaker, yet for all that the Lord may do good to you, even when you are at your weakest.”

Perhaps you are discouraged today because you have not seen much change in the people closest to you.  Sinful patterns continue, harsh attitudes seem rampant, selfishness abounds.  All these factors may be leading you to the point of giving up.  Don’t lose heart, just keep sowing.  One day, when you least expect it, and in a most unusual way, a seed will land on a soft spot of heart soil.  All of this will happen in God’s mysterious timing, and often God’s time coincides with seasons when we feel most weak.  His grace is sufficient to sustain us through the dry, challenging days; grace like rain also comes down on the seed that is sown.  People, with Christ’s power, are able to change.

Keep sowing…

Being a part of the church is a continuous adventure because the church is not a building, a program, or a street address, but rather a people “called out” to follow Jesus Christ into the world.  The church is people on the move, a committed band of brothers and sisters seeking to point people to the Savior of the world.

Jesus modeled movement for the original Twelve disciples; we are now asked to carry the torch in this generation by pressing into the culture with the light of Christ.  Let’s look at some of the characteristics of missional movement (from Mark 6) exemplified in the life and teaching of Jesus:

1) We move together.  Mark 6:6-7 says, “Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.  Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.”  Jesus sent the disciples out in pairs for the dual purpose of encouragement in the face of trial and accountability in the event of success.  A lone ranger mentality does not mix with the Christian life.  Those who fail to see the value of community and honest relationships will eventually succumb to worldly temptation, frustration, or arrogance. 

2) We travel light.  Jesus gave his disciples these instructions as he sent them into the world: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff–no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  Wear sandals but not an extra tunic” (Mark 6:8-9).  We need to be careful and not overlook the radical nature of Jesus’ words.  He was calling his disciples to be completely dependent on Him to supply all their needs.  There are so many things that can “weigh us down” in this life and make it difficult to maintain a high level of mobility.  Stuff can stifle.  Jesus tells his followers to take a walking stick, a pair of shoes, and simple clothes; everything else is superfluous.  One of the great challenges for the church of 2009 is to honestly assess what is needed for Kingdom ministry.  Unfortunately, I have been guilty many times of believing that desires are actually needs.  Traveling light means getting back to the basics: prayer, the Word, love, and community.

3) We move through open doors.  Mark 6:10-11 says, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.  And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.”  Jesus ends his instructions with some practical advice that every Christ follower would be wise to obey: you can’t force the issue when it comes to faith.  The Kingdom of God is a reign that is received and embraced willingly, if it is embraced at all.  Thus, the movement of the church is dictated most often by open doors.  Jesus tells his disciples not to spend a lot of time trying to convince the uninterested; time is too short for hot-air debates and rabbit-trail dissertations.  The mission must move forward, not sideways.

One great way to evaluate the effectiveness of a church is to assess movement; dynamic, spontaneous, transformational movement into the world on behalf of Christ breathes life into believers.  May Crossroads be known as a church on the move!