I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1–2 (ESV)
What I see here is that Paul is going to give us some instructions on how to live a life fully committed to God, not only in spiritual things but also in the physical realm (so, not just thinking nice thoughts, but actually taking action). He prepares us for a mental paradigm shift, then he goes on in the next few verses to explain that in the body of Christ (meaning, all who has put our faith in Him, not the head and torso and arms and legs and hands and feet he had when he walked on the Earth) has lots of members with different functions to perform, different jobs to hold, and all of them are important.
Then we get to that passage I mentioned last time starting in verse 9. There are 13 verses from there to the end of the chapter, and I noticed something interesting. Out of the 13 verses, I only see two verses that are about doing something solitary. "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord." (verse 11) "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." (verse 12). The rest of the verses are all about how we treat other people! We love them (9-10), we take care of their needs (13), we bless them, even the mean ones (14), we empathize with them (15), we are friendly even to the ones that are different from us personally (16, 18), and we choose to treat them well even if they treat us badly (17, 19-21). All that stuff in verses 6-8 - prophecy, teaching, exhorting (persuading people), giving lots of money, leadership, all of the things we tend to think are cool important things that we want to do - all of that stuff winds up being secondary to just being able to treat people like Christ treated them.
To come back full circle - this chapter started off telling us how to worship God with our whole selves, even our bodies. We each have gifts and callings, but in the end, it is doing physical acts of service for others that somehow turns around and becomes a spiritual act of worship to God!
I've been thinking lately about Romans 12:9-21. I actually took a picture with my phone of the passage, and I keep looking at it and thinking about it. Basically, it's a description of how to really live out your faith as a Christian. Every day I take a look at it and take stock of how I'm doing, sort of like a checklist before launching a rocket ship. Here are things I've been thinking about in some of the verses:
Verse 9 "Let love be genuine." If you know about Greek words for "love" - this word is "agape" which means the kind of love that comes directly from God. It doesn't say that we should force ourselves to love - it says we should let the genuine love flow from God through us. I think in the Christian life sometimes we think we have to make something happen, when in reality if we sort of let go of the reins, God will make it happen (see 1 Thessalonians 3:12). Let God's love happen in you!
Verse 10 "Love one another with brotherly affection." This is not "agape" love. This is human affection. Basically this verse is talking about loving other believers in Jesus like family, like brothers and sisters. People don't always get along with their brothers and sisters very well, but in a loving family, they'll stand up for each other when the chips are down. I'm so glad I go to a church where people do care about each other! At your church, when the service is over, do people immediately leave and go to lunch? Not at my church. At my church, people are still there chatting and enjoying each other's company well after the service is concluded. Some of my favorite people are there - I want to talk to all of them! No church is perfect, but I think that's what this Scripture is saying.
Verse 11 "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord" We have a vibrant volunteer culture at our church. I'm not sure how visible it is to members who aren't involved, but I'm on two different teams - worship arts and children's ministry - and in both of those contexts people are fired up about what we're doing for the Lord. I don't hear people talking like they are doing it because they feel obligated or because they want to be special (and that can be a real problem on worship teams!) - people genuinely see that God is doing something and we just want to be part of it.
Verse 15 "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." This past year my wife went through a serious health problem (maybe I'll talk about it in a future post), and it was really hard, but as soon as our brothers and sisters in Christ found out about it, they went out of their way to help us out. They prayed for us, brought us food when we were going through a rough patch, and when my wife wasn't able to come to church with me because of her treatments, everyone asked how she was doing. Do you know what effect it had on me? It made me want to be that person for someone else one day. I guess that's that whole "iron sharpens iron" thing, huh?
Verse 21: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Do you notice what that does not say? It doesn't say "Be careful because evil can totally beat you up, so try to run away if you can!" It completely puts you and me in the driver's seat. If evil happens to us, it's because we let it overcome us. Instead we need to overcome it! It wants to beat us, but it can't unless we let it! That doesn't mean that evil won't come - ref: my wife's health problems last year. But when evil comes and tries to overcome you, the correct response is to apply good to the situation and overcome it instead!
I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. (Revelation 2:2-5)
When I read those words, the phrase "the love you had at first" stood out to me. If you've read this in other translations, you might have read it phrased "...you have left your first love." Reading it in context, though, you'll see that it's not saying "I Jesus am your First Love, and you have left me!" It is saying that the church at Ephesus is still working hard for God, but has forgotten to do the work in love. We learn in the first three verses of I Corinthians 13 that doing good works without love is not what God wants: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
BUT that doesn't stop people from writing cool songs that use the phrase to mean something a little different. Like, for example, this groovy track from Joe English!
Well the single most thing that's certain If ever a truth was true It's that in spite of my many failures My very first love was You
Lord, the world is filled with lies that make the truth fade from You But nothing in all creation will ever lessen my love for You
Having Jesus for my first love Makes the darkest day shine He has filled me with His Spirit And I'll love him until the end of time (And that's a long time!)
There's been a very long list of heartaches Other loves long ago But when I finally felt love from You, Lord I let the loose feelings go
All the pain that hurts the heart and makes the tears freely flow Will never turn me from You, Lord, or of the love that I've come to know
Having Jesus for my first love Makes the darkest day shine He has filled me with His Spirit And I'll love him until...
If ever there comes a dark time Where love is nowhere in view I know that nothing in all creation Will lessen my love for You
Having Jesus for my first love Makes the darkest day shine He has filled me with His Spirit And I'll love him until... (And that's a long time!)
Having Jesus for my first love Makes the darkest day shine He has filled me with His Spirit And He's mine for all time! He is! Oh yeah!
In my last post I mentioned that my new musical/devotional podcast, The Word Go Project, has been a wild ride for me, and I promised to talk about why. The short version is this: when you presume to teach people about something from the Word, you'd better be ready for the Holy Spirit to teach you, too!
The idea of The Word Go Project is that human beings need to hear things a certain number of times before they truly sink in and become parts of our psyche. How many of us can remember a song, or a musical jingle, or even a catch phrase from a TV character, years and decades later, just because we heard it over and over for a period of time? I can remember advertisements from TV that I haven't heard since my childhood. A quick Google returns wildly varying results of how many times it takes, from seven all the way up into the forties, but everyone seems to agree that the more times you hear something, the better you remember it.
Additionally, I discovered by listening back to the online versions of church services that I was actually at that the second and third times I hear the same exact message, I glean different information from it! But how many people follow the valuable practice of re-listening to the same message more than once? I'd guess the percentage is really low.
So I thought it would be a cool idea to wrap a useful message in original music, to make it more palatable to listen to more than once. And that's the genesis of The Word Go Project. Each episode is a short devotional - about ten minutes long - with three songs containing roughly the same information as the three points in the devotional. An entire episode, including the songs, rounds out to about twenty minutes, which I'm guessing is probably about the same amount of time your and my pastor preach on a Sunday morning. Hopefully people listen, and listen more than once! You can always find the latest episode at https://www.WordGoProject.com (mobile-friendly... just click the "Play" button!) and you can listen to older episodes at https://podcast.WordGoProject.com.
I decided that a great starting point for The Word Go Project would be the Fruit of the Spirit from Galatians chapter five. That gave me an instant list of nine episodes to work up without having to come up with separate ideas for each episode. What I didn't realize was that as I was working on each episode, God would start to reveal ways I needed to work on that topic myself! When I did the episode on Love, I started to see ways that I wasn't loving others the way God wants me to. When I worked on Joy, I started to feel a little down and had to reach out to God to help me out of my funk. I started to feel agitated during the time I worked on Peace, and by the time I got to Patience I started to feel like making these things was taking me FOREVER! I've heard Bible teachers say that when you teach a topic, God deals with you on that topic first - even James in the Bible warned against aspiring to teach unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences.
Well, I wasn't particularly prepared for it at first, but now that I've realized what's happening, it's a little easier to let the Holy Spirit teach me right along with my audience. Right now I'm in the middle of the next episode, "Kindness", and I'm looking for ways to be kind to the people around me. I'm generally a "nice guy" anyway, but God's kind of kindness can sometimes cost you something, and it doesn't ask for a pat on the back for it, either. So that's a challenge I'm trying to face!
Please do listen to The Word Go Project! Listen to it several times, and really let the truths from the Word soak in. Then tell your friends about it, and get them to listen as well. The episodes are literally my gift to you. I'm not getting any money for it at all - in fact, I spend my own money every month to get the episodes out there. I'm not trying to be famous or get attention; my real goal is to strengthen the Body of Christ. I hope it makes a difference in your life today!
During the day I often have an MP3 player running on random shuffle - it's fun (and sometimes jarring) to hear different songs from 30 years of accumulating CDs jumbled in together. A few days ago this song by 4 Him started playing, and one single line popped out at me every time they sang it:
The line that bothered me is the line that says that one of the basics of Christianity is "a love that is blind". The reference in the song is of course that God's love does not consider someone's looks, or social standing, or race, or anything else in order to determine whether to love them. But I think this is a dangerous phrase to use to describe that idea.
The phrase "love is blind" is generally used to describe the idea that someone who has fallen in love seems to think the one they love is perfect. "A person who is in love can see no faults or imperfections in the person who is loved" is how it is summarized on Wikitionary, and that seems to be an apt definition. But that's not actually "love," not in the way I believe the Bible describes it. That kind of blind love is only the first stage even of romantic love, and I would more accurately call it "infatuation." And that kind of love isn't for strangers, anyway. I don't think real love, the deep kind that comes from God, the kind that loved each of us so much that it came to Earth and died to save us, is ever "blind".
If it's real love, it is exactly the opposite of ignorant blindness to
the faults of the one being loved. True love means that you can see the
faults of the other, usually in perfectly clear high definition, and you choose
to love that person anyway. Jesus wasn't ignorant to the faults of the people around Him. Very often He told them to "Go, and sin no more",,, I don't see Him saying "Go, and I'm so glad you're already perfect!" He had no problem bringing up the sins of individuals when they needed bringing up. “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true” He said once. He was even known to tell his disciples off in no uncertain terms if they weren't doing right. When Jesus was on the Cross, He both forgave someone who was being executed alongside Him (and who confessed his own guilt willingly) and forgave those who had just put Him there, even though He would have to have been massively blind to not notice the sins being committed in both cases.
God loves each of us, even though He knows about our
faults better than we ourselves do. That's the kind of love that is a basic of Christianity. In fact, I think that if we are actively listening to the Holy Spirit, we will actually have a sharper view of the shortcomings of others, because He will tell us things we couldn't know otherwise. But if we are actively listening to the Holy Spirit, He will also be telling us how much God loves each person, and inspiring the same love for each of them in us.
Blind "love" is the kind of thing
that ignores children's misconduct because it is uncomfortable to
discipline them, ignores a friend's path of alcoholism or promiscuity or
dishonesty or whatever because it seems like it's "not my place to say something to him",
ignores signs that a friend's wife is being abused because "my buddy's
just not like that." I once knew a lovely older Christian woman who always tried to look at the "good" side of everyone's conduct, even when that conduct was clearly wrong, and even malicious. That kind of "love" is at best ignorant and dangerous, and at worst, it is selfishness. This woman was often taken advantage of by people because she wouldn't let herself see that they were likely to do something bad to her; she even seemed to think that the bad things that happened to her were somehow her own fault. I guess, in a way, since she refused to see the proverbial freight train coming down the tracks and get out of the way, she was partially right. God's love does not ignore sinfulness; God's love confronts it.
It confronts it at the right time and in the right way, but God's love
does not leave sin alone. Because if a sinner is left with his sin, that
sin will ultimately destroy the sinner, and injure everyone around him. I think the 4 Him lyric probably makes perfect sense to Christians in general. We aspire to love others despite how they look or act. I think the lazy adaptation of the cliche "love is blind" without maybe totally thinking it through was unfortunate, because I think it could be misunderstood, but the concept is true: God's love does not reject people. God's love is always ready to accept another person, no matter what they might look or sound or smell like. That's the takeaway from that one line in this one song. Don't be blind, though; be completely, 100% aware, but be completely, 100% accepting.
in your eyes
the light, the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
from "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel
What do you suppose Peter Gabriel meant by equating the gaze of the one you love to a church doorway? That doesn't seem nearly as romantic as something like "limpid pools," or stars, or the ocean or whatever. I was thinking about it this morning, and I realized that the lyric means that in the eyes of his lover, he can see something very special and wonderful, the thing he had been looking for all along, something that is so special that it almost seems holy. And that pretty accurately describes what you see when you look into the eyes of someone who loves you. There is something special there that is so pure that it almost seems holy.
And that's no mistake!
Throughout the Bible, God describes His chosen people as His bride. Sometimes His bride is spotless and beautiful, and sometimes His bride has been "unfaithful," chasing after other things instead of pursuing our relationship with Him, but we are always His bride. When we come to Him, he washes us and makes us holy. What He sees when He looks into the eyes of His bride is His holiness. And when God created romantic human love and marriage, He created it to mirror the relationship between Him and His bride, the Church.
So when you look into the eyes of your loved one this Valentine's Day, enjoy the love they have for you, but also know that the love they have for you is a reflection for the love God has for you!
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. -Ephesians 5:25-27 ESV
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened... -Ephesians 1:17-18a NIV
I found it hard to believe
Someone like You cared for me,
You put this love in my heart!
I tried but could not refuse, You gave me no time to lose. You put this love in my heart!
from "You Put This Love In My Heart" by Keith Green
Thirteen years ago today, plus a week or so, I asked my boss Harry for a week of vacation. He gave me a strange look (because I hardly ever used vacation time) and said, "Are you getting married?"
I had to shush him... my girlfriend's own mother didn't even know! But that Sunday morning I picked her up as though we were going to church like always, and when I brought her back a week later, she was my wife. We spent part of that Sunday driving from Tulsa to Arkansas, where we could easily get married in a little wedding chapel we had found out about on the Internet (after all, we had met on the Internet!), and then we spent another hour or two waiting at McDonald's because our County Clerk was out brush hogging his property instead of waiting around for us to be late for our appointment to get a marriage license! We had written our vows earlier that day at Long John Silver's, so we kind of made the fast food circuit in little Harrison, Arkansas that day.
But despite being something we began secretly (her dad did know what we were up to, by the way, and approved of us getting married) and despite us spending way more time in fast food joints than anyone wants to spend on their wedding day, our 13-years-and-counting have been anything but a disposable, fast-food marriage. We've certainly had misunderstandings, arguments, and hurts, but we've had so many laughs, fun times, talks late at night, and so much love that every rough patch is totally worth it.
A good marriage is funny. You start out thinking you are so alike that it's impossible to imagine not being together. Then in the first years of your marriage, you realize that you are in fact not as alike as you thought, and you learn to give each other room to grow as an individual. No marriage can last if one or both of the people in it are being stifled by the other. After a while, you discover that each of you has grown into an even different person than the one you were when you got married, but the person you've grown into is hopelessly tangled up with the person you've married. There's no getting loose! You're totally stuck! ...and you wouldn't have it any other way.
A few days ago I noticed my wedding ring. It was on my finger, of course; I never take it off. But these days, I'm not usually conscious that it's there. It just is. It's part of me. It feels wrong if it's not there. That's what marriage is like when it's a good one. And that's why it's good to celebrate when you pass another yearly milestone... something that you weren't born with, something precious and valuable, has become a part of you. And that's something that deserves celebrating!
As I drove up to the movie theater this sunny Sunday afternoon to view the new Donald Miller/Steve Taylor film, Blue Like Jazz, I had Christian rock playing in my car. This is the song that came on as I drove up to the theater:
When I left the theater, I skipped back to the beginning of the song, listened to it again, and cried my eyes out. Then I called some friends to tell them about the movie, and then I hopped on the Internet with my phone and streamed some John Coltrane (you'll know why when you see the movie), and I cried some more. (Leave it to musician-turned-filmmaker Steve Taylor to use a jazz album as a metaphor for Christ.)
But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. Blue Like Jazz is based on the bestselling Donald Miller book by the same name. I read the book several years ago, wound up a bit puzzled at the end, and enjoyed the experience enough that I sought out more of Miller's work. When I heard that he and Steve Taylor were teaming up to bring it to the big screen, I was excited and mystified. Excited because I'm a long-time fan of Steve Taylor and I really enjoyed Taylor's movie a few years ago called The Second Chance (which in my opinion did not receive the respect it deserved), and mystified because the book really is not a narrative at all. It's a series of essays, or maybe memoirs, that are based on some of Miller's experiences in college. I had no idea how they would turn it into something coherent on the movie screen.
Of course the way they did it was by creating a story that includes elements of the anecdotes Donald relates in the book, but stringing them together into a plot that makes sense. In an almost self-referential twist, the movie is structured around a mantra from a writing class: setting, conflict, climax, resolution - the four elements of a successful story. The screenwriters did a good job of taking the book, applying those elements, and turning it into a narrative that takes you to uncomfortable places where we, as Christians, desperately need to go.
I really hate to give away too much of the plot, because it's best if you take the journey with Don (the main character is based on the book's author, since the main character in the book is the author) without knowing too much of what's going to happen ahead of time. Suffice it to say that it's about a teenager who goes to college and has a crisis of faith - or, maybe more accurately, has a crisis of faith and then goes to college. His college is far from home, and far out of his Texas Baptist comfort zone. The movie is about his struggle to get a handle on his faith, and at the end he has discovered something important, something that every Christian needs to discover.
Sounds like a wonderful, cuddly Christian after-school special kind of movie, doesn't it? Well, hang on tight and keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times, because this is probably not a movie you want to take your 10-year-old to. This movie depicts alcohol being happily consumed by the Christian protagonist, an instance or two of drug use on-screen, a lesbian who does not become a Christian at the end, a shocking case of an unwanted pregnancy occurring outside of marriage, more profanity than some Christians are going to be comfortable with, people talking about sex using street slang, condoms (real ones and some very large ones with happy faces painted on them), an older man who has just had a sexual liaison with a young intern, and a back-story of sexual abuse of a child by a member of the clergy. What it does not contain are: sex scenes, nudity, violence, and the Plan of Salvation. What? A "Christian" movie where nobody becomes a Christian at the end? Tragedy! Blasphemy! Apocalypse!
Well, nobody does become a Christian at the end, but becoming a Christian is not what the movie is about. The point is that Don-the-movie-character, like Don-the-book's-author, learns how to be a better Christian by the end of the movie. He learns the vital, obvious but seldom-lived-out point that Jesus came to Earth because he loved sinners, and if we consider ourselves followers of Jesus, we should be loving them, too. On one of the most liberal college campuses in the country, Don gets through to one of the most liberal people on campus by showing him the love of Christ. Not by debating him about the Bible, not by telling him what a sinner he is, but simply by loving him. And that's why the theater erupted with applause when the credits rolled on the showing I was in. Because the film ends with one Christian young man making a heart-to-heart connection with a hardened, liberal, damaged non-Christian young man by, paradoxically, not being ashamed to say "I'm sorry."
One thing I really appreciated about this movie is the metaphors of Jesus that keep showing up. I've already mentioned the jazz records that represent Christ. There is also a young lady who is a Christlike character, and a Christlike Catholic priest who, at one point, offers a compassionate hand and pulls Don out of an overturned latrine. Not every Christian character in the film is Christlike (I won't give away a major plot point, but you'll know the main hypocritical Christians when you see them), but as Don is exposed over and over to Christlike figures in the middle of some of the most Godless situations imaginable, he finds himself transformed into a more Christlike Christian.
I've read some people's comments online about this film, and I've seen both glowing recommendations (I guess you can count this one among those) and some pretty harsh criticisms. The criticisms are not about the cinematography or the writing or the acting, but about some of the things that are depicted in the film, the lesbians-and-condoms-and-booze kind of stuff. Sadly, I think a lot of Christians are going to find something in the film to be offended by. And that's a real shame, because by Hollywood standards, this movie is seriously tame fare. I mentioned before, and I'll mention again, that this isn't a movie for children; it's a movie for adults, and maybe for older teens who are able to take in the subject matter involved. But come on... if you've watched the advertisements during the Super Bowl, you've seen more suggestive and offensive stuff than there is in this movie. It's a crying shame that some Christians will miss out on the amazing, life-changing, redemptive message because they allow themselves to be offended by a depiction of sinners doing what sinners do: sinning. Without the Godless "setting", the impact of the emotional "climax" would be all but eliminated. Sure, it would have been a safer film, but Steve Taylor has never been known for playing it safe. I'm so glad he and Donald Miller (and the tons of fans of the book who donated via a Kickstarter campaign to get this thing off the ground) took a chance and made this movie. If it helps one person to love others the way Christ did, like the single character of Don does at the end of the movie, then it will be worth it.
And that's why I was crying in my car on the way home this afternoon. I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, that one person will be me.
1 John 4:7-10 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
And here's what I had to say about it:
When I read the verses from 1 John 4:7-10 in the New Living Translation, it got me thinking about the nature of love, and the nature of God. Love, according to the passage, is sacrificial; God sent us something precious because He loved us. God's love is central to His nature. God and Love cannot be separated: "God IS love." Love flows out of Him to us, and is ours to receive.
The passage also says to me that you can't know God without becoming more like Him. If you don't become more like God - if you don't love - then you really don't know Him. You can't truly know God without becoming a lover like He is.
The passage says to me that love gives without being given to first; God loved us before we loved Him. But love gives with a purpose: God gave His gift to show us His love, to provide eternal life for us, and to take away our sins. It seems almost impossible to live up to that kind of love... but the passage not only says that we can, but that we should! Let's keep loving one another with the love that flows to and through us from God!
Thirteen years ago today, plus a week or so, I asked my boss Harry for a week of vacation. He gave me a strange look (because I hardly ever used vacation time) and said, "Are you getting married?"
As I drove up to the movie theater this sunny Sunday afternoon to view the new Donald Miller/Steve Taylor film, 
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