Tag: faith

Own Your Struggle

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog1 Comment

sisyphus struggle

In this social media driven world, we know all too well the temptation to sanitize our respective life experiences and stories.  Even the cloistered folk who refuse any social media will often not give you a straight answer when asked the sincere question, “How are you doing?”  “Fine” is not an acceptable answer, in my book.  The reason I say we need to be more honest in our responses and presentations to one another is:

Hiding large swaths of our lives and stories from others is not the path to spiritual wellness, emotional healing, and personal peace.  However, owning our internal struggles through embracing weakness, humility, vulnerability, and faith opens to us the way of grace.

Far too often you and I have ongoing struggles within because we don’t own them.  We struggle because we don’t struggle.  I’m the expert on stuffing feelings.  I learned it well early in my life.  Yet, feelings never evaporate just because we ignore them.  Just the opposite, like a forgotten half-carton of cottage cheese in the back of the fridge, our feelings only gather moldy bacteria and crust over with nastiness.  We need to understand that feelings really do have an expiration date to them.  If not openly confronted and dealt with, they’ll fester into bitterness.  It’s much better to get down and dirty with our present struggles instead of living with the wishful thinking that they’ll just go away.

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Holy Scripture and 2,000 years of church history have given us a path to wholeness.  Lent is the season which draws out grand themes of the Christian life from the Bible.  Prominent is our need for confession, repentance, faith, humble prayer, and forgiveness.  Spiritual disciplines exist to put us in a position to confront our deepest struggles – even ones we didn’t know we had.

There are 52 references to “one another” in the Bible.  “Love one another” (John 13:34-35); “Be kind to one another” (Ephesians 4:32); “Show hospitality to one another” (1 Peter 4:9); “Forgive one another” (Colossians 3:13); “Encourage one another” (Hebrews 3:13); and “Bear the burdens of one another” (Galatians 6:2); are just a few of the exhortations Scripture gives us to “spur one another on” (Hebrews 10:24) toward spiritual well-being and healthy community relationships.

help one another

Nowhere in Holy Scripture will you find references to hide from one another, pester one another, or put up a false front toward one another.  Some folks live as if the author of Hebrews said, “Some people have gotten out of the habit of meeting together for worship and edification, so just let them go, slackers they are.  Forget about that encouragement thing, especially since Jesus is coming soon anyway.”  Here is what the verse says, for real:

“Some people have gotten out of the habit of meeting for worship, but we must not do that.  We should keep on encouraging each other, especially since you know that the day of the Lord’s coming is getting closer”. (Hebrews 10:25, CEV)

There were confessing believers in the ancient church who drifted away and dropped out.  They had legitimate internal and external struggles with outward persecution and inner doubt.  What they needed most was an infusion of faith and perseverance, which would only come if they owned their struggle through sharing it with others.  Like a charcoal briquette which falls off the pile and loses its fire, so there were individual Christians who separated themselves from the warmth of genuine fellowship and lost their faith.

hot charcoal

The ancient believers had some of the same struggles we had.  They just couldn’t make sense of why things in the world were so bad.  The people had little money, no respect from government authorities, and, most of all, family who were telling them they were crazy for following Jesus.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  Rather than embrace the struggle and work through it, they just sat in the back of the fridge, I mean in the back pew of the church, and slowly gathered mold.  Doing nothing is usually a bad idea.  If you try and fail, there is grace.  But if you do nothing, there is only nothing.

Freighted within the definition of biblical faith is risk.  Faith is stepping out and taking a chance on love, encouragement, help, support, comfort, and kindness.  No risk it, no biscuit.

“Keep on being brave! It will bring you great rewards.  Learn to be patient, so that you will please God and be given what he has promised.  As the Scriptures say, ‘God is coming soon!  It won’t be very long.  The people God accepts will live because of their faith. But he isn’t pleased with anyone who turns back.’  We are not like those people who turn back and get destroyed. We will keep on having faith until we are saved.” (Hebrews 10:35-39, CEV)

william penn quote

God desires you and me to take a risk on betting the farm on Jesus.  Embracing Christ involves owning our struggles, to him and to one another.  Yes, you may argue that it isn’t helpful to wear your feelings on your sleeve.  But I’m not talking about emotional diarrhea; I’m talking about something far worse: emotional prostitution, where we sell ourselves to others in a cheap façade of who we really are and how we are really doing.  We want to be liked and we want to be loved, and we mistakenly believe that keeping up false appearances will get us what we long for.

You might fail? Join the club. I’m willing to wager that I’ve been fired or let go from more jobs than you’ve even had in your life.  I’ve some wild ministry successes, and I have had some spectacular failures.  I have been at the lowest of the low in a major depression, and I’ve been at the top of the mountain where every prayer gets answered.  I have had God be silent for months on end, with me having no clue as to why.  I’ve had literally no money to my name, and I’ve had plenty in multiple accounts.

So, here’s the humble observation: It doesn’t matter whether your circumstances are to your liking or not, whether you have all you feel you need, or don’t ever seem to have enough, whether you have well-behaved kids and family, or wayward children and messed up uncles and cousins.  What matters is faith expressing itself through love (Galatians 5:6).  It takes risk to have faith.  It takes two (or more) to have love.

Own your struggle.  Don’t live in denial.  Grab it and face it squarely.  Face it with God.  Face it with others.  If you’re mad as hell at God, tell him so; he’s big enough to take it (please go to the psalms and pray them as your own).  If you need prayer and/or help, ask for it.  Don’t just expect someone to read your mind or your emotions.  If someone asks you to pray, stop what you’re doing and get on your knees with that person and pray like there’s no tomorrow.

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Life is too short to sleepwalk through it with a constellation of emotions that need dealing with.  Being overwhelmed is common to the human condition.  “How are you?” “Busy!” Tell me something I don’t know.  It takes no relational effort to give a pat answer.  Let’s get down to why you feel you constantly need to express how busy you are, even when you’re not really all that busy.

I think you get the idea.  Scripture doesn’t call us to hide, but to love one another enough to both give and receive God’s grace.  Maybe you don’t need to let it all out on social media, but there is a place and a context for you to bring your struggles before God and others.  Take advantage of the privilege and the opportunity which has been provided for you through the cross of Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:1-10 – Saved for a Reason

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

 

“You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith.  This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed.  It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. We are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.” (CEB)
 
            Christians are not saved so that they can just sit in a worldly holding tank until Jesus comes back.  Deliverance is only one dimension of God’s plan.  We are saved for good works to be done in the here-and-now.
            A Christian knows that he is saved from his sin through the forgiving work of Jesus Christ.  It’s an act of sheer grace on God’s part.  A believer is not born again through her effort any more than a baby’s birthed because of her own doing.  It is thoroughly the work of God.  Even the faith needed to believe is a gift graciously provided by God.
            But that’s not the whole story.  God also has some plans and purposes in mind for his people.  Christians were birthed into a new spiritual community with new commitments to do all kinds of good deeds.  It’s as if sin were a weight or an obstacle that has been removed so that living a life full of goodness can now plow ahead and do its work.  To be saved is to be freed for a vigorous moral life.
            The great problems of our world are spiritual problems which require believers in Jesus to take the lead in agitating for change.  Expecting human governments or corporate systems to take the lead in moral transformation is like asking the fox to guard the hen house.

            Christians, churches, and spiritual communities are to labor at the gates of hell for the lives of women caught in sex trafficking; provide uplift and the tools to a better life for those in grinding poverty and hunger; challenge the idolatry of the American gun culture; and, hundreds of other realities of living in a fallen broken world.
            At their core, these are not political, social, or cultural issues – they are spiritual.  Mass murder violates God’s command to not kill.  Hunger and poverty too often result from greedy leaders in power who covet resources for themselves, violating God’s commands to provide for the poor and needy.  Sexual slavery treats persons as chattel property and not as image-bearers of God.
            God has delivered you from sin so that you can take on the immorality of your world.  Perhaps you have a boss who is nothing more than a master of a small world and bullies and manipulates his employees.  Maybe your local municipal authorities simply aren’t seeing or purposely turn a blind eye to moral evil in their town.  It could be that within your own family there are problems of addiction which need to be graciously confronted and dealt with.
            God has placed you in the place you are right now for just this time so that you can do good works, both big and small, taking on an immoral establishment as well as little acts of kindness.  Doing good comes in all sizes, and all of us are to share our lives for the betterment of others.
Saving God, you have only good plans for your world and your people.  Use me today and every day to be an agent of blessing and goodness, working for the benefit of others who need the power of Christ’s resurrection in their lives.  Amen.

Galatians 5:2-15 – Faith Expressing Itself Through Love

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Faith, expressing itself through love, is the grace others need from us.
            I didn’t grow up committed to learning the Bible or following Christ.  I pretty much went my own way throughout my childhood, and especially my teenage years.  I still remember what it feels like to not be a Christian.
            I think that people who have a past where they didn’t live by grace but only looked out for themselves have a temptation to embrace strict rules when they become Christians.  They know what it feels like to not have Jesus in their lives, so they sometimes can go beyond Scripture and impose standards on themselves, and then others, to keep on the straight and narrow.
            If, and when, that happens, the Apostle Paul has something to say about it.  Embracing certain practices to obtain or maintain righteousness mean nothing in God’s kingdom.  Here is how Paul put it, for the church who went down the path of strict outward rule-keeping:
“You people who are trying to be made righteous by the Law have been estranged from Christ. You have fallen away from grace! We eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness through the Spirit by faith. Being circumcised or not being circumcised doesn’t matter in Christ Jesus, but faith working through love does matter.” (CEB)
 
            Christianity which ignores God’s grace in favor of controlling one’s own faith through certain rules is no Christianity at all, and Paul would have nothing to do with it.  His position was clear and pointed:
“You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love.” (CEB)
 
Grace is the currency in God’s kingdom, flowing freely through love.  God has your back.  His grace forgives, and never runs out.  His love endures and never withdraws.  When we get a hold of this essential and beautiful truth about God, the only rule we want to keep is the continuing debt to love one another.
            So, are there any practices, rules, beliefs, or doctrines which you hold to that you impose on yourself which are burdensome to you?  Why do you do them?  Do you expect others to do so?  What would change if you threw grace and love in the mix?

 

Gracious God, your love has extended so far as to give your one and only Son on our behalf.  Through Jesus, I embrace the faith and love gifted to me through his redeeming work.  Help me to daily die to myself and my propensity for outward rule-keeping, and to live the gracious life you died to procure for me.  Amen.

Faith and Action in the Church

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
“You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.” –James 2:18
 
            Never are we told in the Bible that we make a profession of faith in Christ and then go on our merry way doing whatever we feel like doing and leaving Christian service to others.  Faith is not a checklist of right beliefs to sign-off on as if it was nothing more than some fire insurance policy against hell.  The reality is that the knowledge of salvation and the redemptive events of Jesus mean nothing unless we put that knowledge into practice.  “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). 
 
Don’t try and say, “I’m okay; you’re okay.”
 
            There are always folks in the church who try to justify their lack of action and failure to help others.  When people make statements like:  “I’m not wired that way,” “That’s not my gift,” “We pay our pastor to do the ministry,” “This church is not meeting my needs,” “Let the next generation deal with change,” then they are essentially saying:  “You can do the work while I show up and complain.”  I hope that it goes without saying that this attitude and approach to the church is not good and betrays a failure of real faith.  If anyone is in the habit of complaining about something, but does nothing to be part of the solution – that person needs to get an active faith because there is no room for armchair Christians in the New Testament who spout off about how it should have been done and how it ought to be done, but do nothing themselves.  Each and every believer in Jesus Christ has been called to ministry.  Every one of us has been gifted by God for ministry, and God expects us to use those gifts to build up the Body of Christ.  The church suffers when we do not all participate in service with the abilities God has provided.
 
            In fact, the role of the pastor-teacher in the New Testament is to train others in the work of ministry.  You will not find anywhere in Scripture that only certain individuals serve and everyone else watches, like it is some kind of sporting event.  Check out what the Scripture says:  “To each one of us [Christians] grace [a spiritual gift] has been given as Christ apportioned it….  It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:7-13).  Wherever there is division and immaturity in the church, there you will find a group of people who are not using their God-given spiritual gifts and choose to complain instead of serve.
 
Don’t try and do it all yourself.
 
            It is not the job of pastors, ministry leaders, missionaries, or any kind of leader in the church to do everything, but to invest in training disciples to do the job.  Far too many pastors and leaders complain incessantly about the lack of service within their ministries but are doing nothing to put their efforts into training others for the work of ministry.  A biblical culture is one that is continually offering discipleship and mentorship to believers and sends them out and off to do ministry work.
 

 

            Therefore, there are two groups of people in the church that need to put action to their faith:  members who only sit and soak but do nothing to jump into serving the Body of Christ; and, leaders who do not act to put primary energy into equipping the saints to do the work of ministry.  When members do not serve, and leaders do not train, both groups hurl complaints toward the other and nothing ever gets done.  It is high time that everyone in the church take responsibility for action in a biblical way so that the church’s unity, purity, and peace is upheld because of the maturity that occurs through active service.  May it be so to the glory of Jesus Christ and the sake of the gospel.