Loving Yourself - II

I am back thinking about the need to love yourself in order to love God and people. It seems to me that love has two pieces. Love give priority in time, attention, resources and energy. And love gives the best. When we consider priority, it seems to me we already love ourselves. When we consider the best, we do not. We do not love God. We do not love others.

Love at its most basic, foundational building block is about giving: (again) time, attention, resources and energy. It is also concerned with what, how and why. We should give to meet needs. We give to foster what is best for that person. (As a follower of Christ, the best is transformation in Christ's image; the best is restoration of God's original design for people; the best is a love relationship with the Creator of all.)

An alcoholic needs alcohol. To buy him a bottle of scotch meets that need. However, it doesn't move him to Christ's image. It damages the image of God in the alcoholic. So, love cannot simply be meeting needs. Love needs to recognize truth about the object of love.

Maybe that's what this is all about. There is no before or after. It is a recognition of the truth God gives. It is an acceptance and a practice of that truth. What is that truth?

The truth is: God designed and created man. God intended man to be personal like he is personal. god intended man to be holy like he is holy. The implications of that are profound and many. But one thing is very true. God created man to give love and to receive love. God created man to give love to God and to receive love from God.

God does not love man because he is perfect or good. Man has surrendered his holiness. God loves man because man is designed to receive God's love. Even though main failed to fulfill his design and cannot fully love God -- though it could be argued that he can still truly love god -- God did not surrender. God is true to his nature. God chooses to love people. Jesus chooses to love people. And as followers of Jesus, we should choose to do what Jesus chooses to do. We should love people.

Is my spouse a person? Love your spouse.

Is my child a person? Love your child.

Is my co-worker a person? Love your co-worker.

Is my that man who cut me off and gave me the finger a person? Love your man.

Is I a person? Love yourself.

Spirit and the Kingdom - III

These grace-filled talents and skills are given to allow each person a place of valued service. Each one is needed. Each one depends on all the others. These gifts are sources and tools of love and unity.

Of course, God did not give us a detailed explanation of these gifts. So, there are a multitude of theories about how they are given, what they are and how they should be expressed. On one end of the continuum is not gifts are given. They were a one-time deal for the first church. On the other end, all gifts are given. And in the middle, all were given, but now some are given. Some say God gives a certain set of gifts listed in the bible. Others say anything given to God and empowered with his grace is a gift. So there caould be a spiritual gift of tuba playing, accounting or oil changing.

There are a lot of emotion, hard feelings and animosity behind these theories. God's tool to express love and unity have become a source of anger and division.

 

Spirit and the Kingdom - II

But there is more than just "branding" us with the spirit, making us God's people and working out transformation in our lives. Living out our transformation should affect the world. But God does one better. He empowers talents, skills and abilities we have latent in our lives.

With these gifts, we serve one another, love one another, bless one another and give life to one another. We fulfill a multitude of functions that enable God's purposes to be complete in the world. Because we cannot do everything, and we need "everything" to be done, God makes sure all the bases are covered, all needs in the body are met, and all of his family have to rely on each other. As we express those God-given skills, we build unity because we are mutually giving to and receiving from one another.

We have men who lead churches of thousands, are dynamic, Spirit empowered, charismatic, bathed in an aura of confidence, authority and competence, who are in desperate need of the spiritual service of a totally unknown soul, for their spiritual health, growth and effectiveness.

The prime metaphor of the Christian community in this regard is that of the human body. Multiple parts giving of themselves to provide unique input leading to the health, growth and increase of God's family. Multiple parts giving to the whole. The whole needs the contributions of each part or it stagnates, weakens and collapses.

Think about this.The human body does not need the glitzy, upfront components to survive. The human body does not need to see, hear or speak to survive. Granted, it works much better with those things. Yet, we seem to think that a life without a voice cannot be lived.

Now, consider the kidneys. They are not seen. They make no noise. There is no glitz or glamor. They don't play an instrument or have any upfront role. Yet, without the kidneys, the body is dead. There are those in the family of God, who never appear in the front, they are not recognized, nor are they know, but without their functioning, without their obedience to God and his role for them, the family of God does not reproduce, does not grow and does not thrive.

Spirit and the Kingdom

When a person believes in Jesus, the Holy Spirit puts a seal on the person. the Holy spirit, who is the immanent person of God in each believer's life, claims the believer as his own. He marks the believer. As cattle ranchers in the western US would brand their cattle to identify them as theirs, God "brands" his people to identify them as his.

The on difference is God himself, the person of the Holy spirit, is the brand. He takes up residence in the core of a person's being, marks it as his, and begins the processes of relationships and transformation. It is relationship with God, with his family and with the world. It is restoration of God's original design for this new child of God's family. It is more steps in the restoration of God's Kingdom. The new child is part of the Kingdom, and restores it as his is restored. The new child becomes God's agent. As he is restored, his interactions with the world are restored. And so the world is restored.

Justification Enough?

We have not just been justified. We have been also reconciled. Ever hear someone say, "I'll forgive, but I won't forget." Maybe they are sincere. Maye they are correct.  That means while, they do not hold onto the offense, there is still no peace in the relationship. They have given up any claim for "payment" for the offense, but they do not want to touch hearts with the person. God has given up his rights for restitution. He also seeks to connect in a love relationship, and give blessings. He chooses to treat us as if we never sinned. 

I am not saying people do not sin. I am saying that in his relationship with his children, God treats them as though it never happened. I sure this opens up a theological can of worms. Someone might say that we do not treat sin seriously enough. But I don't think we realize how far God goes in dealing with man's sin and rebellion. I don't think we realize how big grace is.

Suffering - II

God revealed practices, attitudes, values and perspectives that work in harmony with what was created. Suffering was not part of the package. People made mistakes, and it broke the system.

My mother had a table in our house when I was little. It was low enough so I could sit on it. And one time, I laid on it, and slid across it on my stomach. As as I slid, unknown to me, my belt buckle scarred the wood. The table was permanently marked. It couldn't be fixed. If I had know that was going to happen, I would not have done it. But I did do it, and "broke" the table. It was not going to be able to truly fulfill its purpose anymore. We could get a new table. Or work with it as best we could.

Trying to live as God designed in a broken world means living with suffering too. Expecting something positive to happen certainly seems like wishful thinking.

But living with hope is not meaningless, because God has injected himself into our lives and into the world. It is his presence that gives us hope. His presence demonstrates his love of us and his commitment to us. Moreover, he acted on that love to fix  the effect caused by the wrong people did.

His love shows us that it is not senseless to live as he designed, and to persist in it, even though suffering may be the result of it.

Suffering

The Bible seems to take a view of suffering that is very different from one commonly held by people in the world. To many people, pain means something is wrong. The Bible takes the view of someone training to run long distances.

Pain can mean something is wrong; there is an injury or a wrong technique is being used. But it can also come from doing the right thing, and being stretched.

We are encouraged to consider the situation when we are suffering. If we are doing wrong, we should repent. If we are doing right, we should persist. It is this persistence in doind right in the face of suffering that has a purifying effect. It strengthens our hearts.

And if our hearts are changed, then our beings are changed. We think differently. We have renewed perspectives about what is important, our final destiny, God and people. And the Bible say we should derive a positive expectation from life by this persistence in doing good, in the midst of suffering.

Loving Yourself

Many people agree with what seems like a logical and rational progression: to love God, we must first love ourselves. There are generally a couple of assumptions with this statement.

One, people do not love themselves.

I think the Bible disagrees with that. It says people do love themselves. This love is evident by the priority people give themselves. They look out for number one. They make sure they are fed. They make sure they are comfortable. Even people who consider suicide are giving themselves priority. They are in a situation with so much pain or so much trouble, no answers or solutions, and continuing to walk through the situation will bring no good to themselves. Removing themselves from the situation becomes the best response.

Two, love always gives the best to the object loved.

A brief look at a number of people’s lives demonstrates that while they love themselves – they give themselves priority in attention, time and energy – they do not love themselves well. They make decisions that damage themselves. There is the simple “if it feels good, do it” mentality. There is the avoidance of pain. There is the gratification of any and all desires.

People do love themselves. They do not always know how to love themselves well.

To love God and people, we need to learn to change our priorities (to put some ahead of ourselves) and to change what we view as expressing love (indulging vs. refraining).

Loving God?

There seems to be a lot of talk about loving God among Christians. Now I realize that Bible says we should love God. Loving God is good. We were designed to have a love relationship with God. But I sometimes wonder how it is supposed to look.

Much of modern music celebrates love. Romantic love. A boy and a girl meet. The earth trembles. Emotions soars. Passions run at a fever pitch. To be together is almost more than someone can bear. To be apart is like death.

I sometimes wonder if this expectation of ecstatic emotion and passion is what current day Christians expect their love relationship with God to be like. When we move into God's presence, we ought to be overwhelmed. It might be why worship music and secular music sound the same. Word, themes and phrases sound the same.

It also brings up the question: is this what the love of God should be like? Should we always experience ecstasy in God's presence?

If so, then maybe I'm missing something. It seems to me that as I draw closer to God, the more still, the more contemplative, the more quiet I become. Certainly not the soaring emotion that seems to be expected.

Maybe there is no right emotion? Maybe it is song writers who experience this overpowering emotion? Maybe it's a fad? It was once thought that expressing happiness in church was frivolous. It did not take God seriously.

It seems to me that taking our relationship with God seriously means we ought to experience the whole spectrum of emotion. We ought to experience joy and elation as we experience God's blessing. We ought to experience sorrow as we realize the destructive nature of sin in our lives and the world.

If that's true, then when will worship music follow suit?

Righteousness

Righteousness can be defined as "right standing." But it seems to have a couple of connotations.  One is the ability of two people to stand before one another because they are living in peace. One person has nothing against the other.

It can can be seen as "right standing" in the sense of standing right. It is the ability of someone to stand not in the wrong, but in innocence and purity.

The gospel demonstrates that God is righteous according to number two. And it proclaims that man is righteous according to number one.

The gospel demonstrates that God is righteous in several ways. One, it points to the standard. It points to how people should think, speak and act. And it shows that only God keeps the standard. All other people fail to keep the standard. Two, because all other people fail to keep the standard, God is justified in punishing those who break the standard. He maintains a just and fair standard. Three, because of his purposes for creation and his heart for man, he finds a way to not compromise the standard, remain just in punishing lawbreaking and have mercy to man.

And so people can be righteous. People broke the standard and deserved the punishment. But we agreed to take God's mercy. and so we can stand in a restored, peaceful relationship with God.

There is more to the agreement between God and man than just "Yes! I want your mercy!" Just as there is more to the agreement between a man and a dealer than "Yes! I want your car!" There is a cost. And there is a choice. Is righteousness worth the cost?

Diversity

I remember sitting in the church my family attended, when I was nine, and realizing that there really was a God. And if God existed, then he was boss over everything. This meant that I needed to get behind him, get on his team. I needed to follow him. And that is what I decided to do.

However, “following him” does not seem to be as easy as it sounds. There is as diverse an opinion of what that means as there are people. We have considered God’s purposes in the world, his design of people and what these mean in the area of following him. People need to enter and embrace the way they are designed and God’s mission for his family. It is in the embracing and striving to live out and complete these things that humans move into the “zone.”

Athletes seem to move into a place where their bodies and minds are balanced and functioning optimally. Athletes often call that place the “zone.” There is a zone for the family of God. It is found at the intersection of the correct consumption of spiritual fuels and seeing God’s purposes and living in them.

God’s purpose can be described in a nutshell as the re-establishment of his reign over the universe. Jesus had two purposes on earth. (1) To enable people to become part of his family. (2) To teach people how to live so what they say, do or think promotes the re-establishment of his kingdom.

We teach people how to live in a way that re-establishes God’s kingdom by teaching them how to follow Jesus’ commands. Jesus taught a number of things in different settings. But when we look at what he taught about how a person should live his life, he gave us seven commands.

• Repent and believe.
• Be baptized.
• Worship and take communion.
• Pray.
• Love.
• Give.
• Make disciples.

Each person should obey the first two commands once in life. The other five should be life time practices. There is probably a core essence that defines each of these. But actual practices can be varied.

Which is correct? To pray standing. To pray kneeling. To pray laying on your face. To pray aloud. To pray silently in your heart. To pace. Memorized prayer or whatever comes into your head. When Jesus spoke about prayer, it was either concerned with principles or the condition of the heart. There is no exact pattern to follow. (General models perhaps.)

Expressions may change over time and in different contexts. Be slow to insist someone abandon their expression, or to abandon your expression. God is certainly big enough to embrace all forms of expression, if hearts are turned fully to him.

Grace is Sufficient

If we do something, and it is not reflected on, it is worthless. We do not learn anything. We do not evaluate and improve. Reflection is necessary. But we do not always have the right perspective, so we do not see clearly.

I read a story about a group of men on a trip. Each day, they would ask each other a question to consider through out the day. On the last day, the question was "How am I doing?" Followed by asking God "how do you think I am doing?" Some of us got together and asked these same questions. (Obviously, several people have read the same story.)

Usually, my initial reaction when I begin a time of self-reflection, self-evaluation is to bury myself in an avalanche of failure. Not only my sins of commission, but my sins of omission too. Often, examples are held up before the people of God with exhortations to follow these examples. (And what is held up is good. It should be followed.) But how is one person going to make all these things happen?

I sometimes think I have a variety of an attitude called "make it happen." There are ministries to begin. There are services to undertake. The are deeds to do. It is overwhelming, but I need to "make it happen." When I press forward, it doesn't happen. And I am less likely to press forward the next time.

I have mentioned before that I once belonged to a church in which I had a finger in every pie. And it was too much. No I have a finger in next to no pies ... and I feel guilty for not doing more.

So, when I asked God "how do you think I am doing," how did he answer?

"My grace is sufficient."

My gut response was relief and peace. But I went on and asked God another question. "What does that mean?"

God's mission for his family is the restoration of his kingdom in the universe. It is the transformation of all mankind into his image. If someone thinks about God's purposes on this level, that person can only be faced with the realization that it is an impossible task. If someone reduces God's purposes down to its lowest component -- the transformation of a single human heart to a reflection of God's image -- it is still an impossible task. I cannot jump inside the human heart and re-arrange its interior so that afterwards the person looks and acts like Jesus. Even if I am involved in fifty activities that are designed to bring that to pass, it is still impossible.

That's why God injects himself into every situation. That's why God wants each of his children to invite him into each circumstance. Only he has power over hearts. If God's grace is introduced into a setting, an event or a situation, it can have magnitudes of order greater effect than anyone or any group of human can have.

This does not negate the need for God's family to take action. They need to respond to, to initiate, to serve and to love. (And I think each member of God's family should be invested somewhere. And perhaps most of the members will be invested out side of the meeting.) But the results are not our responsibility. And because our target is the transformation of hearts, complete success may look like dismal failure. And because God's agent is the family of God, each act completed with love, faithfulness, prayer and in the Spirit, is overwhelming victory, leading to the restoration of God's kingdom and the resolution of his promises.

World View: Modern, Post-Modern and Other

Each culture has a world view -- ie. a grid through which it interprets the universe. An extremely diverse culture, like modern America for example, might have a number of world views.

There is a large group with a modern world view. The universe and truth are knowable. The universe follows rules which we can discover and leverage using science and technology. Problems can be solved using these tools.

There is a group group with a post-modern world view. No one can really understand the universe and truth, because there is no starting point that we can be sure of. We can learn some things, but we have no basis for sureness.

There are a growing number of spiritual world views: Islam, Buddhism,  Hinduism, Feng Shui, Wicca. Traditional Christianity is decreasing. Is that because the power of the gospel is decreasing"? Or is it because traditional Christianity is linked strongly to modernism?

Modern science and technology are rooted in modernism. Modernism is rooted in Christianity. And Christianity was an appropriate place to begin, because there was a real God who created a real universe. The universe was designed and followed laws. And God revealed himself and sufficient truth about the universe so people had a real place to begin..

There has been a pulling away from the roots. There have been a pulling away from the source. So, traditional Christianity does not sit on a strong base anymore.

Followers of Jesus need to rediscover the roots. The need to re-establish links to the God who created them and not the forms of expression that once successfully displayed who God is and who his family is.

I am not calling for a complete abandonment of all tradition. But are we holding tightly enough to Jesus and loosely enough to its expressions, that we can let go of the expressions if they no longer serve the gospel?

Motives

Motivations are funny things. A person may take different actions. He may know why he takes those actions. If another person understood those underlying reason, he might find the actions to be eminently reasonable ... even though he would never take those actions. On the other hand, if he does not understand the reasons, the actions may seem just crazy.

Paul was stoned and left for dead. He was beaten, shipwrecked and imprisoned. He worked hard and earned little either financially or socially. Indeed, he earned mostly disrespect, scorn and insults. Why would a sane person continually live under this pile of abuse? Wouldn’t you think he would decide he is doing something wrong? Do something to alleviate the stress?

I went to a church several years ago with someone who remarked that the church – the particular one we were going to – was filled with wonderful people, but they really did weird stuff. I understood the desire of those in the church to know and obey God. I also can see now that the zeal they showed needed to be tempered with love and wisdom. Mostly wisdom.

Paul said his actions were motivated by his love for Christ. He knew Jesus dies so he could be with God. He knew God will judge all according to their deeds. Our deeds might no longer condemn us, but that doesn’t mean god will be pleased with us. So, Paul sought to please God at all times. And sometimes, he managed to look like a fool doing it.

Dilemma

There is a dilemma that many followers experience. There is the pull of two sets of desires.

(1) Peace and prosperity in life.

We want a job we like, that provides all the necessities of life. We want health and peace. We want all the gadgets that are expected in the complete full life. (Cars, PC's, smart phones, snow boards, TV's with cable.) We want to enjoy our pursuits -- travel, hobbies, and some luxuries.

And we want these same things for our families, including our children after they leave home.

(2) To be used and fruitful for God

We want people to come to Christ. We want them to mature. We want to mature. We want the culture and society to be transformed into a God-honoring paradise.

And we want these same things for our families, including our children after they leave home.

The Bible tells us that we are in a war. The Bible tells us about the effects it has in people's lives. It seems like we want victory without the fight.

We want the harvest, but we do not want to plant. We want spiritual babies, but we do not want to change the diapers. We want Jesus, but we want the world too. Not too much of the world. Not the really bad things of the world.

God calls to be on mission with him. He fuels our hearts with a need for relationship with him and with a need to serve something bigger than ourselves. And he is a God on a mission. To have relationship with him, we need to be on mission too.

Fundamental Pursuit

We have talked recently about a fundamental approach to life. And for quite some time. we have considered how God designed mankind. Our approach to living is probably derived most naturally from how we understand our design.

An automobile engines needs the correct mixture of gas, air and fire to move. It needs oil to work smoothly. It needs clean glass, break pads and seat belts to drive safely.

A human being is more complex than an automobile engine. To function minimally require food, water, air and safety. To function optimally also requires beauty, creativity, purpose mission, and love.

God designed people so the main ingredient to optimal functioning is a relationship with him. And relationship with him is not a simple, linear set of rules to follow. There are multiple parts to a relationship. Parts that apply to a God-man relationship include prayer, worship, meditation, faith, obedience and love. There is scriptural evidence that indicates a person's relationship with God is affected by his relationship with people. within God's family and with people outside of God's family.

We recently considered the body of Christ, and the differences of function of the members. These differences will also affect relationships with God.

A fundamental approach to life to be true must include a pursuit of God. There are a number of elements that must be the same. But the pursuit will not specifically follow the same pattern for everyone. And God is big enough to cover everyone.