St. John Studies

Chapter 2 is tough.

Thinking about death is no fun, especially your death; my death.

No fun.

Especially poignant in chapter 2 is the story of the death of Stan Gerlach.  He was delivering a eulogy and spoke the words “You never know when God is going to take your life.  At that moment, there’s nothing you can do about it.  Are you ready?”

He sat down.

Fell over.

And died.

You probably don’t remember Harold Camping.  Harold was an evangelist and radio pastor who broadcast out of California and his messages went to 150 radio markets throughout the US.  Harold specialized in messages about the “end times” and he made a bold prophecy in 2011, that the world would see Jesus again on May 21, 2011 whereupon the saved would be taken up to heaven in the rapture, and that there would follow five months of fire, brimstone and plagues on Earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21, 2011, with the final destruction of the world.

Pastor Harold was wrong of course but he got lots of media attention due to his prophecy.

I remember where I was on May 21, 2011.

I was in Chicago attending my son’s graduation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Pastor Camping was on my mind for some reason.  He had garnered a lot of attention from national media outlets.

We had attended the graduation ceremony and it was time to tour the Senior Art Show, where all the graduating seniors got a chance to show an example of their best work for parents and the public to see.

As we toured the show, the galleries were packed with lots of what I would call “cutting edge” art.  For the most part, the seniors were young people and their enthusiasm about their skills led them to try to do new things.

Some of the pieces were shocking.

I came to one gallery and my wife and I were looking at a multi-media display.   The artist incorporated video into the piece.  As we watched the video, it was a couple having intercourse.

We were a bit taken aback but tried not to be too flustered.   The gallery was full of people who were probably more “worldly” than we were.

I turned to Susan and commented, “ I hope the world does not end at this moment.  I would be watching this video as the last thing I did on earth.”

It made for a good joke because Pastor Camping was not accurate in his prophecy.

But what will you be doing?

Stan Gerlach was telling people about Jesus.

His son said about him: “I’m so proud of him.  My dad died doing what he loved most.  He was telling people about Jesus.”

Chapter 2 is designed to make us think about how we are spending our time.  Are we wasting it?  Are we using it for good purposes?

Pastor Camping was incorrect in his end time prediction but everyone has an end time.

Where Will You Be?  What Will You Be Doing?

Pastor Chan cites Matthew 10:32-33 “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my father in heaven.  But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.”  You know those words brought a lot of comfort to Stan’s family.

Stan Gerlach’s family was heartbroken that Stan had to leave them but they knew Stan was in a good place, a place that Jesus refers to in John:  “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.   If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.…”

The assurances are there but what are we doing with our time?

Are we wasting it?  Are we using it for good purposes?

There’s no better purpose than living life for our Lord and Savior.

Chapter 2 in Crazy Love has a title that seems sobering.

“You might not finish this chapter.”

When you begin reading the chapter, it is sobering.

It’s about dying.

Not a thought you want to think about every day is it.

I began considering death when I was called on to handle my Aunt Babe’s affairs.  Her real name was Anna Ruth Revel but everyone called her Babe.  She had many relatives but for reasons that I will not elaborate on, she picked me as her executor in her final arrangements.

It was a real learning experience.

I had help from her Episcopal Church family in Paducah [lots of it].  She lived in Paducah at the end of her life.  I was not able to be there for her as fast as they were and I was very thankful for them.  I was the relative that they called when the emergencies occurred.

There were many.

It began with an operation on her arm which revealed a weak heart and then progressed to late stage esophageal cancer.  I found out that death for some is not sudden.  It is a long, drawn-out affair.

I was terrified that I was not up to the job most the time.

I had never been so close to someone as they died.

She was a Rector at her church, which means she had the rights of a pastor and was ordained.  She did not have a full-time ministry.  She was a psychologist by trade.  She did preach.  I inherited her sermons, books of them.

Being an ordained Rector, I watched her go through the process of death.  I discovered that she was a human being first and a Rector second.  She had emotions that overflowed at times.  Regret that she could not do much, frustration that she did not feel like taking on projects, irritation that her care took so much time and money.

She was a genius; had a high enough IQ that she was in the 98^th percentile of all human beings.

She loved travel and had been all around the world.

She loved her church and they loved her.

She just had a lot of trouble loving her family.

I came late to the game.  She had already divorced her husband and became estranged from her adopted daughter when I came along.  She did not get along with her big sister at all and thought her little brother was a “nut case.”

She loved my Dad but Dad was too sick himself to be of much help to her as she was dying.

That left me.

Other relatives did things to her that she considered unscrupulous but as I said above, I won’t elaborate on those things.

I will never forget the instructions she gave me about her arrangements.  Some people just leave the details a little open with vague instructions that give an executor reasonable “wiggle room” about dispersal of possessions.

Not Babe.

She had it all worked out and the instructions were very specific.

She was a downsizer but she still had lots of stuff when she passed.  She gave every family member something and they had to take it and sign off that they were ok with what they got.  She had a notebook detailing the value of dishes, antique items, jewelry and silver.  She told me where to go for appraisals and I had to raise as much money as I could as I liquidated her possessions.

She had details about a garage sale which I held in my mother’s garage in Marion.  Every penny had to be accounted for and the whole affair was to raise as much money as possible for her final request.

This is where I got one of my strongest messages about death.

I saw her dreams unfinished.  I had to sell them.

Paintings unpainted, music un-played and needlework undone.

I had always heard the old expression that when you “go”, your in box would not be empty.  Someone will have to come along and empty it for you.

That’s what I did.

I emptied her in box.

You may have caught the idea above that she was an ordained Rector in the Episcopal Church.  You may have caught the idea that she had a hard time loving her family.

She did.

However, she did not have a hard time loving her church family.

And they loved her.

She was an amazing woman.  My life was enriched for getting to know her at the end of her life.  I wondered why I had to come along so late.

God has His reasons.

All that work I had to do carrying out her detailed wishes was to raise money for her bequest to her church.   Family did not get much and that was tough, but the love was not there.   The love was there for the church and from the church.

Young people will get help with college for years to come from what Babe gave that church.

Yes when Babe died, it was a real learning experience for me.

I learned that family comes in many forms and Christians like to toss the term “Church Family” around a lot, but Babe knew what that meant.

Now, I do too.

Thanks Babe.

This first week, we have been given radical advice.  Can you imagine a pastor asking us to stop praying?

As you study chapter 1, you begin to understand why.  You have all heard the old expression that “talk is cheap.”  Of course it is and today it is getting cheaper in my opinion.

Pastor Chan takes a shot at technology when he says “We are a culture that relies on technology over community, a society in which spoken and written words are cheap, easy to come by and excessive….We are slow to listen, quick to speak and quick to become angry.”

Every day we find new people finding their way into the news.  It could be Toya Graham, the Baltimore mother who slapped her son and berated him for participating in riots instigated by the shooting of Freddie Gray.  It could be Donald Trump with his presidential announcement and his comments about Mexicans:  ““When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

I am not bashing Toya and I am not bashing Donald.

I am just providing two examples of talk.

Today, thanks to technology, anyone can get their words and images recorded.  Everyone has their opportunity for fame if their words and actions are outrageous enough.  What a dream come true if the comments go “viral.”

Let’s stop a moment and ask a tough question.

Do you think God really cares?

What has technology fueled?  Man is in love with man.  We think we are special because of what we can say, especially if it gets views on YouTube. Toya Graham got 120,000 views and then an interview on CBS news with 205,000 more.  She got an interview on “The View”, she got a phone call from Oprah and some are touting her as “mom of the year.”

Toya is an ordinary person, not a celebrity.  Donald Trump is another case.  He can command an audience on his name recognition alone.  Who has not heard of him?  His presidential announcement was covered by the three cable news 24 hour networks and his YouTube video has half a million views so far.  Donald is not shy about sharing his words.

At this point, we may begin to understand Pastor Chan’s ideas.  Let’s put them in the context of scripture.  “Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.”  Psalm 100, vs. 3 KJV.

I am not a fan of Facebook but I look at it from time to time.  I have family members who will post about anything on it.  At times, I wonder why they just don’t call each other and keep the information within our family.  However I strongly suspect that the need for attention is behind the popularity of Facebook.  People love to share their feelings on Facebook.  We have to photograph our food, our vacations, our pics of our cars, our loved ones, our pets etc.

Do you think God really cares?

Maybe I should lighten up and just have fun but it is hard to have fun when people post political statements about race, gun control, our national leaders and other serious topics.

Do you think God really cares?

I have reread chapter 1 many times for Chan’s thoughts but let’s go further.

Today in church our pastor read from Mark 5 vs. 35-41.  The context is different but let’s imagine Jesus looking at our rants on YouTube and reading our posts on Facebook.

What he did in Mark He could do to us.  When in the boat with his Disciples, they encountered a storm and it was so violent the Disciples thought they would die.  Jesus was asleep in the stern of the boat, sleeping on a cushion.  He got up and rebuked the wind saying “Quiet!  Be still!”

Could He do that very thing to us?

Of course He could.

Should He?

Yeah.

“He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.”

How do you drive my wife crazy?

Tell her one thing and do another.

How do you drive me crazy?

Tell me God is indescribable and then try to describe Him.

That’s what Pastor Chan tries to do in Chapter 1.

It’s not easy.

He says “God is holy” and then tries to explain that God is set apart from us by His holiness.  “There is no way we can fathom all of who He is.”  How can we know a God who is unknowable?  For most of us that is hard.   We want to conceptualize God somehow so we create a visual of the devout God, or the fatherly God or maybe the angry God in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.  Once we have the image, we personalize the image, giving God human attributes…no that does not work, says Pastor Chan.

He says “God is eternal” and then blows our minds with the idea of God existing outside time.  We are solidly within time.  We have a moment when we were born and we will have a moment when we will die.  But God is.  He always has been.  To understand this concept, you must understand the eternal statement Moses makes in Exodus 3:14 “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”

He says God is all knowing.  That’s a tough one.  It basically means that God knows all about you, all day long, every day.   He knew you in the womb.  He knows your future.  He knows what you are going to do before you do it.  Nothing you could ever do surprises God because God knows all.  Is this maddening?  Of course it is because we think we can hide our sin from God.  What a joke.  He is right there.  Can you hide your sin from the world?  Yes, and many people are very good at that, living false lives.  But your best accountability partner is God because you can’t hide anything from God, we just think we can.

We are a society that thrives on possessing things.   We have the conception that the bigger, the better, the more lavish, the happier we will be, the flashier the item, the more positive the image.  But what does God care?  Colossians 1:16 says “For by Him all things were created; things in heaven and on the earth, visible and invisible…all things were created by Him and for Him.”  It all belongs to God anyhow.  We possess only while we have it in life and it can go in a blink.  Ask the family who has lost its home in a fire, a tornado victim whose house has been flattened or a homeless person who is on the street after losing everything.  It truly is “easy come and easy go” when it comes to possessions, yet the distracting drumbeat of buy, buy, buy comes at us every day.  God knows, it is all His anyway.  He is all-powerful.

Finally Pastor Chan tells us the God is fair and just.  God has told us what to do and what not to do, yet we go about our lives ignoring the warning.  That is not smart but who said we are smart?  We have the attitude that we are “tolerating” God but what does God say in his first three commandments? “ 1.You shall have no other gods before Me  2.You shall not make idols  3.You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.  Do these three commandments sound like we should just tolerate God?  Pastor Chan says “God instructs us to worship and fear Him.”  Yet because we are frail humans we forget that “He is worthy to be worshipped and loved.   We are to fear Him.”

Yet we go about our merry lives, thinking God is our “good buddy” and that God understands our urgency and is going to grant us our prayers.   We think we can hide our indiscretions from Him, snapping up this and that hoping for happiness and spending our lives accumulating and expecting to get off the hook when we sin.  Maybe a little hand-slap God?

Why does Pastor Chan tell us that God is indescribable and then tries to describe Him?  Because He knows we are humans and we have our limits.   We need words and images to help us come to any understanding of the indescribable.

In researching this entry, I stumbled on a beautiful song sung by an African-American gospel singer named William McDowell and most of us would say that a small child could write the lyrics of his beautiful song “My Heart Sings.”

The lyrics are as follows:

How could I describe

A God that’s indescribable

How could I explain

A love that’s unexplainable

I’m at a loss for words.

Oh Oh Oh My heart sings Oh Oh Oh

That’s all there is to it, but it is truly beautiful in my opinion.  McDowell says that he can’t describe God and he does not try to, yet the emotion of his music is evident.  He is feeling God and he is singing to children—you and me.

To the Jews, Pastor Chan says, “saying something three times demonstrated perfection, so to call God, “Holy, Holy, Holy” is to say he is perfectly set apart, with nothing and no one to compare Him to.

Maybe we could substitute “Oh Oh Oh” or maybe we should just be silent.

The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan think tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.  They do a lot of polling.  Recently they released their poll about the changing religious landscape in America and the news is not good but it may be in line with what Pastor Chan is saying in Crazy Love.

Let’s wonder about those numbers.

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing.  That’s the bottom line but let’s parse the numbers a little.  First of all, this research is based on a poll that was conducted with 35,000 Americans.  If you know anything about polling, that is a respectable number.  If the poll was conducted properly, the conclusions mean something from a sample size that big.

The drop in Christian religious affiliation was 8%, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014.   Where have the people gone?   The poll states: “the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%. And the share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus, albeit from a very low base.”

“The drop in the Christian share of the population has been driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics. . . . The United Methodist Church (UMC) continues to be the largest denomination within the mainline Protestant tradition. Currently, 25% of mainline Protestants identify with the UMC, down slightly from 28% in 2007.”

What is wrong with Church?

Some of you will think that this is crazy but church is not very important for most people today.  What is important?  Our leisure time.   Leisure time and the options for filling it today are phenomenal.  We work so hard and don’t have a focal point.  When the weekend comes, it is not a priority to devote some time to God.  We are too selfish and want to do what we want to do, even if that means sleeping in on Sunday.   Pastor Chan says “ We see Him [God] as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way.  We forget God never had an identity crisis.  He knows that He’s great and deserves to be in the center of our lives.  Jesus came humbly as a servant, but He never begs us to give Him some small part of ourselves.  He commands everything from His followers.”

That’s the problem in a nutshell.

We don’t want to give Him all of us.

I suspect that the attitude that many followers in mainline churches have is that God is ok to believe in, as long as He is in His place and He does not impede their further activities.  For people who are searching for something to believe in, this attitude does not seem authentic at all.  People who believe this don’t exhibit any sign that they are different from any other person walking down the street. People who are searching for something to believe in want to see someone who is different, someone who is real, someone who is committed.

Or they just give up and become “unaffiliated.”

Pastor Chan says that “most of us know that we are supposed to read our Bibles and pray so that we can get to know Him better; that we are supposed to worship Him with our lives.  But actually living it out is challenging.  It confuses us when loving God is hard.”

But sometimes it is.

He demands so much but it is the demanding that makes us experience the blessings that He has in store for us.  You see God does not need us.  We need Him.  We read the results of the Pew Poll and think God needs us in his house of worship so the numbers will be better.   God needs us serving on the food line at Micah Mission Center. God needs us giving money to missions.  Today we think we are more important than we really are but God is on His throne.

Pastor Chan says He is holy, eternal, all knowing, all powerful and fair and just.

We are the one who has needs to be met and we try everything except God to meet those needs.

What a waste of time.

In my opinion, if church was a place where people truly worshipped, left church and lived out their faith throughout the week, others would flock to the church because they would realize the church is doing a great job of making the world a better place.  The unchurched would say “where can I get some of that ‘religion.’”

God is ok to believe in, as long as He is in His place and He does not impede my further activities.  That kind of attitude will continue the decline.

One day we will look back on today and wish the drop was only eight per cent.

1 Corinthians 18-20 [Paul writing to the Corinthian Church]  “For the message of the cross is foolishness of those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.  For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’  Where is the wise man?  Where is the scholar?  Where is the philosopher of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

Pastor Chan is trying to prove to us that God is much more intelligent than any of us.  He says things like “loving God is hard” and “The wise man comes to God without saying a word.”

Because we just can’t understand God’s infinite wisdom.

Humility is called for.

Why does it have to be so hard to understand?  We get an inkling of that in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church quoted above.

The Bible is full of expressions that are hard to understand but one of the hardest to understand is the emphasis on the death of Jesus.  Through the death of Jesus, man gets “new life”.  The circumstances of the death could have been very different but they were not, on purpose.  In the upper room, Jesus broke bread as a symbolic expression of his body broken for man.  Jesus served wine in memory of His blood that would be shed for man.  He could have arranged things where man would remember him for his teaching, or his words or his works but instead, he followed the plan of God, that he be remembered for his body given and the blood shed in his death.

The cross, according to John Stott became the centerpiece symbol of the church and the fact that it did was truly remarkable.  “In Greco-Roman culture the cross was an object of shame.”  The central symbol could have been a crib [Jesus’ incarnation], a carpenter’s bench [the dignity of manual labor], or a towel  [symbol of humble service to others] but the church settled on the cross.  Brian Moynahan writes in his book The Faith: A History of Christianity, “at first there was no Christian art other than the cross, since the second commandment forbade graven images.”

Let’s go back to 1 Corinthians 22-25: “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”

Is it not ironic that the “man” who was to come to earth and save mankind would come and live a simple life, filled with acts of love and die an undignified death, never even trying to stop the process, a process that He knew He had to endure.

Yet it worked.

It worked because of God’s infinite wisdom.

I don’t often do this but sometimes the news of the day compels me.  The reason I don’t do this is confirmation.  I heard of this gospel singer from Virginia named Marcus Stanley who wrote a powerful message on the alleged killer Dylann Roof’s facebook page.  I don’t have confirmation that any of his post is real.   Mr. Stanley has a powerful testimony himself as he was shot 8 times and survived the attempt on his life.  But as I copy his message to Mr. Roof from Facebook, I just want to say one thing:  as Christians, we are supposed to do what Mr. Stanley has done.

“What am I doing?”

Have you ever thought that?

Have you found yourself not enjoying what you should enjoy—your life?

There was a time in my life when I was driven.  I was paid a nice salary to take care of classes of students and get them from point A to point B in 16 weeks.   Let’s say it was a speech class.  I knew what I had to do.  I had to take a few good speakers, many average speakers and a few people suffering from stage fright and give them fundamental knowledge about how to present material to groups.

I used to kid about it a lot.  My goal was “to get your butterflies to fly in formation.  They will never go away.  You don’t want them to go away or you will be dull and lifeless.   You just want to get them in control and you want to channel that energy into an exciting performance.  You never tell the audience that you are scared.  You tell them you are excited.”

That was my shtick.

I had five classes to teach in 16 weeks, approximately 125 students.  Trying to get them from point A to point B.

After 16 weeks, I started all over again with 125 more.

It was ok.  I enjoyed it.  It was a living, a nice one for around here in western Kentucky.

But I was driven.

You know what I mean.  I was always pushing to get things accomplished.  I pushed myself; I pushed my students.  Getting them to work toward a goal was my purpose in life and I knew that they needed to see me responding to calls, emails, grading papers, creating lectures and doing what I always did in a 16 week period; lots of “teacher stuff.”  I always felt if I presented myself as a hard worker, they may be inspired to be hard workers.

Now, I am retired.

And here is my challenge.

How can I slow down and quit pushing myself and others?

Pastor Chan says we all need to stop and think.  What am I doing?  What is my purpose for what I am doing?  We need to stop and think.

As I am able to be less driven, the habits of the past creep back into my life.  I find myself pushing myself to work at things.  When I am working at something I am thinking about the next thing I have to do, which robs me of the joy of the present task.  Here is what I do.  It is simple and it sounds a bit selfish.  As I work at a task, I say the simple phrase over and over—“this is my time.”  Not complicated but it slows me down and makes me realize that God has given me this time to enjoy myself and I should enjoy it.   I longed to have this time.  I daydreamed about having it.  It is here.

Secondly, stop and just take time to wonder about the small stuff.  The sunset, the green grass, the delicate unfolding of a flower, a bug crawling across my big toe.  I know it sounds stupid, but as you slow down and appreciate the small stuff, it makes you really see the world, feel the world, smell the world, touch the world and taste the world.  God is in it all and He put it here for you to enjoy.

In addition, it is time to focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have.  I spent some time this morning with a man who is suffering from Parkinson’s.  I have known him for quite a while and he loves to read and loves to write.  The disease has taken that away from him now.  His condition makes me look at what I have and just thank God.  Right now, I have more than I deserve.  Right now, I am doing better than I deserve.  It won’t be that way forever.  The focus on the gifts I have now is really important.

Along with slowing down, paying attention to small stuff and acknowledging what I have, it is good to lead what I call a God-directed life.  Don’t get so caught up in an agenda that you can’t move in a direction that God wants you to move when He wants you to move.  Be flexible and realize that if you respond to the needs that God puts before you, there will be a blessing.  I have written about this many times but I get tired sometimes and don’t want to go to church, but I do go because I will receive a blessing.   I always come home feeling glad that I went.

Finally, “Stop Praying.”  Sound familiar?  It is the title of the chapter we are in.  I am a big mouth.  My wife says I am never at a loss for words.  One of the worst situations she ever has to suffer through is when we wake up together and sit on the couch and as coffee invigorates my brain, I begin to speak and I hop from topic to topic as the caffeine begins to work.  There is poor Susan, sitting there in a sleep stupor having to pay attention to a big mouth, blathering on and on.

I can be that way with God.

Just because I am in His presence, it does not mean that I have to be blathering on with God.

Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God.”  I have written about that verse before.  It is a good thing to remember when you feel compelled to pray but you are not in the proper frame of mind.  It is a good thing to remember when you should approach God with the proper awe and just meditate in His presence.   It is a good thing to remember that when you put your concerns in His hands, that He will take care of them.

We need to stop and think.

Just be still and know that God is God and He wants you to enjoy your life.

After all, you are here right now for a reason.  He wants to show you what that reason is, but you have to slow down to understand it.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:39

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear … “ Matthew 6:25

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” Matthew 5:11

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”  Matthew 16:25

We could go on and on.

Crazy scriptures…

Jesus said love your neighbor just like you love yourself?  Wow that’s tough.  Over the years I have had some neighbors who were hard to love.  Yet that is what He says.

Don’t worry about life.  Come on.  Who can do that?   Sometimes I have things going well yet I still worry because they are not “perfect”.  Yet Jesus says not to worry.

When people insult you, do you feel like you are capable of dealing with it?  Can you turn the other cheek?   Jesus says that is necessary.

And then the “losing and finding it” scripture.  Talk about CRAZY!  You have to lose your life in Christ to find your life?  Yet Jesus says just that.

Now we are getting an appreciation of the title of our study—Crazy Love.  To be a Christian is to be labelled as crazy by the people of this world.  The reason, God asks so much of us.

Have you ever been around someone like Francis Chan?  Someone who is extreme in his vision for what the church can do, someone who not only talks about sacrifice, but is perfectly willing to sacrifice, someone who inspires you to want more God, do more for God, grow in your personal relationship with God.  His goal in life is to stretch himself and those around him.

Someone who realizes that enough is never enough.

Drives you crazy doesn’t it.

Adam and Christine Teske have written an interesting article for Relevant Magazine on Three Things I Hate About Jesus.  It fits right in with Crazy Love.

The Christian life calls for us to do a lot that is challenging.  First of all they say it is asking a lot for us to be able to put up with all kinds of people.  In Matthew 13 Jesus talks about a farmer who plants wheat seeds in a field. But his enemy also comes and plants weed seeds. The farmer’s servants see the weeds and they ask if they should pull them up. The farmer says no:  “While you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.”  Jesus goes on to explain that in the parable, He’s the farmer, the wheat represents people of His Kingdom, the enemy is the Devil and the weeds are people of “the evil one.”  Who wants to put up with people from Satan?  Yet that is what Jesus says we have to do.  Isn’t that asking a lot?

The Teskes write “While anyone can follow Jesus, it [must be] on His terms. Jesus didn’t leave any room to call Him a ‘good teacher’ or ‘a spiritual guide.’ He said He was the Living Water, the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Narrow Gate, the Good Shepherd, the Resurrection, the Way, the Truth and the Life (and that’s just in the book of John).”   There is no room for us to pick and choose what we want to do and believe.  The writers call this picking and choosing the “buffet approach.”   Jesus is a “package deal.”  You have to take the whole package, not just parts of it.  Jesus says we have to do this.  Isn’t that asking a lot?

Jesus said if I’m going to follow Him, I have to give up everything I have (Luke 14:33). He said that I have to deny myself, take up my cross (an implement of my own painful death) every day and then follow Him (Luke 9:23). Jesus must become greater, and I must become less (John 3:30).  Wow, where is the room for me to be me?  The Teske’s third complaint is that Jesus asks for their whole life.  Yours too.  Mine too.  Come to think of it, that’s what those verses above mean.  He wants it all.

Can we give our whole lives over to Jesus?  Probably not, but He wants it anyway.

This study is going to ask tough questions of all of us Christians who “compartmentalize” our lives.  You know what I mean.  You have the Christian hat that you put on, on Sunday, and the rest of the week you put on your “worldly hat.”   Pastor Chan will hold the mirror up to us and get us to see that is what we are doing and he does not like it.

We should not like it either.

God doesn’t.

Man this book is crazy!

As we begin a new book, I am on fire.

One of the best Adult Sunday School teaching experiences I have ever had was with the slim volume we are now studying, “Crazy Love” by Pastor Francis Chan.

Chan has a way of waking up the sleeping church and as he wakes you up, you will want more and more from him.

If you are a member of St. John, and subscribed to Right Now Media, you will see companion videos for each chapter.  They are short intro. videos but they may help you get the main point of the chapter.  Log on to Right Now Media and watch along as we study the chapters.  If you are following this blog but not a member of St. John and want to see the video, you can access them on youtube but the quality is not as good.

With apologies to Wikipedia, here is a little information about Pastor Chan:

“Chan was born in San Francisco to native Chinese parents. His father named Francis after the city of his birth. Francis Chan’s mother died giving birth to him. After Chan’s father remarried, when Chan was about 7 years old, his stepmother died in a car accident when he was 9 years old. His father remarried again when he was 10. His father then died of cancer when Chan was 12 years old. Francis Chan was then raised by his stepmother Josephine Chan along with his older sister Grace, older brother Paul and much younger half-sister, Gloria. He had family support from his father’s younger sister and her husband, Marion and William Wong, along with a large extended family and church family. He did not get along well with his father growing up, but says that his fear of his father has helped him understand a level of fear of God. He also stated he didn’t understand the love of God well until he became a father himself. As a high-school and then junior-college student, Chan was active in Christian youth groups which helped develop his faith in Christ and his interest in ministry. Before becoming a senior pastor, Francis worked for a variety of employers including Taco Bell, Mic Pizza, Kirby Company, Ralphs Market, Broadway Men’s Clothing, hardwood flooring contractors, and the Acapulco restaurant. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Master’s College and a Master of Divinity degree from Master’s Seminary. After a three-month leave from Cornerstone Church, Francis said he felt convicted to sacrifice more for God. Chan gives away about 90 percent of his income, doesn’t take a salary from his church, and has donated most of his book royalties, which have totaled about $2,000,000, to various charities. Much of it goes to organizations which rescue sex slaves in foreign countries.”  Furthermore, in 2008 it was reported that Cornerstone would give away 55% of its income to charitable causes.   In September 2014, Chan joined the board of elders of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View, California.”