Tired

As we get toward the end of this week, I’m just shot.  Exhausted.  Worn out. 

Ever been there?

It’s not all bad stuff—in fact, some really good stuff!  And, of course, some really bad stuff.  But mostly just a lot of “stuff” stuff.  I see the brokenness of those around me.  I feel the reality that their brokenness is also my brokenness.  I start to work on crossing things off the to-do list.  More stuff gets added to the to-do list.  I realize more stuff is being added than is getting checked off the to-do list.  I find myself adding stuff to the to-do list that I’ve actually already done, just so I can check it off.  I find that those things are decreasing in their impressiveness—things like eating lunch don’t typically require a slot in Microsoft Outlook.  And I realize that I’m not only tired, but I can now add somewhat unproductive to that as well.

And normally, I just roll with all that.  You probably do too.  But today, I’m just wiped out.  Bodily tired?  Check.  Emotionally drained?  Check.  Spiritually zapped?  Double check.  At least I’ve completed one list for the day.

For years I’ve been fascinated with the ancient church in Ephesus.  It’s the first-century church that we have the most information on—a relatively detailed account in the last 1/3 of the book of Acts, a letter bearing their name that Paul wrote, two letters from Paul to their young pastor Timothy, and finally, the words of Jesus Himself as He addresses the church in Revelation 2.  When I imagine that church, I imagine a well-oiled machine.  They were rockin’ and rollin’ long before the Beatles ever broke onto the scene.  They had solid Elders, strong teachers, watched their doctrine carefully, and were “enduring patiently.”  (Revelation 2:3) The church was planted and set-up by Paul himself, who becomes a sort of consultant for them.  They had Timothy, the young all-star pastor hand-picked by Paul to lead this great church.  And guess what?  Within just a few generations, the church was completely gone.  Wiped out. 

That should make all of us nervous—it certainly does me!  There was far more going for them than we have going for our church… and most of the churches in the world, I might add!  And within a few short generations, it was all gone.  Poof.

What happened?  I think we get a clue in Revelation 2:4-5: “You abandoned the love you had at first.  Remember from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”  They were chugging away at all the externals, but they had lost their first love.  They were getting the outside right, but missing the core.  And what is Jesus’ prescription?  Do the works you did at first…

Think back—if you’re a follower of Jesus, what did you do when you first fell in love with Him?  For me, I devoured the Word.  I mean, devoured.  Reading, memorizing, studying, cross-referencing.  Devouring.  I loved it.  And you know what?  When I find myself truly weary—not just tired from a long day, but truly weary—I almost always find myself having slowed in those things I did at first. 

I’m so thankful that Jesus acknowledged that we would get wiped out.  “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…” (Matthew 11:28)  When we’re weary, He’s the only source of life. 

Sure, we can keep plugging away, just like the church in Ephesus did.  We can keep shaping the externals around what everyone expects of us while we fall apart on the inside.  And when we do that, I wonder if there will be a day where we’ll wake up and realize that our faith is going the route of the Ephesian church… slowly disappearing.  External righteousness doesn’t help us, but it does make us tired.  What does Jesus say when He calls?  “Come to me…”  Not check off the moral to-do list.  Not meet everyone else’s expectations.  Not rest inside the mold of cultural religiosity.  Come to me.

I think being weary might be a gift.  It’s in our weariness that we’re invited; and maybe it’s only in our weariness that we’ll truly come.

Rest well, my friends.  I’m planning on it. 

Jesus said, "Follow Me" - Part 3

OK, for both of you that have been anxiously awaiting this third post, I'm a few days late.  I can give you a variety of excuses for that, but honestly, you don't care and I'm not really prepared to think that hard.  So, without further ado, part 3...

Without fully restating what you can easily read yourself with a few clicks of the mouse, I've been working through the idea that Jesus very clearly called those of us who consider ourselves to be His disciples to follow Him, and yet, there are very few lined up behind Him.  If we're going to be honest, which most of us make it a practice to never truly be, our lives look pretty dramatically different than His.  We seem to love different things, connect with different people, base our decisions on a different set of values, and generally look much more like just about any character in the Bible other than Jesus--with the possible exceptions of John the Baptist and Ezekiel during that "lay on your side naked while cooking your food over animal poop" period.  (Ezekiel 4--seriously, that's in there.  The people who say the Bible is boring have never actually read it.)

As a church, we've wrestled with this, and tried our best to honestly study the life of Jesus as well as the teachings of the Bible to figure out what it actually means to follow Him in 21st century North America.  Of course, we all wish that it was a prescribed list of commands and check boxes--not only would that make it easier, but who doesn't love to check things off a list?  That's how I finally got up the motivation to write this blog post--I needed to check something off my to do list, and the rest of what was on there looked to be basically impossible.  But I digress.  Jesus doesn't give us a checklist--He gives us His Spirit.  Which is way better, but if we're honest, is way more difficult to figure out most of the time, because God has this habit of being far more concerned about our hearts than our external behavior.  So, rather than a checklist, there are seven areas that we see Jesus constantly operating within.  In part 1, I talked through what it means to have a lifestyle of worship, live within authentic community, and to build our lives on the foundation of the Word.  In part 2, I talked about what it means to engage in prayer as the first work, recognizing that God is the only one who is actually able to transform us.  Today, I want to look at the products of that transformation: serving the body, engaging missional living, and becoming the shalom of the community. 

Maybe the easiest way to think of these seven areas is in terms of an hourglass:

Within this image, worship, community, and the Word act as the environment for God to work.  However, it's only as we truly encounter Him through prayer that we are transformed.  Within that transformation, something is produced within us, and that transformation is poured out into the world around us through service, mission, and bearing peace.  But what does that look like?

Serving the Body.  I love the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet in John 13.  It's such a perfect picture of servanthood--not just because the God of Creation was willing to do the most menial job known to first century man, but because it wasn't His gift.  So often, we excuse our lack of service because "that's not my gift" or "I don't feel like the Spirit is leading me in that way."  Jesus washed feet for a simple reason: it needed to be done.  When God transforms us, the very first thing that He transforms is our heart for the body of Christ.  Paul, speaking of marriage in Ephesians 5, says, "no one ever hated his own body, but nourishes and cherishes it."  Then, a sentence or two later, he interprets for us: "I am saying that [this] refers to Christ and the church." (Ephesians 5:29, 32)  When we are transformed by Christ, He gives us a heart to serve His body, and we are willing to pour ourselves out to that end.

Missional Living.  One of the remarkable things about Jesus' life is maybe most clearly seen in the gospel of Mark.  In Mark 8, Peter answers a question that Jesus posed: "Who do you say that I am?"  Peter's answer: "You are the Christ." (Mark 8:29)  Simple.  Clear.  And it changed everything.  Mark records that Jesus "began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things..." (vs. 31) and will proceed to follow Him in a direct line to the cross.  The writer to the Hebrews said it this way: "who for the joy set before Him endured the cross." (Hebrews 12:2)  Jesus' was driven by a singular mission, and He's passed that mission onto us.  We are to go into the world around us, and "make disciples." (Matthew 28:19).  We are to be doing "the ministry of reconciliation" as "ambassadors for Christ." (2 Corinthians 5:18, 20)  It's not an activity we should engage now and then--it's a new way of living.  C.S. Lewis once said it this way: "All day long we are helping each other to one of these destinations [eternal glory or eternal horror]."  We are called to live each moment with that reality in mind.

Shalom of the Community.  Can you imagine being around Jesus?  Mark, again, gives us perhaps the clearest picture as he describes the crowd that seemed to be ever-present around Him, pressing in to hear Him, to touch Him, to simply be with Him.  Why was that?  Genesis 3, for all the debate about Adam and Eve and trees and apples, describes a moment in time where everything broke.  All that was once perfectly harmonious in a single moment was completely broken.  I think this is some of what Solomon had in mind in Ecclesiastes 3:11 when he said: "God has placed eternity in each man's heart."  There's something in us that remembers; we long for the harmony that once was.  In fact, Paul will say in Romans 8 that all of creation "groans" as we await redemption!  However, in Christ, harmony is restored.  That Hebrew word is shalom and it's a beautiful fusion of harmony, peace, wholeness, and rest.  Shalom is the gift that is ours in salvation.  Not a trite happiness, but a deep peace, even in the midst of the storm.  And we are called to bear that peace, that shalom, into the world around us.  I wonder if people long to be with you and I the way they longed to be with Jesus?

It's only when we meet Jesus and are transformed by Him that these things are produced in us.  Hear me, dear friends: if we try to produce them on our own, we will become bitter, frustrated, and tired.  However, if we'll take the time to truly encounter Him, we'll find that He's giving us all we need in order to truly follow Him.

Peace to you as you journey with Him.

This material is taken from the forthcoming book “Follow Me: Discipleship that Moves Us” which will be released in early 2013.