The word “Christian” is a noun. It is defined as a follower of Jesus that is doing certain things in the world. In the scriptures ‘Christian’ is a noun. It was intended to be a noun and never an adjective that you tack onto things to make them safe and acceptable. It’s not an adjective that you can attach to things so that you can uncritically consume them. The danger in branding things “Christian” is that you will lose a fundamental power that is found in the scriptures. There is a danger of branding things Christian that isn’t the truth, and not branding things that are truth as Christian. The danger is that we would then consume it without using discernment and mindlessly digest it. The danger in not labeling it, is that I would discard it as not truth. What if God was using that to speak truth to me?
My faith gets bigger the more I find truth in other things outside of the obvious things that I am religiously used to experiencing. It is a different experience to break free from the mindset that Christianity has the exclusive rights on truth. Jesus came to destroy and demolish religion that says God is only over “here”. Jesus gets angry when religious people make “man boundaries” and say God is “here” but not “there”. “I AM the truth”. I claim truth where ever I find it. Christianity isn’t a closing of the mind, but it is opening my heart and mind to how things are in ways that I never saw before. We are looking for Jesus everywhere we can find Him, and the more I find Him the bigger the faith gets.
Jesus is bigger than any religion and that includes Christianity. We are followers in the way of Jesus, not because it is the best religion, but because following Jesus is the best way to live and if not, then He is a liar. If you don’t believe that He is a liar then “all things are yours!”
CHURCH
What would you sacrifice to get to the next level in your life?
Surprisingly, the Bible never defines the church. Instead, it presents it through a number of different metaphors. One of the reasons why the New Testament gives us numerous metaphors to depict the church is because the church is too comprehensive and rich to be captured by a single definition or metaphor. Unfortunately, our tendency is to latch on to one particular metaphor and understand the ekklesia through it alone. But by latching on to just one metaphor—whether it be the body, the army, the temple, the bride, the vineyard, or the city—we lose the message that the other metaphors convey. The result: Our view of the church will become limited at best or lopsided at worst.
What is the main metaphor for the church that is found in the majority of the New Testament? It is a family! The writings of Paul, Peter, and John in particular all saturated with the language and imagery of family. (Gal. 6:10; Rom. 8:29; Eph. 2:19) Their favorite image is the family. Familial terms like “new birth,” “children of God,” “sons of God,” “brethren,” “fathers,” “brothers,” “sisters,” and “household” saturate the New Testament writings.
This is a huge contrast to the dominating metaphor that’s typically constructed for the church today is the business corporation. The pastor is the CEO. The clergy and/or staff is upper management. Evangelism is sales and marketing. The congregation is the clientele. And there is competition with other corporations (“churches”) in the same town.
But the corporation metaphor has a major problem. Not only is it glaringly absent from the New Testament, it does violence to the spirit of Christianity. Because from God’s standpoint, the church is primarily a family. His family, in fact.
Ask yourself this question: Is my church living in the reality of being the family of God?
CHURCH!
When it comes to faith, everybody has it. I have often heard people say that they are unable to have the same faith that I do because it is just too hard. The idea that some people have faith and others don’t is a very popular, although it is not true. Everybody has faith! Everybody is following someone or something. Over the majority of modern history, Christianity has been under the scrutiny of the world’s religions for being “closed-minded” and believing that Christians are the only ones with faith and this is not true. No matter what your perspective is on life, it is a faith perspective. The person that says we are here by random happenstance is using faith to determine and follow that notion. An atheist is a person of tremendous faith. We are not talking about faith or no faith, belief or no belief. We are talking about faith in what? Belief in what? The real question is not if we have it or not, but what we have put it in.
The tension of faith is not a new one. Paul argued this point for the Gentiles that had received Christ in Galatia, when they faced the challenge of what to believe, how to believe and what should be the expression of their belief. (Gal 4) This argument transcended time and raised its head again in the 16th century and was the wedge that created the Reformation and formation of the Protestant church. Martin Luther stated that Sola Fide (Faith Alone) is “the principle on which the church rises or falls.” John Calvin later affirmed this statement by saying that “justification by faith is the principle hinge by which religion is supported”. But the message the moves through the minds of men for the dawn of time is how to get the all knowing, almighty, all seeing God on your side. Mankind seeks acceptance, and questions what will be enough to get the thumbs up from the creator.
The fight of faith was exposed in the lives of the first family with the first sibling rivalry between Cain and his brother Able. This story of a favored offering that sparks untamed anger and leads to ultimate destruction is a conflict between Cain and Able, but it is an insight for works vs. faith and even deeper, religion vs. revelation. Psychologically man becomes uncomfortable with the notion that what I do, what I participate in, and what I offer through my actions may not be good enough. What can I do to be enough? I mean, we live in a quantifiable world. I know when enough is enough with every intersection of my life, but this invisible God leaves this unquantifiable gap between humanity and divinity. But does He? Does an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful, almighty God leave justification to be an ambiguous undefined subject in our existence?
This is the question that man attempts to answer with the creation of religion. Man uses religion to restore himself to God due to his unpleasing fallen state. But there is a fatal flaw in religion. Religion will always find its strength in what my hands do themselves. Religion puts the emphasis on the work that I do. The problem with religious justification is that what I do is already flawed, if I am doing it for myself. Religion only gives you the credit for what you did. Religion will always honor itself and a faith in that is misleading. This is the tension that Cain found himself in. The work that he did with his hands; the plowing, the tilling, the hoeing, and the harvesting was not acceptable enough. This was because Cain was his work. Cain was his religion and to separate the two meant destruction to who he was, not knowing there is a difference between religion and revelation. True faith brings about revelation. It was this revelation that Able operated in. If man is going to be in right standing with God, it is going to take blood. It is the shedding of blood that will redeem a fallen state of man. Able had the revelation from God that it is not about what I raked and hoed and labored to do. But it is through only what God can give that I can obtain righteousness. Because what God demands, God will give. What God asks, God will answer. What God needs, God will supply.
“It strikes us, when year after year our longed for perfection of life does not appear. The only thing one can do is accept the fact that you’re accepted. This is grace. You may not know more than before. You may not feel different than before, but everything it transformed”-Paul Tillich
CHURCH!
Life is too short…
Life isn’t too short. Not sure who began this false accusation against life. Maybe it was some adventurist that was trying to promote a vicurious lifestyle. On the other hand, it may have been developed by a team of synics to portray life as a meaningless wrinkle in time. What ever the case may be, life isn’t too short. The reason we allow this false statement to transform into a mantra is because we are not using life as we should.
There is a very small statistic of people who claim to have found the meaning of life; others continue to search, and the journey continues without the true answer. I have been invited into the first group, but I am uncomfortable until this minority becomes the majority. So here it is. Only continue reading unless you are ready to completly embrace a change. Only continue reading unless the quest for meaning has left you exhausted.
Ok. I’m glad you are still here. The meaning of life is….enjoyment. Life is here for you to enjoy, and everybody knows that you never want something to end that you enjoy. You see, we were created to always work, or push, or stress, or consume. No. You were created to be envolved with the rest of creation as an apprasier. Your life determines what in this world should be appreciated. Therefore, when we appreciate things that are empty and meaningless, then life mirrors the same.
Listen to the wisdom in Deutoronomy 6:1-4. God the Father of all known creation says, the only reason the decrees and commands were generated so that you may enjoy life. Enjoy life…? Doesn’t sound like the typical voice of God, but it is. God is telling us that He puts rules into place, not to hold us back, but to release us to the freedom of enjoyment. Maybe the reason you haven’t seen this level of enjoyment is because your life is marred with too much.
The key to enjoyment is simplification. I know this is a challenge, but underneath the layers of your life, is your peace. The question is, how despirate are you to want to experence the freedom of enjoyment. You next level of enjoyment begins right now!
A man that doesn’t work doesn’t eat, but a man that doesn’t work smart doesn’t live. Choose life!
CHURCH!
Reconciliation means to make peace where there wasn’t peace before. God wants to put everything back together, and that includes us. God wants to balance all of us. That means everything. Holistically: your heart; your will, your mind; your intellect; your emotions your past; your wounds; your failures; your worries; your anxieties. The things that keep us wake at night. Our addictions. Our Compulsions. It’s the struggles we have and we seem to never get rid of. When the bible speaks of salvation it is speaking of something that is holistic. Every last part of us back together. The same thing that can happen across the universe through Christ’s death has been extended to you and me. In every aspect of my being I should have total peace in.
We are going INWARD because we value wholeness. We want to be the people that are whole healthy people, who have stared our junk in the face, and our wounds, and all the painful stuff from the past, and are making peace with who God is, and who we are.
When we go in the INWARD direction we find out that our identity is marred and flawed. And we are trying to be someone else. Coming to peace with who you are and who God made you to be is coming to terms with who you are, and being ok with that. It is when we start asking fewer questions like; “Why am I not like so-and-so, and why do I not look like that? We spend our lives wishing we were someone else and we feel uncomfortable in our skin. To be whole is to go in the INWARD direction more and more and learning more about you. I’m ME and I am tired of being someone else. This is who God made me, and I am going to learn to be ok with that. And then celebrate that, not because I am so great, but because God is. The INWARD direction is getting more and more OK with who we are. Now once we can do that, we will see so much more and get so much more done!
We are committed to going INWARD. We are dealing with, and digging up the painful stuff that has been covered up. We are defining what is means to allow salvation to be holistic. And what it means to let God’s light to shine into every last area of our lives. We want to be the people that sees the junk, and the trash, and lets it out.
Jesus doesn’t just want to give us a ticket to heaven. No, He wants to heal and mend and put you back in balance with how life is supposed to be, here, now, today. Because you can be a “Christian” and be “saved”, and sing all the right songs, and actually be miserable. So you can be a super Christian and haven’t even begun to experience salvation. As we move INWARD we will see peace where there was not peace before. This is the life of one that follows Christ.
When we choose not to move INWARD and into this peace that is being offered, it is destructive. When we use what others have done to us as an excuse to not receive reconciliation we are destroying ourselves. Because we are driven by things that we are unaware of. There is a mystery behind the mystery, and we will continue to struggle, and wrestle and live fragmented lives until identify them and come to peace with them.
We believe that God wants to redeem every part of us, and that Jesus’ message of salvation is holistic in nature. We believe that all of life is spiritual life and that all of our fears, failures, and broken hearts can be restored and made whole. We value the INWARD journey because we want to be fully integrated people: mind, body, soul, emotions, and experiences all offered together to God.
CHURCH
