Now What? Love

This week in the student ministry we continued in our “Now What?” series.  Our focus was love out of the text 1 John 4:7 -12 and Matthew 22:34 – 40.  We led off the night with Mandy telling her journey of trying to find unconditional love and how it was shown to her in college by many people which opened her up to God’s love.  It was moving and great for the student to hear from others not just my stories.  I then talked about how we can’t love people as we should without God.  I described how I loved pre-Jesus which was selfish and conditional, and then post-Jesus which was more selfless and unconditional because of God’s love for me.   

Secondly, God is love.  1 John 4:8 – 10 describe God’s love revealed in sending his son Jesus that we might have life in him, and how he sent Jesus as the substitute for our sin and mistakes even before we loved him.  This is unconditional love, a love that can’t be earned.  I spoke briefly about those who use the excuse “I am not good enough for God’s love, or don’t deserve it.”  I pointed out that I was not worthy of God’s love and really no one is, but God gives it to us graciously.   

Third, once we have experienced the love of the living true God through Jesus, can we keep this love to ourselves?  No we can’t.  God calls us to love one another because we have experienced unconditional love from him so we must love others unconditionally.  If we love the way God loves us even though no one has seen God, they will see God in us.  When they do, they will ask questions about why we love the way we do and then we get to share the experience of God’s love in our life through Jesus hopefully over time bringing this person to belief.   

We don’t save people; Jesus does yet he calls us to love and spread his message.  He let’s us be apart of saving the world with him.  This is an unbelievable honor.  What is holing us back from loving others the way God does us?  I pray you can breakthrough those barriers with Jesus help because when we live out the love of God in this world, people will be saved, and God will bless our church.  First, we must examine ourselves and make sure we have our priorities in line with God’s in order to live for him. 

Now What? Truth

This week in our student group we continued in our Now What series talking about Truth.  Today truth can be anything to anyone; there is no absolute truth or so we are told.  For Christ-Followers there is absolute truth and it is Jesus.  We believe God’s word, the Bible, is truth and in John 14:6 Jesus says this about himself:  “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  As Christ-Followers, this is black and white:  No one can get to heaven nor be saved apart form Jesus.  Many non-believers get upset when we state this and say we are being snobby or exclusive.  I feel we are not exclusive because we don’t deny anyone Jesus; we are excepting and loving of all people, but it is up to them whether they trust in Jesus.  We are extremely inclusive.  You don’t have to earn your way, work at keeping a bunch of rules, and then we will consider you like ever other religion says.  What an amazing God we serve! 

We also talked about Acts 5:33 – 42.  Gamaliel, a respected teacher stood up and told the religious leaders to be careful what they do to the apostles because if this Jesus movement is of man it will fail, but if it is of God it can’t be stopped.  It has been 2,000 plus years since then and there are 2.1 billion Christians, or 33% of the people in the world.  I think it is safe to say this is nothing one man apart from God could do. 

All these points and facts are great but what about those who don’t believe the bible as truth, or think I need more than a few facts.  I have met Jesus and experienced him in my life.  He is alive and he has transformed my life.  This is true and no one can deny this many have seen my transformation.  I can only attribute it to my savior Jesus and what he can do with a life ready and willing to be transformed by him.  An unbelieving world needs to see more transformed lives by Jesus and I feel then more people would believe if we step up allowing Jesus to transform us to be more like him and revolutionized the world with the only real truth: Jesus. 

NOW WHAT?

Currently in our student group we are in a series called “Now What?” in it we are discussing now that we are followers of Jesus what can we do as a group to affect Coppell.  I introduced a mission statement for the students, “A community seeking to bring glory to God through transformed lives in Jesus.”   I broke this statement down first talking about being a community.  We are all apart of many communities from Coppell to sports teams.  Our group here at FBCC is a community, and we need to live and love each other as Jesus loved us.  We talked about how we need to know one another in church and outside church encouraging one another in Jesus and being lights in our areas of influence. 

With love must come authenticity, we need to be real about our faith in Jesus not being one person at church and a completely different person everywhere else.  No one wants to be a part of a community that is not real.  From there we talked about bringing glory to God and being transformed by Jesus.  These go hand in hand.  We bring glory to God by first trusting in Jesus finished work on the cross for salvation.  (How awesome is the grace of God).  After believing, we follow Jesus as Christ-Followers living our lives to him and for him.  This can only come through the Spirit of God in us transforming our lives.  Only through our relationship with Jesus as we read more of his word, pray to him, listen to him, encourage one another in what God is doing in our lives, and when we are spiritually dry we tell others so they can build us up. 

In this process of working out our salvation, Jesus transforms us only as he can.  We find our identity, love, worth, and value in him not in the things of this world.  We want to then take this message of Jesus to those who we run with living a life transformed in front of them with authenticity, allowing them to ask questions, helping them find answers, praying for them, and eventually hoping for their salvation.  Through being a community seeking to bring glory to God through transformed lives in Jesus, we feel God will bless it over time growing us spiritually deep, and adding to our numbers.  

Living Out Loud

God has done some cool stuff in my life this week.  He is opening me up more and more to get over myself and look to the needs of others.  He is doing the same with Mandy.  We are getting more and more excited about adoption which we have always wanted to do.  Right now we have a dog, Mini T, we have adopted and another to come next week (Boston, a Boston Terrier).  This week, I find myself thinking more and more about what I can do to help change where I live, and impact the world for Jesus.  I am growing more and more uncomfortable with the way things are in our community and church.  I am ready to step it up and live it out loud.  What does this look like?  I want to model to my students to their families and people we run into what it really looks like to be following Jesus.  I mean really abandoning what we know in this world and trading it for kingdom things like helping the poor in Haiti, Africa, looking to adopt, getting my finances in order to give more away instead of raise my standard of living.  I want to live the gospel out loud for all to see. Please pray for us as we try to do these things that God will provide the timing and opportunities. 

Only Conceptual Change not Heart Change

Why is it that churches think all we have to do is better define who we are and people will jump on board?  Change our mission statement or values to the new buzz words like “Missional”, or “Emerging” (I love the word missional but it is becoming over used).  We change a few words around preach a sermon series on it, and all the church has to sign onto it after three weeks.  What!?!?!  It is just semantics.  Now semantics are important and we need people to clearly now what we are about as a church and where we are going.  But don’t miss the underlying problems:  unrepentant sin, idolatry, loss of first love, to busy, etc.   

Many times I think what a church needs is their leader to stand up on the stage and tell them: we have lost our first love, we are lukewarm, we think we are rich but we are really blind, poor, and naked.  We need a kick in the pants sometimes to wake us up to the reality we are not loving God with all we are, we have not shared our faith in months or years, we are not really loving those around us only tolerating them, we are pursuing the things of this world ten fold more than storing up treasures in heaven.   

The church needs to be told they are off the mark, if not they think they are fine or even good when in fact we are dying inside and out. It is a matter of the heart, what we love the most, do our lives match up with our beliefs. If a heart change occurs through being honest with a church and ourselves, God can move. He looks for those who are humble and contrite in spirit.  He looks to those who have a sense of awe in their lives of who God is and what he has done for us through Jesus.  If we are full of pride, arrogance, and thinking we are fine, God can’t use a church like this. Who will stand up and tell them?  Who will bring us to the light?

Foot in Mouth…I am young

I once again I have to put my foot in my mouth for the blog about the Summit Leadership Willow Creek Conference.  I am young and naive at times thinking that the church can’t learn a thing or two from the world and its leaders.   I have realized in the area of Leadership many things are universal from business to running a church.  The speakers have been on point, insightful, and are all innovative creative risk taking leaders. 

We could learn a thing or two about risk taking in the church.  We are so afraid of change and innovation that we end up avoiding it, promoting the status quo, and churches are mediocre at best if not dead.  We spend too much time promoting the (fill in your denomination here) way and not the way of the master (no not Kirk Cameron) Jesus.  Therefore our people get hung up on doing things a certain way that once worked and had great values, but now they are out of touch and those values mean whatever the people want them to be. 

We need young leaders to rise up not accepting things the way they are to bring innovation and creativity back to the church.  Well, I gues we need to bring Jesus back first and then the above mentioned.  I feel led to do the impossible by the grace of God: Help churches change.  God is opening my heart for those churches we are giving up on, the ones everyone says can’t change, and I want to see them return to their first love of Jesus.  I want to see Jesus bring them back to life.  It starts with us coming back to him:  reprioritizing our lives, our schedules, our families, our hearts to a love for Jesus NOT RELIGION!  Jesus gives life, religion kills.  I want to open them up to accept and love all people especially one another.  We are to be known for our love for one another, out doing one another in honor, and this way people will look to the church and say, “I want to be apart of a community like that.  They have something special”.