Friday, November 22, 2013

Who Am I? How Reconciliation Should Impact Your Answer

In getting ready for Sunday’s message that will finish our 4 week Involveagram series, I was encouraged to think about the gospel – the good news that Jesus came, died for our sins, and rose again, making it possible for us to be forgiven and reconciled to God if we would repent and trust the Lord Jesus as our Savior. Specifically I was encouraged to think about some of the impacts in our lives of being reconciled to God, impacts that should inform how I look at myself. 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 is a passage that has helped me think about those impacts. It reads:

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.  16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.  17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In brief, here are five impacts those verses tell us are true about followers of Jesus:

·         Impact #1 – You Receive a New Life – 2 Corinthians 5:17 – In being reconciled to God, we receive new lives – literally we are new creations.

·         Impact #2 – You Gain a New Outlook – 2 Corinthians 5:16 – instead of looking at people based on gender or ethnicity or socioeconomic status, we can look at people in light of eternity. So often we put barriers between ourselves and others people because of short-term stuff. But when with the new perspective we gain through being reconciled, we can invest in relationships across what used to be barriers.

·         Impact #3 – You Report to a New Leader – 2 Corinthians 5:15 – being reconciled means that the Lord Jesus is really the driver of my life bus, which means that my life is being led by the smartest, most powerful person there is. But that raises a question: Why I follow the best leader? My life can be very different when I do.

·         Impact #4 – You Are Stimulated by a New Motive – 2 Corinthians 5:14 – Lots of things can be the driving motive of our lives. Paul wants us to know love can be that motive of our lives, specifically verse 14 it telling us that we can be motivated by Christ’s love for us. Sometimes starting a new day is hard, but think of how different each day can be when the spark in our lives is not the cup of coffee we might crave, but will soon wear off, but instead is Jesus’ love for us that He declared in dying on the cross while we were His enemies.

·         Impact #5 – You Have a New Mission – 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 – when you receive Jesus, you are given the privilege of joining God’s State Department as His ambassador to your home, school, neighborhood, workplace, and social networks. There is a very real purpose for your life.

If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus you need to see yourself according to those impacts. That is who God reconciled you to be. Lots of things can influence how we view ourselves. But because of what the Lord Jesus did on the first Christmas, first Good Friday, and first Easter, one influence can truly be the most influential. Please, live according to the person God has reconciled you to be. Many will be blessed by the impact of you being the God-reconciled person you are in the Lord Jesus.


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Praying for Central


Prayer is an incredible gift from God to us. But for many of us, prayer is something we struggle with and find hard to do. As a church, Central needs to be praying, but we can struggle with how to do that too. The more I try to study about prayer and look for ways to help people, including myself through the struggles we seem to have related to prayer, I keep being pointed to the same conclusion: to become a "pray-er," I need to pray, but then I run into my struggle as if it is a reinforced brick wall. In an effort to help all of us grow in prayer, please read this helpful article -Simple and Strategic Prayer for Your Church - by one of my professors. I pray it helps you and me grow in prayer.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Is God Central?

Recently, a man whom God has used greatly in my life, Dr. Gary Inrig, spoke at the Fall Bible Conference at Grace University, where our second son and our first son’s wife are currently students. Thanks to internet technology I have been able to listen to those messages (you can too by using this link http://blogs.graceuniversity.edu/gracelife/ and scrolling down). Dr. Inrig began his first message by quoting from the first sentence of A. W. Tozer’s book, The Knowledge of the Holy, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

I have been pondering that sentence since hearing it. I am confident that there is much more to Tozer’s words than I have grasped or can write in a blog post – after all, the sentence was the springboard to an entire book – but I would like to share a couple of thoughts that I trust are of some value.

First, I believe the sentence reminds us of the centrality of God to all of life. Romans 11:36 I believe underlines that truth:

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Often, too often, I can be self-absorbed and view life as if everything revolves around me. I suppose a good word to describe that is pride. But my pride is baseless. Things do not revolve around me or you. That in no way means we have no value. We have value, but that value is derived from God. What I mean by that is each person has value because each person is created in the image of God. That fact should have huge bearing on how we treat other people, recognizing God’s fingerprints on and purpose for their lives. In addition, when a person receives the Lord Jesus as his or her Savior, Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us. God believes we have something significant to contribute, we bring value to life.

If I forget or do not live in light of the centrality of God, I will actual undermine or even remove the basis for my personal value. Thinking that what I think about God is the most important thing about me does not diminish me, it allows me to see myself accurately. Though that is contingent on at least one factor, which is the second thought I had.

If Tozer’s sentence is true and God is central to life, including my life, then it becomes really important for me to have an accurate understanding of who God is. To process life, I need to think correctly about God. On page three of The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer offered, “I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.” Thinking about God is a theological concern. But if God is central to life, then if I have mixed up thoughts about God, I can have some pretty mixed up attitudes and actions in my everyday life. To function well, I need to think rightly about God. If I do not, there will be disconnect, and sadly I may not even be aware of that disconnect. Tozer, on the second page of the book noted, “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” If my thoughts about God are off, a lot of things will be off. I need to seek to understand God as He revealed Himself in the Bible, not how I would like God to be.


Please let me know your thoughts about thinking rightly about God.

Friday, November 8, 2013

What Made Moses Moses? Prayer?

I have always wondered how different biblical characters came to play the roles they did and become the people they did. After Christmas we will be doing a series on Joshua, so I have been thinking about Joshua, but whenever I think of Joshua, I think of Moses, whom Joshua followed as the leader of Israel. Deuteronomy 34:10 gives us some idea of how Moses was viewed:

“Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”

Yet, when Moses started out, Moses was incredibly reluctant to assume the responsibility of serving God. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. described Moses, at the being of his ministry, as “timid, unsure of himself, and shrank back from any self-assertiveness that his divine commission demanded of him.”[1] How did Moses become the hero of Israel and an incredibly prominent figure in the Bible?

A brief editorial insertion in the golden calf narrative of Exodus 32-34 may offer the answer to that question. Exodus 33:7-11 read as follows:

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. 8 Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. 9 When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. 10 And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. 11 Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

Please notice three observations from these verses that seem to explain how Moses changed and how following Moses’ example could stimulate change in our lives too.

First, Moses’ action in verse seven of putting up the tent suggests that Moses regularly took time to meet with God. Moses’ life and his service for God operated out of the context of his continuous interaction with God. Moses’ time with God, in prayer, empowered him and gave him life for the tasks and responsibilities he faced.

Second, verses 8 to 10 provide somewhat of an explanation to the people of Israel and us of why Moses changed. People saw that Moses actively sought time with God. It probably helped them to understand that when Moses spoke, his words undoubtedly came from his time with God. Moses’ leadership was not from Moses’ skills, it was from his pursuing the leadership of God in his own life.

Third, the story ends with a reference to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses’ servant. The narrative seems to suggest that Joshua not only stayed when Moses left the tent, but also was present when Moses met with the Lord. Joshua directly saw how Moses commitment to prayer and his relationship with God changed Moses; that vantage point undoubtedly marked Joshua. It also must have made God’s words to him in Joshua 1:5 emphatic:

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.

Donald H. Madvig observed, “The secret of Moses’ success had been God’s presence with him. It would be the secret of Joshua’s success also, and it continues to be the secret of success for the church (cf. Matt 28:19-20).”[2] Moses was changed by God, in part because Moses sought God in prayer.  Out of that habit, he was empowered and able to do things he did not think he could do. As people watch his example, they saw the secret of his success was his relationship with God. From a front row sit, Joshua saw how being God transform a person and lead a person to do incredible things for God, because God is present.

Often we think that prayer is about bring requests and asking God to do things for us. Requests are a part of prayer, but prayer is so much more than that. Prayer can be a tool God uses to transform us to  become people that do things beyond what we would have ever imagined ourselves doing for God’s glory.  Let’s pray like Moses.





[1]Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Exodus, in vol. 2 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein and J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Regency Reference Library, 1990), 318.
[2]Donald H. Madvig, Joshua, in vol. 3 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein and J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Regency Reference Library, 1992), 256.