When following Jesus seems to make no sense…think about Oreos

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

“We’re being saved by someone we cannot and never will see.”  In a way, that describes the Christian faith, and I have to admit that at first glance it sounds ridiculous.  Being saved?  What is “being saved” all about?  Christians talk about being saved, but what do we mean?  Saved from what?  And saved by whom?  Jesus?  A guy that lived 2000 years ago?  How does this work? Does it seem illogical or anti-intellectual?  If you say “yes” to that, I don’t blame you.  It does sound odd.

As we continue looking at 1 Peter 1:6-12, Peter delves into this issue because the people he was writing to are like us, they never met Jesus and never would.  He was gone 30 years prior to this writing.

Start by reading verses 6-7 and the post about those verses.  Then look at verses 8-9 for how Peter’s thought proceeds.  When you keep the faith in the midst of trials, what happens?  First, he encourages the people because even though they didn’t have the privilege of knowing Jesus in the flesh, like Peter did, they still love him and believe in him.  That is pretty deep.  It describes you and I, and our belief in Jesus.  We never knew him in the flesh, and yet we still believe and love him.  It takes serious faith to believe in that which you cannot see or touch or hear.

Peter’s goal is to be very encouraging to the people because if they wanted to, they could feel that they are really far removed from Jesus.  Not only did they never meet the guy, and never have the experience of his touch, his miracles, his teaching, and everything that made him so compelling, they are now being persecuted for faith in him.  It’s almost ridiculous.  You can hear the people in their towns.  Maybe their family and friends saying “So you’re telling me that you are following the teaching of some prophet from Israel who died 30 years ago, and you never met him?  Are you sure about this?”  Add in the persecution, and a person could have less and less reason for keeping the faith.

So Peter just calls it all out. “I know you are suffering trials.  I know you didn’t see him. But you still love and believe in him! That is awesome.  Rejoice!”  Peter is saying, “you are doing the right thing. It might seem ridiculous, it might not make sense to the people around you, and they might try hard to get you to stop it, but you are doing the right thing.   So rejoice in that!”

In fact, the words the Peter uses in the original are “greatly rejoice joy inexpressible and praise”.  That’s three rejoice words, and two emphatic words all jumbled together.  That means he thinks they should really, really be happy about this situation.

But there’s more.  They should be super excited and happy not just because they are doing the right thing in the middle of a difficult situation, but also because the benefit to them is amazing.  He says, “For you are receiving the goal of your faith, salvation of your souls!”

Wait…what? Aren’t they already saved?  Yes.  Why does he say “you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls”?  He makes it sound like salvation isn’t fully theirs yet.

Jesus and the apostles taught that we were saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved.  Sound confusing?  It was surprising and confusing to me, too, the first time I hear that.  That word “saved” is a Christian word we throw around a lot, but what is this salvation, and how can it possibly be saved in the past, being saved in the present and saved in the future?

Let me explain.  You can be saved from something, and you can be saved for something.  When a person is drowning in a pool, a life guard jumps in and saves them.  The life guard saves that person from dying.   Or you can go to the store, and find that packs of Oreo cookies are on sale, buy one, get one free.  Jackpot.  You buy them, bring them home, and you don’t want your family to ravenously eat both packs in one day, so maybe you hide it in the back on the pantry.  You are saving that pack for use another time.

Like the drowning man, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection can save us from the penalty of sin, which is separation from God.

In other words we were saved in the past, as we talked about last week, when we were born again.  Remember that phrase?  Born again. We talked about it last week.  Look at verse 3 and you see the words “he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus.”  New birth, or born again, we saw last week, is from Jesus’ teaching in John 3.  Being born again is when we believe in Jesus, and his Holy Spirit enters our lives, and we follow Jesus.

But that doesn’t mean that you have suddenly become all that God wants you to be. There is still a process of transformation that God is working by his Spirit in our lives.  In other words, we Christians are not finished works, we are in process, we are being changed, and because of that we say that we are in the process of being saved.  We were saved from the penalty of sin, and we are being saved, like the Oreos, for a new life of following the way of Jesus.

But there is still that day in the future, that day of Jesus’ revealing Peter said earlier in verse 5, that day when we will be finally and completely saved, either when we die and go to heaven or when Jesus returns.

We are saved, we are being saved, and one day we will be saved.  So keep the faith, Peter says, no matter what you are going through, keep the faith.  Even though you have not seen and do not yet see Jesus, choose to love him and follow him, even if you are being persecuted for him, because you are being saved.  And in that you can rejoice!

4 pieces of advice to those who are suffering

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Have you ever suffered specifically because you are a Christian?  I don’t know that I have, at least not in ways that would be considered significant suffering, or suffering that led to bodily harm or loss of opportunity or privilege.  Yesterday, I related a story from author Scot McKnight who counseled a teenager who did face discrimination and suffering because that young man began to follow the way of Jesus.

But maybe you have faced suffering for being a Christian.

So how do we have the right perspective about this suffering for Christ?  That is a huge reason Peter is writing the letter of 1st Peter, which we have been studying for a few weeks now.  If the Christians don’t have the right perspective about their suffering, they could easily say “Forget this.  If this is what I get for following Jesus, I’m done.”  And they could give up. So Peter gives them numerous reasons for looking at their suffering. Let’s continue looking at 1 Peter 1:6-12 to see what Peter has to say.

First, Peter says that they need to remember that suffering is for, “a little while”, and contrast that with our inheritance in heaven, which is eternal.  For those that suffer for Christ, that is one way they can have a healthy perspective on their suffering.  Suffering won’t last forever.  But heaven will.

When you are in the midst of suffering for Christ, it can seem like it will last forever.  That’s how it is for anything difficult we go through, right?  Not just suffering for Christ, but any suffering.  There seems to be no end in sight.  I can think like that when I am struggling. It’s called worst-case scenario thinking.  Peter says, “Time out on that thinking.  Your trial is only for a little while.”

Second, he says greatly rejoice.  Greatly rejoice?  In what?  We greatly rejoice in the hope we have, Peter says. Remember that Peter talked about hope in verses 3-5 which we studied last week? Even though we are currently in the midst of trials, we have hope of our inheritance in heaven.

Because we have hope, we can rejoice in the midst of trials.

I don’t want to hear that.  I want God to take the trials away.  I don’t any of this business of rejoicing in the midst of trials.  I’ll rejoice after the trial is done.  Anyone else with me?

But that’s not what Peter says.  He say that because we have hope, we can rejoice while we are still in the middle of the trial.

Third, he says trials are the good stuff in life.  Ugh.  More words I don’t want to hear.  Trials are the good stuff?  I’m not sure I agree.  But let’s at least try.  Peter doesn’t use those actual words. “Trials are the good stuff” is my paraphrase.  Look at what he says in verses 7-9, “Trials have come so that faith may be proved genuine.”

Here he uses an analogy, a comparison to gold.  Faith is of greater worth than gold (because gold perishes in fire).  That might be a shocker.  Faith is greater worth than gold?  I can very, very easily want gold.  Money.  I can believe that money will take care of me.

My prayer often goes like this.  “Lord, if you just drop $10,000 in my lap…well…better make it $20 grand…then my life will be so much easier.  Now that I think of it, can it be $30 grand?  That would really do the trick.”

I think about how much we can be tempted to value huge sums of money.  We can be tempted to think that money is the solution to our problems in life.  And no doubt, we need to pay the bills and provide food and shelter.  Money is necessary.  But it is so tempting to think money can care for us in the hard times of life.

So when Peter teaches that faith is of greater worth than gold, we can wonder if Peter is nuts!

When the hard times come, especially the financial hard times, will we believe what Peter is teaching?

He is convinced, and he wants us to agree, that our faith in Christ is worth more than gold.  Therefore he wants our faith to be proved genuine.  Peter knows that when we are persecuted for our faith, we can turn back on our faith.  During those hard times, it is our faith that is causing hardship to enter our lives.  Get rid of the faith, and hardship goes away.  That is tempting.

But Peter says, don’t do that.  Keep the faith, pursue your faith, grow your faith.  And what you will find is that keeping your faith in the midst of trials will bring you joy and maturity that you will value far more than gold.

Finally your faithfulness will result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus is revealed some day in the future, either when you pass on or when he returns.

The point that Peter is trying to make here is that Christians view and respond to suffering differently from the rest of the world.  When we are persecuted, we respond with joy because God has not left us.  We are not alone.  We can keep the faith and actually grow in him!

Satan did not break my lawn mower

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Are any of you suffering?  Any of you going through a hard time?

How does it feel?  Lonely, right?  Maybe you feel people just don’t understand.  Or your suffering might be ongoing, and you feel you are a burden to the people around you.  You worry about that, and your worry only compounds the suffering.

Have you ever wondered if you’ll ever be done suffering?

What can be so hard for us Christians is that we know we are to cling to Jesus in the midst of our suffering, but it can seem like he is not there.  That’s scary, right?  Suffering can lead to a crisis of faith?  Why is Jesus allowing me to go through this?  Does he really care about me?  Does he know what I am going through?  Of course he knows.  So why he is letting this suffering drag on so long?  What does my relationship with Jesus matter during the hard times?  Am I just supposed to get through this on my own?  I don’t know that I can do that.

As we continue to study Peter’s first letter, we find that he has a word for people who are suffering.  But not just any sufferers. Before going any further in the post, please stop and read 1 Peter 1:6-12.

First of all, what are the trials that Peter was referring to?  Remember that Peter was the leader of the church in Rome, and he was writing to Christians around the Roman Empire that had been dealing with some persecution.

I know this is not fun to talk about.  Persecution.  But we need to have at least a basic grasp of what Peter and the Christians in that day were facing before we can apply this passage to us.  Especially because there have been Christians facing persecution for hundreds of years in many places around the globe, and there still are many Christians being persecuted today.

If we don’t have a good sense of the trials that Peter is talking about, we could very easily apply Peter’s words to every situation that we find difficult.  Getting a bad parking space at the mall.  Having your dryer make funny noises, like ours was this week.  Well, actually, the first comment was “Dad, there is a bat trapped in the dryer…we need to get it out of there.”  Over the course of a few days, the sound went from trapped bat, to full-on shrieking.

You can think about the difficulties and griefs that you’ve had this week.  Are they in any way related to the trials that Peter is talking about?  My concern is that we can trivialize what Peter is talking about.  Missing an important family event.  A sports team losing a big game.  A dryer breaking.

These situations are nothing like what Peter is talking about.

Scot McKnight says it this way: “Peter was addressing the impact salvation had on one’s life and how a person’s changed life (and status) ran counter to the culture in which these Christians lived.”[1]

In other words, the people in Peter’s day, and Peter himself, were suffering specifically because they were Christians.  Their suffering was completely and totally connected to the fact that they had decided to live their lives according the way of Jesus.  Peter is not talking about bad things happening to people who happen to be Christians.  They are suffering because they are Christians.

As I said, my dryer broke last week, and thanks to YouTube it was easy to fix, but also my mower broke…in the same week. Equipment breaking has nothing to do with me being a Christian, or being a pastor.  Now some may say, “What about the spiritual realm?  Couldn’t that be an attack from Satan meant to discourage you?”  I will admit that I don’t know for sure, but I highly, highly doubt it.  That, to me, sounds more like a plot line in a Christian fiction novel than it sounds like how Satan really works.  We need to be careful to avoid spiritualizing things.

Here’s what actually happened.  It was anything but spiritual.

A couple weeks ago, my mower stopped working.  You would pull the cord, the engine would fire up and immediately stop. So Daniel, a teenager in my church, fixed it for me. Daniel is learning small engine repair in an internship, and he did great! I mowed my whole yard, and the mower worked like a charm.  Then a few more days went by, days filled with rain and warmer temps, and the grass was growing out of control.  But there was no end in sight to the rain.  So Friday a week ago, we had a break in the rain, and even though the grass was wet, I had the kids start mowing.  They did their portions, and then I was going to finish up.

I didn’t get far, and the mower died.  Same thing as before.  Pull, start, die.  Pull, start, die.  Pull, start, die.  Ugh.  I thought, how dumb of me to mow wet grass.  And tall grass to boot!  Totally my fault.  Probably got the carburetor clogged again.  So the next day I took it to Daniel again.  I was hoping he could teach me what he did before. But this time there was no fixing it. Same thing: pull, start, die.

He said he would take it to his internship and look at it.

Well the streak of rain and warm temps continued. The grass grew like crazy.  On Wednesday I asked my neighbor if I could borrow her riding mower, and she said I could.  I got it out of her shed, it started, and I drove it maybe 20 yards, and it died.  I couldn’t start it. So I checked and it was out of gas.  Whew.  I filled it up, and I still couldn’t start it.  It would turn over a little, but never really start.  So I pushed it back into her shed.  When she got home, she was able to start it.  It looked like I didn’t have the throttle in the right place.

So I walked over to get started using it, and when I tried, it wouldn’t work.  I thought I must be the lawn-mower anti-Midas.  Whatever I touch breaks.  Then she got on it, and this time, even she couldn’t start it.  She said she had just had it serviced a few months ago, and wasn’t having any problems, so she would call her mechanic.

I was really frustrated, and my grass was super tall.

Then I got a text from Daniel.  “Your mower is fixed.  There was two-stroke gas in the engine.”

What???  Where in the world did I get two-stroke gas?  I have no two-stroke engine equipment like a chain saw.  I never bought two-stroke gas.  What was going on?

Then I had a scary thought!  I had filled up my neighbor’s riding mower with the same gas!  I ran over to her house hoping she was still home.  And she was.  She graciously allowed me to empty her gas tank of the two-stroke gas.  But neither she nor I had regular gas.  As I write this, days later, her mower still isn’t working.

Daniel dropped off my mower, and it works great.

But where did this two-stroke gas come from?  I realized that my father-in-law had been at our house a few weeks ago using his chainsaw to cut some of our wood.  That gas can must have been his, but it looks incredibly similar to our extra gas can, and it had no markings on it!  You know, like a label that would say “two stroke gas”  or something?

There was no demon.  It was the wrong gas.  We need to be super cautious about spiritualizing difficult situations in life and blaming them on Satan.  So many times difficulties come as a result of our own actions and choices.  When we blame the consequences of our poor behavior on the devil, we are trvilializing the actual suffering that people are going through around the world, specifically because they are Jesus-followers.

This week in my prayer app, Prayer Mate, which I have mentioned before, it pulled in a prayer request for Sabina in Tajikistan who became a follower of Jesus. Several members of Sabina’s own family, including her father, beat her when they found out. That didn’t stop her from giving a Bible to her friend Madina, who is now a follower of Jesus.  Sabina and Medina are following Jesus at the risk of their lives.

McKnight told the following story, “I recently spent some time with a young athlete who had some rough experiences at his local high school with his “former” friends. As a senior he had a track record of drinking and drugs but was converted to Christ. His conversion made a sudden and immediate impact on his life, so much that he found himself on an island. After games, he was no longer invited to the parties; during games, he was no longer given the same opportunities to shoot the basketball; and in the hallways at school, he was no longer a “hit” with either the girls or his friends. He came to me for consolation. I explained that at least part of this was suffering and that he needed to guard against retaliatory speech and bitter attitudes. He began to see, in a painful way, that commitment to Christ can involve suffering.”[2]

That is who Peter is talking to.  Peter is writing to people who started living life in a very differing way because they began to believe in Jesus and learn from him how to learn. As a result, other people in their communities starting mistreating them.  As we start looking into this passage this week, it will be very helpful for us to have a proper perspective on the kind of suffering we’re facing.

Tomorrow, check back in, as we look at how Christians have a distinctly different response to suffering.

[1] McKnight, Scot. 1 Peter. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996. Print. The NIV Application Commentary.

[2] Ibid.

How to have an inheritance that cannot be squandered

Image result for squandered inheritance

Michelle and I both had grandparents pass away in the last few years, and we have watched our parents and their siblings handle their parents’ estates.  Sometimes inheritances are smooth and easy.  Sometimes they are a bit complex.  One time Faith Church received a bequest from a parishioner who passed away, and it took nearly two years to receive it!  After a person passes away, there can be many details to process in the settlement of their estate.  Those details are often bills that eat away at the inheritance.  Imagine the frustration when what initially appeared to be a nice inheritance is reduced to pennies.

As Peter continues his teaching in 1 Peter 1, verse 4, he says the living hope based on Jesus’ resurrection, which we looked at the past few days, gives us “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.”

What inheritance is Peter talking about?  That word “inheritance” is defined as: “to receive something of incredible value which has not been earned.”  Human inheritances can be squandered away quickly.  My father-in-law loves to joke around that he is going to write us out of the will, for example, if we don’t help him split firewood.  I love to say back to him, “Good, because all you have to pass on is junk!”

But not the inheritance that Jesus promises to those who are reborn.  We read that it can’t perish, spoil or fade.  Peter goes to enough trouble to use three individual words to describe how indestructible this inheritance is!  It is imperishable and undefiled and unfading, which is a word that means “pertaining to not losing the wonderful, pristine character of something”.

Like a new white shirt.  You know what happens: in a couple months or so, they lose that bright color.  But imagine a shirt that stays just as white as when you bought it at the store, even if you wash it 1000 times.  Paul says our inheritance in heaven is even better than that.  It will never fade.

So not only do they have hope that gives them inspiration to keep the faith now, even though they face persecution, they also get to experience the inheritance of God in heaven.

In other words, Peter is saying, “Christians, you can do this!  Though life is rough when you are going through hard times, remember the hope you have.  That hope can motivate you to stay true to God, to follow him, even when people come against you.  And what’s more, if they kill you, then you get that inheritance in heaven!”

It begs the question: just what will this inheritance in heaven be like?

Probably the most frequent thing I hear at a funeral is that heaven is a better place.  The person who died “is going to a better place.”  What is that better place?  A mansion in Heaven? The Good Place?  Have you seen the TV show The Good Place?  It is a comedy about a lady who, after death, goes to The Good Place, but it becomes apparent very quickly that a mistake was made, because she was supposed to go to The Bad Place.  And in the show, The Good Place is amazing!

Is that what our inheritance in heaven is?  Peter doesn’t tell us.  Instead he assumes that his readers who are going through hard times will know that their inheritance in heaven, which God has gone to great lengths to make available to them, and which God preserving for them, is far superior to what they are going through now.

Remember that Peter is talking to people who are being persecuted or who are threatened with persecution.  He is not intending to give them a full blown treatment of what heaven is like.  Instead he wants to remind them that they have hope now and an inheritance in the future.

For people living in uncertainty, there is certain hope that inspires them to stay true to God now, and an inheritance that will be waiting for them in heaven after they die.

I have to admit, during a prayer time last week, I was thinking about this passage and my own struggles in life, and I said to God, “Lord, I am intellectually thankful for hope of an inheritance in heaven, but I want to feel better now, to be done with my struggles now. I want that inheritance now.”

And instantly, you know what happened?  Thoughts flashed in my mind, thoughts I take as from the Lord, saying, “That’s what the prodigal son said.”

Bam! Conviction hit me hard and fast.  It’s true.  I so often ask for my inheritance now, just like the Prodigal Son saying to his father, “Give me my share of the estate,” while his father was still living.  What a slap in the face.  Do you ever do that to God?  I admit I do. I want my troubles to be done now!

But Peter is not telling these Christians going through a hard time that the hard time will stop.  The persecution might not stop.  Some have already died for their faith.  When we are going through a hard time, we usually want it to stop immediately.  Peter doesn’t say that though.

Instead he concludes in verse 5 that they are being guarded and protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in last (moment in) time. In other words, we can learn to wait for our inheritance in heaven.  We can learn to trust in God in the difficulties of the here and now, remain faithful to him, keeping that hope, that inheritance set before us.

But there is even more to this hope, Peter tells us in verse 5. By faith our salvation is shielded by God’s power. The word “shielded” is the idea of a guard that is posted until the time that God’s salvation is ready to be revealed.

Do you see the overall theme? Though you are going through these hard times, you can still have hope of a great inheritance, and it is secure.

You and I are not being persecuted.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t have challenges in life.  What are the difficult situations you are going through right now?  Know that your future is secure and your hope in Christ can enable you to face any challenges.

Nothing is certain in our world.

It is hard to watch the news.  Our country and world seems unstable.

The stock market is up and down. Bills keep coming and finances might be tight. Maybe we get laid off from work.

Health fails.  All of a sudden we can be on death’s door in a hospital bed.

Family and relationships go sour.  A person has to admit to their friend, “My relationship with my spouse is on the rocks, and we are headed for divorce.”  Friendships can tear apart.

Something in the house breaks.  The car dies.

A school shooting.  And our kids go through active shooter drills now.

Life feels very uncertain. We cannot count on the things of this world to take care of us.

But the good news is that we have a living hope.  And it is kept secure for us in heaven by the power of God.  That is our solid rock that will not be shaken.  What is that living hope?  That God is alive.  That he is active in our lives.  That he gives grace and mercy in the midst of the struggles.  That he loves us unconditionally. That he has made new birth in Christ available to us, so that we can have an inheritance in heaven.  This motivates us to pursue him in faith now!

That’s why it makes incredibly great sense to follow the way of Jesus, even when it gets hard, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when our bodies and emotions tell us to follow a different way.

Jesus’ way is the one true solid rock.

This is not just knowledge we need as we face difficulty and uncertainty!  We can access this hope to make actual choices to keep following Jesus, to keep being his disciples, to keep living like he wants us to live, even when life is falling apart around us.

Have you experienced this new birth?  Following Jesus starts with new birth that Peter refers to in verse 3.  It means believing in him, and living your life the way he wants you to live.  Or maybe you have received the new birth of the Spirit, but you know you have not allowed that to fully define your life.  Today is the day to make the choice to follow Jesus.  Let’s talk about that.  Comment below!

How we can know that hope is alive

Photo by Hillie Chan on Unsplash

Last week I did a search on our local website, as I was looking for the word “hope” in the news.  You know what I discovered?  Hope is a very flexible word, used many ways for many situations.  Here are a few of the recent headlines.  Maybe you remember some of them!

First, here are a couple articles where something was done that brought change:

  • “Sewing Hope in Sierra Leone” – April 16 – It was about a local ministry that makes “pillowcase” dresses for girls in need.  So cool!
  • “Trump’s bid to help Chinese firm draws fire but raises hopes” – May 14 – I didn’t take the time to learn all about this situation but the news report thought it would raise hopes.

Then there is the most common use of hope.  Aspirations for the future!

  • “76ers hope to keep thwarting history in Game 5 vs Celtics” – May 8 …those hopes were not realized, sadly for all you 76ers fans, and happily for all you Celtics fans.
  • “Billboards warning against prescription painkillers hopefully will combat opioid addiction in Lancaster County” – May 8 …they hope billboards will combat opioid addiction?  How do you think that will work out?
  • “US hopes North Korea will become close partner, Pompeo says” – May 12

In our lives we experience lots of these hopes and dreams.  What hopes do you have? What do you hope will happen?

So often we talk about hope as something that we want to happen, but we have no idea if it will actually happen.  We use the word “hope” a lot in our conversation.  “I hope my team wins!”  “I hope I get an iPhone for Christmas.”  I hope…I hope…I hope for a lot of things.  We call that wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking is fun, but it can’t sustain us at the point of our need.  And wishful thinking is not the hope Peter is talking about, as we continue looking at 1 Peter 1:3-5.

As we saw yesterday, when, by God’s great mercy, you have been born again, you have a living hope. For those who are going through a difficult time in this world, you who are born again have a living hope that matters right now.  You have a living hope that shapes you right now. It’s not something that you are just waiting for one day.  It is living.  It is active right now.  This hope we have impacts us now, helping us to the have the proper perspective of what we are going through. It means that no matter how difficult it is now, you don’t have to turn away from God, you don’t have to give up, because you have a living hope.

And what is the foundation of that hope?  How can we prove that hope to be true?

To answers those questions, Peter takes us back in time 30 years or so.  In your Bible, turn to to John 19.  Remember that scene when Jesus is arrested and talking with Pilate?  It is wild. Look back in chapter 18 quickly, and you’ll see that Jesus had already stood trial before Pilate earlier that day.  Pilate found no reason to convict Jesus, and sent him away.  Now he’s back.  You get the sense that Pilate is just done with this whole thing.  I imagine a look on Pilate’s face, and a tone in his words, and they are saying, “Are you serious? I have to deal with this ridiculous situation? A guy who is clearly innocent, but these Jews want dead?  Geesh.”

Now in the beginning of chapter 19, he has Jesus flogged, hoping that will get these bloodthirsty Jews off his case.  He is very wrong.

You see what is going on here? Pilate is saying, “Jesus, come on, man. I know you aren’t guilty.  Why are you doing this?  Don’t you know that I have the power to kill you?”  When Pilate says that very thing, he reveals what is in his heart.  Pilate knows the normal power structure of the world.  The threat of death.  Whoever has the power to kill others holds total control.  That is the normal way of the world.  We see this every day in the news.  It’s why the threat of nuclear war around the world is so serious.

But three days later, something astounding would happen to that power structure.  Jesus, who Pilate did crucify, that same Jesus, would defeat death.  “Death where is your victory?”, the apostle Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 15.  Death has been swallowed up in the victorious resurrection of Jesus!

And that, Peter reminds us, is the basis of our living hope.  Jesus defeated death, and when we are born again, when we believe in him and give our lives to be his disciples, we have a living hope that one day we, too, will experience resurrection. The power of death has no hold on us anymore.  The power structure of death has been overturned.  Jesus’ resurrection is the new reality we live with.  Thus we have a living hope in the future that impacts us now.  But how?  More on that tomorrow!

Why being “born again” might not be as crazy as it sounds

It is cringe-worthy. I admit it. Being born again?  It just sounds weird, not to mention the baggage associated with “Born Againers” in our society.  My guess is that most people don’t know what it means to be born again.  Or they believe born-againers are fundamentalistic, and therefore, mean, jugdmental and harsh.

But being born again is none of that.  In fact, please read on, because what being born again really is just might surprise you.

Last week I started preaching through the book of the Bible called 1st Peter.  It is actually a letter the Apostle Peter wrote to Christians around the Roman Empire in 1st Century AD when they were being persecuted.  This past Sunday, we looked at 1 Peter 1:3-5.

In verse 3, Peter exclaims, “Praise be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”  When you’re reading the Bible, you pretty much expect a phrase like this, right?  “Praise God!” sounds like a really biblical thing to say because it is a really biblical thing to say.  But why does Peter praise God?  Is he bursting with praise, just because?  Nope.  He has a reason.  There is something causing him to praise God.

Peter praises God for his great mercy.  God, Peter says, does not give us what we deserve.  As people who so often choose to rebel against God, whether in big ways or in tiny little ways, what we deserve is punishment of being separated from God.

But that’s where God’s mercy enters the scene. He could separate us from himself, but he chooses not to do that.

Instead, Peter says, God has mercy on us in that he has given us new birth!

New birth is a very Christianese sounding idea.  Here’s the thing though, Peter and other Christians didn’t make it up.  Jesus did.  Peter is just using words that Jesus taught him.  In John 3 we read the story when Jesus taught this.

Let me set the scene a bit.  The religious establishment guys were constantly on Jesus’ case?  They were called Pharisees, Sadducees and teachers of the Jewish law, and Jesus often had run-ins with these guys.  The religious establishment guys were the power-brokers in the land of Israel.  What they said was law.  If you didn’t follow what they said, watch out.  The problem is that they had stacked law upon law upon law so that it was incredibly difficult for the regular person to have any hope that they, the regular Joes, could truly enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus could not stand for that lie, and he undermined their false system every chance he could get.  As you can imagine, the average Joes loved him for it, and the leaders hated him for it, and the leaders looked for ways to take Jesus down.

But not all of them.  Some of the leaders were curious about this Jesus guy.  They had never encountered someone with his gifts and abilities and teaching and miracles.  As hard as they tried to defeat him, those miracles were hard to argue with.  So at least one of the Pharisees was really intrigued by Jesus and knew he needed to meet with Jesus.  But it had to be in secret, under cover of night.  This Pharisee could not risk being found out by his Pharisee pals that he was going to talk with Jesus.

That is where John 3 picks up. Before you continue this post, read John 3:1-10 or so.

Did you read where Jesus says to Nicodemus the Pharisee in John 3 that no one can see the Kingdom of God, unless they are born again?  That’s where the common Christian phrase “new birth” or “born again” comes from. Jesus himself!

Well, this confused Nicodemus greatly.  Born again? You can’t be born again. It’s obvious, Jesus.

Frankly, it is almost silly to me that Nicodemus even brought that up in verse 4.  It is so obvious that Jesus is speaking figuratively here.  You almost want to shake your head at Nicodemus, like we do nowadays and say, “Really?  Really?!  You think he wants you to get back inside a womb?”

Of course not, Jesus explains, what he means is that you must be born of water (which is natural birth) and spirit (which is the new birth).   Nicodemus is still confused, and in verse 10, I love how honest Jesus is. Can you imagine the twinkle in Jesus’ eye when he says, “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”

That’s Jesus saying, “Come on, man, do I have to really spell it out for you?  When I say you have to be born again, I’m not talking about taking you to the hospital so the surgeons can cram you back inside a womb!”

Look at verse 5 where Jesus explains what he means.  The Spirit of God must change us!  We must be born of the Spirit from the inside out.  That is the “born again” that Jesus is talking about.  But how are we born again by the Spirit?

Jesus goes on to say that it starts with believing in him.  Look further down at verses 16-18.  Being born again, means that we have a spiritual rebirth which starts by believing in Jesus, and a change takes place within us, a real change.  This is symbolized in our practice of baptism.  We go under the water to symbolize that we have died to our old selves, and we rise up out of the water to symbolize the spiritual rebirth, that we have new life in Christ.

Let me say something very important about belief.  It is not intellectual or mental assent.  Intellectual or mental assent is just saying, “Yeah, I believe that.  I would say that is true.”  But mental assent does not impact your life.  Jesus is not looking for intellectual assent.  Jesus is not interested in people just believing a fact about him.  I have quoted our Bishop Bruce many times throughout the years, when he says, “Jesus doesn’t want believers.”

That phrase might sound ludicrous when you are reading John 3:16 (“whosever believes in him”).  But Bishop Bruce is right on the money.  Jesus doesn’t want us to just agree to factual data about him.  He wants us to be his disciples.  He wants belief to lead to action.  How do we know this?

In James 2, we read that even the demons believe!  In other words, you can believe the right things about Jesus, but not have been born again into the new life of Jesus.  What Jesus wants, Bishop Bruce says, is disciples. A disciple believes and follows Jesus, learning from Jesus how to live out the principles and the way of the Kingdom of God right here and right now.  A disciples actually changes.  Jesus once taught “by their fruits you will know them.”  You can tell who is reborn, because the new things of the Spirit flow out of their lives.  The evidence of the Spirit changing us from the inside out is what is called the fruit of the Spirit.  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control.   That’s what it means to have new birth.

And that is not so strange, is it?

Embracing Your Daughter’s Killer: The Freedom of Radical Forgiveness (Betwixt Podcast)

I am so thankful to my friend Deb Gregory for the wonderful podcast she created, Betwixt.  I encourage you to subscribe, listen from the beginning and learn about the wonders of liminal space.

I am also thankful that on her most recent episode, Deb featured my story!  You can listen to the episode here.  I would be glad to talk with you further about it.  Just comment below.

We really need grace

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Do you or anyone you know go by a nickname?  I love the band U2, and both the lead singer Bono and lead guitarist, The Edge, go by the nicknames.  Bono has said on numerous occasions that even The Edge’s mom calls him “The Edge”.

But I wonder how many people with a nickname refer to themselves by their nickname?

As we learned last week, Saint Peter, whose first letter we are studying at Faith Church, had a nickname,   The Rock. Check our 1st Peter 1:1, and look how Peter starts the letter.  With his nickname!  The Rock.  Fair warning…you won’t see the words “The Rock.”  You’ll see the name “Peter”, but in Greek that name means “Rock.”  Peter’s actual name was “Simon”.  Does anyone else find it interesting that Peter used his nickname rather than his actual name?

Sometimes nicknames stick!  After 30 years of Peter being the leader of the church, he was The Rock.

Peter also calls himself an Apostle of Jesus Christ.

So far I have called Peter a disciple of Jesus.  What is this word “apostle”?  It refers to someone who is carrying a special message.  Generally, the 12 disciples became known as the 12 apostles.  These guys who followed Jesus became special messengers of Jesus.  The word we would more commonly use in English for an apostle is ____________.  Can you guess it?  Missionary.  That’s what Peter was. You can read about his mission trips in the book of the Bible called Acts.  Peter was a missionary, a special messenger, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

But who is he writing to?  Look at verse 1 and 2. He uses numerous phrases to describe the recipients of the letter:

To God’s elect, Strangers in the world, Scattered throughout Asia, Chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, Through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood.

In that short description of these people, Peter packs a lot in.  Did you feel you just jumped into the deep end of the theological pool?  Geesh.

Remember how last week the religious establishment guys in Jerusalem looked down on Peter calling him an unschooled man?  Now listen to Peter.  He is starts off his letter laying on some thick theology.

And what’s more, Peter gets into one of the most divisive theological issues of our time.  Do we choose God or does God choose us?

For Peter that question is easy to answer.  God chooses.  “Chosen according to the foreknowledge of God.”  That’s pretty clear.  “God’s elect” means God elects them.  God chooses them.  What is not so easy to understand is what Peter meant by all this talk of choosing and electing.  There are two main ways that Christians through the ages have used to help us understand.

One is the deterministic way.  God determines everything and we don’t.  We might think we are choosing him, but determinists say that our feeling of choice is basically a mirage.  God gives faith to some and not to others.  That is the deterministic view.

The other way is the free will view.  God gives us free will to either choose him or not.  We think we are choosing him, free will says, because we actually are.

Each method has its difficulties.  Take the deterministic view.  If God chooses us, then how can he punish those he didn’t choose?  Doesn’t seem fair, right?  And it also really doesn’t seem like my act of choosing is a mirage.  I feel like I am making my own free choices.  I see very little evidence of God controlling everything.

The free will view seems to answer those problems nicely.  If God gives free will, it makes a lot more sense for him to punish sin, right?  Because the sinner doesn’t have to sin.  The sinner can choose God.  Also, free will seems to fit our common experience of life, right?  We feel like we are doing the choosing.  But free will has a problem too.  Peter just said God chooses, God elects.  Peter did not say God gave us free will so we could choose.  And Peter is not the only writer of Scripture to teach this.  The problem free will has is that it seems like the Biblical writers teach God as doing the choosing, not us.

So what do we do?  Do we choose God or does he choose us?

I am going to give you the wonderfully satisfying answer of: “I don’t know.”  That’s just a horrible answer, isn’t it?  You want to me to take a side, right?  At least give my opinion, right?

Well, okay, if you say so.

I think Peter is teaching both actually.  I think the other writers of Scripture are teaching both.  What I mean is this.  God gives us free will and he chooses us. That seem impossible?  A logical fallacy?

Here’s what I believe is the best way to make sense of this:

God chooses corporately, not individually.  Usually the determinists, those who hold to God as chooser, God as elector, believe that God is choosing individuals.  God chooses one person to be saved and go to heaven.  And he decides not to choose the next person, so that person will go to hell.

My denomination, the EC Church comes from a wing of the Christian Church that views God, not as choosing individuals, but God as choosing corporately.  In the Old Testament, God chose a whole people group, the nation of Israel, to be his chosen people.  People from outside Israel could choose to become part of Israel.  In fact, from the very beginning, in his covenant with Abraham, the grandfather of the nation of Israel, God said to Abraham, “I have a mission for your family.  I want you to be a blessing to the whole world.”  God envisioned Abraham’s family, part of which would become the nation of Israel, to be a missionary nation, a nation that actively sought out the rest of the world to join Israel in following God.  Sadly, Israel would go on to do an incredibly poor job of fulfilling that mission.

God gave Israel many, many chances to do better, and after eventually God decided to create a new covenant with a new group of people.  But the mission stayed the same for the new group: reach the whole world with the message of God’s good news.

Who is the new group of people that God chose?  The new group is all those who are in Christ. I believe that is what Peter is talking about here.  God chooses not individuals, but instead he gives us free will to choose to be in Christ.  We cannot choose to be outside of Christ and still expect to be in God’s family.  Why?  Because God chooses only those who are in Christ.  One way to put it is that God does not choose individuals, instead he chooses the method by which individuals of their own free will choose him.  And that method is in Christ alone.

Here’s where Peter’s greeting and conclusion are really powerful.  Just because we have free will to choose Christ, it doesn’t mean that God is totally standoffish, wondering what we will do.

Peter talks about another key factor at work helping us to understand this.  Grace.  Look at verse 3, and Peter’s first message in his letter is this: Grace and Peace.  Keep your finger in 1 Peter 1, and flip a few pages to the end of the book, to 1 Peter 5:12, and notice some of his final words of the letter: “stand fast in God’s grace.”  Peter bookends his letter by referring to God’s grace.  Why?  Because God’s grace is at work in the world and in our lives.

The official word for this is Prevenient Grace.  Prevenient simply means “that which comes before.”  Use it as an adjective to explain grace, and Prevenient Grace means “grace that comes before.”  But what in the world is “grace that comes before?”

The United Methodist Church summarizes well when it says that our evangelical forefather John Wesley, “understood grace as God’s active presence in our lives. This presence is not dependent on human actions or human response. It is a gift — a gift that is always available, but a gift that can be refused. God’s grace stirs up within us a desire to know God and empowers us to respond to God’s invitation to be in relationship with God. God’s grace enables us to discern differences between good and evil and makes it possible for us to choose the good. God takes the initiative in relating to humanity. We do not have to beg and plead for God’s love and grace. God actively seeks us!”

So we don’t have a standoffish God.  We have a God that seeks us, that woos us, that desires to be in relationship with us.  That is grace.  Grace is undeserved favor.  We don’t deserve a God who so actively chases after we who turn away from him.  And yet, Peter says, look at what God did in Jesus!  Jesus gave his life so that the sin that made it impossible for us to be in relationship with God could be dealt with.  God made things right, out of his gracious desire to be with us.  That is amazing.

We can bank on that, Peter says. More on that in just a minute.  Because I have skipped over something important.

Who is Peter writing to?

Look at verse 1, he calls them strangers, scattered people from many places.  With this opening description, Peter begins a theme that will be very important for him.  Christians need to see themselves as strangers who were scattered.  Peter wrote this letter not to one person or one church, but to Christians at the time who had been scattered around the world.  They were Christians living their lives as strangers in foreign countries, scattered away from their homeland.  Many were refugees.

Why? Because it was a difficult time for the church.

As we will see throughout our study, Peter addresses the fact that the Christians are being persecuted.

Peter is their leader. He lives in Rome. The Roman Emperor Nero lives in Rome.  The historians tell us that Nero, at the end of his life, persecuted Christians.  It is likely that both Peter and the apostle Paul died at Nero’s bidding.  But what we don’t see in the time period Peter is writing is Empire-wide state-sponsored persecution of Christians.  Our best guess is that Nero did not try to wipe out Christianity.  So the persecution that Peter refers to throughout his letter is more likely happening to Christians in the localities where they are scattered. The persecution is not in every town and city.  And it is not like they are all being burned at the stake. The persecution varies.  But it is still persecution.  Many Christians have been disenfranchised or displaced.

You can bet Peter hears the talk wafting through the Christian community.  Christianity is only 30 years old at this point.  That’s not a lot of time to develop a rock solid foundation.  If the persecution continues or gets worse, people could easily turn away.  Peter knows he needs to write the Christians who might be feeling like this Christianity thing is no longer worth it.  And that leads to the letter we are reading now.

Peter is not writing to people who are citizens of one national country or city. Peter wants to give them a higher vision.  He says they are strangers in a strange land.  Why?  Strangers?  They are citizens in heaven, and they should live for a purpose, which he describes in verse 2.  Their purpose is “for obedience to Jesus Christ” no matter what is going on.

That is our purpose.  Are we ready for obedience to Christ?  To get ready, we need to see ourselves not as citizens of a country on earth, but as strangers here.  We need to see our citizenship in heaven.  Our citizenship in heaven is the true citizenship, and we are actually strangers in a nation here on earth.  That can be a very hard reality for Christians to grasp.  We are strangers here.

As strangers here, though we aren’t facing persecution like the people Peter was writing to, we need to be ready.  Jesus talked a lot about this.  Be ready for his return.  Persecution may never arrive.  I hope it never does.  But Jesus taught, and the book of Revelation reminds us, that Jesus’ return could be preceded by persecution.  I know many teachers teach that there will be a rapture, meaning that all Christians will be removed from the earth and escape persecution.  Maybe.  But maybe not. Scholars are VERY divided in how to interpret that.  Persecution could come.  And we need to be ready.  We are called to follow Jesus no matter if life is going really well or if life is terrible.

I also encourage you to remember that there are many Christians being persecuted NOW.  The church is being persecuted around the world. And we need to remember that, pray.

In our church fellowship hall, we have copies of Persecuted magazine.  They send five copies every month.  I encourage you to pick it up and read it.

In my prayer time, I use an app called Prayer Mate, and one of its features you can choose is to bring in a new prayer request each day for someone around the world who is being persecuted for their faith.  I love that.  Imagine thousands of Prayer Mate users praying for the person.  How that must feel to be that person?  I hope and pray they can feel God at work answering the prayer of his people, encouraging that person by his Holy Spirit.

And we return to what Peter’s first message is 1:2 “Grace and peace to you.”  And then we look at how he repeats that message in 5:12-14 when he says “Stand fast in the grace of God…[and]…Peace to all of you who are in Christ.”

Grace and peace.

God’s prevenient grace is at work in the world, wooing us to find peace in him.  We can’t control God’s grace, and we don’t want to!  It is his loving choice to shower grace on us, that we might find peace in him.

And what Peter says is that our response is to obey and stand firm in that grace.  Peter, The Rock, knows who the real firm foundation is.  Not him.  He surely knew that.  Peter, the Rock, found a firm foundation in God’s grace.

If you feel like life is anything but firm, I get it.  I talked about my own struggles with anxiety a few weeks ago.  When anxiety hits, when stress rises, when life gets complicated and difficult, it feels like our lives are built on quicksand.

We all seek a firm foundation in life. If our core relationships are not solid, we can be so tempted to betray those core relationships and find other ones that are rock solid.  If we feel an unsettledness, a dissatisfaction, a struggle, with work, with our homes, with our finances, we often go looking for other things in life that we feel rock solid.

Peter, The Rock, says we have a rock solid firm foundation in the grace of God.  The pursuing, loving Grace of God.

This past week I had an anxiety day on Thursday, and as I walked back the hallway of the church, I saw one of the signs the kids made.  I have walked by that sign hundreds of times.  Never struck me before. You know what it says?  Be still and know that I am God.  Psalm 46:10.  I hadn’t been still.  The previous few days were filled and busy and I hadn’t spent time with God, basking in his grace, knowing that his grace is the solid foundation.  I needed that reminder.

Choose to rest in his grace.  That means actually opening up space and time in your life to be with God.  To rest in him.  To be quiet before him.  It might take practice.  To be silent before God is super hard, especially when it feels like life is falling apart all around you.  In those moments the last thing we want to do is stop and be quiet and listen for God.

Standing firm in God’s grace, no doubt about it, is an act of faith in God, right smack in the moment of our struggle, when it seems like God is not there.  Standing firm in God’s grace in that moment means believing that God is who he says he is, and then choosing an action, or more likely a persistent ongoing series of actions, that show we are placing our faith in him.  That is the obedience that Paul is talking about in verse 2.

What will it look like for to stand firm in God’s grace today?  This week?  I encourage you to have someone like Peter, The Rock, in your life.  Someone who has seen firsthand through the years that they can build their life on Jesus.  Sure, Peter was nicknamed The Rock.  But he knew that Jesus was the real  rock of his life.  Who will that be for you?  Who will help you build your life on The Rock of Jesus?

Can you smell what The _____ is cooking? (When Jesus give you a nickname and changes your life.)

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Can you tell whom I’m thinking about?

Read the title of this post.  Look at the picture.

The Rock!

That is Dwayne Johnson’s nickname from his days as a professional wrestler.

There seems to be a specific kind of person whom we nickname with the word “Rock”. Think about Rocky Balboa. Remember the character Sylvester Stallone is famous for playing in how many boxing movies?  20?  Rocky Balboa is a prize fighter.  Dwayne The Rock Johnson is a professional wrestler and action movie hero.  These guys are intense!

At Faith Church last week we began a series talking about The Rock. Not Dwayne Johnson or Rocky Balboa, but a guy named Peter.  How is Peter like The Rock?

We first meet Peter in Mark 1:16.  Peter was a Jewish man from the town of Bethsaida in Galilee, which is the northern part of Israel. People from Galilee had a bit of a different accent, and were considered to be…well…kinda backwards.

As Mark tells us, Peter’s Hebrew name was Simeon, often shortened to Simon.  So why do we call him Peter?  The name “Peter” is actually a nickname Jesus gave him! Right around the same time as the events of Mark 1:16, we read in John 1:42 that Jesus calls Simon a nickname, Cephas, which is the Aramaic word meaning “rock.”  “Peter” is our English version of the Greek word “petros” which means “rock”.  Why would Jesus give Simon the nickname, “The Rock”?  In this post, we’re going to tell Simon Peter’s story to find out what Jesus was thinking.

Jesus would invite Peter, Peter’s brother Andrew, their friends and some others to be his followers, most commonly known as Jesus’ 12 Disciples.  Among the disciples, Peter quickly showed his potential.  He is often depicted as speaking first, or in the lists of the disciples’ names, Peter’s is first.  One time in Matthew 17:24 tax collectors come to Peter to ask a question about Jesus.  There is no doubt that he was considered a leader. Furthermore, Peter was bold. Neither afraid to speak nor to ask questions.  He was rock-like.

But, like so many bold people, Peter knew how to put his foot in his mouth. In Matthew 15:15 right after Jesus tells the disciples a parable, Peter pipes up, “Explain the parable to us.” Jesus’ response is classic: “Are you still so dull?

In Mark 9:5 we read the account of Jesus’ Transfiguration, where Moses and Elijah, two towering figures from Israel’s history, appear beyond the grave, and Jesus’ clothes turn brilliant white.  We are told that Peter, “…did not know what to say, they were so frightened.” But that didn’t stop him. He said stuff anyway, making a fairly offbeat comment to Jesus that perhaps they could build shelters for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.  God the Father responded this time.  Or was a it a rebuke to Peter’s big mouth?  God says, ”

Also in John 13:4-9, during the account of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, Jesus gets up from the table and, showing them how they should serve one another, washes their feet.  Peter is aghast.  The servants should be washing their master’s feet!  But Jesus warmly tells Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.  Guess what Peter comes out with in response to that? “Then, Lord, not just my feet, but my hands and head as well.”  Huh?  Can you see the other disciples looking at each other thinking, “Awkward…” Even in Ancient Israel, grown men don’t wash each other.

Peter was passionate.  Yeah, sometimes he said crazy stuff.  Other times he said amazing things.

In Matthew 16:13-20, Jesus asks the disciples a question in private, a question he could not ask in the presence of a crowd, and especially in the presence of the religious leaders who already wanted his head.  He asks his disciples about his identity, “Who do people say that I am?”  Well, word on the street was that Jesus was special, and there were a number of options for who he might be.  One of the famous prophets maybe.  People in the crowds had speculated wildly.  Jesus knew that.  But he wanted to hear what his closest followers thought.  He wanted to know what was going on inside their hearts and minds.  Guess who pipes up right away?  Peter.  And as much as Peter could put his foot in his mouth and say really inappropriate stuff sometimes, he could also come out with some amazing truth.

Peter is right on the money when he says, “You the Christ! The Son of the Living God.” Jesus looks at Peter with great approval, and says, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my father in heaven.”  What a moment!  Jesus is saying that Peter received a revelation from God of the truth that Jesus is the Messiah!  That is amazing!

But Jesus doesn’t stop there.  Here Jesus tells a joke, a pun to be precise when he says to Peter, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

Peter, Jesus says, is The Rock.  It wasn’t just that he was bold in what he said.  Peter also had a bold faith that took action.

There was the time that the disciples saw a mysterious figure walking on the water out to their boat.  As it gets closer, they realize it is Jesus!  So guess what Peter does?  He walks on water right out to Jesus!  And yet, when the wind and waves spray in his face, Peter the solid rock, crumbles, becomes afraid, turns away from Jesus and starts to sink.  You know the rest of the story.  Jesus grabs his hand, steadies him and says “You of little faith…why did you doubt?”

Then just before Jesus was arrested, as the soldiers surround him, Peter whips out his sword, and he cuts off the ear of high priest servant in Garden.  He was bold!  Has his faith become rock solid?

Jesus surprises Peter, telling Peter to put down his sword.  Peter is shocked and confused.  His Lord who he loves, who Peter has committed to follow, seems to be giving up.  Jesus even reaches over and heals the servant’s ear!  What is Jesus doing?  Isn’t this supposed to be his big moment?  Instead Peter’s Lord is now being taken away.  Peter gets scared.  What seemed like a new movement of God appears to be falling apart right in front of his eyes.

With Jesus in chains, Peter follows at a distance, curious, and frightened.  Suddenly, Peter is spotted.  People outside the high priest’s house where the trial is taking place call him out: “You are one of Jesus’ followers!”  Now Peter is really worried.  If Jesus is going down, Peter and the other disciples could easily being going down with him. So Peter, as boldly as he had confessed his allegiance to Jesus just a few hours before, now boldly denies ever knowing Jesus.  And he does it again.  And one more time.  Three times Peter denies knowing Jesus, then the rooster crowed.  From his position, Jesus turns and looks Peter in the eye.  And Peter runs away in bitter, bitter shame.  Peter seems to be anything but a solid rock.

We know what happens next.  Jesus is beaten severely, then crucified, died and is buried on Friday.  Sunday morning, a couple of the women who were Jesus’ followers report to the disciples hiding out in a room in the city that Jesus was alive.  Peter’s head jerks up and he on his feet in a flash.  He sprints out the door, John at his heels.  They run to the burial place, and John overtakes him, gets there first and looks in from the outside.  Peter arrives and rushes into the tomb.  It was true!  Their Lord was no longer there!  Soon after Jesus began to appear to them.  It was true! He was alive!

A few days pass.  The feast of Passover, for which Jesus and his disciples had originally traveled to Jerusalem, was over so the disciples returned home to Galilee in the north.  What do you do when your world is turned upside down?  They went back to work.  I bet Peter needed to go fishing, to clear his head.  The disciples, from their boat, notice a man on the beach making a fire, and it was Jesus.  Peter again jumps out into the water to go to him.  After breakfast Jesus does something remarkable to Peter. Read John 21:15-17, and you’ll see.

For each one of Peter’s three denials, Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to say, “I love you,” and he directs Peter to feed his lambs.  This is Jesus restoring Peter.  Peter, the one who was so boldly committed to Jesus saying, “I will die for you,” had actually turned out to boldly deny Jesus.  But Jesus knew what was deep down inside Peter was not a coward.  Peter was not a failure.  Jesus loved Peter, and he knew Peter loved him.  So in this amazing moment, Jesus lifts Peter back up. Peter truly would be The Rock.

Now let’s continue Peter’s story in the book of Acts. Very quickly we notice something.  The first 11 verses of Acts chapter 1 are all about Jesus.  But in verse 11 Jesus returns to his father.  Starting in verse 12, the focus then turns to Jesus’ disciples.  How would they react to this astounding turn of events?  In the span of 50 days their master had gone from national hero to criminal to dead to risen again!  And now…Jesus is gone.  The disciples and other followers, which verse 14 tells us number about 120, do what Jesus said they should do: go back to Jerusalem and wait in prayer.

One of them stands up.  Starting in verse 15 Peter stands up and speaks.  Skim through the next five chapters of Acts, these critical early moments of the life of the church, and one name appears over and over and over again.  Peter.

  • In chapter 1 Peter leads the discussion about who will replace Judas.
  • In chapter 2 Peter preaches the first sermon.
  • In chapter 3 he heals a crippled man and preaches again.
  • In chapter 4 Peter is arrested and boldly proclaims Christ before the Jewish leaders.

Look at Acts 4:13 and what it says there is just amazing: “When the Jewish leaders saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

When you spend time with Jesus, he will transform your life.

In Acts, the story of Peter just keeps going.  He takes the lead in confronting sin in chapter 5.  And how about this verse in 5:15: “People brought the sick in to the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.”  What?  Peter’s shadow had power?  Just his shadow?  That’s crazy wild.  And the dude was catching fish just a few years before?

At this point in the middle of Acts 5, the new church in Jerusalem is enjoying amazing favor.  Tons of people coming to faith, following Jesus, becoming part of an amazing new community.  Miraculous healings.  Amazing generous gifts of sacrifice to help those in need.

Until Acts 5:17. The religious establishment guys don’t like what they are seeing. The new church is encroaching into their territory, as people are following Jesus.  The Jewish leaders are filled with jealousy, they round up the apostles, these uneducated men who hung out with Jesus, and bring them in for questioning.  They flog the apostles and tell them to knock it off.  And you know how Peter and the other apostles respond?  They rejoice because they were counted worthy of suffering for Jesus!  They do not knock it off.  They keep preaching.  The church keeps growing.

In chapters 6-7 we get a brief pause in Peter’s story.  We meet some of the other leaders in the church, Stephen and Philip.  But in chapter 8, Peter is back, now going on missionary trips to Samaria.  For the rest of chapter 8 and halfway in chapter 9 we meet Philip again and Paul makes his first entrance in the story.

Halfway through 9 we’re back to Peter, who is making more missionary trips.  Then in chapter 10 something momentous happens.  Peter has a game-changing vision from God.  At first, the vision seems really weird.  In the vision Peter sees a sheet dropping from heaven, and in the sheet are unclean animals, and God is telling Peter to eat these animals, that they are no longer unclean.  The meaning of the dream was that Peter was to lead the new Christian church to reach the Gentiles, the non-Jews, with the message of Good News in Christ alone.

Reach the Gentiles?  Peter is Jewish.  Born a Jew, always a Jew, Peter followed Jewish laws all his life.  The thought of eating unclean meat, and of reaching out to the unclean Gentiles is repulsive to Peter.  So once again, put your foot in your mouth Peter comes out when he says, “Surely not Lord!”  But yeah, God wanted to reach the Gentiles too.

Peter obeys and the book of Acts starts to take a major turn as God wants the message of Good News in Jesus to be conveyed to the Gentiles. In chapters 11, therefore, we read about Peter explaining and living out this newly expanded understanding of the mission of God to include all people.

In chapter 12, things get crazy.  The local King Herod is getting lots of political heat from the Jewish religious establishment about these Christians.  So Herod rounds up a couple leaders, intending to persecute them.  He actually puts the Apostle James to death.  That was James who years before was fishing partners with Peter.  Peter gets jailed too.  With James dead, it seems like Herod wants to take down the new church’s leadership, hoping to destroy the church.  Peter is public enemy #1.

But God has other plans for Peter. The night before his trial, chained in prison, praying, Peter is miraculously freed by God’s angel.  Peter then travels away to share more about Jesus in other places. That is the last full story featuring Peter in the book of Acts.  He pops up again in chapter 15, at a major church council.  By that time, Peter has become a missionary.  James, the brother of Jesus, is the new leader of the church in Jerusalem.

Historians tell us that Peter eventually traveled to many places in the Empire, including Rome. He is believed to have been the leader of the church in Rome.  He is also said to have died on an upside-down cross. Just before his death, Peter wrote two letters which we call 1st and 2nd Peter.  But also the Gospel of Mark was likely influenced by him.  Mark was not a disciple, but a traveling companion of Peter.

That’s Peter’s story of life change.

I suspect Peter was always a bold, brash guy.  But I doubt he ever expected life would take him much beyond the shores of the Galilee.  He was a fisherman.  That was a good business to be in.  Feeding his family, feeding many others in his area.  Making a living.

He meets a guy named Jesus one day.  Jesus is remarkable.  Different.  There’s a spark.  Jesus says, “Follow me, Rock, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Only three years later, what do we see?  Fisherman Peter is now the Rock of the Church preaching a sermon in Jerusalem to a huge crowd.  And 3000 of them respond to his sermon.  What. The. Heck?  What happened in those three years?

What happened during those three years were lots of ups and downs.  It didn’t seem like Jesus’ nickname was working out so well.  Peter often seemed more like quicksand than The Rock.  But Jesus continued reaching out to Peter and set Peter up to lead his followers.  When Jesus returned to his father, Peter was ready to be the Rock of the church.  The Holy Spirit empowering the church, Peter was ready to lead this small group of 120 followers of Jesus.

Peter was a changed man.

I think Peter would understand the life that most of us live, because he lived it too.  The crushing realities of life seem insurmountable.

We hear ourselves saying things like “I’m just a lowly worker with no hope for a meaningful future.”

But Jesus comes to us and says “Follow me. I will make you…something you never could have imagined.  I’ve got a new name for you.”

We hear ourselves saying, “I feel like I’m sinking in the raging waters of life, and I don’t know how to swim and no one cares.”

But Jesus reaches out to pull us and strengthen our faith.

When life gets really hard and scary and God seems nowhere to be found, we hear ourselves saying “I don’t know you God, I don’t know you Jesus, I don’t know you!”  And we can’t believe we denied our Lord, and we wonder if we’ve lost it all.

But Jesus comes to us with forgiveness and says “Do you love me?”  And we really do love him, and he says “I have a plan for you.”  And we think “Really?  Me?  But Lord, I turned away from you.”  And he says a second time “Do you love me?”  And we really do love him, and he says “I want to use you.”  And we think, “But I’ve screwed up so many times.  You can’t possibly use me, Lord.”  And he says again “Do you love me like a brother?” And we know where he’s going with this.  We know he is right, and we respond “I really do love you like a brother.”  And he confirms to us “Yes, I have a job for you.”  He really does want to use us.

To follow Jesus we need to do what Peter did.  Peter left fishing behind.  Peter said “Ok. I will make a change and follow you, Jesus.”

What change do you need to make to follow Jesus in a new way?  During my April sermon series, what I learned on sabbatical, I told you some changes that I needed to make.  I was feeling trapped by some elements of life.  I got rid of them in order to make space to follow Jesus.  I encourage you to do the same.  The time has come.

Jesus wants to restore you, to transform you.  He loves you.  That is our amazing Lord.  Merciful, gracious, patient.

He doesn’t always turn a fisherman into the leader of the world-wide church.  But he obviously can do that if he wants.  More likely, Jesus wants to do in you what he did in Peter.  Transformation.  Transformation of the heart, transformation of the mind, of the soul, of the body.

How is Jesus at work in your life?  What does he need to restore in your life? How is he calling you to serve him?

He doesn’t call everyone The Rock, but I suspect he has a nickname for you too.  His name for you might surprise you.  It might take you a while to feel it suits you.  But in time you find it will fit perfectly.

 

When I visited other churches (What I Learned on Sabbatical, Part 4)

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One of the most frequent questions I got before going on sabbatical was, “Where will you go to church?”

When I asked people what they thought I should do about church, they had many responses.  Some people suggested I take a break, which is essentially the definition of sabbatical.  I seriously considered not going to church during the whole sabbatical. I concluded that it would not be wrong to take three months off.  But I was excited about another idea.

I looked at Sunday morning as an opportunity to visit other churches.  From my first Sunday, when I felt nervous and awkward going to another church, to my final church visit, it was like being on a field trip each week.  Remember the energy you felt as a kid when your school class went on a field trip?  Each visit was informative, even eye-opening.  I would return home, open my laptop and write a report about the visit.  I recorded my thoughts about that church’s website, their parking lot, their greeters, lobby, worship service, bulletin, use of technology, sermons, and on and on. Here’s a bit of what I learned:

First of all, we need to visit other churches!  I would recommend that all of us, pastors included, should be visiting other churches at least once or twice every year.  Some people say that is what vacation weeks are for.  Others say vacation weeks are for taking a break from church.  I’ll let you decide.  I believe there is very good reason to take a break sometimes.  During my sabbatical, I took a few weeks off, and that was needed.  I also found it beneficial to visit other churches.

The writer of Hebrews say: “Let us not give up meeting together.”  The Christian habit of gathering together is not some random, legalistic biblical principle.  Being highly committed to a weekly practice of gathering as a church family is important, the writer of Hebrews says, because when we gather, we encourage one another.  When you prepare yourself to gather together with other Christians, get yourself ready by praying, “Lord, I am asking you to help be an encouragement to my church family today!”

Also read Acts 2:42-47, which describes the pattern of the first followers of Jesus.  They gathered regularly to hear the teaching of the word, to pray, to give, to encourage one another, and to worship God.  They met both as a large group at the temple, and and in small groups in homes.  We need to make our church family’s regular gatherings a priority.

Within that context of intentional, consistent gathering, I recommend that at least once or twice each year, though, you visit churches outside your comfort zone.  Think about it.  What expressions of church or which worship styles seem most distasteful to you?  Attend them.  Go to a liturgical church. Go to a megachurch with rocking music.  Go to a house church. Go to a church from a different ethnicity.  It is good to put yourself in the place of a first-time guest.

Second, we need to reach out in kindness to guests.  It is hard to be a first-time guest.  It feels awkward. The parking lot, the lobby, the service, the fellowship time…all of it is brand new.  A guest has no idea how it works or what will happen.

At one church I visited, they instructed guests to fill out a connection card, similar to ours.  I am not in the habit of bringing a pen with me, and there were none in the pews.  I couldn’t fill out the card.  It wasn’t a big deal, but it felt awkward.

At another church I walked into the lobby about 8-10 minutes before the service was to begin, and it was nearly empty.  I peeked in the sanctuary doors, and though the lights were on, the sanctuary was empty.  I was confused.  There were plenty of cars in the parking lot.  Where was everyone?  Did I get something wrong?  I then realized they had Sunday School first, but still I thought, shouldn’t there be more people here with only 8 minutes to go before the service began?  It felt awkward.

Soon a whole bunch of people started entering the lobby from a different part of the building. I overheard people saying that they had been at a congregational meeting, and it only let out a few minutes before their worship gathering started.  Now I understood what had happened. But there was no signage about this.  And the few people in the lobby never greeted me.  It felt really uncomfortable.

Another church was in the middle of a sermon series that relied on printed materials that they had given out at a previous date.  It was a guidebook that had Scripture and notes pages.  During the worship service, at the point where they were to read Scripture, they told people to go to a particular page number in the guidebook.  As a guest, I never got one, and was uncertain of what they were talking about.  No one offered to share.  Again, this is a minor concern.  I could follow along in my own Bible.  But as a first-time guest it immediately had me feeling out of place.

And then there were the liturgical churches…they took awkwardness to a whole different level.  I’ll talk about them later on.

You also need to know that a couple churches greeted guests very well.  They had people at the front door who were friendly, people in the lobby with big smiles on their faces, welcoming me.  That made a difference.  To come to a church that is new, especially where you don’t know anyone, takes courage.  It feels super awkward, and that is why so many people just stay home.  But in the smaller churches like mine, we know right away when someone new comes. The newcomer knows that too.  So we need to go out of our way to reach out to guests with balance and grace.  We don’t want to overwhelm people.

I encountered a few more things about interacting with guests, about finding that healthy balance of being friendly and welcoming without being overwhelming:

There was the church where, at the end of the service, a guy seated in a pew near me actually engaged me in conversation.  He showed interest in me.  Asked me questions.  It wasn’t overwhelming.  It was just nice, and made me feel like a human.  That should be the minimum we strive for.

At one church I actually stayed for a fellowship meal afterwards.  During the meal people at my table entered into lengthier conversations which was wonderful.

Let us be a people who reach out to guests, and by that I mean actually go to them and talk with them. Ask their name, where they are from. The basics.  Offer to answer any questions about the church.  Invite them to have coffee and tea in the fellowship hall and to stay for classes.  This goes for those who are not just first-time guests.  Reach out to those in your church family who you have seen before but don’t really know.  Even if you have seen them many times.  Reach out.  Make connections.

As you talk, be gracious and non-pressured.  Have in your heart and mind that those seeking a new church family are in a very stressed situation.  Leaving their previous church was likely an emotionally conflicted decision.  Often it came after many months and lots of deliberation.  It is daunting to step foot in a new church.  It means they are being courageous, but they are also often coming to church from a wounded place.

So we need to be gracious.  It is not about us.  We don’t want to give any impression that we are salivating for new people to join us.  It is about God’s Kingdom and what is best for his Kingdom.  We can be gracious and admit that our church might not be the right church family for a person for many reasons.  That’s okay.  We are who we are, and we can be secure in that.  It is okay if guests are looking for a different kind of expression of Christianity than who we are.

The next big thing I learned from visiting other churches is that there were intentional elements of worship services that left me totally confused or distracted.

One church had a lady tastefully waving flags throughout their singing times.  I was aware that some churches do this, but as a guest who had never experienced it before, I had questions that were never answered.  What was the purpose of the flags?  They were green and white.  Did the colors mean anything?  I wish I had understood a little more about what things meant.

At the two liturgical churches I visited, I was really out of place.  The Catholic Church had no bulletin. If I had not gone with friends I would have been totally lost.  Even with my friend’s guidance, there were a few instances where I felt like I was line dancing at a wedding. Have you ever been line dancing, and you have no idea what to do, but you want to join in and not be the awkward one left out?  So you’re watching the person next to you, but you’re constantly late with a step, or totally off, and you feel like everyone in the whole room is watching you make a fool of yourself?  That’s me every time I’ve tried line dancing.  That’s also how I felt at the liturgical churches when there was kneeling or standing or making the sign of the cross.

But hear this: it can be a good thing, a very good thing, to feel out of place and out of your comfort zone.  We also need to remember that most people in our culture do not like that feeling.  Just showing up as a first-time guest will feel like that, no matter what church you are in, simply because it is new, with new people.  How out of place do we want people to feel?  What is the balance?

There are times when we change things up at Faith Church during worship, when we experiment, and we do that purposefully so that we all feel a little out of place.  There is a time for routine and habit, and there is a time for getting uncomfortable, as it can and should cause us to learn.

But I also think it is very healthy, like I said last week, for us to have an honest opinion about ourselves as individuals.  Today I ask that about our large group worship expression.  Are we so different or confusing that we are actually distracting?

Faith Church family reading this, how are we unique or different or odd?  Our open-mic sharing time?  Not a single other church I was in did that.  I suspect it is rare.  Sometimes it is awkward, isn’t it?  But we keep doing it because we believe that all of us are participants in worship.  Sharing the good and the bad is what a family does, and we want to be able support and care for each other.

So let’s be odd, but in a balanced way.  Let’s know how we are odd and why we are odd.  Odd is not always a bad thing.  It’s okay to be doing something different from another.

Fourth, I learned that in every church gathering there was something unintentionally disruptive.  And that gave me great solace because of how often disturbances happen during worship at Faith Church!

At one church a baby cried during the entire sermon.  The parents and baby were sitting up at the very front!  I kept thinking “Why don’t they take that baby out?”  I wondered what the pastor was thinking.  It can be hard to preach when there is disruption. And it can be hard to listen when there is disruption.

At one church the projection system stopped working just before the service started. The computer locked up and the same slide was showing on screen from the time I sat down a couple minutes before the service, through all the welcome and announcements, the whole way to the midway point of the third song.  Before he started playing music, the worship leader deftly mentioned the technical difficulties and led us in beautiful worshipful singing anyway.  In that third song, you could start to the see mouse pointer on screen moving all over the place.  Then finally, they got it working and displayed the correct slide.  I will admit I took some solace in that situation, thinking about all the times we’ve had technical difficulties at Faith Church!

The much larger church I visited had a worship service with no distractions that I noticed.  But after worship there was one major oversight.  They ran out of coffee!  Ha!

Our goal for our worship gathering is not to produce a perfect show.  We want to pursue excellence, for sure.  If we make mistakes, we strive to improve.  But our goal is to worship the Lord, and to help our church family learn from him.  If and when mistakes happen, I encourage you to be gracious and smile.

Finally, I want to talk about what I learned during my visit to the Orthodox Church.  I went to Christ the Savior Orthodox in Harrisburg where my friend is the priest.  Father Stephen and I were in the Clergy Leadership Program together.  The Clergy Leadership Program is a pastoral education program based out of Messiah College, and our cohort met from 2015-2017.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Orthodox church, it has a legitimate claim to be the oldest Christian denomination.  They would say that the Roman Catholic Church broke away from them.  While they are quite similar to Catholics, there are also many differences.  My personal impression is that I felt like the Catholic worship service was mostly familiar.  The Orthodox worship service felt like a whole new ballgame.  I want to describe the Orthodox church for you a bit more in detail because there was an idea that struck me that day, an idea that I want to share with you.

The first thing I noticed was the numerous times throughout the Orthodox service where they used incense.  I like smells.  But I struggled a bit with that smell, which I suspect was frankincense.  I wonder if they can use other smells such as fresh bread?

Incense was not the only way Orthodox worship was so different.  There was no technology, except a couple microphones.  There were no musical instruments.  Zero.  Instead there was a call and response choir in the back.  They did call and response during the entire 2 hour and 15 minute service.  Sometimes we would sing with them.  And did you hear me say that they service was 2 hours and 15 minutes?  Also I would venture a guess that 75% of that time we were standing.  That included a period of about 45 straight minutes of standing during communion at the end of the service.

There was tons of kneeling and bowing and kissing.  Anytime the liturgy mentioned the name of God, they made the sign of the cross, and the liturgy said the name of God a lot!  The service followed a prayer book which was in the pew.  I was constantly flipping pages, thinking I found the right spot, and then getting totally lost, and flipping pages again.  Afterwards my friend told us that the whole time we were in the wrong section of the book!

And then there was the communion part of the service.  I was not allowed to participate in either Catholic or Orthodox communion, because you have to be a member of their churches, and I respect that.  So I observed from my seat.  At the Orthodox church, I had never seen anything like it.  Participants went forward in a single-file line.  They had deacons holding a napkin right under each participant’s chin so as not to drip a single drop of the blood of Christ.  The priest holds a huge goblet, into which is the bread soaked in the wine.  He then dipped a spoon into the goblet, ladled out a piece of wine-soaked bread and spoon-fed it right into the participant’s mouth.  Person by person by person. At the same time the choir in the back was repeating one line over and over, slowly, chant-like, “This is the body of Christ, the fountain of eternal life for you.”  The congregation was singing with the choir during the whole communion.  I think we must have sung that line at least 50 times, maybe more.  My feet hurt, my back hurt, and I admit that I got to a point where I wanted it to be done.

And you know what I thought?  It was actually refreshing.

It was long, smelly, and made my back and feet hurt from all the standing.  It was confusing at times, beautiful at others, and somewhat hard to follow.  Yet I found it refreshing.  Why wasn’t it distracting like some of those other worship services?  You know why?

Because the Orthodox Church is what they have been for centuries, and they stick to that. Furthermore, every single element of worship carries significance.  From the incense to the candles to the kissing and the liturgy and the icons and the spoon-feeding, all of it has a theological underpinning.  There is a beauty to the depth and symbolism of all. I found that super-refreshing.

I get it that other people might find Orthodox worship very distracting.  That’s okay.  To be honest, my feeling of finding it refreshing stems from a couple places.  First, the priest is my friend. I have a personal connection.  Second, I am a pastor, and my feelings were impacted by that.  Let me explain.  A pastor in the Orthodox church doesn’t have to make sure the PowerPoint is good, or that he has great videos, or cool illustrations in his sermons.  There is no pressure to have really awesome worship services to reach people who could just as easily go to the ultra-cool church down the road. They just don’t care about the consumer-minded culture of their people.  And man, that was a breath of fresh air to me.

That is the idea I want to share with you.  We Americans are steeped in a consumer culture, and we bring that to church.  But we should be on guard against that.  A consumer is one who chooses between a multitude of options as to what they like, and they select what they like, and they consume it.  The focus is on them.  The Orthodox church, in how it worships, assaults this notion of the consumer as the focus. Clearly Jesus is the focus.

We low-church protestants tend to give high-church liturgical worship a bad rap.  We say that we don’t see high liturgy anywhere in the New Testament.  The reality is that when I read the New Testament, I also don’t see the kind of worship that non-liturgical churches like ours practice.  What worship is acceptable to Jesus?  Probably all of it, if he is glorified, his word is preached, and people are encouraged to be faithful to God, with an opportunity for the sacraments.

I saw Christ honored in every single one of the churches I visited.  Jesus was glorified at the megachurch, and at the small church. He was glorified at the liturgical churches, and he was glorified at the churches with worship services like Faith Church.  I saw a theme in all the churches I visited: worship should help us stop being self-focused consumers, and reshape us to be God-focused disciples of Jesus.

I don’t think Faith Church is perfect or better than those churches I visited. But I can say that I love where we have come on our journey learning about gathered worship services.  We have learned some important biblical principles that we are trying to apply week in and week out.  Worship, first and foremost, must glorify God.  He is to be the focus of all we do.  Worship should be participatory.  That means including a variety of people in the service.  Worship should be experimental, meaning that we should be teachable learners, admitting that we don’t have the corner on the worship market, and thus willing to try new things from time to time.

That experimental attitude was at the heart of my desire to visit other churches.  It is something I commend to you too.  So at least a couple times each year, go visit a church you’ve never been to, and be a first-time guest, be a learner, worship God with that local expression of what he calls his body, the church, and come back and report on what you learned so that we, this local expression of his body that we call Faith Church, can learn from what you experienced!