tagged 
Obedience, discipleship
Obedience, discipleship Entries in Obedience (13)
Is Obedience Possible?
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 12:55PM Imagine this scene: a man lies naked, hungry and cold. A stranger approaches and offers these words, “I wish you well. Be warm, and filled.” Then the stranger walks away. Now imagine the stranger who walks away is Jesus.
Unthinkable, right? Too many Christians possess just such an image of Jesus when it comes to the issue obedience. God wants us to obey his will. It’s good. It’s necessary. The problem is many of us see ourselves as incapable of obedience. We have failed too often. We find ourselves naked and cold, in desperate need. And into our helpless situation, we imagine that Jesus walks up to us and says, “be obedient” without offering any practical help.
Would the grace God demand from us something we cannot give? If we were “miserable sinners” before turning to Jesus, why does Jesus expect his followers to become obedient to his will? How do we become something other than “forgiven miserable sinners?” Some believers find themselves trapped in a Christian existence of forgiveness, more sin, and more forgiveness.
The good news is that God’s grace does something more than say, “Be warm and filled.” Jesus calls us obey, but he does not leave us on our own. He demonstrated how to become the kind of follower who is not trapped in the forgive-sin again-forgive cycle.
The Jesus way of teaching believers how to obey is contained in the famous verses we call The Great Commission:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
The Great Commission does not command obedience, but rather discipleship--which makes obedience possible. Discipleship is God’s plan to grow in obedience. Jesus breaks discipleship to two functions--immersing believers in the three revealed identities of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and instructing disciples in how to obey everything he commanded. To separate obedience from teaching how to obey would be the same as merely saying “Be warm and filled” to a naked homeless person, and Jesus wouldn’t do that.
The church, however, has fallen into the “Be warm and filled” fallacy. We attempt to “teach” obedience apart from relationship. In fact, obedience cannot be taught apart from relationship, it can only be demanded. Sitting in church listening to the demands of obedience usually results in guilt--a guilt incapable of producing fruit.
A better pattern is the family model. Good parents teach their children to obey in an atmosphere of mutual love and commitment. Fathers and mothers love their children, and children love their parents. Relationship and obedience grow side-by-side. The love felt by both parents and child provide the motivation for discipline from above and effort from below. Healthy families provide examples of obedience. Day-by-day children can witness whether true obedience lives in the household.
New life in Christ means the Father has provided a new family for each of us. We become a part of God’s household. If obedience resides in the house, it becomes a way of life--something for us to enter into, not something imposed from the outside. Obedience becomes the natural response of loving hearts. The family of God becomes the context for learning how to obey. Our obedience helps provide a setting for others to discover the way of life. This is one of the reasons that our obedience is not merely a personal matter. It’s also why some Christian mystics describe God as Father and the church as the mother of our obedience.
Could you be God’s means of grace is someone else’s life? If you respond to the Great Commission by making disciples, the answer is yes.
Monday's Meditation: Two Insignificant Verses
Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 11:23PM It’s just two weeks after Easter Sunday. We are still in that period of time when the resurrected Jesus remained on the earth, encouraging and teaching his friends about the Kingdom of God.
His final actions are recorded for us in Matthew 28: 16 - 20:
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
These are familiar verses to Evangelicals. We have even given this passage a name, “The Great Commission.” Most people who point to these verses begin at verse 18, when Jesus begins to speak, but the proper context begins at verse 16--and what a difference those two verses make!
Here are two quick meditations:
Verse 16 - The disciples obeyed. Jesus gave them instructions to return to Galilee. Apart from carrying out those instructions, they would have missed an encounter with the resurrected Lord. It’s a simple meditation, but challenging: obedience puts us in a position to hear God. Do my actions make it easier or harder for me to hear his voice?
Verse 17 - Some of them doubted. These words first hit me like a thunderbolt--some of those who had seen the resurrected Jesus, those who had “proof” of his glory, still doubted! Imagine the scene around Jesus: his best friends giving him worship in a private setting, yet in some minds and hearts there was still doubt. Here’s the good news: their doubt did not disqualify them. He still received them, and he gave the “Great Commission” even to those who doubted.
These two are worth turning over in our hearts today: disobedience may keep me from hearing his voice, but doubt will not. Happy Monday!
What is the Rock?
Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 05:47PM Jesus offers his followers the kind of life that results in rest and peace. Yet Christians are thrown from crisis to crisis as if the storms of life are in control. Still, Jesus is very clear on this: if we will take his yoke upon ourselves, we can find the kind of life that will be characterized by rest and peace. Who doesn’t want a life like this?
My wife worked for years in a crisis pregnancy center. One day a young, unmarried Christian woman (a teenager, at that) came into the center for a free pregnancy test. The test was positive, and my wife delivered the news to the girl. “I don’t understand,” she cried as my wife held the girl in her arms. “How could God let this happen to me?” The news rocked this poor girl’s world. She received the news as if the pregnancy was something that happened to her--as if some force beyond her control had imposed its will on her and changed her life forever.
In my invitations to speak to Christian organizations, many people are familiar with the gospel stories I select as the theme for my talks. This familiarity can sometimes work against hearing the word of God in a way that can change our lives right now. We are tempted to think that because we have a heard a story before we must already understand its meaning. I believe this is especially true of the final story Jesus tells in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6, & 7). So many people have heard the story they unwittingly think there is no need to let the word of God instruct them if they hear it again. But let’s try to hear it again:
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." (Matthew 7: 24-27)
Each time, after I read these words out loud, I stop and ask the same question: “What is the rock?” In more than a decade of speaking engagements I have never once been given the correct answer immediately. The answers offered are invariably “Jesus,” “God,” or “the Bible.” These are answers are worthy sentiments, but they are wrong.
Only after reading the text a second (or third) time with special emphasis given to the key phrase does it dawn on the listeners that Jesus is requiring something of them in response to his preaching. Jesus says plainly that the difference between the two builders is putting his words into practice. One man hears and puts the words into practice, and the other does not. The old-fashioned word for this response is “obedience.” In these three chapters Jesus offers words of life. He speaks to our condition. He challenges our ideas of piety. He teaches us to pray. He points toward a loving Heavenly Father who is poised to help us in every situation Then at the end of the greatest sermon ever preached, he invites you and me into the building process.
Jesus has provided the guidance, but we must take the initiative to build on his words. We must decide if we trust his words enough to adopt them into our lives. It is one thing to hear him speak, it is quite another to order our lives around his words. His words are the words of life. But we must act on them.
Implicit in his teaching is the idea that we are all building. Each day, brick by brick we are building the houses of our lives. Everyone is building. The question is whether we are building on the rock, and the only way to do that is to put his words into practical operation in our lives.
As a pastor I have listened to people in crisis as they stare into the corner of the room and share the specific sadness that robs them of rest and peace. Their difficulties are real, their pain is not imagined. Sometimes the house of their life is crumbling around them. Seldom do I hear someone question whether they are forgiven or whether they will go to heaven. But frequently I hear them question if God cares about their suffering at that moment. From their ruin they do not doubt that God will forgive them at the end of their lives, but they openly wonder whether he cares at all about their lives right now.
Of course, God does care about our lives right now. He cares so much that he sent Jesus to model how to live in this world in a way that equips us to experience rest and peace right now, no matter what happens. But he will not build our lives without us. We must participate with him, and that participation begins with the determination to put his words into practice, to build on the rock.