Are you up for a challenge?  How about putting your faith into action.  Actually the truth is, if your faith doesn’t result in action, you probably don’t have faith.  It’s true that faith is an internal thing–a commitment of your heart, but unless you have been nailed to a cross and lack the ability to move, true faith will always be revealed in action.  How’s that for a challenge?

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If you knew on 9/1 about the 9/11 attacks that would kill thousands of people in the Twin Towers, how hard would you try to save those people?  How much work would you do to convince the government to stop those flights or keep people from going to work in those buildings or whatever you could do?  It probably wouldn’t be easy because until that day, nobody would believe something like that could happen in America.  Would you try anyway?  Would you make sacrifices to save all those lives?

Do you remember watching as people jumped from the building and fell to their death because the fire was so terrible?  It was a horrible sight.  Would you work to keep that from happening?  Now how about the millions of people who will die in their sins and face much more suffering in Hell than anybody felt in the Twin Towers?  Would you do anything to stop those people from dying in their rebellion against God?

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God has a plan.  Are you a part of it?  Would you like to be?  You can be an integral part of what God is doing, but you have to be willing to get on board with God’s plans and align your plans with his rather than vise versa.

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Don’t let being part of a minority or not being popular hold you back from doing what is right!

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There’s a song that goes:

My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly leaned on Jesus’ name.

Refrain
On Christ the solid rock I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand,
all other ground is sinking sand.

I think some people live that out.  Their hope is truly in Jesus and not in the world.  And because of that they take the mission Jesus gave us, of making disciples, seriously.  But there are plenty of others who might say they stand on Jesus when they really just stand on their own opinion of Jesus.  And many of the people like to keep their religion indoors and just have a country club kind of church where only people who fit in already are welcomed.  And there are tons of individual churches who keep themselves safely hidden behind their closed doors and cut off from everybody else and there isn’t even a chance for unity in our mission to save the world.

Any church that is an island to itself is missing the point:

Ephesians 4:11-16 [Jesus] is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.  Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.

Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe because someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like the truth.  Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.  Under his direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

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The things you own can end up owning you.  And he who dies with the most toys is dead.

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What is the most valuable thing you own?  A car, a house, investments, something else?  How much have you spent on holding on to it, maintaining it, caring for it?  How long do you expect it to last? 10 years, 100, 1000?  Jesus once asked the question “What good is it if you gain the whole world, but lose your soul in the process?”  How much have you invested in your eternal life?  Does it come close to the time, money, and energy that you’ve spent on earthly stuff?  Do you have any treasure stored in heaven?  If not, now might be a good time to open an account with God.  So, what would you be willing to trade for an account in the Kingdom?  What if God told you it would cost you everything you have?

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I always think it’s funny when grownups tell kids not to run and play in church because they’re in the “House of God!” As if God is getting upset that kids are playing. “Hey you kids! Stop having so much fun, or you’ll make God mad! He’s trying to take a nap like the rest of the people listening to the sermon, and if you wake him up he’ll be as grumpy as I am!” What a goofy thought, that God’s house is a church building–as if God was sitting all by himself during the week, and finally got to see everybody on Sunday morning. “So how was your week everybody? Did you do anything fun?” People come to church thinking they’ll get something from God there. They pray and sing, and sometimes they dance and talk like crazy people. Others just sit there and act like scarecrows in pews. But so many of them transform into completely different people as soon as they get back home. All the ‘God’ stuff seems to evaporate like drops of water on a hot skillet as soon as they leave the church building.

But everybody (even non-church people) know that Jesus is supposed to live in your heart. So shouldn’t the life of any Christian be consistent whether they are at home or church or work or school or wherever? If we have God in us at church, we ought to have the same God living in us when we walk out the door. Right? God’s house isn’t a church building. It’s the pure heart of a Christian. And if God is really living in somebody’s heart, it ought to show through–all the time. If you say you have God in your heart, but he doesn’t show through in how you live your life all the time, maybe it’s because you don’t have God in your heart. Maybe what you really have in your heart is your own made up god. So when you go to church and act like he’s in there on Sundays, is it just a show?

I know these are pretty harsh questions, but don’t you think they are important ones to ask? Do you really believe you can have God in your heart and live like the Devil? I would think this is one thing you’d want to make sure you had right. What else in life really matters compared to whether you’re really following God or just following your own evil desires? Jesus asked the same question…”And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?” Matthew 16, Mark 8, & Luke 9

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It’s been a year since the last presidential election. Remember all the commotion and excitement around the race for president? And now people are already upset about the government again. And once again politicians promised change, and delivered a lot of the same, old thing. They’re writing checks that the country can’t cash, quibbling over partisan nonsense, and ignoring all the things they said during their campaigns. Yet, every time there’s another race people get excited again. It’s like they think there’s going to be some amazing difference this time. But the truth is that real changes come when the American people stand up and take responsibility for their own nation. The government is not only supposed to work for us–it’s supposed to be us. And if we really want to see change, it’s going to mean changing ourselves and forcing our political leaders to do what we tell them to do or get out of the way and let us do it ourselves.
Anyway, this is a short talk I gave during the last presidential campaign. Enjoy!

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We live in a fast paced culture.  Right?  Nobody likes to wait for anything.  We want everything now.  We hate red lights and long lines and people who show up late.  I’ve seen people lose it because they had to wait 5 minutes to get their fast food.  Just the other day I was at a stoplight, and across the intersection was a guy whose car had stopped running.  I could hear his starter kick in over and over as he tried to get his engine started again.  And when the light turned green, the guy behind him laid on the horn–several times. We love to be able to fast forward through the commercials.  We live faced paced lives.

But I’ve noticed that a lot of people who get involved with churches or pray some little prayer that’s supposed to magically change them into Christians are more than happy to wait.  Oh, they still want the sermons to be over fast so they can get back to more fast paced life.  But when it comes to making the world a better place, they don’t mind at all just to wait…to wait for Jesus to come back to fix things, to wait till they die to change their lives, to wait for somebody else to do something so they won’t have to.

So is that right?  Is that the way it ought to be?  Does God just want people to go to a church, sing a few songs, pray a few prayers and then sit around and wait?  The Bible seems pretty clear about how people who claim to follow him ought to be impacting and affecting the world around them.  Jesus talked all the time about helping the poor and the widows and orphans and prisoners and foreigners.  He was very clear that we’re supposed to stand up for justice and teach people to obey his commandments.  So then why do so many people who call themselves Christians seem to be waiting?

By the way, what are you waiting for?

PS. I mention a visual aid in part of this talk that might be a little difficult to see in the audio recording.  So for anybody curious about that.  I tied off a big roll of string and began to unwind it across the room.  A little way out, I used a marker to mark a tiny spot on the string.  Then I kept unwinding it all around the room.  I’d go all the way to one wall, wrap the string around something and go back the other way.  Eventually the string was unwound all over the place.  I thought it was fun.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:41 — 14.5MB)