Category: Exploring Church Ministry Blog

God’s Word

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
The Bible is to the Christian what weights and barbells are to a bodybuilder.  The people of God need Holy Scripture, God’s Word, in order to spiritually grow and become mature.  Christian character formation cannot truly occur apart from the continuous repetitions of reading the text of Scripture, and letting it build strength into the muscles of the soul.
 
 
 
Scripture is a powerful unifying force within the life of God’s people.  At the end of the day, we may not explain every Bible verse in exactly the same way, but a common desire to honor, apply, and obey God’s Word will draw us closer together rather than separate us.  It is the devil’s strategy to magnify our differences, and minimize our common confession of Christ around the Word of God.  A passion to listen, talk about, and apply God’s Word will bring believers in Jesus together.  Perhaps because the average American household today has at least three or four Bibles, we take for granted the availability of God’s Word.  It is always at our fingertips, even on our smartphones and computers.  Yet, because it is always present and available we may let the busyness and business of life keep us from paying attention to it.  When we commit to reading and listening to Holy Scripture, it should not be done quickly or mechanically, and certainly not half-heartedly.  If we are to allow God’s Word to penetrate and seep into our souls, we must take the time to listen carefully and slowly.
 
            A famous first century rabbi, Akiva, once noticed a tiny stream trickling down a hillside, dripping over a ledge on its way toward the river below. Below was a massive boulder. The rock below bore a deep impression. The drip, drip, drip of water over the centuries had hollowed away the stone. Rabbi Akiva commented, “If mere water can do this to hard rock, how much more can God’s Word carve a way into my heart of flesh?” He realized that if the water had flowed over the rock all at once, the rock would have been unchanged. It was the slow but steady impact of each small droplet, year after year, that completely reformed the stone.
 
We sometimes want quick answers to our questions without taking the time to prayerfully listen and reflect on the Word of God. God likes to reveal truth over many days, months, and years, as we read and discuss Scripture together. Big splashes aren’t usually God’s way of doing things. Instead, through the slow drip of study and prayer and reflection, day after day, year after year, he shapes us into what he wants us to be.
 
When we approach the Bible it is necessary to come at it with a teachable spirit.  Sometimes God’s Word is not apparently relevant.  We oftentimes need others to help us, and we need the patience to stick with reading it and learning it, even when we aren’t sure about what it is saying.  Rightly interpreting Scripture typically happens in community, and not in isolation which is why small groups of people interacting on the Bible’s message is so very important.
 
One of the things a careful reading of Scripture does is to expose our sin.  When we look intently into God’s Word, it doesn’t take long for us to see God’s faithfulness and our disloyalty; God’s compassion and our selfishness; God’s holiness and our fickle nature.  And, for the believer, it causes us to grieve and be distressed not only over personal sin, but the fact that this sin is universal.  We are all guilty.  But sin does not have the last word, because God’s grace trumps everything!  So, do not grieve, because the joy of the Lord is your strength!  Being truly forgiven washes away the guilt and shame and brings restoration.  God’s Word both slays us, and gives us new life.
 
With this freedom, God’s Word opens our eyes to the needs of others.  An appropriate response to hearing God’s Word is to address and provide for the problems of others.  In other words, God is not just concerned about us, but about other people, as well. 
 
In ancient Israel, Scripture was so important that, by the age of twelve, every Jewish boy had the first five books of the Old Testament memorized.  They did this because they wanted God’s Word to be internalized and known so that it influenced every situation and every relationship of their lives.  What do you suppose would happen if we all committed to carefully reading and listening and meditating, even memorizing God’s Word on a daily basis?  Would it make a difference?  Would it transform our worship?  Would it make a difference in our relationships?  Would a commitment to learning God’s Word together change our life together?
 

 

There is no substitute for the heavy lifting of working through the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book.  Read, meditate, reflect, memorize, and prayerfully consider the Bible, and let its contents be the means of bringing intimacy between you and the divine.  In so doing, we lift up God’s Word and let it do its work within us.

Discovering the Reformation

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry Blog1 Comment
Sometimes I need to go into my daughter’s room to get something.  More often than not, it ends up becoming an archaeological dig as I wade through the layers of stuff.  I don’t always find what I’m looking for, and I sometimes discover things I didn’t know I had lost.  Nearly five-hundred years ago, when Martin Luther went digging into the Bible, he found that he was wading through layers of church tradition and came upon something that was lost; he rediscovered that God justifies sinners by grace through faith apart from any good works done by us.  In other words, Luther found in the Scriptures that we are completely and totally at the mercy of God in Christ.
 
 
 
            The cross of Jesus Christ is our only means of salvation from what ails us because the cross is an attack on human sin.  Luther discovered that we all have layers and layers of stuff that have grown around our hearts to the degree that we no longer see the sheer grace of God in Christ alone to meet the most pressing needs of our lives.  In the centuries before Martin Luther and John Calvin came into history, God’s grace had gradually become something of a supplement to whatever is left of our human willpower.
 
            Apart from Jesus we are addicted to ourselves; and, the cross is the intervention we need to help us in order to confront our constant me-ism.  We might sometimes justify ourselves with the fact that we do good works.  However, one of the legacies of the Reformation is that good works do not earn us deliverance from sin.  What is more, Luther said that our good deeds are the greatest hindrance to our salvation because we have the tendency to trust in those good deeds instead of the death of Christ.  So, Luther actually called our good works a mortal sin that sets off God’s wrath and leads straight to hell.  In other words, doing good deeds are deadly if they are done as a means of approaching God.  It is only through the suffering of Jesus on the cross, his death for us while we were still sinners, not when we were lovely and looking fine with all our pious actions, that we are saved.  Luther had this to say in his Heidelberg Disputation:  “He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering.  Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil.  These are the people whom are under God’s wrath!  God can only be found in suffering and the cross.  It is impossible for a person not to be puffed by his good works unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil until he knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.”
 
            God does not come to us in our beauty and goodness; instead, he comes to us in our ugliness and sin.  While we were still sinners, ungodly, enemies of God, powerless to save ourselves, Christ died on the cross for us (Romans 5:6-11).  We might spend too much of our time and effort concerned about looking good and doing good things in order to present ourselves acceptable to each other and even to God.  But that is the very sin, Luther said, that sends people to hell.  Places of damnation are actually reserved for those outwardly righteous persons who trusted all their lives in themselves and how they looked to others without a thought at all about justification, reconciliation, and being restored to God through Christ.
 
           

 

 
            Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout, is a person who has good deeds but knows nothing of God’s grace.  It is a completely human tendency to decide which sinful actions are trivial and which are the biggie sins.  Yet, the only way of approaching God is by seeing our true ugliness, our rebellious hearts, and that the only hope of salvation is through the cross of Christ.  We are justified by God and restored to relationship with him because of Jesus, and not for any other reason.  A new relationship is established based solely in God’s grace.
 
            When we grasp this truth, even a little bit, it should cause us to repent of our good works done apart from faith.  When there is humility that leads to a total turning to Jesus, there is a revival to new life in God, and a personal reformation around the doctrine of grace instead of the doctrine of my glorious works that I perform.
 
            We, then, as the people of God, saved and justified through the blood of Jesus, ought to be the most joyful and grateful people on the planet.  We have salvation from the deception of our hearts to life in Christ!  Apathy and lethargy in the church to the things of God are the twin evils that reign in the place of awe and appreciation for what God has done for us in Christ.
 
            There is nothing more God can do to show us that he loves us than by actually dying for us, and by doing so, satisfying his own wrath against the sin which seeks to destroy us.  The late Brennan Manning once told the story about how he got the name “Brennan.” While growing up, his best friend was Ray. The two of them did everything together: bought a car together as teenagers, double-dated together, and went to school together. They even enlisted in the Army together, went to boot camp together and fought on the frontlines together. One night while sitting in a foxhole, Brennan was reminiscing about the old days in Brooklyn while Ray listened and ate a chocolate bar. Suddenly a live grenade came into the foxhole. Ray looked at Brennan, smiled, dropped his chocolate bar and threw himself on the live grenade. It exploded, killing Ray, but Brennan’s life was spared.
 
When Brennan became a priest he was instructed to take on the name of a saint. He thought of his friend, Ray Brennan. So he took on the name “Brennan.” Years later he went to visit Ray’s mother in Brooklyn. They sat up late one night having tea when Brennan asked her, “Do you think Ray loved me?” Mrs. Brennan got up off the couch, shook her finger in front of Brennan’s face and shouted, “What more could he have done for you?” Brennan said that at that moment he experienced an epiphany. He imagined himself standing before the cross of Jesus wondering, does God really love me? And Jesus’ mother Mary pointing to her son, saying, “What more could he have done for you?”
 
The cross of Jesus is God’s way of doing all he could do for us. And yet we often wonder:  Does God really love me? Am I important to God? Does God care about me?  We tend to ask those questions when we are trusting in ourselves, because we never really know where we stand.  Let the doubts roll away.  No matter how bad or how good we are, the path of suffering of our Lord Jesus has taken care of the sin issue once for all.
 

 

This is what we call the gospel, the good news that Jesus suffered and died for all the bad things we have done, and all the good things we have done to try and justify ourselves before God and each other.  Week after week for the past 2,000 years, God’s people have been gathered together to worship this same Lord Jesus who died on the cross.  The only thing left for us to do, since Jesus has done it all for us, is to offer our lives to him.  In doing so, the spirit of the Reformation lives on.

Take the Stairs

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
A century ago, the English novelist, G.K. Chesterton, observed that in the house of life, many people are content to live in the cellar.  In fact, they assume the cellar is the only room in the house.  Cellars and basements have certainly changed in the past one hundred years, yet Chesterton’s observation still holds true – that people often seem content to dwell in conditions far beneath what they have the opportunity to experience.  In fact, maybe the basements of today provide a way to extend his metaphor:  rather than take the stairs and dwell in the house itself, we create spaces in the basement, game rooms and family rooms, in order to avoid dwelling in the main part of the house.  It is hard to be joyful in the cellar, because the cellar is a place where people hate themselves because of their failures, are disappointed with God for what he has allowed in their lives, and blame others for their part in it all.
 
Jesus has made the way of deliverance through his death on a cross, and has resurrected from the dead.  Those who believe in these redemptive events are full participants in the death and life of Jesus.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only a doctrine to be believed, but a powerful reality to be lived!  Christian doctrine always has as its trajectory changed lives. 
 
We must live upstairs because Christ’s resurrection makes it possible (Colossians 3:1-2).  Believers in Jesus have a vital connection and union with him.  Jesus has so closely identified himself with us that it is as if we are actually his body.  The bond that exists between Jesus and the believer is so intimate and so close that when Jesus was raised from the dead, we took part with him in that event.  The implication of this incredible truth is that our life is to be the life of Christ.  Our task, then, is to live up to who we are in Christ.
 
            We are to set our hearts on things above.  Today is the day to get our hearts out of the basement and live upstairs with Jesus, who is seated at the right hand of God.  Being seated at the right hand is a symbolic picture that the work of Jesus on the cross is finished.  The only work left to do is to believe, and to participate in the life of Christ.  We do that by living upstairs with Jesus.  Christ’s heart was set on giving us eternal salvation from sin and death, and he accomplished it.  Now, he has his heart set on seeing us experiencing freedom from the habits and shame and practices and addictions that keep us from living upstairs with him.  He wants our hearts.  He does not want us mucking around in the basement any longer because his resurrection has made it possible to be with him. 
 
            We are to get our heads out of the cellar and get them upstairs with Jesus.  The way we think determines how we live.  If our heads are not in the main part of the house, basement thoughts will fill the void.  The cellar becomes a prison, because our thoughts do not rise above the bad circumstances we may have experienced.  You have been raised with Christ.  Because of this, we can ascend the stairs of grace and enjoy God.
 
A devoted follower of Jesus will follow him up the stairs and dwell with him in God’s house.  A follower of Jesus will develop the life of the mind by being steeped in the words and ways of Jesus by reading Holy Scripture on a continual basis, as if it were the believer’s food and drink.  A follower of Jesus will take the stairs and have a heart of prayer that talks to Jesus on a regular basis, because without the regular interaction of listening to God through the bible, and talking to God through prayer, the believer will feel lost and confused and without hope.  A follower of Jesus will take the stairs and serve his/her Lord with all their heart and all their mind, because staying in the confining walls of the basement prevents the believer from seeing the immense need of people in the neighborhood who are lost, sick, dying, hurting, hungry, depressed, and longing for someone to show them the stairway of grace out of the hopeless basement they are in.
 
            So take the stairs.  Take the stairs and leave behind in the basement all such things as these:  anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.  Take the stairs as God’s people chosen to dwell with him in the house by embracing the house rules of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances you have against one another.  Take the stairs to forgiveness because the Lord forgave you.  Take the stairs to love.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since the resurrection of Jesus has made it so.  Take the stairs and let the activities of God’s house shape you and enter into them as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do, whether you are speaking or whether you are acting, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him for raising you up with him.  Take the stairs my friends, and live the resurrected life! (Colossians 3:5-17).
 

 

Move to another level.  Leave the basement behind.  The first step up the stairs is always a step of surrender.  What do you need to surrender?  Do you need to surrender your heart to Jesus by allowing him to meet the needs of your life?  Do you need to surrender your mind to God by allowing Scripture to shape how you think?  Do you need to surrender your fears and worries to the Holy Spirit of God so that your security and hope is firmly in him?  Do you need to surrender your time to Jesus, so that he can live through you?  Do you need to surrender your possessions to Jesus, in order that his purposes can be accomplished?  Take the stairs.

Liturgy

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
When it comes to the worship of God, it is not just a matter of us talking, praying, and singing to God; instead, worship is to be a conversation between God and his people.  There is to be a dialogue in which we hear from God, and engage him in return.  Worship, then, is hearing God’s revelation and then responding to him in praise, devotion, and obedience.
 
            The term “liturgy” describes what we do in worship.  Liturgy is a Greek term that means “the work of the people.”  Every church has a liturgy.  Liturgy is not only a reference to more traditional forms of worship.  Contemporary styled worship may have less liturgical elements to it, but it still has a liturgy of several praise and worship choruses (in which the people know when to stand and sit), and an extended time of preaching.
 
 
 
            God is always the initiator of salvation and worship.  If it were not for God himself approaching us, most fully expressed in Christ’s incarnation of coming to this earth, then we have no hope.  Since humanity is in the vice grip of sin, it takes someone outside of us to help us.  So, when we begin a worship service, it is God himself who initiates the conversation, through the call to worship.
 
            When the two men on the Emmaus road met Jesus after his resurrection, he engaged them in the Scriptures (Luke 24:13-27).  He went to the Old Testament and explained to the two men what it had to say about the Christ.  They heard from God.  If we want to understand Holy Scripture, we must also walk with Jesus and converse with him.  A worship liturgy exists in order to promote a relationship between us and God.  The reason we do what we do liturgically is to create space whereby God and God’s people can be in a meaningful conversation with each other.
 
            This means that we must listen well.  We cannot listen well to God if we are crazy busy and have our minds and hearts engaged in all the things we believe we need to do.  Sometimes we make our lives overwhelmingly busy so that we either cannot or do not have time to listen to God.  We actually might create noise and desire busyness because we are much too uncomfortable with silence, and aren’t sure if we really want to hear what is in our hearts.  Getting to the place of resting enough to listen can seem, for some, like a daunting task.  This is not a plea to do more, but to do less so that God’s people can have a conversation with Jesus.  A good place to begin is to practice the Sabbath, and use the day, not just the morning, to connect with God.
 
            In this liturgical rhythm, this conversation between us and God, the good news of Jesus is presented.  God first acts by seeking and desiring fellowship with us; God sent his Son, the living Word, to restore the fractured relationship – Jesus is the divine Word who has accomplished the restoration between us and God.  This revelation, this realization of what God has done for us in Christ requires a response from us.  When we enter a church, we are called by God to worship him; we respond by praising him for wanting fellowship with us.  Having glimpsed how holy God is, it makes us realize how sinful we are, and, so we confess our sins to him.  God, in his grace, forgives us our sin and assures us of our pardon.  In our thankfulness for that grace, we joyfully listen and live according to his Word.  And, so, back and forth we go, with the liturgy proclaiming the gospel to us in a divine dialogue that blesses both us and God.
 
            If you think about it, all of life is liturgical.  We each have routines, habits, and life patterns that shape how we get things done.  When my wife and I were married, we experienced a clash of liturgies.  Her family had their ways of doing things, and my family had theirs.  I quickly learned what a proper liturgy for folding towels was.
 
            Worship liturgy is not just for Sunday morning.  We can intentionally build some spiritual rhythms and spiritual conversation throughout each day.  Our daily call to worship is when we wake up, realizing that we have been called into wakefulness to enter into praise for a new day.  As we go through our day we can recognize sin when it happens, and be quick to confess it and accept God’s forgiveness.  We can be intentional about hearing from God, by creating space and setting aside time for reading Scripture.  When our heads hit the pillow at night, we receive the blessing of God in sleep, until a new day begins.
 
            Whatever way we go about it, we are to develop spiritual habits of approaching God, listening to God, and responding to God.
 

 

            Christianity is not just a system of beliefs, but is a way of life.  The kind of habits that we develop in that life will determine what kind of disciples we will be.  So, we must choose well the kinds of routines that we need in order to walk well with Jesus and carry on a conversation with him.