A Simple Life

As I'm working through our current sermon series on "The Life You've Always Wanted" and reading the book by the same title by John Ortberg, I'm being personally challenged to renew in my own life many of the spiritual disciplines we all take for granted.

The life of a church planter is like that of many others. We're busy. Hurried. Task-driven. Calendar-driven. Project-driven. Simply put - we're just driven and driven by a lot of externals. Sermon has to be ready. Visitors contacted. Web site updated. Newsletter completed. Bulletin ready. Pastoral care given. Small groups prepared for. The list goes on. Actually, the list never ends.

As I sat down this morning to read my Bible and read through Ortberg's book, though, I hear another voice speak clearly in the hurrying and busy-ness. It's the voice of letting go and simplifying one's life. It's the voice calling gently to retreat to a quiet place and be still with God. (Ps. 46:10)

Jesus would regularly go to a quiet place and pray. I imagine he had a lot to do as well. His mind was likely occupied with ministry needing to be accomplished. And still, Jesus recognized the importance of spending regular periods of time with God. (Mark 6:32, Luke 6:12) He let go of the "ministry need" for a moment to focus on that which gave the ministry life.

I wonder sometimes who it was that got the ball rolling on our being so hurried in life. Who was it that subtly told us that unless we were DOING something then we weren't of much value. And so we "do." And now we "do" at dizzying rates of speed. Consider how much email we receive demanding our attention and action. Consider how many people now are equipped with pda's to help them keep track of all of their personal "clutter." Consider our own lives and how far removed from simplicity and grace we so often feel. How many of us feel like time with our families has become a chore distracting us from our "real" work?

Jesus said in Matthew 6, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life ?...33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own"

I love it. It's such a radical statement of re-orientation. Basically it says, "Don’t worry about it - what you need, God will provide." Could there be any more simple statement of our faith?

What would happen in our lives if this scripture were to be applied to every project, relationship, association, "to do" item, or calendar event. Would we, like the type-A's among us fear, simply jettison responsibility? Or might we actually begin to experience God-breathed depth to our lives as we pause long enough to hear His voice and experience His presence.

Pause. Breathe deeply. Thank God deeply. Just be in his presence. Repeat.

Innocence Restored!

Jn 10:10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.

Jesus spoke these words reminding his listeners that there exists a power in the universe that wants to completely reverse the life of blessing God created us to enjoy. We encounter that power first in the garden of Eden as the tempting voice that "you will not surely die" if you disobey God's commands.

We encounter that power daily when no one is watching, when it's so trivial it won't really matter, when it won't hurt anyone else, when one more time won't hurt me, or any other time that small voice whispers that God doesn't really care. Who are YOU in the universe for God to pay so much attention to?!?

Sin is like that. It creeps in and establishes itself in small places before attacking the more vital places of our life. Before long, we're sick, we're tired, we're worn out. And the promise of actually being able to live life in innocence (yes, innocence!) is a dream long since passed. The cycle of sin continues. As we react to the sin - all in an effort to make ourselves "feel" better - we find ourselves spiraling deeper into it.

Our prayers (if we haven't given up on prayer) sound vaguely similar to the words of Paul in Romans 7, "Ro 7:21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Paul identifies the hope. It isn't in treating the illness with things that can't ever satisfy. It's in radically reorienting our lives back to innocent living. Come to think of it, we don't do the work at all. We simply hand over our lives to the great physician himself, Jesus Christ. Like the woman who'd suffered from bleeding for twelve years who touched the hem of Jesus's garment - we become healed. Instantly. That's the power of faith.

Now my very educated and rational friends are all saying - but Jay! You can't give people such a facile hope. It's so much more complicated than that. You have to have years of professional therapy and support groups before you can ever really hope to be break free from the life-diminishing influences of society and culture!

Really? How's that working for you?

Abundant life flows out of the person of Jesus Christ. When Jesus is at the center our who we are - in prayer, in teaching, in fellowship, in worship, in daily living, in sleep, in waking, in driving our car to work, in work, in play, in family, in marriage - we live abundantly. This isn't something one learns in seminary. They don't teach it there. This is something you experience when you give your life completely to Jesus to work salvation in your life. And, it's only then that professional therapy and support groups can really perform a lasting and beneficial work.

Life in Jesus is a beautiful thing. It's an amazing life. It's a life I want for everyone to experience no matter how far removed they "feel" they are from God. It starts with a simple act of obedience. Stepping out in faith. It moves to the small places before it begins to strengthen the vital places of your life. It restores your innocence in Jesus. And life is never the same after that. It is life to the full.

New "Partners" at TPC!

We had an EXCELLENT Membership Event this past Sunday. Eight people joined Promise Church as "serving partners." These are:

Rory Porter
Bonita Tabor
Corrinne Casey
Will and Gail Thomas
Shannon Kish
Mark Melton
Tina Kelly

We'll put pictures up as we receive permission to do so! But please welcome these folks into our family!!

The Power of Healing

Lk 9:1 When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 3 He told them: "Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic. 4 Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. 5 If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them." 6 So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere.

There are those who would say that the "healing" ministry of the apostles ended in the first century; that it existed solely to exhibit the power of God to early non-believers as the fledgling faith was just beginning.

There are those also we see on television who tell us that if we send them a check for $100 then we will be guaranteed a miracle of healing in our lives.

And the rest of us are left wondering how exactly DOES God heal our woundedness and brokenness. Should we pray for healing and restoration? Should we expect for God to perform healing miracles in our lives today? Should I write the check and send it in and expect God to work through the tele-evangelist?

As I've prepared my message for this coming week, I've been looking at the passages of scripture that deal with the subject of Jesus's healing. While some scholars would try to dismiss healings as purely emotional or "mental" events - I can't do that. Jesus, according to those who witnessed the events or spoke to those who DID witness the events, restored people's bodies and spirits to health. You can't explain away the impact of these actions on the lives of those who would ultimately turn to Jesus in complete faith as God's power was demonstrated through him.

After Jesus's death, the apostles healed as well. In Acts 5, people crowd the streets simply to be in the shadow of Peter so that they may be healed of their diseases. Paul heals a crippled man in the town of Lystra astonishing the crowds to the point that they believe him to be a god (Acts 14:8ff).

In a conversation with a friend of mine who is a physician of internal medicine - a very rational person when it comes to his profession - he claimed that he had seen many instances of what appeared to be miraculous healing - healing where there was no rational explanation of how the person was restored to wholeness.

Perhaps you could tell your own story of healing when all seemed lost to you.

Here's what I have come to know as a pastor working with literally thousands of people in the last fifteen years - those who turn to God in faith for healing are met with grace and restoration. I can't explain it. I don't know the "mechanics" behind it. I simply know that those who let go of "control" and trust in God completely with their lives experience amazing grace and with that grace - healing. Is it the healing one is looking for specifically? Sometimes. Sometimes one is healed in other ways they weren't quite expecting. But in every case where one trusts in God's power to heal, healing takes place. Every single time.

This experience fits with Jesus's response to a sick woman in Luke 8 who approaches Jesus through the crowds to touch the hem of his garment believing that simply touching his robe would heal her of her bleeding. When she touches his robe, she is instantly healed. "Who touched me?" Jesus asks. Fearfully she responds, "it was me." "Daughter," Jesus says, "Your faith has made you whole. Go in peace."

Here's the good news of our faith. God can heal anything. It doesn't cost any money. There's no special "incantation" or prayer to pray. It only requires faith that God can do something new with your body, your spirit, your emotions, or your mind. Sometimes it happens immediately. Sometimes the healing process takes years. But healing does occur just as God has spoken to us continually throughout history that He desires our restoration (e.g. Jeremiah 30:17).

If you were that woman in Luke 8, pressing through the crowds to touch the garment of Jesus, what exactly would be healed if you made it through? What's keeping you from asking God to work a miracle of healing in your life today?

The Power of Truth

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.....You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up and believe...whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill.....you stay in wonderland...and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes."

Neo takes the red pill offered by Morpheus and "awakens" from the Matrix to a world of stark, harsh, painful reality. But, it's a world of truth.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me," Jesus says to his disciples. They accept the way and life becomes harsh and painful for them. Most of the apostles are martyred for their faith in Jesus. But, they have something no one else has. They possess the truth. They see the world as it really is - as the providential kingdom of God - beset, of course, by the "powers and principalities" of the world all vying for control and power - but it is God who wins. This is God's universe. They know the end of the story. They've seen the answer pages at the back of the math textbook. They have had a vision of the light. They know the truth. And the truth is beautiful - it is deep joy - it is peace - it is awesome!

A student at Union wrote me in an email this week likening the culture we live in to a "trance." It's a trance she writes wherein we believe that in order to have any esteem at all we must all look alike, act alike, dress alike, speak alike, believe alike - and the values demanded are those of the rich, the powerful, the glittering, the "influential." Amazingly, Jesus, in his ministry, spent little time with these people. I suppose as far as Jesus was concerned, they had chosen their "truth."

What is the truth? The truth is the world as God has created it to be. It is experienced most profoundly in moments of sacrifice and love, honesty and transparency, community and fellowship, integrity and seeking, discipline and obedience. How do we know the truth? Through the ways God has revealed that truth to us: scripture, prayer, inspiration, creativity, love, community, joy, insight - but most of all - most powerfully of all, in the person of Jesus.

Truth is not an idea. Even though when I was a philosophy major in college I spent an entire semester on the "question of truth" in my "epistemology" class. Truth is not known through one's intellect, nor through one's senses. Truth is known only as it is revealed by God to us. The rest is usually just "educated" guess-work on our part.

Paul says it most eloquently in Romans 1. "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." God's been revealing truth since the moment he created us. Truth is obvious. Truth is clear. Truth resonates deep within us.

We complicate the truth because what we want often differs from what we know is best for us. Human beings have been given an incredibly powerful brain allowing us to do an amazing number of calculations and carry out an amazing number of functions. We can also rationalize just about anything based on our preferences and desires even to the point of making the most obscenely silly idea seem credible.

For Christians the truth of reason always takes a back seat to the truth of relationship and particularly one's relationship with Jesus. If our worlds seem like darkness, following in the way of Jesus provides the needed light. John says, "in Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." (John 1:4)

Are you tired of the darkness? Sick of the trance? Ready to exit the "matrix?" Take the Jesus "pill" and you will see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.