Shake the World Again

To eat, to breathe
to begat,
Is this all there is?
Chance configuration of atom against atom,
of god against god?
I cannot believe it!
Come, Christian Triune God who lives,
Here am I,
Shake the world again!

- Francis Schaeffer

Makes Sense

Ask Yourself These Four Questions

Thought provoking questions to ask yourself - from Pete Wilson:

Years ago I did a message in a series called “Dream Job” that was entitled “Your Path to Purpose”. Walking the path of purpose  requires you to answer four very important questions. These questions were inspired from a fabulous book I read years ago by Dr. Dan Allender entitled “to be told”. I highly recommend it.

I believe to really find the deepest purposes for which you exist, you must be able to answer the following questions.

1. Who Am I To Serve?Your deepest purposes must bring good to someone who is without justice, reconciliation, or hope. It might be abused women, orphans in Africa, or business men who don’t know Christ.

2. Where Am I To Be?What is the primary context where I will serve the people I’ve been called to love?

3. What Burden Am I To Bear?This is so important!! Everyone of you reading this right now is called to battle some unique effects of the Fall.  Don’t just blow by this. Stop for a moment and think about this… there’s a problem in this world that brings you to tears or makes you downright angry. What is it?

4. How Am I To Engage?Your engagement to the problem might be to pray, administrate, teach, serve, lead, paint, sing, confront, repair or nurture. EACH of us will do what we do with a style which reveals something about God in a way that no one else can.

This is not meant to be a guilt inducing question but I’m wondering…

How far are you down the path of purpose? Can you answer these questions?

Jesus Did Not Come...

• Jesus did not come to make us happy. He came to make us holy.
• Jesus did not come to make good people better. He came to make dead people live.
• Jesus did not come to make your marriage happy. He came to transform two sinners into a picture of his self-giving love for us and of our proper response to him.
• Jesus did not come to give you your best life now. He came to bring you into his best life for eternity.
• Jesus did not come so you could ask him into your life. He came to call you into his life.
• Jesus did not come to improve your story. He came to bring you into his story.
• Jesus did not come to make your life into a comfortable cottage for your pleasure.  He came to make your life a majestic palace for his presence.

Switching Life Stories

"Becoming a Christian is much like adopting a new life story.  The biblical notion of repentance, or turning and going a new direction, is rightly viewed as choosing to say yes to God and his purposes.  God's desire to interact with people involves our whole life, which means a change in thinking and much more.  When we are converted, we switch stories, we reenter the plan of God....

...Repentance, properly understood, should become like gravity, pulling every area of our present and future life into the story of God.  It is not just a reconsideration of our sinful past.  Repentance includes all the activities and attitudes necessary to spiritual transformation into Christlikeness.  It is the implementation process of switching stories."

Todd Hunter, Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others, page 41

Rise Together

“Jesus Christ did not rise alone. He rose as the head of a whole body of people elected to have faith in him, to benefit from him, and to extend his mission in the world.”

- Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. Engaging God’s World (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Eerdmans, 2002), 81.

Hat Tip:  Of First Importance

Forget about God’s Will for Your Life?

Are you seeking God's ultimate destiny for your life? Ever asked yourself if that search is fruitless, or even if it is what you are supposed to be doing?  Or maybe we should Forget about God’s will for your life!

“I think a lot of us need to forget about God’s will for my life. God cares more about our response to his Spirit’s leading today, in this moment, than about what we intend to do next year. In fact, the decisions we make next year will be profoundly affected by the degree to which we submit to the Spirit right now, in today’s decisions. It is easy to use the phrase ‘God’s will for my life’ as an excuse for inaction or even disobedience. It’s much less demanding to think about God’s will for your future than it is to ask Him what He wants you to do in the next ten minutes. It’s safer to commit to following him someday instead of this day. To be honest I believe part of the desire to ‘know God’s will for my life’ is birthed in fear and results in paralysis.” (120)

God wants to listen to his Spirit on a daily basis, and even throughout the day, as difficult and as stretching moments arise, and in the midst of the mundane. My hope is that instead of searching for ‘God’s will for my life,’ each of us would learn to seek hard after ‘the Spirit’s leading in my life today.’” (120)

“The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is not someone we can just call on when we want a little extra power in our lives. Jesus Christ did not die in order to follow us. He died and rose again so that we could forget everything else and follow him to the cross, to true Life.” (122)

Quotes from Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit by Francis Chan

What do you think?

See also Seeking an Unmessianic Sense of Non-Destiny

Dwellers In the "Land of Inconsequence"

Parts of this story are mine too.

Saw this sad, but very familiar, story by Dan Edelen entitled In the Land of Inconsequence at Cerulean Sanctum. If you have ever had youthful dreams of serving God, giving your all for the Kingdom and doing great things for the Lord - dreams that later seemed to dissolve in the mists of time or lie broken in the dust- then you too may be familiar with the Land of Inconsequence. I've lived there, like Dan, for a long time.

After describing his life journey, Dan says:

"That’s my story. I believe it’s one that many other Christians share, though the details are different. I think that church pews around America are filled with middle-aged people wondering what happened to the mission they embraced years ago. Life became cubicles and rush hour gridlock and the smirk on the face that accompanies hearing the dream stories of youth who are poised to change the world. Those were our stories—once.

It feels like hell living a life of no consequence, counting time until we go to heaven and receive whatever meager reward we earned, based mostly on what we accomplished for the Kingdom when we were barely out of childhood. The Land of Inconsequence is a terrible place to dwell, yet the population grows daily.

God knows most of us who dwell in that land would prefer to be elsewhere. We’d like nothing more than to cast off the burden of a life buried in bureaucracy and striving. We don’t want to look at the mission of the Kingdom of God and think, Hey, nice fairy tale. We want to be more concerned with the fact that Christians in India and elsewhere  face persecution, but we’re stuck on the phone arguing with the electric company, trying to figure out why our electrical bill is twice as high this month.

All the while, what we once were eats at us. The old mission claws at our heart, but we don’t know how to get back to it. We don’t know if we could even perform that mission should it one day open up again. And the days keep falling from the calendar."

I don't have any answers to this condition (if I did I wouldn't be living in it too), but agree with Dan that we should not pretend this dismal land doesn't exist, and that so many people in the pews of our churches visit it or dwell there.

How about you?