Merry Christmas–Loften Christmas Card

Don’t Pray for Patience

I have said this in different contexts, so I feel obligated to mention here on the new blog.  I was talking to our men’s group Wednesday morning.  We are still working our way through the Fruit of the Spirit.  That morning we talked about patience, kindness and goodness.

Here is the trap that we fall into.  We think that we want to be more patient, and we recognize that we need God’s help.  So we pray for God to help us become more patient.  Here is the problem.  The way that God teaches us patience is to put us into situations that call for patience.  Who wants that?  Who wants to be put in frustrating situations?

Here’s the reality.  Life is full of such situations whether or not you are praying for patience or not.  We just become more aware of them as God is putting our need for patience in the front of our minds and hearts.  (All it takes for me is missing a stop light or someone in front of met to go 2 miles under the speed limit in front of me.)  Honestly, there are few traits I need more in my life than patience. I wish that my first responses to what life throws out was grace, kindness and calm. What a difference that would make in my life, my family, my church, etc.  So despite all of the advice that I have given over the years, I am now praying for patience. I’ll keep you all posted.

Straining Gnats and Swallowing Camels

In Matthew 22, the various religious sects of his day begin trying to trap him by engaging him in the various religious debates of their day.  He very shrewdly answers all of their challenges and then ultimately shuts them up with focusing the conversation on what we now call The Great Commandments–love God and love others. He also shows their ignorance of the theology of who Messiah is/will be.

Then in Matthew 23, he begins teaching the disciples and the crowds and goes off on teachers of the law and Pharisees, exposing their hypocrisy.  They have devotion but do they have a heart for God and people?

Then Jesus says something that I love.  Those of you who know me, know that I love vivid imagery and great illustrations.  I may not be able to create them, but I admire them. “You strain out a gnat but you swallow a camel (Matt 23:24).” So you are walking along trying to keep something nasty from getting in your mouth and accidentally swallowing it.  You keep the gnats out, but you accidentally swallow a camel.  The Pharisees remember to tithe their herb garden, but neglect justice, mercy and faithfulness. They are proud of their attention to detail in one area of their lives but neglect the more important issues.

What about you? Do you stress and emphasize the minor points of your doctrine and neglect the more important? Are you more concerned about the debates that go on between churches or a hurting world that needs the message of Jesus Christ?  Is how you worship more important than the God that you worship? Is your life characterized by religious devotion or justice, mercy and faithfulness?

You keep quoting that parable. I do not think it means what you think it means.

There is a well-used Christian expression (I really love Christian expressions, if by love you mean get highly annoyed by) that comes from a parable in Matthew 20, the parable of the workers in the vineyard.  Read here. In this parable, Jesus talks about a vineyard owner who is hiring people to work for him.  He hires people first thing in the morning and agrees to pay them a day’s wage (a denarius).  He keeps going back throughout the day, hiring more people, but he doesn’t say what he will pay those who only work part of the day.  Finally he goes back at the end of the day with only one hour left to work, or “the 11th hour.” (There’s our expression)  He tells them that he will pay them what is fair.

After the day is over, he starts paying everyone.  Starting with those who only worked an hour, the owner ends up paying everyone the same amount–a full day’s wage. The men who worked the whole day were outraged that they got paid the same as those who worked an hour.  The landowner’s response is like a punch in the face:

‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

The parable is referring to people who come into God’s kingdom.  When many of us quote this, we think of it in terms of when you came to faith.  So someone who comes to faith in the “11th hour” is someone who follows Christ at the end of their life.  The application of the parable then is for those of us who came to faith earlier to not be resentful of those who find God later. “Berrrnnnn”(That’s onomatopoeia for loud annoying game show buzzer sound)

Jesus is talking to the Pharisee’s.  Jewish people are the one’s who have been in the vineyard all day.  People new to the kingdom–the Church, Gentiles are the ones who come in at the end.  That’s you.  Regardless of when you came to faith, you are one who has come in at the 11th hour.  The payment that you have received for your time in God’s vineyard is way more than you deserve.  That is why it is referred to as gift (Romans 6:23).  Nothing you have done merits or earns the favor and gift of eternal life that God offers.

If you start identifying yourself with the people who have been working in the field all day, you can fall into the trap of the Pharisees where you begin to believe that you have earned God’s favor.  You haven’t.  It is a generous gift from a loving God.

Joy–conditional or unconditional happiness

This morning at our men’s group, we talked about joy.  I said that the simple man’s definition of joy is extreme happiness.  I said this knowing that it would raise some eyebrows.  We are told that there is a difference between joy and happiness.  Happiness depends on circumstances, and joy does not.  I understand why people say that and this may be splitting hairs, but bear with me.

Biblical joy is based on your circumstances, primarily one circumstance in particular.  God has forgiven us and given us eternal life with Him.  His Spirit lives inside of us and empowers us.  He is changing and redeeming us, day by day.  That is the circumstance that we find ourselves in as Christ-followers–an incredible circumstance.  That should bring us joy.  It is not that joy is not circumstantial, it is that the one circumstance is so overwhelming and incredible, no other circumstances can compare.

If I were to win a million dollars and then 5 minutes later discover that a five dollar bill had fallen out of my pocket, would that rob me of the joy I felt from winning the million?  I would like to think that it wouldn’t.  In the same way, what can rob us of the joy of knowing that God is redeeming us, has saved us and that we will have billions and billions of years to experience his presence fully?  Can the ups of downs of day-to-day life?  Can the worst that life has to offer rob us of our joy?  It shouldn’t, if our hearts are focused on the intense joy that comes from knowing God.

Before anyone thinks that I am getting too preachy, here me say this, I am giving this lesson primarily to me.  Whether you are impacted by this or not, I need to write it and then read it and then read it again.  The routine ups and downs of my day greatly effect me.  My joy is typically determined by what has happened in the last 30 minutes, not by what God has done and is doing for me.  My hope and prayer is that I can live out what Peter proclaims here:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious JOY (emphasis added), for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

I Peter 1:7-9

Lord, how many times should I forgive?

Recently in a sermon, I was preaching on forgiveness.  I was fairly strong in the statements I made about the limits we put on forgiveness.  You can see that sermon here:  http://www.cloften.com/?cat=37 In some circles that has caused quite a stir.  We don’t want to have to forgive everyone for everything, especially if they have hurt us repeatedly or deeply.  “You can only hurt me so many times” and “Well, I can’t forgive that.” is what we say.  However, there appear to be no limits on what and who we are to forgive.  I am reminded of this, because I was reading in Matthew 18 today.

In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus tells a story about a man who owes the king 10,000 talents, the equivalent of millions of dollars.  In today’s money, that would be roughly 1 cagillion-babillion dollars.  It is an unreasonable amount of money.  It is such an outrageous amount of money that it makes the story bizarre.  Why would the king let such a debt run up? Why on earth would the king forgive such a debt?  Yet this is how Jesus describes our situation before God.  Our sin has run a cagillion-babillion dollar debt and he has forgiven us.

The servant after having his debt forgiven, then comes across someone who owes him a few dollars.  Rather than showing parallel mercy, he has that guy thrown in jail.  Again, this is absurd.  If the bank calls me and tells me they are getting rid of my mortgage and then I see someone who owes me $10,  I’m thinking, “no big deal.  I will make it up 100 times over after the first time I miss my mortgage payment.”  At least I would like to think that I would.  In fact, we do not forgive this way.  God has forgiven us of our sins which are great and we turn around and hold huge grudges for significantly smaller offenses.

Why do we do this?  One of two things (or both) are true.  First, we do not believe that our sin has truly run up a cagillion-babillion dollar debt (I believe this is the first blog post in history to use the word cagillion-babillion 3, now 4 times).  We think that God has only forgiven us a little.  Second, we don’t believe that by comparison people offending us represents just a few dollars.  Hurting me must be a lot of money, simply becomes I am just that important.  If you accidentally cut me off in traffic, that’s at least $10,000, isn’t it?  I mean you delayed me getting to where I’m going by at least half a second.  If you gossip about me and hurt my feelings, that’s off the chart.  At least that is what we believe.  However, by comparison, people’s sin against us are small compared to ours against God.  Do we believe that?

What are you holding on to? What grudge do you have? Whom have you not forgiven? Remember how God has forgiven you, celebrate that forgiveness and then forgive as God has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)

I desire mercy, not sacrifice

After reading that verse yesterday (Matthew 12:7) and the week before (Matthew 9:13) while reading through Matthew, I cannot get that out of my head. On two different occasions, the Pharisees rebuke Jesus for doing something that they felt was “against the rules.”  Jesus told them that they needed to figure what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  On it’s face, it seems pretty straight forward, but there is a profundity to that statement that goes beyond face value.

What is the best way to learn what that means?  Go to the source.  Jesus is quoting Hosea. In Hosea 6:6, God is rebuking an unrepentant people. He tells them that he desires mercy over sacrifice and acknowledgment of God over burnt offerings.  God was concerned in their hearts not in their religious routines.  They were continuing to sacrifice but they were not showing mercy to one another.  They were bringing burnt offerings to God without acknowledging God.

How can they do that? How can they bring offerings to God without acknowledging Him? I am afraid that we know the answer to that more than we care to admit.  Have we ever gone to church without giving real thought to God? Have we ever dropped a check or cash into the offering without really giving that gift to God?  Of course, we have.  God wants our hearts not our rituals, our lives not our attendance.

When we have a heart that focuses on rules and routines, it effects the way we treat others as well.  We see someone in need of compassion, for example a homeless person, and our first thought is, “I wonder what they did to get in that situation.”  We focus on whether or not they broke the rules, not compassion and mercy.

What would our lives look like if instead of focusing on performing the right acts and duties at church, we focused on devotion to God?  What would we look like if we showed compassion and mercy on the hurting instead of judging what they did or didn’t do to get themselves where they are?

Church Attendance and Neurotic Pastors

This is a simple question that I would love for pastors and ministry leaders to answer for me.  It is going to seem a little rhetorical, but I don’t necessarily mean for it to.  Why do we get so neurotic about attendance?  I understand that attendance in some part, determines success.  You plan for hundreds and you get four.  That means something went wrong.  However, it’s the small differences in attendance though that I think demonstrate how neurotic we are .  Let’s say, for example, that we are a church that averages 100 people.  If 90 people come, we get down, but if 10 more people (just 10) had come, we would be OK.  If we average 300, people, we can go into 2 day depression spirals is only 270 show up.  We go crazy over 30 people.  Why is that? Did God show up? Were hearts changed? Did people draw closer to God in worship?  I assure you there is no judgmental finger wagging going on here.  My wife, Heidi, will tell you I am the worst one.  I don’t want to be that guy any more.  Any thoughts?

Who you are not what you do.

I met with a group of guys this morning. We are meeting every Wednesday morning. We call it a leadership class, but it is not what you would necessarily expect from a leadership class. We have spent the entire fall talking about our spiritual life and how that provides the foundation for everything in our lives. Our relationship with God is not a piece of our lives but it is the driver for everything in our lives.

Anyway, we have been looking at Galatians 5 for the last couple of weeks. What I was struck by today is what Paul describes as the “fruit of the Spirit.” What he says next is what Paul believes is the primary evidence/result of God’s Spirit in our lives. He could have said anything: “The fruit of the Spirit is church attendance, serving, tithing . . .” “The fruit of the Spirit is working soup kitchens, feeding the poor, . . .” The fruit of the Spirit is not stealing, not drinking, not having sex outside of marriage. . .” “The fruit of the Spirit is speaking in tongues, performing miracles, healing, . . .”

All of those things are things that we do, but the result of God’s Spirit in us is who we are. God is interested in transforming our character, not in simply altering our behavior. It is when God changes our character that then our behavior really changes. Our behavior does not change our character.

(Expect more on this)

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