The weeks leading up to Christmas are especially busy for most of us. My life is usually busy, but it seems that the holidays just make it worse. Busyness is a problem for a lot of people. It just seems that we don’t have enough time to do the things we enjoy because we’re too busy doing the things that we have to do. Sometimes we don’t even have time to do the things that we need to do. It seems that when we look at some of the basics of Christian life, we’re usually too busy to do things like pray or read our Bible. Never mind things like taking care of the needs of others. I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
When I was studying to get my ministerial license, I learned a valuable lesson. Not every good thing is a God thing. Let me explain. See, I was working a couple of part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. I would get off from my 3rd shift job and come home to study for a few hours before going to bed. I was involved in the church as well, leading a small group in my home, leading the youth worship team and playing on the adult worship team. I played on the church softball team. There were also all of the things I had to do at home – mow the lawn, prepare for the small group, find music for the youth worship team. Not to mention spending time with my wife and children. And then there was work. We had friends that we needed to spend time with, shopping that needed done etc.
And then there were things like prayer meetings at church, special services at church, parties, events – the list could go on and on. Some days I would get home from work and I would receive a phone call asking me to come lead worship at one of the small groups that evening. I would skip dinner and go lead worship. I loved to lead worship. I would go hunting on the weekends during hunting season, play paintball with the youth during paintball season and plant a garden during planting season. For those of you who are wondering, paintball season is anytime the weather is warm enough for the paintballs not to freeze. Frozen paintballs are deadly!
It seemed that I was always running somewhere to get to the next meeting, or to work, or to church for the next thing that was happening or to meet someone. Then I heard something that transformed my life. I learned the word “no”. But weren’t all of the things I was doing good? Working a job was good. Leading worship was good. Leading a small group was good. Being with friends was good. Going to church was good. Softball, paintball and hunting were all good. There wasn’t anything in my life that I could point to and say “I shouldn’t be doing that. It’s not good.”
Then this story in Acts 6 that caught my eye.
But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers. They said, “We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program. And so, brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them this responsibility. Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and teaching the word.” ~ Acts 6:1-4
It seems that even in the early church not everyone was agreeable about everything. People were being left out. There was discrimination. So the apostles decided to take care of it. The thing was, they didn’t do it themselves. Why not? Wasn’t taking care of people a good thing? Didn’t these women deserve to be fed? Taking care of others is biblical isn’t it? It’s right there in black and white and even in red depending on the version of Bible that you have. Running a food program? Good. So why not just take care of it. You know the saying: “If you want something done right, do it yourself”.
But here’s the thing: It wasn’t about the goodness or rightness of the thing to the apostles. It was about their purpose. They had discovered their purpose. Their purpose in life was to pray and teach the word. That was it. Pray and teach the word. Regardless of how good anything else may have been, if it didn’t involve prayer and teaching the word, then it was outside the scope of their purpose. It’s still a good thing, but let’s get someone else to do that. We’ll stick to our purpose.
Have you discovered your purpose? In all of the busyness in life, are you involved in things that may be good, but not necessarily God? What are you involved in that you need to say “no” to? When someone calls with an urgent need, do you evaluate it for purpose? When some new thing pops up in your life, do you evaluate it based on your purpose? Are there things that are sucking time away from what you should be focusing on instead of things that you feel the need to be focusing your time on? Are there good things that you are doing that someone else could do instead? Maybe even someone who’s purpose is to do that very thing. With all of the “hurriedness” of everyday life, let’s not get trapped in the revolving door of reaction based action. Not every good thing is a God thing. At least not for you.
sinful activity and do our best to avoid it, but we are still tempted, and, sometimes, we give in. That’s where grace comes in. As Christians, we understand the concept of grace. Non-Christians don’t. It’s difficult for someone who isn’t familiar with the character of God, or for someone who has a distorted view of the character of God, to understand the concept of grace. The concept that not only would the victim of this crime (God) substitute his own son to pay the penalty for your crime, but that he would then adopt you as his own child as well. It just doesn’t make sense to a non-Christian.
With the general focus on politics right now, all of us have been subjected recently to the onslaught of commercials, debates, commentaries on debates and name-calling that has become a part of the political machine in America. It’s interesting to me that Jesus wasn’t much interested in politics, but the people around him were. He was questioned about the morality of paying taxes to a secular government that tolerated, at best, the religious nature of some of its citizens. The question was political in nature and was meant to trap Jesus into speaking against the current secular government.
How often do we fall into the same mindset? My Facebook page is littered with Christian friends who support both Democrats and Republicans and who are convinced that the hope for our nation is in whoever gets elected to the office of President. How often do you see something to the effect that we should allow prayer in schools again? How often has it been said that this country was founded on Christian principles and we need to get back to them? I’ve even seen a post that said that if only the Christians who didn’t vote would get out and vote that we could turn this country around. How many of you reading this believe some, or all of these things?
Jesus didn’t come to restore our kingdom. He came to establish his kingdom. In the grand scheme of things, our kingdom is unimportant. It’s irrelevant to God’s bigger picture. Oh, it’s important to us. But it’s far less important to God. Should we vote then? Absolutely! Jesus never advocated that we become passive about politics. He did advocate that we keep a proper perspective. When discussing our needs with his disciples, Jesus said that we should first of all seek his kingdom. Everything else would fall into place if we kept a proper perspective. Since we are citizens of heaven, our job is not to campaign for the next political party. Our job is to campaign for the true King. Let’s stop trying to build our kingdom. Let’s help God build his. Let’s do a better job of recruiting for the only party that will make a lasting difference in not only our nation, but the world. The kingdom of God. Make disciples.
One of the things that we like to do as Christians is to pray for an “open door” when faced with a situation that we don’t like. We want God to spiritually, or even physically, open up a new opportunity in order to remove us from the situation in which we find ourselves. An open door may be a new job so that we can get out of the job we now have. If not a new job, it may be an open door to a new opportunity in our workplace because we feel that we are underpaid or that our abilities are not being utilized or that we are no longer challenged. It may be a new relationship because the relationship we’re in is less than fulfilling. We may pray for an open door to a new church because the church we are in doesn’t appreciate us, or we feel that we are underutilized or we aren’t “being fed”.
Let’s look at an example. In Genesis 21, we have the story of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away by Abraham. God had promised Abraham a son, and so Abraham had tried to make it happen by sleeping with his wife’s servant. He did indeed have a son, but after the birth of Isaac, the son which God had promised him, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, insisted that Hagar, her servant and Ishmael, the son of Hagar and Abraham, be sent away.
Instead of praying for God to open a door for us to escape our less than favorable circumstances, why not pray that God would open our eyes to see the answers that may already be right there in front of us. We just can’t see them. What if, instead of removing us from that lousy job situation, God were to open our eyes to see the co-worker who desperately needs the encouragement we give daily? Or the department that needs the knowledge that we have? What if, instead of removing us from a bad relationship God were to open our eyes to see the spouse who still believes in us? What if he were to allow us to see the spiritual forces at work to preserve our marriage? What if God were to open our eyes to the way he is working on our lives every day? Would that change the way we pray? I think it would. What do you think?
We celebrated my Mother’s 80th birthday this past weekend. That’s her there on the left. While her birthday is still a couple of weeks away, we surprised her by throwing her a party at her church. I’m always interested to see what other churches are doing, so I took this opportunity to look around. I usually visit larger churches while on vacation to see what others are doing that we are not doing. This helps me get an idea of what we may want to incorporate, or even compare what we may already be doing that they are doing.
On Sunday morning, while attending the morning service, I began to notice other things as well. They had old-style speakers hung with chains from the pillars along the side of the church. Their worship team sang everything at what I considered to be a frenzied pace – much faster than WE would have done the same songs. Not the same “feeling” as WE would have had. And while the songs were relatively newer songs, the style in which they were done was definitely an older, piano-styled version than WE would have done. I began to find myself becoming critical of my surroundings. They weren’t nearly as far along as WE were. They didn’t do things the same (better) way that WE would have done it. In short, the guy who is always preaching about substance over style began to get caught up in the style of worship.
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I’m constantly amazed by our lack of unity on nearly everything. Just peruse some of the Christian blogs on the internet and look at the comments to back up my claim. Take a look at some of your friends’ Facebook posts and the comments they receive. We beat each other up all the time. We can’t agree on even the simple things. We get upset about the color of cups, yet ignore the fact that there are literally millions of people who don’t know how good life as a Christian can be. We’re not unified.
The next time you tend to be critical of the way another believer, or church, or pastor does things, remember the words of Jesus. We’re all in this together. Unity does not mean unison.
Since Veterans Day was yesterday here in the US, I thought that it would be pretty cool to write about veterans. Now, I’m not a veteran in the sense of having been involved in our country’s military. However, I remember being involved in “warfare” when I was in our youth group. We started getting together to play paintball. Knowing nothing about war, or strategy, didn’t stop us from splattering each other with paint. We began walking through the woods as the colonials did during the Revolutionary War. In a “skirmish line”. A straight line, side-by-side through the woods. Our battles would last a couple of minutes because we all got picked off pretty quickly.
This was in the late 80’s and we were also pretty big into spiritual warfare. At least as we knew it then. We got together every Thursday morning at 5:30 am to pray. For a bunch of kids, we had a good group turn out to engage the enemy. We would pray for an hour or so every week. We would get in the church’s big yellow and black bus and drive around our city praying. We would target specific areas of the city for prayer. We prayed for specific schools and events. And we saw results! We were encouraged by seeing answers to our prayers and so we would fight all the harder.
I remember during one of our meetings, our Youth Pastor was speaking on our legacy. He posed a question to our group. “When you die, what do you want your tombstone to read?” As I pondered this question, in my youthful fervor, I decided that I would like my tombstone to be inscribed with “He was a good soldier”. Be careful what you ask for! Little did I realize what being a good soldier meant. I have since learned.
My hope is that whatever you face today, or in the months and years ahead, you will also be a good soldier. Recognize that whatever you face, it did not come as a surprise to God. He was aware of it long before you were and has already mapped out a strategy for you to come out of the battle a better person than you were when you entered the battle. While it may be difficult to recognize now, the challenges really are good for you. Look for the lesson in every challenge. Learn it and emerge as more like the person God intended for you to be. Learn your lesson.
