No More Excuses

17 11 2011

And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us.  2 Cor. 8:5

I did a radio interview this week about Trusting God’s People…Again, the book I co-authored with Debbie Williams.  The interview request kind of caught me by surprise, since it has been a few years since we launched that book.  I was grateful for the opportunity to do it, because that is still very much a topic about which I am passionate (people wounded by the church).  Thanks, Shane Finch, for that fun opportunity!

Pick an Excuse

It was one of the more interesting radio interviews I’ve done.  Shane asked me a few questions I was not at all ready for (I’m hoping he’ll have the mercy not to run my answer to, “What song do you wish you had written?”–wow, how embarrassing was THAT answer!).  But one question really brought me under conviction: “What do you see the Lord doing through you in the year 2020?”  I knew what my answer SHOULD be.  It should be, “Whatever He wants to be doing through me.”  That should be how all of us answer that question, because, as Christ-followers, we should all be do totally given to Him that He is doing absolutely everything and anything He desires to do through us.

That, I believe, is what Paul meant in his letter to the Corinthians about the Macedonian believers who had given so very much out of their poverty and persecution.  They gave themselves first of all to the Lord…  I think I have a pretty fair understanding of what it means to be busily invested in church.   But I am not altogether certain I have a grasp of what it feels like to give myself to the Lord…not completely.  I know I should want that…but I’m not sure I’m there yet.

But shouldn’t that be my goal?  In fact, shouldn’t that be every Christ-follower’s goal?  If I give myself fully to the Lord, then every waking hour is devoted to being used by Him…at work, at school, at home and at church.  In short, I should have an expectation of being used in every circumstance and in every setting.

That was Paul’s expectation of the Corinthian church.  “I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others.”  In other words, the Macedonians have given themselves, now you guys do the same!  I love Paul’s exhortation that these dear church members step up and deliver.  He wasn’t shy.  He didn’t make excuses for them.  You would never have heard Paul saying, “We really shouldn’t expect quite so much from our laymen in the church…after all, they have full time jobs all week long and families, etc.”

There is joy and fulfillment and satisfaction in giving ourselves to the Lord.  As church leaders, why wouldn’t we want every layman to feel that sense of fulfillment?  It is time, I believe, for us to stop making excuses for one another and to start pressing one another toward giving ourselves first of all to the Lord.  I want that for me, and I want it for you too.  And I want it for every member of my church.  Will you make this pledge with me?  No more excuses!

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Corinthians, Everyone's a Minister, missional, Spiritual Gifts

Now About the Gifts of the Spirit…

29 09 2011

Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed… to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.  1 Corinthians 12:1, 7

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.  1 Corinthians 13:1-3

I wish I could see exactly what the question was from the Corinthian church.  I mean, I wish I could know exactly how they reported their issue with spiritual gifts.  The mediator in me has watched Paul call out three of the four factions in that church in the first part of this letter (“I follow Paul”, “I follow Apollos”, and I follow Cephas”), and I wonder if the “I follow Jesus” faction was representative of the culprits here, because that is the way it comes across in so many of our church conflicts today where spiritual gifts are at issue.  Somebody is making a practice of doing something that is causing all kinds of havoc in the church, i.e., ripping the church apart, and their excuse is that “I am just exercising my spiritual gift…it is the Spirit of God Himself working through me…I am just following Jesus.”  I am troubled by that for several reasons, not the least of which is that spiritual gifts are ALL ABOUT UNITY and bringing the church together…not ripping it apart.

Despite Paul’s concern that we NOT be uninformed on this subject, I think we are.  Paul was kind of a “bullet point” communicator.  But he did not have the advantage of a word processor.  If he had, maybe he would have written his lesson on spiritual gifts more like this:

  • Spiritual gifts are not just abilities; they are the Spirit Himself.  The Spirit, you see, is the gift.  When the Spirit of God manifests Himself through a believer, i.e., “peeks out” at the rest of the church from inside a believer, we call that a “spiritual gift”.
  • Your spiritual gift is not for YOUR benefit at all…it is for the benefit of the church.  It is the Spirit of God working through you for the common good, “so that the body of Christ may be built up  until we all reach unity in the faith…”
  • Even though you should “desire” the greater gifts, you do not get to choose your gift…God does.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could tell God how He should manifest Himself through us?  Then again, wouldn’t that be scary?!
  • You may well have an opinion about what your gift is, but since it is a gift to the church and not to you, you probably do not see it as clearly as the church does.  I am always a little skeptical when someone tells me what his/her own spiritual gift is…I always listen a lot more closely when he/she talks to me about someone else’s spiritual gift.
  • If your “spiritual gift” is damaging your church (i.e., Christ’s church) or is dividing God’s people rather than bringing them together in unity, do you really think that is the Spirit doing that?  It may well be some perversion of a spiritual gift, or not a spiritual gift at all, but it is not likely the Spirit.
  • That God would manifest Himself through you differently than how He manifests Himself through me is not a bad thing…it is a good thing.  God’s idea of unity comes via diversity.  Strange but true!
  • Your spiritual gift, no matter what it is, can only be received by the church through the lens of personal relationships.  In other words, you may be the most gifted communicator of God’s Word alive today, but if the 9 people sitting in your Sunday School class do not know that you love them, then you have nothing to offer them…you are just a bunch of noise.
  • There are not just 5 spiritual gifts, or 9 spiritual gifts, or 14 spiritual gifts.  Be careful about numbering or categorizing or otherwise limiting the various ways God may choose to manifest Himself through a believer.  The lists of gifts mentioned in scripture are more likely illustrative, not exhaustive.

I am with Paul on this…I do not want to be uninformed when it comes to spiritual gifts.  These are some things I have learned so far, with the rest of a lifetime yet to go!

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : 5 Principles of Unity, Corinthians, Ephesians 4, Spiritual Gifts

“I can do all things…”

25 08 2011

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.  Philippians 4:13 (NASB)

I grew up with a pretty healthy dose of Zig Ziglar and Norman Vincent Peale and The Power of Positive Thinking…or at least with my Dad’s slightly more scriptural version of that philosophy.  Dad used to always say to me, “Son, with God’s help, you can accomplish anything you set your mind on accomplishing…and you can be anything you set your mind on being.”

Honestly, I am not sure I ever really believed that.

I just never really bought into the promise that, “through God, I could do all things.”  The whole notion of being some kind of spiritual superhero sounded glamorous and all, but it raised a few questions in my mind.  First of all, what if I set my mind on being God?  Could I accomplish that?  Secondly, shouldn’t there be some moral correlation to that rule?  Or is it really anything at all to which I set my mind?  And what if what I really set my mind to accomplish conflicts with what you really set your mind to accomplish?  Then what?

I had a thousand questions about this concept, especially the secular version of it.  But even the scriptural version gave me trouble: I can do all things through him who strengthens me.  It would be many years before I would begin to understand it.

As it turns out (I would later learn), being empowered by God is not quite the same thing as being gifted with super powers which I could then go and use either for evil or for good.  Moreover, it does not even mean that my story will always be powerful or successful or even meaningful.  In fact, being the kind of Christ-follower Paul describes in Philippians 4 means that my life story is not about me at all.  Rather, my life story becomes a story about God.

Stop now and let that last statement sink in for a moment.

My life story is not a story about me at all…it is a story about God.  That changes everything, doesn’t it?  Suddenly all my metaphors for life are wrong.  All my strategies fail.  It is an entirely different paradigm.  ”I can do all things…” no longer has anything at all to do with me and my agenda, because now it has only to do with God’s agenda in this world and, more specifically, His agenda through and around me.  Now it has less to do with my own accomplishments and much more to do with Him telling me “great and mighty things which [I] did not know”.  I am no superhero.  The only superhero in my life story is God Himself…and He is doing truly amazing things all around me…and sometimes through me.

So it is only through Him that I can do these things, i.e., through His agenda and through His will.  And here is the best part of this truth: this “correction” does not limit this promise at all; rather, it expands it.  Because however grand my agenda and my vision might be for saving the world, God’s is infinitely bigger.  God’s purpose for my life and for your life is immeasurably larger than any purpose we can imagine on our own.

I could never have understood that as a child.  But I was blessed with both an earthly Dad and a Heavenly Father who kept that promise before me long enough for me to find my way back to it eventually.  ”I can do all things…”  What an awesome truth!

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Spiritual Formation, Spiritual Gifts, Things Dad Taught Me

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