I just read this article, 7 Things I Wish the Church Knew About Me. I am still pondering whether or not it hurts, offends, or angers me… because you see I am the Church. Something changed when I actually committed my life to Christ and committed it to Shiloh Baptist Church… and then when I accepted the call as Children’s Ministry Director a whole new level of commitment came with it… as well as a whole new way of seeing things.

Also, something that is quite important… just because a bunch of people meet in a building together on a specified day does not mean they are the church. The church is the body of Christ. The church is an assembly of people who have received the gospel and been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and now live to serve Him and serve others and share the gospel with the world.

As the church, one thing I have learned is that I will never be able to make you happy.

I will sing too loud or not loud enough.

I will welcome you and make you uncomfortable or I will not welcome you and offend you.

I will ask you to join a class or group and be too pushy or I will wait for you to ask to join and I will be stuck up snobs who ignore you.

I will expect you to serve and you will leave because I will be putting too much on you or I will not expect you to serve and you will leave because I am not challenging you.

I will teach you the truths and the doctrines of the faith and give you tools for future growth and study and I will be shoving memorized cliches down your throat giving you answers to questions you haven’t even asked or I will teach you little and then you will accuse me of being the reason you didn’t know truth and it will be my fault that your life is a mess because you didn’t know the right answers.

If I see the obvious darkness around you and ask you if I can help, you don’t want my pity but if I smile and nod and act as though I don’t see the obvious pain in your eyes, I am heartless and inconsiderate.

If I call you out on your behavior or question your faith I am accused of being self-righteous and judging others, but when I stay silent and the youth minister is discovered to be a sexual predator you accuse me of negligence and hypocrisy.

So here are 7 things that I wish you knew about the church.

1) I love Jesus and I love people. I am here for Him and for you. Everything that I am about is trying to serve Him and trying to serve you. All my committees, groups, fellowships, and events are simple me trying to serve you and reach out to those around me in the best way we know how with what our resources allow.

2) I am not perfect either. I am made up of redeemed people in all different stages of sanctification who are all just trying to learn to love Jesus and to learn to love people the best they know how according to where they are in their own walk with Christ. Not only that, I am also the enemy of the very gates of hell. I am constantly under attack by the prince of the power of the air and his demons of darkness… and on top of this I am also being attacked by those who are supposed to be parts of my own body.

3) I will never work right as long those who belong to me refuse to be a part of me. If my hand refuses to show up or my leg refuses to come or my eyes refuse to open… I am broken, weak, hurting, and limping along doing the best I can with the parts of me that are giving all they got and doing all they can to make up for the parts who are not there. I am tired and I need your prayers, not your condemnation.

4) I am a body too… which means I am growing and changing and developing and maturing right along with you. I also have scars, many that are the result of trying to help those who instead took advantage of me and cursed me too others when what they experienced or heard about me might or might not have been true.

5) I am eat up with a cancer of sorts. Within this body grows tares right along with the wheat, but because I am unable to always tell the difference and because sometimes to remove the tare would be to remove a vital part of me that it grows in, I have to let the tares grow right along with the wheat, because that’s what Jesus told me to do.

6) Sometimes even I wish I could stay home because when I open myself up to you, no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I will never be enough… and you will always judge me by the worst of me. Rarely will you choose to love me in spite of the things within me that I cannot always control.

7) Maybe I am where I am because you are not here growing and doing within me what I so desperately need you to do because God uniquely purposed and designed you to do it.

for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

Ephesians 2:18-22

But that’s okay… go ahead in your season of forsaking the assembly… Enjoy your times of worship at the beach, on a hiking trail, hanging in a tree, sitting in the midst of the river, or simply laying in your bed. I will continue to try and figure out whether you want noticed or ignored when you do stop by.

However, please know that I am made up of humanity too… I didn’t check my humanity at the door either… it walked in with me as well. I also can’t read your mind or see into your heart. I am not omniscient… I am in the process of being sanctified just like you… except I am trying to do it along side many other justified folk who are in all different places in this being made perfect and conforming into the image of the Son. Imagine trying to live in a body with an 80 year old hand, 20 year old arms, 2 month old legs, 6 year old eyes, and 35 year old ears… It would be quite difficult right.

But, I will be just fine. I will survive.

I might be battered, betrayed, and belittled, but I will continue to fight evils outside and evils within. I understand your hurt… I have been hurt too. I actually am being hurt on a daily basis around this entire world. Parts of my body die trying to get to me while other parts of my body die because they choose to detach from me, while at the same time I have other parts of the body that are doing all they can to suck dry what life I have without investing back into me at all.

Yet, I will live because Christ lives. I am His body.

I will toil, working with the hands that I have; when I am reviled, I will still bless; when I am persecuted, I will endure; when I am slandered, I will try to conciliate; though I have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now… I will continue to try and serve you every time you choose to walk in my doors. 

I am the church. I am the body of Christ. Please don’t give up on me. If you look for me… you can find me in the midst of the congregation… 

In our homeschool co-op I am teaching through the book of Proverbs during our chapel time. I usually share each lesson here on my blog, but life’s been a little crazy and I haven’t been doing that this year. However, before I delete this one out of our presentation software I thought I would share it… Last week our lesson was from Proverbs 3:29-32.

The lesson began with this cartoon while everyone was getting their snacks and finding their seats.

What we see in this cartoon is a dog, a cat, and a mouse… all who live in the same house. They are always trying to basically kill one another. Yet we do see, that when they choose to, they can live together peacefully.

In the lesson I asked the kids what caused them to fight again. They hollered out, “the steak!” I then said, “wait a minute, a steak is a steak, it can’t do anything good or bad, it wasn’t the steak’s fault… what caused them to fight?” They then hollered out, “they were being selfish!”

Yes! They each wanted their own selfish desires met. When they were choosing to put the others needs before their own they were able to live peacefully, but the moment selfishness began to rule… the fight was on.

It appears that Tom and Jerry and the Dog needed a lesson in the Proverbs…

Do not devise harm against your neighbor, while he lives securely beside you.

Proverbs 3:29

This is how I transitioned into personal application… a bully is never a stranger. A bully is always someone you see on a regular basis… someone you may not even be able to avoid even if you wanted to. They could live in the same neighborhood as you, go to the same school as you, work in the same office as you… even live in the same house as you. A bully is always someone you know.

Do not contend with a man without cause, if he has done you no harm.

Proverbs 3:30

Usually the victim of a bully has done nothing to the one who is bullying. Many times all they have done is happen to share the same space on the planet at the same time with this person, breathing the same area of oxygen.

Here’s the warning to all of us. Do not be the bully. I can almost bet that at some point in time in all of our lives we have been both of these boys. It might have happened all the way back in Kindergarten… when he just didn’t make it to the bathroom in time… or when she just didn’t happen to have a mother at home who would make sure she had on clean clothes and wash her hair and braid it all pretty down her back like yours.

There was a point when you were the one pointing and I bet there has been a point when you were the one being pointed at… how you responded after the realization that you were here is what matters.

Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways.

Proverbs 3:31

Here we are. It’s pretty easy to see we have one who is hurting and three who are laughing. I guarantee only one of the three started the laughter and the other two had a choice… join in or stand up. As you can see… they chose to join in. Some have realized that there is kind of a cycle to bullying…

You of course have the victim and the bully. Now here is where the challenge comes in for everyone else… if you are not the victim and you are not the bully… what part will you play? You have a choice of many:

You could be person B, the one who follows the bully, his right hand man, his back-up… a perfect example of this person shows up on our television screens every Christmas.

You could be person C, someone who doesn’t really follow this particular bully… but you are taking notes and cheering him on… you probably even think it’s pretty funny… and your laughter at the spectacle proves it.

You could be person D, inside you are laughing, you are probably even thinking the victim asked for it… for being weird or whatever other reason you can come up with… outwardly you would never do this to another person because it would ruin the rep you are trying to make for yourself in this world… but hey this person should be doing something to better themselves then this wouldn’t happen to them… right?

You could be person E, yeh you see… but it has nothing to do with you… so you keep walking.

You could be person F, you see… you hate it… you think it’s cruel and mean and you might even run up to the victim after the coast is clear and tell them that… however you will do nothing to try and stop it when it is happening, nor will you do anything to try and keep it from happening again.

You could be person G… the one who sees it, hates it, and does something about it… either by stepping in yourself or going to get someone who can.

The question is which one will you be?

For the devious are an abomination to the Lord;

But He is intimate with the upright.

Proverbs 3:32

I think I know which one the Lord would prefer us to be. I know He most definitely would not want us to be the bully nor join in with the bully and take on his ways. He has already pointed that out to us in Proverbs 3:29-31. Here in Proverbs 3:32 is the hammer driving the nail home… Not only does God tell us not to devise harm with our neighbor while they dwell securely by us… He says the devious are an abomination to Him.

Devious in the Hebrew is luwz and is pronounced looz. That’s right… when you picture the person with the hand making the letter L on their forehead calling someone a looser… this is who God calls a looz… the devious. This word in the Hebrew means to depart, to go wrong, to turn aside, to go crooked.

Abomination in the Hebrew is tow ebah. In the Hebrew it means a disgusting thing. 

So those who turn aside, who go wrong, who go crooked are a disgusting thing to the Lord. So if we treat people in this way the Lord finds us disgusting… and if we claim to be His children and think that we can treat others in this way and believe that He is walking with us…

Whether it be our spouse… whether it be our children… our siblings… the waitress at the restaurant… the guy checking us out at Wal-mart… the umpire calling out in the field at our kids little league game… that kid in our class that’s just a little different…

We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.

1 John 4:19-5:3

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

Romans 10:17

I am working on the study guide handouts for my Cross Guard kids at my home church, Shiloh, and I just had a breathtaking moment as I was digging into what questions to have the children answer concerning Romans 10:17 and what things concerning the verse I wanted them to think about.

I wanted to ask them to think about what was “the word of Christ” and so in order to help them think about this more deeply I wanted to share with them what this phrase was in the original Greek. So as I opened up my study tools and read the information pertaining to this segment of Romans 10:17, my heart caught at the beauty of it.

Here is the HELP word studies definition of hearing:

189 akoḗ – properly, hearing; used of inner (spiritual) hearing that goes with receiving faith from God (Ro 10:17), i.e. spiritual hearing (discerning God’s voice; see also Gal 3:2,5, Gk text).

Here is the HELP word studies definition of word:

4487 rhḗma (from 4483 /rhéō, “to speak”) – a spoken word, made “by the living voice” (J. Thayer). 4487 /rhḗma (“spoken-word”) is commonly used in the NT (and in LXX) for the Lord speaking His dynamic, living word in a believer to inbirth faith (“His inwrought persuasion”).

Ro 10:17: “So faith proceeds from (spiritual) hearing; moreover this hearing (is consummated) through a rhēma-word (4487 /rhḗma) from Christ” (Gk text).

[See also Gal 3:2,5 which refers to “the hearing of faith” (Gk text) – i.e. a spiritual hearing that goes with the divine inbirthing of faith.]

There is something that happens to us when the words of Scripture are read or spoken. When we read or hear this word, we never forget it. It continues to live in us. It is a living word. It comes in through the entrance of our eyes, or our ears, and it travels into the depths of our being, and over, and over, and over again, we will find it resurfaces with in us.

Each time it resurfaces we will do one of two things… we will either grow to hate it more and more, despising its churning within us, and we will look for ways to silence it… or we will begin to love it more and more, desiring to learn more from it, and we will seek it and even chase after it.  This living word becomes our hope… and then in hope against hope we surrender to belief and we respond to this living word with our cry for salvation.

I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, And in His word do I hope.

Psalm 130:5

We dare to believe that this word is truth.

The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting

Psalm 119:160

This word gives birth within us and we are born again!

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

John 1:14

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

Romans 10:8-9

I heard the word as a child… and no matter what I did, no matter how far away I went, no matter how lost I became… I could not stop hearing the Word. It’s sweet whispering and it’s fiery judgments, it’s great joyous hope and its fear of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Both called me, both begged me to come and drink of the living water… of the Living Word.

Every sunrise offered me hope… every nightfall filled me with fear… would I step into the glorious hope of the sunrise or would I sink deeper into the fears of darkness. The living word churned within me… would I despise it… or would I chase it.

I chose to chase it.

As I watched the debate last night between Bill Nye and Ken Ham I couldn’t help but smile all the way through it. I had hoped against hope that this debate would be an opportunity for the world to see that it is possible for people with completely different convictions to share what they believed in a civilized manner.

I believe with all my heart that I can sit down and talk with anyone and treat them with kindness regardless of what they think about my beliefs and what I think of theirs. I don’t have to unfriend you and I don’t have to call you stupid, or blind, or close-minded, nor do you have to do that with me.

As I watched Bill Nye debate Ken Ham, there was no denying that this man believed what he shared. Bill Nye had real questions and they were valid questions that any Christian should be able to receive without becoming antagonistic. I was shocked at seeing a few comments from professing Christians that called Bill Nye stupid. I did not see a stupid man standing there at all.

What I saw was a man who had a love for knowledge and the world around him. What I saw was a man who was seeking answers to very valid questions. What I saw was a man whose eyes lit up when he shared about the amazing things he saw in this world. What I saw was a man who truly loved the joy of discovery. What I saw was a seeker.

Here is where I believe we as Christians must be careful.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake. 

2 Corinthians 4:3-5

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For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” 

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.

1 Corinthians 1:17-29

Fellow believers let us be careful not to forget that only the Lord can open hearts and eyes (John 9:39, John 16:8, Acts 16:14, 1 Thess 1:5) and it is the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the power of the gospel that saves. We can only see the outside fruit… we have no clue what is going on in the heart.

Here is what we are not to judge.

It is not judging for me to point out what the Bible calls sin. It is not judging for me to share what God’s Word says. It is not judging for me to see impatience, immorality, idolatry, outbursts of anger, strife, drunkenness, etc. These things are obvious outside observations that anyone can see. It is not judging to say “Look and see“

What is judging is for me to assume the why behind the fruit. What I cannot see is the dealing of the Holy Spirit at work within a soul. What I cannot see is the struggles and the wrestlings or the lack of them that is at work or not at work in a heart. What I cannot know is the questions that are bouncing around in a mind. What I cannot see are the lies that have been whispered, the hurts that have been buried, the wounds that have not healed… the small steps of faith that have been made, or the huge leaps that appear small to me but were massive from the feet of the one that took them.

Personally I think Bill Nye took a huge leap to even consider the debate. What I heard were the words of a human being who just wanted answers. As a matter of fact he said his mind was open to believe, he is simply searching for evidence. Personally I believe as long as someone is searching and seeking… there is only one place they can stop that search. All true seekers are going to end up at the foot of the cross.

As believers we should be praying for eyes to be opened, because only God can open them. A man cannot see what God has hidden. So this is what we are not to judge… but to smile and pray and say keep seeking.

There are those that I know will never believe… those whose hearts only grow harder… but I am kind of a dreamer… and all I can think about is how awesome it would be for God Himself to answer Bill Nye’s questions.