TRUST doesn’t mean UNDERSTANDING!

The late Robert E. Webber, my teacher and professor at Northern Seminary, was fond of saying “There’s only one thing I worry about getting right–and that’s trusting God.”  Webber was a premiere theologian, historian, and practitioner of the faith, yet what he found most essential was trust.  We can possess sound theology, understand our history and tradition, and engage in spiritual practices…but the question remains, can we really trust God?

In my journey of life and faith I’m coming to realize the importance and nuisance of trust.  I am coming to see more clearly that at the heart and center of faith is trust.  Just trust, nothing more and nothing less.  I am also coming to see that trust does not entail understanding.  So here lies the rub, that trust often lies in opposition to understanding.

My personality, my education, my work and career have all focused on the accomplishment and experience of understanding.  I want to understand!  (Which more than often means to possess and control)  Understanding brings assurance and confidence, attributes I value greatly.  Trust on the other hand calls for humility and surrender, attributes I’m not nearly so fond of.  Understanding makes me self-sufficient.  Trust demands dependence.  Understanding provides me with familiarity.  Trust entails uncertainty.

So back to Bob Webber, “IS THERE ONLY ONE THING I’M WORRIED ABOUT GETTING RIGHT?”  Which is learning how to TRUST.  If I was grading myself on the trust test right now I’d get a “D” (Well, maybe a D+ since I’m an easy teacher when it comes to grading).  However, the grade is not final–there’s work yet to be done and turned in.  This student is trying to learn how to more fully trust God in the midst of confusion and doubt.  To trust in the absence of understanding.

In God’s grip- JDKG

What do I REALLY value?

Do you know what the best thing about church is?  People.  Do you know what the worst thing about church is?  Yep, you guessed it–people!  In the last several days I have been struggling with people, especially church people.  Its not been open hostility or raging conflict.  No, its that quite inner conflict of differing desires and perceptions.  Its been that quiet unrest and inner turmoil that leads me to want to distance myself and push “them” away.  It is so easy for me to become isolated and insulated from others.

This week I came across a quote from Howard Snyder in “The Community of the King.”  Snyder writes:  “If Jesus Christ actually gave more time to preparing a community of disciples than to proclaiming the good news, which he did, then the contemporary church must also recognize the importance of community for proclamation. . . . Truly Christian transformation of culture comes through Christlike and hence sacrificial love, community, and being.”

What did Jesus really value?  People and community.  What do I really value?  Well my frustrations, stress, and struggles reveal the answer–and its not people and community, its ME.  Eugene Peterson’s translation of Matthew 5:23-24 in “The Message” is so powerfully direct in our call to value and embody community.

If Jesus placed people and community at the forefront of his life and ministry, should I not do the same?

Trying to LIVE more like HIM,

-Jonathan

What a pain! Dealing with Holy discontent

M. Scott Peck got it right, “Life is difficult.” But here’s the kicker–maybe God wants it that way. Maybe “difficulty” is sometimes God’s very plan and will. I want my life and faith to be about clarity and peace, I want it to be simple and straight-forward. God has been teaching me a different lesson in the last several months: the importance of holy discontentment. I’m not sure exactly what holy discontent is–I just know how it feels. It feels like frustration and confusion on a higher-level.

Recently Bill Hybels wrote: “Most of us run from our firestorm of frustration. One of the best things you can do is identify with it. … When you find it, feed it. Increase your exposure. Stay close to your holy discontent.”

What a pain–”stay close to your discontent”? That sounds difficult, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and far too unsettling. However, it sounds like the life and ministry of Jesus. I am trying to remember that the power and victory of the cross, also comes with its pain and difficulty. Will I stand firm and face the difficulty and discontentment before me? Will the cross just be an adornment, or a reality of embodiment? Will I not run from my firestorm of frustration? Rather, will I feed it, increase my exposure, and stay close to my holy discontent? What a pain! Yet, maybe precisely what God wants in my life and faith.

The REAL story of Lent

Have we REALLY missed it? As we engage in and experience the season of Lent I’m fearful we’ve missed the real story and point. We miss the real point of Lent: the scandal of Christ.

Listen to how “scandal” is defined,

1.	a disgraceful or discreditable action, circumstance, etc.

2.	an offense caused by a fault or misdeed.

3.	damage to reputation; public disgrace.

4.	defamatory talk; malicious gossip.

5.	a person whose conduct brings disgrace or offense.

Don’t these words capture the events and essence of the Lenten story? Here’s my REAL point. The scandal lies NOT in the physical or social suffering that Jesus endured. The “disgraceful action or circumstance” that Jesus endured were not the beatings, the physical and verbal abuse, not even hanging on a Roman cross. Listen, it was being SEPARATED from the Heavenly Father for the sin of humanity. The scandal is that the Father turned his back on the Son because of our sin. Here’s how Miroslav Volf in “Exclusion & Embrace (great book!) puts it: “Jesus’ greatest agony was not that he suffered. Suffering can be endured, even embraced if it brings desired fruit, as the experience of giving birth illustrates. What turned the pain of suffering into agony was the abandonment: Jesus was abandoned by the people who trusted in him and by the God in whom he trusted-’My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’”(26)

The REAL story of Lent is not that Jesus was beaten and bled for you and me. The real story of Lent is that Jesus took upon himself the adandonment and separation from God so that we won’t be. He was forsaken so that we may never be. Sorry Mel Gibson, the scandal of Christ is not the violence of the cross, but the surrender (“self-donation” -Volf) it represents. Listen again to Philippians: “Who, being in the very nature of God…made himself nothing…became obedient to death–even death on a cross!” (chapter 2)

Lent is about living in the scandal of Christ!

What holiness really means

Holiness is about who Jesus is and who we are in him.  Holiness seeks to share and participate in the Spirit and nature of God.  It is the embodiment of the character of Jesus Christ.  This means that holiness is best understood and described as “holiness to” more than “holiness from.” 

How worship should be evaluated

The question “what should the result of our worship be?” relates to evaluating our worship and character. Worship should not only be evaluated by did I experience God, but is my life changed, renewed, or different because of it? What’s important is not only what happens in worship, but what happens after worship. The evaluative question that we must ask ourselves regarding our worship is not, “did we like the music or sermon?” The question is did the worship change lives? As a result of worship are persons better equipped to exhibit more love, mercy, grace, and justice? Was there a transformation in people’s character towards the character of Jesus Christ?

Beyond the worship wars…

Often today’s worship focuses on the individual exclusively. Even corporate worship in the local church has become “my private relationship with my personal God.” From this perspective worship only builds the individual. However, a clearer focus on the relationship and integration of worship and identity can create the building of the entire church as the Body of Christ. In this way corporate worship has a goal and outcome which is building the community of faith into being the people of God.

The goal must be about an attitude of genuine Christ-centered worship, not musical styles and service formats. It’s easy to change songs and music, but having a heart for worship is a process. The attitude of desiring vibrant, meaningful, and exuberant praise cannot be done through playing different songs. It is only done by the work of the Holy Spirit. Our responsibility is providing an atmosphere where the Spirit of God can work most effectively and efficiently. We must not fall into a tradition verses contemporary mentality. Our job is to present timeless truth in fresh and relevant ways. We must not sacrifice tradition on an altar of the contemporary, but we must at the same time be innovative in making a sanctified use of contemporary communications for eternal truth.

Spirituality?

“O God, teach me to see you, and reveal yourself to me when I seek you. For I cannot seek you unless you first teach me, nor find you unless you first reveal yourself to me. Let me seek you in longing and long for you in seeking. Let me find you in love, and love you in finding.”

(Saint Ambrose of Milan)

Many people seem to think that spirituality is something that inheres within them as a result of what they do to be spiritual- that becoming spiritual is a matter of works. However, Christ is our spirituality. God in Christ has become humanity and has lifted humanity into a relationship with the divine. Spirituality is not a matter of works, but freedom to be in Christ.

Jesus is our spirituality. It is his life, death, and resurrection that make us acceptable to God. We cannot love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind, but Jesus can and has. We cannot love our neighbor as ourselves, but Jesus can and has. It is Jesus Christ, therefore, who presents us to the Father, and it is because of him and through him and in him that we are spiritual. Spirituality begins with simple yet profound trust in Jesus.