Been gone for a while, but now I’m back to tackle more of the questions I didn’t get to a few weeks ago. I’m trying a new means of accomplishing this…lemme’ know what you think.
Here’s the question:
Vodpod videos no longer available.“What do you do if a friend is living in sin with someone.”
What is our duty as a “body” in regards to something going on in the “body” that is not good and we don’t want to be gossiping? What is the proper thing to do?
The instructions of Matthew 18 are applicable here. Jesus said “If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.”
Even before that…pray. Pray for God’s view of the situation. Is the “not good” thing not good because it isn’t in harmony with Scripture…or is it not good because it violates something specific to your own conscience? If it’s the latter, then continue to pray. If it’s the former, and you have a place in the person’s life to speak into it, then go and talk to them about it (and only him or her).
If you don’t have that place in their life, gain it. Get to know them, find out what’s going on with them and how you can serve them. Don’t go off on a crusade to clean a person up or fix them…that will only add new problems to the mix. Pray about how you can love and serve the people involved, and ask God to lead and convict and guide them. The Holy Spirit is well able to lead His own people, He doesn’t need us to show Him how to do it.
The bottom line answer is love. Love the person/people. If you have a place in their life to speak, speak in love. If you don’t, through love-find that place.
First, before I get to the question, be sure to visit the Prayer Wall page, we have a lot of needs to be keeping before God for the people of our church community!
Ok, here goes…
Why Doesn’t Jesus let the demons He throws out identify Him as the Son of God? Wouldn’t that make people believe, and wouldn’t that be kind of ironic?
Also: Why did Jesus warn folks not to make it known that He was the Son of God?
Ok…obviously, the reason this is asked is because the Scriptures don’t give a definitive reason why Jesus did what seems almost counterproductive to gaining a following. I mean, if Jesus let supernatural beings identify Him as the Messiah, wouldn’t that just help to further His cause? The most common answer to that, and the one I tend to lean toward has to do with timing.
Everything happening in it’s right time. The amazing thing about God is that He is sovereign, meaning, He is in complete control of all things. The even MORE amazing thing about His sovereignty is that He seems to be able to exercises it through the midst of man’s appearant free will. Jesus had to go to the cross…it was mandatory. If He didn’t, we would still be lost. There had to be a right time and a right place for people to know that Jesus is the Son of God…and the majority of that belief came after Jesus was killed and then rose again. Had He let everyone identify Him as the Messiah, the groundswell of His popularity may have prevented His death. Maybe that’s even why the demons were so quick to want to identify Him…to throw off the timing, make the cross a less sure thing?
That seems like the most reasonable explanation for His behavior to me.
What do you think?
So…as many of you know, I struggle with hugging. I’m no good at it. I get all embarrassed and uncomfortable…I’m not sure why. It’s just my struggle…or HUGgle if you will.
It’s my intention to change that. Not being a good hugger is something that makes me feel like a second class citizen, especially in the realm of church. Instinctively, I’ve always felt like a good handshake is more than enough human contact…but in the context of a loving community of spiritual people…hugs seem to be the most commonly preferred expressions of familial love. Therefore, learn to hug I will (please read the previous sentence with Yoda’s voice).
Here is the first training video I’m learning from:
I love Eugene Peterson’s take on Matthew 5:5-13 in The Message. No formulas, no fakery…just love and relationship. “Just be there, as simply and honestly as you can manage.”
Read this…read it again. Read it slowly. Jesus is crashing paradigms and inviting us to grace. Take a deep breath…it’s like the shining after a rain.
5“And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
6“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
7-13“The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:
Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best— as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
The CBC News (a Canadian News agency) recently did a story on a reporter who “embedded” himself with the “Christian Army”. Yeeks. The two videos take about 25 minutes to watch in total…but it is well worth it. It’s important for us as the church to listen to and understand the questions posed by those who try to understand us. In fact, the reporters questions form some of the most insightful stuff about the issues at hand.
Go take a look at them, and share what you think in the comments. I think the most damning statement made comes as he summarizes his perplexity that we (Christians) want to change the world “from a compound out in the middle of nowhere”. He concludes he has nothing to fear concerning their influence on the world at large.
It could even be an example of what I said in an earlier post…salt shaking out on salt.
Christians….mostly harmless.
*sigh*
Here are a few things you might be interested in…thought I’d sling a few links to friends and those I find interesting.
As you know by now, Dustin Bryson launched The Root around the beginning of summer. They are having meetings every Monday evening now, click the picture to get the skinny on what’s going on.
Eric Darnell is another friend of mine, who is on journey that has lately been running in tandem with the path I’m on (sheesh…I’m starting to sound like the old guy from Karate Kid). He’s pioneering an informal connection between believers called Flatline Revival. Click the picture to find out more about it.
How did I get surrounded by such awesome people? I remember a time when I longed for just one person to hear me speak about a new vision for church community who didn’t look at me like a potato had just grown out of my nose. Now, everywhere I turn, something wonderful is happening. And we are being woven together….like a net….moving through our culture, capturing hearts like butterflies with the love of the King.
One more link. Here’s my honest opinion. I don’t usually associate really good worship music with Calvary Chapel. No offense…but most people know teaching has led the way in CC, not worship styles. But Jeff Thompson, the worship leader from Calvary Chapel, Jupiter (Fla) is awesome. I was listening to his songs on Myspace this morning…and I thought I should share. Click the picture to go to his Myspace, and listen to the songs he’s uploaded. Really good stuff in my opinion.
What do you think of Jeff’s songs? His vocals on “So In Love With You” make me think of a younger Eddie Vedder.
“… no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”
Jesus said no one puts new cloth which hasn’t been shrunk on an old garment…and they don’t put new wine in old wineskin’s. The idea he’s getting across is one of FLEXIBILITY. In that day, garments weren’t as disposable as they are for us. If a tear was made in an outer coat they would patch it with another piece of material, but they had to have material that wasn’t going to shrink up over time (as cottons and wools are prone to doing). It had to be preshrunk or the patch would just shrink and tear the coat again.
Same with a wineskin. When they would bottle their wine, they would store it in flexible skins because as the new wine is fermenting, its going to expand and contract. If you have this kind of morphing liquid in an old leather skin that’s no longer flexible, that’s become brittle and unchanging… it will tear it.
Jesus is pointing out in this that there will be no cookie cutter religion when it comes to the kingdom of God!
We can end up looking at other fellowships, and how they go about doing their meetings or outreach and start measuring our community by their community…and you know…Jesus used this imagery of flexibility for this very reason because he didn’t want this kind of attitude of comparison to prevail.The kingdom of God at work in the church is going to have a variety of diff expressions! It’s going to change and flex and move in different ways.
Its not a rigid bottle…a rigid structure…it wont always look the same, it will change from age to age, from culture to culture…to meet an infinite variety of needs.
That’s why threre’s no description of what the meeting of the church should look like in the New Testament! There’s no order of service or formula of teaching or anything like that…that way…the church is always fluid. There’s structure of some kind (the wineskin implies that) but its flexible, ready to change, to grow to shrink to take on any shape to accommodate what the Holy Spirit is doing!
I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way in trying to understand what God is doing here with this community called Eastgate…but one thing I learned very early on is that I can’t look at any other model or see what some other fellowship is doing and presume to think God wants to do that here. I tried that, several times, with very frustrating results.
I’ve learned to be content with flowing and flexing with what God is doing right here, right now, with us…and I’ve learned that it wont always look the same from day to day.
How cool is that?
From Eugene Peterson’s “The Message”
Matthew 5:13-16
“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
Salt brings out the natural flavor of a food. It enhances what is already there. Jesus used the idea of salt losing it’s salty-ness…but there’s also an opposite application as I contemplate this. Ever have food with too much salt on it? No good, right? Why? Because the salt overwhelms the natural flavor…all you can taste is salt. The flavor is God…God’s presence and grace evident on this fallen earth. If we put too much of our ministry, too much of our ingenuity in the mix…all the world will taste is the salt. Maybe our culture has been screwing up it’s face at Christianity lately because all they taste is salt…and not the wonderful God flavors we were supposed to be highlighting.
The same can be said for light. I’ve always heard this concept put negatively…that light illuminates what’s hidden in the darkness (which usually meant pointing out sin)…but when I read Peterson’s take on it, it gave me a fresh vision. Light enables us to see things in color…see things for what they really are. But, a light so bright and beaming straight into your eyes will only make you see spots and irritate you. God is the color we are supposed to put on display…but if we put too much emphasis on our clever programs or catchy phrases or slick presentations….maybe all this world gets is a blast in the eyes of our light.
The world will never make a place for Christianity…Jesus pretty much promised that. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t examine our methods to make sure we aren’t putting an artificial barrier between Jesus and those who may seek Him.
Right on?
WONDERWHAT 
