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The Nut Test

Living Loved, Living Loved Newsletter / / ,

BodyLife Archive • September 1997
By Wayne Jacobsen

“You mean I’m not nuts!” No statement has been spoken to me more often by such a wide variety of people than this one.  Sometimes it’s a question. Sometimes it’s spoken with great joy, other times with quiet relief. I’ve heard these words in virtually every state of the union, and from countries half way around the world. Every time, I hear them, I am blessed to be there.
Because for a long time, I wondered if I was nuts, too. I had hungers in my heart toward God that life in today’s Christianity never satisfied. In fact I would say most church activity did more to negate my hunger than satisfy it. There were too many substitutes for the living God and too many people missing out on the sheer joy and freedom of knowing him and depending totally on him. Whenever I tried to talk about it people accused me of being nuts.

Well, that’s not exactly the words they used. They said stuff like: You’re too idealistic. Can’t you just accept it the way it is! If that’s what God wanted to do in the church today don’t you think he would speak to our leaders about it.

The only reason you’re not happy is because you’re too independent and unsubmitted. But every time I read the Word and took a look at church life, I couldn’t relate the two. The promises far outweighed the reality. It seemed to me that only a few people were really discovering what life in Jesus was all about. The rest were just cogs in the machinery of religious institutions.
For the most part these were good people, mind you. They were diligent in their commitments and responsibilities, believing they were fulfilling God’s purpose by doing so. But they never seemed to engage a joyful, transforming relationship with a loving Father.

I know that sounds judgmental. I don’t mean it to be. I’ve talked with many of them always working hard, but always feeling empty. Like me they wondered why they didn’t experience the depth of spiritual life they saw in the Word. They were grieved by the focus they saw on buildings, programs, money and superstar leaders, and the hurt caused by the pursuit of those things.

Ten years ago I wrote some of those observations in a book called The Naked Church. That’s when the letters and phone calls started. It seems that I was not the only one afraid they were nuts. I discovered lots of other believers whose hunger for God left them disillusioned with the priorities of our religious systems. They too had experienced persistent questioning of their sanity. Many of these had served in leadership positions in a variety of denominations. Many had been pushed aside with accusations of being arrogant or rebellious when they started asking the questions that made others uncomfortable.

When they talked to me, they didn’t say things like, “Wayne, you opened my eyes to things I never considered before.” Instead they said, “Wayne, you put into words what I have felt for so long, but could never express.” That someone else was asking the same questions and sharing the same hungers made them feel like maybe they weren’t nuts after all.
Unless, of course, we’re all nuts. Which in all fairness might be worthy to consider. But nothing sums up the passion of this ministry than that simple discovery. We exist to help people discover and enjoy a vibrant relationship with the living God. Sometimes all we have to say is, “I think God is leading you. Feel free to follow him and not worry what others think.” Sometimes we’re the only voice saying that to them.

Relationship not Religion

“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

These are the words Jesus prayed in the Garden, shortly before his crucifixion. He didn’t die to give birth to another religion, but engage people in a relationship with him and his Father. It has always bothered me that institutional Christianity doesn’t look any different to the world than any of the other religions. We who allegedly walk with the living God have the same traditions, obligations, shrines, sacrifices and ceremonies that they have. Oh, we call them by different names and tell them we are different. But it certainly doesn’t look that way to outsiders.

Christianity is not another religion. It is not a code of ethics. It is not participation in ceremonies or signing some creed. Christianity is a relationship to the Risen Christ, his Father and the Holy Spirit. It is intended to be a relationship more real, more loving, more transforming than any other we’ve ever known in this life. He wants to be at our side when we waken in the morning and walk with us through every step of our day. He wants to be the shoulder we cry on when we hurt, the resource we count on every moment, and the ever-present guide that teaches us how to walk away from the bondage of self and embrace life as Father knows it to be. Then we can be like him in the world, loving others as we have been loved.

It is called relational Christianity, because it is only caught up in loving him and loving others. Period. That’s all he asked us to do, and it is what religion has most failed at over 2,000 years. We are committed to helping people discover the depth of that relationship in him and then discover healthy ways believers can relate together without contempt, manipulation, expectation and the arrogance of setting themselves above others. That’s not only the way we’ll treat other believers, but unbelievers around us as well.

Freedom not Conformity

That kind of relationship however doesn’t grow where people are burdened down with religious obligations and duties. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

Paul encouraged the church at Galatia to that freedom, even though he warned them not to use it as an excuse to run off and appease the flesh. But even when people did, he didn’t revoke the freedom of those who were growing to know Father. His letters defined that freedom even as they warned that false leaders would come to take that freedom away. He knew believers would only grow in an environment of freedom.

 

  • To live in the love of an awesome Father, free to respond to him as he leads you, even if that means you make mistakes now and then.
  • To walk without guilt or condemnation. Recognize that transformation is a life-long process that Jesus
  • works in us by our security in his love, not something we do for him out of fear.
  • To be real. To feel what you feel; to ask what you need to ask, to be wrong where you are wrong, and to extend that same freedom to others.
  • To be liberated from accountability to human leaders who seek to take the place of Jesus in the church by telling others what they think he would have them do.
  • To love other brothers and sisters freely, serving them the way Jesus leads you and not trying to conform to their expectations of what a ‘good Christian’ should do for them.
  • To live free of bitterness and hurt, even where religious institutions (and those who run them) have failed you. We’ve all got plenty wrong with us, so there can be no end to the generosity we can extend others in their weakness.

 

Those who do not understand this freedom, have lost touch with the head and deny the power of the cross. When that happens people end up lording over others, seeking to conform them to their standard of Christian behavior. Enduring transformation, however, can never come that way. It can only spring from within as the fruit of our friendship with Jesus.

 

Inside Out Not Outside In

Jesus didn’t mince words. “Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”

Religion always tries to change people from the outside in, because it has no power to affect the inner life. Religion finds its reason for being in sustaining traditions and ceremonies, meeting people’s needs and demanding behavioral and philosophical conformity. We talk alike, act alike, think alike! We must be OK!

And because we’ve learned to be ‘nice’ on the outside, we think that God’s work is done. The only problem is that nothing has changed on the inside. We forget that the same system that made Paul “a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee as for legalistic righteousness, faultless” was the same system that made him the “chief of sinners.” When he fixed up the outside, he only drove the sin deeper inside.

What he was on the inside was frightful. Even though outwardly perfect by his standard, by his own words he was a “blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man.” It’s amazing what horrors external righteousness can produce where it really counts.

In Christ Paul found motivation that absolutely transformed him. He came face to face with a love so powerful, that Jesus’ love for him was the only motivation he needed. He didn’t need the fear of hell. He didn’t need accountability to men. He only needed to know how much he was loved. There Paul could die to everything he aspired to for himself, and could enter into the freedom of living in the power of God.

I find no greater joy in my life than to help people discover the depth of that love for themselves, and see how it transforms them by the shear power of his love. This is no external righteousness, it flows from the depth of our being, the freedom to no longer live with self at the center.

So, Are We Against The System?

If by system we mean Christians gathering together (even if it is the same time every week) for prayer, worship and teaching.  Absolutely not! In fact, I go to places like that quite frequently. But if by system we mean the bondage of religious conformity, where people become passive believers in the machinery of a system that wants to use them to feed itself, then yes!
It amazes me that no one is even bothered by the fact that Jesus never once gathered his people in a ‘service.’ He never ‘led worship’ as far as we knew. He never set up a Sunday School. He never launched into a 10 week study of anything beginning at 10:00 on Saturday or Sunday morning. Yet today, we cannot imagine Christianity without those things and judge harshly those who feel like those thing don’t benefit them.

Hear me clearly here. If you are involved in such a gathering that truly stimulates you to greater depths of relationship with God by all means enjoy it! Wonderful things can and do happen when believers get together like that.

But if you find that environment too passive, or even hurtful because of what’s being taught or how people are treated, feel free not to go too! There are many people today who deeply love God and are finding the joy of gathering in much more informal settings, learning as families to share the life of Jesus together in their homes. They don’t go to church, but are learning to live as the church by sharing his life with others and with the world. There’s nothing wrong with that either. In fact, I think it’s a lot closer to what Jesus modeled for his disciples than many of us would care to admit.
Statistics continue to show that the most significant moments in people’s spiritual growth come not at church services, but through personal relationships and in small home studies. Church statisticians tell us that the fastest growing segment of church life today is home groups, Bible studies and house churches. In fact the most effective discipleship and mission work is done by loosely-affiliated small groups of believers learning to share the life and love of Jesus together as a real part of their every day lives.

Personally, I love that kind of body life. Certainly it is more challenging than meeting in managed services, but I find it a far greater growing environment for the whole family. But our purpose at Lifestream is not to advance any system over another. Actually any system (including home churches) can be exploited by people looking to serve themselves instead of live in Father’s love. And any time our idea of church becomes a substitute for a living relationship with Father it becomes destructive.

Love Him, Love Each Other

Relational Christianity is so simply summed up it seems almost trite to say it. Love him with everything you are, and love others the same way you have been loved by him.
We want to help people experience the depth of that relational life in all its facets. We provide writing and teaching to encourage that process in people’s lives. We meet with a wide variety of groups who want to discover what it means to walk with him and experience Godly relationships with other believers.

And once in a while we’ll be a burr in the saddle of institutional religion, not because we enjoy raining on other people’s parades, but because a lot of people fall out of that system hurt and disillusioned. We want them to know that though the system will fail us all at some point, that is only so that we might come to trust Father and him alone.
Jesus didn’t leave his disciples with a system to mass produce throughout the world. He gave them the Spirit, so that we might depend on him. That is true freedom and the source of limitless joy that can conquer any circumstance life hurls at us.

Learn that and you’ll discover the church as God sees it not our cloistered groups meeting in a specific building under a creed some weekend morning. You will see his body scattered throughout your community and the whole world. He knows those who are his. He is able to be the shepherd and hold them in his care. He is able to link them for fellowship and ministry in ways you never dreamed.

We simply aspire to be a part of Jesus doing that wherever he sends us. We’ll keep talking about this wonderful Father and how we can grow to know him better. We’ll keep talking about ways the body of Christ can share life together that doesn’t hurt or manipulate, but encourage us to greater trust in him.
And we’ll keep telling people they’re not nuts. Unless, of course, we think they are!

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What’s In it For Me?

1 Comment / Living Loved, Living Loved Newsletter / / ,

By Wayne Jacobsen

BodyLife • May 1997

Over the last few years I’ve shared a meal or two with some incredible brothers and sisters.

All of them had been involved in successful vocations or ministries at one point in their lives, most of them at the head of it, and yet all of them found occasion to walk away. For all of them at the time it had been a very painful decision, and none of them really knew what lie beyond it. Often their friends or families didn’t understand what they were doing, and either ridiculed them or withdrew from them.

But they had some wonderful things in common. None of them were bitter, or pined away for their “successful past.” They all confessed how deeply their relationship with Jesus had grown and their understanding of the power of God’s grace. All of them said they had discovered life and freedom in Jesus they never imagined existed when they made their difficult decision.

People who do not act in their own best interest have always fascinated me. It’s easy to understand why people do good things when there is something in it for them. Even our pleas for volunteer help or charitable contributions are almost always linked to tax-deductions, feeling good about yourself and or giving something back, as a way of appealing to people who make choices only because it is in their best interest to do so. That’s just the way our world works.

But that’s not the way Father’s kingdom works. Jesus said so in perhaps the most paradoxical statement of his ministry: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

When we worry about what’s in it for us, struggle to do the best we can for ourselves, even in our pursuit of God, we will always find ourselves deeply disappointed. But if we can let go of that which seeks our perception of our own best interest, we will discover the life of God in the fullest measure.

This is an incredible kingdom our Father has crafted. Choosing his way is undoubtedly the best decision we can make for ourselves. However, our knowledge about what is truly best for us is so limited, that decisions we make seeking our own best interest only draw us further from him. That’s why Jesus warned anyone who would come after him that he would need to, “deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Only where we mistrust our pursuit of happiness on our terms, will we discover that true joy lies only in him. For our joy comes not in attaining anything, but being free from our own selfish passions and desires. The problem is that’s not how most of us were introduced to the Father’s kingdom.

Bribed and Threatened

The two most effective evangelism tools of our century both appeal to people’s best interests.

“If you died tonight do you know that you would go to heaven?” Many people come to this kingdom threatened with the fiery stench of hell. It’s a terrifying concept, isn’t it? Once you convince people that heaven and hell, are both real and God decides who goes where, the work of evangelism is done. What fool would choose hell over heaven if they really believe both existed?

Yet this approach to God leaves us in a horrible dilemma. How do you build a loving relationship with the God who would hurl you into eternal torture if you don’t? Is there something so wrong with God that we have to be threatened with torture to come to him?

The second tool, takes the opposite approach to our best interests. “God has a wonderful plan for your life;” and with it we conjure up images of a blissful life with a God who will keep us at peace, happy and free from suffering if we’ll just follow him. So, people come to God in hopes of finding in him what they couldn’t find for themselves in the world. But self is still at the center-we come to him for ourselves. Joy is still defined in our terms.

This becomes painfully obvious whenever expectations are disappointed or difficulties arise. We begin to doubt God’s love if we don’t get the job we wanted or if our children battle a serious illness. Most Christians I have dealt with in years of ministry seem to have more stress over the fact that God is allowing them to be in crisis, than the crisis itself would ever produce.

In appealing to people’s best interest for themselves, both of these invitations to the kingdom may be counterproductive to the kingdom itself. By getting people to chose the kingdom based on their fear of punishment or their greed for the good life, they are only further ensnared in their bondage to self. Rather than leading them closer to the embrace of a living God, they end up only frustrated that Christianity isn’t all it pretends to be.

The relationship that God invites us to share in is the same one that he has enjoyed through all eternity. The Father, Son and Spirit live together in absolute love, sharing together life, glory, and joy. Love in this sense is complete selflessness, each of them giving and serving without any thought for themselves. This kind of love is hard for us to grasp, for what love defines in our age is usually nothing more than mutually-beneficial relationship. People say they love each other when each of them provide some benefit or enjoyment to the other. But as soon as one stops benefiting from the relationship, they usually withdraw pursuing other more-satisfying relationships.

Such self-based love really isn’t love at all. When we approach God in this way we will find ourselves often disappointed when he doesn’t do what we expect him to. When Jesus invited us to the depths of relationship with the Father, the Spirit and himself, he knew the only way we could discover the depth of joy is where we abandon the pursuit of our own best interests and completely trust him to provide everything we need. But that runs against everything we’ve ever known.

What Else Do you Do With Flesh?

Adam and Eve made their choice in the garden, certain they were acting in their own best interest. We will become like God, they thought, never understanding all the ramifications of that choice until it was too late.

I’ve often wondered why God was not a bit more specific about the trees he’d planted in that garden. About the tree they ate from, he warned them they would die if they did. But why didn’t he tell them all of it? Why didn’t he tell them that if they ate of it they would subject themselves and thousands of generations to follow to the horrible atrocities of sin, disease, depression, broken relationships, abuse and death? If he had, and told them all they had to do to avoid these things was to go over and eat of the Tree of Life, don’t you suppose they would have done it?

Of course they would. But why, because they loved and trusted him? No. They would have done it only because it would have been in their best interest. They would have still chosen control of their own life and by doing so would have missed out on the relationship he wanted them to discover. So they came to know good and evil without any power to choose the good.

But let us not forget, that God knew from the beginning what their choice would be and had already set about to use their failure in the process of redemption. Immediately after their fall, he prescribed conditions in which their bent for choosing in their own best interest would be used to help hold their sin in check until the Savior would come. The curses and eventually the law God used rewards and punishments to make God’s ways appeal to our self-interest.

We do the same thing when we discipline our children. Their flesh will not want to do good on their own, but through discipline we seek to make disobedience less attractive. This is how our world conforms behavior. We obey traffic laws, for fear of getting a ticket. The military makes people conform to the standards of conduct they want by an exhaustive set of rewards and punishments, all designed to use self-interest as the motivating force. Grades in school and incentives in business are all meant to appeal to our greed and fear to hold us in check.

So it is natural for us to assume then that God would use hell and the promise of the abundant life to conform our behavior in the kingdom. That’s why so much fear and guilt or promise of God’s blessing or leadership positions are used to get believers to do what’s right.

The Problem with Self-Interest

But anyone who has ever used self-interest as a motivating tool, knows it ultimately doesn’t work. God never expected his own law to work, because our flesh was just too weak. While it can be successful in conforming external behaviors (there’s a lot less adultery around if people get stoned for it), it ultimately cannot transform people.

That’s why children who have only been motivated by fear will end up in rebellion in the teen-age years. Fear never endures. Having been taught all their lives to respond to self-interest what do parents do when that self-interest is served more by going along with their crowd instead of following the desires of their parents?

Even Paul blamed the same process that made him a Pharisee and faultless in legalistic righteousness, as that which made him the chiefest of sinners. Outside his life conformed to God’s law, even though inside hate raged against people he considered a threat to the God he thought he knew. So he murdered in God’s name, and only by God’s mercy found the light of God.

That ought to give us pause, because much of our orientation to the Christian life today is incredibly similar to the Pharisees. We might call them ‘New Testament principles’ instead of law but they still are a set of dos and don’ts that we try to package to appeal to people’s self interest. Regrettably the results are the same. Externally we may look like good Christians and might even take great pride in that; while the most despicable of sins devours us from within. Scripture and history show us that even the most religious of us, will only end up using our traditions and principles to maximize our own best interests, like tax-lawyers groping for loopholes.

It’s no wonder that this process cannot draw us any closer to him, and why God had a better plan in mind.

Serving God Without Preference

God’s ultimate plan to deal with self-interest was not going to come through law or obligation. He knew our flesh was too weak for that. The only way to life was for self to be swallowed up in the immensity of Father’s love.

So Jesus came to die, not because God needed a victim on which to expend his wrath, but that we needed a demonstration of love so powerful, that we could abandon all trust in living to our own best interests and come to participate in the community of God. Because we would trust his love and care for our lives, we would no longer have to look out for ourselves, but follow him freely all of our days.

That’s what Paul taught regarding the cross. “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” (2 Cor 5:15) That became incredibly practical for me recently. I was reminded about a near accident I had while driving a car when I was eighteen. I was speeding down a dark country road with five passengers aboard. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed with an urge to slam on my brakes and did so without even consciously choosing to. As the car skidded to a stop a diamond-shaped reflector sign came into view. The road was coming to a dead-end into a cement ditch. My tires stopped within a foot of that sign.

I haven’t thought about that for a long time, until a time of prayer when I was complaining to God about some difficult things that were going in my life. “Why can’t I get away with doing what seems to work for everyone else?”

At that moment I thought of my near accident and heard that still, small voice: “Ever since that night I’ve considered you mine. You deserved to die in a tragedy that would have taken five other lives, but I saved you. I own you.”

What captured my heart in that moment was the overwhelming love of God. Being owned by him was not bondage. What he was doing in my life was not punishment I needed to fear, but his grace that was showing me the depth of his love. He was inviting me to a relationship with him that acting in my best interest would never approach.

“But perfect love drives out fear,” John wrote, “because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

What a gift! Abandoning our best-interest is a no-brainer decision in the face of the cross. Our agenda is exposed clearly for what it is, a march for self-destruction. Now, we can face every situation without the horrible bondage of figuring out how to make it work best for me. We can simply yield ourselves to God and watch him work out his purposes.

Obedience is no longer the onerous task of trying to keep God appeased, but the simple result of living in trust. After all, isn’t sin only the result of trying to provide for ourselves what God said he would provide for us? If so, then when we are confident that God will have his way, we no longer have to push for our own agendas. In the cross Wayne’s best interest has ceased to exist and no longer needs to be served. That’s not just true of sinful acts but even visions of ministry. He is at work in me for his pleasure. I don’t have to scheme or manipulate people anymore.

The One Who Is Truly Free

What has touched me most about the people I mentioned at the beginning of this article is that they are the most liberated people I’ve ever known. They had uncovered a greater depth of relationship, not because Father rewarded their efforts, but because they had discovered a life in God beyond self. They had seen God take care of them and were learning to enjoy his presence because they were no longer blowing by him in the night continuing to pursue their own agendas.

We understand people who serve their self-interest. In fact it is easy to manipulate people with threats and bribery. But when someone ceases to be motivated by such things, they themselves become a threat to the self-interest system. Others will call them rebels and accuse them of being unsubmitted.

The free person in Christ and the rebellious will always look the same to those who labor under religious obligation, because both ignore the conventions that govern men. But there is a major difference between the two. The rebel does it to serve himself and his passions, always harming others in the process and leaving a wake of anarchy behind him.

The free person in Christ, however, does so because they no longer have a need to serve themselves. They have embraced God’s love at a far deeper level than any method of behavioral conformity will touch, and they will guard that freedom even if it means others will misunderstand them. They reject the conventions not to please themselves, but Father, and because they want others to find that same joy in the hands of a loving Father.

This is the parent, co-worker, brother, sister, son or daughter that God wants to scatter over the whole earth, and by liberating us from self-interest based, legalistic righteousness, allows us to taste the majesty and depth of all that waits for us in God.

This is the purpose of God in bringing his children into his glory. As long as you seek your own best interest in the circumstances you face, you will never find the life of God. Learn to let go of your agenda and trust Father’s immense love, and you will discover what true freedom and joy really are.

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What About Him?

1 Comment / Living Loved, Living Loved Newsletter / /

What About Him?

By Wayne Jacobsen

BodyLife • January 1997

“When you grow old… someone else will dress you and bring you where you do not wish to go.”

The words Jesus used were precise and abundantly clear. No one standing in that huddled group on Galilee’s shore that morning misunderstood what he had just told Peter. He would one day be executed for his friendship with Jesus.

The surprise breakfast on the beach with the resurrected Lord suddenly turned ominous. Peter must have just stared, his mouth agape with shock. The rest of the disciples must have glanced at each other with that “poor Peter” expression on their face, completely unaware that most of them would die in the same way.

Jesus knew he had just dropped a bombshell on them and certainly he knew the distress that would have been filling Peter’s heart. He was not that many days away from his own anguish that had sent him to the Garden to pray on the eve of his crucifixion.

But Jesus hadn’t spoken these words to scare Peter. So he perhaps reached to Peter, grasped his shoulder and pulled him under his arm. With a reassuring smile on his face he spoke the words he had said to Peter the first day they had met: “Follow me.” It had been on the same lake some years ago and had changed everything about Peter’s life. How much he had been through since then and how much he had learned!

Perhaps this was the best lesson yet. Jesus’ invitation to him was still the same. He didn’t have to be brave or strong or possess great ingenuity. He just need to follow to center his eyes on the one who loved him so much and stay close.

Nothing more simply expresses the essence of what it means to be a believer. We complicate it by getting our eyes on other things, but the secret to thriving through the ups and downs of life is to draw close to Jesus, doing whatever he does and going wherever he goes. In the last days before his Ascension, Jesus wanted Peter to know the same thing that had held him the last few years, could hold him the rest of his life. Jesus would still be with him and he would still be able to simply follow him.

But Peter’s eyes were not yet where they needed to be, for they were yet consumed by his fears.

It’s Not Fair!

When Peter finally regained enough composure to speak we see where his eyes were focused. “What about him?” Peter said motioning to John standing a few feet away. The inference is clear. Is he going to die too? Do we all have the same road here?

I guess misery really does love company. I suspect Peter would have felt somewhat better about his future if he knew he hadn’t been singled out for a worse lot than the others. His words do have a familiar ring to them, don’t they? How often as children when we were asked to do something unpleasant, didn’t we immediately want to know if our brother or sister would have to do it too. Even at work we want to see the joys and responsibilities evenly distributed or cries of “Unfair!” fill our lips.

Isn’t it interesting that our idea of fairness always has to do with comparing ourselves to others? Every human relationship we’ve ever known has been steeped in competition. It seems our society can only measure worth, success even beauty in relative terms. How do you compare to others around you?

Sibling rivalry competes either for the affection of parents, or for their attention as we go out in the world and try to be successful. From the day you started school, you found yourself in competition with all the other students. The infamous bell curve bases education purely on competition. We don’t have to know everything, just a little bit more than most of the others in the class.

In the work world, your application competes against everyone else looking for the same job. On the job your performance review is based on how you compare to others before you or those who have similar responsibilities in the company.

Even in church, competition continues. Minister’s count heads as a measure of success. We compare our blessings with others (or our trials) fearful they say something about how well we are doing spiritually. We even use competition as one of the primary tools used to raise children to be good Christians. We put gold stars on attendance charts so kids who fill up their row can feel good about themselves, and those who don’t might feel guilty enough to come more often.

To show you how poorly wired I was in this area, I remember a Scripture memory contest my church held when I was in elementary school. Whoever could memorize the most verses in one quarter would win a new Bible. I didn’t even need the new Bible, I already had one. But I memorized 153 verses in 3 months. How good was that? Second place had done 37.

Obviously I won the contest, but looking back I think I lost something far more valuable the freedom not to measure my spiritual life against others. For most of my life since I have taken my spiritual temperature by comparing my life to others. As long as I studied more, prayed more, attended church more I could feel good about myself whether or not those things had actually led me to know Jesus better.

Am I saying competition is some great evil? Not in the world. Competition is one of the “elementary principles of this age,” that Paul writes about in Colossians. Without it our world would collapse into chaos, for it is one of the most powerful motivating forces for unredeemed humanity.

But in the kingdom? That’s a different story. Any need for competition has been swallowed up by Jesus’ death on the cross. He set us free from self-effort, so that we need only be motivated by his incredible love for us. Now we can just follow him, without any need to compare ourselves with any other person on the planet. In Christ we are free from the elementary principles of this age. We don’t have to follow them, but we so often do.

Can You Imagine?

We see it in Peter as he turns to John, and that is the lesson Jesus wanted to teach them all that morning.

That’s why he answered Peter’s question the way he did. He didn’t cave into Peter’s comparison even though he could have. If tradition is accurate then John was executed by being boiled alive in a vat of oil some 20 or 30 years after Peter was crucified upside down on a cross. So Jesus could have met Peter’s test of fairness. “Yeah! Him, too! And Philip and MatthewE” He could have worked his way around the circle, somehow proving God’s fairness by the death of them all.

But he didn’t. In fact, he took a surprising tack. He pointed to John. “Him? If I want him to remain again until I come, what is that to you? You follow me.” Jesus expanded the problem to encompass Peter’s worst fear. “What if he never dies, Peter. How does that affect you?”

And then he spoke those incredible words again, “Follow me.” When Peter is looking for fairness in the lives of others around him, where are his eyes focused? On them and himself. That perspective will get you nowhere in this kingdom. That’s why God has never answered my angriest accusations about his seeming unfairness. He does not want to encourage the very perspective that will keep my eyes focused in the wrong place.

We can only follow him if our eyes are on him. When we compare our lives to others our eyes are on ourselves and them. And that is as dangerous as trying to drive while gawking in the rear-view mirror at yourself and others in the back seat. That’s the point Jesus wanted to make here. “Get your eyes off of John, Peter. There’s no help there. Don’t focus on the suffering ahead, just follow me.”

How simple Jesus’ invitation is. All we have to do is follow him. We don’t have to understand the big picture and try to figure out what we are suppose to do. I suspect that’s why Jesus didn’t publish a discipleship manual with troubleshooting options for every difficulty or a list of frequently asked questions and their answers. He didn’t want us pursuing a religion. He wanted to build a friendship with us that would allow him to be our personal friend in every circumstance.

How practical that can be! Every day I have more options before my life than I can possibly meet. Should I teach at this church or go help that school district? Should I write that book, or meet with some broken people? Should I invest time today in Lifestream Ministries or Bridge-Builders? Should I only be focused on one of those? It can get overwhelming, until I realize that I don’t have to understand the big picture. I only need to focus my eyes on Jesus, see what he seems to be up to today and follow him. I know it sounds crazy, but whenever I do that I seem to have great clarity about what today holds, and doing that the future takes care of itself.

Compare No More!

But I find it very difficult to do that as long as my focus is on myself and others. And it doesn’t matter whether I’m battling an inferiority complex based on viewing my own failures and other people’s strengths, or from the superiority complex of accentuating God’s grace in my life and focusing on others’ flesh. The fact that I’m even trying to find wisdom in comparison is the problem. My perception of what seems to be happening to me, and what seems to be happening to others will lead me to the conclusion that God is unfair and break the trust that I have in him and his incredible goodness.

Is it fair that the gifted young evangelist, Stephen, was stoned to death during one of his first sermons, and the young man, Saul, holding the coats of those tossing the stones went on to make Jesus known throughout the Mediterranean world? When you put it that wayE Exactly. That’s how our limited human sight puts it, and by doing so we miss out on the marvelous purpose of God unfolding in our lives and people around us.

But, as this little encounter on the seashore attests, Jesus understands that. He watched his disciples compete over who would be first in the kingdom, who could be closest to him or who wouldn’t have to wash the others’ feet. He knows learning to follow him is the exact opposite of everything we have learned in this world. He knows our proclivity to compare and become confused. That’s why it took something so marvelous as the cross to defeat any need for us to compete with others.

The cross was God’s work for us when we were powerless to do anything for him. Nothing about us made us acceptable to him, except his awesome love for us. At the foot of the cross, we know that we cannot do anything to make God love us more nor less. Therefore any boasting we might portion out for ourselves is rendered ridiculous, as is any blame we render out to others.

At the cross battling over comparative significance is exposed as the farce it is. As much as the disciples seemed to squabble about that before the cross, they never did so after. The cross makes us all equal in the eyes of the Father. When you understand that you will never have a need to exalt yourself over others or tear them down focusing on their weaknesses.

At the cross Father’s love was so completely demonstrated, that no tragedy in our lives can erase the reality of his love for each one of us. Having loved us at the ultimate price, how absolutely silly it is for us to doubt that love just because things don’t work out the way we preferred.

And at the cross all the righteousness of the law has been met in us, so that we no longer have to live by rules, guidelines, expectations even principles. We are now free to serve in the newness of the Spirit where the only rule is, “Follow me!” And the one saying it is the one who has loved us more than anyone else in all the world.

What God Values

What do relationships look like that are no longer steeped in competition? It’s hard to imagine isn’t it? So many of our relationships even with other believers have been tainted by it. But the Word paints an incredible picture of believers who love, share, support, serve, give; without a need to gossip, envy or complain about what God is doing in others.

Those kind of relationships begin only in Father’s lap. I love how Paul expressed it: “For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth is joined.” (Eph. 3:14-15) When we really understand Father’s love, competition no longer has any power over us. We can finally value in each other, what God values in us.

Our world values people who conform, Father values people who are real. Sometimes we’re so busy acting right, that God doesn’t get to touch us where we really hurt. Jesus never chided anyone for being real. If we’re angry at God, don’t you think he’d rather have us be honest about it and work through it rather than hide behind meaningless words that do us no good? When we’re not competing with each other anymore to see who looks most spiritual, we can extend that same openness to others, standing by them in their struggles to let Father reveal himself.

Our world values those who boast in their good fortune; Father values those who can be confessional with their own weaknesses and struggles. A believing community is a confessing community. People are not posturing to be better than others, but letting Father’s glory shine through their brokenness and failures. When there is no competition there is no need to pretend that we are anything else than what we really are. In our conversations and our prayers we can freely look at our failures and mistakes, knowing that he is at work to change us.

Our world values tearing down others; Father values building others up. When I find people who exalt how right they are and gossip about others who disagree with them, I know they are still trapped in competition. The only way they can feel better about themselves is to point out the flesh in others. How tragic! They might be well served to revisit the cross and remember how none of us have earned anything by our acts of righteousness. When we understand that we can encourage others past the most painful obstacles into the fullness of life in Jesus.

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To Be Free of God??!!?!?

1 Comment / Living Loved, Living Loved Newsletter / /

By Wayne Jacobsen

BodyLife • September 1996

“The wish to be free of God is the deepest yearning of man. It is greater than his yearning for God.”

The sentence leapt off the page and nearly took my breath away. I was reading Helmut Thielicke’s, Between God and Satan, a provocative study of the temptations of Jesus. Thielicke was a German theologian who lived through the horrors of World War II as an active resistor of his own government. A depth of faith forged in the struggle of those years permeates everything he writes.

I was enjoying this book tremendously until I came to this statement. As one who teaches on intimacy with God often, I like to think it fulfills the deepest longing of the human heart. Who wouldn’t want to know the Creator personally; to sense the majesty of his presence; hear his tender voice and watch his power accomplish things we could never even imagine? What else could anyone really want?

Before I knew it I was arguing with Professor Thielicke, trying to reject his conclusion. But the more I thought about it the more sense it made. His conclusion does answer some compelling questions: Even though I do really want to know God better, why do I often make choices that lead me further from that reality? Why do I get into circumstances and so easily trust my common sense, than really wait to hear what God might have to say about it? In short, why is it so difficult to follow someone we desire to love so much?

I know there is a deep longing in my heart to know God, but could there also be a deeper yearning still?

The Quest for Control

There was for Adam and Eve. It wasn’t enough that God had given them each other, a garden to live in or even daily moments of fellowship with himself. They wanted something more. Something God said they shouldn’t take to themselves or they would die.

But they did anyway. No where do we read that Adam and Eve wanted to reject God. Quite the contrary they just wanted to be more like him, and this knowledge of good and evil just might be the trick. Here was a simple way to get it. All they had to do was eat the fruit before them. They wanted control of their destiny, freedom from God to earn their own way by their own hand!

And of course it was God that gave them the power to do so. He gave them the freedom of self-determination the gift of choice. He not only invited them to trust him, but he also provided the fruit of that tree as a means for them to gain knowledge apart from him. He warned them not to, but then watched as the enemy coaxed out of Eve her distrust of Father. “God just knows that when you eat of it you’ll be like him.” He’s holding out on you, Eve.

The choice was clear. Trust Father and spurn the devil’s temptation; or trust her own insight and strength to get what she could do for herself. Adam wasn’t long in following after her, and though they gained the knowledge they sought, that knowledge became their bondage. They had no power to choose the good over the evil. Their desire to take control of their lives was greater than their desire for God.

I’ve weathered that same struggle. Sometimes I’ll just start praying about a situation, when my mind is already scheming about phone calls I can make or a letter I could write to fix it. Too often it was only after I have tried those things and made things worse that I quiet myself enough to listen to God’s wisdom.

Don’t we hate being in any kind of situation where we are not in control. Fear and anxiety overwhelm us and we waste all kinds of effort scheming or manipulating others to put ourselves back in control. Haven’t we all learned how horrible it can be to be at the mercy of circumstance or other people? If you don’t control you’re own destiny people will take advantage of you, and use you for theirs.

The yearning in our hearts to be free of God springs from this fountain. It’s not that we reject God; it’s more that we want control of our own lives. We want that and God too, and there is the deception. We don’t realize that the affections are mutually exclusive.

The Insidious Reversal

When we seek control of our own lives, and at the same time attempt to foster a relationship with Father we put ourselves above him. We know what is best for us, and if God doesn’t satisfy our expectations we doubt his love for us, our love for him, or both. Every difficult circumstance, then becomes a cause for despair and disillusionment. We enlist his help to change the circumstances or what others are doing and are frustrated when he doesn’t honor our attempts. Or worse yet, we assume his favor when someone does give in to our manipulation, thinking we’ve won a great victory.

But notice what has happened in this whole process? By wanting God to be the vehicle for our agenda, we turn the Almighty God into our personal fairy godmother. We think he exists to turn our pumpkins into carriages, and our mice into white stallions. Of course we still want God, but not as God. We want him to fulfill our needs our way. We want his power to serve our comfort and convenience.

Jesus didn’t see it that way, which is why he seemed to say some really strange things by our standards. “Blessed are you when you are at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” That’s Eugene Peterson’s translation of Matthew 5:3. How many of us genuinely feel blessed when we are at the end of our rope? How many people do you find sharing how great their week was because they had lost control of key situations in their life?

No, our sense of being blessed is often derived from how ‘in control’ we feel. If we have enough money, friends, health and possessions we feel secure. When we don’t have those things we’re afraid and have to work even harder to maneuver our circumstances to a more secure place.

I’ve come to realize that I have spent most of my life working against Father’s plan for my life and I didn’t even know it. I was trying to help God (see how twisted that is!) get me to a place where everything in my life was wonderful and easy. In short, I wanted to be so secure in my circumstances that I wouldn’t need him every day. All the while he was trying to teach me that I needed him, and that there is no other place in the world more secure than that regardless of what the external circumstances look like.

Regrettably, we only seem to realize that when our attempts to control ourselves fail miserably. According to Jesus that’s the best place for us to be, so he is merciful to show us over and over again that our efforts will never be good enough. When we finally give in, no longer trusting our insights or our abilities we are in the best place to see God’s hand more clearly. Then we can give way to his rule, or purpose, in us. The secret to intimacy with Father is to give up on our ideas of what is best for us and surrender completely to the Father’s purpose even when we may not understand it.

I remember how risky all of that used to sound to me. Even the thought of surrendering completely to God conjured up fears of missionary service in a distant land or menial labor closer to home. Trust used to be so scary. Not anymore.

Life at the End of the Rope

Whenever I talk with other pastors who hunger to see the body of Christ as a dynamic people growing together in loving the Father and sharing his life together, one question almost always surfaces. “If all the body shares responsibility together, how do we justify our salaries?” Sometimes we laughed it off, too uncomfortable with the subject. In more secure times we engaged serious discussion about how great it would be for the body not to have the image of full-time Christians trying to be the body of Christ to everyone else. But we never did anything about it because we were afraid of losing control of our lives.

Instead we’d have to work harder and do more than others to justify our position and our pay. I felt pressure to teach or lead activities, so people would think we were earning our keep. It’s a vicious cycle. The more I did, the more people let me do. The more they let me do, the less opportunity there was for others to grow in their gifts, and the less of a body we became.

Almost two years ago now, it became clear that Sara and I were on a different track than others on the leadership team of the church I’d helped plant 15 years before. We tried everything we knew to do to fix the problem or make room for the differences, but every attempt failed. God clearly put it on Sara and my heart to let go and give everything up–ministry, friendships, reputation, and salary. It was the hardest and most painful thing we have ever done.

Never before had I truly been at the end of my rope. I’ve been a couple of inches down it before, but now I knew I’d never been close to the end. Everything I had controlled about my life through 20 years of vocational ministry was gone in a single day. We cried out to God to fix the circumstances, but he didn’t. Oh, he took care of us well enough. We never missed a meal, nor a house payment. He graciously used our lives to encourage others even as he brought others to encourage us.

The first six months were horrible. We might have put up a bold front at times, but the anxiety was great. Both books I had published were out of print. Few churches were inviting us to come and teach, and I was no longer sure I believed in the church system I had invested so much time in training others to embrace.

I’d lost control of my life and was miserable for it. You would never have convinced me before that I was in control of it. I couldn’t see it until I lost it. I tried a number of things to get it back and all of them either failed, or someone stopped me before I made things worse. Through it all Father kept dealing with my trust in him. “Stop trying to control your life, Wayne. That’s my job. All you have to do is trust me enough to let me.” I kept trying to explain to him that it would be easier to yield to him if I had more control.

I don’t know how. I’m not even sure exactly when, but somehow the words finally sank through my unbelief. The last year has been an absolute joy seeing God open doors, provide for us, and teach us how to live life outside of our own control and under the security of his. Looking back now through every painful moment, I am incredibly thankful for what God has taught us.

I have never known such freedom. No longer burdened by my attempts to earn my way, I can enjoy the grace of God. No longer having to manipulate people to fit into my plans, I can simply love them and free them to discover God’s will and live in it with joy. No longer finding security in a salary, I have only to obey him every day and rejoice as he provides. And no longer being in charge of a fellowship, I can be only what Father has made me to be in the body and not fit a cultural role that no man can honestly bear.

Losing Control, Gaining a Father

When Kevin Smith, a friend from Australia, was here this summer he said something that intrigued me. Because we don’t really trust Jesus to be the head of his church, we devise systems to keep it under man’s control on his behalf. Which means much of our structures for body life today are actually built on unbelief.

Sometimes I feel like such a fool that I had been in ministry so long without learning that Jesus rules to the extent that I let go. He said it clearly, “Whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” I thought I knew what that meant, but if I’d have listened carefully my anxieties would have proved me wrong. Fear is certain evidence that I’m moving out of my own wisdom and expectations, instead of moving out of my trust and security in the Father’s watchfulness over and care for my life.

As long as we’re trying to manipulate circumstances around us, we’ll find our spiritual life shriveling up. That’s as true of our job as it is our ministries and our children. That’s because we’re trying to be free of Father to pursue our own will and desires. That road always looks secure but leads to ruin. I am so thankful that he has provided a better way.

Even out of our own failures, our Father can work his purpose. That’s what he did for Adam and Eve. In fact he knew his first invitation to trust would be ignored. He knew it would cost him his Son before we would be able to understand how much we are loved and how safe it is to put all of our trust in him. He also knows how slow we are to learn that, and with great patience continues to invite us past our fears and anxieties, past the need to control every circumstance of our lives, and surrender to his work and purpose.

What are you afraid of today? Where does your life feel out of control? Right there, at the end of your rope, let go and fall into the lap of a loving and powerful Father. “I’m so sorry God for trying to fit everything in my image; so tired of finding my security in the fickleness of circumstance. Show me, Father, how I am manipulating others and teach me how to find all my joy and security in you and you alone.”

He knows everything about you. He knows every circumstance that assails you and he will use them all to teach you how to trust him, if you’ll let him. He will never take control of your life; that’s something you must give up to him every day, circumstance by circumstance. Give up trying to grab what you desire most. Do it and you’ll find that real security doesn’t come in the money we possess, the church we attend, or the circumstances we manipulate. Security is found in the Father alone.

Then build your life anew not on the fears of unbelief, demanding your expectations be fulfilled, but on the presence of a Father who is more awesome than you ever imagined. There you’ll find a peace and rest that no circumstance or person can disturb.

Finally, you’ll discover what it is to be free of the need to control your own life. You’ll find that Father really does know best and that he can work in you better than you ever asked or imagined.

Then and only then will your deepest desire be to know God more fully.

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Going to the Root

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Going to the Root

By Wayne Jacobsen

BodyLife • June 1996

Talk about intimacy with God for very long, and the conversation almost always turns to how that is lived out in church life. Most people seem to recognize that the means by which we often “do church” does not always help foster that relationship and often provides significant distractions to it.

Look at all the books written and all the seminars held in the last 30 years about church renewal, yet what has really changed? A variety of structures have been offered, each claiming to be God’s last, best answer. But even those lapse back into the same pattern of Sunday services with kids spirited away to their own peer group, up-front led worship, and a sermon that may entertain briefly, but can not be recalled two days later.

Add to that the confusion that comes when people in the church force their way on others, and it’s no wonder that most people really question what ‘church life’ should look like. During a recent trip to New England this topic came up continually. For all the time and energy we put into our church structures, wouldn’t you think they would be more effective at doing the most important thing helping us know Jesus better?

But not everyone finds them so. A couple of years ago, I would have claimed to have more answers than I would today. Now I have far more questions, but through the sometimes painful circumstances of our church involvement the past few years Sara and I have come to see how simply powerful the life of the church can be, without the need for extensive structure.

In the last year we have had significant contact with believers all over the world who have moved out of traditionally-structured churches to seek a more effective and authentic body life. Many meet in homes, building the life of the body around Jesus-centered relationships and daily discovering what it means to pursue God and care for each other. Their meetings are rarely slick and attractive. They are designed to equip and encourage through active participation, honest examination and simple love. They say they have stopped just going to church and are now learning to be the church.

I am not offering that here as the answer, convinced that no structure guarantees renewal. But I am finding increasing merit in their priorities that can even be a blessing to people who attend more traditional church structures. Those are best summarized in a book by Christian Smith called, Going to the Root (Herald Press: Scottsdale, PA). He offers nine proposals for radical church renewal. I want to share them with you for your own reflection and encouragement this summer:

1. Build Intentional Community

“Radical church renewal begins with a new vision of Christian relationships in the body of Christ. It affirms that the church should look, and feel, not like a club or interest group, but a loving, extended family What is necessary for people to live like this? People must truly know each other, share with each other who they really are.”

In short, discipleship and personal care in the body of Christ were never meant to come through a paid staff or cumbersome programs. Jesus gave his ministry to people who would live out their lives in close, personal friendships.

Let me give you a word of warning about this chapter, however. It seeks to build that community through accountability and commitment, two words that are not linked to body life at all in the New Testament and are often misused to exercise control over people. While I love his goal here, his methodology will only set us up for disappointed expectations. Love and freedom is how Jesus called us to embrace body life for it was in relationship not institution that Jesus vested his life.

That said, the author gives two key pieces of advice: “Christian community is an alien, alternative reality that must be purposefully pursued and cultivated” and “It is a living dynamic experience that is nurtured, not a prepackaged program that is instituted.”

2. Do Church Without Clergy

Don’t panic! I know a lot of hot-buttons just went off. The author doesn’t advocate throwing pastors overboard, simply makes the case that we do not need them in the way they’ve come to dominate church life today. “Going to the root helps us see that our clergy system is not demanded by the New Testament. It is often counterproductive. And it can obstruct healthy, biblical church life. Is it possible that one of the best things that could happen to the church would be for the clergy to resign and take secular jobs? The problem with the clergy is not the people, but the profession itself. The New Tes-tament is clear that ministry in the church is the work of the entire body of believers, not of a single minister or pastoral team.”

From both sides the fact of clergy in the body of Christ today produces two classes of people leaders and followers. This is unhealthy from two angles. On the one hand we expect pastors to be the body of Christ for every one, and who can stand up to that weight? On the other, it promotes passivity on the part of believers, waiting for the leaders to sort things out without going to the Head and following his desires.

The profession always seems to lead clergy to be more program managers than mentors, making decisions for people believing themselves to have a superior perspective, rather than linking people close enough to Jesus, that he can live out his will through them.

3. Decentralize Leadership and Decisions

“Never in the New Testa-ment is one believer, even a church leader, said to have spiritual authority over another…. (We don’t find) a model of leadership that is hierarchical, authoritarian or focused on filling offices. What we find is a very organic, bottom-up model of leadership…. (Spiritual authority) is given to leaders by believers around them because of the exemplary, trustworthy character of their lives.

The author goes on to say that whatever leadership emerges exists only to mentor others to hear and follow the the Lord. They should function in plurality without one leader dominating the others. But for decision-making, he encourages those believers affected by the decision to engage in a process of consensus-building. “When dominating leaders make decisions and call the flock to follow, the seeds of apathy and immaturity are sown.” Of course this works more realistically in groups less than 50 than it does in large impersonal groups. For that to happen we will have to learn how to handle growth by multiplying groups not expanding them until they can longer function relationally.

4. Open Up Worship Services

“Structurally, the worship services of many churches are preplanned, clergy-centered and performance- oriented (that often)undermine our best intentions In the most extended New Testament teaching on church gatherings ( I Cor 11-14), Paul repeatedly states that the overarching goal of meeting together is mutual edificationbuilding and strengthening the believing community.”

How can that happen if we don’t move away from our pre-planned meetings, and invite the honest, open participation of all God’s people who gather? This doesn’t lead to an efficient service, but it does allow the body to be the body.

Here the author encourages us away from up-front led worship, which puts the focus on a few and breeds passivity in the rest. Instead people can have the freedom to lead out in prayer, give thanks, read Scripture, encourage, and even ask questions from the teaching so that the body can be built up by its honest interaction in the presence of the Lord.

5. Get Over The Edifice Complex

“Perhaps the most obvious monument to the church’s im-mobility and inflexibility are its church buildings. Buildings are massive, stationary structures, imposing physical symbols of fixity and rigidity.” Here the author most clearly suggests the home church model, “The early Christians could have followed the familiar model of the Jewish temple or synagogue and created specifically Chris-tian buildings to meet and worship in. They did not. Appa-rently they believed their homes were the best context for gathering…. Homes are a place of family, which is what the early believers were to each other.”

Of course the edifice complex can be just as apparent in avoiding buildings, and it could be said that persecution may have contributed to the early church staying in homes. But we still have to ask what do we gain (or lose) by confining God’s work to a building that more often than not confines the life of the body, at great expense to build and maintain.

6. Cultivate a Spirituality of Daily Life

How do we relate to a living God in our everyday existence? Too often we only see that in terms of meeting legalistic, guilt-inducing ex-pectations in the do’s and don’ts of our behavior. This method never produces God’s transformation. Radical renewal invites us to cultivate a relationship with God, that fills every corner of our lives with his presence where we realize it’s not what we do for God that matters, but what we let him do in us.

7. Practice Lifestyle Evangelism

“The Bible makes it clear that the central and irreplaceable medium for communicating the gospel is the quality of believers’ lives together. The lives of people who genuinely love each other, for all their warts and false starts, will be a truer explanation of the good news than the most precisely pitched evangelistic message.” Amen.

8. Work for Social Justice

“Doing biblical justice, therefore, means taking positive actions that create and preserve flourishing human community in fidelity to God’s covenantwhich is to realize a just social order.” This chapter was not easy to understand, but it demonstrates that God’s heart is for justice, especially in alleviating the suffering of the oppressed and needy. How we accomplish that might differ greatly, but we can acknowledge that our service in places like that is close to God’s heart and the true nature of religion.

9. Do Grass-Roots Ecumenism

“Radical church renewal rejects the unnecessary divisions that separate and isolate Christians from each other. It calls believers to work for the unity of the Spirit. But to be meaningful and effective, this work must become the bottom-up, grass roots work of the people of God.” Don’t confine your relationships only to believers who make up whatever group you worship with. God’s work in our world is so much larger, and we can see that when we make an effort to seek relationships beyond our own group.

I doubt I’ve done these justice by trying to summarize in so short a space, but aren’t these fascinating? They have each challenged me to take a fresh look at what it means for me to be a part of the church.

Certainly I’m not encouraging everyone to leave their traditional church structures and jump into house churches. Many of these proposals are possible through home groups and other relationships that can be a part of more traditional structures. What this book did for me, and what I hope this overview does for you, is to help me find meaningful body life wherever God plants me.

If you have been lulled into passivity, expecting your church to spoon feed it to you, I hope this calls you back to action. I also hope it encourages you to find significant friendships with other believers, where you grow together through open and honest conversation, serve each other gladly, and challenge each other to walk in the fullness of his life.

But I also want it to encourage many who read this newsletter who are no longer part of those traditional structures. They are finding God’s life more effective in meaningful exchanges of relationships with other believers in their own homes. I don’t want them to labor under the guilt of an obligation to a Sunday morning format that Scripture never made compulsory. There are many ways for the body of Christ to gather and celebrate.

Let me close by paraphrasing a comment I read off the internet. It ties together so well with past issues of BodyLife:

“Beloved, if we preach ‘the church’ in all of its technical correctness, we will never find it, but if we embrace the power of the cross we will see the church spring up around us in all its glory. When the cross is in its rightful place in the lives of the believing community, the church as God has ordained it will organically flow from that.”

Then God himself can truly be more important than any church structure. In being free from the need to go to church to fulfill some kind of obligation, we can recover the simple joy of living as his church in the world.

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Why Settle for Anything Less?

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By Wayne Jacobsen

BodyLife • April 1996

The lone figure stood on the shore. They didn’t recognize his form or his voice as he inquired about their catch, “You don’t have any fish, do you?” The fisherman’s worst torment when coming up empty.

“Try the other side,” the voice recommended.

Only when they had cast their net on the other side and it came alive with a boiling sea of fish, did John put it all together. He’d seen it happen once before, on the day he and Peter had first met Jesus back on a dock in Galilee. “It is the Lord!”

Without hesitation, Peter stripped off his outer garment, plunged into the sea, and swam for shore. His friend was back and he couldn’t wait for the boat to bring him to shore. There he finds Jesus had already cooked breakfast for them bread and fish.

It appears that the conversation is somewhat stilted. I’m not sure the disciples ever got comfortable with the Risen Christ who appeared and disappeared when they least expected him. No one challenged him as they ate in silent awe. Any word seemed too awkward so the silence hung in the air with the scent of cooked fish. Only when they finished eating did Jesus turn to Peter.

“Simon, do you love me?” The betrayed turns face to face with his betrayer.

“Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Peter’s response is not flippant, it is measured. He doesn’t respond with the word for divine love, agape, that Jesus had used, but with a lesser word, phileo, the companionship of friends. Jesus then tells him to tend his lambs.

You know the exchange. Jesus asks again and again Peter answers the same way. Finally Jesus ends with Peter’s word, “Peter do you like me as a friend.” And now Peter grieved at the third question answers in agony, “Lord, you know all things. You know that I like you.”

Looking for Love

“Do you love me?”

What god of any religion that has existed on the earth cares about being loved? False gods never seek love, only power. They rule with terror, demanding unquestioned obedience and inexhaustible rituals. This theme runs through the idols of the Old Testament, the gods of Greek mythology and the tribal deities of
people around the world. Human-made gods don’t want love, they want subservience even if that means they plunder a man’s riches and require the sacrifice of his own child.

But since they are man’s own creation, they tell us far more about man’s sinfulness than they do the intentions of God. Our Father is a God of love. It was love that inspired him to create a world and people to fill it. It was love that beckoned him earthward, to live as man among us so we might know exactly who God is. It was love that invited these men from fishing boats and tax booths into an awesome friendship. It was love that devised a plan for our salvation for which he would be the sacrifice. And it was love that held him through the brutal agony of the cross until our redemption was won.

His love had prevailed through it all. Was this the final test of the cross, not just that God loved us, but that the sacrifice itself might produce love in our hearts for him? For this was what God wanted with us from the very beginning.

So he turns to the one remaining who had just failed him the most. Peter, so confident that night that his love would prevail, boasted that he would die for his friend. But Jesus knew better. He knew the fear in Peter would overwhelm his faith, that by the next dawn Peter would be devastated by his greatest failure.

But if the cross was going to be worth anything, it would have to demonstrate God’s love so completely, that it could usher a man from his worst failure into the fullness of the Father’s love.

Could that be what Jesus was looking for in Peter? This was no quiz to prolong Peter’s agony nor a three-point make-up test. It was an opportunity for Peter to discover the depth of love he really had for his friend, something he didn’t even know himself.

Is that why he hesitated to use the word agape? Did he feel so unworthy to use Jesus’ word because his failure might well have demonstrated otherwise? Maybe he wanted to use it, but hadn’t felt he’d earned it. Nevertheless the question kept coming. “Simon, do you love me?”

Jesus wanted him to know that his failure was not a measure of his love. Perhaps Peter didn’t understand it completely during this encounter. Perhaps this was just the seed, or maybe he couldn’t grasp it until the fullness of the Spirit captured his heart at Pentecost, but we know he eventually got it. Whenever he refers to the love of God in his own epistles, phileo is no longer on his lips. It is agape and agape alone. Peter came to know not only the depth of God’s love for him, but also his love for God.

Live the Love

Love is the very essence of God’s nature, and it is the means by which everything in his kingdom is transacted. He knew we were ill-equipped to understand that. Life in a fallen world is based around power, not love. We live by seeking to acquire the power or means necessary to guarantee our own survival, happiness or safety. Often when we speak of love, we primarily understand it only in terms of what we get out of it a good feeling, a friendship or some other need met.

God’s love is self-giving. It doesn’t seek its own glory or advancement, and in fact makes one only more vulnerable in a hostile world. But this love is the most powerful force in all the world, able to transform the most broken lives and able to hold us through unimaginable pain.

Jesus lived in that love every second of his life, and in doing so he sought to share it with his disciples. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.” (John 15:9) All he asked them to do was stay in the love he had given them. He warned them: do it, and everything about their lives would bear fruit. Wander away and they would whither up and die.

His call to love was not just for them, but for all who follow him. That is the only basis for life in this kingdom. How do we do that. Here are three ways that can happen in each of us everyday:

1. Embrace His Love Every Day

Do you remember the first day that you knew God loved you? Do you recall the euphoria, the wonder that the Almighty God who spoke worlds into existence even took note of you, much less genuinely cared about you and every event in your life?

If you are like most, that reality probably became clear to you in the midst of great pain or failure. But none of that mattered. His love captured your heart and everything about the world around you paled in comparison.

Every day was an adventure, and even through the most difficult circumstances you knew you were safe in his care and all your struggles were just a part of a larger plan of which you were now a part. God never intended you to leave that place. All he wanted you to do is remain there, or if you’ve left it, to return there. That’s why Scripture calls it first love. We weren’t meant to get on from there, but live in the joy of that love everyday.

Yet, isn’t the record of most of our lives littered with great periods of time where we have wandered away from that love, and sought other motives to carry our spiritual life? Devoid of his presence we are hounded by fear, guilt and the delusion that we can earn that love by just trying harder. So easily we find ourselves living with love-substitutes. We double our efforts to be responsible, committed or disciplined. But those don’t produce love, they were only meant to flow out of it.

In fact that’s also the history of the church. In Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning points out a disheartening trend:

History attests that religion and religious people tend to be narrow. Instead of expanding our capacity for
life, joy, and mystery, religion often contracts it. As systematic theology advance, the sense of wonder declines. The paradoxes, contradictions and ambiguities of life are codified, and God himself is cribbed, cabined, and confined within the pages of a leather-bound book. Instead of a love story the Bible is viewed as a detailed manual of directions.

If the Lord’s love seems distant for you, draw back to him. Find a quiet place and rekindle your affection. Don’t try to go on without it. God never intended you to live even one day outside the wonder of his love. And don’t make the mistake of trying to earn it either. You can’t earn points with someone who is no longer keeping score. Jesus already filled out your card with maximum points. You don’t have to earn what he has already freely given; you simply get to receive it.

2. Let Love Be Your Only Motive

“The love of Christ compels me,” Paul, the apostle wrote in 2 Corinthians 5. Here was a man that rose to the pinnacle of the religious institution of his day before he came face to face with the love of Jesus on that road to Damascus.

He knew what it was to fear the disapproval of men, to conform his life to the strictest of codes trying to measure up, and the control he could exercise over others as a leader.

But the cross changed all of that. He knew he deserved to die in his sin, yet Jesus had taken his place. Paul concluded that he died with Christ and that his life was no longer his own. He had nothing to fear, nothing to earn, nothing to control. His life had been swallowed up by Jesus’ love. There was nothing left for him to do but live every day only by what that love led him to do.

Everyday we are manipulated by host of motives, some of which even look godly. There are expectations people put on us, fears that drive us, appe-tites that lure us, and guilt that hounds us. But none of these are to control the life of the believer. All that matters now is love: his in us, and ours for him.

The next time you feel torn in any situation, retreat to this simple test: overwhelmed by gratefulness for what he’s done for me and secure in his acceptance and care for me, what do I feel called to do? Paul allowed himself no other motive, and neither should we. That’s the only motive that counts in this kingdom and the greatest gift of the cross.

Remain in my love. Without that kindled fresh in our hearts every day it is easy to find our spiritual lives sliding into an exhausting road of responsibilities and rituals. We will be busy doing a lot of things for God, but absolutely devoid of his life and his joy. Weariness will overtake us and our spiritual life will dry up.

3. Let His Love Flow Through You

With every exchange Jesus admonished Peter to take care of his sheep. The love of God flowing in us will die if it can’t flow through us. Having been so generously embraced by the Father, we will find it spilling over to others.

This love is the most powerful demonstration of God in the world. Jesus even took the Old Testament admonition, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” to a whole new level: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Having been loved, now we can love, both our brothers and sisters in Christ and those around us who are lost in the darkness.

I am convinced that we understand little of this incredible love. Yes, it forgives wrongs suffered, but not without honoring truth. Jesus could in one moment confront the false spirituality of the Pharisees at the same time he invited the prostitute into his kingdom.

So much that travels as love in the body of Christ today is simply trying to be nice even at the expense of dishonesty. We’ll smile and feign love in someone’s presence and take the freedom to tear them down in a conversation with someone else. God’s love doesn’t live in denial. It can take situations as they really are and transform them by his glory.

This is the love God invites us to live in and with which we so easily lose touch. I realize that those who misunderstand love only as feeling will agree with much of what I’ve said, yet dismiss the conclusion as too idealistic. We need commitment and tradition, they’ll say, because we won’t always feel his love.

What has feelings do with love? His love for us and ours for him must transcend feelings and touch us at a far deeper level than the capriciousness of our emotions. But it is nonetheless real, all-encompassing and what ignites our hearts with his life.

Wouldn’t it be better to rekindle the love, instead of pushing ourselves to greater responsibility? What effort of our own has ever led us into a greater touch with the Father’s love?

We need only fall at his feet and receive what he has already given. In moments like that we can be captured by his love all over again. When that happens, we are truly full and truly free. He asked us to settle for nothing less. So whenever you lose touch with it, don’t take another step until you fall back into his arms again, and again, and again.

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To Trust or Not to Trust

1 Comment / Living Loved, Living Loved Newsletter /

To Trust or Not to Trust

by Wayne Jacobsen

BodyLife • February 1996

Sara and I had spent almost a week among them. Invited to teach, we were also learning as we watched the simplicity of fellowship, worship and growth that this group of believers shared together. Finally, late one evening while sitting by the fire with some of their key people we got to ask our questions about the life they shared together.

“How do you teach believers to trust each other?” Sara asked.

By the facial reactions around the room, you’d have thought Sara might as well have asked them if they sacrificed animals. They glanced at one another, and shook their heads as if to say, “You really don’t get it, do you?” I was taken back. We had witnessed their honesty, their openness, their service to each other. Surely they worked on trust.

One finally spoke, “Where does the Word teach us to put our trust in men?”

I started probing the deep recesses of my mind whirling through every Scripture I could recall. I couldn’t come up with any Scripture to answer the question.

How could this be? Much of what I taught about the power of Christian community was to help people see how much they need each other, and assist them in building the kind of trusting relationships that would allow them to share God’s life together. But I knew, and most of those I’ve taught also knew that this trust always breaks down. We are imperfect people after all, who will make mistakes, fail each other especially at critical moments which is why churches often leave a wake of broken people.

But isn’t community based on trust? I’ve probed that question often since our encounter almost 8 months ago. Our last issue of BodyLife dealt with the trust we can have in the Father through the faith Jesus demonstrated on the cross. Now let’s take a look at the implications of the cross in our relationships with other believers.

Why Didn’t Jesus Do it?

It’s probably the most difficult question I’ve ever been asked whenever I’ve taught on community. “Why do we have to trust others if Jesus didn’t?” I’ve been asked that twice both of them referring to the same Scripture:

But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man. (John 2:24-25)

On both occasions I mumbled something about Jesus’ superior wisdom and that no one was able to understand his death on the cross until after it was over anyway.

But even at the time the question bugged me. If Jesus didn’t trust men because he knew what was in them, why would he ask us to? But the only models I knew for body life were those where people were trying to trust each other.

I didn’t stop at the time to realize it was also the common denominator in those who had been deeply hurt by past church experiences. They had trusted others only to see them turn on them whenever their struggles, needs or gifts didn’t fit the prevailing agenda.

So as believers, are we or are we not to trust each another?

Turning to the Word

Three words continue to crop up in most teaching regarding the importance of church life: commitment, accountability and trust. These are used to describe the kind of life that brothers and sisters ought to share together. I’ve used them often to help people see the great value that body life can be to them.

‘Commitment’ is not used at all in the New Testament, though its root, ‘commit’ is. Interestingly enough it is overwhelmingly used to talk about committing sin, as in committing adultery. Only in the Old Testament can we find references about committing our ways to the Lord. Two references in the New Testament describe committing people to the grace of God. All of these, however, are clearly directed at the Father and his work, nothing spoke of being committed to each other or to the church.

Likewise our ‘accountability’ in Scripture is only directed at God. We are not accountable to the local church, to its leaders, or even to other brothers and sisters. Paul specifically exempted himself from such thinking: “To me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you; in fact, I don’t even examine myself. The one who examines me is the Lord.” (I Cor. 4:4-5)

Though there are extensive references to trusting and believing throughout the Word, I couldn’t find one where we are encouraged to let another believer be the object of our trust. We are told to love each other, pray for each other, bear each other’s burdens, forgive each other, serve each other, stimulate each other to love and good deeds, be kind to one another and many other such things, but we are never told to trust one another. All references to trust and belief are firmly and exclusively directed to God. If he is the one in which all of our trust is invested, what do we have left over to give to another believer?

Interesting isn’t it? Words we consider critical building blocks to body life are not even part of the
foundation that Jesus laid for the church. In fact, these are the concepts that the church has historically used to bind people to its programs and agendas, as in, “Don’t you trust the leadership here?” “If you’re going to grow you need to be committed to what God is doing among us.” “You’ve got to be plugged in somewhere so you can be accountable.”

Jesus only gave us two directives: Love God and love each other. Doing that, we will fulfill all his ambitions for our lives.

Institutional Words

So why are these words so commonly used in the church today? Commitment, accountability and trust are all words that deal with institutions, and are necessary for the survival of any institution. It is what allows people to find identity and cooperation.

Regretfully many people don’t have an accurate distinction in their minds about the church as God sees it and the institutions that have sprung up around it. We think of them as the same thing.

God sees one church that encompasses every believer in every corner of the world. He sees that not in its institutional failures, or the weaknesses of its leaders or adherents, but as the bride he is preparing for his Son. He views the church with great affection, desire and adoration. Gene Edwards, author of Tale of Three Kings, has taken to calling the church, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” I love that description and understanding it from that perspective will keep us from growing cynical and sarcastic about that which God loves so much.

But that is not the same thing as the organizations, buildings and meetings we call ‘church’ today. Wherever believers gather and seek to work together an institution springs up around it. That’s what allows the group to organize, collect and spend money and make decisions. Leaders are almost always selected who provide certain ‘services’ for the members. That’s been true for 1900 years and will probably be true up to his coming.

Men need institutions to function. Those institutions can be good, releasing the Lord’s life and power among a group of people, or they can become self-serving seeking to use the institution as the extension of their own power needs or the means to their own comfort.

If church history teaches us anything it does demonstrate that while the institution that surrounds the church has often been helpful in preserving history, serving needs, testing orthodoxy and preaching the gospel, it also too often lets the institution overrun the life of God within it. You can always see that when a church battles over ‘what’s right’ in nonessential matters instead of focusing on being right with each other in love and forgiveness.

Church renewal is often only letting believers re-discover what they had in the beginning, before the institution organized it to death. As such, the church often becomes a substitute in people’s lives for a dynamic relationship with the Father. It happens so subtly that few are aware of it. We get so busy maintaining the program and meeting needs that we adjust to the waning life of the Spirit by increasing the institution. When it does we emphasize commitment and accountability.

The Father’s Community

Our attempts to make other believers, or worse yet a church institution, the object of our trust, our commitment or our accountability is to place it in the role that has been reserved for the Father alone. That sounds dangerous, doesn’t it? God has invited us to something so much better.

From the dawn of creation to Jesus’ death on the cross, the Father’s plan has always been to invite us into the fullness of relationship that he shares with himself. Since before time The Father, Son and Spirit have shared absolute joy, love, life, glory, power and wisdom without any thought of one being exalted over the other. God is a community and wherever he manifests his presence he builds community.

That’s the hunger that stirs in people’s hearts who desire to know the Father. It isn’t necessarily for all the trappings of church life today, but to know the community of the Trinity, and be able to share that journey with fellow travelers who are learning to follow the Lord.

That’s the connection Jesus was making with his disciples in the upper room in John 14-17. He wanted them to transfer the friendship he had with them to the Father and the Spirit, and with himself on the other side of the resurrection. “that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may also be in us.” (John 17:21)

In exactly the same way the Father and Son shared life and love, he wanted to share with them as well. We get to experience their life, love, sharing joy and wisdom. Jesus identified that community as the basis by which believers would find their unity and their ability to demonstrate his glory to the world. It doesn’t thrive on our trust in each other, but our faith in the Father. The former will leave us hurt and bitter when we fail. The latter will allow us to know God in ever-increasing fullness, and touching that it will be impossible for us to contain his life and love.

Body Life, Father Style

Almost without trying the Father’s love in us will spill out causing us to ‘one another’ believers with love, prayer, forgiveness, insight, money, help and anything else others might need that we have.

Only out of that fullness and our trust in God to fill our own needs will we be able to share without any expectation for others to reciprocate, or any desire to manipulate their response. This is the essence of fellowship believers freely loving each other, assisting however we can, but without any compulsion to get others to do it our way.

We’ll visit this topic again in a future issue, because it is so critical. Notice I’ve not given any institutional fixes here. What I want you to consider is not the structure you attend, but your relationships with other believers. Are you trying to trust them or do they demand your trust? If so, you will get hurt, because we will fail each other out of our own flesh, and even at times when we don’t understand other people’s obedience to the Father.

If you have been hurt like this, let the Father bring healing to your life. Your hurt, only testifies to your misplaced trust and holding onto it will hold you back from finding a freedom to experience the life of God and share it with others.

So what do our relationships with others look like? A man in Australia expressed it best: “It looks like this, Wayne, “in my relationship with you I don’t want you to trust me more, I want to help you trust the Father like you never have before. If you’re doing the same thing with me then we’re sharing fellowship. If I am and you’re not, then I get to minister to you, which is a joy. But I’m not being cheated because I’m trusting the Father for everything I need.”

Doesn’t that make sense, and isn’t it liberating?

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