Jesus describes the Kingdom of God in parables to invite us to take a closer look at how radically God changes our lives. In this first parable, Jesus compares himself to a farmer extravagantly sowing seed, and we who hear his good news to various kinds of soil. His story begs the question: what am I doing to cultivate the soil of my life?
From Series: "Seeds of the Kingdom"
Jesus spoke in parables to invite us to consider the surprising challenge and offer of his new life more fully. In June, we look at four parables were Jesus talks about the Kingdom as a seed. What is this small, seemingly insignificant Kingdom? And what sort of new life will it grow into? Join us as we explore the seeds of the kingdom!
While Jesus lived among us, he constantly announced a new reality everywhere he went. He spent much of his teaching describing it. Jesus most often described this new kingdom to his listeners using stories we call parables. The stories were surprising, energizing and fresh. They announced that what Jesus was doing is good news: God is doing a new thing and you’re invited to be a part of it!
One of his most famous – and confusing – is in Matthew 13:
Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand. — Matthew 13:3-9
So we have a farmer who’s out sowing seed. Ancient farmers wore sacks around their torsos (pic?), and they walked their fields casting out the seed. In Jesus’ day, this would’ve been a very familiar image – most of his listeners had probably done this very thing at some point in their lives. The seed falls on four different kinds of soils, with four different results. A couple of details stick out as odd: First, the sower is very irresponsible with the seed. In the ancient world, where rain and sun were unreliable and crop yields unpredictable, every seed was precious. Each seed represented potential food and income for your family (and food and income in a preindustrial culture were very scarce). So farmers were very careful with their seed. They sought out and cultivated the best soil. Since so much was out of their power, they did everything that was in their power to give their seed the best chance to grow.
Not this farmer. He’s out in his fields, throwing both caution and seed to the wind. Any of Jesus’ early listeners would’ve marveled (or scoffed) at this farmer’s generosity (or recklessness) with his seed.
The other surprising detail is the yield of the good soil – 30, 60 or 100 times what was planted. For these ancient farmers, the best yield they would ever hope for would be 30 times as much grain as was planted. A 30-fold harvest would be so huge, so big and so rare that it’d be the one all other harvests would be compared to. Remember back in the day when we got the 30-fold harvest? Wow. That was miraculous!
And this farmer gets a minimum of thirty? He gets twice, more than triple that? Practically unimaginable!
So we have an irresponsible (or generous) farmer who’s rewarded with an unimaginable (or miraculous) harvest. But what does it mean? And what about the other three soils? Continue Reading…
God of peace, who created the world and all that is in it, God who is the source of every good gift, we pause today to remember that we live in a broken world. On a Memorial Day in the shadow of yet another terrible tornado, we are painfully aware that we live in a world of selfishness and pain. In our world, nations war against nations, fighting over the good creation you put in our care. We all know the pain of that war, whether we’ve served or someone we deeply love. We know the fear, the sting of absence, the pain of uncertainty.
And many of us know the sting of loss. The pain of death. Weekends like this are particularly difficult because we come face-to-face with that loss again. Let us remember today that people all over our war-torn war know the pain we know. Let us remember that Death is our ultimate enemy, our only true nemesis. Death unites us all as people.
Remind us today that the brokenness we see in war, in natural disasters, is a reflection of the brokenness of our own hearts. Remind us that you are the God of peace, and that you have called us all to be peacemakers. Despite our brokenness, through your son you call us all to join you in proclaiming your message of reconciliation.
Let us hope and pray and work for the day when all our soldiers, when all the world’s soldiers can lay down their arms and come home. Let us hope for the day when swords will be beaten into plowshears, when assault rifles will be made into combines. Let us hope and pray and work for peace.
We offer these prayers to a God who knows the pain of death, and we wait anxiously for the return of your son Jesus, for his kingdom to come and your will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven. We offer these prayers in his name.
The Trinity is the most basic expression of who God is: God is wholly self-giving love. God exists eternally as Father, Son and Spirit - three persons who are united as one being. And these three are constantly giving to and receiving from each other. This is God. This is Trinity. We were created in this God's image. The good news is that through Jesus' death and resurrection, God invites us to join in the Trinity's inner life. We were created to be givers, and we are never more fully ourselves than when we give.
From Series: "Already/Not Yet"
Jesus' resurrection wasn't the end of the story; it was the beginning of God's new creation. The Resurrection is God's first step toward reclaiming creation, and we get to be a part of it. By choosing to follow Jesus, we leave the old reality dominated by sin and death and step into God's kingdom, where we find life. This new life has already begun. And yet we're also still waiting, because God's kingdom has not yet come in full. How do we live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet?
This series explores who God calls the Church to be, and how the Holy Spirit enables us to join in God's mission in the space between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. We're not just waiting around for God to show up. God is already here and working, so we're joining in!
According to the Scriptures, that created purpose is found in the very nature of God. In describing the creation of the first two humans, Genesis 1 tells us this:
God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. — Genesis 1:26-27 (NLT)
We have been created for a particular purpose. You don’t have to live according to that purpose – but that’s like using a lawnmower to wash your dishes: dangerous, difficult, probably painful and just not a great idea. If we want a full, meaningful life, we must embrace the reason we were created. We must learn how to live the way we were created to life.
Genesis 1 tells us that we were created in God’s image. That means that somehow, who we are, our truest Selves, is a reflection of who God is. So the obvious question we need to ask is, Who is God? What is God’s nature?
Once we know that, we’re in a position to determine how we are a reflection of God’s nature. So who is God?
According to the Scriptures and Church tradition, the most basic, essential answer to the question, Who is God? is that God is the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is the defining Christian doctrine. When I talk to my Muslim friends, my Mormon friends, my Hindu or Jewish friends, this is the belief that sets us apart from everyone else. Understanding that God is Trinity is what makes us Christian and not anything else. In fact, for churches all over the world, today is Trinity Sunday, the day we set aside to celebrate and discuss and worship God as Trinity.
Most basically, the doctrine of the Trinity says that God is a single being comprised of three persons (Trinity symbol that we’ll use for all the graphics, then 1=3). Those three persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (which we talked about last week) are all equal and eternal. The Father didn’t create the Son and the Spirit. And the Father doesn’t rule over the Son and the Spirit – as though they’re sidekicks or functionaries who do the Father’s bidding. All three persons are equal and eternal.
What’s true of one Person of the Trinity is true of the other two as well. What one Person does, all three do.
You can see why the Trinity is a doctrine that gets less time than it deserves: it’s really confusing. The way theologians talk about the Trinity can be so intimidating, many Christians just throw up their hands and ignore God-as-Trinity altogether. And that’s truly dangerous because we’re ignoring who God truly is, who the Scriptures reveal God to be.
Ever wonder why so many people have gotten the impression that God’s an angry, vindictive deity? It’s because we’ve forgotten the Trinity. Or why so many today think that God is a distant, unconcerned grandfatherly figure? We forgot the Trinity. Why so many have reduced Jesus to just some good moral teacher whose death was tragic but ultimately meaningless? We forgot the Trinity. And why – as we talked about last week – don’t we have a clue what we’re supposed to believe about the Holy Spirit? We forgot the Trinity.
And we’re made in the image of this triune God! When we forget who God is, we lose the picture of who we really are, who we’re called to be. We know our lives are supposed to mean something. We know deep in our bones that there’s some right way to live, but we can’t figure out what that way is.
So for the sake of the Church, for the sake of our souls, for the sake of humanity, let’s spend a little more time on what it means to say that God is Trinity:
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. She empowers the Church to be the body of Christ, the visible image of God's life, to the world. Everything we do as followers of Jesus flows from the Holy Spirit, and we can do nothing in God's Kingdom without her. What keeps us from living the full life God offers is our refusal (or ignorance) of the Spirit's power. By choosing to connect to the Spirit, we live powerful, victorious lives that present a clear image of God to the world.
From Series: "Already/Not Yet"
Jesus' resurrection wasn't the end of the story; it was the beginning of God's new creation. The Resurrection is God's first step toward reclaiming creation, and we get to be a part of it. By choosing to follow Jesus, we leave the old reality dominated by sin and death and step into God's kingdom, where we find life. This new life has already begun. And yet we're also still waiting, because God's kingdom has not yet come in full. How do we live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet?
This series explores who God calls the Church to be, and how the Holy Spirit enables us to join in God's mission in the space between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. We're not just waiting around for God to show up. God is already here and working, so we're joining in!
When we hear the story of Pentecost, with everyone speaking in multiple languages and tongues of fire and thousands finding Jesus for the first time, it’s frankly easy to become intimidated.
Because we look around today and think, Where’s all that?
Where are the miracles and the tongues of fire? Where’s the powerful, power-filled Church that’s moving and shaking and changing things?
Asking that question about Pentecost points to a whole set of questions that lie just beneath the surface of what we’ve been talking about throughout this series. Since Easter, we’ve been exploring how we are called to live Between Jesus’ resurrection and his second coming, in this time when the Kingdom is already here and not yet here at the same time.
We claimed that those who follow Jesus are called to be different from the world around us, that we should look like Jesus’ Life. We saw that the best way for us to live that different, holy life is in the Church (which began on Pentecost). That we’re all given – by the Holy Spirit – gifts that should enable us to serve each other. A couple of weeks ago, Keven told us that we gather to celebrate the new life we’re living with God and last week Sheila led us to see our purpose: to invite the rest of the world into this new life we’ve found in Jesus.
The scary thing about all that we’ve been talking about is how easily this new life with Jesus turns into a self-improvement program. If we’re not careful, we reduce Christianity to ‘just try harder’ or ‘just be better’. This powerful, world-altering, life-resurrecting faith ends up being sort of like the Atkins diet or P90X or the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You just try, develop some new habits. And some people nail it and some people don’t and that’s that.
Then we hear the story of Pentecost and think, Woah I’m missing something big. But even then, we get caught up in the spectacle – the languages and the fire and the wind. It’s easy for us to miss the true importance of Pentecost for all the spectacle of the day.
What actually matters on Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit creates a people who will show the world who God is.
That’s it. That’s the bottom line on Pentecost. Behind all the flash and truly awesome, miraculous stuff, God has called a people together to become the light of the world. The Holy Spirit is the heartbeat, the lifeblood of the Church.
That might sounds odd to some of us. Of the three persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is certainly the most confusing, least understood. We can imagine the Father, in Heaven, ruling the world. And we really like Jesus, the Son who became human, who lived, died and was raised to rescue us from Sin and reclaim God’s good creation.
But the Spirit? We’re fuzzy on her. Many of us grew up hearing her called the Holy Ghost (and you still hear that on TV and in movies today). The term “ghost” is unfortunate because even though back in ole King James’ day, ghost and spirit were synonymous, today ‘ghost’ conjures images of departed loved ones and wronged, vengeful dead.
For many Christians, the Holy Spirit is sort of like a ghost – haunting the edges of our faith, lingering like a specter we don’t quite know what to do with.
But the Holy Spirit is vital to our faith! She’s the third person of the Trinity (again, more about next week). The Spirit is as fully God as is the Father or the Son. Everything that’s true of the Father or the Son is true of the Spirit (and vice versa). The Spirit is coequal and coeternal with both the Father and the Son.
In short, the Spirit is God, living and active in the world.
Join us Sunday as we celebrate the Holy Spirit and explore what she does in our lives!
Spiritual gifts can be a confusing, intimidating subject, but the basic truth is straightforward: if you are a follower of Jesus, then you have been given certain talents, passions and abilities that our Church needs to accomplish what God is calling us to. The Church needs you to be who God has created you to be. You're an indispensable part of what God is doing here in Beavercreek! And the best way to figure out your gifts is to jump in and serve.
From Series: "Already/Not Yet"
Jesus' resurrection wasn't the end of the story; it was the beginning of God's new creation. The Resurrection is God's first step toward reclaiming creation, and we get to be a part of it. By choosing to follow Jesus, we leave the old reality dominated by sin and death and step into God's kingdom, where we find life. This new life has already begun. And yet we're also still waiting, because God's kingdom has not yet come in full. How do we live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet?
This series explores who God calls the Church to be, and how the Holy Spirit enables us to join in God's mission in the space between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. We're not just waiting around for God to show up. God is already here and working, so we're joining in!
This is where I want to hang out with you today. Let’s ask more specifically about how we do Church together. Not what we’re doing right now, where I am up here talking and you’re out there listening and taking notes and considering. But how do you do Church?
In other words, what do you bring to the table? Why are you essential?
The great news, the exciting news, is that if you are following Jesus, then the Holy Spirit has given you particular abilities that make you unique and necessary to the Church. Your Church needs you. You are vital to what God is doing in your local church.
We can see that in 1 Corinthians 12. The Christians in Corinth had written to Paul to ask him several questions. One of their questions was about how they were supposed to do Church when they got together. Paul had apparently taught them about what he called “Spiritual Gifts” or “Gifts of the Holy Spirit”, and they asked for some clarification about them. Here’s what he said:
Now, dear brothers and sisters, regarding your question about the special abilities the Spirit gives us. I don’t want you to misunderstand this… There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.
Paul says, There are lots of different kinds of gifts, but they’re all from the same Spirit. We all serve in different ways, but we’re all serving the same God. We’re all different, but all the same. He goes on:
A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said.
It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. – 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 (NLT)
Why do we have Spiritual gifts? To help each other. Then Paul goes on to list a pretty nice variety of gifts, and reminds us that they all come from the Holy Spirit. [my gift goes out to everyone else]
This idea that we all have particular gifts and talents can be tough to get our minds around, especially if you’re more familiar with this “big room” model of church. So let me show you something that may help get your brain around what Paul’s talking about.
Do you know why The Avengers worked so well as a movie, why it’s the third highest grossing film of all time? Because every single character was needed for the story to work. If you had taken out any one of those characters, the team would’ve lost (yes, even Hawkeye!).
A super team is only super if each of them is necessary. And believe it or not, God designed the Church to function the same way.
Yes, I’m saying that Church is like The Avengers.
Which may not help matters much if you’re sitting there thinking, Okay, I definitely don’t have any “superpowers”. I definitely don’t have any special gifts from the Spirit.
But the Scriptures tell us that if you follow Jesus, if you have turned from sin and embraced the new life God offers, then God the Holy Spirit has given you some unique abilities.
The problem isn’t that you don’t have gifts. It’s usually trying to figure out what those abilities are.
Join us Sunday as we explore what it means to have Gifts from the Spirit!
We think of Church as the building we meet in, but in the Scriptures, a "church" is a group of people called together to proclaim the Good News that Jesus has risen from the dead. We can do that anywhere, anytime. Church can - and should - happen every day, all over our community!
From Series: "Already/Not Yet"
Jesus' resurrection wasn't the end of the story; it was the beginning of God's new creation. The Resurrection is God's first step toward reclaiming creation, and we get to be a part of it. By choosing to follow Jesus, we leave the old reality dominated by sin and death and step into God's kingdom, where we find life. This new life has already begun. And yet we're also still waiting, because God's kingdom has not yet come in full. How do we live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet?
This series explores who God calls the Church to be, and how the Holy Spirit enables us to join in God's mission in the space between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. We're not just waiting around for God to show up. God is already here and working, so we're joining in!
Last week, I had the opportunity to go to Opening Day for the Dayton Dragons. The game got rained out, which made me think about how similar the Dayton Dragons are to Church.
I know that sounds odd. If you’re like me, you default to thinking about Church as the Sunday worship service. “Church” is what we do one day a week (give or take). On a Sunday morning. Usually. If we’re not too busy.
In fact, if you think about being holy as being different, then this understanding of Church as a different place and different time makes a lot of sense. We go to Church to be holy because Church is a different time (Sundays, which are different from the ordinary days) and at a different place (this building, which is pretty different from your house or office). It’s special. Set apart. Different. Holy.
Makes sense. The problem is that it’s not very biblical.
Calling a worship service “Church” is far from what God has in mind for those who follow Jesus.
And that’s actually really good news. After all, if we’re talking about the massive difference between God’s way and the ways of the world, if we’re claiming that one of these paths leads to life and all the others lead to death, but then we say, Well the main difference amounts to what you do for about 4 hours a month… That seems a little silly, doesn’t it?
Surely the sum total of our life with God isn’t what goes on in this room an hour a week? Surely when we make these grandiose claims about Jesus rising from the dead and offering us new life that doesn’t just mean… now you get to spend a bit of your time listening to some guy talk and wave his arms around!
Obviously that’s not it.
Our problem with Church is really a problem of language.
How we talk about Church reflects our assumption that Church is this place. We “go” to church. We say, “it’s time for Church”, “Hurry up or we’ll be late for Church”. I don’t want to “miss” Church. Can you tell me how to “get to the Church?”
All of that says that Church is particular time and particular place. We can mark it on a map. We can set our clocks by it. We can miss it.
It’s too bad we don’t speak ancient Greek. Because the word the Bible uses for “church” is ekklesia. It literally means “called together”. When the first Christians experienced the resurrection of Jesus, and they started meeting together and doing a lot of the same things we do in here, they wanted a word to describe what they were doing.
And they chose the word “ekklesia“. They said, we’re the “called together”. It was a word Greek people used to talk about a group that met for a purpose (as opposed to people who were just hanging out, or a mob, or a crowd).
An ekklesia met on purpose, for a purpose.
Why isn’t this Church?
In that regard, a Church is much more like a PTA or a Rotary Club, or even the crowd at the Dragons game. In fact, that’s what I meant earlier about the Dragons game being sort of like Church.
What constitutes a Dragons game? Clearly not everything that happens in that stadium is a Dragons game. Little league games that get to play in the stadium are clearly not Dragons games. Neither are the concerts they hold in there.
And I tried to go to a Dragons game on opening day. But it got rained out. So even though the players were in the stadium and it was full of fans and they were selling hotdogs, it wasn’t a Dragons game.
It’s not the building (or stadium) that makes for Dragons baseball. It’s the team, and the fans. It’s this group of people when they are called together for a particular purpose (in this case, baseball). In fact, the Dragons can play baseball somewhere else, and it’s still a Dragons game.
It’s not even necessarily that the things we do in Church are that different from what we do at a baseball game. We all know sports fans who have what we would describe as a religious zeal for their team. They’re evangelistic in spreading the Gospel of their team pride. And when we go to baseball games, we all stand up and sing songs together. We have rituals to open the game. And I’m not saying peanuts and crackerjacks are exactly the same as communion, but it’s pretty fascinating that eating and drinking together is so fundamental to big groups of people getting together.
No, what really makes PTA different from the Dayton Dragons or the Rotary Club or a Board Game Convention is its purpose.
The Church is not a building, it’s the people. We are the ekklesia, the “called together”. So the question we should ask is: Why are we called together? What’s our purpose? What makes us different, unique? What makes us the Church and not the PTA or the Dragons or the Rotary?
Join us Sunday as we explore what the Church’s purpose is, and what that means for how we “do Church”!
Christians are called to be different, but not weird. But what does it look like to be Holy?
From Series: "Already/Not Yet"
Jesus' resurrection wasn't the end of the story; it was the beginning of God's new creation. The Resurrection is God's first step toward reclaiming creation, and we get to be a part of it. By choosing to follow Jesus, we leave the old reality dominated by sin and death and step into God's kingdom, where we find life. This new life has already begun. And yet we're also still waiting, because God's kingdom has not yet come in full. How do we live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet?
This series explores who God calls the Church to be, and how the Holy Spirit enables us to join in God's mission in the space between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. We're not just waiting around for God to show up. God is already here and working, so we're joining in!
I’ve been a pastor for almost a decade, and in that time, I’ve learned to be ashamed of calling myself a pastor.
Not always. In fact, sometimes it comes in handy. But particularly when I’m meeting for the first time people who don’t go to church, I usually try to wait as long as possible in a conversation before bringing up that old conversational standby, “So what do you do for a living?”
Because (and you know this) Christians are weird. We’ve cultivated a reputation in our culture for being against a lot of stuff, for being sticks in the mud, for complaining and petitioning against whatever we disagree with.
So when I’m in conversation with a new friend (I’m an extrovert, so everyone I meet is a new friend; I skip the ‘acquaintance’ stage), and they find out I’m not only a Christian but a pastor, it usually gets awkward quickly. They’re trying to figure out what I’m going to start condemning them for and I’m trying to tell them, Look, I’m not like those Christians, I just really love Jesus!
I shouldn’t give those Christians too hard a time, though. Because I’ve been one of those Christians, too. I grew up in Church, and when I was in seventh grade, I was really struggling with lustful thoughts (as an adolescent boy? Big surprise, right?). I prayed to God to help me control my thought life, to help me to have thoughts that were more pure. And I distinctly felt God tell me to quit listening to secular music.
Now, you need to understand that when I was 13, I wasn’t listening to good music. I went to bed every night with the Top 40 station playing, so I was getting a steady stream of music that painted pretty awful pictures of sexuality, of both men and women. In retrospect, it’s no wonder I was struggling so hard to keep my thoughts pure.
But of course 13-year-old me didn’t know this, so when I felt God tell me to shut off the radio, I did. And practically overnight, my thoughts got a lot easier to control. It was really cool.
I wish I could tell you that story ended there, but remember: this is a story about how I was a weird Christian. What happened next is that I became a righteous crusader against secular music. I imagined myself as Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with an 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Listen to Secular Music!
I became a micro-prophet, proclaiming the evils of secular music to all my friends (who were pretty much my youth group at Church). I started arguments. I won a few converts. I made a lot of enemies. I was one of those weird Christians.
All because I took something that was very good for me, something that was helping me to look more like Jesus, and tried to force it on everyone else.
Because I’ve been there, here’s what I know about those weird Christians: they are trying to live out a core Scriptural truth, a doctrine that is fundamental to our particular denomination and a truth that – when we get it right – is beautiful and powerful and freeing.
It’s called Holiness. And it’s not supposed to make us weird. We’re supposed to be different, but not weird. Not mean, cruel or judgmental. So why is it so easy to get wrong?
What does it mean to be Holy?
Holiness is a church word, but it actually just means different. Specifically, the world Holy recognizes that there are two ways to be in the world: with God and without God. Like we’ve been talking about since January: God’s Way, and everything else. The stuff that’s set apart, the stuff that’s dedicated to God (like temples, priests, holy days, etc) are considered sacred – another word for holy. And if you take something ordinary and dedicate it to God, if you make it holy, you’re sanctifying it.
Holy, sacred, sanctification. All these Church words basically just mean “like God, different from the world”.
So how do we be Holy? Join us Sunday as we discuss it!
One day, Jesus will return to finish what he started on Easter. But until that day, we are anxiously waiting for the old world of Sin and Death to pass away and for God's new, restored creation to become fully. Through Jesus' resurrection it's already here, but until the Second Coming, it's not yet finished! How do we live in the space between Easter and the Second Coming?
From Series: "Already/Not Yet"
Jesus' resurrection wasn't the end of the story; it was the beginning of God's new creation. The Resurrection is God's first step toward reclaiming creation, and we get to be a part of it. By choosing to follow Jesus, we leave the old reality dominated by sin and death and step into God's kingdom, where we find life. This new life has already begun. And yet we're also still waiting, because God's kingdom has not yet come in full. How do we live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet?
This series explores who God calls the Church to be, and how the Holy Spirit enables us to join in God's mission in the space between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. We're not just waiting around for God to show up. God is already here and working, so we're joining in!
Most of the time, we live one day to the next. And most of the time, one day is more or less like the last. But occasionally, we enter seasons of life that are transitional.
Once in a while, we’re between two realities.
My wife Amanda and I got engaged the day after I turned 28. (you can watch the video here) She had a big party planned for me, and I laid all these secret counter-plans that turned my birthday party into our engagement party. So both of us were making all these plans and then all those plans culminated in an Engagement! And it felt like this big moment, but it was only the beginning. Because of course you don’t stay engaged. Engaged is a Between: you’re between single and married. It ends when you get married.
Have you ever gotten a new job and had to put your two weeks in? You officially quit/resign/leave when you turn in your two weeks, but then you’re still there for the next two weeks. Your Two Week Notice is a Between: you’re between one job and the next. And your old job doesn’t end when you put in your notice. It ends when you walk out the door for the last time.
Or consider getting pregnant. When you find out you’re having a kid, you celebrate and get all excited, but getting pregnant is only the beginning. Pregnancy is Between: you’re between not having a kid and having a kid. Being pregnant is going to end.
This first week after Easter marks a spiritual ‘between time’. Easter is the day we celebrate Jesus’ victory over sin and death. And in any good story, after the hero wins, the story’s over. After Luke blows up the Death Star, they celebrate. Roll credits. After Jack kills the giant and returns home with the treasure, they all live happily ever after. After Boy gets Girl back, they get married and live happily ever after.
Easter feels like the End of the Story that began in Genesis 1. We celebrated Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We talked about the Resurrection as God’s victory over Sin, over Death. We claimed that Jesus’ resurrection frees us to follow God, to chase after the life God created us to live. The Resurrection is what makes it possible for us to become children of God.
Is Easter only The End of the story? Or does something come next? Continue Reading…
Through the Resurrection, God calls us to join God in restoring the world. Jesus' resurrection is proof of God's faithfulness to bring life even in the face of death. When we live in the power of Jesus' resurrection, we can step confidently into the calling God has on our lives. We can step out in faith, take the big risk, jump with both feet into God's mission!
From Series: "Already/Not Yet"
Jesus' resurrection wasn't the end of the story; it was the beginning of God's new creation. The Resurrection is God's first step toward reclaiming creation, and we get to be a part of it. By choosing to follow Jesus, we leave the old reality dominated by sin and death and step into God's kingdom, where we find life. This new life has already begun. And yet we're also still waiting, because God's kingdom has not yet come in full. How do we live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet?
This series explores who God calls the Church to be, and how the Holy Spirit enables us to join in God's mission in the space between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. We're not just waiting around for God to show up. God is already here and working, so we're joining in!
My sophomore year of college, several friends and I heard about a cliff overlooking a lake about 20 minutes away from our little town. So of course, we did what any college kids would do: immediately hopped in our cars and set off for the cliff.
The only slightly weird thing was that it was about 9:00pm when we left. Which meant that, by the time we got to the site, got a little campfire going and were ready to jump, it was a little after 10 pm.
Which means we were jumping by moonlight. You could see the ground just fine, all the way to the edge of the cliff. But past that? Just blackness. The cliff was allegedly about 25 feet above the water, but we couldn’t see any water down there.
One guy had thoughtfully brought his giant maglite flashlight, so standing at the edge of the cliff, shining the thin flashlight beam into the darkness, we could tell that there was, in fact, water down there. Probably.
Just kidding. There was definitely water.
It’s not very hard to talk me into a stupid idea, so the maglite guy and I volunteered to jump first, along with one other guy. We took our shoes and shirts off, got about 5 yards back from the edge, sprinted to the edge of the cliff and then jumped!
Have you ever jumped when you couldn’t see where you’re going? It’s thrilling and terrifying – thrillifying. Falling 25 feet actually seems to take quite a long time when you can’t see the bottom, and then all of a sudden, you’re slamming into the water and all that thrillification turns into exhilaration because YOU DID IT! You took the plunge, you make the jump and you were scared out of your mind but you did it and you MADE IT!
What makes the rush so amazing is the terror we feel when confronted with the risk.
The scariest part isn’t the fall, it’s just before the jump. Because before the jump, you’re safe. You’re where you know, on firm ground, where everything’s predictable.
And you’re looking into an abyss. The unknown. By its very nature, it’s unpredictable. And the jump represents risk. You’re abandoning what makes you comfortable and trusting something that may not be trustworthy.
We all face risk in our lives. Particularly when we choose to follow God. Because choosing to follow God means abandoning the ground we’ve always known, the ground where we’re safe, where we feel comfortable.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, I don’t want to give my life to God because I don’t want to get called to move to Africa. I’ve said it myself! That’s risk-aversion. Here is comfortable. There is unknown. And if I surrender to God, if I jump in with both feet, I don’t know what will happen!
We’re afraid of all kinds of things. If I jump in, I’ll have to forgive that person. If I jump in, I’ll have to give up that habit. If I jump in, I’ll have to start acting like a weird church person. If I jump in, I’ll have to do what God wants, not what I want.
Always, at the heart of that aversion to jump, what keeps us from risking is fear.
I’m afraid that the life God will give me isn’t as good as the life I have now. I’m afraid that if I jump in, if I leave the things that make me comfortable, it’ll cost too much.
Here’s what I know about you: If you’re here today, then God is calling you forward. Maybe you’ve never followed God before. Maybe you’ve been following God for a long time. Either way, here’s what you need to know:
Jesus’ resurrection is proof that God’s Way is better.
The fact that Jesus came back to life and walked out of his tomb is all the assurance you need to jump with both feet into the life God is calling you to.
“Prayer is not introspection. It is not a scrupulous, inward-looking analysis of our own thoughts and feelings but is an attentiveness to the Presence of Love personified inviting us to an encounter. Prayer is the presentation of our thoughts – reflective, as well as daydreams, and night dreams – to the One who receives them, sees them in the light of unconditional love, and responds to them with divine compassion.” — Henri Nouwen, A Book of Hours
This is Holy Saturday, a time that lies between the shame and pain of Jesus’ death and the celebration and glory of Jesus’ resurrection. These prayers follow the traditional Holy Hours of the church, times when the faithful would take out of their days to pray and read Holy Scripture.
Use this to help guide you into prayer and meditation on God, who brought you to this point, who died that you might live, and who leads you into community and new life. Continue Reading…
I'm a Teaching Pastor in Dayton, Ohio with my wife Amanda. I do the #StoryMen podcast with Matt Mikalatos and Clay Morgan. I love stories of all kinds. So what's yours?
So we have a farmer who’s out sowing seed. Ancient farmers wore sacks around their torsos (pic?), and they walked their fields casting out the seed. In Jesus’ day, this would’ve been a very familiar image – most of his listeners had probably done this very thing at some point in their lives. The seed falls on four different kinds of soils, with four different results. A couple of details stick out as odd: First, the sower is very irresponsible with the seed. In the ancient world, where rain and sun were unreliable and crop yields unpredictable, every seed was precious. Each seed represented potential food and income for your family (and food and income in a preindustrial culture were very scarce). So farmers were very careful with their seed. They sought out and cultivated the best soil. Since so much was out of their power, they did everything that was in their power to give their seed the best chance to grow.
