The Next Christians
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
June 9/10, 2013
Acts 13:36
Luke 5:37-39 

Peace Friends!

Last week on graduation Sunday we heard from the next generation of Christians, two of our graduates.  It was awesome to hear how they’re living out their faith in the midst of struggles and a culture that strips away motivation.  Their message kicked off our series, The Next Christians.

This series is inspired by the book, The Next Christians, by Gabe Lyons.  The subtitle of the book is “Following Jesus in a Post-Christian Culture.”  Post-Christian Culture?  What is that?  Basically, we live in a culture that we can no longer assume holds Christian values.  We are missionaries in a foreign culture.

Sometimes this post-Christian culture is passive.  Recently I was sitting in Fleetwood Diner when someone who was doing some work on the building was talking to some of the customers.  This man working on the building was obviously a Christian.  He was talking about how he didn’t work on Sundays because that’s how he was raised.  And he made sure to go to church.  He spoke as though everyone had those same values.  But the customers who he was talking to (or at?) just sat there with blank stares.  We live in a post-Christian culture.

Or take for example the time that our new bishop came to our Church in a Diner.  I thought the waitress waiting on her might like to know that she was waiting on a bishop.  I thought she’d also be impressed that we have a female bishop.  So I went up to her and said, “I don’t know if you know this or not, but a bishop is sitting at one of your tables.”  She said back to me, “What’s a bishop?”  We live in a post-Christian culture.  Sometimes it’s passive post-Christian, but sometimes…

We live in an actively anti-post-Christian culture.  Do you ever feel embarrassed to call yourself a Christian?  This probably comes up when you find yourself in an actively anti-post-Christian culture.  Take for example the time I was with a friend who had just gotten a job as a professor at a state school down South.  He was showing me around his department and introduced me to a colleague of his.  This other professor asked what I did, and I said I was studying to be a United Methodist Pastor.  He replied, “That’s what the world needs, more Methodist preachers.”  We live in a post-Christian culture.

Or take the spate of books that have come out recently by the new atheists:  The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins or God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.  We live in an actively anti-post-Christian culture.

If you’re a guest here today and you’re looking in on this whole Christian thing but haven’t yet claimed Christ, then you probably know what I’m talking about.  You live in this post-Christian culture every day.  If you are an “insider” and you spend most of your time around Christians, you may not fully understand.  It’s hard to wrap your mind around how people see you and your tribe if you don’t spend time outside that tribe.

If you’d like to get a better sense of all this, check out this video of Gabe Lyons, especially the first two minutes where he summarizes how we live in a post-Christian culture.

And yet, in his book, The Next Christians, Lyons says:

Today, I sense something different is happening. I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in a new way. He’s moving through people where they work and through one-on-one relationships to accomplish great things. They are demonstrating God’s love to those around them, not just with words, but in deed.

When I read Gabe Lyons I’m reminded of two passages from scripture.  First, we read in the book of Acts, which tells the story of the early church, that King David…served the purpose of God in his own generation (Acts 13:36).  David had a purpose for his generation.  The next king would have a different purpose, and the next king a different purpose, and so on.  Each generation has unique strengths and weaknesses, unique talents and wounds, unique gifts and brokenness.

Reaching out to each new generation, each new culture requires new approaches.  Jesus gets at this when he says:

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.  And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, “The old is good.”
Luke 5:37-39

I was introduced to Gabe Lyons’ book by a member of our church, Kathie Brooks.  Kathie told me she was reading the book to help her understand her new pastor.  Kathie is a retired professor of immunology at MSU.  She’s about twice my age.  She didn’t quite understand the way that this next generation pastor was leading.  So she did what she likes to do to help her understand: she read a book about it.

Separatist Christians
Lyons outlines three different responses that Christians tend to have toward living in a post-Christian culture.  The first of those is what he calls “Separatist Christians.”  They might find a verse like Romans 12:2 (NRSV) to be particularly compelling:

Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Don’t be conformed to this post-Christian culture.  That’s the mantra of the separatists.  He describes three different kinds of separatists:

1. Insiders – Their “lives revolve primarily around ‘Christian’ activities and functions involving other believers.”
2. Culture Warriors – They are “agitated to stand up for their moral convictions.”
3. Evangelizers – They’re “intent solely on getting people saved.”

We all probably know someone, if not several people, who fall in each of these three categories.  They want to separate from the post-Christian culture that they live in, in some way or another.  Their methods may be slightly different, but their sense that we should not be conformed to this world is shared.

Cultural Christians
Lyons then describes what he calls “cultural Christians.”  Cultural Christians might be inspired by a verse like this one from Mark: At once Jesus’ fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee (Mark 1:28 NRSV).  Jesus’ acts and behavior made him famous.  Jesus was liked by the culture around him.  Lyons describes two different kinds of cultural Christians:

1. Blenders – They “attempt to blend with the mainstream.”
2. Philanthropists – They have “an emphasis on doing good works.”

You probably know Christians who are like both of these cultural Christians.  The blenders don’t want to look strange at all.  The philanthropists just want to do as much good as possible.  They share a sense that the culture isn’t fundamentally flawed but is worth embracing.

Restorer Christians
Lyons finishes by describing what he thinks are the “Next Christians: restorers.”  Restorers might be inspired by the book of Jeremiah, the prophet.  Jeremiah is speaking to the Jews who have been carted of into exile in Babylon.  They are in a post-Jewish culture.  They find themselves surrounded by the culture of Babylon.  So what should they do about it?  Jeremiah gives them an answer: Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29:7 NRSV).  When restorers find themselves in a post-Christian culture, they seek to restore the culture.

Lyons outlines seven characteristics of the Next Christians.  They are:

1.      Provoked, not offended

Restorers “don’t run from areas that might typically offend a Separatist Christian—they run to them.  They seek out brokenness and offer hope.”  In our church, I think we play this out by combining small groups and missions.  We ask each small group in our church to make a commitment to serve in some way in our community.  We regularly serve at Open Door, Maplewood Women’s Center, Compassion Closet, Holt Senior Care, Nicaragua, and more.  That’s because you’re being led by a pastor who isn’t offended by the brokenness of our culture, but is provoked to seek out that brokenness and offer hope.

2.      Creators, not critics

Restorers “create something new that has a striking resemblance to the past.”  Here in our church we talk about being Curious, CREATIVE, and Compassionate.  When we say creative we mean that we imagine a new future, experiment, and make it happen.  Take for example our Church in a Diner.  This is a response to living in a post-Christian culture.  In our culture, Sunday isn’t reserved for church anymore.  So are we going to complain about it or adapt to it?  We chose adapting to it.  We’re really just tapping into something in our Methodist past.  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, found that people weren’t coming to the big gothic cathedrals of the Church of England so he brought his preaching to them by preaching at the coal mines and in the fields.  Hundreds and thousands flocked to hear this preacher who creatively adapted to his culture.

3.      Called, not employed

Restorers let “their gifts flood the world from the place where they feel called to work.”  They see legitimate ministry taking place not just in the church but in seven channels of cultural influence: media, education, arts & entertainment, business, government, social sector, and the church.  You don’t have to be a pastor to be a minister.  You can minister wherever you are.  I see this in both Kathie and in her colleagues, Mark and Jana Aupperlee.  All three work or have worked as professors or researchers at MSU, and I bet if you asked them whether what they were doing was ministry, they would tell you that they are helping bring in God’s kingdom by doing what they’re doing.  I see this also in the teachers I talk to in our church.  They teach children because they’re called to it.  It’s a mission and ministry to influence the next generation of kids growing up.

4.      Grounded, not distracted

Restorers are “immersed in Scripture (instead of entertainment)…observe the Sabbath (instead of being productive)…fast for simplicity (instead of consuming)…choose embodiment (instead of being divided)…[and are] postured by prayer (instead of power).”  In other words, they practice the spiritual disciplines.  Take for example our two most recent CRASH men’s retreat.  They were all about spiritual disciplines.  You’d think men wouldn’t be too interested in spiritual disciplines but you’d be wrong.  I remember sitting with my small group of men at CRASH two summers ago when the topic of fasting came up.  I thought that this was going to be way over these men’s heads, but it wasn’t.  Every one of them had some experience or interest in fasting.  Several of them chose fasting as the discipline they wanted to focus on the next year.

5.      In community, not alone

Restorers create “a community of friends that values doing life together, not alone.”  I think you can see this in our emphasis at SycamoreCreekChurch on small groups.  We believe that small groups are essential to spiritual growth.  And yet, this value of restorers goes deeper.  It’s not just about meeting with a group of guys or gals every other week for an hour or so, but “doing life together” day in and day out.  It’s about supporting, encouraging, holding accountable, praying with and more every day of the week. This isn’t a call to spend all your time with Christians, and so we need a balance between spending all your time with Christian friends and having friends outside the faith.  The point is that you don’t do this whole being a Christian thing in a post-Christian culture alone.  You do it with others.  You do it with community.  You do it with the church.

6.      Civil, not divisive

Restorers “learn to have reasonable, productive conversation without resorting to name-calling or angry outbursts.”  Our culture has become so polarizing that it’s a breath of fresh air to find a community where you can disagree in a loving way.  I’ve been wrestling with this in terms of giving a message about homosexuality.  This topic is so divisive in our culture and especially in the church that I’m not sure how to create an environment where we can disagree in a civil way but not divide about it.  I’ve contemplated doing a series where I share what I think about homosexuality followed by a message from a friend of mine who disagrees with me, followed by a message where the two of us talk together about how we can both be Christians and disagree about this topic.  I asked you for feedback on this idea a couple of weeks ago and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.  I think we can be a church that is civil, not divisive when it comes to issues that rarely are civil and almost always are divisive.

7.      Countercultural, not “relevant”

Restorers are “living in the tension of being prophetic with their lives while serving others and inviting them to a better way.”  Let me share with you one way that I try to live this out myself.  I am part of a small group of friends from seminary (we’re all pastors or married to pastors) who call themselves the Order of Saint James (after the book of James in the Bible), or OSJ for short.  We consider ourselves a kind of new-monastic order that has three marks or disciplines: Simplicity, Hospitality, and Evangelism.  We try to live simply by living at or below an agreed upon ceiling of salary.  We give the rest away, whether it’s over 10% of our income or more.  We seek to offer hospitality by sharing our living spaces with other people.  And we seek to practice evangelism by inviting people to join the way and mission of Jesus and his community called the church.  Sometimes practicing these things makes us feel like we’re not very “relevant” to our culture.  In fact, sometimes we feel just down right weird.  We seek to be countercultural, to swim against the flow of the culture while being immersed in it.

So for Gabe Lyons, “the bottom line is that the next Christian has a calling and a responsibility to think, work, and live in terms of how the world ought to be in contrast to reacting to how it really is.”

If we go back to Kathie Brooks and ask her what she learned about her pastor by reading The Next Christians, she’d tell you this.  Kathie was part of Campus Crusade for Christ and was part of the “evangelizer” “separatist” Christians.  Her main focus in Campus Crusade, now known as Cru, was to help people get to heaven.  She’d tell you that she was struck by the description of the full gospel which includes restoring our culture and not just separating from it.  She recognized creativity as “being made in the image of God” but would never say that restoration of our culture was an attainable goal because of the sinful nature of humanity.  And yet now, she sees that Jesus called us to these things whether she thinks they’re attainable or not.  That’s the direction her pastor is leading.

Perhaps it is appropriate to end this message with one last thought from Gabe Lyons:

The church has been reignited in the West. Although few significant trend lines point to it, beyond declining church attendance statistics, an entire population of Christians is rediscovering purpose in their lives. Like new wine in new wine skins, the momentum is building in ways that elude our traditional metrics for measuring church activity. Nevertheless, a surge is under way. And though it will likely take years before it manifests itself in real, quantifiable data, connections between life, faith, and work are being made. People are coming alive and the church is sitting at the nucleus of what could be the faith’s next great expansion.

Several weeks ago I did a sermon in the One Fish Two Fish series about evangelism trying to engage the questions that people thought might come up or had come up when they talk about the faith with others.  I had them submit questions on 3×5 cards and via text.  Here are the questions that were submitted.  I wasn’t able to answer them all, but here’s the manuscript of some answers to some of these questions.  I thought some of you might enjoy hearing what others are thinking.  This list also helps me as I plan future messages.  Thanks for asking great questions!

Question Cards

1. What if God is obviously working (fruit evident) in their life and they know/claim that… yet don’t know Jesus or the need for Him to move on with God?
2. How do I get non-believers to go from science to God?
3. How do you interest someone in God if they are unwilling to hear it?
4. If God has a plan for my life why do I need to pray?
5. Why do bad things happen?
6. [?] feel more like a family to me than my own family.  I turn to them because I feel lost.
7. My life is great…good job, family and friends.  Why do I need God?
8. I don’t believe the Bible’s anything more than stories.  What proof do you have?
9. People who believe in God are just misled.  Look at all that has been done in God’s name that is wrong.  So why is it right now?
10. Why are Christians such judgmental hypocrites?
11. So, someone says “your God doesn’t seem very nice and lets a lot of bad things happen.”
12. Why should I want to be a part of that?
13. I heard Gary speak about meeting an atheist:  So I ran into an atheist and said, “Well I wouldn’t worship that God either.”  And his answer was that is one of the first things people say…can you come up with a different answer, not a pat answer?
14. I haven’t memorized a lot of the Bible…is sharing faith through my own experiences in Christ appropriate?
15. What are you to say from goal on football field to cross and deeper…some connection lines?
16. If you all worship the same God (Jews, Muslims, etc.) why are you right?  You are just being intolerant.
17. How can you be a Christian when you…swear at the TV during sport?  Got drunk last 4^th of July?  Etc…..
18. The Bible is super old.  A lot of it seems superstitious.  Haven’t we moved on from all that?  How does a 2000 year old story from a different time and culture relate to today?
19. My child in elementary school was told by a friend, “God isn’t real.  God is a myth like Santa or the Tooth Fairy.”  How should an elementary school student respond to that?
20. How do you help get people to take you seriously when they smirk and think, “You really believe that?”
21. Where do you go to church?  I don’t…..  I’m spiritual and I don’t think that you have to go to Church…..I’ve gone before but I didn’t really get a lot out of it…..besides, they’re hypocrites.
22. People complain that Christians ignore things like:  Solomon’s relationships with concubines and David’s adultery and 2^nd degree murder.
23. Why?  How?  Where?  When?  Who?  What?  Always?
24. I have several gay and lesbian friends who have said they won’t come to Church with me because they’re afraid they won’t be welcome.
25. What would you say to someone when they ask you why does God let bad things happen?  When you explain to them he doesn’t, people have God’s will and the devil plays a strong part then they say God gave us the devil.  How do you respond at that time?
26. Why do bad things happen?
27. How could there be a God who allows his people to treat others so badly?
28. Why would God protect some people from harm but not others?  (Even when they’re good people?)
29. How could there be a God who would create me to be something that is unaccepted by his people?  (In reference to being gay)
30. What about all the so called miracles.  Do you really believe Jesus healed all those people with his touch?  Do you really believe Moses parted the Red Sea?  And if those things didn’t really happen, how can you believe the rest of the Bible is true?

The Next Christians

“The bottom line is that the next Christian has a calling and a responsibility to think, work, and live in terms of how the world ought to be in contrast to reacting to how it really is.”
~Gabe Lyons

Ever feel embarrassed to call yourself a Christian?  The culture has changed.  The church has changed.  The next Christian has changed.  The next Christians “see themselves on a mission, partnering with God to breathe justice and mercy and peace and compassion and generosity into the world.”  Is that you?  Explore with us how God is doing a new work of beauty, grace, justice, and love in the world through the next generation of Christians and find out what that means for you.  We meet on Sundays at Lansing Christian School (3405 Belle Chase Way) @ 9:30 & 11:15AM and Mondays at Grumpy’s Diner (5600 S Pennsylvania) @ 7:00PM.  Join in the adventure of exploration!

June 2/3 – The Next Generation (Graduation Sunday)
June 9/10 – The Next Christians
June 16/17 – The Next Church
June 23/24 – The Next Lansing (Conversation with an atheist)

This series is influenced by Gabe Lyons’ book, The Next Christians: Seven Ways You Can Live the Gospel and Restore the World.  Pick up a copy and read along with us throughout this series.

“Today, I sense something different is happening. I see evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in a new way. He’s moving through people where they work and through one-on-one relationships to accomplish great things. They are demonstrating God’s love to those around them, not just with words, but in deed.”
~Gabe Lyons

One Fish Two Fish: What about Objections
Sycamore Creek Church
May 19/20, 2013
Tom Arthur
1 Peter 3:15

Peace friends!

Do you ever fear that if you bring up the faith in conversation with your friends or family that you’ll be asked a question that you can’t answer?  If so, you’re not alone.  Today we’re continuing a series about sharing our faith.  Jesus told us to fish for people, but what if those people raise objections to the faith we’re sharing?  We’re asking the question today: what about objections?

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers said, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.”  But many of us feel inadequate when it comes to “making your defense.”  One thing we miss is the opportunity inherent in the question or objection.  In his book The Art of Closing the Sale Brian Tracy points out that in sales, “objections mean interest.”  I think the same thing is true about faith.

So what I want to do today is give you a framework for how to answer objections and then answer some common objections you may run into.  The framework is really simple: be curious, be creative, be compassionate.  Do those three words sound familiar?  Well, they should be.  That’s how we talk about the kind of community we’re trying to form here at SCC.  We’re curious, creative, and compassionate.  So should your answers to any objections you run into.

First, be curious.  Ask questions.  Try to ask at least three before you give an answer.  Part of being curious is humbly receiving the truth in the critique.  Agree with the critique as much as you are able.

Second, be creative.  Respond to the objection as creatively as you can.  Try not to use clichés, especially churchy clichés!  For example, don’t say, “God does everything for a reason.”  Or “God just needed another angel in heaven.”  Or “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle.”  These cliché responses are rarely helpful with someone who is raising serious objections to the faith.  Also, be careful about quoting the Bible.  If someone is objecting to the Bible, it probably isn’t going to get you very far to quote back at them the very thing they’re objecting to.  And it’s OK to say “I don’t know” and research an answer.  In fact, sometimes you need to do this to come up with a creative answer.

Third, be compassionate.  Say a quick breath payer like, “God, help me answer in way that is gentle, respectful, and meaningful to this person.”  Listen for the need under the objection.  If someone raises the question of suffering, perhaps there is some suffering in their life right now that you could ask some questions about and provide some healing in.  In other words, think like a pastor.  What’s the longing behind the objection?

So let’s run a couple of common objections through this framework.

Spiritual but Not Religious
Curious: If someone says, “I’m spiritual but not religious, so I don’t need church”, then first ask some questions.  What do you mean by “religious”? Do you mean “organized religion”?  Then receive the critique: Sometimes it does feel like organized religion gets focused on things that don’t seem to be at the center of what it means to seek God.  That frustrates me too.

Creative: Do you ever get together with friends to hang out and support one another?  Church is really a community of friendships & friendship requires some organization.  Where are we going to meet?  What are we going to do?  Why are we going to get together?  How are we going to make this happen?  The more people in your circle of friendship, the more organized you have to be to sustain and support those friendships.  It feels like you’re saying you can do it alone, but I’ve found that I need a community of friends to do it with.  A church provides me with a community of friends, many of whom I would not have chosen on my own, to help show me my blind spots and hold me accountable to something besides myself.

Compassionate: Have you been hurt by the church in the past?  Would you mind sharing that with me?  I’d like to hear it and do what I can to heal that hurt.

All Religions Are the Same/Equal
Curious: There are many overlapping values shared between different religions.  For example, when it comes to Judaism, we both believe in one God & the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures.  When it comes to Islam, we both believe in Jesus’ virgin birth and second coming.  When it comes to Buddhism, we both believe in showing compassion.  When it comes to Mormons, we both share a concern about our culture’s continued slide into license.  When we find common ground with someone from another religion, it makes sense to work together toward those shared values.  Unfortunately, the church hasn’t done a very good job at working with people of shared good will.

Creative: While we share many similarities, not all religions are the same.  To suggest they are is to say that you see them better than they see themselves.  Sometimes we’re told the story of blind men feeling an elephant.  One feels the tail and says it’s a rope.  Another feels the leg and says it’s a tree.  And so on.  But in reality, it’s all an elephant.  The problem with this analogy is that it assumes a position from which the observer can see everything clearly (without bias) while everyone else is left blind and groping.  There’s a kind of arrogance in that perspective at times.  When you look at religious claims of different groups, there are some serious differences.  Islam claims Jesus wasn’t crucified.   Judaism claims that Jesus was not God’s son.  Buddhism claims that the material world is ultimately not good.  Mormons claim Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon as equal to or better than the Old and New Testaments.  Not all religions are the same.

Compassionate:  Maybe you feel like I’m going to tell you everyone (including the people you love) except Christians are going to hell?  I’d be concerned too if I thought someone was telling me that based on their religious beliefs.  That’s a good question and one worth spending a lot more time studying.  Would you be willing to talk further and maybe even read a book together about this question?

The Bible Isn’t a Reliable Historical Record
Curious: Are there some specific historical facts you’re concerned about?  There are real differences between the way different parts of the Bible tell the story.  Just look at the New Testament.  We have four different books that describe Jesus’ life.  In Matthew, Mark, & Luke, Jesus goes to Jerusalem at the end of his life.  In John, Jesus goes to Jerusalem at the beginning of his teaching.  It seems like the gospels are more “portraits” of Jesus than photographs.  There are definitely some genre errors that Christians have made over the years.  We assume something should be taken literally when it was intended to be taken metaphorically.  We have taken some books of the Bible as history when they are really some other genre such as Apocalyptic or Wisdom.

Creative: The big picture story of the Bible is often quite consistent and reliable.  While there are differences between the four gospels, they all agree on some big points about Jesus:

1. Jesus was a Jew who claimed to be God’s son
2. Miraculous claims were made about him and that was part of his draw
3. Jesus interpreted himself in light of Israel’s prophets
4. He rejected violent insurrection, but he was crucified by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, for insurrection (something revolutionary about who he was and what he taught)
5. After his death, his followers began to proclaim his resurrection.
6. The church only makes sense in light of the resurrection.
7. The rest of the New Testament is an attempt to think about all the rest of life changes in light of the resurrection.

Compassionate: Maybe you’ve found the Bible to be confusing and unhelpful, or even boring to read?  I can understand that.  I do too sometimes.  Can we read some of my favorite parts of it together?

God/Bible/Religion is Immoral
Curious: There is much wrong (even deep evil) that has been done in the name of God/Bible/Religion.  For example, the crusades, the suppression of science (a fellow truth-seeking endeavor), and the oppression of people (slaves, women, minority groups).  Is there a particular command of the Bible that you find immoral?

Creative: Many of these mistakes are due to the human tendency to make mountains out of mole hills.  None of these are the central story of Christianity.  We cannot ignore the great advances in good that have come because of Christianity.  Many scientists were/are Theists/Christians such as Isaac Newton who developed the laws of physics, Father Georges Lemaître, who developed the Big Bang Theory, and Francis Collins, the current Director of the National Institute of Health and formerly the director of The Human Genome Project.  Many justice movements have been led by Christians to reforming itself and society.  William Wilberforce, an Anglican, worked on abolishing the slave trade.  Dorothy Day, a Catholic, worked in the labor movement.  Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist, was the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.  Mother Teresa, a Catholic, paid special attention to the poor.  Shane Claiborne, an Anabaptist, has created a movement called New Monasticism, where Christians live together in some of the worst neighborhoods in our country to help the poor.

Compassionate: Is there something you’ve been told you were doing wrong that hurt you?  I’d like to hear about that.

Christianity Is for Ultra-right-wing Conservatives
Curious: Who are some of the people you’re thinking about who are Christians and are ultra-right-wing conservative?  Some of the loudest voices in the Christian community can be very right-wing in their political views.  One that comes to mind is Fred Phelps, the “pastor” of Westborough Baptist Church who pickets military funerals with hideous signs about gay people.

Creative: The media seems to amplify already loud voices because it gets attention and sells whatever news they’re selling.  There are some equally loud, but not necessarily as well known, more liberal Christians too.  Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, works tirelessly for the poor and oppressed.  Interestingly enough, both George Bush & Hillary Clinton call themselves United Methodists.  That’s either really scary or really cool.  The vast majority of Christians are probably a silent moderate inhabiting a lot of middle ground.

Compassionate: Do you have some Christian right-wing acquaintances who get under your skin?  Some of my relatives are kind of like that with me.

Christians Are All Hypocrites
Curious: Are there particular examples of people who have been hypocrites that come to mind?  Well, yes we are all hypocrites.  We all do what we don’t want to do.  Even the Bible says that’s what happens.  St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that he does what he doesn’t want to do, and what he wants to do, he doesn’t do (Romans 7).  There are some Christians who are willing to entertain this while others are not.

Creative: Everyone is a hypocrite.  We all need to be saved from our own selves.  Join us in a journey to be saved from our own hypocritical selves.

Compassionate: Are there ways your own life doesn’t line up with your own ideals?  Are there ways we could help one another become better people?  I think God gives us some resources to do that.  I’d love to talk more about it if you’re willing.

One Fish Two Fish Why Do I Do This?
Sycamore Creek Church
April 28/29, 2013
Matthew 14:17-25
Tom Arthur

Peace Friends!

What comes to mind when you hear the word “Evangelism.”  For many of you evangelism probably brings up a lot of negative associations.  It does for me too.  There are certain “tribes” of Christianity that I occasionally run into that make me feel like I’m taking a test.  If I don’t get the test right, that probably means I’m not a Christian and need to be converted to their tribe.

I also think Sarah’s experience with a Mormon who came to our door one day.  We had a sign on the door about morning and evening prayer times, and Sarah saw the Mormon evangelist look at the sign, start to walk away, and then come back to the door and knock.  Sarah went to the door and the Mormon evangelist said, “Do you know why God sent a flood on the earth?”  Sarah responded, “I’m a student at Duke Divinity School and married to someone who is studying to be a pastor.  Are you sure you want to get into this conversation?”  He said sheepishly, “No.”  And then he gave her his pamphlet and left!

I recently asked my friends on Facebook this question: What negative associations come to mind when you hear the word evangelism? What bad experiences have you had with evangelism? Either sharing your faith or someone trying to evangelize you?  Here are some of the answers I got [the full answers are at the bottom]:

Two guys showed up to my dorm room unannounced and started grilling me with difficult theological questions that I had no clue how to navigate.

A single narrow minded focus on ‘Christianity’ and if you do not agree completely with their beliefs you are the enemy…

A focus on altar calls and “getting saved.”

I was always afraid of having to “do evangelism.”

I also have been in situations where I’ve somewhat hidden my faith because friends/acquaintances may feel that bringing up my faith in any way is an attempt to either make them feel inferior or change them in some way.

Young men in suits knocking on my door and trying to tell me (while kids cry, dinner burns and I try to escape) why their version of Christianity is the “right” one.

Evangelists just are too pushy and long-winded. They make me feel uncomfortable.

Caring more about my soul than my health and welfare.

The people who come to my door and preach without asking if I already am a Christian, or do ask but still preach anyway.

Walking down a crowded street a guy with a bull horn waited until I was right in front of him before he lit it up yelling about hell. He’s lucky I didn’t send him there.

Earlier in life it made me think of Tammy and Jim Bakker.

Whew!  That’s quite a load of negative associations with evangelism and sharing your faith.  I want you to know that we do it differently here at Sycamore Creek Church.  We’re a church that is curious, creative, and compassionate.  And we are told quite often that people find this a place that isn’t pushy and is very welcoming, no matter where you are in your spiritual journey and what questions you’ve got.  I’d like to introduce you to someone who has been recently coming to SCC and is finding this a good place to seek answers to her spiritual questions.  Meet Marian Wilson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zpVU23XL-A&feature=youtu.be

Marian may be physically blind, but the eyes of her heart are seeking God and finding SCC a good place to do that.  And she even plays the keyboard for us!  And if you were here a couple of weeks ago when she first joined the band, you know that Marian is a real gift to us, even as she’s still seeking answers to her God questions.  That’s the spirit of evangelism that we have here at SCC.

Today we begin a new series called One Fish Two Fish How Do I Do This?  It’s a series about sharing the faith.  Today I’m going to answer the question: Why do I do this?  Why share the faith?

There are three basic motivations that Christians have for sharing the faith, and you can find all of them in the story where Jesus calls his followers to leave their fishing nets and fish for people.  Let’s explore each of these three motivations for sharing the faith.

Concern for Eternity

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Matthew 4:17

For many, the weight of eternity is a significant motivator for sharing the faith.  They look around at the people they come in contact with and see that they’re heading away from God for eternity.  They desire for all to repent, which originally was a traveling term that simply meant “to turn around”, and head toward God for eternity.

One key tool Christians have used over the last fifty years to make this point is often times called the bridge diagram.  There is actually a free app you can download to your phone that walks you and someone else through this bridge diagram.  Here’s a video about that tool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tNvEBnUj15k#at=67

http://www.howtoshareyourfaith.com/images/BridgeDiagram-8.jpg

The basic storyline of this diagram goes something like this:

1. God created us to be in relationship, but we rebelled and sin entered the world causing a big gap to form between us and God.  The result of this gap of sin is death.
2. We sense this distance between God and us, and we try to do good works to cross over this gap.  None of our good works is good enough to get us across the chasm.
3. God saw the predicament we were in and sent his son, Jesus, to bridge that gap.  Through his life, death, and resurrection, he conquered sin and death and created a bridge between us and God.
4. To cross over this bridge and be in relationship with God we ask Jesus to be our forgiver (Savior) and leader (Lord).  Where do you find yourself in this diagram?

There are some key motivators for those who feel the weight of eternity.  At its worst, the weight of eternity can lead to a motivation of fear, especially a fear of hell, and a desire to make sure one has the right “fire insurance” to not end up there.  When those who are motivated by eternity act out of fear, it is often clear to everyone else around them.  Fear as a religious motivator can be powerful, but also very dangerous and off-putting.

At its best the weight of eternity motivates because we recognize that we’re all mortal.  We all will die.  What’s the number one cause of death?  Birth!  If you were born, you will die.  Our culture does a lot to tell us we’re immortal, and sometimes we need a reminder that we don’t live forever.  While concern for eternity has and continues to be a big motivator for many Christian to share the faith, for me personally, this is not a big motivator.  I am much more motivated by the next two.

Obedience to the Truth

A second motivator for many to share their faith is obedience to the truth.  As we continue reading the story of Jesus calling fishermen to join him and fish for people we read:

As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea — for they were fishermen.  And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
Matthew 4:18-20

“Follow me.”  This is a command.  And it’s a command that implies that the “me” that you’re following is worthy of being followed.  Jesus tells us what this means elsewhere:

“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

Here Jesus is inviting us to be obedient to the truth of his word, to be obedient to him.  What is the truth of who God is and who Jesus is?  If we find any book in the Bible that lays that out systematically, it is the book of Romans.  St. Paul doesn’t lay it out as systematically as we might sometimes like, but his letter to the Romans is the closest thing we’ve got.  Christians have recognized this and created at times what is called the Romans Road.  It is a path through the book of Romans that succinctly describes the truth of Jesus.  What you do is write the Romans Road in the margins of your Bible and then all you have to do is remember where the first verse begins.  You look up that verse and beside it is the next verse.  The content is pretty self explanatory.  There are several versions of the Romans Road, but here is my take:

Romans 1:20—Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

Romans 3:23—All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 6:23a—For the wages of sin is death,          

Romans 6:23b—But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 5:8—But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Romans 10:9-10—If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.

Romans 8:1—There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:16—It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

Romans 8:38-39—For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 12:1-2—I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.

One of my favorite ways of describing what the truth of Jesus is comes from a third and fourth century church leader named St. Athanasius.  In his book, On the Incarnation, he begins by describing how we were made in God’s image so that we could have a relationship and friendship with God.  But sin distorted that image and broke the friendship.  Jesus came to restore that image.  Here’s what St. Athanasius says this about the truth of who Jesus is:

What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Saviour Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image.

In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed according to the Image. The Image of the Father only was sufficient for this need. Here is an illustration to prove it. ‘

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: ” I came to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19. 10) This also explains His saying to the Jews: “Except a man be born anew …” (John 3. 3) He was not referring to a man’s natural birth from his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God.

C.S. Lewis, influenced by St. Athanasius, summed this up even more succinctly: “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”  I sometimes make Lewis a little more gender inclusive by saying: In Jesus, God took on the character of flesh so that flesh might take on the character of God or In Jesus, God became friends with us so that we might become friends with God.

If all that seems too complicated, John Wesley comes to our rescue with a simple description of the truth: “Always remember the essence of Christian holiness is, simplicity and purity : one design, one desire : entire devotion to God.”  Love God with everything you’ve got!

For those who desire to be obedient to the truth, there are some key motivators for sharing the faith. At the worst, this motivation can become intellectual hair-splitting. At its best one is motivated by truth, integrity, reason, honesty, and fidelity.  Why share the faith?  Because we are called to be obedient to the truth.

Joining an Adventure & Rescue Mission

A third reason why one might share the faith is because you’re inviting those around you to join an adventure and rescue mission.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.  So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
Matthew 4:23-25

Now that’s what I’m talking about!  For me this is a huge motivator to share the faith.  I want to join the adventure and rescue mission of Jesus to heal and transform the world!

One recent tool that has been developed to tap into this motivation is sometimes called the Four Circles or The Big Story or the True Story.  It is somewhat of a reaction to the bridge diagram.  The bridge diagram is very individualistic.  As you’ll see the Four Circles diagram is very community oriented.  Here’s a quick video that describes the four circles:

http://vimeo.com/24231464

To see how this works if you drew it out, here’s a more home-grown video of the Four Circles being explained by it’s creator, James Choung:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCVcSiUUMhY

http://openchurchnz.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/choung4circlestruestory.jpg

Here are the four circles:

1. Creation – Designed by God for good.
2. Fall – Damaged by evil and living self-centered.
3. Redemption – Jesus restores for better, and his life, death and resurrection show that sin, evil and death don’t have the last word.
4. Mission & Adventure of Following Jesus = We are sent together to heal to become an agent of mission to change the world.  The goal is to transform you and send you to transform the world by bringing God’s kingdom now.

I have a hard time coming up with worst case motivations for this, but if I had to, I’d say that because it is a reaction to the Bridge Diagram, sometimes this motivation can be simply reactionary.  But at it’s best, wanting to join the adventure and rescue mission of Jesus I am motivated by: compassion; justice; ending or reducing poverty; tearing down the walls of racism, sexism, classism, etc.; and bringing God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.  Now that’s what gets me up in the morning!

I like this way of thinking about evangelism and sharing the faith because it is also communal.  We don’t do it alone.  We are sent together to heal.  We invite people to join in that adventure and rescue mission.  Who doesn’t want to be involved in transforming the world for better?  And a key doorway into this mission is through worship.  Worship is the staging ground for this adventure and rescue mission.  We attempt to make this as easy as possible for you by providing three to five Big Sundays every year.  Easter was our last Big Sunday.  So you know that we had almost three hundred people here on Easter?  That’s amazing!

Imagine with me a community of people that were motivated to share the faith because following Jesus led to personal transformation.  Addictions are broken.  Marriages are healed.  The lonely find community.  The “worthless” find worth.  The least become the greatest.  The last become the first.  The lost become found.

Imagine with me a community of people that were motivated to share the faith because following Jesus leads to joining an adventure and a rescue mission to the world.  The homeless women and children at Maplewood find a home.  Those on the edge of society find a welcoming place at Open Door.  Those who are forgotten because of their age and health find friendship and love at Holt Senior Care.  Those in need of basic supplies for life find them at Compassion Closet.  Those who need medical assistance in Nicaragua find health and healing and hope.  Do you know that these are all places where our church is already reaching out to the community and world?  We do it by receiving money and giving it away.  Do you know that we have over the life of our church received and given away almost $80,000 in special offerings that have gone to meet the needs of our community and world?  SycamoreCreekChurch is joining the adventure of Jesus and his rescue mission to save the world.  That’s why we share the faith!  Will you join the adventure?

God, sometimes we’re not very motivated to share the faith.  Sometimes we’re even scared and overwhelmed.  Give us motivation when we don’t have any.  Help us have a concern for eternity. Help us be obedient to the truth.  Help us join the adventure and rescue mission of Jesus to transform the world.  Amen.

Friends, I want to let you know about two things.  First, there are three books that have been influential to me in working on this series.  I’d like to encourage you and/or your small group to pick one up and read it.   They are:

God Space by Doug Pollock

This book is a short (127 pages) easy to read book about how to get into spiritual conversations with those around you.  I heard Doug speak about a year ago and was deeply moved by his approach to evangelism.  His approach is really about how to listen well and ask good questions.  I don’t think you can go wrong with this book.  If you’re not sure about which book to pick, pick this one.

Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk by Dale Fincher and Jonalyn Fincher
This book is a little longer (219 pages) but covers more ground than Pollock’s book.  It deals with the same topic, how to start spiritual conversations, but also spends a lot more time covering what the Christian faith is and how to respond to possible “arguments” against the Christian faith.  If your group wants to go deeper than just how to get into the conversations and needs some help with answers to possible questions that come up, this book would be the one to go with.

True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In by James Choung
This book is the most readable even if longest (222 pages) of the three because it is almost all a narrative (And at times is a page-turner!).  It is a “fictional” conversation between a college-age Christian, a mentor professor, and his non-Christian love-interest.  This book doesn’t dive at all into how to get into spiritual conversations, but shows how to talk about Christianity in a way that is compelling to our current culture.  The book attempts to correct some past ways that Christians have tended to present the gospel that have caused our culture to tune out Christians.

Second, in the fourth week of this series I’m going to be doing a live Q&A with you answering the question: What about objections?  I’m going to give you the opportunity to ask the kinds of questions you’re afraid will come up if you talk about your faith with others around you.  I’m not preparing much for this message because I want you to see what it looks like to answer these questions unprepared and on the spot.  I want to model for you how you might answer objections to the faith, and I may even have to model how to say, “I don’t know.  Let me get back to you on that one.”  So begin compiling your questions and bring them on week four!

Facebook Questions & Answers

Full answers from my friends on Facebook to the questions: What negative associations come to mind when you hear the word evangelism? What bad experiences have you had with evangelism? Either sharing your faith or someone trying to evangelize you?  Here are all of the answers I got:

Back in college I attended a ministry on campus. Once they had my contact information, two guys showed up to my dorm room unannounced and started grilling me with difficult theological questions that I had no clue how to navigate. I was young in my faith and they knew it. After fumbling through my responses, they left. At no point did I feel they actually cared about me. They were there with an agenda. They had no intention of hearing my thoughts. It was as if they only cared about results and could care less about fostering a friendship. Needless to say, I never returned and they never wondered where I went.

A single narrow minded focus on ‘Christianity’ and if you do not agree completely with their beliefs you are the enemy…

A focus on altar calls and “getting saved.” Specifically, I think about when this big production with BMX bikes and loud music came to my high school gym one Friday night. If you didn’t attend the event, you must not have been a Christian. If you didn’t go up front at the altar call, you must not want to be saved. Shame on you!  A similar pressure was present at other church events like concerts and such. It never happened at Lake Louise, Lake Michigan, or Wesley Woods… all UMC camps. I love being United Methodist!

I was always afraid of having to “do evangelism.” I saw a poster once that showed a polar bear on this empty frozen wasteland. The caption read “Now this is my kind of neighborhood for evangelism.”

What I don’t like about being evangelized to is the feeling that there is only one belief and if you don’t agree fully with every single facet then somehow you are “less than” as a person.  I personally don’t like to evangelize to others because I don’t necessarily “fit” the traditional Christian mold. I also have been in situations where I’ve somewhat hidden my faith because friends/acquaintances may feel that bringing up my faith in any way is an attempt to either make them feel inferior or change them in some way. For example, I know religion is a touchy subject with most members of the LGBT community, and even though I personally feel that God is love and everyone has the right to seek personal happiness, bringing up my faith could be seen as passing judgment or even an attack.
My short answer? Evangelism is awkward for me. Religion and faith place me in a box that I personally don’t fit into.

Young men in suits knocking on my door and trying to tell my (while kids cry, dinner burns and i try to escape) why their version of Christianity is the “right” one.

When I rebelled against God I disliked Christianity, especially those who evangelized their faith. As I mature in my Christian faith I respect those that profess their faith and encourage their enthusiasm. In retrospect, I am thankful to God for those annoying evangelists who sparked contempt and fear into my heart.

Interesting you should ask that, that was the exact question my worship committee discussed this month as we gear up for a sermon series on evangelism: what is it and what it isn’t. I hope God is blessing this conversation for you and your church!

Evangelists just are too pushy and long-winded. They make me feel uncomfortable.

Caring more about my soul than my health and welfare.

The people who come to my door and preach without asking if I already am a Christian, or do ask but still preach anyway. If I believe the same thing, I shouldn’t be offended or feel uncomfortable when you talk about it. I can only imagine how much worse it is if it is a non-believer who answers the door.

Walking down a crowded street a guy with a bullhorn waited until I was right in front of him before he lit it up yelling about hell. He’s lucky I didn’t send him there.

Hmm today at sm group we watched a Nooma video called bullhorn, it’s about a bullhorn guy screaming hell fire and brimstone. I loved how he talked about how Jesus “evangelized”

I don’t think of evangelism the same way as I did when I wasn’t as far along in my faith walk. Earlier in life it made me think of Tammy and Jimmy (?) Bakker. Anyway, it was a turn off, pushy, intrusive. Now I see openly talking about faith and how I can lean on God through faith feels comforting and “looks” totally different from “The Bakers.” I don’t feel fake like the big hair and clumpy makeup or the loud pushy preaching.

Dear Friends,

I was recently presented this question: Is your church the best place for someone to give their money?  The answer is yes.  Here’s why.

Most of you are probably familiar with the Agnostic Pub group that I co-lead.  We read a book at a pub and then switch pubs when we switch books.  It’s a group where those who aren’t so sure about this whole Christianity thing can go and find some community.  I am usually the only Christian in the group.  The rest are made up of agnostics, atheists, and everything in between.  Most attend our church.  Some are friends of those who attend our church.  A couple of weeks ago this is what happened…

Several of us had gathered and were beginning to catch up when someone new to our church showed up.  She has come pretty consistently to our Church in a Diner and was intrigued by the group because she had a lot of questions about religion and faith.  An Agnostic Pub group sounded like just thing she needed.

When she sat down at the table I realized that we needed to do some introductions so I asked each person to share their name and to explain why they were at the Agnostic Pub group on a Thursday night rather than somewhere else.  Their answers floored me.

One by one each of these “agnostics” talked about how amazing our church was.  They weren’t sure yet about Jesus, but they couldn’t stop gushing about how great SCC was.  It was warm and welcoming.  It was a safe place to ask questions.  The sermons were always helpful (I didn’t make that up).  Hard questions were open for discussion.  They went on and on.  At one point, one person realized how much they were gushing about SCC and sheepishly said, “Tom didn’t pay us to say this.”  Here were a bunch of agnostics who had become evangelists for SCC to another agnostic!  They weren’t yet evangelists for Jesus, but they were more than half-way there.

That’s why SCC is the best place to give your money.  And that’s only one of a dozen stories I could tell you about the last couple of months.  We’re a curious, creative, and compassionate community that is building bridges with people who have never entered the church or who have been hurt by the church.  We welcome their questions about God.  We’re creative in all we do to reach out to them.  And we show everyone, agnostics included, God’s compassion.

You already know this.  That’s why you give to SCC.  I wanted to share this story with you to show you one way your giving is transforming lives.  Your tithes, offerings, capital campaign pledges (over $283,000 given to date!), and designated special giving (over $2700 given this quarter!) help us ignite authentic life in Christ by connecting people to God and one another, growing disciples into the character of Christ, and helping each person to serve our church, community, and world.  Thank you for your generous giving!  Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!

Pastor Tom

P.S. The absolute easiest way I know to regularly give is to automate the process either through EFT or setting up a regular check to be mailed through your online banking. Then you transform lives even when you can’t always make it to worship.  Included is an EFT form for your convenience.  EFT can be changed at any point by simply calling the church office.

Designated Special Giving (DSG)

Listed below are opportunities to touch people’s lives.  One just might catch hold of your heart, spirit, or imagination, and God won’t let it get out of your mind.  Prayerfully look over the list below and consider whether God is calling you to give to one of these DSG opportunities?  DSG is an above-and-beyond giving opportunity, above and beyond other commitments you’ve made to the church such as your annual Commitment Sunday pledge, your Capital Campaign pledge, or your commitment to Dr. Mir in Nicaragua.  If you can’t give the total amount listed, don’t feel like you can’t contribute.  Perhaps God will speak to five other people too, and their total giving meets the need or opportunity.  Take some time to consider DSG alongside your current giving, and watch what God will do in the coming weeks and months!

• ·         DONE! Main Projection Screen ($1,400) – Help communicate the gospel effectively and excellently.  Our current screen is showing significant age.
• ·         DONE! Nursery Gates ($100) – Keeps kids safe and helps parents worship with peace of mind.  Makes our current nursery setup easier.
• ·         DONE! Floor Mats for the Nursery ($40) – Makes a clean soft place for kids to play.
• ·         DONE! Percussion Shaker ($30) – Adds more variety to the sound of our music and creates an environment where people can go deeper in God’s grace through worship music.

• Youth Ministry Intern ($5000 – $1500 given!) – We’d like to hire a college student as a year-round youth intern to help our youth go deeper in God’s grace.

• Leadership Training ($300+ – $400 given!  This need never runs out.) – Conferences, workshops and coaching help our paid/unpaid staff continue to improve their craft and reach new people for Christ.

• Appreciation Gift Cards ($5+ – $200 given!  This need never runs out.) – A small gift card to a coffee shop, etc. can go a long way in showing appreciation to and retaining volunteers.

• Outreach Events ($500+) – Help reach new people for Christ through several outreach events planned for the coming year that will include renting tents, bounce houses, and possibly even a river boat!

• StuREV Event Scholarships ($200+) – Provide scholarships for students and chaperones to events like Acquire the Fire, winter retreat and more that will deepen the faith of our youth.

• Parsonage Landscape Projects ($500+) – Improve the landscape of our parsonage (SCC owned pastor’s house).  Shrubs, lawn care, mulching, and more will help make a good first impression.

• Signage ($100 to $2000) – We’re working on a new office sign, street signs, signs going into Lansing Christian School, and signs inside LCS that show our new logo and improve visibility.  Signs create and communicate our identity to the community and are an extension of our hospitality.

• Guitar ($1000) – The church-owned guitar shows significant wear and tear.  A new guitar adds excellence to the music of our church creating a worship environment for people to encounter God.

• Nicaragua Meds ($100+) – We send medical teams to Nicaragua twice a year to share God’s compassion.  A huge expense that pays significant dividends in health is medicine.  Many maladies can be simply treated with the appropriate meds.  Share God’s compassion with medicine for Nicaragua.

• Member Care Training ($9500) – We are exploring bringing in John Savage several times over the next year.  Savage is a consultant we have worked with before who specializes in member care through training in listening skills.  This would help us expand our capacity for showing compassion within our community and help retain people when they experience bumps in life and the church.

If you would like to give to one or more of these Designated Special Giving opportunities, simply drop a check in the offering bag and write “DSG” and the name of the DSG (i.e. “DSG: New Screen”).

One Fish Two Fish How Do I Do This?

Jesus told his followers that he would make them fish for people.  But how do we fish for people?  Sometimes that seems scary, even overwhelming.  Learn the why, how, who what, and when of sharing your faith with those around you.  We meet on Sundays at Lansing Christian School (3405 Belle Chase Way) @ 9:30 & 11:15AM and Mondays at Grumpy’s Diner (5600 S Pennsylvania) @ 7:00PM.  Come learn how to fish!

April 28/29 – Why share the faith?
May 5/6 – How to share the faith?
May 12/13 – Who to share the faith with?
May 19/20 – What to do with objections?
May 26/27 – When do you share the faith?

Why Don’t I Always Feel the Presence of God?
Sycamore Creek Church
April 21/22, 2013
Tom Arthur

Peace Friends!

Today we’re wrapping up a series called Why?  We’ve looked at some pretty hard questions and if you’ve been talking about this stuff in your small group like my small group has, it has brought up some pretty deep things.  These Why? questions get at the deepest longings of our hearts.  Today we explore the question: Why don’t I always feel the presence of God?

Have you ever felt the presence of God at some point in your life?  Did you feel the presence of God this morning?  If not, whose fault is it?  Was it your fault?  Maybe you were not tuned in enough?  Or maybe it was God’s fault?  God didn’t like what you wore today?  Or maybe it was the worship leader’s fault.  He didn’t play songs you like.

I think this brings up another interesting question.  How do you know God’s presence?  Do you get tingles?   Well, so can sitting next to your girlfriend in a movie theater.  Do you cry?  Cutting onions can make you cry.  Do you get a warm feeling?  Peeing in a swimming pool gives you a warm feeling too.

Whatever the answer to all those questions, if you do not always feel God’s presence, you are not alone.  The Bible itself talks about not feeling God’s presence.  The psalmist says:

Psalm 88:13-14
But I, O LORD, cry out to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.  O LORD, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?

Today I want to give you five possible reasons why you might not feel God’s presence.  Each one begins with “maybe” because it might number one, or it might be number three.  Or it may be some mixture of two and four.  Or something else altogether.  But I think these are five basic biblical principles that can give us some helpful direction for answering the question: Why don’t you always feel God’s presence?

1. Over-sensationalizing
Maybe you don’t feel God’s presence because you’re over-sensationalizing it.  You’re looking for the big and the dramatic.  “God, show me your presence by making a camel walk into my room!” We read in the book of John:

John 6:30
So the crowd said to Jesus, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?” 

They wanted something big, but Jesus wouldn’t give it to them.  He rightly understood that spectacle doesn’t necessarily produce transformed hearts.

I grew up in a Pentecostal/Charismatic church.  I love the church I grew up in.  I didn’t leave it.  I just married into the UnitedMethodistChurch.  But there were some strange things about my church.  They “spoke in tongues.”  That meant that they believed that when someone received the Holy Spirit of God’s presence, that you spoke in either a real foreign language that another person from that country could understand or a personal prayer language that no one understood except God.  Sometimes this created a two-tier system of Christians: those who spoke in tongues and those who did not.  I asked God several times to give me this gift of speaking in tongues.  One night there was even an altar call for it.  I went forward and several adults laid hands on me praying that I would speak in tongues.  They even held my hands up in the air for me.  They prayed more fervently than I think I have ever heard before.  But after thirty minutes of a valiant attempt to cajole God into making me speak in tongues, we all gave up and called it a night.  Now I learned that all you need to do to speak in a strange foreign language is have a baby.  Then you speak in tongues every time you see the child!

OK, I do believe in weird stuff like speaking in tongues, but that’s another sermon for another day.  What I don’t think is that everyone gets that quite sensational gift.  And if we expect it or some other sensational thing, we may just miss the quiet presence of God.

2. Distracted
Maybe you don’t feel God’s presence because you’re simply distracted.  Jesus went over to some friends’ house and Martha couldn’t stop doing work to hang out with him.  Meanwhile, her sister Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listening.  Martha got upset that Mary wasn’t helping, especially because it wasn’t kosher back in the day for women to sit and learn with the men.  They were supposed to be helping in the kitchen.  So Martha complained to Jesus, but Jesus had other ideas.

Luke 10:41-42
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Some of us are seriously distracted by all kinds of things.  Perhaps the biggest distraction is technology.  And of all the tech that distracts us, there’s nothing like Facebook to keep our minds buzzing from one thing to the next. Have you seen this commercial?  It’s called fifteen status updates in fifty seconds!

We’re super busy aren’t we?  You’re a taxi for the kids.  You’re keeping the house up.  You’re distracted by doing church work, the work of God!  You’re distracted right now by the pop-up window telling you a message just came in.  Maybe you don’t feel God’s presence because you’re too distracted.

3. Hardened Heart
Maybe you don’t feel God’s presence because you hardened your heart.  Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah when he says:

Matthew 13:14-15
With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn — and I would heal them.’

Sometimes I wonder if someone wasn’t close to God sometime in the past but got hurt by the church.  It happens.  It even happens in our church.  We’re not perfect.  I’m not a perfect leader.  But what we sometimes do then is we take that hurt that we got from the church and we project it onto God.  We get hurt by a church or by a Christian and we transfer the hurt to God.  So that we don’t get hurt again, we harden our hearts thinking we’ll protect ourselves from getting hurt again.  All we end up with is a hard heart.

4. Sin
Maybe you don’t feel God’s presence because you have built up a wall of sin between you and God.  Returning to the book of Isaiah we read:

Isaiah 59:1-2
See, the LORD’s hand is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.  Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

“Iniquity” is a synonym for sin.  And sins create “barriers between you and your God.”  If you’re a Christian and you sin, you’re still a Christian.  If you continue to live in unrepentant sin and do nothing about it, God’s patience is long but God will eventually give you over to your own sin.  And sin always drives us away from God.  Let me give you an example.  I sin against Sarah, my wife, almost every day.  I say something I shouldn’t say.  I think a thought I shouldn’t think.  I don’t serve her when an opportunity arises.  I criticize her rather than encourage her.  Each one of these sins is a brick. Now I also take down bricks when I do things like apologize, serve her sacrificially, speak encouraging words to her.  But if all I do is put bricks in place, pretty soon there’s going to be a wall in between us that will be, short of supernatural intervention, impenetrable.  I think of Toby Keith’s song, A Little Too Late.

Maybe you don’t feel God’s presence because you’ve built a wall of sin between you and God.

5. A Stranger
Maybe you don’t feel God’s presence because you’re a stranger to God, you don’t know God.  Do you know about God, or do you know God?  Do you believe in God, or do you believe God?  I’m talking about the difference between what the head knows and what the heart knows.  Jesus was teaching about this at the temple one day:

John 7:28-29
Then Jesus cried out as he was teaching in the temple, “You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him.  I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”

If you know Jesus, you know God.  Walking with God is not about feeling but faith.  It’s not about having the tingles, the warm feelings, crying, or any other emotion.  It is about trusting in God when you feel God and trusting God when you don’t feel God.  Faith is pleasing to God. In fact, according to the Bible, “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6).  Here are three promises you can hang your hat on today.

1. You will find God when you seek God.
When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13

Seek God not as a side gig.  Not as a hobby.  But seek God as a whole life, full-on, heart-pursuit.  I’m not talking about hide and seek.  I’m talking about seeking God with everything you’ve got.

So how do you seek God?  Here are some basics.  Open the Bible daily and read it.  Search the Bible for God.  Spend daily unhurried time with God.  Regularly attend worship, even when you’re out of town!  Not just once a month. Not just every other week.  Do it weekly.  Listen to music and sing it.  Celebrate God through music.  God is all around you.  It’s like cell phone reception.  You just have to have the cell phone to tap you into it.  The Bible, prayer, worship, music, these are the cell phones that tap you into God’s presence.

2. You can do life with God’s presence.
Seven days a week you can find God’s presence. Not just Sunday.  In fact, faith is mostly a Monday through Saturday gig.  You don’t have to go to church to find God.  You can find God while changing that stinky diaper.  You can find God while you’re cooking your dinner.  You can find God while you’re sitting in class. Jesus says:

John 14:16-17
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, who will never leave you.  He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world at large cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you do, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.

God’s presence is here with you in the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, all day long: sunrise, when you go to work, when you come home to your family, and when you go to bed.

3. You can experience God right now.

Acts 17:27-28
His purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him — though he is not far from any one of us.  For in him we live and move and exist.

There’s nothing keeping you back from this right now.  It’s not something you earn. It is something that has already earned you.  It’s not something you must get your house in order first to receive.  It is something that helps you get your house in order.  Give it all to God.  Everything.  It begins with giving God all of you.  It continues every day when you get out of bed giving all of yourself to God.  It begins right now.

Will you let me pray?

God, I want to give my whole self to you.  I want to follow you even if I don’t feel your presence.  Give me faith that you are faithful to me and to the world.  In the name of Jesus and in the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Why Doesn’t God Answer My Prayers?
Sycamore Creek Church
April 14/15, 2013
Tom Arthur

Peace Friends!

Today we continue in our Why series dealing with the question: Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?  I recently came across this prayer written by Tina Fey in her book Bossy Pants.  Here’s a slightly edited version:

“The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter”

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, may she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her when crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it…

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and [making out] in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, that she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for…Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a [witch] in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that…I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

Do you think Tina Fey’s prayer will be answered?  If not, why not?  Well, we all have prayed prayers like this or other prayers.  And whether you think God will answer Tina Fey’s prayer or not, you’ve prayed prayers that you thought God could and should have answered but didn’t.  You may have even claimed Jesus’ promise in John:

I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
John 14:13-14 NRSV

It seems that God did some pretty amazing things in scripture. He made the sun stand still for Joshua.  I can barely comprehend what that might mean for the laws of physics. He saved Daniel in the lion’s den (and I’m not talking about a porn shop off the side of the highway).  Jesus regularly healed people, especially children who were dying or deeply suffering.  If God answered these prayers, why doesn’t God answer my prayers for the same thing?

I think about the issues I wrestle with on a daily basis.  Sometimes I find myself as a pastor in a paradox. I am often praying for people to be healed when I have my own health issues too.  I’ve prayed for body parts to be made well all the while having a bum back that continually gives me problems with aches and pains.  What’s up with that?

Maybe you’ve prayed for a girlfriend or boyfriend but none came along, especially the hottest girl you were praying would dig you.  You prayed to pass a class in school but you didn’t pass it.  You prayed to be healed of a disease but weren’t.  You prayed to conceive a child but didn’t.   You prayed for your parents not to get divorced, but they did.  You prayed for a loved one to come to know Christ, but he only got further away.

If you’re here today as a guest and are not a Christian, you may have the impression that Christians pray and ask for things and always feel like they get what they’re asking for.  But that’s not true.  Just because you seek to follow Jesus doesn’t mean you experience all your prayers being answered.  I certainly don’t.  Just because you’re a Christian doesn’t mean you don’t ask, Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?  That’s the question we’re here to deal with today.  I’d like to make four suggestions of why it might be that God isn’t answering your prayers.  Each one begins with the word “maybe” because it might be this or it might be something else entirely.  So here are four reasons why God might not be answering your prayers.

Broken Relationships
Maybe God isn’t answering your prayers because you have a broken relationship.  Our horizontal relationships with those around us matter for our vertical relationship with God.  It’s not like you can compartmentalize your spiritual life from your day to day life.  Your day to day life is your spiritual life!  Jesus tells us that when it comes to something like forgiveness, how we forgive others will have an impact on how we experience forgiveness from God:

Listen to me! You can pray for anything, and if you believe, you will have it.  But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.
Mark 11:24-25 NLT

John, one of Jesus’ closest followers, reflects on how our horizontal relationships affect our vertical relationship, saying you cannot say you love God if you hate your brother:

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters,are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sisterwhom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
1 John 4:20 NRSV

Peter, another of Jesus’ closest followers, takes this idea and runs with it in your family:

In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. If you don’t treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard.
1 Peter 3:7 NLT

And some of us husbands may not be married to someone who is “weaker” than we are.  So you better watch out on both fronts!

The book of Proverbs, a collection of wisdom sayings, takes this into the realm of our relationship with the poor:

Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.
Proverbs 21:13 ESV

Have you been paying attention to the new pope, Pope Francis?  I really like this guy.  During Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, he took the time go and wash the feet of youth who were in prison.  He washed and kissed their feet!  And he broke with tradition by washing the feet of young women.  Now here’s a pope who has his ear to the cry of the poor.  You better watch out for what Pope Francis is praying for!

Christina Rossetti, a 19th century English poet, sums this up nicely when she says:

I pray for grace; but then my sins unpray
My prayer: on holy ground I fool stand shod.

The way we treat those around us has consequences for our prayer lives. Maybe God isn’t answering your prayers because of the broken relationships you aren’t paying attention to.

Wrong Motives
Maybe God isn’t answering your prayers because you have the wrong motives when you pray. For example, a man was circling the block searching for a parking spot. Finally, after the third time around, he prays, “God, if you help me find a parking spot, I will go to church every Sunday and tithe ten percent of my income.” Immediately, a spot opens up, and the man prays, “Never mind, I found one.”

James, Jesus’ brother, says:

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.
James 4:3 NRSV

OK, let’s be honest.  How many of you have prayed to win the lottery?  Now let’s be really honest.  What were your real motives?  To live a life of luxury or a life of generosity?  My dad still to this day plays the lotto.  When we were kids he would bring home lotto tickets and give them to us to fill out.  One time when my family was having some financial troubles I came within one number of winning $14,000,000!  I picked the number 19 instead of 29.  Instead we got $2500.  Not bad.  My dad was bummed at the time, but recently I asked him about it, and he says he gives thanks to God that we didn’t win the lottery.  He thinks it would have torn our family apart.  And he’s probably right.  Most people who win the lotto don’t lead happy lives.  Winning the lotto seems to have a negative effect on many who win it.  Perhaps that’s because if they were praying to win the lotto, they were praying in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.  I’m reminded of Garth Brooks’ song Unanswered Prayers:

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs
That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

If we turn to the book of Proverbs again we read that our motives are known by the Lord:

All one’s ways may be pure in one’s own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit.
Proverbs 16:2 NRSV

Maybe God isn’t answering your prayers because your motives aren’t the best.

Unbelief
Maybe God doesn’t answer your prayers because you don’t believe God will do it.  Whenever I think of belief and unbelief I think of the Grand Canyon Sky Walk.

You can say you believe that it will hold your weight, but your belief is shown by your actions of walking out on the glass, 4000 feet above the Grand Canyon floor!

A father comes to Jesus looking for his child to be healed from a spirit of seizures that throws him into water and fire.  He asks Jesus to heal him if he is able.  This is what Jesus says:

If you are able! — All things can be done for the one who believes.
Mark 9:23 NRSV

I’m thankful for the honesty of this guy’s response.  He says, “I believe.  Help my unbelief.”  Then Jesus heals his son!

Your faith matters when you pray.  You often hear Christians, even myself at times, say something like, “All we have left to do is pray.”  No!  The first thing we have to do is pray!  And believe that God hears our prayers and can and will answer them.

Now this can be seriously misconstrued.  I’m not teaching a name it and claim it system of belief.  I’m not even saying that all the time the reason God doesn’t answer your prayers is because you don’t believe.  Maybe sometimes this is the reason.  God is not obligated to answer your prayers.  God is not your cosmic sugar daddy.  Just because you have faith, doesn’t mean God has to do it, but your faith does matter.

I think of how we’re teaching Micah to say “Please” when he asks for food.  He has learned this so well that he now says please whenever he asks for food or just about anything else.  Of course, he has learned to say please whether we think it’s a good idea to give it to him or not.  Who gets to decide when he says please?  We do.  Are we obligated to give him something whenever he says please?  No.  Is it important that he says please?  Absolutely!

Again we turn to James, Jesus’ brother:

But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
James 1:6-7 NRSV

Something Different
Maybe God doesn’t answer your prayers because God has something different in mind for you.  In an opening interview with Gary Chapman in the audio book to the new edition of his Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman tells about how he and his wife wanted to be missionaries to Africa.  He wanted to teach in a seminary.  But the mission board turned them down because of his wife’s health.  They did not think she would do well in Africa.

Fast forward many years and Chapman has now written a book that has sold over 5 million copies and has been translated into almost 30 languages.  When it is translated to a new language, his publisher sends them a box of the books and he and his wife pray for the people that will read it.

One day when he received a box of books, his wife began to cry.  He said, “What’s wrong?”  She said, “Remember how we wanted to be missionaries and weren’t able to. Now you’re book is teaching people all around the world.”  God has something different in mind for the Chapmans.

God’s will matters more than our will.  Looking again to John, one of Jesus’ followers:

And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.
1 John 5:14-15 NRSV

Notice the key phrase here, “according to his will.”  If you ask God something that God already wants for you, you’re golden!  That’s a prayer that God wants to answer.  When Micah asks me for more lettuce and says “please” that’s a request I want to answer.

But sometimes we don’t get what we ask for because God has something better in mind.  In those times I’m reminded of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  They wouldn’t bow to King Nebuchadnezzar’s God, so he threatens to throw them in a fiery furnace.  Here’s how they answer the king:

If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.”
Daniel 3:17-18 NRSV

In essence they say: I believe God can, I believe God will, and even if God doesn’t, I still believe.  Now that’s powerful trust in the goodness of God.

Maybe God ultimately wants something to happen in us in prayer.  The movie Shadowlands tells the story of C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia which have recently begun to be made into movies, and his marriage to Joy Gresham.  At an early age Joy is diagnosed with a terminal cancer.  Lewis has married her legally at this point just so that she can have British citizenship.  But when he realizes she has cancer he decided to get married to her in the church.  He prays for her healing.  In one scene, a  friend of Lewis’ says that God is hearing and answering his prayers.  Lewis responds, “That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.”  Maybe that’s the something different, the something better that God has in mind.  Prayer changes me.  Let’s pray.

God, show me where there might be broken relationships that are getting in the way of my prayer life with you.  Give me the courage to confess those areas and to seek healing and reconciliation.  God, show me where I am asking for something out of selfish motives.  Help purify my intentions.  God show me where I say that I trust you but my actions betray my talk.  Help my unbelief.  God, even when you don’t answer my prayers, let me trust that you have something different, something better in store for me.  May my prayers change me.  Amen.

Why do bad things happen to good people?
Sycamore Creek Church
Easter Sunday – March 31, 2013
Easter Monday – April 1, 2013
Tom Arthur

God is good,
All the time!
All the time,
God is good!

Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!

The answer to the question, Why do bad things happen to good people, hinges on these two truths:

1. God is good.
2. God raised Jesus from the dead.

Today on Easter Sunday, we begin a new series called Why?  We’re going to explore the questions that keep you up at night, the questions that you lay in bed thinking about, the deep and hard questions of life.  Today we’re beginning with the question: Why do bad things happen to good people?

There are lots of Why? questions like this that are out there.  For example:

1. Why did children die at Sandy Hook?
2. Why did Katrina have to kill so many people?
3. Why do people die from hunger every day?
4. Why are so many people out of work?

Then there are lots of Why? questions  that are not just out there but have to do with me, with each one of us.  For example:

1. Why am I so lonely?
2. Why did I lose my job?
3. Why did my spouse leave me?
4. Why don’t I have enough money at the end of the month?
5. Why is my family so messed up?
6. Why was I abused?
7. Why am I suffering mental illness?

Taylor Swift sings a powerful song asking the question: Why do bad things happen to good people.  It’s called Ronan, and it’s about a little boy who died too early.  One of the verses says:

I remember the drive home
When the blind hope turned to crying and screaming “Why?”
Flowers pile up in the worst way, no one knows what to say
About a beautiful boy who died

So why do bad things happen to good people?  I can’t in any way pretend that I can answer every possible question along these lines, and what I’d like to share today won’t cover every possible particular situation.  But I’d like to share with you some ways that Christians have wrestled with this question and some answers they have found in the Bible.  Each answer begins with the word “maybe” because, like I said, these are general ideas and may not fit your particular situation.  But they are some “maybes” that will help us to find a handhold or hook to place an answer on.  So let’s begin: Why do bad things happen to good people?

A Broken Sin-Stained World
Maybe bad things happen to good people because we live in a broken sin-stained world.  What is sin?  Most of have an innate sense that the world is not quite right.  Most of us have a longing that the world would be more just, more loving, more right than it is.  “Sin” is the term Christians use to describe the world as it.  God created the world and called it good.  But the world misses the mark of what God intended.  Sometimes this is intentional, and other times it’s unintentional.  Sin is like a train that has run off the tracks.  Sin is like a weight that burdens us down.  Sin is like an overwhelming debt that can never be repaid.

While God created the world and all that is in it good, including humanity, we rebelled against God.  We fell away.  The results of this running away from God were a broken world, a world that didn’t work the way God intended or created it to work.  And so we live in a broken sin-stained world.

Jesus had a sense of the trials that we would face in this broken sin-stained world.  He said:

I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.
John 16:33 NLT

Did you catch that?  Jesus said we’ll have many trials and sorrows.  We can expect it in this world.  This isn’t always because you sinned.  Sometimes it’s because you’re the victim of someone else’s sin.  My wife occasionally says that she’s married to a thirteen-year-old-boy.  Exhibit A took place on one of our first vacations as husband and wife.  Sarah was driving us down the highway, and I was navigating with the map in the passenger side seat.  I don’t really remember what caused the argument, but pretty soon I was ripping up the map into little shreds and throwing it out the window!  This did not help us get where we wanted to go, and it did not help our marriage either.  Now why did this bad thing happen to a wonderfully good person like my wife?  Why did she end up marrying a thirteen-year-old trapped in an adult’s body?  Because she married a broken sin-stained man.  And if you ask her, she’ll tell you that I married a broken sin-stained woman.  Maybe bad things happen to good people because we live in a broken sin-stained world.

Reap What You Sow
Maybe bad things happen to good people because you brought it on yourself.  There are some natural consequences to our actions when we don’t act as God intended us to act.  There are some direct consequences.  If you have an affair, it will hurt your marriage.  If you lie to your boss and he or she finds out, it will not go well with you at work.  If you hit your child, you will have a lot of hard work to do to regain a lot of people’s trust.

St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians:

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.
Galatians 6:7 NRSV

You reap what you sow.  I recently came across a set of pictures on the internet titled, Why Men Die First.  When you look at them, you see that the men in these pictures are putting themselves in some pretty precarious situations.  I can imagine the tragic end of their decisions meeting with the pronouncement: “He chose poorly.”

http://rense.com/general95/whymen.html

Maybe bad things happen to good people because they chose poorly and brought it upon themselves.

Something Big
Maybe bad things happen to good people because God wants to do something big in your life.  Now let me be very careful here.  I do not intend to say that everything that happens happens for a reason.  I have preached against that way of thinking.  When we say that everything happens for a reason, I think we end up making God a monster.  We end up saying that God wanted Sandy Hook to happen so that something else would happen.  I think that is about as far from the truth as is possible.  God cried with us on the day those children and teachers lost their lives.  And yet, I do think that sometimes God allows things to happen in our lives because God wants to do something big in your life.  Not all bad things happen for this reason, but maybe sometimes they do.

Let me give you an example from the Bible.  Jesus and his followers were walking along the road one day when they came across a blind man.  Jesus’ followers asked Jesus if this man was blind because of something his parents did (something bad happened to him because we live in a broken sin-stained world) or because of something he did (he brought it upon himself).  Jesus didn’t like either of those options.

Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
John 9:3 NRSV

Maybe it happened because he was the victim of someone else?  No. Maybe it happened because he reaped what he sowed? No.  It happened to bring God glory.  Then Jesus healed him of his blindness.

God often uses the lowest parts of our life to work the biggest work in our life.  Why?  Because it is at the lowest moments that we are willing to give up trust in ourselves and put our trust in God.  James, Jesus’ brother gets at this very hard truth when he writes:

My brothers and sisters,whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2-4 NRSV

After twenty-four hours of labor, Micah, our son, just wouldn’t come out.  I’ll never forget our doctor, Amanda Shoemaker saying to Sarah, “I love you and I have to hurt you.”  Sometimes God loves us and has to hurt us, or at least allow us to get hurt.

One of the most amazing stories I’ve heard of something like this is the story of Beck Weathers.  Beck was part of what became known as the Mount Everest Disaster of 1996.  That year eight people died trying to scale the highest mountain in the world.  A freak snow storm moved in and guides and climbers made some very bad decisions.  In the midst of this was a doctor from Texas who was so badly hurt in the “death zone” (the altitude at which it is impossible to rescue someone) that he was left for dead…twice.  Here’s a brief clip from the Imax movie Everest to tell the story.

Beck had his “right arm amputated halfway between the elbow and wrist. All four fingers and the thumb on his left hand were removed, as well as parts of both feet. His nose was amputated and reconstructed with tissue from his ear and forehead.”  In his book Left for Dead, Beck answers an interesting question: Would he do it again?  Here’s what he says:

“The other most common thing people ask me is whether I’d do it again.  At first I’d think, What a stupid question!  But as I considered at length, I realized that this is one of the deeper questions to be asked.  The answer is: Even if I knew exactly everything that was going to happen to me on Mount Everest, I would do it again.  That day on the mountain I traded my hands for my family and my future.  It is a bargain I readily accept.”

Beck had been a workaholic.  His marriage was in tatters.  He was on a course of losing his family.  Losing several parts of his body on Mt.Everest shocked him in to reflecting on what was really important in life.  It not only shocked him, but it also gave him the motivation to make some real changes.  He now looks back on those tragic moments as a moment when big changes in his life happened.  Maybe bad things happen to good people because God wants to do something big in your life.

Wrong Question
Why do bad things happen to good people?  Maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with the question.  Here’s the problem with the question from a Christian perspective.  There are no “good” people.  If you’re not a Christian, and you’re reading me saying this, you may not be used to thinking in these terms.  Christians believe that we’re all broken.  We’ve all got a will bent in on itself.  We’re all fundamentally selfish.

Maybe “bad” isn’t quite the right word, but “sinful.”  We miss the mark as I said earlier.  This is the case even from birth.  Just hang out with a toddler for any amount of time and you’ll see that selfish inward bent of all humanity.  St. Paul says:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3:23 NRSV

It takes being honest with yourself to get to this conclusion.  Ask yourself: What are my interior motives?  How do I manipulate language to make myself look a little bit better than I am?  Psychologists call this the self-serving bias.  When asked, “90% of business managers and more than 90% of college professors rated their performance as superior to that of their average peer.”  Something doesn’t add up.  About half of us do not have a very accurate (humble) self picture.  For example, my own tendency is to sit on the couch and let my wife handle the fussy kid, meanwhile internally criticizing her for how she’s doing it!  We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Maybe the right question should be: Why do good things happen to bad people?  This past Thursday our church gathered for a celebration of Maundy Thursday (the day when we remember Jesus washing his disciples’ feet) in the local QD Laundromat to hand out free quarters to whoever showed up.  Why did a bunch of sinful people get together to hand out free money to other sinful people?  Why did sinful people do good stuff to sinful people?

Christians believe that there was only one time when something bad happened to a good person.  It was the day that the world encountered perfect love in Jesus and ended up killing him.  Why did that happen?  Here’s why.

We were created in the image of God to be in friendship with God.  That image was corrupted by sin (missing the mark of God’s plan for us), the friendship with God was broken, and one result was that death (literal but especially spiritual) entered the world.  The only one who could restore the image and thus, the friendship, was the one who fashioned and created the image to begin with, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the perfect image of God the Father.  Like a portrait that has been corrupted, the artist did not throw away the painting (for he loved his creation), but had the perfect model of the image, Jesus, sit again for the portrait to be renewed.  So Jesus became human to restore the image of God within each of us.  But the power of death needed to be broken for that image to be completely restored, so when the sin in the world demanded that he die, he willingly gave his life.  And yet, he overcame death when God raised him from the dead!

When we read earlier that Jesus promised us trials and sorrows, we didn’t finish the verse.  Here’s what the rest of it says:

I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.
John 16:33 NLT

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!
God is good, all the time!  All the time, God is good!

There are two extremes that people go to in responding to this Good News.  The first is to say, “I am a good person.  Why do I need Jesus?”  Until you realize your own responsibility in contributing to a broken world, you will never fully understand God’s love.  Open your heart to the conviction of God and confess your own brokenness, your own willful sin to God.

The second extreme in responding to the Good News of Jesus is to say, “I have sinned too much.  Why would God love me?”  Hear in your heart today that God’s love is given freely, that Jesus gave himself willingly for you, that he loved you so much that he was willing to conquer even death, so that no matter who you are, where you’ve been, or what you’ve done God loves you and desires a friendship with you. Why?  Because God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it!

Prayer
God, help me to recognize my need for your Son, Jesus, today.  Help me to see how my own sin contributes to this broken sin-stained world.  Forgive me.  God, help me to receive the love that you have shown me in your Son, Jesus.  Help me to know that you love me unconditionally.  Restore in me our friendship that you desire and created me for so that I might be a healing presence in this broken sin-stained world.  In the name of Jesus and in the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen.