Are We Full of Talented People but Void of Spiritual Power?

I don't know much about church growth anymore; I once thought I did. I got real heady a few years back when all of our church-growth plans began to come together in a fruitful fashion. Then, not long thereafter, they started to fall apart. Rapid growth (rapid for us anyway) turned to decline. The decline came with a full plate of humble pie; filling no doubt, but tough going down. Now, a few years older and wiser, I am again trying to give credit where credit is due. Having eaten more pie than I wanted I am confident in saying now that if I once thought I knew a bit about the subject I am now writing, I am convinced that I no longer do! What I do know, however, is that as the Lord extends patience to His church for their lack of trust in Him and over-trust in themselves, we must learn to be rapid learners.

To build our lives around Jesus, I am learning, is to make Jesus our foundation. It is to stand on Him. It is to gain one's strength, energy and motivation from Him alone. It is to awake each new morning with the awareness that, once accepting Christ in belief and baptism (see Acts 2:38-40), I am now animated by the Spirit of God so long as I do not quench the Spirit's work in my life. I am now become a temple on heals. I can move where the Spirit leads to do what the Spirit demands. When I get out of bed in the morning, the right side or the wrong side, I can shout with confidence, "I have power, through the Spirit, to put to death the deeds of my body and the thoughts of the mind and to accomplish supernatural things like moving mountains" (see Mt.17:20).

The more I trust in the truths of God's Word- the more I actually believe in what He has told me and live as if they were as true as the sky is blue, the freer I shall be to be used by Him. The Spirit is quenched, however, when we begin to believe and act as if we do not need the branch we are sitting on. Over time we begin to notice our gifts/talents and how good we are at them. We notice their effectiveness in impacting people. Our increasingly polished performance as a Christian leads us to believe we are quite special and needful and good enough. Our preaching becomes an act of creative persuation to make them like us. Our friendships become our attempt to network in order to move up the social and economic ladder. We become gifted salesmen instead of lamps of light who bring warmth and visibility to all we pass. As we graduate from Spirit-reliance to self-reliance we steadily cut through the branch we are sitting on and plummet to our spiritual death. And, as you can imagine, the church begins to decline.

This "cutting off the branch" is what I believe to be a fundamental wound in the life of many congregations today. It was for ours. We all want the church of Jesus Christ to grow. We all want to see every soul from here to Zimbabwe build life around Jesus. But in an effort to spread the gospel far and wide we have forgotten the life-source of our very selves. What I learned in our time in the valley is that it is not so much important for the church to figure out how to spread the gospel to her communities; what's important is to be people who deeply depend on the Spirit of God for all movement. You see it is the Spirit of God who will lead us and empower us to reach our communities. Jesus said,

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen" (Mt.28:19-20).

As we look at this passage, how did Jesus intend to be with us to the end of the age? By His Spirit He would give. It was the Spirit Jesus sent whom Paul relied on to accomplish all he did. He said to Philippi,

"For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death" (Phil.1:19-20).

Through other Christian's prayers and the supply of the Holy Spirit Paul was empowered to plant numerous churches. We need the Holy Spirit alive in our churches! By this I do not mean that we need more Pentecostals. We need congregations who are full of people walking by the Spirit, not by themselves. Francis Chan calls the Holy Spirit the "Forgotten God" of the Christian church. Have we forgotten the One who gives us life and breath and all things?

What would happen if our preaching (my preaching) was less creative this Sunday and more Spirit-empowered?

What would happen if my conversations with my lost friends were less about the right things to say and more about the love of the Spirit of Jesus exuding out of me?

What would happen if our worship gatherings began with congregational confessions of need for God's Spirit instead of incredibly talented and polished worship bands impressing us?

For us, and for many others, we were a congregation full of talented people but, in many ways, void of spiritual power. Years down the road now I believe our congregation recognizes better than ever that if we are going to unite to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our community, we must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit inside us to do it.

Creative preaching with out spiritual power is dead.
High energy worship without spiritual power is dull.
Highly motivated and  talented Christians without spiritual power are fruitless.
Innovative and expensive marketing campaigns without spiritual power are a waste of the Lord's money. (Yes, we may have wasted some money).

May the church become, no, better than that, may I become a person dependant on the Holy Spirit (through prayer, fasting, scripture study and Christian community) who daily experiences the Lord's hand in my life. I won't expect anyone to do what I have not done first.

Let's Give A Microphone to Good Churches!

On almost a weekly basis I hear someone talk about what’s wrong with churches today. Some say, “they aren’t doing anything”, “all they care about is money”, or “they are a bunch of hypocrites”. I do not completely disagree: there are some churches who aren’t doing much, some who care too much about money and no doubt there are some hypocrites out there too. Occasionally we need to give a microphone to what’s wrong in churches in order that they will be corrected. However, sometimes the best way to silence the bad is to give the good a microphone instead.

That’s what I would like to do today. I want to give a microphone to the ways in which I see the Holy Spirit animating the Brunswick Church of Christ.

• BCC has been Praying Regularly

Prayer has not always been a core value of BCC. Neither has it been a core value of mine until recently (sadly). Just this year, however, prayer has grabbed a seat at the top of what members of BCC value. Each Monday night since the beginning of June members of BCC have gathered at the church building to simply pray. We pray for the lost. We pray for the sick. We pray for revival. We pray for the Lord to bring a flood of His Spirit into North Brunswick and awaken our community to their need for Jesus. We pray because we have learned, through the school of hard knocks, that nothing grows unless the Lord makes it grow (see 1 Corinthians 3:6). Prayer has brought a new dependency on God for all things and I am so grateful to see it.

• BCC has been Transforming Daily

Daily transformation has been a core value of BCC for some time. However recently it has really become visible among us. For a while we did not offer people the invitation to respond to the message on Sunday. Instead we encouraged people to talk with a leader of the church afterwards if they had a need. In some ways we may have lost opportunities to call people to daily transformation by doing it this way. But ever since February of this year we have been offering the invitation almost every Sunday and the response has been very encouraging. One Sunday 5 people responded to the message resulting in a number of prayer stations around the room. Another time a gentleman came into the service with a very heavy heart and, rather than talk with him afterwards about his problem, the leadership asked him if they could pray for him right then and there in the service. The people of BCC have been asked to consider what transformations the Lord might be calling them to make today and they have responded!

• BCC has been Building Genuine Christian Community

Community is hard to find nowadays. We may live directly above someone and not even know them. Even harder to find in the 21^st century is genuine Christian Community. We read that the church in Jerusalem,

“…were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved”(Acts 2:44-47).

This picture of the church is foreign to us at best. But those seeking to follow Christ will begin to break out of conventional, American ways of living and transition into new life in community. This is what I have seen BCC doing this year. The women’s FOCUS group had secret sisters they bought gifts for all semester long. This challenged each lady to intentionally think of another during the week. One of our teens has been spending a lot of quality time with her spiritual mentor this summer as well as with some other godly women in the church. The “older women” are “teaching the younger women” (see Titus 2:3-5). The church has been generous to one another by paying another’s rent, paying another’s fines and helping a member clean, paint and move for no charge at all.

• BCC has been Serving Sincerely

Serving sincerely happens to be one of our core values at BCC. This summer has given us a few specific opportunities to sincerely serve together. To serve sincerely, as I am using it here, is to serve with no hidden agenda. It is to serve because He first served us (see John 13). Having said that, we understand that as we love others through service, God draws people unto Himself. As we love others through sincere service we gain entrance into the hearts of people whereby we can then share with them the essential message of Jesus Christ. One lady at our recent National Night Out event said to us,

“What you are doing in giving away school supplies is great. My daughter is a teacher and, because of budget cuts, has to purchase her own supplies for her children out of her own pocket. Keep up the good work!”

I have seen BCC serve sincerely this summer and it is so encouraging to see. Remember and cherish the Lord's words in 1 Peter 2:12: “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

Folks I know there are many things wrong with many churches. But I can vouch for BCC when I say that she is the best congregation I have ever been a part of and the greatest light for Jesus I see in our area.

Please pray that the Lord will draw many, many more people from our community to Christ through the tilling, watering and sowing efforts of BCC!

From Spiritual Bondage to the Promised Land: But How Long?

It’s always a mystery to me how God brings people from a spiritual Egypt (slavery) to the Promised Land through Jesus. It’s been a mystery to me because each person seems to have a different exodus experience. For some it seems like they need all ten plagues to hit their lives before they look up and give up in surrender to Christ. Others only need 3 or 4 plagues. Still others hear God’s plague warning for the first time (either in an experience or through the preaching of the Gospel) and never have to endure a painful plague before they turn to Jesus. I believe Steven is one of those guys on plague number 7.

Jail, drugs, grand theft auto, broken relationships, working a minimum wage job into his 30’s, still living with his parents; all of these things have described Steven’s life thus far, and these are just the things I know about. Some days are better for him than others. There are days when he would rather not live. Other days there are enough positive things happening around him to keep his spirits high for a while. Thankfully, Steven is slowly beginning to see that the straight and narrow path of Jesus is the way to life. He tried his own way for a while and found it wanting.

From my end of Steven’s journey, his exodus is far too slow! I want Steven to just “get it”. I want him to realize that it is Jesus Christ or nothing. I want him to drop every evil way that once brought him an ounce of pleasure and pound of pain and never again contemplate them. I feel like he is so close. An elderly customer approached him at work recently and asked him if he had a church. He said, “Yes, the Brunswick Church of Christ is my church and Shaun is my Pastor”. When he told me this I thought to myself, “Huh? You come to church once every 6 weeks and I have known you for less than a year. How have you concluded that we are your church and I am your Pastor?” He makes me chuckle.

I pray for Steven. I want him to understand the Gospel of Jesus. I want him to lasso the Gospel’s implications for his life. But I can’t force him further than he is. I can open the Scriptures with him. I can share with him Matthew 7:26-27:

"But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: ²⁷ and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

I can persuade him. I can counsel him. I can let him know that if he keeps toying with evil he will die. However, I can’t make him repent and be baptized. The reality is that he may need a few more plagues in his life before he turns to Jesus for good. And so I will pray for him.

At least I know this: when God draws Steven for the last time, he has a church he will turn to and a “Pastor” he will call. Please pray,

1. That God will have the patience to bring Steven to repentance, and
2. That Steven will listen to the plagues he has already seen in his life and begin building his life around Jesus.

Freedom: The Right To Do What We Ought To Do

1 Corinthians 8-10

Recently our congregation went through the books of 1 & 2 Corinthians to learn some general truths about “Living Joyfully in Biblical Community”. 1 Corinthians chapters 8-10 were the passages of discussion on June 11^th. I have included a part of that lesson here for discussion because I believe our understanding of “freedom” is very important to understanding how to live for Jesus in these times.

The problem which Paul is going to address in chapters 8-10 is not really food sacrificed to idols, although that seems to be the topic at hand. The theological issue of food sacrificed to idols is limited to two verses in 1 Corinthians 8 which makes me think that the actual issue is not the real issue. In 1 Corinthians 8: 4-6 Paul basically says

Idols are nothing.
They aren’t real.
There is no God but one God.
Jesus is the only Lord.

Then in verses 7-13 the real issue arises: Listen to Paul’s words;

"But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. ⁸ But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak...”

Did you catch that last verse? It seems that what Paul is really concerned with is how one person’s freedom in Christ, the freedom to eat meat or not eat meat, might hinder another person’s walk with Christ. Many times joylessness in the church has less to do with the issues that arise and a lot to do with the manner in which those issues are handled between people at different places in their walk with Christ. Listen as he continues;

1 Corinthians 8:9-13:

"Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? ¹¹ So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. ¹² When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. ¹³ Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.”

Notice what our Lord is concerned with regarding food sacrificed to idols; it’s not the food sacrificed to idols. It’s the faith of other brothers and sisters in Christ.

I would venture to say that 90% of people who leave churches today to go to other churches leave not because they disagree with other members on issues of faith, but because they have been hurt by the manner in which those issues of faith were handled.

In Christ we have been given the freedom to do many things, but those freedoms must never weaken the faith of others in the church. True freedom in Christ is not the freedom to do whatever I want to do; it’s the freedom to do what I ought to do for the faith of others.

True Freedom

In approximately 2 weeks, if the Lord answers our prayers as we have been requesting, our brother Ken will be released from jail to finish out a final 90 days in a rehabilitation clinic. When Ken’s final day in jail is up he will stand on the exterior wall of the jail and the guards will say to him, “Ok Ken, you are free”.

And at that point every former prisoner must ask himself or herself one question: “Free to do what?”

To those who have not learned their lesson they will say, “Yippee!! I am free to do whatever I want to do!”

Those who say this forget that the reason they were in jail in the first place was because they took the liberty to do just whatever they wanted to do. The freedom to do whatever we want to do will never, never, never, hardly ever, no never bring us freedom.

When Ken is released from jail I believe he will leave knowing that he is free to do not whatever he wants to do…but free to do exactly what he ought to do. That is the essence of freedom, true freedom. And if the church is going to be a joyful beacon of light to our communities we must preach and exemplify true freedom among us and not some false definition of it.

Contemporary Application:

This is important today because in our society the words freedom and liberty are passed around with different meanings. Many people today believe freedom gives me the right to do just whatever I want to do.

A man and a woman have premarital sex together. Not wanting to have a baby they decide to have an abortion. They believe they are free to do so because the laws of our land give them the freedom to do so. What they do not realize, however, is that if they choose to define freedom in this situation as their right to do whatever they want to do (the type of freedom which got them in their predicament in the first place) they will free neither themselves nor their child. The freedom to do whatever they want to do will result in the death of an innocent child and the further enslavement of the mother and father in sin. That's not freedom, folks; that's death. And we can't give it a softer name.

The Devil has convinced us through the media that in order to be free we must have the right to do just whatever we want to do. The truth is, however, that if I take the freedom to do just whatever I want to do in my life, I will quickly find myself a slave. If a country takes the freedom to do just whatever they want to do they will quickly find themselves in shackles as well.

We can give sin a softer name if we like; but the fact is sin by any other name, be it “freedom”, “tolerance”, “human rights” or “alternative lifestyle” is still sin and will always lead to death, not freedom.

True freedom, according to the Bible, is not the right to do what we want to do…it’s the right to do exactly what we ought to do for the benefit of others.

The question for us as believers is: "Who has the right to tell us what we ought to do? The government or God?" (see Acts 4:19-20).

No Spiritual Navy Seals In This Church

A few weeks ago our congregation talked about how the church of Jesus resembles in many ways that of a military team. In fact Paul the Apostle used military terminology when speaking to Timothy: “Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer” (2 Tim.2:3-4).

 In this lesson we talked about how that if you are a Christian then you are a soldier of Jesus Christ. You experience a daily “training in righteousness” (2 Tim.3:16). You experience a very real war everyday all day. As a member of Christ’s church you are part of a soul saving mission to rescue prisoners of war from their captivity to the Evil one by the power of Christ’s Spirit within you.

We also said that different than the Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin Laden on May 1st, in the church there are no heroes besides Jesus.

It does not matter who we are.

It does not matter what we accomplish

It does not matter what awards we receive or how many people we rescue and lead to Christ; in the church of Jesus there is only one hero in the camp and that hero is Jesus.

We concluded by recognizing that as the church seeks to build herself around and on top of Jesus- her foundation (1 Cor.3:11), the life of the church will be a joyless drag in conjunction with how many people there are vying to be the hero. The quarrels in the Corinthian church in particular were largely because some were following Paul, some were following Apollos and some were following Cephas instead of Jesus alone (see 1 Corinthians chapters 1-3).

We would be kidding ourselves if we did not confess the evil desire within us, especially us men, that wants to be the church’s Navy Seal. We want to be the commando. We want to be the Green Bureau. We want to be the knight in shining armor rushing in to make history and receive the recognition.

But the reality of the church is quite different. The reality is that in the church of Jesus, the church Jesus built, there are no spiritual Navy Seals. Instead, we find a whole assembly of former Prisoners of War. Former POW’s. Today we are either former POW’s or we are POW’s. And when God through Jesus makes us former POW’s, we come hard to the fact that we did not have anything to do with Jesus’ rescue mission.

We didn’t plan for it.

We didn’t train for it.

We didn’t even know it was coming.

So what does that have to do with building life around Jesus?  Well as long as we live by the illusion that the church should be filled with spiritual Navy Seals, we will never be able to love one another for the bruised, scarred and beaten POW’s we really are. This seems to be some of what Paul gets at in this passage:

”Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth" [i.e. there were no spiritual Navy Seals among you]. "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, parenthesis mine).

What were these Corinthian Christians before they were Christians? They were spiritual POW’s. They were not wise. They were not influential. They were not of noble birth. They were not the ones chosen to rush in and make the kill. They were prisoners in need of rescuing, and so were we.

How many times have you started a new job thinking it was a perfect match only to discover 2 years down the road that it is not at all what you thought it would be?

How many times have you gone to see a movie that you were told would be spectacular only to leave feeling disappointed?

How many times have you dated someone that you thought was Mr. Right only to realize a year later that he is pretty messed up in the head?

How many times have you bought a new flavor of coffee creamer at the store, maybe a flavor of creamer others raved about, only to get home, try it in your coffee and regurgitate it in your cup because you couldn’t stand it?

How many times have you involved yourself in a congregation that for the first 8 months you truly loved, only to discover that joyous Joyce is not always joyous? In fact she even gets angry.

In each of these situations what do we do? We jump ship! We find a new job. We find a new movie. We find a new date. We find a new coffee creamer. And it’s perfectly fine to do that with some things.

What really blows it for us in all of these situations is not the bad movie: it’s the expectations we attached to the movie. You see if we had gone to the movie thinking, ‘this movie is probably not going to be as great as everyone says it is’, we might have walked out thinking, ‘hey that was a pretty good movie’. The astronomical expectations killed it for us.

In the same way our perfection expectations of the church can sometimes kill the church for us. Forgetting that there is only one spiritual Navy Seal in the camp- Jesus- we often put the church down for resembling former POW’s. Many say, “I don’t go to church because they are a bunch of hypocrites”. My reply is, “Well at least they go to church, which is more than you can say”.

The fact that the church is not perfect by no means frees us from the fight to become perfect by the power of the Spirit; but it should at least grant us the humility to show compassion and patience with other believers who are just as bruised and scarred as we are. Remember...there is only one spiritual Navy Seal in this church- Jesus.

Spiritual Roadblock to Building Life Around Jesus: Pointing the Finger

Suiting up in a high school locker room before a Saturday football game was a serious and energizing experience. Away games in particular were the most intense. We would load up on the bus Saturday morning; shirt & tie, walkman if you had one, you may bring your play book or you may decide to sleep.

When we got to the opposing team’s school a couple hours before game time it was silence from the time you exited the bus till the time the whole team gathered in the locker room facing the coaches. As we faced the coaches about to go onto the field for the first time the coaches were trying to do one thing and one thing only; they were trying to get us fired up. They would have some sort of prepared motivational talk. At times they would tell us a story about why we should really hate this team. They lied about us, or their coach said something nasty in the newspaper, etc. Each of our 4 or 5 coaches would get their say and then came the 3 captains turn to talk.

When the captains talked you really listened. These guys were the best players on the team. They were the ones you were going to follow on the field. They were the ones representing the rest of the team. And the captains also knew that goal of the pre-game talk was to get us pumped up. And so by the time we left that locker room after hearing both the coaches and the captains talk we were like foaming at the mouth. I mean we were ready to tear the doors off the hinges! And as I look back on those experiences I think, “Man it was football not war, what was wrong with us???”

So what does that have to do with Amos? Well in the first chapter of Amos Amos appears to be using his oratory skills to get his own little pep rally going. He seems to be getting them fired up. You can feel it. Listen to the momentum building speech of Amos 1:3ff:

“This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Damascus, even for four, I will not relent. Because she threshed Gilead with sledges having iron teeth…This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Gaza, even for four, I will not relent. Because she took captive whole communities and sold them to Edom…This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Tyre, even for four, I will not relent. Because she sold whole communities of captives to Edom, disregarding a treaty of brotherhood…This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Edom, even for four, I will not relent. Because he pursued his brother with a sword and slaughtered the women of the land…This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Ammon, even for four, I will not relent. Because he ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to extend his borders…This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Moab, even for four, I will not relent. Because he burned to ashes the bones of Edom’s king…”

You can feel the momentum building as the Bethel crowd cheers Amos on. They love it. Amos is the prophet who speaks what the people want to hear. 7 nations which Israel has a few things against are getting verbally thrashed by Amos. You can hear the crowd yelling, "Go Amos! Go Amos!"

And then Amos gets a little closer to home...

“This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Judah, even for four, I will not relent. Because they have rejected the law of the LORD and have not kept his decrees…” (Amos 2:4).

You can envision the people quieting a little as they think to themselves, “Woa, he’s getting a little close to home. I guess our brothers haven’t been very good down there.”

Then comes the final words from the captains. This is the point in the pregame pep talk where you are supposed to charge out of the locker room ready to make war. Here it is:

"This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name. They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge. In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines” (Amos 2:6-8).

 

Nobody is cheering anymore. No one leaves the locker room on this day. There is an enemy within that poses a stronger battle that must be dealt with first. The rest of the book of Amos, the next 7 chapters, deal exclusively with the sins of Israel.

 

There is something terribly energizing about pointing the finger, is there not? One of the things that hinders our spiritual growth immensely, I have discovered, is pointing the finger at others around us when we ourselves have our own list of un-repented sins.

 

How many times have you said,

• “If it hadn’t been for my parents things would be different in my life”
• “If my brother had not did what he did I wouldn’t have these problems”
• "If it wasn’t for my boss my job wouldn’t be so horrible”
• “If it wasn’t for the Governor, life in NJ wouldn’t be so bad
• “If my wife was a good wife I wouldn’t struggle with sexual addiction
• “If my husband would actually be the spiritual leader of our family I could really grow spiritually"
• “If my uncle had not abused me as a child I wouldn’t be so messed up today”
• “If it wasn’t for the incompetent lawyer I would not have had to spend any time behind bars”

Off we going pointing the finger at everyone around us.

 

Don’t get me wrong; I understand that people have hurt you and some have hurt you really bad. I understand that what they did to you was not right. And Amos is not saying that Israel’s neighbors were right either. They all did wrong and would eventually face justice. But Amos’ message to God's people is this: “If you want to grow spiritually, if you really want to be God’s people you need to take a deep look at yourself before you point the finger at anyone else.”

Reward versus Goal

On Monday evening my family and I took a dinner drive to the ocean. It had been one of those days, if you know what I mean, and a quick get-a-way was in store. Pt. Pleasant this time of year is a great place to be in my book. It’s cool. People are clothed. There’s free parking. There’s available parking, and you can have any space on the beach you want. And so we parked at Jenkinson’s Aquarium right off the boardwalk, loaded up the stroller with dinner and beach toys and walked our way to the beach. It was colder on the shore than we anticipated so we didn’t stay too long. We set up shop on the beach, prayed over our dinner and ate.

At one point after dinner Marci and I stood close to one another gazing out at the ocean pondering all the power of our awesome God. Standing there at that moment looking out at the ocean was the reason we went to the ocean that day. Our goal in going to the ocean that day was to stand before the ocean and be reminded of our smallness. It was to experience God’s power as seen in the ocean. It was to ask God to put our lives back into perspective for a few moments.

I remember glancing to my right as we stood there and watching Mason dig in the sand with his toy truck. If you could have seen him at that moment he had his back to the ocean, his face toward the boardwalk and his eyes fixed in the deepening sand as he dug. I felt like saying, “Mason, have you seen the ocean?”

For Marci and I, playing on the beach and watching the kids dig in the sand was the reward for having gone to the ocean; but it wasn’t the goal. In other words we did not set out to play on the beach and build sandcastles. We set out to see the ocean. Playing on the beach was simply the reward. But if you were to ask Mason why he went to the ocean he probably would have said, “To build sandcastles of course”.

You see the youthful mind can innocently confuse reward with goal. And if we are not careful reward can become our goal too. This happens all the time. Consider these items;

1.       World Peace: We all want world peace, but world peace is not the goal. World peace is the reward that comes with the goal of loving Jesus.

2.      Strong Families: We all want strong families, but strong families are not the goal. Strong families are the reward God gives to parents who love Him.

3.      Civil Rights: We all want justice in our land, but justice is not the goal. Justice is the reward that comes when a society builds life around Jesus.

4.      Freedom: All of us want freedom. But freedom is not the goal. Freedom is the reward people receive as a result of following Jesus.

5.      Balanced budgets, health care, education: All things we want. But they are not the goal. They are the reward of a society for whom life revolves around Jesus! We don’t spend more than we have. We care for one another’s health. We teacher our children about life. We take responsibility for those who brought us into the world and those we brought into the world.

6.      Or how about Eternal Salvation: Everyone needs the eternal salvation Jesus offers. But eternal salvation is not the goal. Eternal salvation is the reward for following Jesus.

Listen folks, when I married Marci I did not marry her for the inheritance I might one day receive from her family. I married Marci to have more of Marci. Everything else is a perk. If I get an inheritance that’s simply one reward for having married Marci. And if my goal for marrying Marci had been to ensure myself a handsome reward, you might question my love for Marci. In the same way we can often approach walking with Jesus youthfully. We know about Canaan. We know what’s there. We know what it’s like. We try our best to take the Bible’s description of Heaven and imagine being there one day. But Canaan is not the goal. Canaan’s the reward! The goal is more of Jesus! And if we are not careful we can easily confuse reward with goal and turn our walk with God into nothing more than a greed for ultimate gratification.

I believe Moses’ trek to Canaan serves as a powerful example of a youthful heart that begins to slowly long for the ocean.

Moses was an outcast for 80 years in both Egypt and Midian. After 80 years he is finally on his way to the promised land where he can finally set down roots and call it home. But just at the peak of freedom, just when everything seems to be working out to his favor, God tells Moses, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them” (Num.20:12).

What sobs must have flooded his chest on that day. After 80 years of being a stranger Moses learns that he will spend his last four long decades wandering a trackless and hostile “no man’s land” in the desert. Let me tell you folks if anybody wanted to get to Canaan’s land in a hurry it was Moses! Canaan would be the home he never had. It would be the place where he could finally settle. The place where he actually belonged. The place, however, that he would never see.

And then we come to Deuteronomy 34: the last chapter of Moses' book, the last day of Moses' life. Up walks Moses to Mt. Nebo alone, probably lonely. Through glistening eyes he listens to God speak these last words to him; “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it” (Deut.34:4).  

Were there tears? I’m sure. But maybe not the kind we would expect. You see after 120 years of life you learn something about goals and rewards. I believe that on Mt. Nebo that day Moses knew he had finally reached the goal: In less than 24 hours Moses would never again leave the presence of God. He knew that Canaan down below was just a perk of the journey. On Mt. Nebo Moses actually stood much more firmly on the promised land than those who would settle on the real estate beyond the river.