discipleship

Following God One Yes At A Time

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Cesar felt abandoned by his dad and betrayed by life.  By the time he was 25 years old, Cesar was angry all the time, running with a bunch of tough guys, working a dead-end job and looking for life playing soccer for five Toronto teams.  His mother began attending a church and three teenagers came to visit him.  Mary told him, “He  loves you; He died in your place to pay for your sins; He wants to come in to your life.  Will you let Him in?”  When the truth about Jesus was shared with him Cesar invited Jesus into his life and he began a new journey into God’s provision for a changed life.

It was soon tested.  Connie Cavanaugh writes about that first test in Following God One Yes At a Time:

Even though he felt different, like something had happened to him when he hasked Jesus in, Cesar didn’t think it would last.  Nothing ever had.  But the next day, on the soccer filed, a strange thing happened.  A player on the opposing team, a new guy who obviously didn’t know Cesar’s reputation, tripped him and then, for good measure, kicked him in the ribs.  Everybody froze. Neither team wanted to miss the beating Cesar would deliver once he got back on his feet.

Jumping up and facing his attacker Cesar balled his fists but before he could take a swing, something stopped him.  God loves you and gave His Son to die for you, he remembered.  You are a new creation.  His hands relaxed.  He shook his head and told his opponent who was crouching, ready to defend himself, “Iss okay, man.  Fogedaboudid.  Less play.”  He ran back to his position.  Shockwaves rippled across the field.  Cesar’s first Christ-like act generated so much buzz that he eventually introduced almost every player on his team to Jesus.  Nobody had told Cesar not to fight; it was the voice of the Holy Spirit he heard and said yes to.  He was beginning to grow in the simple way God designed–one simple, immediate, possible yes at a time.

It’s stories like this that  inspired me as I read Connie Cavanaugh’s book Following God One Yes At a Time: Overcoming the 6 Barriers That Hold You Back.  The life stories from her own life and that of her family and friends readily illustrate the biblical truth she presents to help us take a first step in following Christ again when we have gotten stuck.  God wants us to keep in step with Him.  But at different times in our lives we may find that we have a our feet nailed to the floor by fear, pride, guilt, shame, comparison or doubt.

Connie, who previously authored From Faking It to Finding Grace, has given us an book that is fuel for faith.  She celebrates discipleship in real life by rooting faith in two Gospel realities:  1)  Following Jesus is a call to say “Yes” to Him everyday of our lives.  And 2)  God is faithful to reveal Himself and provide enough for us to move on. You can learn more about this Canadian author at http://www.conniecavanaugh.com .  I enjoyed Connie’s book and was equipped and inspired to follow God one “Yes” at a time!

the first problem with a grudge

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Have you ever found yourself in a thought-loop unable to get your mind on something else?  Really its worse than the time I was unable to find my way out of Oklahoma City.  Around and around I drove for what seemed like an eternity trying to find the way out of that city and head back towards Fort Worth.  I was trying to leave but couldn’t find the way.

The problem with a grudge though, is that we aren’t trying to leave.  We harbour, nurse, feed our offendedness with rationalistic reasons for why we are right to feel the way we do and to keep holding onto it.  Before we know it a root of bitterness and resentment has turned into a habitual way of relating in relationships  making us over-sensitive, proud, and very self-righteous.  I know, I’ve been there.

As we have been reading through Mark in our journey with Jesus at Cityview I have been surprised at the way Mark correlates Jesus’ teaching with Jesus’ activity.  This pattern is evident in the text associated with Palm Sunday.

A.  Jesus enter Jersusalem as a triumphant king and proceeds to the temple where he looks around.  Mark 11:1-11

B.  The next day, Jesus examines a fig tree for fruit, and finding none, judges it.  11:1-17

C.  Jesus returns to the Temple and clears the Court of Gentiles, and announces that the redemptive purpose of the temple is not being fulfilled:  Is it not written, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?” But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’  Mark 11:13-19

D.  The chief priests and teachers are deeply offended and begin to seek in earnest a way to get rid of Jesus.

E.   The Disciples observe the withered fig tree and Peter is astonished.

E.  Jesus addresses two concerns He has for the Disciples:
1.  Faith-full prayer/conversation with God.
2.  Forgiveness in prayer of any people with whom they might hold an offense.

I believe Jesus recognizes a challenge for the disciples that will keep them from realizing their full redemptive potential in His Kingdom.  In the course of the ministry with Him, Jesus’ disciples will run into confrontations with people.  The Kingdom of God and the Gospel of Jesus confronts what is wrong in the world:  unbelief, abandonment to the flesh, idolatry, misuse of God’s gifts, and the abuse of people.  The disciples  had just accompanied Jesus on such a foray and I believe it would have been easy for them to hold “something” against the people who were now planning Jesus’ death.

An enemy thinks the world would be a better place without you.  And clearly these enemies of Jesus were headed down that path.  However, Jesus would have nothing to do with holding a grudge, planting bitterness, and nursing resentment.

In the future, these disciples of Jesus confronting a world of unbelief and opposition at times to the Gospel would discover that the world would not change as quickly as they might have hoped.  The now-but-not-yet nature of the Kingdom of God meant that they must look forward with faith in a good God who does complete what He says that he would complete.  Even Israel in celebration of the Passover where called out in this week to persist in their faith that God would prevail.  They must not retreat into despair or un-believing doubting prayer.  I do not believe the issue here is whether or not the disciples believed God could do something miraculous.  The real issue was in doubting the fundamental nature of God as one who cares.  Faith-full believing prayer maintains the revealed character of God in His Word as fundamentally good.  It is this quiet confidence and faith then that allows us to engage the sovereignty of God with faith in prayer.  His “no,” “yes,” or “wait” can be accepted and trusted.

And it is this observation that brings us to the first problem with a grudge.  We want to believe that a grudge or resentment is first and foremost a problem between me and the person, or me and the company, or me and that race of people, or me and individual in the past.  But Jesus makes a grudge or sensitive offendedness to a first and foremost a problem between me and God.

“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”  Mark 11:25

The first problem with a grudge toward a person is that it is a problem between me and God.  If I am holding something against another person and believing that they owe me, it is a problem between me and God.  And it is such a problem that I will not be able to fulfill the full redemptive purpose of God for my life.  Jesus tells me that God refuses to bless this course of action in my interior world.  A grudge will cause me to be as lifeless and fruitless as the fig tree Jesus examined the day before this teaching.  A grudge will cause me to be as cluttered, busy, and void of the redemptive purposes of God as Israel was in the Court of the Gentiles.  A grudge, you see, is actually an persistent act of unbelief and treats the Gospel of Jesus’ grace, God’s unmerited choosing, as something small, trite, and of little consequence.  God will not bless grudge keeping, bitterness, and nursed resentments.  Unforgiveness keeps me from fulfilling the redemptive purposes of God and limits my generosity, kindness, compassion, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, joy, peace, self-control, and love.

What to do?

Well we can’t wait to forgive until the other person changes.  To pray is to change.  If I am in conversation with God I am the one called to forgive.  Choose over and over to say, “This person owes me nothing.”  I entrust them to God.  I entrust myself to God’s grace in the Gospel of Jesus.  God has abundantly blessed me…I can afford to extend such grace to others…even to others who wish ill of me.   Jesus has shown us how, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Our challenge is that because most of us who are habitually confronted with our ability to keep a grudge rarely enter into that pain because of our commitment to Jesus’ mission, we fail to make the connection between grudges, grace, and our experience of God’s power.  Our experience of such pain derives mostly from unmetabolized pain in our past and/or from the irritants  that accompany daily relationships common to us all.

When we stand praying and God reminds us of a offense we are holding onto, he is inviting us to a new level of living and relationship in the Kingdom of His Son, Jesus Christ.

It is possible that unforgiveness can become such a mountain in our soul that we are not sure we will ever be free of it.  The 70 times 7 challenges to forgiveness have  shown me that forgiveness is sometimes a  process of growth and experience of Jesus grace.  Thankfulness for the other person(s), Surrender of myself to God, Interecssion for God to bless the other person(s), and then finally imagining what the full redemptive work of Jesus’ grace could look like.  On the later, let me paint the picture I have:  Seated at the banquet table of heaven we raise our glasses to toast Jesus, the King of Kings, but instead he begins to toast us…he makes his way to me and blesses me, toasts me, welcomes me to His table as a loved and cherished son…a tear slips down me cheek and Jesus reaches out to wipe it away…I turn away and find that beside me is one who was an enemy, recognition crosses our eyes in an instant, and all I can think to say is, “Jesus is awesome isn’t He?”

the compassion of Jesus

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I enjoy Open Table.  When we share the meal and time together as brothers and sisters inThe Compassion of Jesus Christ  on Thursdays at Cityview for our community meal I get really excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives.  Plus we have really good food!  This week we prepared ourselves for the Lord’s Supper by reflecting on the compassion of Jesus.  Its really a bit surprising.  Our cultural disposition is quite accusatory towards those who preach.  But when it came to compassion that’s exactly what Jesus did.

You see compassion is to be moved toward another person by the reality of their condition.  In this case Jesus arrived on the other side of the lake with his tired and hungry disciples seeking a quiet place.  But instead of quiet they found a crowd.  Jesus “saw the large crowd and had compassion on them because they were sheep without a shepherd.  So he began teaching them many things.”

Obviously Jesus was an entertaining teacher; he taught through the day and past dinner.  But more than that was going on.  He recognized that the most desperate hunger of the crowd’s souls could only be met by truth, by Him, by the good news of His Kingdom.  So he taught them.  The truth could set them free.  Now before you shut Jesus and the church off, see what happens next in the account from Mark.

The disciples, probably being really hungry themselves, recognized that the crowds of people where in a desperate situation for food.  They were away from the towns and villages and the families that had spent the day with Jesus were now very hungry.  The Disciples wanted Jesus to send them away.  This is not compassion.  The disciples were not moved toward the people.  Rather, once they recognized the condition of the crowd, the disciples wanted to be done with them.  I love what happened next.

Jesus told the disciples to feed the crowd.  When they protested that it would cost eight months of wages, Jesus told them to see “what they had.”  In other words Jesus told them go find out what this community had.  When they came back with five loaves and two fish, Jesus took this community offering and fed them all.  They collected twelve baskets of leftovers.  Now that’s hard to believe.  And in case you are wondering the disciples had a hard time accepting Jesus’ authority of nature as well.  Just notice that even within the next twelve hours they were astonished that Jesus had this kind of authority.

My observations here are about the compassion of Jesus.  1.  He was moved towards people because of their condition:  their interior world was lacking  truth, specifically the truth about Him and the Kingdom; so, he taught them.  2.  He was moved towards people because of their condition the physical reality of hunger; so, he had his disciples gather what was already present in the community and share it beyond what one would have thought possible.

I believe Jesus was nurturing the spiritual motives necessary for His disciples to be a movement:  Complete trust and dependence in Him and compassion for the lost.  If we are to join Jesus in His work we must ask the Holy Spirit to nurture these motives in us.  Otherwise, we will keep our mouths shut in a culture that is suspect of truth proclamations and we will run away from people whose needs exceed what we have in our pockets.  Two aspects of our ministry of the gospel of the Kingdom that must be held together tightly:  proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus’ grace and the sharing of our community’s resources in the name, power, and character of Jesus.  Clearly Glenn Beck is not the first to struggle with Jesus’ ability to hold these two realities together, nor will he be the last.

Identity videos used on the weekend

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I have had several inquiries about the videos used on the weekend in Part 3 of our series, Renew my Life Lord!  This week we are exploring how to battle our spiritual amnesia by “remembering who you are and who’s you are.”  You can watch the videos below.

integrity test: will I stand with the friends of Jesus?

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Here’s the reality:  there are forces subtly and not so subtly arraigned to divide the friends of Jesus from Him and from each other.  The disciples experienced this pressure early on when Jesus called Levi, the tax collector to follow Him.

Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.  “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.  Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners.’?”  Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  Luke 5:27-32

The party has been crashed.  The Pharisees are making a scene.  And Matthew (Levi) stands to be embarrassed.  Perhaps the music stopped and everyone gets quiet to see what would happen next.  Its Matthew’s party…but its Jesus who gets in the face of the Pharisees and challenges their self-righteousness with a statement of defence crafted not on the merits of the tax collectors and sinners, but rather on the merits of His own mission.  Jesus will not be divided from the people He has called out even when others call them down.

In our setting, self-righteousness comes in many forms and has many preachers.  The “new” self-righteousness may not be religious, but may actually pride itself in not being religious.  This self-righteous non-religiosity creates a pressure that can divide many followers of Jesus from living an integrated life.  It happens on Monday morning.  “Hey, how was your weekend.”  Great.  “What did you do?”  uhm…watched the game, went hiking with the family…

What’s missing?  A vibrant confession:  “I got to hang out with some friends who have been accepted by Jesus Christ and consider how God is making a difference in… I’m amazed that this group of imperfect, diverse, people are drawn to Jesus and have been given life.  I’m really happy to be a part of this group.”  

Or whatever…but that’s the integrity test.  Its in the subtle ways we avoid pressure, question, conflict, and therefore never create the space to address one of the hot deafeaters of faith in Jesus:  the weaknesses and failings of Jesus’ own people.  Unless we confess with absolute joy and awe at what Jesus has done in accepting us–all of us who call Him Lord, then we will rarely have the opportunity to proclaim the gospel as a way of living that is neighter religious or irreligious, moral or immoral.  Unless we celebrate the mission of Jesus to us–to meet the sick and to heal them–and to call the sinners to repentance–then we will struggle on Mondays and Tuesdays and Fridays–and even Sundays to stand with the church.