Wisdom, grace and oportunities

I have an appointment tomorrow to speak to a senior member of local law enforcement. 

Pray that the opportunity would be well used to promote mutual understanding and find ways of mutual encouragement. There are many needs and they have a very tough job.

What is the gospel?

An individual I spoke with recently, told me:

"When you believe in Jesus, and accept him into your life, and do what he says, then you can call yourself a Christian."

While that sounds about as thorough as most gospel presentations I have heared recently, it was the following statement that caught my ear.

"So long as you are sincere and do the right thing, you will be ok.  My wife is Bhudist, and my kids are whatever they want to be when they decide, but I believe in Jesus, I guess." 

I pushed back a bit, I asked at what point  you move from believing in Jesus to belonging to Jesus? Jesus himself said that there would be a lot of people who did a lot of good things, and followed his teachings so to speak, but that at the end he will say he never knew them. So how does a person move from just believing in Jesus, to belonging to Jesus?

He didn't have a good answer right away.

This man grew up in a Southern Baptist church, has made a "profession of faith" and been baptized. 

But does he understand the Gospel?

I had another conversation a while back and an individual told me they were saved becase they had followed the A B C's of the gospel. Admit that you are a sinner, Belive that Jesus is God's Son, and Confes Jesus as Savior and Lord. Again it sounds good, but I have realized that, by that definition Satan is a Christian. He knows he is a sinner, he knows Jesus is God's son and he has already on several occasions been forced to recognized the lordship and authority and salvation made possible by the cross. 

But I know he is not saved.

Another version of the gospel I have heared many times of late is the Mother Theresa argument. Commonly expressed as "I know my Grandma ( or my neighbor, or the lady I ran into in the grocery store)was saved because they are so good, they loved Jesus, they prayed a lot, they helped people, they countered the evil in the world, they made the world a better place." The problem is that moral behavior is required of us in the first place. Some if the most powerful, good and spiritual things, like driving out demons, and  prophesying in Jesus name,  merit people an "I never knew you" and "Be gone you workers of lawlessness."

And try as you might, there is no sinners prayer in the Bible which, as if by magical incantation, automatically makes whoever recites it "saved." The same goes for dunking an unconverted sinner and calling it baptism.

So what is the Gospel?

Jesus summarizes it as "Repentance unto faith for the forgiveness of sins."

Repentance is a richly loaded biblical term, with many layers of Biblical background, but fundamentally it means a change of mind resulting in a change of life. It involves confession, abandoning sin, contrition, and a genuine recognition of sin and unworthiness. 

It is not about becoming good, it is about learning to see and recognize and hate our sin and the rightfully deserved damnation that results from our willing participation in it.

Faith again has a tremendous amount of Biblical background, and only a very careful  study will begin to reveal how much there is packed into this word. But essentially it boils down to absolute dependent obedience. It is the kind of trust in somone that does what they say, with complete confidence merely on the strength of who they are. Faith is both the fierce grasping of a drowning man, and the simple face value acceptance of a child. And at the same time a thing that can be measured objectively by seeing how a person's life matches up with the instructions of the one they claim to trust. 

Faith involves both submission, and utter loyalty, because faith recognizes that in our own strength, we can be moral (to a point) but not righteous, that our best and most generous acts are totally offensive and disgusting, and that even a total domination by sheer force of will such that we never consciously break another law of God would only serve to condemn us for our current and previous sins, as an acnowledgent that we were wrong to do them.

Jesus says that his work on the cross, when combined with genuine repentance, and sincere faith leads by entrance into a covenant relationship of creature to creator, slave to rightful master, child to firm but loving father with God to the forgiveness of Sins, reconciliation of the relationship, redemption from our sin, sanctification of life and purpose, through granting us HIS righteousness.

It isn't so much that the gospel is complicated, but that it is rich. Not so much that it is difficult as that it is deep. And while almost any sinner, can be taught to mimic the actions and words of the Gospel, only God can transform the heart of stone to make the Gospel truths ring true in the human heart.

And that of course is where we  come back to the pivot point where you don't just know about Jesus, but belong to him. When our repentance is not just formal or technical but richly personal, then we can see the work of the Spirit in our hearts leading us to genuine conviction. When our faith moves beyond moralism, and academics to Spirit induced obedience and genuine trust. When we understand that we are forgiven and not merely reformed, and brought back to a dynamic relationship not merely given a clean slate and told to be carefull. It is then, when the work of God is evident in the choices and attitudes and life of a human being that we can be confident that we don't merely know of Jesus, but that we belong to him.

God provides, and the needs are great.

The last few months have been quite a challenge, on several levels. 

One obvious level is that last year we approved a budget at the church that requires us to not spend money we don't have. And the giving was very low. The only place in the budget lage enough to flex with wide income gaps is the salary for the pastor.  

(The church also approved a housing allowance which is fixed, so we can keep paying the mortgage without a hiccup) the result was that we ended up with a huge budget reduction on the home front. Not a crisis so far, but certainly a challenge.  This past Sunday, we had an extra large offering, one which brought us back into a normal budget range for at least one month, God provides.

We also got our one deacon back from an extended ministry absence. And while we may call him a deacon, he actually functions as the primary trusted spiritual caretaker for many of the more mature members of the congregation. It is a huge blessing to have him back among us. But it pointed out the crying need for leaders in our midst. 

Leadership development is not an overnight event, so as we start to work toward developing the innate potential in some of our members, my prayer is that we can hold on long enough to begin to see fruit.

A third challenge is about to kick off in earnest. We have been given a grant to provide parenting training for families in our community, it is a great program, but it will require a lot of effort from members who are in many ways not able to do much anymore, or not able to do much because of how life is working right now. The thing is this program has reached out to the community, and in the last few weeks I have had everyone from child services and county parole officers to pastors and school principles I my building to talk about serving our community. A huge opportunity which I can only trust God to help develop.

Related to huge opportunities I got a call today from a local food distribution team, looking for a place to hold their weekly food distribution program.  They see about 400 people every week, so I am not sure they would even fit, but I am also not sure that it would be wise to get into the handout business at this stage In the game.

Pray for wisdom in knowing when to say "No" and when to leap on opportunity. For exceptional insight into how to mold leaders and  For Gods continued providential supply.

Thanks for your prayers.