God as silent

I recently heard something on the radio that said something like this:

We need to, as Christians, begin to realize and teach that sometime in our lives we will NOT hear from God and we will NOT feel like He is present and we will NOT know whether we are making Godly, righteous, or Biblical decisions. Let's make sure we tell new Christians to understand that every walk of Faith in the Bible, at some point or another, reaches out to God, speaks to God, and hopes for God, but gets silence or seemingly no answer.

Even Jesus struggled with the Father's seeming silence and abandonment: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

What makes us think we will not? Or should not?

What makes us think we have to hide it when we do feel like God is silent, uncaring, or indifferent?

Just because we might get silence from God, does not mean we stop believing. It just makes us have to choose to believe in the midst of doubt - THAT IS WHERE FAITH BEGINS.

For it is precisely when we experience these things of "silence" that we cannot live in His Kingdom - and by trusting in Faith in those moments we ironically begin to live in His Kingdom by His power alone.

What do father's think?

This coming week's Message is mostly for Dads. Some of the questions given to us in an email to think about are the following:

Questions to Think About:
1) What do fathers think of when they hear the Gospel story?
2) Does God tell you what to do in life?
3) Is the Bible an instruction manual?

I wanted to respond to this personally, and thought I'd do it on the blog here. I have no idea what specifically will be talked about this weekend.

I have always struggled with almost no direct New Testament examples of fatherhood. There are implications of actions, but nothing like the Old Testament where we read about David and his sons or Abraham and his sons.

How in the world did Peter have a family, even a wife, and travel around the way he did? Did he feed and provide for them? How? Did he ever fight with his wife? About what?

I imagine it going something like this:

Peter: I need to travel up to the Antioch church for a meeting with the leaders there.

Petrina (since we don't know her name I'll be creative): Ok...um...well...we have this bill coming due (I know there were no bills, but work with me here). I guess I'll just go get full time work and put our children in daycare now at the local synagogue where they will be taught the law over Jesus.

Peter: But I gotta go to this gathering of the leaders...the Jewish Christians up there want to circumcise the whole bunch of Greek born servants of the church (what the word "deacons" means) and if they do that now in the middle of winter who's going to get all those locked in widow's the food and wood they need for heat?

Petrina: What about our table!? Our kids?!

Peter: I know, I know. I'll find some way to make some more money or bring home some fish to eat or sell.

Petrina: And you're gonna do that where on the road to Antioch! Water into wine...multiplying bread and fish...healing my mother...but are you gonna turn dirt into fish?

Peter: Look...If I don't get up there we'll see a bloody mess from those circumcisions at Ananias' house and at least days of miserable pain for the wrong reason! You don't know what that will do to those marriages! And you know Ananias' wife - a great hostess but a stickler for keeping things clean!

Petrina: If Jesus can let you heal the blind and lame and drop a blanket of potential unclean food in front of your face to eat, why won't he at least drop me a blanket of food to put on the table...kosher of course so we don't offend the neighbors.

Ok, so maybe that's just my situation! But where in the New Testament does it tell us how to be fathers and follow Jesus "at all cost"?

I mean, the best thing we might have for teaching about sex is Song of Solomon. I can hardly understand that or read it to my wife without blushing. What about a 8-10 year old (which is the age we have to start these days, if not earlier!)

But there are some great instructions in the Old Testament, that seem to apply.

I think the greatest ideas of teaching in Scripture, and the most difficult to actually do, is to teach your children alongside you as you do the work of God, the mission of God, together:

Deut 4:9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

Deut 11:18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates,

And though this doesn't apply to children, it's along the same lines of how to teach each other and the next generation:

Exodus 18:19 Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people's representative before God and bring their disputes to him. 20 Teach them the decrees and laws, and show them the way to live and the duties they are to perform. 21 But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.

So, practically, I'm wondering what it looks like to do things alongside my children.

Like, taking them to the shelter and serving food. Or, do they know about how we spend money? Tithe or not tithe? Do I come to church, spend church with them, and talk to them about what it all means, or do I just send them to some Sunday School program? Do I let them participate in my prayers?

What this seems to mean is that we should spend our lives with them, explain why we go to church, what we want from it, when it fails us, what Jesus' intention is...ideally, all this stuff we talk about as we do it.

Jesus loved kids and we do too. They are part of our community and we welcome them in our midst. More than anything, we hope your kids come away knowing they are loved and enjoyed. As you follow Jesus, they will follow you. We want them to notice and learn that you are devoted to learning from the Bible, to genuine worship, to prayer, to an honest walk with your Creator, and to a commitment to caring for others in the body of Christ and in your community. We do not believe it is the church's responsibility to teach the children what will be taught in the home. We will not try to replace you; it cannot be done. The story of your life will powerfully teach your kids and thus, as your children watch you, we want them to see your relationship with Jesus changing your life. That will be the best lesson they will ever receive. Our first goal is to equip you to lead them in both word and action to an understanding of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The difficulty is often that these days I don't work alongside my children, nor do we in America. We leave the house to work, and then come back to the house. It used to be that they learned the same things as fathers and mothers to learn a trade. Now parents leave the house and spend the majority of their "awake" time away from the house. Kids in school, parent's are at work. When do our worlds intersect? Not much anymore.

It actually makes it a greater sacrifice to be with your children in our culture, because we have to sacrifice "me" time.

A friend once said to us that we should home school because if you send them to elementary school they will learn how to relate in the world primarily from other children. This isn't about home schooling, just making the note that our kids in America, from the age of 5 on, spend more time walking alongside their peers than they do their parents. And those peers, and probably our own children, spend more time in front of the TV learning about how to relate in the world than they do from adults around them, much less parents. The TV and media teach children, and the children teach each other.

I really have to be more intentional about doing things alongside my children. I'm not sure how to do that, but I want to keep my eyes open to it.

And I have to remind myself that watching TV together doesn't count!

I saw a mailing the other day and it had this family all smiling and sitting on each other's laps and laughing. It was an advertisement for a Dish! So, if I got a dish, we'd make a great family right?

It's funny how the world knows what we want, and uses what we want to sell us stuff that will do exactly the opposite of what we want.

I've got to keep myself attuned to what is being "sold" to me as easy ways to get what I want, but that will do just the opposite.

As a church we've got to be just as careful. It's easy for us to start up children's programs, theology, teaching, and other things that promise great things we really and truly want, but

it's often the simplicity of Scripture, and it's simple truths, that we need to humbly apply. And that is very difficult because to do that means we do have to deny our own time (like our TV programs), our own enjoyments (like my sports or my reading), our money (working a little less or going out less or not paying for TV, Internet, or other things), our desired standard of living, and ourselves.

I am guilty of not denying myself to be a father very well.

Again, I have to remember...it's not about making my children or my wife like me. It's about loving them whether they like me or not.

Boy, my family would be upset if I thought we needed to cancel the cable. Got to pray about that one!

Revisiting Mission Statement: Start at the Beginning

Our Mission: HELPING PEOPLE FIND THEIR WAY BACK TO GOD!

This is the mission statement that Bill, Matt, and BJ have been trying to work out. At the moment, the mission statement includes some practical steps of what that means and how we think it might look...practically.

Practically we are working out these (click to see) missional actions.

But why are we saying we want to "HELP PEOPLE FIND THEIR WAY BACK TO GOD!"?

Well, I want to answer that by asking: Where does the Gospel, the good news start? What do you say to people first?

Do we start by saying, "You are a sinner?"

I would say no.

Not that it's not true, but what good is it to start with people who have no concept that they were anything other than what they are?

That is, in today's culture, people do not have a pre-culturized context of believing there is a God, that He created us, had a purpose for us, or that He cares at all what we do.

Starting by saying, "You are a sinner" is the same as coming up to you and saying, "You are a ladifald." You don't know what a "ladifald" is do you? Of course not. So, what good does it do to call you a "ladifald" and tell you there is a way to correct it?

By saying we want to "Help you find your way back to God" it implies several things:

1. There is a God
2. You were with Him once
3. You are not with Him now
4. There is a way to get back with Him

All those are part of that statement, "Helping people find their way back to God."

Some of the most attractive things in the story of what God is doing in the Bible is

1. I am (that is God saying "I am")
2. I wanted you, so I created you very special and uniquely fit to be with me and like me and like me with all the others around you
3. I wanted to be with you but you left me
4. I still want to be with you, I still want you to be especially like me
5. I have provided a way for you to be with me and be like me again

What we want to communicate first to people are these things. Primarily this thought:

God created you uniquely special for a purpose and he is still wanting that for you.

Who doesn't want to hear about that?

Ironically, people really do reject the idea they are special more often than rejecting "you are a sinner." We have an innate given knowledge that we are not what we are supposed to be and everything in our lives is striving to be something. And it's not that we reject we are sinners, but it's more often we reject how special we were originally created to be because it means we have to accept our need for God to do something to make us special again. We know sin and how to act that out don't we? We know how to destroy, work to get what we want if we have to, even if it hurts people or makes things worse in the long run. We don't know God or how to act like Him by ourselves, though we try (Genesis 3:4,5). We don't know how to create the good deep things we truly long for.

Of course, the truth of the story is that we sinned and destroyed the "specialness" that God created us with (taking on His image in His presence) and went our own way to be our own God. And we don't want to give that up for fear that God really won't fulfill His end of the bargain.

But He has in my life. I'm changing and destroying less of the good things in my life because of what He has done to get me back to Himself. And I want to tell you that there is a way to get back to God. God has made a way for you to get back to Him. But you have to accept that:

1. You are specially made by God, like God, to be with God
2. You have rejected the image of God in yourself, rejected the presence of God, and denied he made you for any purpose, much less that he made you to be with Him
3. God has made a way for you to get back to that wonderfully joyful created purpose of being with Him to be like Him

And Jesus is the way! His death was the equivalent of destroying all your bad directions away from God. You should have taken on the direction of death and permanent separation from God, but Jesus died and took the separation so we didn't have to die and be permanently separated.

Jesus is the truth! He and His church (the gathering of all who choose to believe and follow Him as the way) embody all we need to know - not just knowledge - who we need to know, who we need to talk to, who we need to be with, who we need to listen to, and who we need to be.

Jesus is the life! He is alive! And we share in that life, that walking with God, by walking with Him through Jesus new life after death given to us - we walk with God, in His Kingdom, through Jesus resurrection.

Instead of seeing humans first and foremost as sinners, we need to see them as Eikons of God [(images of God)], created to relate to God, to relate to others, and to govern the world as Eikons. The Fall effects each of the previous: our relation to God, our relation to others, and our relation to the world. Humans, then, are cracked Eikons. There is all the difference in the world in depicting humans as simply sinners and seeing sinfulness as the condition and behavior of a cracked Eikon. Humans sin, but their sin is the sin of an Eikon [(image of God)]. They can't be defined by their sin until they are seen as Eikons. - Scott McKnight, "What is the Gospel?"

Mission Statement

Our Mission: HELPING PEOPLE FIND THEIR WAY BACK TO GOD!

1. To plant Journey242 as a missional (outward going) church body that will help people find a way back to God.
2. To teach the Word of God in a relational context while providing a home for the "unchurched" that have lost hope in the local church.
3. To send one another to reach the "lost" in our personal communities with the hope of salvation we have found in Jesus Christ.
4. To enter authentic, honest, and open relationships with one another where we are becoming more like Jesus.
5. To support one another as we walk together as missionaries in this world while looking forward to the next
6. To grow large enough to send out at least 100 missionaries to plant another church in the Evansville area.
7. To multiply and plant at least 5 churches in the Evansville area.

God wants us happily married, alive with a sense of adventure and romance!?

The last few months one of the jobs that I've been trying to "get by" on is furniture delivery for a custom furniture maker. It often takes 3 to 4 hours to get to the destination, so I listen to alot of radio.

One of the Christian stations (there seem to be hundreds around) regularly plays a show called "Crown Ministries." Now, I'm about to make some comments about my reaction to Crown Ministries. I'm not necessarily knocking what they do.

Crown Ministries is committed to helping people manage their money in a Biblical way. How to save, how to give, how to tithe, how to borrow, how to buy, etc. Now, I've only been pondering this, but I've been struggling with the reality that the early church simply "sold their property and possessions and gave the money to whoever needed it" (Acts 2:45). What does that mean for us? But I digress in that discussion away from what I was going to say...

My problem with the radio show is that...I don't have any money...and I feel guilty that I don't have any money, I'm not saving regularly, and even though I have tithed with quite a bit of dicipline when I had an income...I haven't had a consistent income for very long most of my adult life. I haven't had a steady income for a long time now.

Seriously...I don't have a steady income, normal life, or regular job. I've known what it's like to be totally relaxed and feeling like tomorrow is all taken care of financially and then I've also been a few dollars short of being "in the red."

I really struggle between two things: 1) the Christians who seem to imply that if you handle your money well, God will bless you with more money, and then 2) what Jesus says to his disciples about "take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep" (Matthew 10:10) and all the other stories that seem to say "follow me at all cost"...and that includes financial well-being.

I just have come to the conclusion that following Jesus is not so financially blissfull as all that.

In fact, I've kind of been pondering the reality that...it's quite a worldly bit of suffering to follow Jesus.

DUH!

I sometimes think I wasn't reading the Bible all these years...or just glancing over those passages and quietly thinking, "Well, that's only for some" or "That doesn't apply to suffering financially" or in "employment" or in "relationships" or maybe it doesn't apply suffering to that part of life.

I am reading, "Reclaiming God's Original Intent for the Church." The foreward talks about giving up up church as he knew it...and he's trying something different. This passage hit home quite readily for me:

Too often the whole church event feels like...a well-orchestrated event more than a throbbing-with-life community. The raw realism of the Bible is too often sugar-coated with cheerily optimistic promises that God wants you happily married, financially secure, and alive with a sense of adventure and romance. Whether it's a megachurch parading it's A-team every Sunday before a packed house of struggling people who are helped to pretend things aren't so bad, or whether it's a single-pastor congregation of a hundred faithful members trying to believe that life can work better than it does, the problem is the same: too often the church is aiming its people toward self-fullfillment through God's blessings and away from the failure and pain that could bring its people together as the community of the broken but loved and hopeful because of Jesus.

Ah yes...I am tired of that kind of church, too.

Kind of like the money thing...I don't have money, so why do I listen to the idea that I should have it (whether it's my idea or not).

I am not perfect, nor have I arrived in spiritual, mature bliss yet. So, why do I listen to the idea, and portray the idea, that I should have it and so should everyone else?

Pain, brokenness, and failure. It does seem that it's through those things that the people of the Bible found God. It was through pain, brokenness, and failure that the disciples grew to know Jesus.

Do we want God enough to accept the pain, brokenness, and failure that comes with seeking Him in our lives? Or, do we want to avoid those things, and end up with something less than all He is and has for us?

The community for you? Or you for the community?

I don't have much time to really work through and clarify all these thoughts right now. But I have been pondering this struggle of wanting a church for me versus wanting to give myself to a church.

I do want a church to be something for me. It's just who I am...selfish...more often than I like to admit it. I am, like Paul says, a sinner who does what he does not want to do, and what I want to do I do not do.

But I want to give myself to the church community, not go to the church community for myself. "Me for the community, not the community for me."

But...

I am a sinner in need of faces of people who love God and others...and I am that "other" to you...

I'm not in need of touchy, feely, crying, and hugging love...though that could be part of it. I'm not in need of another program, men's study, or bible study...though that could be a part of it. What I am thinking of by saying I need others who love God and love me are people who know that:

God asks us to love others...not do things to get them to like us...and God is not pursuing us in our lives to try to get us to like Him...the things He does and the way He pursues us us is loving us regardless of whether we like Him or not...and regardless of whether we return that love or not

Do I want to be loved? Or do I want God and you to make me happy? Do I want God and you to work to find ways to make me like you? Do I want to be loved or liked? Do I want love others or work to make them like me?

A recent study says that:

More specifically, 28 percent of churchgoers who choose to leave their previous church do so because the "church was not helping me to develop spiritually," the study revealed. And 20 percent of respondents leave because they "did not feel engaged or involved in meaningful church work.

There is meaningful "church work" in every face we see....whether it's at "church" or not...

We love...we don't work to make others like us; or like our church service. Or our teaching. Or our sense of humor. Or our music. We don't work to make others like us for anything we do or say. We love them by "doing unto others as you would have them to unto you." Do I stop and think, "If I were that person, what would it mean to me to be loved?"

We are called to love God and love others. God created us...me...you...and He loves us so much He suffered for us to get you back to Himself.

He suffered and died to bring us back to himself. He loved us...regardless of whether we liked Him or not...regardless of whether we killed Him or not.

Believe and trust that God loves us, and then we don't need to work to make others, or God, like us. We love others, regardless of whether they like us or not...regardless of whether they kill us or not...in word or deed...

For God loves us first...

John 3:16God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die.

Father, thank you for loving me and forgiving me...even when I turned my back on you, forgot you, killed you, hurt myself, hurt others, or wished you were dead in my own heart...help me to not work to make others like me...but to love them as you loved me.

My Mentor's Words

My friend and mentor Wes Roberts and his friend pastor Glenn Marshall wrote a book entitled Original Intent. In the forward of this book Larry Crabb, another mentor, wrote these words that have enhanced my inspiration to see churches planted in the Evansville Metropolitan area.

"If, like me, you want to trade in illusion for reality, if you're a pastor or church leader or hungry Christian who loves the church and longs to participate in authentic community led by people who are
more broken than confident and
more Spirit-dependent than naturally talented,
if you desire to see the church re-formed into a place where
character counts more than credentials,
where life is lived in humble trust rather than by careful method,
where organic growth matters more than organizational growth, where serving nudges aside controlling,
then glance at the chapter titles of this book."

Covenant and communion

Easter teaching on covenant and the communion table and bringing ourselves to the table.

http://www.graf-fiti.com/CovenantTable.html

It's in Windows Media File format...sorry Mac folks...I'm too tired and frustrated to try to change it to mp3