Thank You, Jesus.

Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal's death on a cross.

Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

-Philippians 2:6-11

Thank You, Jesus!!!

Jesus is Not a Weapon

Yesterday I stopped by the hospital to spend some time with my dad. When I got to his room, my dad wasn't there. A few minutes later, he came rolling in on his bed, chatting away with his nurse about everything under the sun, including politics and the economy. (Fortunately, while my dad's body is in pretty bad shape right now, his mind is still sharp!) The male nurse--about my dad's age--was clearly a liberal, and my dad being the staunch conservative that he is, it made for an amusing conversation, to say the least. After the nurse (somewhat jokingly) rebuked my dad for being a Rush Limbaugh listener, my dad changed the topic and said, "Let's talk about religion." Much to my surprise, the previously jovial countenance of the nurse turned rigid, and he blurted out, "The way I see it, believe in whatever makes you a better person, but if you're going to use religion as a weapon against me, I don't have time for it."

Wow...

I was shocked on multiple levels. First of all, during the discussion on politics, it had come out that this man was a devout Catholic. Now, here he was saying that people should simply believe whatever makes them a better person. In light of the postmodern world in which we live, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to hear yet another universal claim about the relativity of "truth," but seriously I still find it absolutely mind-blowing that people who claim to follow Jesus Christ refuse to acknowledge that he is the only Truth. I mean, did he cut John 14:6 out of his Bible or something? I don't understand...

Upon further discussion, the nurse actually gave his definition of the Gospel: social justice. (Take that Glenn Beck!) This devout Catholic man did volunteer work with the homeless and with drug addicts over at Hope Ministries in South Bend. To him, THAT was the Gospel. And, given passages like Matthew 25:31-46 (the sheep and the goats) and James 1:27 (true religion = caring for widows and orphans), it's somewhat hard to argue against the "social gospel." However, this version of the Gospel is incomplete, and when it leads to universalism, it's VERY incomplete. I felt sorry for this man and his misunderstanding of the Gospel.

Finally, the imagery of using religion as a weapon left a deep impression on me. No matter the religious affiliation, people of religion can be downright nasty sometimes...and often times Christians are the worst. We walk around hitting people over their heads with our Bibles and preaching condemnation and eternal damnation, all the while proudly steeped in our own self-righeousness. We loathe the "pagan" much like the New Testament Jews despised the Gentiles (ie. Acts 22). Somehow, we believe that we can hate people to Jesus. (Have we cut Matthew 5:43-48 out of our Bibles?) We're so messed up...

Lord, may it never be said of me that I used You as a weapon to hurt other people...

What if?

These questions have been haunting me recently:

What if I truly believed the things Jesus said? How would I live my life differently?

I get excited and scared thinking about the answer to these questions...and the implications for my life.

***Special thanks to The Tom Carpenter for ruining my life with these questions!!!

Walk as Jesus Did...

This morning as I was reading through 1 John, I came to this passage:

"But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." (1 John 2:5-6).

A pretty simple, yet incredibly difficult teaching, isn't it?

Last night I was hanging out with my buddy Justin at a Starbucks in Granger, and Justin got a call from one of his friends who wanted to hang out. I knew the kid as well, and my first response was, Oh great.... You see, this particular friend is just about as different as it gets from Justin or me. He does not love God. He hates his parents with a passion (always a hot topic of conversation when we're with him). He struggles with deep insecurities and depression. He's a 20-year-old practicing homosexual, currently in a relationship with a 42-year-old man. And that's just the start of the demonic strongholds in his life...

So here I was just chillin' at Starbucks with my best friend, entirely immersed in my own comfort zone...and I found myself not wanting to step outside of it. How often does that happen? Too much...

Well, like I said, I didn't exactly want to hang out with this guy, but yet somewhere in the back of my head I knew that Jesus would be jumping at the opportunity to hang out with someone who needed him so much. For as Jesus says in Mark 2:17, It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

This particular conversation with Justin's friend began like so many that I had witnessed before. This guy began sharing all about the horror that is his life. It made me uncomfortable enough to realize one thing: I spend WAY too much time with Christians! I'm so used to conversations that are centered around the Church, God, and Scripture. This conversation was far from that.

But yet somehow in the midst of this conversation (a mostly one-sided conversation as Justin and I sat and listened), things actually took a natural shift to allow Justin and I to speak truth into this young man's life. He recently got a tattoo on his back, and part of the tattoo was a verse from Proverbs! Kinda crazy, I know. So that opened up a huge conversation about Scripture and Truth. This kid began to share about how he thought that we were all born "neutral" (in a spiritual sense). Because of this friend's interest in Scripture and in our thoughts on "good vs. evil," Justin and I were able to share with him about the fall and about how we are born in sin. Justin shared clearly with his friend about how the only way to be free from this sin nature is through a relationship with Jesus. It was pretty cool. I was so proud of Justin for the way he clearly presented Truth in a loving way to his friend.

So this morning when I read: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did, I think I had a pretty good visual of what this looks like. We are to walk in obedience to God, and we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus on this earth.

So what about you? Are you being a doctor to the sick? Are you learning to walk as Jesus did?

God wants to use YOU!!!

Introspection on Israel: Part V

Day 3: Morning Session

My Religion Meets the Master

In the morning session on day 3, South African Mark Tittley, a big voice in the global youth ministry discussion, shared a powerful message with us about Jesus' response to religion. You can listen to this message here. For those who won't take the time to listen, the following are some of the key thoughts I gleaned from him, as well as a few thoughts of my own:

1. Jesus confronts our beliefs.

-Jesus was constantly challenging the beliefs of the people, especially his disciples. Consider the "antitheses" passage in Matt. 5:21-48 in which Jesus continually says, "You have heard that it was said...but I tell you...." Jesus saw through the disciples' faulty belief systems and cut to the heart of the issue. This is still true for us today (if we are willing to listen).

2. Jesus confronts the world around us.

-Jesus' teaching was always in direct opposition to the predominant culture in his day.

3. Jesus confronts the world we live in today.

-This includes the "religious cultures" we find ourselves in.

-We reflect our religious culture and the broader culture in which we live.

-Jesus introduced a "Kingdom of God" that was at odds with both of these cultures.

Mark's concluding message was that we have created a false dichotomy as Evangelical Christians in saying that we choose "relationship" over "religion." Was it not God who created the Jewish religion in the first place? It is not religion and relationship, then, that are diametrically opposed to one another but rather true religion and false religion. True religion has at the very root of it a relationship. False religion has its root in "the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).

Sometimes we buy into this false religion...Jesus confronts this even today.