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!

On Beat

Noise vs Music

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!

Off the Chain

Liberation is a process not an event. There is a distinction between salvation and liberation. It is possible to be saved and still need liberation. Your personal sins have been remitted from the cross, but the after effects of the victimization that has been done to us still lingers. It is miserable being a Christian that is converted but still be bound by the oppression of your past that is affecting your quality of life. It is God’s will that you enjoy liberty. He wants you to be able to do the things that he called you to do without the constraints of past entanglements and problems. It’s a great thing to be free. But there is some residual effect of that which was done to you. It’s not based on geographical location, because you can leave the scene of the victimization but still have some residue that still haunts you. Deliverance can be difficult. It’s a difficult process because of a challenging problem that continues to manifest in your life Identification: Your experiences in the world shape what you call “normal”. You spend years defining yourself through the things or people that you are connected to. But once you get freed from a bad relationship, the struggle is now regaining a sense of “who am I now, apart from you?” (Children of Israel vs. Egyptians) What is this thing that posses us that we find it difficult to break our tie with our oppressor? You have to allow yourself to be blessed. Do not be afraid to be redefined. The way to break the tie of the past is to be fascinated with the future. You have to be intrigued with where your going instead of being attached and wrestling with where you came from.

CHURCH!

Sola Fide

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 16^th 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!

Going Outward

Gen 12:1-4: Real pivotal point in scripture. God is creating a new initiative for connecting in a relationship with the people that He calls His own. This doesn’t mean that this is the first time that God communicates with His people, that is obvious because God was in a relationship and communicated with His people since Gen. 1, but things change in this chapter. God comes to Abram and says I want you to leave everything that you know, because I’ve got something different for you. This something that God had in store for Abram was a blessing. It was something that he had never seen or experienced before. This blessing was so gigantic that it would change his life so much that Abram would have to change his name.

God’s Blessing is:

Instrumental: God’s blessing for Abram does not end with just Abram. It was not just a single blessing for one person. Abram received the blessing so that he could become a blessing. It was received to be distributed. Abram is a new means to an end. The good life that Abram was promised and did receive wasn’t just so that he could chill and enjoy it, and live life playa style. Abraham has become a medium of God’s blessing.

So the same suit fits us. We are not just chosen, or predestined, elected or called, just to be called. God says that you predestined to be holy, you are called to be a Son of God, you are chosen for His glory. These things exist as windows of opportunity for us to be something outside of ourselves for someone else. It is not just about me.

Universal: God’s blessing is in response to the sin separation in the world. God’s blessing is no respecter of ethnicity, color, political affiliation. God’s blessing doesn’t pay attention to policy, or timeline, or economy, or even morality. It’s for everyone, everywhere. God invited Abram to live out this blessing and to become a light in a dimly lit world. Abram says yes. But as generations pass, more and more people forget that the plan was to be lights and they disconnect from the mission.

We go OUTWARD because this is what God is like. God doesn’t just exist for Himself, and God doesn’t live just for Himself. He wants His love to be on display to everyone. We go OUTWARD because the heart of God goes OUTWARD. This is what He is calling His church to. So what can we learn as a church about this.

A good life is not about talking about all the things that you would not do just because you have been called by God. I used to think that living such a good life meant explaining to people what I don’t do now. “I don’t do this”, and “never do that”, and “you can’t do this until”, and “you may have done that, but you need to feel sorry for it”; are all things that we have heard or said about the “good life” we have in God. But a good life goes beyond the type of books you don’t read, or movies you won’t watch, or that type of people that you would never hang out with. A good life is more about what we choose to do. How do I choose to spend my time? Where do I choose to give my money? Who do I choose to associate with and why? Who do I invest in? What am I passionate about? How has God shown me love, so that I can show that to other people? When you live life in such a way as this, you become compelling and not repelling. What is it for you? How can you find and promote the divine in the daily?

Jesus calls his church to be a compelling force for good in the world. God uses people as agents of change, to relieve suffering and fight injustice; living out the transforming message of the resurrected Jesus. We believe that the church is at its best when it serves, sacrifices, and loves caring about the things God cares about. We were created to live for something larger than ourselves.

CHURCH!

It's All Good!

The style of the beginning of Genesis is as a Mesopotamian poem. There is a rhythm that is created in this poem. “It is good” continues to pop up time and time again. The “good” is woven into the beat and rhyme of the scripture. The scriptures even end with a new rhythm, “it is very good”.

Death, destruction and curse are temporary invaders. The story begins in Chapter I; not in Chapter III. The story begins with good, not with curse. Sin, death, corruption, curse, and exclusion are not the way God intended things to go. These things come in later in the story, after God claimed that everything was good. The world with these temporary invaders isn't how God made it; it isn’t the way God intended it to be; and it isn’t how it will be forever. So that means, there is no amount of human sin can push out the good. This is because sin was simply a second thought. God made it and said “IT IS GOOD!” The world was already good before anything contaminated it or invaded it. This statement only holds true if you believe the story begins in Chapter I and not Chapter III. If you believe that the world was good before it was invaded, this should make a huge difference with the way that we live on earth today.

Everything that God created is good. He will continue to prove the things that he created are good. We see this happen from time to time in places that we would not expect. Don’t completely write anything off, because God will always prove that something He created is still good. If we believe that the story starts in Chapter I and that the resurrection is a reality, then we believe that life can come out of any dead situation. We want to reclaim the good, where ever we find it.

The Resurrection Story is about the pivotal moment in time where death, destruction, disease, pain, hurt and any other temporary invader gets ousted. The invaders have been removed so that we can live the why we should have if we had never been invaded. Now that the invaders are gone lets get on with the life He intended. Let’s CELEBRATE as we go UPWARDS.

We believe that the world the Lord God created is good; and that He creates people in His image and no amount of darkness can erase that divine imprint. Because we believe that all of life is sacred, we look for God’s fingerprints everywhere. We celebrate the divine in the daily; pursuing lives of hope, gratitude and worship. God invites everyone, everywhere into this way of life, and we believe that it is the best possible way to live!

CHURCH!

God is Spirit, so what does that mean?

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

If I were to ask you to explain God’s spirit, what would you say?

Explain the Holy Spirit without using any “Christianese” (i.e. Holy, Trinity, God Head…etc)

For some of us, because of the way that we have heard other people explain the Spirit, we stay away from trying to explain it. Probably because we feel that it is this weird unexplainable thing, because we don’t really get it. We believe it, but we just don’t get it. There is also another spectrum that just believes that anything that has to do with the Spirit is crazy and loony and you don’t touch it with a 10 ft pole. But over and over again in the scriptures you have this affirmation of Spirit.

For thousands of years throughout human history, people have understood that the spirit is similar to the air that you push out of your nose, and inhale through your nose. Our physical breathe is somehow a representation of a far deeper unseen force that is what gives us life. In the ancient middle-eastern culture, the word for breath is the same for spirit. There is awareness that there is a life-force that you either posses or you don’t, and to have it means life, and to not have it means death. This same life-force is somehow connected to you breathing.

So when we talk about spirit, there is an understanding that we all have of something that animates us at a physical level, but being represented as something that keeps us alive at a far deeper level—this is called “spirit”. So if I were to make a couple of observations about spirit, without using “Chrisitianese”, I would describe “spirit” like this:

Animating Energy: When we say “spirit”, we are talking about an energy that animates things. There is a certain language that is used when we discuss spirit. “I need my spirit lifted.” So with this language, we build an understanding that this “spirit” is like electricity that we plug things into.

Non-Material Essence: There are material realities: dirt, trees, bones, blood, food etc. In contrast, when we talk about something spiritual, we are talking about something that is non-material. There are things that we can engage with our natural senses,(i.e. Taste, Touch, Smell, See, Hear)but then there are realities that are just as real but they are not material. They are a non-material essence.

Sensory Transcendence: There are realities that go beyond my five senses and they are just as real, (even though I can’t access them through my five senses) as these things. Here is a simple example: When I embrace my wife, I am wrapping my arms around her physically, so we can feel each other touching, but I really love her, and she can’t feel that essence of my love with her arms. So there are these realities that we live with everyday, that you cannot access or prove them, but yet they are just as real as things that you can hold in your hand. So when you say that someone is “spiritual”, you are saying that they are tuned into realities that transcend what we can access with our five senses in the material or sensory realm.

Each of us has an inner life. We all have an inner command center that essentially runs the show that we call “our life”. From this command center we make decisions, whether or not it is subjective or objective. We make decisions whether they make since or not. But it is this inner life, signals something to us that something may or may not feel right. We see this at work when we meet people. We see this at work when we hear something. We see this at work when we experience certain things. Some of us are more in tune with it than others, and that is ok. But no matter what the case may be, we encounter these feelings in the daily. Jesus knew in His spirit is what the text explains. Walking in the spirit in everyday language is being so connected with the divine in the daily that God’s spirit begins to shape, and fill, and control (not dictatorly)our inner life. These people that have allowed the inner life to be shaped by God are so contagious. They are a joy to be around. They are the ones that we want to be around. To be shaped by the spirit of God means to have your inner life that sees another reality than the current one, and that propels you into the manifestation of greatness on this earth.

To ask for God’s spirit is to say: “I am spent, and I need something to animate me, because I can’t do it myself.” Walking in the spirit is finding a permanent connection to God’s animating energy that fuels your inner life so much so that the effects are seen in your outer life. “God I am at the end of everything that is me, and I need your SPIRIT.”

CHURCH!