I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the underlying messages in our communication. For example, I can say something to my wife that sounds totally supportive, right and loving, but the message is “You need to change A and B for me to accept you” – which is neither loving nor supportive.
The same principle applies in communicating the Gospel, especially in preaching. Christians give a lot of lip service to “God loves you just like you are” and “you are saved by grace alone, not by trying hard and doing good.” If that’s true, why is the underlying message so often about “you’re not measuring up” or “you need to do A, B, and C to be a good Christian” or “we’re better than those other churches”? Even then, the things we lay on people are often totally bizarre – like how do we end up distilling everything down to “go to this Sunday School class, read your Bible more, come to the men’s pancake fundraiser, etc.”?
The truth is that the Gospel is MUCH more radical: you were more guilty than you can ever imagine, but Jesus paid that debt more completely than you can ever image. God is more in control than you can ever imagine. Every step in the Christian life is an undeserved act of grace. You start out with God’s favor and He delights in your immature love more than you can ever imagine. That’s good news and that should be the primary message – explicit and implicit – of EVERYTHING we do.
I think there’s another truth here, though. If you start with and really believe the Gospel, there is a MUCH more radical response. People who are changed by the Gospel will give everything for it. I think most Christians are actually longing to be called to something radical and costly. I think most of us are bored, honestly. BUT, we’ll never risk everything for a God that’s mostly dissappointed with us and is just itching to torch us if we fail. But if He really loves us and death is really an upgrade and He’s really more precious than any amount of money…
We spent Christmas with my family in Arkansas. It was a really fun time, although family time is always tinged with a “make the most of every moment” kind of sadness these days. We spent a lot of time reading, drinking coffee, playing games like Cranium and Clubs. We saw I Am Legend, which we really enjoyed, even though it caused me to jump and shiver like a wee girl. We opened presents and met old friends. We drove twelve hours…twice…
Now we’re at Ange’s parents house for the next few days for a bit of same-song-second-verse. There will be puzzles, great conversation, and late-night movies I’m sure.
We have really great families. Thank you, Lord.
We finally figured out the perfect metaphor for trying to move overseas. It’s like playing Sudoku. You know, where you have to figure out where the numbers 1-9 go on the board and a number can’t be repeated vertically, horizontally, or in the same cell. Ange and I used play Sudoku at the laundromat, before we got our washer and dryer. Now we feel like we’re playing it again.
There are so many variables that depend on each other: you’ve got to know A before you can do B; you’ve got do C before you can know A; but you’ve got to do B before you can do C… It’s mind bending (and also fun and addictive), and the only way to win is to find the few pieces you do know and go from there one at a time.
On that theme, we recently found out that we had a few numbers placed wrong – a bit of bad information about the visa application process and some new choices to make. So it looks like we won’t be leaving in January after all. We are hoping this won’t delay us by more than a month or two, but it is a setback. We are in good spirits and are still excited about going, but please pray for us. We’ll need a lot of wisdom to get the right pieces in place over the next few months.
Mark
For everyone in the Indianapolis/Muncie area, we’re going to have a moving sale on Saturday, December 15. Here’s a sample:
This is really wild. We’re finally starting to go through our stuff and decide what we’re going to throw out, store, and ship. It’s easy to talk about not being attached to things until you have to put “things” in one of those three categories.
Our once-inviting, warm, friendly home is quickly becoming unfriendly:
