VBS

We are in the midst of our VBS program.  I have to say that this is the one time a year I am most reminded that as a pastor I cannot do it all and that I am so grateful that God has given us a church body to help fill roles and do things together that none of us could accomplish alone.  I am so grateful for those who have organized it, teach each day, help with the crafts, clean up all the messes, hold the children who are crying, help keep order in the midst of what quickly can become chaos.  I am thankful for those who are daily praying.  Thankful to those who lead singing, who help at the sound booth, who man (or woman!) the registration table.  I am blessed by those who do the skits each day - to those that guard doors and make sure the children are safe and taken care of.  I am privileged to work alongside people who take the time to make snacks, help decorate, fill in wherever is needed.  I cannot fail to mention those that mow the yard so it looks nice, clean the facilities at the end of each day above and beyond their normal responsibilities.  And this is just for one VBS program.  Following our week we will have a parade for the 4th of July and hand out water.  Each Sunday many of these same people are faithfully teaching or helping in some way.  I cannot do all of this and if I even tried to remotely do most of it, I would quickly lose my sanity, but the faithful service of God's people accomplish together far more than any one person could do on their own.  And to the glory of God our VBS is going so well.  Lives are being impacted with the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ and the lives of children are being changed as they learn that they are a treasure to Jesus.  Thank you to all who are helping bring honor and glory to God through their faithful service.

Psalm 139

"I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;  Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well."  Psalm 139:14 (NASB)

I recently got the opportunity to take a short vacation to travel and see both my parents and my wife's parents.  During part of this trip we were staying at a campground and got the chance to simply see the beauty of what God had created.  Through the bugs and heat we were still able to see that which God created.  We can look around and see the grandeur of the trees and hills.  The majesty of a bird in flight.  The power of flowing water.  The immensity of a storm.  And at all of these things we tend to marvel.  But have you considered the marvel that is you? 

God spoke the world into existence, and the pinnacle of His creative action was the creation of mankind.  The psalmist personalizes this when he recognizes that He is fearfully and wonderfully made.  But he goes a step further to recognize that when God works at something there is nothing wrong with it or bad about it.  Puts my receding hairline into perspective.  Puts those age spots and even gray hairs into perspective.  (I never thought it fair to go bald and gray simultaneously) 

We tend to think of ourselves and find the things wrong with us.  Do this long enough and we begin to question our value.  This is as contrary to Scripture as pride is!  We are to seek and find our value in our position as a creation of God.  We are to recognize that God does not make mistakes and that if we are here we are a creation of the Heavenly Father who loves us enough to make us for His honor and glory.  It is not that it is all about us, but it is about giving thanks to a Creator who cared enough to make us special. 

Love

"We love, because He first loved us."  1 John 4:19 (NASB)

Our culture is enamored with the concept of love for each other.  We have a whole segment of the movie industry dedicated to perpetuating a faulty concept of what love is.  We have young people growing up who think about love in the context solely of personal pleasure.  We have this because we have generations of adults who have demonstrated that love is simply about personal pleasure.  As a culture we can fall into love and fall out of it just as easily.  And we have a divorce industry that demonstrates our commitment to self love.  For our culture, love begins, and ends, with me. 

I believe that this is the foundation for a number of critical problems within our culture.  The acceptance of homosexuality and other forms of sexual deviancy is because of the base of love being centered in me.  I have heard good Christian people tell me that they do not know how they can stop their child/friend/co-worker/family-member from choosing to live in sin because it "makes them happy".  This is the reason politics is so divisive.  Everything begins and ends with me. 

This one simply verse from John contradicts all of it.  Love, and the ensuing understanding of life, does not begin with me.  Instead, love begins with God.  When we consider this it means that there is someone we must look to outside of ourselves to define for us what love is, and God certainly has defined it for us.  Love is self-sacrificial.  Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love keeps no record of wrong . . . and it goes on and on.  When we think of love in this way it changes our perception, not only of the concept of love, but our concept of the world and even ourselves. 

So love the way God intended love to be.  Because our love is dependent and secondary upon the love that God has for us.

Involvement in Your Local Church

We all want something out of our church.  This in itself is not a bad thing - after all, the Scriptures are fairly clear that we are going to gain benefit from gathering together.  It is commanded that we do, but we gain encouragement and edification and growth together in Christ.  We gain the chance to serve one another and love one another and in doing so, we are served and loved.  I think that many people have a wrong idea about what church is and what church does.  For many, church is just something to do.  This "doing" concept of church involves people who are just there on Sundays and check off a box on their to-do list.  They have done church and can wait a week or two before feeling as though they need to do it again.  Some people do church and are really involved in church.  They tend to get burnt out because they are simply doing what they know to be right.  Many times, these people have a hard time saying, "No."  They fill our positions and things seem great, but they too are simply doing church.  There are people who have been "doing church" for so long they now believe it is someone else's turn to "do church" and believe they have earned the right to sit still for a while and just observe and sometimes complain.  In fact, there are many different ways that people "do" church.  They can be involved or uninvolved.  They can be long time members or first time visitors.  They do not however develop authentic relationships within the context of church.  They may have friends, but their church friends likely do not know the real person, they are able to "do" church in whatever way they deem best. 

So often when we consider the work of the church we are thinking in the context of doing church together and the old 80/20 principal comes into view.  20 percent of the people are doing 80 percent of the work.  But notice the word between the numbers - "doing".  We must break free from this unbiblical mindset of doing church. Instead, we need to "be" the church.  The church is not something outside of ourselves that we do, but something that we are.  It is an identity.  We are the church.  We talk about this in theological terms, but then when it comes to our practice we revert to doing church together.  If we are the church, it changes our perspective on things.  First of all, there would be no one who was unwilling to participate.  Paul talks about one body and many members and all the members are critical to the function of the body.  If you are a church you are indispensable to the work of the body of Christ.  It does not matter how much you do, it matters that you are being you - using the gifts that the Spirit has given you to serve the body you love dearly because it is YOUR BODY!  You are the church. 

I believe if we could think in these terms it would solve a lot of issues that all churches face.  If we are doing church it is easy to fight over ways that church is done.  If we are being the church we would set aside personal differences for the glory of Christ.   If we do church we can complain it is not done right, if we are being the church we realize every time we say something negative we are insulting ourselves.  It helps us avoid burnout because we are not doing church but being Christ's representatives and it is for Him we serve.  It would help because all of us would be involved in some way.  It would help in a number of other areas as well.  So, be the church this week.  And I hope to see you, because the body is not the same without you!