And How About a Side of Conviction??

I have a lot to talk about in this post. I've been slowly compiling my thoughts for the last couple of days. Bear with it. This might be a long one.

To begin, this week has been an exhausting one so far. I started my part-time job on Tuesday with a landscaping company in Omaha owned by a member of Coram Deo. I was scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday from 7:30 AM until 5 PM and I spent that time on both days trimming grass with a weed eater. My feet have a few blisters from the walking and I am making serious headway on a fabulous farmer's tan. But don't take this as complaining. The owner has been very gracious in offering me a demanding job for only eight weeks and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to make a little money while I am here. However, I now have a pair of previously white shoes that are now green along with a healthy respect for the potential brutality of the Nebraskan sun.

Now on to the bulk of this post. Something really neat happened on Sunday that will set the tone for the rest of this entry and develop the context for what is rattling around inside of my head so loudly right now. This weekend, Coram Deo was preaching on blessings and generosity. The perspective was that we can bless those around us with our time, possessions, home, etc. But the focus of the sermon was placed on money because that is the thing in life which we all have trouble giving away to some extent. The purpose of the message was to point out that when we use what we have to joyously invest in the cause of Christ, we are blessed with more so that we might continue to do so. Basically, what I'm saying is that Joel Osteen has got it halfway right. There is something to be said about being generous. When we give away our possessions in response to a call from the Lord, he blesses us with more. But Osteen is wrong in saying that we have earned that surplus or that we deserve it. Because we don't. Instead, God gives us surplus in life so that we might give it back to him. You can enjoy what you have, but it will go away. If you delight in the Lord while giving it away, he will bless you with more to continue your generosity. After the sermon ended, a woman from the congregation approached Bob, the pastor, and handed him a check saying, "This is my application. Please give this to the intern." The intern being me. When I received the check, I found it to be a sizable sum of money that I was in no way expecting. And honestly, I felt uncomfortable in deciding what to do with it. My immediate motivation was to find a financial need somewhere and address it with my newly found financial abilities. But when I talked to the associate pastor, Will, about my thoughts he challenged me on them and revealed something to me about myself.

Every reason I have conjured up in defense of giving this money away has been built upon reasoning from my flesh. I don't deserve it. I haven't earned it. I can live without it. But part of living in the Gospel is learning to be not only a cheerful receiver of gifts, but also a willing one. And this revealed something to me about my character. I'm not good at receiving gifts. That may seem like a humble and selfless quality to have, and I think it is, but it also has skewed the way I live out the Gospel. I can see this translating into my relationship with Christ. There are motivations within me, lurking in the darker corners that convince me that I have to live up to a standard of works that will allow me to be deserving of God's love and Christ's sacrifice. That perspective is where my reservations are coming from. I have nothing with which I can barter with God. All that I have is his that he has given to me out of grace. The acceptance of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is not something that I deserve nor is a relationship with him something that I can earn because it was given to me, and everyone else, "while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8). In other words, he died for me even though I did not deserve it and could not earn it in any way, but knowing all too well that I could not live without it. I have been praying about this situation for the past couple of days and as difficult as it has been for me to stumble over these character traits about myself, I am beginning to believe more and more that simply accepting this act of conviction in generosity by the woman on Sunday is a perfect opportunity for me to experience the Gospel in a way in which I struggle plainly. I consistently pray that the Lord would present me with opportunities to honor him, that he would open my eyes to see them, and that he would give me the courage to act upon them. The more I dwell upon this situation, the more I feel like God has given me that opportunity and opened my eyes to it and that now he is granting me the courage to accept it. I have to learn how to receive something before I can give it away.

This wasn't the beginning of this feeling though. It has slowly compounded since the beginning of the week and I am now getting clarity on the issue. It really began when I listened to the full-length version of the John Piper message in the sermon jam I wrote about in my last entry. The sermon was called, "Don't Waste Your Life" and he has written a book and started an entire organizational movement from this very message. The whole idea behind it is that the way we are supposed to walk in the Gospel is a thoroughgoing contrarian to the message of the world, or more specifically America. Our country says to work hard until old age and then retire into a life of leisure and comfort. In other words, the end goal is comfort. By the definition of the world, we shed blood, sweat, and tears for the sake of comfort. Here is an excerpt from Piper about this that has truly invaded my mind for the past few days:

"And I don't have any idea how long the Lord may give me. But my zeal not to waste my life is as alive today as it's ever been. Perhaps moreso because it feels so short before I stand before the Judge, King Jesus, and give an account of my life. What a tragedy in America. This is one of the biggest tragedies in our culture. That billions of dollars are invested every year to get people my age to waste the rest of our lives. Billions of dollars invested to persuade us and lure us at any cost, it seems, to waste the rest of our lives. It's called retirement. And in some, it goes like this: you've worked for it. Now enjoy it. Twenty years, perhaps, of play, leisure, ease, while the world, uncared for medically, uneducated, filthy water, poverty-stricken, unevangelized, sinks under the weight of healthy, sixty-five year old people playing bridge and shuffleboard and collecting shells and fishing and golfing their way into the presence of King Jesus. And you know what? You're gonna join them unless, at this stage in your life, you make some very radical decisions; very radical commitments; very radical choices about where your treasure is."

Tough stuff, isn't it? In concluding his sermon, Piper said there are three things that we have to realize in our pursuit of the Lord.
1) That Life and Death are gifts given in order to display the supreme worth of Jesus Christ.
2) You must cultivate a supreme treasuring of Christ above all things. If you're not there, labor and struggle with God to get there.
3) This treasuring of Him and displaying his worth is most clearly seen by what you are willing gladly to risk and sacrifice if he calls for the surpassing value of Christ.
It's not the American dream of escaping pain, hurt, and calamity. Instead, God's power is made perfect in our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12). Paul is counter-intuitive by boasting "all the more gladly" in his weaknesses. We waste our lives when we invest in comfort because that is not how we glorify the Lord.

Alongside this, I have also been listening to Matt Chandler in abundance recently and I always draw something from his sermons. One that I listened to yesterday was about Luke 18:15-18 in which Jesus says that we are to approach and receive the kingdom of heaven like little children. When you think about how little children, or babies, go about receiving things, this really becomes a tough passage to read. Babies cannot do anything on their own. Therefore, when they need something they scream and cry for it until they get it. Why? Because they are hopeless in their own abilities. Chandler says that this is how our relationship should be with Christ. And that idea has really played into the Piper sermon as well as my dilemma with the money. When I pursue my relationship with Christ thinking I have to earn his sacrifice rather than receive his gift and praise him for it, I am placing my hope in myself and, in a sense, am treasuring something other than Christ. A real pursuit of the Lord is found in being completely hopeless with yourself and crying out to the Lord for his saving grace. When we learn how completely hopeless we are to escape our own sins, we come to understand and feel how completely capable God is to forgive them. This really confirms for me even more that by receiving this money, I will be experiencing the Gospel in a way that will help me redefine and reset my perspective on my relationship with Christ.

If you made it to the end of this, thank you for reading. I know it was a lot, but some of the stuff I post on this blog is more for my sake in putting words to my thoughts than it is anything else. But if you are looking for something to be prayerful about with me, this is certainly an issue that will be on my mind in the future. That's all I've got for now. Here are pictures of the church office in which I spend most of my time and the recent "paint job" on my shoes..

Love you all!

"And I will walk on water. And you will catch me if I fall. And I will get lost into your waves. I know everything will be alright."
"Storm" by Lifehouse