Monday, October 27, 2008

Who Are You?

At a Youth Ministry conference I was at back in January, one of the speakers said something that has been very challenging for me. “You need to know who you are outside of being a minister,” is the comment that I’ve been struggling with for the past seven months. Ministry is my life. There isn’t much more to it than that. I began to have a better understanding when I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. When you’re on the trail you are just a hiker. No one asks you who you are or what your vocation is. It isn’t often that I get to set “who I am” aside and just be Ryan.

We consume ourselves with identity and live accordingly. We are…doctors, nurses, teachers, students, retired, salesmen, etc. We get to a point that we cannot really see ourselves as anything else. What we do becomes our identity. There is a great need in our lives to be recognized as Children of God…to find our identity as Children. I can only speculate what life would be like if we were to fully embrace our identity as Children as our full identity…and then find ourselves working our jobs within the realm of this identity.

One of my favorite stories in British history is the story of King Canute the Great. His Nobles and Officers often praised how great he was. They showered him with praise so much that Canute grew tired of their foolish speeches. One day he was by the seashore, and his officers and nobles were with him…continuing to shower him with praise. He had them bring his throne to the waters edge. As he sat down he asked them, “Am I the greatest man in the world?” They called out, “Yes! There is no one as mighty as you.” He did this for a while to the point where he looked out at the water and cried out, “Sea, I command you to come no farther! Waves, stop your rolling, and do not dare to touch my feet!"

The tide came in as it always did. Water rising higher and higher till it came up around King Canute’s throne…wetting not only his feet but his robe as well. He then stood up, taking off his crown, he walked over to the sanctuary and laid it at the feet of Jesus on the cross. He turned to his nobles and officers and said, “I will never wear this crown again. There is only one King who is all-powerful. He is who shall be praised above all others.”

In order to know who I am outside of being a minister, I must lay that crown down at the feet of Jesus. Jesus challenges us to take up our cross and die to ourselves. Ultimately we must remove the crown of our identity and be identified as Children of God. We then look to God and say, “Where do you need me in your Kingdom?” He will make you whatever He needs you to be.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Walk This Way

Growing up I’m sure we’ve all looked at the Bible and said, “Why all the rules?” The reality is...a lot of us still ask this question. It is the basic question the world asks us. Does Jesus simply not want us to have any fun? Is the grumpy old man in the sky upset by us feeling good and enjoying life? The questions could get worse I guess…but we’ll leave it where it is. I feel like there is something more than just an exchange of Old Testament Rules for New Testament Rules.

In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” He then spends the next bit of time turning the world of Jewish thought on its head and calls us not to be rule followers but to be Salt and Light in this bland and broken world. He says, “Walk This Way.”

Before Jesus ever says anything about “Walk This Way” He gives a quick glimpse of what it looks like to be Children of God in this broken world. He gives us the Beatitudes. This past weekend, eight Youth Ministers and 250 teens from all over the Carolinas explored what it means to “Walk This Way” in terms of what Jesus calls us to through the Beatitudes. The weekend retreat at the beach was incredible…even if it was in the 60’s and rainy. One of the greatest things in youth ministry is to see this many teens get together to worship God. His Spirit filled the whole weekend. The teens were challenged to the deeper life that Jesus calls us to through the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount…simply…they were challenged to “Walk This Way!”

Talk to someone who was there. Find out where they were encouraged to grow. Ask where God spurred them in their Walk. The challenge for you now is to pick up Matthew 5-7 and let Jesus’ Words mold you into a deeper way of living. Let Jesus teach you to be Salt and Light. Let Jesus show you how to “Walk This Way!”

Friday, October 17, 2008

Where Is Your Stone

I am a fan of rocks…let’s face it…they rock! Ok…I know…really bad joke. Hear me out anyway. I never really like learning about them in school but I am fascinated by them. How can a huge bolder just sit there the way it is? How does it then become a tiny pebble? Some are jagged. Some are made for kids with short attention spans…they sparkle! Some are smooth…these are the ones that intrigue me the most. How does a coarse stone become pure smooth like that?

At our “Walk This Way” Beatitudes retreat this weekend I was given the topic “Blessed are the pure in heart” to speak about Saturday night. I started looking at the heart as if it were a stone that needed to be made smooth. What would it be like to try and smooth a rock with your hands? Would it be possible? Even if you were able to get one area smooth would you accomplish pure smoothness?

The Pharisees constantly tried to smooth themselves out through “Righteous Living” and completely missed the point of why the Law was put in place in the first place. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls His followers to a deeper way of living. The way of a transformed heart. When you might pat yourself on the back and say, “Look at how righteous I am…I haven’t killed anyone all day,” Jesus says, “How is your anger?” He makes you go deeper into your existence and look at the heart of the matter in all things. “You say don’t commit adultery. I say don’t look lustfully on a woman.” It isn’t just about your action but about the center of your being…your heart!

Time for reality…YOU CAN’T DO IT! That is hard to swallow but you can’t. Paul in Romans 7 talks about his struggle with the Law and cries out in verse 24, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Then answers in the next verse, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” It is Jesus who transforms our jagged hearts into the pure heart that we’ve been called to. But how does this happen? (Stop and read Roman 8:1-17…it’ll change your life)

Jesus promises the woman at the well, in John 4, “Living Water” and then a few chapters later in John 7:38 He says, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” And again in Revelation 7:17 “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.”

Jesus calls us to take our stones and throw them in the river of Living Water to let His current run over them every day. He calls us to immerse our stones…to baptize our hearts in His Living Water and let His Word, His Spirit, His current smooth out and make pure our rough hearts. Where is your stone? In your hand or in the River?

Thursday, October 16, 2008

GPS

All throughout the Bible…especially in the Jewish mindset…God is never explained by who He is but by what He does or what He is like. From time to time we see something and it makes us think about God. We see a father throwing his kid in the air with joy. A mother consoling her child. In an old woman’s eyes. In nature. The stars. The ocean. His reminder is all around us.

One of my favorite things is when God reveals Himself in the oddest of places. I’ve had a GPS (Global Positioning System) in my car for almost a year now and it has been an interesting trip figuring it out. When you set your destination, the GPS provides you a map with a purple line that you simply follow. What happens often is that you get distracted and miss a turn. What the GPS then does is changes your course giving you new direction to get to your destination. Sometimes it simply tells you to turn around and get back on the right path.

What I love so much about God is that when you take a wrong turn in your life He says, “I can work with this” and then gives us new direction to get from where we are to our Destination. When you look through the story of Israel you see this happen over and over again. God has a destination for them but they always want to go another direction. Abraham and Sarah were promised a son but they were tired of waiting so Abraham had Ishmael with Hagar. God said He would work with it. All through the story of Israel you find mess up after mess up and God continued to work with them to bring them to their destination.

“Make a U-Turn as soon as possible…” my GPS will shout at me over and over and over again. There is simply no other way but to turn around and go back to the last turn you missed. Sometimes we make such a bad turn that God has to simply turn us around. Israel spent so much time in the wilderness learning a relationship with God and when they finally made it to the Promise Land…they made a wrong turn. God’s response? “Make a U-Turn as soon as possible!” They had to go back to the wilderness to find their direction again.

Listen to God and see where He is guiding you where you are right now. Follow Him. When you miss a turn…look for the next one He brings you to. He’ll take you to your destination…Heaven.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Jesus Be My Guide

Every year we do a Family White Water Rafting Trip on the Nantahala River (this year being my third since I’ve been here). With my love for adventure and the outdoors, I look forward to this trip each year. It is a great weekend of family, fellowship, fun, adventure…and as always…“injuries make memories” which has more or less become an unspoken motto for the Nantahala Trip. This year we had a great time with record numbers and many visitors (110 total I believe with 86 rafting).

The two rafts I took down the river were two of the best rafts I have ever had the pleasure of guiding. I was thinking back as to why those rafts…at the average age of 13…did so well. Unity. Unity was key in those rafts doing well. Before ever getting in the water they were given one simple instruction…paddle together.

Every once in a while someone would ask, “Are we going right or left?” and the response from Philip Travis and I would be, “You paddle…we will guide.” I heard another guide talk about their group and he said that when he said that they were going to the right someone said they wanted to go left and started paddling against everyone else. Needless to say…they got stuck on a rock. Sunday morning we talked a lot about fellowship, unity, and Jerry challenged us to let Jesus be our River Guide.

The more I thought about that the more I thought about the boats I had the privilege to guide. Life is a lot easier when we just keep paddling with everyone else and let Jesus be our guide. We may not all look the same in the way we paddle but we can all paddle in the same direction.
Hebrews 10:23-25 says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Why We Gather

While at home, a good friend gave me the book, "Evil and the Justice of God" by N.T. Wright. He said I’d like it so he wanted me to have it. After a few weeks I finally picked it up and read it in about six days because I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend picking it up and reading it for yourself. There are a number of things I could share from this book but I want to focus on one thought that really has hit me this week while reading…

The Gospels do not offer any kind of philosophical explanation of evil, what it is or why it is there, nor do they give any suggestion for how we might change our lives so that evil might mysteriously disappear from the world. What the Gospels give us is the story of an event in which the Living God deals with evil. The cross is God’s eternal “no” to the problem of sin. Often we look at the world in terms of Good and Evil…us being “Good” and them being “Evil” but what one must realize is that the line between good and evil runs through the middle of me…of every one of us…and it is in this that the Gospels proclaim that the death of Jesus is “for me,” in my place and on my behalf. This is where the personal meaning of the cross becomes very clear…that there will be a time when I, the greatest of sinners, will be totally sinless, when God has completed the work of grace within me!

When we gather around the LORD’s Table we are reminded of this. At the supper the King shares His life with His friends, more particularly, solemnly makes them the beneficiaries of His kingdom-bringing death. What was accomplished in His death and resurrection, according to the early Christians, is the foundation, the model, and the guarantee of God’s ultimate purpose…which is to rid the world of evil altogether and to establish His new creation of justice, beauty, and peace. Every time we come together around the table we are reminded of what we are here for. That we are taking part in the death that must take place for us to stand sinless before God and that our purpose is to rid the world of sin through introducing them to the Creator who wants them back.

Monday, October 06, 2008

Focus on the Light

I was sitting in a little office with my cute little blue hairnet on answering questions and cracking jokes about the possibility of my eyes getting bigger after my surgery when I was called into the next room. The nurse looked up at me, smiled and said, “Just look at the light” and handed me a little blue pill. Looking at a little light seemed like a simple thing to do so I went on with things.

After some tests I walked into a room filled with white-masked people whose eyes were smiling as they told me to lie down. The doctor kept repeating those same words to me as he informed me everything that was going on. “Just keep looking at the light” was all I had to do…what is this tape their putting on me…no just look at the light. This liquid feels funny…I can’t feel anything but I’m looking at the light…Is this sucking on my eye…its ok…focus on the light…that sure is an interesting brush touching my eye ball…then the light got dim…that’s when the lightning show started inside my eye…here comes the cold fluid and now I can see the light more clearly again…That wasn’t all that bad…Just kept looking at the light.

That was the first eye…then the valium kicked in and it was even harder to focus on the light. It really seemed like the light kept moving around on me the second time and I had to be reminded more often to keep focusing on the light. The reality is that the light stayed in the same place…I just kept getting distracted by all the little things coming into my view…and it didn’t help that I was a little more relaxed the second time.

The truth is that I find this to be true in my life on a regular basis. It seems so easy…Just look at the light. Nothing about getting distracted by all the things that come into view seem to have any benefit to my life at all yet distraction comes easily. Jesus said in John 8:12, “I AM the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” As distraction comes easily to each of us, let us encourage one another to “Just look at the Light” and everything will come out clear in the end.