Stand and Fight

Allow me to rant. I love war movies! Saving Private Ryan, The Band of Brothers, Braveheart, anything with a lot of action and heroic speeches I'm hooked. I think the reason why I love these movies so much is that it speaks to a deep desire within my soul to give my life for something bigger than myself. In these movies you see men dying for a greater good, for this idea of freedom, for their brothers at arms, and then after a few hours of on screen action I return to the real world. The real world of bills, and repairs, and office hours. The real world dealing with drama, and feelings, and monotony. And I have to wonder, where is my great cause? Where is my battlefield? Where is my defining moment in the heat of battle where I decide to either lay down and die in the mud, or pull myself up and face my enemy gun in hand?
I feel all to often like the men towards the end of Band of Brothers when the European conflict is all over, Hitler is dead and they find themselves without an enemy so they begin to fight each other. I feel as though I am so ready to stop talking about being more, and giving more, and engaging the enemy; that time has past. I feel as though it is time to rally the troops and storm the gates of hell, and yet I am without a direction in which to march. I am sick of the status quoe, sick of inactivity, sick of half hearted commitment. I feel like the guy on the horse in front of the army, or the guy standing on the battlements yelling to the troops, "Who will join me? Who will fight? Who will die if necessary for the sake of the King?" So, will you join me?

God's Will?

At times I find it comical that we are so prone to extremes, or perhaps I shouldn’t lump everyone into the same mold. I guess you can just read this and see if it applies. I started reading a book today called “Just Do Something” where the author makes the argument that there are times when we find ourselves guilty of not doing anything because we are waiting on God’s will. He claims that there are times when believers try and find God’s will in a situation when maybe God is indifferent to that situation. Now granted I am only half way through the second chapter but it is an intriguing idea.
On the other hand, my devotions this morning form Oswald Chambers claimed that if there is any doubt in the heart of a believer about a situation one is in, then the believer is not in the will of God. He states that we must wait until God’s will is absolutely clear before we make a move lest we run ahead of God’s plan and mess the whole thing up.
Well, what is one to think? It can easily be tempting for believers to adopt one or the other extreme: to just run through life doing whatever pleases you, all the while claiming it is the will of God; or to not do anything, take no chances, exercise no faith because you feel a shred of doubt and so therefore it must not be God’s will. I’m sure that both of these authors would agree that it takes equal amounts of both views to follow God’s will. In scripture we see where Jesus’ disciples tried to run out ahead of God’s will and had to be reigned in. On the other hand we see where God wanted His people to move but they were afraid of what that might mean for them.
Ultimately I believe that when we are truly seeking God we do not have to fret about whether or not we are or are not in his will. In Isaiah 30, the prophet is telling the Israelites that when they repent and come back to God, He will receive them and forgive them. Then in vs. 21 he says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” Meaning that when we truly seek God, we can take comfort in the fact that he will guide our steps, the only thing we have to do is keep following where He leads.

Following closely

So yes I realize that it has been forever and a day that I have written anything on here and that probably everyone has assumed that I have abandoned this whole blogging thing forever but, here I am, and I pledge to do better with this whole thing. With that being said . . .
I was listening to one of my favorite pastors the other day discussing his "conversion experience" or in layman's terms how he began to follow Jesus. He explained that he really didn't know anything about what he was doing, he just knew that he had been forgiven, and that he now had a hunger for scripture and a longing to live however God wanted him to live. Because of this hunger, he began to read his bible every morning and every evening; not out of a legalistic sense of having to, but because he wanted to know what he was supposed to do. He explained that he also had a lot of baggage, like a filthy vocabulary and as he read what God was all about, he realized that the way he talked didn't match up with who God was, so he changed the way he talked, and so on. The thing that I found very interesting about this (and it certainly isn't anything new) is that Chip didn't change because he set out to specifically change this or that about himself, he changed because he realized his actions didn't add up to what he now knew.
One of the problems that I have to be mindful of is the fact that I get to focused on the action; in order to be a better Christian I must do this, this, and this. The action then becomes the important thing, and if I don't do these actions in a certain way then I have failed. In actuality, I believe that God isn't about the actions. What I'm going to do is not focus so much on the actions, and instead focus on who God is, on who Christ is and then think, if I want to be closer to Jesus, these things in my life can't stay. If I want to be closer to Jesus, I need to talk to Him, I need to spend time with Him. If I want to be a Christ follower I need to know Him more so I can follow Him more closely. Makes sense, doesn't it?

A Willing Heart

This past Sunday we wrapped up a four week long discussion on how to unlock your God given potential, and through it all the main theme has been commitment; how committed are you to seeing God work through your life. I've had a lot of people come up to me these past four weeks expressing concerns that they don't feel like they are doing enough for God. Or people are wondering how they can hear God more clearly because maybe there's more that he is wanting them to do. If we aren't careful, when we begin to focus on questions such as these our Christianity can very quickly turn into a question of "how good am I?" Or "How much can I do?"

I shared last Wednesday about how in 2Chronicles 30, under King Hezekiah the people were taking part in the passover for the first time in a long time. It was basically a revival where people were earnestly seeking God, and yet the problem was that there were a lot of people who, when the time came to eat the passover they were, according to the law, unclean. Then in 2Chronicles 30:18-20, Hezekiah asks God to pardon the ones who had their hearts set on seeking God, and yet were unclean according to the rules of the sanctuary. It then says that "the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people." So what was the most important thing? Being clean according to the rules, or having a heart set on seeking God?

Now don't get me wrong, the law was very important but it was a means of drawing the people to God. God's focus and his desire was for a relationship with his creation, not that they were perfect! Even today we get so hung up on, and worried about how well we can perform as Christians, and how often we have our quiet times, and how much we put in the plate, and how many Sunday school classes we teach, and how we don't drink, or smoke, or cuss, and how clean we can look on the outside that ultimately we miss the fact that Christianity is all about having a heart set on seeking God! Again, Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; there were a lot of other commandments but this was the most important one!

And so as we strive to be disciples of Christ, and as we work to be holy as God is holy, we must remember that above everything else we must ask ourselves the question: "Is my heart set on seeking God?"