Planning Your Party

Mike Hosey, An Elder

There are some events in life that seem to demand formal recognition. For instance, it seems strange for a couple to call themselves married, but to never have had a wedding.  Although it is possible to be married and not have any human observance whatsoever, almost everyone in every culture expects a marriage to be marked by some kind of ceremony.  The same is true for funerals. When someone dies, his or her people almost always, in every culture, execute some kind of funeral ritual.  Obviously, death doesn’t require this formal recognition, but it is somehow expected. When a person graduates from high school, college, basic training, or any kind of significant education, there is expected by society a graduation ceremony. Once again, you can skip the ceremony and still get a job, but this is not the expectation.

These formal recognition events are actually pretty important.  For instance, the wedding publicly communicates to the world that one is serious about being committed to one’s new partner. The ceremony also cements and reinforces the couple’s vows to one another by making them part of a special event that everyone sees and easily remembers.

In the Old Testament book which bears his name, Nehemiah noticed that the walls of Jerusalem had fallen into disrepair. He agonized over this because the city was a symbol of his people and their relationship to God. He could not allow this, so he secured the right to repair the walls, and set about getting the men and material to do so.  But sometime before he dedicated the repaired wall, he put together a ceremony (which may have lasted as many as 6 hours) where Ezra the priest stood on a stage with a large number of other men and both read and explained the law of God to the people (Nehemiah 8:1-18).  The ceremony allowed the people to see how their own lives were in disrepair, just like the wall they were about to restore. They wept when they realized how much of the law had been ignored or forgotten.  They were then ordered to celebrate, with wine and food, and recognize the day as holy, and to remember that the joy of the Lord was their strength. This event helped them rejoice that God was going to restore them, as His word promised.

The Christian walk has these kinds of events as well. Baptism, for instance, is a major ceremony which symbolizes to the world that the old sinful self has died, and the new self has been raised with Jesus. 

Have you planned a party to recognize your walk?  Do you remember one you have had?

You've Got To Keep Them Separated

Mike Hosey, An Elder

Have you ever taken strips of raw steak or chicken and mixed them in with your nice, crisp, beautifully colored raw vegetables, then put them into the refrigerator for a quick snack later?  Of course you haven’t!  Common sense tells you that your meats will ruin your vegetables. And you almost intuitively know that if you eat that “quick snack” without cooking it, then you could become deathly ill.

The reason is cross contamination.  Raw meat is seething with bacteria that will ruin a human being pretty fast.  If you place that meat in the midst of the vegetables, its bacteria will colonize on them, and make them unfit for consumption. You have to keep them separated!

The bible teaches this concept in many ways.  Perhaps the most notable way is found in 2 Corinthians 6:17, where we are taught to be separate and holy.  We are to be separated from the systems of the world.  We are, after all, not of this world.  Instead, we are simply in it (John 17:14-19).  If we don’t keep ourselves separated from the world, its sin, or its ways of thinking, then we will become more like it, and consequently, less effective for God’s purposes. But God clearly wants us to be in the world for a reason. He tells us so in that passage above. Jesus doesn’t pray for us to be removed from the world.  In His prayer to the Father, He says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world.” Instead, He asks that we be kept from the evil one.  He then argues that we are sent, just as He was sent! That’s a great privilege! And it’s an ironic one as well.  We are not to be contaminated with the world by allowing its dangerous bacteria in us. Instead, we are to be like an antibiotic that invades and battles the bacteria in whatever host it has taken up residence in.  In our case that bacteria has taken up residence in the world God has created.  And he is using us as his antibiotic to reclaim it.

This idea of separation is found all throughout the Bible.  And Jesus is the pinnacle of that separation.  Consider that Jesus died and brought us the Holy Spirit, so that God’s people can be separated from the world. The church is then created from those people so that it can go back into the world as an instrument for God’s continuing redemption of a sin infected world. In fact, Satan should fear CROSS contamination in the world he has stolen.

Are you allowing God to separate you from anything so that you can be a part of that redemption?

LIfe's Interruptions, or God's Opportunities

Mike Hosey, An Elder

We usually think of interruptions in life as evil. They’re troublesome. They bother us.  They keep us from being productive. They slow everything down, and get in the way of our scheduled goals for the day.  They’re almost always frustrating.  If you’ve ever had kids, you know about interruptions in all of their multi-faceted and very deep glory. In fact, there have been a few times where my children gave me major interruptions.  Now that I’m older and wiser, I wish I had seen those interruptions for what they were – opportunities to bring love, kindness, patience and Jesus into their lives.  

Interruptions are part of daily life. Just the other day in my office I had several administrative goals I had to reach before going home.  But every time I tried to start working on one of those goals, someone came through my door and asked for help, or guidance, or just for someone to listen to their plight.  It didn’t let up for most of the morning. In fact, those interruptions forced me to re-arrange the whole afternoon.  But the truth is that those people needed assistance. I am, after all, there to serve those people. I am there precisely to serve my clients, and precisely to serve those who work under me. These were not interruptions, really.  These were opportunities for me to fulfill my duty to God and his calling on my life, both with active effort, and by demonstrating a personal example of patience -- a patience that they will surely know comes from the Holy Spirit as they get to know me more.

Jesus tells the story in Luke 10:30-36, of a man who was traveling, and was mugged by thieves and left in a state of near death.  Two men from Jewish upper society passed him by, perhaps viewing him as an interruption. But a third man, a despised and lowly Samaritan, helped restore him.  He didn’t see an interruption, but instead an opportunity to do good, and display the love God intends for all of us to exhibit. C.S. Lewis put it this way in a letter he once wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves: “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”

 

Lewis recognized that real life, with all its interruptions was, perhaps, the best way to recognize God and His divine opportunities. 

Asking the Right Questions

Mike Hosey, An Elder

If you want to have any degree of success in life, you must, at the very least, be able to ask the right questions.  It is, after all, the right questions that help us to understand the world around us.  For instance, you will never be able to know why the sky is blue, unless you ask the question, "why is the sky blue?" The answer to that question, of course, will lead to many, many other questions, which will lead you into a deeper understanding of why the sky is blue, which may in turn lead to a better understanding of light, refraction, and a whole bunch of other stuff about your world. Obviously though, unless they're nerds like me, most people don't care why the sky is blue.  But most people do want to know why their boss wants things a certain way, or why their employees keep making the same mistake, or why their spouse likes this or that. Asking the right questions about the people in our lives absolutely impacts our relationships with those people. When things are wrong, the right questions get us past the symptoms, and take us directly to the root cause.  When things are right, those questions get us past the fluff, and increase our wisdom.

Anytime that I am given the opportunity to interview someone, I will often pepper them with a barrage of questions.  This does a number of things, but chiefly, it tells me A) what the person's position is on a particular topic, and B) has this person taken the time to think about the things I'm asking.

Jesus once asked His disciples a very important question, in part, to elicit similar information.  He asked them, "Who do the people say the Son of Man is?" His disciples answered that some people thought He was Elijah, or Jeremiah, or some other human prophet. Then He asked them who THEY thought He was.  Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God (Matthew 16:13-19)." Peter had paid attention!  He had listened to Jesus, understood His allusions to Old Testament prophecies, made the leap of faith, opened himself up to God, and therefore recognized Jesus for who He really was when God revealed it.  That recognition changed his life.

Who is Jesus? Your answer to that question will determine much about your life.  If you answer that question with He is my Lord, Savior, Son of the Living God, or my King, then you will want to do His will, and you will march against the darkness of the world.  And the gates of hell will not prevail against the advance you make for His kingdom!

Do You Have a Lofty Goal, or a Low Down Dirty Goal

Mike Hosey, An Elder

The Bible has a lot to say about goals.  Proverbs 21:5 tells us that diligent people plan out goals that lead to abundance, and that hasty people who don’t make plans end up in poverty.  Consider, also, that Proverbs 6:6-11 portrays the ant as wise because she diligently tends to goals and duties in their proper season.

These truths mesh well with 21^st Century America which also has a lot to say about goals.  In America, we are told to complete a college degree, or to ascend the career ladder, or to amass money, or to be famous, or to do any number of things that improve ourselves.  Certainly, there is nothing inherently wrong with these kinds of goals.   Well, nothing wrong with them until we consider what they might mean in light of serving God. 

We spend a great deal of energy shooting for these lofty goals. But we often do it at the expense of the loftier goal of serving God. 

If we are pursuing these lofty goals like a college degree, or climbing the career ladder, at the expense of God, and certainly if we are pursuing them without considering how we will serve God once we’ve achieved those goals, then those goals cease to be lofty.  In fact, they become the opposite of lofty. They become lowdown and dirty.  

Paul understood this very well.  He understood it so well, in fact, that his whole life after salvation was dedicated to pursuing God.  In Philippians 3:7-14, he tells us that he wants to become like Jesus, sharing in His sufferings, and even in His death. He famously tells us in verses 13 and 14 that he forgets everything behind him and presses onward to the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ. 

There is no loftier goal than attaining the upward call of God. So ask yourself if the goals you are striving for today move you closer to that upward call, or if you are just striving for a low down dirty goal. 

Like a Good Pair of blue Jeans . . .

Mike Hosey, An Elder

The non-Christian wise man, Confucius, once argued that the strength of a nation flows from the integrity of the home. He may have been a pagan, but he got that truth right. The same thing can be said of the strength of a church. Her strength, in part, derives from the integrity of her congregants. But this leads us to ask, how should we define integrity? And where or how do we get it?

My friend, Drew Castoral, defines integrity as being an undivided

Losing Jean Integrity!

whole. He likens it to blue jeans, or other woven fabrics in which all the threads are interlinked into a seamless wearable tapestry. He points out that if the cloth becomes frayed then those individual threads can be pulled out, and the whole thing unravels. It can quickly cease to be an undivided whole.

A church needs to to have integrity if she wishes to remain useful to God. For her to be an undivided whole means that her members must be wholly devoted to God. They must be an unbroken whole when it comes to their love for Him. This is an impossible task without the Holy Spirit, because the truest integrity is completely dependent on His presence and action. We can achieve this integrity by being diligent. That is if we exert our energies with careful and persistent effort toward pleasing God and keeping His commands then we will have spiritual growth toward that integrity. This is, after all, our duty (Ecclesiastes 12:13). And we should exercise that persistent effort daily with any task or mission he gives us. He tells us that if we seek Him diligently, then we will find Him (Proverbs 8:17).

But we can't just be diligent. We must also be consistent. Consistent means to be the same throughout. It means being the same where ever we are. C.S. Lewis put it this way. He famously said that integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. So in order for us to be church members of integrity, we must be the same out in the world that we are at church. Our lives should be consistent.

Colossians 1:17 teaches that Jesus is the key to true integrity, because it is Jesus who holds all things together! So strive for integrity - to be that unbroken whole - by being diligent in your search and obedience as it regards God, and by being consistent in the application of the wisdom and character that he gives you through Jesus!

Cheating on the Homework or Seeing Opportunities Instead of the Obstacles?

Mike Hosey, An Elder

I hated math when I was in sixth grade.  I struggled with it from that point until my first year of college when everything finally clicked, and I could apply the concepts to actual problems. Anyway, before that, I often needed just a little help.  If I could just have a hint at the answer, or a hint at the procedure, I could sometimes stumble into an understanding of what my teacher was trying to instill.

She used to send the class home with little booklets full of math problems. And it seemed like this homework was a never ending torturous list of boring, incomprehensible busywork. At the end of each math activity were blocks of red dots and patterns.  Beneath these patterns, one could make out what looked like little etched, squiggly lines of gray.  I learned that if I looked at these blocks through a red lens, or even if I took a transparency and colored it with a red marker and placed it over these blocks, that the red patterns blended together into a seamless background, and I could see written in gray, the answers to those problems that tormented me! It was magic! Did I use this newfound discovery? Well, yeah . . .  But don’t get the idea that I’m condoning cheating. I’m not.

Instead, here’s the point of that story. Those red blocks were obstacles that kept me from seeing what was really there.  Sometimes we walk out into the world, and those pesky red boxes hide wonderful opportunities from us.  But if we choose to look through the proper lens, those obstacles fade to the background, and we see clearly what we need to do, and how we can grow.

Consider the story of Peter and John visiting the temple (Acts 3:1-10). As they were about to enter the temple they were met with a lame man who asked them for charity. Instead of viewing him as an obstacle, or as someone who would slow them down, or as a nuisance asking for money they didn't have, they viewed him as an opportunity to proclaim the power of Jesus.  Because they were wearing the right glasses, the lame man was healed,  He then praised God, in the name of Jesus, while walking and leaping before a whole bunch of people who didn’t know the savior.  Peter and John grew in their faith, the man grew in his faith, and in health, and God’s kingdom grew with a new chapter of scripture.

Your whole life is full of opportunities, but you must look past the obstacles to realize them.