ifollowtheway

Our impressions we make on people matter.  Our first impression hold significant influence on how we are viewed.  I don’t particularly like that so much is based off of one encounter, but it is a reality.  We must take note of this as individuals and as the Church.

How do we make good first impressions as a Church?  There was a quote I heard that I think is incredibly true.  Kyle Idleman author of the book “Not a Fan” said, “What we win people with is what we win them to.”

We as the Church need to live with that reality.  How are we doing to win people to the Lord?  What are our means for evangelism and discipleship?  Whatever we are doing to introduce people to the Lord is what they will think the Church is.

If we are winning people by having fancy Sunday services with lights, attractive worship leaders in trendy clothes, and the latest worship music, then that is what their picture of the Church and being a Christian is.  They will think Christians come to a service once a week and call it Church and a good week as a follower of Christ.

Now am I saying these things are bad?  No.  Good musicians and occasionally lights can certainly help us have an intimate time of worshiping God.  That is a good thing.  But if in the process of creating a time in which we worship God, we often accidentally communicate that our lives as Christians is tied up with that one hour or hour and a half each week.  

There are 168 hours in a week.  Spending one hour in worship a week does not make us good disciples.  People spend more time at concerts and watching specific television shows.  Every hour in our week needs to be praise towards our God.  Does that mean we ought to sing all the time?  No.  We praise and bring glory to God in how we live our lives.  Every hour of our life should be dedicated to that goal.

So when we make the climax of our lives as Christians gathering to do a good thing of praising God, we communicate that is the DNA of being a Christian.

What if instead we one people to the Lord (I’m not a big fan of that terminology, but we will go with it) by being a loving community that reaches out to the needs of those who are suffering physically, spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically?  What if that is what we won people with?

We then would be communicating that is what it means to be a Christian.  We would be telling and showing people that following God is an hourly thing in which we commit to loving God and each other.

What if our first priorities were not on an hour a week, but on daily evangelism and discipleship?  What if we were on our hands and knees praying with people and teaching them to read the Bible to learn and grow with our amazing God?

What if instead of bringing people to “church” we were the Church and reached out to those around us with our brothers and sisters?

When we attract people with good musicians, lights, and magnetic public speaker, new comers do not know how to get plugged in.  They see their possible roles as being a talented musician, technology person, or public speaker.  Sure we provide them with other ways to get involved.  We have lists for them to choose from, but they will consider those things items for the entree of coming to a service once a week.

If we are completely honest, it seems the early church gathered to pray and give praise to God on a daily basis.  So I am in no way dissing formal times of worshiping God.  I am asking if that should be the primary aspect of what the Church is.

So let us envision a Church were people are not seeking to get a spiritual buzz once a week, but instead envision a church that is an active, outgoing, and life giving community to the individuals who are spiritually sick in this world.

In life we place so much value on first impressions. Our first day in a class, our first date, our first time practicing for a team, the first day on the job; they go a long way in forming our thoughts and feelings about a person or situation. It can be hard to overcome a bad first impression.

I think this is very important for us to take note of individually as Christians and corporately. There are so many people to look to in the Bible in how to live. There are also countless people in the Bible in which we should not base our lives around them. One person I highly respect for many reasons is Daniel. The biggest reason I look to Daniel for an example of a man of God is because of these verses:

At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.” (Daniel 6:4, 5 NIV)

Daniel was a great man of integrity. Daniel lived a life completely grounded in God. Everything in his life was based around his love and faith in God. After this the bad guys in this story (the satraps and admistrators) did not care for Daniel. They tried to find a way to bring him down. They observed his life and could find nothing at all. There was NOTHING in his life that could be held against him.

Imagine if that was the case for a presidential candidate. Imagine if people trying to bring up dirt on a candidate failed because that person lived out all he or she said or believed? That was the case with Daniel. That is how we must life.

What happens when we become lazy with our living? What happens when the things we say and do don’t match up with our statements and beliefs as who we are as Christians? Not good things. People can question us, and when they question us they go on to question our God. When our lives are in accord with God’s will for our lives we will point people to Him.

So often we settle in our lives as Christians. We make jokes that are not uplifting and encouraging. We look at things we ought not look at. We treat people as they should not be treated. We make claims of freedom in Christ. And freedom we do have, but we do not use that freedom as we want. We need to use that freedom to bring God glory and love our neighbors as ourselves.

When non-believers see us act in these ways they either question our God or they will believe the things are acceptable. Maybe they are acceptable, but they are not commendale. We should not seek to merely be acceptable to the Lord. We need to strife for Him to tell us, “Well done good and faithful servant.” We need to look at things in the context of eternity and not in the context of the next five minutes.

Non-believers often get a negative first impression of us. They see the Sunday rush come in and act rude and tip poorly. They see crosses or fish on bumper stickers and the drivers have road rage. They see us draw back into the safety of our buildings and create the most segregated hour of the week. So often our actions do not well represent our God. Christian means little Christ. When we claim to be a Christian we represent God. Paul says in II Corinthans 5 that we Christ’s ambassadors. We are His people here on earth with His mission.

We need to strive to be more like Daniel. We need to strive to live lives in which the people cannot find a fault in our lives. We need to be above reproach. A lot of denominations debate the idea of sanctification and Christian perfection. A popular Christian song says, “Perfection is my enemy.” I couldn’t disagree more. Christ was perfect, and I’m not about to call Him my enemy. We are broken people, but that is why Jesus came, and that is why the Holy Spirit is given to us. I’m not here to say whether we can achieve perfection here on earth, but I am here to say it is our goal. Christ told us to live perfect lives when He said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48 NIV)” So go and be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Just to clairify, there is no 29th chapter in Acts 29. It ends with chapter 28. Here is how the book of Acts ends:

“Therefore I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!” For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance! (Acts 28:28, 30, 31 NIV)

So what after that? What happens after Paul? What takes place next? The Bible kind of leaves it open. There are various churches and people who have taken up the mantel of Acts 29. Their thinking behind taking up the Acts 29 label is that we are the continuaiton of the church. The Church of our risen savior Jesus Christ did not end at the end of Acts of even the Bible. The Church is still alive and around today. We are a direct continuation through our faith of the Church that began in Acts.

That is something that I hold dear to my life right now. I am in a time of transition in my life. I am going from incarnational homeless ministry in Fort Lauderdale to life in rural South Carolina. From living on the streets to living in comfort. I need to be reminded that I am part of the Church that Jesus Christ died to bring about.

As I begin to find my role and niche in Clemson, I need to keep one thing in mind: how does this match up with the rest of Acts? If our lives as Christians make up Acts 29, then how does my life in Acts 29 compare to Acts 2? Acts 7? Acts 17? Acts 26?

Our lives as Christians should look more like the book of Acts than the American Dream.

The Holy Spirit was moving and active in the Church then, and it is the same Holy Spirit in us now. Our faith can be that of the early church. We are no different from Elijah who prayed and it didn’t rain for 3 years (James 5:17). The Holy Spirit is still in the business of giving glory to the Father and making disciples of all nations. The Holy Spirit still CAN and still WANTS to do things like are recorded in the Bible. Jesus says greater things are to happen what we have read about in the Bible (John 14:12).

So what can I be a part of in Clemson? I want to be about two things. I need to care for the poor, the very thing I want to do (Galatians 2:10), and I want to be a part of a living community (the Church) that is led by the Holy Spirit to make disciples of all nations.

So I was sitting around bouncing around different ideas of what to do for Lent when I realized I didn’t even know the history behind its inception. So I looked it up.

Lent is one of the earliest traditions in Christian history dating back to as early as around 130 A.D. It was during this time of 40 days before Easter that the practice of denial and penance was practiced. I was SHOCKED at the extent by which the early church sacrificed.

The church would eat ONLY one meal a day! For fourty days they would eat just once a day! That is crazy. Here we are giving up a few things, and the early church was giving up almost everything. I go without sweets and they went hungry spending time praying to the Lord for revival and growth in Him and the church.

We should possibly get back to that if we want to see transformation.

Another thought I began to have about Lent is concerning the idea of not doing things. Too often as Christians we are known for not doing things. Christians are those strange folk who don’t do these normal things that the rest of the world does.

Yes that should be part of who we are. God desires for us to be set apart, but He does not want us to be set apart by just what we avoid, but what we do as well.

Paul gives us this truth when he wrote, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3:12-14 NIV).”

We are supposed to do these things. He previously writes the things we are not supposed to do. We are not supposed to do those things SO THAT we can do these things. We refrain from the things of this world so that we can be compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, patient, forgiving, and loving. That is the purpose of avoiding the “bad things.”

So as you start to think about what you are going to give up for Lent, think also what are you going to do. Sure you might want to give up red meat for Lent. But in addition to giving that up write an encouraging note every day. Maybe you will give up television, but in place of that have a conversation with a new person every day. If you give up alcohol or facebook think about also giving to the poor or reading an extra chapter of the Bible.

We as Christians should be known more for what we do than what we do not do.

Since today is Valentine’s Day, I figured I would just ask a simple question. Where is the love? Today is based around couples gathering together to spend time developing and growing their love for each other. It is always a fun and awkward day. There is a lot of pressure to do something for people on this day.

I think that is great. Developing true genuine loving relationships between couples is so vital. Loving couples should lead to loving families which should lead to loving and loved children who turn into loving adults. So this is critical to making a better world.

I want to challenge us to think about a different kind of love. Let’s quickly think about God’s love. God has an unquenchable love for us. His love is genuine and pure, and He desires to love us personally. He wants that much that He came and died for us to restore us to Himself.

Now doesn’t that make you feel special? It should because you are special. The think is that so are the people around you. So are the people all around the world. So are the orphans dying throughout the world. So are the people in New York City. So are the people in Uganda. They too are special.

I hope that we can find ways to show love to the forgotten and marginalized people around us and around the world on this day of love. For after all don’t even the tax collectors show love to their friends? As Christians lets go above and beyond because that’s what our God does.

So this past weekend I went to the One Conference down in Miami. That being said, I was only there Friday night because I was so convicted and moved by the Holy Spirit that I had to go and take care of a few things that did not permit me to come back to the rest of the conference.

It was amazing that first night, and I am sure that the conference will be a turning point for the city of Miami as the Spirit imparts power and unity to the Church.

Francis Chan spoke the first night. His opening remarks caught me a little off guard. He said we he looked at Pedro Garcia (the person who had the idea to bring about the One Conferece) as he gave the opening remarks, he did not look and see just a human. He saw the Spirit of God.

I thought that was a little bold to say. How could he say that a person is the Spirit of God? He went on to explain why he said that. He said we as Christians need to take the Bible literally. We need to see the Bible as literal truth. Too often we explain things away. So Francis was saying that when the Bible says things like “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; (1 Corinthians 6:19 NIV)” and “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. (Romans 8:9 NIV)” then the Bible really means the GOD is living INSIDE of us.

Paul says there that we are no longer in the realm of flesh. So what Francis Chan was saying is that when he looked at Pedro, he saw a human that was now supernatural. Pedro was still human, but he was human with God. God is in him. He is not just human because once you have God in your His holiness comes as well. Pedro was more than natural (fleshly), he was supernatural (God was in him)

Pedro was supernatural because the Holy Spirit was in him. That means that Francis Chan is supernatural because the Spirit is in him. That means I am supernatural because God is in me. That means any of you who are Christian and reading this are supernatural because of the Holy Spirit in your life.

In fact, if you are not supernatural, if you do not have something different about you because of the Holy Spirit then you do not belong to Christ. Paul is saying that if you are not different from those who do not have the Holy Spirit, then you do not have Christ and are not a Christian.

We all must be supernatural and be human with God in us for us to claim Christ.

The implications of this are abundant. We have God in us. Since that is the case, His holiness should be rubbing off on us. We are going to care less and less about the fleshly desires. Wrong doing should be less and less appealing to us. Power and love should be more evident in us. If that is not the case then we should question why because God has not changed from the God He has always been.

In fact we should be doing great things because of the Holy Spirit to glorify the name of Jesus. Jesus Himself said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:12 NIV).” So we should be doing this as great as Jesus did becuase the Holy Spirit is in us.

You might say well Jesus didn’t mean that. Jesus said we would do greater things than He would, so either we should do greater things or He is a liar. I will not call Jesus a liar because that would question His perfection and deity, one thing that we as Christians should never do.

We too often compare ourselves to the people around us. That is not right because God has created each one of us uniquely to do unique things. We should not compare each other. But we should compare ourselves to the things that took place in the Bible. The same Spirit that was in Jesus and the aposltes is now in us. So the same Spirit has the same power. So are we doing things like being shipwrecked because we are a prison on our way to declare the Gospel to Ceasar? Are we doing things like walking up to a crippled beggar and healing him? Are we being stoned to death because we are speaking the Good News to people who are not fond of it?

It is not the things themselves we need to seek. We need to have the boldness to surrender all for God in the pursuit of making His name great to all peoples in all languages. In the process of doing that the Holy Spirit will do the miraculous things like heal people, raise people from the dead, give sight to the blind, be able to take beatings and ridicule for the sake of the Gospel, etc. Those things will come because God works things out for our good (and what is good for us is for God to be praised and loved).

So look around you. When you see a Christian know that you are not only seeing someone created in the image of God because all of humanity is created in His image. When you see a Christian know that God Himself is there because God Himself is in that individual. Love that person and serve alongside that person because it is as if you are doing it to God.

I was doing some reading and looking at Philippians 2. I put some thoughts down about verses 5-11. Right before verse 5 we see the unity that Paul seeks for us to have.  Unity will bring him greater joy than anything else.  To achieve that unity, Paul wants us to consider others better. He wants us to look at others interest before our own.  He wants us to not think about ourselves, but think about others. This is so that we will be of one mind. This is so we will be united as the church.

We have following this the possible hymn that the early church had.  Paul leads into this hymn/song by saying, “Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus…”

So Paul commands us to make our attitude like Christ.  Here is one of the many instances in Scripture in which we are called to be like Christ or God. Paul, James, and Peter tell us to be like Christ.  Jesus tells us to be like God.  We are to do everything we can to focus on being like God as to be perfect as He is.  This is indisputable by Scripture. Our call is to perfection.  I will not talk about how achievable that is if at all, but it is what we are to do.  Perfection is our goal, not our enemy like is said by some (why in the world would we make perfection our enemy when Jesus Himself was perfection and the fact that our lack of perfection is what keeps us from God in the first place? Obviously through Jesus, God made a way for a lasting relationship with Him apart from perfection, but we should still try and maintain the best relationship with God through our unquestioned obedience and love to Him and His ways.)

So now in this hymn we get to focus on Jesus. Focusing on Jesus and His ways is the best thing in the world.  Let’s explore these verses a little bit.  Jesus existed in the form of God.  Right there, we see Jesus divinity.  Jesus is not like God.  Jesus is God.  In the form of God. I love that.  This was the great debate in the early church.  Anthanasius debated this full diety of God versus Arius in the council of Nicea in the fourth century.  This would surley have been one of his defining passages (I didn’t check that though).  The Greek phrase homoousia and homoiusia were debated. One meant of the same substance as God and the other meant of similar substance to God.

This is not where the great hymn stops though.  The point of the hymn is not to stop with the diety of Christ.  Paul is using the hymn to make a point.  He is saying that yes Christ is God Himself, but look at what God Himself did: “[He] did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped.”

So God did not consider Himself equal with Himself.  That doesn’t make any sense.  It begins to make sense in how we relate to others.  We who are no better than our other brothers and sisters in Christ, should not go around boasting of our greatness.  Instead of saying we are greater or even EQUAL to other, we are to become subservient to them.  We are not to look to be greater, but less than those around us, no matter our status in comparison to them by worldly standards. By spiritual standards, we are less than those around us.

Christ who IS God “emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of me.”  So God became man.  He became a slave.  He was no longer the creater, but he became the created.  He didn’t even become great among us.  Born in a manger. Brought up the son of an ordinary carpenter not even of royalty.  Christ became a lowly slave not the great.  We are to model that in our churches so that we can help create unity.

I’m beginning to see this passage more and more in the context of creating unity.  We are to become subservient to those in the church.  We are to consider others better.  We are to look at their interests.  We are to have Christ’s attitude towards them, the attitude of being a slave to them. When we do that, we will be united in mission and in purpose. Everyone is equally submissive to each other, so we are left with nothing apart from following the Word of God in bringing His kingdom here to earth.

We continue go on further like Christ did, “He became obedient to death, even death on a cross.”  We must reach the point of servitude to the members of the church around us to where we WOULD die for them.  We need to be willing to lay down our lives to die for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I can’t help but to go on a tangent to talk about how this impacts loving the poor.  Jesus is the poor (Matthew 25).  We are to love Jesus.  We are to love the poor as our brothers and sisters (1 John 3:17).  We now need to get to the point in which we would die for them around us.  We must take the attitude of Christ to where we would die for our brothers and sisters who are poor on the street of L.A. and in the slums of India.  When we are willing to die for our brothers and sisters, we are willing to fellowship with them, eat with them, pray with them, give them a place to sleep, help them with resources to become more productive members of the kingdom. We MUST die for them to bring about unity like Christ did to unite us with Himself!

Then we go on to see the beauty of the end of the hymn in which EVERY knee bows to praise Jesus.  Everyone is going to do it.  We might as well be willing to do it.  We might as well submit to Christ so that we joyfully and lovingly praise the wonderful feet of Jesus instead of being forced to pledge fealty to Christ by the power of His glory.  I really do long for the day in which I get to praise Jesus infront of Him.  I can’t wait to look at the fullness of His glory and fall down in fear, reverence, and love for God Himself.