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Of Course, Church Is Also for Unbelievers

It would seem rather obvious that church is a place for unbelievers as well as believers. After all, where else are people going to learn about who God is and what it means to be a Christian? What better place could there be?

Some argue that church is only or primarily for believers. Church is designed primarily to help believers grow, and then they go out and connect with people in the world. At the least, they might argue, unbelievers should not be a focus of the church as an institution. If they come, that’s fine, but having unbelievers in church is not a goal that the church should pursue, they might say.

I believe that this argument often grows out of frustration with churches that water down the Christian message in order to try and get people to come to church. I have also heard many people who think that if church is also for unbelievers, then it will simply be a church service where a simple Gospel message is presented over and over again with an altar call. Some Christians feel like they never get anything from these services that help them grow. They feel like they have been left behind in the quest for “numbers.”

Whether these sorts of complaints are just or not, I won’t attempt to answer here. It’s sufficient to say that there is no necessary connection between church also being for unbelievers and watering down the message or just focusing only on getting conversions.

In fact, I would suggest that merely repeating the simple Gospel message or watering down the Christian message is not particularly helpful either to believers or unbelievers. While it is true that in order to become a Christian, we only need a little bit of knowledge (i.e., John 3:16), following Christ involves understanding a whole variety of topics explained in the Bible at large.

For those considering whether or not to follow Jesus, it’s good for them to learn about what that means for their families, their work, their emotions, their time, and a host of other things. That’s why being in church where the whole counsel of God is taught is especially helpful for those considering Christianity.

But does the Bible teach that church is also for unbelievers? I believe it does. When God established His worship in the Old Testament, He centered His worship in the temple. According to Isaiah, the design of the Temple was to “for my house [to be] be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Is. 56:7). Continue reading “Of Course, Church Is Also for Unbelievers”

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On New Year’s Resolutions (With a Few of Mine)

Me at the cemetery of my Keith ancestors, a partial fulfillment of one of my resolutions (see below)
I’ve talked to a few people recently who’ve said that they don’t like New Year’s resolutions because they never do them.

I can understand that, but I would really encourage people to make New Year’s resolutions.

Resolutions are about thinking about life and being proactive rather than simply reactive and going with the flow. If we simply react and go with the flow, we will probably miss out on a lot of things and take the path of least resistance.

Making resolutions is about walking with our eyes in our heads (Ecclesiastes 2:14). King Solomon advises his son Solomon: “Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways” (Prov. 4:26). Making resolutions is about giving careful thought to how we live.

A couple suggestions on making New Year’s resolutions.

First, I try to think of my goals along the lines of Jesus’ growth as recorded by Luke: “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man” (2:52). From this, I take four categories: spiritual, social, physical, and intellectual. To this, I might add things that I want to do just for fun (though I could probably fit those into the four categories above).

Second, when I make goals, it seems best to me to make them as specific as possible. For example, “Stay in touch with my Grandma” is probably not a very good goal. “Text Grandma everyday” is a good goal (this was a resolution one of my daughters made, completely without my prompting, I might add).

Third, don’t give up because you fail. This is also one advantage of being specific. If you mess up, just keep going. If you forget to text Grandma one day, just text her the next day. If you don’t read the Bible one day, read it the next. Life is going to interrupt our goals. If you recognize that going in, you’ll be OK?

Finally, just make some goals. Think about your life. Don’t let life happen to you. Take charge of it and make things happen that you want to happen. Why should we not do that? Why be a slave to circumstances? Why not begin to change what you can change?

Here are a few of my resolutions:

  1. Don’t use computers or movies to relax in the evening except when doing so with other people. Instead, use fiction books.
  2. Go outside each day and work a little bit on my yard.
  3. Check the news and Facebook once a day only.
  4. Visit and tour the places where each of my grandparents grew up this year and see the places where they grew up and where my ancestors are buried (Note: partially accomplished already).
  5. Attend more worship services and church events in other churches.
  6. Connect individually with each of my children daily.

Reading over my resolutions, I realized that I need to follow my own advice on some of them and make them more specific. Thinking about our lives and what we want them to be is a continuous process.

At any rate, I hope in the next year to try and walk “with my eyes in my head.” Have fun making your New Year’s resolutions! “May the Lord make all your plans succeed” in 2018 (Psalm 20:4).

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Jesus & Our Struggles

Jesus walking on the water captivates our imagination. It captivated me as a young boy. When I was 4 or 5, my Dad took me to see Superman 2. The three criminals from Krypton land in the water, levitate, and start walking on the water. I shouted out in the theater in amazement, “Dad! They’re walking on the water like Jesus!”

As an adult, it still captures my imagination.

In Mark 6, there are two aspects of this account that get my interest. The first is that Jesus is on land and sees the disciples straining at the oars.

This reminds me that even when I’m struggling, Jesus sees me. He doesn’t immediately relieve my difficulties. He allows me to struggle. There will be struggles in this life, and Jesus will allow me to go through them.

The second thing is that when He walks on the water, the text tells us that “He was about to pass by them . . .” He wasn’t going to fix their situation. He wasn’t going to relieve their difficulty. He was going to make His presence known to them and then pass by.

They responded with utter terror like the narrator in the Credence Clearwater Revival song.

Jesus responded simply: “It is I! Don’t be afraid.”

And He still does that for us. What if in the midst of my anxieties and fears, I could feel Jesus’ presence and hear Him saying, “It is I. Don’t be afraid”?

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Will Someone Take Care of Me?

Mosaic of Fish and Loaves at the Church of Multiplication in Tabgha, Israel
Jesus’ miracle in multiplying the loaves and the fish is one of the most well-known in the Bible. There is so much fruit for reflection in this event.

The accounts of Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish bring us face to face with the most basic question of our existence: how will we be provided for? In spite of all our advances in technology, we still fear interruption of our provision for our lives and well-being.

Even if we are not afraid of having bread and fish, we worry that we will not have jobs, good family relationships, safety, security from foreign enemies, continued freedom, freedom from discrimination, and a good place to live.

On a daily basis, we worry about retirement funds, having enough money to get the things for our children that we need, besides being able to provide for ourselves good things to enjoy like vacations, entertainment, and so on.

There are three different perspectives from which we can view these issues.

The Disciples and Jesus
The first is Jesus and the disciples. The disciples have just returned from a preaching and ministry tour of Israel. When they get back, things are as busy as ever, and they don’t even have time to eat.

At this point, Jesus says, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (v. 31). I love this passage because I imagine Jesus saying this to me at times, and I take comfort in the fact that He cares about that.

When they actually go to rest, the crowds find Jesus and ministry work immediately begins again. How do you react when God interrupts your day, especially a day you planned for rest? If you’re like me, probably not that well.

Do I ever get a break? We might think.

Notice the end of the story, though. Jesus gives them rest: there were 12 baskets left over. Jesus still cares about our rest, even when He interrupts it.

The Disciples and the Crowd
The second perspective is the disciples and the crowd.

At the end of the day, the disciples start to worry. “This is a remote place . . . and it’s already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat” (35–36).

They seek to solve the problem for Jesus because of their own worry. Do you ever seek to solve the problems of someone else, even Jesus, when you worry?

Since they want to take the problem, Jesus gives it over to them. He says something very interesting, “You give them something to eat.”

Why does He say that? Does he actually want them to perform a miracle? Does He want them to see their own inability? Is he being playful to calm their anxiety? Difficult to say.

At any rate, as they contemplate the magnitude of the problem, they will have to look to Jesus.

That’s what we’ll often find in life. Our resources are totally incapable of accomplishing what they need to.

What do they need to do in such circumstances? Follow Jesus’ instructions, and something amazing will happen.

Jesus and the Crowd
The problem with Jesus is that He is so perfect that we might wonder if we can even go to Him. We all have shame that makes us want to hide. We all have things that make us unworthy.

The crowd approaches Jesus in the midst of His time with His disciples. What will He do? Mark says that He has compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Luke says, “He welcomed them.”

And He will welcome us, whoever we are, wherever we’ve been, whatever we’ve done.

And through this miracles where He provides for the crowd by multiplying five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand, He shows that He will provide for us.

In Jesus, we have everything we need, and He will welcome us. “I am the bread of life,” He says. “Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst” (John 6:35). In Jesus, we have someone who will satisfy all the deepest longings of our soul.

Conclusion
Jesus has compassion on us, but He also challenges us. He may call us to work when we’re ready to rest. He may not enter into our worry. He may put us in impossible situations.

But that doesn’t mean He doesn’t care. He cares, and He will provide. He will provide for us what we need and do amazing things that we thought could never be done.

There is someone who will take care of us, and He challenges us to trust Him when we don’t know where our provision will come from.

That’s the comfort and challenge of Jesus.

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The Comfort and Challenge of Jesus

“Comfort! Comfort!” These are the words announcing Christmas, the coming of the long-promised Messiah in Isaiah 40.

Isaiah declares immediately after that every mountain needs to be leveled and every valley filled in. The coming of God brings comfort, but it also presents a challenge. Our lives will have to adjust to fit the new reign of God.

It’s not surprising, then, that when we meet Jesus in the Gospels that we find a person who brings amazing comfort but who also presents significant challenges.

He is His own person, has His own goals, is willing to challenge people at almost any time, and is unwilling to get caught up in the torrent of our emotions. But He also stays connected; welcomes everybody; and provides help, blessing, and comfort beyond our wildest expectation.

The account of Jesus calming the storm in Mark 4 is an illustration of the comfort and challenge of Jesus.

After a long day of teaching, Jesus is tired and enters a boat with His disciples to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Mark reports, “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped” (v. 37). This was no small or imagined problem. Their lives were in mortal danger.

And what was Jesus doing? “Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion” (v. 38). As followers of Jesus, we will often feel like we are in mortal danger, and we will wonder, why isn’t Jesus more concerned about this?

When we feel anxious about a situation, we generally want others to feel the same way. It’s not easy to tolerate a calm presence when we are filled with anxiety. So, what do we do? We’ll try to pull people in, and we’ve got a lot of ways of doing this.

One way we try to bring people into our anxiety is through accusatory questions. The disciples seek to pull Jesus into this situation by waking and asking Him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

This is just the sort of question that is designed to awaken our anxieties as parents, pastors, bosses, and leaders. Our response is generally to defend ourselves, to reassure, or to argue.

But that’s not what Jesus does. He actually doesn’t address that issue at all. In essence, He says, “I’m not going to get into that with you, but here’s what I’d like to talk about: why are you so afraid, and where is your faith?”

This is the sort of question that would probably deeply disturb and annoy us. Here we are, we might say, in serious trouble, and you want to challenge our emotions and our faith!

It’s frustrating! Here’s a serious issue, and Jesus is telling us that we should not be afraid and have faith. A real challenge!

The fact is, though, that Jesus does care about them and us, and He is willing to help them. He stands up and responds to the storm, “Quiet! Be still!” –

Remember that at this point the disciples are just beginning to understand who Jesus is. So, they are terrified. The Greek adjective is mega. They are terrified with a mega-fear. They are in total disbelief at what has just happend.

Who is this? They ask. And that’s a great question for us to consider this Christmas. Who is this man? What kind of person is He?

In calming the storm, He not only solves their problems but gives them the key to controlling their anxiety and fear in every situation. Instead of seeing the storm, they need to see Jesus who is Lord above all storms. If they can understand that, then they will have a foundation for faith that can give them peace in the midst of every storm.

That’s why the question that Jesus asks is so crucial. Jesus has compassion on us but doesn’t enter into our anxious responses. He challenges us to have a faith that is the antidote to every anxious response.

So, where are you feeling anxiety this week? What are you anxious about? If you could see Jesus as for you and Lord over the totality of those events that you are worried about, wouldn’t that make a big difference? Wouldn’t that calm our anxious nerves?

But it’s hard to let go. It’s a real act of faith to say that we’ll let go of our own anxious responses and trust Jesus and His solutions.

That’s the comfort and the challenge of Jesus.

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