A Time To Stand

My heart is both sad and challenged as I write this blog. I believe that June 26, 2015 will stand as a day of great significance in the history of the Church of Christ in the United States of America. On this date, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges, by a 5-4 majority, that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out of State. I love our country and I am fiercely loyal to our nation and what it stands for in this world ... but I cannot stand in agreement with this interpretation. I find myself in the position of the apostles of old as they faced oppressive pagan authorities who attempted to thwart the spreading of the Gospel - “I must obey God rather than man.” Acts 5:29 In my opinion, this court has disregarded thousands of years of defining marriage as a God-ordained union between one man and one woman, and the affect it will have upon our culture will be broad and impactful. In the light of this monumental interpretation by the highest court in our land, we must articulate what we believe about marriage. We must not define marriage in terms of values or culture alone. Our challenge is to talk about marriage the way Jesus and the apostles did. Marriage must be seen as a picture of the union of Christ and his church (Eph. 5:32). Scripture defines marriage solely in terms of the union of a man and a woman (e.g., Matthew 19:4–6; Mark 10:5–9; cf. Genesis 1:27–28, 2:20–24; Ephesians 5:21–32). Not only that, Scripture prohibits same-sex intercourse (Romans 1:26–27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10; cf. Leviticus 18:22, 20:13). When it comes to same sex marriage, the Scripture stands clear and uncompromising. So then, must we. At the same time, we must lace our convictions with love. We must stand with conviction and with kindness, with truth and with grace, with strength and with love. We must hold to our values and love those who hate us for them. We must not only speak Christian truths; we must speak with Christian love. We must make certain that we convey our truth with mercy and with an invitation to new life in Christ. The early church ministered under an oppressive pagan empire and grew in power, strength and numbers. We can too. Lastly, we must intensify our prayer for this great nation. I am reminded of the challenge found in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.” (NLT) So, let us stand ... let us love ... let us pray! Can you say amen?

God Help Us To Reach Out

We live in a sea of people who do not yet know Christ. There are enough people in our community to fill up every church fifty times. This is one reason that I find transfer church growth so distasteful. It is critical that we are more interested in reaching the lost than growing our church. I am not sure how interested God is in growing our church; but He has proven how He feels about reaching the lost. He proved His heart at Calvary. It is a matter of priorities. Let’s face it, if we reach the lost we will not be able to stop our church from growing. If on the other hand we strive just to grow our church we may find ourselves wandering lost in the forest of other peoples’ methodologies and miss altogether God’s plan for reaching the lost in our own culture and more specifically in our own community. When I speak of community I am not just speaking of people who live near our church. In today’s society, community has more to do with culture and less to do with geographic proximity. I believe God wants to reach the lost in our community more than we do. If this is true then it stands to reason that He has a plan to reach them. This is why we developed Connecting Points in our church. I believe that the principles of Connecting Points will lead you to that specific plan. Every believer is a minister of God. As we embrace this powerful truth, we can expect our Wonderful Lord to direct our path. We can reach our sphere of influence. God help us to Reach Out!

Let’s Talk Potential

Let’s Talk Potential! God made us with different levels of potential. This is made clear in Jesus’ story of the talents in Matthew Chapter 25. Here the Master, before going on His journey, left one with five talents, one with two talents and yet another with one. The first point is found in verse 15. He gave every man according to his “several ability” or, stated differently, according to his potential. God is the one who gives the potential and everyone has different levels. The second point is that God only requires productivity that is proportionate to the potential that He gives. The scripture declares “To whom much is given much will be required” (Luke 12:48). God did not require five from the one He gave two. The one who produced two received the same accolades as the one who produced five. It is clear that the man who was given one would have received the same if he had produced only one more. Why? They each have different levels of potential. What does the Lord require of us? The answer is to reach our full potential by simply being what God made us to be and doing what God made us to do. Our potential is always changing. Notice the three men in Jesus’ parable. Focus on the fluctuation of their potential. The man with five worked to reach his full potential and developed another five. Now he has ten. The one with two earned two more. His potential is now at four. Their potential has grown because of their faithfulness. The man with five grew even further because the master gave him one more. What about the man with one? His potential decreased. The master took his talent and gave it to the faithful man that reached his full potential. Can you see the pattern? The principle goes like this. If we are faithful to work hard and reach our full potential; our potential actually increases. If we just stand by and embrace status quo; we lose the potential we once had. Use it or lose it! You can see that the possibilities are endless. Imagine with me the man with five talents. He reaches his full potential and he now has eleven. What will happen if he now reaches his full potential with eleven? Now he has twenty four. He’s faithful with that…well, you do the math. The point is it really starts to get exciting when we reach our full potential.

The Joy Of Connecting

God is all about connecting. He wants to connect with us and He wants us to connect with each other. God wants us to connect to the community so they can connect to Him. You and I will never be happier than when we are fulfilling God’s dream for our lives. We will never have more joy than when we are connecting with God, connecting to others, and when we can connect others to the Lord. There is genuine joy in connecting. It stands to reason that if God is all about connecting, He wants us to be a Connecting Point for Him. We live in a sea of people who do not yet know Christ. There are enough people in your community to fill up every church in your town fifty times. God revealed the principles of connecting when I hungered to see people come to faith, not just to grow our church. Did you get that? It is critical that we are more interested in seeing people come to faith than growing our church. I am not sure how interested God is in growing our church, but He has proven how He feels about connecting with people. He proved His heart at Calvary. It is a matter of priorities. If we connect people with God, we will not be able to stop our church from growing. On the other hand, if we strive to grow our church, we may find ourselves wandering lost in the forest of methodologies. We may also miss God’s plan for our culture, and more specifically, for our community. When I speak of community, I am not speaking of people who live near your church. In today’s society, community has more to do with culture and less to do with geographic proximity. I believe God wants to connect with people in your community more than you do. If this is true, then it stands to reason that God has a plan to reach them. I believe the Holy Spirit will lead you to that specific plan. Once you engage the plan, you will find the joy of connecting.

Your Dreams Come True

Do you remember when you first gave your heart to the Lord and became born again? You realized that old things were passed away and everything was brand new. Those were marvelous days as you explored your new life in Christ. There were days of hope and vision. There were days of dreaming about your future with the Lord. You were aware that God had a plan for your life and you believed, somehow, He would make your dreams come true. The fact of the matter is, when a person accepts Christ as their Lord and Savior they are changed on the inside. There are many things that happen. We are forgiven of our sins. We get a brand new start in life. Our names are written in the Lambs book of life. One of the most significant things that will happen is God will put a dream in our hearts. He impregnates us with the vision He had in His heart before we were ever born. Long before you were conceived in your mother’s womb, God had a plan for your life. He had something for you to do for Him during your time on earth. God made you with this plan in mind. He gave you just the right gifts and abilities to afford you the opportunity to be successful in His plan for you. When you accepted Christ, God planted this vision and this dream in your heart. You could see yourself serving God and fulfilling the dream. Oh, the wondrous days of dreams and visions. What happened to those days? What is it about the cares of this life that cause us to lose touch with the dream God planted in our hearts? What is it about life’s troubles that cause us to lose sight of the vision we know is from Him? I want to declare that God has not given up on the dream He placed in your heart. God wants to make our dreams come true. God will make your dreams come true. God has a plan for your life that includes you having a ministry that connects people to Him.

Let’s Empower People To Serve

The mission of the Pastor is to empower people to develop a ministry by connecting with people in the community and, in turn, connecting them with God. This is accomplished when people operate in their gifting by doing what they have a passion for and doing it for the Lord. Is that it? Is that all God requires? Why would God require something of people that He never equipped them to do? That is what religion does. God would never do that. Christ’s heart in this matter is revealed in Mark 14:1-9. When the woman anointed Christ at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, some were troubled. The perfume she poured over Jesus’ head was “very expensive”. They objected because of what seemed to them to be a waste. When Jesus heard their murmurings, He rebuked them and expressed His pleasure with what she had done by saying “Leave her alone … she has done what she could.”(Verse 6) What pleased God? She could not do everything, and there were some things that others could do that she could not. But what she could do...she did do. Think about this. God was pleased when she did what she had potential to do. She reached her potential and that was enough for God. It was true then, and it is true now. So relax! This is supposed to be a journey of joy. God will never require anything of you that He does not provide the means whereby it can be accomplished. So, let’s get out there and empower others to “do what they can” for our Wonderful Lord.

Messy Christianity

I must say, as I look at Jesus’ building relationships, that it is time consuming, requires an intentional willingness to see where people can be and not just where they are now and at times can just be messy. Jesus looked into the eyes of rough fishermen and saw that they could become apostles. We must be willing to do the same thing. We must look around us and see those people who can shine like stars if someone is willing to invest in them. If we are going to connect with one another, we must be willing to make room for one another, our idiosyncrasies, our personalities, and sometimes even our faults. We ought to bear with one another. We ought to build relationships with one another. None of us are perfect. We all have issues, and we all have difficulties in our lives. We all need friends. We all need someone to look after us. We all need someone to look after. There is fulfillment in relationship. The scripture tells us that we’re to have hearts of compassion, that we’re to have hearts of love, that we’re to have kindness and humility and gentleness towards one another. We are to even feel this way toward those who have complaints against us. In other words, find the people you can connect with and connect with them. We’ve all had problems; we’ve all failed in many ways. The point is we should connect with one another and we should bear one another’s burdens because Jesus has chosen to do that with us. When we read the Gospels we see how often the disciples blew it, fell short, let Jesus down, showed little faith, and Jesus still connected with them. He still found reason to disciple them and keep them in the circle. At times they all showed faithlessness. But Jesus kept His relationship with His disciples. His kindness should be a catalyst, a motivation, to reach out to one another in kindness. We must find people with similar interests and connect with them. It is the responsibility for every Christian to build strong relationships with other Christians and pre-Christians ... even if it gets messy.