Category: Exploring Church Ministry Blog

Overcoming the World

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Everyone who is truly born of God overcomes the world because such a person believes in Jesus as the Son of God and seeks to obey him in all things.  Faith, love, and obedience are tightly woven together to such an extent that to pull one of them out is to unravel the whole bunch.  These three characteristics of the true Christian are vital and necessary to living the Christian life.  They all must be present in order for the church to overcome the world (1 John 5:1-5).
 
            God saves us from sin and grants us forgiveness; the action is on his part.  We simply are recipients of his good grace toward us.  Our actions are a result of God’s action to us.  In other words, to put it simply:  to be a person born from God means that the Christian will engage in the activities of faith, love, and obedience.  Just as a newborn baby first breathes, then learns to eat, sleeps, grows-up, learns to walk, and over time develops into an adult just like his/her mother and father, so the Christian who is born again from God exhibits faith, learns to love, and grows up developing the skills of obeying Jesus and following him, learning to walk in his ways, becoming just like him.
 
            In the same way that a child must learn and grow in order to have the skills to face the world in all its bigness, trials, and temptations, so the Christian must also develop the commensurate abilities necessary in order to take on the world and overcome it.  The indispensable skills that Christians need are faith, love, and obedience.  Without them we will not be able to deal with the world; but with them we experience a practical victory over the world.
 
            The term “world” in the book of 1 John is used in the sense of the patterns, systems, and operations of the world in contrast to how God operates.  The world engages in revenge and payback when wronged, whereas the Christian learns to believe that God will be the Judge, loves the person who has offended him through prayer for his enemy, and obeys God by engaging in good works that seeks the welfare of the other.  The world uses other people as either objects of their pleasure or to get ahead in life, whereas the Christian believes God will take care of her needs, will seek to love the other person instead of use them, and would rather obey God by cutting off her right hand off than engage in selfish behavior.  The world thinks nothing of lying, cheating, and stealing if they can get away with it, whereas the Christian believes that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, loves being a person of integrity, and obeys God even when it hurts.
 
            The way to overcome the world with a practical victory is to be about the business of faith, love, and obedience.  Where do we feel “the pull” in life from?  Do we feel it from the world, or from God and his Word?  Yes, it is true that our society is becoming more and more secular and worldly.  We must learn to navigate the worldly elements of our society that upset us through faith, love, and obedience to God.  We must also learn how to deal with the worldly elements of our society in which we feel a pull and a tug to go along with it and want to give in to it.  This requires a community of Christians that engages the world through faith, love, and obedience in order to overcome.
 
            Our task and our call as Christians cannot be reduced to just survive the world.  If anyone could have had that kind of mentality, it was Helen Keller.  Deaf, mute, and blind, she could have settled into just getting by and waiting for heaven.  But she accepted her situation, coped with it, and even transcended her limitations.  She did more than survive – she thrived.  Helen Keller once said, “The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were not limitations to overcome.  The mountaintop would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”
 

 

Overcoming the world is a high calling from God.  It means using faith to put aside fear and take the kind of risk God wants churches to take.  It means using love means to forsake hate, even when it hurts.  It means using obedience to cast off selfishness and choosing to do what is best for another person’s welfare.  Being characterized by these three Christian virtues will have the effect of overcoming the world.  It is not a burdensome or heavy way to live.  It is not an isolated individual thing, but a communal way.  It is the way of Jesus – a way every believer and every church must follow.

Who I Am

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
     

 

 
     There are two crucial matters that every church needs to understand and grapple with; they are:  1) Christians are children of God, loved by God – that is their status and identity; and, 2) Christians are to abide and live into this identity as children of God, loved by God.  In other words, we must, first, know who we are; and, second, know how we are to live (1 John 3:1-7).
 
Who We Are
 
When Jesus was on this earth he was misunderstood by nearly everyone around him, and Christians must learn to expect the same.  If we are true children loved by God, we will neither fit in with the world, nor will we seek the world’s affirmation and accolades.  The practical difference between Christianity and the world is that Christians locate their primary identity, allegiance, and purpose in Christ, whereas the world finds their identity in things other than Jesus.
 
Being loved by God brings assurance, peace, security, and hope.  These qualities cannot be manufactured by us because they are results of being loved.  The world cannot give us these characteristics because it does not have the love of God to give.  This does not mean that Christians always have it all together.  In fact, we are continually in a process of discovering our true identity and growing more and more into that uniqueness.  The reason Jesus could live his life without needing the world’s recognition is that he was firmly and securely assured of the Father’s love and care for him. 
 
As Christians, we will keep learning what it means to be loved by God in Christ.  And this will help fortify our faith so that we will not find our identities in worldly roles, however intrinsically good those roles might be.  A woman whose primary identity is a mother will live for her family to such a degree that her salvation comes through it.   A person whose primary identity is a teacher will live for the job because saving the world for him will come through education.  But when the Christian has his/her primary identity as a child of God, loved by him, then that person will view deliverance from sin as coming through Jesus.  When the church, living and serving together is secure in its identity as children of God and loved by him, then we are able to withstand any adulterous flirtations from the world to woo us away from the centrality of Jesus and onto something else.
 
How We Are To Live.
 
            Jesus said all the law could be summed up in two commands:  love God; and love others (Matthew 22:37-40).  For Jesus, breaking the law means hating instead of loving; working to undermine someone instead of seeking their best interests; excluding others instead of including others; dividing instead of cooperating.  No one who abides or remains in Christ keeps on sinning by continuing on the same trajectory that they had before knowing Christ (John 15:1-17).  Jesus came to take care of the sin issue once for all through the cross.  Therefore, Christians, loved by God, cannot be sinning if they are abiding; the two cannot co-exist with each other.
 
            Identity and life are to work together.  For example, I am a citizen of Wisconsin.  It is both a status and a life.  I not only live in this state geographically, but I am to abide in it as a responsible person.  What does it mean to be a Wisconsinite?  How is it different from the rest of the world?  Being a relatively new resident, two words come to mind about living in Wisconsin: sports and food.  Wisconsinites readily identify themselves as Packer fans and forsake any identification with the god-forsaken pagan Vikings.  We like our prep and collegiate sports; and, our outdoor sports of hunting and fishing.  When it comes to food, there is nothing to compare to the Friday night fish fry; the cheese curds; the venison; the mustard; and, wash it all down with a “Spotted Cow,” or maybe a trip to the “bubbler” will do just fine.
 
            We are to become more and more like Christ.  Our identity as loved by God means we will seek to live in Christ by living a life of love.  The people of Wisconsin have a general reputation of being polite and helpful, not rude and unhelpful.  They should live into this identity and behavior.  And as Christians whose primary identity is in being children of God, we should keep living and abiding in Christ through love and obedience. If our primary identity is secure in being a loved child of God, then what comes out of us will be loving words and actions, even to those in the world who might not believe or understand.
 

 

            Knowing our true identity is necessary.  Without it, the church is only a random collection of individuals doing their own thing, however good it is.  But knowing who we are brings focus, purpose, and value in a way the world cannot provide because the greatest need we all have is for Jesus.

Confession of Sin

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            “If we confess our sins he (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).  This is a tremendous promise – forgiveness and cleansing from all sin.  Yet, it cannot be activated apart from confession and admitting one’s true condition.  Secret sins tucked away deep in the soul will only fester and boil, while on the outside the snakes of temptation slither around our feet seeking to immobilize us with fear.  The result of un-confessed sin is spiritual blindness, darkness, and death.  When Scripture speaks about confession, it does not just mean a private personal confession; it also means a corporate and public confession.  “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you might be healed” is the unambiguous command of the Bible (James 5:16).
 
            There cannot be new life and renewal, revival, or revitalization of church life and ministry apart from real honest tell-it-like-it-is biblical confession.  If this scares the hell out of you, it really should.  Dealing with sin radically is what Jesus talked about in his Sermon on the Mount when he said we should pluck our eyes out if they offend and cut our hands off if they cause us to sin because it is better to be in God’s kingdom with no eyes and hands than to burn in hell with our parts intact (Matthew 5:29-30).  Confession is more than simply mouthing some words about not being perfect and a sinner like everybody else; it is to lead to a complete turn-around and change of how we live our lives.
 
            If we have besetting sins that dog us on a regular basis and we do all the same things this year that we did last year to deal with it and it did not work, then we will be right back to the same place next year in the season of Eastertide carrying the very same burden of guilt, shame, and regret.  Walking away from the church will not deal with it.  Walking away from God will not deal with it.  Trying some new teaching or new practice will not make it go away because that is only re-arranging the inner furniture of the soul.  No, only agonizing spirit-rending yet freeing confession will allow God’s clean surgical knife to take out the offending sin and bring spiritual and even physical healing.
 
            Patricia Raybon in her book I Told the Mountain to Move shares the regret and grief she carried after aborting two children.  She writes, “I had told myself than an abortion would end my problems, not complicate them by bringing an innocent life into my own upheaval.”  She shares a courageous and heart-wrenching confessional letter she wrote to her two aborted children:
Dear Babies:
This is Mama.  You will know my voice, I think, even though we were together for such a short time.  I did a bad thing.  I did not trust God.  I did not understand that God would have made everything okay.  I was like Peter… who looked down at the waves, not at Jesus.  And when he looked at the waves, he started to sin – down, down, down.
That’s how I felt, like I was sinking down.  When the doctors said you were growing inside of me, that’s how I felt, like I was sinking down…. So, I didn’t know how to love you.  I was afraid.  So I let fear convince me that more babies would just make things worse.
Instead, look what I did.  I robbed us.  First, I robbed you – taking your own lives… I didn’t think I was strong enough.  So I robbed myself of all the joy you would have brought me too.  Brought all of us, your sisters, your family, and for each of you, your daddy.  I thought we would have more problems. That we did not have enough money. That we did not have enough time.  That we did not have enough love.  But I just did not know then that God is bigger.  And God would make everything all right.  I didn’t know….”
 

 

Genuine authentic change will not occur without first dealing squarely with our past thinking, choices, and behavior.  This is why some form of a prayer of confession really needs to happen at every church worship service.  Ignoring such a vital liturgical prayer and practice will, at best, leave people with no guidance for confronting sin; and, at worst, will teach people that confession is not necessary to Christianity and leave them a spiritual mess.  Instead, the carefully constructed prayer of confession can lead believers to unburden the things they have done, and the things they have left undone.  Only then will we experience the advocacy of Jesus Christ who speaks on our behalf because of his once-for-all atoning sacrifice for sins.  This stuff is really too important to blow-off.  Church pastors and leaders need to put some real time and prayer into understanding the dynamics of confession, repentance, and new life because they are all vitally linked.  It is the first step to a spiritual breakthrough.

Christ’s Resurrection

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
It is actually possible that some Christians can be laid back concerning the subject of Christ’s resurrection.  Those who have grown up in the church have heard it all before.  They believe it and have signed off on it on their invisible Christian doctrinal checklist.  Yes, yes, Jesus has risen from the grave… now let’s talk about some exciting stuff, like Wisconsin basketball!  When we view Christianity as merely a set of beliefs to hold, it is only logical to have some boredom over the resurrection.  But if we go beyond this and rightly discern that following Jesus is a way of life, then Christ’s resurrection becomes vital, interesting, and wildly significant.  It is necessary to believe in Christ’s resurrection as a real historic event.  But his rising from death was never meant to end there because God has a way of life for us to live into.  God desires us to lean into that resurrection power as the foundation for glorifying him by experiencing a new changed life.
 
            Jesus had in mind to see a community of redeemed people, delivered from the power of sin and death, use their salvation to love God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength; to love one another in such a way that demonstrates God’s self-sacrificial love by following him together; and to love the world by talking about the events of the cross and resurrection with people wherever they go, just as naturally as we discuss collegiate basketball.
 
            It is the kind of life that cannot be achieved on our own because spiritually dead people cannot make themselves alive.  It is a life based upon the power and love of Jesus Christ.  God does not choose, adopt, and save based upon how lovely we are or how good we are at making ourselves attractive to him.  He loves us because love is who he is – it is all about his giving us belonging as his beloved child.
 
            Timothy Paul Jones tells in his book Proof: Finding Freedom Through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace about his adopted seven year old little girl.  It was with much prayer that he and his wife decided that God really wanted them to have her become part of their family.  It was not because she was a sweet child.  In fact, this was actually this little girl’s second family because another family had adopted her and did not keep her because they could not handle her.  She had ended up back as an orphan.
 
            After she was adopted and with the Jones’ family for a while, Dad discovered that her former family went to Disney World every year… without her.  The Mom, Dad, and biological siblings would all go, but they would always leave the little girl behind with extended family.  That meant the girl would have to hear all year about the memories of the family and the see the pictures without her in them.  So, after learning about this, Dad decided that the next family vacation was going to be to Disney World, including the adopted girl.
 
            In the month leading up to the vacation, the little girl began lying for no reason, saying incredibly hurtful things to her siblings, and was just a handful to deal with.  Two days before they were to leave, she said to her Dad: “I know what you are going to do.  You are not going to take me to Disney World, are you?”  In her previous family, she had tried being as good as possible, but it never earned her that trip to Disney.  The little girl had been so terrible in the past few months that Dad had the thought to use the trip as leverage to get his daughter in line.  Rather, he wisely responded to her by saying, “This is a trip we are doing as a family, and you are a part of this family, so you are going with us.”  He went on to say, “You will get consequences for your behavior, but we are not leaving you behind.”
 
            The daughter’s behavior did not change, and the car ride to Florida was awful.  But after the first day at Disney World, there was a breakthrough and a turn-around.  Dad asked his daughter, “So, how was your first day at Disney World?”  After a long pause, she said this: “Daddy, I finally got to go to Disney World… but it wasn’t because I was good; it’s because I’m yours.”
 
            Jesus died and rose again, giving us the grace of forgiveness and a new life not because we were either good or attractive; he did it because we belong to him.  There can be no grace without people who flip their middle fingers at God.  Jesus died and rose again because of our sin; because we needed a Savior.  God’s grace is a farmer paying a full day’s wages to a crew of deadbeat day laborers with only a single hour of work (Matthew 20:1-16).  God’s grace is a man marrying an abandoned woman and then refusing to forsake his covenant with her when she turns out to be a whore (Hosea 1:1-3:5).  God’s grace is the nonsense of a shepherd who puts ninety-nine sheep at risk just to rescue one lousy sheep that is too dumb to stay with the flock (Luke 15:1-7).  God’s grace is the extreme commitment to save people from their own sinful stupidity and stubbornness by sacrificing himself on a cruel cross and rising from the dead just so people can live brand new lives full of peace, love, and joy in a new family of redeemed people with lots of siblings who love each other and want to love the lost world who still does not know what they can have in Christ.
 

 

            A true and real grasp of the grace of God in Christ never results in yawning or boredom; it leads to unending praise and extreme gratefulness.  In the wake of Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus is more than a once-a-year recognition for believers; it is to be a way of life in grasping the power of grace and belonging in Jesus.  It ought to change our lives.