What to Give the God Who Has Everything

24 05 2012

With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.   Micah 6:6-8

Father’s Day is nigh upon us…just a little more than three weeks away.  It is not too early to start thinking about what (for most of us) is the most difficult gift of the whole year to find.  What in the world will you give him for Father’s Day?  He is so very difficult to buy for!  Whenever he needs something, he just goes and gets it…what could I possibly get him that he doesn’t already have?  A tie?  Did I give him that last year?  Did I really give him a tie last year!?  How cliche is that!?  I am so embarrassed.

In The Gathering, we are wrapping up our study of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah this week.  Finishing with this passage out of Micah got me thinking about God and what He really wants from His church (from His bride) and what we could possibly give Him, and I wondered…What do you give the God Who has everything?

Some would answer we should give Him our very best gathered worship…excellence in music, in preaching, in communion, in corporate prayer…that we should give Him a truly amazing gathered worship expression week after week.  They might cite Psalm 22:3 (our God inhabits praise).

Others would answer the church should give Him our broken Spirits and contrite hearts…that what He really wants from us is moldable hearts.  They would cite Psalm 51.

Still others would argue that what the church should give God is everything.  After all, it all belongs to Him anyway!  They would argue that we should give Him our very lives and all they contain…that we should present to Him “our bodies as living sacrifices”.  They would cite Romans 12:1-2.

None of those would be wrong.  That’s the nice thing about serving this God…it’s not really the gift that counts, it is the heart behind the gift.  Cain and Able taught us that.

But Micah captures the very essence of what it is God really desires from His people.  Micah, it seems to me, has the answer for what to give the God Who has everything.  What God really wants from His church is simply that we do justice in the world, that we love and show kindness or mercy just like Jesus did, and that we walk humbly with God.  Somewhere in there is a pretty good strategic plan for your church, wouldn’t you say?  What would it look like in your church?  How can your local body of believers do better to give this great gift to God?  Are you up for it?

Or, you could just give Him another tie.  Your choice.

© 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 : Everyone's a Minister, leadership, missional, Spiritual Formation, strategic planning

Outrunning the Bear

1 05 2012

Tuesday Re-mix - Anonymity Anonymous: Recovery from our Addiction to Self-reliance

Step 1: We admit we are powerless over our addiction and that our lives have become unmanageable.

There’s an old joke about two guys out on a camping trip.  They are at their campsite and they spot a bear off in the distance.  They are watching it when it spots them and starts coming toward their campsite and then starts running toward their campsite!  One guy grabs his gun and starts loading it and grabbing extra ammunition.  The other guy grabs his tennis shoes and starts furiously lacing them up.  The first guy says, “Are you crazy!?  You’ll never outrun the bear!”  And the second guys says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear.  I just have to outrun you!”

In my addiction to self-reliance, i.e., my fear of being too transparent with my friends, i.e., my secret disdain for the type of “community” and interdependence described in the Bible, there is a perspective that “enables” my addiction.  It actually makes the addiction worse.  It is the perspective that I don’t really have to be as perfect as God desires me to be…I just have to be better than the guys around me.  It is an attitude that all but gives up on living the life God intends for me and stays content with living a life that looks pretty good when compared to lots of other people.  It is the attitude that says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear…I just have to outrun the guy next to me.”

You see, no matter how badly I mess up, I can always find someone else who messed up “worse” in my opinion.  And as long as I can feel like I’m doing better than most folks around me, I can convince myself that I’m good enough.  ”Better than average” works fine for me.  And as long as that is the case, I don’t need anyone else’s help!  I can accomplish “better than average” all by myself!  In other words, if my standards are low enough, I am NOT powerless and my life is NOT unmanageable.

But what if the standard really is much higher?  What if God’s intention really is that I follow Him completely and that I commit to Him all the way?  What if I am not to be comparing myself to other people, but am to compare myself to Christ Himself?  What if my expectation really is to outrun the bear, and not just the guy next to me?  How in the world could I meet that expectation without a lot of help?  How would it ever be possible on my own?  It would not be!

When I lift my gaze a little higher and look up to Him and His Word for me…when I begin to realize the kind of life God really calls me to as a follower of Christ…when my “standard” becomes God-sized and my goals all become eternal, then I can see that I am a miserable failure.  I need help.  I need a community of believers who will walk with me and push me to become the man God calls me to become.  All it takes to see the truth about myself is the right plumbline…the right standard of measure.  If God’s Word becomes that standard, then step 1 in my recovery from my addiction to self-reliance comes into focus much more easily.  I truly am powerless on my own, and my life truly is completely unmanageable.

It’s all just a matter of perspective.

That is how I get to setp 1.  And you?  How do you get there?


© 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 : Anonymity Anonymous, Christian Accountability

“Scoreboard, Baby!”

5 04 2012

 

I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man—
the Holy One among you.

I will not come against their cities.
They will follow the LORD;
he will roar like a lion.
When he roars,
his children will come trembling from the west.
They will come from Egypt,
trembling like sparrows,
from Assyria, fluttering like doves.
I will settle them in their homes,”
declares the LORD.  Hosea 11:9-11

“…and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” Matthew 16:18b

It is a scenario which plays itself out in the sports world over and over again.  A frustrated player whose team is hopelessly behind with no chance of winning happens to make a good play or win one small skirmish against his opponent and begins to celebrate wildly.  His opponent simply points to the scoreboard and says, “Scoreboard, baby” (or some other word is sometimes used instead of “baby”).  The point is simple: knowing the outcome of the game ahead of time does change things a bit.

That is why words such as Hosea’s (above) had to be encouraging to Israel.  Though a horrible season was coming, it gave them a sense of what would be on the other side.  It is what God does for His people…He gives them hope of what is to come, even in the midst of judgment.  He still does.  The church today has similar promises to which we can cling.  We may go through horrible seasons ourselves (as a church), but we know how the story ends…we know Christ’s church prevails in the end.  ”The gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”  That is an important encouragement.

Often, when I am working with a conflicted congregation, I will encounter leaders in the church who are literally wild-eyed and crazy passionate about “defending” the church, or protecting it, or defending God’s truth or God’s Word, or otherwise saving the church from sure disaster.  I see or hear them say or do outrageous things, all in the name of Christ and His church.  I see them showing uncontrollable rage toward this particular threat or that particular threat.  I see in them a reckless fear of what might happen to the church if this group gains control or if that leader has his way.  They see themselves as the savior of the church…and it just makes me lean back and say, “Really?”

I think we would all do well to remember that Christ does not need us to defend His church.  And He does not need us to “save” His Word from the otherwise sure destruction of misinterpretation.  Not our jobs.  What He does call us to do is to be His church and to speak His Word…not out of some panicked sense of fear or hatred, but with love and with a peace that surpasses all understanding.  He calls us to conduct ourselves with confidence that His church will in fact prevail in the end and that His Word really will endure forever.

Every once in a while, especially when we feel ourselves getting all twisted up in a knot over things we see going on in the church today, we just need to glance at the end of the story and remind ourselves, “Scoreboard, baby”… His church wins in the end.  Relax.

© 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 : Church Unity, leadership

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