R3: radical, revolutionary, different

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Have you ever noticed how everything in the world is geared towards justifying our choices, our actions, and our decisions?  We live in a world obsessed with finding excuses, reasons, and explanations for why our behavior should be the exception.

“Well officer, I didn’t mean to speed, I just had to go to the bathroom.”
“I’d love to play with you tonight son, but I had a hard day at work.”
“Everyone else is doing it…”

We are always looking for loopholes.  Always looking for an out.

I find it interesting that God is just the opposite.

God closed the loopholes.  No, scratch that.  He doesn’t “close” loopholes, he slams them shut, nails the door, and moves a giant bolder in front of it.  God does not accept “well I just wasn’t paying attention.”  God does not accept excuses and justifications.

Is there anything more revolution, more counter-cultural than that?

We often have this impression of Jesus as a “nice guy” who was in complete contrast to the “big, mean” God of the Old Testament.  But that’s not the case.  Both treated sin in a very-counter cultural way.  And yes, it was counter-cultural 2,000 years ago.   Much to the shock of the Jews of the day, Jesus ramps up the intensity of the 10 commandments:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5: 17-20)

If that’s not enough.  Consider what Jesus said about murder.  “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

Wow.

I don’t know about you, but that’s terrifying.  Hating someone is the same as murdering them?  God doesn’t see shades of gray?  You can be condemned to Hell for that?!  Talk about closing the loopholes!

Why was Jesus like this?

I believe it’s because God knows how we operate.  He knows that we’re always looking for loopholes.  He knows that if there was any wiggle room we’d be asking, “how close to the line can I get?”

That’s what Israel did.  In fact that was their entire history.  They were constantly trying to get as close to the line as they could without crossing.  And you know where that led?  To hardened hearts.  To spiritual death.  And to a life lived not in faith, but a life lived in mindless obedience to minute laws.  A place where there was no room left for God.

There is good news though.  While you and I can never live up to Jesus’ standards.  That doesn’t matter.  Jesus took the punishment that we deserved.  He suffered where we should be suffering.  He paid the price that was ours to bear.  That’s what’s so amazing about God.  At the very moment he was closing all loopholes, he was opening up the front door.  No more sneaking around, we could boldly and confidently walk in the front door.  As Michael W. Smith says in Come To The Cross, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, everyone can come to the cross.”

If God has closed the loopholes should we still be seeking to justify all of our actions?  Should we still be trying to avoid trouble by wiggling our way free?  Or should we boldly move forward and simply ask God to forgive us?  Jesus may have closed the loopholes, but by doing so he made it easier to enter Heaven, not harder.

I ask you this week – where are the loopholes in your life?  And what are you going to do to close them?

A life of faith is guided by God, not controlled by loopholes.

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What do spiders, silk and missionaries have in common?

For one missionary living in Madagascar in the late 1800’s they meant inventing a device to extract spider-silk from spiders, without hurting them.  While this invention didn’t go very far (it’s hard to get enough silk to work with) it has spurred modern inventors, who have now created a 2-pound rug out of spider-silk.

One of the things that I think the church (in general) has moved away from is leading society in the areas of science, art, and thinking.  Some of the greatest minds in history have been from the church.  For many years the church was the repository for knowledge.  It held the scholars, the educated, and the literate.  Much to our shame, the church used it’s knowledge to secure it’s position in society.  Which in turn held back literacy and education.

However, the church also did remarkable things.

What if the church led the way today?  What if we focused on giving back to society instead of changing it?  What if the church led scientific research?  What if the church was tops among inventors?  What if the church was the most innovative organization on the planet?  What if the church made a tangible, day-to-day, impact on everyone’s life?  What if the church didn’t just improve the spiritual well being, but also physical well being?

What if…

What if the church led the way?

Can you imagine the possibilities?

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Reading the Bible is one of the most difficult things for a Christian to do.  It’s challenging because it takes discipline to read it every day.  It’s far too easy to get busy and let it slip.  On top of that, a lot of Christians find it kind of boring.  And lets face it, there are parts that are exactly thrilling.

Of course that doesn’t mean those parts aren’t useful or important.  It’s just that this isn’t exactly the next Harry Potter.  Because of things like this, many Christians never read the Bible.

I personally love reading the Bible.  It has re-shaped my understanding of who God is.  And the more I study it, the more I realize the Bible is real.  I’ve written about my own experience reading the Bible many times.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t times that I feel myself struggle to stay focused.

There are days when I would like to read the Bible written in a bit more contemporary style (such as The Message).  I’d also like to read a Bible that was chronological, as the Bible skips around a lot (at least if you read it cover to cover.)

That’s where Jesus Wants to Save Christians comes in.

Authors Rob Bell and Don Golden write, in what they call, a New Exodus perspective.  To boil it down, New Exodus refers to the fact that Jesus led a new exodus for Christians in much the same way that Moses led an (old) Exodus for Jews.

Prior to reading Jesus Wants to Save Christians I hadn’t really considered this before.  I knew the details, and I even knew some of the similarities.  But I had never taken the time to really consider what that looks like.  Or what that would mean for my life.

And it’s this life change that we’re most interested in here at R3.  That’s why I was so intrigued by Jesus Wants to Save Christians.  It provides a useful framework for understanding our own journeys, and our own lives.  And it’s built around four major events within Jewish history.

1. Egypt - Egypt was a place built on the concepts of slavery and oppression.  It was a country that didn’t value people.  That didn’t value God’s creation.  And didn’t value life.  As the book describes it, “Egypt is what happens when sin builds up a head of steam.”
2. Sinai - Sinai is where God breaks his silence (up to this point he had only spoken to a few people).  Now he’s speaking to everyone.  It’s during this time he truly sets his people free.  It’s about grace, forgiveness, compassion, love, trust, and caring.  It’s about getting a new beginning.  It’s about all the things Egypt wasn’t.
3. Jerusalem - This was God’s kingdom.  A chance for people of faith to show the world what it means to live a life of faith.  But it all fell apart.  Sin crept back into the story and Solomon, instead of using his wealth and power to advance God’s kingdom, used it to create luxury and palaces for himself.  Or as Bell and Golden say, “in just a few generations, the oppressed have become the oppressors.”
4. Babylon - Exile.  That’s what happened here.  Israel was destroyed by their enemies and the Jews go back into exile.  Exactly where they started many years before in Egypt.  Exile is all about forgetting your purpose.  It’s about losing sight of why God has given you blessings – not to gain wealth and power, but to use wealth and power to advance the Kingdom.

It’s these four things that stick in my mind.  These events may have happened on a grand scale.  But it also happens on a very individual scale.

How many of us have been rescued from a figurative Egypt?  Maybe we lived in terror from someone who abused us.  Or we lived a life consumed with sin, lust, and temptation that took us to a very lonely place.  Or maybe we were just consumed with greed, and found our lives destroyed by money.  And yet, for some reason, God rescued us from our personal Egypt’s.

The danger in all of our relationships with God is losing sight of that miracle.  It’s forgetting the grace and forgiveness.  The world is crafty, the enemy is smart, and we will get tricked (all too easily) into becoming the oppressors.  Instead of showing the world what it means to live out a life of faith, we show them exactly how not to live.  And so greed, lust, temptation, abuse, anger run rampant in our churches and our lives.

It’s that structure that I take from this book.  It helps me see this pattern in my own life.  And encourages me to stop it at all costs.  I don’t want to go into Exile.  I don’t want to forget the amazing things God has done in my life.

As you can tell the thing I liked most about Jesus Wants to Save Christians is how it provides a new way of looking at the Bible.  The Bible is one of the best ways we can connect with God.  And anything that helps to improve that connection, that relationship, is worth pursuing.

A word of caution though.  I found this book difficult to read.  Not because it was complex or heavy.  But because of the writing style Bell and Golden use.  Let’s just say it’s “choppy.”  Fortunately this isn’t an English class, so we don’t need to grade them on that.  But if you’re going to read it (and it’s worth reading) you should know what you’re getting into, grammatically speaking at least.

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Revolution.  That’s a big theme around R3.  In fact, that concept is a core part of what drives R3 (hence the line: radical, revolutionary, different).  Being a revolutionary is part of what it means to live out a life of faith.  Why am I talking about all of this?  Because I am preparing to teach a new community group called Welcome to the Revolution.  The class is based on the book written by Brian Tome.  The book version of Welcome to the Revolution focuses on what it means to live out a life of faith as a new believer.  The class I am teaching condenses these ideas into a six week period.

Because this is such an important topic to me, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to teach.

As I was preparing for the class I began to think about how you define a Revolution.  What makes something revolutionary?  What are the key components of a revolution?  At the very core, what does a revolution look like?  What does it mean?

As I thought about it, three concepts came to mind.

1. Revolutions are all about doing things differently.
2. Revolutions are about action.
3. Revolutions are hard.

While there are many different ways to describe a revolution, it’s these three things that define a revolution.  Especially the Kingdom revolution.

Revolution = different.  If things are working perfectly in your life you don’t need a revolution.  If your government is doing the will of the people, you don’t need a political revolution.  If you’re ok making your clothes by hand you don’t need an industrial revolution.  If you’re content writing using only pen and paper you don’t need a technological revolution.  But if everything isn’t perfect, then maybe it’s time to do things differently.  Maybe what’s needed is a revolution.

Revolution = action.  There isn’t time off in a revolution.  You don’t go to commercial break.  You can’t call “time out” so you can go get a drink of water.  Revolutions are 24/7.  That doesn’t mean there will be “fighting” all the time, but it does mean you are always on duty.  You never know when the next battle will be fought, and if you aren’t ready, you’ll find yourself quickly defeated (metaphorically, spiritually, and perhaps even literally).

Revolution = hard.  If someone told you a revolution was easy…they are lying.  Changing things is never easy.  This is especially true with the Kingdom revolution.  The more headway you make the harder it gets, the bigger the challenges, and often, the more it costs.

If you aren’t willing to accept these costs then your revolution will fail.  In the physical world this means that your idea won’t catch on.  Or your political movement will die out.  It will mean that change doesn’t happen and the status quo remains.  In the spiritual world it means your faith will falter, your trust in God will fail, and you’ll find yourself in a very dark and lonely place.

That’s the trade-off with a revolution.  You can change the world, or you can fall in defeat.  Revolutions aren’t half way affairs.  You are either winning a revolution or losing a revolution.  But the pay-off for being a successful revolutionary is amazing. Despite the danger, despite the cost, the Kingdom revolution is worth it.  Which is why I encourage you to seek out revolution in your life.

Become a revolutionary!  Change the world!

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One of the hardest things to do as a Christian is to trust in the promises of God.  We want to throw our own promises into the mix.  When we read that God gives us freedom, we think, “well that must mean I can retire with a six figure salary.”  When we hear Jesus say that we will be blessed, we think, “that’s great, that must mean I will have an easy life.”

Yet it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these things don’t always happen.  Is it any surprise that we become quickly disillusioned when our prayers “aren’t answered”?

I grew up believing in the religious “check box god.”  This was a god who would reward you if you just managed to get enough points or answer the questions correctly.  As long as you could do that it didn’t matter what was in your heart or how you lived your life.  Avoiding making a “big” mistake was all that mattered.  And of course “big” was defined as any mistake you hadn’t made before.

But that’s not what Jesus had in mind.

Jesus keeps his promises his way.  We can’t allow ourselves to insert our promises and call them God’s.  It doesn’t work that way.

I was reminded of this in my daily blog reading.  Jim Hamilton a pastor and professor discussed his experience with starting a church.

Sunday after Sunday, month after month, the same four families and a few singles gathered for worship at Baptist Church of the Redeemer.  As this happened, the Lord slowly disabused me of the notion that the church was going to grow because of me.  It hurts to have your pride molded into humility, but it feels good, too, and how liberating!  Not to mention the way others prefer humility to pride.

Through this experience, I learned that Jesus keeps His promise to build His church.  I learned the power of the Word of God.  And I learned – or made progress in learning – to love people.

As I’ve been out of work for 9 months now, I can’t even tell you how many times I have let my assumptions become what I thought was a promise from God.  And it was in those moments that I’ve been most tempted to turn away from him.  But Jesus keeps his promises.  He’s never let me down.  I just need to trust that his promises will be kept in his way, not mine.

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I got this email from Chris who writes Got-Fruit.net.

Your post [about the power of prayer] has many wonderful thoughts about how we’re to relate to God and others.  I read that the point is; that we should be just as if not more concerned for the spiritual welfare of others as we are about our own necks.

I too have been trying to get into a better habit of writing down prayer requests more often, as well as how they’re answered.  As you mentioned, it’s not to track when God is blessing me, rather to have a broader view of how and when God is working His will; how I’ve been privy to seeing Him work I suppose you might say.

My experience(s) have been that sometimes the Lord’s work in others is done not just for their sake but for mine as well; I’ll get a glimpse of how He’s blessing or working in another person’s life and I then begin to relate & understand better; my relationship with Christ – where I’m faltering or where I might need to add or delete an activity for example, to adjust to the Lord’s will.

Prayer is something that is remarkable.  It’s a unique chance to communicate with God.  We don’t need fancy clothes, special rituals, or a go-between.  We simply need to take the time and say “hey God” and start a conversation.  What’s not to like about that?!

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It’s been a couple days since The Nines leadership event / conference / webcast.   In that time I’ve heard a few people say sitting through the conference was a bit like drinking from the business end of a fire hose.  And I think that’s a fair description.  70 speakers in 9 minute chunks is a lot of information.  What’s more is that many of these speakers were world-class teachers.  Meaning they know who to give you relevant, useful, important information.  I personally felt I needed to write down everything that was said.  (I didn’t.  I just felt like I should.)

So now I find myself thinking about how I want The Nines to impact me.

There is simply too much information for me to use all of it.  There’s too much information for me to even process.  But what unique concepts can I bring out of it?

For me I think there are two major points.

1. Everyone needs rest.  This theme has been a cornerstone of conversation for R3 for the last few weeks.   It’s no wonder that it resonated with me at the conference.  God built a Sabbath into our lives for a reason.  Maybe we should use it.
2. Don’t be afraid to be different.  Sometimes I hesitate to take a chance because I think “maybe I’m too young to take that leadership role” or “I don’t have a degree in theology.”  But those are just excuses.  We saw a cast of speakers from all ages, all backgrounds, and all “looks.”  We don’t need to belong to a special club to teach or to follow where God leads.

The Nines reminded me once again that it’s important to be exposed to a vibrant community of faith.  It’s easy to forget, in our highly secularized world, that God is moving powerfully all around us.  We can easily believe that we are a lone island.  Yet God was moving in so many stories.  How can we realistically believe that he’s forgotten or abandoned us?

The Nines was an amazing experience.  I wish that I could have seen all 70 speakers.  But I am thrilled to have been exposed to the ones I was.  I think The Nines is going to have a profound impact on my life, on R3, and my community.  To me that’s the definition of success.

The only thing that remains is to go and do something about it.  Learning to live out a life of faith is one part knowledge (that’s the learning component), but there’s also the action piece.  We need to live out what we know.  That’s as true for me as it is for you.

I plan on living out the lessons I’ve learned from The Nines.  How about you?

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Today was spent watching The Nines.  A web-based conversation about the church.  Here are a few things I picked up from The Nines today.  Not all of these are earth shattering, but they are all good things to hear multiple times.

• “A movement of God cannot be planned but must be prepared for.”  – Perry Noble I think this is true.  We can prepare for God.  But how would we plan for the crazy things he does on a regular basis.  How could we prepare for Moses who had no leadership experience.  How could we prepare for God to turn Paul into a leading evangelist?  We can only prepare to move when we need to.  We can’t force God to move when we want him to.
  
• “We often equate large with legitimate” -  Skye Jethani Almost all of us fall into this trap.  When God is as big as he is, it’s easy to expect BIG miracles.  In fact, that’s what we see a lot of in the Bible.  Being big often means God is involved.  The danger is in thinking that large always equals God.  Or that small always means God isn’t.  Many of the Old Testament Prophets were lone voices crying out to Israel to repent.  They may have had a small impact, but they were still legitimate voices of God.
  
• What burden would be lifted from our lives if we rooted our identity like Jesus (Jesus Identity rooted – that he was beloved Son of his Father.) -  Skye Jethani
• “If our church went away, would the crime rate go back up?” – Jorge Acevedo I love this.  The Church should be a leader in all fields, science, advancement, healing, compassion.  If your church isn’t making a significant impact (however that looks for you) in your community, you’re not doing something right.
• “What is the condition of your heart – above all else, guard your heart“ – Nancy Beach There is a definite theme in The Nines of leaders needing a break and to watch their lifestyle.  I know I have recently felt in over my head.  Even though I am doing amazing things for the Kingdom.  God won’t ask you to burn yourself out – so don’t ask that of yourself!
• Stephen Furtick -  I don’t know anything about him other than what I heard on The Nines.  But I found him refreshingly hilarious.

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This is shaping up to be a very busy week for me.  Which means posting will be light.  I admit, I am tempted to find a way to get the usual 3 posts up this week.  But I’m also reminded of what I wrote a few weeks ago.  Everyone needs time off.  Including a write-a-holic like myself!

As much as I love writing, if I want to produce my best work, I need to be conscious of how I am spending my time.  And not surprisingly it takes a lot of time, creativity, and effort to come up with three interesting, and hopefully insightful, posts per week for R3.  I am convinced this is why God created a Sabbath.  Sabbath’s aren’t designed as punishment or ways to prevent us from going  shopping or eating at Chick-fil-a .  It was so we could actually rest and recover.  We all need that.

But before I go, I do have some updates for you guys.

1. There are changes coming to R3.  I’ve been hinting at this for a few months now.  But I am in the finishing stages of updating R3’s theme.  I think the changes will bring a lot of new functionality to R3 and hopefully encourage us all to better live out lives of faith.
2. I have a couple of job interviews in the very near future.  Being unemployed has been unbelievably trying, but I have grown more in the last 9 months than at perhaps any other point in my life.  I finally understand what it means when the Bible says, “God provides.”  That said, I’d appreciate any prayers.  I’m less concerned about “interviewing well” than I am about making the right choices that honor God and advance his kingdom.
3. This last point is perhaps my most important one of the day.  If you’ve ever wanted to know what stormtroopers do on their day off – know you know.  See?  Even stormtroopers have a Sabbath!

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