Citizenship!

This week we celebrate together with Kenneth the reunion of his family! What a joy it is for us to meet his wife, Millicent, and daughters, Doris and Loretta, after all these many months of prayers on their behalf. What a much greater joy it must be for him to finally have his family reunited.

It’s a blessing for us because it reminds us of the all-important issue of citizenship. We tend to take our citizenship for granted until we hear stories like Enrique finally getting his citizenship, or we see Kenneth and his family reunited, excited about pursuing "citizenship" in a brand new country. Living in the DC area, we are blessed to be able to drive by the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Library of Congress...and see all these symbols of America are real places. Conversely, one of the bad things is we get familiar with these amazing symbols and often drive right by without even a second look. Do you remember the first time you drove by the Washington Monument and said to yourself, "Wow! There it is! I live right by the Washington Monument."

I wonder if we don't do something similar with our citizenship in heaven. I wonder if the temptation is to be citizens of the most amazing "nation" in the world, the kingdom of God...and to take for granted all the amazing blessings and benefits we have as citizens. Do we miss how amazing it is to take the Lord's Supper because, like the Washington Monument, we drive by it all the time? Do we fail to grasp the freedom that we experience in Christ and bask in how fantastic it really is? Not that America deserves to be compared to God's kingdom...it really does not... but since we are citizens of both places at the present time, maybe it’s a fitting comparison for our situation.

This week as we welcome Millicent, Doris, and Loretta to our family, maybe we can learn from them how great reunion can be. I doubt Kenneth or Millicent, as political refugees, will easily forget they can say what they want about our government without fear of retribution. I doubt they will forget anytime soon they are free to move about and go where they wish. It might be good to see Kenneth’s family as a way to reflect on the freedoms we experience in America...but if that's all we do then we will miss the real chance to see ourselves as people who are exactly in their shoes: visa in hand, citizens of God's kingdom, and secure in knowing the freedom He has promised us.

Mark

Cell Phone Vs. Bible

I wonder what would happen if we treated our Bibles like we treat our cell phones?

What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?

What if we turned back to get it if we forgot it?

What if we flipped through it several times a day?

What if we used it to receive messages from the text?

What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?

What if we gave it to the kids as gifts?

What if we used it when we traveled?

What if we used it in case of an emergency?

This is something to make you go . . . hmmm . . .where is my Bible?

Oh, and one more thing. Unlike our cell phone, we don’t ever have to worry about our Bible being disconnected because Jesus already paid the bill!

Makes you stop and think, “Where are my priorities?”

And no dropped calls!

* Submitted by Kimberly Crawford, The Messenger, Volume XXX, Issue 06, February 11, 2007, Church of Christ at Dale City. **

Easter Message

As a kid growing up in the 1970’s, my biggest memories of Easter are the stomach-aches I always got after eating way too much chocolate. It was the Halloween of spring for me. Even a seasoned chocolate eater such as me could not down half a dozen of those super-rich Cadbury eggs without repercussions! I noticed in the media this week that the numbers for Easter candy sales for 2007 are higher than ever. Candy sales are expected to top 1.85 billion this year. That’s just the money spent on candy! If you count all Easter related purchases, the average American will spend $135.07 each.

In the midst of all this conspicuous consumption, the Crossbridge church in Houston, Texas has a plan to use the Easter holiday as an outreach tool. Today (Easter Sunday) they will have a helicopter drop candy-filled Easter eggs to egg-hunting youngsters below. Thousands of eggs will fall from the sky for children to collect. "It is something different and completely unrelated to the Gospel message, but it is a fun way to reach people," children's director Trisha Rich said. "And once they are there, we invite them into the service."

Good for them for being creative in their outreach, but I wonder if the type of people who come to church because a helicopter dropped eggs on their kids’ heads are going to be a little surprised when the rabbits leave, the fun and games stop, and the church starts asking people to die and be resurrected with Christ. As far as I can tell that’s the primary message of Easter.

So here we are at Easter, faced with the challenge of presenting the hope-filled reality of Christ’s empty tomb to our culture. Should we get tough, be serious and make sure we are not confused with those helicopter churches? (Based on our budget I don’t think we have much of a problem there;-) Certainly there will be different answers for different members who have different sorts of friends. But here is one message we can tell our culture this Easter. If you fill your bellies with 1.8 billion dollars worth of candy, you are going to feel very, very, very sick.

Mark

The Miracle of Constant Forgiveness

Do you believe in miracles? There is a great prayer on one of my favorite worship CDs: "Risen Christ, your miracle in us is your constant forgiveness." I really like this little saying a lot, and I can't seem to get it out of my head. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Constant forgiveness really does create miracles in our lives. Why? Because constant forgiveness is nothing else than the unending love of God, which Paul describes in Ephesians 3.18. Paul prays that we are able to grasp “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge….” God’s forgiving love is so great that it is beyond our reasoning capabilities. Our response to this love should simply be acceptance. Accept his unending, loving forgiveness each morning. Don’t try to figure it out; just receive it and enjoy it. The results of accepting this amazing love are nothing short of miraculous: this love will make you like God (2 Cor. 3.18). You’ll become a giver of unending love like the Father, and all those around you will benefit.

When we let go of the dark places in our past--whether they were ten years ago, last week, or this morning--and we accept the love God has for us, things change. This acceptance gives us hope and makes room in our hearts for God’s Spirit to “pour out love” (Romans 5.5). As Easter nears let’s reflect on how the Risen Christ’s steady flow of forgiveness miraculously helps us see beyond past failures and future fears. The love he offers us is like a door leading away from the dark places we tend to wander. His love melts away judgmental attitudes and bitter thoughts that harden our hearts toward others and creates interpersonal havoc. I pray that this Easter we will let God work a miracle in us and resolve to accept his constant forgiveness.

Matt

The Freedom of Belonging to Christ

Here is a provocative thought: 1 Peter 2:9 says, ". . . you are . . . a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (English Standard Version).

This scripture really impressed me this morning--particularly the phrase "his own possession". The idea of being God's possession is tough to get my modern mind around. How does God "own" me? From the day we are born, American culture marinates us in the idea that we in fact belong to ourselves and no one else. You belong to yourself and so you have the right to make choices that benefit the self. The problem with this is that we don’t really know what’s best for us.

The Apostle Peter's words fly in the face of this modern definition of human personhood. In the Bible humans are not presented as pickers and choosers. We don't own ourselves. The Bible tells us that we are either slaves to the work of the devil or that we are slaves to Christ. Belonging to Christ is true freedom because it makes us dependent upon God who can do all things well. Belonging to Christ liberates us from the tyranny of our self-centered desires, which can be harmful to us and other people.

We should all realize that our choices are not ours alone. Our choices must glorify God who purchased us at the cross. We are his adopted children. Since we belong to him, our choices in life should honor him as well. He spent the blood of his precious Son on us. Know today that you were "ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ . . .” (ESV, 1 Peter 1:18-19).

Matt

Encountering Christ in Prayer

At the heart of faith is a personal encounter with the loving Christ that is beyond all reasoning, beyond all words, and beyond all relationships. This personal encounter takes place in prayer. Christ is not an idea. He is a person. When we pray, we meet with the person Christ. Remember, salvation is about “knowing” him and not just knowing about him. Jesus said, “And this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Like any other relationship you have, knowing him intimately comes from spending time with him. When we spend time talking and listening to him, we begin to see him, ourselves, and the world more clearly—the fire within us burns brighter.

There is nothing like the Christian religion when it comes to the presence of God in relation to humans. In no other faith do we witness God going so close to people. The life of faith is about a journey with the living God established through Christ's work on the cross. This personal life with God dominated the language of the apostles. Thomas Oden writes: “When the apostles began to try to express what happened to them, they did not begin with a system of metaphysics or ethical injunctions or scientific data, but rather with their experiential testimony of an interpersonal encounter with Christ that made ‘all things new.’ I pray that today you reach out for him and personally invite him into your life through prayer.

-Matt

Confession

I have a confession…my laundry room is messy. There are clothes hanging everywhere, and toys are all over the basement area you pass through to get there. I am sure this ruins your opinion of me and my family, but I want to go ahead and admit why I have locked all of you out of that corner of my life. It’s usually a big mess.

I’ve never been Catholic, and thus, I have never been to confession. But I have seen it a lot in movies and heard my Catholic friends from high school talk about it quite a bit. I must admit long ago I formed a pretty low opinion of the whole practice. I just dismissed it as nonsense that a man could speak for God about forgiving sins.

Now that I am older I think I am hedging a little on how sure I am that it is an altogether bad practice. In fact, I will say that we might just be better off if we had a confessional booth right here in the Springfield Church of Christ. We could get anyone in the priesthood of all believers to sit in it, and then we could all go about the Biblical command of “confessing our sins one to another.”

Better yet, though, we save the money on building the booth and just start confessing. The problem is that we are all too embarrassed to admit how messy our lives are. It’s like inviting everyone over to your house to go into your laundry room. I’m guessing your basement is just about as messy as mine, yet we all keep each other out of one another’s basements. It’s embarrassing, depressing, a reminder of things we are not all that proud of.

But what if we had a common practice of allowing people into the messy rooms of our houses? Wouldn’t that inspire us to clean them up? Obviously God knows all about your messiest rooms, so there is no need to hide. So why even confess something he already knows? Obviously, it’s because confession is not for him but for us. He knows we need to uncover all that stuff, confess it, admit it and quit pretending it doesn’t exist. That’s what it means to have a clean house in God’s eyes.

I don’t know much about Catholic confession, but I know it begins like this: “Forgive me father for I have sinned; it has been ___ years since my last confession.” How long has it been for you?

Mark