New Series at The Hype- Hashtag

Last night, we began a new series at The Hype called Hashtag. The basic idea of this series involves taking a look at popular hashtags that show up on social media and dissecting the meaning and thought process behind them.

Last night, we began with #selfie. A selfie is when a person uses their phone to take a close-up picture of their face and post it to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter. Sometimes, they simply choose to share it with friends via texting.

The text for the evening came from Jeremiah 9:23-24, which states, “Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

A few of the main points from last night’s lesson:

1. Selfies tend to be counterfeit. We share them in the hopes that people will believe that we simply turned on our phone and quickly took a picture to share. The reality is that people tend to take pictures and delete them until we get the perfect selfie. They’re the absolute best that we have to offer, but they often take many attempts until we are pleased with them.

2. Jeremiah is a prophet speaking on behalf of God to the nation of Judah. Throughout the Old Testament, God has required his people to understand that HE is their provider and protector, instead of the belief that they are taking care of themselves.  This is behind the command to worship Him alone.

3. In this particular text, God tells Judah to not boast in their riches, wisdom or might. Instead, Judah must remember that it is God who provides them with these things. They are not responsible for what they find themselves boasting about. They are boating in a counterfeit version of themselves. They are providing a selfie and claiming that it is a realistic representation of who they are.

4. Rather than boasting in those things that are a counterfeit representation of reality, God’s people are instead called to boast in their knowledge and understanding of God. This is not a call to boast in our “religious works,” such as our prayer lives, our time spent in the Word, or any other spiritual duty we might perform. Instead, God calls us to boast IN HIM. This means rather than finding pride in ourselves, we find pride in our God. Rather than finding pride in our gifts, we find pride in the Giver of our gifts. We are children who are to be abundantly proud of our Father.

5. This resonates wonderfully with Paul’s teachings in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 11:21-28, Paul lists all of his spiritual accomplishments, including everything he has endured for the cross of Christ. But scattered throughout, he claims that he is speaking as a madman. He’s saying that if he were to find pride in this long list, he’d be insane. These things are nothing to boast about. Instead, he claims in 1 Corinthians 4:13 that Christians everywhere (himself included) have become like the scum of the world, and yet God is still working through them to bring about major change. Boasting finds its rightful place on God rather than ourselves.

6. In what area of our lives are we projecting a counterfeit version of ourselves? How would we describe our own personal #selfie? These are the areas of our life where we find ourselves boasting in something other than God. Christ is constantly calling us to a life of humility in our personal lives and boasting in the greatness of God.

-The Pastor

Understanding Grace

“There’s nothing we can hide behind; in the end we need grace instead.” -Beautiful Eulogy

Recently the topic of grace has been hitting me over the head repeatedly like a sledgehammer.  Whether it’s in the Scriptures that I am spending time in, the books I’m reading, or even the songs I’ve been listening to, God’s grace and forgiveness have been on my mind.  While I’ve had so many thoughts, especially over the past couple of days, I’d like to run all of the streams into one main river that has been my thinking over the past day or two.

I believe that there is a spectrum when it comes to grace and works.  On the one end of the spectrum is the “overemphasis” of grace and on the other end is the “overemphasis” of works.  Here is the balance that I believe is supported by Scripture.  We are saved completely by God’s grace and our works play no part whatsoever in our salvation.  This is to say that we are saved by the goodness of God, and no matter how great our works are, we will never attain righteousness through our works because of our sin.  Ephesians 2:8 is such a well-known passage, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”  And yet, while our works play no part in salvation being offered, this does not negate the importance of our works.  Paul urges his readers in Philippians 2:12 to, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work his good pleasure.”  So, we have grace that saves us, and works that are evidence or proof of your receiving the free gift of grace.  Hopefully this has been made clear enough and we might be able to agree on the basic truth of this paragraph.

Now on to the difficulty.  As mentioned earlier, I believe that everyone has within them a spectrum of what they choose to emphasize through their thoughts, prayers, words and deeds.  On the one end, the extreme of grace.  This is what Bonhoeffer referred to as “cheap grace.”  This is the idea that we have been saved by grace and our works no longer matter.  Sin can reign in our mortal bodies because it has all been forgiven.  Obviously, there are some major problems with this line of thinking.  At the other end of the spectrum is the extreme of works.  Grace is unimportant and what I must do in order to be saved is live a holy, set apart, righteous and pure life.  If I am simply good enough, God will embrace and accept me.  Again, it is easy to see the major problems that appear with this sort of thinking.  I believe that neither of these extremes are Scriptural or should be embraced.

Somewhere in the middle of this spectrum is the idea that we are saved by grace through faith and that our works still matter as we become more like Christ through sanctification.  Now comes the difficult truth: I don’t know that I always fall in the middle.  Often as I evaluate my teaching, preaching, and even one-on-one conversations, I find myself falling a bit toward the works side of this spectrum.  This never reaches the extreme of thinking that grace is at all unimportant, but instead overemphasizing holiness over God’s forgiveness.  The challenge for someone like me is to seek to better understand grace and the impact that it has in the lives of humanity.  Then once I understand it, I must be proactive in teaching the beautiful subject of grace as it is found all throughout Scripture.  May we all strive for the balance in the middle and may we all find it.

-The Pastor

Learning to Walk

In my recent blog, “Lesson of the Lanyard,” I mentioned that our daughter Aletheia had recently started to walk.  It was quite the journey because she always seemed to feel so much more confident in crawling and had gotten to the point where she was getting around really well on all fours.  We worked and worked with her, but she wanted to take her time getting there.  There were moments of frustration, but slowly she was able to get to the point that she could walk pretty easily.  Now, she actually thinks it’s pretty funny trying to get away from us when we ask her to come.  It’s cute.  We laugh just as much as she does.

I have now been in full-time youth ministry for almost 6 years at NHCC.  As I look back over those years, I can definitely see that many times I have the wrong mindset about something.  Unfortunately, it happens far more often than I’d like to admit.  However, I think there has been one issue in particular that took nearly all of this time in ministry to figure out.  My mindset has been wrong and it’s slowly beginning to come around.

I think that youth ministry is a lot like watching my daughter learn to walk.  Sometimes there are students who seem like they have everything right where they need it and simply need to make the decision to follow Christ.  They’ve grown up in the church.  They’ve got a Christian family.  They even know all of the correct answers to your questions about Christ, sin, righteousness, etc.  Yet something holds them back from ever taking that first step.  It can be frustrating as a youth pastor to see these students seemingly set up for a relationship with Christ only to see them choose something else.  But, here’s the lesson: you never ever lose hope in them and you never ever lose hope in Christ.  Aletheia took her time walking but as her parents, we joined together in encouraging her, cheering for her, teaching her and even propping her up so that she could take those first steps.  You never lose hope in your students or in what Christ is able to do in and through them.

One more lesson.  Once Aletheia began to walk, she would frequently fall.  Down she’d go, sometimes to bounce back up, and other times to stay down for a bit.  If this isn’t a great picture of following Christ, then I don’t know what is.  There have been times in ministry when you honestly believe that students (the ones who have been baptized) will never understand that life changes when Christ is introduced.  I always wanted to have immediate change in their lives, and yet it never seemed to happened that way.  To be honest, it doesn’t happen that way in MY OWN life!

So I would watch students who had just been baptized treating others pretty badly.  Or I’d notice their Facebook page and realize that some of their posts weren’t appropriate.  Or I’d even see them drop off the radar for a while and not come to church or youth group.  And I would become irritated.  I just wanted to see an entire ministry filled with students who lived EXACTLY like Jesus, and it never came to pass (and yes, I fully understand and take responsibility for the hypocrisy in that statement).  I have been learning that patience might be the most valuable virtue in all of ministry.  Students begin to walk in their faith, learning what it means to be devoted to Christ, learning what it means to be a living sacrifice, and falling down pretty often.  Sometimes they’re right back up walking, and sometimes they stay down a bit because of all the pain they’ve just experienced.  And again, the pastor can’t come to them with rage or judgment in his eyes.  He must lovingly embrace them for who they are in that moment and encourage them to walk again.

Oh had I only learned that lesson six years ago.  Trust may have been increased.  Love may have been embraced.  Bonds would have been built stronger.  Patience and gentleness must be the characteristics that our students see in us at all times.  Hard to do, and yet incredibly worth it.

Now, thinking ahead to when my daughter becomes old enough and slips up.  I’m guessing that will be unlike anything I’ve ever experienced…

-The Pastor

Auto-Correct

I have found auto-correct to be both very helpful and very entertaining. I love reading those articles of other’s auto-correct mishaps. I have even had a few of my own.
In Matthew 19, we read the story of the rich young ruler. At the end of the story it says
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
I have heard people speak on this scripture at least a half a dozen times and somehow I have always read that to mean a needle going into a camel’s eye. And I would think to myself “that wouldn’t be so hard. Especially with a little anesthesia.” Then one day it finally occurred to me that it was the camel going through the needle!!! WOW!!! What a new meaning! I’ve also heard some theologians apply it to the name of the gate to the city but either way, boy was I off!!!

I think many Christians auto-correct the Bible. Sometimes it may just be an accidental switch but more often it seems to be a purposeful change to fit what we think it should mean.

“God can’t be that mean so it must be figurative speech.”
“That’s way too hard to do, it’s just something to strive for.”
“He didn’t mean sell everything.”
“Hell is too harsh for a loving God so it must not be real.”
“There’s no way He meant me when he said that.”

We try to rewrite the Bible so that God fits into the image we believe he should be.

But we can’t.

God is exactly who Scripture claims him to be and He meant everything He said. Whether we like it or dislike it, agree or not. God is an all or nothing God. Take Him at His word. Follow him completely. No auto-correct necessary.

-The Pastor’s Wife

Forgive Us

Wanted to share a few thoughts from The Hype last night, some which focus on our lesson as we work through the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, and some which have nothing to do with that. I shall begin with the latter:

1. A few weeks ago, I challenged the students at The Hype to learn the Lord’s Prayer and commit it to memory. Scripture memorization is something that has always been encouraged for kids, but seems to drop off once they reach jr. high. We’ve had a handful of students recite it and even more who are still working on it. This makes me a very happy youth pastor.

2. When I issued the challenge, one of our jr. high girls named Autumn told her small group leader (Brandy) that this would be very difficult for her because she is blind. She can’t simply buy herself a Bible because braille Bibles are much more expensive. So we challenged the youth group to raise money to buy Autumn a braille New Testament ($200). They raised it in one night in the offering at The Hype. Last night, we presented her a 9-volume set of braille books which make up the entire New Testament. I have never experienced something quite like seeing her receive it or seeing her read through the Lord’s Prayer with her small group after the lesson. Priceless. More pics and video to be coming soon…

3. New song for worship last night begins with the words, “Grace, what have you done? Murdered for me on that cross.” Brilliant lyrics.

4. A few thoughts from the lesson on “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors,” from Matthew 6:12:

– Two relationships are the focus of the text. First, the vertical relationship between us and God (Forgive us our debts…) and second, the horizontal relationships between us and those around us (we have forgiven our debtors).

– Luke’s version of the prayer uses the Greek word hamartia, which is translated sin or trespass. Matthew uses the Greek opheilema, which is translated debt. Our sin causes us to be indebted to God. Jesus understood that the debt is too large to ever be repaid or even decreased. Thus, when teaching the disciples to pray, he doesn’t instruct them to ask God to reduce the debt or even make them better followers in order that they could repay the debt in full. Jesus emphasizes grace by instructing them to ask God to forgive the debt completely. When we come humbly before God (Blessed are the poor in spirit…), God is fully willing to forgive the sins that have put us in his debt.

– We require a change in attitude when we become aware of the size of our debt. Rather than trying to become a better person in order to be acceptable before God, we must instead understand that only God is capable of ridding us of our debt. This drastically changes the way we are, the way we behave and the way we understand God.

– Forgiving others is the evidence of our receiving forgiveness from God. If we are truly aware of the great debt that God has forgiven, then our response to that forgiveness is to forgive others when they are in our debt. When people sin against us, it’s often difficult to be able to offer forgiveness, but when we see their debt compared to the debt we owed God, forgiveness becomes much more possible.

– One of the excuses given for not forgiving others is, “I’m working through it.” In the Lord’s Prayer, the words, “as we have forgiven” are very important. It’s past tense and it’s something that is expected. Not if we have forgiven, but as we have forgiven. Scars and baggage take time to work through, forgiveness does not. When we come to God for forgiveness, it happens immediately. He doesn’t work through it or need time to process the request. We should strive to be like him even in this regard.

– Have we recognized the weight of the debt that we owe our perfectly loving, just, merciful and gracious God? Have we ever humbly come before him and ask that he wipe out the debt? Have we allowed that forgiveness to change our attitude toward those who have wronged us?

– The Pastor

Lesson of the Lanyard

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 12:1-2

Recently, my daughter Aletheia began to walk.  She is about 16 months old and it has been quite an adventure seeing her gain confidence to take her first steps (more coming in another blog post on that very soon).  Now she is walking pretty well, even though it’s only been a couple of weeks.  She has gotten to the point where she will now pick things up and play with them while walking, something she never would have dreamt of accomplishing during those first few steps.

Tonight, I witnessed a moment in her life that immediately brought to mind some theological lesson.  She had grabbed a set of my keys which are attached to a lanyard and was walking around while playing with them in her hands.  Since she is only a couple of feet tall, the lanyard was hanging down all the way to the ground and she would step on it.  The tension in the lanyard would let her know something was up and she would try to pull on the keys, but her weight was keeping the keys right where they were.  She would look at me with a puzzled look and then begin to cry.  It was one of those moments that you might chuckle at if you’re at all a parent like me.  She would finally lift her foot and be able to play with the keys just the way she had wanted to.

A few minutes later, and after a couple more times of stepping on the lanyard, she actually put her foot through the lanyard on accident.  Of course, she was so tangled up that there was nothing she could do.  She looked at me with sheer horror on her face and began to scream at me.  I got up and helped her out of her entanglement but within about 30 seconds, she was right back through the loop with her foot.  Finally, I decided that it was better for her to no longer have my keys as a toy, so I took them from her and put them away.  Not a just decision according to Aletheia.  She let me know it.  She screamed, she cried, I picked her up but she couldn’t get the keys out of her mind.  She didn’t want to part with them and thought of me as the bad guy for having taken them from her.

Oh the sins that hinder my walk.  There are times where I feel as though God is getting ready to move in my life in a pretty incredible way, and yet sin continually trips me up.  I am so often reminded of texts like Hebrews 12 in which God is pleading with me to lay aside and rid myself of the sin that will keep me from experiencing the fullness of the hope, love, joy and peace that he promises me.  I feel like a child with my foot caught in a trap.  Though I’m still learning to walk, my sin continually hinders me.

The difficulty of this situation is intensified when I actually get upset with God when I can’t simply enjoy the very sin that is hindering me.  God wants me to care for others more than myself?  But God, I’d much rather take care of me first and have the leftovers for others.  God wants me to have a pure mind?  God, this is an impossible task.  The culture we live in is bombarding me with things that diminish my purity.  Why would you not let me enjoy these things?  God wants me to love those who are unloved?  God, there’s a reason they’re unloved.  Please let me focus my affection toward those who seem worthy of my love.

It’s ridiculous.  How childish can I be?  I’m like my daughter, putting myself in harms way because I’m unwilling to give up that which is tripping me up.  I may not scream or cry, but I assure you that the attitude Aletheia had when the keys were taken from her is identical to the attitude I face when God calls me to a life free from sin and other lanyards.

The great thing about this text in Hebrews is that God is not limiting us by telling us to fight sin!  Go back up and reread the verses.  The reason we are called to lay aside our sin and other things that hinder us is so that we can run a BETTER race!  It allows us to experience a clearer picture of Jesus, which should be more attractive to us than any other thing in the universe.

For me, this is a great reminder to hang up my lanyard.  Yes, in the situation with my daughter, I need to know that it could cause her harm, so I am reminded to hang up my keys on the hook inside the front door rather than leaving them on the floor in the basement.  But in a spiritual sense, get rid of the junk that’s holding us back from focusing only on Christ.  Stop carrying that which will trip you up in your race.  May we followers of Christ let go of it and experience freedom unlike anything we could imagine.

-The Pastor