The Big Picture

I once quizzed a group of teens on Bible history, a quiz similar to the American history questions Pastor Rick referred to in Sunday’s sermon. Questions like… Did the Flood occur in the Old or New Testament? Did the apostle Paul live before or after Christ? Who was the most famous writer of the Psalms? The results were eye-opening and discouraging.

Discouraging, because this was not a group of kids off the street. These were, for the most part, children of devout parents, moms and dads who had brought them to church – and Sunday School - all their lives. These kids had heard all the stories – Moses at the Red Sea, David and Goliath, the Christmas story, the Easter story, Paul and Silas in jail… I scratched my head over their apparent ignorance. Had they been so poorly taught all those years? Or hadn’t they been listening?

And then I remembered that to me, also, these once were piecemeal stories. Accounts I knew very well… but I didn’t know how they fit together. I was probably well into my teens – or beyond – when I saw that the Bible reveals, in orderly progression, God reaching closer and closer to mankind, with a purposeful plan that will culminate in the final closing of the gap between Him and us, forever. The whole thing made a lot more sense when I saw it that way. And, if I might say it, God did, too.

Have you discovered the big picture yet? If not, here are a few suggestions…

Get a Bible timeline. Our local Christian bookstores likely have charts available. Or go to http://www.sundayschoolresources.com/timeline.htm to view one online. It’ll help place biblical people and events in sequence and perspective.

Read the Bible through. Yes, clear through. You can do it. Get an easy-to-understand version, pick it up in your spare time instead of the latest Christian novel, and take it in beginning to end. Or, if this is too daunting…

Find a good, chronological children’s Bible story book, and read it cover to cover. Don’t be embarrassed to read on their level – it might be a lot more fun and informative than you imagined. And you might as well get one with good illustrations!

Why go to all the trouble? Why make the extra effort to know when God did what He did, and how it all fits together? Well, if you’ve been struggling to trust God’s faithfulness, or hungering to know His heart, or wrestling with doubts about His love for you, or feeling insignificant in the overall scheme of things, it can help a lot to see what He’s been up to over the last several thousand years. How much you have been on His mind and in His heart.

Because He did it all to get close to you. It’s right there in the Bible. Read it for yourself – all of it.

The Call to Order

The very word “order” connotes somebody in charge. Somebody with a plan. Somebody with the power to make it happen.

“God is not a God of confusion and disorder but of peace and order (1 Cor. 14:33 Amp).” And He’s always been that way – just look at the creation of the world. He made something out of nothing. Brought order out of chaos. Meaning out of randomness and confusion.

If He’s really that kind of God at heart, that tells me a few things:

1. He doesn’t just want order in our church services. He wants it in our lives, our ministries, our homes, our relationships.
2. Where you and I are concerned, He’s very intentional. He knows where He’s going with each of our lives, if we’ll give Him permission to carry it out. And why shouldn’t we? One look at creation tells us He can be trusted to pull off something better than we could have done – or imagined.
3. He doesn’t need a lot to work with. Our insufficiency doesn’t hamper Him; the improbability of the situation doesn’t hinder Him. He’s got a history of making something from nothing, with no help from anyone else.

If these things are true, then I guess we could bring anything to Him – that chaotic job situation, the hopelessly confused marital relationship, the decision that pulls us in three different directions, anything and everything that breeds disorder and confusion in our life – and expect Him to dispel the ruckus and overwhelming helplessness, and restore order and peace. To implement a plan. To take charge. To change our world – or change us.

So why don’t you and I let Him do it… today?

Constructive Criticism

Pastor Rick acknowledged Sunday that some criticism was almost certain to come his way in response to his treatment of the topic at hand: the gift of tongues and its application in the church today.

I believe that the Lord led him to a balanced, thoughtful, and Scriptural approach, and I don’t have any criticism to offer. However, so as not to disappoint him or others who were braced for it, I do have a two constructive criticisms to offer… on other topics, and not my own observations. You might say they were overheard, and I am passing them on, for whatever good they might do us (for it is said that in every criticism there is at least a grain of truth).

The first came my way some months ago when my husband Dave, still an elder at the time, was give the elder-job of contacting a lady who had stopped attending FAC. (The idea is to let the people know they’re missed, find out what is keeping them away, see if there is anything we can do as a church for them, etc.)

When Dave got off the phone, he shared with me the reason this person had switched churches. “She said we were too serious about our relationship with God.” I smiled. It was constructive criticism, all right, well taken. It constructed in me a gladness that FAC is dead serious about knowing God personally and walking in a way that pleases Him. And it shows when people come to visit.

I overheard the second criticism while sitting in my pew one Sunday morning waiting for the service to start. Two people behind me were discussing Epic Faith, and one commented on an acquaintance who had attended one of their services. “He didn’t like it,” she reported. “He said it was too friendly.”

Once again I jumped for joy inside. Oh, I understand that maybe this man was shy or trying to hang back and check things out, and just wanted to be incognito… but what an encouraging critique!

Too serious about God… too friendly to visitors. Those are charges that shouldn’t be ignored. They should be celebrated! And may the grain of truth in them multiply and be fruitful!

Got Love?

I think it would take a major mental shift for today’s Christian culture to grasp Paul’s meaning in those first verses of 1 Corinthians 13:

“If I pound it out from the pulpit in words that bring them pouring down the aisles… If I become a sought-after Bible teacher, and am flooded with letters of gratitude from people who finally grasp truth that always eluded them… If I’m the one everyone asks to pray for them, because God always seems to answer my prayers… If my church sends me out as a missionary, and I leave everything behind, and them suffer persecution in a foreign land and end up a martyr… If I do any of these kinds of things, but lack love, I haven’t done anything!”

Of course, if you’re like me you don’t qualify for any of those heroic scenarios. I’m no preacher or Bible teacher or prayer giant or missionary. But the question is for us, too. Whatever we’ve done for God, what has the motive been? What the overall attitude? How many of us have worked so hard for so many years – but really haven’t done anything out of real love? Duty, maybe, or habit or selfish satisfaction or desire for recognition or trying to earn our way into God’s good graces. But authentic, God-given love?

Methinks there’s a lot of clanging and clashing going on in the larger Christian church today, and it’s the sound of service without love. There are a lot of gongs and cymbals announcing the implementation of gifts without genuine consideration for the rest of the body. Let’s make sure we aren’t adding to the commotion.

It might mean sitting down with the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to reassess our work for Him, and our motives. Our home life, our work life, our social life, our ministry for Him - all areas. According to the Apostle Paul, there is only one ingredient that will prevent our efforts in each area from falling into oblivion, from being counted as worthless. That ingredient is Love.

Got love?

When I was a kid, our family used to put jigsaw puzzles together. We followed a sort of system: first we’d look for all the straight-edged pieces, and build the frame. Next one of us might piece together the blue sky while another tackled the patch of flowers in the lower left corner… Finally it would all start to come together, and what a celebration it was to fit the last piece into the puzzle, and admire the finished creation.

In fact, it got to be such a coveted honor to insert that final piece, that one of us would often hide a puzzle piece in order to insure that we were the one to complete the picture.

Does it seem sometimes (when Pastor John is lobbying for children’s workers or the Internal Impact team is looking for Sunday morning greeters or…) that somebody is sitting on a puzzle piece at FAC… hoarding what the body of Christ needs to make it complete and healthy?

There are no high honors for the one who holds out the longest! Those of us sitting on our puzzle pieces are losing the joy of fitting into the right place, completing our part of the puzzle, connecting people with God and each other, giving a true picture of Christ to our community and the world.

Or have you looked and looked, and still can’t see where your spiritual gift fits in? Maybe you should try what we did as children building that puzzle, and hold out that spiritual gift and say, “Here’s what I have. Help me find where it fits in at FAC.” Another set of eyes might spy exactly where your gift should be exercised.

So get it out. Hold it up. Fit it in. And let the celebration begin!

A Lesson in Gratitude

My family always exchanged Christmas gifts with my aunt and her family. I clearly remember the year that we gave my cousin, young Nathan, some model train tracks.

It was a great gift - an accessory to the train set his parents had bought him for Christmas. This extension set would enlarge the track and make it lots more fun to play. The only problem was, my aunt’s family hadn’t opened their gifts yet.

I don’t think anyone had thought about this at the time… until Nathan unwrapped his present. He looked at the track extensions - lonely, useless little pieces - and smiled and politely thanked us for the gift. He didn’t appear to have any idea what they were for, and even if he had, he couldn’t have done anything with them at all! I just wonder if he didn’t wish (until Christmas at least) that we’d asked him what he’d like, or at least come up with something a little more brilliant… But I have to give him credit – he didn’t turn up his nose or turn down the gift. He didn’t look around and whine for his brother’s gift instead. He accepted the puzzling, perhaps disappointing present he’d been given.

If only we could always do so well. Pastor Ben reminded us that the Holy Spirit has given gifts to each believer. But isn’t it often a lot like Nathan’s predicament? We struggle to identify the gift God has given us – What is it? And then we struggle to figure out what to do with it! Where does this fit in? Is something missing? Isn’t it all a mistake? Couldn’t God have come up with something more fun, more useful, more exciting…

I think from Nathan we can learn that God’s gifts are really great – we just need to be grateful even when we don’t see their purpose or yet understand just what we’re supposed to do with them. We need to accept them and hang on to them (even work to develop them while we’re waiting), watching for the opportunity to pull them out and put them in use.

Because they’ll snap into place as surely as Nathan’s train tracks did, a few days later. And the Body of Christ around us will be enlarged and encouraged when that happens.

Holy Mysterion

Here at FAC, the first Sunday of every month is an invitation to mystery. The mystery of Holy Communion.

For nearly two thousand years, theologians have tried to solve it. Some insist the bread and cup become the actual body and blood of Christ. Others term it a “spiritual feeding” on Christ. Still others say He is simply present in an unusual way as we remember His death for us. The church has been trying to lay it all out in black and white for nearly two thousand years, but the case remains unsolved.

No wonder. The Greek word used in the early church for sacrament is mysterion, usually translated mystery. It indicates that through sacraments, God discloses things that are beyond human capacity to know through reason alone (gbod.org). In a way we can’t fully understand, He uses communion as a “means of grace” to help open us up to Himself and His work.

So as for what exactly happens at Holy Communion…it seems we ought to let it be a mystery. God’s ways can be hard to define. Sometimes only a mind as large as His can fully understand what He’s doing.

Instead, the next time the plate of bread is coming our way and the tray of juice is passed… we might do better to shiver at the inexplicable: Someone is present; Something is happening. Christ is attending by His Spirit, grace is flowing, the ancient sacrifice is still pleading for us. And then we should take up the broken bread and the wine-red juice and, as the old Methodists said, “feed on Him in our hearts by faith.”

For it’s a mystery… a mystery that should keep us on the edge of our seats the first Sunday of every month at FAC.