LOOKING FOR LOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE

Churches are ebbing rather than flowing.   The future of many churches looks bleak. The Christian media reports that young people are rejecting their Christian identity and leaving the church in droves.  So, . . . What?

The ongoing performance of an automobile requires an ongoing supply of energy.  Today that’s usually gasoline and electricity.  Life too requires energy, but also a constant supply of oxygen.  Likewise, the ongoing life of an authentic follower of Christ requires the ongoing gift of God’s grace.  His grace is sufficient at all times and in all circumstances.  Without God’s grace we are left to our own flawed and insufficient wisdom, abilities, and nature.  Grace enables faith, encourages hope, and empowers love where these characteristics of the Christian life would otherwise be impossible.

In the words of John Wesley, grace makes possible life in Christ as an “Altogether Christian” in contrast to an “Almost Christian.”  Today, Christian young people are leaving the church and shunning their identity as Christians.  They're frustrated in large part due in to so many churches being filled with “Almost Christians”, church attenders who have a measure of honesty, the outward form of Godliness, and may be sincere in being good and doing good.  However, they're missing the key characteristic of an “Altogether Christian”.

The difference between the “Almost” and the “Altogether” is the authentic love of God and love of others.  Love is the key attribute of the Altogether follower of Christ.  Love occasions the obedience to faithfully follow and obey Christ daily in all things. Jesus made it clear several times (read John 14 & 15), “If you love me, you will obey what I command."  Obedience to the Great Commandment is our shared vocation.  It is our steadfast, faithful, obedient response to Christ’s calling to love the Lord God with everything one has and to love others without discrimination.  Such love follows the high and narrow road of Christ’s likeness (holiness).  It is occasioned by an profound desire to faithfully live in the presence of a holy God whose essence is pure, holy love.  Like oil transposed into gasoline to power one’s automobile, such holy love is transposed by God into gifts of grace and fruit of the spirit sufficient at all times and in all circumstances for the life of the authentic follower of Christ.  Young people can spot such love like a seasoned jeweler can spot a high grade, authentic diamond.

Young people are not fooled.  They know authenticity. They recognize true love. They will always look for love somewhere.  Sadly, with a paucity of Altogether Christians in the church, many will continue “looking for love in all the wrong places.”  It is no surprise that so many young people will look for the pure, holy love of God somewhere else.  . . . So,  . . . What?

Note:  John Wesley’s sermon, Almost a Christian, may be read or listened to by Googling the sermon title. It is also available on Amazon with nine other Wesley sermons on Christian discipleship as noted above.

PUTTING A FACE ON JESUS

I am writing this blog right after Thanksgiving heading for Christmas, but my mind is on needy kids and summer camps.  This past August, I was blessed to be in Phoenix for a truly awesome, unforgettable reunion of Camp O Wood staff.  This Salvation Army camp functioned in the Catalina mountains of Arizona for about 50 years impacting thousands of children until it was sold in the nineties.  The reunion brought back a flood of precious memories of staff and campers for the 150 or so former staff who came from across the country for the event.

The Salvation Army’s camp ministry, over sixty camps across North America, is devoted to lovingly impacting the lives of children mostly from the inner cities of the nation. In this case, so many kids that came to Camp O Wood, boys and girls, were from homes where the father was absent and the mother was exhausted from trying to keep it all together.  Kids in these home environments missed out on the quality of family life that we may sometimes take for granted.  Discussions with an adult of life’s joys and challenges were rare.  Affirmation of kids' personal worth was equally rare.  Then . . .

Then they came to camp.  For so many, they came with ideas of God that were unfocussed and/or distorted. They could not imagine a God as a Father who was transcendent (mighty, Creator of the universe, all powerful, all knowing, present everywhere) and yet full of loving kindness, caring, and compassion.  They encountered a quality of life that was different than home.  Camp staff were more than friendly.  They were loving and kind, sometimes with tough love, but nevertheless they seemed to care.  That became clearer and more profound as the camp period progressed.  The faith of the staff was being lived out in campers daily lives as love.  Galatians 5:6 was a reality, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.”  In that love, campers could begin to imagine a God who loves.  Jesus put a face on God the Father.  Camp staff put a face on Jesus.

My son is now 32 years old.  He's ministering in the context of a Salvation Army community center in Seattle.  When he was about thirteen, he came to me with a problem not knowing what to do.  He wore a WWJD bracelet.  I said to him, “Well what about the bracelet.  What would Jesus do.”  He said, “I struggle thinking about What would Jesus do.  But instead I think – what would Auntie Marilyn do?”  For my son at that age, Auntie Marilyn put a face on Jesus.  That’s what camp did for thousands of campers over all the years and especially for those kids who returned to camp summer after summer.  That’s what I love about the memories knowing that I played a small part in putting a face on Jesus who puts a face on a loving God our Father.

LOVE MY ENEMIES? SERIOUSLY?

You have heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.  John 5:43 & 44

The good news of the gospel is sometimes hard news with hard directives.  In the worst scenarios of human conflict, the gospel is the only truth that makes sense.  Christ calls us to love rather than loath our enemies.  Seriously!

One of the worst situations today is the Hamas-Israeli war in Gaza.  The provocations of Hamas rockets launched into Israel and the massive Israeli response of bombardment occasions several tragic outcomes: 1) the enormously imbalanced scale of violence and death (Israel:56; Gaza: 1,400+ including children*); 2) the inability to achieve  a substantial cease fire, never mind a lasting peace;  3) the loss of Israel's moral credibility in the world; 4) the unbending, strengthened resolve, by all Islamic nations in Africa and the Middle East, to achieve the complete destruction of Israel.

When my children (now in their thirties) were little, I remember one of their spats that became physical.  They hurt each other.  When I asked who started it, my daughter said, “He hit me back first!”  There was no way to discern the origins of their mutual hostilities at that moment.  It did no good to force them to say to each other “I’m sorry!”  In the first place, they didn’t really mean it.  It wasn’t in their hearts to articulate sorrow for hitting each other.  Secondly, if they did regret their contribution to the hostility, regret gives no guarantee that they would act lovingly toward one another in the future.  Thirdly, even in the context of regret, it is not the same as repentance.  Repentance is sorely needed.

Repentance is sorely needed in the Palestine-Israel conflict by both sides.  But what is repentance?  It is making a 180 degree turn and walking in the other direction.  It is a massive change of behavior because of a change of heart. We know something about repentance when we ask God for forgiveness of sins and walk with Christ in the direction he is walking, in holiness and righteousness.

Four things are needed if Palestinian-Israeli peace is to be reached:  1) The Palestinians need to get rid of Hamas; 2) the peace talks must be pursued to a successful conclusion; 3) A two-state solution (a homeland for Palestine and one for Israel) must be put in place and supported by all nations. This can only happen if Israel stops building more settlements; and 4) the entire Christian world must bring all of this before God in prayer asking the Holy Spirit to do what no military or political intervention alone will accomplish.  Finally, both sides need to repent.  Only the intervention of God can redeem the deep, horrible sin at the center of the conflict and bring new life for all.

Now, unto Him who is able to do immeasurably 

more than we ask or imagine . . . glory!

Ephesians 3:21 & 21

*undocumented statistic - source: The Economist, Aug. 2014