Every time we add something new to our schedule, we must take something out. Alongside your ‘to do’ list think about keeping a ‘don’t do’ list as well.
“Many times, developing the ability to spend time in the Bible and to hear what it’s saying is less about our aptitude for scripture and more about all the noise that exists around us. We all know we could use more Bible, but we often forget we could use less of everything else.”
—Jared Wilson, Abide
Today we begin a new weekly series I’ll simply call “-ISMS,” a look at the dominant philosophies of our day. Some will be overtly religious; some will seem non-religious (at first); all are the lenses through which we tend to think and feel about ourselves, God and the world around us. First up, consumerism.
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Alan Hirsch gets to the heart of how everyone is a disciple of something and why someone cannot stay a consumer and become a growing disciple of Jesus.
(Let this 3 minute video provoke your thoughts.)
“Everyone is a disciple and no one stops being a disciple.”
“If we don’t disciple, then the culture sure will. (And it’s doing a good job of it.)”
Consumerism is being defined by what we consume. One’s meaning, identity, purpose and belonging becomes tied to the consumption of products. Consumerism is the most prevalent religion of our day.
Jesus’ call to all consumers:
DIE.
Only then will we truly live.
radish seed sprout
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” —Jesus (John 12:24)
The goal and power of the Christian life is worship. Everyone everywhere at every moment worships someone or something. What do you worship? What are you worshiping right now? Whose approval do you crave?
Paul’s ambition in a phrase:
So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.
—2 Corinthians 5:9
Here’s a man so bent on helping others grow and know God that he takes responsibility for their very lives. So he sacrificed and gave and confronted and extended grace. Paul was relentless and driven, yet transparent and authentic.
Things can get complicated quickly when so many relationships are at stake. Yet his ambition and desire for approval was singular: pleasing God was all he wanted to do. When he submitted his daily plans to God no one else was CC’d on the email.
In a culture where we are commended to focus on pleasing ourselves and where masses celebrate those who make their living pleasing themselves in public (celebrities), what a freeing reality to find ourselves wrapped up in pleasing Someone who is genuinely worth celebrating. He is so worthy and compellingly beautiful that any small thing done for Him is greater than something big done for ourselves (who are so small).
How will you please God today?
“There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.”
—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 109
“Our God Above,” a song of God-centered renewal, from Andy Melvin’s album The Human Engine Waits:
Come and fill us Father
with Your living water
’cause these wells we’ve dug are dry
the world we have befriended
has left us empty-handed
and only You can satisfy
as we return to You
our spirits are renewed
and our hearts are moved to worship You alone
our God above
we lift You up
to the place that You deserve
within our hearts
and we glorify
the Lord on high
You have no equal on the earth
No equal on the earth
Lord, we claim the promise
that the work You started
You’ll be faithful to complete
so we trust in Your might as we offer our lives
as a living sacrifice of praise to You
and we! declare! our love! to You!
yeah we! declare! our love! to You!
Live recording of “Nothing Compares” by Andy Melvin and the Unlikely Sons [see in HD]:
“God suffers in the multitude of souls whom His word can not reach. Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books, which confine instead of spread the public treasure. Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world by her word no longer written at great expense by hands easily palsied, but multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine.”
—Johannes Gutenberg, in a preface to the Gutenberg Bible (1454)
Of course, up until that time no book, including the Bible, had been copied and mass produced on a printing press. Everything had to be written in pen, by hand. (There actually is a blessing in that activity, as words are less likely to be taken for granted.)
Whether you grab a paper copy or a digital version, take up and read the Great Words! Let’s not squander the Truth by keeping it to ourselves. Embody it; proclaim it; be changed by it.
Grateful Johannes Gutenberg employed creativity and innovation for the common good.
Some questions to consider:
A reflection video from the message, GRATITUDE: Becoming Grateful for What I’ve Been Given, week one of the BECOME series at Willamette Christian Church [all audio].
Last week our daughter asked, “Mommy, why God haffa die?”
While I cannot completely remember what her older brother Dutch said in response (though I remember chuckling), the question came during Bible story time right before bedtime. This may have been the first inquiry on the nature of what we were reading. Other questions have shown curiosity about the characters on the page, and our son is beginning to get excited about the complexity of the Trinity (how can Jesus be God and God the Father be God too?).
The question Heidi asked made my heart leap, and I knew Kari would have a terrific answer. (Mostly because she embodies doctrine and godliness like no one else I know.) We recognize a response is not so much about saying the exactly correct thing once; it’s about showing why and how we believe what we believe, every day.
So, “Why God haffa die?” Kari responded that God gave His Son Jesus to rescue us and forgive us from all the naughty things we do. (Do you do naughty things?) God wants to be with us, but we ran away and disobey Him. We chose to leave Him; Jesus came to bring us back. Jesus did this to bring us back to Him, so we can be with God.
It’s starting to click in her mind. Heidi then smiled, joyfully exclaiming,
“Now He happy!”
So true.
Continue reading
One night last week while finished up our evening routine — “family bath and family snuggle” (always inseparable) — we ended with a Bible story and prayed for one another. Right after reading the story of Jesus dying on the cross in the Jesus Storybook Bible, our two-and-a-half old daughter asked:
“Mommy, why God haffa die?”
That’s the best question all week. I wanted to put that moment in my pocket and never forget it.
Love how both of our kids are wrestling with the substance and implications of the Gospel. Wish I was that curious all the time.
Question: How would you answer that question? (When asked by a toddler, or even an adult.)
Tomorrow I will share what her older brother said, and what we’ve been telling our kids, repeatedly and in different ways.
The great book VENEER: Living Deeply in a Surface Society by Tim Willard and Jason Locy, is now on sale for Kindle for $0.99.
Get it. That will be the best dollar you invest today. (Even if you don’t have a Kindle device, you can read it with their app on your computer, mobile device or smartphone.)
A quote from Veneer:
“We need to go to God and then stop. We need to lay down our burdens and requests for a moment and attempt to gather him in, encountering his vastness. We do not approach him with a laundry list of wants. Rather, we approach him in order to worship him—giving him his worth—hoping that by being in his presence, we will glean a small piece of his glory to season our daily existence.”
Every branch receives its full nourishment from it’s root. The hidden part animates the seen parts.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
—Colossians 2:6-7
Notice the words “in Him,” which form the basis of the exhortation. What God did for us in Jesus — rescuing us from sin, death, wrath, and Satan — He now does in us. He calls us to grow into His likeness, with our whole identity becoming “in Him.” Everything we need for they journey is ours. Yet, this connectedness to God is more than me-and-God spirituality. There’s an ‘us-ness’ to this walk.
God intends that we grow; He designed us to flourish together. Just as the roots of all the trees in a healthy forest are interconnected below the surface, we have opportunities to strengthen one another. We can move beyond our preference for comfort and leave behind our want of control, success and approval. In Jesus we have found all we could ever wish for. He is making us whole; we can now give more than we take.
Do you want to grow like this?
Commit yourself to a life of gratitude and humility, cultivating true community in honesty with others, serving people who cannot pay you back — proactively and sacrificially giving away your time, talents, and treasure. All the while, you’ll be surprised how much God is shaping your character into the image of His Son.
What Jesus did for us is becoming what He is doing in you, and will do through you.
You’re becoming like Him.
Remember, healthy people grow.
Yesterday we took a quick glimpse at Colossians 2:6:
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,”
Note how the way on in the same as the way in. We trust Jesus by faith, relating to God by His Grace, as a whole way of life. Not cheap grace, but costly grace. Jesus gave up His life for us. We know we can never repay Him, so we don’t try to earn His favor. We have God’s favor because of what Jesus did for us. Now begins the effort, working out what God has worked in (Philippians 2:12-13).
Colossians 2:7 shows us the ‘how’ of continuing to walk in Jesus:
“… rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
Paul’s vision of the Christian life is both ambitious and sustainable. He calls us to accomplish the extraordinary through faithfulness in the ordinary moments of life. (Clearly we were not meant to merely ‘accept’ Jesus as our way to Heaven.) He and we want much more than that. Jesus comes to take masterful control of every area of our lives as our Savior and Lord. Yet what we read here is sustainable as well. As we began in Jesus, we shall continue in Him. The same way we trusted Christ at first, we continue to trust Him each day.
(Paul employs five metaphors in verse 7 as he illustrates how growth works. )
The growing process is rooted like a healthy plant. We shall be continually built up and renovated together as a luxuriously designed dwelling, established on a solid foundation. When Jesus is our sure foundation, we can weather any season and storm. God leads us forward by pointing us back to what we’ve been taught — we never outgrow our need for the good news of Jesus.
People who live this way — rooted, built up, strengthened in the gospel — will naturally overflow (abound) with thanksgiving, like a river at flood stage.
No one can contain that life, it’s an unstoppable force.
(Tomorrow, part 3.)