relationship – Moving Forward

Designed to Reconcile

Most of the items we find around our homes were designed for specific purposes. Coffee makers make coffee, chairs are for sitting, lights are for ease of sight in the dark. But, there are some items that can multitask; a newspaper is for reading, but can be rolled up to squash a bug. A fork designed to pierce a food item and bring it to our mouths, can, in a pinch, be used to stir our coffee if we can’t find our spoon. Not the ideal design, but we can make it work.

Mankind, likewise has been designed. We have been designed for relationship. Genesis speaks clearly to this when God declares it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone. Everything else God created was good. God saw that it was good and commented. Mankind as part of His creation was good, except, not that the first man, Adam, was alone. By himself. With no one else to help him on this planet. Not good according to God. Man needed someone and God provided with Eve. He also told them to be fruitful and multiply. He gave them the ability to create other humans. And He gave them the freewill to choose to obey His instructions. They could stay innocent, or choose to know not only good, but evil, as well. And we know what they chose.

But God wasn’t about to write off the human race altogether. He promised to send an offspring that would crush the Devil. The original antagonist. God designed us for Himself. He didn’t need anything, but maybe He enjoyed His creation. He used to walk in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Can you imagine? A hike with the creator of the beauty of nature we see through His beautiful creation.

So God chose to reconcile us back. To a place where we would not need a veil or mask to hide our eyes from seeing God. He Himself would make the first move to restore the broken relationship. Years went by, like thousands of years, but God kept His promise and Jesus came as a baby in a manger. He was fully God and fully man. He was the promised offspring of Genesis. And He grew and set upon a journey that would take Him to a cross on a hill outside Jerusalem.

When two parties are in a broken relationship, there can be reconciliation,and a restoration of the relationship, or a severing permanently. But for a true reconciliation both parties must come to agreement. Between God and man, God made the first move to reconcile with man. But to have a true reconciliation, man must agree with God, accept fault, and allow the relationship to be restored.

Sounds easy, but like in any relationships, we tend to be self- centered, self- determined, and self- reliant. We want it our way. We don’t believe we have any faults to be accounted for. We are pretty good, in our minds, by our own standards. The other person is more to blame than us. And in terms of our relationship with God, He’s difficult. His old fashioned, and didn’t He tell the Israelites to kill a bunch of people? How can He say we are bad?

Without getting into a major discussion of gratuitous evil, let’s just realize that God has made His move. Now the ball is in our court. We can move forward and acknowledge our wrongdoing, accept His terms and look forward to a restored relationship with our creator.

Here’s a comparison; imagine that a rich benefactor sends you a $ 500 gift card to an expensive restaurant. You might think, “Well, I wonder what the catch is?” You realize there isn’t a catch, you just need to enjoy it. No reservations are required. But, you think to yourself, you’ll probably wait to use it. After all, your refrigerator and cabinets are full of food. You’re pretty much set as far as food goes. Maybe you’ll wait and use it when your friends can join you, or when your parents are in town. Maybe on your birthday. It’s months away, but that would probably be a good time.

You’ve decided that yes, that would be perfect. Invitations are given, you get dressed up for the occasion and call an uber- you plan on celebrating and do not want the risk of driving later-. Your plan is flawless. Except for one thing. The Uber parks across the street. In your excited state, without thinking, you open the car door into traffic, step out, right in front a speeding vehicle. The injuries are extensive and you pass away on the scene. That’s it. Game over.

Your plans come to nothing now. You thought everything was all set. Your friends and family were coming. You had the right clothes. You had your gift card. But, you would never get to use it. Why? because you thought you had time. Time to get all your plans together. Time to spend with your family. But, you waited too long, and didn’t realize your own shortcomings.

Time is one thing that is always running short. God has given us this beautiful gift of reconciliation with Him, but we believe we can redeem this offer whenever we choose too. Not at the invitation, when we hear it the first time, but maybe later, when we have all of our stuff together. When we are older. When our family can be there to witness it- like joining the church, or baptism, or confirmation. Yes, that would be perfect, except, neither are redeeming the gift of salvation, just outward acts. Today is the day. We were designed to reconcile with God and each other. We are made for relationship. Life is complicated, I get that, relationships with other flawed humans do not always work out. It is like using a fork to stir, it will work, but not as originally designed.

But, if we will do our part in reconciling to God, simply by recognizing our flawed lives, and accepting His offer. That He already paid our debt. That He has a future for us, with Him, then we will be able to walk with Him in the cool of the evening, as Adam and Eve could. God has done His part, now it’s your turn. You were to designed to reconcile. -God Bless- Nancy

Charis

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– Paul, Ephesians 2:8

Grace. Short word, but not easy to define. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about grace this past week. If you read the last blog or listened from the podcast, then you’ll know I mentioned grace at the last part of the blog. As promised I’m going to talk about grace. Last time we looked into placing blame on others and considered several examples of shifting the blame on others, when we ourselves often overlook our own responsibilities. What we need is grace.

To be honest, I have a difficult time narrowing down a definition of grace. I know for some of you who might have grown up around Christian circles there is an acrostic for grace using each letter of the word. But, I think it needs a bit further example. It is true we do experience the grace of God because of Christ’s expense on the cross, but what does it mean to live in this life of grace? How does it play out? Like I said, I’ve been trying to find a good example to give you and have been reminded that grace is the right topic for me to write about this week. It has been literally everywhere. Have you ever noticed that when God has something for you to meditate upon, He keeps bring it up in the simplest and strangest of places? For me, it was in a podcast I listened to,my devotional this week, and in my reading through the letter to the Ephesians, written by the apostle Paul. If you haven’t read it, or it has been awhile, let me encourage you to do so. Paul has a lot to say about grace.

One of the strangest reminders of grace this week, was finding grace written on the side of a building. Well, let me be specific, it was a sign on a church building in a very small city, near where two of my adult children live. Can I call them that? It does seem a strange contradiction of terms. Anyway, I almost overlooked this prime example of what grace can be defined as, since I was familiar with this church. I had visited once, when it was located in a smaller building and was aware they had moved down the street.

But, what is remarkable is not a church moving, or that they are called “grace” church, but what bigger picture I think they represent. Let me explain. I am a big fan of revitalizing old down town areas. Not with large condos, that push out the people living there, so they are not able to afford to stay put, but restore, reuse, remodel and reawaken dead, historical business districts. Many times the architecture found in these older buildings is amazing. Great care was put into the design and expert workmanship. They were not simply quick, cookie cutter buildings. But they had history and design. They often reflect the time period in which they were built.

But, sadly, as my husband and I have discovered traveling across the United States, so many of these classic, historical down towns are neglected, falling into ruin and boarded up. Interstate travel moved the business districts too far from the traveling public, subdivisions created commuters and fast food restaurants to be accessed by cars. Drive- thru’s took the places of sit down diners. No one ventured off the bigger roads to visit these small towns anymore, factories on the fringes of the towns closed and businesses shuttered their doors.

Often as I drive through these towns, I wonder what they must have been like in their hey day. Before the faded paint, broken windows, and darkened interiors. I close my eyes for a minute and imagine it. People strolling down the streets, shop keepers displaying their goods in the window, the smell of food drifting from the restaurants and the faint sound of music coming from inside. As it got dark, the street lights would come on and the lights inside, welcoming and beckoning the shoppers and those looking for a meal.

As I opened my eyes, it was still there. The brightly lit shops, the food smells from the restaurants, and the music. There was even the sound of saws and hammers as another building was being rebuilt inside. This wasn’t my imagination, but a reality in which I found myself this past weekend in a revitalized down town. The streets have been all repaved in bricks, the restaurants open their doors to tables and benches on the sidewalks, special events and event spaces now frequent these once broken down and silent areas of town. As I ascended a staircase leading to a newly opened photography studio, I noted the decorative welded iron work on the stairs. This was definitely not cookie cutter, but the work of a skilled craftsman from years ago.

I visited this same town three years ago, as it began to revitalize when there were only a few new businesses in these graceful old buildings. It has taken those willing to step out of the cookie cutter strip mall worlds, invest in the broken down and old. The abandoned and forgotten. To see how it can be. It took someone to see past the inside of the buildings, past the darkness of broken street lights, and broken windows to offer this town a second chance. To imagine what this town could be like once again. Full of life, and full of light and joy once again as people were welcomed to visit it. It took grace. And not just the church that decided to revitalize an entire city building for its new church, rather than build in a large suburban area, it took looking past the broken parts to what it could be.

We are like that too. No, we are not the imagineers, or the visionaries. We are those broken buildings. Dark inside, without light and life. We were once full of light and life, but not now. We are full of strife and anger and hopelessness and sin. When we were created and designed by the ultimate designer and architect, God, we were designed to be welcoming, to be in perfect relationship with our creator and each other and full of life, His life, His Zoe that He breathed into the first man Adam. But then sin arrived and we found ourselves off the beaten path from God. The life and light was gone. We grew old and our bodies saw decay and death. But God offered us grace, right from the beginning, and He promised to send Jesus who would defeat our enemy and restore our life. God looks past the brokenness of our lives, the dark places we have been and that resides within us and offers to recreate us. To restore our relationship with Him, to give us life, not just like the world’s cookie- cutter version, but His life, and Himself, the Holy Spirit, who will change us and transform us into the likeness of Jesus, what we were and should have been. God offers us grace. His grace. Nothing we have earned or deserved, but because He sees what is possible in us and loves us despite our shortcomings. God Bless- Nancy

Not For Sale

The truth is hard to take. It is impossible to take when it is something about ourselves. Ouch! It hurts to face the truth about ourselves. Recently I was reading an article on the rising number of atheists among Gen Z. What was hard to take was that the article mentions the fault for such a thing was not that there wasn’t enough opportunities for them to have heard the Gospel, aka the good news, but that their parents had presented them with a Christianity that just wasn’t realistic. It is one that was based upon self fulfillment, prosperity gospels, and entertainment. The Gen Z saw right through that, but the parents did not. Gen Z desired social justice, authenticity and acceptance. And they are right in expecting this from Christianity. This message is found in the Gospels. Jesus accepted all people who were willing to follow Him (equality). He came that all men might be saved. He called for community (acceptance) He also treated women with high respect, compared with the religious leaders of the time ( women’s rights). Examples of caring for the environment (Environmental justice) is found in the Old Testament as well, as mankind was called to be good stewards of the land and animals (Genesis 1:28). They were given the role of care taker of the earth and to be generous and support the widows and children (social justice) as acts of pure religion( James 1:27). So the Gen Z’s who want this are actually wanting what Jesus wanted for His followers. But what the Gen Z’s see is a church full of self serving hypocrites. And they are right. So they look elsewhere to find the answers to life. So what happened?

I suspect that we as parents of Gen z and millennials failed our kids by allowing them to be sold out to the highest bidder. What do I mean? We sought out churches with the best youth activities and mission trips, but not always considering whether they were getting the best understanding of the Bible. We sought the best worship music experiences with the best lighting and video effects. However, we failed to help them learn to disinguish between the true and false teachers taking up pulpit space. We ourselves wanted a blessed life without problems. We wanted to be blessed in our finances and health and fell for the lies of the prosperity gospel that we just have to believe and we can somehow manipulate God into doing our bidding. We thought He was there for us, to serve us and our needs, rather than somehow we were to serve Him? That poverty and lack were to be battled against as an enemy to our happy Christian life. We allowed ourselves as parents to believe the lies that it is an “us” versus”them” world; the” us” that have it and the “those” who do not. We ourselves fell for the clever marketing of the Gospel. We bought the T shirts and attended the concerts and conferences. We loved our churches and branded church emblems more than God. We idolized Christian speakers and leaders and taught our kids to do the same. We watched the leaders we idolized fall away from the faith and were shocked to hear them denounce Christianity. We taught our kids that acceptance and participation awards were more important than standing out as an individual. We told them it was more important to feel good about themselves and to avoid dealing with negative thoughts. We filled their schedules with activities so they would fit in with their peers and not feel left out. We taught them that feelings were more important than facts. We ourselves did not want to feel bad, so we found ways to medicate pain and difficulties we did not want to face. We failed to give them the truth. We sold them out to a marketed truth that filled the pockets of a Christianity which fell to the same marketing strategies as the corporate world. Give people want they want, and if they do not know what they want, help them to realize that you have what they need. Invent felt needs that only you can fill with your product. Offer to give away some of this magic elixir for free, but just enough so they will desire more. Do not include warnings, except in tiny fine print, for any side effects. or better yet, just omit any warnings and give them only promises of good results if they follow their specific Church plan.

Does Christianity come with warnings? Yes, the Bible is full of them. Christians will deal with all of the problems of this world and then some because of their faith. Christians should expect that they are not shielded from real life. There will be hurts, heartaches, disappointments, isolation, loneliness, grief, sadness, financial loss, job loss, diseases, accidents, rejection, suffering, pain, and the deafening silence from God when you seek Him for answers to prayer. This does not sound appealing does it? It would not market well, but it is truth. The God we have been sold by contemporary Christianity has failed us and we in turn have failed our kids. When they, and we, hit real life problems the catchy sound bite Christianity fails us. How do I know? I have been there, done that and bought the t shirt. No pun intended, but I couldn’t resist. I found out the hard way that ministries are not always what they seem and some are for profiting themselves and not helping people find God and grow their faith. The only thing growing are their bank accounts. I have also learned that God’s plans are not mine. We can’t “name it and claim it” to get what we want. It just doesn’t work that way. We shouldn’t expect God to give us everything we want. It is about Him, not us. We will have pain in this life. It is something we must deal with and go through. I know this from losing my Mom. My brand of Christianity almost failed me through the grief I felt in her death. I have also fallen for the false acceptance (over- eager church welcomes) and the free give aways done in clever marketing of churches who are seeking to pad their numbers. I felt accepted and important and needed, until I wasn’t, or until I raised questions about their motivations or programs.

But it is not about the numbers, it’s about real people with real lives and real eternities. What Gen Z’s want is authenticity. Will we give them the truth of what it means to be a Christian? Will we tell them it is not an easy road? I applaud the skeptics of this generation that are asking the tough questions of Christianity and demanding real answers. We should have answers for them, not marketing strategies. We can’t sell them out any longer. God doesn’t need our marketing; He does a pretty good job reaching out to those who are looking for real answers, not false promises. I fear more for those who do not ask enough questions and fall for a less than the truth Christianity. We need to admit we were wrong for giving them this model to follow. We need to help them find the truth among many opposing truths that Peter warns about in 2 Peter chapter 2. I found this verse interesting, “In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up.” (vs. 3, NIV). I think this is what the Gen Z’s have called us out on and they are right. Although this verse refers to what was happening in the first century church, it is also true of today’s churches. They exploit and make up stories so that we will buy what they are selling. A false gospel that will make us feel better and benefit those who teach it. It was a problem then and it is the same today. Human nature has not changed. We are all designed for acceptance and relationship. This is to be met in personal relationships with friends, community, and in marriage, but ultimately is to be met by God Himself. We were designed for a relationship with God. It is not just a “felt” need, but a real one. Gen Z’s are wanting this and have discovered that in some cases, churches are standing in the way of them discovering this truth. They do not want a relationship with a church; they want a relationship with God. Will we continue to tell the younger generations to love their church, idolize their pastors, and seek for blessings? Or will we point them to Christ, who although He had never done anything deserving punishment for a crime, chose to suffer on our behalf, experiencing unbearable pain in the name of loving mankind. Will we tell them that once they realize what Christ has done for them, they won’t need to keep seeking more blessing? This is all the blessing they need. Will we tell them this love for Christ and from Christ will motivate them to suffer and endure things such as pain and even isolation, in His name? The first century church we read about in the New Testament existed in a world that was hostile to them. It was a difficult world, as it is today. Will we continue to present a false story of Christianity or a true one? Will we teach younger generations to be watchful of false teachings, such as the prosperity gospel? Will we tell them that discernment is an important tool to sift out the scams of Christianity that exist? Will we warn them about idol worship in the form of churches or pastors? Will we teach them apologetic methods to help them explain their faith? Will will teach them to learn the Bible and not just memorize Bible verses for a prize? Will we teach them good hermetical practices so they will not fall for false teachers who take Bible verses out of context? Will we do the same for ourselves? Will we realize that the truth is not for sale? I hope so.

Pray

Today I have a simple question to ask of you… Do you pray? If your answer is yes, then let me ask another follow up question…. When? Maybe your first thought about this answer was a particular time of day, like first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. There is really no set time that is better than others. However, praying first thing in the morning kind of gets the day started off in a better direction. Do you pray alone? Or with your spouse? Or with your kids before bed time? I remember praying with my kids at night while I sat on the edge of their beds. My husband and I began praying together both in the morning and at night a few years ago. My favorite time to pray is when I have the whole house to myself and can just have this awesome conversation with God, pouring my heart out to Him. Or in the car- I promise I do not close my eyes when driving!

Maybe you can’t remember the last time you prayed- I mean really poured your heart out to God with thanksgiving and also with your concerns. Maybe you save prayer for the big stuff- like health scares or financial stresses. Or maybe only when that child or spouse that just needs to change- in your opinion. Or maybe you just get busy and slowly prayer becomes something you’ll get to later in your already busy over scheduled day. Yes, we can get lazy about prayer. It can be like that well intended diet we started. As soon as the desserts show up our diet is gone and our good intentions are lost.

Some people like to schedule their time with God for reading His Word and for prayer. This I do recommend to keep from falling away- like that well intended diet plan. But, if you blow it and miss a day don’t worry, just get back at it. It helps to remember why we pray in the first place. Its all about communication. Jesus even gave His disciples – and us- an idea of how we should pray in the Lord’s prayer. No, we do not have to follow it word for word like a memorized prayer. But, He gave us ideas of how to pray- to communicate- with God- the Creator of the universe. If you’re unfamiliar with what’s called the Lord’s Prayer you can find it in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.

The most important item to take away from Jesus’ model He gave His disciples, was that He prayed to His father. If Jesus prayed, shouldn’t we also? Jesus is part of the Trinity- God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Did He need to pray? Wouldn’t that be like talking to yourself? Well, that’s a deeper question to think about now, but what we should realize is that Jesus communicated with God the father regularly. And that is what He wants us to do as well. It doesn’t matter the formula, time of day, or words- God knows us- He wants to be in a communicating relationship with us. He wants our praise, our thanksgiving, our petitions, requests, our worries and stresses- all the messy stuff of life- He cares. He accepts and does not reject those that call upon Him to be saved (Romans 10:13). He hears us (1 John 5:14), He will not forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6), He loves us (John 3:16). He wants to hear from us, so why not at the end of reading this, you just stop and pray. No excuses, just do it. Not sure what to say? Just tell Him whatever is on your heart. He’s waiting for you to make the first move.

-God Bless

– Nancy