How Much Is Enough?

It's not enough to know that God loves us with an unrelenting, unreasonable, all-consuming love. We must also know that we love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

How can we know God's love for us? We know God's love for us when we begin to realize the incredible sacrifice God made when he came to earth in human form, fully entering into the human condition (yet without sin), suffered for no wrong of us own and died. We know God's love for us when we begin to realize that his death was not because wicked men nailed him to a cross but because he climbed on that cross of his own free will to take our sins to the grave.

How can we know that we love him? Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commands." (John 14:15) And then he said, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:12-13)

Gary Smalley says that life is all about relationships. Everything else is just details. To love God and to love people is what a huge chunk of the Bible is all about. God's great love for us is another huge chunkf. The rest of it is about what happens when human beings fail to do either of those and what God has to say about it.

Tradition tells us that St. John the Beloved would go around from church to church the same message over and over, "Little children, love one another." One day, someone who was tired of hearing John repeat himself so much asked John, "Brother, don't you have anything else to say to us?" John replied, "When you've learned that lesson, then we'll move on to the next."

O God, may your Church be filled with the love of Christ. And may we be rescued from the insipid and shallow love foisted upon us by our own carnality.

Tea & Books

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enought to suit me." C.S. Lewis

Worship & Passion

Everyone worships something or someone. It's built into our very nature as human beings. The issue we face is not whether or not we are going to worship but what or whom it is we shall worship.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the one human beings have been designed to worship. It seems that something in us has become corrupt because, on our own, we do not seem to give ourselves naturally to worshiping the Yahweh God. When... or should i say... Because we do not, our lives are unbalanced and "wobbly." When our lives are not centered on the Lord God, we're like wheels that spin awkwardly and even crazily because they are off center. Life is worship. Worship is life. And like an off-center wheel, the wheel may work fine for a while but the wheel, as long as it is off-center, is eventually damaged and even destroyed. Our lives fail when our worship is off-center.

Jesus came to reset our center even though it is our own fault that we have lost our center.

The thing about worship in much of the Church today is that it is still off-center. We want to sing particular songs and pray a particular way and hear certain kinds of sermons/teachings because of how they make us feel. We want to feel the presence of God. We think feeling good is feeling God's presence. We equate our emotional charge with God's presence. Never mind that Jesus said that worshipers must worship God in spirit and in truth... and that nothing about how we feel is indicated.

It's not that God is against emotions and feelings. God himself has feelings and emotions. Jesus wept. Jesus had compassion. Jesus demonstrated anger. But these things were not what drove Jesus in his mission, in his life, in his worship.

Many Christians pray for and emphasize the need for our passions to be stirred. We're supposed to love God passionately, follow God passionately, worship God passionately. But are we just worshiping passion? We would do well to either redefine "passion" for ourselves or just drop it all together. (The ancients warned against passion.) The operative word is not "passionate." Rather, we should focus on the words Love, Follow, Worship.

Maybe the Church in America should throw out its emphasis on being being passionate and, instead, emphasize Christ's passion. Every Christian, by definition, is a follower of Christ. We are to follow Christ in his passion. This brings us to the big question - What was Christ's passion? If Christians would follow Christ in his passion, our worship and our lives would look very different. The Church might even look like Christ.

May our worship be filled with the passion of Christ. May the passion of Christ consume our lives.

A God Without Wrath

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. - H. Richard A. Neibuhr

Resolved

Well, i guess i did make resolutions. For some reason, the four i listed keep coming back to mind. So i intend to be intentional about these things.

And Christians need to be intentional. We can't change people. And there are a lot of situations we can't change. But we can decide on what we will desire and pursue those desires. The choices we make indicate what our true desires are.

The only way i know that i can make any lasting changes within me is if i am in constant communion with God. Prayer is key - prayer that is in concert with the heart of God. God's heart is revealed in the scriptures. If I am going to succeed in these resolutions, they must be directed by God's heart and I must be energized by God's Spirit.

Isn't that how Jesus lived?

What's New?

I've never been one for New Year's resolutions. I've just kinda figured if i was going to begin something or start something new or even restart something, why wait... ? But if i was going to make New Year's resolutions, here are some i'd make...

1. I'm going to love more extravagangtly and sacrificially. While i don't think you have to be more loving in order to sacrifice more, i don't see how anyone can love more without sacrificing more. In fact, it seems to me that, unless sacrifice is for the sake of love, the value of the sacrifice is pretty small.

2. I'm going to read more. I'd love to say i'm going to read at least one book a week. There's so much to learn, so much that i need to learn. Mainly, i'd love to read more biographies and wisdom of some the ancients - Iraneus, Chrysostom, Augustine, Aristotle... what about some of the eastern writers? I need to know what these men (and probably some women) found out about God and life and goodness and love.

3. I'm going to be bolder in my faith. I'm going to pray more with people and share more intentionally and regularly with those who don't know Jesus Christ.

4. I'm going to quit procrastinating. 'nuff said.