The Joy of Grace

I’ve talked about the meaning of grace and the wonder it induces, now I would like to talk about the joy of grace.

Jesus died so that we might live through him to the glory of Our Father in Heaven.

This is how God loved the world: he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes may not perish but may have eternal life. (See John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1John 4:9)

Paul’s cry from Galatians (He loved me and delivered himself up for me) says Jesus endured the cross and everything it meant, because of his enormous love for us and the joy of reconciling us to God.

 It is apt to ask if Jesus had to die, did He have to die condemned as a criminal, next to common criminals. Why did He have to die shivering and naked on a wooden cross on a hill outside the gates of the holy city? Couldn’t He just as easily and much better die a nice death? Couldn’t He die in bed surrounded by friends and family?

Asking this gives us a fresh look at what the scandal of the King of the universe dying on cross for the people who had forsaken Him really means. It should give us pause as to what it means personally to affirm that Jesus died for our sin. To what it means to say, Jesus carried our sin to the cross and separated us from it forever. We put Jesus on the cross. We did it. With that image in mind, doesn’t Jesus dying for our sins, for the sins of the world hanging on that rugged old cross saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” change how we see the whole Christian story.

No one understands the love of God. None quite gets what it means that Jesus so loved the world that He forsook heaven to live a very human life and die on a very real wooden cross. I know I don’t. I like to think I do. I don’t. We don’t get the kind of love that climbs the hill, bears the cross, takes the nails, and takes our place; that gives His life and clears our name. The kind of love that cries alone, that tastes death to bring us home. We don’t understand the love that Gives His Son, that gives hope, dries tears and brings joy. We say we want to know this love, but when it comes to the wonderful, glorious, marvelous love embodied in the broken, bloodied body of Jesus, we start talking theology, justice, God’s wrath, and orthodoxy.

Jesus didn’t die for theology, justice, God’s wrath, and orthodoxy.

Jesus died for love, joy, relationship, so that we might live through him to the glory of Our Father in Heaven.

 The Cross stands at the center of the universe revealing God’s love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son so that we might live.

 To live by grace means to have a deep trust in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ in our lives, understanding that he/she is a beloved child of God, and that God is present and at work in the world at all times. Trusting God is to stand in child-like awe and openness in the mysterious and gracious love and acceptance. A relationship with Jesus drives out fear, doubt, and shame that enable us to be hopeful, joyous, and loving.

We need to be about bringing joy to sadness. Ralph Waldo Emerson advises us to “scatter joy” and Mark Twain advises us to “Let your joy be unconfined!” Scattering unconfined joy is what Christians should be meant for. These two great writers are simply saying to not hide our joy under a basket or keep it to ourselves, but to share our joy and guide others to joy. The more you give something like joy, love, or kindness away the more you will have. We must stay open for joy and happiness. The bible is ripe with exhortations calling us to be of joy and to be not afraid. This life is full of things to fear and grieve, yet the bible implores us to be joyful in all circumstances. (1 Thessalonians 5)

I am not alone in preferring joy to sadness. Sometimes there seems no way out of sadness. Sometimes sadness hovers over us weighing us down. Jesus says he came so we could live life to the full. This means that our joy should be shared that it is a communal thing. We may be the most joyous people, but if we are not sharing our joy and guiding others to joy than our joy is meaningless. Joy should be part of community and cause us to reach out to others. Joy should cause us to widen our circle of compassion. Our joy is only complete when it is shared with others, especially those struggling. Joy is the fruit of a right relation with God. It is not something people can create by their own efforts. Joy is a choice we must deliberately make each day. Smile at people, greet them, make time for them, take friends to lunch, and show others images of beauty and works of literature.

It is urgent that we respond to God in this life.

God’s grace is sufficient for our needs, but this life is all we got and we need to respond to God trusting that God will handle the rest. We each have an important choice to make.

We shouldn’t wait for tomorrow. We can begin today. It’s not only pastors, missionaries, saints, but you and me can know, live, and spread the awesome joy of the god of love and the gospel of grace. Salvation is not just about us. Salvation begins in our heart and ripples outward, for it to be worth anything it needs to be about all of us, not just an elite few. God doesn’t merely want to save Christians, but everyone everywhere. 

We need to remember that God is in control. We are not. We don’t have to worry about things working out or not. God will handle it. We just need to respond in sane, healthy, and loving ways to the things and people we encounter in our daily travels. It’s not ours to worry about the future. If we can control something, there is no need to worry and if we cannot control something why worry about it. That leaves nothing worry about. We simply live the best we can. When we value what God has bestowed onto us and who we really are, God will entrust us with more. God will give us more to do and more to become.

Too much energy is wasted by fretting over how we will do what needs doing. We simply show up and God will handle the rest. My experience has been that I get so nervous that I either shut down or shy away from what needs to be done. When I stand up and show up, I find that the doing for the most part is done almost by itself.

Maybe God is calling you to something you have put off for so long that you want to pretend it never crossed your mind. Something you want to do, but you fear will end up in disaster or worse, so you are ignoring it and hoping the desire will pass. There is a reason God has put that on your heart. God wants you to do that thing whatever it is. So do it. Just do it. Step out in faith, show up and let God handle the rest. Don’t worry that you may stumble, that you may fall flat on your face. God will use failure or success for your good and through you bless many others.

The joy of grace isn’t only God loves you personally and powerfully, but that he wants to do life with you.

The Table of Jesus

In The Eucharist, we come to the table of Jesus remembering who he is, what he did, how we are saved, what it means to the people of God, and where we are headed in and through the person and work of Jesus on the cross. We remember, acknowledge, discover, and embrace our true reality—the Kingdom of God. We throw our lot in with Jesus who is the bread of life. Real life is found in Jesus alone. By accepting the bread and wine, we recommit to following Jesus. Jesus who suffered on the cross died and raised three days later to new life now bids that we come and die. The bread and wine nourish us in such a way that we can invite others to new life in and with God.

As long as we are clinging to our life, power, and ways, as long as we insist that we can do it than we will never experience Jesus’ power. The moment we die to self, lose ourselves, and take our true place, we will experience the depth, fullness, and vitality of Jesus. Only in recognizing our death, lostness, littleness, and lastness are we enabled to see the grace that has already been ours.

God’s grace is sufficient for our need, but we should repent now. There is urgency to the call of Jesus. Jesus offers forgiveness of sins to all who confess their need and respond to his grace. Jesus welcomes all who trust in him. A Savior is only use to one who sees the need to be saved and trusts in him. You cannot rescue a man who is no need of rescuing. Some are drowning not realizing that they need rescue. The moment we turn to Jesus saying help, He will save us. It’s already ours. Our repentance, our response adds not a thing to God’s unbelievable love and radical grace. Repentance and response merely allows us to recognize and live in and towards what God has already done for us.

Jesus saves us from ourselves and the lies of the world, so that we can live fully here-and-now. It is in Christ that we can live the kind of lives we all dream and hope for, yet Jesus doesn’t promise we will never suffer or stumble. He does promise that in the darkest times he will be with us. Jesus is with us in the darkest times, when we don’t think we can go on Jesus whispers his love to us. Jesus is not concerned with us believing the right things, going to the right churches, hanging out with the right people, or our personal happiness. Jesus is in the business of making us the kind of people that can live in the kingdom. Jesus is not a watchdog of the church. Jesus is not a self-help guru. Jesus is not a slot machine.  Jesus is loving and welcoming, inviting all into the loving, grace-filled, beautiful and wondrous arms of a God who doesn’t need us, but wants us.

Jesus never asks we clean ourselves up to be presentable to God to earn the love and grace of God. He knows we cannot. Jesus only asks that we trust him to be who he says he is. We only need Jesus. We are not called simply to believe in some detached intellectual way, but to trust and follow. If we say yes and follow him then our entire life will be transformed in such a way that we won’t need proof of God’s existence. We will know God is real.

Each has choice to make. Is Jesus who he said he was and acted as in history? Either Jesus is the son of God and the Lord and Savior of all or he is nothing. You cannot have it both ways. Either Jesus is in control and we are to pattern our life on his life, death, and resurrection or we are in control and it doesn’t matter what Jesus said. Make your choice. Make it today. I have made mine. I am not perfect at following Jesus and I need to learn more about what it means to follow Jesus, but I am resolute in my choice.

What The Church Needs

In a meeting with my pastor, I heard that the congregation I belong to, PCUSA would lose a projected 100,000 members just in this year alone. So, it got me thinking what does the church need.

My initial answer was to chuck the book of Order to do away with traditional ways. I figured the reason we are bleeding members was being encumbered by the past, but trashing traditionalism is not the answer. Being postmodern and progressive could be part of the problem. I say that knowing I am both of those things and there is nothing wrong them. Yet, they can be hindrances to some. If we are too busy defending our biases and inclinations, we could be driving a wedge between believers.

Church is about community about people coming to worship God, learn how to follow Jesus, and live in the Spirit. Church isn’t about you it’s about we, it’s about holding the light for those struggling and better to see the light when darkness entangles us.

Maybe, by sharing my idea of the church I would like to pastor after seminary will help you better see what I think the church needs.

It would non-traditional, come-as-you-are, everyone-is-welcome, open doors, open arms church, a place where everyone is invited to come and see how awesome Jesus is and how we should live in response to God’s all-inclusive, all-embracing love. I know how it feels not to belong to feel like that mismatched sock, not to have place where I fit, so it would be important that everyone felt welcome. A place where non-believers and believers could gather to learn more and more about who God is and what it means to live a life with God.

I see this community housed in a coffee shop or bookstore and not a regular church building. During the week we would be open just like a normal business and conduct our bible studies out in the open, we would go out in the communities and do service projects and on Sunday be closed and hold a worship service right where during the week we did our business. Our worship would be a weeklong thing not just the service on Sunday. Also, how we behaved and interacted during the week, how we did business and presented ourselves in and to the community.

It would of course be radical, evangelical, Protestant, and mystical, a reformed and reforming Christian church.

This is a broad brushstroke of what that community would and will look like, but as I get closer and more prepared to begin to lead that community the more concrete the details will become.

I don’t go to church out of obligation, but because I want to show my love for God with all my heart, soul, and strength. I worship God not for my sake, but to affirm God is the source and ground of my being. Church is not a building, but a loving community committed to the way of Jesus, a group of people committed to being Jesus’ hands and feet in the world. The church is not made of stone and steel, but people gathered by Jesus saying yes to the Kingdom of God and no to the world of men and things.

Church is not a building you go to, but a way of being in the world but not of the world.

A Living Sacrifice

Our lives can be seen as both a signpost of the presence of God in the world and a doorway to gifting the world with our faith. The Christian life is not just about what we get from and through it, but what we can do, offer, and extend because of the power we receive from Jesus. As we remember who Jesus is, what Jesus did in his life, death and resurrection what Jesus continues to do, we renew our commitment to follow Jesus, to be followers of the way. The Christian life is lived in community. When we gather to worship and serve, we capture the presence of Christ among us and are able to step forward in faith helping our needy brothers and sisters.

God gift us to the world to bring about His purposes in the world, which full restoration and reconciliation of all to the Kingdom. God purchased us for a price and a reason. We were saved to be a living sacrifice, presence, and present to the world. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” The doing comes after we have been saved; after we have been redeemed, we do good. God’s own goodness is first and the good we do is a mere response to what God has done and is doing. It’s an outward sign of an inner movement.

Faith in Christ is as much if not more about living a life of compassion and joy as saying the right words, believing the right things, or attending the perfect church. None of us is as we should be and we never will be the good news that attacks us is God loves in spite of all our messed ways. God’s love enables us to live the life that we ought to live, but without God, this is not possible. Without God, we are lost at sea; with God, we have purpose and strength to live lives of compassion and joy. With God, we begin living towards the love and grace that has been lavished on us already. For restoration and reconciliation begins in our hearts and radiates outward into all of creation.

Worship and Service are signs of God, the very embodiment of love expressing Himself through us. We are given many occasions to worship and serve to experience love and joy. Worship is not just what we do Sunday morning, but what we do with our lives, time, and money. We need to help our needy brothers and sisters to find the love, joy, and hope we ourselves crave. We can offer our time, energy or money in worship to others. In any situation, especially in crisis we are to respond in and with love, to be Jesus to the world. Bad things will happen the key is to love in spite of it all. Hate and despair are realities, our role is to offer love, joy, and hope to a world that desperately needs it. We can extend love instead of hate, hope instead of despair, and joy instead of sadness. We can always do something to show the love and grace that has been lavished on us. Mother Teresa said that we should find one person who feels they are alone and show them that they are not, that they are loved, loved by us and God.

Jesus does not want us to hide our faith or what God is doing in and through us. Jesus wants us to let our light shine and to remain salty so that the whole world, that everyone will see God through us and will come running to see that God is good. We are to beacons of God’s light, love, joy, and hope for a world going mad. When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus is telling us to live in remembrance of him as much as he is saying break the bread, drink the wine. Jesus was very serious when he said, “Go and do likewise.” Go spread the message of a God who went to the extreme for love and will not stop until the whole world and everyone and everything in it is restored and reconciled to the Kingdom.

Resurrection Now and Later

Christianity is about something that happened; something that happened to and through Jesus; something that touches and transforms our life continually. Christian faith is centered on the cross. What led up to the cross, the event of the cross and repercussions of the cross throughout history is the story of Christian faith. The Christian faith is not about another moral teaching or some new religion or a book, object, or place. No! The Christian faith is all about one man—how he changed the world through his life, death, and resurrection. Our faith is about Jesus alone and what he did on the old rugged cross.

The resurrection of Christ is core to Christianity. If it were not for the resurrection of Jesus, Christianity would have never arisen to the heights that it did, and the Jesus movement would have been relegated to a footnote in history. In the cross, Jesus an innocent person was executed, abandoned by his friends and utterly forsaken by God. The resurrection is God’s faithful response to Jesus willingness to go all the way. It inspires hope for both the now and the future. The resurrection was not an arbitrary display of how powerful God can be; it was the inauguration, the in breaking of God’s kingdom, bringing with it a great hope for the future of this world and for those who cry out from the ground for justice.

God cares about everyone. There is not a single person, animal, or section of our universe outside of the love and care of God. Every life counts. Every life matters. God sees the pain of this life, hears our cry, and understands the brokenness and misery all too often common to life on earth. God is involved and taking the world to a certain place. The Kingdom planted from the beginning is growing no help or hindrance will affect it. In the end, God will have his way.  

Jesus is not about rescuing us from our humanity, but showing us how to live life to the fullest, love everyone, and stand up for the little, least, and lost. Our task is not to judge, but to love, not to bash people with their shortcomings, but tell them of God’s incredible love for them. Jesus doesn’t want us on our knees he loves us into our better self so that we can follow his lead in showing the world God’s love.

Selfishness is a dead end. It only leads to sin and death, the anti-kingdom life. God leads us into the open, free life of love and forgiveness, the eternal life of the kingdom. Anyone selfishly absorbed ignores God, thinking only of what they want and how they can fulfill their personal desires. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. That person thinks more highly of themselves and stomps on others. God wants a personal relationship with all of us. God wants us to live our lives alongside Him. If God himself has taken up residence in our life, we can hardly think more of ourselves than of him. God’s loving presence will not leave us untouched. We will never be the same and there is no going back.

Christians are not dominated by the flesh, but are under the rule of Christ. Though the body is still subject to death, life prevails because united with Christ we live to and with God. We stop living for our own happiness and seek to bless others with our life. This is how God created us to live. Life with God is not about escaping this world into some otherworldly paradise, but making this world as it is in heaven. We repent, turn from the life we were living and trust that God knows what he is doing and that by embracing God’s grace, we will live into the life we have always wanted to live.

This life will not be easy, sunshine and moonbeams, but will be difficult, at times suffering and darkness will overpower us. Yet, the darkness isn’t the end of our, it’s just part of it. Jesus is with us. I know this. I am in the midst of health issues. I could let get me down and question my faith. I could that would be very easy. I am and I won’t let it. I pray that this too will make me stronger and more able to bless others.

I like many others need resurrection now and later.

I like many others need God’s power and glory in my life.

I like many others need to know that Gods love will never let me go.

If God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into our life, He’ll do the same thing in us that He did in Jesus, causing us to live vibrant fresh life in Christ. When God lives and breathes in us, as surely as he did in Jesus, we are delivered from dead life to eternal life.  God makes us into the people we are to be and live the life we are to live. This is not because we deserve it, because we don’t, but because we trust, God to do what Jesus promised he would do. We take God at his word and hold fast to faith. In trusting God, in making God our center, we live into the grace lavished on us. As Spirit-filled, Christ-centered, and God-glorifying people, we are on the way to life eternal; death is only an interlude that all must pass through on the way to the Kingdom.

Worship and Discipleship

Two aspects of our relationship with God don’t seem to go together and may even at odds is worship and discipleship.

Where do they fit together?

They are very important aspects of the Christian life.

Let’s address worship first.

This is how John Piper defines worship. “Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth. This cannot be done by mere acts of duty. It can be done only when spontaneous affections arise in the heart. These affections for God are an end in themselves.”

N. T. Wright said, “Worship is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb. That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God’s dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in.”

So worship is reflecting happily back to God who God is. It is the glad shout for what God in Jesus has done and is doing for us. Worship is intimately tied into seeing Christianity as a love story. Worship is more than just singing hymns, praying, and gathering once a week in a building. Maybe we can and should praise God with our lives by being mindful, cultivating loving relationships, being kind to all we meet and to the places; we live and go, by being a living prayer, a living parable, a living sermon.

We haven’t been given this life to use, as we want to do whatever pleases us in the moment. We are to be images of God in the world; we are to be gifts of God to the world and to use our life to bless others all to the glory of Our Father in Heaven. Life is a gift, life is a miracle and if we don’t give it away, it will be taken away from us. Our life, like the life of Jesus is to be broken, blessed, and given away. We should live our lives as a living prayer to the God who wastes nothing, to the God of Jesus who lavishes boundless, intimate love and grace on all and calls us into relationship with the divine 3-in-1 dance.

Now, discipleship.

German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer defines discipleship as “bondage to Jesus alone, completely breaking through every program, every ideal, every… law. Beside Jesus, nothing has significance. He alone matters.”

Michael Spencer said, “The command to follow requires that we take a daily journey in the company of other students. It demands that we be lifelong learners and that we commit to constant growth in spiritual maturity. Discipleship is a call to me, but it is a journey of we.”

A first step is letting go of the world and embracing Jesus, letting go of the things that keep us from walking in faith to and with Jesus. Following Jesus is a deep affection to his person, the grace that allows us to claim Jesus as our own shatters all bonds and prisons that keep us stuck in the smallness of the ego. Jesus disposes of the things that keep us shivering scared of the unknown. It’s only in responding to the call to be a disciple that we learn how to follow Jesus. It’s in the going that the going is possible. This is not abstract. It’s concrete. You must respond to Jesus in the present and continue to do so in order to truly have faith and stay in relationship with him.

We must constantly step towards Jesus.

I have learned that I must Surrender to God’s will for my life to trust that God is taking me somewhere that it will be for my good even if it’s not what I imagine or hope it to be. Even if or maybe I should say when I go through the valley of death, the darkest night and the most dangerous places that God will be with me and will see me through it. God will lead and guide me and when I am unable to walk, He will carry me until I can walk on my own.

Jesus didn’t stutter and we cannot hesitate.

Discipleship, the call to me leads to the call of we, worship.

The Wonder of Grace

The love of God is not some theological construct that helps one sleep at night. Not a security blanket that helps one get out of bed and face the world. It is not wishful thinking or fantasy.

 It’s the ultimate reality at the nub of the universe. It’s the heart of everything. At the center of everything is love, pure, perfect divine love.

My knowing that God is love and that God, the Creator-King of the universe loves me personally and intimately is not some intellectual assertion I can or cannot believe in. It does not disappear or diminish when I or anyone else stops believing it.

The God of love is my core, bedrock reality, and the presence that I trust my entire being to and where I find my fundamental identity. I try to live out my faith, my deep trust in God’s love daily. Sometimes, I stumble, fall flat on my face, I get bruised and battered. The love of God picks me up, dusts me off, puts on a bandage or two and sends me on my way to be better than I used to be, to sin no more. This presence is with me constantly even when I fail to be the person I ought to be. This presence is with me constantly even though I will never be what I should be.

 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “I feel only gratitude for my life, for every moment… Never once did I ask God for success, wisdom, power, or fame. I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me.”

I believe life is more than birth and extends beyond the grave. I have not the slightest clue how or what life beyond this life will be like, except every tear will be wiped away. I trust that my life will go on. That there is more that life steadily moves on. We have no choice in the matter life goes marching on, ever forward to our destiny. Life always has and always will find a way. We can and should celebrate life. All of life is sacred for it comes from God, the redeemer and sustainer of life and is on its way back.

Life is a grand, epic miracle. Yes, Life is a miracle! I affirm this. My faith informs this hope and promise. We are invited to revel in the miracle of life. Just to breath, just to live, just to be is holy. We are on holy ground and should live in deep reverence to life, reality, divine, the holy, God–whatever you want to call it. Life is good and conspires for our Good. Life is a gift. Life is beautiful. Life is messy. Life is chaotic.

Life can be hard, harsh, and terrible at times. Bad happens. So, does good. Yet, I don’t think dwelling on the bad will ever make us feel better. We are called to serve our neighbor, to speak truth in tragedy, and to do love. Dwelling on the bad, will only cripple us from serving, speaking, and loving.

We have lost the wonder of life. We have lost the sense of seeing the awesome miracle that life truly is. Life is an epic miracle. Yes, Life is a miracle! A miracle I say, a miracle. Everything both the good and bad is a signpost to the being who sits at the center of the universe, the presence of pure and prefect love that beckons each of us. Each day we are invited to revel in the miracle. Just to breathe, just to live, just to be is holy. We are on holy ground and should live in deep reverence to life, reality, divine, and the holy, God— whatever you want to call it. Life is good and conspires for our Good. Life is a gift. Life is beautiful. Life is a glorious, rapturous, and awesome moment.

Everything is a miracle, every moment a gift from God and when we rediscover and embrace this the smoother life will be. I am not saying that is easy or we should be happy when we are in pain or darkness has over taken us. That would be dumb and you should ignore me. I know life can be hard, harsh, and terrible. Often it seems life is suffering. Evil things and chaos ensues. Yet, I don’t think dwelling on the bad will ever make us feel better. We are called to serve our neighbor, to speak truth in tragedy, and to do good. If we dwell on the bad that is flung at us than we cripple ourselves from serving, speaking, and doing good, but if we can step beyond our little selves than we can do good.

I have been battling a foot and I am having surgery this Friday. One of three surgeries. This is bad, but I have not let it get me down. I refuse to let it defeat me. I am facing it head on, while it’s not easy and I have darker moments I trust God is with me in this. As awful, painful, and scary as this is I trust that this too is a blessing. The miracle is not a magical cure, but letting it bless me and others. The miracle is love. I have witnessed that life is a gift and should be treasured as such.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

We need to embrace as life a miracle then, cultivate this miraculous sense of God in the world. God is everywhere, everything is spiritual, and God loves us personally and intimately. The moment we discover and embrace this we see how good life is and want to experience more, we will live our life to the full. This is a grace that only God can grant us, we can open ourselves to seeing the miracle and taking steps to being a living, breathing miracle.

I ask God for this gift making Brennan Manning’s prayer mine.

“Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe. Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His, to the Father through the features of men’s faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I only ask to share in the wonder of it all.”

The Time Is Now

In my reading during this past week, I came across a phrase. The context or book isn’t important, because it got me thinking beyond the authors point.

The phrase is the time is now. I have been mulling over what is time is for?

The time is now for bible study.

Everyone should just pick up the bible and read. Don’t worry about reading it the right way or coming away with an orthodox belief. Read, contemplate what you read, reflect on what the text might be trying to say to you and pray about it.

Just read.

To read the bible and let it work on you goes against what the world would have you do is subversive. The world would tell you it’s all myth (they usually mean myth in the negative sense, a made up story) and that none of it true or it was translated wrong or it’s rubbish. The world wants you to dismiss the bible. It’s rebellious and seditious to the world systems of power, greed, and individualism to read study and apply the bible to our life. I will not win friends by studying the bible. I’m more apt to wrinkle a few feathers by reading studying and applying the bible to my life and telling others what I find. It will unsettle my life. It will transform my life.

We need to seriously read, study, and apply the bible we do have to our lives. Not use the bible to exclude anyone, beat people over the head with it, or use it to point fingers at someone else. We need to take the bible serious and let it point a finger at all the places where we are not living up to God’s ideal.

The time is now for loving others.

The Christian life is all about love. It’s sad that a vast number of non-Christians don’t see Christians as loving. We need to renew our call to love. We need to love so much that this world will transform into one grand party. It’s not always easy to love or accept love. We all have problems with loving others that block us from seeing others as God sees them. If loving others weren’t so difficult than it wouldn’t be such a noble pursuit. If it weren’t risky, it wouldn’t be so awesome. Love is something we all want. I know I do. If we want love, we need to love. Love is not something outside of us, but something we are deeply in our inner being. We need to love, to be love, and risk the possibility of getting hurt. Love can hurt. It is risky, but it is better to be hurt by loving than not loving. Love rocks! Be the love you want!

The time is now for reflecting God’s image.

As Christians, we must look at Jesus first when we want to see and know who God is exactly. Jesus is the decisive revelation of God. To see Jesus it to see God, there is no disconnection between Jesus and God.

To understand what it means to be a living reflection of God we must look at the way Jesus lived, loved, and died. Jesus was not concerned about himself, what others thought of him, making a good impression, or meeting the standard, that society set up. He was independent of the good opinion of others. He embodied an inner trust in who he was and what his purpose was in living. He lived in such a way that with each breath, each stride, and each action God was present. Jesus forgave all who came to him. Jesus healed everyone. Jesus loved everyone. Jesus stood up for the things God wants and proclaimed the Kingdom of God with word and deed.

This life doesn’t begin after death in some far-off celestial paradise. It begins here and now. It begins when we respond in faith to the gospel of grace. It continues as we live out our faith in the world. We reflect the image of God by living authentic lives that mirror the life of Jesus.

The time is now for discipleship.

Some may say we are too messed up for God to use, but a cursory reading of the bible will confirm the truism that no one is too messed up for God to use them. God usually uses the messed ones to bring about his will.

I must Surrender to God’s will for my life to trust that God is taking me somewhere that it will be for my good even if it’s not what I imagine or hope it to be. Even if or maybe I should say when I go through the valley of death, the darkest night and the most dangerous places that God will be with me and will see me through it. God will lead and guide me and when I am unable to walk, He will carry me until I can walk on my own. Over the last few years, I’ve had to give up many things that I thought I could never do with out for the most part it’s been a good thing, a gift, a blessing. I am moving towards the person God wants me to be. I have a sense that God is leading me to places that are new, challenging and transformative. The more I step out in faith the more God will be there to guide the way.

The time is now to be the church.

God wants us to love and honor him not out of obligation or to get into heaven, but because we want to, because we are in a relationship with the divine not to keep the peace, to appease, or for some pretense, but because we are moved to it. God wants us to love and honor him not with our words and rituals, but with our hearts and actions. Through loving and caring for each other, we worship God.

We are the church when we are following so closely on the heels of our rabbi, Jesus we are covered in the dust from his feet.

A Christian is one who loves the unlovable, includes the excluded, guides the lost, cares for the hurting, is committed to being better than they used to be, helping others do the same, and affirms that we do this through Jesus Christ. Wherever a Christian goes and whatever a Christian does influences his worship and fellowship. Everything we do and don’t do should be guided by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We should follow God’s example and be an example to the world.

Going to church is not something you do to look good or to keep the peace; it’s something you do because if you didn’t in some way you would feel incomplete. It’s not about attendance at some building on a certain day and time, but about the way, you live out your life and faith on a daily basis. It’s about the kind of person you want to be and are becoming, not something to cross off a things-to-do list.

Church is not a building you go to, but a way of being in the world but not of the world.

The Resurrection is Important

I believe in Jesus Christ, in the resurrection, and life everlasting.

Christianity is about something that happened; something that happened to and through Jesus; something that touches and transforms our life continually. Christian faith is centered on the cross. What led up to the cross, the event of the cross and repercussions of the cross throughout history is the story of Christian faith. The Christian faith is not about another moral teaching or some new religion or a book, object, or place. No! The Christian faith is all about one man—how he changed the world through his life, death, and resurrection. Our faith is about Jesus alone and what he did on the old rugged cross.

The tomb is empty, our cry: He is risen.

The resurrection of Christ is core to Christianity. If it were not for the resurrection of Jesus, Christianity would have never arisen to the heights that it did, and the Jesus movement would have been relegated to a footnote in history. In the cross, Jesus an innocent person was executed, abandoned by his friends and utterly forsaken by God. The resurrection is God’s faithful response to Jesus willingness to go all the way. It inspires hope for both the now and the future. The resurrection was not an arbitrary display of how powerful God can be; it was the inauguration, the in breaking of God’s kingdom, bringing with it a great hope for the future of this world and for those who cry out from the ground for justice.

N. T. Wright claims “The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”

The resurrection is without a doubt the most awesome, glorious, miraculous event in history.

The simple yet transforming fact that it actually happened makes it even more awesome, glorious, and miraculous.

This single event transformed the apostles 2,000 years ago, and it has the ability to transform us now. It points us to our ultimate destiny. N.T. Wright says that in the resurrection Jesus’ body was the one bit of earth to be already fully and completely colonized by the powerful, life-giving energy and glory of heaven. Through the resurrection, Jesus was putting the human project back on track. In Jesus, God has indeed overcome the problem caused by the eating of the Tree of Good and Evil and has also led the human race, at last, to taste the Tree of Life.

The resurrection is important. Proclaiming it as an event in history goes beyond saying the words, it is also, about how it affects how we respond to life. We proclaim the resurrection as true by loving and serving our needy brothers and sisters, by reverence of all of life, and by living in life-honoring, honest ways. The resurrection happened 2,000 years ago and happens every time we love our neighbor, every time we serve the least, every time we honor the good, true, and beautiful. It will happen to each of us as we enter eternal life now and later. The resurrection goes way beyond any one event, even the amazing event that happened to Jesus. It stretches way beyond our life and includes everyone in the loving embrace of Our Father, the God who is with, for, and ahead of us (thank you, Rob Bell).

I trust the resurrection as a truth we affirm with both word and deed. I am still learning what this means and I am fully committed to deepening my knowledge of what the resurrection really means for me now and later. God will handle the later.

On The Passing Of Brennan Manning

I woke to the sad news: Brennan Manning died, Friday, April 12, 2013. The blogosphere and social networks have been abloom with kind words and remembrances. Brennan Manning showed me the amazing awesome love and grace of God found in Christ Jesus. Through his books, Manning taught me what the Christian life is all about.

I read The Ragamuffin Gospel several years and have reread over the years. I picked it up this morning and read the opening chapter before hearing the sad news of his passing. Before Brennan, I thought grace was something you said before you eat pious words to appease God not God’s free love and forgiveness lavished indiscriminately on all. I didn’t want to admit my inadequacies and failures for fear of being found out, but Manning showed me that I was caught already in the loving embrace of God. God knows all about my darkness and loves me anyway. God meets me where I am and leads me to where I should be. God still has a lot of work to do in me, but I trust Gods grace will complete me.

“The gospel of grace calls us to sing of the everyday mystery of intimacy with God instead of always seeking for miracles or visions. It calls us to sing of the spirit roots of such commonplace experience as falling in love, telling the truth, raising a child, teaching a class, forgiving each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise and sexuality, and the radiance of existence. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven, and of such homely mysteries is genuine religion made of. Grace abounds and walks around the edge of our everyday experience.” (Brennan Manning)

Writer Robert Benson said it better than I ever could. “I learned the truth of the gospel from Brennan, the same gospel you will find in this book: That in the end, my sin will never outweigh God’s love. That the Prodigal can never outrun the Father. That I am not measured by the good I do but by the grace I accept. That being lost is a prerequisite to being found. That living a life of faith is not lived in the light, it is discovered in the dark. That not being a saint here on earth will not necessarily keep you from being in that number when the march begins.”  

As sad as it is to lose such an amazing writer, speaker, and brother in Christ I don’t think Brennan would want us all weepy. He would want us to celebrate his life and our Savior. A better way to speak of than saying Brennan Manning died or passed is to say that he is now fully embraced by Abba. Brennan found himself on dusty road and still far off Abba ran and embraced him. Now, there is party going on.