In Dave's Words

In our comfort and certainty obsessed generation, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes followers of Christ different from the rest of our generally polite and benevolent North American culture. I’ve been asking myself, if someone watched me for a few days would they confidently peg me as a Christ follower?

I grew up in a religious sub-culture that taught me that I would be noted as “Christian” because of what I didn’t participate in. If I didn’t swear, smoke, or drink and tried really hard to act as nice as possible, I would be “letting my little light shine”. The goal seemed to be getting through life, or at least my teen years, as “sinless” as possible. The result? I’m still a recovering Pharisee.

So now… 20 years later what is it that I now think makes a follower of Christ different from other nice, law-abiding citizens? Here it is! Get ready for it!

Love.

Yup…love…that’s it. Strikingly and seemingly not so spiritually profound. To be clear, I’m not talking about a “run of the mill” kind of love. Anyone with a heartbeat can love; and I would surmise that EVERY religion espouses “love” as a hallmark of what they preach and teach in some way. So then…why would I say that love is what separates authentic Christ-followers from everyone else?

Extra-ordinary love produces extra-ordinary love-ers. Even within the limits of my ability to comprehend and describe, extravagant, non-reciprocated and truly unconditional mercy is not the kind of  common “love” I’m referring to. Parents love their children, husbands love their wives, people can even “love” their jobs, holidays, coffee and ice-cream. We “love” all of these because of what we receive from them. And while the limits of our common love can be deep and wide (as for our children), at some point, once we stop receiving long enough, we will stop loving. God loves completely different to this; for as long as I draw breath I will never be able to understand why or how. I can only do my best to experience this love and thereby dispense this love. I can only hope that the more I experience it, the more I can live it. The more I try to find words to type to explain or express this love, the less I find myself typing.

So…when it comes to the matter of how I am different from other nice people the simple answer becomes…not so simple. People will know I am His when I love like Him. Not perfectly of course, but hopefully more and more like Him. The more my life and my love isn’t conditional upon what I receive from people, the more I extend mercy to those who let me down again, the more my acts of service are not done to elicit a similar response, the more I give without the expectation of even feeling fulfilled by the giving, the more I serve knowing I will not be served in return, the more I spend myself on those who are the least to me, the more I will give off the fragrance that followed Jesus.          

Do you really want to know if you are Christ-like? Take this little test and honestly evaluate if your Christ-likeness is anything more than just trying to be as nice as you can be. Like many, we’ve got 1 Cor 13 hanging on the wall in our bathroom as a constant examination of my heart. I’m sure you may have heard this before, but substitute your name for the word “love” in the familiar passage of scripture. _____ is patient and kind. _____ is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. _____ does not demand his/her own way. _____ is not irritable, and keeps no record of being wronged. _____ does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. _____ never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Better yet…ask your closest friends, spouse or children how you fare against this description of the greatest One who ever loved.

Dave’s book entitled: Hungry For Life: A Vision of the Church that Would Transform the World has now been released and is available for sale. For more information you can click The Book tab above.

Again, the purpose of writing the book is to expand the message of our vision and mobilize more churches and groups into international compassion. If you are interested in buying the book, you can call our office to order a copy. While the book is now available for sale through channels such as Blessings, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc, for the initial release, Hungry For Life is making it available through our office. HFL purchased an initial print run and it would be helpful if you purchased them from our office. Once this run has been sold, we will recommend people buy it through Blessings Christian Marketplace, online or in their stores.

Here are the details if you’re interested in getting a hold of a copy:
Cost: $20 (includes taxes)
Shipping: You can either pick one up from our office in Chilliwack or we can mail you one for $4.
Purchasing: You can either just stop by if you’re in the Chilliwack area or call our office and dial reception at 604-703-0223 ext 107 to order by phone.
Payment Options: Visa, MasterCard, Cheque, or of course Cash.

Although I do believe that the internal culture of the Church in North America is going through a cultural change for the better, territorialism and chiefdoms are very much still the accepted norm. For the most part, church (or para-church for that matter) is still seen as religious business rife with brands to protect, money to guard, competition to watch, market trends to be conferenced about, customers to vie for and the most “successful” leaders are the ones with entrepreneurial as opposed to shepherding gifts.

Molded by our commercial and well oiled free market, the machine of church continues to produce well programmed constituents…but rarely life change. And in addition to the world shaping the church with its mold, I also believe that this territorialism is perpetuated by insecure spiritual leaders who base their self worth on free market metrics applied to “their” church. And while most of us can wax about strategy and mission as the outward motivation of the pursuit of church success…there is often an equally, sometimes more powerful motive than God’s glory.

Our glory.

The reality is that something very unhealthy inside of us makes the subtle switch when things start going…good. Attendance, giving, outwardly successful programs, numbers of baptisms and converts…all opportunities to feed the child in all of us that still needs value and validation. Is our commitment for excellence, results, change, etc…for the benefit of God’s glory (and those we serve) or are we really more driven to be reliant on the praise of man for our value? Self-lessness is not some place to arrive but rather a journey of continuing to make sure that when people see me they continually recognize the face and heart of the Savior.       

As Keith Green wrote and sang…and as I sang this morning:

Oh, Lord you’re beautiful.

Your face is all I seek.

And when, your eyes, are on this child,

Your grace abounds to me.

I want to take your word and shine it all around,

But first help me to just live it Lord.

And when I’m doing well, help me to never seek a crown.

For my reward is giving glory to you.

The following Manning quote has been bouncing around my head and heart. “The ordinary pablum of popular religion caters to the idealistic, prefectionist, and neurotic self who fixates on the graceless getting worthy for union (with Christ), while allowing the protitutes and tax gougers to dance into the kingdom. Our strategies of self-deception persuade us that abiding restful union with Jesus is too costly, leaving no room for money, ambition, success, fame, sex, power, control, and pride of place or the fatal trap of self-rejection, thus prohibiting mediocre, disaffected dingbats and dirtballs, like myself, from intimacy with Jesus. ”

Guilty as charged!

Why is it that I constantly feel I need to get or stay worthy for Christ’s affection? I guess that, as with everything else in this world, our worth is so often earned. As much as we talk about “God so loving the world”, mainstream evangelicalism may talk about the grace and love of God, but lives out the reality that we need to work to continue to earn something we have been freely given.

God…help me to recognize and reject contemporary Pharisaism and go deeper into an experience of your wild grace for me.

I’m constantly amazed at how, within the Kingdom of God, we take our preferences about how the work should get done and make them universal forgone expectations for everyone else. We never fight about whether or not we worship…we fight about how we should worship. We never fight about whether or not we preach the Word of God…we fight about how we should preach the Word of God. No one disputes that we should care for the poor…but there is much dispute about how we should care for the poor. No one would argue that we need to disciple our children…but many argue about how we should teach them.

It’s so easy for me to love what I love so much that I expect others to love it also. We arrogantly prescribe our preferences and passions for everyone else. And in the church, we have the unfortunate advantage of saying, “thus sayeth the Lord!”

While there are universal principles and commands for all Christ followers to follow…they are few. And I have yet find universal methods that apply to all churches, cultures, communities for all time. Lets be honest…our default “self” mechanism causes us to expect that everyone be “normal”…like we are.