Sacred Mundane: The Blog

“We found a church we love!” 

“I love my church.”

“Well, we don’t love love our church, but it’s ok.”

I’ve often said those kind of comments.  In Corvallis, I always told people, “I love my church so much.”  At other times in other towns, I would often say, “Well, I don’t love love my church, but it’s ok, I mean at least they teach the Word and stuff.”  And I’ve often asked people, “How do you like your church?”  They or I would respond with a quick run down of characteristics that are either positive or negative.  “Well, the worship is [fill in the blank: boring, loud, quiet, old fashioned, hard to follow, not my style] and but I like the [fill in the blank:  preaching, sunday school, nursery, youth group, small groups].  So all in all it’s just fine.”  How many times have I done that?! 

But what Jeff keeps reminding me is that the church is the people.  Yesterday I overheard some college girls doing the old children’s hand-song:  “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open it up and see all the people,” twising their hands upside down to reveal their wiggling fingers.  Such a small thing, but it does teach our children that the church is the building (and that it has a steeple!), and the people wiggle around inside.  And for many, that is the church–the building.   Or, more accurately for our discussion, the church is the programs.  We like worship but don’t like the teaching.  We like the teaching but we don’t like the sunday school.  We like that the church has a nursery. We don’t like that the church has a nursery.  Goodness gracious I am so convicted of how opinionated I am with regard to “how to do church.”  The church we’re at now is lightyears different from the church where we served before.  And naturally, when we first came all those differences felt awkward and bothersome, like wearing someone else’s shoes.  I kept evaluating things in terms of my preferences. 

So this past week, I’ve been talking to God about this:  To love “our church” is to love the people.  We will never love our church until we love the people.  And if you don’t love those people, then you don’t love people at all, because people are people.  Do I love people?  Do I love these people?  God never once commanded us to love the worship style, to love the preaching style, to love the building. He never commanded us to love programs or procedures.  He commanded us to love the people, and the people are the church. 

Now I’m not saying that our individual likes and dislikes have no value. I wholeheartedly agree that we should find a local congregation where we can support the work of the ministry without reservation about essential issues.  Not every congregation is for every person.  But the majority of us aren’t in that boat.  The majority of us, including myself, just need to ask God, Help me love my church.  Help me love the people.  Move me past myself and give me supernatural love for people, even the ones who are hard to love. 

And finally, love for my church moves me beyond local congregation walls to love the church.  The worldwide church of God–all true believers.  Do I love people?  Real people–the ugly ones.  The bitter ones.  The ones who don’t believe the same way I do.  The ones who aren’t friendly or even nice sometimes.  The ones who are annoying (aren’t we all?).  Do you love your church?  Let’s love our churches.  And next time someone asks, “How do you like your church?”  Let’s respond, “I love every one of them.” 

Jeff and I just got back from the coolest experience.  We got to speak at the Oregon Moms in Touch annual conference, up at the Mount Angel Abbey.  My mom and Dutch came too, so it was a sweet experience for the four of us.  Mom has known many of the women for years and Dutch, well …. Dutch was his crazy self.  He actually didn’t break anything, so that was great, but he did manage to reach into the candy bowl and grab an enormous red hot heart-shaped gummy candy and shove it in his mouth.  He was later covered in pink sticky goo from top to toe.

We only talked for 20 minutes tops, but it was basically just a time where we shared our testimonies of our moms who prayed for us–persevered in prayer for us, and how God has been so faithful to honor those prayes in our lives.  We are the beneficiaries!

I was so humbled to look out at this group of women.  They are saints. These women are all moms, and they’ve devoted their lives to lifting up their children i prayer to God.  Young and old alike. One mom was pregnant, some had kids in their 30s.  But their common goal was this:  to devote their lives to prayer.  I pray that I can be half the mom that these women are–devoting my life to praying for Dutch and any other children God blesses us with. 

ANd for you moms out there–hang in there!  Through diapers, through tantrums, puberty, rebellion … hang in there!  God has been so faithful to me, and I know it is the result of a praying mom.  And any of you MIT moms out there, way to go!  Your prayers matter. 

I never had the privilege of meeting Dr. John Mitchell, founder of Multnomah Biblical Seminary (then Multnomah School of the Bible).  He died in 1990, at 98 years of age.  His most famous quote is engraved on a plaque in the library: “Don’t you folks ever read your Bibles?”  He was famous for that.  But his lesser known quote that he said just as often was, “Do you love the Savior?”  Just that.  So simple.  “Do you love the Savior?”  And I’ve been thinking about this lately.  Jeff and I are always talking about the best way to influence people for Christ.  And this week, as I listened to the John Piper message (posted in LiveDifferent 3), I realized what is missing from so many of our pulpits and lives:  Love for the Savior.  Oh I know that we want to live for God. We want to serve Him.  We want to be good people. We want to be His hands and feet.  We want to love others, see families reconciled, see people come to Christ.  But do we love the Savior?  Do I love the Savior?  Do you love the Savior?

I remember a while back visiting a church and hearing a great message.  It was creative, funny, and easy to listen to.  It was a really creative way to help people understand how to respond better to situations where they might feel stressed or negative.  But after I left, I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling I had.  What was wrong? I enjoyed listening to the message, and even took to heart a few things, thinking through how I could apply the principles and respond better in situations.  But later that day I realized what had been bugging me–It wasn’t about Jesus!  I never opened my Bible!  I wasn’t drawn to the feet of my Savior.  I wasn’t drawn to fall on my face before my Lord and confess my love for Him.  Principles are good.  Biblical principles are good.  Godly principles are good.  But you know that?  They’re not Christ.  They’re not what’s real.  They might help us to be good people, help us to resolve conflict better, help us to respond better to life’s challenges, but they’ll never make us fall in love with the Savior.  Without a complete, wholehearted, reckless adoration for Christ those principles are no more potent than the Seven Steps of Highly Effective People.  Great for making friends and influencing people, but they won’t draw us into the Holy of Holies, they won’t create in us a hunger for the presence of God.  Do we love the Savior?

I’ve mentioned before that I love looking to see what people write under “religion” on their Facebook profile.  I noticed that my brother’s says “Christ Adorer.”  When I saw that I just stared at it for a second. Christ Adorer.  Is that my religion?  Do I adore Christ.  Seriously.  Let’s be honest.  What are things that I adore.  Well, I adore my son, that’s for sure. I could talk about him for hours. I love to post pictures of him and videos and anything else that will somehow communicate with other people how cool he is.  I adore my husband.  And sometimes I adore some pretty simple things like mango with sticky rice or sweet iced tea on a hot day.  Do I adore Christ?  Now to be real here, it’s tough because I’ve never actually seen Christ.  I’ve never been able to put my arms around him. I can’t smell him or feel his arms around me. I don’t know the sound of his voice.  But my spirit does. And when I’m with Him, I do adore Him. I am intoxicated by His presence.  I love Jesus.  And that is the goal of our Christian life–to adore Christ with ever increasing measure, until the day our love is make complete in His presence in glory. 

But if all that we do is talk about biblical principles, how will people ever see and savor the beauty of Christ?  How will they be motivated to live those principles if they won’t adore the Savior?  And even if we are motivated to live that way, is that the reason we’re here?  Is our goal in life to have a good marriage, a good job, and to live a good way?  That’s hopefully a byproduct, but our goal is Christ! Our goal is to love and adore the Savior!  ANd if He is not truly beautiful and captivating to us, I am venturing to say that something is wrong.  And yes, our love waxes and wanes.  Our emotions grow cold.  We experience deserts, wildnernesses.  But if our default experience, our normal, most common experience is a Christian life that is centered on living biblical principles and not on seeking and savoring the glory of Christ, we’ve missed the boat. I’ve missed the boat. 

So I think I’m landing with the conclusion that my goal in life is not just to love people, not just to give my life for ministry, not just to see people made whole–it is first and foremost to seek God with all my heart, to seek Him for His sake, to see His beauty, to worship Him in His splendor.  As John Piper says, “When people are caught up in the heavenly sphere, caught up in the beauty and glory of God, they’ll do diapers differently!”  I’m all about the earthly action–I think my whole LiveDifferent challenge shows this loud and clear.  But if at the bottom of it all we aren’t Christ Adorers, then lay aside the LiveDifferent and first and foremost seek Christ. 

Do you love the Savior? I pray you do. I pray that I will more and more.  Let’s pray for a people whose hearts are truly set ablaze with love for Him.  Amen?

Last week as part of our LiveDifferent challenge we gave away “Beans ‘n Jeans” to help feed and clothe people in need. I’m a few weeks into my clothing fast and that’s good and well. Some of you may have read my recent post on Prayer in Action which focused on Prayer as Justice & Compassion. Basically, if our spiritual life isn’t one that’s actively moving as the hands and feet of Christ, it is no spiritual life at all.

Last night, I had a big change in my heart. I decided I no longer want the house. Any of you who know me at all know that for the last 10 months I’ve had my eye on the house. The same house. I’ve known, at least I felt like I knew that God wanted us to have this house. It was perfect. Everything I’d ever dreamed of, and with plenty of room to grow and open up our doors to others for ministry. And, provided that we could sell our McMinnville home, it was also in our price range — the upper end of our price range mind you, but our price range nonetheless. But a few doubts have been slowly creeping into my mind. First, I was jostled a little by something my pastor said a few weeks ago in church while discussing finances. He said a pretty simple statement, “Just because you can afford it, doesn’t mean you should buy it!” He was basically explaining how we automatically look to see “what we can afford” and then get the very most we can. That’s human nature. So I contemplated this, and while I did, I went to visit my brother and sister-in-law, as you know, in Salt Lake City. Now I don’t want to trespass their privacy but let’s just be frank about the fact that my brother makes a a lot of money. But here’s the thing–they give it away. You would never guess by visiting them. They have a beautiful but humble house that’s suited perfectly for ministry. They have only one car. They don’t have new furniture, they don’t have new clothes, they don’t have the latest this or the latest that. They live soooooooo below their means, so that they can give what they have for the Kingdom of God. Now I just had to shake my head at that, because I know if I were his wife, I’d be like, “Give me some of that money so I can have some new stuff!” But she’s not like that. She has the same vision, the same perspective on life.

So coming home I considered this. I thought, it’s no wonder God hasn’t entrusted me with a lot of money–He knows how poorly I’d use it! So as I thought about this and about the LiveDifferent challenge, I thought about this house that I’ve dreamed of for 10 months. And strangely enough, it was like slowly opening my little hand and letting my precious little thing slide away. And, strangely enough, I don’t miss it.

So while contemplating this I read a chapter in a prayer book and came across this translation of Isaiah 58:6-11:

“Is not this what I require of you as a fast: to loose the fetters of injustice, to untie the knots of the yoke, to stop every yoke and set free those who have been crushed? Is it not sharing your food with the hungry, taking the homeless poor into your house, clothing the naked when you meet them and never evading a duty to your kinsfolk? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn and soon you will grow healthy like a wound newly healed; your own righteousness shall be your vanguard and the glory of the Lord your rearguard. Then, if you call, the Lord will answer; if you cry to him, the answer will be: “Here I am.” If you cease to pervert justice, to point the accusing finger and lay false charges, if you feed the hungry from your own plenty and satisfy the needs of the wretched, then your light will rise like dawn out of darkness and your dusk be like noonday; the Lord will be your guide continually and will satisfy your needs in the shimmering heat; he will give you strength of limb; you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.”

Something in my heart leaps when I read this! Yes! That’s it! That’s what I want! That’s what we’re supposed to do! We choose to go without so that others may have. We “fast” to untie the knots of the yoke, to set free those who have been crushed. How can we offer to God a sanctified life if that life doesn’t take up the cause of those around us?

So on Wednesday (this was the depressing day of which I wrote about earlier this week), I was driving to school and consumed with myself, and as I pulled onto the I-205 off ramp there had been an accident so traffic was backed up, and I knew then I’d be late. And as I sat in traffic I realized that Jesse was there. Jesse is the homeless man who is at the Glisan off-ramp of I-205. My wonderful husband, who always disciples me by his actions, has befriended Jesse. We would always give him part of our lunches, and Jeff would always try to pull up next to him to talk, or get out and put his arm around him and talk to him about Jesus. Jesse always recognizes us when we come and smiles at us. Well this Wednesday I was already late, waiting for the accident, and I saw Jesse and realized the only food I had with me was my yogurt, which was the thing I had hurriedly grabbed in my frantic attempt to get out of the house. Oh Lord, do I have to give him my yogurt? Can you believe how selfish I am? That’s what was going through my mind. I knew I wouldn’t have time to get anything else and I wouldn’t be home until 3:30 and by then I’d have a raging headache because I cannot stand being hungry. And Isaiah 58 went through my mind. Ok, God, my yogurt. But I was stopped four cars away, and couldn’t pull up near him, so I through it into park, grabbed my yogurt and ran up the off-ramp calling him by name and gave him the silly yogurt, then the light turned green and I raced back to my car before people started honking and giving me the universal “I love you” finger sign. But as I went up I saw him absolutely light up and smile at me, a real smile–looking me right in the eyes. “Thank you!” He shouted as I waved.

You know what? I didn’t get a raging headache because I was hungry. In fact, I felt better because it took my focus off my silly little self. And you know what–just to be real honest here, I think maybe Jesse was kind of tickled to have a cute little blond girl run up to him and smile and call him by name(ok maybe he didn’t think I was cute but my husband does). I think maybe that mattered to him. I know it mattered to me.

So, Jeff and I have started making it a habit that Sunday night I pack our lunches and our dinners, just like normal, for our 10-hour day of class on Mondays. But Monday morning we give our lunches to Jesse, we tell him that God loves him, and we call him by name and look him in the eye and tell him he’s valuable. And one cool thing is that our friend Lyndi usually brings leftover sandwiches and coffee cake from Starbucks so a lot of days we end up with more food than we brought anyway, like loaves and fish!

So the LiveDifferent challenge is this: One day this week (or every week!), fast one meal (if you’re like me and you can’t not eat, just eat something simple for that meal, the point isn’t to not eat, the point is to give to others and offer ourselves to God), and give that “meal” to the homeless or the poor. That will look different to different people. If you live where you have access to homeless people, take your lunch to them personally. If you don’t have that kind of access, donate $2.16 to the Portland Rescue Mission–that’s enough to provide one meal and you can give online with your credit card (click here!) Wherever you are, there are always people in need and it is so easy to give to them if we just take the time.

I’ll leave you with this: The ultimate way to LiveDifferent is to see and savor our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One who inspires and empowers us to LiveDifferent, and He is the reason we do. I listened to a profound message this morning by John Piper. (Click here to listen) It was delivered to a group of pastors, but it’s applicable to us all. Set aside time and persevere through it–67 minutes long–or break it up into chunks and listen as you are able. If that doesn’t motivate you to LiveDifferent, I don’t know what will! Thanks for reading. Let’s LiveDifferent this week!