This post is by a friend of mine, Chris Heintz, who has attended the Vineyard Chattanooga since he was in the 8th grade. Since graduating from high school Chris has been caught up in many an adventure for Christ. He attended Christian college in California, has lived in a Christian communal setting, has had several neat experiences in other countries, and is now interning at monastery in Conyers GA. Chris and I had coffee a couple of weeks ago where he shared with me his experiences with the Sister's of Charity in Calcutta India. I thought what he shared was s interesting that I asked him to write it down so I could share it with you.
Two years ago I was given a plane ticket from my grandparents for my college graduation. A ticket to anywhere in the world. I had spent time in Europe and Japan while I was in high school and had seen how other cultures in the so called "first world" lived differently and how they lived similarly to those of us comfortably in the United States. But what I hadn't yet seen was the world most people lived in. The very world Jesus lived and died in. The world of the marginalized, the excluded, and the outcast. The world many of would prefer not to acknowledge. The world of the poor.
And so I decided to travel to Calcutta India to work with the Missionaries of Charity, the order that began with Mother Teresa. By the time the plane landed in India, I still didn't know exactly where I was going to stay those two months, but somehow I wasn't too worried. I finally connected with the Indian man I found online through couchsurfing.com who lived on the outskirts of Calcutta (or Kolkata, as it's officially called today) and was willing to let me stay with him. A stranger, willing to welcome me into his home. And all was well. At least where I would sleep.
That first day in Calcutta was about as much of a shock to the system as any place could have been. The kind that feels impossible to describe. People EVERYWHERE! Cars, mo-peds, motorcycles, rickshaws, buses, and taxis all happy to reduce the pedestrian population. All moving in mass anarchy to the constant honk of every horn. And trash... trash, everywhere. Calcutta could sometimes make Skidd Row in Los Angeles seem like a safe, quiet neighborhood to raise a family. For the first few days, the poverty was all I could see. You'd try to escape it in air-conditioned book stores or coffee shops, something, anything to give you a taste of home. But all you could taste sipping your latte as malnourished children would bang on the glass windows, begging for food, was your own guilt.
But I arrived in India precisely to see this. To see the world in all its reality. And what was beginning to stir in me was the reality of the Gospel. The reality of a God that would rather be born among the poor in ancient Palestine, in a filth covered manger, than in the palaces of Rome. That it was precisely to the weak and powerless, to those sick and in despair, to those shoved to the margins that Jesus said, "follow me".
After several days of trying to adjust to everything I was experiencing, I began working in Kalighat, the home for the sick and dying, there with the Sisters of Charity and volunteers from around the world.
I had heard stories of people, friends of mine, who had traveled to Calcutta to work with the Sisters in Mother Teresa's various "homes," and I came somewhat skeptical. I heard of how homes could often be flooded with volunteers who weren't really needed, who came to earn a badge or "check off" a life experience. I came with the (feeling) that the homes were more for volunteers than for the patients, and I heaped on it all the criticism I had gathered for "short term" missions. But what I experienced there was very far from what I anticipated.
It was a place unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was a place of poverty and pain so real you could feel it inside your bones. But it was also a place permeated by the thick love of God. It was a picture of the church. A picture of the Kingdom of God. People literally from all over the world, speaking all different languages, came to serve the very people the world considered least. To bathe them, to dress them, to feed them, to wash their soiled clothes, to bandage their wounded bodies.
And God was there. There in the gentle hands of the Japanese man who cleaned the sick with soap and water, there in the West African nun who radiated with love and humility as she directed volunteers to the back to wash dishes or the roof to dry clothes, and there in the emaciated face of the Indian man too weak to feed himself. Here in a place of so much despair was the Kingdom of God breaking out. A sign of the Kingdom that will one day come.
Everyday was filled with so much beauty and so much pain. Every morning we would carry patients every bit as starved as images from Auschwitz. Many had bones exposed or limbs black with gangrene. The patients had no anesthetics except to squeeze our hands or to be held tightly against our chests as the nurse would clean their horrific wounds. And many mornings we would arrive to find patients who had become our friends, covered in white sheets.
One particular morning, there were four people that had passed through the night. One of the sisters pointed to me and three other volunteers to carry them out from the "cold room" onto the bus and to the crematorium. And so we carried them, first on a cold metal stretcher and then by our hands into the crematorium. Death. In our hands. Cold. Utterly lifeless. And we laid them on a platform and watched as they were slowly moved into the furnace.
It's an image burned into my memory. This was poverty. An empty, silent funeral with no one to mourn. Burned into ash with no hope of resurrection.
But here... it was here that Christ died. Beside the poorest of the poor, among the utterly abandoned, among the god-forsaken. I began to see how much it is that this is the God we worship.
Somehow by God's grace, after several days away to process through what I had experienced, I returned to work at Kalighat for several weeks until I finally returned home.
The transition from Calcutta to Chattanooga again was nearly as jolting as it had been when I arrived in India. But I had changed. I began to see things clearly that before I saw only in a blur. The poor. As I would read scripture, every passage about the poor and marginalized would jump out. It would come with the face of that little girl that tugged my arm for food. Or that older man I carried in my arms to bathe.
I began to see God's heart for the weak and invisible illuminating every page of scripture, as one of its most central themes. From the Exodus to the New Jerusalem. I began to see where it was and to who it was that we were called to proclaim the reign of God. To the sick, to beggars, to sinners, to the demon possessed, to the unclean, to children, to the poor. To the very people most shoved to the margins. I learned too, that this call to the margins meant not simply to "minister" to "them" at a distance, from above. But beside, as Jesus did. Remembering that we too are the sick our physician came to heal.
God doesn't call us all to Calcutta. But he does call us to our neighbors. Our lost, lonely, hurting, forgotten neighbors. Because the good news of the Kingdom of God, hope in the midst of despair, the hope of resurrection, is good news indeed.
Showing posts with label Kingdom of God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kingdom of God. Show all posts
Friday, July 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Value 2: Ministry to the Marginalized II - The Old Testament
The Old Testament
God's heart for the poor and the marginalized permeates the pages of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we see God's plan to fix a world broken by sin unfold, and one of the primary ways we see this plan in evidence is through the way He cares for the poor and calls his people to care for the poor. We see it in the way He protects Cain even after he has murdered his brother Able. We see it in how He calls this nomadic tribesman, Abraham, and promises to make him a mighty nation that will bless all the nations of the earth. We see it in the way He cares for Abraham’s slave, Hagar, and the child, Ishmael, that she bore him after Abraham left them for dead in the desert. We see it in how He takes a spoiled child like Joseph and refines his character through horrible circumstances until he is made steward over all Egypt. We see it in His protection of Joseph’s brothers and their families even though they had meant him harm. We see it in how He hears the cries of Abraham’s enslaved descendants in Egypt. We see it in how He rescues an enslaved baby boy condemned to death by a fearful pharaoh. We see it in how this baby boy is found by a princess of Egypt in his basket of reeds where they have hidden him. We see it in how this baby boy grows up as a prince of Egypt. We see it in God’s calling him to deliver His people from slavery in spite of the fact that he has been so beaten down by the world that he can’t even speak without stammering. We see it in the way He frees a community of slaves and turns them into a nation of priests. We see it in His patience with the nation of Israel’s habitual sinning and running to idols. This list could go on and on. The Old Testament is filled with stories about God’s love for the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, and about how he expects his people to care for them.
Read what He says through the prophet Isaiah:
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
ISA 58:2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
ISA 58:3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
The Lord is coming to the nation of Israel with a word of judgment. He tells Isaiah to announce boldly to the nation that He is not pleased. Yes, from the outside they look religious. They put on a good show, but there is a reason He is not responding to their fasts. There is a reason He is not noticing them.
God’s words to the nation of Israel through the prophets always seem to hit me right between the eyes. He could speak these same words to the church, at least the church in the United States. Why, oh church, do I not seem to respond to your call? You make million dollar cathedrals dedicated to me, and put my name on t-shirts and in your popular music. You send your children to private schools that cost thousands of dollars a year that are run out of these same churches. You support entire industries based on the selling of books, videos, music, and movies that tell you how to better please me, but I’m not pleased. I’m not pleased with this.
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
ISA 58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
ISA 58:5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
ISA 58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
ISA 58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
God tells us exactly what he wants from us. He wants us to bring the light of His compassionate kingdom to the forgotten of society. The fast the God chooses for his people (a fast is the act of denying oneself to draw close to God) is that we do the work of the Kingdom by championing the cause of the marginalized; the cause of the least, last, lost, and lonely. God wants our acts of self denial to be acts that care for those who have been beaten down by the broken condition of the world. When we do this we are anticipating the day when poverty, loneliness, and abandonment will be undone.
I’m going to call some things out here, and I’m not doing it to be mean, but I feel that God has called me to speak with a prophetic voice on this issue, and I feel we (The Vineyard) have the right to be that prophetic voice because we’ve chosen to walk a different path. Every day I pass by a church that has a huge private school attached to it. This church and school is literally a quarter of a mile from the school our church meets in. They are just finishing up a multi-million dollar expansion to their sports and recreation fields; fields that could rival a college campus. Just a quarter of a mile down the road the three minority, public schools we meet in are playing on ball fields that are so desperately in need of renovation that it is just sad. Last fall the coach of the baseball team from this high school was literally begging the community to invest ten grand in the ball field so it would be playable. It floods every year. These kids can’t play home games because the condition of their field is so poor. Not only that (I know this is going to sound unbelievable but it’s true), these kids are wearing uniforms that were new in 1968! I wish our church had the financial resources some of these churches have because I would have written the check on the spot. Do we profane the name of our God when just a quarter of a mile down the road the wealthy, who can afford to invest the thousands of dollars a year, have college level ball fields, provided for them in the name of Jesus, when the poor are left behind? Is this where God wants His resources spent? Is this the fast God chooses for us?
Just a stone’s throw from our schools that were built in the late 1950’s, that have roofs that are leaking, where the air conditioning units don’t work properly, with more problems to their physical campuses than you could shake a stick at, goes up a multi- multi-million dollar church campus. This facility is built for the glory of God and hey, they are doing it debt-free. I promise you, people are being asked to take on financial fasts to see this thing built, but is this the fast that God wants when the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely who are literally sitting a stone’s throw from them are going severely without? Are these the acts of self denial that God is calling His people to? Are we seriously to believe that God wants us to invest millions and millions of dollars simply on ourselves? I don’t think so.
Now let me say, I think all of this happens through the best intentions. The leaders of these churches are good people who dearly love Jesus. They desperately want to see people come to know the Lord and live their lives for Him. My critique is in the American way of doing church. We have defined success in such terms that it takes mammoth facilities and budgets to be thought of as being relevant. This leads to a trap of catering to one particular group of people, the type of people who have the kind of resources that can fund this type of programming. I don’t think God has called us to compete with theme parks. I don’t think we are in the entertainment business. I think God has called us to partner with Him in seeing heaven touch earth.
I’m telling you right now, Chattanooga, arguably the most Christian city in the world, will not experience all that God has for it, until we, the churches, repent of this waste and turn our hearts to the true work of the Kingdom. It should be an affront to us that our school system is the worst performing in our state. Seriously, as Christians we should be embarrassed by what is happening to our city, because the presence of so many Jesus following people should be changing the very fabric of our society.
ISA 58:8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
ISA 58:9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
ISA 58:10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
ISA 58:11 The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
This is but one of literally hundreds of passages where God talks about his heart for the poor. The prophets are all looking forward to the Day of the Lord, when the great reversal of fortunes takes place. When the tears of the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, will be wiped away once and for all. Those who thought of themselves as having been forgotten will realize that they were always very close to the heart of God.
The Old Testament teaches us that God loves the poor and He expects His people to love them too!
God's heart for the poor and the marginalized permeates the pages of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we see God's plan to fix a world broken by sin unfold, and one of the primary ways we see this plan in evidence is through the way He cares for the poor and calls his people to care for the poor. We see it in the way He protects Cain even after he has murdered his brother Able. We see it in how He calls this nomadic tribesman, Abraham, and promises to make him a mighty nation that will bless all the nations of the earth. We see it in the way He cares for Abraham’s slave, Hagar, and the child, Ishmael, that she bore him after Abraham left them for dead in the desert. We see it in how He takes a spoiled child like Joseph and refines his character through horrible circumstances until he is made steward over all Egypt. We see it in His protection of Joseph’s brothers and their families even though they had meant him harm. We see it in how He hears the cries of Abraham’s enslaved descendants in Egypt. We see it in how He rescues an enslaved baby boy condemned to death by a fearful pharaoh. We see it in how this baby boy is found by a princess of Egypt in his basket of reeds where they have hidden him. We see it in how this baby boy grows up as a prince of Egypt. We see it in God’s calling him to deliver His people from slavery in spite of the fact that he has been so beaten down by the world that he can’t even speak without stammering. We see it in the way He frees a community of slaves and turns them into a nation of priests. We see it in His patience with the nation of Israel’s habitual sinning and running to idols. This list could go on and on. The Old Testament is filled with stories about God’s love for the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, and about how he expects his people to care for them.
Read what He says through the prophet Isaiah:
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
ISA 58:2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
ISA 58:3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
The Lord is coming to the nation of Israel with a word of judgment. He tells Isaiah to announce boldly to the nation that He is not pleased. Yes, from the outside they look religious. They put on a good show, but there is a reason He is not responding to their fasts. There is a reason He is not noticing them.
God’s words to the nation of Israel through the prophets always seem to hit me right between the eyes. He could speak these same words to the church, at least the church in the United States. Why, oh church, do I not seem to respond to your call? You make million dollar cathedrals dedicated to me, and put my name on t-shirts and in your popular music. You send your children to private schools that cost thousands of dollars a year that are run out of these same churches. You support entire industries based on the selling of books, videos, music, and movies that tell you how to better please me, but I’m not pleased. I’m not pleased with this.
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
ISA 58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
ISA 58:5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
ISA 58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
ISA 58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
God tells us exactly what he wants from us. He wants us to bring the light of His compassionate kingdom to the forgotten of society. The fast the God chooses for his people (a fast is the act of denying oneself to draw close to God) is that we do the work of the Kingdom by championing the cause of the marginalized; the cause of the least, last, lost, and lonely. God wants our acts of self denial to be acts that care for those who have been beaten down by the broken condition of the world. When we do this we are anticipating the day when poverty, loneliness, and abandonment will be undone.
I’m going to call some things out here, and I’m not doing it to be mean, but I feel that God has called me to speak with a prophetic voice on this issue, and I feel we (The Vineyard) have the right to be that prophetic voice because we’ve chosen to walk a different path. Every day I pass by a church that has a huge private school attached to it. This church and school is literally a quarter of a mile from the school our church meets in. They are just finishing up a multi-million dollar expansion to their sports and recreation fields; fields that could rival a college campus. Just a quarter of a mile down the road the three minority, public schools we meet in are playing on ball fields that are so desperately in need of renovation that it is just sad. Last fall the coach of the baseball team from this high school was literally begging the community to invest ten grand in the ball field so it would be playable. It floods every year. These kids can’t play home games because the condition of their field is so poor. Not only that (I know this is going to sound unbelievable but it’s true), these kids are wearing uniforms that were new in 1968! I wish our church had the financial resources some of these churches have because I would have written the check on the spot. Do we profane the name of our God when just a quarter of a mile down the road the wealthy, who can afford to invest the thousands of dollars a year, have college level ball fields, provided for them in the name of Jesus, when the poor are left behind? Is this where God wants His resources spent? Is this the fast God chooses for us?
Just a stone’s throw from our schools that were built in the late 1950’s, that have roofs that are leaking, where the air conditioning units don’t work properly, with more problems to their physical campuses than you could shake a stick at, goes up a multi- multi-million dollar church campus. This facility is built for the glory of God and hey, they are doing it debt-free. I promise you, people are being asked to take on financial fasts to see this thing built, but is this the fast that God wants when the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely who are literally sitting a stone’s throw from them are going severely without? Are these the acts of self denial that God is calling His people to? Are we seriously to believe that God wants us to invest millions and millions of dollars simply on ourselves? I don’t think so.
Now let me say, I think all of this happens through the best intentions. The leaders of these churches are good people who dearly love Jesus. They desperately want to see people come to know the Lord and live their lives for Him. My critique is in the American way of doing church. We have defined success in such terms that it takes mammoth facilities and budgets to be thought of as being relevant. This leads to a trap of catering to one particular group of people, the type of people who have the kind of resources that can fund this type of programming. I don’t think God has called us to compete with theme parks. I don’t think we are in the entertainment business. I think God has called us to partner with Him in seeing heaven touch earth.
I’m telling you right now, Chattanooga, arguably the most Christian city in the world, will not experience all that God has for it, until we, the churches, repent of this waste and turn our hearts to the true work of the Kingdom. It should be an affront to us that our school system is the worst performing in our state. Seriously, as Christians we should be embarrassed by what is happening to our city, because the presence of so many Jesus following people should be changing the very fabric of our society.
ISA 58:8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
ISA 58:9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
ISA 58:10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
ISA 58:11 The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
This is but one of literally hundreds of passages where God talks about his heart for the poor. The prophets are all looking forward to the Day of the Lord, when the great reversal of fortunes takes place. When the tears of the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, will be wiped away once and for all. Those who thought of themselves as having been forgotten will realize that they were always very close to the heart of God.
The Old Testament teaches us that God loves the poor and He expects His people to love them too!
Friday, June 4, 2010
Value 1: Apprenticing the Next Generation II
The Nature of the Curse
I’m going to be giving a few specific examples of which there are literally hundreds to choose from. As you read these you might discover that you might fall into one of these groups. I’m not calling these out to heap condemnation or guilt upon you for the choices you’ve made or have had forced upon you. Remember there is no condemnation for those of us who are Christ Jesus. It’s the enemy who would want you to wallow in guilt. He would want you to be paralyzed thinking there is nothing that can be done. The Lord however would call you to think about how you can begin to partner with Him in setting things to right. Believe it or not, God even wants to set to right the areas of our life in which our own personal sin has reaped destruction. God doesn’t want the brokenness to remain; he wants healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and growth. With that spirit let’s read the two examples I’ve provided.
Think of the epidemic of divorce our culture has experienced over the last generation. So many adults have abdicated their responsibility to protect and nurture their children because they have emotionally detached from the spouse of their youth (I’m not talking about areas of physical abuse, or addiction here). Let’s face it, relationships are hard, and a healthy loving marriage is hard work. To make a marriage work requires great sacrifice by both spouses time and time again. Sometimes people make unwise decisions and marry a jerk. O.K., but does that give us the right to inflict the emotional damage on our children that divorce brings? Adults get over a divorce, the children never do. They always have to live with it, and if the children are young (by that I mean not out of the home and responsible for themselves) a divorce will breed deep seeded issues of abandonment, insecurity, loss of innocence, confusion, anger with God, I could go on and on. Here’s a hard question, “Do you love your kids more than you love yourself?” Do you love them enough to make your marriage work during the hard times, during the times when you don’t feel “in love”? When we don’t, we bring forth a generation of latch-key kids shuffled from home to home confused and disconnected. I promise you, that brings a curse on the land.
Statistically speaking, 33% of all marriages end in divorce. I know many of you who are reading this have gone through divorce. Here are a few things you can do if you’re divorce involved children to help them not feel so disconnected and lost thus lessening the effects of the curse.
First own up to the problem. When my parents got divorced I was very young. One of them had an affair and did not want me to know this. The other parent was very bitter because of the infidelity and did not have much contact with me because it meant they had to have contact with their former spouse. I grew up thinking this parent did not care about me; that wasn’t the case. They simply didn’t know how to process through the anger appropriately. Both of them were embarrassed by what happened and did not know how to talk about it. Now granted, when I was six was not the time for this discussion, but in little ways when I was feeling abandoned or confused about my place in this world, helping me understand in age appropriate manners that it wasn’t about me, it was about them and that there were very understandable if not always justifiable reasons as to why circumstances were what they were. By the time I was a teenager full disclosure needed to happen. It would have helped my emotional growth immensely and eliminated a lot of confusion.
Second maintain a friendship. Unless your spouse was physically abusive to you and you and your children are in physical danger by being near them, you don’t get to hold a grudge. Who loses when your kids are shipped to one house and the next living out of a suitcase? Who loses when you don’t want to be around your ex so you don’t go to a birthday party or to a school event? Who loses when you don’t maintain geographical proximity to one another? Who loses when you make your kids a messenger between the two of you? Who loses when you insinuate that your ex doesn’t really have the appropriate types of character qualities? The children lose. I can’t tell you how stressful it is for a kid to have to deal with those types of issues when they are a child. So forgive. Get over it. Let it go. For the sake of your children you need to become friends with your ex so you can talk and share with one another. Your children need this from you, and frankly it’s your responsibility as their parent.
Depending on Institutions to Raise Our Children brings a curse on the land. Nobody can instill your values, develop character, or impart a genuine love and sense of service towards God like you can. Public/Private school and church programs are not to be substitutes for instilling your values or parenting your kids. These institutions can assist you in developing your kids. One hundred years of Sunday school can never accomplish what a parent that genuinely lives his or her faith, and takes the time to instill those lessons in the life of their children can. Your children will learn far more about God and His character as they see you in small group praying with your friends, they will grow more as you genuinely help them wrestle through their questions about God because you yourself have wrestled through the scriptures and can give them an answer born of experience. Your kids will learn far more about developing a heart for people and a being a servant as you take them with you to serve the poor or help at church.
The same is true for education. You cannot let the school system parent your kids; it was not designed for that. Yet many of us become consumed with our careers and think that the eight or more hours our kids spend at school is time that we can coast. If we are not involved with our schools, volunteering and being a presence there, then guess who parents your kids during that time? It’s not the teachers, it’s their peers. If you don’t take the bull by the horns on this one, the primary influence in the lives of your kids will become their peer group. Peers parenting their peers are the blind leading the blind. Children don’t have the wisdom to give truly good counsel all the time; they simply don’t have the life experience. Think how hard it is for you to navigate this world as an adult. Our children don’t have to try to navigate life without us. We have the ability to help our kids find their way through this tricky world if we take our role seriously. When we relinquish this role to institutions the results are gangs, rampant promiscuity, gross materialism and consumerism, no moral compass, the list could go on and on. Let’s suffice it to say the land experiences a curse.
And lest we think these problems are simply relegated to those with kids let’s think again. This is actually what we are experiencing in Hamilton County, today. According to PSK12.com , a website that helps parents decide what school district they want to live in based on comparative standardized test scores, Hamilton County is cumulatively the lowest ranked school system in the state. It scores at the bottom of the pack in elementary education and in middle school education, and we are ninth from the bottom out of 150+ high school systems in the state. According to a study done by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee as reported in the Chattanooga Times Free Press our county has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. We have several zip codes within Hamilton County with higher Infant mortality rates than are in third world countries. Also weekly we hear reported problems with gangs and gang violence disturbing the scenic city. Where do these problems come from? It’s a parental problem, it’s a political problem, it’s an educational problem, it’s a societal problem but you can boil it down to one common denominator. There are groups of adults, parents, politicians, and school council members who are all choosing to put their own wants and desires above what’s best for the emerging generation. This attitude is brining a curse on our land. This curse raises our individual property taxes, it results in the vandalism of our city, It creates a lack of safety on our city streets and in our public parks, it effects businesses hiring decisions.
Each of us knows kids who are in less than great home situations. We can take these kids under our wings and become mentors to them.
When my children were little we lived in a suburban neighborhood in Houston Texas. In the evenings Kellie and I would take a walk through the neighborhood with our children. A few doors down were some neighbors who sat in their driveway, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and listening to heavy metal. I remember thinking, “There is the scourge of the neighborhood.”
One day shortly after Christmas I was on my roof taking down my Christmas lights while my oldest son was riding his new bicycle up and down the street. I noticed the kid of my rough neighbors hiding behind a truck with one of his friends. When my son rode past them they jumped out and attacked him. A fist fight ensued. I yelled at them to stop but the fight didn’t break-up until I was able to get off my roof and get near them. Once the boys saw me coming they bolted across the street into their home.
I asked my son what had happened and he said they just ran out and started hitting him. That didn’t sound right, people just don’t jump out of nowhere and try to beat you up unprovoked. I wanted to get to the bottom of it so we walked over to my neighbor’s house and knocked on the door. The wife who was in her mid-thirties answered. She was dressed like the teenagers in my youth group at the time. She had a corona beer sleeveless t-shirt on and skin-tight jeans with holes in them. A fad at the time was to write on your jeans with a pen; she was fad current. I related to her what had happened between my son and her son and his friend. She went and got the two boys and asked them what had happened. They said, without a clue to the inappropriateness of this comment that they just wanted to see what it was like to beat someone up.
I was horrified. I explained to the kids that we never should do anything like that, and then walked away with my son. I was in shock. In my mind I was hurling all sorts of curses and judgments their way. Then God began to speak to me. He said, “How many times have you walked by those people’s house when they were outside?” I said almost every night. He said, “How many times have you tried to talk to them or build a friendship with them?” I said that hadn’t, not once. He asked me whose fault it was that my kids had been beaten up? Was it the people who were trapped by darkness or was it the one who knew the truth but failed to reach out.
You see I had a responsibility to that family and to that kid to reach out to them with the love of Jesus. I realized then, that those children and their families were my responsibility, and if I didn’t love people and befriend them, I was as much responsible for the curse through my inaction as they were through their action.
We all have a responsibility to the next generation.
So I repented. Repent is a biblical word that simply means to change course, to do a 180. After that experience I went home to my wife Kellie and I told her what happened. We sat down our kids and we told them that they were to consistently invite that little kid over to play. We began to build a friendship with him, to earn the right to be heard and to speak into his life. We began to invest in him. I wish I could give you the rest of the story, we moved about 6 months later so I don’t know his life turned out, but I know for 6 months there was a family that loved him and was teaching him right from wrong.
These are just a couple of examples out of literally hundreds, but the biblical truth is this, if we as adults don’t take an active interest in teaching and modeling for the generation underneath us how to live, and love, and invest ourselves in their lives we will reap a curse upon our land.
The Nature of the Blessing
Now enough with the negativity, because in this passage of scripture is also found a blessing and a promise.
If we turn the scripture around and state it in the positive we get something like this: If the parents will turn their hearts to their children and the children will turn their hearts to their parents I will bless the land. Now that is encouraging. If we will focus on helping our kids become all that they were created to be and if our children will honor our instruction, God will bless the land.
If we think of the overall context of the passage from Malachi we begin to realize that not only will the land be blessed but this action, unlike any other, prepares our hearts for the arrival of the Kingdom of God. There is a reason that this is the last thought that God wanted us left with at the conclusion of the Old Testament. There is something central about the generations loving each other and wanting the best for each other that brings the Kingdom to earth in a unique way. I think in some ways it’s the practical application of the golden rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and the Great Commandment of loving God with all that we are and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves because in a very real sense it is laying down our lives for others.
I think we learn this when we begin to allow God’s dreams for the next generation to be the motivating factor in our lives. When we realize God would like us to leave the a world a better place than we found it, a little more like the coming Kingdom he is bringing, it motivates our actions. When we also understand that leaving the world a better place than we found it means that the generation underneath us has to understand and take that mission to the next level, it focuses us on how and with whom we seek to accomplish that mission. I can’t leave the world a better place if the generation coming up after me does not desire to do the same. When you have multiple generations seeking to leave the world a better place than they found it, then the land is blessed indeed!
There are people who are reading this blog right now who have experienced the truth of this. I will spare the names to save the embarrassment, but I think of a particular Christian counselor in Houston Texas. I fist met him when he was in junior high, and he was an angry young man. His father was an alcoholic and he hated people, but there were several key adults who saw something special in this young man and began to love him to life with the love of Christ. It didn’t take long for his heart to be softened to the love of God. Today instead of hating people he loves people, and is investing his life in helping people find peace in Christ just like he has. What would have been a curse was turned into a blessing because the hearts of the fathers were turned towards the children.
I think of a young lady whose parents went through a rough divorce. She wanted to give up on God, but a group of adults in her church surrounded her and loved on her. It took her a little time to work through her anger but by the time she was in college the love she had experienced gripped her heart in a powerful way. She went on to start a camp that teaches junior high kids how to serve the elderly and indigent. She is leaving the world better than she found it! What could have resulted in a curse has been turned into a major blessing through some adult small group leaders who loved this girl in the name of Jesus and as a result the land is being blessed.
So how do we do this? How do we practically apprentice the generation underneath us?
I’m going to be giving a few specific examples of which there are literally hundreds to choose from. As you read these you might discover that you might fall into one of these groups. I’m not calling these out to heap condemnation or guilt upon you for the choices you’ve made or have had forced upon you. Remember there is no condemnation for those of us who are Christ Jesus. It’s the enemy who would want you to wallow in guilt. He would want you to be paralyzed thinking there is nothing that can be done. The Lord however would call you to think about how you can begin to partner with Him in setting things to right. Believe it or not, God even wants to set to right the areas of our life in which our own personal sin has reaped destruction. God doesn’t want the brokenness to remain; he wants healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and growth. With that spirit let’s read the two examples I’ve provided.
Think of the epidemic of divorce our culture has experienced over the last generation. So many adults have abdicated their responsibility to protect and nurture their children because they have emotionally detached from the spouse of their youth (I’m not talking about areas of physical abuse, or addiction here). Let’s face it, relationships are hard, and a healthy loving marriage is hard work. To make a marriage work requires great sacrifice by both spouses time and time again. Sometimes people make unwise decisions and marry a jerk. O.K., but does that give us the right to inflict the emotional damage on our children that divorce brings? Adults get over a divorce, the children never do. They always have to live with it, and if the children are young (by that I mean not out of the home and responsible for themselves) a divorce will breed deep seeded issues of abandonment, insecurity, loss of innocence, confusion, anger with God, I could go on and on. Here’s a hard question, “Do you love your kids more than you love yourself?” Do you love them enough to make your marriage work during the hard times, during the times when you don’t feel “in love”? When we don’t, we bring forth a generation of latch-key kids shuffled from home to home confused and disconnected. I promise you, that brings a curse on the land.
Statistically speaking, 33% of all marriages end in divorce. I know many of you who are reading this have gone through divorce. Here are a few things you can do if you’re divorce involved children to help them not feel so disconnected and lost thus lessening the effects of the curse.
First own up to the problem. When my parents got divorced I was very young. One of them had an affair and did not want me to know this. The other parent was very bitter because of the infidelity and did not have much contact with me because it meant they had to have contact with their former spouse. I grew up thinking this parent did not care about me; that wasn’t the case. They simply didn’t know how to process through the anger appropriately. Both of them were embarrassed by what happened and did not know how to talk about it. Now granted, when I was six was not the time for this discussion, but in little ways when I was feeling abandoned or confused about my place in this world, helping me understand in age appropriate manners that it wasn’t about me, it was about them and that there were very understandable if not always justifiable reasons as to why circumstances were what they were. By the time I was a teenager full disclosure needed to happen. It would have helped my emotional growth immensely and eliminated a lot of confusion.
Second maintain a friendship. Unless your spouse was physically abusive to you and you and your children are in physical danger by being near them, you don’t get to hold a grudge. Who loses when your kids are shipped to one house and the next living out of a suitcase? Who loses when you don’t want to be around your ex so you don’t go to a birthday party or to a school event? Who loses when you don’t maintain geographical proximity to one another? Who loses when you make your kids a messenger between the two of you? Who loses when you insinuate that your ex doesn’t really have the appropriate types of character qualities? The children lose. I can’t tell you how stressful it is for a kid to have to deal with those types of issues when they are a child. So forgive. Get over it. Let it go. For the sake of your children you need to become friends with your ex so you can talk and share with one another. Your children need this from you, and frankly it’s your responsibility as their parent.
Depending on Institutions to Raise Our Children brings a curse on the land. Nobody can instill your values, develop character, or impart a genuine love and sense of service towards God like you can. Public/Private school and church programs are not to be substitutes for instilling your values or parenting your kids. These institutions can assist you in developing your kids. One hundred years of Sunday school can never accomplish what a parent that genuinely lives his or her faith, and takes the time to instill those lessons in the life of their children can. Your children will learn far more about God and His character as they see you in small group praying with your friends, they will grow more as you genuinely help them wrestle through their questions about God because you yourself have wrestled through the scriptures and can give them an answer born of experience. Your kids will learn far more about developing a heart for people and a being a servant as you take them with you to serve the poor or help at church.
The same is true for education. You cannot let the school system parent your kids; it was not designed for that. Yet many of us become consumed with our careers and think that the eight or more hours our kids spend at school is time that we can coast. If we are not involved with our schools, volunteering and being a presence there, then guess who parents your kids during that time? It’s not the teachers, it’s their peers. If you don’t take the bull by the horns on this one, the primary influence in the lives of your kids will become their peer group. Peers parenting their peers are the blind leading the blind. Children don’t have the wisdom to give truly good counsel all the time; they simply don’t have the life experience. Think how hard it is for you to navigate this world as an adult. Our children don’t have to try to navigate life without us. We have the ability to help our kids find their way through this tricky world if we take our role seriously. When we relinquish this role to institutions the results are gangs, rampant promiscuity, gross materialism and consumerism, no moral compass, the list could go on and on. Let’s suffice it to say the land experiences a curse.
And lest we think these problems are simply relegated to those with kids let’s think again. This is actually what we are experiencing in Hamilton County, today. According to PSK12.com , a website that helps parents decide what school district they want to live in based on comparative standardized test scores, Hamilton County is cumulatively the lowest ranked school system in the state. It scores at the bottom of the pack in elementary education and in middle school education, and we are ninth from the bottom out of 150+ high school systems in the state. According to a study done by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee as reported in the Chattanooga Times Free Press our county has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. We have several zip codes within Hamilton County with higher Infant mortality rates than are in third world countries. Also weekly we hear reported problems with gangs and gang violence disturbing the scenic city. Where do these problems come from? It’s a parental problem, it’s a political problem, it’s an educational problem, it’s a societal problem but you can boil it down to one common denominator. There are groups of adults, parents, politicians, and school council members who are all choosing to put their own wants and desires above what’s best for the emerging generation. This attitude is brining a curse on our land. This curse raises our individual property taxes, it results in the vandalism of our city, It creates a lack of safety on our city streets and in our public parks, it effects businesses hiring decisions.
Each of us knows kids who are in less than great home situations. We can take these kids under our wings and become mentors to them.
When my children were little we lived in a suburban neighborhood in Houston Texas. In the evenings Kellie and I would take a walk through the neighborhood with our children. A few doors down were some neighbors who sat in their driveway, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and listening to heavy metal. I remember thinking, “There is the scourge of the neighborhood.”
One day shortly after Christmas I was on my roof taking down my Christmas lights while my oldest son was riding his new bicycle up and down the street. I noticed the kid of my rough neighbors hiding behind a truck with one of his friends. When my son rode past them they jumped out and attacked him. A fist fight ensued. I yelled at them to stop but the fight didn’t break-up until I was able to get off my roof and get near them. Once the boys saw me coming they bolted across the street into their home.
I asked my son what had happened and he said they just ran out and started hitting him. That didn’t sound right, people just don’t jump out of nowhere and try to beat you up unprovoked. I wanted to get to the bottom of it so we walked over to my neighbor’s house and knocked on the door. The wife who was in her mid-thirties answered. She was dressed like the teenagers in my youth group at the time. She had a corona beer sleeveless t-shirt on and skin-tight jeans with holes in them. A fad at the time was to write on your jeans with a pen; she was fad current. I related to her what had happened between my son and her son and his friend. She went and got the two boys and asked them what had happened. They said, without a clue to the inappropriateness of this comment that they just wanted to see what it was like to beat someone up.
I was horrified. I explained to the kids that we never should do anything like that, and then walked away with my son. I was in shock. In my mind I was hurling all sorts of curses and judgments their way. Then God began to speak to me. He said, “How many times have you walked by those people’s house when they were outside?” I said almost every night. He said, “How many times have you tried to talk to them or build a friendship with them?” I said that hadn’t, not once. He asked me whose fault it was that my kids had been beaten up? Was it the people who were trapped by darkness or was it the one who knew the truth but failed to reach out.
You see I had a responsibility to that family and to that kid to reach out to them with the love of Jesus. I realized then, that those children and their families were my responsibility, and if I didn’t love people and befriend them, I was as much responsible for the curse through my inaction as they were through their action.
We all have a responsibility to the next generation.
So I repented. Repent is a biblical word that simply means to change course, to do a 180. After that experience I went home to my wife Kellie and I told her what happened. We sat down our kids and we told them that they were to consistently invite that little kid over to play. We began to build a friendship with him, to earn the right to be heard and to speak into his life. We began to invest in him. I wish I could give you the rest of the story, we moved about 6 months later so I don’t know his life turned out, but I know for 6 months there was a family that loved him and was teaching him right from wrong.
These are just a couple of examples out of literally hundreds, but the biblical truth is this, if we as adults don’t take an active interest in teaching and modeling for the generation underneath us how to live, and love, and invest ourselves in their lives we will reap a curse upon our land.
The Nature of the Blessing
Now enough with the negativity, because in this passage of scripture is also found a blessing and a promise.
If we turn the scripture around and state it in the positive we get something like this: If the parents will turn their hearts to their children and the children will turn their hearts to their parents I will bless the land. Now that is encouraging. If we will focus on helping our kids become all that they were created to be and if our children will honor our instruction, God will bless the land.
If we think of the overall context of the passage from Malachi we begin to realize that not only will the land be blessed but this action, unlike any other, prepares our hearts for the arrival of the Kingdom of God. There is a reason that this is the last thought that God wanted us left with at the conclusion of the Old Testament. There is something central about the generations loving each other and wanting the best for each other that brings the Kingdom to earth in a unique way. I think in some ways it’s the practical application of the golden rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and the Great Commandment of loving God with all that we are and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves because in a very real sense it is laying down our lives for others.
I think we learn this when we begin to allow God’s dreams for the next generation to be the motivating factor in our lives. When we realize God would like us to leave the a world a better place than we found it, a little more like the coming Kingdom he is bringing, it motivates our actions. When we also understand that leaving the world a better place than we found it means that the generation underneath us has to understand and take that mission to the next level, it focuses us on how and with whom we seek to accomplish that mission. I can’t leave the world a better place if the generation coming up after me does not desire to do the same. When you have multiple generations seeking to leave the world a better place than they found it, then the land is blessed indeed!
There are people who are reading this blog right now who have experienced the truth of this. I will spare the names to save the embarrassment, but I think of a particular Christian counselor in Houston Texas. I fist met him when he was in junior high, and he was an angry young man. His father was an alcoholic and he hated people, but there were several key adults who saw something special in this young man and began to love him to life with the love of Christ. It didn’t take long for his heart to be softened to the love of God. Today instead of hating people he loves people, and is investing his life in helping people find peace in Christ just like he has. What would have been a curse was turned into a blessing because the hearts of the fathers were turned towards the children.
I think of a young lady whose parents went through a rough divorce. She wanted to give up on God, but a group of adults in her church surrounded her and loved on her. It took her a little time to work through her anger but by the time she was in college the love she had experienced gripped her heart in a powerful way. She went on to start a camp that teaches junior high kids how to serve the elderly and indigent. She is leaving the world better than she found it! What could have resulted in a curse has been turned into a major blessing through some adult small group leaders who loved this girl in the name of Jesus and as a result the land is being blessed.
So how do we do this? How do we practically apprentice the generation underneath us?
Apprenticing the Next Generation
Value 1: Apprenticing the Next Generation
I had a really cool moment the other day. I was watching my 17 year old son and some of his best friends lead worship at a Christian high school. Their band HighPoint had been mentored by a young man who had come to our church when he was eighteen. He was a fantastic keyboard player and also had a wonderful mind for finance. He later came on my staff as our business manager but still took the time to teach my son and his friends how to lead a praise and worship team. He taught them how to manage practice sessions, how to run a sound board, how to make a song theirs instead of a reproduction of a studio track, and how to put together a worship set. That morning he and I sat smiling as we watched our kids lead several hundred students in worship. They were great, not only were they musically great but they were sensitive to the Spirit. They listened for God, and ushered those kids into a time where Spirit came and ministered in a very powerful way. These were things that they had learned as they were apprenticed by the generations that had come before them. We were all blessed by this.
As I sat there and watched this I had the satisfaction of knowing another generation had really gotten the heart of the Kingdom. That these young men would take what they had learned from me and the men and women I had mentored and pass it on to the generation underneath them. When I think about that I want to get up and do back flips, because that’s what it’s all about and you know the Bible seems to back me up on that.
In the book of Acts we read about the birth of the church on Pentecost Sunday. The church is the community of the “age to come”, the time when Jesus returns and sets all things to right, as it exists in the midst of this present age. The church plays by a different set of rules than the world does (or at least it should). The church is ruled by the values and characteristics of what the world will be like when everything is set to right. In the church love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, selflessness, gentleness, and kindness are the daily DNA of life because that is what life will be like in the “age to come”.
On the day the Church was established, the Spirit of God came and empowered each person who had placed his or her faith in Jesus. All heaven literally broke lose at that time. Manifestations of the life of the “age to come” began to break into this present age through God’s empowering presence at work in the followers of Jesus. The gift of tongues went forth reversing the curse of the confounded languages at Babel. The followers of Jesus began to proclaim Jesus as the true Lord of all, their fear of retribution overcome by the courage the Spirit brings. To explain all this Peter says to the crowd that had gathered:
AC 2:14 Peter Addresses the Crowd
…"Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
AC 2:17 'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
AC 2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
God’s Kingdom was forcefully breaking into the world. What Jesus had set into motion through his death and resurrection was continuing through His people who were empowered by His Spirit. This is what had been promised by the prophets of the Old Testament, a reversal of the way things were, an end to the status quo. This Spirit-empowered people were bearing witness to the world of the complete reversal that Jesus would bring in all of it’s fullness in the “age to come.” Peter, quoting the Prophet Joel, says that one of the major signs of the in breaking of the Kingdom is young and old engaging in Spirit-empowered ministry side by side.
Listen to the language; sons and daughters, young and old, men and women! When the Kingdom comes young and old, male and female will be serving God side by side! Therefore, one of the signs of the “age to come” breaking forward into the present is young people being empowered by their spiritual mothers and fathers to engage in Spirit-led ministry.
This is a reoccurring theme with the Old Testament Prophets. Listen to the last sentence of the Hebrew Scriptures found in the book of Malachi.
MAL 3:16 The Reward of the Faithful
Then those who revered the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD took note and listened, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who revered the LORD and thought on his name. 17 They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them. 18 Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.
MAL 4:1 The Great Day of the LORD
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.
MAL 4:4 Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
MAL 4:5 Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.
Just like the rest of the Old Testament prophets Malachi is looking forward to the Day of the Lord, the day when God will decisively act in setting the world to right. Malachi says part of what prepares our hearts for this event, part of what makes us ready to experience God’s Kingdom in all its fullness, is the hearts of the parents being turned towards their children and the hearts of the children being turned towards their parents. This is an incredible picture, a picture of seasoned adults not being focused on achieving for themselves but their desire is for their children to be all they can be. It’s the children not looking at the older generation with suspicion and rebellion but acknowledging the gift that is being given to them by their mentors. Out of that knowledge is born a love and respect for those who are sacrificially focusing on them.
God says this has to happen so that the land is not struck with a curse. Think about that for a second, when the older generation refuses to invest in the younger generation the land is cursed. I can think of many reasons why the land would be cursed when the older generation refuses to invest in the younger generation because of the things I’ve seen in my quarter century of experience in ministry.
I had a really cool moment the other day. I was watching my 17 year old son and some of his best friends lead worship at a Christian high school. Their band HighPoint had been mentored by a young man who had come to our church when he was eighteen. He was a fantastic keyboard player and also had a wonderful mind for finance. He later came on my staff as our business manager but still took the time to teach my son and his friends how to lead a praise and worship team. He taught them how to manage practice sessions, how to run a sound board, how to make a song theirs instead of a reproduction of a studio track, and how to put together a worship set. That morning he and I sat smiling as we watched our kids lead several hundred students in worship. They were great, not only were they musically great but they were sensitive to the Spirit. They listened for God, and ushered those kids into a time where Spirit came and ministered in a very powerful way. These were things that they had learned as they were apprenticed by the generations that had come before them. We were all blessed by this.
As I sat there and watched this I had the satisfaction of knowing another generation had really gotten the heart of the Kingdom. That these young men would take what they had learned from me and the men and women I had mentored and pass it on to the generation underneath them. When I think about that I want to get up and do back flips, because that’s what it’s all about and you know the Bible seems to back me up on that.
In the book of Acts we read about the birth of the church on Pentecost Sunday. The church is the community of the “age to come”, the time when Jesus returns and sets all things to right, as it exists in the midst of this present age. The church plays by a different set of rules than the world does (or at least it should). The church is ruled by the values and characteristics of what the world will be like when everything is set to right. In the church love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, selflessness, gentleness, and kindness are the daily DNA of life because that is what life will be like in the “age to come”.
On the day the Church was established, the Spirit of God came and empowered each person who had placed his or her faith in Jesus. All heaven literally broke lose at that time. Manifestations of the life of the “age to come” began to break into this present age through God’s empowering presence at work in the followers of Jesus. The gift of tongues went forth reversing the curse of the confounded languages at Babel. The followers of Jesus began to proclaim Jesus as the true Lord of all, their fear of retribution overcome by the courage the Spirit brings. To explain all this Peter says to the crowd that had gathered:
AC 2:14 Peter Addresses the Crowd
…"Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
AC 2:17 'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
AC 2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
God’s Kingdom was forcefully breaking into the world. What Jesus had set into motion through his death and resurrection was continuing through His people who were empowered by His Spirit. This is what had been promised by the prophets of the Old Testament, a reversal of the way things were, an end to the status quo. This Spirit-empowered people were bearing witness to the world of the complete reversal that Jesus would bring in all of it’s fullness in the “age to come.” Peter, quoting the Prophet Joel, says that one of the major signs of the in breaking of the Kingdom is young and old engaging in Spirit-empowered ministry side by side.
Listen to the language; sons and daughters, young and old, men and women! When the Kingdom comes young and old, male and female will be serving God side by side! Therefore, one of the signs of the “age to come” breaking forward into the present is young people being empowered by their spiritual mothers and fathers to engage in Spirit-led ministry.
This is a reoccurring theme with the Old Testament Prophets. Listen to the last sentence of the Hebrew Scriptures found in the book of Malachi.
MAL 3:16 The Reward of the Faithful
Then those who revered the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD took note and listened, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who revered the LORD and thought on his name. 17 They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them. 18 Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.
MAL 4:1 The Great Day of the LORD
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.
MAL 4:4 Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
MAL 4:5 Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.
Just like the rest of the Old Testament prophets Malachi is looking forward to the Day of the Lord, the day when God will decisively act in setting the world to right. Malachi says part of what prepares our hearts for this event, part of what makes us ready to experience God’s Kingdom in all its fullness, is the hearts of the parents being turned towards their children and the hearts of the children being turned towards their parents. This is an incredible picture, a picture of seasoned adults not being focused on achieving for themselves but their desire is for their children to be all they can be. It’s the children not looking at the older generation with suspicion and rebellion but acknowledging the gift that is being given to them by their mentors. Out of that knowledge is born a love and respect for those who are sacrificially focusing on them.
God says this has to happen so that the land is not struck with a curse. Think about that for a second, when the older generation refuses to invest in the younger generation the land is cursed. I can think of many reasons why the land would be cursed when the older generation refuses to invest in the younger generation because of the things I’ve seen in my quarter century of experience in ministry.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Catch the Wave
AC 1:1 “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach”
My family’s favorite type of vacation is a beach vacation. We love the sand and the sun, the sound of the surf and the waves, the beautiful water on Florida’s gulf coast. We love the beach, and my favorite beach activity is body surfing. I love getting out there and catching the waves.
The best time to body surf is when there is a storm not to far off the coast that really kicks up the waves. There’s nothing like standing out in the ocean waiting for that perfect swell, feeling the waves pick you up off your feet, while all the time watching for the wave that will bring the best ride.
Then you see the wave, an Everest of water barreling towards you. You feel the inflow of the current of the wave drawing you and everything else in towards its building power. You lift your feet off the ground and off you go, and if you catch the wave just right you are hurled towards the shore at a terrific velocity by it’s power.
After your belly begins to hit the sand, you stand up, pull-up your shorts that are riding dangerously low on your hips, give a sly grin as you see the forty some odd yards you’ve traveled in a few seconds, and march right back into the water excited by the possibility of the next ride.
Catching a wave is a thrilling exercise in relinquishing control to a power greater than yourself.
I cannot make the wave. I cannot stop the wave. All I can do is either fight against the waves power or surrender myself to it and let it take me where it will.
This is the same type of power we read about in the book of Acts in the Bible. In Acts we see God’s power breaking out all over the place, setting things to right. People are given access to the covenant promises of Israel not through the keeping of a religious system but through their allegiance to a new King. The measure of sin that had separated God’s people from their creator had been dealt with through their Kings confrontation of evil, death, and decay.
We see that this wave of the King and His Kingdom is breaking to the shore of an age when all those who follow Jesus will be set free from death and decay and risen to a renewed life on a renewed earth where sickness, war, human trafficking, infanticide, genocide, racism, and everything that would have no place in God’s Kingdom will be done away with. Heaven and Earth will be joined together knowing the rule of God on earth.
This is the point of all the sermons in the Book of Acts in the Bible. These sermons serve as markers helping us understand the narrative action of the book.
In the first of these sermons occurs when Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost and proclaims that God’s presence is no longer found in a nation, or a city, or a temple, but in the people who have given their allegiance to Jesus as King.
He points them back to the Old Testament prophets and says this is what they have been anticipating. This was the wave they were longing to catch. Peter says to thse who have assembled because of the outpouring of the Spirit that Israel has rejected their true king, Jesus of Naxareth. He says repent and catch the wave. He challenges those who have gathered to get caught up in the trajectory of a world that will one day be set completely to right by the dynamic action of this King.
It’s what Peter says to the ruling council in Jerusalem as he testifies before the same court that convinced the Roman presence in Israel to crucify Christ. He tells them the wave of God that has been building, pointing to the eventual setting to right of all things. Peter says this wave has crested in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He calls the gathered to not be left behind. They need to let the wave take them to the place where all things are set to right.
This hope is also seen in Stephen’s speech right before he is stoned to death. He calls Israel to remember its long history. He recounts to them how God has been actively moving in their history drawing them towards the moment when all things are redeemed and restored .
He says the decisive moment has occurred in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He reminds them that there have always been people who have embraced what God is doing and those who have stood in opposition to it. There have been people who have ridden the wave and those who have tried to hold back the tide. Those who ride the wave get to go on one incredible ride and those who fight the tide find themselves battered by it.
The world will be renewed.
Evil has been defeated and will one day be destroyed.
The Caesars and false kings of the world will find their knees bowing and tongues’ confessing Jesus Christ is Lord. To some this is the blessed hope to others it is the stone of offense, but this is the gospel. This is the wave that has broken and is now pushing history towards the shoreline of a renewed heaven and earth.
Each of us has the opportunity to catch this wave or to try to hold it back.
We catch the wave by becoming followers of Jesus and allowing his wave to take us where ever it will.
For some of us it might look like fight against human trafficking, or laboring for racial equality, or being like Mother Teresa and caring for those no other will care for, praying for the sick or feeding the poor.
The wave that draws us nearer to shore line of God’s renewed Kingdom can take us to so many different places, and the places will always look like the will of God being done on earth as it is in heaven.
Catching the wave looks like saying yes to God when he calls us to dare things that bring an intersection between the Kingdom of Heaven and earth. This year when we felt like God was calling our church to build a well in Uganda and it was going to cost 50,000 dollars. We knew there was no way we could raise that type of money, but it was what God wanted us to do, so we said yes and raised 51,000 dollars.
When God asked our church to not build a building but to fight against the materialism and commercialism of an age that says the church’s mission should be to a consumer instead of transforming the world; it didn’t make sense, but we said yes and we are just starting to see what God might do through a church that will seek his Kingdom before it seeks it’s own.
Even when a group of us prayed for a friend who came into the church having to use a walker and left under the strength of his own legs because of the healing God provided, none of the prayer team had the power to heal someone, but God did. He asked us to pray and we did and we saw a glimpse of what the shoreline is going to be like when the wave finally arrives.
Have you caught the wave? If you haven’t you have no clue as to what you’re missing. Stop trying to hold back the tide and instead allow the wave to take you for a ride.
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