pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

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Relationship

Reading: Psalm 4

King David is one of the giants of our faith.  Not only was he brave and strong and wise, he was above all faithful and honest with God.  The deep personal relationship he enjoyed with God is really what allowed him to be brave and strong and wise.  David knew God intimately and fully trusted God with his life.  He knew each day he lived was lived under God’s care.

Psalm 4 is a great example of the level of trust David had in God.  It opens with David’s expectation to hear back from God and it ends with complete confidence in God’s protection.  There is a respect built upon experience and intimacy with God.  All is on the table; nothing is held back.  God is David’s priority.  His day begins and ends with God.  And God is present everywhere in between.

God offers us this same intimate relationship.  God desires to know and be known by each of us just as David knew God and was know by God.  We do not need to slay giants or lead nations to have a deep personal relationship with God.  We just need to spend time with God.  We just need to go to God with our big things and our smallest of things.  Whether life is great for the struggle mighty, we need to daily be in conversation with God.  This day may we deepen our relationship with God through open, honest, and frequent prayer.


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Willing Vessels

Reading: Jeremiah 18: 1-11

Jeremiah 18 opens at the potter’s house.  The potter forms the clay into a desired form.  But if the form is flawed, the clay is reformed and reshaped.  The clay can be remade into what it was intended to be.  And so it is with us.  God has a plan and a purpose for each of us.  We can become flawed but through God’s love and mercy we can be reformed and reshaped.  We can be reshaped over and over and over again into the creation that God intends us to be.

Oh how we can fight this process.  We can turn away from God and we can even run away at times.  We can and often do act as if we were the one in control.  Yet God continues to work on us, to mold us into who we were created to be.  When we take a fork in the road that God did not want us to take, another fork is being prepared to guide us back to God’s path.  God never gives up.

Jeremiah 18:1 says, “the Word came” to Jeremiah.  This is still true for us.  God is always right there, always ready to re-engage us, ready to reshape and reform us, always ready to restore us.  The Word that comes draws us back to God.  The Word that comes will be specific to us and to God’s purposes.  The Word may be one of promise and hope.  It may be one of comfort and peace.  It may be one of direction and discipline.  It may be one of forgiveness and mercy.  It will be what we need.

Unlike the clay that is placed on the wheel and taken into the potter’s hands, we have a role to play.  If we desire to hear the Word that God has for us, we need to seek God out and to be receptive to the Word that God comes with.  This day, may we seek God and may we be willing vessels in God’s hands.  May we be who God created us to be.


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Living His Life

Reading: Luke 14: 1 and 7-14

Today’s passage is about welcome, inclusion, and openness.  It is about these things for us and for those we invite to the table.  God’s table is a place for conversation, compromise, and acceptance.  It is a place for all to come and experience God’s love, grace, and presence.

For all, being welcome is key.  In love we need to create tables and spaces where all people feel welcome.  Each must be able to come as they are and to be comfortable in that.  We need to be comfortable with any that come too.  We cannot limit who is welcome in any way.  To do so is to remove God’s love.  We cannot do this.  All, through God’s love, are welcome.

Once each feels welcome, they gain voice and place at the table.  The sense of being included brings the freedom to be open and honest and transparent.  This can be scary because it makes the table a place for frank and often difficult conversations.  It can open our eyes to needs we never knew existed.  It can place upon our hearts convictions about the need for change and to corrects injustices.

Once the conversation has started, we begin to see each other as the same and as brothers and sisters in Christ.  The openness of the experience will lead us to compromise and to a willingness to give of self.  As God works in our hearts, we are led to be more accepting.  We see less and less our differences and grow to see more and more that we are much the same.  As we come to see God in others, we see their true value.  In humility we gain an understanding that we are not the most important thing in the world.

Once we understand that all are beloved children of God, we are forever changed.  We live life with an open heart and mind.  We are willing to enter into a conversation and relationship with any and all.  We are willing to walk with those who suffer so that we can bring relief.  We are willing to give of ourselves in service to others.  This approach to life may sound familiar.  It is how Jesus lived and how He calls us to live.  May it be so.


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In Spirit and Truth

Reading: Isaiah 1: 11-15

Isaiah writes to a people who are simply going through the motions with God.  They may be offering sacrifices and saying the corporate prayers but their hearts are far from God.  They may be doing all the ‘right’ things according to the Law, but they are far from the intent and reason for worship.  Their worship is not connecting them to God.  Since they are not connecting to God, they are not experiencing God’s presence in their lives.  They leave worship and leave God in the synagogue or temple.

In the New Testament, Jesus echoes Isaiah’s call.  Jesus calls on us to worship God in spirit and in truth.  Worshipping God in spirit involves us in connecting to God’s spirit in worship.  In worship we can connect to God in an intimate and personal way.  In doing so we come to know the Creator’s will and purpose for our lives.  We too often come to worship expecting to ‘get’ something.  Worship is about offering ourselves to God and allowing God to transform us into who we were created to be as a child of God.

When we worship in spirit then God’s truth will shape and form how we live.  When we worship in truth we are honest and open to what God speaks into our hearts and are willing to go where God leads.  The fruit of authentic and real worship is revealed in how God transforms us.  When we worship in truth we are led to repentance, to seeking to bring God’s love into the world, to do good in our world.  Through God’s transforming power we are conformed more and more into living as Christ lived in the world, bringing glory and honor to God in all we do.

When we worship in spirit and truth, we worship in a way that is open to God working in our lives.  We come to God with the desire to be transformed, filled up, and sent out into the world to live for God.  May we offer all we have and all we are to God in worship this day, allowing God’s spirit and truth to transform us into the likeness of Christ, bringing His light and love to the world in need.


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Righteous Anger

Reading: Luke 9: 51-62

As God incarnate, as human flesh fully alive in this world, it makes sense that Jesus got angry.  Being divine did not keep Jesus from weeping a tear for Lazarus, from being joyful over a lost sinner being saved, or from being moved by a poor widow’s offering.  So why should we be surprised that at times Jesus got angry too?  Too often we want Jesus to be only the warm and fuzzy and loving.

The reality is that Jesus exhibited anger at times throughout His ministry.  He gets angry at the Pharisees and Sadducees and even at His own disciples.  And I am sure that He gets angry at me and at you from time to time as well!  In this story today, what lies ahead in Jerusalem has surely put all on edge; Jesus is probably as likely to break into tears as into a rant.

As disciples of Christ, we are ever seeking to become more and more like Him.  Jesus felt all emotions, as do we.  We should.  Anger has a place.  We might be angry over an injustice and be moved by our anger to intervene.  We might be angry at ourselves for falling into sin and the emotion may lead us over the stumbling block to a place of change and transformation.  Anger is also present in our prayer life.  In times of deep emotions we may need to rail at God out of the depths of our pain and suffering.  God can take it.  He desires an open and honest relationship.  This day may we offer all to God.  May we offer all that is inside of us – joy, pain, praise, anger, love, adoration.  May our relationship with God be all it can be.


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Open, Loving, Welcoming

Reading: Revelation 1: 4-8

At times our churches and faith can be private or exclusive is one is not already a member.  Sometimes we do this by using insider language or by expecting guests or seekers to know how we do things or to look and behave just like we do.  Although most churches genuinely work at and desire to be welcoming and inviting, sometimes we are not.  In the same way, most Christians know Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations; we just do not live with this as our primary focus.  We inadvertently put up barriers or fences that in essence keep non-believers and the unchurched outside of our institutions.  On a personal level, we can judge or choose to keep separate from those we see as sinners and unsaved.

If we are truly living as a witness to the love of Christ, we will seek to be more inclusive and inviting and will work to be less judgmental and isolated.  Jesus’ radar was always on.  He was so sensitive to the needs He sensed in people.  Jesus did not allow social or cultural or any other norms to tell Him how to deal with someone.  He simply recognized what they needed and what He could offer and acted accordingly.  Jesus seemed to be friend to all as relationship was the basis of His ministry.  The forming of a relationship so often allowed Him to share Himself to meet their need.

Just as Jesus sought first and foremost to be welcoming and to quickly enter into relationships, so must we as His disciples and as His church.  People need Jesus, not our religion or our churches.  He is who or what we offer.  It is through faith and in the church that people come to know Jesus.  We all need to know His love and the saving grace offered by His blood.  To begin to know Jesus, one must experience Jesus in the love and witness of His followers.  This is what we have to offer.

As believers and followers of Jesus Christ, we are privileged to live in His love as we enjoy a personal relationship with the savior of the world.  This relationship is something we are called to share with others.  Our opportunity may come within the walls of the church; it may come out there in the world.  May we be as open, loving, and welcoming as Jesus was as we seek to live as His witness in and through our lives.


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Word In, Word Out

In my community it is easy to go to church.  Access to a Bible is almost a given.  Finding a place to Worship or a Bible to read in our native language is not very difficult.  We have such open access to the Word.  All that holds us back is our personal choices concerning what to do with our time.  There are places in our whole though where the Word is simply not available in a language the people speak or read.  All they know of the Word of God is what is shared orally by a missionary or by someone who has heard one.  And for many of us in parts of the world where the access is so easy, the reality is that His Word remains a ‘foreign language’ to many.

God placed His words in Jeremiah’s mouth when He called him to service.  The Word is powerful.  God tells Jeremiah that God’s word can uproot and tear down kingdoms and that it can also build up and plant.  The truth in this remains with us today as well.  God’s word continues to work in our lives to destroy those little kingdoms we establish and also to continually build up and plant vision, hope, love, light, and such.  All of this so that we can live these things out and so that we can share them with others.  Just as God placed His Word in Jeremiah’s mouth to call people to God’s commandments and to the covenant, we too are given God’s Word to do the same.

We also share the Word orally.  The words we take in are given not only for our lives, but to share with others as well.  Perhaps it is with a friend who is struggling or maybe it is with one who is searching for direction or meaning in life.  There is a hunger for the Word of God everywhere, even here where access is easy and open.  May we who know God make the choice to be diligently in the Word so that we are rich in what we have to share.  And may we freely share His Word with all we meet to both uproot and destroy those things that keep us from God and to build up and plant those things that draw us to Him.

Scripture reference: Jeremiah 1: 9-10


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A Work in Progress

How true of a vision of ourselves do we present to others?  In sharing a story, do we fully and honestly tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”  or are we more selective?  There are times when we may want to stomp our feet and scream, but we don’t.  Why not?  Because we like to keep the ugly locked away and hidden.

Are we the same way with God?  Do we come before Him with partial truths and incomplete confessions?  Even though we know that He knows all, at times we are not transparent and open.

Do we offer God partials?   All of my heart?  Really?  Can’t I just keep this part here and that part over there?  Isn’t ‘most’ good enough?  Not in the end. Is some better than none?  Certainly!  But God wants to be our “all in all” not just our “some of a bit”.  It is a journey.  The question we need to be asking is do we love Jesus more today than we did yesterday or a week or a year ago?  Is our faith growing?  After all, in reality, we are a work in progress.

Scripture reference: Psalm 17: 1-7 and 15