What is Valued

"You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight."

Luke 16:15

This is Jesus talking to the Pharisees "who loved money." I love Jesus! Can I just say that?? I mean, I love how He seems to take everything and turn it upside down! He just comes in my nice and tidy life and messes things up!! And I love that about Him - He's rebellious, and being rebellious myself, I just LOVE it!!

Our pastor used this passage in his message a few weeks ago, and it has just been stirring my thoughts, and weighing on my heart. Of course, in context it is regarding money, but I believe this is true about everything we value! We value power, influence, success, money, individuality, freedom to ____________. These are the things that excite us, and make us work harder and step on more and more people to make it to the top!!

Yet, when we look at Scripture, we find that Jesus values humility, servant-hood, the weak and the poor, community, and freedom from ____________. He says the first shall be last, and the last shall be first; He tells us the least shall be greatest, and the greatest shall be least . . . now, you and I say we believe the Bible, so why do we still try to be first? To be greatest? I mean, if we truly believe the Bible, and believe it to be God's perfect truth, then shouldn't we all be fighting to be last? To be least? Yet we don't. I don't.

Oh God, help us to truly begin to value what You value! Give us a desire for humility, to be servants of all around us, to be with the weak and the poor, to live in community, and to be free from the chains and bondage of sin! We love you, and we want to live lives that reflect that love!!
In the mighty name of Jesus - Amen!

Risk

Would you say ours is a faith of risk? No?? I wonder why that is . . . could it be that we are not willing for it to be?? I mean, it seems to be a faith of risk in the Bible, so what has changed??

I wonder if we have our focus too much on ministry, rather than on God. We are so worried about growing our ministry, and making sure it's "healthy" (by whose standards, by the way?), and wanting to be the next new BIG thing with the greatest idea that will bring in the hoards, and how to we get more people involved, and blah, blah, blah . . . . I wonder, friends, have we missed the boat??? Or, perhaps, we have quite the opposite problem . . . we're not willing to step out of the boat.

I think of Peter walking on water - Jesus bid him "Come" and he did!! He didn't look around at the wind and the waves and the circumstances and tell Jesus, "Hey, you know, the wind is blowing really strong right now, and those waves are awefully big, not to mention the fact that it is pitch black out here!! You know, it just seems to me, by my human logic, that the time just isn't right for this, so let's wait until tomorrow, when the storm has calmed down, and it's light . . . that makes more sense, right?" NO!! He ignored "common sense" (by every stretch of the imagination!!) and stepped right out . . . he kept his eyes on Jesus, ignoring all circumstances, ignoring the probable shouts of opposition coming from his "friends" in the boat, ignoring even the nagging thoughts in his own head telling him he was NUTS, and he (GASP!) trusted Jesus!!!

I have to be honest here, and tell you all that I am tired of fancy-schmancy ministry ideas, plans, schemes, whatever . . . I just want to follow Jesus, and I want to hang out with other people that want to follow Jesus. I want to know that the people in authority over me spiritually in the Church are just following Jesus. We need to stop worrying about the breadth of our ministries!! We need only worry about the depth of our relationship with God, and trust that as the roots grow deep, our reach will grow ever higher and farther!!

We need to step out of the boat! We need to ignore circumstances - often times I think God likes to work in the most strained, most awkward, most impossible circumstances to show off all the more! We need to simply keep our eyes on Jesus, and trust that He will take care of the details and circumstances, whatever they may be.

I am ashamed to think of all the times He has said to me "Oh you of little faith! Why did you doubt?" Probably too many to count, too many to remember . . . not that I want to.