From as long as I can remember I was always enchanted, intrigued, and inspired by the stories of heroes. You have to excuse me, but I know my geek is showing. Yes I was the comic book collector of the neighborhood. I would trade my sports cards for Marvel Super hero cards. I remember being upset that DC Comics began killing off heroes like Superman and Batman’s sidekick, Robin. As a kid I wished that a radioactive spider would crawl into my bedroom and bite me while I was sleeping, or that the local area industrial plants would explode and expose me to gamma rays. When that didn’t happen, I decided that my only other choice was to become a billionaire so that I could spend my fortune developing a flying indestructible iron suit. I wanted to be a super hero, not just for the benefits super powers or because I am addicted to adventure, but because I wanted to save the world. And I thought, just like every other super hero fan, that I was the one to do it. When we were kids we thought we could do it. When did we stop believing that we were heroes? When did we stop believing that we were called to save the world? The place that is supposed to be breeding, training and dispersing more heroes than any other institution in world is the church. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the case in recent history. But the world’s need for heroes has grown more and more in recent history. We may not be indestructible or fly or are freakishly strong, but we still have a world that needs us. We stop wanting to be superheroes because we lose our vision. We lose our since of adventure. We lose the zeal of the calling that we originally had when the call was fresh. As people of God, we simply embrace that it is our turn. It is our turn, because it is a new world, with new people, but it is the same God. We aren’t the first heroes to do this. There is a difference between first and new. We aren’t the first people to go through this, we are just the new heroes that are doing this. We are the latest additions to the heroic storyline. When you choose to enter into this story with God, you are joining a line of heroes who said God, will you please use me to serve your world? Church!
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
The issue with religion is that religion says, something scared has to take place in order for something to be spiritually “Holy”. But the question is what makes that thing any Holier then the other thing? And the answer is….(wait for it, wait for it) it is not. We miss the power of God if we think that He is limited to ritual. This misunderstanding of ritualistic Holiness ends up harming us and confusing God’s plan, purpose, and presence in His creation. Holiness and Sanctity are everywhere and we are not awake to it. He is everywhere and we are asleep. He is always in the place and we are the ones that just showed up.
Jesus was teaching us to be in tune to what is always happening around us. The idea is that you might live a better life if you understood that He is involved and concerned with every area of your life. Every interaction, every conversation, every place, every person, every mess, every time, every problem, every location. God is always doing something. It’s not a view that He is involved with the things that are “churchy”. He doesn’t get bored with one thing and moves onto another thing and forgets about the first thing. If He is not done with me then He is not done with you. If He can be here then He can be there. He is always working. Life in Christ is about being fully awake to the work of God in all things. (John 5:17)
“The purpose of worship is not to escape from this world, into the other world, but to open oneself to the meaning of Christ in the Common.” Church is not supposed to be a bubble that you run to, to hide from the world. It is a place where you go to learn how to make every place a sanctuary. We are to learn how to be like Christ in unChirst like situations. Worship is to help is realize these depths of our world. If worship doesn’t do this, then it is an empty ritual.” (John Robinson-Honest to God)
CHURCH!
The Reformation of the church gave us the “5 solas” of the church: Sola Fide, Sola Christo, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura, and Soli De Gloria(Faith alone, Christ alone, Grace alone, Scripture alone, to God be the Glory). The 21st century has brought us a new “sola” that is described in the Neo-Reformation as Sola Cultura (Culture Alone). Sola Cultura has caused much argument within the modern church because of the belief that it should be separated from the other Solas.
Scripture has no power if culture is not present. Scripture is the story of the supernatural God, intersecting with real people within their culture.God power can never be denied because the whole earth is filled with the significance and weight of who God is. Truth is everywhere. So we should not surprised when God’s truth pops up in all places, and all cultures. We are called to confirm truth where ever it pops up. No matter where it comes from, even if it is not from the places that we think are of God. God’s word even contains words from people who didn’t believe in the one true God that our bible is written about.
Acts 17:28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.
As some of your own poets have said,’We are his offspring.’
Relation is the best teacher. Scripture, Jesus, and the One true God are all foreign concepts to them, but Paul uses relation to argue his point about the One true God. He not only affirms what the Greek poet said about “their gods”, he spins it and claims it for the one true God.
The reality of God so profound, so wide, and so deep that we can take statements that are not in relation to the one true God and spin them to affirm and testify of the truth of God.The history of the church is filled with ideas that came from contemporary understanding at the time, to be used to better understand the world that we live in. Why? Because, “all things are ours”, and we are of Christ, and He is of God, and He made the whole world and we just live in it! The depth of God is everywhere!
CHURCH!
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!
The difference between music and noise is knowing when to be on, and when to be off. There is a clear rhythm in music and it can be heard when everything is on beat.
God made the world with a rhythm; 6 on and 1 off (6 days and rest on the 7th).When we don’t follow a rhythm, our life is less and less music and more and more noise. If we want experience next level living and master life, then we have to understand to have a life of rhythm and know when to be on and when to be off. If we don’t learn rhythm then we butcher the song that we were created to play. Do you ever feel that your life is always on, and you’re just going and you’re just existing, and you feel like a machine? You feel like you have less and less of a life. You were not created to just exist, you were created to have meaning and purpose. Life is about having rhythm.
Life will kill you if you don’t find a rhythm. This is why God instituted the “sabbath rest”. The sabbath rest was interpreted as a 24 hr period where nothing is urgent. A 24 hr period where your not in a rush. A 24 hr period where life is not moving fast. Slow down and see the joy of the Lord. There is a restaurant in my city, that have a huge deck where you can dine outside. Everyday at sunset people come to this restaurant and while the sun sets they applaud. They give the sun a standing ovation. They do this because the understand the beautiful site that they just witnessed. Slow down. Get on beat, and give God a hand for what you have seen in your life.
CHURCH!
