Bringing Our Pain to God: Michael Card and Calvin Seerveld on biblical lament in worship

Bringing Our Pain to God: Michael Card and Calvin Seerveld on biblical lament in worship

Thanksgiving

November is the time that many of us focus on the many blessings that God has brought into our lives over the past year. Many will gather around the dinner table, heavy with turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy and pies to celebrate family and the material things that adorn our lives. By the time the football games kick off and the turkey induced naps take over, our minds will be transitioning from thankfulness to the Black Friday sales and the holiday celebration that will follow.

Now don't get me wrong, I am as thankful as the next guy. In fact, I may be more thankful than most. This past year, God has given me a great perspective on life and his goodness. I have a wonderful family, beautiful wife, three children who love God and are pursuing his will for their lives, and I serve an amazing church at MCN. It is very easy for me to see God's hand in life.

My problem is this, it seems to me that those of us who call ourselves Jesus followers should be thankful every day of the year. Paul says in I Thessalonians,  "Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live." (I Thessalonians 5.16-18 The Message) It seems to me that this admonition is pretty clear. When you couple that with the immense number of times the rest of scripture calls us to be thankful, that our gratitude is a pretty important component to our spirituality.

An attitude of gratitude that looks for things for which to give praise focuses differently than one which homes in on the negative. A person with a gratitude attitude can be happy no matter what the circumstances and can find the good in just about anything. A person with an attitude of gratitude can see the good in the people around them and enjoy folks, just because they are who they are.

The fact is that far too many people focus on the negative around them. They see people's shortcomings and faults. Such people are often joyless, bitter, and sullen. They live beneath their grace.

I invite you to cultivate a Thanksgiving attitude every day of the upcoming year. Look for the little ways that God has blessed you. Take joy in the little moments of joy and happiness. Take my challenge and see how much better your life becomes...

Just pondering.

Relationships and the Election

It is official, the national elections are still twelve days off and I am overly sick of the campaign ads, the vitriolic rhetoric coming from both sides, not to mention all the campaign posters and telephone calls I receive every single day.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that every Christian (not to mention every able-bodied citizen) has the responsibility to understand the issues and exercise their responsibility to vote. It is our ability to form our society and influence national policy that makes our country, and our people, great. The fact that each of us has a voice give us the moral responsibility to exercise our voice.

What I am sick of is the mean spirited way that we talk about politics. I spent a great deal of last week listening to one candidate or another call each other liars, attack their motives, and generally create feelings of animosity for the ways that their campaigns run. Further, I listen to "Christian" folks talk about their candidate and portray them to be the pious saint, and then with the same mouth refer to the other candidate in the basest of manners, demonizing that person, or that party, making them out to be the greatest single problem with America today.

For those who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to a higher standard. We are called to love all people, even those we don't agree with. We are called to be relationship builders, conduits of reconciliation rather than architects of division. We are called to exercise our voice and vote without hatred, bitterness, or enmity in our hearts.

I have been reminded today of advice given to voters by John Wesley in 1774.

"1. Vote, without fee or reward, for the person they felt most worthy, 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against, and 3. to take care that their spirits were not sharpened against those who voted on the other side."

These are words that we who call ourselves followers of Jesus, inheritors of grace, would do well to remember and practice daily. Let us live, as much as it lies within us, at peace with all men.

Just rambling today....

Relationships

Beginning this Sunday, I will be preaching a series entitled "Relationships 101." It is spawned by the ongoing realization that the call to be a follower of Jesus Christ is a call to live in and practice community. In a word, our call to follow Jesus is a call to relationships. The Trinitarian understanding of God expressed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living in unbroken relationship illustrates for us the foundational understanding of community as understood by God.

From a purely secular point of view, we cannot escape the necessity of living in community. We exist in a complex network of dependent relationships. Those relationships may be familial, social, forced upon us by our work environment, and even our global economy is dependent upon relationship.

Yet, what is readily apparent, is that humans are great at destroying relationship. Everywhere I look, relationships of all kinds are in stress, dysfunction, and in pain. Relationships that are nurturing, caring and mutually beneficial seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

Yet, the apostle Paul sets forward God's plan for our relationships. 

And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They've refused for so long to deal with God that they've lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can't think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.
 But that's no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.
What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ's body we're all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.
 Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don't use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don't stay angry. Don't go to bed angry. Don't give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.
Did you use to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can't work.
 Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.
Don't grieve God. Don't break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don't take such a gift for granted.
 Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.

--Ephesians 4.17-32. The Message.

|Over the next several weeks, we will be exploring what it means to live in relationship as Christ intended for us. Please join us on Sunday mornings at 10:50 and let's take this journey closer to God and closer to one another.