Sometimes unexpected things go together!

                Last week we looked at lukewarm from a spiritual standpoint. It’s where you love God to a point. You are NOT all in at any cost. If it is too uncomfortable or too hard or…you know then count you out. “God can get somebody else after all what do you have to offer,” you say to justify your refusal to God’s request. Yep you just said no to God. That’s lukewarm.

                I never thought calling and purpose would work together with that lukewarm thing. I have been reading the story of Saul. Saul was set apart by God to be King of Israel, called you would say. Saul was faithful to be the King and yet everything he did was to be king not God’s servant. He became confused as to his calling and his purpose. Saul was called to be faithful to God and his purpose was to be king. It happens so easily to all of us.
                Men we get so caught up in our career and/or job to the expense of our family and friends that we lose all of the above. Then we wonder why. It’s because we lost ourselves. Ladies we can get so caught up in our kids and their lives that we forget we were first a wife. It’s not a bad thing to be dedicated to your purpose. It is only bad when you forget your calling.
                The calling is always bigger than the perceived purpose. One of our values at Crossroads Church is to always do things that are good for the Kingdom of God then it will be good for Crossroads Church. Our calling is to increase the Kingdom of God not necessarily Crossroads Church. It is a bigger picture. It is not easy. You know church would be so much easier if you didn’t have to deal with church people. School would be so much better if you didn’t have students. Business would be more pleasurable if you didn’t have to deal with customers. The irony is in all of those examples without the very ones you are complaining about you would have no reason to exist. We get this way when we fail to keep our eyes on the bigger picture. In the case of the church Christ.
                Paul was called out by God to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles. An odd choice considering his training, a Pharisee, religious elite, rising star in the Jewish political/religious ruling establishment. Zealous for the purity of the Jewish faith to the point of securing official sanction to round up followers of this subversive sect of Jesus. He was confused about calling and purpose. Jesus met him on the road blinding him to everything but himself (Jesus). Do you see that? Refocusing Paul away from what his eyes could see to what they could not until his sight was restored. What an attention getter? After that Paul was all in.
                All in but I wonder in the 14 years following how many times he was tempted to take the task into his own hands on God’s behalf? That’s the danger of lukewarm taking things into our own hands. Paul didn’t do that. No matter what happened to him he stayed true to his calling to spread the word of the Gospel to the Gentiles. Standing before King Agrippa to defend himself, what does Paul do? Save his own hide? No, he shares the Gospel message just as he was called to do, in season and out of season.

Calling over purpose any day, every day.

In HIS Service and yours,

Bro G

God is able to orchestrate everything...

 There is a relatively new translation called The Voice. It relates Romans 8:28 this way.

We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan. Romans 8:28 The Voice

Being a musician I love those words. It makes me identify in a different way. While at the University of Kansas (Rock Chalk Jayhawk) as an undergraduate Music Theory major two of my last courses to take were Orchestration. One taught in the fall and the other in the spring. The fall semester was just trying to lean instrument ranges, styles, what sounded good and what didn’t. We would craft an exercise, but that was the extent of the class. It was small in members 8 I think. The second semester we spent on projects. A project consisted of a piano piece and then we would “orchestrate” it for a small ensemble of strings, or woodwinds or brass. The instructor was a published composer/arranger James Barnes. He would tell you if it was a clunker or not. The final project was a piano piece arranged for an entire orchestra, the conductor’s score and all of the parts by hand, computers did not do that yet. The finale for the project was the University orchestra would play it live while you sat there and listened. It was terribly cool and terribly frightening. Those folks were piers and friends and that was all your baby. I spent a lot of hours copying parts and going over them until the day. I knew what I thought it would sound like putting all of those instruments together. Each one with unique abilities, roles and capabilities not to mention the skills of the players in the room. But, as much as I thought how it would be there is nothing like actually listening to it. Sitting in the chair listening to your work come to life even if it is not original. Drum roll please, the time came and it was over before it even started or so it seemed. They started playing and then they were done and it was good. The orchestra kind of looked at each other and decided to play it again because it went so well. Man was I thrilled. There was one clunker in the trumpet part, one note not transposed right but that was it. I was relieved.

It doesn’t always go so good putting together different parts, pieces and people to make a new thing. Just try to get your family somewhere on time! It is hard to do! Most days it seems like nothing is working at all much less together. That’s why I like the above verse. God has a unique ability to orchestrate lives towards something good and beautiful. It seems not to matter whether from good or evil, rich or poor, huge, small, compatible or incompatible…God puts them together to make something good and beautiful. The prime example is the Cross of Jesus. The death of the Savior of the world would seem to be an end and yet with God it is the real beginning of the rest of the story of redemption. The beginning of real life eternal and free for ever. What if, And we know that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful, was really true in our hearts and minds. How would you look at your current situation? Differently? Confidently? With security? So why don’t you?              

In HIS Service and yours,

Bro G

And we know that God...

             That is how Romans 8:28 begins in the New Living Translation. I heard this as I was driving down I-65 in Alabama Monday a week ago. It was the focal passage of a message by Chuck Swindol. I was channel surfing because we had gone out of range of the previous station that I liked and had to find another or turn the radio off (no XM). So I hit search and off it went to the next station and the next and the next until I heard this familiar voice and stopped to listen. That “chance” listen turned into an obsession with that passage and this week with that phrase.

Honestly, I did not know that would be on the radio. Most of life is like that, we just don’t know and to be honest it drives us crazy not knowing. Even those “fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants” people like to “know” a few things now and again. Looking at the past year and then to the next year there is much we know about the past and at the same time much we don’t really know. Take for instance as you are reading this you know you are still breathing. Don’t smell your breath to be sure, it might not be pleasant. But on the flip side if you were honest you don’t really know how it is you are still breathing considering what you faced last year. At the time you didn’t even know if you would make it this far but here you are questionable breath and all (insert a tic-tac HERE). So what do we know?

Paul pens for us what we do know as believers…also all that we need to know, GOD. So, we need to ask a different question! Not WHAT but WHO, because who you know makes all the difference. For a believer God makes everything different, new, reborn. God is the breath of life, the Word of hope, the Joy of living, the Light and Life of men. Who makes all the difference! And we know that God… is more than just a phrase it is life and living our hope. I read this Friday morning:

“Hope is defined as faith that all circumstances work to deepen our relationship with Christ and reconfirm our salvation.” The Disciples Study Bible NIV, Romans 8:28-35, pg. 1430

Once again it is not the “what” we trust but “who.” That’s how Jesus lived here among us. Jesus thought differently. That is the pattern even when he had no certainty of what was going to happen he trusted his heavenly Father. His hope came from who he know and not what.  Peter writes to us and other believers how our thinking needs to change.

^1-2 Since Jesus went through everything you’re going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you’ll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want. 1 Peter 4:1-2 The Message       

 

In HIS Service and yours,

Bro G