He's coming!

Seriously consider the question:  What if God revealed to you that Jesus was coming back next Saturday night?  What would you do?

How would you go about your week?  Would you still go to work or not?  What would you say in conversations with friends and coworkers?  What would you spend your time doing?

What would you be doing that Saturday as you awaited His return?

Pray about it.  Ask God what you should do.

Then do it.  Live like it was true.  Because it just may be true.  We should live as if it was coming soon.  As Jesus said:

42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Matt. 24:42-44)

The Lord could come at any moment.  Be ready.  You don’t want the Lord to come and then you’re stuck there thinking  ”Oh, I wish I had done such-and-such or I wish I had told so-and-so about Jesus”.

Without your own faith in Christ, your grandma's prayers cannot help one bit to keep you out of hell.

I often ask people about how they are doing with God.  A very common answer I get is about someone else, like “my mom is a preacher” or “my grandmother prays for me every day”.  I am always confused by that answer.  What does someone else’s relationship have to do with your own relationship with God?

Recently I realized that a LOT more people do that than I thought.  I realized this when I met a couple who had just recently changed churches.  For many years they had been going to a good church near where they live.  They were leading small groups and even meeting regularly with a pastor to grow in leadership.  They had friends and a community that lived near them.  But they said they felt like they were “not growing” so they felt like they should leave.  Now they drive 30 minutes to participate in a church where they don’t know anyone.  The pastor they followed before had left, so they wanted to find a different pastor to follow because maybe that will help them “grow”.  As I listened to their story, I was again confused by what I heard.

Similarly, a friend of mine left his church of 10+ years (which was a decent church) to move to Bethlehem Baptist.  He told me proudly “Now John Piper is my pastor!”  He left all his relationships and travels further to get to church.  Now I love Piper (as you can tell by my other posts!), but simply listening to him doesn’t make me a better Christian.  And certainly just sitting in the same building as him doesn’t do it either.

All too often people take pride in their spirituality pointing to the authors they read, the preachers they follow, or their family members with great faith.  It is good to esteem them for God’s work through them!  But learning from them or hearing of their exploits does not necessarily make us better Christians.  Our own faith does.  Our own faith may involve sacrificially praying for or giving toward those persons, but it always involves our own obedience to whatever God calls us to.

This same thing happened in the early church in Corinth.  The Apostle writes:

12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” 13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Cor. 1:12-13)

Paul makes it very clear that following after a “man” is not the answer.  We cannot lean on someone else’s faith.  We cannot live on a borrowed relationship with Jesus.  The Apostle also tells us:

5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Cor. 3:5-9)

No matter how insightful, challenging, relevant, or life-changing a sermon is, it is completely and utterly worthless without God giving growth to the hearers.  God gives the growth! He deserves all the glory!

What's funny about this is that for most of my life I would have totally made fun of this dude. Now... I kind of understand and admire guys like this. I'd probably take a different tact, but at least the dude is trying!

To those of you who have known me for awhile (like 5+ years), you’re probably worried about me.  That or excited.

A few months back a very good friend of mine who I had not seen in awhile was expressing his concern.  He said “Paul, I am really worried about you man.  You had everything going for you.  You lived in LA and had a great job and made a lot of money.  I’m really worried about you.”  I told him that I count all those things I used to count as “benefits” I now count as loss in comparison to gaining Christ! As the Apostle Paul said:

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. (Phil. 3:7-8)

He then re-expressed his worry and thought I was not on a good course in life.  But I was encouraged by this friend.  First off because it is clear he cares about me.  But even more so, I was encouraged that my life looked looked ridiculous to him.  Since he does not know Jesus, he cannot comprehend why I would want to take up my cross and follow Christ.  As the Apostle so rightly states:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing (1 Cor. 1:18).

Or as Francis Chan well states in his book Crazy Love (read it!):

Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.  (page 115)

If you are not a Christian, I hope you are worried about me.  If Christ has not been raised, then everything I am living for is worthless and foolish (1 Cor. 15:17).  But if Christ has indeed risen from the dead, then obeying God without regard to the cares and concerns of this world is by far the most important thing I can do!

Aaron, taking in the situation, built an altar before the calf. Aaron then announced, "Tomorrow is a feast day to God!" ... The people sat down to eat and drink and then began to party. It turned into a wild party! (Ex. 32:5-6 The Message)

Two contrasting things are really helpful in bringing out what IS truth and what IS NOT.  God uses contrasts very often.  Things in scripture are often written with a contrast in mind.   Today God provided a contrast for me with two different people who gave me their wisdom on “play”:

This morning I talked to a 60-year-old man who looked like he may be homeless.  I got to talking to Manuel and find he’s a Christian.  He recently got hit by a bus and a car and got severely injured.  The doctors said he would lose a leg and never walk again.  He said “no way”.  A pastor came in and prayed for him to be healed.  He was in the hospital 5 days, then 2 days later he was out shoveling snow.  This man has a testimony of God’s faithfulness amidst a severe ordeal.  He still has some mental issues and physical things wrong which have left him without work and in big financial need, but he sees God’s faithfulness and humbly trusts in God.

He said to me “Pray, not Play” to me over and again.  He said “when I was young, I always wanted to play.  Even going to church was about play.  Play play play.  That was it.  Not ever serious.  We need to be serious and pray”.  This is a man who has learned this lesson the hard way.

Later in the afternoon I met a well-off 88-year old Swedish woman.  We had a long conversation about religion.  She said we need churches just like we need mental homes, because some people need it.  She kept emphasizing “free thinking” and coming to conclusions using our mental abilities alone (yet also said truth is unknowable, which seemed to not make sense).  She interrupted a lot, was very rude and condescending, and reeked of pride in every word.

As I was leaving, she told me a story about two Mormon missionaries who came to her house and she invited in.  She said she paraded out her beautiful 16-year-old daughter (clearly to entice them) and told them they should take off their stiff-clothes and put on comfortable clothes and give up this stuff to go “play” and have fun.  She told me, “youth is a gift, you should use it to play and enjoy!”  I told her “I take my gifts and give them all back to the One who is truly worth it all, because my life is not for me but for Him”.

A poor, humble, beat-down man who looked homeless shared in broken-English a deep truth about our need for prayer over play.  A rich, prideful, self-glorifying woman told me I should ignore God and go play. This reminded me of the contrast in Exodus 32 (referenced in the picture), where Moses is up praying to God receiving the commandments while Israel makes a golden calf and indulges in “revelry” and play.

True is the Proverb:

¹¹ The rich think they know it all,
but the poor can see right through them. (Proverbs 28:11 The Message)

This is especially interesting for me, as on Sunday I felt like I was lacking “joy”.  I asked God if I need to do more of the activities where I find “enjoyment”.  I realized that pretty much all the “enjoyment” I did before Christ I have now dropped.  Instead of seeking “enjoyment”, together my wife and I pressed in with prayer.  The next day I woke up overwhelmed by joy for our Lord, with much scripture running through my head about how our joy is the Lord!  Then my daily Psalm reading for the day included this:

7 I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love,
because you have seen my affliction;
you have known the distress of my soul,
8 and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;
you have set my feet in a broad place. (Ps. 31:7-8)

Consumerism is an identity. Our identity is to be in Christ, not in our stuff.

Last week in a class, someone said how public school “teaches us how to be consumers”.  Then the teacher chimed in, “consumer, what a terrible identity to have”.  This got me thinking a lot about consumerism.  It really is terrible.

Our American culture lifts up being a consumer.  Most of our day is being bombarded by things to consume.  Our Facebook profiles describe ourselves based off of the movies, music, and activities we consume.  Our social lives are often centered around the food and entertainment we consume.  We’re in debt because of our consumption addiction.  We don’t have time for real relationships because we are so busy consuming or working harder to raise our consumption level.

God calls us to something different.  When God created Adam, he did not say “go into the garden and sit around and enjoy the fruits.”  No!  This is what he said:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it…” (Gen 1:28)

God put Adam in the garden to be a cultivator, someone who produces a harvest by working the earth.  He then also gave Adam a wife.  They were called to be (re)producers, making more people to fill the earth.  God created mankind to be producers first and foremost.  Of course, men will still need to eat, but God promised to fulfill all those consumption needs (Gen. 1:29, Matt. 6:25-33).

Look also at the passage (which almost no American Christian actually believes):

34 You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. 35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:34-35)

It is more blessed to GIVE!  Consumers receive.  Producers give.  The Apostle Paul even demonstrated this by seeking to produce enough for himself and to give to others.  Yes, he still received support from churches on many occasions, but the receiving was to give himself all the more away for the Gospel.

Now also apply this to your spiritual life.  Are you a consumer or a producer?  We are called to be producers and reproducers of disciples, which is the essence of the Great Commission (Matt. 18:16-20).  The great commission calls ALL Christians to be making disciples by baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded.  Yes, I know that in your church you outsource that to your pastor.  We need pastors, but they are there to help you be a disciple-producer rather than train you to be a consumer of their religious services (see Eph. 4:11-12).

We are called to be spiritual givers, see what Jesus had to say:

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? (Luke 9:23-25)

Give your life away, and you’ll save it.  Be a consumer, and you’ll lose your life.

There’s a guy that I recently started discipling.  He was complaining that so many of his friends lead him into sin (drugs, gossip, etc.).  I asked him where his friends are going.  He said hell.  I shared with him Romans 10, about how faith comes through hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.  But “how can they believe unless they hear, and how can they hear unless someone preaches” (Rom. 10:14).  So I asked him how they will be saved.  He didn’t know.  I kept asking.  He didn’t know.  He said God has to do it.  I said yes, but how will God do it.  He didn’t know.  I let it sit on him for about five minutes.  Finally, his face lit up.  ”I will preach to them!”  I told him that’s exactly right.  He said “Wow.  Can I do that?”  I said, “yes of course!”.  He said, “I never knew I could do that!  I didn’t even know that was possible!”

Not only is it possible, it is PROMISED that those who believe will be able to do such things.  Jesus emphatically states:

12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14:12, emphasis added)

Greater works that Jesus!  Believers have the full power of Christ at their disposal to be a witness to what Jesus did!  That is powerful stuff!  If you are a believer, you have the HOLY SPIRIT inside of you!  Think about that.  Seriously.  That’s GOD… INSIDE YOU!

A few minutes after the conversation above, my disciple was talking about his friends.  I asked him what he should do with his friends.  He said “Get rid of them”.  I said, “No, win them to Christ.  That’d be more convenient than making all new friends, right?”  I told him “if you’re a Christian, you already know what to say.  Just share what you believe!  Share what Jesus means to you!  Share your experience with Him.”

Yes sharing the faith is fearful, painful, awkward, embarrassing, and sometimes even hurtful (depending on how they receive it).  But it is LOVING.  The greatest love we have is from God.  If you want to “love your neighbor as yourself”, then wouldn’t you want them to receive the love of God in Christ and the eternal salvation bought by His blood?  Yes it seems hard.  It should seem impossible.  But with man this is impossible, but with God ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.