Living This Life Part 2

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Romans 12:3-5 ( NIV )

I wrote last time about how the first step in living this life as a follower of Jesus begins with our relationship to God and how Jesus gave us a tremendous example of what that relationship looks like. Paul, in extreme language, described it as a ‘living sacrifice.’ Many people stop at this point either because it’s more than they want to step into, or because they

think that God is all they need and as long as they are good with God, then they’re good to go. Even in some of the songs we sing, this mentality is reinforced. We sing, “All I need is You” or “You are my everything.” I understand the poetic beauty and resonance of these words, and even love to sing them, but to think that we only need God and nothing else is just not accurate, even as Paul states in these verses. We who are many, form one body, and we belong to one another. What Paul is describing here is the church.

Church

The word ‘Church’ is one that stirs up a wide range of thoughts and emotions. For some good, others bad and for many, I believe, misunderstood. When the word ‘Church’ is mentioned in scripture, it does not mean a place or a building where you go to worship; it is referring to the people who follow Christ all over the world. They ARE the church, Christ’s body, as Paul states, active in this world. And it’s

important to realize that we were designed by God for this community and that it’s an important and necessary part of living this life.

In the Beginning

In Genesis, at the very beginning, God had created paradise and placed Adam in the middle of the garden. They walked in perfect relationship with each other before the fall and God at this time said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2) Who else would dare to say “it is not good” in a situation where it is just you and God in perfect harmony? But God saw that there was still a need in Adam, the need not for more of God, but for someone else.

Now, when God created Eve, He didn’t just create a companion for Adam, He created family and larger still, He created community. The implications go much further than just the two of them. We can still see the gravity towards community in life all around us. We see it at sporting events as we wear our team colors and give high fives to the people around us we’ve never met as our team scores, at concerts or parties. Some will even be beaten half to death just so they can be accepted as a member of a particular gang. And though some of our choices aren’t always healthy, they are confirming what God saw there in the beginning, the need to be with others.

Jesus brought depth to this, and again (or should I say of course) in an extreme way. There was a crowd sitting around Jesus and someone said, “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” Jesus replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Then he looked at those around him and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:32-35 NLT). Jesus just took the closest circle that we have (family), and made it a whole lot bigger. Paul continues here in Romans with the attitude we should have toward each other, not thinking too highly of ourselves, recognizing our differences, as well as our dependency. Even as has been said, “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go with others.”

This love for others was Jesus’ mark and example and His disciples became known because of it. The world saw how Jesus’ followers lived and called them, “Christians”. Today we call ourselves Christians and the world sees how we live and calls us hypocrites, because what they see so many times doesn’t match who Christ is.

I believe that our communities of worship would not be able to contain all the people that would come if we loved and cared for them as we should. It was how Jesus said people would know that we are His followers, by our love for one another. The importance of being connected to others is a vital part of living this life. Loving God includes loving others (1 John 3).

After all …we are the church.

Living This Life Part 1

Living This Life Part 1
The following is taken from a 4-part series I taught entitled, “Living This Life”, from the last 4 chapters of the epistle to the Romans.

Living This Life Pt. 1

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. – Romans 12:1-2 ( NIV)

I think a lot of us, at one time or another, have wanted to know what the will of God is and in just a few sentences Paul tells us how we can prove what His good, pleasing and perfect will is.

In View of God’s Mercy

Paul’s first step to connecting with God’s will begins in the light of God’s mercy. Our actions, if not connected to the heart and love of God, will end up being a religious regiment of do’s and don’ts that quickly lose sight of why we do what we do. So it is in this awareness of mercy shown to us that we move forward.

As Living Sacrifices

This language is intense, especially if you can imagine a time and place where animal sacrifices were common occurrences. Jesus often used extreme language like this as well. He would say things like, “pick up your cross and follow me” or “whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” The intensity of how he spoke at times even turned people away (John 6).

People have different thoughts about what it means to be a Christian. To some, being a Christian is a matter of exclusion. I’m not a Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist so I must be Christian.

Others focus on the negative things they have seen or heard, like the televangelist who always wants money or Uncle Jim who just got out of rehab and feels the need at thanksgiving to tell the family the “good news” that they are all going to hell. Their perception is based on a few incidents and not on Christendom as a whole. And to others Christianity is about patterning their lives after the principles of Jesus (who is a great person to pattern your life after!). But this frame of thought doesn’t need to embrace the significance of Jesus death on the cross, the resurrection or even His claims to divinity. These people are simply following the principles Jesus taught, caring for the poor and outcast and in all sincerity trying to live a good and wholesome life. And again, those are all good things. But I believe Jesus gave us an example through His life of what it really meant to be “Christian”; after all the word means, “little Christ”. In Jesus’ life we see a dependence on God to a degree that seems foreign to us (well at least it does to me). He said things like, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” or “I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.” (John 5 & 12). I really believe that Jesus revealed what our lives are supposed to look like. And I believe that He is also the best clue as to what a living sacrifice looks like: a life yielded to God, in relationship with God, directed by God. God leads, we move, we hear His voice, then speak, we are touched by Him and reach out in love to others. This kind of life IS a spiritual act of worship.

Conform / Transform

I have heard people talk about “not being conformed to this world” and talk about things like the kinds of clothes people wear, movies they watch or music they listen to. I think to myself, “Are you serious?” On the top of God’s list of what’s important to change in our lives is our fashion, the movies we watch and our taste in music? Do the same standards apply to those in Africa or the Philippines as they do to us in the western cultures? What about tattoos? Are they conforming or transforming?

Once again I think we can be much too superficial in the way we look at these things. I believe the contrast is really between the spiritual and the material. We are to walk by faith, not by sight. We can only serve one master. One is God, who is Spirit; the other is money or what is material. If we live by the Spirit, we will not gratify the sinful desires of our flesh. The world is what we see and what is temporal; our minds are renewed when we set our eyes on the things above and on what are unseen and eternal. Not whether or not our clothes or hair are acceptable to certain religious standards.

If we would live in the constant light of God’s mercies (which are new every morning), be as mindful as Jesus was to the Father, aware that without him we can do nothing (even as Jesus said that apart from His Father He could do nothing) and walk in the reality of this Spirit-led life, then I think we would have no problem wondering what the will of God is, for we would find ourselves ALIVE in it.

To be a living sacrifice (or follower of Christ) may cost you everything you have, but in exchange you will gain everything your soul needs and craves.

Dirt, Sandals & Holiness

“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. - Exodus 3:5-6 ( NIV )

As I read this scripture recently I asked the question, “Why take off the sandals?” What is it about “holy ground” and sandals that doesn’t work for God?

Taking one’s shoes off is still a custom in the east and no Brahmin enters a pagoda or Muslim a mosque, without first taking off his shoes. The purpose, from what I’ve read, is so they do not to defile the place of worship with dirt. But what we find here in Exodus is quite a different scenario because Moses is in the desert with nothing but dirt or sand everywhere! So what’s with the sandals?

At a glance, God telling Moses, “Do not come any closer” can translate in our minds to God wanting to be distant from Moses, but if that’s the case why would He then ask him to take his sandals off? Wouldn’t that actually bring him closer to the ground that is holy and not further away? Could it be that part of what God actually wanted was for Moses to be closer in some way, perhaps to touch Moses with His holiness with nothing, not even a sandal between them?

It’s wonderful the change that takes place in Moses’ life from this point. Here we read that he falls to the ground and hides his face, afraid to look at God. But time passes and in a later encounter we read that instead of hiding, Moses actually wants more than anything to see the very face of God, but is denied because no one can see God and live (Exodus 33), which may be part of why God told him not to come any closer the first time.

Now, everything I’ve read seems to agree that the ground itself was not holy, but became that way because of God’s presence. When God “left”, the place went back to being just plain ol’ desert. I know there have been times in my life where the place I stood seemed to change from that of something ordinary, to one that was holy… to a dimension where the invisible presence of God touched me in a very tangible way. It has happened in buildings during times of teaching or singing, in my truck while praying, outside a school dorm in Swansea, Wales and each time it has left me

wishing I could stay in that moment forever. I believe that may be what happened to Naaman in 2 Kings 5 and why he took the dirt from Israel where he was healed of his leprosy back to Syria, trying to take a piece of that “holy” place back with him; why Jacob built a monument of rocks after his dream, saying “surely God was in this place and I did not know it”; why Peter (though misguided) wanted to build the tabernacles on the mount where Jesus was transfigured, each of them wanting something tangible as a reminder of what had taken place.

Maybe what God was doing with Moses here was drawing him into a relationship with nothing between them allowing His holiness to touch and forever change Moses’ life. And this holiness instead of pushing Moses away changed him from a man who was afraid to look at God, to a man who wanted to see God more than anything else.

I hope that if we ever find ourselves in a place confronted with God’s holiness, we will refrain from turning away or putting a guard up, but will instead… take our sandals off.