autumn in the rain

Image by Denis Collette…!!! via Flickr

Dismal dreary days lead to a dismal dreary heart. A life that finds hope hard, strength weak, and rest difficult.

Autumn in the rain.

The trees shed their coverings and stand naked against the steel gray sky. Rain and wind lash at the windows and threaten to make hearts as cold as the bare feet on this hardwood floor.

Disillusionment occurs when real life doesn’t live up to our expectations. — Sarah Cunningham in Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation

Maybe this happens when people do not live up to our expectations. Disappointment just does not really fit the feeling. Sure that is there. There is a sadness and heartbreak, a feeling of being let down. More, though, is this feeling that they have let themselves down. A feeling that they are not being true to who they claim to be, to who God is calling them to be. A frustration that there is freedom available if they could only open their eyes.

Disillusionment has this sense of removing the rose coloured glasses through which we see the world. A freeing from false belief or appearance. To be disillusioned is to be able to see through the masks that others wear. A freedom to see things as they really are.

Recently, I was sitting in church and it hit me.

Is this really it? Are we being the church God had in mind? Is this what God had in mind when he stood with his disciples in the final moments of his life on earth and told them to go into all parts of the world and declare his authority over all creation? Is this what he envisioned when declaring that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ?

I think not. I think that we have allowed consumerism, pragmatism, and individualism to deeply implicate our vision of Church; we can no longer see clearly what God intended for us to experience as the people of God. — JR Kerr on the Q blog

Is it possible that our focus on the existing entity to which we belong, the physical congregation which gathers at a given place a given number of times every week, is hindering our vision of what we could be in Christ? Is it possible that God is calling us to sacrifice our own comfort in order to follow where he is leading? Is it possible that he is calling us to pick up a cross (an instrument of torture and death) to follow him?

Autumn in the rain.

There is hope even in this, because it is only through our own death that we receive his life.

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crazy love: a review

Christians spend so much of their time trying to live the right way. We try not to swear or use foul language. We try not to tell dirty jokes. We try to make our kids sit straight and be quiet in the worship space.

Do you ever wonder if we are trying to do the wrong things?

Sometimes I wonder if we major in the minors and completely ignore the big things God is calling us to. I wonder if we gloss over Jesus’s radical calls to obedience in the scriptures on purpose, or if we simply miss it.

Francis Chan, in his book Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God says that yes, indeed, we have missed it. At least the vast majority of us have.

You may wonder if this is simply another angry book blasting the North-American church for not following Jesus. To be honest, I wondered that myself. As I began to read the book, I actually felt that it moved rather slowly. Chan takes his time outlining what it means to follow God, and makes sure that we understand just who this God is.

He incorporates his website in his text, urging the reader to go and watch some videos that are hosted there. I found this somewhat distracting. When I sit down to read a book, I want to read the book. I do not want to have to take the time to go to my computer and watch a visitor.

These drawbacks were more than made up for, however, as the book progressed. Chan Biblically draws an outline of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, not in specifics but in attitude.

His explication of what it means to be obsessed with Jesus really hit home for me. Here is a quick summary of his description of a person deeply in love (obsessed) with Jesus.

People who are obsessed with Jesus: give freely and openly, without censure, aren’t consumed with their personal safety and comfort above all else, live lives that connect them with the poor in some way or another, are more concerned with obeying God than doing what is expected or fulfilling the status-quo, know that the sin of pride is always a battle, do not consider service a burden, are known as givers, not takers, think about heaven frequently, are characterised by a committed, settled passionate love for God, are raw with God, have an intimate relationship with Him, are more concerned with their character than comfort, know that the best thing they can do is be faithful to his saviour in every aspect of his life.

While there are other books that relate the same subject, they rely more on experience than scripture. Chan makes a concerted effort to remind us that it is only in Jesus that we are saved, and that for the glory of God. This salvation calls us to lead a radically different life than those around us. This is one of the best books I have found that outlines the Biblical basis and demand for radical discipleship in an accessible and engaging way.

sin boldly: a review

There are plenty of books out there on the subject of “Grace”. This could be perhaps the most discussed theological concept within the protestant tradition. The problem, however, is that grace is very rarely something that can be talked about, but is really something that has to be experienced. Perhaps this is why there is such a profusion of literature on the subject. Everyone is trying to identify, dissect, and explain their own experience of grace. This sometimes has the effect of taking all the wonder and joy out of the experience, draining it of its power.

“This collection of stories is about the author’s experiences with grace–in ridiculous moments and in those that seem trivial but are anything but.” (from the front flap)

In this collection of stories entitled Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace, Cathleen Falsani tries to simply relate her experiences of grace. The times when she felt something of God in the circumstances around her. The times when people showed her the heart of God. The times when her faith has been shaped as she was introduced into deeper expressions of grace.

I have to admit that I found this book to be lacking in some ways. I found a distinct lack of true wrestling with scripture and how the experiences Falsani was having fit in with the experiences of those who recorded the scriptures for us. A very important part of finding God in everyday life is learning more about God from his revelation to us. It is not as though Falsani led us down any heretical paths, but her abstinence from any kind of commentary on the stories did little to expose how she was experiencing God in them.

The title of the book comes from a famous quote of Martin Luther.

Sin bodly.

Believe in grace even more boldly.

Love without limits.

Live this life.

Luther was trying to relieve the people he was talking to from the cripling guilt that they were experiencing. They had a tendency to become overwhelmed with their sin, and their lives become joyless and unsatisfying. Luther was attempting to remind them that their sins do not create an insurmountable barrier between them and God. There is grace which will cover our sins. So, we may sin boldy, not in the sense that we deliberately go out and commit more sins, but that when we do sin we can admit the mistake and move on.

Falsani attempts to convey a life that is organised in this manner. She attempts to collect stories which will lead us into a place where we need not be debilitated by guilt, but can be overawed at the grace of God all around us.

While I wish that Falsani had done more reflection on her experiences in the light of scripture, this collection of stories do provide glimpses of grace which can lift up our eyes from contemplating our own sin to a place that recognises God’s grace.

stop hiding

“I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing.” (John 15:5, The Message)

Image by Brenda Anderson via Flickr

This coming advent I am planning to join in something that many of the churches of my tribe are doing in our area. We are planning to join together in 40 days of prayer, asking Jesus to come into our world, into our churches, into our homes, and into our lives.

I have to admit, in many ways I prefer to do something a bit more concrete. I prefer to do something like the Advent Conspiracy that we did last year. Our community responded really well to this call to share, and we raised a little over $50 000 on Christmas Day to help provide water for places that do not have clean water.

I think we prefer to do something like this, because it is something we can point to that shows how good we are, or how caring we are, or how ‘good’ we are. It is something that we can point to that relieves some of the angst we feel about our relationship with God. The worry that maybe we, as a community, could be doing something a bit better in leaning on God.

We like these kinds of things because they focus on behaviour, and that is something we love to control.

Many of the sermons, and Christian talk that I was exposed to growing up had to do with moralisms. Things such as “Adam and Eve should have obeyed God. You should obey your parents” actually send the wrong message about the Christian faith, but it plays on our natural instincts.
This plays into the “moral temptation.”

Moral temptation: the attempt of the hidden heart to try to perfect oneself in the power of the self.

This is not something we do consciously, but subconsciously. We use an appearance of goodness to cover over the shame we feel about how broken we are. Something we inherited from Adam and Eve.

Their first response to guilt and shame, to a feeling of being completely exposed and worrying about how they were being perceived, was to try to figure out a way to fix it on their own (by sewing together fig leaf garments) and then hiding when they realised that didn’t work. You get the feeling that they would have been willing to meet with God if they had been able to provide a covering for themselves with which they felt adequate, not that this is possible.

When we experience guilt, our first response is quite often, “God, I am going to work on that. I am going to be better. I am going to pray more. I am going to do more. I am going to _________.” This, of course, only increases our feelings of guilt and inadequacy, beginning a long spiral into spiritual despair and distance from God.

But, if we are able to see that moment of being convicted of sin as a reminder of the first time we encounter the good news that Jesus has covered that sin. If we can see that the guilt we carry is not a burden which we have to try and work off, but an invitation to a journey of trust and growing intimacy with God, then we will be able to move away from moral formation to spiritual formation.

Even though it is a big temptation to focus on the practical, the numerical, the easily identifiable, it is more important that we focus on an encounter with Christ ;the author and finisher of our faith.

It is only in Christ that we can move from “I need to do better” to “I need you.”

““I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing.” (John 15:5, The Message)

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losing God: a review

I’ve been telling myself lately that faith without doubt—like faith without works—is dead. – J.C Schaap

James Schaap wrote in a blog post recently about a student whose life has not been going so well. There have been a quite a few things which have drawn much energy out of her. In her words, “Life just got a lot more complex in the last few years :/”

Maybe it is simply because I am moving into an age range where more problems seem to appear, or maybe it is because I am a pastor and people are more willing to open up to me, but it seems like this has been happening to a lot of people. Life just seems to get more and more complicated. Perhaps “painful” is a better word than “complicated.”

Life just seems to get more painful, and we don’t seem to know how to handle pain.

Matt Rogers, in his book Losing God: Clinging to Faith through Doubt and Depression records his own long journey through the dark valley of doubt. Through all his struggle, Rogers said he wanted to know that there were others who shared his struggle.

What I really wanted was just to knowthat someone, anyone, had shared my pain and asked myquestions-and had made it out the other side with their faith intact. I wanted a story.

In this book Rogers provides his story in order to help others understand what the experience of depression and doubt does to a person. He highlights how depression is often intermingled with doubt; doubt about salvation, doubt about God’s goodness, doubt about the purpose of it all. Much of his own experience of depression is intricately tied up with a theological struggle involving election and predestination and a sense of being on the outside of that election. He relates how a time of worship at a missions rally became the darkest point in his life. Standing there with thousands of other Christians, he suddenly felt his heart grow cold. He stopped singing and felt completely lost.

Rogers’s story is intensely personal. He relates his own struggle. His own thoughts. His own pain. This may make it difficult for some people to relate to his story, as everyone experiences depression in different ways. However, this may also help someone identify with his thought processes and feelings. Even though different circumstances gave rise to them, someone else has thought these thoughts and has clung to their faith through it all.

This book is not a guide to treatment, or even an analysis of depression and its intersection with the faith. It is one man’s story of his experience.

I recommend this book to those who have never experienced depression. Rogers brings you into his experience and allows you to see, first hand, what it is like. For those who are in the midst of a crisis, this book may provide a little comfort and perhaps some hope that all is not lost.