God In the Now

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:1–3

This past Sunday we talked about a place called in-between. How being in-between is not a place that anybody wants to be, but that in reality it is the place where each of us always is. My point was that we need to recognize, cherish and live in the now, the continuous now. Have you ever been so concerned about getting to the next thing that you were almost completely unable to be present in the now? Have you found as I have that this reality was not cured when you got to the next place? There is always another place to get to. 

Jesus was on the way to his destiny -- to the destiny of us all -- his death on the cross, his resurrection for our sins. Mary was in the midst of some bit of confusion -- the man who raised her brother from the dead was talking about how he would soon be dead. So many questions must have been racing through her mind. And yet in the moment, she had a moment, with Jesus; an extravagant, ostentatious, probably embarrassing moment with him. It was a moment that I am sure Mary remembered until the day that she died. 

We need to remember that the goal is Jesus. The goal is not family, mission, church, worship -- it’s Jesus. Those other things are very, very important -- crucial to following Jesus, but they are the outflowing, the product of our moving toward Jesus. It is not completely linear, for example, we worship Jesus because we move toward him and we move toward him as we worship. I am a better husband because I desire and move toward Jesus, but I also move toward Jesus as I live into my role as husband in dependance on God and service towards my wife. Does that make sense? 

A deep sadness of mine is that so many Christians miss Jesus in the busyness of trying to get somewhere else, often in the rush to get to the place that God wants them to get.  As you read this, where do you find Jesus, now? Consider taking a piece of paper and a jotting down 10 ways that you recognize Jesus’ presence and grace are with you now. What if you were to do that two or three times a day? Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. Share what happens with others. I guarantee that if you do this simple exercise, you today or hopefully longer, you will enter into each area and responsibility of your life with a greater awareness of Jesus, with less stress or concern, with more courage and hope.

Peace, hope and love

Doug

The Measure of Success

“I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:23

You have probably heard the African proverb, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Maybe you’ve heard it too often. Even if that is the case, I think we all know that there is truth in these words. It is a countercultural truth -- we know that these words have truth, yet we also know from our experience that other people sometimes just slow things down, we can get more done if we just do it ourselves.

This same conviction often floods over into how we view and live out our lives as followers of Jesus. I have had more than one person say to me, “Doug, I know you believe that doing life as part of a group, meeting regularly, praying and doing ministry together is the best approach, but if I’m are really going to make a difference in this world, I can get more done, faster, on my own.” That might be true -- in the short term. That might be true -- if the measure is what we get done.

Let me suggest that while words like “faster” and “more efficient” have their place in a life of following Jesus, but they are not meant to be the leading or directing principles. These words need to be viewed with some suspicion. To not do so is to misunderstand the countercultural upside down Kingdom of God. Our culture -- the world’s kingdom -- will tell us that the measure of success is how much we get done. Jesus’ message is far less quantifiable, far more mixed and organic. Jesus uses words and phrases like rest, don’t worry, be content, yet he fuses them with an urgency that tells us to get up and do something while we can. Jesus is interested in process as much as he is results. Jesus is interested in modeling dependence upon him far more than he is interested in what we might think of as measurable success. At the same time, Jesus believes that we can have a far greater impact than we do. How do we balance these seemingly incompatible ideas?

As we move into the places and spaces, the dark and the broken, the places where God invites us to bring light and healing, we must avoid the temptation to be obsessed with the arrival, completion or end. God has called you and me to a journey, with him, to learn from him and to do the things that he shows us. To seek him, to trust in him, to depend upon him and then to be moving outward in his love toward the world. It is an amazing opportunity, the beauty of which will be missed if you choose speed over companionship.

Are you intent to travel alone? Think this week about who your spiritual companions are. If you do not have any, think of who they might be. Are you in a Small Group? Consider joining one. Are you meeting with someone regularly to share life with? Consider asking someone. If you want to go far, you must go together.

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Who Might Be Missing Out?

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Isaiah 55:1-2

What a great celebration we had this past Sunday as we began a new chapter in the life of Creekside. It was a wonderful morning of worship, of fun, of welcoming, expecting and dreaming. Even the long days of work leading up to Sunday were enjoyable times where  memories were created. I was so encouraged by how many people invested time and energy to make Sunday possible. If you had the opportunity to visit the new building at our open house on January 20th you know the amazing transformation that has taken place in a very short period of time -- all in the two weeks leading up to Sunday. Even though we know that the transformation is not complete and that there is still lots of work to do, let’s celebrate the goodness that we are experiencing. 

God has been with Creekside since our beginning. Through ups and downs, highs and lows, God has been and will continue to be faithful. A new chapter is the perfect time to reengage in the question of the why? Why do we do what we do? Why does Creekside exist? How did you find your way to Creekside? Why did you come this past Sunday? Why did you volunteer to help us get ready? What is next for you? What is next for Creekside? 

Jesus said something really interesting. In describing what it was like to follow him, he asked and invited, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28–30 The MESSAGE) There are so many people around us who, if they could believe these words, would flock to Jesus. There are so many people longing for rest, longing for a life that could be described with words like free and light. 

Unfortunately, for many, Christianity has been defined not as a freeing from the weight of an overburdened life, but the adding on of additional burdens. The adding on of burdens was never part of Jesus’ message. It was never the message of the Old Testament prophet’s who spoke of the coming Kingdom of God, “come and eat, come and drink, enjoy good food and wine, it’s all been paid for.” Our move is an amazing opportunity to reclaim the story. Do you know someone who might find a promise of rest, freedom and lightness inviting? I suspect you do. Could it be you? Could it be your neighbor? Could it be the hundreds of new neighbors we inherited when we moved? Who do you know that might be missing out on the life that God has planned for them?

Jesus invites everyone to this kind of life, a way of life that transforms us and empowers us to transform the world. On Sunday I said that the Church is called to be a countercultural, revolutionary, resistance movement that is marked by peace, joy, hope and love, and lived out by broken and messed up people who are being transformed by Jesus so that they can transform the world one little space at a time. The idea is that the Kingdom of God moves into the current kingdoms of darkness. As we begin to follow Jesus we are invited into a better way, a way of rest but also a way of significance. It is a way that frees us from conformity to the broken patterns of our culture, empowers us to resist, and to speak out, but to do so not as the world resists and revolts, but as people marked by the character of Jesus.  

Come, come, come. Come to the well and drink. Come to me all you who are weary. Come all who are thirsty. Come find real abundant life, more and better life than you ever imagined, here and now and forever when you die. Be freed from the striving, the burden, the weight. 

Who might be missing out? 

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Reflections on Moving

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9

This past Sunday I mentioned that although it was our last Sunday of worship at Redmond Middle School, we would continue to be a mobile church. We will always be a mobile church, Jesus’ Church is always to be a Church on the move. The God we worship is a sending God; the creative loving fullness of the Father sending his Son, the   just, merciful and loving Son sending the Spirit to make his home in us even as we are sent to a broken and hurting world in desperate need of a savior. 

The pages of scripture reflect this sentness. The Old Testament prophet wrote about the impetus for and the posture of those sent, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8). Jesus sent his disciples and all who take his name, with the charge, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18–20)

Several years ago when I first suggested Creekside move to a building that would combine worship, ministry center and offices, I heard from someone who was concerned about what seemed to be a shift in our vision. Over lunch, they told me that the Creekside vision was to never have a building. Yet as we discussed vision and sentness, we both agreed that neither having a building nor not having one were vision, but were instead implementations of a vision. That vision? To be a sent people, a mobile missionary church focused not on ourselves but to those we have been sent beyond our walls\\

As we complete another chapter in the story of Creekside -- as we move with excitement to our new location -- we do so as people sent by God and shaped by the places he has sent us thus far. We go remembering and celebrating the chapters completed, even as we begin this new one. It is wonderful that this new chapter begins during the season of Lent, a time where we ask, “what would it look like for the infinite and the penitent to begin to feel like home in our lives.” 

Spend some time this week thinking through your story. Reflect on when your story first  connected into God’s story. Remember when your story connected into Creekside’s story. Reconnect with a time or a place where you were struck by the weight of the infiniteness of God, a time perhaps when you simultaneously felt both small and insignificant yet deeply loved and called to something far greater than yourself? 

As we move into new places of sentness, we need to be intentional. Listening for God’s voice. Reflecting upon and examining our lives and the voices that speak into them. Participating with him as he moves and shapes us, ordinary people living the extraordinary way of Jesus. 

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Lent, Truth, Strength and Courage

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psalms 91:1–2

Today, we are a week into the season of Lent -- the 40 day journey to Easter. What is your experience with Lent?

When I was growing up, I thought Lent was “a Catholic thing” and did not really understand it, or try to. For some of you, Lent was something that was a part of your tradition and it left a bad taste. For still others it was deeply meaningful. I love the fact that I have been introduced to Lent over the past five years or so. It has become a deeply important time, a time of self examination -- not in a sense of trying to please God, but in the knowledge that he is ready pleased with me. It is a time of entering with Jesus into the reality of his infinite nature (and my finitude) with a sense of penitence for not only me, but for us as a people made in God’s image, yet so often using our gifts in ways that ma that image. 

On Sunday I put these words up on the screen: “You are my dear, dear child, and I am delighted with you.” Can you imagine God saying these words to you right now? Do you believe them to be true? They may seem like words for someone else, but the Bible makes it clear that they reflect how God sees and feels about you in Christ. They are words of truth. 

This truth is crucial. This truth, if you appropriate it for yourself will infuse all of your life with the power and the courage to step into needed areas of challenging and growth. In this truth, you will discover a completely different way of doing Lent, a completely different way of being a friend, completely different way of being a spouse, a completely different way of being human. And it happens in the image of God. 

What if this Lent you just sat with those words and you let them change you in the way Jesus meant when he said “repent,” see the goodness of reality and move toward it? 

Sit with those words, put your name into the sentence, “____________, you are my dear, dear child and I am delighted with you.” 

What would you do with God, what areas of growth would you step into, what risk would you take if you knew with every fiber of your being that God was thrilled with you? Because, he is. 

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Tools of Freedom

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. (Romans 6:12–13)

As we study Roman’s we keep running into themes of reigning; of death and of live. Jesus came and announced, that through him and his reign, the Kingdom of God was available to anybody and everybody. His invitation: reorient your lives to this amazing reality - repent and believe the good news. 

The reality is that while there is a moment of repentance and belief, a moment of salvation known ultimately only to God, their are innumerable moments thereafter. Moments of choice. Moments where we choose whose reign we will be subject to. Moments where we choose to live as instruments of  God’s reign or as instruments of the defeated reign of death. When these moments of stress, insecurity, instability, fear, impatience, and the like appear we hear the familiar voice of the defeated reign asking if he might help us navigate these troubled waters. “Just allow me to take care of this for you?” “I’ve done it before, it’s what you know.” “Can I borrow a part of you?” And then we choose. Do we trust God and his goodness enough to say, “no, I will not lend any part of myself to you -- I don’t work for you anymore.” “I am a citizen of the reign of God, and only he has my best interests in mind, you do not.” 

Most of us can identify the situations where we face this conversation. Satan is not creative, he will come and come again to the same places of weakness. What is that place for you? When you allow him to “fix” things, how does that work out? Does he deliver what he promises or does he promise good but deliver greater brokenness? 

Take a moment to think through the one or two most frequent areas where you have loaned yourself to the old reign. When these come again, how might you respond differently? How do might you allow God more fully into this conversation? Plan it out, prepare ahead of time. Celebrate the victories, give yourself a break when you slip and allow God to increasingly transform you into the truer and fuller you in him. 

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Good News, More Good News & Even More Good News

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6:8-11

The words quoted above are good news, more good news and even more good news. When Paul implores us, “count yourself dead to sin but alive to God in Jesus Christ,” he gives us in a few words amazingly important good news. 

And so you rightly ask, what do these words mean, why are they good news, and if they are such good news how do what they say? 

What do these words mean?

To “count yourself” means essentially to look in the mirror and see the amazing reality so often missed. To count yourself means to consider, think, regard, and recon yourself. It means to rethink the way you think about yourself; to reconcile yourself to a new reality of you. Similar to those posters where if one looks at them long enough they see a different reality emerge, there is a new you that is different from what you might first think when you look in the mirror. And it is that new you is the more real, more free, more real you. That is good news.

Why are these words good news?

As followers of Jesus the “plan” is not that once you get your life straightened out, you will be good enough (holy enough, spiritual enough, acceptable enough) for God. No, as soon as you decide to follow him, to enter into His story, God sees you as all those things and more. The “plan” is that for you to step into that new reality, that you appropriate that reality into your life, that you count yourself dead to sin but alive to God, so that you can fully live as the person you already are. That more good news. 

How do we do that? 

The final three words of the verse tell us the answer, “in Christ Jesus.” So often we correctly believe that we are saved by grace and not by our works but then incorrectly believe that our sanctification is all on us. It is not. It is his power and his grace that both convinces us of the beauty that is our new self and that empowers us to live as that person. As we seek Jesus and find him in prayer, Bible, service, fasting, nature and the like, they both move us toward him and are done with him alongside us. That is even more good news. 

How are you personally effected by these pieces of good news? Your you "counting" them to yourself? What would it look like for you to do so? 

Peace, hope and love

Doug

Blame it on Cain, but don't blame it on me.

Just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. Romans 5:18–19

Maybe you have never thought about original sin. Maybe you know the term but are confused by what it actually means. Perhaps you think of it as a theological concept not important to your life. Maybe you understand it well, but are offended by it. Maybe you are somewhere in the middle or off to either sides. I think it is important for people to wrestle with and discuss theological concepts -- it helps us both to connect into the history of the church and Biblical thought, and to flesh out what we believe the Bible says to us practically in the world and the culture we live everyday. 

The theological concept of original or inherited sin comes mostly from Paul’s writings, particularly from the end of Romans 5. In a nut shell, the idea is that when Adam sinned, every person who has been born since, is born personally guilty of sin. In the post enlightenment, increasingly individualistic world that we live, this is a hard pill to swallow; “I’ll take responsibility for what I have done (for the most part) but there is no way I am responsible for something that someone else did a long, long time ago.” Original sin is a difficult concept for our western minds to grasp. I say our western minds because for the non-western church (Asia, Africa and South America) the idea of a corporate or communal responsibility for things done in the past and by others is consistent with the general way of thought. The idea of original sin, consequently is generally not given a second look, “of course I would be guilty of wrong done by an ancestor.”  

Can a theological truth be correct or incorrect based upon where you are born? The answer to that question leads to the point I want to make with this passage and this e-mail. In order for theology to be correct it needs to be correct in all contexts and cultures. There is no such thing as a Biblical understanding that makes sense in America that is impossible or incongruent in the Congo. If we have trouble with a concept, could it be  that the concept is not the problem, but rather that our understanding of the concept been unknowingly filtered through the eyes of our culture? For our purposes, broader than the idea of original sin, trust me that we are far more individually focused than the Bible imagined. 

Most of us in some ways do not have a full understanding of the communal nature of the culture of the Bible -- not because we are not educated, but because we were not raised in that culture. The Bible is set in and speaks to a far greater level of interconnectedness than does our culture. Therefore, a part of the “counter cultural” nature of the Church is learning to live more inter-connectedly and then finding ways to live that out -- modeling it to the world.

Take some time to think through the questions below, I think you will find it helpful. Consider discussing them with a friend or in your family:

How is our individualism a strength?

How is our individualism a weakness? 

How does your individualism color your reading of the Bible or your understanding of what church looks like? 

Original sin as a theological concept is important. But perhaps equally important is what it shows us about our relationship to both those who went before us and those who will come after -- and to those around us in our world today. 

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions. 

Peace, hope and love

Doug