Barney Wiget's Blog, page 5

Commit Your Way to the Lord

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of your cause, like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. (Psalm 37:3-7)

Commit your way to the Lord: Does this refer to seeking guidance from the Lord about which road to take? Or is it about the way we go about taking the way, the way we behave while on the way? Answer: Yes, all of the above.

Yielding to the Lord is about the same thing as committing to him––yes? For when you come to a yield sign at an intersection, what do you do first? You slow down enough to observe whether or not other cars or pedestrians might be coming from the right or the left. Yielding to the Spirit can be tricky sometimes. I think he often makes it so, in order to get our full attention and teach us how to listen and obey. But yield, we must, lest we crash and burn for being inattentive to God and the people around us.

Surrendering to the Lord might be another apt figure that describes committing our way to his. We’re not talking about surrendering to a ruthless God with a gun to our back. We surrender to love. Think of a woman who has received a repeated marriage proposal from a man who loves her completely. On his knees he’s proposed several times. She loves him too, but is unsure. Yet he persists until she surrenders. That’s what surrendering to the Lord is like. We surrender to love.

So many seem committed to going the general direction Christian people ought go, but have forgotten the way we’re supposed to go the way. Each of us has a race “marked out” for us (Hebrews 12:1), but we have to run our race in the right way, i.e., in a Christlike way. We have to model our attitudes and actions after Jesus and make sure to watch out for other runners who might need our assistance along the way.  

Eugene Peterson said, “When we follow Jesus, it means that we don’t know exactly what it means, at least in detail. We follow him, letting him pick the roads, set the timetables, tell us what we need to know but only when we need to know it… There are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all beginners, necessarily followers, because we don’t know where we are going.”

Though we don’t know where we’re going, we do know who goes with us and what kind of people he wants us to become along the way.

The early Christians called themselves “The Way.” Which is strange since Jesus said he was “the Way.” Yes, he’s the way to the Father, but our journey doesn’t end when we come to the Father. Jesus modeled to us the way to conduct ourselves in this world, and our mission is to demonstrate that way to others. Remember the What Would Jesus Do? bracelets? They were never my thing, but the sentiment fits. Commit to the Lord the way you go and how you live while going that way.

The Hebrew term David used for “commit” means to roll a heavy object onto another thing. Trying to negotiate life by ourselves is too heavy a weight. Committing our way to the Lord means to daily roll ourselves and our many concerns onto his shoulders strong enough to carry any weight.

If you think about it, there really are no uncommitted people. Everyone is committed to something. It may be that you’re committed to your leisure or your own personal pleasure (“lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God”), but you are committed! I can hear Dylan’s nasally voice now: “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody!”

Let’s be clear, God doesn’t want a PLACE in our lives, even a PROMINENT PLACE. He wants PREEMINENCE! And he deserves it. I like to say, “Choose God. Then give him your choices!”

Only one life, a few brief years,

Each with its burdens, hopes, and fears;

Each with its days I must fulfill.

Living for self or in His will;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,

Only what’s done for Christ will last. (CT Studd)

[Next, he invites us to “be still and wait,” which oddly might be our most difficult invitation to accept.]

In the meantime, are you yielding, surrendering, commiting yourself to God and his way of doing things? If yes, what evidence do you have? If not, go for it! You won’t regret it.  

Delights and Desires

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of your cause, like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. (Psalm 37:3-7)

The next part of David’s poetic invitation to living a whole life in spite of life’s challenges, is this well-known but often misunderstood sentence.

Delight yourself in the Lord:

If there were an American Dream Version of the Bible this sentence would go something like: “Believe in the Lord, and he’ll make all your dreams come true.” That would be a gross misinterpretation of what it means to “delight” in the Lord, not to mention the promise of getting our heart’s desires. But let’s start with what it means to “delight” in him.

Remember, this is the man of whom it is said that he pursued the contents of the very heart of God. David knew what it meant to delight in the Lord. He knew that it pleased the Lord to create us in such a way that we would find our highest pleasure in pleasing him. John Owen said, “When the soul sees God…to be infinitely lovely and loving, rests upon and delights in him as such, then it has communion with him in love.”

Delight is commonly, if not always, reciprocal. Among friends, between a man and a woman, and between people and their God. When we tap into his delight in us (Zephaniah 3:17) we can hardly help but delight ourselves in him. “Earth has nothing I desire besides you,” said the poet-king in another place.

The Jerusalem Bible version translates it, “Make Him your only joy!” When he’s our principle joy, we have much less room for shallow joys. Unfortunately, we (and I mean all of us to some degree) have dulled our appetite for what is good, let alone for what is best. But when he’s our highest and truest joy, we lose our appetite for what is petty and trivial.

And he will give you the desires of your heart:

When we’ve tasted and seen that the Lord is good, our taste for what is truly good crowds out our appetite for what is not. Our palate changes. It matures when we take more than small bites, but constantly feed on his faithfulness.

Aged David assures us that the serendipitous consequence of “delighting in the Lord” is that our desires begin to change to match his desires. That is, when our delight is found in him, his desires become ours.

Ask a cross section of people who identify as “Christian” what they want from the Lord, and you’ll find a number who want him to give them something––a wife, a career, enough money for rent. All valid requests from a God who loves to supply our every need and give us good gifts. But is that all there is––believing in God for what he gives us? “God has put us within sight of the Himalayas of His glory in Jesus Christ,” said John Piper, “but we have chosen to pull down the shades of our chalet and show slides of Buck Hill—even in church.”

But you’ll also hear from others, who, though they ask for some of those same things, their first and foremost request is not so much something from him, but him. It’s not presents from God, but the presence of God that they long for most. They want to know him, to please him, to be with him, and someday to see him face to face. That is their greatest desire, the desire he programmed inside them.

He delights in us and we in him and his desires become ours.

[Next, he invites us to commit not only our desires but our direction to him…]

In the meantime, what or who is your utmost delight and supreme desire?  

Settle Down and Feed on His Faithfulness

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of your cause, like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. (Psalm 37:3-7)

We’re wending our way through each invitation in this segment of an overall delightful Psalm of David. We started with “trust him and do good.” Now, he makes us lie down in green pastures––so to speak.

Dwell in the land:

The Hebrew verb is an invitation to do something more than simply live somewhere, but to “settle down.” He beckons us to more than just locate ourselves in a piece of geography. He wants us to settle down, to make our home in the land of his promises.

Have you noticed that we Americans always seem to be relocating from place to place, failing to put down roots anywhere? I for one, have lived in at least 30 or 40 different houses and apartments in my lifetime. The longest I’ve ever lived at one address is 8 years. I must’ve inherited my itchy feet from my dad, who before unpacking from the new place would comb the listings for the next new one.

Here, the Lord invites us to settle down, to quit wandering and make our home in him.

Throughout its 40 verses, this song refers to “the land” 7 times. Citizenship in the promised land was God’s gift to the Israelites who had been a nomadic and then exiled people, destined to be exiled again in the future. Here, the poet king told them to settle down in God’s country.

It’s one thing to possess land and another to settle in it, which leads to the next beautiful summons.

Enjoy safe pasture:

These heavenly words have given me limitless comfort over the years, especially during gnarly cancer chemo, and now again in this much less difficult, but still challenging season of my life nevertheless. The small and simple home of the elderly couple that took me in (where I stayed for 3 years while they nursed me back to health!) was “safe pasture” to me. My small cottage in the California redwoods is a safe pasture. But more than those homes, it’s the one who lives with me and I in him, that makes them safe pasture.

Having grown up in the fields with his father’s flocks, David routinely used images of sheep, shepherds, and pastural scenes in his poetry to convey the tender and intimate relationship between us and God. Jesus did too. “Fear not little flock… I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… My sheep know my voice…” There are few things more assuring than safe pasture with our Great Shepherd.

Yet, a more accurate translation of the phrase “enjoy safe pasture” is “feed on his faithfulness.” As the sheep of his pasture, it’s there we’re safest, in green pastures feeding on his faithfulness. Though in the presence of our enemies at the table he’s prepared for us, we’re best nourished when we feed there on his faithfulness.

He makes us lay down in lush meadows, scopes out quiet pools for us to drink, lets us catch our breath, and sends us in the right direction––paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

[It just keeps getting better, for next we’ll talk about “delighting” ourselves in him and its predictable consequence.]

For now, may I ask how settled you are in him. Are you feeding on his faithfulness?

Trust and Do Good

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of your cause, like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. (Psalm 37:3-7)

Trust in the Lord: This is the only one of the nine invitations that David repeats. The reminder to trust is like that reminder evite that keeps on coming until you RSVP. Trust serves not only as the beginning. Trust contains all the rest. If we trust God, we’ll be inclined to do good, to enjoy safe pasture, to delight ourselves in him, and so on.

The term itself shows up 170 times in the Bible, over a third of which find themselves in the Psalms. Trusting the Lord is often set against trusting alternatives, such as wealth or military strength or human wisdom or idols. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” (Psalm 20:7)

Many of the Psalms refer to trusting God’s unfailing love, his omnipotence, his trustworthiness. Trusting “in him” is like putting money in an impenetrable bank for safe keeping. Trust is the precursor to courage, to making good life choices, and of course, to worship. You can’t very well worship, let alone love a God you don’t trust.

When talking about my relationship with God, I usually prefer to speak of trust over the more standard term, faith. I guess it’s because it sounds to me more personal. Faith sometimes feels more like a duty, something I have to perfect and possess in increasing volumes. Trust, though, is rooted in the one in whom we deposit it. It’s more about him than me.

But then he surprises me by linking trust to an action.

And do good: Trusting the Lord is not an alternative to doing good in the world. On the contrary, it is the catalyst for doing good. Trusting him doesn’t let us off the hook for doing his will. It’s the motive and the impetus for it. My life verse is Daniel 11:32. “They that know their God shall stand firm and take action.” I’ve met way too many people who think all that God requires is to believe the right things, and have somehow overlooked that “faith without works is dead.”

In his letter to his disciple, Titus, Paul urged him to “love what is good,” in contrast to others who seem “unfit for doing anything good.” He told him to set an example to people by “doing what is good,” to be “eager to do what is good,” be “ready to do what is good,” and be “devoted to doing good.”

So, trust the Lord to show you and empower you to do good! As someone said, “While you’re praying, row toward shore.”

[Next time we’ll see what we can glean from: “Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.”]

For now, tell the Lord that you trust him and ask him to give you opportunities and the courage to do something good today.

Psalm 37:3-7

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of your cause, like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. (Psalm 37:3-7)

I commend to your serious consideration this most precious and comforting passage the Spirit has many times highlighted during some of my darkest seasons. I have repeatedly found my way back to these words of Israel’s sweet singer during many of my dearest meditation moments. Though his melody is lost to us, these lyrics and others like them play in my soul like poetic enticements to be at peace in the Presence.

There are nine invitations the song offers to its readers: Trust…do good…dwell in the land…enjoy safe pasture…delight in the Lord…commit our way to him…trust (in case we didn’t get it the first time)…be still…and wait patiently.

Let’s glance at each of these over the next couple weeks, pausing to wait for the Spirit to unveil his heart to each of us in our own circumstances. He might underscore trust or delight, be still or wait patiently. But he always knows just what we need to hear at the moment. I offer these for your own meditation.

Next time we’ll begin where it all begins––with “Trust.”

In the meantime, pour over these five verses, if not the entire Psalm.

Will You Still Follow Him When It’s Hard?

Sixteen years ago, while recovering from a divorce, a surgery for a broken neck, and a year’s worth of gnarly cancer treatments, I wrote an essay (mostly for my own good) on the topic of enduring in the faith and why I resolved to continue following Jesus as best I knew how. As I’ve been in a more recent season of difficulty (another neck surgery and the complications that have followed), I’ve revisited the subject. If you’re in your own version of suffering from whatever source, maybe my meager thoughts will inspire in you the courage to endure.

You can find the essay here. Spoiler alert, it is rather long, so you might want to read it in chunks if at all.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)

[BTW, I wrote a ton of other stuff on suffering during that early season. You can find a number of other posts (most of them much shorter) on the subject. Go to my site, scroll down to “Select Categories” and scroll to “On Suffering.”]

There’s a Slow Train Comin’

I grew up with Bob Dylan music in the ether, but was never really a fan of his. It’s only been lately that I’ve sort of been coming around to appreciating his genius (in an odd sort of way). I’m intrigued by him and the wide range of subject matter included in his repertoire especially in his earlier days. Admittedly, in order to “get it” I have to listen to his socially provocative folk pieces from the 60s over and over, which is painful, as his voice, not to mention his solo guitar playing, to put it bluntly, grates on me. But I do love the lyrics of some of those old songs that I overlooked in my youth.

Even when he did his overtly Christian albums, I paid little attention.  So, when I listened to his 1979 Slow Train Coming it was like hearing it for the first time. I love its straightforward, if not disturbingly blunt, lyrics. I particularly love its title track. I love the music and can even tolerate Dylan’s singing voice. But it’s the lyrics that move me most like those of the prophets of old. If you listen to it a time or two before reading on, I think you’ll be more likely to get the gist of my drift.

He comes right out of the gate with:

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
Are they lost or are they found?
Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

I don’t know if he’s referring to his Christian or non-Christian companions, but I can’t help but be particularly concerned, if not outright disgusted about some (not by any means all) of the behavior of church folk these days. Are they lost or are they found? Hard to tell sometimes. (Fortunate for some, it’s not up to me.) Have they counted the cost to follow Jesus? Do they abandon earthly principles for the sake of their faith or the other way around?

There’s a slow train coming that will tell the whole story, the true story about how we’ve managed our lives. Its slow pace gives us time to get it right or to continue to get it increasingly wrong, not to mention affording us the impression that it isn’t coming at all. But it is coming for all of us, for each of us. It’s now just around the bend.

In a later stanza, Dylan sings:

Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters
Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition
But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency
All non-believers and men-stealers talkin’ in the name of religion
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Could this be even more true today than when he composed it nearly a half century ago? Big-time negotiators. I can think of a few whose negotiations are slick and always play to benefit their ego and personal power. Can you? False healers, woman haters, and masters of the proposition wearing a cloak of decency are not far behind. People using religion as a prop to get what they want. I’ll withhold the long list of names that come to mind.  

It may be slow but the train is just around the bend.

The train will judge the social as well as the personal, the systemic as well as the individual.

People starving and thirsting, grain elevators are bursting
Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it do to give it
They say lose your inhibitions, follow your own ambitions
They talk about a life of brotherly love
Show me someone who knows how to live it
There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

There’s plenty for everyone if some would just quit taking more than their share. Jesus was pretty clear on this point. I wonder if that’s the main reason he was so hated by the greedy among both his religious and secular contemporaries. Some people talk about brotherly love with the intention to apply it everyone but themselves.

There’s one other line in the final stanza that strikes me as particularly poignantly to our time:

But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets

I suppose we vary in those we identify as pulling the strings and to what end. But the best and most sinister strings are the invisibly subtle ones. Yet today, if we’re paying attention at all, the puppeteer’s strings and even his hands are in full view. In some cases, it’s awkwardly obvious. Still, the puppeted senselessly obey his every tug, his every command.  

Are you bothered by the same today? Do you know people who wolf down entire toxic ideas posited by self-aggrandizing ideologues replete with outlandish conspiracies aimed at the gullible consumer? Sadly, it seems hucksters are evenly spread between those “inside” and outside the faith.

Or might you be the object of the concern of others watching you standing on the tracks with your back to the oncoming locomotive?

Beware of the slow, but decidedly inescapable train comin’ up just around the bend.

A Short Sad Story*

My sister “Ann-Erica” became infatuated with a charismatic multi-millionaire real estate tycoon named DJ Crump. Bewitched by his phony charm and swept her off her feet, she was lured into his world of glamor and fame.

Everyone in our family and circle of friends saw beneath Crump’s seductive mask. His persona was fake and his character non-existent. All our efforts to dissuade her from this palpably toxic man were fruitless. Her love-sickness and the allure of “the good life” he promised obscured her usual good judgment.

Though we begged her not to, in no time at all, to match his flamboyant personality, Crump put a gaudy ring on her finger. Having baited and bagged the trophy wife he had coveted; the wedding was a garish spectacle equal to his narcissism. As always, he got what he wanted––only to subject it to his self-serving whims.

She moved into his 58-bedroom mansion estate in Palm Beach, complete with servants and butlers who catered to her every need. He gifted her several cars, bought her lavish jewelry and beautiful clothes. He introduced her to the highlife to which he was accustomed.

Overnight she morphed into a different person, a socialite, one that none of us recognized. When she gave birth to two beautiful children, DJ insisted on naming them after his business partner: JD and Vance.

In time, his misogyny eked out the shadows and his serial philandering became the subject of the newsreels. The prenup she’d signed pinned her down until she had had all she could take and divorced him. Shielded by his wealth and power he sued for full custody of the children. He won. He always wins. Even if he doesn’t, he does.

Ann-Erica got a minimum wage job at an all-night diner and moved into a tiny apartment in a bad neighborhood in the southside of town. She can only stay in touch with her children through a computer screen, and every few months when she’s allowed supervised visits.

Though we had seen the writing on the wall years before, we had no need or desire to gloat. We just wanted her to be safe and back to her beautiful self again.

After years of therapy, she has begun to enjoy a degree of normalcy. She met a good man who cherishes her. They married and live in a small house in the suburbs, with two children: Peace and Prudence.

She was damaged but not destroyed. We have hopes for her to make a full recovery to be what God intended her to be.

“Though their speech is charming, do not believe them, for seven abominations fill their hearts. Their malice may be concealed by deception, but their wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.” (Proverbs 26:25-26)

——————————-

*If you didn’t already realize it, this story is a fictional version something all too real.

The Things of the Lord

I heard about a Christian man who said, “I don’t mean to suggest that it is wrong to pay attention to some of these social issues — but I do wish we would spend more time talking about the things of the Lord!”

I couldn’t agree more about the eternal importance of concerning ourselves with “the things of the Lord.” But just what are those so-called things of the Lord? What matters to him should matter to us, so what are the things that matter to him? Are his things only comprised of those “spiritual things” like prayer, Bible study, worship, good theology, church attendance, evangelism, the gifts of the Spirit, and such? Surely, those are some of God’s things, some of the things that matter to him. In some ways and at some times they might even be the things that matter most.

How can you tell when someone prioritizes certain things over other things? You can often tell by the “3 Cs”: their conversation, their calendar, and their checkbook. In other words, if it’s important to them, they talk a lot about it, are willing to pay for it, and plan for it by putting it on their calendar. Though we don’t have access to God’s calendar or his checkbook per say, we do have a record of some of his most important conversations. It’s called the Bible. So, if we want to know what matters most to him, what his “things” are, we might take a serious look through the Book he’s given us.

We don’t have time or space right now to list every important theme of Scripture and put them in order of priority based on frequency of mention, but I will posit some “things” of a social nature that the brother I referred to earlier felt really don’t qualify as “the things of the Lord.” I suggest that these things also matter to God, maybe even as much or more at times than the so-called “spiritual things.”

For instance, could it be that one of the things of the Lord is how we treat one another, especially those who aren’t like us, some of which even hate us? How about the way we treat the planet on which we reside? Is that one of the things of the Lord? Could our care for the least, last, and lonely be one of those things that matters a lot to him and should therefore matter to us? Unjust policing, abortions, gerrymandering, materialism, and greed. Are solutions to these the things of the Lord?  These “social issues” are the kinds of things that the brother appeared to consider not a part of the Lord’s things. I guess these things either don’t matter or matter less than so-called “spiritual things.”  

Rather than sorting everything into distinct categories of social versus spiritual things, maybe God intends for us to jumble them all together like fish in a pond and then throw in our line to catch whatever he intends at the time.

Remember when Jesus told Peter to throw his hook into the lake to catch that particular fish with the tax money in it? Of all the other fish in the sea that day, it was that one that mattered most at the moment. It was the one that God intended Peter to catch. Other fish would have made a good meal, but it wasn’t a meal that so much mattered at that moment. It was tax money and the lesson Peter (and us) needed to learn.

Don’t forget that Peter had left fishing for following Jesus. The Lord had called him to catch people, not fish. But on this day, what mattered was a fish with money inside. The things of the Lord aren’t always the same things. At one moment they might include what we mistakenly think of as “spiritual,” like praying, prophesying, or preaching. But in the next moment, the circumstance might call for something much more physical like paying our taxes or feeding, clothing, and befriending the poor. What matters to God and should matter to us depends on what the need is at the time.

Apparently, the priest and Levite on the road to Jericho thought whatever “spiritual thing” that was on their agenda, was at that moment more important than stopping to help a dying man.

What are the things of the Lord? Is it making it to church on time or stopping to give a cup of cold water to a thirsty person?

I guess it depends.

How’s the Church in America Doing?

I recently shared this quote by theologian N.T. Wright on Facebook:

“The church is designed to be the small working model of new creation, to hold up before the world a symbol—an effective sign of what God has promised to do for the world. Hence, to encourage the rest of the world to say, ‘Oh, that’s what human community ought to look like. That’s how it’s done.’”

Then I asked people to weigh in on how they think we’re doing so far. Most said they love their local church and feel it’s doing a good job in the community (which I celebrate btw). Others said we’re a mixed bag of the commendable and the horrible, which is, and always has been the case, I’m sure. One just responded with “lol.” I took that to mean he didn’t think we’re doing very well.

Here are a couple of my own thoughts on the state of the American Church.

I too love my church here in Santa Cruz. Sincere godly pastors and the members seem to love Jesus and others. I’m very glad for the community we have. But as I look at the state and reputation of the uppercase C “Church” in America, I’m pretty disappointed. I’m speaking generally now, but the Church as “an effective sign of what God has promised to do for the world,” (?). I’m not seeing it. Do we really display “what human community ought to look like”?

When the Church comes up in conversations I’m having with people outside the Church, I’ve had people laugh in my face. We can blame the devil or social media or bad doctrine, or we can be honest about how divided we are amongst ourselves, how we’ve conflated Christianity with political party, and how we’ve replaced true spirituality with what someone said to me about our super-sized glitzy presentations as “Christian razzle dazzle!” I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of the long line of high-profile megachurch pastors whose theology may have been solid and their oratory impressive, but whose lifestyles have been found out to be devilish. Or the so-called “prophets” who predict political outcomes. And what about the billions we’ve spent on buildings while neglecting the people whom Jesus demonstrated were his primary target, the poor and vulnerable.

I love my church too. And there are many many great churches throughout our great country. Maybe the good ones outnumber those less than good. I don’t know. But it seems to me that with all our “razzle dazzle” we’re losing rather than gaining kingdom ground toward being the “small working model of new creation.” We have a lot of work to do to be worthy of it being said of us: “Oh, that’s what human community ought to look like. That’s how it’s done.”

Jesus had nothing but praise for two of the seven churches of Asia Minor whom he addressed in Revelation 2-3. One of the two was lean and mean by reason of the intense persecution they experienced. Shallow believers must’ve fled the scene leaving only people willing to die for Christ. To the rest of those churches Jesus had nothing or near-to-nothing to commend. Yet he promised them rewards if they’d suck up their pride, repent of their behaviors, and “overcome.”

Let’s be the Church he wants to see, that we must be, and the world needs us to be.