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Sermons

Come in to the Party – Acts 15

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Right now, we’re sharing each week how we’ve seen God in our life, and each year when this date comes around, I’m reminded how blessed I am by this church family, and beyond that, how blessed our community has been by our presence in Hermitage. I’m happy to be a part of a church that if we were to just stop, people would notice. So thank you for being part of our story, and I’m looking forward to all that God might do in our midst in the next year.

Today, we’ll be continuing our series as we lead up to Easter, with a familiar parable of Jesus.

Let’s pray before we go further:
Lord, thank you for bringing us here together today, and thank you for 7 years here as New Garden. Thank you for the relationships that you’ve grown between us and for the relationships you’ve grown between our church and our community. Lord, as time passes, we ask that our presence here will continue to be a blessing to our neighbors. For the next little bit, God please speak to us. Give us a message from you today. If there’s anything that’s from me and not from you please just let it fall away from our ears. Help us to be more like Jesus, in His Name we pray, Amen.

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Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 Then Jesus told them this parable…:

“There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

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Today we’re talking about one of the most familiar stories in our Bibles. Probably one where even people who aren’t in a church this morning could get a lot of the details right if asked. Why does this story have such a widespread appeal? This is the type of story that draws us in. We can relate to it. We’ve all got family of some sort, and there’s probably a lot of us that have family or know families that portray a similar dynamic. An older son, the family standard bearer, going into the family business, and the younger son, who resists accepting the family expectations and wants to go out and see what all the world has to offer. And at the same time, I think this story sticks out to us because a lot of the characters actions in this story, specifically the father’s actions, are not the actions that we would expect. Not how our fathers would act, likely not how we would treat our kids were they to act like these sons.

Before we get too much into this familiar parable, I think it’s important that we take note of who Jesus is telling this parable to. When we read Scripture, the why is an important thing to interrogate. For what reason did Jesus tell this story? In verses 1 & 2 we see this:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher. But the people who wanted to be around him and hang out with him didn’t look much like most rabbis’ entourages. Most rabbis would be followed around by straight A’s, star students. They’d be around the synagogues teaching their disciples and discussing things with other rabbis and religious leaders. But Jesus wasn’t like most rabbis… His entourage looked different. Sure, he was around the synagogues, talking with the religious leaders, but he also had friends who you wouldn’t expect to be with a rabbi. People who normally wouldn’t like to be around the religious, wanted to be around Jesus. People who were rough around the edges, who would probably feel judged by most of the religious Jews, didn’t feel that way around Jesus.

The Pharisees don’t like this… The Pharisees are proud of their limited list of acquaintances. They’re proud that they don’t associate with tax collectors and people who don’t follow the rules. In fact, they are sort of using Jesus hanging out with these people to discredit him, to somehow prove that he’s not a legitimate teacher. Jesus knows their attitudes, so he tells them this parable. When we think about this parable, its good to keep in mind who this parable is for: both those regarded as sinners and these religious leaders.

And Jesus tells the story. A man had two sons, and the younger one comes to him and demands his share of the inheritance.

The younger son falls into a common misconception: that his father is holding out on him… You could argue that every sin has a root in this lie. Think about Adam & Eve in the Garden, the serpent plays into this, saying that God knows when you eat this your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like God, and God doesn’t want you to have that experience. Of course, God had this rule in place for Adam & Eve’s benefit, but they fell for the lie that God’s way wasn’t quite enough. This younger brother falls for it too, like we do sometimes. We start to think that we know best. That we need to break out of this lifestyle Jesus has outlined, or maybe more relatably, that we can hold back some things over here and still experience the deep life of meaning and goodness that God has for us.

We should also mention that this was a deeply hurtful and disrespectful request from the younger brother. He’s essentially telling his father, “I wish you were dead. I’d rather have your stuff than a relationship with you.” How would your dad react if you had made a request like that? How would you respond if your kid demanded that from you? This father isn’t completely like our fathers though, is he? He gives the son what he desires. He probably knows that this son isn’t going to use this inheritance wisely, but he gives it anyway. This father gives generously without strings attached. He doesn’t use his money to coerce his son into good behavior.

We know how the story goes, the son goes off to a distant land and wastes all of his dad’s money on partying, using it all to do what he thinks might make him feel good or be happy, but eventually the money runs out, and things go south. So he had to get a job feeding pigs. And it’s when he’s so hungry that he would eat pig slop that he hits rock bottom. Sometimes we have to get there before we realize what a mess we’ve made. It’s at this point that he comes to his senses. He remembers his father’s house. Even the servants there live pretty well, but he’s out here broke & starving.

So he makes a plan. He’s got his speech ready to go. He’s going to go home beg his father to take him back, to let him just be one of the servants at the house. It’s not the life he started with, but it’s a better plight than what he’s got right now. As he nears the house and he’s still a long way off, his dad spots him. His dad doesn’t see him coming and wait for him to knock on the door. His dad sees him coming and he runs to meet him. He wraps him up in a big hug, he kisses him on the face.

Just imagine this for a moment. A father running out to meet his adult son. Weeping and running, holding up his robe so it doesn’t drag on the ground. If this happened today it would go viral on Facebook and be on the Today show. Headline: elderly father runs to embrace his son who returned home.

The younger son says his little speech that he practiced, “I have sinned against heaven and against you, I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.” And his dad says it’s party time, put the best clothes on him and fire up the grill, we’re having steaks!

That’s a great story right!? God’s love for us is unmatched. There’s nowhere that we could ever go and nothing that we could ever do that would change God’s love for us. Whether this son was gone for a month or 10 years, we don’t know, but his father was waiting for him to come home and ready to embrace him when he did. God loves us like crazy. God wants those who have gone away to come home.

But that’s not the whole story, is it? Now if we went on the street and asked a non-Christian to tell the story, their recollection might end there, but the story actually keeps going. And part 2 is really important.

Meanwhile… the older brother was in the field and began to hear music. So he asks one of his father’s servants what’s going on, and he tells him that his brother has come home, and your dad is throwing a party because of it. So what does the brother do? “Woohoo! My brother is back! Thank goodness, we’ve been worried sick! I can’t wait to give him a big hug!” It doesn’t go like that, does it. The older brother pouts and refuses to come inside to the party.

But just like with the younger son, the father doesn’t wait inside the house, the father comes out to him and pleads with him to come inside. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

Though these brothers have gone about it differently, this response from the older brother reveals in a way that they aren’t that different. They both want their father’s stuff more than they want to have a relationship with their father. It turns out, this older brother has been keeping score. He knows that he’s done more right things than his brother, so he thinks he has earned his father’s extravagant gifts. What he fails to realize is that the greatest gift of all is not to get the father’s things, but the greatest gift is to be with the father.

I think the language that the older brother uses is really important. He says he’s been slaving for his father, not serving him. Do you see the difference there? Slaving away for something feels so much more transactional. Like we’re doing something so that when we’re finished we can get the reward that we’ve earned, but serving is something done out of love, based out of a relationship of care for the other’s well-being.

I also find it interesting that the older brother says that he has never disobeyed the father’s orders, except I guess the party invitation … He’s never disobeyed an order from his father and yet this relationship is clearly broken. The sin that separates the older brother from his father has nothing to do with his actions and everything to do with his attitude. He’s kept all of his father’s house rules, he’s gotten all of his work done, but there’s this great distance between them.

Here’s the thing: God cares more about the posture of our heart than the scorecard we’ve been keeping. If we are doing the “right” things just so we can we be rewarded for them, then we are just as lost as the younger brother who went and broke all of the rules. More than Jesus wants us to follow the rules, Jesus wants to have a relationship with us. The father says: don’t you see, we’re always together, everything that I have is yours. The Older Brother has missed it just like his brother. Having a close relationship with the father is the best gift, not the inheritance. Not the party.

I think the older brother is mad because he thinks his brother got to have his cake and eat it too. What he doesn’t realize is he’s had it better this whole time because he was at his father’s house. He’s had everything he’s needed this whole time. If you asked the younger son, I bet he’d say “I wish I had never left. I was missing it… I had everything that I could have ever needed, and I gave it up to chase things that left me empty.”

We see the younger brother’s change of heart where he admits his sin to his father, but we don’t see part 2 of the story resolve neatly.We don’t know whether the older brother comes inside, if he celebrates with his father and brother. And I think the reason we don’t know is because we get to decide for ourselves what we will do. This parable was an invitation from Jesus to the Pharisees to come to the party, and not turn their noses up at it, thinking that they’ve earned it and others haven’t. No, these tax collectors and sinners that hang around Jesus don’t do everything right, but they love Jesus. The relationship is the most important part.

And yes, I know I know, I hear the rebuttal in my head too. “If you love someone, you do what they say.” Even Jesus says this in John 14 “If you love me, obey my commands.” But obedience does not necessarily reflect love. You can do everything your boss says at work and not love them. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

The difference between the brothers at the end of the story is that one realizes he completely missed it and he is welcomed back, while the other thinks he’s got it all figured out, and he’s standing in the field sulking. His attitude is keeping him from a relationship with his father, not his actions.

Like the father did with the older brother, God has come to meet us with an invitation to come inside to the party. To lean into a relationship with God that is far more intimate than rule following and box checking. It’s easy for us to identify with one brother or the other in this story, but the character we want to be like is the father. Will we accept the invitation to become like the father in the story? Recklessly generous, completely forgiving, and willing to run out and invite others back home. Will we be on the party planning committee or will we be the party poopers? We get to choose!

Each Sunday when we go to the Table, we remember Jesus. Jesus, who was a friend to sinners. Jesus, who prioritized relationships over rules. Jesus, who invites us to come inside to the party, even when we’re being difficult. Let’s pray and then we’ll go to the Table:

Lord, thank you for Jesus and these teachings that penetrate our hearts in new ways as we come back to them over the years. This morning, remove those things in our lives that are keeping us from the good life you have for us. Humble us, so that we can see our need for you. Be with us as we go to the Table together this morning. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

This sermon was delivered on March 30th, 2025 at the New Garden Campus of Woodmont Hills Church. You can watch it here.

Sermons

God Wants to be With Us – Luke 13:31-35

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Good morning, everyone! I’m glad that you’re here with us today. So far this year, we’ve been talking through Acts each week. Seeing how the people of God, these followers of Jesus were attentive to what the Holy Spirit was doing in their midst, they were attentive to where God might be directing them to go, to whom God may want them to go. And we sort of saw that culminate in Acts 15 as the people of God are discerning together what it means for the body of Christ to transcend this ethnic and cultural divide between Jews & Gentiles.

From now until Easter we are going to move a little deeper into this theme of Noticing… Each week, we’re going to talk through a moment in the life of Jesus, hold it up, and examine what it might show us about the nature of God, and what that might mean for us. We’ll ask the question: how do we see that playing out in our lives? Each week, the invitation will remain to share how we are noticing God in our midst, Not just in the big flashy things, but in the small moments when another kid showed kindness to our kid, when someone in our life made a decision to make more room for Jesus, when we felt love on a hard day. In doing this, we are hoping that we will grow more aware of God’s work around us, so that we can join into that good work and bear witness to it.

Let’s pray before we continue this morning:

Lord, make us more aware of Your presence here in our midst. Help us to expect your work and movement in our homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Today, I just ask that you will speak, that we will receive a message from you that sinks deep down into our hearts and changes us from the inside out. If anything this morning is from me and not from you, God I just ask that it will fall out of our minds. Thank you for Jesus, and in His Name we pray, Amen.

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Luke 13:31-35

31 At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”

32 He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

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This story comes at a point in Jesus’ life and ministry where Jesus has set his sights on Jerusalem, and he’s heading there, knowing what lies ahead. In this Lenten season, we sort of join Jesus on this journey as we read along. We know what lies ahead. This epic moment at the cross where the ultimate showdown occurs: the powers of the world, the rulers and authorities do their best, but its in this moment, in Jesus’s willingness to endure and in God’s great love, that God wins. God triumphs over death at the cross and proves it at the resurrection. So we can think of all of these moments from Jesus life we’ll talk about from now until Easter as prequels, as these foreshadowing scenes as we walk to the cross and the empty tomb together.

So here’s Jesus as he’s traveling south towards Jerusalem. He’s performed all these miracles in the northern part of Israel and he has this following. He’s doing all of this teaching about prayer and against greed. And in this moment, we see these Pharisees come to Jesus and tell him to leave, that he is in danger. And we don’t know if this is warning from the Pharisees where they are legitimately concerned for Jesus’ safety. We don’t know if this is more of a threat from the Pharisees, but what’s important to note is that Herod is the person who they say wants to kill Jesus.

Now Herod is in this position of power, but it comes with a catch. He is in charge of the Jews in his jurisdiction of Judea, and at the same time he is having to answer to the Roman Empire. He’s sort of in this precarious middle man position. Herod has an interest in maintaining the status quo because the status quo keeps him in power. Jesus is a threat to that. He’s gaining all these followers. There’s people changing their hearts and minds, their allegiances, people envisioning a life for themselves and for Israel that is better than the one they currently inhabit. This is a problem for Herod. He’s not that different than folks in our world today who grab power and are willing to use whatever means necessary to hang onto it. Not so much concerned for the needs of the people they rule over, but very concerned for their own position, their own bottom line.

And we see Jesus’ response: You let Herod know that I’m going to keep doing what I do. I’m going to keep healing people, keep exorcising demons, I will continue to do what I have come to do until it is accomplished. This response from Jesus is strikingly resolute to me. If I got the message: Governor Bill Lee has heard what’s been happening in Hermitage, and he doesn’t like it. He wants you to end it, or else, I’d be taken aback. I’d have to go home and think about that one for a while. But Jesus knew that his purpose, his mission was so much bigger than the rulers and authorities of this world.

Then Jesus sort of comments on the history of Israel. That this is nothing new. God has been sending prophets to Jerusalem since its founding 1000 years earlier, and time and time again, God’s prophets have been written off, persecuted, and even killed. Looming large in Jesus’ mind is probably his cousin John the Baptist, who was beheaded by Herod. To Jesus, I can imagine this is a devastatingly sad state of affairs. For 1000 years, God has been sending prophets to the people of Israel, hoping that they will simply return to a right relationship with God, but they keep choosing other things. God wants to protect the people of Israel, to gather them like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but the people continually choose to be close to and experience security in other things.

Jesus knows, the only security the people of Israel need is found in God. Likewise, the only security we need is in God. But I think all to often, we decide that that’s not enough security for us, and that’s where the tension lies. We look for security everywhere else. This need to feel safe fuels our compulsion towards making sure that other people like us at all times, making sure that our stocks aren’t falling, keeping that cable news running so we know everything at all times.

In this story, Herod is the fox in the henhouse of Israel. He’s motivated to intervene in this momentum of God and the ministry of Jesus to protect himself and his position. But Herod is not ultimately the issue. Swap Herod out with someone else and there would be someone else or something else getting in the way of the people and a right relationship with God. Paul speaks to this in Ephesians 6:


12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Herod’s not helping the situation, but he’s not the main issue. Herod’s just a king doing what kings do.  This is a pattern. The people of Israel have been in this cycle for years. They have not been willing participants in an intimate partnership with God for the sake of the world. The struggle is not against Herod, its against what Herod represents: the powers of the world with whom we far too often cozy up to.

Yes, I am talking about how we mistakenly hope for these broken political systems to take care of us, but I’m also talking about how we believe that if I just had more money I’d be safe, and if I just had a better job, I’d be happy. I’m talking about how we take pride in our busyness when hurry is this great enemy of deep and abiding relationship with God. I’m talking about how we put all of this energy into the culture wars, pressuring others to become more like us instead of us focusing on becoming more like Jesus.

When we do these things, the Enemy has us right where he wants us. Love of other things ahead of Jesus, constant distraction, a full calendar with no room for God to add things to it. That’s no way to have a relationship with God.

What we learn from Jesus in this story is: God wants a relationship with us. God wants to take care of us. God wants to be with us. Jesus is the representation of God’s divine love for us and desire to be with us. Immanuel: God with us.

The question for us today is: will we open the door of our hearts, and minds, and calendars, and wallets to this God that wants to be with us? Jesus wants to be the Lord of our life, will we let him?

If the answer to that question is yes: then we must begin to embody the lifestyle of Jesus. Spend time in community with others, spend time alone in the quiet places with God, and do these things regularly. Lead others by example as we let go of those things in our life that keep getting in the way, things that are sucking away at God’s gifts to us of time and energy. A relationship with God through Jesus is not something we can simply add into our schedule or to-do list, it’s something we must orient our lives around.

The Creator of the universe knows you and wants to be known by you. That’s why Jesus came, to bring about a New Kingdom where all of us are gathered together in relationship with God. But God doesn’t force it on us. We get to choose. Will we choose to let Jesus pull us in close?

There’s these moments in our relationships that affect the intimacy level of a relationship. They affect our emotional proximity to each other. When I’m in our living room relaxing on the couch with the basketball game on and Wesley is playing on the floor, and he asks me to get down on the floor and play, I have a choice to make. Do I stay zoned out or do I engage? When we’re in our bedroom, and Madeline is telling me about her day before bed, do I keep scrolling, or do I put my phone away and connect? I can’t say I always engage in those moments like I should, but you know what, I never regret when I lean in to those moments, those bids for connection.

In our human relationships, if we don’t rise to meet the moment enough, those relationships sever and break apart over time. Fortunately for us, God’s love for us doesn’t diminish, no matter how many times we don’t rise to the moment. No matter how many times we have failed to respond to God’s invitation, God is ready and waiting for us to embrace new life. Jesus coming to earth was this great invitation to us into a loving relationship with the Almighty God, let’s respond to that. Maybe the right response for you is baptism where you publicly name Jesus as the Lord of your life. Maybe the right response for you is sitting down and taking things off your calendar. Maybe the right response for you is deciding to read the Bible for the first time ever, or the first time in a long time. Whatever that means to you, the invitation from Jesus is to come and be pulled close. Lean in.

As we go to the Table this morning, we remember Jesus, who was committed to us to the point of experiencing death on a cross, so that we can have life. When we share in this bread and juice together, we proclaim Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we hope for Jesus to come again soon. All are welcome at these tables.

Let’s pray:

Lord, thank you for Jesus. Thank you that you want to be with us no matter how many times we’ve resisted you and how many times we’ve chosen other things. Help us to see that the best life is in you, that your ways are better than ours, and help us to look to you only for joy, hope, and peace. Help us to be more like Jesus. In His Name we pray, Amen.

This sermon was delivered on March 16th, 2025 at the New Garden Campus of Woodmont Hills Church. You can watch it here.

Sermons, Uncategorized

All That God Had Done – Acts 14

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This year, we’ve been talking through the book of Acts in our Bibles each week. Commonly known as the Acts of the Apostles, but I think a better name would Acts of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit has been the primary mover, the primary animator, and the primary instigator in the stories we’ve waded into. From the very beginning of Acts where Jesus tells his apostles to wait for the Spirit to arrive, to the day of Pentecost, where the thousands of people gathered are overcome with the Spirit, speaking in tongues that they can all understand despite not all speaking the same language, to the community of believers selling their stuff and using the money to take care of the poor in their midst. To the miraculous healings, and the miraculous conversions of Saul and Cornelius. The Holy Spirit has inspired, motivated, and moved these followers of Jesus to give of themselves, to bring others into the fold in a radical way.

I’m excited for us to talk more about this movement of God a little more today. Let’s pray together:

Lord, thank you for being here with us. God, may we talk to You and listen for You as much as we talk about You. This morning, please provide a message for us, something that seeps deep into our bones and changes us from the inside out. If there’s anything today that’s from me and not from You, God I ask that it will fall away and be forgotten. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear what You have for us today. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

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Acts 14:26-28

26 From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. 27 On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they stayed there a long time with the disciples.

Last week, we talked about God’s radical inclusion in chapter 10. How Cornelius, a Gentile, along with his family was filled with the Spirit, about how Peter had a vision from God that made him change his thinking. God’s love and desire to be in relationship with humanity transcends cultural and ethnic boundaries in ways that Peter couldn’t have known without an interrupting experience with God.

Then in chapter 13, we see the church in Antioch prayerfully and obediently commission Paul & Barnabas to go and do the work that the Holy Spirit has for them to do. So they get going. They go from place to place preaching the good news about Jesus in the synagogues. The Holy Spirit is making this new mystery known: that God is reaching out to all people, not just the Jews. As they were going around, many people were coming to faith, people of high status and low status, Jews & Gentiles.

But it wasn’t all mountain peak moments of unity & kumbaya. Not everyone rolled out the welcome carpet for Paul & Barnabas. Yes, on their journey in chapters 13 & 14, there’s large groups of people turning to God, putting their faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and then being filled with the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit performed miraculous signs in their midst, but even so, in chapters 13 & 14 they get expelled from one place, they flee another because of the threat of danger, and in this place called Lystra, this crippled man at the city gate gets healed and because of that people think Paul & Barnabus are the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes and want to offer sacrifices to them, so Paul & Barnabas have to convince them that they’re not Zeus and Hermes. Then these Jews who had kicked them out of other cities showed up and turned the crowd against them, and Paul gets stoned and left for dead outside the city.

So this is a roller coaster ride. A lot of good, a lot of bad. They’re experiencing a lot of things that would make me want to give up, and yet, before returning back to Antioch, they go back through and encourage all these new believers saying “We must go through hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.” And they return back to their home church in Antioch, and they report all that God had done through them, how God had opened this new door for the Gentiles. How God is working in it all.

This singular focus that they have on what God has done and is doing among them sticks out to me. The way that Luke describes their report back to the church at Antioch sounds a little different than the way that I think we often tell stories from our lives. I think if we came back from a trip, even one where we felt God was leading us  as we went along, I think we’d probably describe it in us central terms: The craziest things happened to us. We were like preaching in the synagogues and a ton of people were there and they got baptized and now there’s these churches that are starting up because of it. And then the guy I was with got stoned, like not what we mean now when we say that, he got like rocks thrown at him and everybody thought he was dead. And then he was ok after all so we left town.

Do you see what’s missing from that description? Clearly God was in those stories, but when we tell stories we typically find a way to make ourselves the main character. And why is that?

I think there’s a few reasons. Maybe one of the most common reasons is that we maybe don’t want to over spiritualize things. We know there’s people in our world who use God as the mascot for whatever thing they want to happen, even if its not necessarily good, or beautiful, or just. I would guess a lot of us in this room came to faith within a group of people that had some doubts about the legitimacy of some other Christian groups and how they might interact with the Holy Spirit. I know that holds me back personally. As I heard Josh say earlier this week, and I think this is true for a lot of us, many of us probably came to faith within a group of people, that believed “Ya know, God just doesn’t work like that anymore.” So the scope of what we might contribute to God’s work in our world or our life is sort of narrowed down to explicitly answered prayers like for a loved one to be healed or for us to get that job we’ve prayed for.

But as we’ve been walking through Acts together, I feel like I want more of this. This kind of relationship with the Holy Spirit, where we can sit together and ask God to take us where God wants us to go, and trust that the Holy Spirit is going to take it from there. Where we ask God to present opportunities for us and actually are willing to accept what falls into our lap.

There’s a common phrase in the circles I think a lot of us run in. The phrase “it was just a God thing.” And I think we use this phrase to describe when something works out in a great and unexpected way. Like for instance, when I get a call out of the blue from a random phone number the day before a Mobile Food Pantry and its FedEx, saying they’re going to bring 30 volunteers, that was a God thing right?

I don’t want you to hear me knocking that phrase because I think it gives us a good shorthand way to talk about how we saw God work in our world or life, but at the same time, we shouldn’t limit our understanding of how God works to serendipitous God thing moments we encounter.

Yes, it’s a God thing when we run out of gas on the side of the road and a fellow church member sees us and just happens to have a gas can in their car, but its also a God thing when we watch our friend become a better father over the years as a result of their relationship with Jesus. It’s also a God thing when a loved one passes away and we have brothers and sisters in Christ who will sit with us, and grieve with us, and pray for us. It’s also a God thing when our neighbor trusts us enough to ask us to put their trash can out when they’re out of town.

The idea that we’re talking about is God’s immanence. This theological concept that the God who created our universe still is active and present in creation today. From Ephesians 4: There is one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. Or as Paul tells the Athenians in Acts 17, in God we live and move and have our being… If we take seriously this notion that God is present with us in every moment of our lives, and not just a passive observer, then our language should reflect that belief. If God is an active participant with us in life, then we should talk about God in that way.

And Paul and Barnabas believed that. They report back to the church in Antioch all that God has done. God opened doors to new believers, God carried them through persecution, and God retuned them back to this family of God who sent them with blessing. God prompted, they responded. God lead, they followed. God did the thing, and now they are bearing witness to that truth.

During Sundays in Lent, there will be an ongoing invitation to share how you have noticed God in your life. Each week, there will be a link in the newsletter to upload of photo that represents a story. A story of how you saw God breaking into your world, your day-to-day life. As we’ve talked about today, God is immanent, meaning that God is here. God is with us in the big moments, and God is with us in the small moments.

There’s a 17th century monk, Brother Lawrence, who had this deep belief and passion for relationship with God. He was a cook and a dishwasher at his monastery in France. He wrote a book called The Practice of the Presence of God. In this book he talks about how God is present in the ordinary and the mundane things. He believed these basic everyday tasks, like washing dishes, was a way to connect with God. I first heard about his idea when I was like 18 or 19 years old. I had always wondered how it was possible for us to pray without ceasing like what Paul writes to the church in 1 Thessalonians. Prayer doesn’t have to be confined to our room at night on our knees with our hands nicely folded. Prayer can be a way of life. A way of inviting God into every moment.

As we talked about on the first Sunday of this year in January, both as a church and as individuals, we should be sailboats, not row boats. As sailboat captains, we still have a job to do, our job is to get the sails set up in a place to catch the wind. Let’s get our sails ready and go where the Holy Spirit takes us. We can only do that if we are living attentively, aware of and watching for the presence of God in our midst, when those moments of goodness, justice, peace, and love burst through the noise around us. Let’s walk open handedly into our world this week and, like Paul and Barnabas, report back all that God does.

As we go to the Table this morning, we remember Jesus. We remember the moments from Jesus’ life that we read about in Scripture, and we remember that Jesus is here with us in this room right now. We remember all the ways that God has worked in our lives, in big ways and small ways. In short moments of time and in the long nitty gritty of heart transformation. Let’s remember all that God has done in us, through us, and among us as we go to the Table today.

Let’s pray:

God thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for listening to us, and thank you for working in ways that we both see and don’t see. Help us to draw near to you and be more and more aware of how you’re leading us and working in and around us. Thank you for Jesus, through whom we have access to this relationship with you in the Spirit. Help us to be more like Him. In Jesus Name we pray, Amen.

This sermon was delivered on March 2nd, 2025 at the New Garden Campus of Woodmont Hills Church. You can watch it here.

Sermons, Uncategorized

Bearing Witness – Acts 3-4

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Good morning! Today we are continuing our series as we start the year in the book of Acts. If you remember, Acts is the story of how God worked to form and grow this small group of Jesus’ followers into a multi-cultural, multi-national group of churches. A couple weeks ago, we talked about how Jesus’ command to his disciples in Acts 1 is to wait for the Holy Spirit. How we should be people who are attentive to where the Holy Spirit is leading us. Last week, we talked about how being led by the Spirit, this group of Jesus followers took on this lifestyle that looked different from the people around them as a response to the work of the Spirit in their midst. Today, we’re going to see how these apostles bear witness to the movement of the Spirit.

Let’s pray before we go any further:
Lord, thank you for our time together today. Thank you for using this weekly gathering to encourage us and form us into people who are more like Christ. If there’s anything from me today that’s not from you, God, I just ask that you will remove it from our hearing. Give us a message today that can plant itself in our hearts and grow us into who you want us to be. Thank you for Jesus, in His name we pray, Amen.

______________________________________________________________________________

Acts 4:1-14
The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. 3 They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. 4 But many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand.

5 The next day the rulers, the elders and the teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. 6 Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and others of the high priest’s family. 7 They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: “By what power or what name did you do this?”

8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, 10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11 Jesus is
“‘the stone you builders rejected,
    which has become the cornerstone.’[a]

12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say. 

So let me try and set the stage a little bit for what we just read. Before this, in chapter 3 of Acts, Peter and John are heading up to the Temple when they encounter a lame man, a beggar who asks them for money. Peter and John tell him we don’t have any money, but in the Name of Jesus, get up and walk. So, he gets up and he’s rejoicing! This miracle just happened. All three of them head on into the Temple and the people around are going crazy. Not every day you see a miracle happen, and they know it to be a miracle because they know this guy, they’ve seen him there day after day, and now all of a sudden here he is walking around with these two other guys saying he’s been healed.

Well of course, this draws a lot of attention to them. People are starting to think that this Peter & John guy are miracle workers. God has worked in a mighty way, and instead of accepting even an ounce of credit, Peter quickly lets the people know what really happened. He says this miracle wasn’t by us. That guy that was crucified, that you all wanted to be crucified, he’s the reason for this. And the truth is that most of you didn’t know any better when Jesus was put to death, but now you do. So if you are having a change of heart and want to undergo a heart and life transformation, now is the time. All those prophets you know about in Israel told your ancestors about this guy. Jesus was legit, the real deal. So come get on board and be renewed.

Peter and John had waited for the Spirit to arrive, and they had been attentive to the Spirit, and they just participated in this miraculous moment of healing, and now they are bearing witness to that. They aren’t willing to accept any praise from this. They are taking this moment of wonder and awe and pointing the people towards the good news of Jesus.

This is what we are going to see over and over as we work through Acts over the next couple months. People are attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit, God moves in power through healings, prison breaks, and blinding lights, and the people of God bear witness to what God has done. Amazing things happen, and the people of God aren’t quiet about it. They step out and let people know that God is responsible, inviting those around into a renewed life.

And this is where chapter 4 starts…
While Peter and John are testifying to the Lordship of Jesus and the power of the Spirit to enter our world in mighty ways, the religious leaders step in. Peter and John are preaching this good news of resurrection and they don’t want that spreading around. That would mean that they were wrong in their assessment of Jesus. This could unseat these religious leaders’ place in society, and that’s not what they want! So they take Peter and John and throw them in jail. But these religious leaders were too late, a bunch of people heard and accepted what Peter and John were proclaiming, the church grew.


So the next day, they bring Peter and John in from jail and ask them “by what power or what name did you do this?” See there’s no debate that this did indeed happen. That crippled beggar who has been hanging out by the gate near the Temple, now he’s walking around. There’s no debate that it happened, they just want to know, how do you explain such a thing? And I wonder what in their mind they were hoping Peter and John would say. I don’t know, but what I do know is this: Peter and John once again took this opportunity to bear witness to what God had done. This was a miracle done by the power of and in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Peter & John were attentive to the Holy Spirit, God worked in a mighty way, and now they are bearing witness to what God has done. And this is what we are called to do as well. We are supposed to invite God into our lives and into our world, be attentive to ways that God may be moving in our midst, and give God glory for the ways that we see God working. We bear witness to what God has done.

So why do we bear witness? I think most of us know that we should tell people about how we’ve seen God work, but maybe we’re not sure why. So let’s talk about it. For starters, I think sharing how we’ve seen God work helps other people gain some language or understanding that they didn’t have before. For instance, there have been times in my life when there were people who I was having a really hard time dealing with. I didn’t want to see them, and you all know this, we don’t always get to choose who we interact with. And through prayer, I have seen God work in my heart over time to help me view people more fondly and to forgive people that I have had conflict with. That’s bearing witness to a way God has worked, and there could be someone I share that with who may think, I’ve never thought about how God could change the way I feel about someone, that’s cool.

Another reason I think its important to bear witness is to encourage each other. Throughout our lives we’re not going to always feel the same way about God and how we’re seeing God move. This weekend the shepherds and ministers from both campuses had a little retreat where we prayed together and shared how we have seen God moving in the last year. On Friday night we shared moments of joy that we were able to experience in 2024. At the end, one of the shepherds was really moved and said thank you for sharing these moments of joy because the last year was really hard for her. They spent most of last year dealing with a tough diagnosis and the beginning of treatment for a loved one. There’s a lot of those days in our lives where its hard to see God working, but when we bear witness to what God is doing, it can encourage those who aren’t seeing it in the moment.

And finally, I think its important to bear witness to what God is doing so that God gets the glory for what’s happening. When I think about our Mobile Food Pantries, and how many people in our community got fed last year, I want you to know that those were successful because of God’s faithfulness and provision. I promise you its not because of our elaborate planning and good strategy. God continues to provide volunteers from unexpected places to come and serve in the Kingdom, and many of them don’t even have an understanding that that’s what they’re doing. If it was all up to our planning and our precision, we’d be falling way short on a lot more stuff. God is working among us. James 1 says that every good and perfect gift comes from God. We praise God for the good things that we see and experience.

So we know we should and maybe now we have a few reasons why, but what keeps us from bearing witness to what God is doing? Why don’t we do this more? I think there’s a few reasons that we don’t do this as much as we should. Number one, I think we’re a little too afraid of being socially weird. We don’t want to be that guy who’s always bringing up God, and we’re afraid that this may turn people off. And this concerns me, because I think sharing with people how we experience God working in our life is one of the lowest hanging fruits of evangelism. Like, sharing the good news of Jesus doesn’t have to be complicated or formal or even that thorough. When we share how God is transforming us or showing up in ways we didn’t expect, we are sharing our faith.

I think that another reason that we don’t bear witness to what God is doing is because we’re not looking to see what God is doing. I think we sort of operate on auto-pilot most of the time when it comes to the spiritual element of our lives. We’re so distracted and concerned with other things, that we don’t take the time to pause and reflect on what God might be up to among us. Furthermore, I think our understanding of how God might work or move in our midst is way too narrow. Can we ask God to wake us up to the work that we don’t yet see or know? So how can we slow down and be attentive to God? How can we wait? Practices like prayer and Sabbath help us resist the distractions and concerns of the moment and lean into listening and watching for God.

And finally, I think many of us probably feel too insignificant or too insecure. We don’t think our bearing witness to God matters. Well, if that’s the case, I’ve got news for you, God uses people like you. The religious leaders in this story were amazed because Peter and John are out here sharing how God is working with the people and they were just uneducated Galileans, just some country bumpkins. God wants to use us no matter our education, our race, our socio-economic status, our gender, whatever.

God is in the business of using people of all kinds to share the good news of the kingdom of God, and we’re going to see more examples of this as we continue to work our way through Acts. You are not too small a voice or too untrained to share how you experience God. God can work through us in mighty ways, but are we willing to share with each other and those outside of this room what God is doing?

Let us be people who begin to bear witness to what God is doing among us, the ways that God is transforming us, the ways God provides for us, the ways that God intervenes in our world for good. Let’s trust that God will show up for us and share that in our circles when it happens.

Each week, we go to the Table together as a way of bearing witness to one another as to what Jesus has done for us. The bread and juice at the tables around the room symbolize Jesus’ body and blood. And in eating and drinking this together we remember Jesus, who came and lived, died and was resurrected. Jesus is alive, and we celebrate that together at the Table today. All are welcome to join us at the tables around the room.

Let’s pray:
Lord, thank you for the ways that you work in us and around us, both those ways that we see and can articulate and the ways we can’t. God, wake us up to your work in our midst, and give us the boldness to bear witness to your movement among us. Help us to be more like Jesus. In His Name we pray, Amen.

This sermon was delivered on January 19th, 2025 at the New Garden Campus of Woodmont Hills Church. You can watch the video here.

Faith

I knew. But I didn’t know

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15 years ago today, I was baptized. I was fourteen. It was mid-November and for whatever reason, on that day the water heater for the church baptistery was down. It was cold. I remember wearing the church’s button up onesie and how it was really uncomfortable, especially soaking wet. I remember how loved I felt in that moment by God, my family, and my church family.

I think I got baptized for a few reasons. I thought it was the right thing to do. I wanted to go to heaven when I died. And thirdly, I wanted Jesus to be the Lord of my life. I knew then that following Jesus was something I wanted to do. But I didn’t know how my faith would grow and change and expand over the next fifteen years. I knew. But I didn’t know.

On Sunday, a boy from our church made the same decision and was baptized while surrounded by family and friends. He knows God is good. He knows that he wants to follow Jesus. But I doubt he knows all that life holds for him – how his faith will grow and shift. He knows. But he also doesn’t.

In that cold baptistery, I had no idea all the places that my faith would go over the next fifteen years. Learning more ways to trust God and experience the Holy Spirit in Scripture, silence, and song. Losing many appendages of what my fourteen-year-old faith was as I transitioned to adulthood. From doubting that I could live into who God was calling me to be, to doubting God’s power and goodness in general. From feeling like a faith success story to feeling like a failure. I might have known a little in that baptistery, but I didn’t know much.

Through it all, I believe God has been consistently present and benevolent in my life. Both when I have felt the presence of God most strongly and when I have doubted God’s existence, I have come out on the other side with new perspective. I’ve learned that God doesn’t live up on the mountain, God comes down to live with us wherever we are. On a street corner in San Francisco, on a hill in Scotland, awake in bed late at night, at the end of a broken relationship, and everywhere in between, God finds us.

Baptism isn’t a course you need prerequisite courses to enroll in. It’s a person’s decision to do the following Jesus thing. It’s not an end goal, it’s not a checkpoint. And with that, we must accept that we don’t know what we’re signing up for. None of us do. We don’t know how our life of following Jesus will go. Will it look like we hope? Will it look like our mentors’ lives? We can’t know. But what we can know is that we are attaching our life to something that is so much bigger than ourselves. We are committing to walking that narrow road with Jesus. And sometimes we’ll stop and won’t make any progress for a while, and sometimes we’ll turn and go the other way, but God will be there with us through it all.

So baptism is a wonderful decision to make and thing to do, but that moment in the water is brief. I don’t remember too much about that day, but I remember a feeling of clarity and knowing. And while I have come to realize that we can only know so much, at the end of the day, I know for sure that Jesus is someone that I want to be like – someone I want to follow. I’m sure in fifteen years (Lord willing) I’ll look back at who I am now and think that I knew a little, but I definitely didn’t know everything.

So we can rest easy in what little we know. There’s a God who loves us wholly and totally simply because we exist. We can move in faith trusting that God will be with us no matter what comes or changes.

Let’s go and do it. We may not know much, but we know enough.

Faith, Faith and Culture

Enough Blessing To Go Around

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Over the last month or so, I have been listening to the Bible Project’s podcast series called Firstborn: The Last Will Be First. They do really great work if you’re not familiar with them – making layered scholarly studied of the Bible approachable and understandable for us regular folks. In this series, they’ve been talking through the biblical theme of The Firstborn, which, when closely examined, plays itself out differently than I would’ve thought.

Culturally in Old Testament times (and still today in some sense), the firstborn son was to be the one who was blessed with an extra portion of inheritance and was to take on the responsibilities of the family leader after their father died or lost the capacity to fulfill those roles. While this may be the cultural norm, God often operates outside this birth order rule when choosing who to annoint, bless, or carry out His plans.

In the very beginning, God creates those who will rule over creation last, not first.

God favors Abel’s offering over his older brother Cain’s.

God chooses a people through the family line of Shem, the middle of Noah’s sons, not Japheth, the oldest brother, or Ham, the youngest brother.

God blesses the world through Abraham’s second child Isaac, instead of Ishmael, his oldest son.

God turns Jacob (or Israel) into a great nation, not his older brother Esau.

The list goes on and on and on.

While God is doing this, we see struggle from those not initially blessed by God:

Cain kills his brother Abel.

Ham seeks to establish himself as the family alpha.

Sarah struggles with Abraham’s second wife Hagar providing a son first.

Jacob and Esau struggle over Isaac’s blessing for the firstborn.

In all of these stories, there is an underlying human myth that is causing these conflicts: That there is not enough of God’s blessing for everyone. If we don’t get it first, we might get left out. This lack of trust that they will be taken care of causes people to do evil in the world: take life and deceive, jostling for position to receive blessing first.

This myth of scarcity: That there will not be enough for everyone, permeates our culture still today. Even in our Christian communities. We draw lines explicitly and implicitly communicating who is in and who is out. It is completely draining to me how much of what I see online is Christians debating who will receive blessing from God and who will not.

Jesus entered our world proclaiming a new Kingdom, one devoid of cultural lines separating those who are blessed from those who are cursed. Jesus was spreading the news that whoever believes in Him would be blessed. There is enough for all, just believe and come into the light (John 3:14-21). We don’t need to jostle for position, in fact, like Jesus we can put others above ourselves. In this new Kingdom, the first will be last.

Somewhere along the way, we have begun to follow people besides Jesus. We have been convinced that there is not enough, so we have to decide who is outside the blessing of God. Now we spend way too much time arguing, debating, and condemning the world that God sent Jesus to save.

Jesus came proclaiming good news to the poor and the outcast. Let’s do more of that. There is enough.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.  This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.“
John 3:16-21

LINK: Here’s a great 5 minute video resource on the theme of The Firstborn in Scripture!

Faith, Faith and Culture

Practical Wisdom – Reading James Together

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Last night we had the youth group students over to our house, as we often do. We normally have a meal together and then have a discussion-based devotional. I love being able to have them over, but sometimes the discussion is more difficult than others. Teens these days have a lot on their minds. There’s the stuff that has always been on teens’ minds: school stresses, crushes, self-esteem issues, family angst, but now all those things are amplified by their awareness of everything all at once thanks to smartphones, the internet, and social media.

With all of that swirling around in their heads, its hard to want to dive deep into Scripture – actually, I don’t think its a lack of wanting to, but its a quicker frustration with not immediately reading and understanding well enough to have some thoughts. In our culture of immediacy, sitting and soaking a text up can be hard because we’re not used to doing those things.

Last week, we read Hebrews 11. I’m not sure we got past verse 1:
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what we do not see.” This is a great piece of text, but it’s so abstract! It’s so easy to get caught up in the semantics (just the English, not even the Hebrew/Greek) and lose the point. So many words to define. And after that we have to think about what this means for us, examples from our lives etc etc. I know that last week was fine, good, and helpful because we were together in our home reading the Bible, praying together, and talking about our faith, but afterwards Madeline and I were kind of left wondering whether we had all really “gotten it.”

Contrast that with last night. We’ve been reading through James as a church, and this week we talked about James 2:1-13, so last night we read it and talked about it with our students. It starts like this:

“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?“

After we finished this portion, our resident eighth grader blurted out: “That is the easiest to understand part of the Bible that I have ever read!” It was a beautiful moment. She heard something from the Bible and it made sense to her. So of course, we didn’t call it a night and all head home, we talked about it. Sometimes following Jesus isn’t nearly as hard as we make it to out to be with all of our meetings and word studies. Simply put: Love everyone. Don’t treat people better or worse based on what they have or don’t have.

I’ve really enjoyed listening to, reading, and talking about the book of James with our church family over the last few weeks, and we’ve still got a few weeks to go! If you want to read and talk about the Bible with your family – or you want to think about how Christians should live – I recommend James as a great place to start. It’s Christian Living 101.

Blessings!
MC

Book Reflection, Faith

Book Reflection: The Pursuit of God

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If you read my last post, you know that my reading of this book comes on the heels of reading The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God has been a very fitting follow up.

The Pursuit of God is a classic for modern Evangelicals in the West, and it’s easy to see why. Tozer’s point: God is here with us, now, inviting us into a relationship. Because of that, the book asks the questions: why are we not taking advantage of that opportunity to commune closely with God? And how can we get there?

Perhaps my number one take away from the book is this: In order to move into the relationship God is inviting us into, we must acknowledge God in all the moments we live out: the big, the small, the mundane, the heartbreaking, and the joyful. In acknowledging God’s presence, we can give each moment over to God, aligning our lives more and more with God’s will, strengthening our connection with our divine Father.

What does this look like in practice? I tried to talk this out with our church’s youth group on Sunday night. I think the Apostle Paul encapsulates this idea well:

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17

Our lives cannot be segregated out into different containers, God is with us in every instance. Whether we’d like to or not, we can’t escape the presence of God, as David describes in Psalm 139:

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.“

Just because we haven’t been making ourselves aware of God’s presence with us in every moment, doesn’t mean God has not been with us. So how can we pray without ceasing? How can we acknowledge God in our midst in the different things we do throughout the day? What I recommended to our students is a simple prayer as they enter school, work, etc.:

God, please be with me as I __________ today. Make me aware of your presence in each moment, so that I may give thanks for the good in my life and that I may be comforted and strengthened when challenges arise.

Perhaps the bit from Tozer that connected me instantly back to Comer’s book is the multitude of things that we must have surgically removed from our hearts, so that God can fill the space. These areas differ for all of us, but we can be so preoccupied with our things, that God’s presence seems like a foreign concept or a faint memory from long ago.

Perhaps this preoccupation with worldly things is actually what’s burning us out. Jesus offers something better:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Trade in your load for the yoke of Jesus. Unburden yourself. Before this invitation, Jesus says this:

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.  All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.“

Let us become once again like little kids at the feet of Jesus: unconcerned with titles, square footage, and 401k’s. Let’s go about our lives holding the hand of our Father.

At the end of each chapter in the book, Tozer shares a prayer. I have adapted one that I found to be extremely convicting for my life and our culture. I will share that in conclusion.

The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing:

Father, I want to know You, but my weak heart is scared to give up its stuff. I can’t give it up with out pain, and I am trying to be open about that fear. I’m scared, but I’m here.

Please remove all the things that I have given myself to that have become a part of me, so that You may enter free of resistance. Then You can make Your home beautiful. Then my heart will need no light from outside because You will fill me with all the light and warmth I need. 

In Jesus Name, Amen.

Blessings,
MC

Faith

With-ness

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Happy New Year! This morning at New Garden Church we met online to kick off 2023. I was able to provide the message this morning via video, but I wanted to share it here in blog form! May we all experience a deep with-ness with God and each other this year. You can find that gathering in its entirety on YouTube here.

We are officially in the resolution season of the year. I’m generally not a resolution type of guy, but I personally do like using this time to reset and get some things in order, and try start the new year off on the right foot. I hope that today, with our time together, we can do that too. I won’t be throwing any new and crazy ideas at you today, but I hope that our church can take some things to heart over the next year, and that today’s message begins that journey.

Please pray with me.

God, this morning are thankful for a new year and all that it may have for us. We know that the next year will hold both joy and sorrow, and God we ask that you give us the community and faith we need to grow in both of those times. Fill us with your Spirit, and be with me today as I try to speak a message from you. Anything that’s not from you, God I just ask that it will be dropped from our minds. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

As we are exiting the Christmas season, the piece of the story of Jesus birth that has stuck out to me the most was that Jesus was to be called Immanuel, which means God with us. That before Jesus, God had not lived on earth as a human among the people, but in Jesus, God was with us. And most of us probably know the story, that Jesus was here on earth, teaching people about this new Kingdom of God and performing miracles – even raising people from the dead. And most of us also know that out of love, Jesus was killed, but three days later rose from the grave, and later ascended into heaven.

And after Jesus ascended into heaven, was God no longer with us? No! In Acts chapter 2, we see God send the Holy Spirit into the people at Pentecost. And this Spirit remains in us today, giving us the opportunity to be an instrument of God’s power and love. God is with us today through the Holy Spirit. With you right now!

One cool thing about it though isn’t just that God is with us, but God is with God too, and always has been. That may sound weird to say, but its true. In Genesis 1, as God is creating everything over those 6 days, and on the 6th day, he says this:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”

And while this is a mind-blowing text for many reasons – for starters, we’re created in the image of God – what I also take away from this text is that God is not alone, God experiences togetherness too, and has since the beginning. It’s different than if I went on vacation by myself and said that me, myself, and I had a great trip. The way we believe that works is that God the Father, God the Son aka Jesus, and God the Spirit aka the Holy Spirit, created the universe together. We get a similar picture in John chapter 1, where he references Jesus as The Word:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Jesus is both God and He was with God in the beginning. It’s a really cool idea. And so this idea of community – or as I want to call it today: with-ness – goes way back to before time began. God has been experiencing this since forever, and its core to who God is. And I also think its core to who the bride of Christ – the Church – is intended to be. We’ve talked about God with us, and God with God, and now we’re talking about us with us.

It’s not shocking to me, in this context, that God has created a group of people, the church, to be the image of God here on earth. We are to be a light to the nations, a witness of God’s goodness in the world, but without the with-ness we’re talking about, our witness will fall on deaf ears. The church must be deeply committed to community and togetherness in order to share the gospel in a way that draws people in. I think that when the church started, they really understood this idea and put it into practice. In Acts chapter 2, immediately after thousands of new believers came to faith in Jesus, it reads:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.

They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

So I have a couple questions for us to think about this morning, and I want us to put some thought to it, and whatever our answers are, I want to put these things into practice in 2023.

The first question is this: How can we create a church culture of with-ness this year? How can we be a group of people that is connected in a way that mirrors the connectedness of God and the church we’ve read about today in Acts 2?

For starters, I would like to challenge everyone to host someone from our church in your home this year, bonus points if you host someone that you aren’t already buddies with! I know there’s a lot of reasons we could come up with why we shouldn’t do this: my home’s a mess, my kids are crazy, I never cook, etc, etc. – but you’ve probably had this experience, I know I have: when we see someone’s home, we get them on a level we probably didn’t before. Our connection is instantly deeper. We can offer these people more grace and understanding in our interactions. Hospitality is a Christian value, and while you may not consider it your personal spiritual gift, practicing hospitality helps us grow.

Another way I think we can cultivate this with-ness is by praying together. So this year, one of my hopes and goals is that there will be more opportunities to pray together, on Sunday mornings, and other times. Praying together – like hosting someone in your home – provides a window into someone’s life – their passions, their struggles, their dreams – that leads us to a deeper connection and mutual understanding.

How can we cultivate a culture of with-ness in our communities? We often talk about being a group of people who are FOR Hermitage. We definitely want to be a group of people who are willing to provide support in our communities, but how can also be WITH our communities in 2023?

Attend an event in your neighborhood! This could be an HOA meeting, a town hall meeting, a block party, a cookout, anything. Sometimes, I think its easy for churches to fall into the trap of trying to be the directors and creators of every community event, and while that’s a great thing, there can be tremendous value in joining into the good things that are already happening around us. We can be both WITH our communities and FOR them.

So we’ve talked a lot about how we can do the us with us portion of the Christian life well this morning, so now let’s ask a question about the God with us portion:

How can we experience a deep with-ness with God this year? This is the one that I think we as a church do the best talking about! And every week we come together, sing, share communion and remember Jesus. So I don’t have any earth shattering ideas that will change your life this morning. But I’ll say this: we have to connect with God outside of Sundays.

You know me, I love the Titans – probably too much. Things haven’t gone well of late… After the 5th straight loss last week to the Texans, Coach Vrabel said in a press conference that he didn’t know what a lot of the guys were doing outside of the 8-4 work day in preparation for the upcoming games, pointing to that as a possible reason the team is falling short of their hopes for the year. And sometimes I think our faith and our connection to God is the same way. God isn’t asking us for a few hours a week, God is inviting us to a transformed life. A lifestyle overhaul.

In Deuteronomy chapter 6, God commands the Israelites:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

God is commanding the Israelites to not merely offer weekly sacrifices at the Temple, but to pass this lifestyle on to their children, to talk about God often, and put these words from God on their hands and head and walls. Maybe we don’t spend a lot of time walking along the road, but we don’t spend a lot of time driving around – especially in Nashville traffic these days! This is one I need to practice more: do I need to hear another hour of sports talk about Titans roster moves?? No! I need more reminders of the goodness of God in my life. That can be conversations in the car, songs that point us towards Jesus, or even a little bit of quiet reflection.

1 Thessalonians 5 tells us to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances, which is pretty clear to me that we’re being told to give our all to Jesus and this Kingdom lifestyle he has brought to earth.

So that’s my challenges to us this morning: Try new things this year to experience a deep with-ness with God and each other this year.

One way that we experience Immanuel – God with us – every week is through our practice of communion. As we go to the table this morning, we can invite Jesus into our hearts, minds and actions over the next year. Let us give Jesus all of us, so that we can experience this Kingdom life He has called us into.

Let’s pray,

Lord, thank you for this day, and for this new year. God in this year, let us give ourselves to your teachings and love in a way that transforms our lives and the lives of the people we encounter. Fill us, our homes, our communities, and our workplaces with your Spirit so that we can become more like Jesus. In his name we pray.

Let’s go to the Table.

Faith, Faith and Culture, Uncategorized

A “too political” Essay for Christians Like Me

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I haven’t written much lately. That’s not because there hasn’t been anything going on in our world or in my life, and it’s definitely not because I didn’t have any thoughts about what’s been going on in the world or in my life. I think that for most of the last year, I decided that I needed to take a step back for several different reasons. I thought that I was talking a lot, and I needed to listen more. I was afraid that people may start to view me as too political (ugh, I know), or that I was ignoring the parts of myself that needed work because I was consistently pointing out the flaws and injustices of everyone else while ignoring the issues that I was causing or having to deal with. I think in many ways, I stopped believing that anything I did or said on the internet could or would affect positive change or growth in the world outside of my computer screen.

Let me state that I am not a perfect vessel for any sort of justice work, and I know that. But, I am going to try my best and likely say things imperfectly because I think I’m supposed to try. I’m afraid that there are many other people out there like me who want to say something, but they’re afraid to because it may come out wrong, so instead they don’t use their voice at all. So here goes nothing:

 

I thought I would eloquently write some memoir-ish style stories from my own life and weave them into many of the issues I care about, but that’s not where my head is at today. Instead I think I’ll just give it to you straight. It will save you some time reading and save me some stories for another time. There’s also too many issues swirling in my head to do that well.

Christian friends, please remember when reading: I love you. Even if I disagree with you, I don’t hate you. I love you.

Here’s some things those professing Christianity should consider in 2020:

Ending the Death Penalty:

In 2020, two millennia after the cornerstone of the Christian faith, Jesus, was put to death by the state, why is the Death Penalty still legal, and why are the majority of the supporters Evangelical Christians like me? In my home state of Tennessee, there have been 12 executions since 2000. There were not any executions in Tennessee in the 20 years leading up to 2000. Why do so many claim Pro-Life stances and then support the premature ending of life? Professed Christian and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has the authority to pause all scheduled executions via gubernatorial moratorium (California, Colorado, Oregon, and Pennsylvania), but he has ignored his standing invitation to go and pray with the death row inmates in Tennessee. Where is the grace in this legislation? Is the justice of the Kingdom of God found in such retributive justice? For each of our sakes, I hope that Kingdom Justice is found in other ways. Ending life is not a redemptive act. Jesus stood down a group of people ready to stone a woman, and they all dropped their stones and went home. Perhaps followers of Jesus should do the same.

Welcoming Refugees:

You’ve likely heard this before, so I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but after Jesus was born, his family had to flee to Egypt because the land of Israel was not safe for him. So yes, Jesus was a refugee. That’s in Matthew 2:13-23 for the fact checkers. Other of our Bible friends were refugees – like Ruth. Aren’t we glad that Boaz welcomed her? They ended up being some of the ancestors of Jesus. More than that, for the Old Testament lovers, God gives a clear command to the people of God in Leviticus 19:33-34, “Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” This really doesn’t seem too much like an optional deal to me. You are not in danger, these folks – like you and me – just want a safe place to live.

***OK, now we’re at the point where you might be about to check-out because what Michael has written is just too political. Here’s the thing: to me, our faith and our politics cannot be separated. Everything that we do and all the people that we support, reflect what we have put our faith in. We show what we believe and what we are trusting in with our actions. Political action such as voting or even endorsing someone on Facebook, reveals a little more of our priorities and beliefs about the world. So if you think I’m being too political, I disagree, but I don’t hate you. I love you.

Stopping Support for Un-Ethical Leaders:

I am weary from beating around the bush so much in 2019, so here goes, supporting President Donald Trump is severely problematic at best and dangerous at worst. Endorsing this president in front of your kids, grandkids, or friends is harmful to the brand of Christianity that you claim. Any person who openly speaks so offensively about women, minorities, and his peers while using the Name of Jesus to gain political power is not someone we should be supporting. If someone simply tweets a Bible verse and you interpret that as an offense against the President, what does that say about the President? For too long, good people like you and me have buried their heads in the sand while the President of our country pushes policies that harm marginalized people groups and serves himself. This level of moral impunity is not worth the Supreme Court Justice that you wanted. Please acknowledge wrongdoing for what it is and do not support those who bring it about. Yes, please pray for our president and other leaders. Pray that they will make decisions that bend our world towards justice. And if they are not doing that, Pray that they will change their ways, but don’t support someone who you think is doing wrong.

Stopping Support for War:

For the record, this is not me coming out as unsupportive of the members of our military. I have real life friends who are currently in the military and have been in the past. Just this afternoon, I was counseling a young friend who is graduating high school in May. We’ve talked often about him entering the military after high school. I don’t think it’s a bad idea for him. I hope that our troops are compensated well and their health – both mental and physical – is given high priority. What I don’t support is our government entering into violent conflict. Many of our governments leaders, President Trump included, claim Christian faith. A core tenant in the life and ministry of Jesus was non-violence. I honestly really struggle with understanding the Christian support of war, ever. Jesus talks of the blessedness of the peacemakers, but war seems to do the opposite. I know that the current situation is very nuanced, and I am not well-read enough to make an educated comment on our current state of affairs with Iran, but I can say, to me, war is never a good option. I don’t hate people who disagree, but I am asking that my fellow Christians, in order to follow Jesus more earnestly, to consider the how and why of your support or lack of support. Pray for peace.

In Conclusion:

If you disagree with me, I don’t hate you. If you think I’m being too political, I disagree with you, but I don’t hate you. I love you. Some things transcend political philosophy and enter into what I believe to be an ethical issue. These issues have become bigger than Republican v. Democrat or Liberal v. Conservative to me. I hope that in reading this you consider what I’ve brought up and haven’t simply dismissed it, but if you have, I don’t hate you. I love you. This year, let’s be people who wholeheartedly march towards justice and redemption for all people.

 

With Love,

Michael