Worshipping the Unknown God-Part 2

“In these bodies, we will live, in these bodies we will die.  Where you invest your love, you invest your life.”  -Marcus Mumford

We are all the objects of a relentless love of the Father.  The beginning of our ability to communicate this message to a world that needs to hear it begins when we understand the passage in Romans 5 where Paul writes, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  (Insert your name here.)  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Did you hear that?  While you were still an enemy of the cross, the love of the Father still relentlessly pursued you through the death of Jesus.  As I write these words, my heart is flooded with emotion at the reminder that even when I was bowing before inferior gods, full of sin in my life, God loved me with a love that is unexplainable. 

Paul further explains the inability to understand the depths of the love of God when he writes his desire that God “grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that SURPASSES KNOWLEDGE, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  In our attempts to understand in our simplicity the dimensions of the love of God, we are left dumbfounded in that His love is beyond our ability to comprehend. 

If you get nothing else from these ponderings, please hear that you are loved by the Father, and through this love, you and I, though at some point enemies to the gospel, now experience adoption as sons and daughters.  And this, my friends, is the best news imaginable.

With this understanding, however, there is a responsibility.  Our responsibility to the Father is not the cause by which we are loved, but rather the effect and response by us as the recipients of this love.  Or to put it another way, we are not loved because we do, we do because we are loved.  As the object of the love of God, we are called to submit our lives to His Lordship.  To be faithful to the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, AND to teach them to OBEY all that Christ commanded us. 

In my last post, I shared the two greatest commandments from Christ:  to love God supremely, and to love our neighbors.  This leads me to a question.  Are you a hoarder of God’s love or a sharer?  In our Christian culture today, we have a tendency to spend the majority of our time “hoarding” Christian things:  more knowledge, more connection through worship, more discipleship, etc.  And while these are extremely important to our growth in Christ, we have to see that as we grow in knowledge, worship, and discipleship, we are commanded to “go and make disciples of all nations.”  To share the love of God to those who have yet to experience it. 

So where are you investing your love?  As you are allowing me to think out loud through your reading of this blog on my ponderings of worship, how are you being challenged to demonstrate the love of God in the context of the city and culture that you live in?  My heart breaks to know that there are many who do not understand how deeply they are loved.  May our indifference towards the lives of unbelievers never be the barrier by which this misunderstanding exists. 

Worshipping the Unknown God-Part 1

I have a deep love for music.  Being born and raised in the heart of the South where the sound of music is richer than the Delta dirt along the Mississippi, maybe it should be expected.  Whether it is the timeless melodies of folk music, the knee-slapping rhythm of bluegrass, or the catchy beats of modern tunes, I have an appreciation for the unique gift when an artist is not just singing a song, but instead telling a story.  

Tuesday night, I had the chance to attend a live show by quite possibly my favorite band.  (This is debatable, and subject to change.)  The room was filled with energy from the crowd that is seldom produced or experienced at a live show.  It was amazing to look around the room, and see a wave of people completely engaged with the artists, singing each song word for word at the top of their lungs.  (Although I wish the guy next to me had either refrained or learned the words.)  Groupies were waving their hands, closing their eyes, and simply taking it all in.  And then it hit me harder than the boom of the bass, that for many, what they were experiencing was cheap worship.  Now when I say worship, I don’t mean that this was an authentic, spiritual worship experience, but at that moment, the band and their music were being worshipped by many.  

Worship is defined as a “respect for or devotion to an object of esteem.”  If we take that definition and apply it tangibly to life, then everyone is a worshipper of something.  We worship many things:  family, careers, possessions, and unfortunately self.    We see this when any of these priorities are elevated to a place of supremacy where our lives are lived out in submission to these objects of our worship.  If it is family, we will pattern all of our decisions on what makes sense for family.  If it is our career, we will do anything possible to bring pleasure to our superiors.  If it is possessions and money, we will sacrifice whatever it takes to acquire more and more.  If it is self, we will always do what is best for us, regardless of the affects to other people.  

Despite the fact that we often choose to worship other things, God’s word leaves no room for this choice.  Jesus tells us in Luke 10 that we are to “love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.”  Everything!  When the love of God holistically consumes your whole being, He maintains His proper place as the Lord of our life, and the object of our worship.  When we choose to allow other things to take control of our heart, soul, strength, and mind then we bow before the idol of family, careers, possessions, and self and worship an inferior god.

What do you truly worship in life?  My prayer is that you will find your worship in rhythm with God, and find your life moving to the beat of His calling on your life.  When you do, you will experience truth and worship everlasting.  

Hope Street

In a world that is marked by turmoil and problems, what does true tangible hope look like?  As followers of Christ, we speak of the hope that we have in Him, and in our theologically trained minds, we understand what that looks like; however, to a lost world, hope in Christ is often hard for them to understand or feel.   

As the eminent parting of Jesus to heaven was taking place, He carefully chose the final words He would incarnationally speak to His disciples when he said this:  "All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."  

A specific command spoken simplistically for us has unfortunately become so confused.  Rather than embracing and engaging this commission, we often find ourselves rewriting it to fit our current model for reaching the lost.  I am afraid we often unintentionally rewrite it to say, "Come to us, and we will attempt to make converts."  How has discipleship which was foundational to the words of Christ become supplemental to our current approaches?  How did we ever get away from the importance of our "going”? How did we ever get away from the importance of follow-through in discipleship? 

 Discipleship is difficult, messy, unconventional, and often unpredictable.  Discipleship relationships must be gospel-centered in order to have any baseline or standard by which we strive for.  Without the gospel at the heart of our relationships, we have no destination to point people to, only self-help and encouragement that points to nowhere.   

At Venue, we have adopted an approach to discipleship grounded in life in community.  Our community groups strive to understand four basic components:  

1.  We are Family.  We are a family because we are all children of God; we have the same Father.  The way in which we do life in community should be an illustration to the world as to what our God is like. 

2.  We are Missionaries.  As followers of Christ, we are sent by Him to carry the message of reconciliation through Jesus Christ to the world!  We believe that as missionaries we are sent INTO the culture with the goal of seeing all things restored to God through Jesus.  

3.  We are Servants.  As follower of Christ, we are called to serve Him by becoming a servant to those around us.  "No servant is greater than His master."  With this understanding, we take on the posture that Christ did by humbling himself as a servant to serve those around Him.  

4.  We are Learners.  Discipleship is critical!  As learners, we take our personal development in Christ, and the personal development of others as our responsibility.  This involves a dependency on the Holy Spirit to guide us and teach us so that we are constantly being poured into by others, and are constantly being used to pour into others.  This happens through an incarnational approach to discipleship in community.   My prayer is that as a faith community, despite our flaws, we are being shaped into a people for God's possession, passionate to know Him more, and persistent in being used by Him to be faithful to His commission for our lives.  

This week, the community group I am a part of will be joining another community group to carry this message of hope in Jesus to a little street in Hattiesburg called, you got it, Hope Street.  My prayer is that God will tangibly use these Bible Clubs to replace a temporal hope being sought by the residents of this street, with an eternal hope of life through Jesus.  And my prayer is that it doesn't stop this week.  My prayer is that this will be the beginning of a long discipleship relationship with those we encounter.  

All glory and honor to Him!

23 Cents

As I sat at my desk this morning, grinding through thoughts for a new teaching series on stewardship I will be leading our faith community through, my mind was constantly driven back to this past week's stewardship offering by our faith community.  The significance, however, of this past week's offering had nothing to do with the dollar amount that we received.  Despite the generous offerings given to God by our people, it was  23 Cents that I can't keep my mind off of.  Now I have no idea who put this change in our offering basket, but nonetheless, it has impacted me in my thoughts towards what generosity truly looks like.   In Mark 12, we are reminded, as I have been this week, about what true stewardship looks like.  Mark 12:41-44 says this:   "And he [Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums.  And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny.  And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.  For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”   There was no pressure this day in regards to stewardship right???  Those who were extremely wealthy put in large amounts of money.  And this poor widow put in two small copper coins.  They gave from their abundance, but she gave everything!  Jesus instructs His disciples that this is what generosity looks like.   We often gauge our generosity on the amount we give:  the dollar amount, the amount of time, the amount of energy, or the amount of commitment.  Unfortunately, this becomes our litmus test for the level of our generosity.  This often leads us to give the remnants of our money, the remnants of our time, the remnants of our energy, and the remnants of our commitment.  The sad truth is, many of us often would be characterized by the qualities of the "rich" instead of the humility of the "poor."   What would it look like if followers of Christ truly began to live generous lives?  What if we "put in everything we have" for the sake of the kingdom?  What if we truly trusted God with our lives to the point that we went all in?    I am fully convinced that if we truly gave Him all, we would commit to give Him from the "firstfruits" of our finances and not just from our surplus.  We would begin to order our calendars and lives around missional living so that our lives are leveraged for His use in our neighborhoods and communities.  I believe we would prioritize what we pour our energy into so that we fully invest our lives for the advancement of the gospel.  And there is no question that we would begin to commit our lives to gospel-centered discipleship as instructed by Jesus in the Great Commission.