Goliath Sometimes Wins

About a week and a half ago, the small town of Heyworth, Illinois had something exciting to celebrate.  Our high school boys basketball team just kept winning games and had finally made it to the 1A State Championship Game.  Obviously, this is HUGE for a town of less than 3000 people.  It’s actually really cool to see the entire town get behind a cause, and that is exactly what happened that weekend.  I wasn’t able to make it over to Peoria for the game, but it seemed like the rest of the town of Heyworth made the drive.  Everyone wanted to show their support for these high school boys who had reached the climax of their season.  I was lucky enough to be able to watch the game on tv!

Right around game time, I put Aletheia down for a nap and my buddy Jared came over to watch the game with me.  We sat down and turned on the television…and our hopes for the Heyworth team fell through the floor.  The other team was made up of players who seemed to dwarf our team.  When they went over the starting lineups, our tallest player was listed at 6’4″ and the other team had 4 players in their own starting lineup that were that height or taller, including a center who was 7’0″ and forwards who were 6’10” and 6’7″ (if I remember correctly).  They were huge!

The game began and it went the way I had expected it to.  The other team ran out to a 19-2 lead and Heyworth was in trouble.  Slowly, but surely, Heyworth worked their way back into the game and by the third quarter, actually took the lead for a minute or two.  It was right around this time that I (and probably many other folks from Heyworth) began to think, “We could actually pull this off!  How huge would this be?!”  But reality quickly caught up.  By the end of the game, we had lost by about 20 points.

Now here is where things get a little bit interesting.  Everyone (myself included) was so proud of our boys.  It was the same excitement that we felt towards our volleyball team when they won state just a few years ago!  The entire town of Heyworth could not express just how much pride we felt towards the team.  However, something began to happen that tends to rub me the wrong way.  Facebook posts started showing up in which people would state that our team were still champions, even though we had lost the championship game.  Now please hear me out, I get it.  I understand that we show our support in every way to these young men and let them know that they accomplished something incredible.  But at the end of the day, they weren’t champions.  They were extremely close, but not quite there.  And here’s the thing: that is perfectly fine.

Let’s bring in a quick thought from Scripture.  In Philippians 3, Paul begins talking about a pretty difficult topic: confidence.  He brings up the fact that a lot of people find confidence in their accomplishments, or things of the flesh. He recites quite a list of everything that he had accomplished up to the moment when Christ found him, and then closes his list by saying the following in verses 7-11:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Sometimes (scratch that and replace with oftentimes) we grow the most through our shortcomings.  Paul realized that his entire list of accomplishments meant nothing compared to what Christ has offered.  How will we react when everything comes crashing down, when we are not able to accomplish that which we have struggled so hard to accomplish?  Unfortunately, David doesn’t always win the battle against the mighty Goliath.  There are moments in our lives when we feel like the underdog and hope as much as possible that we will be able to overcome the odds.  But when the chips fall, we have failed.  Are we still champions?  Nope.  Does God still love us?  Absolutely!  Will God take those weaknesses and use them for his glory?  You better believe it!  These moments of weakness and failure should always be reminding us that we won’t always win and that at the end of the day, we require God’s grace much more than our own sense of accomplishment.  How we react in our moments of failure could have a profound impact on our relationship with Christ.

May we be people who don’t give others a false sense of accomplishment.  Instead, may we be folks who encourage and love in the midst of hardship.  In my own life, I’ve never wanted to hear that everything is fine when I have messed up.  Instead, I’ve wanted to hear that I’m still loved and valuable in the midst of my failures.  Even though we may not always defeat the giants in our lives, God will still be faithful to love and care for us through our defeats.  We won’t always have to be crowned the champion, because the true Champion is on our side.

-The Pastor

#YOLO

This past Wednesday at The Hype, we discussed the hashtag YOLO, which stands for “You Only Live Once.”  Following are some of the main thoughts from the lesson:

1. YOLO seems to have a couple of different meanings, but one of the most common is the idea that we can disregard the consequences of our actions.  “Going drinking tonight…YOLO.”  The idea here is that either our consequences shouldn’t get in the way of what we are wanting to do presently, or else that we don’t believe we will suffer any consequences at all for what we are doing.

2. Sometimes, this way of thinking finds its way into the Church.  We tend to believe, at times, that what we want to do right now is of supreme importance.  Even if it is sinful and deviates from God’s plan for our lives and behavior, we choose to ignore the consequences in order to satisfy our own desires in the moment.

3. The book of Galatians is all about grace (unearned favor).  Paul is writing a letter to the church in Galatia, pleading with them to ignore the Jewish folks who are changing up the Gospel.  These Judaizers, as they are called, were telling Christians that in order to have a right relationship with God, they must add to grace the ingredients of Jewish culture.  They must still be circumcised and observe Jewish rituals.  Paul immediately (chapter 1) claims that there is no other Truth than the Gospel of grace.  We are only saved by God’s grace, not through observing religious rituals.

4. While Paul states repeatedly that grace is the only path to salvation, in chapter 6 he lets his audience know that the way we live has a real connection to our spiritual well-being.  He states:

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

Paul states that our actions (that which we sow) will have consequences, either good or bad (that which we reap).  When we continue to act in a way that is sinful, it reaps our corruption.  However, when we act in a way that is in line with the Holy Spirit, it reaps eternal life.  Our actions are a gauge of our hearts’ condition.  If we are spiritually corrupt, then of course our actions will seek to satisfy our own sinful flesh.  However, if we have eternal life, we will be focused on the desires of the Spirit within us.

5. When we live as though our actions have no consequences, we mock God.  God has made it abundantly clear to his followers that the way we live matters.  We see it in every section of Scripture (The Law, The Prophets, Wisdom Literature, Teachings of Christ, Epistles, etc. etc. etc.).  If we claim to think that what we sow will not reap any consequences, we have ignored the entire testimony of Scripture!

6. We cannot live our lives as though our actions have no consequences.  Every time we commit ourselves to the prodding of the Spirit, our eternal life is made richer.  When we give in to our own sinful desires, the cost is further corruption of our hearts.  May we reject the #yolo lifestyle in order to realize that there is incredible value in the things we do.  May we do good (deeds) to everyone (as Paul challenged the Galatian readers) with the understanding that our actions overflow from a heart that is committed to Christ.

-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