ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU DO?

I’VE had the opportunity to work for some great churches over the years.  All of my ministry experience has been in what has come to be known as the megachurch.  It’s often been jaw-dropping, as I’ve had the first hand experience of God doing some amazing things.

When I tell people what I do for a living, most think that it’s super spiritual.  After all, I go to work at a church.  Isn’t that God’s house?  I spend most of my day reading the Bible and praying.  I wash my hands with holy water and have communion for break­fast – only one cracker though because I fast all throughout the workday.  Of course, it’s not really work.  It’s not like a job in the real world where you have to produce, hit sales numbers, set goals, and get home after 7pm.

If I keep going, you’re just going to assume that I’m being being sarcastic.

The reality of ministry is that it all too often became a job. It didn’t start out that way though.  When you begin it’s all about God, and this insatiable desire to see Him change the lives of people.  Finally, something that you do clicks.  It works so well that you assume that God is blessing the program. Sooner or later, and not in one fell swoop, you start serving the program more than you are the people you are trying to reach.  More tragically, you serve the program more than God.

Often our conversations on staff turned more toward how many butts were in the seats, and “How can we do this better?” Rather than, “What do you think God is do­ing?  Where is He leading us?”  I’m ashamed to say that weeks, even months at a time, I was almost completely prayerless.  “Isn’t that what you do?” Well, it’s sup­posed to be what ministers and pastors do, but I was too busy doing good things for God. I couldn’t take the time to stop what I was doing.

Unfortunately, I’m not alone in feeling like that. Like me, most pastors and ministers I know are Type A, highly motivated, and task-oriented.  Much is being produced, but our conversations on a more personal level reveal other things when they use these words to describe themselves: overworked, dissatisfied, frustrated, empty, lonely, burnt out, stale with God, obsessed with comparison, hardhearted, uncompassionate. Marriages were often in disarray.

Kinda scary isn’t it?  But by all the standards, we are succeeding with honors.

These experiences brought to mind the letter that Jesus wrote to the church at Ephe­sus:

Revelation 2:2-5

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. You have perse­

vered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the

height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.

Just like this early church, we were such a doing people.  And let’s face it, there is much to be done.  There is a mission to be accomplished.  The mission is to spread this news of Jesus to each and every person on the planet to bring them back into a relationship with God. Jesus said there was a great harvest – an enormous opportu­nity to reach out to people who want and need this – but very few workers. But He wants us to know that He’s more concerned with our passionate pursuit of Him per­sonally. The mission will come.  We cannot confuse pursuing the mission with pursuing God.  When we come to a place of emptiness, frustration, and exhaustion, it’s a sure sign that something is wrong.

The place that Jesus wanted to bring these people back to was again focusing on love. And there’s a really good reason for that: the mission is the byproduct of a regular, personal encounter with God.

This whole mission that God asks of us isn’t a work of obligation.  It’s an act of rela­tionship, and its purpose is love, because it is out of love that God allows us to be a part of what He is doing.

John 15:15

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s

business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from

my Father I have made known to you.

God’s mission flows out of love.

I think a lot of the guys I know in ministry who are ultra-successful by the world’s standard are driven, but it’s not flowing out of love from God. I think their basic need for love has not been met, and, to compensate, they have occupied themselves with goal setting and impossible standards in an effort to earn the love that they haven’t experienced.

In So I Send You, Oswald Chambers wrote, “Any work for God that has less than a passion for Jesus Christ as its motive will end in crushing heartbreak and discour­agement.” And I would add that mission that is not firmly rooted and grounded in the love received from God will collapse and its personal destruction can even be catas­trophic.

If you’re still reading or possibly skipping ahead because this sounds like an earlier chapter of the book and I’m being redundant, then maybe you’re still not getting it. We can’t understand mission apart from love.  We have no power; we have nothing to offer unless there is love first.  When we dwell in Him, the mission – the vision, the passion, the ability, the power, the success, the place – will all flow naturally out of it.

Mission, doing anything good for God, and what Jesus was driving at in Revelation 2 can be summed up in one word: Response.  Our heart has a response to the love that has been received from God.  In the overflow of our heart, something happens. You know what that is?

We love.  It’s the natural response to unconditional love.  We love God back.  All that He desires, it happens.  And out of a love response, comes the other stuff.

RELATIONAL MISSION

When I was kid, I really looked up to my brother, Kelly.  In a time when Tom Selleck was considered a sex symbol, my brother was the envy of all his peers as he sported a full mustache at age 12.  Looking back, I don’t know what’s more strange – my brother having a mustache at an unusual age or Tom Selleck being a sex symbol.  Nevertheless, Kelly convinced me that all the girls were in to him, and he proved it to me by making out in front of me with his girlfriend in the church van on the way back from a trip to a semi-pro baseball game.  I wanted to be just like him!

In the summer, my brother cut our neighbors’ grass for extra money. I remember the distinctive sound the plastic flap would make as it dragged on the concrete as my brother pushed it down the sidewalk en route to the houses of his customers’ blocks away.  A farmer’s tan later, he’d return with sweat in the crease of his neck holding onto bits of grass and mud.  When he got around to it, he would cut our grass.  It was a magnificent sight to behold watching him cut perfect geometric shapes into our lawn until it was a small square.  I’d chase him in the trails that he made, and ulti­mately convince him to let me have a turn.

I was a very short kid so my arms could only comfortably grasp the bar that func­tioned as a brace on the mower.  Not only did I have physics and structural design against me, I was weak, so I couldn’t really do much with the mower.  My brother would walk behind me with his hands on the main bar.  I’d try to swat him away so that I could do it, and somehow he’d convince me that he was just keeping the mower straight within the lines as I couldn’t see over the bar.  I really didn’t care about keep­ing it straight.  I just wanted to push it, feel the beads of sweat on my forehead, and then quit whenever I got bored.  I was a pretty annoying kid, but, for some strange reason, Kelly enjoyed sharing his work with me, even though I really wasn’t a whole lot of help, and might have even been more of a setback.

I find some similarities in our mission with Jesus.  It’s His mission, by the way. He started it. He continues it.  And He’s going to be the one to complete it.

Us? We join Him in what He’s doing.  We don’t have the strength at all to do it on our own.  As a matter of fact, we sometimes swat away and try to take credit for what’s happening, when all along Jesus has His hands on the bar making it go.  Of course, we’re doing even less than what we think we’re doing because there’s this whole Kingdom of God that’s advancing and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Otherwise, we’d just be pushing mowers.

We’re not really needed, but it just seems like God refuses to do this without us. He gets a special joy out of working through our weakness.  The problem for us though is that, for the most part of our lives, we’ve struggled to admit our weakness.  Depend­ence doesn’t seem that appealing to us.

Regardless, dependence is essential, and it was something that Jesus modeled when it came to work of the Father. Love and dependence was the foundation of His minis­try.  He never sought to establish His worth any other way.  No one tricked Him, badgered Him, or guilted Him into doing anything that He wasn’t supposed to do. Not that they didn’t try. At times He healed, other times He didn’t, and more times than not, when it seemed He could benefit the most, He did the opposite.

Jesus described this relational ministry for us, and it helps us understand how we relate to God in the work that He’s called us to do:

John 5:16-19

Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I,

too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not

only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Fa­

ther, making Himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you

the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His

Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

Would you have said that Jesus’ life was normal?  You might be thinking, “No, it’s not normal.”  It really depends on who’s saying normal. Because in Jesus life and times, what He did on a daily basis drawing crowds to Himself of the people who just wanted to hear Him speak, blessing kids, feeding thousands of people with a kid’s meal from Long John Silver’s was normal.  People walked who’d never walked.  People gained hearing who’d never heard.  People saw the sunrise who’d never seen the light of day. People dead and in their graves – rigormortis had settled in; they were stinking and somehow their lungs expanded and the blood flowed through their veins again – this was all a day in the life of Christ.  It was normal.

We struggle with the fact that Scripture says, “We’ll do those same things, even greater things.”  We discount it.  We say, “Jesus didn’t really mean that.” Or we just disqualify ourselves as people who don’t have enough faith or something.

The question I’d pose is: “Why doesn’t our life read more like that?” When we dis­count or invalidate what Jesus Himself spoke, I think it’s just a copout.  I think it’s because we struggle with the fact that there are stories that have yet to be written in our lives

Now, we’re not going back to a “work it up, “Let me try to make something happen,” mentality. What we are going to do instead is respond to our hearts; because in our hearts, there is a voice that’s saying that there has to be more.  There’s got to be more that what you’re living.

RELATIONAL RESPONSE

How did Jesus live out this life?  If you notice, no place was safe when He was walk­ing the planet.  He did a few things in church (the synagogue), but the whole of His ministry was spent among real people, among the broken, in a broken world.  Things broke out when Jesus was walking into cities, attending weddings, fishing – even when he was 3 days late for funerals.  And the reason wasn’t just because He was God in the flesh.  Jesus modeled a way of relating to God as He did ministry.

Jesus remained intimately connected to God the Father.  He got away if that’s what He needed to do.  But the important thing is that when He left those times of solitude, He didn’t walk away from the Father.  He remained with Him.

Countless times, Jesus urged us to remain with Him. It’s not that we’re ever on our own, but aren’t there times when we seem more aware of God than others? I find that there have been times when God seemed more present than normal.  But that’s not because He actually was, it just meant that I was more sensitive to Him.  We have to learn to remain in Him, even as we go out to do the stuff in the ordinary, every day.

As Jesus moved along in His day, needs would seem to find Him.  Now granted, some people would just drag their families and friends to Jesus, but that wasn’t always the case. Jesus, remaining in the Father, saw the need and knew how God desired to re­spond. And when He felt the heartbeat of the Father, He joined in on what the Father was doing.

I have a habit that some people might find strange.  Actually, it’s probably more of a discipline, but I pray with eyes wide open.  I know, I know, that breaks some kind of religious rule or something. I remember having my eyes open during a prayer when I was in a kindergarten Sunday School class. At the end of class, our teacher told me to stick around after everyone had left.  She pulled me aside and told me “Jesus was very sad that you had your eyes open during prayer.” I was busted.  “How did she know?” I remember thinking.

Why do we close our eyes?  We close our eyes for our benefit.  We close our eyes so we aren’t embarrassed or distracted by other people who are around.  We close our eyes to block out distractions and have a personal moment.  Those are the reasons.

But I’ve found that I close my eyes mostly when I’m asleep. I learned a while back that a third of our life is spent sleeping – we’re literally unconscious through one-third of our lives! And another 20 – 25% is spent waiting, preparing, taking showers, and using the bathroom.  More than half of our life is in complete stagnation.

So when it comes to prayer, I don’t want to shut the world out.  I want to be fully con­scious and aware of what God is doing.  Often I’ll pray just short breath prayers even when I’m walking around Wal-mart: “God, show me what you’re doing around me.  Show me where You’re working, so I can join You and be a part of it.”  I keep my eyes open with expectation, and God does respond.  Sometimes He just speaks to me.  Sometimes there’s a small way in which I help someone.  Just yesterday, out of no­where, I had a conversation with a barista at Starbucks about deep spiritual matters.  The guy didn’t even know me, and he started spilling his guts in front of everyone.  And it happened simply out of just keeping my eyes open and being willing to be in­convenienced when God was ready to do something.

LOVE TO OTHERS

Mark 12:30-31

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all

your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor

as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

I think we forget a lot that we’re supposed to love people.  The fact that we’re sup­posed to love people like we love ourselves, and some other really difficult things like loving our enemies, seem like impossible tasks.

And there’s good reason for feeling like it’s impossible.  Do you know why?  Because it is.  It’s not humanly possible to love people sacrificially and by choice regardless if they hate us.

Love for people, just like everything in the mission, is based on response.  We can only love people as much as we have truly experienced the love of God.  That’s why you see Scriptures that tell us to forgive as Christ forgave us, love your wife like Christ loved the Church.  Our depth of knowledge and experience is what enables us to respond.  I think people who have a difficult time forgiving, have never experienced forgiveness.  I think people who are selfish, greedy graspers, who aren’t lovingly gen­erous have not experienced the generosity of God.  People who are reckless tyrants don’t know and haven’t experienced the patience and unconditional love of God.

The mission is fueled by love from God for us.  It changes us, and the overflow of that love is redirected toward the world.

LOVE THAT CHANGES THE WORLD

We all know that we’re supposed to care.  We know we should love people.  I think maybe we underestimate love. We don’t realize how it could change the world, or how a fuller expression of it could change us.

Do you think you know God?  Do you think you know His love?

For years, I ran past this verse as I read through the book of Matthew.  It never jumped out to me because I hadn’t really experienced God’s love for me, nor knew how that could impact me to change the world.

Matthew 9:36

“Seeing the people, [Jesus] felt compassion for them.”

In the book, Organic Church, Neil Cole brought this verse to life:

“…The busier I get, the less I care about others.  When Jesus saw the crowds, He saw more than an obstacle getting in the way of His mission.  He saw His mission, and He felt compassion for them.  For Jesus however, His body re­acted to His compassion.  It was an immediate and physical response.  He felt it. Actually, in the original language this is one word: splancthna. The word for compassion is quite descriptive; it literally means “bowels.”

There is good reason for using this descriptive word.  When you feel really emo­tional, where do you feel it?  The first time we men picked up the phone to call a special girl and ask her out, we felt it in our splancthna. When the doctor has crushing news from the results of your blood test or biopsy, you feel it first in your splancthna.

So when Jesus saw all the people, His breath was taken away.  He was hit in the solar plexus.  He was bent over in discomfort.

The Bible reveals why He felt compassion for them.  It is because He saw them as distressed and downcast, like sheep without a shepherd. The two words translated “distressed” and “downcast” are also highly descriptive.  They are violent words.  Distressed can be translated as “harassed,” or even as mo­lested.”  The word downcast is a wrestling term that can be translated as “pinned down by force.”

If we really saw people like this, there’s no doubt we’d be motivated.  We’re so hesi­tant. We’re so, frankly, uncaring that we don’t get involved.  We’re afraid; we’re too busy; we don’t want to be inconvenienced; or we don’t want to involve ourselves in personal matters.

If there was a child across your street that you knew was being molested, you would get involved.  Fear, being late for work, being inconvenienced, getting too personally involved would not be a concern of yours. 90 year old grannies would march across the street with a walker and kick the front door down to save the child.

What kind of Jesus followers would we be, what kind of impact, how world changing would it be if became people who felt the expression of love that Jesus has for each person on the planet.  Do you think that could make a difference?  I do.

I know I want to love like that.  I have to admit I’m not there yet.  But I’m asking God to work that in me.  It’s not possible up to me, but by His grace and the power of His Spirit, it can happen.

And it can happen for you as well, when you experience His love, when you get to know Him, when you quit trying to force it and lean in to His grace and rely on His power.

What does God want from you?

He just wants your heart.  Are you willing to give it to Him?

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