Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places?

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“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,” (Ephesians 1:3, NASB)

Spiritual blessing in the heavenly places

When I read this verse, there is something that haunts me. Paul tells me that I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. The verb is past tense, so it has already happened. Why then do I often feel so unblessed?

It seems that if I were to appropriate this promise that my life would be lived differently. This is what haunts me.

The question then becomes, “what inhibits me from appropriating this promise?” The truthful answer is that I don’t really know what holds me back.

Perhaps it is because I am unable to imagine what “every spiritual blessing” looks like. It must be independent of my circumstances, but it doesn’t feel that way. Often my circumstances cause me to look to the heavens and ask “what happened?” This is in spite of the fact that I’ve had it easier in life than many. Yet, I struggle to look beyond the stuff that is in front of my and see beyond.

Perhaps it is because my understanding of God is too small. As a result, my trust is too small. If I really understood God and his expectations for me, I might live differently. I might be more inclined to act and less inclined to wait until the opportunity is passed.

I do not know whether to admire or pity those who seem so presumptuous in appropriating all the blessings in the Bible. Yet, when I read those promises, there is a nagging sense in the back of my mind that perhaps these who pursue with such reckless abandon are the ones who have it right after all.

Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places has been my blessing. Perhaps I will start living that way.

How about you?

Does the church bring freedom or coercion?

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Freedom or Coercion?A common perception of Christians is that we are a bunch of people who want to impose our form of Sharia law on the rest of the world. In other words, we are viewed as people who use coercion to get people to conform to a set of laws to which they would rather not be bound.

Yet what I find in Scripture should cause the Church to be perceived as a group of people who strive for freedom in response to the spiritual freedom that the Gospel has brought into our lives. Consider the following:

  • Jesus came to provide freedom – In Luke 4:16-21, Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1 in the synagogue and applies that Scripture to himself as one who brings release to the captives and freedom to those who are oppressed.
  • In Galatians 5:1, Paul reiterates Jesus’ claim that the gospel sets us free.
  • The History of the last 2,000 years supports the idea that Jesus Christ brings freedom. The countries in the world where freedom is currently experienced can tie that freedom to a Christian heritage.

We do have to admit that the Church has not had a perfect record in the area of coercion. My own experience lends support to the idea that the church can be coercive in her tactics. This is a point that the church needs to face up to and change.

In too many congregations, there is pressure to conform to a standard of behavior. In some cases the coercion is overtly proclaimed from the pulpit, in other cases the pressure is more subtle. When someone does not live up to the standard of behavior he is either directly chastised or the subject of gossip.

When I read the Gospels, I see no coercive tactics used by Jesus. Jesus told people where they went wrong, using the law as his guide, but loved them through the entire process. In reading the story of the woman at the well in John 4, it is difficult to imagine that the woman felt shamed or coerced. One gets the sense that she already felt ashamed and Jesus offered her love, hope and a way out of her bondage.

What can the Church do in response?

  1. Live out the claims of the Gospel – demonstrate by changed lives that the Gospel is indeed true. We need to allow God to “will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Phil 2:13)
  2. If we are yielded to God we can then love like Jesus loved – those outside the church community must feel our love before they will be willing to hear our message. In reading the accounts in the Gospels where people came to faith in Jesus, it is obvious to me that they felt Jesus’ love and were drawn to him by that love.

We do not need to impose any standard of behavior on the world around us. Paul wrote his letters to communities where moral decay and depravity were rampant, and I find no hint of an assertion that the church should work for a legislative response to that decay.

Coercive tactics should find no place in the church. We are called to speak the truth in love (Eph 4;15), not bully people into conformity.

God does not like bullies any more than we do.

Working together in ministry – No solo acts

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Work TOgetherIn Exodus 18, we have recorded the advice that Jethro gave to Moses.

Moses was the sole judge for all the people of Israel and as such spent all of his day hearing the cases that came before him. Jethro’s advice was to set up judges under Moses who could hear the minor cases and make decisions. Thus a management structure was born.

One man cannot minister to all the people in his congregation, no matter how small the congregation may be. The pastor needs to have elders and deacons to whom he can entrust the ministry tasks. Even in the smallest congregations, the pastor cannot do all the ministry or make all the decisions. He must work together with the congregation for effective ministry to take place.

For such a structure as Jethro recommended to Moses, the viability of the structure depends on the degree of empowerment that the judges are given. If a particular judge’s rulings had to be repeatedly overrulled, that judge would have to be removed from his office since he would no longer have the credibility to do his job effectively.

In the same way, the pastor must empower his elders and staff to do the work of ministry and make decisions on their own. If every decision has to be made by the pastor, very little real ministry will take place. It does not matter if there are 100 people, 1,000 people or 10,000 people in the church, Others beside the pastor must be empowered to minister as they are led by God.

With empowerment will come mistakes. Ministry is sometimes a messy business and hindsight is always 20/20. When mistakes happen it is important that the leadership team is open about the mistake and learns from it.

What then is the Pastor’s role in the ministry? He should play a major role in setting the priorities and being the most visible voice for announcing those priorities. However, the pastor should remind himself that he is the first among equals and is himself subject to weaknesses and blind spots. The pastor should not want to make all the decisions.

Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:11–13 what the goal of ministry should be:

“And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” (NASB)

The goal is the equipping of the congregation for the work of ministry (ESV). It is the entire church body that is to be God’s instrument for changing the surrounding culture.

If the entire church body is ministering together in the community, not only will the pastor influence the congregation, the congregation will influence the pastor. When this happens the congregation will “stimulate one another to love and good deeds,” (Hebrews 10:24)

Why people lie – Infographic

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The infographic below was brought to my attention in response to one of my earlier posts which mentioned lying. I found it interesting so thought that I would share it with you.

From a Christian perspective we know that the answer to the question of “why people lie” can be found in Genesis 3. The result of the first sin was deception and blaming of others. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. The root cause of lying is our severed relationship with God which results in brokenness and alienation from others. In that brokenness and alienation is the drive to present things as being different than they are.

The church should be the one place where triumph over this effect of the Fall should be observed. But often the church is a place where people are less real about who they are. We feign that things are good when they are not. We intentionally mislead people into thinking that we are better than we really are.

Perhaps those of us in the church can look at the infographic below and purpose to be more honest about who we are and where we stand in our spiritual life.

The world does not need false spirituality, it needs Jesus. The only way they will recognize their need of Him is to see the church as a group of people who are honest about who they are and are demonstrating real progress in becoming something better.

As Paul reminds us in Ehesians 4:25, “Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” As Christians, we know that we cannot do this in our own power. It is God “who is at work in you, both to will and to work for HIs good pleasure.” (Phil 2:13)

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