The Secret to Unity

            I believe in the goal of unity. After all, Jesus called his followers to be unified.

            Now, how do you live that unity?

            Scripture teaches us that, if we are truly serious about pursuing the life of Christ, if we truly desire to be remade into the image of Christ, an integral part of this process is making disciples of Jesus.

            Jesus came to earth to make relationships with people, which is another way of saying Jesus came to make disciples in his image. When we give birth to spiritual babies, and dedicate ourselves to helping them grow up to be like Jesus, we are ourselves becoming more like Jesus.

            In a church, no greater question can be asked than this: what do the (new Christians) babies need? Unfortunately, it is rare churches ask this question. Usually, if members of churches are honest, including those members who should be more mature, the question they will often find themselves asking is this: what do I need? Or, more crudely, what do I want?

            Often the result of this is that baby Christians fall away; meanwhile, Christians who should be more mature spiritually gorge themselves, consuming what they wish. All the while, baby (young) Christians are starving to death.

            If we in churches ask ourselves, “What do the babies need?”, we will cover all of the important things of the Bible. We will emphasize the Lordship of Christ; we will emphasize the sound doctrine of Scripture; we will create strong relationships with these baby Christians to help them grow up; and we will learn how to prioritize and serve them.

            Probably the most difficult implication of asking the question, “What do the babies need?” is the fact that we would have to give up so much more than we would like. This is good for the spiritual babies, AND this is good for us as well.

            For a married couple, nothing could be more stressful than to bring a child into the family. Some marriages break up because of their inability to cope with the responsibilities of parenting. But in those marriages where the husband and wife, the mother and father, are able to prioritize and ask, “What does the baby need?”, they will find as a serendipity more maturity and unity.

            Many married couples discover they can sacrifice extensively when they recognize a young life is at stake. Raising healthy babies is more important than their own wants and desires. On a spiritual level, this premise lies at the core of Paul’s admonition to the Roman Christians in Rom. 14-15.

            I am convicted to the core that more churches can find maturity and unity if they will submit themselves to the transcending goal of training up new Christians, spiritual children, in the ways of the Lord.

            May those children never depart from Him.

Think Different--pt. 2

            Last week, we began by talking about marriage, community, the mission of Israel and of the Church. We also noted that God spoke to the Apostle Peter in a vision, telling him, in essence, to think differently about those God desires to invite into His community of faith.

            Bringing Gentiles into the Kingdom had "blown the fuses" of the Jews. The question in the New Testament would prove to be: would it blow the fuses of the New Testament Church? Could the Jewish Christians welcome the Gentile Christians? Could the Jewish Christians place God's agenda over their own preferences? It would mean fellowshipping those who prove to be extremely different.

            Recently, our family attended a wedding. The groom was the son of parents with we served as missionaries to Argentina. The groom’s dad officiated the ceremony.

One of the things he emphasized was a bride and groom cannot focus on individual happiness in marriage. They cannot obsess with individual wants. Each must focus on Jesus. Jesus’ Kingdom must transcend all things—even the marriage. (“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God…”)

The starting step to making a marriage work is to have the Kingdom of God as the goal transcending a couple’s marriage. Man and wife are looking UP to Jesus and His Kingdom. Everything is about “how do we help the Kingdom in this marriage?” It is a lot easier to find unity in marriage when SERVING the Kingdom is the primary goal.

            The problem for Israel was that seeking the Kingdom first was not the goal that transcended their lives; their own personal agendas had superseded God’s Kingdom. That led to division and their own destruction.

            And so, in Acts chapter ten, God was handing over to a new community of people this mission yet to be fulfilled. The new community was called the Church. To fulfill this mission in love and unity, they would have to elevate the Kingdom of Jesus and His will as the primary goal above all else.

            Jesus wanted more people to come into his kingdom. He wanted them to grow in his kingdom. And so much of what you read about in the New Testament having to do with unity and love, division and discord, is this struggle between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians.

            Sometimes these concerned non-negotiables. I Cor. 6:9-11 offers an example of attitudes and morals that could not be compromised. But passages such as Romans 14 and 15 call upon these churches to make decisions that will help build young Christians in the Kingdom. These were negotiables.

Paul typically does not give them the answers. He gives them a framework for negotiating the negotiables.  Hence, these Christians were to make decisions that were to help these who were new to the faith, be able to stay in the faith, so that they could be formed by the faith.

            This meant that for some of the questions addressed, Christians had to put aside their personal agendas, their personal preferences, their personal comfort zones, even their personal understandings of God's teaching in Scripture (unless it was clearly connected to salvation) for the sake of Jesus and His kingdom.

You know, the biggest disagreement I've ever seen in a church might have been the one I saw Argentina years ago. We were planting congregations in different parts of the city, and for a while one met in our home.

We met on Sunday afternoons at three o'clock. One Sunday, we had our assembly, followed by a Bible study, which was followed by our monthly family meeting.

Somebody suggested that we change the assembly time to Sunday mornings. That started a huge fight.

            It was so bad that one of my teammates finally said, “Stop! Let's table this and talk about it next week after the assembly and Bible study.”

            Well, it just so happens that this brother was the one who was supposed to bring the sermon the next week. He preached out of Philippians chapter two, 1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others….

            When it was time for the family meeting, everyone had a suggestion about when to meet, and no one suggested the time that he or she had originally proposed. Everyone suggested a time that was beneficial for someone else.

            I will never forget my teammate taking us to Philippians to help us understand how you place the mind of Christ–the mind of the Kingdom–above all else. In the end, isn't it the Kingdom that matters the most? In that case, we had to learn to think different when it came to starting times for assemblies.

            If I can paraphrase an acquaintance paraphrasing Martin Luther King, I have a dream that someday, on the same pew, will be sitting a woman wearing a burqa, alongside an elderly woman wearing a hat and earrings, alongside a young man wearing a nose ring, alongside a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit, alongside a person who likes to sing new songs, alongside a person who likes to sing old songs, alongside a person who is emotionally expressive, alongside a person who is emotionally reserved… and all of these people bringing into the assembly different cultures and different ways of viewing things.

All of that would be okay–because the glue that holds everybody together in love and unity is the Kingdom of God, which is above all.

           

Five Things I Think I Think (with a nod to Peter King for this idea)

1. Curse you John Feinstein! You came out with another book I cannot put down—One on One. In it, you describe in exquisite detail your behind-the-scenes activities writing about sports these past thirty years. Especially fascinating is your account of your time with Bob Knight writing A Season on the Brink. I hate it when a book absorbs my attention—please stop writing them.

2. A lot of people got the Super Bowl they wanted. I cannot help but pick the Giants.

3. Texas Rangers—I believe in Yu Darvish because I believe in the judgment of Nolan Ryan.

4. Yesterday, I preached on Hebrews 2:1, which talks about drifting away from Jesus. I promised my church yesterday I would place a link to the Casting Crowns’ video SLOW FADE—a cool video and a great song. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QASREBVDsLk

5. Saturday marked 39 years of Roe v. Wade; yet, I still believe in the future. Most stats I see show younger people growing increasingly more pro-life. Someday, I predict, culture will place the stigma on the pro-choice position that it has placed on the old Jim Crow laws.

Think Different

I’ve seen various versions of the following joke. My favorite was sent to me by a friend:

His and Her Diaries

Wife's Diary:

Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it. Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much. I asked him what was wrong; He said, 'Nothing.' I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it. On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior. I don't know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too.'

When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent. Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About 15 minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep - I cried. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster!

Husband's Diary:

Boat wouldn't start, can't figure it out.

Marriage is hard. Spouses see things differently. To become married, you have to transform your mindset to a different way of thinking.

            We have seen this in other fields. Apple, a few years ago, launched a new advertising campaign—“Think Different.”  (Think different, not grammatically.) The company was integrating everything: music, computers, cell phones… a complete break from the rest of the industry.

A mantra for God could be, “Think different.” For example, in Acts 10, God was doing a work that was going to blow Peter's mind. He had to show Peter what He was up to.

In Acts 10, we have a very good man who was known as Cornelius. He was a Gentile. Cornelius was in a journey of faith, but he was not yet in a saving relationship with Jesus. So God went to a lot of trouble to see to it that it happened. However, there was a problem.

God had chosen to work through the people of the church, and they did not have the same mindset He did. For example, he spoke to a fellow named Peter. Peter was an apostle. Peter was part of the household of Israel. One day, Peter went up to an out-of-the-way place to pray.

Peter had been trained to look at food in specific ways. Now God was telling him to think different. God was telling Peter to think different about food so that he could think different about people. God wanted to bring different people into the kingdom. This was going to be a huge stretch for Peter and others who were like him.

            What Peter did not remember was that God was always about community. You go back to Genesis 2: God started building his most fundamental community–and what was that? Marriage.

            Now folks, Judy and I are married. We are very different. Our bodies are different. She is a female, and I am a male.

Do we think alike? No. She is an early riser. I have built pyramids of pillows on top of my head trying to cut out any sign of sound and light at 5:30 in the morning while she is getting ready for her day; I'm trying to sleep… because I am a late-to-bed person. (Of course, according to Ben Franklin, Judy is healthy, wise, and, now that she is a full-time teacher, surely soon to be wealthy!)

            Judy would love to set a thermostat to 70° in the winter time. I would be happy to turn off the heater until the temperature drops below 50°. (It is winter after all; we can bundle up.)

            A few years ago, we negotiated.

            Judy said, “Let’s put the thermostat at 65.”

            I said, “Let’s put it at 60.”

            We compromised… at 65.

            God, in his mysterious wisdom, has called Judy and me together in community. Somehow, we work it out. Sometimes it is through submission; sometimes it is through compromise–but we make it work.

            Now, there are those in our society today who are trying to eliminate the difference and create marriages for those who are as much alike as possible—including alike in gender. But God has always said, in His word, regarding marriage–think different.

            As for Judy and me, God, in His infinite wisdom, understands that Judy and I, as we struggle with our differences, if we submit to the work of the Holy Spirit, are being transformed more and more into the image of Christ.

            Let's expand this a little bit. God called the world to his community of people, initially through a fellow name Abraham. He cultivated a people. Later, he would call that community Israel. They were to take the good news of God to the entire world, 
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant 
to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. 
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth” (Is. 49:6.) NIV 1984

            God was saying: I want to call the world to this community.

But this community–Israel–could not get over the difference between themselves and the rest of the world. They could not think different. They wanted to think--same. They wanted only those who were like them in their community.

            What they did not realize is that God would have done a work on them had they allowed him to do so. He would have transformed them into a people of his character through this difficult work of interacting with those who were different, but that was not a priority for the Israelites.

            Unfortunately, too often, the Israelites thought about what they wanted and that messed up the work of God. You have got to think about God and his Kingdom—what God wants.

(To be continued next week.)

           

Five Things I Think I Think (with a nod to Peter King for this idea)

1. I found the book Eisenhower-The White House Years by Jim Newton to be enjoyable. I had read that it broke new ground because of the access the author had to classified documents that had recently been declassified. Yes, the book broke new ground, but… it was not to the extent as advertised. However, these new revelations continue to draw out the fact that Eisenhower was the true leader of his White House. Moreover, I found those endorsing the book on the cover (including a few democrats) fascinating

2. John Eisenberg’s book That First Season did not break much new ground either about Vince Lombardi’s first season with the Green Bay Packers back in 1959. Probably, the more accurate statement would be Eisenberg provided a few more details about what occurred that first year in Green Bay than other books. Still, the book was interesting; furthermore, I was impressed by the quantity of people the author interviewed.

3. Okay, so I was wrong last week about Denver’s defense. They looked awful. I am picking San Fran over New York and Baltimore over New England. However, the glamour Super Bowl matchup would be New England vs. New York—a rematch of their epic 2008 battle.

4. I’m intrigued by Kiefer Sutherland’s new TV show Touch. 

5. I downloaded new music to my iTunes last week, and everyone in my family loves it. It’s called “Hero in Waiting”, and its composed by David Robidioux of NFL Films. You might recognize portions of the piece. I find it stirring and beautiful.

“Unity–not uniformity” or… What Gay Marriage has to do with the Church

           Okay. Just so you’ll know. My wife hates this title.

           She thinks I ought to dump it.

            I hope by the time you read this blog you’ll know why I chose it.

            A phrase I have heard all my life has been this, “Unity–not uniformity.” Usually, 

that statement is said in the context of passages such as Ephesians 4:1-16 or Rom. 14-15 

that talk about the importance of church unity.

            What this statement means, of course, is that members of the church do not have to 

look alike, act alike, or even think alike. As a matter of fact, the appeals in Scripture for unity 

imply that Christians are often extremely diverse, different, and divergent in their cultures, 

attitudes, and views. Otherwise, there would be no need for a call to unity.

            I am fascinated by how we accept that humanity’s most fundamental relationship-

outside of one's blood family-is based upon the biblical presupposition that two humans 

will enter into it as different. The two will enter into it totally distinct in terms of genetics, 

culture, and gender. I am of course talking about marriage.

            In marriage, you have the union of a man and woman. Typically, this is a collision of

temperaments and hormones, ambitions, and hobbies. Anatomically, they were even built by 

God to be fundamentally different.

            Yet, a man and woman in marriage are called by God to build unity through their 

relationship with Christ. Is this difficult? Well… yes! In spite of this, God builds this challenge 

into His call to creation.

            When a man and a woman pull marriage off, it is a beautiful thing. And the more 

diverse, the more beautiful.

            Again, we Christians assume the difference of the sexes, but it is fun to see a couple 

harmonize hobbies and sleeping schedules, thermostat settings and toothpaste caps (on or 

off?). I especially enjoy watching a couple cancel out each other’s vote in an election—each 

one a member of a different political party.

            An even more critical community is the church; for it is within this community that 

Jesus has chosen to express His saving work (Eph. 1:22-23, Col. 1:25-28.) Keep in mind, 

before God established the church, he established the community of Israel to call lost people 

all over the world to find a relationship with Him through His group of “called-out” ones.

            God specifically instructed the members of His community to be a light to the world. 

They were called to call foreigners to join their community and find God.            

            But foreigners were so enormously different! Yes; still, God issued that call.

            Unfortunately, Israel would not tolerate the difference. To put it in fancy terms: Israel 

did not want heterogeneity; Israel wanted homogeneity. That is to say, Israel would not 

accept diversity. Israel insisted upon uniformity—to her own peril.

            Sadly, early in the first century, the community that we know as the church suffered from

 the same problem. Jesus told his disciples that they were to take His message of reconciliation

 to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to all corners of the earth. God had to allow persecution to 

arrive before those Jewish Christians would be willing to begin doing His will.

            Even after that, the Gentiles entering into the Kingdom created a crisis for the Jewish 

Christians. Many seemed culturally and temperamentally incapable of welcoming Gentiles, 

unless the Gentiles agreed to buy a view exactly like the Jews. This especially meant Jewish 

customs such as observation of the Sabbath and diet.

            Now, don't miss this. In the critical communities-marriage, Israel, and the church-

God consistently calls his people to relate in community with those who are different. 

Behold – the pattern!

            Paul fought many battles against those who refused to fellowship with Christians who 

were different. Again, to put it in fancy terms: many Christians, especially Jewish Christians, 

did not want heterogeneity; they wanted homogeneity. That is to say, they would not accept 

diversity. They insisted upon uniformity—to their own peril.

            It was this battle that motivated Paul to write letters such as Galatians, Ephesians, and 

Romans. Over and over again, Paul argued that through creation and community, God has 

called people to engage in relationships that create unity in spite of diversity.

            Indeed, God’s presupposition was that there would be no uniformity, only unity (see 

Eph. 2:11-22.), just like in marriage.

            It's funny, today so many in the Christian world disagree with gay marriage on a 

fundamental level. I certainly join with them in this opinion.

            Gay marriage goes against the creative work of God. In gay marriage, people do not 

seek heterogeneity; they seek homogeneity. They celebrate homosexuality instead of 

heterosexuality. This is wrong.            

            In gay marriage, two people are attempting to construct the most fundamental of 

relationships on the basis of uniformity. This move is a perversion of God's creative work. 

Anatomically, they are uniform. Hormonally, they are uniform. In terms of the culture of gender, 

they are uniform.

            This was not the way God intended it. We get that.

            Nevertheless, some church members who blanch at the subject of gay marriage, 

without irony, fight tooth and nail for uniformity in a community in which God did not call for

uniformity–the church. These members want homogeneity not heterogeneity.

            God calls people of different races, languages, cultures, genders, and political positions 

to come to the cross and form a unified community. Yet, there are Christians who would pervert 

the gospel by insisting that Christians eliminate differences.

            In some extreme cases, the call is to eliminate different races within the same church. 

In other cases, and this is more prevalent, it is the insistence that members hold the same 

positions on as many issues as possible—even those that are opinion issues. ESPECIALLY 

THOSE THAT ARE OPINION ISSUES.

            Uniformity! With it–there is no need for unity.

            With uniformity (homogeneity), Christians are attempting to enjoy the love of God as 

expressed through people in His church in a way that is artificial. Anytime we force members 

to be uniform, we do not experience the real thing. It is a shallow, sad imitation.

            Many Christians, who are physically repulsed at the thought of same-sex marriage are 

totally oblivious to the fact they are trying to achieve the same thing on a spiritual level: they 

are trying to force community through uniformity (forcing homogeneity instead of heterogeneity.)

            I wonder if God is spiritually repulsed by that?

Five Things I Think I Think

(with a nod to Peter King for this idea)

1. For some reason, I can’t get fired up about college football this year. The BCS race just 

doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it has something to do with the Southeast Conference West having 

the top three teams.

2. Still, I wish I could have seen the Baylor/OU game Saturday night. Robert Griffin III is a MAN.

3. Nice to see Vince Young enjoy some success again. That was a crucial drive he led against 

the Giants last night.

4. Haleigh is in town, so we started over the weekend watching the second season of 24 on 

Netflix. What do I do this? I’m going to bed so late every night. I can hear Haleigh’s voice 

reverberate in my head, “Oh, come on! Let’s just watch one more episode.”

5. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Be safe.