Faith like a Child

Matthew 18:3
And He [Jesus] said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

My daughter, Violet, is almost two years old and for the past week, we have been taking walks around the neighborhood first thing in the morning. As we are putting her shoes on, she gets excited when I remind of the things we may see outside. She especially loves trucks, big rocks, airplanes, hot air balloons, helicopters, waterfalls, and trains. We have seen all these things on our walks, and everyday, we see trucks, big rocks, a waterfall (someone has this in their yard as a lawn ornament), and airplanes. She is filled with joy when she sees some of her favorite things and after nearly a week of walks, her excitement has not waned even though we see trucks, big rocks, a waterfall, and airplanes everyday. I am reminded of Jesus' words that unless we become like children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. I think it is all too easy for our faith to become stale and routine. We can have a tendency of reading Scripture without the intent of hearing from God, we can pray without expecting great things, and we are not overjoyed when someone begins their new found spiritual faith in Christ. My daughter reminded me that I need to continually come to Jesus with a child-like faith; to expect a fresh encounter with the Lord every single day, to pray with faith that could mountains, and the excitement of knowing someone who comes to know the Lord in an intimate way. I am thankful for my daughter's perspective and pray that she never loses the excitement she receives when seeing an airplane flying above.

Community

This is from an experience that I wrote about two and half years ago. At the time I was attending seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, and the story takes place around finals week.


Today I helped a very good friend of mine move from Wilmore to Nicholasville. Nicholasville is an interesting town. It existed before Lexington but certain portions of the city have now morphed into a suburb of Lexington. The city also contains plenty of tradition and backwoods folk like every small town in Kentucky.


As I and another friend helped him move, I couldn't help but ask myself, "Why are we the only two helping this awesome guy out?" It's not like this guy is a jerk; in fact, he is one of the nicest guys I know. I recently attended his wedding four weeks ago and it was one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever attended. Part of the ceremony included each member of the wedding party forming a circle around the couple and offering a blessing to them as they passed around the wedding rings. The blessings they offered only confirmed how great of a guy he is.


But alas, he is moving during exam week and the world of academia has swallowed people whole. Everyone always complains about how bad Christian community is in America and how everyone is always trying to solve this dilemma. What it boils down to is that people are just too wrapped up in themselves. People really believe the world revolves around them and sadly, Christians are particularly prone to these types of beliefs. How can we blame them, though? After all, self-help sermons are being preached all across America. If we follow these three bullet points, these four steps, and follow the six point action plan, we will be happier individuals. Sadly, Christians continue to struggle with addiction, depression, and loneliness. I wonder why?


Jesus once said that if we desire to find life, we must lose it. The path to finding our life involves denying ourselves and picking up our crosses daily in service to Him.


I think if we followed Christ's words, we would discover community and fellowship as it was intended.

Recognizing Jesus

It was about 1:00am and I was tired...very tired. My dear husband had taken a nap earlier and found humor in wrapping himself up in all the covers so I didn't have any. I had spent most of the day reading "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" by Ron Sider so in fairly good humor I told him I felt like a developing nation and he was America. After about 5 minutes in the cold I got irritated...then frustrated...and then belligerent as I tried to push him out of the bed. I know this seems ridiculous but this little event gave me some perspective on the pacifist view that improving the standard of living for those hanging in the balance would significantly decrease the number of people joining the terrorists. I believed it would work before but now I understand why. I didn't have covers and was ready to go find a different bed to sleep in. A horrific number of people in this world don't have food, shelter, or health care and we wonder why they take the side of those who offer them a chance to live...for it isn't hard to understand why people who don't know Jesus would quickly throw ethics out the window in favor of mere survival.

But here's an even bigger lesson...our national security shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not we feed the hungry or seek justice for the oppressed. These actions are absolutely necessary if we love the Lord, for He says when we feed the hungry and visit the imprisoned we feed and visit Him and, even more, when we don't do these things we leave our Jesus starving and lonely. I've gained entirely new perspective on Matthew 7:22-24:

"Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

I sincerely wonder if He says He doesn't know these people because they never took the time to find Him in the people on this earth...the least of these.

Ron Sider says, "Some try to avoid the clear meaning of Jesus' statement by spiritualizing His words. Certainly, as other texts show, He came to open our blinded hearts, to die for our sins, and to free us from the oppression of guilt. But that is not what he means here." He is referring to Luke 4:18-19 but I think that many people believe references in Scripture to "poverty" imply only spiritual poverty and deny that Jesus cares specifically for people in physical poverty. It's comfortable to think that, isn't it? Because we can't fulfill anyone's spiritual poverty so we're off the hook. But that's not at all the only implication.

I used to think that wealthy people would find it difficult to enter the kingdom of God because it would be hard for them to see their need and once they did know Jesus they would have to check their hearts more often to be sure their possessions weren't idols. Now I see that if Christians live luxuriously while their neighbors starve, their possessions can only be idols. If they weren't idols, Christians would readily sell them when they saw their neighbors hungry (and anybody that is aware can be sure their neighbors are hungry)...but they don't, do they? It is harder for them to enter the kingdom because they have so much more of the things they are commanded to live without.

So, I will ask you what I need to ask myself daily. Did I meet Jesus in the least of these today? Did I feed Him when He was hungry? Did He feel welcomed? Or did I choose to spend money on myself while He sat starving by the road? Or, even worse, did I completely avoid places where I might find Him?

I want to be 3D

I like to pray that God makes me open-minded enough that I can learn but steadfast and passionate enough that I don't flounder. I feel like this has really become a reality for me in the last year or so but there is still a problem...I am often one-dimensional. When I first became a Christian I went to a fairly charismatic church and experienced great outpourings of the Holy Spirit. We prayed passionately, expecting miracles, and experienced the gift of speaking in tongues. Unfortunately, this intense focus on signs and wonders left little room for teachings on the life and words of Jesus. More recently, I have very much become a "Red Letter Christian." I see that Jesus' words are often neglected in the church. We are rarely told to love our enemies in the radical context in which Jesus meant it and we frequently forget "the least of these" when planning church "ministries." With this realization, I devoured the Gospels, wanting to fully understand the lifestyle that Jesus expects me to live if I love Him.

I don't think there needs to be balance between the two extremes...I think we need to give both 100%. We simply cannot live the life Jesus speaks of if we are not filled with the Holy Spirit. The problem that I see with many charismatic churches is that being filled with the Holy Spirit somehow got manipulated into a self-focused experience. This is why we often see the prosperity gospel associated with those churches that believe in prophecy and tongues. On the other hand, many people I've been in contact with who desire to live out Jesus' words try to do it of their own effort. They never allow themselves to be filled up enough that they can adequately pour into others. Their actions are often out of obedience rather than transformation.

I don't want to be one-dimensional. I want to embrace the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously...I want to be 3D. I desire to do the work of the Father on this earth by being filled with the Holy Spirit so that I am capable of modeling the life of Jesus.

Prosperity Gospel Redefined

Even when I believe passionately in something regarding my faith, there are usually one or two verses in the Bible that I cannot answer for. I like to interpret Scripture at face value and not with the purpose of proving my perspective, so when I read 20 verses that seem to point in one direction and 2 verses that seem contradictory, I have to say that my conviction is the same although I cannot understand God's purpose in those 2 verses.

Today was a good day, though, as I had quite a revelation on one of those Scriptures that people use to question my belief about simplicity. Before today, I had no way to justify Jesus' words in Mark 10:

"Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands..."

Growing up I was taught this meant that whatever you plant will be returned to you a hundredfold...so if you plant a seed of $100 (in tithes), you will receive it back a hundred times over in this lifetime.

The "now in this time" part of Jesus' words are what always got me. Does this really mean we should expect to gain great wealth if we just plant a little? I tried to tell people that the reward for obedience in giving to our neighbor was the promise of heaven, but that sidesteps Jesus words: "now in this time." And I'm not okay with sidestepping Jesus' words, especially remembering another well known passage:

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well."

It truly sounds like our lives will be easy and plentiful if we are obedient, but that doesn't seem right in the context of the whole Bible. We can be sure righteous men have suffered on this earth.

But today...today my eyes were opened to this verse. My thoughts are not original but another product of Ron Sider's book. He beautifully describes the community of the early church in Jerusalem where there was a common purse and nobody was poor, referencing Acts 4:34-35:

"There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them;...and distribution was made to each as any had need."

They didn't have private property; they shared everything they had with one another and made themselves gloriously available to each other. In light of this realization, it is easy to understand how someone who gives up his own house gains 100 houses. When a person joins a community in which all belongings are shared, recognizing that they are not our own but God's, he gains availability to the belongings of the rest of that community. This is the kind of economic security Jesus was referring to in Mark...not that tithing $100 will eventually make Christian's millionaires who store up their treasures on earth.

"The common purse of Jesus' disciples symbolized their amazing availability to each other. In that kind of community, there would be genuine economic security. Each person would indeed have many more loving brothers and sisters than before. The economic resources available in difficult times would in fact be compounded a hundredfold and more" (Sider).

So, it is true. If we choose to be part of this beautiful community of followers by "seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness," the love that causes us to meet eachother's needs "will be added to us as well."

Sinners at Church? No!

I had a discussion with Lance and our neighbor, Jim, last night about why many people are so turned off by American churches today. I’ve talked to enough people about this to know that “hypocrisy” is on the top of that list of reasons. But I started thinking last night that perhaps the American church has created this image of hypocrisy by making its focus on the people rather than on Jesus. The churches I have been to tend to focus on moral behavior as the definition of being a Christian. Thus, when people go to church they are more likely to hide those aspects of their lives that don’t line up with Christianity. This atmosphere of “righteousness” prevents people from talking about their sinful tendencies and sin becomes a hidden struggle that one must deal with on his own. Obviously church is the last place you would reveal your sexual struggles or your substance abuse or hate and anger toward someone. Then everyone would know we are not truly Christians no matter how much we want to belong.

But what if we emphasized the true definition of salvation—that we are sinners in need of a Savior? What if it didn’t mean that you were a terrible Christian if you failed and sinned? What if, instead, acknowledging your sin in a community of Christians and asking for help to overcome the sin so that you can be pleasing to your Savior made you a strong Christian? If that became the church’s identity, when someone in the church sinned, non-Christians would not see it as inconsistent with the church’s message because the message of the church and the purpose of the church would be that we are sinners working together to live righteously before our God. We will fail but our deep repentance and forward progression would identify us as children of God rather than our apparent (feigned) sinlessness. When the church publicly dismisses people that sin from being part of the Body, it accomplishes 2 things:

1. It drives those in the church that are struggling with sin into a deeper and more secret battle that they will have a difficult time overcoming on their own.
2. It creates an image of hypocrisy when those who adamantly preach against sinners inevitably sin themselves. This turns people away from Christianity.

Now, I’m not at all saying that sin should be taken lightly. It irritates me when preachers stand up and rattle off all their sins and shortcomings like acknowledging them is something to be proud of. Sin is an offense against a holy God and should be grieved. Those who love God should mourn when they fail Him. But they must then acknowledge the power of their salvation and the power that the Holy Spirit gives us to overcome sin.