The Right Question

“Brothers, what should we do?” –Acts 2:37b

This was the question the audience asked after Peter’s powerful message in the first part of Acts on the day of Pentecost. His spirit-filled words elicited just this one question from the mouths of those in earshot - “what should we do?”

When we hear God speak to us through his Word, through our pastor at church, or through other Christians, are His words meant just to make us feel good or even just convicted? Rarely – I would contend that the right follow-up question to His words is most often “what should we/I do?”

Remember that faith without works is dead. We can’t merely claim to believe Jesus saved us from our sins, we have to show it by forgiving others. We can’t merely believe in generosity, we have to give generously. We can’t merely believe in love, we have to actually demonstrate our love for others.

Jesus, help us to learn to live out our faith in good works.

Colossal Obedience

But we must be sure to obey the truth we have learned already. 
–Philippians 3:16 (NLT)

There’s a story that goes that years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Apostle John was teaching his followers. Every time they gathered, for many weeks in a row, John would get up before them and preach to them the same message over and over. His followers grew confused and honestly quite bored hearing the same message preached over and over again and desired to hear something new and profound. Finally, his followers approached the Apostle and said, “Rabbi, you’ve taught us these many weeks but have been giving us the same instructions each time. Please, when will you teach us something new?” The Apostle responded to his followers, “When you start obeying the teaching I’ve already given you.”

In America, we thrive on hoarding information and entertainment. We’ve carried this to our Christian lives as well. It bores us to hear the same messages over and over again and we hunger for more teaching, more stories, more information. We fill up Christian bookstores with tons of information, commentaries, works of fiction, apologetics, self-help, and any kind of teaching you could want. My pastor, Pastor Furtick, likes to say that “we are educated far beyond the level of our obedience.”

Consider the church in Colosse, who received (as far as we know), exactly one letter from Paul, which consumes all of two pages in my Bible. They would have poured over that one letter, most likely memorizing it and being careful to do everything written in it. They didn’t have even the full Bible we have today, let alone bookstores worth of supplemental resources on which to overindulge.

We need to stop and consider all the teaching we’ve received already and act on that. Heck, if we just worked on obeying “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” our lives would look a little different? How about, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love others as yourself?”

Nonfat Half-caff Double-shot 1-pump Carmel Macchiato…and a Splenda

For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths. – 2 Timothy 4:3-4

The prevailing view of truth in Paul’s day, especially in the Greco-Roman regions, was that there was a truth to which one could reason or be convinced. There wasn’t as much a notion of “I” as there was a “we.” In other words, there wasn’t this idea of what’s true for you isn’t necessarily true for me. Today, we live in an age and place where everything we think about and interact with we expect to be personalized and customized to “me.” From our coffee orders to our religion, we want to pick out the pieces we want and come up with a flavor combination that’s the most palatable for us – one that won’t come off too strong in one element and maybe amplified a little in a different element we’re more comfortable with.

Here’s an example: how many of us steer clear of temptation areas like, say, drunkenness, yet when we order a pizza, we eat most of it by ourselves – or scarf down a whole bag of Doritos or box of donuts? Do we think that drunkenness is worse than gluttony? Paul predicted that today would come where we would start to mold our religion out of our comforts and discomforts and seek out teachers and other believers who agree with us so we wouldn’t have to feel challenged or convicted.

I believe God gave us the guidelines He did not to come up with an artificial set of rules he wanted us to follow, and not to cramp our style, but to help us live a full and abundant life. I will tell my kids to do something that doesn’t sound like fun for them - “daddy, I don’t want to clean my room.” But what they may fail to see is that I’m setting them up for success in the future by instilling a value of cleanliness and order in them.

God’s word isn’t pick-and-choose. All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Lord, thank you for your Word. Help us to follow Your lead and go where you send us. Make us more like Jesus and not bend to the whims of our egocentric tendencies. Make us strong and courageous. Amen.

Guilty Money

I’ll say it again—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!” – Matthew 19:24 (NLT)

Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life. – 1 Timothy 6:17-19 (NLT)

We in America are rich. Believe it or not, we are. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, that if you know that you will eat later today, you’re in the richest 20% of people in the world or something like that. If you drive a car, you’re in the richest 10%; if you have a household income over $50,000, you’re in the richest like .2% or something ridiculous like that. (Actual figures may vary – i didn’t have time to look them up, but you get the idea.)

Many of us will read the passage from Matthew 19 and feel guilty because as Jesus asks the rich man to give away all he has and that man refusing, or at least hesitating, Jesus responds saying that it’s virtually impossible for rich people to enter heaven. Since many of us rank in the top few percentage of the world’s richest people, the situation does not look that bright for us.

This passage from 1 Timothy sheds the much-needed light on the matter. Money is not the root of evil, love of money is. How do we deal with our wealth? Are we generous? Are we willing, if asked, to give up our wealth? Do we do good with our riches? It is hard, and society teaches us otherwise, to hold loosely to our money and to use it for good rather than hoard it and use it to make more money for ourselves or to use it to live a more lavish lifestyle. But if you can use it for good, congratulations, you managed to shove a camel through the eye of a needle!