Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Burdened

I've felt very spiritually burdened the past couple days. My goal is to grow as a disciple of Christ, but I'm finding out just how far away I am. I can't get this image out of my mind of Jesus calling Simon and Andrew to come follow Him (Mark 1:16-18). Simon and Andrew "at once" drop their nets and follow Jesus. The nets represent everything that their old live was. I've realized that my whole Christian walk has been me trying to follow Jesus while dragging my nets along at best, or trying to get Jesus to live my fisherman's life with me at worst. My Christian goal hasn't been following Jesus, it's been following my Comfort, and trying to insert Jesus into that. It's not just like trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, it's like trying to fit a life-size person into my round hole (maybe this is because our/my view of Jesus is just too small). It's not going to work, and it has become a burden.

I think that's why real discipleship is so hard for us today as Christians to get, because we're so dragged back by the nets we're still holding on to. And we wonder why we keep struggling to grow. At least I do/did. It will never work like this. It's either my comfortable former life, or Jesus. All or nothing.

Now even though I'm feeling so burdened by this realization, I'm glad that it has come to me, now that I know what needs to be fixed. But I have no clue how to fix it. I feel trapped and captive by this that I don't know how to fix. Today I read John 8:31-32, where Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." There it is. Simple, right? Hold to my teaching, and you are really my disciple. Does this mean that I need to go through all of Jesus' teachings again? I'm thinking it might. And then you will know the truth, and this truth will set you free. Maybe this truth is what I'm looking for, of how to fix this. I don't know. I can hope.


On an unrelated note, I've found a great new artist that I really like so far, from what I've heard of him. His name is Phil Wickham, and he's a Christian acoustic rock sound. He's got a great voice, creative music, and deep, poetic, and profound lyrics. Here's the chorus to the song "Mystery":

I wanna hear the thunder of who You are
To be captured inside the wonder of who You are
I wanna live, I wanna breathe, to search out Your heart
And all of Your mystery

I really like that, and it's kind of my longing right now. I need a dose of the greatness and the wonder of God. Maybe that needs to be my push to give it all. I'm praying that God will lead me along this journey and show me what needs to be done. Maybe He'll just keep wearing me down with this burden until it becomes too much and I'm forced to give it up. Whatever happens, I am confident that this is the path and the life that God is leading me towards. And I praise Him that I feel so burdened right now, because I know what it's going to lead to. It's for His glory, and may I never lose sight of that.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Discipleship: A sermon

I'm preaching tonight and tomorrow morning (4 services total--eek!) at Good Shepherd. So, once again, I'm going to practice writing out what I want to say on here. Here goes:

God has been teaching me a lot recently. First off, let me give you a picture of my spiritual life so far. So often in my Christian walk, I've prayed that God would make me a better follower, make me grow closer to Him, and make me a more mature Christian. And I would wonder why I seemed to stay in the same place spiritually most of the time. I didn't experience growth. I would go to church camp, or some other great worship time and experience that spiritual high, but then go right back into living life as usual. Continuing to screw up, continuing to fall short, continuing in this seemingly never ending cycle of ups and downs. Yeah, God was always there to forgive me when I messed up, but I couldn't help but wonder, "where's the growth?"

So recently I've been realizing that the Christian life isn't lived on the high mountaintop experiences with the valleys in between, just waiting for the next mountain. The Christian life isn't about not trying to become better because God's grace is always there for us when we screw up. This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace." This is the idea where grace fixes everything, so nothing needs to change on our part. We can continue to live our lives the way we want to, because grace has taken the consequence upon itself for us. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right? We get to live life how it's comfortable to us, and we get a free ticket to heaven. This is cheap grace.

One of the most profound things that I've learned recently is that grace is proactive, not just reactive. It's not merely there as our safety net to catch us when we mess up and put us back on our feet. Grace is not merely to erase our record of sin. It does this, but I really don't think that's the main purpose of it. It is proactive. It seeks us out and seeks to change us. Jesus did not die on the cross purely to cancel our debt of sin. He did it to change us, to allow us to become something other than what we've known before. His grace is proactive. His grace is about transforming us to be like Himself. Jesus has called us to be more than forgiven people. He has called us to be a transformed people. He has called us to be his disciples.

We throw around that term, "disciple," a lot, don't we? It's even a part of the mission statement of this church--to attract, build, and utilize disciples. I like that. But it wasn't until recently that I think I really understood fully what a disciple is.

Back in biblical times, there were these highly respected teachers called rabbis. These were men who knew the Scriptures backwards and forwards, who specialized in interpreting the Word of God to teach His people how they should live. These rabbis would go around and try to spread their teaching to the people of Israel. They would gather up bands of followers who wanted to learn from the rabbi and be just like him. These followers were the rabbi's disciples. A disciple was one who desired to learn from the rabbi and become just like him, in every way. I'd like to use this biblical culture example and look at the disciples of Jesus to inform us of how we need to live as disciples.

First off, a disciple was a follower of the rabbi. Someone who goes with the Teacher wherever he goes. Usually, back in the day, the student would pick the rabbi they wanted to follow, and after close examination, the rabbi would either accept the disciple or not. The weird thing about Jesus is, he picks his disciples. In the gospels we see a few stories illustrating this. One of my favorites is in Mark, chapter one starting at verse 16: "As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 'Come, follow me,' Jesus said, 'and I will make you fishers of men.' At once they left their nets and followed him." There are several events like this that occur in the gospels that show Jesus handpicking his disciples. Isn't that cool to think that--if you are here right now, in church, listening to this--God has handpicked you? He has extended that invitation to you--"Come, follow me." I think it's also interesting to note how Mark words the new disciples' reactions: "At once they left their nets and followed him." Simon and Andrew were fishermen. They lived off their business of catching fish. But at the call of this new rabbi they left their nets, their business, their old lives "at once." To leave all else behind in order to become a disciple of this Rabbi--that's a crazy thought. And scary. It wouldn't have been the same if Simon and Andrew had taken their nets along with them, dragging them behind them as they followed Jesus. They left everything behind. Now, to us--have we given up all of our old lives to follow Jesus, or have we chosen to merely integrate Jesus into our old lives? Now, I don't think this is a call for everyone to leave their jobs and their families behind to follow Jesus now, but it is a call for us to give up our way of living to follow Jesus' way of living. Jesus said in Luke 9:23, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." To deny ourselves, lay down our nets, only to pick up a cross. That's a heck of a call. But if we remember that we are handpicked by this rabbi, we know that he believes in us that we can do this.

Next, a disciple is a student. The word "disciple" literally means "learner" or "student." A disciple is one that wants to learn everything that the rabbi knows. A disciple carefully studies the rabbi's teaching and applies what he learns to how he lives. As disciples of Jesus, we are full time students. And as students, we have to place ourselves in a position to be taught. Let me explain this: As a college student, I'm pretty familiar with what being a student and a learner entails. In order to learn, I have to take several steps: I have to register for classes, pay tuition, buy my books, go to class, pay attention to the lecture, do the reading and homework assignments, study for the tests, etc. All of these things I do to put myself in a position to learn. The main point is that I can't learn just by doing nothing. That's what I didn't get for so long. As Christians, we have to do the work necessary to place ourselves in the position for Jesus to teach us and transform us. That's where growth happens. How do we do this? How do we put ourselves in this position? This is part of what I'm still learning, but a large part of it is in spiritual disciplines such as prayer, study, fasting, service, etc. There's a great book I just finished reading on this called "Celebration of Disciple" by Richard Foster. He goes through many spiritual disciplines and explains how they are merely the things that place us before God so he can transform us. But all of this is unique to every person. We need to find out what best helps to put us in a position before God to be transformed.

Another aspect to being a learner is to study the Rabbi. To study what Jesus taught. I would encourage all of us to really study the gospels and the words of Jesus. Don't just assume you know. Because let me tell you, the "American" Jesus who hates gays, wears red, white, and blue, and supports a political party is not the Jesus we find in the New Testament. I won't go into this now, but if we are students of this rabbi Jesus, we have to really know and understand what His teachings are.

The ultimate purpose of a disciple is to ultimately become like the rabbi and to spread his brand of interpretation and teaching around the world. Jesus attests to this in Luke 6:40, where he says, "A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher." It is our job as disciples to grow to become like our Rabbi and to spread His message. To teach others what He taught us. To live like He lived. That's why when Jesus ascended to Heaven, he left his disciples with this command: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matt. 28:19-20). It is our call to make more disciples, to teach the things that Jesus taught, and to teach them how to obey these things. To teach others how to follow, to learn, to obey, and to spread the Word.

Jesus is our ever-present Teacher. Our job as disciples is to be ever-present students. To always be learning, always be growing, always be sharing the Good News--that's the job of a Christian who strives to be a disciple. And it's not exactly going to be easy. It's going to require us to leave behind our comfortable ways of living life the way we want to, to do the work necessary to learn, to obey the teachings of this Rabbi. Discipleship is a journey. It's a continuous process of growth and learning. And it's all worth it.

Update: Giving the sermon went pretty well. I got more confident and comfortable as I went along, and I think overall the message got across, which is what counts, right? If you feel the urge, you can listen to the recording of it here.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Committing to Being Committed

I realized the other night that I am not fully committed to God. I say all the time that I am, but it really hit me that I'm really not. This occurred as I was thinking of asking one of my pastors how they, as pastors, fed themselves spiritually. This got me thinking about how, when I am a pastor, I’ll be preaching about God, giving counsel about God, studying about God, etc., and after all that I need to put aside time to devote to God for myself. I then thought to myself, Man, that is a lot of God. Am I really ready for that? Am I ready for every single moment to be an sacrifice to God? Right now life is so comfortable. I think about, worship, and talk about God when I want to, usually on my timing. I like the comfortable-ness of it. It works for me. But to have a life where absolutely every moment needs to be about God--am I ready for that? It's my whole life.

I think this is why the greatest commandment that Jesus gave us was to love the Lord our God with everything that we've got. You
cannot spend every single moment with a person that you do not love completely. From everything I hear about marriage from people who are absolutely committed to and love each other very deeply, even they need space from time to time. But with God, there's no space. He's always there. We don't get any alone time. It makes more sense now when Jesus said, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:37-39). To devote every single moment of our lives to someone, to do everything to please them, to let there be no space between you and them, forever--is it within the human capacity to love this much? Or maybe it's something that only God, who is Love itself, can initiate in us.

I'm still thinking this stuff through, and maybe I'll never completely have it coherently figured out. I know this isn't going to happen automatically. But this is me, committing to be fully committed. So may I learn to live in discomfort. May I pick up my cross every day and work to give every moment to Him. May I lose myself in this Love, who somehow wants to spend every moment with me.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Return of the King

I'm giving the sermon tomorrow at Open Arms, which is Good Shepherd's second campus congregation. So I'm going to 'practice' on here. In the words of the Joker, here we go:

We have many different names we like to call God, don't we? I like that we have so many different names, because it helps reveal the many different facets of the kind of relationship that God wants with us. One name that I want to focus on today is "Lord" or "King." We call God "Lord" all the time, but do we really carry with us an understanding of what this means to call God "Lord"? We can investigate this by looking way back in the Old Testament to understand the relationship between God and the ancient Israelites.

God's relationship with the Israelites cannot be properly understood outside the context of the Covenant. The nation of Israel was defined by their relationship with God inside the covenant. God made a covenant, or promise, with Israel at Mount Sinai. This was basically Israel's new, fresh start as a nation after coming out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt. The terms of this covenant are written out in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. This was a formal agreement, like a contract. In fact, the entire book of Deuteronomy is structured similar to other ancient Near Eastern treaties found during that time period between a king and his subjects. These contracts governed the "rules" that the two parties would live by in this agreement. I think it's great that God speaks to Israel in a language and style that they are familiar with--such as the social structures of cultures around them.

The terms of this covenant are set by God--He is the one in charge. He names off all of His conditions for the covenant, and that is what we find in the book of Leviticus. All these "rules" about how the Israelites should live are part of the terms of the covenant that God set. All this to establish that God was the King in the relationship between Himself and Israel. This was a big part of what defined Israel's religion. Israel was a theocracy, a nation governed completely by God.

I find it helpful to picture what other kings in the ancient world were like, and how people acted around them. We've all seen movies and read books with this element in it. When people see the king passing by, they immediately move out of the way and bow down to him. When the king requests something, he gets it immediately, without question. The words of the king become law. Servants would immediately fall down and hunch over if the king needed a footstool. All of this wasn't done just for kicks and giggles. It was because of a genuine reverence and great respect for the king. People would literally worship this man who sat on a throne. All of this for a man who was born into this position of authority.

Let's compare this to the King of kings and Lord of lords, our God who's very presence is too great for any man to view and live. This Lord of Hosts, who commands all the heavenly bodies as His army. This King who conquers lands and nations for the sake of His people. This King who's name is too sacred to utter, so much so that the pronunciation of this Name is now lost. This King who is so holy that the very ground where He is present is made holy (we are in a holy place right now because He is present--isn't that cool?). This King uses the entire earth as His footstool! In the book of Revelation, dozens of kings--these powerful men who are constantly waited on hand and foot--lay their crowns before the King of kings and bow down prostrate to worship Him day and night.

It's in this context, understanding God as the King, that all of Jesus talk about the Kingdom of God makes more sense. Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God more than any other subject during His ministry.

But it's so amazing that this King we serve is no typical king. He is so powerful and mighty, and all the things that come with being a king multiplied by thousands. But at the same time, somehow, he is still so personal, and so intimate. This is a King who loves His people as a Father.
Yet we reject Him. In 1 Samuel chapter 8, Israel requests a king to rule them. You can almost hear the hurt in God's voice when he tells Samuel, "...they have rejected me as their King." What have we made our king in place of God? What rules our lives? Scripture makes it clear that anything that rules our lives apart from God is sin.

God, this King who has conquered nations, wants to conquer your life and mine. He wants to be the only ruler, and the supreme ruler, Lord over everything in our lives. This King, who led Joshua and Israel to conquer Jericho, is on a mission to conquer you. Perhaps at this point in your life, He is circling you, quietly closing in. Perhaps He is knocking down walls, the barriers that separate you from Him, right now. Has he conquered you yet? Is He King over every part of your life? Does every part of you exist to serve Him? I'll be honest with you, I'm not there yet. I haven't turned everything over to Him yet. But I'm getting there. I know that my life is headed in the direction of the King, slowly but surely being completely and utterly conquered. I hope yours is too.

The paradox of this is, to be completely conquered by God brings complete freedom in Him. We are free from all the things of this world that vie for our attention and only seek to enslave us. 2 Corinthians says, "Christ's love controls us." If we allow ourselves to be completely conquered and controlled by this King, we receive life, and life to the fullest.

Update: The sermon went pretty well. Not phenomenal, but good. It didn't really sound much like this though.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Blown Away

I love those moments when the love of God just blows me away. When, in a moment of perfect clarity, I know why I'm living for this, why I want to work so hard for this. When nothing else could seem more real than the powerful and life-changing presence of God right there with me. When I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this God, this Savior, this Lord, is the One that holds everything together and still loves me enough to give it all up.

Amazing.

This God--who so often has the ability to completely blow me away and break down every barrier that keeps me from Him--is my everything. He is my reason, my source, and my purpose. He is the Alpha and Omega of my life, and all things in my life are by Him and for Him.

And all this for how often I sin against Him. How often I turn my back and do my own thing. How often I blatantly and purposefully disregard Him. He still loves. "Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault" (Colossians 1:22). His loving eyes look past all my sin and flaws and see me as holy, without fault at all. This blows my mind.

This is something worth living for. Giving everything for. Doing the work it requires to be a disciple for. It's worth it.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

What is a Disciple?

Like I said before, I decided to name this blog "A Disciple's Journey." This is partially a result of a profound realization that has rocked my spiritual world the past few days, which I am going to share here.

The word "disciple" in the Greek literally means "learner." It was used in Jesus' day to describe those who followed a rabbi, going with him every where that he went, learning from him, and emulating him. They were, in effect, full time students. They devoted their entire lives to the teaching and way of life of their rabbi. They wanted their lives to be transformed and shaped to be like that of their rabbi. Thus, to be a disciple of Jesus is to devote our entire lives to his teaching and way of life, immersing ourselves in Him. We are full time students of Jesus Christ, the ultimate rabbi, and this must come with a desire to be transformed to be like Him in every way.

Now here's the thing that gets me: If we are to devote ourselves to the teachings of Jesus, we must place ourselves in a position to be taught.

An example: As I'm currently in the midst of my college career, I know what it's like to be a student and a learner. In order to learn, I have to take several steps and do some hard work to gain the knowledge that I want to attain. I have to register for classes, pay tuition, buy books, show up for class, pay attention to the lecture, do the homework and reading assignments, study for the tests, etc. All of this to gain the knowledge that I desire. I need to do all of this to place myself in the ideal position to learn. The thing is that I can't learn just by doing nothing. The same applied to the disciples of the rabbi. They had to follow the rabbi around everywhere he went, absorbing his teaching and taking note of how he lived his life, all in order to learn from him and become like him.

So how do we apply this to learning and becoming like Jesus? By immersing ourselves in Him, by doing the things necessary to place ourselves in a position to be taught and transformed by Him. We can't just assume that if we sit around, eventually we will grow in spiritual maturity as we get older and wiser. Not much that's worth having in this life comes easy (no matter what Hollywood says). We have to work for it! We have to start with the desire to learn from God and be transformed by Him. For so long I've been living a lazy faith, assuming that I would grow and change over time. Now that I've realized all this, I want to really grow. I want to be transformed, and I want to be a true disciple.

What can I do as a Christian to place myself in a position to grow and be transformed? Resources for this have been given to us by God in the form of spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines is a term that so often automatically turns people off. It has a real negative connotation around it. But spiritual disciplines are not meant to restrict our lives, but to free us. As soon as I realized all of this a few days ago, I went to the library and checked out Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. I'm only a few chapters into it, but it has already had a profound impact on me, and I would recommend it to everyone. For the sake of length, I'm not going to go too much into the book in this post.

But for now, I'm overjoyed to find myself longing for God, and thirsting for the things of God. I feel like I'm finally on my way to becoming a disciple of Christ. Will you join me on this journey?

The Christening Post

Hello! This is my first attempt at blogging, so this is going to be an experience for me. I've tinkered around with the idea of creating a blog for a while, so I decided to just go for it.

First off, the name of this blog took some considering for me. I decided on A Disciple's Journey because that is what I consider myself: a disciple of Jesus Christ. "Disciple" literally means "learner," so this will be my record of the things that I am learning on my journey closer to Christ and further into ministry. I know that I have a lot to learn, so who knows where that will take this blog.

I'm also greatly interested in movies, music, and culture, so I'll probably end up posting stuff about that too, along with whatever random things I want to. This is my blog--I can do whatever I want, right?