Archives For Scripture

On January 23, 2013

God at Work: Mission Work

Jesus at the officeA few months ago I had a friend ask me when I was going to be going on a mission trip again. She had gone with us on several international mission trips, and had really come alive while serving in different parts in the world. And now years later she and her husband owned a restaurant in another state, and they missed missions. Their business was successful and thriving. She loved her job, but she felt guilty about serving chicken fried steak to customers but not orphans in another country.

Sometimes I hear people say something along the lines of “No one ever thinks on their death bed, I wish I would have spent more time at the office.” And I get what I think they’re trying to say with that. I think they are trying to say that there are unhealthy work-a-holic like patterns that we need to veer away from.

But I know a lot of people who are glad that they are doing what they do with their lives, and feel like their work is one very important reason why God put them on this earth. And they’re right.

 

The Myths of Retirement

 

In the world that the Bible was written it was extremely countercultural. Specifically, it’s view of work.

Most of the Creation stories of the ancient world involved this idea that the world was created from warfare and violence, and the body of a dead god decayed into the creation. So the Greeks viewed work as a curse, they thought that what it meant to be really alive was to be uninvolved in this world.

The Greek view of work was that it was a necessary evil. They believed that in the beginning, the gods and people lived together in “a golden age” and that in that age there was no work. Work was something to be suffered through. It was a means to an end.

But Genesis, starts off radically differently. It involves a God who intentionally works and creates the world with care. In fact, the word that Genesis uses for God’s creative word is just the Hebrew word for everyday work.

The Bible starts off with God working. And then he creates Adam and Eve and immediately puts them to work And that’s important, because before the fall, there was work. God didn’t finish creation, he started it and then joins in a partnership with them as they create culture, name animals and pioneer…well basically everything.

God works with them.

And in the Christian story, this all happens before sin entered the world.

It’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t have this idea of retirement. Instead the Bible has the idea of Sabbath. That is you don’t just work yourself to death until you turn 65. You work with the pace of someone who knows they aren’t the Savior and creator of the world. You rest for a season and then work for a season. But you never just decide to not work again.

In fact, the closest thing in the Bible that would resemble what we call retirement is death.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — 1 Comment , ,
permalink
On January 15, 2013

God At Work #1: God is at Work

Jesus at the office

First a confession: Whenever someone hands me their business card with a Jesus fish on it, it doesn’t make me want to work with them. Actually it makes me more skeptical about the quality of their work.

And maybe I’m just being cynical but in my experience there is a correlation between those kinds of cards and less than ideal work.

But I don’t think that’s just a problem with Christian business people. It’s been a problem for churches for over a thousand years.

And it is a problem.

We’ve developed a system where a persons faith has nothing to say about where they will spend the majority of their lives. We’ve begun to believe that God is at church, but not really at work.

I’d like to start a blog series for the next few months about how our God views our work. And how God works through our work.

Did you know the first person the Bible talks about as filled with the Spirit was a guy named Bezalel, he’s not a priest or prophet. He was a skilled craftsman, the Bob Vila of the Bible.

We’ve had this idea for the past hundred years or so that the really Spiritual people are the ones who work at church (which I can see why we’d think that).

But the best way to tell whether or not we are doing our work for the Lord well, is by seeing if you are doing you’re work for the Lord well.

Somewhere along the way we bought into the idea that really Spiritual people work at the church, or at non-profits. But the majority of Stories in Scripture aren’t about God working through the Levites, or priests. They’re about God working in accountants, or trumpet players, or carpenters.

For Example…

Continue Reading...
In Archive — 6 Comments ,
permalink
On December 18, 2012

Names #6: Changing Names

CT PreachingThis is the last post in this short series about names in the book of Genesis. I know that whole idea might sound strange, but it’s something I’ve been rolling around in my mind for a while, because I’m convinced that our names matter more than we think they do. I think our language to describe the world and ourselves matter a lot to God.

That why Genesis talks a lot about names. Because a name is a story, and if we don’t name well, we might not tell the story we are wanting to tell.

For example…

Did you ever wonder why God changes people’s names? Does this strike anybody else as bizarre? And it happens all the time in the Bible, especially in Genesis. Like when God comes to Abram and Sarai, these people who’ve had their names for 70 years, and he’s like “Let’s add an H” in there.

Or what about Jacob? God comes to this guy who is one of the worst heroes in ancient literature (He’s kind of a jerk, he’s selfish and he’s always trying to get ahead) and God tells him that he’s going to change his name to Israel.

To which I would say, can’t we go with something that sounds more normal like…Gary or Robert?

But I’ll come back to this.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — 1 Comment , , ,
permalink
On December 11, 2012

Names #5: The Towers We Build

In the 18th century, there was a Spanish philosopher named Miguel de Unamuno who came up with one of the best questions to illustrate the human condition. This was the question: If you had to choose between creating amazing works of art that would last forever and would make the world a better place, but you would remain anonymous; or you could become a famous, world renown artist and painter but your works would be totally forgotten. Which would you choose?

Insignificant fame or Anonymous blessing?

So this is a series on a small theme in the book of Genesis. Namely, that Genesis cares a lot about names. Apparently the Bible cares a lot about the language we use to describe the world and each other.

Last week I talked about how after the fall in Genesis, Adam and Eve try to find their own names, independent of God. But what happens when that stops just being a problem for a couple of people and starts to be the way the whole world operates?

Just eight chapters later, Genesis tells us about how the how the whole world was speaking the same language. And they all got together because they wanted to build a tower. Which actually sounds like a pretty good idea. I mean we build towers all the time. But Genesis is telling us something here. They are trying to exceed the limitations of being human. They are trying to be gods.

The real reason they wanted to build a tower was because they wanted to “make a name for themselves.” (The actual Hebrew here is Donald Trump).

Now think about this for a second. They aren’t actually concerned about the project they are building. Their real goal is to be important. Their real goal isn’t the tower, but to justify their existence.

And God doesn’t like that goal at all.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — 2 Comments , , , ,
permalink
On December 4, 2012

Names #4: Curses and Poetry

So this is a short series about names in Genesis, and more specifically about why the Bible seems to make such a big deal about names and the language we use. It’s why names matter more than we think they do.

The other day I was talking with another preacher friend of mine, who is a minster in another state, and we were talking about church work and about the different ways that church volunteers serve. And ultimately the conversation turned to how bad preachers are at getting people to volunteer. Not that we can’t get people to volunteer, that part is easy, but that preachers aren’t that good at getting people to volunteer in ways that help the volunteers just as much as the people they are serving.

The temptation of preachers, or bosses, or anyone who cares about a certain project is to use people.

I’m going to let you in on a dirty little church leadership secret. If you have pride…I can get you do almost anything. But it will almost never turn out well.

Let me explain:

One of the more interesting things about the book of Genesis is how it starts. If you’re familiar with the Bible at all, then you probably know that Genesis chapter 1 is the story of God creating the world. But what you might not know is that Genesis 1 is written as a poem. It’s got a rhythm, it’s got beat and a cadence.

Genesis 1 is about God doing the work of creation, but he does it with a song.

He makes the universe like he’s writing a poem.

And then the crescendo, the climax of this song is when he makes Adam and Eve. God passes on to them things that he doesn’t give the other parts of his creation, he asks them to name and create with him. In other words, he let’s them sing along.

Now if you are familiar with this story, you know that this doesn’t last long. Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden and they are given permission to do anything they want, the only prohibition God gives them is that they can’t eat from one tree. They can do anything, and remember they’re naked at this point, it’s like God is making it easy on them to think about other stuff. But they do the one thing we probably all would do, they disobey, they fail to trust God.

And this is the story that we’ve been living out ever since.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — Leave a comment , , , ,
permalink
On November 27, 2012

Names #3: People of a Name

Have you ever noticed how ugly names can be? I’m not talking about bad names like Hubert or Lance, but more about the ugly ways that we use them. Names can unite people, but they can also divide us. So I belong to group of Christians who traditionally didn’t want to be named anything, we started off as non-denominational (non-named) Christians. The only problem with that is that we named it “Churches of Christ” and then pretended like it wasn’t a name at all.

Which is the theological equivalent of saying something like “Oh that’s my friend Steve, he doesn’t have a name.”

But “Churches of Christ” has been moving along as a non-denominational denomination for well over a hundred years. And we really like our name. If you ever doubt that, just go up to one of us and ask us to change the church sign.

But having a name isn’t a bad thing. Everything depends on what you do with it.

I have a friend who’s a few years older than me, and until a couple of years ago he and his wife led what most of us would consider a pretty normal American life. But that was before they met Heather. Heather was a teenage girl who had come from a very broken home, she had been coming to the church they attended for the past few months, and they started to get to know her…then she started staying with them…then she wanted to be their daughter.

Now my friends hadn’t planned on adopting, but they loved Heather, and so they gave her a ton of options other than full adoption. They told her she could keep staying with them until she went to college, they would be willing to become her legal guardians, and if she really wanted they would legally adopt her, but she could keep her last name, and she could still make a lot of her own decisions and remain relatively independent.

But, my friends made clear to her, if you want us to fully adopt you and give you our name, then it’s going to be an entirely different situation. We are going to expect a lot more of you than we would just some resident. If we give you our name we are going to ask you to live a certain way. So no more abusing alcohol or drugs or dating boys we don’t approve of. Because if we give you our name it comes at a price.

And Heather said yes.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — Leave a comment , ,
permalink
On November 20, 2012

Names #2: Don’t Think of an Elephant

So this is a short series on why names matter. but more specifically it’s a series on why the book of Genesis talks so much about names. Because one of the greatest gifts that God gives to humans is create with Him, and to name that creation.

I’ve noticed that it’s trendy among younger Christians to use language that older generations find offensive. And I get that. After all, every generation stretches the boundaries of language. Otherwise we would never hear the word pregnant on television, and “sucks” would still mean what my mom thinks it does. But I think it’s important to not forget that the Scripture is telling a story in which the language we use, the names we choose matter very much.

And here’s why:

I have a friend who had been married to his wife for a decade when he found out that she had cheated on him…a lot. He remembers the night that he found out that she had really never been faithful to him, in fact, he discovered there was a very good chance that their kids weren’t even his. And so my friend had a choice. He knew that the marriage was over, in a sense, it had never really existed. But he had to decide what to do with the children. He could probably walk away from any responsibility at all, or he could get DNA testing to find out which ones belonged to him biologically.

But he didn’t. Instead my friend went to court and fought for everyone of his kids without qualifiers. It cost him a small savings, but he did it. And later, when his kids found out that there was a chance that he wasn’t their biological father, they asked him why he fought so tirelessly for them. He told them, “Because I named you.”

Which is an interesting answer isn’t it?

It implies that there’s more to creating a kid than a sperm fertilizing an egg.

Naming a child has something to do with what kind of child you have created.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — 5 Comments , , ,
permalink
On October 23, 2012

The Grace of Truth

The problem I have in confronting other people is that I want them to like me, I want to be known as a loving person more than I want to be a loving person. But the people who have blessed my life with their words the most, were people who cared enough to say hard things to me about life or ministry, because they cared more about me as a person than they did my immediate emotional state. And they weren’t doing that to be a jerk, they weren’t trying to hurt my feelings, they were trying to help me see myself better. They cared enough to tell me the truth about myself.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — Leave a comment , ,
permalink
On September 4, 2012

A People of Maybe

At the heart of Christian Theology is what we call sin. It is the human condition, and a huge chunk of it is our incredible capacity to deceive ourselves and be totally unaware of it. We can be incredibly arrogant, prideful, smug creatures who are capable of both great harm and great good. And that’s why we need both community and humility.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — 2 Comments , ,
permalink
On August 15, 2012

After The Smoke Clears

A few years ago, I sat down with someone who I loved a whole lot, they knew I loved them, and they loved me. We had been friends for years, we had laughed, cried and lived life together. But over the course of the past few weeks and months I had noticed that my friend had been making choices that were becoming more and more destructive and refusing to take responsibility for the outcomes. He was headed down a path that almost everyone who loved him knew was going somewhere toxic…the only problem was he couldn’t see it.

Continue Reading...
In Archive — 5 Comments ,
permalink