Good isn't enough....

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.  You are the light of the world.  A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." - Matthew 5:13-16(NIV)

If all I have done with my life is convince others that I am a good person, a person to be trusted, than I have utterly, miserably failed in the one calling around which all the rest of my life was supposed to circle.  If the "good deeds" of this life that I carried out were credited only to me, than I "missed the mark."  All the praise and the accolade I may receive to my person is meaningless, unless it is turned heavenward.

"In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." - Matthew 5:16(NIV)

I have spent most of my life being involved in volunteer or professional ministry in the church.  Outside of that circle, as a Christian my life is supposed to be a light in a world corrupted by sin.  I am to serve others because Christ serves others.  I am to love others because Christ loves others.  NONE of these things are supposed to point to ME but to HIM WHO SENT ME!

I was told by a non-Christian friend of mine that, though this person does not believe, he knows I'm "one of the good guys."  At first, I was flattered... naturally I was!  But as I thought about it... about the implications, I wondered, "What if that was all he ever got from me, that I was 'one of the good guys?'  What if all he ever saw was me, when it was only Jesus who could change his life?  What if I have gotten in the way of the ministry God has given me?"  All the kindness I showed him in the world, all the care and discussion and friendship... would be meaningless.  Because at the end of the day he'd still be in hell, and I'd be the one who didn't "make the most of every opportunity" (Colossians 4:5).

And I guess that's the point I want you to take home as you read this; that is the HEART of the issue.  People live and die outside of the grace of Jesus every DAY!  As we go through our lives, there are people on the path to HELL that we pass right by because we're afraid to speak, afraid to be judged, afraid to be wrong or challenged or rejected.  It's like watching a man starve to death because we're afraid they won't like pb&j.

We hold the keys to LIFE people!  Look at the people that you pass every day.  Really look at them!  Look at the students in your class, the people on the sidewalk, the families at the mall or grocery store or at your sporting event.  The knowledge you have in Christ will save their lives.  All that is necessary is for you to speak!  

It's not enough that people like you or think you're a good person  At the end of the day, you cannot save them.  Only Christ can.  He is the one who stands in the brink; who bears us into the presence of God every day of our lives.  Don't be content to stand there and watch the dying pass.  Be the breath of life from God, Himself.

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God." - 2 Corinthians 2:14-17(NIV)

Calling obsessions....

People collect all sorts of things, from your standard, run-of-the-mill stamp or coin collection, to things a little more odd: like belly-button lint and celebrity hair (yes, people actually collect hair that once was connected to the scalps of famous people.)  If you're like me and have walked into an office lined with figurines from a much-loved TV series, then you know that sometimes our little collections can turn into obsessions.  Most of us have had at least one, and as long as you're not the collector who tackles famous people on their morning jog to make off with a hunk of hair, you're probably not hurting anyone with it.

However, there is an obsession we have in the Christian world that I think is causing harm, and we don't even recognize it.  That obsession... is our fixation on a concept known as "your calling."  Don't get me wrong, calling is an extremely important concept that is a part of the life of every believer, but it is my belief we have taken something that was supposed to be a blessing in our lives, as well as a means of blessing other people, and have made it into a burden on the necks of believers.

Before I explain my point, I want to highlight that I am working from a Lutheran (LCMS) perspective of calling, where "calling" equates to "vocation."  Vocation, from this perspective, is not necessarily what we could call a "career" or "job," though it does include those things.  More generally, vocation is  whatever legitimate labor we carry out in our day-to-day life, with a "legitimate labor" being any action we carry out that does not go against the life God has called us to in the Bible.

Already, this definition is touching on the point I'm trying to make.  We have convinced ourselves that "calling" implies the one thing in our lives that we were made to do, and until we are doing that one thing, we are in a sort of holding pattern where we are getting prepped to do that thing.  This leads us to thinking that, unless we're doing that "one thing," we are not engaged in things that truly matter or that we are not where we "need to be" at the moment.  Yet what does scripture actually say?  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:31(NIV):

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

Wait a minute...does that mean... that my eating and drinking are to God's glory?!  How can this be?!  As a Christian, when you eat a steak or carrot, who is benefiting?  Well, you, for one.  This food is being used to sustain the life of a person that scripture calls "the light of the world" (Matthew 4:14).  This food is allowing you to continue living, to go out into the world and shine the light of Christ into a world "in darkness" (John 12:25).  What is more, by eating, you are blessing everyone that worked to provide that food.  You bless the check-out lady at the grocery store, the stocker who put that food out on the shelves or in the cooler for you to buy, you're blessing the guy who manages the stocker and the check-out lady, you're blessing the guy who owns the grocery store, you're blessing the trucking company that shipped the food to the store, the trucker who drove the truck, the gas station attendant who the trucker paid to get the gas that runs the truck, the guy who owns the gas station, the guys who fix and maintain the truck, the guys who make the parts for the truck, the guys who ship the parts to the guys that fix and maintain the truck, the guys who ship the oil, the worker on the oil platform, the owner of the oil platform, the company that makes the parts for the oil platform, the engineers who designed the oil platform, the guys who build the oil platforms, the farmer who raised the cow or carrot you ate, the farmer who raised the feed the cow ate, the company that made the fertilizer for the carrot, the water company that the farmer buys water from to water his crops or cows, the company that makes the cars that all these people use to get to work or at work, all the way down to the kids and wives and husbands who wear clothes, buy their food, go to school, and have electricity because all the way down the line, a little Christian somewhere in the world bought a steak at the local grocer.  With one little action, as a Christian, you blessed thousands of people you will never know, just by living out the life God has given you.  Sure, you weren't preaching at the pulpit on Sunday morning or teaching kids arithmetic or shaping policy on capitol hill... but you were changing people's lives none-the-less.  Wherever you are, "whatever you do," you are living out "calling."

Now let's get on to the heart of the issue: the calling, if we must put it that way.  What about your career field?  What about that one thing you are trying to figure out you are supposed to do, as though God has this one thing for you to do, and if you don't find it your life was wasted.  One of the verses I hear cited a lot in support of this view is Jeremiah 29:11(NIV):

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

This a beautiful passage, one that has given me hope in many very unpleasant situations, but I don't necessarily think we have understood this passage rightly when we have cited it to prove God has a specific plan for our lives in regards to that ONE career choice we need to make.  Keep in mind this was written in the Book of Jeremiah, an Old Testament book, and a prophetic book none-the-less.  This was written in a time when Israel was about to be conquered and enslaved by Babylon, and when Israel would be looking forward to a promised Messiah who would deliver them.  What I'm getting at is: Christ had not come yet, and this book was reminding people of the promise of His coming.  Wasn't Jesus God's ultimate "plan" for humanity's good?  Doesn't he allow for prosperity, doesn't He give us hope and a future we would otherwise not have?  In Christ, we have hope in the knowledge that God loves us and has done everything to bring us back into peace with Him.  We know that life does not end in death, but that we have eternal life with God.  We know that one day, all suffering and hardship will cease when God perfects all things.  These things ARE our promised hope and future.  Jesus was and is God's plan for us.

Does this mean I think God has no calling for us?  By no means!  But I think scripture more clearly supports that whatever God-pleasing thing we are doing right now is our calling.  We aren't waiting for some future thing to do with ourselves, we are living out calling every day.  

Now, legitimately, I won't say that means every Christian has a calling to do everything.  In 1 Corinthians 12, it is clear that not everyone has the same gifts, though they all are equally important to the whole of Christianity.  When God created you, He gave you certain gifts and abilities that are unique in the way they are combined in you.  Necessarily, then, there are certain things in life that you are more suited to than someone else with a different combination of gifts.  But that still does not mean there is only one thing by which you could serve God and humanity.  You have options, and as long as your focus is on using your gifts to serve God and other people, whatever you choose (even if it's different things over your lifetime), be assured you are living out your calling, and that God is using you to bless this world:

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.  For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing." - 2 Corinthians 2:14-15(NIV)

You are not a waste...

I was in Japan when I first realized it: I ask nothing of my body compared to what it's capable of.  What brought on this revelation: watching a "parkour" competition on television.  Parkour, also known as urban running or free running, is essentially where a person goes directly from point A to point B in an urban setting - literally.  I mean they are jumping fences, climbing buildings, leaping rooftops, and everything in between.  In the competition I was watching, there were competitors from all around the world, competing on a fabricated course.  There were various stages to the competition, each with a different course to run.  In order to move from one stage to the other, you had to complete the entire course, without falling "off course," like into the water or off a platform or anything.  What lead me to my realization was that one part of the competition required someone to run across a platform to leap up between two suspended, plexiglass walls.  There was nothing to "land on" between these walls, so the competitor had to open his hands, palm out, as soon as he or she got between the walls, and hold themselves in between the walls through the sheer pressure of their hands against the walls.  They then had to climb inside the walls, again only through the pressure of their hands, to get up onto the next platform of the course.  It was incredible that people were actually capable of doing that.

Incidentally, it is also in Japan that I began to realize my "issue," at least the "issue" I believed I had.  I had the sudden belief that I am not particularly "gifted," at least in a specific sense.  Sure, I'm pretty good at a fair number of things.  But am I spectacularly good at any one thing: I didn't think so.  Back in school, I had good grades, sure... but it wasn't effortless.  I had to work hard to make it happen.  I was pretty good at sports; I was pretty fast and fairly strong.  But I was never God's gift to the athletic world.  As I took inventory, I couldn't really think of anything that people would say, "Man, they're sure impressive at ____."  

About a year or so ago, this thought process unexpectedly surfaced again.  I met this extremely gifted person at athletics.  They had walked on to their college track team and were immediately the fastest sprinter on the team, even though they had never trained for sprinting in their lives.  With the right training, they could have made a name for themselves as an NCAA athlete.  They could start a sport they had never played before, and within a day, be proficient at it to the level that you would never know they had not done it before.  They could watch someone proficient at a physical activity, and very shortly teach themselves how to do that activity.  Even the things I considered myself fairly good at, they could do better without even having attempted to be proficient at it.  What was worse, this person wasn't stupid, either!  They were extremely intelligent, to the point that they sometimes talked over my head without realizing it.  Standing in that light... it was difficult to find any giftedness in myself.  Even those things that I would consider my "gifts," didn't seem that great compared to their's.

I bring this up because I think this is an issue that, in some way, most of us humans struggle with.  As our own worst critics, it is hard to see the value in ourselves, especially compared to someone who has these amazing abilities we admire... and even covet.  When I turn to God about this, though... He definitely has a different view on the issue.

The first passage is one that convicts me, for it reminds me who I am and Who God is:

"But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, 'Why have you made me like this?' Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?" - Romans 9:20-21(NRSV)

I am only a human being, crafted by God, whose entire life depends on God and who only lives for maybe a century.  Who am I to question what God has given me, when He can see the full measure of Time and knows how important my gifts, no matter how small they appear, really are?  Isn't He worthy of trust, if He is all knowing and all good, as we believe?

But God does not leave us with, "Why do you question me, though I have your highest good and the highest good of all humanity at heart?"  He also gives us this passage:

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.  Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.   If all were a single member, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many members, yet one body.  The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'  On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." - 1 Corinthians 12:12-22(NSRV)

What does this mean?  We, as Christians, are members of the body of Christ.  And we each are valuable to that body.  We were given different gifts, as a body has different parts, and each part has a necessary function without which the body would be incomplete.  Even people who have gifts that seem "undesirable" are "indispensable," just as the bowels may seem unpleasant, but are absolutely necessary for the survival of a human being.

Even more simply:

"YOUR GIFTS ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THEM!"

God has given you your gifts for a reason, and that reason was to be a blessing to the rest of the Christian community, as well as the rest of the world, through your usage of those gifts in the name of Christ.  Maybe you're not a good speaker.  So what!  It's our culture that's telling you to be ashamed of that.  God has an important calling for you!  Maybe you suck at sports.  So what!  Use the gifts you have because each one of us uniquely and specifically impacts the lives of the people we meet.

And finally, remember this:

 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,  your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." - Psalm 139:13-16(NIV) 

You are a wonderful, incredible work of God.  And we know God does "all things for the good of those who love him" (Romans 8:28a).  When God made you, He knew your gifts were for the "good of those who love him," both yourself and others.  Take comfort, then.  You are not a waste.

Jeremiah 1:4-9...

During the installation service of our new pastor this past weekend, the first reading was from Jeremiah 1:4-9.  A part that particularly stood out to me was verses 6-9(ESV), "Then I said, 'Ah, Lord God!  Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.'  But the Lord said to me, 'Do not say, "I am only a youth"; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.'Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, 'Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.'"  

From what I understand, we do not know exactly how old Jeremiah was when he says "I am only a youth."  However, judging from the perceptions of the time, he could have been anywhere from his mid-teens to mid-twenties when God called him as a prophet.  Let me type that again: he was the age of a high schooler to someone just completing college.  Let me say that another way: he was in the age group of people that are thought to "know nothing" today.

Where am I going with this?  You can probably see where I'm going, but I'm going to type it out anyway: you are never too young to make an impact for the Gospel.  You are never too young for God to use your faith to change peoples' lives.  Want to see proof of that?  In Matthew 18:1-6, Jesus uses a little child to teach the disciples humility and about how we should approach faith, and in Matthew 19:13-14, He states that the "kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" about children, teaching us we should have the sort of trusting faith that a child does.

Now some of you may be saying, "But Jeremiah was a prophet.  They're a special sort of believer."  Granted, Jeremiah was called for a specific purpose, but that does not mean you are not similarly called to reach others with the Gospel of Christ.  At Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles as tongues of flame, Peter said this prophecy of Joel was fulfilled "In the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams" (Acts 2:17).  Just as God gave Jeremiah the ability to speak, so, too, God entered believers through the Holy Spirit in order that they would be empowered to speak the truth of Jesus to all people.  And this Holy Spirit was not just given to the Apostles, for Peter goes on to say, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself" (Acts 2:38-39).

Ultimately, the point I am making is this: as a Christian, God has called you to reach out to anyone in your life with the good news that God loved them so much that He sent his son, Jesus, to live a perfect human life and die a gruesome, human death, in order that when Jesus rose from the dead, He would ensure that all believers in Jesus would not be condemned for their failings, but would spend eternity in the presence of God.  It doesn't matter what age you are.  Don't be afraid.  Let your life as a Christian speak the truth of Who God is to the people in your life.  Trust that God will take your efforts, whatever they may be, and use them to change lives.  After all, remember whose Spirit makes you able to speak: the Spirit of God.  As the creator of language, He'll figure it out for you.