Passion or Plodding Through?

I am not exactly your greatest source for the latest news. I  keep up with the major stories and keep up with what is going on in the world, but I don’t watch CNN for hours a day and I don’t listen to talk radio everywhere I drive.  But I have really been fascinated by what has been happening in Iran.

The whole situation has seemed to take people by surprise. I mean wasn’t everyone in Iran a crazy, radical, nut-job wanting to bomb the rest of the world into extinction?  Wasn’t every Iranian a revolutionary, dedicated to the principles of a West-hating, Islamic state?… Apparently not.

By nature, I really don’t like assumptions. I don’t like people assuming things about me that are not true. I don’t like assuming the worst about others… until they prove me wrong. I don’t like assuming the worst about the world, which many Christians seem to make their living doing. Assumptions are for those of a weak mind who merely want to take the lazy way out rather than doing the work, the reading, the conversations to discover what reality is. The world, by way of our media, assumed that all Iranians were the same. “The Iranians” is like saying, “The Americans”. We would take offense if someone said, “All Americans are greedy capitalists who…”.

We assume things about our Christianity as well. We take things for granted. We sometimes don’t do the hard work to find the truth or discover what God is up to. Rather than pursuing the reality of our Christian walk with passion, we merely plod through our life, assuming (usually the worst) things about God and ourselves. This is something that I have been working through a lot over these last few months.

When you feel the call from God to pastor, to preach, to serve as a teacher, children’s leader, usher, greeter, cook, nursery worker, treasurer, outreach leader, or whatever else God calls you to do… does it really become your passion or…do we just plod through, doing the work assigned to us until we get bored or hurt or tired or frustrated.  As a pastor for 16 plus years, I always assumed that pastoring is what I would be doing for the rest of my life. Why should I think otherwise?  I wasn’t cheating on my wife, didn’t have a Swiss bank account filled with church money, what could possibly go wrong?  Well, something did go wrong.

Our move to Gainesville, Florida  was a great one. We loved the church. The ministry was progressing. We had a great staff. The people of the church were awesome. I was getting to be involved in community work, which I love. And then, and then we found ourselves in a difficult financial spot, caught in the trappings of a recession… and there was no more pastoring. Confession time– I was mad. I was angry, frustrated, sick to my stomach and completely not understanding what God was doing.  But through all the haze and the fog came a very clarifying question.  Is serving God your passion or are you just plodding through?

Ministry has little to do with position and everything to do with love. Jesus said the greatest commandment of all is to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength– no disclaimers, no clarification, no maybes, no ifs, no nothing. The command is not different for pastors or missionaries. It isn’t different for parents than it is for children. It doesn’t discriminate nor does it show preference. Love God with all you’ve got- whoever you are, where ever you are. I like (well most times) this passage from Job 2:

7 So Satan left the LORD’s presence, and he struck Job with a terrible case of boils from head to foot. 8 Then Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. 9 His wife said to him, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.” 10 But Job replied, “You talk like a godless woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So in all this, Job said nothing wrong.

Listen to Job’s word- accept. If we are just plodding along, we don’t want to be disturbed by difficulty, by hard things, by discomfort.  Plodders give up easy when things go wrong, they whine a lot, they complain about others, the world, themselves, the circumstances. Charles Stanley calls this kind of casual Christianity a “line of least resistance” faith (see Job’s wife). You can’t love God with all your heart… as long as things are going well… as long as it doesn’t require too much of me… as long as I don’t have to give up what I love– those are qualifiers, asterisks on the command. Jesus said to have passion, love God with all you’ve got, no matter what. Even if you are sitting in the ashes, scraping your sores with bits of broken pottery.  Now I have never doubted that I loved God, and have never doubted that God loves me. I have however wondered why certain things happen and have happened.

I was not your most compliant child. I was the youngest of four boys, and it showed. I was a loose canon. A live wire who wanted to live loose and free. My parents, however, saw things differently. Now I never doubted that my mom and dad loved me, but I did wonder why they were so upset at some of the things I did. I questioned their judgment. I questioned their ability to understand me. I was not happy with how things turned out. But, I never stopped loving them and they never stopped loving me.

Right now… yes, I have questioned God’s judgment at times. I have complained about what is happening. But I will never allow any circumstance to extinguish my love for God and I know, I know that my God has never stopped loving me. I may not be where I was a while ago, but what kind of job you have or what kind of title you wear, is merely a place, a setting if you will, for your love for God to shine through. First things first- Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.. the rest is details. If we get the details first- the what we do, how we do it, where we do it, the title we wear, the position we hold, the traditions we adhere to– then we become plodders. People get attached to a position or a place or a thought of who we should be or where we should be, and we plod, trying to hold onto those details.

I think back on so many conversations that I have had with Christian leaders over the years, and I realize that many are plodders. We mean well, we want to “do good” and “do right” and “grow the church”, but somewhere along the way we became plodders rather than passionate. Denominations are talking about Great Commission Resugences, strategies to reach the world, programs to make the church vibrant and growing again. All of these wonderful things will be plodding, if we do not, at our base, in the depths of our heart burn with a love for God.

Christianity, at its’ core, is a simple faith. Love God, receive His love through Jesus’ life and sacrifice on the cross. Remember the verse, we love Him because He first loved us. So simple. I guess when you are going through trying times you either highly complicate things by trying to figure out all the why’s and what if’s… or you simplify, stick to what you know and what you can count on. In other words, you try to make assumptions about your situation, make up scenerios about why God is punishing you or what He is setting up for your future or… you set your feet on the unshakeable love of God. You may not be able to explain what is happening in your life today, but do you know that, when you scrape away the layers of problems, trials, pains, hurts, confusion… that your heart really and deeply loves God?….then really, your OK. I am.

Does God have the Right To Choose His Character?

We live in a world consumed by our rights. We have groups that have fought for their rights because they needed to. We have groups that think they are entitled to special rights, but are not. We have movements, seminars, discussions, arguments, legislation, protests and all manner of things, all about rights. Why?

Because we are a people that love self-determination. We want what we believe should be ours.

That concept also bleeds into our character. We believe that we have the right to be and do whatever we want to do. And to an extent we are correct. God gives us the right of self-determination. We choose our character, He does not force it on us. The rub comes when we arrive at the point that we believe whatever character we choose should be approved and celebrated by God. Much like the rights we fight for, where we believe that everyone should agree that we are correct in pursuing these rights.

There are really two issues that we have to deal with when it comes to our character.

1) Who determines the standards for our character?

2) Who do we answer to for our character?

Our character is our choice, and we are accountable for how we act. As children, we were accountable to our parents, to teachers or coaches. As we got older, we became less accountable to parental authority and moved into the work world where we were accountable to managers and company executives. As children we are more intimidated by authority figures, there is more of a powerless feeling. As adults we bristle against authority figure, complain about our bosses, yell at our bosses and quit our jobs… wait, that does sound like a child doesn’t it?

If we get right down to it, we never really have liked people telling us what to do. We, either in rebellion or in maturity, want to have the right of self-determination.  Further, we want what we believe to be our standard, accepted and approved by others. If we want to have an affair, who’s to say we are wrong. If we want to show prejudice and hate, nobody has the right to tell me I am wrong. If I believe that everyone should like a particular presidential candidate, then everyone who disagrees is stupid or isn’t thinking.  So… we love self-determination.

Unfortunately, we take this a little too far when we project this onto God. If you have watched the news, you have seen the group from Kansas who carries signs that say “God hates fags”, and other groups who say that God “does not send anyone to hell”, and yet other groups who say that God is love and there is no such thing as sin. I always find it interesting when people try to speak for God, as if they have the authority to set God’s character.

God has spent ages revealing Himself, consistently and openly. His people have written it down, recorded His works, scribed His words. God is perfectly capable of revealing Himself… just like you and I do with people that we love and want to know us. God has the right of self-determination. If He has said that only people that believe in and receive Christ into their life can go to heaven, then that is what He has determined to be the standard to get into His heaven. If I were to walk up to you and demand the keys to your house, what would you say? (be nice…) Why would you refuse?  Because it is your house and I have no inherent right to live there. Heaven is God’s, He has every right  to determine who gets in and who doesn’t. We love to exert our right of self-determination, we just don’t like to give it to others… especially God.

Allowing God to express His character and His ways, is a matter of humility. I have to recognize God’s position, His power and His place… above me.  I cannot “tell” God who He will accept or approve of… what sin He doesn’t care about or what isn’t sin at all…what I can act like. In fact, taking the position that I can “tell” God that having sex outside of marriage isn’t wrong because everyone is doing it… well think about it, “God, I’m going to have sex with this girl, and not apologize for it”.  Wow.  I’m sure that God has been put in His place. This is the height of…Arrogance?  Selfishness?

The church and the Christian community has in large measure lost the value of humility. We don’t see it as a virtue, as a character trait that is desirable. We believe that real strength is in self-determination, well, only our own self-determination. We have fights in church because we value our right to determine our preferences of music or Bible version or temperature of the building… and everyone better agree with us. That is not strength, that is being in the flesh. If we want strength, spiritual strength, then we must be humble. We have to be willing to allow God, to be God. To recognize His right to determine His character.

“Lord, forgive us where we have overstepped our bounds, and not been humble. Help our hearts to want to know you for who you are, not who we say you are or want you to be. Help us to respect you for being Holy. You are wonderful in all your ways, although we do not fully understand all you are and everything you do… we love you.  We don’t need to know it all to know that you are a great God, indeed Lord, increase our faith to trust you.”