All that Matters

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you faith by what I do.”  James 2: 18

 Before writing this post, I would like to pray. 

Dear God, you are the author of life.  You are the alpha and omega, the beginning and end.  You sent your son, Jesus, to this world to redeem us of sin and make us your disciples.  Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, you have promised to use us for your Kingdom’s purposes.  Please Father, don’t let us miss this.  Challenge us to get into the daily ministry of demonstrating Christ-like love to this fallen and broken world.  We know that we can’t do it without the Holy Spirit’s love and guidance, but let us dare to live surrendered lives.  Your way is the only way.  Let the vision of that Way overpower us and shape our lives for the betterment of Your Kingdom.  I pray this in the name that all knees will one day bow to, the name that gives me life eternal and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the present, the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Please stop reading this post if you won’t take seriously what I am about to share with you.  I have a holy discontent regarding the way many people, who profess to believe in Jesus, are living their lives.  What I am about to share with you isn’t any sort of condemning word against them.  Rather, out of love, I pray with EVERY OUNCE OF MY BEING that they would come to know the reality of the Kingdom of God among us.  Ever since the Pentecost (one can read about this in Acts 2), we who believe in Jesus have been empowered with the Holy Spirit to do God’s work in the here and now.  God’s work, outlined by Jesus in the Great Commission (Matthew 28-16-20), is to make “disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  This, along with the two greatest commandments Jesus instructs in Luke 10:27 (love the lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself), make up the three big commands for Christian living. 

1. Love God
2. Love People
3. Make Disciples

This is pretty clear cut, yet how often do we live it? 

The beauty of these commands is that they encompass every ounce of our lives.  Think about it, in order to REALLY love God one has to put Him first in everything:  before money, before their own plans, before everything.  I think we lose sight of this because we have changed the definition of love from a commitment, or dare I say choice, to a feeling.  This is demonstrated by how freely we use the word: We love our cars, our televisions, our spouses, and our favorite football team.  This lessens the value of the word.  Isn’t love more than a feeling?  It was for Jesus, he loves us so much that endured nails being hammered into his hands for our sin.  If love was nothing more than a feeling to Jesus, he would have been out there quicker than Peter forsake Him.  Loving God simply encompasses EVERYHTING we do. 

Yes we understand this conceptually but do we live it?

Following Jesus Christ is an all out proposition.  This isn’t like joining the local health club because ‘half commitments’ do not count in the Kingdom of God.  In his new book, The Whole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns says coming to faith in Jesus is like “betting the farm and signing over the deed.”  We no longer have control of our lives when we come to faith in Jesus.  We’ve turned that over to Him because His ways are simply better than our ways.  This means that we MUST follow His commands.  All of them and there are no exceptions.  This is why I continue to passionately argue for every reader of this blog to inundate themselves with the scriptures.  You aren’t reading to pass some sort of biblical literacy test, but to have your soul, and therefore your life, completely transformed by the hand of God.   PLEASE, make that a part of your daily routine.

I’ll repeat: Jesus wants all of you. This means that like Jesus, we are commanded to be doers of the word.  Specifically, this means that we need drop our consumer attitude regarding the Church.  Church isn’t about connecting with the preacher or what you get out of the message; it is about worshipping God and connecting with fellow believers.  At the risk of sounding too harsh, it would be absolutely staggering if the “sermon critics” among us put half as much energy into serving as they do into their analysis of each week’s message.  Of course there are better speakers than others, but that isn’t and has never been the point of church. 

I’ll keep prying, are you willing to live fully for Jesus?  What needs to change in your life?  With every ounce in my being I encourage you to make those changes.  In Luke 6:46 Jesus asks, “Why do you call me lord, lord, and do not do what I say.”  Or, as Jesus says in Matthew 21:7, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

It is all or nothing and the choice is yours.

I will close with an experience that deeply touched my life and the lives of those who I have the pleasure to lead in our community group.  A few weeks ago during our prayer request time, one of our members asked us to pray for his grandmother whose health was declining rapidly.  Being from the Samoa Islands, he felt helpless because he couldn’t get to her immediately.  Our hearts broke for his situation.  After the group ended, and he and his wife had left our house, group member after group member came up to me with the same idea: we, as a group, should provide financial help to get him to Samoa.  Immediately Acts 2:45 came to mind (“selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need”).  So the following Sunday we met as a group in the balcony of our church.  As the worship band was singing songs of praise, we passed around an envelope and each of us anonymously contributed to the ‘fund.’  We did so anonymously because we truly didn’t want to know how much each was giving because it didn’t matter.  This was a God thing, and if we found out who gave what we would immediately position ourselves in a ranked order which isn’t the intent.  Besides, we all are in different financial situations to begin with.  After the service, we walked down as a group and presented it to this couple.  With tears coming down their cheeks they accepted it and I led the group in a group prayer.  My friend is currently in Samoa, but he unfortunately wasn’t able to make it in time as his grandmother, a believer in Jesus and doer of His word, is now dancing in the eternal Kingdom of our Father’s making.  As I reflect on that experience all I can mutter is the following, Bill Hybels is more right than I ever imagined, ‘the local church IS the hope of the world.’ 

Don’t miss out on this.  Please, please, PLEASE, surrender your life to Jesus and to doing His commands.  Dare to live in such a way that you no longer can afford to rely solely on yourself, but daily you have to get on your knees and rely on God almighty.  He is all that lasts, all that counts, and all that matters.  As the Psalmist says, “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good spirit lead me on level ground.”  Join me in making that the prayer of your life.   Amen.