Culture change is tough - but it is worth it!!! I was reminded of this as I watched the movie Remember the Titans. A coach dropped into a chaotic situation must bring culture change for the team to survive... but he doesn't just want it to survive he wants it to succeed, and to dominate. In a way we want our ministries to do likewise so what ideas for culture change can we take from Coach Boon?
If Jesus is King, what does that mean for what we want to do with out lives? [Image by Chris Bellerophon Dotson on flickr]
Reminded again and again about what we are created for. We are created for worship! But because there are some people who do not worship, we have been given a mission... to go and show people they were created to worship! - photo on Flickr by llamatofu
Do we look to appease our emotions, troubles, discomforts with earthy things that may provide some release temporarily, or do we look to God who is the source of complete satisfaction? [Image by donald_palansky_photography on flickr]
Piper's final chapter is his prayer for all those who have read his book. A prayer that cries out the hope that no one at the end of their life would look back and say "I've wasted it."O God, you know I tremble now for fear that many of the ones who call you Lord have made themselves the prize and glory of your grace. How many, Lord have made your love a witness to their worth! Is then their joy a resting in your worth or in their own? So many decades have gone by in which the constant message from the world, and even from some ministers, is this: that love means making much of man. And so when men, with this assurance, ponder what your love might mean, they say the same: God's love means making much of man. For proof they ask: Don't you feel loved when someone calls attention to your worth?
And I answer: Once I did. When life was better than the Lord, and not the other way around. There was a time love felit like this - when I could not conceive of any joy greater that the honor of my name. Whan I was so absorbed in me that it was inconceivable for joy to rise by my admiring rather than my being admired. Oh, yes, I've known what it is like to call the praise of men an act of love and justify this craving with the readiness to give the same...
But now (thanks to your might grace!) I see it is an imitation... Oh, what a history of deeds and revelation you have wrought to make yourself the centre of our joy and take back for yourself the place of honor in the world - to be the One your people treasure more than life... Oh what a grand design! To make our joy the echo of your excellence. To make our pleasure proof that you now hold the place of Treasure in our lives. The make the gladness of our soul the essence of our worship, and the mirror of your worth. To make yourself most glorified in us, O God, when we are satisfied in you. How could I, Lord, have ever been so blind to think that being loved by you means making much of me and not yourself?...
No, Father, love is this: At great expense you made yourself my glory and my boast. The cost was infinite by which you made yourself the Treasure of my life. You sent your Son, the blazing center of your beauty and you love. You gave him up to mockery, betrayal, thorns, the whip, the rod, the fists, the mails, the same, and death. For what? To swallow up your wrath, and satisfy your righteousness, and bury all my sins as far as east is from the west and in the deepest sea, so that I might come home... This is your love, O God, not to make much of me, but do whatever must be done so that I waken to the joy of making much of you through all eternity.
~John Piper, DWYL, p184-186
Camp is only 3 week away - so exciting. Hopefully you've all registered and are keen to go.
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.In every situation to be content. I think that is the key to living a life worthy of the call Jesus places on our lives, and worthy of the grace that has been showed to us through His actions on the cross. Paul knew what it was to be both rich and poor, hungry and full... and in both situations he was content.
~Philippians 4:11-13
Someone might say, "But isn't the Gospel about finding forgiveness of my sins and getting the hope of eternal life and being filled with the Spirit of hioliness and being changed into the image of Jesus so that I am a better mom or dad or son or daughter or friend or employer or citizen?" The answer, of course, is yes. But if that is all we focus on in our walk with God, we miss the big picture. We miss the bigger point of it all. We are like batboys at Yankee Stadium who think the great point of the World Series is to hand the players a bat.
I urge you in the name of Jesus to wake up, and enlarge your heart, and stretch your mind, and spread your wings. Mount up above your limited life - yes, a very important live, which God does not diminish - and see the great and thrilling big picture of God's global purposes for the history of the world that cannot fail... And as God gives you wings to rise up and see the world the way he sees it, many of you, I pray, will be loosened from your present situation - job, neighborhood, state, nation, plan - and be called to direct engagement in this great historic, global purpose of God as a goer and not only a sender.
~John Piper - DWYL, p163-164
God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that He was willing to take it on Himself.But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil.Such a simple thought, but one that seems to have to be stated again and again. If you're asked to do something (and you agree) or you offer to do something that lays a certain responsibility on you to do it. Having responsibility is good and right, and something Jesus obviously wants us to engage in.
Matthew 5:34-37
Walter Wink tells of two peacemakers who visited a group of Polish Christians ten years after the end of World War II. "Would you be willing to meet with other Christians from West Germany?" the peacemakers asked. "They want to ask forgiveness for what Germany did to Poland during the war and to begin to build a new relationship."
At first there was silence. Then one Pole spoke up. "What you are asking is impossible. Each stone of Warsaw is soaked in Polish blood! We cannot forgive!"
Before the group parted, however, they said the Lord's Prayer together. When they reached the words "forgive us our sins as we forgive...," everyone stopped praying. Tension swelled in the room. he Pole who had spoken so vehemently said, "I must say yes to you. I could no more pray the Our Father, I could no longer call myself a Christian, if I refuse to forgive. Humanly speaking, I cannot do it, but God will give us his strength!" Eighteen months late the Polish and West German Christians met together in Vienna, establishing friendships that continue to this day.This is just one powerful illustration of how God's grace can bring about seemingly impossible acts of forgiveness.
~Philip Yancey - What's So Amazing About Grace, p123
I would hope that there aren't people who think I am unapproachable because they feel they have broken relationship to a point of no return. Let me put it out there that I feel compelled to offer forgiveness to all those who ask, just as I feel compelled to ask forgiveness for the wrongs I have done.
