Gospel

i am thankful for celebrate recovery

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Last night Cityview had its first public meeting of Celebrate Recovery.  CR is a recovery program based on the 8 Beatitudes of Jesus and the 12 Steps.  Our commitment to a LIFE vision of the follower of Jesus means that we believe every person can Find freedom in The Truth.  CR is part of that journey at Cityview now.  I am thankful for the ministry team that has stepped up for this new season at Cityview. 

One of my favorate authors on the process of knowing God and becoming like Jesus is Brennan Manning.  He writes and speaks often of the recovery that Jesus has given him.  In A Glimpse of Jesus:  The Stranger to Self-Hatred, Manning writes of the challenge of being free.

Two millennia later I find myself threatened, challenged, and exhilarated by Christ’s freedom from human respect, by his extraordinary independence, indomitable courage, and unparalleled authenticity.  In preaching the gospel I have been graced to speak fearless in the knowledge and conviction that the Word of God must not be fettered, compromised, or watered down; but in my personal life, my fears and insecurities continue to lead me voraciously to seek the approval of others, to assume a defensive posture when I’m unjustly accused, to feel guilty over refusing any request, to doggedly live up to others’ expectations, to be all things to all people in a way that would make St. Paul shudder.

I cannot free myself.  I must be set free.  Yes, the untrammeled freedom of Jesus disturbs me, his utter indifference to human respect makes me uncomfortable; but he invites me to make friends with my insecurities, smile at them, outgrow them in patient endurance, live with the serene confidence that he never abandons his friends even when we disappoint him….

It can be unequivocally stated that the central, most important theme in the personal life of Jesus–the theme that lies at the very heart of the revelation that he is–is his growing turst, intimacy, and love of he Abba, his heavenly Father.  The interior life of Christ was completely Father-centered.  The master clue for interpreting the gospel narrative, the foundation of Jesus’ compelling demands, the source of his towering zeal–was her personal experience of God as Abba.

The pearl of great price in my life, the most treasured gift I’ve ever received from Jesus is to come to know the Father.  “No one knows the the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those tho whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27).  Biblical scholar Joachim Jeremias did not hesitate to call this the central revelation of the New Testament.

Jesus brought a revolution in the understanding of God.

–select passages from p. 43-45, A Glimpse of Jesus:  The Stranger to Self-Hatred

My ultimate prayer for all those participating in Celebrate Recovery is that they would be set free by the grace and truth of Jesus to fully enjoy knowing their Heavenly Father.

Celebrate Recovery meets at Cityview on Wednesday Nights at 7 PM.

11 statements from James on the power of speech

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  1. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life God desires.  James 1:19-20
  2. If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.  James 1:26
  3. Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.  Mercy triumphs over judgment.  James 2:12-13
  4. The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts.  Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.  The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.  It corrups the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.  James 3:5-6
  5. …no man can tame the tongue.  It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.  James 3:8
  6. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.  Out of the both come praise and cursing.  My brothers, this should not be.  James 3:7-8
  7. What causes fights and quarrels among you?  Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  You want something but don’t get it.  You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.  You quarrel and fight.  You do not have, because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.  James 4:1-3
  8. Brothers, do not slander one another.  Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it.  James 4:11
  9. Now listen you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why you don not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  …as it is you boast and brag.  All such boasting is evil.  James 4:13-14, 16
  10. Above all, my brothers, do not swear–not by heaven or by earth or by anything else.  Let you “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, or you will be condemned.
  11. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.  James 5:17

more than a legacy

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I am excited about what God is doing in the WestCoast Baptist Association.  God is raising up a group of churches and leaders that love people from Hope to Victoria and want to see life-changing churches in every community.  I am glad for us to do our part in God’s assignment.  The video below is about the WBA More Than a Legacy giving campaign.  (Many thanks to Conrad Au for putting the video together.) Now is good time to give as our gifts will be matched through the generous offering of the Lam Foundation, here in Vancouver.  You can give on-line through www.vancouverfocus.ca

a matrix for identifying and empowering reliable people

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Last Sunday I preached from the hard-working farmer metaphor highlighted by Paul to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:1-10.  Paul directs Timothy to reflect on the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer in order to gain insight for investing his life and ministry in reliable people who will in turn be able to invest their lives in other people who in turn will be able to invest their lives in other people.  Paul envisions the Gospel life and message being passed on through a chain of discipleship.  A few years ago I developed a matrix from these three images for identiying and empowering reliable people for discipleship.  You can download the pdf: matrix-for-identifying-and-empowering-reliable-people-for-discipleship

habituated inactivity (blog action day — poverty)

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blog action day 2008

blog action day 2008

 How many times have I changed the channel when confronted with global scenes of human devastation?  I couldn’t even venture a guess.  We all have changed the channel at some point.  We have even hurried past another person who threatened to invade our precious sense of equilibrium. 

However I am concerned.  I’m not talking about donor fatigue.  I’m talking about sloth and its companion of hardness of thought;  continually choosing not to do the good that we know we should do, we begin to believe that we never were to do good with the poor at all.  One of the disturbing patterns of human behaviour is our ability to turn habitual actions into hardened character.  In respect to the under-resourced who are my neighbours locally and globally, I am troubled by how easily those of us “afflicted with affluence” habitually choose inactivity or passivity as a righteous decision.  I believe there are many self-justified reasons for choosing to “do nothing this time;” however what scares me about the lack of concern, care, or compassion is that with time the character of a person, community, church, or nation shifts in such a way that the “poor” cease to be persons but instead become a class or a caste.  It seems to me that whole systems of a society can conspire then to keep people in the confines of poverty in order for them or at least the resources of their geography to be available for the service of the ultra-affluent.  Because we are “not them” but “us” we then believe we are justified in our habituated inactivity.

Habituated inactivity is a justice issue.  Stirring a people to action and even identification with people captured by poverty requires a multi-facited strategy.  It is not enough to get us to give once a year.  We need sustained activity underwritten by clear beliefs regarding God, Humanity, and the Creation and by congruent core values regarding relationships, economics, work, and care for the “least of these.”  I believe that this sustained activity on behalf of the poor is best worked out in community and is meant to be part of the overflow of the transformed life that Jesus envisioned for His called out ones.  It is possible to shock people into an act of giving or debit deliverance in order “to relieve the conscience as quickly as possible.”  However in community the leaders of mercy have the opportunity to seek habitual activity on behalf of the poor or under-resourced in specific long-range relationships with individuals or communities.  In this way I hope habitual activity on behalf of the poor becomes hardened character from which we are not easily dissuaded, either by good times or the worst of times.