Vacation with a purpose

I was able to go away on “vacation” last week. I have only had one other week off where I wasn’t serving in the last five years, and it was the first time that I have left the area for time away. Through the week I found myself thinking about vacation and why we take it. During the week I listened to a sermon from Francis Chan of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA. In that sermon he challenged people to throw out what we know about the Bible and Christianity, to no longer be influenced by society and what others believe, and to shape our thoughts, values, and priorities based on what the Bible really says. In order to that we have to actually open the book and read it!

Does the Bible talk about vacation? I can’t find it.
Does the Bible talk about sabbath? Yes!
Does the Bible talk about stepping away from the normal daily schedule, responsibilities, etc.? Yes, but for a purpose, to pursue time with God.

I spent a week on the Eastern seaboard exploring, renewing, and stepping away from my normal schedule and responsibilities, but the overarching purpose of my time was to be with God, to restore my relationship with him, and to listen to him. A week before the trip I posted When Your Spiritual Bottom Falls Out because my relationship with God was not right. Over the last two months I have become very aware of deep-seated sin that has been in my life for 25+ years. It has been a painful process, but I can say I am learning what it means to be a new creation in Christ. I have given over that sin to God and he has forgiven me and set me free. My attitude, priorities, values, views, relationships, responsibilities, etc. are all changing because of the journey I have been on the last few weeks and because of how God is working in my life.

Should we take vacation…is it Biblical? I don’t see where it is Biblical, but I do see where we need to take time out. Christ stepped away from the crowds, away from the disciples, and even away from his closest three friends all to spend time with God. He didn’t do it to fill selfish desires, to sleep and relax his human body, or to have a change of pace. He used the time to let God fill and change his desires, to let God fill and restore him, and to let God change him from the inside out.

Has our view of vacation, recreation, renewal, and enjoyment moved away from God’s Biblical standard? I don’t have a clear answer to that, but I do know that by taking a week off where every day I asked God how to spend my time, where to go, what to do, and what to listen to/read/reflect on I have come home at a better place than I have been for the last four years. As I look at the rest of my “vacation” this year I am already planning to attend a conference focused on spiritual restoration (one I have been seeking to attend for several years), planning to go on one or two mission trips, and if time still allows I will serve at a youth camp. I want my life to be poured out for others due to my love for God and I want him to be glorified. No “vacation” will ever match the joy, peace, happiness, and rest that will come from that. I can sleep at home, and I can do wonderfully enjoyable things with my time even while at home, but my desire is to live by “All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD. Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” Proverbs 16:2-3

Church, what’s the purpose?

I have been thinking about church a lot lately. There are a growing number of people having questions and concerns about my church, a two year old church plant. I absolutely love the values it is founded on, but as things are walking out I don’t see the values exhibited in meaningful ways and don’t see the leadership I thought was there. Lots of questions have raced through my head. Should we go to church for others or for ourselves? When things don’t seem to be working should we look for a new church or should we be sticking it out and trying to be part of a solution? No church is perfect, and there will be things about any church we don’t like or that don’t fit us, but is there a point we should use to determine a church/environment is unhealthy or not working and it is time to move on?

While wrestling with those questions I have seen several reports about where America and the church is headed in the next couple decades.

• By 2050 America is going to be over 50% hispanic
• America is changing from being a Protestant (51%) nation
• More than 25% of people have left the faith of their childhood
• Approximately 10% of all American’s are ex-Catholics
• Most converts to evangelical churches were raised Protestant
• We may be headed for the greatest recession since 1929

In light of this list and the questions above, what is the church and what is its purpose? Is the church here for us, or are we here for the church?

Encouraging videos on faith subjects

With what I would classify as a downhill slide on the three main cable networks over the last few months I have spent a lot more time online and have found a new interest in streaming media. (I won’t pay for cable so I only get the three main networks via antenna.) Years ago I started collecting videos so I could control what I watched when, and this new technology allows that same advantage.

Recently I stumbled across some powerful videos provided by City on the Hill Productions. H20 A Journey of Faith is a collection of 10 videos you can preview on line and purchase to be used for presentation to an audience along with a discussion time. These videos have a very powerful message.

A description from Amazon is as follows:
H2O is a DVD-driven, ten-session experience designed to create a safe atmosphere where people are comfortable considering the person of Jesus Christ. Through high-definition video, H2O uses carfefully crafted storytelling to reach a media-savvy generation. This H2O library contains everything needed to plan and host the program: Ten episodes on 3 DVDs / Participant’s Guide Leader Training and Resource DVD Sample invitations, poster, and postcard STORM-a ten DVD series that helps answer the tough questions about God, creating, the Bible, Jesus, suffering, prayer, Satan, afterlife, and questions about questions.

If this description interests you go online and preview the 7 minute trailer at
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid958548776?bclid=958471652&bctid=958571853

Heart knowledge

I have been raised in a Christian environment all my life. I have a base knowledge that means I know a lot of the standard answers to the standard questions. I can tell you what it means to be a Christian, what it means to follow, historical facts about the religion, cultural things about biblical times, and many traits of God’s character.

I believe I have more than head knowledge about God. I believe I have heart knowledge, but right there is the problem. I have heart “knowledge”. I analytically know something with my heart, but what I am not sure I have is a heart understanding of relationship. What is a relationship with God? Many would say it is about reading our Bible, spending time with God, going to church, worshipping, serving, and loving. If my relationship with my friend is about reading email, calling on the phone, spending time, seeing the person, and nothing more I am missing something. Those things are about “doing”. If our relationship is all about “doing” a series of specific actions but we are not present in the relationship in a way where we are “being” then are we really in relationship?

Many in our world have a relationship with God where they are “doing” all the right things, but I want to learn to “be” in relationship with God, not just “do” it. It is a journey that few seem to know about but it is one that I am finding rich in blessings when I am actually able to move forward along the difficult and uncut path.

Christ challenged us to disciple

What does it mean to “go and make disciples of all nations”?  Being part of a young church plant there are a lot of programs that we have not yet put into place and others that still need to be adjusted before they will thrive. In the midst of that I am finding that not all of my spiritual growth needs are being met so I have started looking around for other options to fill in those gaps. I have found bible studies and small groups, which are wonderful programs, but I have been left asking myself if they will disciple me.

These words are some of Christ’s last words to those alive on earth at the time of his death and resurrection. He continued with “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded”. The words were given to those who had been called disciples, but they were also the first people to form churches. Has the church become a place where we all are making disciples and teaching others to obey everything? If I take a critical look at the ministry I am actively involved with to youth we are doing really poor in this area.

Are there churches that are making disciples? What sets them apart from those who are not?

When your Spiritual bottom falls out

The past two weeks have been a really tough time for me. I feel like the bottom dropped out of my spiritual life. Right now I don’t know what I believe, what is right, where I am at, or which direction to go. I am one of those people who has walked faithfully as a Christian my entire life. Even before I was a Christian I was raised in a Christian home and I lived by ethics and beliefs that are a part of the Christian faith. I know on the deepest levels of my heart, my head, and my soul that God exists, but I am at a point where the confusion is so deep about how to live out those beliefs that I feel paralyzed. My church likes to ask “what do you think it would look like….” Right now my answers to that seem to conflict with things others are telling me, and things that seem to make “common sense”. Maybe that is the problem. Maybe I am trying to understand this faith walk with an earthly mindset instead of a heavenly mindset.

Part of me wants to fight, to understand, to make sense of things. Part of me wants and needs answers. At the same time I think it might be best to not try to figure out what is of God and what is me/others/evil spirits. Instead, I just want to cling tightly to God and rest. I need God to make it clear if he exits, and why he exists. I am wearing myself out, when what I need is rest, hope, and peace. Sometimes it is time to fight, act, move, leave, but sometimes what we really need to do is stop, be still, wait, listen, and stop the “doing”.

God, you know my heart, my hopes, my fears, and your plan. My ways are so far from your ways and my thoughts don’t even come close to your thoughts. You have given me free will to fight, strive, and work out my salvation, but today I am coming to you with a heart that is tired, one that needs your rest. I don’t know what to believe, but I do still cling to the belief that you are the one to believe in. Calm me and show me the way.

Singles in a world of couples

Today at church as I was greeting someone new the standard question came up, “Are you married?” Nope. “Kids?” Nope. Then there is often a strange silence while the married person tries to figure out what that means. Can a 39 year old really be single with no kids and still be healthy and happy? Yes!!!

Our world, even in the church, is very marriage or couple oriented. As a single I struggle to know how to relate to women who have priorities of husbands and kids, men who are trying to respect their wives and don’t want to share and get real, and families when I am alone. Most married people are not quite sure how to embrace relationship with an adult single, and yet a significant part of the church and world is now single.

How can churches embrace, serve, support, and encourage singles more effectively? Often they are referred to a singles ministry, but those usually only exist in larger churches. I attend a smaller church that is a two year old plant that I am very committed to, but I struggle to find meaningful relationships that meet my need for companionship, accountability, and support. Are churches teaching, creating programs, and doing things to support singles as effectively as they do marriages and families?

Created to do or to be?

In recent years the idea of what we have been created for has become a common topic among Christian circles. Some of that probably stems from the book “The Purpose Driven Life”. Do you think we are starting from the correct premise? The conversations I have heard usually focus on us being created to “do” something, but what if we were created for God to “do” and we are just to “be”?
 
“We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest well pleased. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labor to makes us loveable.” “Love may cause pain to its object, but only on the supposition that that object needs alteration to become fully loveable.” (both quotes are from CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain)

Words used to reflect God’s heart

In my quiet times this week I have been reflecting on how to present the gospel to those around me who do not know Christ. Most of these people will not sit down and read a quantity of scripture to extract meaning, but instead want facts and straight forward truth. I started looking up words we commonly use in Christian circles and was amazed at how seldom they appear in scripture, or the fact that they do not appear there at all. The numbers below come from the NIV translation, and they include some headings that are included in that translation, but as you can see there are words like Believer, Christian, Communion, Mission, Partner, and Relationship that very uncommon words.

How can we communicate God’s heart for connecting through relationship if scripture must be read for context? Are we forgetting to communicate about concepts God must believe are important such as believe, faith, listen, peace, sacrifice, and wisdom?  Why are wives mentioned 324 times when husbands are only mentioned 129 and marriage comes up only 49 times?

Abuse = 6
Baptism = 21
Belief = 2
Believe = 259
Believer = 7
Betrayal = 59
Body = 232
Boundary = 53
Burden = 51
Carry = 177
Charity = 0
Choice = 47
Christian = 4
Church = 112
Common = 27
Communion = 0
Community = 84
Connect = 10
Convert/Converted = 5
Disciple = 28
Faith = 422
Family = 179
Fidelity = 0
Free = 186
Free choice = 0
Friend = 172
Gossip= 10
Grace = 124
Healing = 39
Hope = 174
Hurt = 12
Husband = 129
Joy = 242
Judge = 211
Learn = 105
Listen = 413
Love = 697
Marriage = 49
Meaning = 61
Mission = 6
Money = 114
Partner = 10
Peace = 247
Redeem = 116
Redemption = 25
Relationship = 4
Righteousness = 232
Sacrifice = 357
Saved = 109
Sex = 56
Speech = 41
Struggle = 12
Stumble  = 53
Support = 48
Talk = 124
Testimony = 106
Tongue = 137
Trinity = 0
Trust = 164
Unbeliever = 5
Uplift = 12
Wife = 324
Wisdom = 215
Wise = 104
Wrong = 126

The conversation topic

Colossians 4:6 “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Are your conversations always full of grace? I know I have a long way to go to get there. I have my agendas, my priorities, my emotions, my likes and dislikes and often they over power any grace that may have been in my heart and mind. Are my conversations always seasoned with salt? Nope, I miss the mark there too. Sometimes the fact that scripture is known as “living and active” can mean that the truth it contains can leave us almost feeling pain due to how far we are from where we should be.

Last Sunday at church I had the pleasure of speaking with two separate ladies that are relatively new to the church, one being brand new. Those conversations were full of grace and seasoned with salt. We didn’t just speak of the weather or surface level things, but we spent time speaking of God and what he was doing. It left me reflecting on how often I can go to church and never have anyone speak to me about God (nor do I speak of Him). If we can not even speak of God when we gather as Christians in a safe environment like a family gathering, how are we going to share Him with others that don’t know about Him?

I am challenged right now to watch my conversations. Not only do I want them to be full of grace, and seasoned with salt, but I want to reach a point where I am truly talking about the relationship that I believe is the most important to me….my walk with God. May my tongue always speak of you Lord.

Psalm 35:8 “My tongue will speak of your righteousness  and of your praises all day long.”