Archive for the ‘Theological Musings’ Category

We began a new series last Sunday at GP on modern day idolatry. Most people think of idolatry in terms of stone statues and golden images but idolatry is actually a matter of the heart. Idolatry is placing anything or anyone over God in our lives. And the truth of the matter is that most of the things we tend to place over God in our lives are good things. They are not bad things. Most of the counterfeit gods we encounter are good things in life that we allow to become supreme things. Most of our idols are things that we love and are a natural and healthy part of our lives. We just tend to elevate them to a status that is reserved for God alone.

Take for example our children. Kids are a good thing. Children are a gift from God. We are instructed to love our kids in a God-honoring way. We are to protect them, provide for them, make them feel secure, love them as God loves us. And yet our children can easily and quickly become false gods in the sense we can elevate them to the place in life reserved for God alone. A good thing – kids – can become the supreme thing. And when that happens, we are actually damaging them in the sense we are raising them in a way different than God intends. Our good intentions can actually create damage!

Idolatry stands at the heart of our sin. Any time we choose to sin, we choose to replace God in that moment with a false god. We choose to commit idolatry of the heart. Calvin called our hearts “idol factories” in the sense that our hearts continually seek other gods instead of the true God. That’s why we must guard our hearts and seek to prioritize God in our hearts. And as we learn to prioritize God, we find the fulfillment, peace, and contentment for which we are often searching when we construct counterfeit gods.

This weekend we are going to look at an unusual story in terms of idolatry. We are going to be examining the story of Abraham and Isaac. In this story, we have a classic example of the temptation to elevate a good thing to the place of the supreme thing. We will discover in this story that the very promise of God became a potential counterfeit god in Abraham’s life. The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is really an idol check. Was Abraham willing to trust God even when it did not make complete sense to do so or did Abraham hold so tightly to the fulfilled promise of God (a son) that he actually elevated that promise to a place reserved for God alone?

Isaac was Abraham’s ultimate idol test – his one and only son. This test prioritized God in Abraham’s life – it allowed Abraham to find the place of ultimate contentment and faith in God. It proved that Abraham ultimately trusted God and not just in God’s gift. His ultimate faith was in God alone.

This series is teaching me a lot about what idolatry looks like in my own heart and life. What I find is not always attractive for sure. Idolatry is an ongoing battle of the heart but the battle is worth fighting. It is a battle for our hearts – a place reserved for the God who declared in the first two of the ten commands: You will have no other gods before me. You will not allow any idols in your life. We were created to love, trust, and obey God. And only as we live with Him as our highest priority can we truly experience the reality of what that means.

I have a humorous story that I tell on occasion about a surgery that I had when I was in my mid-20s. Without getting into graphic detail, let’s just say I had a surgery that required me to be prepped in an area of the body where most men do not want to be prepped and most prep people I imagine do not like to prep. It was an awkward moment for me and for the person assigned the task of preparing me for the surgery. I had to resume an extremely uncomfortable position in order for this poor dude to perform his horrific task of preparing me for surgery. Not only was I humiliated but my own wife laughed at me and had to run out of the room to keep from losing it. One of the lessons I learned from that life experience is that sometimes you have to be made uncomfortable in order for the necessary outcome to take place.

As I am writing this blog, my mother-in-law is coming off successful breast cancer surgery. My mother faced a similar surgery a couple of years ago. In both situations, the surgery was necessary to both eliminate and prevent a potentially deadly disease. Surgery was necessary for health and wholeness.

This Sunday we are talking about the scalpel that God often uses to cut away that which hinders us from living whole and healthy lives. We are talking about the Bible – the tool that God often chooses to speak into the lives of His children and transform them from the inside out.

Hebrews 4:12-13 informs us that the Word of God is living (effectively transforms lives), penetrating (cuts away the wrong), discerning (helps us make wise choices), and revealing (exposes our hearts before God). God works through the living Word of God to bring healing to our wounded souls.

In our series Pierced we are discovering that what Jesus did on the cross was all that was necessary to provide complete healing for the Jesus follower. He was pierced so that I might find life – so that I might live life to the fullest – as God intends. The opposite side of the discussion is that life often pierces our own souls and leaves us wounded and marked. Life has a way of piercing our souls in a way that dictates how we live life. And so the gist of our series is that God did what was required to heal our piercings by being pierced Himself.

God intends for us to live whole lives in Him – not lives marked by our own shortcomings. He employs life experiences to transform us into His image. And as we will learn this weekend, He also uses His word to penetrate our souls, reveal our sins, and lead us toward the truth. For that reason, we believe it is important to get the Bible in you somehow. Not every Jesus follower enjoys reading and we all know the frustration of trying to read the Bible daily when we are not motivated to do so. Soon something intended to make us more like Jesus becomes a source of bitterness and guilt. I can’t tell you the number of times I set out to read my Bible for xxx amount a time a day for xxx days only to find myself bogged down in Leviticus or some Minor Prophet wondering why I even try. So what do we do?

Ignoring the truth God provides in His word is not a healthy option for the Jesus follower trying to take positive steps on their spiritual journey so we try and encourage people to get the Bible in them somehow and someway. That looks different for different people but the goal is the same: get the truth in you. Someway – somehow – consistently get the Bible in you. Whether it is reading it, listening to it, discussing it, or whatever method you choose – get the Bible in you. It’s God’s scalpel and it helps make us whole as God uses His truth to perform grace surgery on our hearts and souls.

Consistent spiritual surgery is necessary for whole and healthy living. And the Bible serves as God’s scalpel to make that happen. Get it in you!

We continue our Pierced series this Sunday at Grace Point.  This weekend we are talking about how to find healing from pain through what Jesus did on the cross.  Pain and suffering can cause some deep and lasting wounds.  No doubt the question of pain and suffering (often labeled theodicy) causes many to question God’s compassion, power and even His existence.  Pain pierces deeply.

To complicate further this question there is not a lot of “explanation” passages in the Bible as to why pain and suffering exist. If anything the NT even admonishes the Jesus follower to “rejoice” in suffering.  The only exhaustive treatment of this issue is actually an OT story – the story of a guy named Job who was basically stripped of everything we consider important in life (family, friends, possessions, health, security) and then told by God that the difference between the infinite and the finite is so vast that there is really no graspable explanation for the reality of pain and suffering.

Here are a few things we do know about this issue:

- We live in a jacked up world. Our stained planet is filled with pain, evil, and suffering. It is simply a part of the reality. Pain and suffering are part and parcel for living in a planet distorted by sin.  We can anticipate one day that God will restore earth to its original intent and remove the sin factor.

- At the end of the Job story God has an extended conversation with the sufferer and basically reminds him that His plan is much broader and bigger than we can comprehend. God owes humanity no explanation for why things happen.  He is God. We are not. There’s simply some questions to which we will never get answers.  So what do we do?

- It seems throughout Scripture that one of the primary purposes for pain and suffering is to enable us to trust God at deeper levels which in return makes us more like Jesus and less like … us.  God allows pain and suffering to refine, shape, and mold us.  The reason we are instructed to celebrate suffering is not because God is the evil troll under the bridge who enjoys torturing his children. The reason we welcome pain is because God uses it to grow us.  Pain and suffering remind us that God is paying attention – that He is working in our lives to draw us closer to Him.  Obviously the reverse can take place – pain can cause us to retreat, question, doubt, and run from God – but that is not God’s intention.  God allows pain to bring us closer to His original design for us.

- Here’s is one important lesson we don’t need to miss in this discussion – Jesus was pierced for our pain and suffering.  Jesus hung on a cross so that I might find complete healing.  One of the most important truths within our Pierced series is the idea that what Jesus did on the cross was intended for my wholeness. In other words, the life experiences that pierce my life, my wounds so to speak, can be completely healed through the gospel.  We have a tendency to allow our wounds to define and shape our lives. But the gospel allows for another option. The gospel allows my life to be defined by Jesus. Salvation is more than a ticket to Heaven. It is a way of life. Salvation is the means by which God enables Jesus followers to live complete, whole, satisfying, intentional, purpose-filled lives.  The gospel allows my pain and suffering to be defined by God’s intention and not by my reaction or adjustment.

I am not sure I can completely unpack the significance of the gospel when it comes to pain and suffering. I am not sure I completely get what it means to find healing through the piercings of Jesus. I am not sure I completely grasp the eternal meaning of what happened on the cross that enables me to live as a person defined by wholeness and not by my failures and shortcomings.  But I do know that if what Jesus did was authentic, then my pain and suffering are part of a process that makes me more like Jesus and less like Devin.

This weekend we begin a new series at Grace Point called Pierced. The central point of the series has to do with the idea that our souls are often pierced by life experiences that leave hidden and/or visible wounds and scars. These piercings can only be healed through the gospel – the story of the God-man who was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our iniquities. On the cross, He took our spiritual wounds. He became sin for us so that we might be made right with God.

I believe the average Jesus follower is content to live an unfulfilled, incomplete Christian life. We learn to adjust to our wounds and in some weird way even believe that we deserve them because we know what is behind the curtain. Part of this tendency stems from our inclination to make salvation a “free ticket to Heaven” instead of salvation as a transforming way of life. If we begin to understand what Jesus did on the cross, we begin to grasp that He died so that our wounds might be healed. He died so that I might experience life to the fullest.

Life pierces our souls. Jesus heals our souls through His piercings. The work of the cross provides what is necessary to enable the Jesus follower to live a whole life in Christ.

This past weekend Grace Point Church sponsored an Easter event that attracted somewhere around 15,000 people. Borrowing the basic idea from some other churches, we dropped several thousand empty Easter eggs onto four soccer fields where thousands of eggs were already placed. Thousands of kids swarmed the field and gathered eggs and then exchanged them for candy. The event also included 12 community sponsors and tons of free family-centered activities: live music, good food, bounce houses, an obstacle course, face painting, balloon animals, crafts, and a raffle. We even had a real robot on the field entertaining the kids. It was an unbelievable event and surpassed anything we had planned or dreamed.

We learned a lot in this process and plan to do a bigger and better event next year. Considering it was the first time we have ever attempted this size event, I believe it was extremely successful. The more problematic areas were the ones we knew would be problems: the registration process, too many kids and too few eggs, competitive parents, and a few dozen misplaced kids (or parents). We tried our best to be prepared in these areas but definitely had the opportunity to learn how to do it better next year. I am not sure we could have planned any better. But now that we have executed the event, we simply know how to plan a little different to make it more effective and efficient.

Let me share a bit how an event like this fits within our overall vision as a church.

A large part of our church’s vision is driven by the concept that if our church was removed from our community that it would be missed by people other than the one’s who attend there. We are intentional to serve our community in a way that impacts people in a positive way – to share God’s love with them through serving. Tim Keller refers to this type vision as helping to restore the shalom (the Hebrew word for peace & wholeness) to a community. From day one, we have been committed to restoring our community’s shalom. We are intentional in our community service to be Jesus to people. We believe that by being Jesus we are given the platform to talk about Jesus at strategic times. We believe God is big and sovereign enough within this vision to draw people to Jesus through serving.

With this vision in mind, we have worked hard for 4 years to develop key partnerships in our community that help us make our community a better place. We have worked hand-in-hand with the City of North Las Vegas and established a great relationship with them. It has taken us years to build a trust with the City that allows us to work with them toward the common goal of making our community a better place. We have served under their umbrella and have been privileged to do so.

In the past few years, our community has been DEVASTATED by the economic downturn. Las Vegas is one of the hardest hit areas in the entire country. Our particular community is one of the hardest hit areas of Vegas so we have really felt the impact. Thousands of people have left our community. We went from one of the fastest growing communities in the nation to the one of the fastest declining ones in just over a year. New growth came to a sudden stop. Most of our people have been impacted by job loss, foreclosures, and financial insecurity. One of the ways our community has felt the impact is that our City has had to cancel many of their city-wide events. In the past, the City of North Las Vegas has provided several great community events that provided free, family-fun entertainment. Once the economy collapsed, budget numbers would not allow for the bigger events to continue. But we did not want to just stand back and watch this happen. Our vision compelled us to do otherwise.

So we began a process several months ago to plan a Spring event that would provide a unique and fun event for our community. We began to build on the relationships we had established over a four year window of time and to make a long story short – we put together what will be the second largest event of the entire year for our community. After serving under the umbrella of our key partnerships for the last several years, we stepped out and led the charge. Thankfully the City of North Las Vegas and other key organizations came alongside us and served. It was awesome to see them join forces with us. It was the vision coming full circle. Our even was supported by the Mayor, the City Council (both our Mayor and Ward Councilman were at the event and spoke from the main stage), the Police Department, the Fire Department, Medic West, Republic Services (garbage collection), and other key organizations in our community. It was unbelievable to see so many different organizations come together to help restore the shalom.

As a leader you have those momentous moments where you see a vision come to life. Saturday was one of those days for us. Saturday was not just about a cool event or Easter eggs falling from a helicopter or 15,000 people crammed into a park. Saturday was about a vision that God birthed in my heart that has been poured into the people of Grace Point and people outside of our church – a vision to make a difference in a community by restoring the wholeness – to borrow a term: a Servolution. By providing a moment in time where people come together and have fun, a moment where people can lay aside their problems, pains, and troubles for a few hours and celebrate life, happiness, and peace. Easter eggs and a helicopter were just a means to an end. They were opportunities to serve – to restore the shalom.

God is big. Lives will be transformed through this event. People will be connected to the gospel because they decided to take their kids to hunt eggs dropped from a helicopter. God will work through this effort to draw men, women, boys, and girls to Himself. But in the end, if not a single person steps foot in our church because of Egg Drop 2010, we still believe God calls us to serve our community – to be Jesus to people who live around us. And that’s how eggs and a helicopter fit in a God-sized vision!

Parenting is the most rewarding and frustrating task on earth. I love being a dad but I have to admit that there are days when I just want to scream “I didn’t sign up for this.” Well actually I did. When our kids entered the world, we were automatically placed in charge of their upbringing. Good or bad parenting – prepared or unprepared – willing or unwilling – we were placed in charge.

There are a million books, seminars, classes, lectures, and people out there who want to tell you how to be a good parent. Some of it helps. Some of it doesn’t. I know for me most of my parenting skills have been developed with time and experience. I tell my oldest daughter Kayleigh regularly: “You are the first _____ year old that we have ever parented. Give us some space and time to learn.” With all the insights and suggestions out there, here are a couple of essentials that would make the top of my list.

1. Love your children unconditionally.

Here’s what I want my children to know: there is nothing they can do to make me love them any less. I’m not sure this is a principle you can learn. You can really only experience it. As often as my kids frustrate me, my love for them never diminishes. They really don’t even begin to comprehend how deeply I love them. As a matter of fact, they will most likely not understand it until they experience it themselves!

Unconditional love allows freedom and responsibility. Free to be who they are and take risks. Responsibility to know that because I love them I want what is absolutely best for them and that includes boundaries (for their own reward).

2. Correct your children consistently and lovingly.

DISCIPLINE: what a scary word! Discipline is perhaps the most difficult part of parenting. It is probably the one area where I question my own consistency. It is so TOUGH to be consistent in this area. We have developed some incredible plans and charts through the years when it comes to chores, responsibilities, consequences to choices, and other discipline-related issues. Most of these plans and charts are in the trash. Our discipline, as inconsistent as it is, has this primary goal: instructional reconciliation. We want our children to “learn” and to “be forgiven.”

Discipline stems from God Himself and his purpose is the same: He disciplines his children so that they might grow, develop, and learn. In the process, we learn to make right choices and become more like Jesus. That’s hopefully what discipline for our children does as well (notice I said for and not to): it teaches them to make right choices and in the process hopefully leads them toward becoming more solid Jesus followers and better people.

I am not a parenting expert. I make plenty of mistakes. But I have learned that if we can learn to love our children unconditionally and discipline them consistently and properly, then just maybe I have helped do my part of making them more dependent on God and less dependent on us as they grow.

We continue our Modern Family series this Sunday talking about the concept of oneness – how do a husband and wife seek to be one when so many things push us toward division?  God’s initial mandate for married couples is that they were to become “one flesh.”  This instruction not only includes physical intimacy but also a oneness of life – same agenda, goals, heart, etc.  Oneness is a process and does not happen instantaneously.  But it is also something a couple must work to obtain.

The truth is you are either growing closer or further apart from your spouse. There is no middle ground on this one. And we all know that oneness does not just happen – particularly the longer you are married.

What we will also discover this weekend at GP is that it is good things that normally threaten the oneness, particularly children.  When a child or children enter the scene, everything naturally changes. Married life is simply never the same.  Two threats emerge when children arrive: a child-centered home or a couples-only home.

The child-centered home makes the children the central part of the family. This common and natural shift is probably the highest threat to the oneness of the marriage. It is a code red threat.

A couples-only home creates an environment where children are not nurtured and loved in a way that shifts their dependence from their parents to God. The most important aspects of raising a child are neglected and the child often seeks what they should receive from their parents in other places. Again – this faulty approach threatens the oneness of the marriage and the stability of the home and even the health of the child.

A healthy home begins with a healthy marriage. Can children be raised properly in an environment where oneness is not a reality? Absolutely. Can children grow up and love God from single-parent homes or divorce situations or unhealthy marriages? Absolutely.  Is it God’s ideal? Absolutely not. Protect the oneness.

If you are a person who regularly teaches the Bible to other people, you know the tension between the message you have been entrusted to proclaim and the reality of your own struggles in life. There are times that I feel somewhat hypocritical in my preaching simply because I know that I am teaching the ideal and that I do not always live up to that ideal.

I talked with a mentor one time about this surreal dynamic – how do we preach a message that we know we are struggling to live in our own life? It was refreshing to hear him say that he lives constantly with this same tension. Here’s the reality: pastors are human too. We are fallen, sinful humans who are in constant need of God’s refining grace and provision. We preach a perfect gospel as imperfect humans. The gospel is flawless. We are prone to wander.

This Sunday we begin a series called Modern Family. I am teaching this week on the priority of the husband-wife relationship. Let me be raw for a moment: I am not that great of a husband. I want to be. I have seasons where I am better than other times. But the truth of the matter is: it takes a lot of grace for Starla to live with me. I could list the many ways that I fall short as a husband but the bottom line is this: I am constantly in need for God to grow me in this area of life.

This weekend I will be preaching the ideal. Specifically this Sunday I will be talking about how to prioritize your spouse. To be honest, I am not that great at making Starla my highest human priority. So I will be preaching a message this week that I am consistently striving to apply as well. I have been reminded as I have prepared for this series that I am simply another Jesus follower on the journey that is in constant need of the gospel. I just happen to be the guy that gets to stand on the stage and preach the ideal. I am sure there will be many other guys there this Sunday who are far more “qualified” to teach this message than me. But then again – that’s kind of what grace is all about isn’t it? We are all people in need of Jesus.

So join me this Sunday as we talk about God’s ideal and then we cry out to Jesus to enable us to live it.

For the last 2 weeks we have talked about God’s agape love. He is love and He demonstrated His love by providing His own Son to secure our redemption through the sacrifice of His own life. This week we begin to talk about how we live agape love. The Bible is clear that God followers will be God lovers – experience and live God’s love.

When I read about agape love, I struggle with how difficult it appears to live out this type of love. For instance we are instructed to love the family (other Jesus followers) which in and of itself can be difficult at times but also we are supposed to love losers (the least of these), winners (those who one up us), and even enemies (those we are naturally inclined to dislike). Loving those we normally neglect, envy, or hate is a God thing. We can’t conjure up agape love. It is outside of our own natural abilities.

Loving as God loves begins with embracing God’s love for us. That’s why John says that “perfect love casts out fear.” Living agape is really a fear issue. Because we know what’s behind the curtain we are often afraid to be loved or to love. Allowing someone to love me means that I have to open my life to them and allow them in. I have to allow them to see the good and the bad – my strengths and weaknesses. I have to allow myself to be accepted by someone who might judge me. That’s why we often keep God and others at an arm’s length. Being loved is frightening.

Loving someone else is also a frightening endeavor. When we allow ourselves to love someone with the agape love of God we are saying to that person: “I accept you for who you are. I trust you.” Agape love opens itself up for betrayal and hurt. Agape love believes the best about someone. Agape love trusts those who may or may not deserve our trust. Agape love says “I am making myself vulnerable to you.” Agape love is SCARY!!!

That’s why learning to love as God loves begins with experiencing God’s perfect love for us. Only as we begin to embrace God’s unchanging, eternal love for us can we begin to live out this type of love to others. Only when we replace fear with trust can we begin to love with agape love.

God is love and those who are connected to Him will love with God’s love. Perfectly? Not yet but as His love becomes a part of who I am, as I learn to be loved and to love – as I become a God lover, then I begin to demonstrate God’s love for other sinners – just like me.

We continue our Agape series today talking about God’s amazing love as demonstrated by Jesus on the cross. True agape acts. By its very nature, it acts. It can’t help but act. Agape is all-giving. And God demonstrated this highest form of love by making the ultimate sacrifice: He sent His own Son to die for undeserving, unworthy, incapable, sinful humans.

One of the first steps in understanding the magnitude of God’s love is understanding the magnitude of our own depravity before God. The New Testament writer Paul uses some strong language to define us: sinners, enemies, unworthy, objects of God’s wrath. He uses this language to help us comprehend how reprehensible sin is before a completely pure and perfect God. And then he informs us that God loved us while we were still in this state!

I am glad that God’s love is not fickle. I am glad that God’s love does not hinge on my own ability to do right or clean up myself. I am glad that God loves me while I am still a sinner.

One of my favorite definitions of grace is: God can never love me any more or less than He does right now. That is love!