What about a "good news" app?

What kind of news might the peoples of the world welcome?  What would bring a smile if it were to flash across the screen, pop up in an email, or scroll across a tweet?

If there were a GOOD NEWS app, what might bring joy when someone clicked on "open"?

GOOD NEWS CANDIDATES

From what I can observe, people welcome the following news -

• someone (at best, "me!") has won a multi-million $ lottery
• a cure for some wasting disease has been discovered
• my team is national champion!
• great weather ahead
• I've been given a raise!
• the economy is improving
• a grandchild is on the way!
• a hero came through for someone in difficult straits
• a criminal received his/her due
• a billionaire has given it all away

It's worth asking: what news would lift your heart?

BEST NEWS APP

I've been asking people what they perceive that they really need.  I'm grateful people I've approached have thoughtfully responded on simple surveys.  Answers like "more time," "to find a well paying job that fits me," and "to be loved" are common.  People are clearly preoccupied with the immediate, or the very personal.

God has the best news for each and every person, a sort of "good news app" if you will.  Anyone can download it by reading Paul's letter to the Romans.  The "app" offers that for which our greatest need begs.

Our greatest need is found in our lack of righteousness, and the inevitable prospect of standing before a thoroughly righteous God at the end of our threescore and ten here.  The best news available is (to use John Stott's well-crafted words) that "God's righteous initiative is putting sinners right with Himself, by bestowing on them a righteousness which is not their own but His...God's righteous way of pronouncing the unrighteous righteous...He has done it through Christ."

Share the app (Romans 1:16-17)!

What does the love of Christ do...

"The love of Christ _________ us."

How might you fill in the blank with a word?

Various translations of 2 Corinthians 5:14 offer various words.

LIVING BIBLE and ESV and RSV - "controls."
AMPLIFIED BIBLE - "controls and urges and impels"
GOOD NEWS TRANSLATION/CEV - "rules"
NIV - "compels"
GOD'S WORD TRANSLATION - "guides"
WORLD ENGLISH BIBLE - "constrains"

What does the love of Christ do to you?

THE LOVE OF CHRIST

Of course, the phrase can be understood in two ways.  Is the "love of Christ" His love for me?  Or is the "love of Christ" my love for Him?  What did Paul mean when he wrote this phrase?  How are we to understand it?  Greek grammarians would say it's the difference between an "objective genitive" (His love for me) and a "subjective genitive" (my love for Him).  The context should lean you to one or the other.

In the context of 2 Corinthians 5, it is likely the former.  Jesus' love for us -- more particularly -- Jesus love for me, for you, has a clear impact on the way the one loved lives.  Jesus' love for me "controls, urges, impels, rules, guides, constrains" me in a certain way.  The rest of the verses (5:15-21) explains.

Paul writes he is compelled, constrained, guided and urged by Jesus's self-sacrificing love for everyone and every one TO BE God's ambassador.  To be someone who communicates for God (God making His appeal through us) to men and women, girls and boys, that they be reconciled to God.

Jesus' love makes us beggars.  We beg people to receive God's love and forgiveness.  We beg people to understand that God "poured our sins" into Jesus, so that he could "pour Jesus' righteousness" into us (5:21, Living Bible).

Our men's group this morning was checked up by this applicational question:  With how many people in 2013 did you plead with to be reconciled to God?  And how many in 2014 will hear God pleading through us to this end?

What does the love of Christ do to you?  Or should I say "through" me, and you?

Listening to the Ancient Giants

If you think seriously about matters which truly shape and turn the life you are living, then the following question should not be dismissed.

To whom are you listening?

There are 10,000 voices that fill your ears and vie for your heart on a regular basis.  The onslaught of modern voices is not necessarily a life-giving stream for the heart.  It appears more to be the shallow, swirling, and muddy backwash of an unwelcomed flood.  Paul worried over young Christians who would be "carried about by every wind of doctrine."

A Proverb suggests that we do well to "guard the heart, for from it flow the springs (or issues) of life."

Jesus remarked, "It's not what goes into a man that defiles him, it is what comes out of a man."

If our heart requires rich and nourishing deposits in order to produce that which is wise and life-givng to others, guarding the heart means carefully selecting its inputs.

I'm not suggesting ignorance of the current blather.  However, awareness of the chatter within the "backwash" is not the same as drinking regularly from it.

READING THE OLD BOOKS

In his biography of C.S. Lewis, McGrath draws attention to an important essay the Oxford scholar wrote in 1944 entitled "On the Reading of Old Books."  Lewis observes:

Every age has its own outlook.  It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Dr. HG Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

This quote from the essay offers substantial wisdom about shaping the perspectives of my heart.  The full piece is worth reading, and can be found by doing a search with Lewis' title.

"What 'old books' might I read?" you ask.  That's a fair, and important question.  

You might begin by asking a more precise question.  "What are the issues (or core questions about life) that need firm resolution in my heart?"    Or, more simply, what inside do I need to get straightened out?   It can be helpful to write out the key matters upon which you need conviction grounded in truth.

Then, once you have determined the answers which need discovery, as the wisest people you know -- and especially those who know God well -- for suggestions on which ancient giants are worth listening to.

Your heart --and life -- will be grateful you did.

Scripture: Revelation or Shrugged Away

Our conversation somehow shifted from Rick's 16-rounds-in-10-days trip to Scotland to his surprise over what happened in a Bible study he was leading recently.  The latter was clearly more important to him.

"I was stunned at how quickly some in the study sided with prevailing cultural opinion," Rick said.  "So I asked, 'What do you do with Leviticus 18?'  They just shrugged their shoulders."

Rick attends a leading evangelical church in Wheaton IL.  A church that has long heralded the authority of straightforwardly interpreted Scripture - in its historical context, allowing the Biblical (and Divine) author speak.   Yet he finds himself in a study with Jesus followers that struggle sticking with Scripture.

REVELATION or DEBATED INTERPRETATION

Several years ago, Alistar McGrath's book Christianity's Most Dangerous Idea argued that one of the difficult ideas emerging from the 16th-17th centuries' Protestant Reformation was that any Christian, with a Bible and a the presumed guidance of the Holy Spirit, could authoritatively interpret the Scriptures for himself/herself.  

To be sure, the freedom Christians (especially those where personal freedoms are honored) have to read, interpret, and apply Scripture provides us tremendous spiritual growth opportunity.

But this immense privilege has a less helpful, if not harmful, aspect.  When Christians "interpret" Scripture by reading it and then dismissing any particular passage's right to speak against the grain of current cultural opinion, God's authoritative voice is muffled, if not muted.  Divine Revelation is emasculated.  Don Carson called it "the gagging of God."  The clear meaning arising from a Scripture passage ceases to be God's voice.   We somehow feel justified in shrugging  away our need to bend the knee in humble worship and obedience.

STOP SHRUGGING - THINK BIBLICALLY

Let's re-anchor our approach to Scripture in the Biblical doctrine of Inspiration.  Ryrie defined it as "God's superintendance of human authors so that using their own individual personalities and style, they composed in the autographs (the original writings) God's authoritative revelation to man."

Let's read Scripture, reflect on it, intepret in its grammatical and historical context, and let it speak as God's Spirit delivered it.   Doing this gives us a chance to do in our generation and in current culture, the important privilege of thinking Biblically and living in alignment with God's revelation.

Remember - God didn't set forth the 10 commandments as a referendum for public vote.  He revealed them as an unmistakable and life-guiding moral compass.

For What do You Pray?

While conducting an informal survey in my favorite coffee haunt today (sure...ask me about the survey!), a friend came in and we shared a few moments over the dark, black stuff.  I shared that I am praying through our church ministry's missionary prayer calendar.  There are several missions needs listed for each day.

"What do you pray?" he asked.

That's a great question to be asked, and to answer.  Many secularists (perhaps all) dismiss prayer as foolishness; not me.

My response to my friend was that I try to imagine (if I'm short on up-to-date info) where the missionary is, his/her setting, and think about the spiritual life and ministry challenges he/she may be facing.  We finished our conversation noting the importance of not just speaking with God, but listening to Him as well.

FOR WHAT DO YOU PRAY? [Finish the sentence]

I've been reflecting on our conversation in the after-burn hours.  My thoughts about what to pray about returned to a fresh conviction that grew in my heart last year.  I believe it was from the Spirit.

Succinctly, to pray "that Jesus Christ become the most important person to...." and you finish the sentence.

Perhaps the finish for you is a close friend who has not bent the knee of his/her heart to the grace and love of God found in Christ.  Pray that Jesus become her most important person.  Pray that Jesus become his model, friend, and Lord.

Perhaps the finish for you is your local church.  I find it odd that so many churches seem to talk so much about everything else but Jesus Christ.  How can this be?  Even a cursory reading of the New Testament puts us in a full-nelson about this.  He is central to everything...why not his local churches.

Perhaps the finish for you is your community, or the college/university which you serve in some capacity.  Perhaps the finish are the employees in your business, or your exercise mates at the local "we never close" fitness center. 

You finish the (above) sentence.  And let's pray together for the supreme centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ, in 2014, for everyone and in every place. 

Why not now?

What are your 2014 Kingdom opportunities?

January 1, 2014 was an unscheduled day for me to get a few things back on the tracks.  These include --

• another run at shedding the "middle-earth" pounds (i.e., around my mid-section) I've re-acquired in November and December
• a strong prompting from the Spirit to get on my knees every day for many minutes a day, including praying for and writing to our missionaries around the world
• a personal promise to blog and tweet more frequently
• a few great starts on good reading, with the lead off read being John Stott's great commentary on ROMANS: God's Good News for the World

Popping in on the email list was a great note from a family in our church which is making friends with a family from India who are Hindu.  The wife/mom wrote to explain the relationship that is blossoming between them, and then concluding, "Any advice?"

Nothing thrills the heart of a pastor more than when a Christ-following family is given this kind of kingdom opportunity by the Spirit, and is eager to make the most of it.

What are your 2014 Kingdom opportunities this year?  Have you thought about it?  If not, why not before this 1st week of January gets away from you?

Here was my advice to my inquirer.

First, pray fervently for the Holy Spirit to lead and do the heart work.  From everything I understand from Scripture and theology, we plant and water, and must do so with loving as our lead.  But it is God who gives the increase.  It is the Spirit who persuades, draws, convicts, and gives birth.  What kingdom opportunities are you praying about already in this year?

Second, be patient and wait for good, Spirit-directed opportunities to share the truth claims of Jesus.  Yes, there are many gods in our world, but God the Son clearly and compassionately insisted that there is One True God and that He is the way home to our Creator and Redeemer.

Third, get your hands on a tool that can equip.  Read it (or listen to it) and use it.  Good resources abound about which can help "sharpen your saw" so that you are the best tool possible in the hands of the Spirit.  You can always do a topic search at a Christian Book website for the tool you need.

My encouragement?  Assess the Kingdom opportunities God is setting before you, and start praying for a fruitful year of impact and ministry in the lives of others.  Who knows what the Spirit might do, through all of us Jesus-followers this year.

START RIGHT - Resolve to Read...and be choosy

One of the reoccurring frustrations in my life is the tension between so much to read and the lack of time to read.   I subscribe, and then unsubscribe, to rich feasts of the heart.  My apologies, again, WSJ.

Last summer, I attended a preaching workshop led by a gifted communicator only to hear him say, "I don't read hardly anything...especially not books.  Takes too much time." 

Sorry, I'm not that gifted, nor that original. I constantly have to stand on the mental shoulders of others in my desperate attempt to keep a fresh stream flowing through my heart.

If you are reading this, I hope you will resolve to read in 2014.  Shut down the Xbox.  Forget another 30 minutes of Sports Center, and for goodness sake, stop blathering on Facebook.  Start feeding your heart with great thoughts well written.  Buy a Kindle or a Nook, and start downloading.  Then find a coffee shop that doesn't dominate your ears with crude music, pick a favorite corner, and read for an hour.

Hey, why not?

A COUPLE OF RECOMMENDS

If you love anything written by C.S. Lewis, then let me recommend Alistair McGrath's new Lewis bio: C.S. Lewis-Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet.  His chapters leading up to Lewis' transformation from atheism to embracing Christianity are quite insightful, and his chapter on Lewis' conversion is fascinating.  Kudos to J.R.R. Tolkien!   Lewis, as you will discover, was quite human (that is, fallen), and he also was quite converted!

Another important book you might consider is by Os Guiness, a Christian philosopher/historian who as written extensively on a number of subjects.  His latest challenges us all (and in the camp where I usually hang out, evangelical Christians) to join the call for "soul freedom," the opportunity for all (religionists and secularists) to affirm the right of every human being to freely think and believe and practice what they believe, and extending that right to all others. 

"Soul freedom," Guiness offers, "is for the good of all, down to the very last human person."  This recognition is something which will necessitate "that educated elites in the Western world must overcome their personal prejudices about religion in order to take it as seriously at it deserves, ad that no solution will be possible without a partnership between responsible religious believers and responsible secularists." (p.27)

Yes, it's a heavier read, but Guiness' approach provides us with an opportunity offer others the truth of Christianity without insisting on cramming it down others' throats, and asks for the same from those with different or even opposite views.

I am thankful to friend Tom Ingebritson for giving me a copy of the book, and recommend it your way.

ONE MORE THING...

If you do decide to read more and Facebook less, and you are a follower of Jesus, be sure to pray over what you are reading.  I mean, why not ask the Holy Spirit to give you His insight on what you are putting in your mind and heart?

Happy 2014