Thoughts on Community (part 2) {Thinking Theology}

I felt it was high-time we made it back around to community.  (If you missed part 1 be sure to check it out!).  I'm going to start titling these posts focused on spiritual growth: {Thinking Theology}. 

At church we've been going through a section of our Mission of God series that our pastors are calling "The Gospel in Real Life".  They then attach a focus to the end of that like "eating" or "bless" or "education".  The point they are trying to make is the fact that the gospel affects everything in our lives.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

When was the last time you really thought about how your relationship with Christ affects the way you eat?  I know I've thought about it with regards to being thankful, but what about using the time spent around the table as a focused, gospel-centered time?  Then to have this same thing affect the realm of your finances.  Pastor Luis shared that we are "blessed to be a blessing" and not blessed without an outward focus. Too many times I've found myself blessed with something and haven't thought past my own good fortune to think how my blessing could bless others.

I've really begun to see how viewing this life in light of God's Kingdom changes everything.  I'm no longer content to walk around blind to the fact that all things are to revolve around God.  I feel like Christian society today is too easily divided.  We have the secular realm where we do business, live life, eat food, and spend our free time as we please, and then we have the sacred realm where we are "good Christians" who attend church, talk about spiritual things, and generally live "better" than most.  Is that what true Christianity is about? 

I just don't think so.

Christ is our perfect example and I can't say that He separated his life into two realms.  In fact, He was the embodiment of living fully in all ways of life.  The pharisees were always so quick to watch Him and critique who He ate with, how He spent his time, and what He was saying but they never fully saw that He was modeling life for their sake (for our sake as well).  Christ ate with sinners and tax collectors (Mark 2:13-17).  Do we realize who those people were?  They were the outcast, the maligned - the rejected of society and He was sharing a meal with them (think Luke 7:36-49 /John 8/John 4:1-45).  You could equate a tax collector to a secret service agent (someone known for protecting the nation) selling national secrets and being known as a traitor.  Christ was having dinner with that guy.

Do we even invite our unsaved neighbors in for dinner?

For me, this is where all this talk of community is launched into overdrive with purpose.  The beauty of living our entire lives in light of the gospel is that we get to do this together (and that's not even mentioning the Holy Spirit...)!  Christ saved us as a people for himself [more on this in another post] and because of that we are live as a people - redeemed and always ready to give an answer for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15).

How beautiful that Christ not only gave us himself as a sacrifice but as an example too! 

There is so much to say about community but the point I'll leave you with today is this: does the gospel affect every area of your life?  Or have you relegated it to Sunday mornings or a Tuesday night Bible study?  Are you living effectively in your neighborhoods or at your jobs to be an example and a blessing to your neighbors and coworkers?  How are you (or can you) partner with Christians in your area to love those people and show them that you care for them - not to fulfill some heavenly quota of "people saved" but to truly reach out and share the Good News with them? 

I would love to hear creative ways that you have found to reach out to those living near you or those who you work with.  I'll share some ways in my next {Thinking Theology} post!

cheap imitation

Today at church it really hit me that Jesus, showing His humanity, asked God if the cup (God's wrath) could pass from Him but Jesus made it very clear that it wasn't what He wanted but rather what God wanted.  "Yet not what I will, but what you will."  (Mark 14:36b)  That hit so close to my heart for some reason this morning.  I wrote down the question: How many times do I say, "Not what You will but what I will."  Instead of getting it the other way around I ask for my will, not God's.  


That breaks my heart because I know it's not just something that I struggle with - it's something humanity struggles with.  Our perspective is off.  We view the world around us in such a limited way.  We say "this is what I want and this is what will make me happy" but we choose the wrong thing(s).  Instead of lasting happiness and security, we pick things like wealth which diminishes, beauty which fades, and momentary pleasure which stops satisfying much to quickly to be of any good.   Sure, these things seem like the answer at the time, but they are quickly exposed for what they truly are - a cover up.  A band-aid.  A cheap imitation.

We have to re-focus; adjust our perspective to put Christ at the center.

I love photography and when you take a picture, what you focus on is so important.  In fact, it shapes the entire point and purpose of the photo.  When I look at a portrait I've taken and notice that the eyes aren't in focus it pretty much ruins the while picture.  What good is it if the ear is in focus but the eyes aren't?  The same is true with our walk with God.  What good is it if we have only one aspect of our relationship with God in focus while everything else is left blurry?  


I want to sharpen my focus on the important things, the things that make up the picture.  It wont help me to hone in on certain aspects of my life if Jesus and the cross are out of focus.  I hope that my passion for taking photos will help me to remember where my focus needs to be.  Every time I got to take a shot I want to be reminded that the same idea will be helpful in my own life.   Focusing on Him will lead me to put everything else into focus.


 

renewed, refreshed, refocused

Do you ever have those days when you feel like you're just going through the motions?  Where you find yourself questioning your own motivations, wondering if what you hold so strongly as your beliefs are truth or are maybe founded on something wrong?  I know I have those days...sometimes those weeks, but today, for some reason, I started assessing what founds that initial questioning.  What makes me look around and wonder, "Is this real?".  I'm sure there is more than one answer to that, and yet I think...actually no, I know there is really only one answer to it - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

There are a lot of things we do - as Christians, as humans, as friends, as lovers, as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers...you name it, and there is generally something associated with that role.  For me, being raised in a Christian home and accepting Christ as a small child, I felt I was 'expected' to act/live a certain way.  You know, the 'good girl' thing.  It's not that my parents forced this on me, it was just my understanding of being a Christian at that time in my life.  It took me 'growing up' and going to college to realize that my faith couldn't exist just because my parents said it did.  As much as I respect them and look up to them as pillars of faith in my life, I knew I couldn't rely on their beliefs as if it were my own and call it good.  I had to accept my faith as personal; a relationship between Jesus and I.  Recognizing that, I found myself growing in leaps and bounds as I became saturated in His word and spent time with Him in prayer.  I stopped looking to others to gain my faith from and instead turned to God to establish His word in my heart and to answer my questions through scripture.

Years later, I can look back on those initial growth spurts and smile - completely seeing the hand of God through all of those times!  But, I also see times where I struggled.  It wasn't always easy to believe and I didn't always find the answers to my questions right away.  I did notice that in the times where I was struggling the most, there was one thing I overlooked every time.

I forgot who I was.  And, unfortunately, I still have times where forget who I am.

Maybe that sounds a little existential, but what I mean by that is the minute I start looking to myself to try and make sense of life, I forget Who is really in control.  It's so easy to think that the life I'm living is just all a performance when you conveniently forget what the purpose of life really is.  Based solely on a human understanding, life could be about making yourself happy and doing things so that you live your life 'satisfied'.  But then I think of all of the things in my life that are supposed to make me happy and remember that they don't - not completely.  Friends are great and money is nice and relationships can make you feel happy and fulfilled for a time, but what happens when those things don't work out?  When your friends can't hang out with you and your pay check doesn't quite stretch far enough and when your boyfriend dumps you?  Then what?

Then you're left to yourself and your own thoughts and that's a scary place.  No matter the amount of time I could take to 'make myself' be a better person, there is no way that I could actually accomplish anything worth noticing.  Sure, I could give money away, feed the poor, help an elderly neighbor get her cat out of a tree... you name a good thing and I could do it, but doing all of those things would get to be so tiring!  I know I couldn't keep it up for long and then I would be right back where I started - feeling purposeless and hopeless.

The beautiful thing in the midst of all of this is a simple word: grace.  Getting to the place where you recognize that you can't do anything to be good is exactly the place where Jesus meets you and says you don't have to do anything!  In fact, all you have to do is accept that He already did it all.

Maybe it's just me, but this always seems too good to be true.

But it's not!  In the midst of those times of questions and wondering if my life is headed in the right direction the answer to all of this is as simple as reminding myself of the gospel.  It answers every question I may have.  It puts me in the right place - recognizing that I am a sinner and don't deserve to be saved, but then comes along side me and lifts me up saying that I don't have to deserve anything.  And then, at the end of it all, it promises that Christ will always be with me, helping me, strengthening me, and guiding me through all of my life.  Through the good and through the bad.  I'm not alone and I'm not purposeless.

The gospel has renewed me.  It has refreshed me.  It has (and will always) drawn me near to the Lord and that is the best, most peace-filled place to be.  It's what I choose to focus on.

Check out James 4:1-10

Paul - why so serious?

To me, Paul (the apostle), seems so...serious.  And I don't mean that to sound as if it's a bad thing, so much as its just something I've observed as I've been reading through Acts recently.  I have a feeling most of the disciples were actually this way - not all the time, I'm sure, but in general.

When I ask myself why that is, I'm faced with a hard truth.  I believe the main reason is because they understood the gravity of the gospel.  They saw and experienced its miraculous, transforming power and felt an urgency that most of us can't even grasp.

We are so caught up in "us".  Faced with the idea that the gospel means more than "our next thing" doesn't shake us.  I sometimes think it doesn't even touch us.  Paul was ready to die "for the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 21:13) and nothing - not his closest friends or co-workers in Christ - could convince him to choose himself first.  And they definitely tried (Acts 21:4,11).

How different that is from us.

What price have we (or have I) paid for the gospel in our lives?  What hard decisions have we let ourselves get out of by the convincing statements of our family or friends?  Have we allowed ourselves to slip into complacency with regards to the truth?

I hope not.

I don't want to be that person!  I want to understand that there is nothing more precious, nothing more valid, and nothing more relevant than the gospel and what that means to our world.  I want everything in my life to be ordered in such a way that it all reflects and revolves around Jesus.  I guess, in a word, I want to be totally surrendered to Him.

I'll leave you with a few lines from a wonderful hymn...

All to Jesus, I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live

I surrender all, I surrender all,
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.