Scripture: Acts 10:44-48
How do you experience God? Where best do you relate to Him? It is funny how often we tend to judge when, how, and in what clothes we can meet with God. In this passage Peter and several Jewish believers witnessed something they could not explain. They say people unlike themselves receive the same blessing that they had.
Prior to this time the only way people could come to God was through the temple in the Holy City…or was it? I have often wondered about this. What did God do with people in Ireland, Rome, China, and every other nation prior to Christ? I think it will be a constant debate because we can never really know the truth on this side of the veil. But it still makes me wonder. Which also makes me ask where did all the “pagan” gods come from that these places worshiped? I try to look through the legendary writtings and am left with the thought that someone experienced something and had to give it a name. I have even read through scripture and found references to Michael being the leader of God’s army and the protector of Israel, what if there were other angels given tasks over other people groups? Were some of these angels involved in the angelic rebelion and if so what hapened to the people groups that they were sent to protect?
Lots of questions, but there is really only one answer. We all experience God in different ways. God speaks to some of us through participating with Him in creating through art and music. Others of us enjoy having a healthy intellectual debate and reason with Him. Some of us hear His voice most clearly while being out in nature, or working with our hands. We build religious groups around these expressions but the fact remains that God meets people there.
Theologically we can debate if expressions are benificial or not, but God is beyond our words and knowledge. Peter and the Hebrew believers had a theological stance, but God blessed Gentiles with the Spirit in the same way. Which leads me to ask was God already there? When I think back on my life I can see that God has been there all along, even in the areas I felt He was absent. The most stiking thing is that those areas I felt God was farthest away He was actually closest to me helping me find my way through the darkness.
I recently went on a tour through a cave and just like every cave tour they shut off the lights. In the darkness our guide asked us to find the way out, of course no one moved. God gives us some light, He did not leave us in total darkness. He then judges us according to the light we have received, and also draws us to even greater light which is found in Jesus. Jesus experienced life just as we experience life, sure there were some differences but for the most part the basics of life are the same. (If you visit another country you would observe this as well). Jesus vicariously lived out the darkness for us leaving in our paths enlighted trails to follow.
God did not withold his blessing from anyone, but freely gave it to anyone who opened their lives to Him. I encourage you to follow the Light before you and enjoy His pressence where you feel closest to Him.
Scripture: Psalm 98
Music is a tool, a tool that moves the spirit of a person. For my birthday I received a CD from a friend. It is probably one of my favorite albums even though it was originally produced before I understood what music was. (I was alive but only a few months old.) This album makes me think, it actually drives me into a spirit of worship. I do not know why and most people would be scared about what I was worshiping by listening to it.
The album is Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The music reminds me of the brokenness of mankind and the struggle each of us make just to survive. We each have wounds from various places: our parents getting a divorce, bullies and teachers at school, the threat of war, and countless others. To protect our vulnerable spirit we build defensive walls to hide behind. We hide behind the wall afraid to show our true selves to the world. The wall become our facade, who we think we are. It was built to protect but it morphs into our prison, we would like to be free and real but we cannot think of living life without our protective wall.
The album stirs emotions in me, which is the point. Music is used to prompt emotions, thoughts, passions. This album reminds me of what life could be like, but does not have to be. There is another option. The bricks of the wall could be used for other purposes.
The Psalm today speaks of a victorious life with the Lord. A life where God shows the world what he can do. It speaks of a battle, but we are not sure who the players are. If you wanted to study it deeper you could probably figure it out, but the writer does not say who the Lord was victorious over. It is left up to the imagination. What if the victory was the transformation of a life hidden behind a wall, but brought out into and warmed by the light of God? Somehow the light breached through the cracks between the bricks sparking life within the dying spirit withering in the darkness of their prison. Slowly and steadly enlightening more and more of the life until the wall has been transformed into a beautiful labyrinth leading to the throne of God.
As we travel this pathway we are filled with more life, greater energy and hope. We are vulnerable to the word yet not worried about what it can do because the Lord is drawing us in and protecting us as we sing His praises.
Today consider what bricks you have in your life, the issues that you struggle with, and consider where we are putting them. Are we stacking them up building walls to seperate us from the people around us, or are we allowing God to use those struggles to build a pathway for us to walk on? Consider those people that we have in our lives, are we allowing them to become bricks in a wall or are we letting God turn those stressful people into songs of praise and ornimates in the garden of our lives?
Who would ever think a progressive rock album from the 1979 would prompt a guy in 2012 to praise God? Crazy things happen when God is in your life. I also challenge you to prayerfully listen to music, consider what it is stiring in your life. If you have kids it may be a great oppertunity to open up lines of communication between you as you just listen to the music. I am not going to say that there is great spiritual significance in every song but there is movement. If you play an instrument consider a jam session with God.
I also encourage you to let others know how God is moving in your life. On a path we will meet others on our journey sharing our experiences often gives help to others and may also prevent us from building another wall.
Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21
There seems to be a desire in humanity to find acceptance somewhere. A child seeks to be accepted in a crowd and will participate in things they may not agree with, we often call this peer pressure, but all it really is is the screaming of a child to be acceptable and loved. Adults are no different, they seek to find acceptance through education, careers, offices, and countless other venues. We seek out love through fat bank accounts, and interpersonal relationships. Often Christians stand on corners protesting things like homosexualtiy and abortion crying out for repentence, but they are casting coals on the heads of people hungry for acceptance and love.
People want to be loved, they seek love from whoever will give it. Their perspectives as to what love is become perverted or skewed, so much that they have been wounded to such a degree where love is replaced by hate, freedom is replaced by bondage, acceptance by rejection. We accept the lesser because we come to the conclusion that something better is not available. We believe a lie.
Love… John the elder says that God is love. If we love one another that is a sign that we are of God. The opposite is true as well if we do not show love we are not of God. Does this bother anyone else? For us to be with God we must love. If you are human I will tell you that you have already failed in this area, probably several times already today. For John being known as the apostle of love, he gives the hardest comand to follow.
There is a reason for this. I will not diminish the command because it is a lifestyle we truely should strive to mimick. During the last days of the apostolic age there were already factions within the church that threatened to fracture the unity. This is to be expected when people from various walks of life, with diverse experiences begin to relate to God personally. Every person in this room interprets the meaning of the truth differently. Does this mean truth cannot be known, no it merely means that truth must be saught diligently.
John the elder most likely wrote this letter to the leaders of the Ephesian church, the church he was ministering at after he escaped from excile. We may ask why he wrote a letter to the church he served but again we read things through the lenses of our own experiences. In the ealriest days of the church they did not meet in centralized buildings or cathedrals like we do today. If they had a house where several could gather they met there and the people would visit these meeting as they could. They met to worship and encourage each other to love God mind, body, and spirit. John the elder was not able to visit the houses himself any longer, if tradition is correct he was most likely crippled from scars from multiple attempts on his life, so he passed that ministry to others. Sending this letter with his scribe to share with them all, which was the ministry role he took up do to his condition.
With so many pockets of varying maturity there were people that would try to explain the Gospel in ways contrary to reality. These various pockets of the church would get influenced by Greek philosophy or Jewish legality, or maybe a mixture of both. Some would blend in aspect of polytheism with monotheism causing both confusion and the beginings of the various sects or denominationalism we see so rampant today. Some of the greatest struggles dealt with was the gnostic teachings, which basically say that your body and spirit are seperate, and what you do physically does not matter if you have the secret knowledge. Others struggled with how to define who Jesus was. Was he divine, human, half and half, or both.
John was trying to say that ultimately God is Love. Going on to say that we know He is love because He love us so much He sent His Son to be a sacrifice for us. If we claim to be followers of Jesus we should also sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others.
Love is the way people know we are different. Love is what attracted the earliest followers to this movement. Those that first read this letter did not have the tangible realationship with Jesus, he was basically unknown to them. They did not understand the Jewish history, culture, or law that he emerged out of. They did understand love. These people would meet together to worship under the threat of death. They would go out into their communities serving others, praying for the sick raising orphaned children left out to die in the elments. They would share their homes, food, and money. It made absolutly no sense to the world because the very things used to gain acceptance and respect in the world were rejected by these people of Chirst.
Love is to give yourself for others. It is rare to see real love. There are pockets of love, glimspes of it, but love is a rare commodity like the ore of a precious metal. I have seen it though. I saw it in the eyes of my grandfather as he held the hand of my grandmother as they said goodbye for the night when he was in the hospital. I saw it in my sisters facebook posts joyfully sharing comments about her daughter’s gymnastic performances. I see it in people walking to raise support and awareness for premature birth issues through the march of dimes. Love is around but often hard to see. The greatest symbol of love that humanity can participate in is a marriage. In marriage each member loses themselves in each other forming not two halves but a two in one whole, two personalities making up one entity. They no longer exist seperatly but are linked physically and spiritually. Just think briefly at who is in this Meeting of Friends, I would guess that you though of the couples together almost as if they were one. Mark and Ellen, Kay and Charles, John and Ramona, Jared and Kristy. If people are married they are linked. Those married are not any greater or worse than those unmarried but we recognize and think of them together.
What about our large communty? Are we linked deeply to Christ so that when people think of us Christ is all they see? That is what John is getting at, the theology and philosophy is important to an exstent, but if there is not a deep devotion and sacrifice the theology is pointless. Living the love of Christ with others is what we should be about. Losing ourselves in Christ just as we lose ourselves to our mates, should be our goal.
This is idealistic though. Most things are, because we live in a broken world. We live in a world of broken dreams and promises. Marriages do not always reflect the sacrifical love of God. Families do not always live lives of loving encouragement. Often they are filled with selfish manipulation and fear. We fear love because we have been hurt in the past. We do not want to help the hungry or poor because we did it once and were taken advantage of. Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love was hung on a cross left to die, not only rejected but betrayed by a kiss given by a close friend. The truth is perfect love wins perfect love conqures death, perfect love lifts those crippled by past experiences so they can thrive and shine.
Loving others will change lives. We are not asked to feed every person that is hungry, we are not asked to comfort every person that is suffering a loss, or to heal every broken spirit. We are asked to love those around us, those that come into our lives. We are asked to encourage our coworkers, our families, the people that are waiting in the line at walmart with us, and the waitress or waiter that serves us our Sunday dinner. We are called to love and encourage those around us how ever we can, supporting them, giving our lives for them because our God did that and more for each one of us.
As we enter into this time of Holy Expectancy, encourge and challenge each of us to intentionally bless and share the love of Christ with those around us. As we sit listening for the Spirit to lead us into our ministry outside of these walls, let us be obedient to His leading and cast out the fear our world i bound in with the Love of God.