For God so loved the world

Christmas time is a great time to write about love, and love fits with the theme of walking in unity. There will be no unity without love, and that is what our church desires to walk in. I want to quote from God Still Heals, by James Garlow. He says about love:

The words “love one another” occur twelve times in Scripture, eight times in the present tense. That means we’re to love one another habitually, as a way of life. This kind of love is not a feeling; it is an act of the will. We love our brothers and sisters in Christ not because they happen to be great people but because we have chosen to love them. First John 4:12 says, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is make complete in us.” A healthy church is one in which the people love one another.

I’ve seen our church do some incredible things to demonstrate love, there are literally too many to mention. One example, though, was last Sunday. There is a couple, literally off the streets, doing things that you would picture street people doing. They recently gave their lives to Christ, and made the commitment to be His disciples. They were baptized two weeks ago, and married the next weekend. The church was invited, but here is the interesting thing. Very few in the church knew these people, this couple had only been attending about a month. But after worshiping for over 1 ½ hours together, staying until after 12:30, over a 1/3 of the congregation stayed for the wedding, just to show support and love. Volunteers took care of the wedding cake (baking as well as serving), reception, sound, set up and clean up. Donations were given so they could have a night in a rather expensive hotel, including breakfast. One man, who tapes the services, and didn’t know until that morning that the wedding would take place. He stayed and taped the wedding, took it home to edit it so he could give it to them.

This is not the perfect church, we have our differences and struggles. We all make mistakes, BUT we know that each of us are growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ. And we love one another.

Barbara Walters special on heaven

December 22, 2005
I don’t know how many saw the Barbara Walters special on heaven the other night. Judging from what I can find on the blogosphere, it would be about zero. I can’t find anyone in the evangelical blogs who wrote about it. That’s ok, no one missed much. I’m not a fan of Barbara; her politics and her beliefs are night and day different than mine, so watching was a bit of a struggle.

Nevertheless, Traci and I sat down and watched part of the show. We wanted to see what other religions had to say about heaven, how to get there, and how Barbara handled the subject. No matter what she tried to do, Barbara’s belief system came out loud and clear. Her interview with Ted Haggard, pastor of a church in Colorado Springs, and the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, was the very revealing. She prefaced one of her questions by saying, “you’re an intelligent man”, then went on to ask how he could believe that Jesus was the only way to heaven. Her meaning? How could an intelligent person believe such a thing, your belief system is only for morons?

One reviewer wrote (Brian Lowry in Variety) “Evangelical Ted Haggard, for example, states flatly that accepting Jesus is "a guarantee for eternal life" and that everyone who doesn't is going to hell. This isn't a new aspect of the evangelical movement, but it's always a trifle jarring to see someone with such a pleasant demeanor cheerfully sentence every nonbeliever, regardless of their good works, to everlasting damnation.”

Two points need to be made. First, if anyone knew anything about Ted Haggard, they would know that he would never “cheerfully sentence” anyone to hell. He is blatantly evangelistic; his church works hard to minister to those who do not yet know Christ. I have no doubt that his heart bleeds for those who are unbelievers. He, like most Christians, would not “cheerfully” wish or condemn anyone to hell. We do all we can to give them the free gift of eternal life, found through Jesus Christ.

The second point has to do with the phrase, “their good works”. In other words, I can go to heaven because I’m a good guy, I do good things, and I deserve it. Do you notice anything about the last sentence? The word “I”. Good works are all about me, and my deserving heaven. Lowry declared who his god was: himself.

Ted did an excellent job in a difficult position. Many Americans, like Barbara Walters and Brian Lowry, do not want to believe there are absolutes, or that we’ll be held accountable for our actions, or that our actions will be woefully short of heaven. Their belief seems to be that God is this wonderful grandfather type in heaven who really doesn’t care what we do, as long as we’re nice and good. Of course, no one can ever define nice or good, or how nice or how good we need to be to get into heaven.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me (John 14:6).” There isn’t any way around that Scripture, unless you choose to not believe the Scriptures at all. God doesn’t indiscriminately throw people in hell. Everyone has a choice as to what god they want to serve. The Bible says "men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20.

Barbara’s beginning statistic that 90% of Americans believe in heaven was quite interesting. That decision on how to get to heaven rests with you and me, though. Will we try to get to heaven on our own, through our good deeds, or will we realize our good deeds are never going to be enough, and we are in need of a Savior? All the other religions Barbara dealt with had a common theme: doing good works will get them into heaven. Christianity says, you’ll never get there on your own, Christ has made a way. The choice is yours and mine. Barbara chose to ignore that.

I’ll deal more with Unity and how our church is attaining to that later.

Unity can happen

This is a picture of my third child, Bryson, and his friend, Maurice, the nephew of our youth pastor. The two of them slowed down long enough for their picture to be taken the night our church family got together to decorate the worship center and lobby for Christmas. They weren't friends till that night, but they became instant buddies. Amazing, isn't it, how quickly two children can see beyond color (or other barriers) and only see someone as a potential new playmate.

I pray that my children are the generation that finally sees beyond color to the individual, accepting others as Christ taught us to do. Ephesians 4:3 says, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." If the Church (those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ) cannot accept others and keep the unity of the Spirit, how can we expect those outside of Christ to do so? We are called to be the example of breaking dividing walls, and I know we can do better.

The church I serve is working at breaking down those walls. We have people from all walks of life working, praying, and worshiping, side by side. (And in this picture, they are playing paint ball side by side. This is our youth pastor, Jonathan, and one of the youth leaders, Esther, at our paint ball outing). We are working toward a place where God feels "right at home" (Ephesians 2:22, Message).

loving the community

One of the 1800 homes that have received gifts through our outreaches is the home of Wally and Florence. This is an older couple, as kind, gentle and loving as any couple I’ve met. Florence became very interested in our church because of the little gifts she kept receiving, so she finally stopped by the church office one day to meet the staff and find out about worship services.

Because of her interest, and email contact with the daughter of Florence, I visited this wonderful couple. Wally had recently come home from the hospital and was recovering from some health issues the day I visited. We had a great conversation, and while I was there, Florence renewed her commitment to Jesus Christ. She commented that she had not been to church in 40 years, but both she and Wally would be coming to church when he felt better. A few weeks later they began attending, and had been consistently in worship for the last three months.

Wally had never made a commitment to Christ. I asked him, during one of my visits, if he would like to accept Christ into his heart. In his words, he was “not quite ready,” but continued to faithfully attend, and enjoyed the worship services.

This week something special happened. Florence called the church to let us know that Wally would like to accept Christ into his heart, and he’d like the pastor to come over. I was over the next day! We had a great time talking, and then we came to the reason for the visit. I led him in a brief prayer, asking Jesus to come into his life. It was nothing less than glorious! Wally is 90 years young.

That’s why we are reaching out to our community. We would never have met Wally and Florence if we had not given out those little gifts. They even commented on how they liked our low key approach of giving gifts, and that we weren’t pressuring them to pray for salvation. Loving the community works, because that’s is the heart of Jesus Christ, loving and serving those who do not yet know Him.

More on Unity

"We want to look like our neighborhood."

In many churches, people drive for miles (10-20 or more) to attend the church of their choice. There is nothing wrong with that, but I believe that the Lord called this church, CrossRoad, to specifically reach our immediate neighborhood with the love of Jesus. We've been doing that for the last year and a half, giving out little gifts periodically to 1800 homes in our area. This last Saturday, a group of 25 went out again to give away "to" and "from" stickers, along with an invitation to join us in worship. The picture is our youth pastor, with some of the youth who helped him.

Since we are reaching the neighborhood, we need to look like the neighborhood, and we do. This area is as diverse as any in the LA area, and our church attenders look very much like the neighborhood. They also look like the verse I previously quoted in the post on December 2, "from every tribe, language, people and nation."

Unity in the Body of Christ

Revelation 7:9 “. . . and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.”

My friend at Peace on That blogged (November 28, “ The Racism of my Religion”) recently about diversity in the church, the body of Christ. He had some great comments and discussion. I was going to blog this week on the subject of unity, in light of Ephesians, but got tied up with other events. This is the first I’ve been able to blog this week. His blog encouraged me to go ahead and get this done. I serve in a church that is very unique in that we don’t all look the same. We’ve got all kinds of ethnicities as well as people from differing economic backgrounds and ages. The desire of the church is that we look more like our neighborhood (because we want to be a church that looks like our area), which is very diverse, and more important, we want to look like the description in Revelation 7 that I quoted earlier.

God is pleased by unity. Here are just a few Scriptures that deal with the issue:
Psalm 133, “how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity. . . for there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life evermore.”
John 17:20, 23 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message. . . May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
Ephesians 2:20-22 (Message) He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day - a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

I used the last verse in my sermon on Sunday. Earlier in the same chapter (Ephesians 2:14-15) the Bible speaks of the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles (people who were notorious in the hatred of one another) was broken so that enemies could be made one. The conclusion of that thought is found in verse 2:22. I applied that to today, that when people of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, color, ages, etc., are brought together “God is quite at home.” God is at home, not in separation, but in unity, when diversity is joined together! I believe God is at home in our church and part of that is due to our differences. And by the way, this unity can only fully take place by the power of Jesus Christ, who is the one who breaks divding walls!