The politics of the world matters; right, left, Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive. But the church is a community of those whose first identity is who they are in the Trinity and to the Trinity. So, our first passion and first agenda and first focus is not right, left, progressive, conservative, Democrat, Republican. It is kingdom. It is the way of Jesus. Ephesians 4 and verse 15, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
Immaturity is one of the glaring problems facing the church in our country right now. Immaturity. Christian immaturity. Christians acting immature. There are far too many who claim to be Christian, standing in their highchairs with nothing on but a diaper, demanding dessert right here and right now. Christians who have not and are not, allowing the gospel to penetrate their pathologies and transform them into a new person who increasingly thinks, feels, acts, reacts, chooses, and responds the way Jesus would if he were in their shoes and in their situation.
The story continues to unfold today as it has for thousands of years. God is creating a community that identifies as God's people and they and he interact, relate, and work together toward the fulfillment of his purposes; land, people, God, place, heaven, earth, co-mingling, interacting, intersecting, roots being set down, and all of this adding up to this demonstration to the world. This is who God is, and this is what life can be like under him. See, this is what church means, what I'm describing. This is what church is. And this is why church matters.
Our service on Sunday was a deep breath from the day-to-day crazy of our lives. Pastor Mike encouraged us to sit in this idea that God's invitation to you to follow him, to trust him, to live in his ways, is immense. It covers quite literally everything.”
“The one who loves fulfills the law.” - Romans 13:18
What is church about? Why does it matter? Does it matter? What are we attempting to communicate? What are we attempting to say to one another? What are we attempting to say to ourselves? And what are we attempting to say and demonstrate to a hurting world?
There is no one like our God!
“This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” – John 21:24-25
In the last two verses of John's gospel that I just read, John says in effect, I saw all of what I just wrote happen, and I wrote some of it down, and if every one of the things that Jesus did were written down there would not be enough room for all the books that would be written…Just think about what he's saying, my testimony is true, I saw it, I witnessed a lot of this, and if all that had been witnessed, or all that Jesus has ever done, would have been recorded in a book there aren't enough books in the world to record it all. See, he is pointing to Jesus not only as the rabbi he walked and talked with for three years. As a disciple, he's pointing to the Jesus of John 1:1 who, as it says, “In the beginning, the very beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He's pointing to Jesus as the One.
Inhale the victory of the cross and exhale the power of the resurrection. Maybe that gives us something in the thick of the suffering, down deep in the valley of suffering. Inhale the victory of the cross. Exhale the power of the resurrection. This is the way of the Christ follower.
And you know what strikes me in all this, as we reflect on this. What strikes me is that this is another one of those occasions where we begin to realize, or we realize again, the business of following Jesus or of living Christian is not some nice idea. It's not a paper transaction to avoid hell. It's not a religious distraction to pretend things are better than they are. Rather, the business of following Jesus and living Christian touches our real lives in every way. It is intensely and immensely practical. It's actually, the center of our lives. It reshapes us. It reorients us and reframes everything around us, including, believe it or not, the valley of suffering.
Friendships can be hard; that's just the simple point, they can be hard. We let each other down, we disappoint, we don't come through, we don't show up, we fail as friends, and some of our friends have failed us. And so, friendships in the real world will usually be a mixture of the good and the beautiful and the hard and the painful, but the resurrected Jesus, just by way of vision, models friendship that perseveres through the failure with grace and with the desire to reconcile.
Every person that professes to be a follower of Jesus Christ has a vocation and that vocation is bigger, more important, and more of a priority than our jobs or…
Part one, thinking it was the gardener, just another day, just another person, just a thing. Part two, she hears her name, he calls her name. And part three, she turned toward him. This kind of just walks right out the door with us on any given Monday.
Outbreaks of God’s presence and activity in the ordinary of our lives anytime, anywhere. See a God who can return from the dead can rather easily handle something so pedestrian as omnipresence; present and active everywhere. So, we can encounter him anytime, anywhere if we are attentive. If we are listening. If we have eyes that see and ears that hear. If we’re present in the moments of our lives rather than being behind them or ahead of them, if we’re open to it.