"To Him be glory forever": purpose

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Hope is a Person

I haven’t written for my blog for a few weeks. We have been extraordinarily busy and while I have had a few ideas of things to write about they haven’t risen high enough in priority for me to actually think them through and post them.

We are moving. I have been called to serve as the pastor of the Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church in Dulce, New Mexico. Today, Sunday, has been our fourth day on the road. We are in southern Colorado and will arrive in Dulce, our new hometown, sometime tomorrow morning.

In one way of thinking our days of travel have been a bit of a respite. The past few weeks were busy with packing, and tomorrow the unloading and unpacking will begin. Everything we own is on a truck and inside a 26 foot-long box, packed completely full, with a little bit more stuffed in the cab of the truck and our car. Tomorrow we start the process of unloading and “getting settled.” After 16 months in “temporary” housing we are excited both about having our own place, and also to begin living among the people of Dulce.

Today we drove through Denver and I was listening to the radio. I found a station that was playing music by Chris Tomlin so I settled on it and listened for a while.

After a number of songs there was a segment of a man speaking, something that caught my attention, to say the least. Unfortunately, I didn't find his message very compelling. It sounded okay at the beginning, but as it developed a critical piece was missing.

The man’s starting point was suffering, and he asserted that everyone is either going through a time of suffering, has recently gotten through some suffering, or will soon be entering into a time of suffering. I didn't quite agree, but every message has to have a starting point and that is where he chose to start.

The he started to talk about suffering having a purpose, and that everyone has a purpose. How do you know you have a purpose? According to this man you know you have a purpose because you are breathing. As simple as that. You are breathing, and therefore alive, so you have not yet achieved your purpose.

That is where this whole line of reasoning got me thinking. He was teaching that if we are alive we have a purpose, a purpose that hasn't yet been reached, and that we will continue to live until we achieve that purpose, whatever it may be. The unsaid assumption was that life ends upon achieving the purpose. Maybe it is sort of like the Greek runner Pheidippides, the legendary inspiration for the marathon, who ran a great distance to carry news of victory by the Greek army, and then died after achieving his purpose, or at least his purpose for the moment.

I was listening to this message on a Christian radio station and I think that the teacher was attempting to provide encouragement to his listeners, particularly as they consider the times in their lives when they suffer and wonder if there is any reason, any purpose, for the suffering. Christians do need comfort in time of suffering, and they can have a perspective on their suffering that has much to teach to non-Christians. But I was more taken with the notion of “purpose.”

What was missing from this whole discussion of purpose was any mention of a person, or rather the Person, the person we know as Christ Jesus.

Good times and bad, it is He who gives purpose to our lives. The work He accomplished on the cross, for our salvation, is what makes us whole before God. Everything else, absolutely everything else, flows from that singular action.

Our purpose is not some unknown event out on the horizon of our life, but rather is something that we as Christians are called to do right now, to live each moment of our lives to the glory of God. May you live into the purpose that the Person of Christ Jesus makes possible.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Chosen

Last week I was on a short trip to Holland, Michigan, where last year I graduated from seminary. I was at a program for people who have graduated within the past five years, as they make the transition from seminary and into…well there has been a great variety of vocational destinations among the graduates who came back. Many would have been expected but there were a few surprises.

One of the talks I was privileged to hear was titled “The Biblical Vision of Leading the Church.” As part of his talk, Kyle Small introduced us to what was for me a new way to read, and more importantly, to listen, to Scripture. I’m not going to describe the method, at least not here right now. I haven’t taken the opportunity to go back and review my notes or the information we were provided with. What I do want to discuss is what I heard in particular at that time, as the text spoke to me. Or perhaps more accurately, as God spoke to me through the text

As a group we heard and read John 15:1-17. This was, for me, familiar territory. We recently explored it at my Bible study and it contains many phrases and thoughts that I believe are fairly widely known among Christians. Themes of “abiding,” “bearing fruit” and “laying down one’s life” are just several of the treasures of this passage.

As I read and pondered this section of Scripture, my eyes, and my heart, lingered on the first half of verse 16, where Jesus says,

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide,…”

I suppose that the first part, where Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you” could be held up as a proof-text for the Biblical foundation of the doctrine of election. It could be used to “prove” that God is in the business of choosing those who follow him, perhaps even against their will. And maybe sometimes it has been heard and used that way, but it wasn’t to me that morning.

I heard something much more personal. I heard that I, Brad, did not choose God, but that God chose me. Personally.

The God of all time and space, the God who transcends all time and space, the God who spoke creation into existence, the God who gave his own Son for my sin, chose me.

He didn’t have to choose me, because he’s God and can do whatever he wants to. He didn’t have to choose me so he must have wanted to choose me. But for what purpose?

The easy answer, the one that is almost a reflex, is described in John 3:16,

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

So maybe God chose me so that I could hang out in heaven with God, eternally. And I believe that the easy answer is certainly true, but John 15:16 points to something richer. I have not just been chosen by God for salvation to eternal life, but as a result of his choosing I am also “appointed” for the task of “bearing fruit.”

Now this is starting to sound to me a bit like it may be John’s version of the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20. And while I know those verses from Matthew well, the way that John has described the task of sharing the Good News feels a bit richer as I contemplate the phrase “that your fruit should abide.”

God has chosen me, and given me, the task of “bearing fruit,” fruit that will “abide” in him. He doesn’t tell me who and he doesn’t tell me how. He appears to leave those details up to me.

And maybe that is why lately, over the past two weeks or so, I have found myself thinking more about some particular people that I know and what the eternal state of their souls may be. I have never heard them say what they think or believe about Jesus and God’s Good News, but the evidence of their lives that I do know of suggests that knowing and loving God are not things they value highly.

So maybe one of the things that God has chosen and appointed me to do is to pray for these people and to prepare for a moment when I may share in some way with them what I believe about Jesus, so that they, like I, may abide in him, now and forever.

These are some of my thoughts on how “being chosen” looks at this time in my life. To what task has God chosen and appointed you for?