How To Be Miserable

If you're looking for the recipe for wretched unhappyness...this will get you there. Author unknown.

How To Be Miserable

- Think about yourself
- Talk about yourself
- Use “I” as often as possible
- Mirror yourself continually in the opinion of others
- Expect to be appreciated
- Be suspicious
- Be jealous & envious
- Be sensitive to slights
- Never forgive criticism
- Demand on agreement with your views on everything
- Never forget a service you have rendered
- Do as little as possible for others
- Trust nobody but yourself

Off to get some sun!

For travel to be delightful, one must have a good place to leave and return to.
-- Frederick B. Wilcox

Man, that is so true for me right now! We’re heading south shortly for a week long vacation with our kids and grandkids! Often times, a vacation is literally no more than running away from an unpleasant work environment. Things are so crazy exciting here at Grace church were I serve that I’m actually a little frustrated by what I’ll miss. I thank God for that because being part of something so vital and alive is a gift. That said, I’m also deeply grateful to have this next week to spend exclusively with my treasures. My family is the best thing that has ever happened to me outside of running into the King!

Essential Jesus Study Material

I pray the series Pastor Derek presented over this past month has challenged you to examine the person of Jesus Christ. I have the honor of presenting one last essential fact about the Christ this weekend. It pertains to His often missing or misunderstood identity. At the bottom of this post you will find solid web info that gives a great deal of material to review and consider about the identity of Jesus Christ. If you have had little exposure to His story, the following will give you a some background.

Jesus Christ (also called Christ the king) was born in Israel 2000 years ago. Modern civilization marks his birth by dividing time B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini - or the year of our Lord Jesus Christ). For his first thirty years, Jesus Christ lived a traditional Jewish life, working as a carpenter. During this time, all of Israel was under Caesar's Roman dictatorship, including Bethlehem, where Jesus Christ was born, and Nazareth, where he was raised. In his thirties, Jesus Christ began his public teaching and display of recorded miracles, yet still never travelled more than 200 miles from his birthplace. Over a three year period, despite his efforts to keep a low profile, Jesus Christ's reputation spread nation wide. The Roman governors and rulers of Israel's provinces and the leaders of the Jewish people (the religious counsels) took note of him.

Jesus Christ's most controversial act was that he repeatedly claimed to be God, which was a direct violation of the Jewish law. Therefore the religious leaders asked the Roman government to execute him. In each of several official trials, the Romans found that he was not guilty of breaking any Roman law. Even the Jewish leaders recognized that other than Jesus Christ's claim to be God, Jesus Christ followed the Jewish law perfectly. Still the religious leaders, using the argument of political disfavor, persuaded Pilate, a Roman governor of the Southern province of Israel, to authorize an execution. Jesus Christ was brutally tortured and then hung by his hands, which were nailed to a horizontal wooden beam (cross). He lived for three hours, then expired. However, according to more than 500 witnesses, Jesus Christ returned from the dead three days later, and over the next 40 days journeyed in both the southern and northern provinces of Israel. To many, this was conclusive proof that Jesus Christ's claims to be God were real. Then Jesus Christ returned to Jerusalem, the city where he was recently executed, and according to witnesses, he left the earth alive by rising up into the sky.

As a result of these miraculous events, the number of his followers increased dramatically. Only a few months later in that same city of Jerusalem one record states that some 3000 new followers were added in a single day. The religious leaders responded by trying to stomp out Jesus Christ's followers. Many of these people chose to die rather than deny their belief that their Lord Jesus Christ was truly God.

Within 100 years, people throughout the Roman empire (Asia Minor, Europe) became followers of Jesus Christ. In 325 AD, the following of Jesus Christ, Christianity, became the official religion of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Within 500 years, even Greece's temples of Greek gods were transformed into churches for followers of Jesus Christ. Today, followers of Jesus Christ number in the multiple millions and can be found in every people group in the world.

• Historical evidence of Jesus' life and mission.
• His life, mission and resurrection from the dead as presented in the Bible

whoisgrace?

When we launched our new facility, a team of people crafted a promotional campaign called whoisgrace to stimulate discussion around our region. The centerpiece was the website whoisgrace.com, a web portal that would afford people an opportunity to hear the story of a church on a journey.

One honest question that arose during that time was framed like this. “Isn’t it a bit arrogant and poorly focused to point people to our story and not His? Isn’t our responsibility to direct people to Christ and not ourselves?” A suggestion to rename the website whoisjesus seemed more God honoring to a few. Although I completely understood the rational behind the question, I didn’t agree. I referenced a situation in Jesus’ ministry when Philip asked this question. “Lord show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus responded: “Don’t you know me. Philip, even after such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? Jesus was claiming complete equality and unity with His Father. As Christ followers, we obviously will never be equal to our Lord but it is our joy and mandate to live so fiercely for Him that when people examine our lives…they see Christ! This is the heart behind Jesus’ statement in John 14:20 regarding the coming Holy Spirit. “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you!”

The whoisgrace story continues as we are preparing to launch yet another new venture called ServErie. ServErie is our heart in action as we live out Christ to the needy and challenged in our community. May our world see Christ in you and in me!

room with a view.

Friday mornings are pretty robust here on the Grace campus. Every week, a crowd of young mothers gather to celebrate and collaborate on their roles of being somebody’s mom. It’s always a pleasure to speak to that group because I firmly believe they hold one of the most important jobs on earth.

This morning, there was an oddly unique collision of mother’s right outside my office window. Our Pastor Derek has been on a tough journey with a long time friend of his. A young guy named Brian has been in a fierce battle with cancer and Derek has been at his side for months. Brian passed away just a few days ago and we held his funeral here today.

The hearse arrived early to prepare for the scheduled viewing that would be held prior to the funeral service. As the lifeless body remained in the hearse, dozens of young mom’s began arriving for their meeting in another part of the building. Carefree young women pushing strollers passed by the hearse engaged in light hearted conversations based on their common bond of motherhood.

In the crowd I noticed Brian’s mom arriving for a completely different reason, to say good-bye to her boy. Like I said, it was a collision of emotions. During the service, Brian’s mom bravely spoke of her love for her son, how deeply she would miss him and challenged all of us to love our kids as if every second could be the last time we had opportunity to embrace them. I have every intention of responding to that challenge.

Native Christian perspective

This morning I was reminded of a very significant Small Group meeting I participated in a few years ago. The memory came as I was comparing the way believers experience church today vs life in the book of Acts. Here's the setting. There was an empty chair in our circle and I announced that a very special guest would be visiting the group. Imagine if by some incredible circumstance, a whole hearted believer was whisked away from 70 A.D. and spared the drama of seeing how incredibly different things on earth have changed in the past 2000 years and then plopped right down into that empty chair. For the next few hours, our group visualized that discussion as we compared experiences with our guest. The question that received the most feedback was “how different are we in the way we live out our faith?”

Here are some of the supposed answers:

• Shocked that lion’s share of our interaction with each other is regulated to a one hour a week corporate gathering.
  
• That we have complete across the board access to the letters and books of the early church fathers and are not stunned by our good fortune.


• That we have such deeply protected private lives.
  
• The miraculous is more a mystery than a reality.
  
• Noticed a desensitized relationship with the Holy Spirit
  
• Very surprised that no one in the group knew a single person who had died because of his/her beliefs.
  
• The Christ was no longer the most talked about person in the land.
  
• People didn’t seem very confident in exactly who they were supposed to be in Christ.

parables...

I read stories to my grand daughter. She loves them and would sit and listen all night if she could. We read crazy stories about a vampire mathematician with purple skin, singing rabbits and dancing foxes and her favorite, a little Latino girl who explores the world. These stories all have some kind of message embedded in them to teach her simple truths and facts about life as a two year old. She has the best questions and the wildest assumptions when I quiz her after a story.

Maybe this is why I love the parables so much. Jesus would sit with His beloved people gathered around Him and spin simple tales with embedded truth so they could absorb at least some aspect of His love for them.

Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.

MT 13:34-35

thank you annie!

My wife and I recently started a new venture. We get up in the morning and leave the house while it’s still pitch dark and walk together. Our normally busy neighborhood is completely still; the only sound is our footsteps and the steady crisp wind ringing in our ears. Thus far, I have loved the experience. It’s a unique time for us to talk or just be quiet and listen to the silence. Today we prayed for each of our kids and grandkids and I was deeply moved by Annie’s prayer. There’s nothing like the prayer of a mom for her children. That moment reminded me for the millionth time why I’m still so in love with this woman. The sun was just showing up as we concluded. What a great morning!