A Fool’s Truth

This message was delivered by Pastor Brent at River of Life Church

…Jesus responded, “…All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.”  “What is truth?” Pilate asked. (John 18:37, 38, NLT)

Today we are continue in our series “What a fool believes”.  Last week we looked at “fools talk” and we saw how the the way people see meaning in life has changed in the last 50 years.  Well, actually, we know that the change started during the Enlightenment and had been slowly working its way through the fabric of culture and society until we arrived in our day with what is clearly a change.  Last week we looked at how the gospel addresses the ultimate questions of our world even though to those who are not listening carefully hear it as fool’s talk.

This week we are looking at “Fool’s Truth”.  When we think about our place in the world, one of the first passages I think of is John 18:37-38 when

Pilate is interrogating Jesus.

37 Pilate said, “So you are a king?” Jesus responded, “You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.” 38 “What is truth?” Pilate asked. (John 18:37–38a, NLT)

In this passage Jesus is facing a death sentence and his defence before Pilate is rooted in this idea of the truth.  Yet, for Pilate that was a foolish statement — we can almost hear his disdain when he says: “What is truth”. I think the reason I can almost hear the disdain is because it is exactly what somebody would say today if we were having a conversation about truth.  

Talking about truth is very much out of sync with our culture.  The first step was in the Enlightenment when the lead thinkers decided that God needed to be removed from all our questions about truth.  Entire thought systems of ethics and morality were created without appealing to God or his ways.

Ultimately where that led is today — where Western society believes that anything related to God is “unknowable”.  It belongs to the category of preference, or opinion — but definitely not things that we can say are true.

Truth without God looks very different than truth with God.  

Truth without God

First, without God, truth is about what can be known and since our world has arrived at a place where spiritual things can never be known, spiritual things cannot speak to what is true.  This is what our world thinks.

It is not uncommon to hear people talk about the “leap of faith” as if it were believing without evidence or even believing against the evidence.  But faith in the Bible is not like that. The leap of faith is still a movement into the unknown, but it is firmly rooted and in line with one’s knowledge and experience of faith.  The modern idea of “leap of faith” Dallas Willard calls a “leap without faith”.

Eventually, once faith has been categorized as completely personal opinion that cannot inform real knowledge or what is true, it simply doesn’t matter.  Spirituality and religion can say whatever they want to say. Who cares — the world says — it’s all just make believe.

Obviously this creates a real problem for the person of faith.  When we speak of truth or of spiritual knowledge — people think of it as “fool’s truth”.  Truth based on fantasy and imagination — not on facts.

The thing is, if you rule out that there is a spiritual world.  If you rule out God and all the things connected to God — the modern viewpoint makes sense.  But here’s the issue. Once you add God into the equation — none of the numbers add up any more.  Truth without God, in certain areas of life look very different than truth with God in the picture.

Truth with God

Now, obviously, 2×2=4 regardless of one’s faith.  In fact, the great classical mathematicians were pagan Greeks.  Later, mathematics and the teachings of Aristotle were preserved and added to by the Islamic Scholars.  So much so that our number system is actually based on the Arabic number system. At so many levels of life, faith is not part of the equation.  But at another level, it is the foundation of the equation.

Oxford mathematician John Lennox gives the illustration about a beaker of water boiling in a science lab at a university.  The professor asks the student, “why is this water boiling?” The student analyzes all the features of what makes water boil — what temperature is needed and for how long and at what specific gravity.  The professor says to the student, that’s very good, but the reason why the water is boiling is because I wanted some tea!

Truth includes revelation from God

The hard knowledge of science can give us great and wonderful information, but the spiritual dimension gives us a different layer of information.  We treat people well, not just because it adds to social cohesion and creates safe places for humans to develop and thrive — we also do it because every person is made in the image of God. Every person has value and significance. It is not connected to how much you contribute to overall social cohesion or community — you are — at the very core of being — beautiful and treasured by God.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a scholar or have intellectual challenges. It doesn’t matter if you’re a criminal or a philanthropist or straight or gay, skinny or fat or anything else — each person carries the image of God in their person and there is something of infinity..of eternity in every person.

Pol Pot and Stalin had very scientific ideas about the worth of single life. One doesn’t have to look at nature very long to see that the strong prey upon the weak in every species.  They just have to observe the male lion killing his male cubs to understand that staying powerful requires radical violent behaviour. And yet once we bring God into the equation, we see Abraham bartering with God to spare Sodom and we see Jesus reaching out touching the outcast-leper.  In this we see an alternative point of view that is very different at its core.

As soon as we allow God into the conversation, we have to account for what God says.  What God’s opinion is on a particular matter becomes an important part of the equation.  Dallas Willard makes this comment:

The “double-minded” person is someone with a reality problem. The New Testament writer James, brother of Jesus, precisely describes the life of such a person. He says that individual is “unstable in every way” (1:8). That is what lack of knowledge at the worldview level does to you. It destabilizes your whole life. (Willard, Dallas. Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (Kindle Locations 726-728). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition).

We don’t want to have our whole lives ‘destabilized’ because we fail to accept the reality of God and allow God a place in our discussions.  Once we let God into the mix, we quickly see that…

We can know spiritual matters

Once we accept that God has spoken to specific matters and just generally about a lot of areas, we begin to see that spiritual matters shape what we know.  This doesn’t mean that the bible speaks to how old the earth is. Anyone who reads the bible will tells you God doesn’t spend a lot of time dealing with modern scientific questions.  The eternal matters – things that ultimately matter — that’s what comes out as important for us to see.

I remember seeing one-zero-zero and thinking one hundred.  I was taught this in school and never doubted. What I was not taught was that that actually depended on what base number system I was using.  In a decimal system, where after nine, you start over in the one’s column and place bump up the tens column, one-zero-zero was one hundred. But what if I were using a binary number system?  In binary one-zero-zero represents four. I remember how excited I was when I learned about different number systems. I was 20, Lise and I had just moved into our first apartment — the basement of former school teachers.  In our storage room was a box of old school books. Our landlord said if we wanted any of them to take them. The one I was interested in was a math text (and a Latin text). Reading that book — it was chapter one that they taught about number systems was the first time in my entire life that math was interesting to me.  It was a result of reading that one chapter from an old high school text book that made me buy more math books and relearn math that I never really understood as a student.

Why do I tell that story.  Because science can’t tell you if one-zero-zero is one hundred or if it is four or some other number — several could be true depending on other information.  In the computer age, we can’t even say that normally it would be one or the other because base-2, base 8, and base 16 systems are commonly used. Someone needs to give us some more information — information from outside — so we can interpret properly. Once we know it’s binary, we know it is 4.  If we learn it is decimal, we know it is 100.

When it comes to learning why the water is boiling — God gives us information from outside. God reveals to us important pieces of information that helps us understand and make decisions about our world.  God is the key that unlocks our understanding about the deep questions of life.

What is reality?

Who is well-off or blessed

Who is a truly good person?

How does one become a truly good person?

(these worldview questions are from Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (Kindle Locations 876-878). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. )

These are the deep questions that are of ultimate importance and require information from outside our bubble to answer them. Because God has revealed the answers to these questions (and others) our …

Faith is rooted in evidence.

But it is evidence that is disallowed by an unbelieving world.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to understand that because

Faith and truth are connected, we must act on it.

Pilate asked Jesus: “What is truth?”  Many people are cynically asking that question today.  People were asking that same question in the early church.  The early centuries saw the church grow exponentially. People were accepting the ‘truth’ of Jesus.  But why? One reason was that so many christians lived authentically. What God said was truth. What was true was lived — at times — died for.  

Yes, there were fakes and phonies — but mostly there was authenticity.  They were not doubled minded people but were single-minded in their love for Christ and their commitment to live as kingdom-of-God people.

This is a big deal.  When we look at the Western world today, what passes as Christian is often a sad mess of moralistic violent nationalism.  This is the realm of the zealots of Jesus day. They were invited into his circle, but they were called to change. To love their enemies not kill them.  To be generous with their money and their time. To give value to those on the margins of life and to hunger and thirst for the just way of life what was called in those times – righteousness.  

Our truth is rooted in God and his ways.  To our world this is seen as a fool’s truth and weakness — but as Paul said long ago to people not unlike us — Christ is both the power of God and the Wisdom of God. (1Cor 1:24)

A Fool’s Choice

Introduction

We live in a world where faith and foolishness goes hand in hand. In 1 Corinthians 3:18b Pauls says, “…you need to become a fool to be truly wise.”  When Paul writes that, he does so ironically and with not a little sarcasm. Of course the wisdom of God is true wisdom.  Of course the strength of God is true strength. The irony exists though because from a purely human evaluation, God’s way looks foolish.  

Where we have been so far

    1. Fool’s Talk – Meaning and purpose about life and grasping an understanding of ourselves is found in the message of Jesus’ death on the cross
    2. Fool’s truth – people are wondering if we can speak about truth that goes beyond our material world. We discovered that truth does include revelation from God and we can speak about spiritual ultimate matters as part of what makes up real knowledge. It speaks to our deepest needs about what is love, meaning and truth. God’s truth requires us to have a faith, which is based on evidence, that we must act upon.

 

Today, we now come to the Fool’s Choice. In light of who Jesus is, in light of his death on the cross – How will we choose to live with others? When confronted about seeking achievements, comfort and success how does the story of Jesus on the cross shape my choices?

 

1 Corinthians 1:18 – The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.

N.T. Wright explained what a death on the cross meant to people in the first century – Crucifixions were common in the first century. It was a fairly standard punishment for slaves or for rebel subjects. It was a way for the Roman Empire to say “We are in power, and this is what we do to people who get in our way.” Crucifixion was unspeakably horrible, with victims often left on crosses for several days, pecked at by birds and gnawed at by vermin. It was deliberately a very public execution, to warn others: When the Spartacus rebellion was put down, roughly 100 years before Jesus’ day, 6,000 of his followers were crucified all along the Appian Way between Rome and Capua, making it more or less one cross every 40 yards for 130 miles. Anybody, and especially any slave, walking anywhere on that road would get the point. But it wasn’t just (what we would call) a “political” point. In Jesus’ day Rome was “deifying” its emperors, at least after their deaths, making the present emperor “son of god.” Rebelling against Caesar’s empire was therefore a kind of blasphemy, and crucifixion a restatement of the theological “fact” that Caesar was “Lord.” (CT – Interview – N. T. Wright: The Church Continues the Revolution Jesus Started –  In his new book, Wright explains that Jesus’ death does more than just get us into heaven.)

What the cross meant for people in the first century was weakness and death.

NT Wright in his book – The Day the Revolution Began goes on to make this observation –

The very mention of crucifixion was taboo in polite Roman circles, since it was the lowest form of capital punishment, reserved for slaves and rebels.

As for the Jews, the very idea of a crucified Messiah was scandalous. A crucified Messiah was a horrible parody of the kingdom-dreams that many were cherishing. It immediately implied that Israel’s national hope was being radically redrawn downward.

But if the Messiah’s crucifixion was scandalous to Jews, it was sheer madness to non-Jews. The early cultured despisers of Christianity had no trouble mocking the very idea of worshipping a crucified man. (Wright, N. T. (2016-10-11). The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (Kindle Locations 669-674). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.)

But then Paul contrast this by saying the message of the cross reveals the power of God for those being saved. In other words we see in the cross the entire story of God and his rescue operation for the world. The cross opens us to a deeper meaning of knowing God. It is the pivotal moment of all time and eternity which in turn shapes how we live life.

Transition – In light of the cross we have to make a choice. Will we go the Way of Power or the Way of Weakness? Let us first consider the Way of Power?

When you think of what power looks like – what comes to mind? In our culture images of physical health, being in control, possessions of beauty and quality and having lots of money are things that we want because they all give us a sense of power. These are all the symbols of power.

 

Think of the phrases we use to describe power

  • Heavy Hitter
  • Girl Power
  • Grey Power
  • Force of Nature
  • Power Nap
  • Power Dressing
  • Corridors of Power

So many things that “just make sense” to us are rooted in the way of power. There are winners and losers. There are those who use their abilities and talents to get ahead and make a good life for themselves. If we have to push others out of the way, gain the advantage, well such is the competitive world we live in.

In a book our board is reading – The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb –

“You don’t simply go to school; you go to the right school. You don’t simply publish; you publish with the right publishers and in the right journals…it is easy to think we can achieve our way out of our struggle. It is easy to think that if we do all the right things, everything will work out…We want to buy the right house in the right neighborhood. We push our way into the right social circles. We obsess about having the right body. Our culture is dominated by the way of power.”

Goggin, Jamin; Strobel, Kyle. The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It (p. 42). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Power has such a pull on our souls. It is enticing and beautiful. We want it because it gives us a sense of invincibility, control and security. If you are really paying attention so much of our consumerism is meant to give us a sense of power over our lives.

  • Get a degree and manage your destiny
  • Get wrinkle cream and control the appearance of aging
  • Get that vehicle and feel the rush of life
  • Get that new renovated home and feel the pride and respect of others

Power is ultimately deadly for our souls – why? Power leads us to depend on ourselves rather than God. At the very beginning of the 10 commandments that Moses received from on Mt Sinai – was this directive from God – You must not have any other god but me. Exodus 20:3

At the heart of our sinful condition is this pull to trust in other gods that will give us a sense of power. Rather than trusting and loving God above all things – we find ourselves giving into all forms of idolatry – where we make important things like abilities, finances, family and circumstances into ultimate things. We worship these things because they falsely promise us a power that makes us feel special, self sufficient, self actualized, self significant and secure.

(This is the great irony of seeking to define personhood through power. In our pursuit to be more than, to transcend our weaknesses and frailty, we are reduced. When we seek to create a self through our professional abilities and success, we are dehumanized, becoming less than God has called us to be. And trying to sustain yourself is such a heavy burden

In this self-actualized account of human flourishing, the thrust of personhood is to achieve in my own power…we end up using God to become something powerful.) – Goggin, Jamin; Strobel, Kyle. The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: p.49

But consider the pictures of Jesus – the images of him are very different. From the world’s view they seem so weak…

  • Born in weakness
  • Served others
  • Even when others wanted to use power he responded with mercy – which is so easily seen as weakness…

In Matthew’s gospel, we see an example of Jesus’ way in the garden of Gethsemane. The way of weakness.  Listen to Jesus’ words to Peter and the other 11.

52 “Put away your sword,” Jesus told him. “Those who use the sword will die by the sword. 53 Don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and he would send them instantly? (Matthew 26:52–53, NLT)

Just think of it.  The angelic armies of God waiting at the edge of their realm and ours . . . just waiting for the Son of God to call for their help. Think of their zeal to protect the Holy One.  But now think about this. Jesus didn’t call for them.

Choosing the way of weakness is not being weak.  It is rejecting the way of power — the way of self-promotion.  Choosing the way of weakness is redefining what success actually is.

  • Ultimately he gave his life on the cross – which was the ultimate demonstration of weakness from the world’s point of view.

There is profound depth to the death of Jesus on the cross. But one thing we must grasp is that Jesus shows us that life in God’s kingdom takes the way of the cross… the way of weakness and yet in that weakness is the very power of God…

When Jesus faced the extreme moment of weakness and rejection, he made the choice to embrace weakness instead of seeking to dominate it. In the words of Isaiah 53: 7, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

For the follower of Jesus here is what the cross has become – Here is an excerpt from the Jesus Army – a new movement of faith:

The cross is the universal Christian symbol, acknowledged by millions of Christians everywhere as the single visual sign of their faith.

Which is weird, isn’t it? Because the cross was originally a symbol of suffering and defeat. The Roman Empire killed thousands of its enemies by nailing them to wooden crosses.

It’s like wearing a gibbet around your neck. Or hanging a little golden lethal injection from your necklace.

Jesus Christ was executed 2,000 years ago by the Romans. But Christians believe Jesus didn’t stay dead— that Jesus beat death and rose again, beyond death’s reach.

That makes the cross not a sign of death, but a sign of the end of death. A sign of hope, a sign of possibility— for every human being. That’s why Christians wear crosses.    (Wright, N. T. (2016-10-11). The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (Kindle Locations 432-439). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.)

FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE WE WILL….

The path of power for Jesus can said that he suffered, he was a sacrifice, but ultimately it is about the fact that he loved… out of that love gave his life…

God demonstrates his love for us in this – While we were still sinners Christ died for us – Romans 5:8

Christ became weak to demonstrate his amazing love. As Charles Wesley in his famous hymn asked – “Amazing Love how can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me?”

Let me quote NT Wright again –

It seems as though the world knows in its bones that the cross of Jesus was the ultimate revelation of true power and true love… speaks of the true God not as a distant, faceless bureaucrat, nor as a bullying boss, but as the one who has strangely come into the middle of the pains and sorrows of the world and taken their full force on himself.

Will we go the way of weakness? Choosing a life of love

Think about it… love often/always takes us the way of weakness. Everytime I think about demonstrating love in my marriage, my family, my neighbours, my enemies, strangers…if I am profoundly honest it means giving up, taking a risk, sacrificing, suffering…in other words- love leads me in the way of weakness.

That is where love led God.

BUT HOW?

And the only way we can go this way of weakness…is acknowledging that with Jesus we are weak without Him…nothing…we may gain the world but without Him we are nothing…in the path of weakness we learn something important about ourselves…if we want to flourish as a human being – becoming a weighty soul – we must become the abiding self in Christ – not the actualized self apart from Christ/

Human flourishing is not about self-actualization, but about discovering our life in Christ. Flourishing entails discovering our insufficiency and coming to rest in the sufficiency of his grace. This is what a genuinely human existence really looks like.

“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.

 

Church: Sacred Connections

(This message was delivered on February 25, 2018 by Pastor Dave Morehouse at the Allison Campus of The Journey Church)

Let me begin with with reading a simple description of the early church – how they related together.

Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.

Brent – our teaching pastor has said if we were to translate this into our modern church situation we would say:

They devoted themselves:
To following the bible
To the life together,
To worship & the Lord’s Supper
 And to the prayers.

To simplify this passage for the moment I want you to zero into on the phrase “they devoted themselves…to the life together.

Today I want us to chew on this idea – The life together. This is important as consider how to navigate relationships as God intends… especially within the church community

What goes through your mind when you come think of church? When you think of all the sorts of people who show up for a service –  people who may be similar or very different from you – how do you think about relating to them?

I like how the famous C.S.Lewis responded to this question – from his book God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, pg. 61-62

He says, “when I first became a Christian, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology…”

He further discovered “how it is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house.”

But as C.S.Lewis attended he went on to make this observation – “I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.”

I realized that the hymns were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side – (rubber) boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.’”

LET’S MAKE A DEAL

Here is my observation. A lot of us might have the desire to treat each other at church the way we treat each other when we go to the grocery store.

We are all there to get something for our spiritual benefit. We recognize others might want the same thing so we are polite, greet each other with a nod and go on with our spiritual shopping.

We are calling this way of relating to church – Let’s Make a Deal. It is simply a transactional relationship. We come into a church community with a couple of simple questions:

  • Does it serve me?
  • What will it cost me?

Those questions make sense in so many relationships I have with others. I go to a dance class, I pay my fee. The instructor meets my need by teaching me how to line dance – if I don’t like how he/she is teaching me, or I find the cost too much…no big deal. I leave and go looking for my next dance class.

There is nothing wrong with transactional relationships. This is so deep within the culture we live. The profound difficulty is when we try to treat church like our spiritual grocery store – where I think it is primarily about serving me and the cost is not too much.

DEVOTED TO THE LIFE TOGETHER

Why would I want to do life together with people who come to church?

We are calling the relationships in church – sacred connections. I am convinced we will never really be devoted to the life together until we grasp what makes our connections sacred.

Our connections are sacred because

Christ Is Our Foundation

For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:11, NLT)

There is a holy mystery of the church – it is the dwelling place of God. The invisible Christ is the basis of of this community. People who have by faith have opened their hearts to Jesus are now bound together –  not by genetic DNA but by DNA of Christ.

Because Jesus is the foundation of our He defines our life together.

The foundation of Jesus Christ moves us from a marred identity to a new identity – we are a new creation. Because of the cross of Christ we who once were alienated from God are now reconciled. We who once were condemned are now forgiven. Once rejected are now accepted. At a chapel service in India the person starting the service said – “Welcome royalty – kings and queens of God’s kingdom!”. Therefore as we do the life together we treat one another with a profound honour. We are brothers and sisters in God’s family, we are the forgiven ones.

The foundation of Jesus Christ let us see things as they really are – what is fundamental and ultimate reality. When we look at the world’s ills it helps us understand the heart of the human condition. Therefore as we do life together we will focus on seeking to live out the things really matter – we will encourage one another to serve, to give, thirst for justice, to show mercy, work for peace, sharing the hope of Christ.

The foundation of Jesus Christ tells us what we value in this life – that all we say and do  – we think, act and be like Christ. Therefore we as we do the life together we worship and love God, we love others, we love one another with a joy, humility and thankfulness.

The bible says there will come a day when every knee shall bow before the name of Jesus and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. The church already is ahead of the curve – because Jesus is our foundation – it changes everything about our connection with one another – we together know the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

“So welcome kings and queens of God’s kingdom..welcome!”

The Divisions of the World don’t Count

Now devoted to the life together also has a hard negative implication. Our sacred connection in Christ means the divisions of the world don’t count.

I just got back from India…with World Vision. They have work among some of the poorest of the poor children and families. We had the privilege of visiting them and seeing the work that is providing health, education, safety from violence, and hope.

In those travels I discovered that India still deeply struggles with their caste system. The caste system divides Hindus into four main categories – . Many believe that the groups originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation. One group came from the head, one from the arms, one from the thighs and one from the feet. But there is a fifth category called Dalits or the untouchables.

Most of the poor you see are in India are Dalits. And that is who World Vision works with…Go ahead and look up more  – but the point is there are divisions in the world. We experience them too.

But look what Paul says in Galatians 3:28,

There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28, NLT)

The social divisions that exist in society are broken down in Christ and we are equal before God — saved by grace through faith.  We are children of God.  That is our primary status and every other status we are given in the world — beautiful, wealthy, intelligent or the insults ugly, poor, stupid — all of these with away when the God’s shout is: “This is my child.”  

Let me quote Brent’s observation – The sacred connections God is creating between his children knocks down the world’s divisions and pulls us together. The segregated life may be a reality in our world but is not the Life Together.

Therefore as we do the life together let us open our lives and homes to all – not letting our status or stash define us – but rather our sacred connection in Christ.

We Are the Body

He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:16, NLT)


One last implication of our sacred connection is that is how faith in Christ is lived out. The experience of following Christ though it is a individual decision – it is meant to be lived out in community. We are not separate chess pieces – rather we are a spiritual body that is knit together.

We are the body of Christ. The funny thing about parts of the body is that they are deeply connected not loosely associated. Anytime we remove part of the body it is a big deal. When you remove yourself from the body it is a big deal.

A healthy body is deeply connected – fitting together perfectly. If a body part starts to become detached – that is a matter of serious concern. Detached retina, a valve is detached from our heart, our hip gets detached from our leg – it affects the whole body.

But when everything is healthy and deeply connected the body can do amazing things – the Olympic athletes prove that over and over. It is a wonder and amazing to watch. Virtue and Moir winning gold in dance competition of skating was incredible!

When we are deeply connected as the body of Christ amazing things happen as well – lives get changed, God’s presence, love and truth is experienced, people find hope and healing through the Body life of Christ.  

We today are seeing people come to faith in Christ – don’t you think for a minute that is all because of a single individual – it is the body of Christ working together in a healthy way – each part did its special work – God is glorified and all heaven rejoices and people find hope and eternal life.

Conclusion

When people come to church – people are simply wanting deep in their hearts to say – can I meet God?

  • So we gather to hear teaching of the bible –
  • we pray –
  • we remember the Lord’s sacrifice for our sins as we break bread and drink the cup.  

Everyone of us these 3 practices are good, right and needed. But just like a four legged table we must have one other spiritual practise in our life – doing life together.

But I don’t want to – my family matters, my work matters, my buddies at the club matters – beside these people are so not like me –

May we ask God to do one thing in our lives – fill our hearts with Christ-like love. The supreme mark of the life of Jesus Christ within a Christian is love.  

Jesus speaks to us all:

This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. (John 15:12, NLT)

This is the unifying force that helps us as the church to carry out its purposes in the world. This is our one strategy – our one weapon our one force our one agenda. This love will peel away our conceit toward others. This love will be tenderhearted and forgiving. This love will lead us to live holy lives, seek God’s glory and be a witness to Christ.

This love will make our connections sacred. We will experience God more deeply as we devote ourselves to a common life in Christ – where we are present – where we give and encourage, teach and help – where we will have to practise patience, grace and forgiveness…but ultimately these sacred connections will grow great souls and we are the church as God intended…

 

The Heart of Marriage

[This message was delivered by Pastor Brent at River of Life Church]

“Happy marriages are based on deep friendship…” (John Gottman)

Introduction

Last week we began a new series called Connect.  We want to look at building deep relationships in the way that God intended.  We started our series by looking at Friendship and this week we are going to move into the area of Marriage.  I want to say up front that marriage is always a topic that is difficult to speak on because no one really has a perfect marriage. But that gives me confidence that because we are imperfect, every marriage can thus improve.

If you’re here today and you’re not married, I want to say two things. One day you might be, so you can still learn something.  More significantly though, marriage is used by Paul as a symbol of Christ’s relationship with the church and as you know, the ‘church’ is the people — you and me.  The more we learn about God’s view of marriage, the more we learn about the kind of relationship he wants to have with us — corporately and individually.  So whenever you hear a marriage sermon — look for the nuggets that will help you build your character and look at it as an opportunity to learn more about central image God uses for his relationship with us as a church.  

The first thing we need to ask in our particular culture is simply:

Why Marriage?

“A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” (Ephesians 5:31, NLT)

Today more and more people are choosing to not get married. To simply cohabitate and hope it works out.  I understand the simplicity of this choice.  It avoids all the problems of dealing with family and wedding planning.  It saves a lot of money. The average wedding today could be a good down payment on a house.  All of these are great supporting arguments but the main reason, the heart of the problem with marriage for many people is that there is no guarantee that the relationship will work.  People have been pummelled into a stuper watching marriage after marriage fail all around them.  Often it was their parents marriage – either it failed in divorce or just failed while they continued on together.  I think we have all see that.  For many all of this adds up to just living together to test the waters.  

But here is the big problem.  It doesn’t really test the waters. It’s like when someone who has a puppy says to a new parent: “having a puppy is the basically the same as having a baby.”  Only people who have never had a baby could agree to that comment.  There are lot of similarities — but it is really not the same and many levels.    

Future Love

…she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. (Malachi 2:14b, NIV)

I want to explain the biggest difference between living together and marriage from a biblical point of view.  God created us in a certain way and then gave us some guidelines to live by so that we could live life abundantly — not miserable or unfulfilled.  This includes marriage. 

The first thing different about cohabitation and marriage is simply this, cohabitation is all about what I know today — I love you right now and I want to be with you right now.  Marriage is a certainly based on my love today but it is also a promise about future love.  That I will demonstrate love toward my beloved in the yet unknown future.  

 Tim Keller says it this way in his book, The meaning of Marriage:

In so many cases, when one person says to another, “I love you, but let’s not ruin it by getting married,” that person really means, “I don’t love you enough to close off all my options. I don’t love you enough to give myself to you that thoroughly.” To say, “I don’t need a piece of paper to love you” is basically to say, “My love for you has not reached the marriage level.” (Keller, p. 70)

That sounds a bit harsh, but something true resonates in me when Keller says: “I don’t love you enough not to keep my options open”.  

In the Bible, the commitment of marriage is called a covenant.  It’s more than a promise, it is promise with consequences.  In the ancient times we read Abraham walking into a spot that had a chopped up animal scattered around him and God met him there and “cut a covenant” with Abraham. The scene is one of a self-imprecation.  It’s as if the covenant-maker were saying “may I be as this animal if I break my promise”.  

Needless to say, we don’t do that kind of thing now, but this is the background for the biblical idea of covenant. It basically is saying “I hope bad things happen to me if I don’t keep my word.”  It’s reciprocal, of course.  We see that throughout Israel’s history when they break their covenant with God. When that happens they need to be reconciled to God.  They need to turn away from the things they were doing and act in a way that showed they loved God before anything else.

This is the kind of promise that creates a strong foundation to build a relationship.  It’s not everything.  Lots of people have made those promises and not followed through.  But it starts with a promise.  

I wonder what God would have said if after a few miles on his journey and still with no heir, Abraham said to God: “I wish I never covenanted with you.”  The thing is, we don’t have to say it out loud. We just have to live it.

Marriage starts with a promise but it doesn’t end there.  Bob Goff likes to say: “Love Does” but it also grows.  The Greek had four words to describe different kinds of love ranging from desire, friendship, affection, and sacrificial love.  We always have these four loves in us — but we all know in the vast majority of cases, it gets started with desire for each other. But if it just stayed there, the relationship will fail.  It was psychologist John Gottman who said: ““Happy marriages are based on deep friendship…” and this is true.  Desire is important but the other loves are what keeps things getting better and deeper.  After a while, you can’t even imagine life without the other.

The Covenant commitment is the fertile soil that allows trust and friendship to take root and for the sacrificial love — Agape love — to grow and bear fruit in our marriages.  It starts with a promise, but it ends with an entanglement of identity and an understanding of the deepest kind of love. When another person knows you completely — warts and all — and loves you still and freely gives themselves to you.  

Some people will say that marriage is just a piece of paper — but that is just not accurate.  It is a piece of paper that holds a binding promise about an unknown future.  A promise of future love.  It won’t be the same combination of four Greek loves – ερος, φιλος, στοργη, & αγαπη — and we celebrate that the quality and essence of that love will be matured and even more wonderful — but it is a promise just the same.

One of the things that Paul says about Marriage that I think anyone who is married can readily agree with is that it is a mystery.  The reason why it it is compared to God’s relationship to the church, the depth of meaning that brings to our human relationships. The deep-meaning of marriage is indeed a mystery.  What is not a mystery is what we must do to create healthy loving marriages.  John Gottman wrote a book a few years ago called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  He took the view that he wanted to study happy marriages to understand what they had in common rather than study bad marriages to see what is wrong.  His idea was that it is better to do what is right than to avoid doing what is wrong. You can avoid the worst mistakes of a bad relationship and still have a bad relationship.  But if you employ the principles of a happy marriage — you can improve your time together and increase your possibilities for happiness.

You can buy his book to get the full scoop — and I would highly recommend everyone who is married to read it.  But I just want to compact them together and give a very brief practical ideas to make marriage stronger and happier.

Puzzle Pieces

This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband. (Ephesians 5:32, 33, The Message)

 

  • Kɴᴏᴡ Eᴀᴄʜ Oᴛʜᴇʀ

 

The first thing is to know each other.  What I mean by this is that you need to create mental space for your beloved.

  1. What is the favourite colour?  
  2. Who is their best friend?  
  3. What is their happiest childhood memory?
  4. What is their favourite movie?
  5. What is the favourite song?
  6. Who at their work is driving them crazy right now?  
  7. What music are they listening to right now?

Gottman has a lot more questions and in the book he has a 20 Questions game to play with your spouse to learn more about them.  More importantly, the number one key for making conversation with a stranger, he says is also important for relationship building in marriage.  What is that key?  Ask open ended questions.  Don’t ask questions that have a yes or no answer.  Ask questions that allow the other person to talk.  Talk and listen.  Know each other.  Don’t stop learning.  

As you learn more about each other, think of the ways you admire and are inspired by your spouse.  Everyone who has been married for more than 5 minutes can list the annoying things.  But fixating on that is a killer.  Instead focus on areas of appreciation and admiration.  The other things will come naturally 🙂  

When you keep those positives close to your heart, your appreciation comes through in your words and mostly in your tone because your heart is moved and you actually get to a place where you can put your own pride on hold and allow that person to influence your decisions and the way you look at things.   

 

  • Dᴇᴀʟ Wɪᴛʜ Iᴛ

 

If the first thing is to know each other, the second is to deal with problems that can be fixed.  There are a lot of things in any relationship that need to be worked on.  But you can work on you.  If leaving the toilet seat up or leaving the cap off the toothpaste is an annoyance — fix it.  If interrupting your spouse bothers them, stop doing that.  Learn what the problems are, how you are contributing to them, and work on that.  Apologize when you don’t get it right and reaffirm your desire to bring them joy. Also, if those thing bother you, you need to ask yourself why it bothers you so much?  What is it about you that makes those things so annoying.

The main thing is to solve the problems that can be solved. For the problems that are deeper, there is a need to allow God’s grace to change us.  We need to be forgivers and practice grace in our lives with each other. There will always be things that annoy us about others.  I want you to start seeing that as a gift because our ultimate goal in life is to be like Christ and that starts by being gracious to one another.  

When we do not live as gracious people — as forgivers — bitterness takes root in us and from that comes contempt.  Contempt is a cancer that destroys a marriage.  It is bitterness on steroids and sadly it is alive and well in marriages everywhere.  It can be fixed if caught early but most of the time it is left to fester and grow and eventually someone quits.

 

  • Wᴇ ɴᴏᴛ Mᴇ

 

Finally, we need to allow the entanglement that I spoke of earlier to actually have a place in our thinking.  The idea of “two becoming one” is something we need to practice in our thinking and planning and doing.  Life as a married person is not the same as a single person.  You are an individual and you have dreams and hopes, but you are no longer alone in those.  You need to share those and allow them to be both cherished and challenged — because there is no “me” just “we” when it comes to marriage.  

Each of these practical points are clearly seen in God’s relationship with his church.  We are connected to him and we are called to be of one mind in the church.  We are give guidelines to live our lives and a helper to empower us but we need to do the work.  God isn’t going to do it all himself.  We need to practice spiritual disciplines and exercise our faith so we grow in Christ.  We need to know God more.  We may not be able to ask God open ended questions, but we can hear from him in his word and his Spirit continues to speak to us.  

When we take these practical steps in our marriages we grow together in love and unity and ultimately we experience greater fulfillment in our lives.

Ephesians 5 shows us the deep connection of marriage relationship and God’s relationship with his church.  Let us listen to the opening verse of Ephesians chapter 5:  

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.  Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. (Ephesians 5:1–2, NLT)

Husbands and wives – Imitate God in everything you do, because you are his dear children — live a life filled with love.

 

Friendship

[Brent Hudson gave this message to River of Life Church to start the new series]

Becoming the friend you want to have

Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. (John 15:15b, NLT)

Today we begin a new series called Connect. Over the next five weeks we are going to be looking into building deep relationships in keeping with God’s intentions for us to experience an abundant life in Christ.

As we begin, our first message is on Friendship. Friendship is a good place to start because most other relationships in our lives have trajectories toward friendship. Whether in marriage, or church, or family or where ever, one sign that a relationship is moving forward well is that you consider yourselves friends.

John 15:13-17 is as good a place as any to anchor our thoughts.

In that passage, Jesus calls his disciples friends and he differentiates that from those who are just servants. The word “Lord” has a synonym in our word “Master” and so definition if we call Jesus “Lord” we are calling ourselves servants. But Jesus defines the relationship he had with the 12 as more than that — they were his friends. They were in many ways elevated from disciples and followers to friends but Jesus defined that friendship by doing what he commanded and love one another.

The fact that this narrative exists in the Bible just gives voice to the importance of friendship to Jesus. By extension, friendship is important to us as well. Not just friendship with Jesus which has eternal significance but regular, ordinary friendship is something that we need to look at as a social necessity — God made us to experience friendship.

That is why the starting point of this message is that

Friendship is Important

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18a, NLT)

Someone may read the Genesis 2.18 passage and say “wait a minute, that’s about marriage” but I would disagree. The solution for the problem was the creation of Eve and the first couple of the biblical narrative, but the problem is simply this: “it is not good for the man to be alone” and the word for “the man” is Adam which in Hebrew means human being or as various Hebrew scholars like to translate: earthling because he was formed ‘hadamah’ from the earth. My point here is that this is not just a male situation or a particular man – Adam – situation — it is an earthling situation. We need companionship. We need friendship.

There have been a great many studies done on the matter of happiness and at this point there is some commonality among the data. One author has state quite clearly that the core factors of happiness have been identified and they do not correlate to having lots of money or it being complicated. They as follows:

1. Number of friends
2. Closeness of friends
3. Closeness of family
4. Good relationships with co-workers & neighbours.

Researchers have gone so far as to say these 4 elements explain over 70% of personal happiness. (Murray & Peacock, 1996). Of course we know now that our very DNA become unravelled by stress and how supportive social networks and compassionate friendships actually reverse the damage (Stress Damage / Sapolsky ).

Whether through psychological surveys, analyzing the telomeres of our DNA, or reading the creation narrative — the evidence is very clear — Friendship is important – even perhaps essential for a happy life.

Of course, this is not complicated and we probably already knew that but that just begs the question — how are we doing in the area of friendship? Most of us get a bit introspective at this point because we may not have that many deep friendships. The reason for this is obvious as well.

Friendship is hard

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13, NLT)

There is a reason that I chose John 15:13 for this particular point. Look at what underpins Jesus’ friendship with us — sacrifice. In order to have deep friendships — friendships marked by love — it is going to take effort. We will need to work on it.

Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst has done a study showing that we lose 50% of the people in our social network every 7 years and that our close friends are drawn from these social networks. In other words, half of the people you could develop friendships with will be gone in 7 years because the networks shift. People move, jobs change, a multitude of things that change the intersection of our lives with others. Friendships survive beyond the immediate social network — but his research shows quite conclusively that it is from that social network that friendships develop.

It was in 1970 that futurist Alvin Toffler wrote his famous “Future Shock”. In that book he warned that future generations would need to learn to accept “ad hoc” friendships. Lewis Smedes commented about these friendships that were built on the transient projects and tasks that we share for a while with others: they are not built on human relations, but on job relations.

Smedes writes:

In the mobile life of the future, no job or project will last long for anyone, and friendships based on them will last no longer. As we consume disposable products, we will increasingly have to settle for disposable friendships. (Lewis Smedes)

I think Smedes saw the problem with Toffler’s vision — not that it would be incorrect of the future but that it was troublesome from a human point of view.

Friendships require effort to create and maintain when life is neutral — but Genesis 3 is pretty clear that life is not neutral. Weeds grow and sin abounds in our world. The effort of friendship is not finding people you like it is accepting that the people you like are imperfect humans just like you.

My grandmother told me a wonderful truth when I was a teenager “to have a friend, be a friend” — I thought she was so wise. You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that her learned wisdom was actually a well-worn aphorism that had become almost cliche. Yet, it was and continues to be — for me — sage advice. Sometimes the cliches are correct.

The primary way to have good friendships is to be a good friend.
Since…

Friendship is biblical

…let’s look at two stories from the Old Testament about Friendship. One that is rarely remembered and other that has become a heroic refrain.

Job’s friends were unwise — they gave bad advice. Yes, that perhaps is a good lesson to learn from the bible — good friends can give bad advice. Job’s friends were just that. Let read a passage from Job:

11 When three of Job’s friends heard of the tragedy he had suffered, they got together and traveled from their homes to comfort and console him. Their names were Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. 12 When they saw Job from a distance, they scarcely recognized him. Wailing loudly, they tore their robes and threw dust into the air over their heads to show their grief. 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights. No one said a word to Job, for they saw that his suffering was too great for words. (Job 2:11–13, NLT)

That is one of those passages that we almost need to just sit and think about for a minute. When I first read this, I just trudged on ahead in the story. I was a young man with lots of friends and a busy life. Now as an older man, I couldn’t help but think how rare such friends are in life. Walking miles to meet their friend and then sitting with him 7 days and 7 nights not saying a word — just offering their support and presence. The depth of that kind of friendship strikes me now. For all their faults, it is not surprising that Job interceded for his friends later in the story. They clearly loved him. They just were not that wise in their advice. I think we all yearn to have friends like that. Some here are blessed to have friends like this. . .friends who may say unhelpful things — but they love enough to show up to be with you — they are actually there.

The second story is from the book of Ruth where we see the devotion of Ruth to Naomi.

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. 17 Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!” (Ruth 1:16–17, NLT)

This story is often cast in religious tones — I have done this myself — but first and foremost it is a story of friendship between two women. Young and older. Both experiencing hardship and heartbreak and bound together through commitment to one another. They both put the other first. Naomi wanted Ruth to go and find a life not get dragged down by Naomi’s loss and disadvantage. Ruth pleads to stay — she declares her commitment to God and an enduring devotion and friendship to Naomi.

Friendships are important. Friendships are hard. The Bible teaches us that friendship are also profound and life-changing. I want to give three things to do to deepen the friendships in your life. But first let me just say that if you feel you don’t have friends, you need to seek someone out who you would like to be friends with and just ask them to be your friend. If that sounds awkward, that’s because it is. But it worked as kindergarten kids and it works today.

If you want to have a friend, you need to seek one out. You can be a bit more refined in your words — you can start a book club and invite some people you would like to know better. You can ask someone to go for a coffee or to come to your place for tea and conversation. This was all natural when I was a little kid. My mom would have tea or coffee with neighbours on our street all the time. My mom’s best friend to this day is a woman who lived down the street from us when I was five years old. My mom is now in Ontario and her friend lives in the same house in Fredericton. A simple tea-time can lead to a life-time friendship. But even that requires some effort.  Here are three things to remember about being a good friend:

Listen. From time to time just stop talking and listen. It’s amazing how interesting your friends can be. The stories they share and the thoughts they are having are the stuff on which friendships are built. Put your phone away. Don’t be busy with other thoughts. Be present. For all their faults, Job’s friends made an effort to show up and they just sat there because there were no words for them to say. The Bible tells us we should be quick to listen (Js 1:19) and that is still primary advice for us today. And remember, it doesn’t matter if your listening if the other person doesn’t think you are. You may think you can multi-task with your phone and listen — but if you’re building friendships, put the phone away and just listen.

Be gracious. Job teaches us that when friends mess up, the best response is to be gracious and merciful. No friendship will ever last if you are not willing to forgive an offense and accept people for who they are.  Good friends can give bad advice, behave poorly, and cause us hurt. We can be that person too.  Friendships that allow for grace can grow and last. Friendships that don’t have grace will inevitably fail.

Be authentic
Ronald Sharp, an English professor at Vassar College who co-edited the Norton Anthology of Friendship writes:

“Treating friends like investments or commodities is anathema to the whole idea of friendship. It’s not about what someone can do for you, it’s who and what the two of you become in each other’s presence.”

He goes on:

“People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”

For Sharp, friends are people you take the time to understand and allow to understand you.

All of this takes time. All of this takes effort.

The question that remains for us:

Are you willing to exert the effort
that true friendship demands?

Our Sin – Jarvis Lepper at BC

[These are the notes used by the speaker.  It is not a complete manuscript or formatted as prose.]

Nehemiah 13:17-18, 25a (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:17 |

“It’s interesting that Christians are the only ones in the worldviews around us that claim our transformation is supernatural.” –Ravi Zacharias)

Introduction

Today I am speaking about a builder of walls.  And I am not talking about the other builder of walls to the south of the border.  I am talking about a person by the name of Nehemiah.

Review

In the fifth century, Nehemiah served as a cupbearer for king Artaxerxes1 (sampled the kings’ drink to make sure it was safe) in Susa/Iran/250 km (1:11)

Being a cupbearer naturally put Nehemiah in a position to        speak to the king.

And one day Nehemiah had to speak to the king about something really important.

Nehemiah heard about the physical state of Jerusalem; he heard about its broken walls.

And this destruction broke Nehemiah’s heart, so he asked the king for permission to return to Jerusalem to rebuilt and the king granted him permission.

When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, he surveyed the entire city (Nehemiah 2:12-15).

Then, he enlisted the help of the people to repair the broken walls (52 days, 6:15).

And the walls were not only restored, but eventually spiritual lives were restored.

You know the people of Israel made a vow to change their lives with respect the temple, marriage and the Sabbath (Nehemiah 10).

Eventually the people of God had a joyful dedication of the wall (12:43).

The author of Nehemiah had every chance to finish on this high note.

But everything falls apart in chapter 13.

T.S. Elliot would say this story does “not end with a bang, but a whimper.”

Because of this, I seriously doubt that Hollywood would ever make a movie about Nehemiah.

Hollywood wants their happy endings.

What happened?

Nehemiah left Jerusalem, after 12 years, to ask King Artaxerxes permission to serve longer in Jerusalem.

Eventually Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem and he saw that the Jewish people let the world invade their lives.

They failed to live holy lives with respect to the temple, the Sabbath and marriage.

They broke their vows (Nehemiah 10); they went back to their old ways.

Temple: Tobiah, a non-Jew (2:19, 13:4) operated within the temple.

Sabbath: The Jewish people were working on the Sabbath (13:15-16).

Marriage: Jewish men married non-Jews (13:23-29).

The people of Jerusalem rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.

But the moral walls broke down.

There is no happy ending.

But the story is real.

And we must ask what we can learn from this gloomy story?

Read chapter 13…

What do we learn from chapter 13?

We learn that we have to admit our ongoing struggles.

How do we admit to ongoing struggles?

The Jewish men did not admit their sin, marrying non-Jews

(vv. 23-29, cf. 2 Corinthians 6:14).

In response, Nehemiah not only confronted those who married non-believers, but he hit them and pulled their hair out.

“So I confronted them [Israelites] and called down curses on them. I beat some of them and pulled out their hair…” (Nehemiah 13:25a, NLT)

When there is sin, we cannot have a Nehemiah response.

Instead, we should encourage other believers to admit their sin to God (cf. Psalm 41:4).

How do we admit our ongoing struggles?

There are two aspects to admitting our sin to God:

The Hard News: We must admit how sinful we are.

The Bible says, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Romans 3:23; cf. Nehemiah 13:17-18a).

We have all sinned.

Because of this reality, we must admit our sin to God

Nehemiah reminded the Jewish people they have fallen short with the Sabbath.

And he warned them that God brought destruction on their ancestors when they didn’t observe the Sabbath (vv. 17-18a, cf. Jeremiah 17:19-27).

Even with the talk about judgment/reminded about sin, the people of God did not admit their sin of breaking the Sabbath.

We often don’t admit our sin.

  1. We don’t admit our sin because there is pleasure in sin/hold on.

The Bible says, we “enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25).

There is pleasure in sin, but it’s for a season; it is fleeting; it’s short-lived.

You can have a good time with drugs, with…

But this pleasure comes to an end; there is emptiness to it.

Even with emptiness, we sometimes won’t admit our sin, because we want the pleasure of sin.

  1. We don’t admit our sin because we think sin is over there. We think sin is over in that situation; in that person; in that country. So often we spend time focusing on the sin of other people.

Someone once said, “We tend to be very good lawyers when it comes to our own mistakes, but very good judges when it comes to the mistakes of others.”

What would the world look like if we all spent our energy confessing our own sin rather than the sins of others?

Often we think sin is over in that person, in that country.

But Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil isn’t just over there, in that person, in that country.

The line of evil runs right down the middle of our hearts.

Often we don’t admit sin because we think it’s over there and that we are basically good.

We are not basically good.

That premise is wrong.

We are sinners; “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10)

F.F. Bruce wrote,

“In the eyes of Christ, a person confessing sin is nearer to true goodness than a person boasting of [their] goodness.”

Story of two brothers: “As you all know, the departed stole and cheated. However, compared to his brother, he was a saint.”

  1. We don’t admit sin because we trivialize our sin.

“Oh its no big deal, so I don’t need to admit it.”

What are some examples of trivializing sin?

  1. a) When someone sins, we often say, “Well, you’re only human.”

This cliché frees us from admitting that we have sinned.

  1. b) One Halloween, some dress up as demons or seductive fairytale characters.

When we do this, we are trivializing these realities.

We are treating these realities as though as though they are no big deal.

And we think since they are not a big deal, we don’t need to admit this sin.

  1. c) We even see this trivializing with our food names.

Philosopher, Alvin Plantinga said “the word “sin” finds its home mostly on dessert menus: “Peanut Butter Binge” and “Sinful Chocolate.”

We should never trivialize sin.

Because all sin breaks the heart of God.

And Jesus died for all sin.

  1. We don’t admit sin because we think truth does not exist.

The Bara Research Group discovered that 75% of all people deny the existence of absolute truth.

Only 8% of teenagers acknowledge there is truth.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky once observed when there is no truth, “the fences of morality area easily plowed over.”

If we don’t think there is truth, we will chase anything and we will think there is nothing to admit.

  1. We don’t admit sin because we have doubts about certain sins in the Bible.

When certain sins are brought up in our discussions, sometimes we ask the question from Genesis 2: Did God really say that?

Doubts creep in our minds about morality in the Bible .

Did God really say I need to keep the Sabbath?

Did God really say that I need to honor marriage?

Did God really say to honor the church?

Did God really say these things?

 

If there are doubts, study God’s word in context, listen to credible scholars.

Often from this, there are good answers that will help us move from doubt to faith.

When we don’t doubt the Bible’s morality, this will help us to admit our sin.

 

  1. We don’t admit sin because we don’t want others to see our sin.

We need to stop pretending everything is okay and admit our sin.

Example with children: quick to confess

A preacher wrote, “One of the by-products of true faith is the freedom to honestly acknowledge our weakness…rather than…conceal it.”

 

 

 

 

  1. We don’t admit sin because we think we should just focus on love.

I remember seeing Billy Graham’s first crusade poster, “A sin smashing week.”

The Christian life is not all about holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

Someone tweeted this week, “Pastors are not cooks, but physicians and therefore should not aim to delight the palate, but to heal the patient.”

 

  1. We don’t admit sin because we are busy majoring on the minors (i.e. entertainment, luxuries).

You know in the summer time, are we more obsessed with taking care of our lawn (our wall) than our character?

Are we more concerned about our house, than helping the poor? (The Isralites)

Gordon MacDonald wrote, “Don’t spend your life becoming very good at something that doesn’t matter.”

 

We don’t admit our sin for various reasons.

In other words, we often handle sin the wrong way.

Our passage was never about the wall.

The people of God handled sin the wrong way.

The people of God refused to admit their sin (cf. temple, Sabbath, marriage).

Now Nehemiah tried to forcefully change the people’s response, but he could not change their hearts.

I heard someone say once, “You can change laws, but you can’t legislate people’s hearts.”

 

So there is hard news: we must admit how sinful we are

But there is good news: We get to admit how sinful we are!

When we come to Jesus and admit our sin, we are forgiven, we became a child of God, we are justified.

Sir Walter Scott said the two most important words in the English language are, “not guilty.!”

And when we are “not guilty,” we are no longer condemned!

The Bible says, “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1; cf. Nehemiah 13:22b).

The CEV translation says, “If you belong to Christ Jesus, you wont be punished.”

In Nehemiah 13:22b, we see that Nehemiah gets to admit his sinfulness.

“Show mercy to me.”

 

We get to admit how sinful we are!

Being aware of God’s love/grace compels us to admit how sinful we are.

 

Do you realize how much God loves us?

He loves you when your mind denies it.

He loves you when your emotions don’t feel it.

Do you believe God loves you this moment “as you are and not as you should be?”

Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote, “God does not love some ideal person, but rather humans just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.”

When we realize God loves us, we realize we get to admit our sin!

 

When we come to God and admit our sin, God will build a people who love him and loves what he loves.

We see this spiritual building project in 1 Peter 2:4a, 5a.

“You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple…And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple.”

We are God’s building project.

God is building a people who love him and love what he loves!

Are you loving God; are you desiring him; are you placing him

first?

Are you loving what he loves? (i.e. the poor, Harvest House/1400, 1in 7 children go to school hungry)

  • Often we don’t love God or love what God loves.

Instead we want to live in our comfort zones.

Dr. Craig Evans, my professor, describes what our lifestyle looks when we are living comfortably, “I find western Christians are very soft, cheese cake Christians. Soft and sweet. And melt under the least bit of adversity.”

 

Examples of our comfortable lifestyle:

  1. There are people into the health and wealth prosperity gospel.

And they will say that if you have enough faith you will enter the good life, the comfortable life.

I often hear, “If you have enough faith, you won’t suffer, you will be healed.”

Christ prayed in faith that his suffering be removed, but he was crucified.

Did Jesus not have enough faith?

There was a lady that said to a pastor, “I was born blind. I don’t mind being blind, but I have some well meaning friends who tell me that if I had more faith I could be healed.”

The pastor asked her, “Tell me, do you carry one of those white canes?”

“Yes I do,” she replied.

“Then the next time someone says that, hit them over the head with the cane. Then tell them, ‘If you had more faith, that wouldn’t hurt.’”

Sounds like a Nehemiah response J

 

  1. We want the grace of the cross, but not the life long response of taking up our cross.

Billy Graham, who turns 100 this year on November 7 said, “We have taken away the cross and substituted cushions.”

  1. We often give a half-hearted response to helping others in need.

I often hear, “I did my good deed for today” as if they’re off the hook to do anything else.

When we have this mentality, we will often say no to the things God loves.

  1. We also say, “I am too old to do these things.”

When we say we are too old, we say no to things God loves.

Pastor Craig Groeschel said, “If you’re not dead…you’re not done.”

 

Are you loving God?

Are you loving what he loves?

Or is comfort pulling you from this?

Someone wrote that, “Comfort is the enemy of achievement.”

If we only want to stay comfortable, the Christian witness in the west will continue to diminish and be less important.

And the future of the church will be more and more in the developing world; not here in the west.

Conclusion

“Let’s land this plane…” (Robin Mark, “When It’s All Been Said and Done”).

Malcolm Muggeridge was a Christian journalist, and when he graduated from Cambridge, he moved to India (Dave Morehouse) to teach English.

In his early twenties, he strolled down to the nearby river where bathing was common in India.

In those early evening hours, Muggeridge’s eye spotted the silhouette of a woman bathing on the other side.

His heart began to pound with what he called, “wild unreasonableness.”

Suddenly seized by his lustful imagination, he lunged into the water and crossed the river.

After he splashed over to the other side, he emerged face to face with an exposed woman.

And Muggeridge almost fainted.

Before him was a deformed, toothless woman who was wracked with leprosy.

Her eye-sockets were eroded and her fingers were stumpy.

Muggerridge threw himself back into the water, and drifted in the stream, shocked over the encounter.

Muggeridge admitted that the real shock that morning was not the leper.

Rather, it was the condition of his own heart.

Muggeridge said, “The diseases of the body is not nearly as hideous and grotesque as the disease in our hearts.”

One day a newspaper posed this question.

“What is wrong with the world?

G.K. Chesterton wrote a brief letter in response.

“Dear Sir. I am. Sincerely Yours.”

What is the problem with the world?

There is darkness in all of our hearts.

J.J. John stated, “The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”

Billy Graham also said with conviction, “…the world is in such terrible danger right now. It’s not dangerous so much because we have atomic bombs, it’s dangerous because of the human hearts in back of the bombs, filled with envy and hate and strife and grief and lust and all the other things that could pull the trigger.”

This darkness in our hearts pulls us back to our old ways like the Israelite’s in Nehemiah’s day .

We follow what is popular than what is right.

We compromise.

If this is you today, education will not help, being self-reflective wont help, having rules will not help.

None of these things will change the heart.

The solution is (first step) admitting our sin/love of Jesus

I spend time working with people who are rejected, who are broken, who are hurt by addictions.

I know the answer to this problem lies not in knowledge or following rules, but in transformed hearts.

And this transformed heart begins with admitting our sin

This is the first part of repentance.

And we should have a lifelong practice of admitting our sin.

Then, take action!

Have you been skipping church? Start back.

Have you been breaking the Sabbath? Turn from the business and turn toward God.

Have you gotten away from God’s plan for marriage? Put God at the center.

Has your daily devotional life fallen away? Begin it as once.

J.I. Packer said that cars need periodic checkups.

And the Christian needs regular checkups to remove sin.

We need to open the rooms of our heart that have sin.
Then, we need to admit our sin.Then, we need to clean out our rooms with Jesus’ help.

Have you ever had a spiritual check up?

 

Prayer

Lord, thank you for being in the heart renewal business. I think you for promising to give your people a new heart. Thank you for doing this very thing in us.

Lord, we believe that we are new creation. The old has indeed passed away. Yet, a remnant of the old remains in and around us as we wait for the fullness of your kingdom. So I ask you to continue to renew our hearts. Where there is any bit of hardness, soften it. Where we are still inclined to resist you, help us to open our heart to you. Thank you that you are the giver of new hearts.

 

Our Fight

6 At last the wall was completed to half its height around the entire city, for the people had worked with enthusiasm.

7 But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashdodites heard that the work was going ahead and that the gaps in the wall of Jerusalem were being repaired, they were furious. 8 They all made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem and throw us into confusion. 9 But we prayed to our God and guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves.

10 Then the people of Judah began to complain, “The workers are getting tired, and there is so much rubble to be moved. We will never be able to build the wall by ourselves.”

11 Meanwhile, our enemies were saying, “Before they know what’s happening, we will swoop down on them and kill them and end their work.”

12 The Jews who lived near the enemy came and told us again and again, “They will come from all directions and attack us!” 13 So I placed armed guards behind the lowest parts of the wall in the exposed areas. I stationed the people to stand guard by families, armed with swords, spears, and bows.

14 Then as I looked over the situation, I called together the nobles and the rest of the people and said to them, “Don’t be afraid of the enemy! Remember the Lord, who is great and glorious, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes!”

15 When our enemies heard that we knew of their plans and that God had frustrated them, we all returned to our work on the wall. 16 But from then on, only half my men worked while the other half stood guard with spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. The leaders stationed themselves behind the people of Judah 17 who were building the wall. The laborers carried on their work with one hand supporting their load and one hand holding a weapon. 18 All the builders had a sword belted to their side. The trumpeter stayed with me to sound the alarm.

19 Then I explained to the nobles and officials and all the people, “The work is very spread out, and we are widely separated from each other along the wall. 20 When you hear the blast of the trumpet, rush to wherever it is sounding. Then our God will fight for us!”

Introduction:

As we continue to discover how God wants to make a fresh start in our lives we now must ask the question – How do we stand against the pressure to quit?

Checking out is easy. There is less stress. And it is true that wisdom is needed when to say NO and when to persist and just GO!

Even if you are not a person of faith – we all find common ground in the observation that the secret of success is to simply outlast your critics.

I love pithy sayings! One of the earliest phrases I learned was an inspirational quote attributed to Vince Lombardi – famous coach of Green Bay Packers, “Quitters never win and Winners never quit!”

When he was seven years old, his family was forced out of their home on a legal technicality, and he had to work to help support them. At age nine, his mother died. At 22, he lost his job as a store clerk. He wanted to go to law school, but his education wasn’t good enough. At 23, he went into debt to become a partner in a small store. At 26, his business partner died, leaving him a huge debt that took years to repay. At 28, after courting a girl for four years, he asked her to marry him. She said no. At 37, on his third try he was elected to Congress, but two years later, he failed to be reelected. At 41, his four-year-old son died. At 45, he ran for the Senate and lost. At 47, he failed as the vice-presidential candidate. At 49, he ran for the Senate again, and lost. At 51, he was elected president of the United States. His name was Abraham Lincoln, a man many consider the greatest leader the country of the United States ever had. Some people get all the breaks.

How do we stand against the pressure to quit

… fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes… Then our God will fight for us!” (Nehemiah 4:14b, 20b, NLT)

The Story in Nehemiah is about the Jewish people rebuilding the broken the walls of Jerusalem. At a deeper level it is about restoring what God had intended for the people of Israel. But the conditions for the rebuilding project was fraught with difficulties and opposition.  

And in this story we see Nehemiah leading people who are facing the pressure to quit. What we see in this story is how Nehemiah led the people to fight; to battle through as they continued to build.

And we need to learn from this story in God’s Word how do we fight against the pressures that overwhelm us, how do we battle as we continue to build into our lives a faith in Christ that changes us from the inside out.

The first thing we learn in the inevitable reality of…

Hitting the Wall
Fear and fatigue can bring us to the quitting point.

At last the wall was completed to half its height around the entire city… then the people of Judah began to complain (Nehemiah 4:6,10, NLT)

The halfway point is a dangerous time for a lot of us. In this story we heard there had been plenty of enthusiasm. But now there was opposition. The old enemies of the Jewish people did not want them to emerge and re-establish themselves.

Now that the wall was half way built – the success they achieved activated more resistance. That is true at a human level and at a spiritual level.

When we carry out God’s will we must expect opposition. Jesus spoke of this opposition reality. Sermon on the Mount – God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Matthew 5:11

This opposition is rooted in the spiritual reality of Satan and the forces of darkness. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:11

What are the things that are opposing you – bringing you fear right now? Failure, shame, looking foolish, others backing away, critics, unexpected problems, spiritual warfare?

And the other factor when you get halfway in the work you believe God is calling you to do is tiredness. Listen to what is recorded in this story.  Then the people of Judah began to complain, “The workers are getting tired, and there is so much rubble to be moved. We will never be able to build the wall by ourselves.” Nehemiah 4:10

The rocks they were moving were huge when Brent and I were talking about this message. It is understandable that fatigue set in.

Boulder size tedium, tests, trials all tire us out. We are facing challenges that are not easily solved. We are fragile and we in our pride we overestimate our abilities and don’t want to ask for help. Where are you getting weary? What is contributing to your physical, mental and spiritual fatigue?

Enemies about – weariness within. Fear and Fatigue  makes us hit the wall…Nehemiah faced Psychological warfare – physical threats – personal discouragement. It would have been easy for him to say…

  • I am done.
  • I am finished
  • It is time to quit

When you commit to live God’s way we have to face a simple reality of life and the path of faith –

When you hit the halfway point, brace yourself for troubles and commit yourself to continue.

Let us not get surprised when faith, obedience to the way of Christ gets hard. Let us not think that difficulties means God is not in it. Every single advance in Nehemiah’s mission is met by opposition, and there’s trouble. Every time he makes a little headway, there is more trouble.

I don’t know about you, but there’s a part of me that thinks: Life ought to be easy. If I try to do a good thing, I ought to get credit for it, and life ought to be easy.

Someone once remarked: “No soldier ever goes into battle and says, ‘Hey! They’re shooting at me!”

Transition: But in this story of Nehemiah we also discover how we keep going, how spiritually and practically we get our…

Second Wind
God’s power and presence overcomes fear and fatigue.

Then as I looked over the situation, I called together the nobles and the rest of the people and said to them, “Don’t be afraid of the enemy! Remember the Lord, who is great and glorious, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes!”… then our God will fight for us!” (Nehemiah 4:14, 20, NLT)

This source of strength for Nehemiah is another reality that we cannot avoid. To experience God transformational work in us we need to depend on God’s power and presence..

Nehemiah first and foremost depended on God. This was at the heart of Nehemiah. This dependence was demonstrated in his  prayers.

Chapter 1 – O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands, listen to my prayer!…“The people you rescued by your great power and strong hand are your servants.

Chapter 4 – “Hear us, our God, for we are being mocked. May their scoffing fall back on their own heads,

Chapter 5 –  Remember, O my God, all that I have done for these people, and bless me for it.

All throughout the bible the way of faith is one where we constantly lean into God. Every day in every way we practise the presence of God in our lives.

Hear God speak to us through his word…

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble Psalm 46:1

 

But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31

But (Christ) he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Ephesians 6:1

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13

SideBar: Dependence on God lets us see how God always uses the good to foil evil.

Author J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote in a letter:

“…evil labours with vast power and perpetual success in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.”

Chris Armstrong, “9/11, History, and the True Story”, Christian History Connection,

Dependence on God moved Nehemiah to a place of action. He rallied the people to return working on the wall. He reminded them to not let fear of the enemy distract them, and to be encouraged because the great and glorious God is with them.

But he also called them to fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes!”

Other people are depending on your spiritual choices, your faith, your love and service in the name of Christ. You are a light in their world. Giving up doesn’t just impact you but so many others around you.

So how do you and I fight and stand against the pressure to quit?

Remember that Almighty God is with us and he can renew our strength to overcome obstacles.

Shofar Moment – The Ram’s Horn – The Trumpet Blast

In the story we are told that Nehemiah gave the people these instructions – When you hear the blast of the trumpet, rush to wherever it is sounding. Then our God will fight for us! That trumpet was a ram’s horn – in Hebrew it was called a shofar.

So if you were at the wall of Jerusalem – this is what you would have heard…PLAY SHOFAR CLIP.

We don’t have ram’s horn today but we still those trumpet /shofar moments that alert to the spiritual danger, that God is with us and that we need each other.

What are trumpet moments – weekly worship, journey group, our times of reading scripture, a commitment to be a spiritual friend, a time of quiet and solitude.

Let’s have a trumpet/shofar moment right now. As Kevin comes I want to ask – If you are facing something in your life – the pressure to quit is strong – in your walk with God, in a friendship, in an attempt to reconcile, in an area of service, in your call that God is placing on your life, in your parenting, your marriage, your struggle to overcome an addiction. – raise your hand to say I need prayer – I don’t know what to pray.

Pray  – Lord I am hitting  the wall – I feel the opposition. Lord I know I am in a spiritual battle. I can’t overcome all these problems on my own. God instill within by your Holy Spirit the will to fight, to persist to persevere. To simply say in faith, “All right, God. I lean into you. I will walk with others by faith. I’ll be faithful. I won’t give up.”

At the end of the service – if you need a time of prayer Kevin/Seth will meet you at the front for a ministry time…

 

Reflection Questions (Questions are based on Nehemiah 4)

 

 

  1. Think of a time you wanted to quit because of fatigue (you had enough!) and another time you wanted to quit because your were afraid (of failure, leadership ability, etc.).  What are some differences and similarities between these experiences? 
  2. The Jews had the wall half completed when the opposition began getting serious (cf., Neh 4:7,8). Why do you think this happened then? How can we better plan for opposition in the middle of our journey? 
  3. Why do you think Nehemiah encouraged people to think of their family and neighbours as well as God? (cf., Neh 4:14)  How does this connect to Jesus teaching for us? How does thinking about God help you not to quit? How does thinking of your family and friends help you not to quit?   
  4. Nehemiah used the trumpet (shofar) to rally the people together at critical times of threat. We are better together!  What are some ways Satan tries to divide us in difficult times? What can we learn from Nehemiah 4 to help withstand Satan’s efforts against us. 
  5. Notice how the rubble was interfering with the work (Neh 4:10-12)? What types of spiritual rubble can make us want to quit? What steps will you do this week to clear the rubble for your life and push through the quitting point?

 

 

 

 

Our ‘Yes!’

What will kickstart our decision to act?

17 But now I said to them, “You know very well what trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire. Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and end this disgrace!” 18 Then I told them about how the gracious hand of God had been on me, and about my conversation with the king. They replied at once, “Yes, let’s rebuild the wall!” So they began the good work. 19 But when Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem the Arab heard of our plan, they scoffed contemptuously. “What are you doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” they asked. 20 I replied, “The God of heaven will help us succeed. We, his servants, will start rebuilding this wall. But you have no share, legal right, or historic claim in Jerusalem.” (Nehemiah 2:17–20, NLT)

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”  So quipped Mark Twain about his reality in the late 1800’s and we laugh because it is still true for us.  I think the people of Nehemiah’s day would have found some truth in it as well as they surveyed century old rubble that once marked the great protective wall of Jerusalem.  

Last week we looked at how we must face problems in our lives. We discovered that it is with a sense of humility and holy discontent — that we come to that place where we admit to our broken walls. Rather than whitewashing over them where we rationalize that our brokenness is manageable or even comfortable we come to a place, like Nehemiah, where we are weeping.

The hope we discovered last week was that when we see our broken walls, God meets us there with a real hope for a new beginning.

At the heart of God’s love for us was that Jesus went to the cross to deal with our broken walls. It was in our bleakest situation that God meets us through Jesus and deals with our greatest need, the need for a Saviour. That is the beginning of a fresh start.

Now that our heads are in the game so to speak, what next?  

Today we are continuing with the story of Nehemiah. Let’s remember we are looking at this story as type/a metaphor of our need for renewal – for deep change – for transformation – for a fresh start in our lives.

At this point in the story we see that the people respond to Nehemiah’s’ call to rebuild the wall with a resounding yes. “Yes let’s rebuild the wall.”

As we consider the fresh start God wants to do in our lives we must wrestle with our yes.

  • “Will we say yes?”
  • How does a fresh start begin with a yes?
  • What will kickstart our yes?
  • In other words what will kickstart our decision to act – to say yes?  

Yes is such a small word – but without it nothing happens. A famous poet E.E.Cummings wrote this interesting verse about YES:

“Love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds”
― E.E. Cummings

Remember the former President Obama’s campaign slogan in 2008? YES WE CAN? There was a video made with alot of stars and singers – here is a portion of the lyrics made from Obama’s speech:

 

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can.

Half-hearted
a spiritual sloth which rarely starts and easily quits.

Now that we have seen those years go by and Obama’s era is over – we may feel a tinge of cynicism and sadness and wonder if a yes that is filled with hope really does make a difference.

We live in a world of what I want to call the half-hearted yes. People in their discouragement, lack of faith, disobedience, weariness are leery of giving a full throated yes.

So instead we express a half -hearted yes…

  • Okay – if you say so.
  • Really? Haven’t we tried that before?
  • Yes until I get a better option.
  • One I have heard in the last number of years – “Whatever!”
  • A Fake Yes – A recent (2015) article in The Wall Street Journal points to new research that proves what many workers already know: employees fake a positive outlook when the boss is around, and all that fakery can be exhausting. The research, reported first in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, concluded that workers tended to put on smiles and fake happiness when higher-ups were in the room. By contrast, when workers hold meetings with peers or with lower-status employees, they tend to express themselves more honestly.

A Half hearted yes is dangerous for the Christian life. It reveals that we have given into a spiritual sloth. As it says in the teaching  – it rarely starts and easily quits.

What does spiritual sloth look like? Half-hearted people likely…

  • spend no time seeking “eternal wisdom,”
  • they say, “It’s useless to search for meaning.”
  • they never wonder if they will go to heaven.
  • “it’s not a major priority in my life to find deeper purpose.”
  • There is a denial that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.

A term used in the historical church for this condition of being half hearted was called acedia. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church defines acedia (or accidie) as “a state of restlessness and inability either to work or to pray”. This spiritual sloth leads to minimal response to ultimate matters.  

But how is this half heartedness overcome? Perhaps staring at broken walls of Jerusalem for nearly a century possibly caused some half heartedness.

But listen to Nehemah… “But now I said to them, “You know very well what trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire. Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and end this disgrace!”  (Nehemiah 2:17, NLT)

Do we not begin to overcome half heartedness with a stirring inside that God wants something more for our lives? That the day is not done and that we are called to the do the good works that God had planned in advance for us to do? (Ephesians 2:10)

Nehemiah was confronted by a situation filled with apathy, and his first step was to call the people to action. He was calling people to say yes to God and the implication was that they could not stay where they were.

When we say yes to God – we cannot stay where we are. And here is the hope that we get from Nehemiah’s story – God’s work in us starts with our yes to the mess!

When we look at where we are and recognize where God wants us to be is a different and better place and we sense God is there to make a way – is there not an enthusiasm that wells up within that God is at work in us?

Henry Blackaby observes the bible teaches that as we submit to God we see the truth “…that God can do anything He pleases through an ordinary person who is fully dedicated to Him”

Including working through the mess of life – whether that is in our relationships, our hurtful past, our addictions, our fears and pain and allsorts of other “disgraces”  

God’s work in us starts with our yes to the mess!

Kickstarted
a dynamic faith, rooted in God’s power, confirmed in our circumstances.

Our yes will be kickstarted  instead of half hearted when it comes from a dynamic faith, rooted in God’s power, confirmed in our circumstances.

How does this work itself out? Let us get practical – how do we move our yes from Half-hearted to Kickstarted?

Here in the story of Nehemiah we need to connect the dots between two important matters that impacts our yes!

 Then I told them about how the gracious hand of God had been on me, and about my conversation with the king. They replied at once, “Yes, let’s rebuild the wall!” So they began the good work. (Nehemiah 2:18, NLT)

For Nehemiah he was more than committed…he was submitted to what God wanted to do through him and the people in Jerusalem. God was giving a sense to Nehemiah what he wanted him to be involved in.  He sensed the presence of God – the gracious hand of God was upon him.

Nehemiah was sensing that God was calling -inviting him to join God where God wanted Nehemiah to be involved! God was at work in Nehemiah’s life.

Is God’s gracious hand on you? Henry Blackaby in his classic “Experiencing God” and other writings make these observations:  

  • Anything of spiritual significance that happens in your life will be a result of God’s activity in you
  • Where are you sensing God inviting you to join Him where He wants to involve you?
  • God doesn’t want people to do what they think is best: he wants them to do what he knows is best – only God can reveal it”

Our yes is getting kickstarted when we get a sense of that God is at work in us. When we start to have a desire for God, start to questions about Christianity, when we are inquiring about spiritual matters, ultimate matters, when we start to wonder about justice, truth and meaning and where does God fit in to all of this – you are witnessing God at work!

But there is another part to our yes getting kickstarted. Nehemiah talks about his conversation with the king of Persia. God had already proved His power by working in the heart of the king, and the king had promised to meet the needs. Nehemiah had the resources and permission to go forward with the work. God was at work in the circumstances.

When we believe God is calling us to His work and will we must also believe God is working all around you and me. One more Blackaby quote: Whether you see Him at work is irrelevant to the fact of God’s presence in our world. He is actively and intimately involved in both the affairs of this world and the details of your life.

When you see heaven and earth agreeing, it is time to say yes to the mess! – Instead of being driven by our circumstances the challenge is to discern our circumstances.

For Nehemiah God was in this. His power was upon him. This took his faith by storm. And because the circumstances were aligning it allowed Nehemiah to put into place a definite intelligible plan to be carried out. God was saying yes…the king was saying yes and now it was time for Nehemiah for the people to say yes.

Application/Conclusion

Will God ever ask you to do something you are not able to do? The answer is yes–all the time!

We need God’s power to face our broken walls in ourselves, our families, our marriages, our churches, our communities. We need God’s presence and power at work in us to kickstart our decision to act.

Why? Because there will always be the no’s to our yes. There will always be opposition and ridicule when you decide to go God’s way. Jesus faced it and so will we. (Our Lord was ridiculed during His life and mocked while He was hanging on the cross. He was “despised and rejected of men” (Isa. 53:3). On the Day of Pentecost, some of the Jews in the crowd said that the Christians were drunk (Acts 2:13). The Greek philosophers called Paul a “babbler” (17:18, NIV), and Festus told Paul he was out of his mind (26:24).)

We need to be discerning the circumstances to see how God wants us to act in this moment. What is happening right now that is a confirmation for you to take the next step? How is God at work in the circumstances. If doors that were once closed now opening, if resources that were once not there now available, if people are now open to conversations that were once not happening, if people are willing to consider new things…are we wise enough to act upon the yes?  

  • Recognizing God is not the same as coming to Him and saying yes!.
  • Hearing God in your heart is not the same as answering with a yes!.
  • Working for the kingdom of God does not mean saying yes to living in the kingdom of God.
  • Christianity is not believing the truths of the Bible; it’s saying yes to them by living them out and
  • When we allow God to guide our life we are saying yes to God.
  • Will you respond  to God and make the choice to say Yes Lord and interact personally with Him.”

Think about the challenges – the needs – the broken walls. What is God revealing? Do you sense God’s hand upon you/ Are you discerning how God is at work around you right now? God’s work in us starts when we say yes to the mess.

Yes let’s rebuild the wall!

 

Reflection questions / group questions

  1. What are some examples of expressing a half hearted yes?  Why do we sometimes feel powerless to change? 
  2.  Nehemiah had scoffers around him — those who criticized his plans. How do we give power to our critics? What are some ways we can resist the critics like Nehemiah did?
  3. Acedia (a-SEE-dee-ah) is a spiritual sloth that makes us unable to make decisions that could change our circumstances.  Acedia is a half-hearted state of giving up. Why is being half-hearted a great danger for the Christian life? Are there areas of your life that are marked by acedia?
  4. Nehemiah’s plans to rebuild the wall came from his sense of what God wanted (spiritual) and confirmation from the king’s willingness (practical).  Why do we sometimes fail to “connect the dots” between what God is saying and what God is doing around us?  
  5. Saying “yes” in the face of our mess is saying ‘yes’ to God. Where are you going to say ‘yes’ to God this week?  Pray for the confidence of Nehemiah 2:20 – knowing that ‘the God of heaven will help us succeed” when we give him our ‘yes’.

Our Broken Walls

1 These are the memoirs of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah. In late autumn, in the month of Kislev, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes’ reign, I was at the fortress of Susa. 2 Hanani, one of my brothers, came to visit me with some other men who had just arrived from Judah. I asked them about the Jews who had returned there from captivity and about how things were going in Jerusalem. 3 They said to me, “Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.” 4 When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. (Nehemiah 1:1–4, NLT)

I love the hope of our key verse in this series called Fresh Start. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  2 Cor 5:17

We all want to have a fresh start in those deep areas of our lives – where we are not simply surviving, hiding or blaming but becoming what God wants us to be.

Fresh Start is about experiencing a Holy Spirit Driven process where our internal world is remade, our inner beings – who we really are is changed in the likeness of Christ –

Our Fresh Start starts with deciding to follow Jesus – transformation happens the moment we believe. But God’s intent is now that we grow as a new creation – where we become great souls learning to be like Jesus, act like Jesus, love like Jesus…

But in this journey of understanding what a fresh start means we have to begin with some hard news.

  • It is a willingness to face where we really are.
  • To peer into who I really am.
  • To honestly face what the conditions really are.
  • A courage to understand what is broken, wrong and evil in my life.
  • Though it is not a desirable thing to do we must be willing to look at the problems that are within in our lives.  

We are going to learn from the book of Nehemiah to help us understand what a fresh start looks like. The story of Nehemiah is not just the story of leadership, it is the story of brokeness and the struggle to overcome it.  Nehemiah’s leadership only comes to focus because of the bleak situation of Jerusalem.

I want to take you through a mini walk through the Bible to get a sense of where Nehemiah fits into the overall story of Israel. A quick timeline: Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and slavery to the Promised Land. That took place sometime around 1300 B.C., give or take 100 years or so. Then they occupied the Promised Land. Then there came kings—first Saul, then David. When David becomes king, Israel reaches its peak. Then came Solomon, and then begins a long, slow decline.

Finally, Israel is pretty much finished off as a nation by the Babylonians around 587 B.C. At this point Jerusalem is wiped out, and many Israelites are sent into exile, especially the upper classes. Sometime after this, the Babylonian Empire is defeated by the rising Persian Empire. This is good news for Israel, because a significant number of Israelites are allowed to return to the Holy Land. They are allowed to go back to Jerusalem. That’s the setting for our story.

So now Nehemiah comes on the scene – he lives in Persia, in the capital city of Susa, around 445 B.C. Now it has been over a century after the Israelites had been sent into exile.

He is serving in the Persian government as the cupbearer to the king of Persia. It is his job to taste wine before it is presented to the king—not to make sure that the wine is good enough, but to make sure that the wine has not been poisoned. You never had to ask a cupbearer, “How did your day go?” If they didn’t die, things had gone pretty well.

He is someone the king trusts, someone who has a lot of access to the king. So Nehemiah was doing very well for himself. He was well connected to the king, and on a successful career path. His life was going pretty well, until one day:

Nehemiah learns that Jerusalem is in great trouble – Enemies surround the city, the walls are in ruins, and morale is in shambles.

But the part that really concerns Nehemiah is that God’s whole dream of redeeming the world—of forming a redemptive community and having a covenant with them, of letting everybody on earth know that there really is a God who created each of us and that the earth is part of his story—that whole idea seems to be at risk. Neh. 1:3-6 (NIV)

“Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

[4] When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

Our Broken Walls: How do we respond to the problems in our lives? I want us to that for all of us we have a choice of 2 ways can choose 2 different ways.

The Whitewashing Way:

Until Nehemiah addressed the problem, the people of Jerusalem had accepted the broken walls.

The walls of Jerusalem had lain in ruins was not new news. It had been nearly 90 years since the people who had returned from exile. But any idea among the residents to rebuild was met with force — to the point that the residents of the city had given up. They consigned themselves to living as a broken people in a city of broken walls.  

We are not so different are we.  We have broken walls in us and around us. Relationships. Personal struggles.  We have tried to change before. . . maybe many times and the resistance was too strong. We stopped.

When you get use to broken walls I think the temptation is to cover up the mess. Slap a little whitewash on the mess to help us get used to it.

Jesus talked about this “Whitewashing Way”

27 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. (Matthew 23:27, NLT)

This is from a section of Matthew’s gospel devoted to “woes” that Jesus says to people who engage in hypocrisy.  Hypocrite is just the Greek word for “actor”– a person who pretends.  Pretend is a great thing for children and even for adults in particular contexts (role playing for training purposes)– but as a life-model, Jesus didn’t really favor that.  Listen to the words of Jesus:

When we have brokenness in our lives and in our relationships and we pretend that everything is okay, we are engaging in hypocrisy. We may excuse it because we are embarrassed and because we feel shame. Wanting to hide the reality of what is wrong is a natural reaction.  But it is unhelpful because it doesn’t lead us anywhere.

Illustration: We may do it to feel comfortable…but I wonder if pretending is comfortable.  Donna Freitas in her thought-provoking book The Happiness Effect, argues that the real downside of social media is that it demands fake happiness. She writes:

Because young people feel so pressured to post happy things on social media, most of what everyone sees on social media from their peers are happy things; as a result, they often feel inferior because they aren’t actually happy all the time … . students are becoming masters of appearing happy, at significant cost …. Many students have begun to see what they post (on Facebook, especially) as a chore—a homework assignment to build a happy façade.

A full 73 percent of the students she surveyed agreed this this statement: “I try always to appear positive/happy with anything attached to my real name.” Only 19 percent of respondents agreed that “I am open about my emotions on social media.”

Laura Vanderkam, “A Generation Living for Likes,” The Wall Street Journal (2-14-17)

It is hypocrisy because we are advertising to everyone that we have everything in order, when we don’t. We are saying we don’t need grace when we do. We are creating a false life instead of a new life.

John Ortberg calls this “image management”.  We want to look better than we actually are. In fact we place great importance on that in our lives.

When we prettify our problems it leads to Chaos & Confusion – The change we need most is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves. If we simply cover up we are going to end destroying what we want to keep.

The Weeping Way

When Nehemiah heard the report from Jerusalem, it overwhelmed him emotionally and made him spiritually aware of his need for God.

I sat down and wept…

Our Teaching Pastor, Brent Hudson observes:

This is the reason we don’t want to stare our brokenness in the face.   We know that when we truly see it — see it for what it is — our response will be like Nehemiah — Weeping and mourning.  A deep sadness from the deep wells of our hearts. It hurts too much…it feels us with pain…and we all want to avoid pain…especially emotional pain.

13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ (Luke 18:13, NLT)

When we see our broken walls, God meets us there with a real hope for a new beginning.

The wisdom we learn from Nehemiah is not about weeping and mourning — that is just the natural response to not looking away.  

The wisdom of Nehemiah is seeing his need for God and seeking him. Nehemiah’s lesson is clear.

When facing our brokenness,
don’t go to the whitewash, go to God.  

Forget about image management. Forget about what others might say.  Forget about everything else. Face the face that brokenness is bleak but in God, there is hope. But there is a self-awareness that is needed.  

Think again of the story of Tax Collector and the Pharisee the temple.  The Pharisee has employed the whitewash so well, he didn’t even recognize his brokenness.  Instead of weeping and mourning and fasting and praying as Nehemiah did, he thanked God he wasn’t as bad as others. But Jesus reminds us that it was not the Pharisee who enjoyed God’s favour.

“But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ (Luke 18:13, NLT)

When we see our ‘broken walls’ — really see them. See them as bleak and barren as they are.  See them as the destructive energy that they are — it is in this moment that God meets us.  It is in that honesty and helplessness of our broken walls that we finally have with a real hope for a new beginning…it is in that honesty of facing it that we discover something transforming. When we peer into the very heart of our brokenness we find Jesus on the cross — suffering with us and more importantly suffering for us so we can transcend the broken walls of our lives and experience new creation.   

New beginnings starts with broken walls

As we move into 2018, I challenge you to face-in to a challenge that is far more significant that diet or organizational skill.  Ask yourself…

  • Where you are right now is that where you want to be?
  • Where you are in our family, church, work is that where you believe God wants you to be?
  • What is the new beginning God wants to begin.
  • Where does the fresh start begin with you?

I challenge you, even as I challenge myself to open your eyes to the broken walls things that are really holding you back from a deeper more substantial experience of Christ in your life.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  2 Cor 5:17

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Why do we avoid or become complacent regarding our problems?
  2. Is there an area in your life where you are whitewashing instead of weeping? What are some ways that “prettify” our problems?
  3. Nehemiah didn’t just weep and mourn, he also fasted and prayed. What specific things are you doing to connect your emotional health and your spiritual health?
  4. What is the connection between facing your deepest problems and having hope?
  5. What steps can you take this week to honestly face your broken walls?

 

Fresh Start

We are beginning a new series called  Fresh Start with today being the introduction to the series. We are starting this series at the beginning of the New Year but I want us to think that we are not so much talking about resolutions as we are going to do a deep dive in considering what it means to experience God’s transformation.

But before I begin we have I want to introduce Parker Barriault and back up vocalist Moiria Hennessey as they perform a rap song called – Remember This by the artist NF

PERFORMED SONG

In that song we heard the idea about change and something new beginning – “Say goodbye to the old me

We ain’t friends anymore”

A FRESH START – THE PROMISE

That desire for something new is within all of us. Scriptures give us a promise of a Fresh Start – verse for today – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  2 Cor 5:17

At the core of the gospel where we speak about what God is doing in Christ – this statement reminds us it is about something new – a deep change – transformation.

Think of what it means to be in Christ. The description of your life and my life in Christ is not based on resolution but re-creation, the re-creation that comes from new life in Christ.

The change people need most is not in their circumstances, but in themselves.  It is not the ability to try harder, but rather to have a soul rooted deeply in Jesus.

Let me quote Ed Stetzer – The very heart of the Christian faith revolves around change, but it is not turning over a new leaf—it is living out a new life.

Christian transformation always involves something old passing away and something new taking its place. Spiritual change is needed by everyone—the poor and the rich, the success and the failure. We are constantly in need of this change, no matter who we are.

But too many people misunderstand the words. They believe, “If I change, then God will like me more.” The bid to be be better accompanies the hope for divine blessing. But that is not the gospel.

Now the danger when we speak of change is that there is a make yourself better/improvement industry in our culture.

If we are not careful you may end up hearing that what we are offering is a entry level/low-stress therapeutic moralism sprinkled with a little bit of deism —where a faraway God makes life better and makes you a better person.

But we are not offering a religious idealism. We are not talking about about making religious people good. Read the gospel stories about how Jesus interacted with good religious people- they were called Pharisees – they were also called white-washed tombs.

The promise of God offered to us is that we can have a Fresh Start that begins with, to quote Stetzer again, “a New Life, Not Just A New Leaf.

A Fresh Start – A Problem

But with this wonderful spark of hope of a Fresh Start in Christ – we have a problem – the problem. Making changes in my life is really hard. Really living out a new life seems like an ideal not a reality. So often we do not see a change in people in churches so many walk away discouraged – our slogan for our lack of transformation – Christians aren’t perfect just forgiven.

Why is that even though we intend to be good and do the good it appears that we are prepared, ready, to do evil–should circumstances require it. And of course they do ‘require’ it, with deadening regularity.

Fresh Start is deeply difficult…

  • Genetics – what do we do with tendencies/traits that run in our families? I have my father’s hands – I whistle while I drive…I like to drive slow! What about deeper darker traits?
  • Past – what do we do with the past of our family systems and deep memories –
  • Stubborn/Pride – Perhaps you’ve heard the illustration of how to trap a monkey. All you need is a rock and a coconut. Drill a hole in the coconut large enough to put the rock inside, but not large enough for anything else. A monkey will reach inside to take hold of the rock, but its clenched fist around the rock will not fit back through the hole. The monkey will, in effect, trap itself because of a refusal to let go of the rock. We get trapped when we will not let go.
  • Comfortable – We get comfortable with sins that keep us from knowing Christ better. We get comfortable with irrelevant practices at church that keep others from understanding Who God is and what He is doing in Christ! We get comfortable with our standard of living, and it keeps us from the mission of God’s kingdom.
  • Afraid – Fear of the unknown is a primary reason people don’t change. Some think following Jesus will make them a fanatic or, at the very least, socially awkward. Not knowing what God will ask of them causes many to shy away from the new life offered by Jesus. It can even paralyze Christians from fully embracing the new life they have inherited.
  • Hurts – It is hard to change. Even good change costs some of a person’s security. Leaving the proverbial “comfort zone” will cause a pain effect that carries a price.

A Fresh Start – A Past Story

But here is where we need to look at how God has worked in the past where a fresh start was needed. This biblical story is where God’s people who had failed miserably and desperately needed renewal.  The story of Nehemiah is about the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down. But that was just an outward image of a much deeper problem – a need for renewal and God’s transformational change when are a community and lives are broken down.

Rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah: a story that speaks to a greater reality – God’s intent for there to be renewal in our lives and Christ’s church.

So in the weeks ahead we are going to look at how change occurs when things look BLEAK, our basis for being RESOLVED, Why PERSEVERANCE matters, the ongoing Challenge to lasting CHANGE.

A FRESH START – A Path

But as we begin this journey on we need to pay attention to what lies on the path of a fresh start in God’s kingdom that impacts our lives, our families, our friendship our church, our communities.

GRACE – this change we want is not merely human attainment of self improvement – it is ultimately a gift from God – a divine act of grace – a gift of His love that we don’t deserve. This is the amazing grace

Grasping God’s grace – results in us giving up on changing our own lives. Rather than wasting our lives on self-initiated change, we give over our lives to God’s work to grant us a new life.

Tweet by Ravi Zacharias – Jesus Christ did not come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive.

Our minds cannot even begin to dream up the radical new life that is needed.

Ed Stetzer in preaching on transformation points out in in John 3, Jesus was approached by someone who needed change. Nicodemus had the right pedigree, the right spiritual training, and the right position in society, but had not been transformed. He was most likely moral and definitely religious. But Jesus informed him of the need to be “born again” (John 3:3). Nicodemus did not need more rules but rather a new life.

Nicodemus, like many of us, had to unlearn the matrix in which he lived—the idea that rules and regulations bring about lasting spiritual change. They don’t. Rules can modify behavior, but only the gospel of Christ can impart new life. We should never be satisfied with merely a new way of life. Only a new life will suffice.”

Grace means we let go of the formula – “If I obey I am accepted by God. Grace tells me instead – “Because I am accepted – I move toward obedience”.

EFFORT – Dallas Willard made an important distinction – Grace is opposed to earning – Attitude of seeking God’s approval BUT grace is not opposed to effort – our Action.

We have to grasp where we must apply effort to our faith journey of experiencing a fresh start. This should not surprise us that life demands effort.

Let me go on and speak to where effort comes into our fresh Start. There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that suggests you can decide just to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus’ expense and have nothing more to do with him.

Some years ago A. W. Tozer expressed his “feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout evangelical Christian circles–the widely-accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need him as Savior and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to him as Lord as long as we want to!” (I Call It Heresy, Harrisburg, PA.: Christian Publications, 1974, p. 5f) Tozer goes on to state “that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred scriptures.”

This ‘heresy’ has created the impression that it is quite reasonable to be a “vampire Christian.” One in effect says to Jesus: “I’d like a little of your blood, please. But I don’t care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won’t you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I’ll see you in heaven.” But can we really imagine that this is an approach that Jesus finds acceptable?

It takes effort to learn from Jesus how to do what he says – which is the central point of the New Testament doctrine of salvation and life.

We are called to take his yoke His way and learn from Him – so that our inner being – our spiritual being – our soul – begins to express this new life we have in Christ – and our outer life begins to show us as people who walk easily in the goodness and power of Jesus. (observation by DW in Renewing the Christian Mind)

Spiritual formation in Christ is not a passive process..Grace does not make us passive. but rather informs our soul and our actions and makes them effective n the wisdom and power of God.

Practicing Jesus’ word as his apprentices enables us to understand our lives and to see how we can interact with God’s redemptive resources,

CROSS – We all have a human desire for significance. But the way of Jesus changes us to see through the cross the divine nature of sacrifice. And as we learn this way of sacrifice we reject the way of the world and embrace the way of God’s kingdom which causes life to have true significance – which is reflecting the glory and love of God.

COMMUNITY – We need to encourage one another – love another – help one another – this journey of Fresh Start is not a solo expedition…we are called to live out this

MISSION – We need to take hold of something better: God’s agenda for a missionary people. We are called to go forth be kingdom living people where truth, justice, mercy and God’s love are the core expressions of who we really are.

Tim Keller – Jesus didn’t come primarily to solve the economic, political, and social problems of the world. He came to forgive our sins.

But in doing so the everything else is impacted...Mission includes our vocations and not just church ministry.

Conclusion

Fresh Start is about experiencing a Spirit Driven process where our inner beings – who we really are is changed in the likeness of Christ –

Our Fresh Start starts with deciding to follow Jesus – real change – transformation happens the moment we believe –

But God’s goal is now that new creation – where we become great souls learning to be like Jesus is our focus…

More Souls or great souls – the real journey is that we are becoming a community of great souls – that will draw more souls into the kingdom of God where we all learn to love like Jesus.  

“The alternative to this biblically mandated transformation is to pick a rut and make it deeper.” God holds a desire to bring transformation to life, the church, and your community. The transformation is there for the choosing. Of course, so is the rut of remaining spiritual static.

We’re not all of the decisions we’ve made in the past;
we’re what what we do next…