Sunday School: Sneak Peek

This Sunday we really are (hopefully!) going to be looking at the pro and con of being single. Our text is going to be most of I Corinthians 7, where Paul tells the "unmarried and the widows" that "it is good for them to remain single" (7:8). Is Paul against marriage? What's Paul's mindset that leads him to think and write this way, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, remember? How does singleness help and hinder believers in the spreading of God's glory and the furthering of his kingdom. Can you serve God better as a single?

Looking forward to letting the Bible do its work on Sunday morning. Please join me in praying that the discussion will be as rich as this past week's.

The Pro and Con of Being Single, Part One (Leftovers)

Yesterday was one of the hardest rounds of teaching I think I've ever done. It was difficult because it was a lot of emotions and feelings, which I tend to not be the greatest at, and it was difficult because I was giving some thoughts that are hard, honest, and ones that could potentially create some messes within the singles group.

I was working on my lesson last week, thinking that we would do the pro of singleness this week and the con next week, but as I started writing the lesson, I realized that the intro. to the lesson was becoming the lesson itself. That's because, before we can look at singleness and how it can benefit or hinder the spreading of God's glory and the furthering the kingdom, we had to address some of the underlying thoughts and feelings that folks in our group seem to have about being single in the first place. Thus, yesterday was about thirty minutes of brutal honesty and the saying of things that needed to be said. For those who missed it, here are the three points:

• Some of you are mad at God because you're in your late 20's or early 30's and still single.
• Some of you feel you're utterly unloveable, and that's why you're still single.
• Some of you feel that your singleness is God's punishment for some past or present sin that you're dealing with.

I was so thankful to the Holy Spirit for giving the group that was there ears to hear and soft hearts to let these things be said. As I said yesterday, saying these things out loud doesn't make them go away. It doesn't make them necessarily even any easier to deal with, but at least it puts us all on the same footing as we begin to fight to see singleness as a gift from God for this season of our lives.

Like Cough Syrup

Here's the thing you should read today: http://ruf.org/help/singledout1.htm

If you're single you might find yourself there. If you're married, you might remember how it was for you and decide to pick up the phone and call one of your single friends and ask them about some of these issues.

Sunday School: Sneak Peek

I hope you're enjoying the Life in the Body series as much as I am. I really feel like I'm the lucky one in this deal because I get to prepare and spend all week thinking and praying about the things we fly through in thirty minutes on Sunday mornings. To be honest, when I was initially planning this series, I didn't realize just how much it was going to challenge us to focus outward. To get outside ourselves and look at the larger body of Christ. Amazing, how truth has a way of fitting us into its mold, instead of the other way around.

This week we'll be looking at the Pro and Con of being single. (Notice the singularity of those two words.) Now, I'm not arrogant enough to think that I've definitely figured out the one pro and con to being single (well, okay, I am arrogant enough), but I definitely think if these two aren't the top, they hover very near. Any ideas as to what they might be?

See you Sunday at 9:00am in Room S-180. And don't forget, if you'd like to help with the Info. Table or room set-up or breakfast, please contact Cammie Snowden, or you can volunteer here on the blog, and I'll pass your name along.

Knitted Together (Leftovers)

Yesterday in Sunday School we discussed spiritual gifts and how they give us insight into how God's wired us to function in the body of Christ. Now, I gotta say, that I was pretty hesitant about yesterday's lesson. Part of it was that I wasn't sure there was anything really new to be said about spiritual gifts, and the other part was that so many people have had less-than-stellar experiences with spiritual gifts tests over the years, that I was expecting a good bit of resistance. At any rate, it seemed like the next natural step in the progression of where we're headed in the class this semester, so I decided to plow through, and I'm glad I did.

One of the things that I didn't really get to hit on was the idea of the separation that exists between actually having a gift and using it. The test was designed as such that if you felt a need to do something or a desire to do something, that was an indication that you have that particular gift. It made no mention of whether you actually do the thing as an indication that you have the gift.

Here's the thing: I think that's a really good way to think about spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts are a lot like many other aspects of the Christian life. They are based in truth, in reality, not in what we perceive or what we do. Think about it like this. You're 100% justified in the sight of God. That is truth. You may not always feel like that, and you certainly may not always act like that, but it's reality nonetheless. Same thing with someone who has the gift of prayer or intercession. That gift is given to you --woven into you, to use Psalm 139 language -- and that's reality. The fact that you feel like you're a person of prayer, or the fact that you actually pray a lot doesn't really change that fact.

Again, so much of the time I want my Christian life to be about me. What I do, what I want, and I can totally discount God's sovereignty in the whole thing. Almost as if my doing makes it true. Wow, what an arrogant person I can be!

P.S. For those of you who would like to take the test we used in Sunday School yesterday, here's the link: http://pastoralcareinc.com/MR/Surveys/SpiritualGifts.html.

Point of View

Last night my roommate and I were watching something on a cable news channel, and they were contrasting the visit that John and Cindy McCain recently made to The View, with the times that Barak and Michelle Obama were on (the Obamas appeared at separate times.) It's pretty obvious, if you watch even excerpts of the video, that the Obamas were given a much warmer welcome and easier time than the McCains were. Even the wives of the candidates, who are usually viewed in a much better light than their husbands by people on both ends of the political spectrum, were related to in strikingly different ways. What was interesting about the show we were watching and what I've heard from others who saw particularly the McCain interview, was the amount of surprise that was expressed that something like this happened. As if what people were expecting was as fair, balanced, and objective interview. Really?

See, here's the thing: I think this speaks to a real problem in our society. Somehow, over the course of time, as Americans increasingly turn away from hard news programs and get used to the opinionated cable hosts, we've come to regard programs like The View as news media, and in doing so our expectations of them have risen to the same level as those for NBC Nightly News or The Wall Street Journal. Here's a thought, just because The View does a segment at the beginning of each show called "Hot Topics," where they might bring up a news item or two, doesn't make them a news program, and just because Barbara Walters is on the show, doesn't make it a reputable source for objective coverage of events and issues. It's a talk show, folks. These women were chosen in part because they have strong opinions on things, which can create heated discussions and conflict, which creates ratings.

Both candidates want women to vote for them, and the audience of The View is mostly women, and that's why they went on the show. Now, all of a sudden, there's great surprise that women who have made no qualms about their political leanings for years, treated the liberal candidate better than they did the conservative. I mean, it wasn't Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw out there, it was Whoopi Goldberg! Their goal is not to present both sides of the issue, and if you are turning to these kinds of programs to help shape your thinking on politics and society, don't be surprised if you start seeing things from a definite point of view.

Fine With Dreaming

Here's the thing a pastor friend of mine told me the other day when we were talking about some of the issues I was dealing with in my life in terms of my own sin and problems friends were having: "You know, Jason," he said, "some people say that if you're thinking about Heaven all the time you're living in a dream world. What I think is that if you're not thinking about Heaven, you're living in a dream world. People who don't long for Heaven are people who don't deal with sin in this world."

I think that's a pretty good perspective. How can you not walk through this life, experience the pain and frustration of a fallen world, and not long for the place you were made for to begin with where you've been promised complete peace, joy, and rest. No more pain, no more frustration, everything just as it should be. If you go back and look at some of the old hymns, you notice that many of them have a line, usually the last one, referring to Heaven, longing for Christ's return. I think they might have gotten it a little more than we do. Maybe they weren't as self-assured as I am. Maybe they didn't love this earth as much as I can at times. They echoed John's sentiment at the end of Revelation, "Amen, come Lord Jesus, come."

What Am I Looking For?

Take a minute and read this short article at msnbc.com: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/26720566/. Now, here's a question, how does reading this article affect the way you would pray for the missionaries from your denomination or para-church organization who are serving in the Congo? How do you share the gospel with a culture that believes in witchcraft so much that a rumor could start at a soccer game that one of the players was using it on the field? How do you offer Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, when the police's response to the chaos is to protect, not the people, but their own leader, and fire guns into the air? How do you talk about hope in a place that's been a battlefield for civil war?

See, here's the thing: when I read articles in the news it's easy for me to dismiss them as far-off places, and not realize that there are probably missionaries who have followed God's calling on their life to go to these places and share the gospel with the people that live there. It's easy for me to read articles like this as news and forget that really they give me a wonderful prayer guide for countries, cities, and regions of the world I've never been too. Just imagine, that in this couple paragraph article, I have all the information I need to intercede before the Lord on behalf of missionaries I'll probably never even meet! And that's true of almost any story from any country in the world. In too many cases, though, I'm not looking and so I don't see.

Why the Church Matters, Part Two (Leftovers)

Yesterday in Sunday School, we continued our two-part look at the church that's forming the basis for the rest of our discussion this semester about how to live life as singles in the body. The self-sacrifice and "other-ness" membership in the body of Christ requires, continues to astound me. No matter if you're looking at what the church is or what it does, there's really in it's mission or working that's focused on us.

One quote that I didn't have time to share this week but that spoke pretty powerfully to me as I was preparing is from Bishop Lesslie Newbigin who was a 20th century Church of Scotland missionary, “The Church is the pilgrim people of God. It is on the move – hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all men to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one. It cannot be understood rightly except in a perspective which is at once missionary and eschatological. We have no liberty to stop until both ends have been reached.”

I just love the idea of the church looking outward and forward. Both eyes on slightly different goals, neither of which are self-satisfaction or self-service. I wonder if we spent our time and energy, money and resources focused on these two things, if we'd really even have time to think about or focus on ourselves? My guess is we'd be too exhausted and spent to use the energy. It's almost hard to imagine, because it's such a foreign concept to the way we do and think about ministry in an American, 21st-century context.

Open and/or Closed

On the second Friday night of each month, the singles group at my church heads downtown to a park and along with some other churches, provides a meal for people who are homeless. It's always a powerful time for me, and this week was no exception. I just love the whole concept: we, a group of people who has "everything," shows up and gives to people who have "nothing." What a picture of the gospel and what God has done for us! And, yes, there's always that one person who pulls you aside to tell you tha he/she knows for a fact that half the people who come for meals aren't really homeless, but the reality is, that's a picture of the gospel as well. See, the Bible teaches that when we were apart from Christ, we weren't just indifferent to him, we were absolutely, diametrically opposed to him. We didn't just kind of look over at him, every once in a while and sneer, like you might look over your fence into your neighbor's yard that still needs cutting. No, we warred against him, we took advantage of him, we found every way we could to be at odds with him and his holiness. That's the picture the Bible paints of non-Christians, and that's the picture that comes alive for me when I see people walk up to the table to get their plate. Those people who have nothing, and those people who are getting government checks to sit around all day and do nothing. See, here's the thing: the gospel's not just for those who with passive indifference, it's also for those with active deceitfulness and cunning. And that is part of what makes it "good news."

Rockin'

This morning, I looked in the change holder in my car, and saw this little rock that I picked up on the beach in Malaga, Spain in February of 2007. I had lost my passport while traveling the previous week and had made three frantic trips to Madrid to the U.S. Embassy there to get emergency papers, etc. so that I could get back into Russia. Everything had worked out, and I was sitting on the beach just thanking God for his faithfulness and sustaining grace, when I remembered that he told the people of Israel, after they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, to take stones and make an altar of rememberance so that they could tell future generations of God's goodness and faithfulness. So, I picked up this little rock, stuck it in my pocket, and everytime I felt it, it reminded me that God had been so faithful and merciful to help me in what was at that time, the hardest situation I'd ever found myself in.

Here's the thing: I've decided to start carrying it again. Right now I just need to be reminded that God has been so faithful and merciful to me in the past, there's no reason to think he's going to stop now. I am so thankful that I have 30 years worth of memory and track record with God. I mean, not only do I have his Word, which I firmly believe to be true, but I also have experience after experience, of him proving himself faithful to me over and over again. What a blessing, and what a comfort. Like the hymn says, "When darkness seems to hide his face, I rest on his unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil." The ship might get beat up, and maybe even damaged, but ultimately it won't be moved. Not because it's strong, but because of the certainty and strength of the rock in which it's anchored.

Leftovers

This fall I'm teaching one of the Sunday School classes at my church for singles. It's for singles in their 20's and 30's, and we're doing a series called Life in the Body. It's designed to take a look at church life from a single's perspective. I get thirty minutes to teach each week, which is still about 15 minutes longer than most people are willing to listen to me, and so I'm finding that there's a lot more information and insight that comes up in my studying than I have time to present on Sunday mornings. So, here's the thing: I'm going to do a weekly post dealing with the "leftovers" from the previous Sunday's lesson. I'm putting the label "Sunday School Leftovers" on each post, so if you want to find them quickly, you can search that way.

It won't be a re-hashing of all the points from the lesson, but more a chance for me to clarify points and bring up things I didn't have time to. It's also a place where you can post questions or comments or even ideas about what you think would be helpful moving forward in the class, so hopefully the discussion continues.

Why the Church Matters, Part One (Leftovers)

The text from Sunday was Hebrews 12:22-29, where we get a glimpse of heaven and some very useful starting points to defining the church.

Here's the thing I didn't have time to tackle: it's on the notion that the world (and Christians) often give that the church is full of hypocrisy and sin, or the idea that the wheat the tares that Christ talked about in Matthew 13, makes it impossible to trust any local body. Well, that didn't seem t obother Christ or the apostles. In Matthew 16:13-19, Christ set the apostles up as those on whom he'd build his church, and presumably Judas was standing right there. Not only that, but Christ had been with these guys for the past three years or so, and he'd seen their lack of faith, their mess-ups, etc., and yet he still gave them the task of building the church. In I Corinthians 1:10-11; Galatians 1:6; 2 Peter 2:1; Jude 4; and Rev. 2-3, we see the apostles and Chrsit calling out the sin (specific and general) in local churches, admonishing them toward holiness and purity, but never, never, giving up on them or withdrawing support of them, simply because sin existed in them. See the visible church is always going to be an imperfect and skewed view of the true, catholic church. That's why, as believers, one of our jobs is to fight and pray for its purity and right handling of the Word and sacraments. But, if Christ doesn't give up on his bride, we shouldn't either.

Any thoughts/questions you have from Sunday's lesson, or thoughts for future lessons would be greatly appreciated and welcome!

I'll Pass on the Gravy

So, almost every week day, on my lunch hour, I head over to a gym near my office, and get in a quick 45 minutes of sit-ups, weights, and pain! I hate it. I am not one of those crazy people who gets some sort of euphoric high from exercising. Nope. I dread every minute of it, and do everything I can to make the time go faster. I do, however, like the results, so. . .

Anyway, I say that one of the reasons I work out and run occasionally is so I can eat whatever I want, but really that's not what ends up happening. After going through all the pain and effort to beat my body into form, I find myself refraining from a lot of food that would be counterproductive. It's like I have this subconscious attitude that says, "Look, if I going to all the trouble to work out, I'm gonna eat things that help me. Not ones that undo everything I've been working so hard for."

Here's the thing: this is the same kind of thing that I see happening in my spiritual life as well. See, a lot of people think that grace gives you a license to sin. It's the attitude that if all my sins have been paid for, and my salvation secure, then why not just go do whatever I want, right? But really, the more I understand and "get" grace, the more I find the opposite to be true. Just like working out and eating bad, I find that I'm more compelled to spiritually stay away from those things that seem contradictory to my new nature. Not because God will like me better if I resist them, but it's like I have this subconscious attitude that more and more leads me away from the unhelpful things and more to the helpful ones. Now, it's not that I never use grace as a license to sin. Just like I sometimes (most weekends!) use the fact that I worked out all last week as an excuse to eat whatever I want. But rather than leading me to more and more sin, I'm finding that grace and adoption into God's family leads me -- at times with seemingly no thought on my part -- away from sin.

I know, I know, it doesn't make logical sense. 'Course neither does God choosing me as his child. I'm just glad both are true!

Sign Me Up!

This week our Sunday School class is starting a new series, designed to look at life in the body of Christ (the church) from the perspective of singles. I'm pretty excited about it, and as I was preparing for this week's lesson, here's the thing that struck me about the church: it's an organization (some would say an organism) that you become a part of when you become a Christian, and yet it calls you to a life of constantly living outside yourself. Being a part of the universal (catholic) church, and especially being part of a local representation of the invisible church, demands that you put others first. It has to, it was founded that way! The very one who founded the church and brought it into being did so by laying aside his glory in Heaven, coming to earth, and then living the next 30-33 years constantly giving up his rights to the point that he gave up his ultimate human right, and was put to death.

It's just amazing to me how I'm so quick to think about church in terms of what I can get out of it. I look for ways, within the body of Christ, to make it all about me. Trouble is, that just doesn't work. That's not how it runs, because that's not how it was set up to run. I'm excited to start this series, because I need to be reminded that the church really is all about Jason. . . it's all about Jason laying down his life and giving up his rights over and over and over again, and then going back for more.

Oasis, Next 3 Exits

Have you ever been reading through the Old Testament and just marveled at how quickly the Israelites go from seeing God work in tremendous ways on their behalf, to falling into despair over the the new hard situation that's presented itself? It really is just amazing to me that God can do so many miraculous things before the people, that prove his love and care for them, and yet they forget over and over again.

Here's the thing: it amazes me in the present-day as well. This doesn't mean I can't find myself in this place as well, but it really is pretty shocking to talk to friends and realize they have completely forgotten, or at least seem have completely forgotten all that God has done for them in the past. They're facing a crisis (to varying degrees), and it's like the God they're trusting in is brand new. It's his first day on the job, and there's no guarantee that he'll be there for them. It breaks my heart. Not because I'm sad for God. He can take it. But because I'm sad for all the time, energy, and emotion that's being spent worrying and wondering if God is going to show up, when he's already proven time and time again that he will.