I am a very lucky man

I am a very lucky man.  I have a lot to be thankful for this Christmas season.  I have a beautiful wife, two healthy boys. I have a home, a vehicle, & nice clothes. I am not in need.  Yet, I like everyone else in the United States, feel the need to buy more this time of year. I buy more toys on top of the ones my boys already have, because if I don’t I feel am doing them an injustices.  I buy my wife clothes in which she already has plenty of and my wife buys me electronics, which, frankly, I really don’t need (but don’t tell her that). 

All this spending, all this hustle and bustle that we do for one day in December, makes me wonder WHY ARE WE DOING ALL THIS?  Now don’t get me wrong, I love buying things for people, I admit I am part of the problem.  But have you ever stopped and wondered how far we have gotten away from what Christmas is suppose to be all about, the birth of are Savior.  Since when did we start buying presents for everyone else other than the person having the birthday?  When it’s my wife’s birthday, I don’t go out and buy my boys and myself a gift. That would be ridiculous, but we do it on our Savior’s birthday.

I think if we were to put the focus back on Him and less on ourselves, Christ still would not want any presents.  Rather knowing Christ’s nature, I believe He would want to help his sheep that are less fortunate than we are.

I stated early what I was thankful for but I left out key things that I take for granted everyday, like water.  Did you know there are people all over this world that do not have clean drinking water.  Food is something else I take for granted.  I go to the pantry anytime I want and grab something to eat.  There are millions of people that will go without food tonight; most of them are children.  Nevertheless, as not to make others and myself feel too bad this Christmas season, I’ll stop.  On the other hand, maybe we need to hear more of this very thing to take the focus off our greed and more on the hurting and needy people of this world.   

Adventconspiracy.org that talks about this very thing, spending less on ourselves and using that money to help others.  It is a site worth checking out, but be warned it may change the way you view Christmas.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Trying to be like Christ for a week

I evaluated my thinking recently and was amazed just how fair away I am from God.  Here is what I was thinking.  I started my day by getting gas and I was standing at the end of the line waiting to pay, while I hear the cashier speaking to the person at the head of line.  The cashier, obviously not from this country, had a hard time speaking English and I thought to myself, “Man, I wish they hire someone who was from this country, who could speak English better”. 

Then once I got back in my vehicle, I mapped out all that I had to do that day.  But once I arrived at work I was bombarded with a list of things that had to be done, none of them was what I had in mind.  So I thought to myself; “that’s typical, now I can not accomplish anything I wanted to get done, now I will be playing catch up all week”.

Now here’s the kicker, I’m done with work driving to a friends house to help him do something, when I am stopped at a red light and there to my left is a dirty man holding a cardboard sign that reads “out of work, will work for food”.  I look away as not to make eye contact with him and think that there’s work for him, he just isn’t looking hard enough or he is probably just a drunk wanting a hand out. 

These experiences from one day are typical of the thoughts that inhabit my mind time after time and you know what?  I am sick of them.  I want to be more like my Savior, I want to think more like Him.  What I lack is the heart of Jesus.  And here is the scary thing, it is scary to begin to see the truth about our own thoughts and its need to be cleansed. 

I imagine having a mind more like Christ, freed from all the derby that blocks my best intentions. What would it be like if the first time I saw a person I  started to pray for them?  What if instead of getting upset at how my day turned out I thanked God for the ability to work and thanked Him that I still have a job in this economy?  What if I looked at that man standing on the street corner and did not pass judgment on him, but offered to take him to MacDonald’s? 

That’s what it would look like to have the mind of Christ.  That’s what it would look like to be immersed in the scriptures.  The Bible teaches us how to live the kingdom in the here and now.  I have never known someone who was truly spiritual in the truest sense who had not been deeply immersed in the word.

So this week I am trying to be more like Christ, by being more in the word of God, by trying to have more of the thoughts of Christ and less of my own.  This week begins the second week of the Advent Season, where we start thinking of the birth of our Savior and what He has done for us.  What better way to start this Advent Season than to think more like Him.

are you in or are you out?

There’s just something about being in a group or club that cost you something.  When I was in college, I belonged to a fraternity and it felt good to belong to a group that not everyone was a part of.  Anyone that knows anything about fraternities of sororities knows that you have to be sponsored be someone already in the group that vouches for you and they say that you would be an excellent addition to our group.  However, this does not guarantee a spot in the group. First, you must rush, in my case for a week, where your fellow brothers, as they are known, can get you to do pretty much whatever they want.  Then they drill you with questions in an interview and if they like you, you’re in!  You are now part of the brotherhood!  You’re a big dog on campus now.  You’re part of an exclusive group that many want to be a part of and yet only a few ever get to opportunity to join. 

Not much has really changed since my days as a member of the Phi Simga Cia fraternity.  Yes, I am no longer a college student who likes to hang with my brethren, but I am part of another exclusive group, the church.  In many ways, the church feels a lot like my fraternity, for we have the tendency to be exclusive as well. 

Many members of the church world will call themselves the insiders and they want to separate themselves from the outsiders.  We don’t dare say we’re exclusive, but it’s how we act that gives that perception.  We have set in place external practices that separate us from the outsiders – our vocabulary or dress, who we associate with, and so on. 

We have become proud and judgmental toward the outsiders.  We often pride ourselves on how righteous we are, so much so that we can just look at someone and tell right away whether they are an insider or outsider.  However, with Jesus, the leader of the church, this wasn’t the case at all.  His messages and mission was to have everyone be an insider.  Not just to belong to an elite group of people that are super spiritual, but to belong to a group of people that wanted to be transformed into “new creatures”.  Jesus didn’t focus on what someone looked like or how they acted, rather he looked at the persons heart.

I have been a part of some wonderful churches in my life and every one of them has added to my spiritual walk with Christ.  Nevertheless, each one of them, some more than others, had their own bench markers.  Some of them could have had a pastor consumed with pride and was a glutton, but as he was growing or at least maintaining the church, he need not worry about his job.  But if by chance a church member saw him on the golf course smoking a cigar with a friend, you wouldn’t see him next Sunday at church.  Why is that?  Well probably no one would ever say that smoking a cigar on the golf course would be a worse sin than a life consumed with pride or a glutton.  Although for many in the church world smoking has become a bench marker for many.  It is one of the churches ways to tell if you are a wolf or a sheep. 

We all know that smoking is not the unpardonable sin, but it breaks many churchgoers unspoken bench marker.  Something like this could upset a church’s sense of identity.  It doesn’t matter really if you are Baptist, Catholic, Pentecostal, or Greek Orthodox I bet you can come up with your own set of bench markers.  This type of spirituality puts most of the focus on your position.  Are you in or are you out? 

However, Jesus is more concerned with people’s hearts.  He wants to know that they moving forward in their spiritual life, do they have the love of God and their fellow man in their life.  That is way many people were shocked in his day when He said that many of the religious leaders were outside of God’s kingdom, because they were more concerned with the bench markers than peoples heart.  John Ortberg in his book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted,” said it well.  He said “The ‘righteous’ were more damaged by their righteousness than the sinners were by their sin.”

Are we spiritually incompetent beings?

Those of us that long for God and take our spiritual life very seriously always experience periods of spiritual darkness and loneliness. Is it just part of the spiritual quest for Christians? 

 

Sometimes we may feel overwhelmed with God’s grace and kindness.  Other times we may feel distant from God.  We know this happens to all Christians from time to time and Saint John calls these times the “dark night of the soul”.  At times our “night” seems darker and deeper than others, why is that?

 

Could the “dark night” just be a reminder that we are spiritually incompetent and in constant need of a Redeemer?  What are our thoughts?

“A friend of sinners”

I was reminded the other day that Jesus was accused of being “a friend of sinners”.  That was supposed to be an insult to Christ. But it turns out to be a great source of hope to all of us.  We all know we are full of sin and fall short of God’s glory, but God is gracious.  God in His grace allowed Jesus to hang out with unrespectable people.  So I am just thinking here out loud, if our congregations are full of respectable people – then could it be said that we have not truly grasped the radical grace of God.  Just a thought, any comments.

What Jesus will look like

I read about the 2^nd coming and I, like most evangelicals, think of a big to do!  I imagine Jesus riding a white stallion with clouds rolling behind him as He comes down to earth, like the pictures I see.  I also imagine everyone waking up to angles playing trumpets. 

 

But what if my view like many other evangelicals in America is wrong.  What if instead of angles playing trumpets, it’s a couple of homeless guys in New York playing. Instead of a great white stallion it is a donkey?  Then what if after Jesus got here He first visited the homeless shelters and bars and drank and ate with the kinds of people evangelicals have declared war against?  And when it says in the Bible that He comes like a thief in the night it means that He did not make a big deal of his return, that He kept it on the down low.  Now to top it off, what if He did not have long waive hair and a good complexion, but was just average or below average looking.  And what would we think if he talked with a hick accent and spoke in parables all the time. 

 

I think if He comes back like this not many will believe He really is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  Those that did follow Him would probably be the poor and marginalized.  I can’t help but wonder if the ugly Jesus came to America if we would fulfill the Isaiah 53:3 prophecy once again, where it says He that was rejected by men. 

 

It’s probably easier for you and me to believe Jesus is now in Heaven with God in all his splendor and glory.  I feel this way because I’m afraid the Jesus that exists in most of our minds is hardly the real Jesus at all.  The Jesus that sells books, that is on TBN, the Jesus of many evangelical Americans, is a lot of times the Jesus of the suburbs.  A Jesus that wants you to be a better person, a Jesus who supports your political party, a Jesus who dresses in a suit, who speaks eloquently and says what we want to hear and above all does not rock the boat in our lives. 

 

I think some people live in a fantasy world where Jesus is holding our hand telling us we are the ones that are right and some day soon all the other idiots will pay.  And we are going to make it because we are Pentecostal, Calvinists, Catholics, and Armenians; because we attend the right church and support the right political party.  Or is Jesus actively pulling our heartstrings to feed the hungry, help the marginalized, and the desperate.  Is He the Jesus that is telling you to reach out of your comfort zone to eat and fellowship with those you would not normally talk to?  The Jesus that compels us to pray for our enemies instead of talking about them – the Jesus that says put others before ourselves, the Jesus that said to model our lives like him.  The latter of these is the Jesus of the Scripture, the ugly one.  The first one is definitely more popular in evangelical America, but is a myth, a make believe Jesus sharing a genre with Harry Potter.