pastorchin’s weblog

We see the economic dimensions of the new exodus again and again in the early church. On the heels of the story of the languages and the three thousand being added to their number, we’re told that they “were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need” (Acts 2:44-45). 

Instead of building towers and forcing others to make storehouses out of bricks so that some are stockpiling while others are slaves, this new movement is ruled by generosity. And compassion. And sharing. The gospel for these first Christians is an economic reality. It’s holistic and affects all areas of their lives. It’s an alternative to the greed and coercion of empire. It’s a whole new order of things. And what does Paul do everywhere he goes? He takes an offering for the poor (Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 8:19; Galatians 2:10). He never stops reminding people of their responsibility to use their wealth and power purely and properly, for the benefit of those who need it the most. 

Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile 
by Rob Bell and Don Golden

When I met Christ, I became a different person. Forgiven. Changed. And new. Experiencing God at the church was similar to my moment of salvation. It was like another turning point. Somehow I experienced God in a new and deeper way. My desire for him wasn’t about what he could do for me. It was just a desire for him and nothing else. From that day forward I was somehow a different person. God was no longer just someone who did something for me. I was overwhelmed with an awareness that it is about me loving him. It is about this will. His plan. His desire to reach other people … through me. - Craig Groeschel

Sometimes we’re tempted to think that our current position / job / situation is a barrier to our mission, but, in fact, it is where it starts. Paul said, “Each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him.” This doesn’t mean that we should never change jobs or move, of course. It does mean that if my mission cannot start here, where I am, it cannot start at all. - John Ortberg

I believe the Western church is generally in the same condition as Martha. You know the truths about God’s Word in your head, but you still like to run your own lives. Like Martha, many Christians cry out, “Lord, if you had just done things according to our plans, we would never have ended up in such a mess.” Friend, you need to realize that God is not at all interested in your plans. He is only interested in His plans! So many churches and individual believers think they should make their own plans and strategies, then ask God to bless them.  

The almighty God is not our servant! He does not do what we tell Him to do. Many Christians need to climb down from the throne they have built for themselves, fall on their faces before God and do whatever the Master tells them to do. - Living Water by Brother Yun

God has a beauty to unveil. There’s a reason that a man is captivated by a woman. Eve is the crown of creation. If you follow the Genesis narrative carefully, you’ll see that each new stage of creation is better than the one before. First, all is formless, empty and dark. God begins to fashion the raw materials, like an artist working with a rough sketch or a lump of clay. Light and dark, land and sea, earth and sky—it’s beginning to take shape. With a word, the whole floral kingdom adorns the earth. Sun, moon, and stars fill the sky. Surely and certainly, his work expresses greater detail and definition. Next come fish and fowl, porpoises and red-tailed hawks. The wild animals are next, all those amazing creatures. A trout is a wonderful creature, but a horse is truly magnificent. Can you hear the crescendo starting to swell, like a great symphony building and surging higher and higher? 

Then comes Adam, the triumph of God’s handiwork. It is not to any member of the animal kingdom that God says, “You are my very image, the icon of my likeness.” Adam bears the likeness of God in his fierce, wild, and passionate heart. And yet, there is one more finishing touch. There is Eve. Creation comes to its high point, its climax with her. She is God’s finishing touch. And all Adam can say is, “Wow.” Eve embodies the beauty and the mystery and the tender vulnerability of God. As the poet William Blake said, “The naked woman’s body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.”

And so Screwtape reveals the Enemy’s ploy—first make humans flabby, with small passions and desires, then offer a sop to those diminished passions so that their experience is one of contentment. They know nothing of great joy or great sorrow. They are merely nice. 

Christianity has come to the point where we believe that there is no higher aspiration for the human soul than to be nice. We are producing a generation of men and women whose greatest virtue is that they don’t offend anyone. Then we wonder why there is not more passion for Christ. How can we hunger and thirst after righteousness if we have ceased hungering and thirsting altogether?

As C. S. Lewis said, “We castrate the gelding and bid him be fruitful.” 

The greatest enemy of holiness is not passion; it is apathy. Look at Jesus. He was no milksop. His life was charged with passion. After he drove the crooks from the temple, “his disciples remembered that it is written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’” (John 2:17). This isn’t quite the pictures we have . . . , Jesus with a lamb and a child or two, looking for all the world like Mr. Rogers with a beard. The world’s nicest guy. He was something far more powerful. He was holy.

Clearly, the idea of a man taking responsibility for his family’s physical needs is biblical, honorable, and loving. But I am convinced that it is also overglorified by the church today. The far more pressing issue is the tendency of fathers to pay so much attention to material needs that they overlook a family’s spiritual needs. 

Most Christian men are far more concerned about saving up to send their children to college than discipling them when they are living under the same roof. Jesus tells us in Mark 8:36, “What good is it for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?” Perhaps we should come up with a New Father’s Translation of the Bible that paraphrases that verse something like this: “What does it profit a man if he can afford a big house and an Ivy League education for his kids, only to have them fall away from their faith when they get to Harvard?” - Rich Wagner

Eternal life—we tend to think of it in terms of existence that never comes to an end. And the existence it seems to imply—a sort of religious experience in the sky—leaves us wondering if we would want it to go on forever. But Jesus is quite clear that when he speaks of eternal life, what he means is life that is absolutely wonderful and can never be diminished or stolen from you. He says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Not, “I have come to threaten you into line,” or “I have come to exhaust you with a long list of demands.” Not even, “I have come primarily to forgive you.” But simply, My purpose is to bring you life in all its fullness. Dallas Willard writes in The Divine Conspiracy, 

Jesus offers himself as God’s doorway into the life that is truly life. Confidence in him leads us today, as in other times, to become his apprentices in eternal living. “Those who come through me will be safe,” he said. “They will go in and out and find all they need. I have come into their world that they may have life, and life to the limit.” 

In other words, eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, “life to the limit.” It cannot be stolen from us, and so it does go on. But the focus is on the life itself. “In him was life,” the apostle John said of Jesus, “and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4). 

(The Journey of Desire , 38–39)

You have a life force, you have these God-given energies. And if they aren’t focused and disciplined in really specific sorts of ways, we get pulled off track and they get diffused and they dissipate and they get spread too thinly and they just aren’t as strong as they could be. But when you will the one or few most important things, you’re focusing your God-given energies. 

Being busy is a drug that a lot of people are addicted to. I mean now obviously there are seasons in life—somebody close to you has gotten sick or you’re starting a job or a business or it’s something to do with school or your family. But we must examine the rhythms of our life. - Rob Bell, Nooma Shells 020