Close, but no cigar…

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34 ESV)

You are not far from the kingdom of God, but you are not there yet either…

So what does that mean?

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul and mind  and the second is like the first, to love your neighbor as yourself. So from these 2 commandments we have to love 3 people(s): God, our neighbor and our self. We have to love ourselves, our neighbor like we love ourselves, and God. And these three loving acts are more important than burnt offerings and sacrifice. These things are more important to worshiping God than any act of worship prescribed in the law, is what the scribe is saying.

But that is not quite all of it, that doesn’t get us to the fullness of the kingdom… Jesus tells the scribe that he is not far from the kingdom, so what is he missing? What part is not there?

This is not in our text but maybe it was his understanding of what he was saying, or the position of his heart? Maybe he was playing lip service to the things coming out of his mouth. He did not feel or believe what he was saying.

You see this is all saints day and many of us believe that we can not be a saint until we have died. And my friends that is simply not the truth. We are saints now in this life, it is not something we wait for. We are connected to God here and now, and so through that connection we are saints.

Live in your sainthood, and believing that God loves you and wants to to love others. Be love to the world around you, helping all of creation to gather and give praise to God and know the love that they all have from Him.

Book Review: Leadership by Example by Dr. Sanjiv Chopra

Leadership is something we think a few people do. There are leaders in the country, leaders in business, leaders in church, you name the place and there are leaders there. And we look to these people to show us the way to do things. Sometimes these people are leaders in only one aspect of their lives, and followers else where. That is the point Dr. Chopra makes clear, we all have the potential to be leaders. We may not be leaders in every aspect of our lives, but we all have the potential and the moments to be leaders.

This book is written from a series of talks Dr. Chopra gave on the topic of leadership. He uses the “LEADERSHIP” mnemonic to explain his view on leadership is as follows: L – listen well. E – empathy. A – attitude. D – dreams and decisiveness. E – effectiveness. R – resilience. S – a sense of purpose. H – humility and humor. I – integrity and imagination. P – principles, and willingness to pack other people’s parachutes.

In this book Dr. Chopra explains how we have to move people and understand where they are at in order to lead them to places and to do things. He gives warm moving examples of leadership from normal everyday people who did not see themselves as leaders, but led many people and did wonderful things for society.

I highly recommend this book for everyone to read to unlock the leadership potential in all of us. This book will move you with examples that will not surprise you, but with examples that will show you, you can lead by example!

Go and do… likewise!

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” (Luke 10:25-37 ESV)

What must I do to inherit eternal life? The answer that is wanting to come out is nothing… We can do nothing to inherit eternal life… God freely gives that gift to all, yet we will be held accountable for our actions, so there is something we have to do…

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. See the lawyer then looks for the loop hole. Who is my neighbor? Is it the people who live next to me? How many blocks away count as my neighbors? Is the guy the street behind me my neighbor? How far does this go Jesus?

I wonder how I can love people as myself, because sometimes I really do not like myself. I get into that place that Paul talks about not being able to do the things I want to do and doing the things I know I should not do. And I do not like that or the way I behave. When I play music people will say it was so good, but I remember every mistake, every wrong note and I cringe and know I could have done better, and I do not like myself. Same goes for public speaking, or preaching, or teaching… I am my own worst critic and that makes me wonder how can I love my neighbor as myself? Or is that a cue to us, that is how God loves us????

You see we are His creation but we are also His neighbors, and rather than holding all of our loud partying and late night parties against us, He loves us as He loves Himself…. So we too must love all of creation as God does…

Go and do likewise. Find the people that your people are suppose to hate and not get along with and help them. Because when you were separated from God, God came low to pull you up to Him. Stop looking for loop holes and love everyone as God has loved you.

Play Nice…

“You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
“You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And you shall observe all my statutes and all my rules, and do them: I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:32-37 ESV)

Honor your elders, treat those who are not natural born of your country as if they were when they are in your borders, and be honest in your business dealings…

How many of us say we do this? All of the talk about border patrols and keeping those people out of our country here in the USA. We worry about the people coming over our southern border, because we don’t want them using our tax money. We need to have those benefits for our self. But yet wasn’t all we have given to us by God, and we need to manage that so that all of His children are cared for? If we ignore this passage of Leviticus 19 then we might want to rethink the whole chapter or book. We can not pick and chose the verse we want to uphold, it has to be all or none… We have to accept the sojourner as one of our own, that is what God tells us.

Honor your elders and do not cheat in weights and measurement, in your business dealings be that at the office or at home. Do not cheat anyone.

Basically Play nice! Share your things and treat others with honesty and respect.

 

atone…

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11-12 ESV)

Through His blood He has secured us eternal redemption. This brings us to atonement…

What do you think when you hear the word atonement? If you were raised in the church you think of Jesus dying on the cross, because a blood sacrifice had to be made. There is a vengeful blood thirsty God that had to have His pound of flesh. There needs to be a sacrifice, and Jesus is the one to do it. He dies on the cross so that we can be reconnected with God.

Ok maybe God is not blood thirsty and vengeful. But what kind of God needs to have a blood sacrifice? Is not our God loving and caring for the last, least, little and lost, so why must there be blood? The cross was a part of the plan, that I can say I do not completely understand, but here is one thing I know. The cross and not just the cross, but all of Jesus’ life leads us to a relationship bridge to God.

You see when I read this passage today from Hebrews I looked up the word atonement. And here is the definition from Merriam-Websters Online:

Definition of ATONEMENT
1 obsolete : reconciliation
2 the reconciliation of God and humankind through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ
3 reparation for an offense or injury : satisfaction
4 Christian Science : the exemplifying of human oneness with God

This was not that helpful. So I looked some more and I found and answer at Bibleq.net:

According to the OED, the English word ‘atonement’ was probably in use at least by 1513, but it was first used in a translation of the Bible by William Tyndale later in the 1500s, possibly while in exile in Antwerp . The word  “at-one-ment” comes from a contraction of “at one”. So first Tyndale (1526), then the Bishop’s Bible under Queen Elisabeth 1st (1588), then the Authorised Version under King James (1611), employed the word ‘atonement’ 69 times through the OT where the Hebrew is ‘cover’. However since the original context of the Hebrew meaning, sin-covering, comes through in the context, whatever Tyndale’s intentions, the meaning ‘covering’ has attached to ‘at-one-ment’ because of the contexts of the OT verses in which his new word was used. Later, following Tyndale’s death, the noun  ’atonement’, created the coinage of another new word ‘atone’ (first seen in 1574 according to Merriam Webster).

This I thought was interesting. You see atonement is from the words at and one. Thus the contraction at-one or atone. The act of covering our sins is what allows us to be at-one with God. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ allows us to be at-one with God. It is not about a gruesome death that Jesus had to die or the blood sacrifice required by some vengeful blood thirsty God. It is about a life lived in obedience to God and one that shows love for other over self. It is the life that Jesus lived as an example to us to be at-one with God. Jesus lived a life that does give us atonement, but lets not get hung up on His death when we should get hung up on His life. A life that leads us to live for the other and truly be connected with God.

I also wanted to share a quote from David Lose from a few weeks ago on this subject. The original article here was found at WorkingPreacher.org.

One last thing: The popular religious culture in our country tends to get hung up on the second half of last line of this passage: “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” But I have a hunch that understanding the second half of that verse correctly rests in taking the first half more seriously. Maybe, that is, Jesus’ giving his life as a “ransom” doesn’t describe some elaborate and rather gruesome mechanism by which God has to brutally punish Jesus before God can love us. Maybe Jesus “buys us back” by showing us a way out of the devastating cycle of looking for glory, joy, and peace on the world’s terms by teaching and showing us how to receive by giving, how to lead by serving, and how to find our lives by losing them for the sake of the people around us that God loves so much.

So what do you think?

What do they want…

And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” And stopping, Jesus called them and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him. (Matthew 20:29-34 ESV)

Here is Jesus walking out of Jericho and there are 2 blind men on the side of the road, shouting, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” And the crowd tried to silence them,but they were determined to get what they wanted. They were determined to be seen by Jesus and to get their hearts desire.

And Jesus walks up to them, and knows they are blind, and asks “What do you want me to do for you?” Now wouldn’t you think Jesus would know they would want to see? They are blind, what else could they want, right?

But you see that is the point. We see them as blind men and think they need to have their sight, but maybe, just maybe there is something more they need. Something that is more important than being able to see. Can you imagine it? If I was blind, I’m sure I would want my sight, but what if I was starving and blind which would be the greater need? Sure if I could see I might be able to find food, or work, and feed myself. But in that moment when I have the chance to get food or sight which would I ask for. The point is that Jesus does not pretend to know what they want. As if He had to, He is God after all and knows our deepest darkest secrets… He still asks them what they want.

How many times do we see someone in need and by seeing them we know what will fix their problem? We have never spoken with them, we do not know their name let along their situation  but we have judged them by what we see and we know what will fix them. Maybe we should take a hint from Jesus and get to know them, and ask them what they want. Not pretend we have all the answers. Not pretend to know what is best for someone else. I honestly have enough problems trying to figure out what is best for me so why do I want to say what is best for some one else.

So next time you see someone you think is in need, ask them what they want. It doesn’t mean you can get it for them or do it for them. It may not be the best thing for them, but rather than assuming you know, get to know them, and help them to see that God wants to know them, and help them through whatever it is they might be facing.

So what do they want?

What is possible…

Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. (Acts 9:32-35 ESV)

What is possible for the disciples of Jesus to do?

Remember that Jesus told the disciples they would do greater feats than Jesus did, if they only believed…

So what is possible?

In out text for today Peter heals a man who has been paralyzed for 8 years. He tells him to get up and he does and walks away. And everyone who saw him turned to the Lord, or gave their life to Christ or started following the Lord. So what can a disciples do? Help others to see the awesome power that the Lord has and help them align their lives with God.

You see that is the real miracle in the story. That the whole towns turned their lives over to God. Not that the paralyzed man walked. It is the grace that everyone saw in the power of the man walking that is the real miracle. Now don’t get me wrong, the paralyzed man walking is a big deal. But in comparison to all of those people realizing the power of God and choosing to accept the grace that is given!

Anything is possible for those who believe and no walk is too dark, because in faith Jesus walks with us every where we go. So know that nothing is impossible for God who will give you the strength to do what has to be done.

 

While I’m Waiting

I have been waiting on something to happen for quite a while now. And it seems like I have done everything right and just still nothing happens. We get close to being able to move on, but something happens and we start over again.

In times like these it would be real easy to give in and say it is over, enough is enough. Find another way and move on. Cut your losses and be done with it.

But is that what has to happen? The answer to that question is no! That is the easy ways out and that is what the world would want us to do. The powers of evil alive in this world work to get us to think only about our selves and how we need to make it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wonder if I have let my family down. I wonder what I have gotten them into. They are looking up to me as a provider and supporter of them, and I am not providing. I’m watching my wife go work, and make money so we can survive as we burn through savings. It is hard. I want to be the hero for my children and I wonder if I am letting them down. I wonder what they will remember about the past 8 months while daddy looked for a job.

And it would be real easy to just curl up in a fetal position and cry and say whoa is me…

But hat is not who I am. That is not who God created me to be. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God has a place for us. We just have to wait on His timing. Philippians 4:11-13 says:

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

No Matter where we find ourselves, God will give us the strength through Jesus Christ to make it through. I can do ALL things. I can praise Him, I can serve Him and I can wait for Him even when it feels like the mountains around me are closing in on me and the valley is getting deeper and darker, I do not have to fear, because He is with me and will be my strength through the storm.

Just as Jeremiah 29:11 says:  For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. We all have been given a hope…

I thought of this song today, While I’m Waiting by John Waller. It is a wonderful song from the movie Fireproof. I find comfort in the words, and I pray that it will brighten your day. And always remember there is strength through God in Jesus Christ for us to do all things. So look to the Lord and He will be your help and your shade, and He will protect you!

Chosen…

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:1-10 ESV)

Have you ever felt abandoned?

Like you were left out in the cold?

Recently I was given some news which was so far from what the majority of the people around me thought would be given I was shocked and wondering how we could ever move forward. My family was hanging in the air waiting on news of a possible calling for me. It was going to happen, we all thought. It was what would be. We were making plans to move and telling our friends that we would be moving soon…

Then the phone rang, and I remember the words…

“I had to call but it is not good news…”

Really God! We have given everything and this is what happens?!?!?!

But now wait a minute…

You see God is in control and what we think we need or what we want may not be what God needs for us to do, or what He wants to give us. As Peter tells us, we once were nobody, but God came in and accepted us and made us His people. We need to not be upset when things don’t go our way, because maybe the way we want them to go is not the way that God has for them to go. Maybe we are stumbling over our own thoughts, our own ways. Maybe we are so hung up on trying to do it right that we don;t see the grace for our faith. We can not see the love of God for our wanting to please Him by doing everything “right”.

When we see that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. it is then that we see that we are to be a light to the world and it is not about our needs or our own desires. It is about the community and the world that God sends us to. We need to be ready to go and do and not worry about ourselves. God has chosen us as His own people for His possessing.

So when your world is collapsing around you cling to Him and know that He has chosen you and has a plan for you and your life.