I randomly ran across this video today. I think that it demonstrates perfectly the way that the Church should be interacting with the Gay and Lesbian community. Watch the whole video – It is a powerful message that applies all of us! Have you surrendered to God even the things in which your identity is rooted?
So wordpress won’t let me embed my vimeo sermon video . . . awesome. But here is the link. I would love to know what you think!!
4/30/10 Update! I figured out how to post the video here!!
So, I know that the crusades were mostly bad…or all bad…but I can’t help but loving that phrase, “The power of Christ compels you!” I think I actually may have heard it first from The Kingdom of Heaven (which is such a clutch movie). For me, this phrase ranks alongside: “This. Is. SPAAARTAAAA” from 300 as totally epic and memorable(I like war movies and history…it doesn’t get much better than war movies from history…not that there are a lot of war movies from the future). But as I have spent more time thinking about that phrase, “The Power of Christ compels you,” I wonder how that actually might apply to me right now. What does the power of Christ actually compel me to do? Anything?
I recently have been teaching my youth group what it means to be a real disciple. It’s been super convicting for me, and for my youth to think about how radical being a disciple actually is. I can get into it, but in order to keep this a reasonable size post I’ll need to get those issues out there in another episode. I taught a lesson out of Matthew 10, and that is where I would like to draw from for this post. (Don’t forget, we’re talking about the Power of Christ compelling you). In Matthew 10 we see Jesus sending out his 12 disciples into towns which make up the “lost sheep of Israel” with the goal of preaching this message: “The kingdom of heaven is near.” This sounds a lot like what he tells them at the end of Mark when he says to go into all nations with the good news. But we often stop there, don’t we? We often think our job is to go out and tell people. Telling does some stuff – but telling isn’t all there is. In verse 8 of chapter 10, this is what Jesus instructs his disciples to do: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.” Ok, woah, when did Benny Hinn start tampering with the Bible? Heal people? Cleanse skin disease? Drive out demons? RAISE PEOPLE FROM THE DEAD? That is pretty crazy stuff; pretty crazy POWERFUL stuff. So often we view the disciples as these guys who were giants of faith and extra “special” because they got to be right there with Jesus. Jesus must have sprinkled them with his “Jesus healing talcum powder” and they were able to heal people because of it. But the way I see the disciples in the Bible, is that they were full of doubts. They were pretty scared dudes who didn’t know how to be all they could be for Jesus. Then he tells them to go raise people from the dead. I probably would have guessed that NONE of those guys had raised someone from the dead before this moment in time – I can only imagine their reaction:
“Uh, Jesus, did you say…raise people from the dead?” the disciples asked, flabbergasted.
“Let him who has ears, hear.” Jesus replied.
“Um…how exactly?” they responded dumbfounded.
“The Power of Me compels you.” Christ replied.
Can you imagine being a disciple walking into a town where you know absolutely no one, then walking up to the first funeral procession you see, stopping it, standing over the dead person and saying “Wake up dead guy (or gal) – the power of Christ compels you!” Then hoping, praying, pleading with God that he raises the person or else you are totally going to be stoned to death in the next 10 seconds. I mean, I just spent the last large amount of space describing to you the immensity of this request from Christ to his disciples. It is one thing to pray from someone’s cough to get better, it’s a whole other thing to raise them from the dead. But you see that’s the point. We don’t do anything. It is Christ through us. It’s his power, or so we say. Because you see, it’s SO easy to rely on your own power to tell others about the kingdom of heaven. That hardly takes much faith at all when you think about it. But Christ sent out his disciples in power, that the message they took with them would be impactful because of the power they demonstrated through Christ. He came as Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. If we claim to be followers of Christ (and I mean, true followers – the kind that put their hand to the plow and don’t look back…see Luke 9:62) then why don’t we claim the power of Christ? Doesn’t Jesus tell his disciples that if they had the faith of a mustard seed – just a tiny bit of faith – they could move entire mountains?! Not that Jesus wants us rearranging the scenery, but the fact remains that we don’t live our lives with the amount of faith that Jesus is asking from us, do we? How many people have you healed recently in an attempt to bring them to Christ? How do you pray for those who are sick and hurting? I used to (and still do I guess) pray like this: “God, help the doctors know what to do…” I have a story to tell, then I’m done.
I was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia about a month ago. I had some pretty severe discomfort below my abdomen for about 2 weeks, so I decided to get it checked out. It was going to need surgery (obviously) and I was going to be out of work for at least 2 weeks after surgery. I was pretty bummed out frankly, but I took it in stride and starting making the appropriate arrangements to be out of work. I was telling a few people about it, having them pray for me and what not, when one day (it was a Tuesday) I had a pastor acquaintance of mine call me up and pray for me. Unlike the prayers I usually prayed, he prayed like this: “Father God, in the name and power of Jesus we command that hernia to disappear. We give you until the 8th (my pre-surgery appointment) to do it, and we trust you to take it away.” I was shocked. He actually prayed that the hernia would go away. He didn’t say “God, if it be your will please take it away” or “Jesus comfort Ryan as he struggles with pain.” He said TAKE IT AWAY. I stopped having pain that night. Didn’t have pain for 2 days straight and I was like – I’m healed. This is awesome. Then the pain came back, and I was seriously bummed. My mother expressed to me that she had a similar experience of healing, then having it come back, but that I needed to live in the healing power of Christ. So I claimed it, and spent the next 3 days with no pain. You’ll never guess what my surgeon told me…
“…it’s gone.”
The power of Christ compels you. Do something about it.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter or on FB know that I have been reading Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. In fact you may be sick of hearing me talk about it. The truth is the things that I am dealing with in IR are really a continuation of the things that I have been dealing for the past month or so. Part of my denominational requirements for ordination is to take a series of courses. Most of them I took in college, but there were a few that I lacked and I have been taking them via 1/2 week intensive classes. The last one that I did was a course on the doctrine of holiness. Basically this doctrine says that we believe God wants to do an ongoing transformative work in your life even after you have reached the point of admitting you are a sinner in need of a savior. In this course we talked a lot about the fact that this is not something that God will do to me as I passively park my rear in a pew week in and week out. This process of transformation requires hard work and commitment on my part, but at the same time it is not something I will achieve on my effort. It is still the work of the Holy Spirit, since it is in fact God who is transforming you, and not yourself. This is a both/and process, it requires both your WORK and the work of the Holy Spirit.
I love taking courses like this. I love learning about God and how He works in our lives. I love learning about the Bible, I was a Bible major in college and I minored in Theology. Something God said to me in an all but audible voice during that class was: I need to start living what I have already learned before I move on to learning the next thing.
That hit me hard. There are a lot of things, little things especially that I know I need to do/not do if I am serious about follow Jesus. But there are big things too.
The thing that has stuck with me the most as I read through IR is that Shane is someone who has reexamined all aspects of his life in order to follow Jesus to fullest extent he is capable – not that Shane has reached that point necessarily, but it is the only direction he seems to be heading in. It is his only pursuit. It is as if in every area of his life he has asked the question “Will this bring me closer to the American dream or the Kingdom of God?”. Some of us have not even realized yet that these are not the same thing!!!! Is there a scenario where the answer to that question would be, “both”?? I can’t think of any?
It seems as if in order to pursue the Kingdom of God on earth (Matthew 6:10) you have to stop pursuing everything else, even (or perhaps especially) the American Dream.
So where am I in all of this? Good question. I have no idea. All I know is that I need to stop concerning myself with learning more about God until I can begin to allow what I already know about Him to alter the trajectory of my life. Getting to that place requires far more humility than I currently have and a lot more wisdom. I think that my biggest need is focus. Focus on one pursuit. I would greatly appreciate your prayers.
God, our culture has made us disciples of the American Dream. We have bought into the lie that we can pursue the American Dream and Your Kingdom. Please forgive us. Please forgive us for the times that we have confused the American Dream with Your Will for our lives. Teach us the difference. Teach us through the Holy Spirit to lay down the American Dream and pursue only You, and Your Kingdom.
This video sums up the way I have felt over the past month.
When Tyler and I first talked about starting a blog, in my mind it was just going to be used as a platform to get some ideas out on the table, and that it could be fun to battle back and forth with him on different topics (I mean, we always used to do that when we were roommates in college – I was starting to miss it a little bit). I pitched him the idea and he got really excited – Tyler style. He started sending me links on how to write a successful blog and how often you need to update in order to keep your readers coming back blah blah blah. Then he starting mapping out all this criteria for a name, “Nothing with the words ‘thoughts’ or ‘musings’ because that implies that we are emo.” (I may have exaggerated that statement in one way or another, but you get the idea). So my simple thought of having a small platform to shoot ideas out was turning into the next big online blog that was gonna get a million hits a day because we were going to do it “right.”
So in classic Ryan and Tyler fashion we let this idea mull in our heads for a good few months before we actually decided to do anything with it. (If any of my professors ever read this blog – they will know exactly what I’m talking about). Then one day a week or two ago, Tyler says, “Scrap everything, let’s just write. Here is what I wrote for our first entry…” I thought how ironic it was that ultimately Tyler came back around and saw things my way…even though I actually never expressed them out loud to him to begin with. So he put up his first post and got what he was hoping for too – a million visitors to our blog. How great a thing! By a million, I mean more like 75 but that’s awfully close to a million when you consider how many posts we’ve put up so far. But then you subtract all the “bots” that are on the web that graze over sites (and still count as a visitor), and ultimately we probably have a more modest number of 20 or so. But hey, that’s still good in my book. I mean, whenever Tyler and I had conversations in our apartment I never would have imagined that 20 people would have wanted to listen to him…I know I didn’t want to.
So I guess now I’m supposed to be a dishwasher. Tyler said he found that phrase in a Shane Claiborne book, but I was sort of shocked that Shane Claiborne has dishes to wash frankly, seeing as how he lives the way he does. I figured he maybe would eat out of pizza boxes so as to save water or something. (If Shane Claiborne ever reads this blog…which he probably won’t since I doubt he owns a computer…but just in case, I’m only poking fun and think what you do is great). Being a dishwasher isn’t so bad though. I mean, I didn’t have any better names for our blog (I really wanted “thoughts” but didn’t want Tyler to back out on me).
I’ll try not to make this too long, but wanted to put a first post out there about my background so you know where I’m coming from when I get into posts that focus more on this “revolution” that Tyler threw into our name. Tyler and I graduated from Houghton College together in May of ’09, my degree was in Religion with minors in Bible and Theology. I like to think that I have a firm grasp of all subjects though. I did take a Mayterm calculus class after all. I decided to move back home after I graduated, and took a job as a Client Care Specialist at the local homeless shelter. On top of that full time job, I was offered a part time gig at a local church to work with youth too (something I had ripped on Tyler for doing just a few weeks before…that is, taking a “church job”). Three months into the homeless shelter job, I took a position on the Spiritual Life Team and now serve as a chaplain. I still work at the church too, and love church ministry so much more than I ever could have imagined. It’s funny how God will take what you have labeled as “dead” and use it to revive your spirit. So, students and shelters. That pretty much sums it up for me. I look forward to diving into the deeper conversation next time.
“Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes.” The first time that I heard this I knew that God was calling me to do the dishes. I am not really sure who originally said it, my google research connected it to a book by Shane Claiborne and Jonathon Wilson-Heartgrove called Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, but even in their book it is a quote from a t-shirt. If you know who said it please tell me!!
The more I thought about that quote, the more I felt like it described my calling. There is a revolution happening. I don’t know what to call it. I don’t think it will have a name until it is over and I am dead and gone. The “Emerging Church Movement” is part of it. New monasticism is part of it. People like Francis Chan, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborn, Matt Chandler, Tony Jones, Brian McLaren are all a part of it. In my life people like, Mike Belt, Billy Combs, Randy Garner, John and Patti Hudgins, Ryan Johnson, Adam Wormann, Sean Read, Nate Austin, Greg Dabb, Scott MacBeth, Angela and Ashley LaBoda (I could go on and on) are all a part of it. These people are taking the time to recognize God’s movement around them and they are joining Him. It is a movement toward authenticity. There is a sense among these people that being just another hypocrite in need of forgiveness is no longer good enough (not that it ever was, but it was acceptable to fellow hypocrites). There is a “holy discontent”, to use Bill Hybels’ term, for being phonies. We recognize that God has a higher calling for us. Jesus said that whoever follows Him will not walk in darkness (John 8:12). Lukewarm is not acceptable. If you have not watched “Lukewarm and loving it” yet, do it. This is as well an articulated description of the revolution as you will find.
As Ryan and I work daily in ministry we hope to do so men who will bring this revolution to our local churches. This blog will not become a place where we whine about how the church has gotten it “wrong”. We don’t pretend to be doing it 100% right. This will simply be a place where we unpack and explore the ways in which we feel God is shaping and molding us to be servant leaders in the revolution.
