The Base of Operations

Home base…in the military it is the place where decisions are made and the commanders develop strategy… in baseball it is the starting place for the batter and the ending place for the runner… if you are playing flag, it the place to protect or to capture the flag of the other team…in living our faith, it is our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Our Christianity begins and ends with Jesus. The Bible puts it this way:

Hebrews 12:2

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus is described as the author and the finisher of our faith. He is at both ends, in His terms, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end.  As life changes, as experiences bring you hurt and hope, Jesus Himself is our home base.

My parents still live in the same home I grew up in. When I visit them, I visit home. But home is not home because of the building or my room or my backyard or the trees, but the presence of my parents. Their personal love and devotion to me and my love for them, make it a special place. Their care for me and concern for my well-being, make it a safe place for me. No matter how special that concrete block house looks, no matter how many memories of mine occurred within the walls of that home with the screened in patio and corner lot, it is not truly home. My concern is that too many of us are associating the our spiritual home with a place or form or preferences rather than a person.

Ask yourself a few questions? What image comes to mind when you think of serving Christ… did a church service pop into your head? sitting in a Sunday School class…or maybe (scary thought) serving on a committee? What if I were to ask you what image comes to mind when you think of living the Christian life… Fellowship with other believers? Reading your Bible?  Now, there is nothing wrong with worship services, Sunday School classes, fellowship or reading your Bible, in fact I highly recommend all of them for having a vibrant faith, but none of these things are home base for the Christian. When I serve Christ, I serve Him. When I get to heaven I will not be accountable to the church, not to the pastor, deacons, not the patriarch or the matriarch of the church, not the controlling committee, no board, but I will stand before Christ, and I want Him to say to me, “well done, good and faithful servant” [meaning that He is rewarding servants who are accountable to Him]

We are enamored in our culture with things. Americans are overrun with things, in love with things and seem to have a desperate need for things in order to feel “right” with the world. Several years ago it took $600 to buy a Tickle Me Elmo doll during Christmas. I still do not understand that. My wife and I are taking care of two girls in foster care. This past week walking through Wal-Mart we could have decked out the girls in everything Hannah Montana- hair bows, lip gloss, shirt, watch, shorts, underwear, socks,shoes, backpack, bandanna… I am sure there were a few other things that I missed, but I got tired of looking. And of course the girls had to have every piece- had to. Let’s face it, we feel better if we have the “right” things. If we like golf, we want the right clubs, the right balls with the particular dimple pattern in them. If we like cars, we want one that has the right body, engine, color and sound system. If we like decorating, we want certain colors, furniture or curtains. The right things make us feel right, like we are comfortable with ourselves and with the world.

Spiritually we like our own “things” as well. We like a certain kind of church. A certain kind of appearance to the building. A certain way that people dress. A certain kind of music. A certain kind of instrumentation. A certain kind of people. A certain type of church government. A certain kind of evangelism. A certain kind of Bible. We sit in a certain seat. We like certain things said to us. We like a certain amount of attention. This list could get lengthy. The point is that all of these things have to do with personal preference, not righteousness or holiness. When we use personal preference as our base of operations, Jesus is no longer the author and finisher of our faith, we are. I become the controlling voice in all decisions spiritual, because everything has to line up according to the way that I am comfortable.

Now, everyone has preferences, we cannot help that. A certain sound is appealing to us. For example, as I am writing this I am listening to a worship leader named Paul Baloche singing “Meet with Me”. I love that song. It is a preference. Now the problem would come if I were to say that I could not worship Jesus unless we sang Paul Baloche songs. The expression of my faith in worship then becomes about me… the Bible however says that worship is about God. You could apply this example to a hundred different things in your Christian life. If my preference becomes the driving force behind whether or not I can live out my Christian faith, then I have abandoned Jesus as the center of Christianity, I have left my first love. The authorship of my faith becomes my own, my name goes on the cover. Our base of operation, home base for our faith, has to begin with Jesus. His name has to go on the front cover of the story of our life.

Think about the importance of an author to a story. If the author is writing a creative piece, they are working from their own personality, experience, knowledge and imagination. If they are writing a history or a biography, then they are merely reporting events that have already occurred, created by someone else. What kind of author is Jesus to your faith?  Is He creating from His own resources a magnificent story of His love, care, grace, power, purpose and mission? Is He using His knowledge to guide you and His experience to prepare you for what lies ahead? Or maybe you have control… and you want Jesus to be there to support what you are doing and what you are creating.

It is important that we have Jesus as home base, the author and finisher of our faith. If He were the author without being the finisher, He would wind us up and take His hands off. “Do the best you can and I’ll see you when it’s over!” We would be adrift in this world. Who would we turn to? We would be all alone with no help, only an idea of what the story is supposed to be about. (which seems like a place a lot of Christians are– We have a Christian idea without the realization of living the purposes and character of Christ). If He were the finisher without being the author, we would have no idea what to do nor would we understand any kind of purpose for life. This is prevalent today as God is pushed aside as creator and maker. If He didn’t make us, what are we here for? Does life have meaning?  Judgment would be a frightening and unsure time. Did we get it right? Did we follow His will?

For us to really live an abundant life, a Pluslife, we need Jesus as home base. Today, think about how you approach your faith. Is Jesus that author of it, or are your preferences the true author of your faith. Is Jesus the finisher of your faith, are you “seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” or are you just making it through trying to add a little Christian virtue into an otherwise unsure life?  We have a home base, and you are welcome there, the author and finisher of your faith awaits to write a beautiful story with you.

John Johnson

www.pluslife.wordpress.com

God Encounters

I have just finished a series of messages on “Close Encounters:God Up Close and Personal” (click on the sermon link to listen). Over the summer we have taken several passages in which God personally encounters someone and impacts their life. It probably has been one of the most enjoyable sermon series I have preached in a while– for several reasons.

I was reminded afresh that God is really personal, I mean really, really personal. As we spoke about Moses and the lonely man in John 5 who had no one to put him in the water, God’s incredible and deep personal knowledge of our life, circumstances, pains, hurts and passions emerged. This personal knowledge is both comforting and challenging. God spoke directly to the need, never really having to ask a lot of diagnostic questions about our condition. He knows us better than a spouse or a best friend. His knowledge, as the Psalmist says, is too wonderful for me. How can a God who knows me so well, still love so passionately, remain so loyal to me and still desire to use me in His service? Only the arrogant and the proud (and the self-deluded) would say, after telling the entire truth about their inner life, thoughts and attitudes, that God still has great reasons to think them worthy of His presence and service. Humility on the other hand, drives us to realize that one with such knowledge of us would surely reject us and not look back… yet God never even looks away.

If you are married or have a best friend- what would happen to that relationship if all of your inner secrets were exposed. If every bad thought you have ever had about them, ever word that you uttered under your breath about them or every bit of criticism that you had spoken about them… not to mention all the stuff that you thought about other people, all the fantasies and day dreams and every action done in the dark… what if all of that and more were suddenly known to them?  Would they still see you in a loving light?  I have heard people say, “my husband and I don’t have any secrets”.  Yes, we do, and we know it. It may be attitude or thoughts or passing anger, but no one knows all of you– except God. And yet He loves us passionately. A relationship with God is intensely personal. This means that our faith is more than a philosophy or a creed to live by, it is a deep and personal relationship with a living God that goes to the very heart of who we are and who we desire to be.

Secondly, I was reminded that we can and do encounter God Himself.  Several years ago I was teaching a Sunday School lesson on Jesus’ power over the demons. As we talked one of the students asked a very interesting question. “Do you mean that Jesus encountered many demons, but only encountered Satan himself a few times?”. “Yes, that is how the Bible reads”, I answered. With a quizzical look on her face she asked, “that means of all the times that I have felt evil, that I may not have ever really encountered Satan, but his demons instead?”  With that we began to discuss the difference in demons and Satan and the difference between God and the angels. After a few minutes I said, “When it comes down to it, Satan is still just an angel. He may be their leader, but he is a created angel like the rest. God is only one who is unique.”  When we encounter God, we are encountering the unique and only God. Now we do encounter angels, and we do encounter demons, but those experiences pale in comparison to encountering the personal work of God in our lives. The most amazing part is that as Christians we don’t encounter God in a passing manner, but God takes up residence inside our lives, so that we live and breathe with the presence of God within us.

John 14   ²³ Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him

God the Holy Spirit fills us, changes us, works through us and the power of God is seen in a life that is transforming day by day.

We see celebrities each day or politicians who are surrounded by their “people”. They may be a body guard or a publicist or a personal photographer or a driver… or whatever other people who work for the rich and famous (of which I am neither rich nor famous). In order to get to one of these celebrities, you have to know someone. Now my “people” cannot get with their “people” because I have no “people”- just me. With God, He doesn’t have “people” that we must get with in order to encounter Him. I get the awesome privilege of meeting, not just one of God’s servants or one of God’s people, but God Himself. He puts no barriers between Himself and His people. Let the WOW factor sink in here. You, in whatever state or condition you find yourself in, get to encounter God… just you and Him. Sometimes scary, but all the time awesome!

Thirdly, the church needs to emphasize the idea of personal relationship more. We live in an age of big companies, big government, impersonal service, take a number, get put on hold, and so on. Now, I am not sure about you, but I can’t get real excited about calling customer service and hearing “all of our representatives are busy, you estimated wait time is…7 minutes…your call is valuable to us, so please hold”.  Yea, we live for that. The church cannot be another place of impersonal, routine, go through the motions, put your money in the plate, do something for us– without placing first and foremost the personal aspect of Christianity.

I have come to the belief that the church has burned a lot of people out of ministry and involvement because we have become an organizational machine instead of a meeting ground– a place to meet God and meet with others who have Him in their life.  If we know Christ, believe in His personal involvement, are in love with Him (not just His organization, but Him), and know that we serve Him first, then church never becomes a burden. It’s kind of like a marriage, if we love someone, we don’t get burdened by giving them hugs, buying them gifts, going on vacation with them, raising kids together and yes, even getting a mortgage together. But if we lack love and personal care, we merely go through the motions and everything becomes a burden.

I am passionate about the idea of loving the faith I live. I want to dive deeper and get more exicted about Christ, to develop the “Pluslife”, the abundant life, He talked about. I want to be more in love with Him tomorrow than I am today. But that can’t happen if God remains impersonal, far away and distant from me. God is up close and personal and I look forward to every “Close Encounter”!

The Law vs. Life

I am a person who believes that the Bible I read is true… Now that immediately summons to your mind either relief that I am not some leftist liberal or dread that I am a fire-breathing fundamentalist.  If there is one thing that I abhor it is labels.

When I was in seminary, I hung out with everybody, which is saying something considering the time that I went to seminary. I arrived at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary shortly after Dr. Paige Patterson arrived as President. The transition between the seminary being a moderate, neo-orthodox school and a more conservative, fundamental school was in full swing. There was a mix of students and professors on campus. Now, let’s stop a moment and consider that only a few short years previously I was tending bar, hanging out with the guys and chasing the girls like many other twenty-somethings. I was pretty accepting of everybody and loved being around people.

Arriving at the school I quickly figured out that there were not just categories of people, but sides. If I had lunch with the “wrong” person, there were some in the school who felt it was their job to take note of such things and “mark” you. So when I would have lunch with a friend from class who some noted as a more moderate or liberal student, they would take me for a liberal– and I did have lunch with all of my friends, frequently. I worked at a church in Raleigh that I dearly loved with a pastor that i would consider my greatest mentor, but it had a reputation around campus of being a charismatic baptist church (which means we got real happy when we worshipped and we prayed fervently like we expected God to respond to our prayers). So in school I was a liberal charismatic…

Jesus dealt with this whole idea of labels. The Pharisees were fond of noting themselves as “sons of Abraham”, but Jesus wasn’t real impressed. John the Baptist even said that God could make sons of Abraham out of stones (Matt 3:9).  Jesus was concerned with making sons of God who would have the life of God flowing through them. Now immediately people will ask, “what do you call these people?”. What do you call people who have the life of Christ flowing through them? In our form of writing, we need a noun to describe this group of people. We need the name of a person, place or thing… so that we can label something. See, it is important in the law to have labels. You have to be specific, be exact, name names. In a contract you have parties with labels, agreements with specific duties, amounts and warrenties. In court cases you have names, dates, testimony of places and times. That is the law and the law requires labels.

I however have come to believe that followers of Christ are less like nouns and more like verbs. We are not a static group that gets slapped with a label so that it can be identified and studied under a microscope. I know, we are Christians. But ask a thousand people to describe a Christian and you will probably get close to a thousand variations. Now don’t misunderstand, I believe there are standards. God calls us to a relationship with Him through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and through His resurrection. But  life that is in Christ, is active, dynamic, spontaneous and free… it is not a noun. It is flowing, moving, breathing, expanding, contracting, reaching, touching, sharing, holding, helping, giving, sacrificing, caring, crying, rejoicing, celebrating, kneeling… The Christian who is truly in Christ should be in constant motion, living the life of a person who is actively following the one who once was dead, but now is alive.

The Pharisees believed that the law was the way to pleasing God, in other words, you don’t have to follow God, just follow the rules.  Keep the rules. Don’t get off the path. Stay within the boundaries. Don’t color outside the lines. Play by the rules… only they weren’t God’s rules. Jesus broke so many of the Pharisees’ rules, and He did not repent one time. He lived without sin, while breaking the rules of the Pharisees. He lived, truly fulfilling the law.

How about us?  Are we stuck in the law? Not the Old Testament law, but the laws of modern Christianity or churchianity. Don’t say that, wear that, do that, try that, sing that, read from that version, hang around those folks, give to that person, go to that place… if you have been around church very long, you know the rules. I wonder how many of us, like the Pharisees, have stopped short of truly living life, because we simply obey rules. I am ready to run free, in the life of Christ, to experience all of God that I can.  That doesn’t mean I don’t care about convention or tradition, but I don’t place my faith in it or trust in it for life. Jesus said that ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’- life that is abundant and free, fulfilling all the law of God while not being restrictive on who we love or how much we love or… you get the idea.

If I were wanting to live a life that is a ‘plus’, I beileve I would start with the life of Jesus in me rather than the rules of the Pharisees. Those rules may make a comfortable place for some, but Jesus wants us free to follow Him on a miraculous and glorious journey of coloring outside the lines.

Are you feeling fresh?

Taking a Break… For Yourself

I recently got back from a week’s vacation and it was great. We spent some time in the Boone area of North Carolina, seeing the mountains and taking in a little cooler air than we have here in Florida this time of year.

It is always refreshing to get away from your daily duties and spend time with people you love and do things that you love doing. Everyone looks forward to vacation or at least they should. Unfortunately many people these days are so pressed and pressured by their work, that they are taking fewer and fewer vacations. In 2007, 25 percent of American workers had no paid vacation time, meaning that their employer did not provide for them to get away. Worse though is that 25 percent of Americans who had paid vacation time available, took none of it. Another 35 percent used only a portion of the vacation time available to them. When you look at the figures, only 15 percent of American workers used all of their available vacation time.

The quote comes from a Seattle Times article about vacation time:

“The idea of somebody going away for two weeks is really becoming a thing of the past,” said Mike Pina, a spokesman for AAA. “It’s kind of sad, really, that people can’t seem to leave their jobs anymore.”

Shrinking-vacation syndrome has gotten so bad that at least one major U.S. company, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, has taken to closing its entire national operation twice a year to ensure that people stop working: for about 10 days over Christmas and five days or so around the Fourth of July. “We aren’t doing this to push people out the door,” said Barbara Kraft, a partner in the human-resources office. “But we wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 e-mails.”

The company tracks vacation time so that when employees fall behind, they are reminded through an electronic nag that they should be getting out of the office more. And posters evoking lazy days away from work were put up in the New York offices. Hint. Hint.

So what does this have to do with living a Plus Life? Well, think about the ultimate “working man”, God. The Bible says that He works so hard that He “never slumbers and never sleeps”. Jesus said that “My Father has been working until now and I have been working”. You think you’ve got a busy job, try keeping up with 6 billion people.

God, however, has built in renewal time. When He created man, He created Him with the ability and the need to sleep. We cannot work and live without sleep. Our bodies need the rest and the renewal time, although some today are trying to live without sleep and it is showing. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for example, drowsiness and fatigue cause more than 100,000 traffic accidents each year. Lack of sleep can be expensive: The National Commission on Sleep Disorders estimates that sleep deprivation costs $150 billion a year in higher stress and reduced workplace productivity.

Take it a step further and a lack of sleep time can cause some serious health problems. Studies have showed that sleep deprivation can affect such things as our appetite, weight gain, diabetes, the strength of your immune system, and even your chance of developing depression. According to a CNN report, in 2004, University of Chicago researchers restricted a group of men to only 4 hours of sleep per night. After just 2 nights, the men had an 18 percent decrease in leptin, a hormone that tells your brain when you are full, and a 28 percent increase in ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. These results were reinforced last October by a study of almost 10,000 adults that found that people who slept fewer than 7 hours a night were more likely to be obese than those who got 7 hours of shut-eye. Chronic sleep deprivation causes changes in metabolism that produce a state that stimulates hunger. Sleep deprivation can also affect how your body handles insulin; insulin resistance puts you at risk for weight gain and diabetes.

God also has designed into man’s existence a day of rest. When He created the world, Genesis says that God worked six days, and on the seventh day, God rested. Following that pattern, God called His people to set aside a Sabbath day, a day of worship and renewal. To live a Plus Life, we have to pay attention not only to our work time, our relationship skills, but also how we handle our spiritual life. Feeling fresh involves not just our bodies and our mind, but our spirit as well. Refreshing your spirit through regular worship, prayer, Bible study, enjoyable fellowship with others, serving God (yes, serving is refreshing if you serve with the right heart) and simply enjoying his presence daily can help you feel better because you are relating to the one who made you. Colossians says that we were made through Christ and for Christ, in other words we were designed to live and work with Him. Keeping your spiritual life fresh, keeps us working like we were made.

I have been just as guilty as anyone on not taking this seriously. God however does take it seriously. He has designed our lives with these times of refreshment and we should take advantage of them. We worry about productivity, about missing something, but if we spend time refreshing our bodies and our spirits, we will be more productive than if we deprive ourselves of these things.

Many a person has gotten lost in the chase to keep up with their tasks, meetings, e-mails and project deadlines. We are working more, resting less and are more stressed, less happy and definitely not more refreshed. Somewhere in all of this, we have lost the true pattern that God created for being the best that we can be. I saw this sign on a secretary’s desk:

If I am not here,

I have gone to look for myself,

If I get back before I return,

Tell myself to wait for me,

We have some issues to deal with.

Thanks,

Me, Myself and I

We aren’t better if we work more than others, take fewer vacations, neglect our family and friends, miss church, sleep less and experience all the symptoms of someone who is overworked, over stressed and under refreshed. These are not signs of a person who is healthy and living a Plus Life. If we allow the pressures of the world to drive us to this state, then we are denying the very things that God has designed into our lives to help us live a Plus Life.

As the new school year is starting and we get back to normal routines, maybe we should think upon our vacation time, go to bed when we should and make sure that we participate in taking a day to worship the Lord. Take some time to find the real you, the person you could be if you were refreshed, fully charged and alert. A Plus Life may just be a week of vacation or a few hours of sleep away….