Nov 24, 2006

"The God-life: Where our deep thankfulness and our deep struggle meet."

If you would flip to Matthew 4:18….

One of the fundamental realities we are called to live into as followers of Jesus is that God knows better than we do what we have been created for and what in the world that looks like. And, as people who agree that this is true, we also recognize that this is not easy, this business of giving up control of our wills and our lives and entrusting them to God.

I will walk out of this place of worship today and will find all number of ways to justify to God why I should be allowed to keep this part or that part of my life for myself, and God will continue to remind me through his Word here, through brother and sisters who will challenge me here and elsewhere, and through prayer that He knows better than me, and that that is a GOOD thing, a WONDERFUL thing, a HARD thing, but the most FULFILLING thing I will ever do.

Finding meaning in a growing relationship with God will plant, water, and cultivate a deeper and deeper thankfulness in our lives as we live into this business of following Jesus. But this deeper thankfulness will not come from a denial of the reality that living is more often than not a struggle, and requires from us a commitment to walking in the footsteps of Jesus no matter what else happens to us in our lives.

It is in the midst of this struggle, when we call out to God, and order our lives around who and what we have been called to be as His people, that this deep thankfulness settles in.

But it ALLLLLLL starts when we make the hard, fearful move to commit to follow Jesus no matter where the path leads.

And that is why it seems like it was just an entirely natural thing to do, if we open to Matthew 4:18, as if it’s totally normal that, as Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew, who were casting a net into a lake, and Jesus said, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” and in response, they left their nets, their trade, their life, and followed him. Shortly thereafter, they’re walking further down by the Sea and see James and John, who were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets, and Jesus called them, and what happened?!?!?

We might stop to think here for a second, scratch our heads, and wonder…now how in the world did Jesus just talk to these guys and invite them to come along with him, and they left everything to follow him? Did he have an extremely charismatic personality? Did he smile just right? Did he flash some cash-money at them in his hand as he spoke? I think we can be fairly certain it wasn’t that last one, but that should be a mystery to us…

All things considered, it should strike us that it indeed DID sound natural and good and right for these disciples to abandon everything their lives centered around and follow Jesus. Maybe they had heard Jesus speak before, maybe his message of hope and reconciliation and this new thing God was doing inspired them to follow Him…

If we stopped here, we’d have a fairy tale ending…and they left their nets and followed him into the sunset, and lived happily ever after. The problem with that fairy tale ending, though, is that the story doesn’t exactly go that way.

You see, Jesus is sharing this message of hope and reconciliation, revealing to the people in Palestine what they’ve been created to be, and time after time in the gospels we see phrases like “everyone was AMAZED and gave praise to God” or “they were filled with awe and said, ‘We have seen remarkable things today!’” or “they were amazed at his teaching, because his message had authority,” had some weight to it, some mmmmph! And “who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” Wonderful, miraculous things are happening all around these disciples…it’s EASY to follow Jesus! Walking around in these massive crowds with people pointing and whispering, “I’ve seen that person with Jesus…they’re close to him,” feeling like a celebrity.

But THEN Jesus starts ruffling the feathers of the religious establishment of the day, getting enemies for straight-talk about the dangers of wealth and pride and self-sufficiency, and things start to get tense. Jesus busts off and says “If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” The disciples had to be confused here, muttering angrily to each other that maybe this guy wasn’t who they thought he was.

Then Jesus starts talking about something that I would guess would make us terribly uncomfortable today too in John 6, starting in verse 41, when he starts talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, to which the disciples respond the way I know I’d respond, “This is HARD teaching! Who can accept it!” and at this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

You see, Jesus didn’t end up fitting the definition for many of them of what the Messiah would look like, he didn’t toe the same line, allow the disciples to continue in their self-centeredness, or the Pharisees to continue in their twisted version of the faith they had received from their fathers. Jesus comforted, but also challenged, showed mercy, but also flashed with anger…and ultimately was murdered because his message was so offensive and so counter to everything folks had been expecting that he was too unsafe to allow to live.

And this was all driven because those who hated him and those who left him refused to give up their approach to life and embrace his, even though it was what they were created for. THAT’S how much your life and mine is turned upside-down and how desperate we are in need of submitting that God knows better than we do, and how THANKFUL we are as we find how empty and directionless our lives were before we made this decision to love God with everything we are.

And the disciples that stick through this all, even though they turned tail and ran at Jesus’ arrest, find in their gathering together, worshiping together, praying together, Pentecost, the power of the Holy Spirit, and God confirming the message of truth with signs and wonders…even in the face of intense persecution…find a deep gladness, thankfulness, and peace that nothing in the world can disturb.

And that is why it is SO NECESSARY after we’ve talked over the last two weeks about needing to admit as a church family that we are powerless, lacking in identity, that our lives are unmanageable without God, that we make the necessary move to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Completely.

And I am unqualified to say this with ANY legimitacy because I will more than likely walk out of this place of worship and will show in many areas of my life that it’s more defined by me and my thoughts and my perspectives and my priorities than God’s. I think you will too. Not telling you, just suggesting.

Because if there’s one word that holds the potential to make us cringe, it’s this: Surrender

What does that word make you think of?

I think it’s a great word for us to run with today, because both the Old Testament and New are FULL of reminders for us that the world is in direct rebellion against God, a civil war if you will, where we simply refuse to LISTEN. And the process of turning our lives over to God, surrendering, is no small puppy of a problem!

As C.S. Lewis said, “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor--that is the only way out of our 'hole'. This process of surrender--this movement full speed astern--is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death.

And that’s why this can be so hard sometimes, and why it was so hard for the disciples! Because we say to God, I give my will, my life to you, but we walk out the door and take things over ourselves. In some sense, we treat God as if he runs some sort of emergency crew we can call on when all else fails or when our control of a situation or person starts slipping. We say, “God gave me all these abilities, and I’m going to do what I can to solve each problem first. I’ll turn my problem over to him after I have done all that I can.” There’s a certain truth in that approach in that we try to solve a problem, attack it ourselves, recognize we can’t, and THEN turn the problem or issue over to God. But the process is backwards if we approach it like this.

We could look at it like this, a Christian businesswoman might get into a business deal, for example. She puts together a team to get the job done: an accountant a lawyer, a tax advisor, a banker, and God- and uses them in that order. When everyone else has done their part, the businesswoman calls on God to come through with the victory: the goal of the businesswoman. The bottom line is the woman is telling God what to do, and will be terribly upset if He doesn’t come through the way she wants.

The reality, I think, is that many of us are in denial, and we’re so confused that we don’t know God’s will, and we’re not pursuing God as fully as we could, so we’re not growing in deeper understanding of the voice of God, so we settle for what I call a slot-machine God…the God that pops up when things are out of control.

When a family member gets sick, I pray and expect God to Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching! heal my family member and get angry and question his existence if he doesn’t.

When I mess up, I pray that God would remove the consequences of my actions and Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Maybe he does…but maybe he doesn’t and I get angry.

If I’m going through a tough time, I pray that God would lift my struggles and give me a direct answer…but He may not, and I don’t understand why I continue to go through these struggles…I don’t trust that God sees the bigger picture. It’s like I expect God to be a bigger version of Nate Myers to want what I want and do what I do; answer my every whim.

But, thankfully, that’s not God! And in order to let God cultivate, water, and nurture the seed of thankfulness and purpose and meaning in my life, I need to lose the image of the God I only need in the midst of catastrophe, or the slot-machine God who can be manipulated by me. I have to continually give my will and my life over to God. This change of direction is what the Bible calls conversion. But, unfortunately, the revolutionary reality of this change and commitment has often been lost, and we do not realize the extent of our rebellion. So we often continue to try to get God to do our will by the way we pray, worship, and live. That is a discouraging lifestyle to live, one I often find myself in.

But the God-centered life is one where we change the direction of our lives from the way WE THINK they should go to the way God thinks they should go. And in this process, we find roots, we find life, we find deep thankfulness.

In conclusion here this morning, I’m going to share a situation from the life of a man named Johannel Hamel, pastor of a small congregation in communist East Germany. Johannel and his church family existed in a system under communism which was atheistic and hostile to followers of Jesus, and Johannel struggled deeply with the issue of truth vs comfort: when he asked“Should a Christian in a communist land make an issue of honesty and faith?...or should they lie low and seem to accept the system and its injustices?”

Hamel made the decision to focus on the first, honesty, and that in the process God “opens doors” as the church walks obediently one step at a time: saying “time and again God creates loopholes, so to speak, open space in the midst of closed systems of unbelief and hatred of God. The possibility is offered and realized here for doing the good, reasonable, well-pleasing, (and faithful act), although this system seems to leave no room for such action.

Where we take our place in this honesty of the Gospel, there opens, usually by surprise, a door through which we can pass through to move on in our earthly life. To be sure most of the time this door is only visible in the last moment. We must have enough faith to run up against a doorless wall up to the last centimeter, in the certain hope that God who leads one this way will not allow his people to break their heads… More than once as a people we have believed ourselves to be finished…Then in the last minute God stepped in and made it clear to us, so clear that we were ashamed of ourselves, so that he only needs to move a little finger to make things come out quite otherwise that we could have ever imagined.

And I think that carries so much truth for us a church family at Middle River today. Placing God at the center of our church life and decisions and dreams will start an adventure for us…one with changed lives and a changed community of New Hope, and change taking place in the cities surrounding us, in our families…but it must start in our hearts as we make the decision each morning when we wake up to turn our will and our life over to God…and it is that crucial decision made each day that will enable you and me to look back on our lives and see the work of God amongst us.

Sermon, Sunday Nov 19th "Testing? Temptation? Which is it?"

(Read Luke 4:1-13)

Now, I’m gonna be honest with you about an aspect of my life, and maybe you can relate. I haven’t been through a lot of trauma in my life…part of that is probably because I’m still relatively young, and part of that is probably because I had a safe upbringing, my parents set up boundaries for me, I haven’t lived in a war-torn nation, and the Shenandoah Valley is a relatively safe place to grow up. But I HAVE been through traumatic experiences, and two weeks ago starting at 5:15 in the morning was one of them, when I heard the simple message from Rowena, “The church is burning.”

I’ve been through my share of emotions since then, and I’ve seen the emotions on the faces of more than a few of you since then; some feeling overwhelmed…crushed by the responsibilities suddenly placed on you…some feeling numb, aimless, as images I’m sure rushed through your mind of events that have taken place at that church that were meaningful to you; gave you a sense of belonging. I’ve heard Jean Landrum say twice something that moved me…she said to God in prayer, “I know that you will bring life out of the ashes.” Jean’s been through some things in life…she can say something like that with experience to back it up.

And last week, I mentioned the question one of our youth asked the night of the fire, “Why us? Why did this happen to us?” A good question that a lot of people are asking around the world in the situations they’ve been thrust into in their lives…everything from relationship difficulties to wondering about the importance of their lives to family members being casualties of war to long periods of repression and starvation…lots of people are asking that question. And if they’re being honest with the answers, the answers aren’t easy.

Last week, at the end of the worship service, Rick got up and stated quite simply what I think may be the most necessary reflection for us to have right now, “What is our goal as a church? If it is simply to rebuild a physical building, that’s not good enough, and it’s not high enough. Many of us saw how gutted the sanctuary was, and maybe just like the sanctuary was gutted, God knew that we need to be gutted too.”

Honest awareness, I think. I know how easy it is to say that I WANT change, that I WANT a God-centered life, that I WANT to pursue righteousness, that I WANT to love God and my neighbor more today than I did yesterday, that I WANT to pray more, that I WANT to grow. I also know how hard it is to put those things in practice with everything else shouting for my attention…and the problem is, I listen to them and turn towards those things instead of pursuing God. And I find myself growing numb and lukewarm…and it takes something that rips me right out of my comfort zone and shoves me into a place of pain or doubt or discomfort for me to WAKE UP again.

This is one such situation. The question hangs in the air: Was this an act of evil to try to tear us apart as a church community? I’m not talking arson here…just taking a second to think…did the forces of evil that we can’t see, taste, touch, feel get together to try to plunge a knife into our heart as a church, try to make us throw up our hands and say forget it? Or is this a test by God to put us in a place of discomfort, a place where we need to figure out what our identity is and where our foundation is? Or is this just a part of living in a broken world where things like this happen, and our response to this thing determines who we’re going to lean on and where our treasure is? Or is it all three? Short of an angel appearing here behind me to talk to us today, I don’t think we can point at any one of these suggestions and say; THAT’S the one. We have to be honest. We don’t know.

And that’s why this passage from Luke today grabbed me as I read it. Some of you who have been around churches for a little while in your life have probably heard of this situation, and some of you have heard more than a few messages on the topic as well. We could be tempted (no pun intended) to simplify this situation and say, Jesus was weak from fasting, Jesus was tempted, but Jesus was God, and Jesus emerged free from sinning. End of story. But if we did that, we’re missing a terribly important reality here that has a big-time message for us today.

The word temptation shows us twice in this passage; verse 2 and verse 13, both times associated with the devil. The word test shows up once, when Jesus says, “Do NOT put the Lord your God to the test.” You may have known this. You may have come to the conclusion, if you have a broad understanding of Scripture that God “tests,” while Satan “tempts.” But you may not have known, if you didn’t know that New Testament was written first in Greek, that the word translated into English as “temptation” and the word translated into English as “test” are the same word in Greek: peirazo. (repeat)

The biblical idea of temptation is not primarily of seduction, as in modern usage, but of making trial of a person, or putting them to the test; which may be done for the good purpose of proving or improving their quality, or the evil purpose of exposing them or tricking them into unfaithfulness.

We can see the difference of the two in the book of Job, a terribly confusing section of the Bible, where it looks like the LORD lets himself to be talked into destroying Job’s life by Satan. Job ends up losing everything and finally sits in the ashes of his life, scraping boils on his body with a shattered piece of pottery, and the very first thing his friends do is tell him; you did something bad to deserve this, Job! What’d you do? Jobs’ friends reacted like we’re tempted to react; bad things, bad consequences, happen to people that MESS up. ALL the time. But Job was blameless and upright, and his life is in shambles. And on top of that, God LET that happen to him! John Waggy and I have had a couple conversations around the problem this passage raises! I find it disturbing in this passage that it wasn’t just things that were destroyed in Job’s life, but his sons and daughters.

And I continue to wrestle with this reality. And the simplest conclusion I think we can come to is to recognize that the intention of the two parties the LORD and Satan is clearly different; the LORD wants to see Job pass this test (display his character), and Satan desires to see Job fail. Who and what passes away in this situation is very secondary to God; what matters most to the LORD is the faithfulness of Job, and what matters most to Satan is that Job would curse God.

This should illustrate an important point for us. God really doesn’t necessarily care what material things he gives us or doesn’t give us, whether we have no cars or 2, a house or an apartment, no house, whatever. What God wants is our hearts, what God wants is that we would center our lives around him, whether things are flowing along quite nicely or everything’s falling apart around us. God doesn’t exist to make us happy…we exist to be in a relationship with Him and to heal the brokenness around us, starting right here. (point at heart)

The difference between a test and temptation is found in the tester’s motivations and expectations; the devil tempts that the believer might fail and sin; God tests that he might determine and sharpen character, with no focus on making the believer fail.

And when it comes to this situation of the temptation of Jesus, we simply can’t sugarcoat the reality that Jesus was “led by the Spirit” into the situation of tempting! So, just like Job’s situation, this shows it is completely possible for divine and demonic intention to flow through the exact same experience; working for different ends. What does that show us? I think it shows that our lives are right smack-dab in the middle of the battle between good and evil; where our consistency in faithfulness or failure determines the impact of our life, and when we’re speaking of our church family, determines the impact of our church.

And I think that requires honesty from us: honesty with God and honesty with one another. The thing that God loves the most is our faithfulness and our commitment to pursuing Him, the thing that God HATES the most, and we should to, is our unfaithfulness and inconsistencies. And that’s a tough thing to deal with, because we’re all inconsistent and unfaithful on some level…and that’s where our honesty and accountability to one another comes in.

If we run with Rick’s suggestion that simply setting the goal of rebuilding the physical structure of our place of worship isn’t good enough, and that maybe God is waking us up as his people to gut us, take us out of our comfort zone, and figure out what we’re made of, then we need to deal with some tough reality.

We can’t consider our church to be successful or a failure by how many butts we have in seats or don’t have in seats on Sunday mornings at worship…lots of churches how lots of people, and are spiritually dead. (and in the same vein, lots of churches have little to no people, and are spiritually dead). But I'm of the mind that God would take a church of 5 people living into their faith and actively growing than 25,000 warm bodies occupying a seat on a Sunday morning. So we’ve gotta look deeper to test our success as a church. Are lives being transformed? Is Nate changing for the better, struggling with less weakness, and pursuing God more this year than last? Are we as a church changing for the better, struggling with less weakness, and pursuing God more this year than the last? These are questions we should ask, and we should seek to be as open and trusting of one another as possible…that demands that we take risks to trust one another with our lives.

You have in your bulletin the letter Ted Haggard, the guy we talked about two weeks ago, wrote to his church community. For those of us who seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, the news of the truth was a shock. What makes the situation even more ironic was the fact that the Sunday before this came to light, Haggard’s prayer before the sermon was that deception would be brought to light. God answered his prayer. He was deceiving his wife, his family, his church, and those around him. But I’m not highlighting this to point a finger at him, because Ted Haggard isn’t the only one responsible in this situation. We are too…and the reality we have to deal with is that quite often we don’t create the space in churches where we talk about our weaknesses and temptations and failings, we pray for each other, and walk with each other as we seek to grow and strengthen as followers of Jesus. Because of this environment, Ted was afraid to share his weakness and hid from the church.

The good thing about this situation is that Haggard himself now is free to choose to be honest. He no longer has to hide in the dark and deceive those closest to him. Now that he’s been removed from his position of leadership, he has the opportunity to find out what he really believes by the way that he wants to live. I pray God’s grace upon him and his family in the process. I pray that New Life Church of Colorado would make the move to be a people who recognize their common weakness as followers of Jesus, who pursue honesty, forgiveness, and the pursuit of righteousness together.

This situation demands: How will we respond? Will we shove Haggard under the bus as an embarrassing exposure of our weakness, or will we take a hard look at ourselves?

Certainly Haggard is not alone in his struggle. So it might be good to ask whether our congregation is a grace-filled place of accountability and healing or a performance-based social club where we all hide from one another, and get better and better at it as we get older.

Ted failed his testing and gave in to temptation, and is facing consequences because of it. It is good that he is being held accountable…it is hypocritical if those holding him accountable are carrying secrets of their own. The open question for us, given that we have no idea of knowing whether this Sanctuary fire is a situation of testing or temptation, or both, is how we respond.

God is in the business of shaping a people who will passionately pursue Him, and he is completely free (as we see in the book of Job…even if we feel terribly uncomfortable with that reality) to do anything or allow anything that will bring His people to stop relying on themselves and instead rely on Him. He’s the Creator, and he’s free to do that…we can trust that God knows what he’s doing. So the story of Middle River’s success or failure starts right here in each of our hearts, moves outward into our actions and our priorities, and our conversations, and what we center our lives around.

If we stick together as a people and walk this road of discipleship honestly, passionately, and openly, we’ll be able to look back at this situation and see how God used this fire to drive us to our knees and depend on Him. This is his desire, and he will stop at nothing to achieve it. Our legacy hinges on our commitment. So what will we do? Will we stumble and bumble along, giving off a self-sufficient front that is completely false, or will we do the hard work to make Middle River a place where we both pursue righteousness and have high goals and accountability while recognizing we are all flawed and weak and broken…and that we need grace and forgiveness to be able to make progress. Perfect love drives out fear. What is our goal?

Sermon Nov 12 2006

Now before I launch into the message this morning, I’d like to let you know that, like the rest of us here, I’ve had an up and down week, mostly down. I’ve cycled through many emotions, sometimes feeling unstable and not in control of myself. I’ve tried to cope with those emotions by withdrawing from others at times, thinking I could handle these strong emotions myself, but found all that was doing was making me numb. And to tell the truth, there’s a strong voice in me telling me before I read the verses I’m going to read here in a second that God doesn’t have a ghost of an idea what He’s talking about. That God is out of touch with reality, and pain, and grief. That’s my natural human response to what I am about to read here.

(1 Pete 4:12-19) And just when I am about to toss the Bible down and not pick it up for awhile, I come to Hebrews 4:14-16 (read), and I find that the message is deeper than it looks at first, and I find here the example of Jesus, and my mind immediately shifts to the struggles he endured on this earth during his ministry, the pain and agony of struggling with living into his destiny while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, the physical pain of the crucifixion, sure, but the pinnacle of that experience being the moment where Jesus stepped in the gap for the sake of all humanity, and in those moments underwent such suffering that the sky turned black in the middle of the day, an earthquake shook Jerusalem, dead people arose from tombs, and he finally cried out, “It is finished.”

And if I read that story closely, I don’t recall Jesus walking through that experience with a smile slapped on his face, dancing a two-step as he stood before Pilate or the Sanhedrin, or laughing as he carried his cross. And if the stories are true at how Peter’s life came to an end, I’m positive he wasn’t just really excited, overwhelmed with joy when he was crucified for being a follower of Jesus as well. So when Peter suggests to rejoice and praise God in the midst of suffering, I think we can come to the conclusion that he doesn’t mean deny reality or pretend like everything’s ok. And I feel confident in saying this, because this life that God has called us to is at its heart being real and honest, not running away from things that upset us, stretch us, or are painful. So what is the deeper reality here?

Paul Brand, a missionary surgeon to India wrote in his book: Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, “I have come to see that pain and pleasure come to us not as opposites but as Siamese twins, strangely joined and intertwined. Nearly all my memories of acute happiness, in fact, involve some element of pain or struggle.”

And while that sort of message may not necessarily fly in Hollywood, where movies can tell of lives that have incredible problems and manage to solve the problem in about an hour and a half and everyone walks away feeling great…I think if we’re honest with ourselves and look back at our lives, we will find what Paul Brand found IF we do something essential. We do NOT pretend like the pain does not exist, we do NOT run from our emotions, we DO turn around and face reality head-on, take on the brunt of the storm, depending on Christ.

I dare say if someone ever suggests, "The deepest and rarest and most satisfying joys of my life have come in times of extended ease and earthly comfort." they’re outright lying or out of touch with reality. It isn't true. What's true is what Charles Spurgeon said: "They who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls."

The command is found in verse 13: "Rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ." Rejoice. Peter has the audacity to tell us in situations of conflict, pain, and suffering to rejoice. When you dive in the sea of affliction, keep on rejoicing. In fact, keep on rejoicing not in spite of the affliction but even because of it. This is not some little piece of advice about the power of positive thinking. This is an utterly radical, abnormal, supernatural way to respond to suffering. It is not for the faint of heart. It is one of the ways those who dare to follow Jesus set the pace, live a life that is radically different from the folks surrounding them who don’t know him.

Experiencing doubt, fear, grief, sadness, and confusion are not bad things, they’re not things to run away from. They’re a part of human existence. Life doesn’t go the way we planned, relatives die, we will die, tragedies (car wrecks, airplane wrecks, suicides) happen, we lose jobs, suffer from broken relationships, wonder about our place in this world. Life is broken. It has been ever since Adam and Eve bought into the first great lie, that the day they ate of the fruit of the tree, they could be like God.

But what God is all about is reaching and transforming his creation into people who recognize what’s broken and simply choose to be people of healing and great love who reverse the brokenness of the world; and they do this without denying the brokenness and pain in themselves…

And I have two basic suggestions for how to approach this problem:

1) We admit we are powerless…that our lives are unmanageable without the relationship God created us to pursue, and

2) We believe that pursuing that open relationship with God can and will both restore us to sanity, enable us to face life, AND begin to restore the face of humanity that is hopelessly broken.

Dealing with #1, it seems to be a bedrock truth that we cannot receive the power to face life head-on until we see our own human limitations and quit struggling to do it ourselves. That’s why it’s so ridiculous on a human level that Peter would dare to suggest that we are to praise God whether things are going great or going down the tubes!

"Count it all joy when you meet various trials," is foolish advice, except for one thing—God, the Creator of the Universe, who has not stepped away from his creation, but comes to meet us in our suffering and transform us as we face it, depending on Him..

One of the youth on Tuesday night asked the question that had been ringing in all of our heads since the time each one of us heard about the fire at some point during the day: “Why us, Lord, why now?” And because that is such a real question, a deep question, Rick Thornton honored the question with the truth. “I DON’T KNOW,” he said to Tanner. “I don’t know.” Rick was admitting reality…we are powerless and our lives are unmanageable without Christ. I think all of us, even the most hardened criminals, the most “self-sufficient”, fabulously wealthy NFL player, or the factory worker working more and more hours to provide for his or her family, we know this.

But most do NOT come to the place where they make the move to number 2…we believe that pursuing this growing relationship with God can both restore us to sanity, enable us to face life, AND begin to restore relationships with humanity that are hopelessly broken. It’s really easy when things are flowing relatively smoothly in life to think that we’re in control…we may even SAY TO OURSELVES that we’re depending on God when it’s obvious both to ourselves and to others that our lives revolve around us, not God. The last two Sundays, our theme has been “Taking an honest look at ourselves,” and that is what this situation demands from us, what God EXPECTS from us, and what God will provide through this trial.

As members of the larger body known as the Church of the Brethren, we are a part of the same spiritual heritage of followers of Jesus called Anabaptists, who found the strength of their beginning in the 16^th century while the Reformation was turning Europe upside-down. And because the Anabaptists believed baptism was a outward sign of a conscious decision made to follow Jesus that simply could not happen when one was a baby, and because the Anabaptists believed that the church, not the state, carried the central meaning of history, they faced intense persecution and execution for living this out. Hans Schlaffer was one of these Anabaptists imprisoned, and while in prison before his execution, Schlaffer wrote a series of prayers to God, of which we will look at two. Pay attention especially to the underlined sections to grasp the transition he made.

O almighty, eternal God, we recognize that we are weak and pray that you would strengthen us with the power of your Holy Spirit, that He would extinguish all human fear in us…we praise, honor, and thank you that you have so graciously called us out of the terrible darkness of this world into your marvelous light…

But Schlaffer’s prayer was not answered in the way he expected. Grief and fear haunted him, and Hans realized that he was deeply troubled and it wasn’t going away. He discovered comfort in seeing the example of Jesus. who agonized in the Garden as his soul felt troubled to the point of death. In the following days and nights before his death Han’s prayer changed: “Therefore we pray, dear Father, that with your divine power you would keep us (hold us) in all difficulties, offense, fear, and anxiety…This is my comfort, O heavenly father, in which Christ will strengthen and keep me with his power. Well, Lord, I will lay all my worry, fear, and anxiety on you for I have mightily experienced your help, and you will (I hope) not forsake me to the end, but in my greatest need and weakness show praise and glory, and in my physical death reveal eternal life, that all may give themselves to Christ and persist in your will and work to the end.”

And in the time that changes between these prayers, a clear difference emerges between the two. In the first, Schlaffer prays that God would take away the fear of those imprisoned; extinguish it. But in the second, Schlaffer prays NOT that God would take away their fears, NOT that they would deny their fears, but that God would hold them, carry them, empower them in and through all difficulties, offense, fear, and anxiety. Just after that final prayer, Schlaffer was beheaded for his faith.

Now is the time to show where we, Middle River Church, get a chance to show where our treasure is and the kind of people God is shaping us into.

We NEED to stand together as a church family, shift priorities as necessary (sometimes painfully) to attack this challenge together.

We NEED to trust the leadership of our church to make sound decisions about the direction we head as a family (that involves our leaders listening to all, but eventually making hard decisions for the good of the whole); that's why we've called them out as leaders, and why our identity is not found in what I want, but in the direction WE go.

We NEED to eliminate from our vocabulary words such as "them," "they," and "those people." The church is US, and God carries high expectations for us to love one another and build one another up in this process; especially in times of disagreement. Let's disagree well, and act as followers of Jesus are called to act, and seek forgiveness and take a shot to our pride when we fail. Let's do this together.

We NEED to lean on God in this time...the most obvious way we can do this is through a commitment to prayer; individually and together. Those who gathered Wednesday evening at Emerson and Elaine’s house to pray together experienced a powerful sense of unity and identity...let's not walk away and forget that goal we are called to. Consistency in prayer and unity will define us into the future. Will we continue to gather together in prayer even when it seems tedious or like hard work?

This life is impermanent, and things are impermanent, but I was struck after the fire to see the cross here in front of us today remain on the alter, the wooden cross in the baptistry, and our neighbor down the road, Linda Sanders, in the midst of tears, told me how even when the fire was leaping up into the steeple, she was struck by the fact that the cross remained. All things will pass away, but the word of God stands forever, and he stands with us now. Doug Southers, member at Rileyville Church of the Brethren, called on Tuesday, and simply said, “You’re gonna find what you’re made of, Nate. The church, and yourself.” So let’s all take responsibility for our part, be a part of the process of recovery, and trust and pray for our leaders to make good decisions for the future of our church. And above all, we MUST MUST MUST root our identity in Christ. We’re powerless to face this alone, and will fragment and shatter eventually if we fail. I don’t want that on my record when I stand before God and I don’t think you do either…

Sermon Sunday, November 5th, 2006 "All these Guidelines!!!!"

Source Scriptures: Romans 12: 9-16

You know, if I’m gonna be honest here, I really struggle with reading the Bible and especially with reading the letters to the churches that Paul and a few other early church leaders like James and Peter and John write, because, and I’ll use Romans as an example, the letters are just LOADED with things I’m supposed to do. And that wouldn’t be such a big deal if the things I’m supposed to do are EASY to do, NATURAL to do, MAKE SENSE to do. But the problem here is many of the things I see in these letters are HARD to do, UNNATURAL to do, MAKE NO SENSE at all according to how I see reality. I could be tempted to think following Jesus is a checklist, a hopelessly complex system where I know what God wants, but I’m either too confused or too weak to ever make progress in achieving the goals he carries for those who have submitted their lives to him.

So I have several options here for how to deal with the fact that God asks of me things that are HARD, and seem UNNATURAL:

1) I could not read the Bible because it makes me uncomfortable and lays bare my often self-centered lifestyle.

2) I could read the Bible, but come up with all kinds of justifications for not doing what God commands me to do and be

3) I could read the Bible and give others the image that I’m following what God is asking of me, but that requires that I’m a part of a church that only meets once a week, where I can scoot in and grab a seat and scoot out when things get a little too close for comfort, or

4) I can try to figure out why these expectations of God seem so unnatural to me, maybe try to figure out what they’re pointing me to, and do my level best to pursue that direction. In other words, I know lots of people write off these expectations from the beginning because WE HATE BOUNDARIES. They limit us, imprison us, stifle us. But if I want to be honest and authentic in figuring out what God expects, I gotta give letters like Romans a fair shake.

And I think a good image for us to work with is one that many people see Christianity as. The boundaries are a fence that God has set up around our lives as followers of Jesus. The rest of the world either knows they exist and doesn’t care or doesn’t know that those boundaries exist, but we have to be honest and say “Yes” they exist..

Now the problem with this is that so often we focus on the fences, thinking UHHHH, why are those fences there, why does God ask of these things from me, they’re HARD, and every now and again in our thoughts and actions we catch a glimpse of the other side and for some reason we long for that grass and say, “But, it’s so GREEN over there, and I can be whoever I want to be over there.” So we OBSESS over the fences and feel SO ATTRACTED to the other side because we’re hammered with messages and people tempting us to climb that fence and define our lives ourselves. This was the sin of Adam that began in his MIND and showed in his eventual ACTIONS, and we find after Genesis 3 and the fall of Adam and Eve that the chapters following all the way to 11 show increasing immorality and violence and existence…the reality of existence outside those fences.

But what Paul is calling us to here in Romans 12 is the RENEWAL of the mind of the community of God’s people, and all of these boundaries shown here point us towards the ABUNDANT life found within the fences. Because if we consciously and habitually and daily flip this around, and take our attention OFF the fences and OFF longing for the other side and inside turn around and recognize that we as followers of Jesus within these boundaries have the most full, most awe-inspiring, most beautiful Garden around us INSIDE these walls, we instead appreciate the fences as a boundary that enables us to cultivate, appreciate, and revel in the beauty contained within.

Knowing this, it might be time here to suggest some biblical thoughts about how to read the Bible in a way that changes us deeply. This applies ESPECIALLY to today, where the eight verses from verse 9 to verse 16 contain 20, count it, 20 guidelines for our lives.

1) Love must be sincere 2) Hate what is evil; 3) cling to what is good. 4) Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. 5) Honor one another above yourselves. 6) do not be lacking in zeal, 7) maintain your spiritual fervor, 8) serve the Lord. 9) be joyful in hope, 10) patient in affliction, 11) faithful in prayer. 12) share with God’s people in need 13) practice hospitality. 14) Bless those who persecute you 15) Do not curse those who persecute you 16)Rejoice with those who rejoice, 17)Mourn with those who mourn 18)Live in harmony with one another 19)Do not be proud 20)Do not be conceited

Knowing that we’re tempted to be shallow, overly busy people in our society, I would suggest we may feel like throwing up our hands and saying, “God, I quit. This is too complex for me!”

Suppose you get up in the morning and have committed yourself to read several chapters of the Bible before you enter the day. And suppose that one of them is Romans 12. So you read through the chapter. Now what do you remember from those 20 guidelines? What will you remember in two hours? And what effect did they have? After three minutes reading this chapter, how are you changed in your love of others, and hate of evil, and brotherly affection, and honoring others, and zeal, and fervency, and service, and hope, and joy, and patience, and prayer, and generosity, and hospitality? Did simply mentioning these 20 guidelines in your mind for a total of about 15 seconds transform your heart and mind so that all 20 of them are fired up and growing? No, it doesn’t work that way. Reading over texts like this once, and quickly, has little effect to produce all these beautiful things in our lives. So what are we to do? What would make these things happen?

We slow down. One guy I know said it like this: “We don’t just fly at 560 miles an hour in our 747, miles above a grove of fruit trees and look down and say, “My, what an impressive grove of fruit trees.” Instead, we land the plane and walk through the grove of trees and stop here and there and linger, inhale and smell the fruit, pick the fruit and eat it and savor the beauty and the sweetness of the grove. In other words, we meditate on these words. We don’t rush over them.

And we find if we meditate on them that these verses are calling us beyond seeing ourselves as isolated individuals starring in our own Broadway show to recognize we are a part of a larger community, and after verses 1-3 called the community to transformation, called the community to offer all of their lives in worship, after verses 4-8 tell us what role we are commanded to play in this community, then verses 9-16 hammer home the point that whatever the role is we play in this community that we are a part of, we are to do it with all of our hearts, all of our minds, and all of our strength; we recognize that Middle River is intended to be a kingdom center, a launching pad for us to go out and show the world what this abundant life is all about, and we have a role to play. And IF Middle River is THAT kingdom center, IF Middle River has a unique mission and calling in the surrounding community, then we need to linger on these words and ask ourselves if we are showing the world around us in our thoughts, our words, our priorities, and our actions that our role in THIS thing bigger than ourselves is the center of our lives.

THEN, and only THEN, does this take on a new character. As verse 9 so clearly say, we are called to do battle with, to HATE the part of us that stares longingly at the fence and at the pastures beyond, because we know where that leads and can pull up in a matter of a minutes countless stories from these pages of what happens when folks do that. And we don’t have to go far to see a modern example: If you’ve followed the news at all this week, you have been exposed to the story of Ted Haggard, an evangelical church leader and lead pastor of a large church in Colorado who has been accused of hypocrisy by a male prostitute for preaching in favor of a marriage amendment excluding homosexuals from marriage while having a physical relationship with this prostitute on a regular basis. And instead of coming clean, Haggard pulled the same move Bill Clinton did with the whole Lewinsky scandal in the last few days moving from saying, “I don’t know the man,” and “I never did drugs” to admitting he bought drugs from the man and received a massage from the man to being removed from his leadership role just last evening for “sexually immoral conduct”. I have been deeply saddened by this situation, and think that the very last thing we should do is to point our finger at Haggard and say “hypocrite” I would suggest this situation should reveal some things here:

1) This should illustrate for us the terrible danger of giving off an external picture that we are one person while living an entirely different reality behind the scenes, and

2) It should remind us of the places of greatest weakness in our lives, and drive us to commit or recommit ourselves to the hard road of transformation…should drive us to flee from hypocrisy, to find someone to be accountable to, and to be transparent and honest about our lives.

3) This should illustrate for us plain and simple human weakness that we are all held to the same standard and find ourselves failing. I am 100% positive that there is no person sitting in this room that has lived 100% up to his or her own standards for morality at all times. This is a fact of life. Does that make us all hypocrites? On some level, yes. I think more accurately, though, we’ve gotta be honest with our friends (especially those who don’t know Christ) that as followers of Jesus, we’re always seeking to grow, we get it right sometimes, fall flat on our face other times, and because we refuse to sit down and quit, our hearts, our thoughts, and our lives are being transformed. This is honesty in the pursuit of transformation.

We lose the looking down our nose and others, and we choose to humbly bend our knee before God and sit at his feet, listen, and alter our lives according to the boundaries he has set up for us.

When Paul says, “HATE what is evil; cling to what is good,” he is rejecting the idea that evil is defined by what I naturally hate; and he is rejecting the idea that good is defined by what I naturally think is good. We were created to naturally listen to God first, but we’ve been hammered since our childhood with the message that God has no idea what He’s talking about and the other way is better. But what God is shouting to us in the Bible through his love and justice and Jesus is that the priorities and thoughts and life of the world surrounding us have turned everything upside-down, and we’re confused and wandering and numb; blind leading the blind off a cliff. As Anne Lamott so famously said, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

You see, following Jesus means recognizing that good and evil don’t change, we change. We get honest about the evil inside of us and learn what we are called to hate in the world…now listen carefully there…WHAT we are called to hate, not WHO. We’re going to talk deeper about that reality two weeks from now, but our calling as Christians is to love and give our lives for others. The enemy does not exist on the other side of the globe, the enemy is evil itself; and we have a lifetime to confront it and the systems and the people it twists and destroys, starting with ourselves.

Hypocrisy is falling into the same trap Haggard did—an external picture of holiness without an internal reality. Don’t just avoid evil, HATE evil. Don’t just choose good, EMBRACE the good. CLING TO the good. The battle of Christian living is a battle to transform our entire existence, not just our behavior or our emotions.

If we want to live into the reality that when we commit our lives to Jesus that “the old has passed away and the new has come, “we must submit ourselves to see the world the way he sees it and feel the way he feels it, we must go on fighting for daily transformation:

And that’s where Paul gives the old one-two punch to lackadaisical, lukewarm, disconnected faith. “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor”

The word “fervor” in the original Greek means “boiling.” It’s the opposite of the prevailing approach in our society of growing boredom and apathy. A news story came out just last week that the productivity of the American worker continues to drop as hours continue to rise…in this situation of little to no relaxation or life outside of work, many are coping through choosing simply to go through the motions. And in this situation of boredom, we don’t have to look far in our culture to find the areas where we can vicariously live through the exciting lives of others, whether that be sports, or movies, or video games to inspire some sense of excitement and adventure and strong feeling in a workaday world that is just plain boring. This pursuit almost suggests we were made for adventure and exertion and passion and risk-taking in some great cause, and instead what we do all day is sit in front of a computer or shuffle papers or make deliveries or drive a bus or clean a room or sell a product or fix gadgets. Life in the real world seems to fall so far short of what our hearts cry out for that the best we can do is create substitute, artificial exploits—football, basketball, hockey, explosive movies, shocking video games—anything to transport us out of the boredom of the real world, and give us a little taste of passion and zeal and daring and energy and strategy and courage—even if it is an artificial world or EVEN if certain things that promise adventure are unfaithful for us to participate in.

We look like we are having a great time as we go from one entertainment event and program and mall and movie to another, but it is all artificial. We are not excited with real life. We are desperately waiting for the weekend when we can play, because real life is just not connected with any great cause. We wonder why our relationships are so feeble and thin and fragile, and yet, in the place of this deep need, we as the church allow our message to be simply emotional or a checklist of chores to do. (not knocking movies, music, entertainment in general b/c those can be life-giving...but a dependence on them to deliver us from boredom and provide adventure in place of pursuing this relationship with God (this adventure) we were called to pursue)

If Middle River wants to be a kingdom center, a place of change, we must be willing to commit ourselves to making this a place where relationships go deep, where we link arms in the greatest cause this world has ever seen.

Boil for Christ. This is a rebuke to passivity and laziness and lethargy and apathy and boredom. Paul assumes that if you see this in yourself you can do something about it. We have been given the Holy Spirit and the Word of God and the power of prayer precisely to fight against the boredom and apathy in our own hearts. So he speaks this word directly to us this morning: don't lag, don't float, don't drift, don't waste your life sitting mindlessly in front of TV, don't have only little dreams of playing on the weekend. Don’t put the place God has sacrificed for, empowered, and equipped to be a center of change in the dust heap of your life…about as important as the used oil jug in your garage. Stir up zeal for God and for the cause of God and truth and life. There are great things worth living for

That is his will for you this morning. If you have it—this "boiling in the Spirit"—you will find ways to pour your life out in the cause of truth and life. I will not deny that it is HARD to maintain this boiling, because there is so much in our world that tries to suck that energy right out of us and destroy our willingness to live this purposeful life… but God expects from us (doesn’t wish, EXPECTS) a conscious, disciplined, habitual commitment to growing deeper in relationship, in love with God and with others)

So let’s not forget this as we head home today: meditate on these things, talk about these things, let them sink into your heart, pursue these things