BudapestAlive

What is God up to? (part 2)

There are many things that we Christians might say to the question of what God is up to in this world. We might say, “He’s saving people.” Or perhaps, “He’s magnifying his glory.” Something along those lines. Those things are true, but they don’t sufficiently answer the question, “What is God up to?”

It seems to me the answer lies further back, seen better from a high vantage point. There is a purpose behind God’s working in this world. It’s one that he not only makes plain to all, but one that he has desired for all people everywhere, of all times, to know intimately. He first spoke it to Adam and Eve. He promised it to (and through) the patriarchs. His prophets yearned for it and chided Israel for their blindness to it. His Son came and established it. The church is now tasked with the glorious work of proclaiming it.

Is it salvation? No. Life through Jesus, being renewed spiritually and adopted by God, is a huge part of it, but it is not completely it. I believe that what God is up to in this world is the same thing he’s been up to since our inaugural forebears.

Yahweh is wholeheartedly about the business of giving his grace to all peoples. He has always desired that his boundless, joy-filled, grace would be known by all of his creation, and by all humans in particular. The patriarchs and Israel were supposed to be a means to deliver that grace to the world. They failed in that role. The church (all-Jew or not-who by faith trust Jesus for redemption) now carry that mantle. We, according to Scripture, are the last instrument of God’s favor to this world. He has, with infathomable glory, blessed we, Christians, to be a blessing to all nations as preachers of the greatest news broken humans have ever heard.

He is, and has been, sending his grace to the nations.

What is God up to?

One’s view of what God is doing, what he’s “up to” in this world has an enormous impact on every aspect of life.

Imagine you believed that there was a god of some sort, and he/she/it, after making this world had long since lost interest and moved on. I suppose you would view yourself has having little to do with the one who made you. Something like parental abandonment, you might become ambivalent or embittered at such a god and take matters of life into your own hands, according to what you deem best in this universe.

Such a belief would also effect your relationships with people in profound ways. If this god was out of the picture, then life is ultimately a sort of no-holds-barred contest. To each their own. You have no ties to maker or man. Your choices about how to treat people are ultimately as valid as any other, no matter the outcome.

That’s not a very far fetched example. It’s how many people live life. I know it’s how I lived life from the time I was 18 until about age 24. Those were dark and desperate years filled with revelry, song, and despair.

Lately I’ve been thinking again through how the Bible most clearly answers the question:

What is is that God is really up to in this world?

Mark Driscoll, Deepak Chopra, Bishop Pearson, and Annie Lobert debate whether Satan is real

This debate ranges well beyond the initial subject and is very telling of the popular mindsets of our day. I’m glad that Mark was in this. I’ve seen many debates where a token Christian is included, and usually one whose lack of education is matched only by their unchecked emotion. It was also very well moderated, another rarity. I think Jesus was glorified through Mark’s points and responses, and that’s an answer to prayer.

Watch it at abc’s site

Reflections on Job

The book of Job is a treasure of wisdom to those who will, like Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, sit silent with Job, recognizing his suffering was great. To every person Job is a comforter. He is the empathetic forerunner of our troubles. Not because misery loves company, but because to suffer alone is salt upon an open wound. The sufferer knows they are not alone as they walk with Job.

It is a warning to all about the pride of man. For all of Job’s righteousness, even he could not keep his pride from swelling as the dichotomy of his service to God and his unexplained suffering pulled at the fabric of his desire to understand why.

It’s a warning that our greatest need in suffering is neither release nor understanding, but rather to remain steadfast with Yahweh. This is a terribly difficult and freeing truth. How reasonable it is to want to know why we suffer. How logical it is to cry out for release. But neither of those things are our ultimate good. They can be sought in a righteous way to be sure. But they can far more easily take us from faith and dependence on Yahweh to a false hope that release or knowledge will cure what ails us. Consider the stories of suffering among the saints and the resulting richness of their life in Christ. I know it to be true from own trials; that though I pray unceasingly for relief and am daily occasioned to wonder why, it is when I let go of those things and cast my life itself up the mercy and grace found only in Jesus Christ that peace and hope are mine. Once again that incomprehensible mystery of joy amidst suffering is proved true and my faith is used by the Lord in all the ways I grasp for when trials are far off.

Between Appearing

I typically use the word ‘epiphany’ to refer to a sudden insight. Something like, “I’ve had an epiphany about the word epiphany”. While that’s acceptable in current vernacular, something recently changed that word for me in a profound way. That something was Jesus.

More than two thousand years ago an older man sat down and wrote a letter to a younger man, you could call him an apprentice of sorts. People said some rather curious about the older man. As a boy he was given the most rigorous and devout education one could imagine. As a young man he was exemplary. Today he would be the sort who graduates high school a year early and tests out of most of their freshman year of college. He would also be the type whose academic excellence drove him to crush anyone in his way. But then something unexpected happen (which nearly always does) …he was interrupted. Not like call waiting, no, this interruption was more like a car crash or an unexpected fist fight. And the result was that he went from being one of the most highly educated and esteemed followers of Judaism to one of the most passionate and faithful disciples of Jesus. In fact, Jesus himself hand picked him to be the front-man for telling non-Jews about Him.

Back to the letter. This man wrote many letters, but to this one younger man in particular he wrote about Jesus coming to the earth, appearing. In the language of his day he wrote, “epiphaneia” …epiphany. In other words, Jesus coming as a man was His appearing, His epiphany.

It occurred to me that this is where we find ourselves, between appearings, between epiphanies of Jesus. He who is without beginning or end has come, and will come again. Yet, through each of us who by faith know Him as Messiah, He continues to show Himself to all who will see or listen. So it is for us. We are between appearings, by grace living out epiphanies of Jesus each day.

Church Planting & Church Redemption

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the death (or deep decay) of local churches. More specifically, juxtaposing it with the church planting movement among young pastors.

As I drive around Ft. Bend County and Houston proper I seen many churches that I know are without a lead/senior pastor, or are completely closed up. Teaching at CBS puts me in contact with many pastors and church workers all over the greater Houston area. My students frequently share stories of major leadership problems in their churches and the decay that comes with it.

It’s not just Houston of course. My brother told me a story about a local pastor who took him to San Antonio for some ministry work. While they were there he took him on a “tour of closed churches”. Earlier this year I was in Portland for a class and my prof told me that while speaking a northwestern regional conference for a major denomination, he was told that they had over 50 churches without pastors in that region alone, and another 30 without pastors in the southwest region.

That really gnaws at me. I know there are many churches who are led badly and full of people who are full of wrong ideas about Jesus. I know there are many churches that aren’t really a church as the Bible describes one. There are many who have tossed the gospel out the window and concocted some “Jesus” for themselves that doesn’t make anyone change, loves golf, money, and doesn’t have that big of a problem with adultery or pornography.

But even with all those churches, there still must be a good number among the pastor-less ones who are truly sheep without a shepherd. They can’t all be churches that run good pastors out on a rail.

Then I realized how I never hear anything about those churches, or about how to help them. Sure there are some who don’t really wan’t help. They’ve been hijacked by some misguided and unqualified board of yahoos who are afraid to make the changes necessary to glorify Jesus. But what about the others? Where are the conferences on “Church Redemption”? Where are the paper backs and podcasts and “movements” about this one?

I really only know of three guys who have done something about it. The only one I know personally is Bobby Delgado out at Long Point Baptist Church. This church was toast. It once must have had near 1,000 people. The first time I saw it there were 12 people with a combined age of a million. First Baptist Church (which is geographically close to LPBC), stepped in, brought in Bobby, dumped some needed cash on the place for maintenance, and now they’re slugging it out, helping the people to re-engage the culture after doing nothing for what seems like several decades.

The second is Matt Chandler at the Village. I don’t know Matt, just met him a few times. What’s hilarious (and he’s admitted this) is that he gets all sorts of run in church planting circles…but he’s never planted a church. What he has done is step into what was a seriously messed up situation where the pastor broke his brain, the church was a theological mud pie, and the building looks like a 70’s orange juicer. The Village is now a thriving place with the kind of problems you prefer (because there are always problems…just a question of flavor). In Matt’s defense, he didn’t want the job.

The last is Gregg Matte at Houston’s First Baptist Church. I’ve never met Gregg, haven’t heard him speak, and don’t even know what he looks like. What I do know is that he had what was apparently the college Bible study equivalent of New Year’s Eve in Times Square and left it to pastor a huge (and hugely un-led) church in Houston. He’s a relatively young guy who stepped into a HUGE set of shoes. We’re talking a MASSIVE church with a massive budget and buildings and staff and all that jazz. Some might salivate at that, but not me. I go with Biggie, “Mo Money, Mo Problems”. Nonetheless, I’ve not heard a single negative thing about FBC since he’s been there. Quite the opposite. I know several folks who would never have gone there before who are now tied into a vibrant fellowship. The church is also active in what appears to be all the righteous ways. This church went years with interim pastors and the ubiquitous “pastor search commitee”. God has used him to help them turn the corner.

I don’t see a clear solution to this. The only think I can think of is to start an org whose focus is to provide hurting churches a place to contact, a trustworthy source for guidance. I suppose some try their denominations, but from my outside perspective that doesn’t seem to have had much success.

In the end, I know that Jesus cares more about His bride than I ever can and that’s a very comforting thought. And I know that the church is, in one sense, flawed by design. We are going to mess stuff up. If it wasn’t the case then the NT writers wouldn’t have given us so much encouragment about loving and caring for one another. That was how Jesus summed up all of His teaching “Love one another as I have loved you.” Nonetheless, I do care enough to be haunted by the thought of so many people gathering together and having no idea where they are headed, or how they’re getting there.

Cynicism

I’m starting to see the poison of cynicism more clearly. Not that all cynicism is bad, just look at 1 Kings 18 and how Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, and there are many others. But each place where I see some form of cynicism, it’s pointed at the ridiculousness of false things compared to the glory of the living God of the Bible. But that’s not the kind of cynicism I’ve mastered, and definitely not the kind I hear from all my friends and associates.

I’m finding that the flavor of cynicism which I’m accustomed to is damaging to me, and all around me, in a seeming ever increasing number of ways. I’m not writing this because any particular instance. I’m just realizing how cynicism is robbing me of relationships, spiritual growth, and joy.

Cynicism is a thief of relationships because for every cynical comment, I sacrifice an opportunity for genuine relationship. Instead of a heartfelt question or an honest reply I offer a cheap, cynical substitute. Moments lost add up to relationships lost.

Cynicism is a thief of spiritual growth because for every cynical response, I sacrifice a God given opportunity to allow the Spirit of Christ to refine me. Instead of a spiritual pause and moment of submission, I quickly surrender the moment to the cheap, fleeting humor of cynicism. Moments lost add up to spiritual growth forfeited.

Cynicism is a thief of joy, because for every moment a relationship is enriched, every period of spiritual growth, there is great joy.

How often do we hide behind cynicism? How badly does it show that we want the praise of man more than God when we are far quicker to offer cyniscism than we are to listen or speak what is truly in our hearts?

The Lord’s brother was right when he wrote about what we say and how it’s like the rudder of a ship…such a small thing compared to the whole, yet it steers the whole boat. Or how what we say is like a blazing forest fire. Think of the California fires this past few weeks. All of that was started by very small flame. I grew up in California and I’ve seen many summer brush fires close enough to touch. The appetite of the flames seems unquenchable. It seems the appetite of a cynical mind is the same…never satisfied, never contented, never at peace.