Danger, Danger!!!

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:32:00 +0000

Just last week I recieved a phone call that no husband or father wants to recieve. My wife called to tell me that she had been in an accident with my mother, my son and my niece. They had been rear-ended on a local freeway and the car was totalled. My immediate response was to ask if everyone was OK. As I drove to the scene I had all kinds of emotions flowing through me, fear, anger at the driver that hit them, gratitude that everyone was alright. In the days since the accident my mother, since it was her car and she was driving, has been dealing with the insurance company. During this process I started thinking.

In the the late 60's there was a T.V. show titled Lost in Space, one of the main characters of the show was a robot. Although the robot had no name it has made its way into the psyce of a nation with one phrase, "Danger, Danger!!" This loveable robot became a security system to those lost on a distant planet. As I look around I can see that we have placed a high value on security. We all want to feel secure and protected. We have car insurance, house insurance, health insurance and life insurance. We have alarms on our houses and cars. We have stickers telling people that our dogs are killers and to beware. We make our kids wear helmets when riding their bikes, we have seat belts and air bags in cars, gone are the days of the kids being able to lay across the back seat on a long drive. We have become so obsesed with saftey that we will not allow anyone to smoke in our presence out of fear of becoming sick, we allow people to look at us and frisk us as as we walk through security at the airport.

It seems that in every area of our life there is a overwhelming desire to be safe. We want to be so safe that we have even given up some of our freedoms to feel secure.I am not saying that some of these things are bad or that it is wrong to want to take care of ourselves. But what I am begining to notice more and more is that this mindset has made its way into the church.

As I look at the church I see people that want to be safe. Some of them are using Christianity as fire insurance, they want to stay out of hell and so they sign up with Christian Mutual. There are others that believe that they really love God but they are in it for the benefits, healing, provision, fellowship, protection. We even try to to put a Christian mask on it, we pray for saftey when on the road, we pray God's hand of protection on our friends and family. Again, I am not saying these things are bad, there have been times when I was in it for the fire insurance, and I will admit that I enjoy the benifits of being in the faith and part of a community of believers. My fear is this. I think we have become so obbsesed with saftey that we miss a great deal because we are not stepping out in faith.

As I look through the Bible two things stands out to me, The absence of security and the presence of faith. I could spend allot of time going through the stories where God asked men and women to get out of their secure place and do a work for Him, a work that would put them in harms way.

God calls Moses to leave the saftey of his sheep and stand before a god-man and tell him to let his work force go.

God calls Gideon to leave his wine press and fight an army that is many times larger than his own.

Daniel is put into a position where the very act of praying is going to put him in the lions den.

God tells Hosea, the prophet to marry a prostitute when doing so had the potential to ruin his reputation.

There are many more examples in the Old and New Tesaments, there are also many examples throughout church history. But the greatest example comes from Jesus Himself.

He went to Jerusalem knowing that He was going to die and yet He followed the will of His Father.

I wonder how much of God we are missing and how many miracles we miss because we are so concerned with being safe that we never step out and do something that requires risk.

We quote scriptures like, no weapon formed against you will prosper, and I am the Good Shepherd, and All things work togther for the good. We quote these becasue they give us a sense of saftey and security. We tend to stay away from the scriptures like, In this world you will have tribulation, I send you out as lambs among wolves. We even quote scroture that seemingly have nothing to do with saftey and yet in the original language it does, you will be my witnesses. The word witnesses should have been translated martyers. How many would have signed on if they knew that Jesus was asking them to be martyed for Him?

I recently sent a text message to some of the young leaders in our church and asked this question. What are you doing right now in your life that requires faith?

I think many Christians could not answer that because we have taken faith out of the equation and traded it for a security.

In Closing,

In his book , The Barbarian Way Erwin McManus tells a story that speaks to this. He and his wife are standing outside thier house when their son comes out of a window on the second story. Immeditaly Erwins wife, like any mother would, Starts telling her son to get back in the house. The son pretty much ignores her and askes his dad if he can jump off. After a little conversation he finally tells his son that he can jump. The mother is screaming no and the father is saying yes. I will let you get the book and read it yourself to see how it turns out but the point is, could it be that the Father is telling us to jump, to trust Him in away that we are willing to step out by faith and do what He has called us to do even if everyone around us is telling us to get back in the house?

I find it amazing that Jesus never promised security in this life, but all through His Word He did promise to never leave us or forsake us.

I hope that this is only the beginning of a qwest to live a faith filled life, a life that requires that I step out of my comfort zone and do what God has called me to do regardless of how I look or what others think.

What are you doing that requires faith?

Organic

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:05:00 +0000

Organic, it is all around us. Organic food, organic milk, and organic clothes it seems that everyone and every company is jumping on the organic bandwagon. Even the church world has jumped on it, including myself. There are books titled The Organic Church and Organic Leadership. Why? Why is this happening?

I think that as a society we have become fed up with all the fluff in the world. We want something that is raw and natural. We are tired of the preservatives and the extras that are added to our food, water and everything else that we encounter in life. On some level we want to get back to simpler times. We long for the days when things were real, no MSG, nothing false.

This movement is not new in fact the same thing was happening to some degree when I was in High School. We would watch people to see if that person was real if not we termed them “plastic” at times we would call them credit cards. Why?Credit cards are not real money. It is a representation of something that is real, they are plastic, fake.

Now that this same generation that was calling people plastic has grown up and is in a place of influence in the market place and in church we have taken over the advertising and as a result the culture with the message……BeReal…Be Who You Are…Quite wearing masks, Be ORGANIC.

The amazing thing is that this message actually starts several thousand years ago. Jesus started a movement where He challenged people to be real. He challenged them to look at themselves as they really were and to come to God on that basis. He understood that the only way to have a real relationship with the Father was not by pretending to be something we are not but by coming to Him as we are. He challenged the current thought process that said you had to approach God on the basis of your works. He let it be known that the people that were real, the ones that were not afraid to cry out as He passed by, the ones that would climb up a tree just to get a better look at Him, the ones that were willing to eat the crumbs that fell from the table like a dog, He let it be known that these were the ones that He came for. These are the ones that He wants to have a relationship with. Jesus rejected those that were “plastic.”

As I look at the world around us I see people crying out for something real. I see them frustrated with the church in America because it has been “plastic” for so long. It has been a sorry representation of what the church was supposed to be and has done a horrible job portraying Christ to the world around it. I know that I may be jumping on a trend that may pass in our culture,but the church needs to get back to the place of being organic, real, without the fluff, just a heart wrenching, life changing relationship with God. It needs to become the place of forgiveness, mercy and grace that it is supposed to be. It needs to once again become the place were we can be honest with ourselves, God and others about our struggles. It needs to become safe, were condemnation has no place, were fear is eradicated and love wins out.

It needs to put on the sandals of its leader and walk in the places that the “plastic” will not go. It needs to echo the call of the founder to love the unlovable and to be organic.

People wonder why there is a decline in the churches in America. Have you ever noticed that things that are organic grow while things that are plastic never do?

Pastor Tim

Thoughts from My Journey

Danger, Danger!!!

Organic