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Reframing The Gospel

February 14, 2012 in Bible, church, God, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

Unfortunately, many of today’s Christians have come to believe in a gospel that is only concerned with praying a prayer, getting individuals to heaven. And then they go out and pitch this limited gospel message to others in ways that devalue the holistic nature of the message itself.

Scot Mcknight says ” the soterian gospel resolves one problem — our broken relationship with God. The soterian gospel focuses on one event — the cross as the place where Christ takes our place, shoulders our sins, removes our guilt, and forgives our sin. The soterian gospel pleads for one major response — trust in that Christ for that problem.” (See King Jesus Gospel)

The Story gospel is otherwise urges us to see the gospel in Story terms. The gospel is that the Story of Israel comes to its definitive completeness in the Story of Jesus. In this video you will be introduced to the holistic nature of the gospel and challenged to return to the Bible to get a better picture of the story and how it should shape your whole life. I love this!

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Missional Defined

February 13, 2012 in church, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

“IT IS NOT THAT THE CHURCH HAS A MISSION BUT THAT GOD’S MISSION HAS A CHURCH.”

The word missional has become a buzzword that so many are using but not living. It must be defined. To help my readers understand what I mean when I use the word missional here is a conversation with Glenn Smith about defining missional church: (Glenn Smith is a world-renowned theologian and missiologist who has been leading “Christian Direction” in Montreal for a couple of decades. Glen is a huge influence in my life and ministry and is becoming a dear friend)

Have you been following this discussion about the missional church? Perhaps you have asked yourself

Is this just another fad?
What is this word, missional?
Does it mean anything for me, for my church?

Let me try to unpack what it means…
When we talk about a novel, we refer to it as “fictional literature”. The noun, “fiction” becomes the adjective, “fictional”. It is same thing with the wonderful word “mission”. When it is used as an adjective, we say “missional”, for a church that is dedicated to mission. But I call it an accordion word – the more air you pump into it, the more noise it makes! At the core, in spite of all the noise, there are four key ideas:

First, we are affirming that God is missionary in His character – His Being in Action. Mission is first and foremost God acting through Jesus in His creation by the work of His Spirit. Yes, God is love, just, holy…and He is also missionary!
When we use the word missional, we are reaffirming the Gospel . Jesus is LORD. A king has a kingdom; the Good News is about the LORDSHIP of Jesus over all His creation, in our lives, in His Church and over our cities.
When we use the word missional, we are admitting that we live in a new period in our history. Some people call this, “Post-Christendom”, a period where Christianity and the Church are no longer at the centre of our culture. We may grieve, but we also need to think and act in fresh ways.
When we use the word missional, we are affirming that the Church, by its very nature, is living out the implications of the Gospel; we are a people sent into our neighbourhoods and cities.

Read the rest of the article by Glenn Smith

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Three Circles: Wisdom From Francis

February 10, 2012 in Bible, church, God, Leadership with 0 Comments

Francis A. Schaeffer was born 100 years ago today (Jan. 30, 1912). He died in 1984. In 1974 he wrote this in his book No Little People:

As I see it, the Christian life must be comprised of three concentric circles, each of which must be kept in its proper place.

In the outer circle must be the correct theological position, true biblical orthodoxy and the purity of the visible church. This is first, but if that is all there is, it is just one more seedbed for spiritual pride.

In the second circle must be good intellectual training and comprehension of our own generation. But having only this leads to intellectualism and again provides a seedbed for pride.

In the inner circle must be the humble heart — the love of God, the devotional attitude toward God. There must be the daily practice of the reality of the God whom we know is there.

These three circles must be properly established, emphasized and related to each other. At the center must be kept a living relationship to the God we know exists. When each of these three circles is established in its proper place, there will be tongues of fire and the power of the Holy Spirit. Then, at the end of my life, when I look back over my work since I have been a Christian, I will see that I have not wasted my life.

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Getting Through The Challenges of Mission and Community

February 9, 2012 in church, God, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

In planting a church that longs to see its people live on mission, if I am honest, it is super challenging. The cost that people have to count is so much higher than attending a designed program at church. I understand why Jesus constantly is reminded those following him of the cost involved in such a decision. Jonathan thanks for the honesty and the encouragement… as Eugene Peterson says “it is a long journey in the same direction.”

Article by Jonathan Dodson

The popularity of missional community is rising among evangelicals, and yet, the American church is nowhere near a missional tipping point. I’ve faced missional highs and missional lows. Along the way, I’ve considered a number of things that are absolutely necessary for us to endure the transition to missional church. How should we respond to the challenges of missional community? Here are three things to keep in mind as you lead in God’s mission (and thanks for doing so).

1. Building Missional Community Requires Stretched Grace. We need more than a drop of grace to get us going on God’s mission. We need an ocean of grace to swim in to continue on God’s mission together. Do you remember when you knew nothing about “missional church”? That’s where many people are. Do you recall how long it took you to process, assimilate, and live out the principles of missional community? This probably took a couple of years, and if you’re a leader, you are in it “full time”. When leading others in missional community, remember the slowness in your own story and extend others the same grace and patience King Jesus extended you. After all, the kingdom of God is slow, and thank God for that! We need more than a drop of grace to get us going on God’s mission. We need grace stretched across the length of our lives and depth of our missional failures and successes. Jesus secured this grace, so revel in it and splash it on others.

Leader Tip: Try to avoid making mission a new benchmark of religious performance. Instead, motivate people with grace. Grace preached and grace embodied. Embody the grace of Christ, who has put up with our missional fumblings for centuries, as you lead others on mission. When it comes to mission, it’s not perfection overnight but progress over a lifetime.

2. Community is What You Make of It. In order to make progress with your community, remind them that community is what you make it. Community isn’t an idea; its real people, awkward, struggling, weird, different, funny, slow, arrogant, sheepish, humble, curious, skeptical, excitable. You get the idea. Jesus didn’t die to make cliques; he died and rose to form diverse communities. Diverse and different is hard. It requires love, effort, and patience. Community doesn’t just magically appear in a church. In fact, churches don’t have community at all; they are community. The question is, “What will you make of the community?” I’m falling in love with real community, which is really messy, with people who are so different from me and yet so alike in Jesus. There’s nothing like pursuing difficult people, being loved by different people, serving alongside a diverse people. What a display of grace (nothing else could hold us together).

Leader Tip: In a highly consumeristic, individual-centered society, it will take at least a generation to get back to the biblical notion of community. And even then, we will need more than community to sustain community. Let’s all agree to shatter our ideal of community and enter the real community of people God has placed in our lives. Let’s lift Christ higher than the community. Jesus is head not the body. He’s lord of the church. He’s the hope of the community, not the community itself. Community needs a center deeper than connection and a purpose greater than comfort. It needs the Lord of Community, Jesus Christ, to knit unlikely people together as a display of our common need for grace. Insist on this.

3. Labor for the Lord of Mission not the Fruit of Mission. With all the missional hype, our faith can easily slip from trusting in the Lord of the Harvest to trusting in the fruit of our labors. I’ve had several deep relationships with non-Christians dissolve over the past year and a half. This came after spending a lot of time with them over meals, out for philosophy discussions, in our home for counseling, and with our family doing fun stuff. They were loved and heard the gospel in ways that were profoundly relevant to their own fears, struggles, and hopes…and they walked away. They walked away from Jesus and created distance from us. That’s hard. If I’m putting faith in the fruit of my missional labors (at least at what I can see), then I’m discouraged. But if I’m putting faith in the Lord of the Harvest, I can be confident that he has been lifted up and that he is in charge of all salvation. He has endured much more to witness friends walk away from his costly sacrifice. He’s not only a model of missional endurance; he’s the hope for missional endurance.

Leader Tip: Put your faith in the Lord of Mission not the fruit of mission. It can be easy to congratuate ourselves when mission is high and berate ourselves when mission is low. That’s a sign that we’ve misplaced our faith. We put it in ourselves or our “fruitfulness.” Come back to the gospel every single day and ask the Spirit to put Jesus highest among your affections and greatest among your hopes. Keep repenting and putting your faith in Jesus and he will take care of the mission.

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Missional is NOT a Project

February 3, 2012 in church, FAMILY, friends, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

Here is a great post by Michael Stewart. Even missional can become a word that is diluted and co-opted for safe programs.

Living in an under-resourced, inner-city neighborhood I had become accustomed to the constant knocks on the front door. But this was different. As I opened the door I was taken aback at the large group of youth and adults, all swarming around my front door like a pile of hungry ants – all with perfectly matching shirts that had the logo of their church emblazoned on the front and back along with the phrase “Outreach Ministry” in big, bold letters. It was at once a scene that was one part intimidating, one part awkward, and one part funny.

One brave soul in the group who had been convinced of the worthiness of their missional efforts piped up with a semi-rehearsed speech:

“Can we mow your yard? We’re just here to love on you people.”

“You people?” I thought to myself. I’d been called a lot of things in the past. “You people” was not one of them. That was a first.

And it was also the first time that I had ever felt the sting of losing a little bit of my dignity. The first time, as a person of resource, I had ever been on the receiving end of a missional project dripping with good intentions, but bad implementation.

You see, to them I was not “Stew” (as all my friends call me) – I was a nameless project – something to be accomplished. Me and my yard were a benevolent deed in a long list of good deeds to be accomplished that day under the impatient heat of the summer sun. The question seemed harmless enough, but even a sharp knife that comes wrapped in good intentions hurts nonetheless.

Now contrast that picture with this one: A 4-alarm fire ravages an apartment building in ourneighborhood. A single mom with 2 young children is displaced, along with 45 other families, from her home. A friend in our Missional Community at the time lives a block away from the fire, shows up on the scene as the 6 fire trucks are dousing the flames, and feels led by the Holy Spirit to talk to this single mom. He connects her with us and she ends up moving in with us.

5 kids under the age of 6 are now packed into our little house, and in the middle of the chaos, transition, pain, struggle and tears, our little community of believers surrounds this mom and her children with support, affection, listening ears, and everything in between.

The love, sacrifice, and difficulty was not glamorous – it was not sexy – it was not easy – it took time…lots of time – and this family was certainly not a project to be completed, a task to be accomplished. This family had become our family and our family had become their family. It was the weaving together of both families.

Like a fabric, this was a network of relationships weaving their lives, sweat, time, energy, prayers, and tears together. This was incarnational ministry in its essence:

living among
learning from
working with
being shaped by
and walking alongside.

What excites me about the current missional conversation is that it seems to be catalyzing a resurgence for activism. That is a good thing.

“Let’s go!”
“Let’s do something!”
“Let’s be active!”

But the first story is what happens when “missional” is not joined with “incarnational.” Missional is the “what” but incarnational is the “how.” They are inseparable, as they were with Jesus. Jesus was sent by God on a mission, but “how” he was sent was just as important as “that” he was sent. “Missional” without “incarnational” devolves into mere projects. “Missional” without “incarnational” at best will be a passing fad, a short-lived experiment that has no staying power, or a kind of paint that we plaster on our current methodologies until some new, shiny paint comes along to replace it.

But I have a greater hope because of the incarnation of Jesus. Because He accomplished his mission, because he came to live for us, suffer for us, die for us, and be raised for us, now we are freed, because of His work and performance, to purse the long-term, difficult, self-denying incarnational mission to love others for the sake of the gospel.

Dreamer, catalyst, avid indoorsman… Michael Stewart (who goes by “Stew”) is Founder and Director of the Verge Conference and Verge Network, a network created as an advocate and champion for movements of gospel-centered missional communities. He is also Pastor of Missional Communities atAustin Stone Community Church. He has lived in at-risk, inner city neighborhoods in Memphis and Austin where he has, with his family, lived out his passion for holistic community development, advocacy for the poor, and gospel-centered justice. His passion is to see ordinary people radically transformed by the gospel of grace and engaged in the mission of God.

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How You Live Matters

January 30, 2012 in Bible, church, God, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

At The Journey we are continuing our series on life rhythms. As we receive the gospel and allow Jesus to reign in our lives we can’t go on doing the same things. We know who God is by what God does! How we live matters. Too often the extent of our new life is about “going to church” or telling those around us what we are against but it is all to rare to find someone who has genuinely been transformed by the gospel and they live a different life.

Imagine showing up at work on Monday being asked about your weekend and you respond…”I went to church on Sunday”, then silence and you both go on with your day. Your response does not demand further dialogue because you are not living different, you simply attended something.(same response occurs if you say you went to a restaurant) BUT what if you respond “we spent the weekend moving”,- “oh wow did you move into a bigger place?” – “No we moved into a smaller space”, – “really, how come? Are things tight financially?” – “No we desire to live a more generous life so freeing up money going into our mortgage will help us give more to people in need”… – “I have never heard any one doing that before what caused you to make that decision?”… now that is a conversation based on you living out of a new story that allows you to give a gospel answer because they asked! Are you getting the point.

We want to tell others about Jesus outside of allowing our very lives to tell the gospel story. People know who your god is by what you do!

The pastor I was serving under in Vancouver is a great example of this. As Kari and I were living missional in our neighbourhood we came across a single mom in need. She had 4 kids, a problem with alcohol, and very little money. As a group we began to love them, serve them, and care for the kids. To make a long story short things became more difficult and the kids were about to be split up through the foster care system. This is when the gospel of love and sacrifice moved Greg and Debbie to take the 4 kids. Yep crazy… nothing like doubling the family overnight. What would happen if you told people that on a monday morning at work? God is inviting us into a new way of living modeled by Jesus and empowered by the Spirit. We live a different story showing people the trailer to the coming Kingdom of God.

Too often can live in the pendulum swing between being and doing, and miss the point completely. Biblically these two are very integrated. I would like to call it Being In Action… It is a matter of order, being precedes doing but always results in action. It would be crazy to think loving my wife would not result in new behaviours. Love results in a new way of living.

Too often we study God (attributes) apart from what God does. We have divorced the churches nature from her mission. No longer are we the echo, the trailor to the coming Kingdom of God, we don’t show the world a different story they could live their life from.

If you are interested in a new way of living start with the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5. Jesus calls his disciples to follow and then shows them in chapter 5 – 7 how to live. He concludes with this verse:

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

May people be introduced to Jesus because of the way you live!

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Story-Formed

January 23, 2012 in Bible, church, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

At The Journey we desire to live a different kind of way, showing to the world our allegiance to Jesus and what life in His Kingdom looks like. Too often we define being a Jesus follower by where we attend church or what we are against BUT Jesus says “it is by your fruit you recognize who my disciples are”, it is about how we live.

This Sunday we talked about the first of our everyday rhythms, Story-Formed.

Every person on the planet is living their life inside of and in light of a larger story shaped by the country they live in, the cultures surrounding them, the family they were raised in, the worldview they believe… Until they understand all of this in light of the Redemptive Story of God, they will give themselves to lesser stories that do not work.

A story is just a person that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. And we are all telling stories.

But stories aren’t neutral. The stories we hear change the way we see life. Stories teach us what is worth pursuing, what is worth living for, what is worth sacrificing for. If we are a person that wants a BMW and is willing to work overtime to get it, than the moral of the story we are teaching the world is work hard and some day you’ll get a BMW. It’s not a bad story, but it’s not a good one, either.

As a Christ follower we are a story-formed people who are living our lives based upon and within an incredible story. All of our beliefs, identity and actions are all connected to the dominant story. This is why we need to know it and we are to talk about it when we sit, stand, walk along the way, eat, lie down, etc…

In this case, the Good News is that God sent his Son to redeem the world and create a new humanity. Eventually the whole world will be renewed. Death, decay, injustice, and suffering will all be removed. God is saving a people and sending them out for His Mission so that Christ will be glorified in all things.

The Church has been saved BY God’s work FOR God’s work (Ephesians 1, 2:10,14-22; 2 Corinthians 5:15-21; Revelation 21).

The Gospel is not just about my individual happiness or God’s plan for my life. It is about God’s Glory and His plan for the world.

There is a movement afoot. God is doing something and we have been called to His purposes. The people of God are participating within God’s redemptive plan by being a display people offering a foretaste of what the future will be like under God’s rule. This is an amazing story I am living within!
(Jeremiah 29; Matthew 5:3-16; Luke 6:20-36; 1 Peter 2:9-12).

We are like a trailer to a movie…giving a foretaste of the kingdom fully consummated by Jesus that makes people long for the future redemption of all things under Jesus as King…the difference is that unlike a movie trailer we are often a poor reflection of a far better future.

How is your story connected to the larger story of God? OR Are you living the worlds story of success?

What are some next steps your Missional Community should take in order to be a Story-formed people?

What is Storyline? from Donald Miller on Vimeo.

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Why Church Planting?

January 23, 2012 in church, MISSIONAL, Pastors, Religion with 0 Comments

One of my kingdom desires is to see churches planted in the urban centres of our nation. Last week I was being interviewed by the C2C Network about our story and after the interview was reminded how passionate I really am about church planting.. Here’s some quotes from Tim Keller that are featured on the blog of Scott Thomas (President of the Acts 29 network which has planted 400 churches in the last few years.)

Tim Keller states the vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else–not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes–will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow raising statement. But to those who have done any study at all, it is not even controversial.

So, why is church planting so crucially important? Because…

We want to be true to THE BIBLICAL MANDATE

Jesus’ essential call was to plant churches. Virtually all the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant churches, not simply to share the faith. The ‘Great Commission’ (Matt.28: 18-20) is not just a call to ‘make disciples’ but to ‘baptize’. In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a worshipping community with accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts 2:41-47). The only way to be truly sure you are increasing the number of Christians in a town is to increase the number of churches. Why? Much traditional evangelism aims to get a ‘decision’ for Christ. Experience, however, shows us that many of these ‘decisions’ disappear and never result in changed lives. Why? Many, many decisions are not really conversions, but often only the beginning of a journey of seeking God. (Other decisions are very definitely the moment of a ‘new birth’, but this differs from person to person.) Only a person who is being ‘evangelized’ in the context of an on-going worshipping and shepherding community can be sure of finally coming home into vital, saving faith. This is why a leading missiologist like C.Peter Wagner can say, “Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven.”

Paul’s whole strategy was to plant urban churches. The greatest missionary in history, St.Paul, had a rather simple, two-fold strategy. First, he went into the largest city of the region (cf. Acts 16:9,12), and second, he planted churches in each city (cf. Titus 1:5).

We want to be true to THE GREAT COMMISSION.

New churches best reach a) new generations, b) new residents, and c) new people groups. First, younger adults have always been disproportionately found in newer congregations, and second, new residents are almost always reached better by new congregations. Last, new socio-cultural groups in a community are always reached better by new congregations.

New churches best reach the unchurched–period. Dozens of denominational studies have confirmed that the average new church gains most of its new members (60-80%) from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshipping body, while churches over 10-15 years of age gain 80-90% of new members by transfer from other congregations.

We want to continually RENEW THE WHOLE BODY OF CHRIST.

It is a great mistake to think that we have to choose between church planting and church renewal. Strange as it may seem, the planting of new churches in a city is one of the very best ways to revitalize many older churches in the vicinity and renew the whole Body of Christ. Why?

First, the new churches bring new ideas to the whole Body. There is no better way to teach older congregations about new skills and methods for reaching new people groups than by planting new churches. It is the new churches that will have freedom to be innovative and they become the ‘Research and Development’ department for the whole Body in the city.

Second, new churches are one of the best ways to surface creative, strong leaders for the whole Body. New congregations attract a higher percentage of venturesome people who value creativity, risk, innovation and future orientation. Many of these men and women would never be attracted or compelled into significant ministry apart from the appearance of these new bodies.

Third, the new churches challenge other churches to self-examination. The “success” of new churches often challenges older congregations in general to evaluate themselves in substantial ways. Sometimes it is only in contrast with a new church that older churches can finally define their own vision, specialties, and identity.

Fourth, the new church may be an ‘evangelistic feeder’ for a whole community. The new church often produces many converts who end up in older churches for a variety of reasons. Ordinarily, the new churches of a city produce new people not only for themselves, but for the older bodies as well.

As an exercise in KINGDOM-MINDEDNESS

All in all, church planting helps an existing church the best when the new congregation is voluntarily ‘birthed’ by an older ‘mother’ congregation. Often the excitement and new leaders and new ministries and additional members and income ‘washes back’ into the mother church in various ways and strengthens and renews it. Our attitude to new church development is a test of whether our mindset is geared to our own institutional turf, or to the overall health and prosperity of the kingdom of God in the city.

SUMMARY

New church planting is the only way that we can be sure we are going to increase the number of believers in a city and one of the best ways to renew the whole Body of Christ. The evidence for this statement is strong–Biblically, sociologically, and historically. In the end, a lack of kingdom-mindedness may simply blind us to all this evidence. We must beware of that.

*Adapted from an article written by Tim Keller, titled “Why Plant Churches”. To download full-length article as a PDF, click HERE

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Day 3 – Prayer and Fasting

January 18, 2012 in church, God with 1 Comment

Our community at The Journey has committed to a week of prayer and fasting. I personally find day 3 the most challenging so here is a reminder from Adam Mabry the pastor at Aletheia Boston on why we fast.

Why Fast?

There are a few reasons why Christians should and do fast.

1. Jesus commands us to Fast – In Matthew 6, Jesus says, “When you fast…,” and then goes on to give instruction how to fast. His instructions assume that his disciples will, in fact, be fasting. Otherwise, there would be no need for him to give any instructions on the matter. Additionally, Jesus modeled this discipline. Before he went into public ministry, he fasted. Often he would come away from the crowds to pray alone.

2. Fasting Kills our Love of Lesser Joys – So often in our lives, we run around so preoccupied with the lesser joys of money, people, job, school, etc., that we forget our dependance on and joy in God. Fasting helps us to remember that, “man doesn’t live by bread alone, but on every words that comes from the mouth of God.” In forsaking food, we forsake that on which we depend for life, to remember the one on whom we ultimately depend on for life. Often during a fast, our idolatry is exposed, giving room for repentance and growth in holiness.

3. Fasting fans into ?ame our Passion for God – God does not want us to be half-hearted in our devotion to him. We are not honoured when people are half-committed and ?aky to us, and neither is God. Fasting causes us to see freshly our dependance on God and thus stirs our affections for him. It causes us to
see him as our daily bread, and sweeter to us than honey. (Psalm 19). This makes true worship rise from our hearts to God.

4. Fasting causes us to be Generous – Isaiah 58 shows us that one of God’s intentions behind fasting is that we might take the food and resources we’re not using during that time and give them to the poor and oppressed. By abstaining from food and the “extras” in life, we’re able to be more generous. Consider the words of Scripture:“if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.” (Isaiah 58: 10-11)5.

5. Fasting Strengthens Prayer – Scripture gives us examples of fasting strengthening our prayers, thus the common pairing of Christians fasting and praying. When we fast, our minds and hearts become focused, and our prayers are often more ?lled with fervor and life. That’s not to say that our emotional commitment to pray somehow makes God listen better, but it does allow us to pray better, and more in line with God’s will. (See Matthew 17:21; Mark 9:17-29; Acts 10:30; 1 Corinthians 7:5).

Fasting vs. A Hunger Strike

A hunger strike is when someone refuses to eat to get someone else to bend to their will, capitulate, or do something for them. Prisoners go on hunger strikes. Oppressed people go on hunger strikes. Christians do not, I repeat, do not go on hunger strikes.When we fast, we are not doing it to get God to notice us, hear our prayers better, love us more, or move him to do what we really want him to do. Christians are not prisoners, oppressed people, or manipulators of their God. We fast to align our hearts with God’s. We fast to suppress the noise of the natural man to hear the still small voice of God. We fast to kill sin that we might live to God. We fast to fall in love with Jesus more, aligning our hearts to his. We fast as a form of freedom in God, not as a form of oppression under God.

May our hunger for food awaken us to the real hunger of our hearts.

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Day 2 – Done with Doing

January 17, 2012 in Bible, church, FAMILY, God, Leadership with 0 Comments

It is day 2 of The Journey’s week of prayer and fasting and today as I sit and wait and be with Jesus I am reminded of my journey last year. One that involved a shift… (Thanks to Andrea Argue, Larry Brune, Terry Wiseman and our Together Group)

For the past several years, ups and downs defined my spiritual life. Moments in the journey were some of the most intimate encounters with Jesus that I’ve known. Real (nearly tangible) experiences, that can’t be explained by anything but the power of the Holy Spirit, took place…. moments, when I showed love to a neighbor, prayed for an enemy, served the poor… these were times when Jesus was right there with me.

Then there were the times when I got stuck trying to live like Jesus. In the Christian world we call these “good works” or “ethics.” I made my aim “doing” rather than “being.” By “doing” I believed that my “being” would be consumed by an experience of the life of God. Unfortunately, the God encounters often fade when all my time is spent “doing”, reading about or theorizing about such “doing.”

For me, it was time to stop doing. It became a time to simply rest in what Christ has done. Done “doing” because the Holy Spirit invites us to stop and to “be.”

It’s easy to follow the Sermon on the Mount and other ethical teachings of Jesus and to miss the Christ who taught such things. Dallas Willard puts it this way:

Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays. Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behaviour such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do. For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser… True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.[1]

So, last year was a year I announced “I am done with living like a Christian”. I traded that in for living in a deeper relationship with Christ. I want to know Jesus. I want to hear Jesus. I want to be empowered by Jesus. Not simply in theory as I do the good things that he calls us to do, but as the natural outflow of intimacy with God. The former way “gets the job done.” The latter way changes the world.

For me, this meant a new-found intentionality of placing myself in a position to hear from the Spirit. Spiritual practices like – solitude, Sabbath, lectio divina, silence, confession, prayer, and practicing the presence of God – these neglected areas of my life had led to a Christianity defined by “doing” rather than “being.”

My prayer for us this year is that our intimate relationships with Christ would make it impossible to not respond with the ethics marked out by the Kingdom of God. Not out of effort to do good things, but out of our efforts to know Jesus Christ through an awareness of the presence of God’s Spirit. When this becomes normative, we won’t be able to help it… we will just start doing stuff… looking more and more like Jesus.

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