Friday, December 14, 2012

  

"The Kingdom of God is like . . . .
a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant
in the ground.  Yet when planted, it grows and becomes
the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the
birds of the air can perch in its shade."
Mark 4:30-32

Jesus told a story about a tiny mustard seed growing into a huge tree.  If you were a first century
historian having watched the meteoric rise of the Roman Empire and then having watched this Nazarene named Jesus rounding up a few non militant followers, who would you have bet on as most likely to change the world?

God thought it best to reduce himself to the size of an uncultured peasant in order to redeem the universe.  God must think that "little" matters.  Not only that, He must think that "little" works . . . .

I recall this sentence from the book, The Shack,  "If anything matters, everything matters."  If I, with
only mustard sized faith, do anything, no matter how small, then God may grow it to become far more influential in building God's Kingdom than anything I could ever hope or imagine.  That's how God's Kingdom grows, from the bottom up, from the margins in, from the least to the largest, from small to big, from the acorn to the oak.

"If anything matters, everything matters."

"Lord, help me today and each day to pay attention to the simple details of the needs of those around me so that I don't miss taking the small action that you could use to 'move a mountain'.    Amen."

 

                                                        December 12, 2012

Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. . . . .
"This is what the kingdom of God is like.  A man scatters seed on the ground. 
Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though
he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain -- first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.  As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." Mark 4:26-29

Christians Believe that Jesus is the Only Hope that the World Has.
Why is that?

Monday's blog recalled Jesus' teaching that underlying all of the world's problems is the sin which dwells within you and me.  Planet earth houses 7 billion people each of whom views the rest of the world as revolving around him or her.  We are self-centered creatures and that leads to conflict, war, death, divorce, poverty, and environmental destruction.   We are all about ourselves rather than God.  Therefore the one hope for our world lies in the possibility of changed hearts, hearts into which God plants His kind of life so that we are motivated to serve Him rather than ourselves.

It's as if God plants a seed of Himself into each believer and causes that seed of Himself to grow, something like His having planted a seed into Mary and from within her the new life of Jesus grew.  Therein is the hope of the world, the possibility of such a thing taking place in lives all over the planet.

Your part and mine is to allow ourselves to be the fertile soil in which that life can grow.  How?  We can worship, connect regularly with other believers, practice the disciplines of prayer and Bible reading, and choose to live beyond ourselves, as "circle four" believers.

"Lord, it is astonishing that you came to earth to bring us back to you and that you continue to live with us.  Help us Lord to keep our soil fertile so that you may increase and we may decrease.    Amen."

December 10, 2012

As a response to the Pharisee's criticism of the disciples for not following the letter
of the law, Jesus said this,
"It's what comes out of a person that pollutes:  obscenities, lusts, thefts,
murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks,
slander, arrogance, foolishness --  all these are vomit from the heart. 
There is the source of your pollution."
Mark 7:7-23 (Msg)

Why Did God Come to Earth?

C.S. Lewis wrote, "[Jesus] came to this world and became a man to spread the kind of life he has -- by what I call a 'good infection'.  Every Christian is to become a little Christ.  The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else."

Jesus did not come to earth to socialize us into Christian behaviors.  He came to infect us with a new kind of life.  The heart depicted above needs infused with the life of Jesus, which, as it grows within, chokes out the old and permeates the heart with the new.

But you do have a part in this transformation.  I call it "strategic positioning" which means that each of  us must put ourselves in a position where that new life of God can make its way into us.  That will be the subject of Wednesday's blog.

"Lord, it is so hard and disheartening to look into my heart and see the pollution that is still there.  Yet, thanks to You, to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit, that is not all that is there.  May your life within me increase even as my sin dies away.  Amen."