an ounce of mother worth a pound of clergy

This is a repost from 2010.

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My mother has been the greatest picture of selflessness and sacrifice in my life.  Sometimes people think being a missionary in Africa involves a lot of sacrifice –but I’ve got nothing on my mom.  From the time I was 13, she raised three of us on her own, while working full-time and going back to school.  Mom graduated from college with degrees in business administration and accounting the same year I graduated high school.  And she did so with a 4.0.

But more than that, my mother raised us to have faith in Jesus Christ, and to be committed fully to him.  As the Spanish proverb says,

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

Mom, I hope you have a very special day today.  I’m sorry I can’t be there to celebrate it with you.  Thank you for all you’ve done to bring me into the faith in which I now rest — and for teaching me how to sacrifice myself for others.  I love you.

A lot of people have said a lot of nice things about mothers.  Below are some of my favorites:

men are from mars…

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I am republishing a portion of my most popular blog post ever in the history of aliens and strangers. While I’m not ashamed that my most visited post has to do with love, I am a little embarrassed that this Christian missionary’s most successful essay ever is this:

Top Ten Alien / Astronaut Pick-up Lines

the tattoo i didn’t get (yet)

I had planned to get another tattoo while home on furlough this past year.  I even had it approved by the wife.

a list of all the things which can separate us from the love of God

aromas

How are Christians to be perceived by the world around us?

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.  For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. — 2 Corintians 2:14-16a

The fragrance of death, huh?  I’m to be the non-Christian’s bete noire?  I’m not going to be attractive to all the world, I suppose.

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And only slightly related:

“Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on
shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.”
 — Karl, age 5

 

a contract with God

Forgive me the liberties I’ve taken with the text (I aspire to be the next Eugene Peterson, only without the trite and cheesy* colloquialisms):

Don’t fool yourselves or turn up your noses at God’s contract.  It’s a simple kingdom truth that wages are determined by performance.   If a man works selfishly and for his own good, he’ll receive death.  But if he works in order to please God, his salary will be true life — and he’ll enjoy that life forever.

So don’t entertain thoughts of starting your own private businesses.  And don’t give up doing good and working for God.  Because God’s salary and benefits package is far better than anything you could arrange for yourselves.  [His retirement plan's not bad, either.]  Take advantage of every opportunity that arises; if you’re able to assist someone, do.  And you should especially lend a hand to other employees in God’s kingdom.

— Galatians 6:7-10 (my own very loose translation)

judged by our works

A lot of Christianity frowns on talk of good works being rewarded. “Eternal life is a free gift, and you can’t earn it,” they say.  I’m not suggesting salvation can be earned.  But we can’t deny that the Bible says a great deal concerning our being judged by works and reaping what we sow. This is a kingdom principle. The truth of the matter is that a true Christian shouldn’t be concerned by this, as faith manifests itself in love for God and love for others.  And these are necessarily demonstrated by good works.

the fruits of selfishness

While living selfishly seems to bring us great pleasure, Paul is clear that, in reality, it results only in death.  We would do well to consider the future implications of our behavior today.  Pray that God will help us to see well in advance the fruits of those things we do in the present.

transformed thinking necessary

“As we have opportunity, let us do good…”  Pray that God will help us to notice the opportunities we have to do good. I’m afraid I often miss these occasions — not because of a reluctance to help others, but rather because of a failure to be conscious of their needs.  This seems to be at the root of the problem. If my thinking is selfish, then my actions will necessarily be so. In order to take advantage of opportunities to help others, I must be thinking of others. A self-centered attitude yields service to self.  While an others-based view of the world produces compassion and kindness.

responsibility to help other christians first

Christians are called first to help one another.  We often ignore this principle (which is found throughout scripture) because we think of it as selfish.  We prefer to give to the poor in rural Tanzania or to the homeless in New Orleans because (my guess) it makes us feel good.  But proper kingdom giving begins with giving IN the kingdom. It may not be as sexy as feeding the poor in Haiti or providing water for a village in Sudan, but it’s a kingdom principle.

We’re meant to demonstrate to the world how the family of God functions.  [You could call it a missionary principle.] I’d argue this is God’s form of attractional ministry: that Christians love one another and take care of one another. [Not that we have a great praise band and let visitors park near our front doors.]  For a little more on the subject, see giving: the seventh year and debts.

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May God empower us to take every opportunity to do good works.  May he make us a less selfish people, and may he be glorified in our willingness to serve others.

 

* You know, it’s sad that the word “cheesy” is in and of itself cheesy.  I generally don’t use it, but the irony struck me as humorous today.  It is, however, slightly better than “corny.”

marriage as a (misunderstood) play

image courtesy of life.com

If the church is a theater,
marriage is a play —
Christ’s good and perfect love
for his church to convey.

[The role of Christ is performed by a husband, and the church is played by his bride.]*

Our hero is steadfast in his devotion to his wife. His love is powerful and unflinching.  With great determination, he sets off to present his bride to the world as unparalleled in beauty, and of revolutionary perfection.  He guards her purity and fights for her honor.  His own life he deems of little import when hers is in danger.  And, in what would seem to be the end of our tale, this husband sacrifices himself in order to give his bride life. But this is not indeed the end of the play.  It is only the beginning.

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The world the audience, they misunderstand. And their reactions and reviews vary greatly:

• Some women are repulsed by the way they were portrayed as weak and in need of salvation.  And you can bet they won’t attend the sequel, which will surely involve both children and cooking.
• Other women, though, swoon at the mere thought of true love, as they long for rescue — but wrongly believe they’ll find it in the arms of the next man they meet.
• The men taunt and mock the actors — the husband for his sentiment and emotion, and the wife for donning a much too modest apparel.  “After all,” they complain, “we paid good money for an action-thriller, and we want to see some breasts!”
• Outside there are demonstrators with signs.  They protest the absurdly conventional director because he didn’t have the backbone — or the creative imagination — to cast two men as the love interests in his production.

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Even the Christians can’t come to a consensus on the play:

• The Calvinists grumble at the scene where the young maiden chose to marry her suitor.  “HE elected HER,” they cry out, “and she should have no say in the matter.”
• The social justice crowd believes the writers placed far too much emphasis on the rescue of the young damsel in distress.  ”And they barely mentioned her great love for the peasants!”
• Catholics and classical Arminians are angry the possibility was never mentioned that the young lady could have fallen out of love, cheated on her lover, and been divorced.
• But the Southern Baptists really enjoyed that aspect of the play.
• Missionaries worry there wasn’t enough care taken in the story to demonstrate that the husband searched — and found — his beautiful bride in a far away land.
• And the Church of Christers are upset there was a pit orchestra.
  

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As for me, I just hope my wife and I can do this play justice.  I’m a bit overwhelmed that I’ve been cast as Jesus in any production — much less one that’s for the world to see.  I pray that God will empower me to love my wife just as Christ loves the church.  And that he will be glorified in, and through, our marriage.  Amen.

* This post was inspired by Ephesians 5:22-33

This is the third post in a series on marriage.  Also see:  marriage is a hierarchy and marriage to an unbeliever (and sanctification the result)

raising children according to deuteronomy 6

Last week I wrote about the importance of both spiritual leadership in the family and obedience to God in Bible study.  [The two go very much hand in hand.  That post is here:  one obedient step.]  I mentioned that Deuteronomy 6 is an abundantly practical instruction booklet on how to raise a Christian family.

Deuteronomy 6 — Very Abridged (and somewhat Christianized) and In My Own Words

• I’m now going to give you some rules that come from God.  If you follow these commands, you will live a blessed life and so will your children and their children.  You have the opportunity now to affect your family for many generations to come, so that they will continue to receive the blessings of God.
• The Lord is our God.  And as he is the one God — united in all he does — you should be single-minded in your love for him.  Love the Lord your God with every bit of your being; don’t hold any part of yourself back from him.
• You should teach these commandments to your children.  Talk about them all the time, everywhere you go and whatever you do.  Put reminders of God’s laws everywhere you look, or anywhere others might look.
• Do not forget the Lord who rescued you from a meaningless life and slavery to sin.
• Honor and respect the Lord your God, and only serve him.  Do not honor, respect, or serve the gods worshiped by those in your surrounding culture.
• Do what is right and good according to God in heaven, and you will live the life that he intends for you — a life of blessing and joy.
• When your children one day ask, “Why do we follow all of these commandments and laws of God?  What do they really mean?”  tell them: “We were slaves to sin, but God rescued us with his power because of his love.  His son died while giving us freedom to live in his new kingdom.  Then he was raised from the dead to defeat death on our behalf.  The reason we now keep God’s commandments is so that we will live the life for which God has created us, in his kingdom.”

What I’ve Learned

• God’s commandments carry promise. He blesses those who are obedient to him.
• I have the ability to affect my own family for many generations. This makes me responsible both for their obedience to God and for the blessings they receive from him.*
• It seems the two best things I can do in order to raise Christian children (and grandchildren and so on) are to:  1) love God with all of my being and 2) be obedient to him. We seem to make spiritual leadership (and raising Christian children) difficult, thinking about plans and strategies.  Perhaps we should focus more on simply modeling love for, and obedience to, God?
• We shouldn’t look like all the non-Christian families around us. I can’t think of a better way to confuse children than to tell them we’re different because we serve the true God, and then to look and act like every other family in our suburban neighborhood.
• We necessarily talk about what is important to us — and our children know that.  We should take every opportunity to speak of God’s goodness with (and in front of) our kids. If you’re like me, you shrink back from that just a little bit because you don’t want to be one of those families who sound pious and preachy all the time (ie. Ned Flanders) — it really is a turnoff.  I’ve decided it’s not the speaking about God that bothers me in those situations, though; rather it’s the decidedly trite and wooden church-speak.  I think we ought to speak about God in the same language we use to speak about anything else.

If you haven’t set a text for your next Bible reading time — or if you just want to read a chapter that addresses raising children — you really ought to work through Deuteronomy 6.  It will be a blessing to you and to your children.

 

* Responsibility is not necessarily the same as culpability.

full of grace and truth

image courtesy of michael belk and theundergroundsite.com

 

This is the third post in a short series from John 1:14 on what Jesus’ incarnation means to our own ministries on earth.  Find the first two posts here: the word became flesh and robbing God of his glory.

The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.  – John 1:14

Full of grace and truth.

Churches often exist in one extreme or the other, as do Christians.  We either preach a lot of grace while downplaying (or ignoring) important truths… or we get so caught up in truth we believe salvation is found in possessing it.  We’re a strange lot, humanity, choosing one extreme and claiming Jesus was firmly in that camp. Many of us would give up truth in an effort to “just love on people” while others would use that very truth as an excuse to not love people as we love ourselves.

Yet Jesus existed in both of these extremes; he was full of grace AND truth.  In verse 17 we see that Jesus not only possessed them, but came to earth to give them to us.  We have received both grace and truth, and we have been called to be grace and truth in the world; and we must be both.

We have been called to be
grace and truth in the world;
and we must be both.

We must, when serving others, share with them the truth behind our graciousness.  Loving someone without telling them the wonderful truth about God is not the kind of love to which we’ve been called (nor is it love at all — more on this later). For it is this very truth that will set them free, not my random acts of kindness.

But also I must show love to others if I intend to share with them truth.  I don’t like wording it that way; it sounds as if we’re loving people as a cover for sharing the truth — and some churches indeed see it that way.  I don’t.  Nor did Jesus, it seems to me. We love because love is the currency of the kingdom of God; it should be our default setting. We love because it is the right thing to do.  We love because God loves us.

These two ideas — grace and truth — don’t actually stand in opposition to one another.  Rather, love necessitates truth. How could we claim to love someone while hiding from them the most important information they could ever know?  Churches who offer grace without truth do not in fact love as Jesus loved.  And their counterparts — churches who offer truth without love — have not fully grasped the truth which they are attempting to offer.  They may know it, but they’re not living it.

Father, make us both grace and truth to a world that knows and understands neither.

fruitless

image courtesy of fir0002 at flagstaffotos

 

Once upon a time, there was a God whose followers met together every Sunday.  They called themselves by his name and praised him for his willingness to save them from their sins.  One day, the God went to see if his Spirit was producing in these people love and goodness — and if his followers were making other disciples.  He was disappointed to discover there was no fruit.

So he said to his son, “We’ve been waiting for these people to have hearts like ours for a long time.  I keep expecting them to love one another with a great love, and for that love to spread throughout their neighborhoods and towns.  But I’ve seen nothing of the such.  Get rid of them, would you?  They’re taking up space in a kingdom to which they don’t belong — and to which, deep down, they don’t want to belong.  And they’re ruining my good name.”

“But father,” the son replied, “please give them just a little while longer.  I’ll touch the hearts of those whose hearts can still be touched, and I’ll convict anyone who will hear my words.  And if, still then, they refuse to look and act like us, we’ll do as you say.”

– Luke 13:6-9 (more or less)