Tag: Love (Page 3 of 7)

Why relevant isn’t relevant.

RelevantFor the last 15 years or so, the main idea for how the church should approach the culture has rested on one word; Relevant. At some point, a lot of somebodies decided that The Church just wasn’t connected to what was going on in our world, so they started changing things. Little by little it became more difficult to see the line between church and culture. Relevance became so important that it became a church catch-phrase, “We want to be a church that’s relevant to where people are in life.” In fact, we started naming churches “Relevant” and in 2003, Relevant Magazine hit the scene and boasts 70,000 paper subscribers, in addition to 500,000 monthly website visitors.

I’m not overly concerned with how the need to be “relevant” has changed the way we “do” church. The model of church matters very little. If you’re following God’s call, preaching Christ and Him crucified, loving and caring for people and making disciples that make disciples, then I don’t care if you use elephants and camels in your sermon. It doesn’t matter how you do church. What does matter is the mindset that “being relevant” has created in the people who proclaim to follow Jesus. Trying to be relevant and love people the same way that Jesus taught, doesn’t work very well together. As the years have passed and the need to be relevant has invaded our church, we’ve began to allow a mentality of relevance to permeate every part of following Jesus. So much so that we’ve arrived at a place where we seek to provide a love that’s relevant to where people are. On the surface that seems like a smart way to go, but it isn’t. As a Christian principle, it’s actually pretty reckless and when applied to the area of loving God and loving others, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because it’s unstable. And an unstable love ultimately disappoints and causes hurt. That’s not the love that God is or gives.

The thing about being relevant is that the culture is constantly changing. Relevant as a principle is the idea that your action or response should be closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand. If that’s true, then as “the matter at hand” changes so does the way we live out our faith and the way that we respond to those around us. That also means that the way that we love God and others changes as the culture shifts. All of a sudden it becomes easier to bow to the culture, in the name of love, rather than be a light to it. If that happens over a long enough period of time, eventually following Jesus gives way to a universalism type mentality that pretends to meet the needs of all people, but actually does nothing for their deepest needs. Jesus didn’t do that.

The things that Jesus taught weren’t even relevant to the culture that He taught them in. In fact, they were so irrelevant to the culture that they got Him arrested, beat and crucified. Jesus wasn’t relevant. He didn’t bend His response to the matter at hand. But, that doesn’t mean that He didn’t meet needs. He did. In deeper way than we can understand. Regardless of the circumstance, He responded in the same way. He healed the blind Jew just the same as He healed the Roman officer’s servant. He didn’t offer a relevant love, he offered a radical love. It was the type of love that changed people and circumstances. It was the type of love that impacted the circumstance instead of being impacted by it. It was that type of love that allowed him to reach across culture and make a difference.

If we’re looking for a principle to describe our love for people, relevant is the wrong word; the word we’re looking for should be radical. So that we’re clear, when I say Radical, I’m pointing to a love that affects the fundamental nature of the culture. It’s far-reaching and thorough in how it fills in the gaps that culture invariably creates. Not only does it fill in those gaps, it covers and changes everything it touches. The culture, and the people in it, are changed on a heart, soul and mind level. If James 1:17 is true, that with God there is no variation or shadow due to change, then God can’t be relevant to any culture and must be the change agent in every culture. We should want to be a church that is unselfishly concerned with the good of others, causing us to abandon the idea of relevance and embrace the action of a freely given, radical love, regardless of circumstance or culture.

Relevant love responds to change. Radical love causes change.

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Not “More than you can handle”, but “More than you deserve”

Ephesians 3One of the most contrived ideas inside of Christianity is the one that says, “God will never give you more than you can handle.” That’s garbage. I’ve said it before, and a ton of people have written about it, but nowhere in the bible is there scripture that supports the idea that God will never give you more than you can handle. On the contrary, we can read situation after situation, in the bible, in which a person is given a task they obviously weren’t capable of accomplishing and were forced to go to God. Some have used 1 Corinthians 10:13 to support the idea, but that verse is speaking specifically to God not allowing us to be tempted beyond what we can bear in the area of idolatry and sexual immorality. It speaks directly to God’s good grace and mercy to provide an escape in those situations.

While it may not be true that He won’t give you more than you can handle, what is true is that He gives far more than you deserve. If you’re Christian you know that what we deserve is death. If you’re not Christian, Romans 3:23 tells us that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because of that, in Romans 6:23 we’re told that the wages of that sin is death. That’s what we deserve; death. But God, in His infinite grace and mercy, desires better for us. He desires communion with us. And because He desires that we share eternity with Him, we’re promised that He is able to “do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” We deserve death, but He promises life. And it’s not only life, but an abundant life and a life everlasting.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection we’re given the opportunity to receive the promise of life eternal spent in His presence. He willingly gives far more than we deserve.

That means He gives immeasurable grace, infinite mercy, boundless forgiveness, incalculable faith, unlimited hope and a love that knows no breadth, or depth, or width or height. And He offers that to all of us; no matter your past, regardless of your present and despite how you perceive your future. There’s nothing that can be considered “too much” for Him to undo. There’s no distance that is “too far” for Him to reach across. And you’re not the one person that’s done something “too bad” for Him to forgive. Life will hand you more than you can handle, but God will hand you more than you deserve.

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Making Jesus Attractive

DiogoMorgado_Jesus1Creating converts is easy. There are whole programs designed to convince people of their need to believe something different. Christianity isn’t the only religion that seeks to create converts and really isn’t even the most successful at it. But, still converting others tends to be our main goal. It isn’t necessarily wrong, but it should be our end game; making disciples that make disciples should be. I’m convinced that creating converts remains our main focus because it requires far less from us than making disciples. We’ve diminished Jesus’ commission to create followers that are enabled to create other followers down to handing someone an invite card and hoping they show up. My 6 yr old does that. So when we talk about inviting people into Christ, what are we talking about? What makes them want to come? Isaiah 53:2 says that there was nothing physically appealing about Him. There was nothing in His looks that drew people to Him. If He was here today, He’s not getting picked to be The Bachelor. But yet, over the last 2000 years, millions of people have been drawn to and  follow Him. Why?

In John 6:44, Jesus tells us explicitly that the only way people come to Him is at the drawing of The Father. Does that mean we have no dog in the fight? Is Jesus letting us off the hook for implementing the Great Commission? Not even a change. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul lets us in on our part of making Jesus known to others. He says, “…be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. He saying that the fruit of our following Jesus well, will cause others to glory and praise God. We get to be a part of positioning people for the Father to draw people to Jesus. I love the way The Message translation says it. It says, “Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.” Our life of following Jesus ought to reflect a love and righteousness that makes Jesus attractive. But it isn’t a gushy love. And it isn’t an unintelligent or naive love.

Love often and well.

Tweet: Love often and well. | Latest post on #ApproachGod | Making Jesus Attractive http://ctt.ec/2WNy8+ via @bpags2Some may argue the need to be “honest” with unbelievers about the very real truth of God’s wrath and hell. Both of those are very real things and we, as believers, ought to be concerned about them for ours and others’ sake. You can no more divorce love from wrath than you can mercy from justice, but that can’t be our introduction of Jesus to an unbeliever. Those are important conversations, but they’re conversations that come as relationship develops. If we introduce a world to a Savior, they don’t even believe in, by asking, “If you died tonight, where would you go, heaven or hell?” That question bears little weight on the majority of those that don’t believe in Jesus. In reality we’re not actually attracting them to Jesus, we’re trying to scare and coerce them into converting. It’s almost the equivalent to a far milder modern day version of the Inquisition, only we’ve traded instruments of physical fear for instruments of mental fear. If thought through that tactic honestly would we use it as an approach to initiate any of the other relationships we try to build? I assume if we did, we’d all be pretty lonely.

When we talk about attracting people to Jesus, it starts in how we love each other, as Christians, and how we love our neighbors, which is everyone else. If God is love, everything we do, our entire life, should reflect that. That’s what makes Jesus attractive. Love is the thing that will soften the hearts of others and open them to the possibility of who He is. In that, the Father draws them to Him.

Love often and well.

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