Monthly Archives: September 2013

Being a Christian is hard. I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. I mean, even the smallest of things is sometimes difficult to do. Take love for example. The scripture is full of commands to love one another. Jesus made it clear that all of Christianity could be summed up in “Love God, Love Others”.  Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:2 to “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing one another in love.” John instructs us to “love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” ~ 1 John 4:7  Peter tells us “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” ~ 1 Peter 4:8. And of course, Jesus himself said “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” ~ John 13:35. 

The problem with this is, let’s face it: some people are just downright unloveable. Especially Christians. There are quite a few non-believers that I would rather hang out with than some Christians. Why is it so hard to love some people? And while I’m one who relies rather heavily on grace and not “rules” I do believe that the instructions to love each other are ones to be followed. This is a prevalent theme in scripture. How then can we reconcile our instructions to love each other with our natural tendency to want to arrange for some Christians to meet Jesus sooner than they want to?

Maybe we should start by recognizing what it is about some people that drive us crazy.  We may be surprised (or maybe not) to find that the same things that make us want to do bodily harm to some Christians are the same things that non-believers find so annoying about Christians. They do tend to lump us all in one group. Where Christians can see Charismatics and Catholics as two distinct groups of believers and understand the distinction, most non-believers will just lump us all in the category of “Christian”. Therefore, the idiosyncrasies that are particular to charismatic Christians will also be attributed to Catholics by most non-Christians. So what is it about “Christians” that we find annoying?

Hypocrisy has to be at the top of the list. It is at the top of the list for non-believers. There are people I know who have been Christians for decades, and yet they don’t live a Christian life. They gossip. They slander. They lie. And while I’ll be the first to admit that everyone is dealing with something in their life, these people don’t seem to be just going through a phase or tough time in their lives. No, these people just live where they are. They’re mean. They are just people that are difficult to be around sometimes, much less love.  It’s hard to love hypocrites. Especially when you are the one on the receiving end of their bitterness.

But the fact remains that we are instructed over and over to love each other. By “each other” the Bible is referring to other Christians. The people who tend to get under our skin the most sometimes. How do we love people who are irritating, annoying, time-consuming, needy and abrasive? If you are part of a family, you already know the answer to that question. You see, the Bible also makes it clear that the church is a family. We are called brothers and sisters. Some of us “more mature” (read older) Christians are to be father and mother figures to some of the younger Christians. This also means that some of the younger Christians will be spiritual children to the older Christians. So let me ask you. Did you ever feel animosity toward your brother or sister? Did you ever rebel against your father or mother? Did you ever wish you could return one of your children to Wal-Mart? I can answer yes to all three of those.

My sister and I didn’t get along very well when we were younger. We often fought. And yet, when someone spit in her face in high school, I was the one who came to her defense and hunted the person down like a felon. She was my sister, and while I didn’t always like her, everyone else had better like her and treat her nicely.

Long before I turned 18 I thought I was an adult. As the son of a pastor, there were certain expectations that people had of me. I was determined, as most pastors kids are, to dispel every one of those expectations. I started smoking when I was 13. I began acting out in school and often got after school detention and even suspended. I began cursing around friends in school just to be “cool”. I rebelled against what my parents expected of me. I rebelled against Christianity. And yet, I was the first one to come to the defense of my parents when others would talk about them. When church members would say or do things against my father’s position as pastor, I was ready to defend him to the death. He was my father.

We moved to North Carolina from Florida in 1999. We had only been in North Carolina for a few weeks when my oldest child decided that she wanted to move back to Florida to be with her boyfriend. We were heart broken. We were angry. How could our child treat us this way?

We received a call one Wednesday morning from her two years later. She was in tears and wanted to come home. NOW. We jumped in the car and went down the next day to bring her home. A similar situation happened with our middle child. She decided one day that she didn’t like living at home any longer. She was going to leave home and move in with a friend. A month later, she called at midnight for us to come and get her. We arrived at the home of her friend to find the friend tossing her belongings out the front door. Did I defend her? I sure did! Why? In both instances, my children did something that was unloving. They chose a boyfriend over their father. They chose a friend over their parents. They threw us to the curb in favor of someone else. They acted unloveable. And yet I came to their rescue each time. Why? Because they were my children and even though they had done something that was unloveable, they were still my daughters. And I was perfectly within my right to not like them, but everyone else had better be nice to them!

The same principle is true for us as Christians. We are part of the same family. Not just like family. Real family. God said that we have been adopted into his family as his sons and daughters. As Christians, we are all brothers an sisters. Those of us with siblings understand that the hardest people to love sometimes are our own brothers or sisters. The problem is that often times we don’t want to like our brother. We want to hold a grudge against our sister. This is where Christianity gets hard sometimes for some people. Because we can’t hold a grudge. We can’t stay angry. The Bible says that if we do, it doesn’t hurt the person we’re angry with. It hurts us. Jesus even said that if we are praying while holding something against someone, that we should forgive them so that God will forgive us. (Mark 11:25).

Being a Christian is hard sometimes. It means doing things that don’t come naturally for us, like forgiving someone who has wronged us. Or loving someone who is unloveable.

A doctor, a lawyer, a little boy and a pastor were out for a Sunday afternoon flight on a small private plane. Suddenly, the plane developed engine trouble. In spite of the best efforts of the pilot, the plane started to go down. Finally, the pilot grabbed a parachute, yelled to the passengers that they had better jump, and then he bailed out. Unfortunately, there were only three parachutes remaining. The doctor grabbed one and said “I’m a doctor, I save lives, so I must live,” and jumped out. The lawyer then said, “I’m a lawyer and lawyers are the smartest people in the world. I deserve to live.” He also grabbed a parachute and jumped. The pastor looked at the little boy and said, “My son, I’ve lived a long and full life. You are young and have your whole life ahead of you. Take the last parachute and live in peace.” The little boy handed the parachute back to the pastor and said, “Not to worry, Pastor. The ‘smartest man in the world’ just took off with my back pack.”

Isn’t it funny how smart we think we are sometimes? I’ve noticed something common to new parents. Their children are usually smarter than any other child who has come before. I know mine were. Something happened to them when they hit puberty that erased any hope of intelligence that I had though. We usually tend to think rather highly of ourselves. At least in relation to everyone else. They’re the stupid ones. It’s always their fault that we make mistakes. If we could just pack them up and ship them off somewhere the world would be a better place. Except for that place we shipped them off to. Sometimes I think we place too much emphasis on them.

How many times have you been sitting in church listening to a message and thinking about someone who needed to be there to hear it? I know I do that just about every week. Here’s another question. When was the last time you left a church service challenged to change because of what you heard? If you’re a typical church attendee you are not challenged to change any aspect of your life according to a recent survey. In a 2010 survey, only 17% of church attendees said that the weekly sermon frequently changed their attitudes towards others or helped them look afresh at controversial or topical issues. Sixty-two percent of those questioned said sermons frequently gave them a sense of God’s love and helped them to understand Jesus; two-thirds said they “frequently” looked forward to the sermon; and 84 percent said the sermons should be rooted in the Bible. The conclusion of the research team was that sermons are better at helping people reflect than at challenging them to act. While reflection often precedes action, the action seems to be missing.

Why is it so difficult for us to accept change, especially when it involves our behavior? We have become creatures of habit rather than creatures of the Creator. I heard a message recently about the state of the world. It was an evangelistic message that focused on the number of lost people in the world. The speaker illustrated his point by telling us that there were 5 billion people worldwide who still do not know Christ. He said that if you were to line those people up at the front of the church, front to back, the line of people would reach to the East coast of the US. If you were to build a bridge, the line of people would extend all the way to Europe. In fact, the line would reach all the way across Europe, and into Asia. From Asia, if we were to build another bridge, the line of people would extend back to the opposite coast of the US, stretch across America and come right back in the door of the church. In fact, the line of lost people would do this not only once, but 37 times! Now, you would think that after hearing a statistic like that, and visualizing a line of people spanning the globe 37 times who were going to Hell, the church would mobilize. People would begin witnessing like never before, inviting their friends and neighbors to their church, warning them of the dangers of continuing a life without Christ! Pastors who heard this message would place a renewed emphasis on evangelism in their churches and begin making an impact on their communities. Churches all over the country would be bursting at the seams. No – we came back from that conference and quoted that statistic to those who weren’t there. We used it as a sermon illustration. We told others the same thing that we had heard. We disseminated the information, but we remained unchallenged and unchanged. I say we, because I am in the same boat. We didn’t begin witnessing, we didn’t invite our friends and neighbors, we went about our lives as usual. Within a few months, the illustration and any sense of urgency for the lost we got from that conference was gone.

Why is that? How can we sit in a church every week and hear a message that we apply to others, but remain unchanged ourselves? What would it take for us to recognize the need for change in our own lives? Why do we not confront sin in our lives when it is pointed out to us? I think it’s because we have become comfortable in our sin. See, we tend to hold our own sin so close to us that we can’t even recognize it. On the other hand, we’re very quick to point out the flaws in others. Let me give you an illustration. Pick out someone else in the room. Now, look at their face. Can you see their nose? That’s their sin. It’s easily visible to us. Now, while still looking at them, can you see your own nose? That’s your sin. It’s so close that you can easily see around it, while the other person’s sin is… well…. as clear as the nose on their face.  You can accomplish a similar illustration by holding your finger, pointing up, out in front of your face. Can you see it? Now, bring your finger, still pointing upward, up to your face and touch your nose. Now look at the other side of the room. Can you still see your finger?

I think that if we were to recognize our own sin for what it is – sin – we would be more apt to change our behavior. We hold our sin close. If we were to step back a little and see it the way others do, would we do anything different? If we were to just listen to the message every week with ourselves in mind rather than projecting it onto others, would we do anything different? I’m sure we would. The thing is, we often don’t see the necessity of change when a change comes along.  And while change for the sake of change is never good, the times in my life that I have grown the most have been during and after times of change.  I have mentioned the death of my Father in previous posts. That was a difficult time of change in my life. I could no longer call him for advice. I no longer had him to fall back on financially if I faced a financial challenge. He was not there to offer unsolicited advice on situations that he observed. I no longer had a rudder to help steer me, parent me, in the right direction. However, those changes, while very difficult to go through have helped shape me into a better man, father, leader and husband than I would be today if he were still alive. Without my Father to fall back on financially, I have had to make better financial decisions. Without him to call for advice, I have been forced to choose more wisely when making decisions. Without my dad around to offer advice based on his experience, I have had to go through some difficult times and gain some experience of my own.  And I am better for it.

Not that I don’t wish with all of my heart that my Father were still here to see his great grand children, or to witness some of my accomplishments or just to share life with. However, in the midst of difficult change, I have become better for it. The same is true for each of us. Once we give up the sin that we hold so close to us, we realize that we have become better for it. Addicts don’t think that they can live without the thing that they are addicted to. It’s not until after they are free from the addiction that they realize how much better off they are without it.

When you are faced with a changing situation in your life, how do you react? How will you react in the future? None of us is comfortable with change. We don’t know what’s on the other side of the change and that is uncomfortable. But we must realize that often, on the other side of that change is a better organization, a better marriage, a better us. We’re not as smart as we think we are. How do you face the challenge of change?

Ever feel stuck? In a rut? I heard a well-known Christian speaker state recently that there should be no such thing as an unhappy Christian.  They said that we should never use the words ‘unhappy’ and ‘Christian’ in the same sentence.  On the surface, that sounds right, but it’s easy to say something like that when you’re doing what you love to do for a living and making quite a bit of money in the process. My focus is not so much on the money, but, let’s face it, too often we think that we shouldn’t use the words ‘money’ and ‘Christian’ in the same sentence either. I think that what this speaker probably intended was to say that Christians should not live unhappy lives. Do we get unhappy? Sure we do. We live in the same world as everyone else. The difference is that we don’t live unhappily.

Unfortunately for some Christians, they are not doing what they love to do for a living. They are stuck in a dead-end job that brings no fulfillment, they struggle to make ends meet every month, they have families, school functions and then they also volunteer at church. The fact is that we all live in the same world and face the same daily situations, whether we’re Christians or not. We all have stuff in our lives, from the mega-church pastor to the sunday school teacher to the worship leader to the pew warmer. Even the speaker mentioned above. Everyone has something going on in their lives. But there should be a difference between how Christians face their stuff and how non-believers face theirs.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus has once again offended the Pharisees. He has just healed a blind man on the Sabbath. In answering the Pharisees accusation that He has broken the Law, Jesus answers that He entered the world to bring judgement – not only to give sight to the blind, but to show those who think they can see that they are really blind. Then in Chapter 10, He goes into a story about how anyone who does not come into the sheepfold by the gate is a thief. He explains that those who came before Him were thieves because they were false teachers, like the Pharisees. Then in verse 10, He says this, speaking about His sheep: “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” My focus is drawn to the last part of that verse. Jesus says that while false teachers come to steal and kill and destroy, Jesus has come to give us a ‘rich and satisfying life’. Do you know any Christians that are living a rich and satisfying life? I know a few, but they seem to be fewer than the ones living a miserable life. How do we reconcile a rich and satisfying life with a dead-end job, problems with our marriage and bills that seem to pile up? I think it’s a matter of faith.

Faith is a word that has taken a bad rap because of its mis-use. God is not some genie in a bottle that grants our every wish simply because we have faith that He can or will. God is still God. However, the correct application of faith has everything to do with the statement that Jesus made. Hebrews 11:6 says that we must not only believe that God exists, but that we must believe that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. You see, those who diligently seek Him not only know about God. They know God. Knowing God’s character changes everything for a Christian. Diligently seeking God means that one has spent a great deal of time in the Bible, since it is God’s Word to man. They have also spent a great deal of time in worship, since worship is where we get to know God intimately. They have also spent a great deal of time in prayer, since prayer is how we communicate with God. Like any other relationship, a person does not generally get to the point of knowing God in the first 6 months of salvation. It takes time. But then, so does life. By spending time with God through the Bible, worship and prayer, we learn God’s character. It is through this knowledge that we react to life’s  challenges differently.

Are you in a dead-end job? As a Christian, you are aware of the story of Joseph, who was unfairly sold into slavery, but ended up becoming the 2nd most powerful man in Egypt – the superpower of the day. You know the story of Abraham, who left his family and everything that was familiar to him and followed God even though God didn’t give him a map. I could mention all kinds of things we deal with – marriage problems, money difficulties, family dynamics – the list could go on for pages. The point is that Christians are aware of the vast love that God has for us. Sending His Son was one of the ways that He demonstrated that love. We know that God genuinely cares about our day-to-day lives. He cares about our dead-end job, our financial difficulties, our relationship problems. He knows about all of them, and He cares. That knowledge alone should be enough for us to experience the rich and satisfying life that Jesus came to give us. Our purpose extends far beyond the borders of our job, our family or even our lives. I know so many Christians who praise loudly in church on Sunday and then talk about how they don’t know if they are going to make it on Monday. Unfortunately, those around them are well aware of both their profession of faith in God and their lives of unbelief.  This is what James meant when he said “faith, by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:17)  

Faith is really just taking God at his word. It is knowing the character of God so well that you can trust him to be there even in the most mundane parts of your life. Sometimes it means getting a new perspective on your circumstances. Take the apostle Paul for example. Paul oftentimes had to work to support himself. He said in 2 Thessalonians 3:8 that he “worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you”.  But how does he describe himself to those to whom he writes? As a tentmaker? No. He is Paul, an apostle in Galatians. He is Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus in Romans. He is Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus in Colossians. Maybe some of us need to remind ourselves that we are not John, stuck in a job we hate. We are John, a disciple of Jesus Christ called to lead a small group. We are not Chris, working third shift for minimum wage. We are Chris, a disciple of Jesus Christ called to play the drums and lead the people of God into his presence.

Faith is more than blind belief. It is standing on what you know to be true, even if circumstances tell you differently. It is knowing that because of Jesus, our joy is complete (John 15:11). It is being “Joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer (Romans 12:12). It is being ” …hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Cor. 4:9-10). Knowing that “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). It is living as if these things were true, because they are.

It’s time we got our joy back. Too many Christians are living a defeated, depressed life. That’s not the life that Jesus died to give us. We belong “To him who is able to keep [us] from falling and to present [us] before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy…“