I am a big fan of the Wordle tool. I use it as a kind of barometer to gauge whether or not I’m writing about the things that are really important to me. Here is the latest:
I’m pleased to find that God figures prominently…
Browsing Posts published in November, 2008
Last Sunday, our pastor was preaching from John 4. He stressed the importance of being satisfied in God. In fact, what he said was that we demonstrate God’s worth by how satisfied we are in Him.
Wow.
If I turn that upside down in order to apply it to my life, it means that when I seek my own satisfaction I am really telling the world that God isn’t so great. If I pursue my own way, seeking to satisfy my own needs, and failing to seek my satisfaction in Him, I am, in effect, saying that God can’t handle it. I’m telling the world that God needs a replacement – me!
This new way of thinking will undoubtedly help me as I work to remain faithful to Jesus.
I just stumbled upon something interesting to me – the way a couple of things have lined up to reinforce one another without my conscious involvement. I think it’s kind of cool!
I did a word search in the NIV Bible for “with his heart.” One of the hits was 2 Kings 23:25:
“Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.” (Emphasis mine)
I find it awesome that two of my ministry names – Josiah’s Stand and With His Heart are included in this single verse. When Josiah, the namesake for the subtitle of my ministry, turned to the Lord, he did so with all his heart, the name for my overall ministry outreach.i hadn’t seen that before. It’s almost as if I’d planned it!
I was very proud of myself for having constructed the argument in my previous post. I carefully laid out my argument for the guys in class, fully expecting to get the appreciation I deserve as a teacher! (That should have been a warning to me!)
Wrong! After I finished my exposition, Ron sat back and said, “Wait a minute. I think there’s an inconsistency there.” Ron went on to explain what he meant, and I was busted! Oops.
As you may recall, I was aiming for putting shoe leather on the following statement:
A job is holy when God assigns it, and he is present and actively involved in the work.
My “brilliant” argument was that this becomes real when we experience a confluence of God-given skill and God-given desire. Unfortunately, just down the page from the statement above was this statement:
Unless a job is immoral, unethical, or contrary to the will of God, it is holy if the worker shares a right relationship with God.
Although I believe my argument is partially right, or at least valid in some situations, I want to teach the complete truth. It is true that God often is in the assigning of a job when the God-given skill to accomplish it comes together with the God-given desire to accomplish it, but it is not required. If God is working in a thing, it is holy whether I participate or not. Whether I want to do it or not, whether I have the skill to do it or not, God in the work is what makes it holy, and the only way I can participate in it is if I am in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Apart from him I can do nothing. (John 15:5)
It’s really all about relationship. Even Ron admitted that his struggle over work issues from a week or so back came down to wanting things his way. He felt like things should go a certain way for him to be ministering to people. When he recognized that he was driving, he refocused on his relationship with Jesus Christ and came to some answers.
Thank you, Ron!
In the previous post, I offered that I was struggling with how to put shoe leather (make real) the following true statement from the Kingdom Agenda workbook:
A job is holy when God assigns it, and he is present and actively involved in the work.
With a little help from the Bible and a little help from authors John C. Maxwell and John Eldredge, I think I have an answer. It’s not a nice, neat answer, but it is an answer. The logic of it goes like this:
- God is all about skill, and skill is meant for creating and building. For example, the NLT of the Bible renders Genesis 1:31a as “Then God looked over all he had made and saw that it was excellent in every way.” Excellent in every way! We can move through the Bible and see many examples of where God calls for people to exercise great skill. This is evident in the way the Tabernacle was constructed (Exodus 36:1), the way David chose people to serve (1 Chronicles 15:22), the skill of Solomon as a leader (2 Chronicles 2:12), and the way David was equipped for battle (Psalm 144:1). Jesus was noted to have skill, as well (Luke 2:40-52).
- Skill is a natural extension of our spiritual relationship with God. In other words, we cannot settle for mediocrity in the work that we do and still work wholeheartedly for God. Our job title does not matter. We are called to excellence!
- We are wonderfully made. In Psalm 139:13, David marvels at the way the spirit knit him together in the womb. Genesis 1:26 says that we’re made in God’s image. How then could the skills we use at work ever be considered less spiritual or less connected to the Holy Spirit than our spiritual gifts?
- The conditions are met when our innate skill meets our passion. God equips us to fulfill a purpose. (Sometimes multiple purposes…) It doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t then fill us with a desire to accomplish something with that skill. Eldredge says that if it’s in our hearts to build a boat and sail it, write a symphony and play it, or see a mountain and climb it, it’s a good bet that we have found what God has purposed for us.
So I believe that a job God assigns and participates with us in accomplishing is one where our passion and skill come together.
Please note two cautions about this answer:
- Determining the point at which passion and skill come together should be done as part of a relationship with Jesus. If you aren’t connecting with God on a regular basis, I think your results are less certain. It’s all about relationship. (See www.notreligion.com)
- Finding the point at which passion and skill come together does not preclude doing unpleasant things. That is, we are sometimes called to do things that we are well suited for but aren’t easy. I have a friend who works in a hospice group. She is well suited for the work and feels called to it, but the work is often physically and emotionally draining.
(Originally published in early 2007)
This week, the “Experiencing God in Your Workplace” meeting was very interesting. When we met, one of the participants (Ron) opened up by sharing some of his concerns about what it means to carry out a ministry in the workplace. Ron works in a technology environment, and he shared his frustration that “99% of the people there don’t care if I serve them or not!” That comment led to a long group discussion about what it means to serve or minister to people.
Ron is frustrated because he spends almost all of his time dealing with personnel issues, responding to employee complaints, and basically dealing with the problems a manager must face. He said that he finds it difficult to think of these kinds of activities as a ministry, and he’d rather be available to comfort and counsel. It was clear that Ron felt that to be an encourager to an employee going through a divorce is God service but that to deal with the administrivia of his position was not.
I think most of us feel the way Ron does. We have a natural human tendency to compartmentalize our lives. This is my work. This is my school. This is my family. This is my faith. It’s often difficult to see the hand of God at work in tough situations.
As we talked, Ron asked an interesting question: “What would Jesus have done if one of the 12 wasn’t pulling his own weight?” Ron recently had to fire someone who was not performing. The experience was very stressful for Ron. Ron found himself asking “What would Jesus do?” If you’re a Christian, is it okay to fire someone? Even after you’ve worked with the employee to correct the situation, been over the problems with him or her again and again. Is it ever okay for a Christian to fire someone?
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably noticed that I don’t have any ready answers here. I have “Sunday School” answers that are true but ring hollow as I consider the gravity of Ron’s struggle. He’s trying hard to do the right thing, to follow Jesus as a man of faith and deep commitment. But he’s struggling with the situation he’s in.
In the study guide for our group, I came across the following text:
A job is holy when God assigns it, and he is present and actively involved in the work.
I think this is the crux of the problem Ron is dealing with. He’s in a work situation and can’t see God’s assignment, presence and activity. I believe that this text is correct, but the guide simple leaves it at that. It doesn’t give us a clue as to what this looks like. I want to know what this looks like in practical, real-world terms, and I’ve given myself a goal to get some answers for Ron and the rest of us.
Stay tuned.
(Originally published May 2007)
This week I was on hand during the youth meeting at church, and the youth pastor did a great job talking about Romans 7 and 8. This is the passage where Paul writes about his struggles – how even though he’s been following Jesus for years he does what he doesn’t want to do [what he knows is wrong] and doesn’t do what he wants to do [what he knows is right]. Our pastor talked about the struggle we have between doing right and doing wrong. The most compelling part of the talk to me was when he started talking about alternatives to nasty behavior and music. He said that instead of dumping a lot of garbage into our brains through what we do, what we listen to, and who we hang around with, we should pour on the good stuff. If we fill ourselves with God’s word, good Christian music, and good Christian friends, we will displace those things that draw us away from God.
I must admit that it’s those times when I’m studying to teach a Bible class that I tend to do better. When I’m filling myself with God’s word, I am much less likely to struggle with temptation and sin. It’s like putting on armor.
I think non-Christians must be very confused about the many translations of the Bible that are available today. I think I could list 10 without doing any kind of lookup. The uninformed person is probably thinking, “Why can’t these Christians make up their minds?” When some of us make the claim that the Bible is God’s word without error, they probably ask, “Yeah, but which one?”
The truth is, all the popular modern translations of the Bible are translations made directly from the oldest manuscripts available. This isn’t a case where one English translation was created, then another was created based on the first one, and so on. The Bible translations available today at Christian bookstores are the product of years of scholarship in ancient languages and history.
As for the Bible being God’s word without error, it is my opinion that this statement is true of the original documents. The best ancient documents we have are copies of the originals, and the translations themselves contain small differences. This means that the Bible I carry to church on Sunday probably contains small errors. But here’s the deal: Of all the ancient documents under scrutiny in the world, the Bible has the largest number of manuscripts, and many of those documents are of the highest quality. On every score of ancient document scholarship, the Bible scores higher than all other documents. And those thousands of copies and fragments of copies agree with one another on all the fundamental and important aspects of Christianity. The differences we find are regarding minor points upon which salvation and doctrine do not depend.
Bottom line: You can trust the Bibles at the Christian bookstore. NIV, NASB, Living, KJV, NKJV, Holman, etc. can be trusted to tell you the truth about what was said and done. They are reliable and historically accurate. You job, given the evidence in the Bible, is to decide what you’re going to do with this Jesus character. He said and did some things that have affected all of history. How will you respond?
(Originally published May 2007)
I recently watched the new Drew Barrymore movie, Fever Pitch. I enjoyed the movie, but most impressive to me was the main message delivered by the movie:
Sometimes you sacrifice what you love for the one you love!
Fever Pitch is a sappy romance that brings together two people who were previously unwilling to compromise their goals and desires for anyone. In their own ways, each was immersed in something very important to them with no room for anyone else. By the end of the movie, however, in a scene reminiscent of O. Henry’s classic The Gift of the Magi, both are willing to give up something dear to them for the other’s sake. (Okay. It falls well short of O. Henry’s work, but there might be a hint of it!)
In this day of selfish pursuits, it’s nice to see a movie with a positive message.
( I just wish they could have restrained themselves from adding the strong undercurrent of sexuality!)
If you’d like to read a public-domain copy of The Gift of the Magi, try Project Gutenberg at this location:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/magi10h.htm
Enjoy!
Josh McDowell wrote a book entitled, “More than a Carpenter”. That book provides an outline of the historical proof that the Bible accurately captures the facts that Jesus lived, said what the Bible says he said, and did what the Bible says he did. In terms of the scholarship of ancient documents, the New Testament stands head and shoulders above all other ancient documents for accuracy and reliability. It passes all the tests for self-consistency, accuracy between thousands of copies and fragments, consistency in the way other ancient documents refer to it, and in its historical accuracy when compared to other documents of the day. Another way to put this is that the “historical probability” that Jesus said and did all those things is so high that it is virtually guaranteed. What the Bible says about Jesus can be taken as fact.
Given this historical probability, each of us must examine the claims of Jesus and decide for ourselves who he is. Given the high probablility that the New Testament account is accurate, it is at least worth an investigation into the claims made there.
The New Testament tells us:
- Jesus is God; in some mystical way, while on earth Jesus was both fully God and fully man.
- Jesus died, was buried and rose again. The purpose for this was to pay the price for our sins.
- Jesus is the only way to get to God, the only way to heaven.
- Jesus performed miracles to prove he was who he claimed to be.
I’ve heard it put this way: Since there is no ambiguity in what Jesus said and did, his claims make him either a liar, a lunatic or the person he said he was – God. Neither the liar nor the lunatic claims make any sense. If either were true, why did his followers hold to his story until their deaths? I don’t know about you, but my ability to maintain a lie would end right about the time they got out the instruments of torture and death. (Did you know that almost all of the first and second century church leaders were killed for their faith? It was not a fun time to be a Christian, and certainly no time to follow a bogus religion. Yet it grew by leaps and bounds in the face of persecution.)
The Bible says that there were more than 500 witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. All of this adds up to someone you need to deal with. Who is Jesus to you?
I have friends who argue with me about this. They argue hard to throw away the miraculous and challenge me to prove my faith through logic and reason. I can’t do it because they won’t let me use the evidence in the New Testament. In other words, they will not allow for the possibility that anything supernatural could occur. Therefore, they will not accept the miracles in the Bible. The problem is that they are claiming to have a lock on truth. They claim that the only way to know something is to either experience it or think it through in a proof. Where this falls short is that they have assumed that there is only one way to know truth. They claim that anything else is “blind faith”.
We are secular creatures. All we have is the here and now. We can’t reach into eternity and check it out for ourselves, so some of us choose to behave as if it doesn’t exist. If we can’t know eternity, we can’t know God, so we behave as if he doesn’t exist. This is the old “God is dead” argument. What those who hold this position fail to consider, however, is the possibility that God has the ability to inject himself into this reality. That is, the universe exists. SOMETHING had to create it. To presuppose that whatever created it can’t affect it is bogus logic.
God knows all of this, and he knows our condition. He knew that we couldn’t reach him on our own. God created the universe and CAN affect it. Jesus Christ was one of the ways he inserted himself into the mess. The Bible, Old Testament and New, is full of stories about God injecting himself into our reality.
Now, back to our reality. We each have to weigh all of this in the light of our own experiences. Some of us have had bad experiences with some folks who were “Christians” in name only. DC Talk, an old Christian rock group, had a song with the following line in it: “The #1 reason most people won’t consider Christianity is Christians themselves.” The sad truth is that it is very easy to talk the talk without walking the walk. I’m guilty of that from time to time. We humans want to keep “fixing” things that aren’t broken. The result is a diluted message, legalism and often outright sin on the part of those who claim to be “God’s people”. The picture of Christianity seen on TV and taught in our universities is not accurate. That’s why I gravitate toward churches that emphasize the Bible as the true, accurate and complete revelation of God. I don’t need some church committee “interpreting” scripture for me. It is man’s tendency to add and change that has led to the fragmentation of the church and the rise of several cults.
The bottom line is that each of us needs to decide who Jesus is. If he’s a liar, a lunatic or you just plain don’t need him, then forget all this religious mumbo-jumbo and get on with your life. Jesus has nothing to offer those who do not seek him. If he’s telling the truth, however, and he really is the risen Lord and Savior he claimed to be, then you owe him your life because he gave his up for you.
Think about it.
