Seed Packets and Water Pails

I can't help sometimes getting a little impatient with this whole witnessing to the world thing.

I've long been of the opinion that witnessing is about more than just paying someone else to produce a magazine and television broadcast.  Not that I'm into standing on a milk crate somewhere with a megaphone either, but I do believe Jesus expects me to be ready, even desiring, even praying for, the opportunity to give an answer to the hope that lies within me.

Statistics on church growth confirm the fact that most new converts to the faith are the result of personal contact with a believer anyway. God uses His people. He always has. Magazines, television broadcasts, websites are great tools but, in my opinion, they are resources to supplement, not substitute for, our personal witness. We are lights in a dark world, conduits through which God works to bring those He is calling into relationship with Him.

So why am I impatient? It's not that I don't feel prepared. There's always more to learn.  After all, it's a big Book, and my mind, well...not so big. But after a lifetime of being immersed in the truth of God's Word, I feel I have acquired a decent arsenal of clear, scripturally supported, rock solid, Theology. When it comes to sharing the hope that lies within me, I'm pretty much loaded for bear. I suspect the same is true for most of you reading this. My problem isn't with the what to say, it's with my expectations of what the saying of it will produce.   I want results now. I want to see the fruits of my effort now. I guess, in a nutshell, I'm looking for the Acts 2 moment. Unfortunately, it doesn't ever seem to happen that way. Hence the frustration.

I remember a few years ago being excited when a co-worker asked me, "So where do you go for eight days every Fall anyway?"  Seeing an opening that only God could have inspired, I launched into a treatise on everything from the plan of salvation revealed in the Spring and Fall Harvest festivals, the empty counterfeits that are Christmas and Easter, to the significance of understanding the digestive tracts of pigs vs. cows.  I was on a roll man! More excited still was I, when, rather than returning a blank, glazed over stare, he actually exclaimed "Wow, that makes a lot of sense! I need to look into that!"  I left that conversation pretty confident that this co-worker would be attending church with me the next week, and, more than likely, be counseling for baptism within a month.  My expectation took a fall of Babylonish proportions when the very next week this same co-worker, on whom I had unloaded all of this precious, life altering truth, casually asked if I'd be at the happy hour after work that Friday night.  Sigh... Once again, my Acts 2 moment fell flat on its face.

I should have known better.  The truth is, we live in a different world today.  Most of the world knows about Christianity. They have heard about Jesus Christ, almost ad nauseam.  They've heard the hype. They've heard the promises. They've seen the bad examples and the million or so competing interpretations of Christian "truth (small "t"). Frankly, many if not most are just a little jaded about the whole thing.  So, can we really be surprised when eyes glaze over when we launch into an explanation of what really happened under Constantine in 325!

Even those God may be calling, whose eyes He is opening to understand, have a lot of garbage to wade through to get to the real deal.  So, it's not surprising that our revelations of truth don't immediately land on fertile ground.

In Hebrews 12:1 - 2 Paul encourages us to "...lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,  looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

He, Jesus, not my co-worker, not my neighbor down the street, not the pastor of my church, is the Author and Finisher. He is in charge of the process from beginning to end.

Hmm...so if He's the Author and Finisher of my faith...it probably follows that He's the Author and Finisher of everyone else's faith as well. He's the Author and Finisher of the faith of everyone I might have the opportunity to witness to in the short life He's given me, including my neighbor down the street, my uncle Joe, and that co-worker who just invited me to the happy hour on Friday night.   If I'm to lay aside every weight and trust in Him to bring this process He has started in me to completion, I should probably lay aside my impatience and trust in Him to complete that process in their lives as well.

1 Corinthians 3:7 - 8  tells us "So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.  Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor."

Basically, when it comes to witnessing, you and I are seed planters and waterer's.  We may never see the end result of the little bit of truth we plant over here, the small bit of water we sprinkle over there, and, if I'm reading it right, we aren't always meant to.  He is the Master Gardener. He is the one who shepherds the growth of His people. 

That doesn't make our role unimportant. We are tools He has chosen to use in that process. My labor of planting and watering, combined with the planting and watering of other laborers in His harvest may ultimately, over time, bring uncle Joe, my neighbor down the street, or that co-worker in the office to repentance and faith. 

If you think about it, it's a whole lot less stressful letting God worry about how it all turns out, isn't it?  Not that I won't still get impatient with the whole process sometimes.  I'd love to see that Acts 2 moment unfold before my eyes just once. And maybe someday I'll be so blessed. But until then, I'll keep my seed packet and water pail at the ready. 

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"I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways. I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word." Psalms 119:15 - 16

The Past: Learning From It Without Living In It

Someone once said that in life we have two choices. We can learn from the past or be doomed to repeat it. It’s good advice. Individually and collectively we must learn the lessons of history if we are to avoid the traps and pitfalls into which others before us or perhaps we ourselves have fallen. It’s advice, though, that should be taken with caution for the line between learning from the past and being a victim of it is thin indeed.

We may know of someone for who past experience has soured current aspects of their life. It may be the person who, because of one or several failed romantic relationship, has exiled themselves to a life of loneliness, refusing to risk further emotional trauma. Or it might be the individual, who having been raised in an abusive childhood situation determines to never bring children of their own into such a potentially painful world. Or perhaps it's the Christian, having been soured by experience with "organized" religion, who washes their hands of it altogether, packs up their Bible and Concordance and proceeds to "go it alone" on their own little spiritual island.

Whatever the hurts and injustices we've suffered or witnessed in the past, living in it rather than using it as a tutor to guide ourselves or others to a more successful future, makes us its victim.

I believe that we as Christians, perhaps more than most, have a tendency to fall into this trap. We as a group have very sensitive noses for justice. We are keenly aware of right and wrong and we have a definite desire to see righteousness prevail and evil punished. Although a desirable quality in most cases, this sensitivity has the potential to work against us. In a world where the evil too often emerge victorious and injustices are a daily occurrence, our spirits can easily become embittered, cynical and negative. Allowed to linger, this fixation on the injustices of the world can ultimately serve to rob us of our joy and inhibit our growth forward. We become victims of the past rather than its students.

In Philippians 3:12 through the example of Paul we are admonished to forget those things which are behind and reach forward to those things which are ahead.

In Matthew 10:16 Jesus tells us “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

Taken together, these passages encourage us to not let the past cripple us but rather to gain wisdom from the injustices we or others have witnessed or experienced, and use that wisdom to move forward in a positive, productive direction.

God wants us to look ahead to Him as the Author and Finisher of our faith and toward what He has in store for us. We can’t do that if we are constantly obsessed by what’s back over our shoulder.

Yes, it’s true. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We shouldn’t ignore the past. Let’s learn from it, gain wisdom because of it, but not be victimized by it. It’s okay to visit there once in awhile but it’s definitely not a healthy place to live.

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"I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways. I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word." Psalms 119:15 - 16

Batter Up!

I’m not much of a baseball fan so I’m not all that familiar with the difference between a slider, a curve ball or a change-up. I do know they are all designed to do one thing…throw the batter off his or her game…get them out of their rhythm so they swing and miss.

Maybe the reason I'm not much of a fan has something to do with the fact that I've never been that good at playing the game...especially the batting part. You never know what's going to be thrown at you and I'm not good at adjusting to the unexpected. I’m a person who likes things to go pretty much straight down the line...accross the center of the plate... nice and predictable...no surprises.

As a Christian, it can be a challenge to be someone who doesn't deal well with surprise. God allows the unexpected to be thrown our way at times. A slow fade here, a curve ball there. Just when we think we've got the game under control, we know what to expect, a pitch comes along that completely throws us out of our rhythm and sends us swinging at air.

When this has happened to me I've typically experienced one or more emotions: Confusion – Why is God allowing this? It doesn’t make sense that things would happen this way? Frustration: Doesn’t God know how important this is to me? Why isn’t He blessing my effort here?! Discouragement – Why should I even try to do anything for God when it all just seems to be for nothing anyway? In a nutshell, "God, why are you trying to strike me out?"

You know, you don't read many inspiring stories in scripture of people who did it "their way". Rather, the most amazing stories are about people who seemed to have little or no idea when they started where they were going and what the end result might be. Abraham gave up the comfort of Ur to pitch his tent in the wilderness wherever God would lead. Moses, with Israel in tow, trudged into the desert following a pillar of fire. I doubt they spent a great deal of time trying to direct where they thought it should be leading them. The apostle Paul travelled the Mediterranean, enduring shipwreck, imprisonment, and beatings to preach the gospel wherever the Spirit led him. I somehow don’t think spending the last days of his life locked away in a prison in Rome made Paul's top ten list of lifetime goals.

These, and many others like them, did seem to have one thing in common; the ability, as well as the humility, to adapt themselves to whatever life threw their way and to change course to wherever God, through His Spirit, was leading them. If the Spirit was leading them to go into the desert, they pulled up their tent stakes and went. If it was leading them to go to Antioch, or to Rome to preach, they got into the ship and set sail.

The truth is, even if they couldn't see it fully, they were following a plan. It just wasn't their own. It's the plan of salvation. Looking over the span of time since creation, we are able see their role in that plan, even if they didn't fully. It's a plan that is at work in our lives as well. And it's one plan we can be confident won't throw us a curve.

Do I still make my own plans? Do I still have my own goals? Sure. But I’m learning to hold them a little more loosely and be ready to adapt and change them when God unexpectedly takes them in another direction. I've learned God isn't trying to strike me out, only help me improve my batting average. Hey, maybe I'll learn to like the game after all. Batter up!

Potato Salad and Other Reasons to Love Going to Church

I've been thinking a lot about this thing we call church lately.

Why do we go to church anyway? After all, it's sometimes a lot to put up with isn't it? Don't get me wrong, there are the good things, the things we enjoy. But, there's also a lot of stuff we could just do without isn't there? There's the couple with the crying baby that can't seem to get the concept of a mother's room; there's the deacon who fools everyone with his show of piety when you know full well he's anything but that during the week; there's the well-meaning elder who, bless his heart, couldn't give a cohesive sermon to save his life; and then there's the monthly church potluck, an event filled with culinary land-mines of runny jell-o, meat dishes of questionable origin and potato salad teetering a little too close to the edge of rancidity for comfort. The list could go on and on....the gossip, the posturing, the power trips, the hypocrisy. All of this and more begs the question, "Is it all really worth it?" Wouldn't it be easier to just stay in our own world, carry on our own private Bible study, our own personal worship service, have our own private religion between just us and God? You have to admit, sometimes it would be a lot less of a hassle, wouldn't it? So, why do we do this church thing anyway?

Well, there's the obvious answer. God says do it. There's that pesky little scripture that tells us "Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together." But why?

My sister called me the other day. There's a handful of States separating us physically and we're both not that great at phone conversation so, when she called me, after several months of not hearing from her, I knew something important was on her mind. She had stopped attending church as a teenager sometime back in the early 80's, ditching it along with pretty much everything else having to do with religion in favor of going out to "find herself." Now, twenty or so years later she realizes that she had, in fact, left a very huge and important part of who she was behind. She asked me a lot of questions during the course of our conversation, but they could all pretty much could be summed up as: "How can I find my way back?"

There were so many things I could have told her. I could have explained the importance of repentance and faith. I could have encouraged her to get into her Bible and get on her knees. But that's not what I led with. Not that she doesn't need, at some point, to do these things. She does. I just didn't feel it was where she needed to start. So, what did I encourage her to do? Get to church.

Sure she could have studied on her own, prayed on her own, been nourished in her faith on her own, but that is just not how God wants us to walk in relationship with Him...on our own. He wants us to be connected to others, to be in an environment where we can support, encourage and carry one another's burdens, and yes, put up with one another's imperfections and baggage. It's all part of the package.

In the western world we are conditioned to believe in the "pull yourself up by your own boot straps" mentality.   We embrace the ideal of "rugged individualism." We are a very individualistic centered society. It's so easy to bring that mentality into our walk with God. The problem is God really isn't all that into the "individual." In His word, there just isn't a whole lot of focus on the "me", the "I" of our faith. Rather, the focus throughout is on the "we", the "us", the community of believers. Yes, we come to Him individually in repentance and faith, yes, we are individually restored to a relationship with Him. But, after having been individually restored, we then lay down our lives, our individual identities, and are placed into a community of believers, into the body as it pleases Him.

Hebrews 8:10, quoting Jeremiah, says, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people."

Ephesians 2:19 - 22 tells us "Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit."

We are His "people" (plural). We are "fellow" (not individual) citizens. We are 'members (plural) of the household of God." We are "fitted together." We are being "built together (not separately)."

Not much gets built if the bricks are all scattered around doing their own thing.

The bottom line is, as I expressed to my sister, God doesn't want our faith to be about only "my" walk and "my" relationship with Him. He wants our walk of faith to be outward, focused on the "us", "our" walk together. He want's us to get outside of ourselves and get connected to the body. Serving each other, encouraging one another, building one another up, and collectively witnessing and ministering to a world that desperately needs it.

I told my sister that I would pray that God would continue to work in her heart to return her to that community some day. Yes, she'll be returning to some hassles. There will always be hypocrisy. There will be one or two annoying "super" deacons. It's sure she'll hear the occasional boring sermon. And, unfortunately, the need to keep a keen eye out for rancid potato salad will never go away.  But all of those hassles pale in comparison to the sense of shared purpose and community that doing this life together will bring her.

As we said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone, it hit me what a blessing it is to be there already.  Hmm...I wonder what the mystery meat will be this Sabbath.