A Line in the Sand

Today I went to worship at Ocean View UMC with my wife and two of our children. We are on vacation here at Oak Island, NC, and we go to Oceanview each year when we are here. Being on vacation is a great opportunity to visit another church. Being United Methodist, I find comfort in getting into a new the town and seeing the cross and flame on a sign or a church building. It's kinda like a beacon for me, guiding me, and also reminding me of the beautiful aspects of our connectionalism. So going on vacation shouldn't be a time to skip church. What a wonderful chance to get to worship with some extended family that we don't know yet, but we will be spending eternity with!

Being a pastor on vacation is a great opportunity to worship with my family, and extended family, in the pews rather than the pulpit for once. I get to sing the hymns with the rest of the body, and receive the sacrament of Holy Communion with my wife, being served by others as I reminded that, "in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven", and that the body and blood of Christ were given for me.

The preacher today was preaching a series on "Revival" from a book by United Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton. Today's topic was on holiness, and the Scripture was 1 Peter 1:15-16. Here is that passage:

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

 I love to read, and each year I bring a book or two to read while sitting on the beach. This year, ironically, I brought a book by Ken Collins, entitled, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love & the Shape of Grace. In the book Collins outlines the major themes of our faith, and Wesley's views on them, and how his views were shaped by others.

One chapter is on sanctification, or Christian perfection.
For Wesley, we are called to grow and mature in our Christian faith, we are not supposed to stay static in our faith. Once we are saved and ask for forgiveness of our sins and accept Jesus as our Lord and savior, we experience a new birth (aka "born again") and we are justified by the grace of God through faith in Jesus. As we mature into the faith we profess we are being sanctified by the grace of God.
It is a process of Christian perfection, growing in holiness. In fact, at the moment of our salvation, we are made holy before a perfect, holy, and loving God by believing in and trusting in Jesus, through the working of the Holy Spirit in us. That's a lot happening!
In 1776 Wesley wrote

"It is impossible that any retain what they receive without improving it. To use the grace given is the certain way to obtain more grace. To use all the faith you have will bring an increase of faith"

So then we are holy.
You are holy.
We don't like to use that term often, especially when we talk about ourselves. I have even heard born again Christians use terms like "sinner" to describe themselves.
Wesley would have been abhorred by this.
You have been created in the image of God. Jesus died for your sins to bring you into right relationship with God. You have asked Jesus to be the Lord of you life...and you call yourself a sinner?
Sure, that's who you were. That's who we all were. That's part of the whole "original sin" (I will write a post on that later). We need a savior, and we have one!
We were once lost, but now we are found. Blind, but now we see. Sinner, and now....saint...holy.

And yet we still sin at times. But the growing in sanctification, this process that is leading us toward Christian perfection, should be a sign of who we are. No, it should be a sign of WHOSE we are!
We are CHRISTians. We are, perhaps, the only glimpse of the goodness of God that some people might see today.
And He is holy.
And in the scripture referenced above Peter is reciting a passage from Leviticus, that God calls His people to be holy because we are His and He is holy. So the Holy Spirit is at work in us, making us holy.
Not  sinless. Although how we sin should be ever decreasing outwardly and more aware inwardly.

"Absolute perfection belongs not to man, nor to angels, but to God alone"- John Wesley

The long and short of all this is that we are called to be holy, and this means that we are being perfected in Holy Love. This is because God is love, and love is how we are showing God to the world around us.

I think sometimes we just don't do a good job showing love because of our differences. Rupert Meldinius, a German Lutheran theologian of the early 17th century, is attributed a quote that Wesley surely agreed with:

"In essentials unity. In non-essentials liberty".

I think we struggle in our own sanctification, in the growing in this holy love, because we have drawn too many lines in the sand.

 My daughter Hannah found this line in the sand today, and then she added these two words for me:
Sacred
Secular

I wonder how definitive that line is. I absolutely agree that there is a line between "lost" and "found", to use parable words of Jesus.
But I wonder if the line between what is deemed "holy", or sacred, and what is not, is more of our own making? Is the line exactly where we think it is? Or have we made the line ourselves?

I am not saying everything is holy. Sin is obviously not. I am just saying that maybe we can look for the holy in places where we might not have thought to. Maybe Jesus is at work in some unique places today. After all, He has been known to do that. And in so doing maybe He is making things and places holy because He is there.

I heard once that Jesus did not live in the "Holy Land", but rather Jesus made the "Land Holy" because He was there.

Maybe we can't drag people across the line in the sand from secular to the sacred. But maybe we can take some sacred across the line into their secular.

And maybe that is where holiness begins.

What do you want me to do for you?

Think about the last time you asked God for something. You probably don't have to think back too far. We are pretty good at that.

Now, think about how you asked God. Think about the words you used in making your request.

I have to admit, that when I am asking someone for something, even in my prayers at times, that I am pretty nice and polite.

Now, imagine this conversation:

You: "Jesus, I want you to do for me whatever I ask you".

OK, just to be real here for a minute, if anyone made that statement to me I am pretty sure they wouldn't be getting what they asked for. 

I mean, seriously, where is the respect? Where is their sense of gratitude? Even my children know if they are gonna ask me for something they need to butter me up a little bit first.

But now imagine this response:

Jesus: "Sure. What do you want me to do for you?"

Really?! That's Jesus' answer? How about reminding that person who they are talking to? Is that any way to speak to God?

But this is the conversation found in the gospel of Mark (Mark 10:35-45.)

James and John make a bold statement, and Jesus has a bold answer.

Before we get into what they asked of Jesus, and why, let's just think about the first two verses in terms of prayer.

Prayer is our conversation with God. It involves talking and listening, and the working of the Holy Spirit to help guide us in this divine conversation. Prayer is intimate, it is worship, it is a holy encounter with God.

So Jesus asks these two disciples, "What do you want me to do for you?"

This isn't the only time Jesus says something like this. In fact the next story that Mark's gospel recounts is Jesus healing a blind beggar in the city of Jericho. This was another bold and blazen 

human, who, in the presence of Jesus was shouting, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 

(Mark 10:47-48)

So Jesus, being Jesus, does not rebuke him for him boldness. Jesus doesn't remind him who he is talking to. Jesus doesn't tell him that He's busy. Instead Jesus asks him a question.

And the question Jesus asks him is "What do you want me to do for you?" (Mark 10:51)

Two separate situations. 

Once with James and John, two of the first disciples of Jesus. 

And then with a blind beggar named Bartimaeus.

But the same question.

"What do you want me to do for you?"

And if this wasn't amazing enough, Jesus isn't asking this question because He doesn't know the answer. He is asking because He wants us to know the answer. He wants us to verbalize in prayer  what we need, or to know that we really don't have a clue what we need, but we know we need Jesus. He wants us in conversation with Him, to tell our Father what is on our mind.

I am thinking Jesus hasn't changed any. In fact I know this to be true.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) 

Imagine Jesus asking you this question right now. "What do you want me to do for you?"

He is.

At this very moment, as you turn your heart and your attention to Jesus, He is waiting for you, His beloved child.

And as your eyes meet His eyes, there is a moment of peace that is greater than anything you could ever comprehend. And as Jesus smiles at you in pure and perfect love, He asks you, 

"What do you want me to do for you?"

And now, what is your answer? Go ahead and tell Him.

In the name of Jesus, get up!

The Bible is full of healing miracles. Some of my favorite ones are in the book of Acts. Here God uses men like Peter and Paul to work through so that others are healed in name of Jesus.
This morning I was reading the healing of the man by the Beautiful Gate in Acts 3:1-10.
There are so many great parts of this story, but here is something that I really love: he got more than he asked for.

You've heard that saying, "be careful what you ask for, you just might get it", right?
Well, this guy got it and then some!
Here he was, lame since birth, doing the only thing that he could do: beg.
He didn't have any other options. He relied on people to drop him off in front of the temple gate so that he could beg for money from the people headed into the temple. And the gate where he was dropped off is called "Beautiful".

That's a pretty striking picture. There was nothing "beautiful" about this man's situation, and I wonder if people found his presence off-putting from what was supposed to be a beautiful scene. Or, maybe they didnt even notice him.

I think we are pretty good at that.

(Photo courtesy of https://www.canstockphoto.com/images-photos/homeless-man-holding-cardboard-sign.html)

So here he is, doing what he does every day. But today is gonna be different. It didn't seem that way when he woke up that morning. It sure didn't seem that way when he was being carried to his normal place to do his normal thing while all the normal people walked by him. He didn't know how different today was gonna be. He had no idea that today was gonna be a day where his life would change forever, and today would be a day that, thousands of years later, people would still be talking about him.

Peter and John come up into the scene about 3:00 in the afternoon. This was one of the routine times of prayers in the Temple. Let me just pause here and say that routine prayer times are a great routine to be in! I have talked to people that think that having set times for prayer is a bit rote and routine. They feel like they are scheduling time for God rather than being open to the surprising and unscheduled presence of the Holy Spirit. I think God works in our routines when we have focused them around Him.

So, as Peter and John approach this guy, laying there begging, does what he has been doing for years, he asks for money.
He asks for money...this is what he thinks he needs. And this is true. But here's the deal, he asks for what he thinks is enough, and God has something greater in store for him.
I wonder how many times we are asking for what we think we need, maybe even praying hesitantly for what we think is such a huge thing, and God has something so much bigger and better in store for us!
Peter says, "I don't have any silver or gold for you". Peter doesn't have any money to give away. How many days can you identify with that? But he doesn't just ignore the man. He is led by the Holy Spirit. And so he doesn't just keep walking into the Temple. He could have. He could have said, "We're on our way to church. We need to get there or else somebody might take our seat. We are on our way to do something important."

But instead Peter says, "I'll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus, get up and walk!"

Now, realistically, this guy is probably a little confused.
After all, the thing that he thought he needed was money. And here is this broke guy telling him to get up and walk. If he could have gotten up and walked don't you think that he would have already done that??

"Then Peter took him by the hand"

Today maybe there is somebody you need to take by the hand and help them take a step into this faith filled life. Or maybe you are lying there doing what you've always been doing waiting for somebody to take you by the hand.

Or maybe you are praying for what you think you need, and God has something even bigger and better in store.

Give what you have. God isn't asking you to give more than that, but to trust that what you have to offer is exactly what someone else needs right now.

Keep your routine, keep your focus and eyes on Jesus. And God will work in and through you. I believe this.

And in the name of Jesus, get up!

Always Anticipating...

I have been counting down the days until my family leaves for the beach. To be honest, I have been counting down the days to vacation since my last vacation. I love my trips to the beach, they are a time of solace and regeneration. There is something special about the vastness of the ocean when I look at it, it just goes on and on and you can’t see where it ends, and in reality it doesn’t. it reminds me of the power and the intricacy of God.

                I think we spend a lot of time counting down the days, anticipating something to happen.

                My kids have been counting down the days until the end of school, and now it is here. Sumer break is finally upon us.

                I talked to a gentleman yesterday, who asked me to pray for his friend, Sabrina. She is in jail and counting down the days to her release date.

                Most months I count down the days to payday so we have some spending money, only to do the same thing again next month.

                My niece is counting down the days to her wedding.

And every child I know counts down the days to their birthday, though at some point we stop doing that.

                I talked with a woman this week who is looking forward to being reunited with her husband. He is heaven.

                We seem to be always in a state of waiting on the next thing to happen, looking forward to the next event, the next trip, the promotion, next phase in our life. We are in a constant state of anticipation.

                The stories of the Bible are stories of waiting on the next thing to happen, too. These are our stories also, we find ourselves in the midst of them just as clearly today as the people whom were in the very middle of them thousands of years ago.

                The exodus is the primary event of the Jewish faith showing not only God’s power through miraculous events but also His love for His people by taking them from captivity and bringing them into a new land of freedom with a purpose. The exodus was a time of anticipation. The people anticipated being set free from Egyptian slavery, then after decades in the wilderness they anticipated a new promised land, and then years later they anticipated a restoration to this land.

                The prophets that we read in the Old Testament relate an anticipation of a Messiah to deliver them from their oppression. And when Jesus does arrive on the scene, most of the people who have been talking about anticipating Him are the very ones who don’t recognize Him for who He is.

                Maybe that’s an interesting thing about anticipation. We get so wrapped up in what we think we are anticipating, what we have in our minds will happen, when we expect, that we are not prepared for the unexpected.

                The beginning of the book of Acts tells the story of Jesus’ ascension. This is after Jesus was crucified, had died, and was buried, but then He rose on the 3^rd day (Surprise! Most people weren’t expecting that to happen), and then after a period of 40 days He told his followers that He was leaving again but that He would return. And then He was taken up into the clouds…talk about anticipation!

                “They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them… “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go” (Acts 1:10-11).

                And so we anticipate Jesus’ return. We are not alone in this waiting, God is with us. God’s very Spirit has been given to every believer as a Comforter in this waiting. And we wait with others.

                But we can’t wait just staring up at the sky.

                We are all waiting for so many things today; healing, reconciliation, the doctor’s prognosis, forgiveness from the person we hurt, a child to finally come home, for the pain to end, for Jesus to return.

                But here’s the deal, sometimes by only anticipating tomorrow we are missing today. You have been given today, this right here right now, as a gift of grace by God. Don’t just stare up into the clouds waiting on something amazing to happen, look around you today and you will see there are already amazing and beautiful things happening. Live in this moment. Thank God for this moment. Experience this moment as what you were anticipating. And then let God guide your expectations, and set your heart and your mind to His beauty and grace.

               

               

The Wind of the Spirit

As I am writing this I am sitting in front of a fan. It’s an oscillating fan, the kind that rotates around to blow air in a semi-circle. I’ve been working on a sermon about Pentecost as described in the New Testament in Acts chapter 2. So the wind from the fan I am feeling is kind of a cool thing (get it, “cool”?)

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting”- Acts 2:2

This is the day that the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to believers who called upon the name of Jesus. And the elements that Luke (the author of Acts) uses to describe this event were with wind and fire.

                But I have been focused on the wind the past few days. Sometimes we don’t like wind. It can blow your hair around (although truthfully I don’t have this problem anymore), or it can blow over trees, and even cause damage. But there is some kinds of wind that we do like. When I am sitting on the beach I love to feel the sea breeze blowing. On a hot summer day when we are sitting on the porch sipping ice tea we love to feel the cool breeze blowing. As I am sitting on this couch writing this I am thankful to have the fan blowing on me. And the reason is because without the fan today I wouldn’t have any “wind” in the house.

                I have spent the past few days with my hand over vents trying to feel something blowing, but to no avail. And when I have felt a little air moving, it’s been warm air-not what you want when it’s almost 90 degrees outside.

                But the wind from the fan is comforting. It’s what I need. Without it I would be sitting here sweating.

                Maybe today you feel a little stagnant in your life. Maybe you need to feel a fresh wind blowing in your soul. That’s what the Holy Spirit does, God in us. Teaching us, comforting us, directing us.

                When Jesus was preparing his disciples for this event he told them that He must go away so that the Holy Spirit could come. So we often think about Pentecost as the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

                But Pentecost really isn’t about arrival. It’s about return. Pentecost is about the return of the Son in the form of the Spirit. And this same Spirit that rose Jesus from the dead now lives in you (see Romans 8).

                Fire and wind.

                And as the Spirit breathes a fresh cool life into your sweaty overworked and stressed out existence, this same Spirit will plant and grow holiness by cultivating in you the fruits needed for daily living (see Galatians 5).

                God’s Spirit is a gift to all believers, for “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21).

                May it be so today.

Grab a snake by the tail

I love the stories in Exodus of the encounters with Moses and Pharaoh. I am reminded that God has, and does, work in common people to bring about His good for His glory.

            One story that I shared with my congregation recently comes from Exodus chapter 4. This is at the beginning of Moses following God’s call on his life to be a prophet and lead the Hebrew people out of captivity from Egypt and into the Promised Land that God has in store for them. But first, God has to get Moses ready, because Moses doesn’t feel very qualified to do the job that God has laid out for him. In fact, he is very insecure about what he is supposed to be doing.

            I have heard it said that God doesn’t call the equipped, but He equips the called. I have sure found this to be true. And it was true for Moses, too.

            But in an effort to help get Moses ready for an encounter with Pharaoh, the single most powerful ruler in the known world at the time, God gave Moses a practice run. This story is in Exodus 4:1-5.

            Moses was holding a staff in his hand and God told him to throw it down on the ground. When Moses threw it down it became a snake. God told Moses to pick it up and when Moses picked it up it became a staff again.

            There are a couple of things I wanted to share with you today from this story.

            When Moses threw the staff down and God turned it into a snake Moses ran from it. I get it, I would have done that too. And probably so would you! But the thing is that we do that all too often. Run from things, I mean. When we are faced with an unexpected fearful situation (and this was just that, God could have at least gave Moses a heads up of what He was going to do) we have a few options. One is to run from our fear. This is probably the most common reaction. Or we can be frozen by our fear. Paralyzed. I have seen this as a pretty common reaction also. Or there is a third option: face our fear.

            This is what God tells Moses to do.

            “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail” God told Moses (4:4a)

            When I was a teenager I had a pet snake, a ball python named Merlin. Merlin is the only snake that I have ever handled, so I am not exactly a proficient professional in snake handling mannerisms (I am, after all, Methodist), but there is one thing I do know about picking up a snake.             Never, and I mean NEVER-EVER-NEVER, pick it up the tail. If you pick up a snake by the tail then it might swing around with its free end, its mouth, and bite you.

            So why did God tell Moses do pick up the snake by the tail? Did God want Moses to get bitten? Did God not know that Moses would be vulnerable to a snake bite this way? Or did God have an ulterior motive? Did God want to teach Moses, and us, something more important than just proper snake handling etiquette? I think the latter.

            Maybe, by picking up the snake by the tail Moses was being forced to face his fear (not run from it and not be paralyzed by it) and trust God at the same time. God calls us to a living faith, and a living faith involves action!

            Is there something in your life where you need to trust God and reach out and take hold of? I can promise you that if you are following God’s plan for your life He will take care of you. If God has brought you to it He will bring you through it.

            And one more side note about snakes: the mouth is the big end…the tail is the little end. You just take care of the little end, the part that you can handle, and trust that God handle the big end. Now, bend over and pick that thing up by the tail. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

An Abundant Life

Before we lived in a parsonage we owned a house behind downtown Jonesborough in a little subdivision with lots of kids. Many nights, right about dinner time, several of my oldest daughter’s friends would be at our house. Most of the time they just ate with us, but there were times that I was thinking, “Can’t ya’ll go home to eat?”

                That was the same thought that Jesus’ disciples had one evening. Jesus had been preaching all day and a crowd of thousands of people had gathered to hear him. But as it got later in the day people started to get hungry. You know how you feel at high noon every Sunday right? You’ve been listening to the preacher for 20 minutes and you need something to eat! These people had probably been listening to Jesus all day, and now it was dinner time. What would they do?

                This story is told in the gospel of Mark 6:34-44. Take a few minutes to read this amazing story….

                The disciples wanted to send the people away. Jesus wanted the disciples to feed them. The disciples were focused on the problem. Jesus was focused on the people. The disciples were focused on the fact that there wasn’t enough. Jesus wanted them to give and trust Him to provide, a lesson that there is always enough with Jesus.

                When I was growing up we ate most of our meals thanks to food stamps. Not the little EBT credit card looking thing now, but the old paper stamps in the book. I am thankful for that. But I grew up thinking that there was never enough. I grew up thinking that at some point we would run out. There was always more month than money. There never seemed to be enough.

                This is called a mindset of scarcity. It is a belief that leads to consumption that leads to lack that leads to fear. This is where the disciples were that day.

                “Send them away”, they said. When we are focused on the problem that is our response. We can’t help them, we don’t have enough. Send them away. Send them to another place. Send them to another church. We don’t have enough.

                But Jesus responds with a great question (He always has a way of doing that doesn’t He). Jesus asks, “How much do you have”.

                Jesus is not asking us to give more than we have, just to trust Him with what we do have.

                And the disciples, thanks to a young boy in the crowd, scrounge up 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Not exactly enough to feed thousands of people, is it?

                But here’s the deal. That thought is from our mindset of scarcity.

                Jesus looks at this from a mindset of abundance. This is a view that there will be enough. This is not fear, this is faith. This is trusting God, with something that seems like not-enough, with something that seems inadequate, and trusting Jesus to do something amazing with it.

                We serve a God of abundance. We are called to be people who live in this life of abundance. I am not exactly talking about material things here, but I do think we need to look at the luxuries we have in this time and place we live in compared to previous generations and compared to others around the world today.

                Jesus said “I came to give them life, and life in abundance” (John 10:10).

                We live an abundant life when we trust in Jesus as our Lord, when we view Jesus as enough in our lives, and as we freely give to others in need, because God will continue to provide for us as He always has.

                And then those people that ate the fish and bread, “everyone ate and was satisfied” (Mark 6:42).

                May you be satisfied in the abundance of grace and love your heavenly Father is pouring out on you today, and may you be a conduit to share this with others in the name of Jesus.