Doing What God Places in Our Hands–No More, No Less

I was talking with a friend the other day about the fear of being an ineffective Christian. Both of us face some difficult challenges in our lives, some the same, some different. Those challenges have taken their toll on us both.

No one gets through life unscathed, though. Everyone has challenges. Everyone. If not now, then later. If not when we’re young, then when we’re old. Life is hard, and no one has a magic mirror to peer into the future or a gilded passport to avoid trials.

Christianity in America consists largely of two polar camps.

You have the Radical camp that defines Christians by what they do or do not do for God. Some even go so far as to say one’s ultimate standing with God depends entirely on how radically engaged one is for the Kingdom. It all comes down to what you do, and you better do a lot.

Then you have the Rest camp. “Do? What is that? I’m resting in the Lord and in my salvation!” The funny thing about that camp is that it never seems to do anything, ever. The world ends at the tip of their noses (or, in some cases, the outline of their belly).

I don’t think the truth dwells in either camp. The Church in America can lull you to sleep or work you to death. Neither is healthy–or godly.

Open, cupped hands One day, I cupped my hands in prayer and said, “God, fill these hands.”

And He did.

He filled them with a mix of normal American life and stuff no sane person would want. Do my best for Him at work, at home, and out there in the world. You know, everyday normality. This blog was part of that mix. Then came the outrageous stuff, most of which consisted of challenges that would push me to the edge.

All God asks of me is to address what He has put in my hands right now, or as one wise Christian once told me, “Jesus hung on one cross only.”

We have this tendency to either drop our cupped hands and let things spill out, or we let guilt force us to take on so much we can’t hold it all and panic sets in.

We need to examine our lives. What is immediately before us? What is in our hands right now? Do those things to the glory of God.

Little things that daily fall into our cupped hands matter too. When God puts a person in front of me, I can give that person my attention and be in the present. I can be Christ in that moment to that one person. That fits in my hand. That I can always do. I may not be the answer to that person’s deep need, but the little bit o’ grace I dispense in our connecting matters to that person. I can always be kind and empathetic. Maybe I can help that person financially or emotionally if he needs it. But then, maybe I can’t. God, what can I do right now? In what ways can I be your ambassador to this person now? What have you put in my hand?

Regarding the challenges of life, let no one judge you. Anyone who has had to caretake a dying parent knows how debilitating such a task can be and how it consumes all of life. That’s reality, and it’s OK. It’s what is in your hand right now. It won’t always be there. God is not judging you by what else you try to carry. Sometimes, something that big is enough. It doesn’t matter what other people think of your inability to say yes to everything else they ask of you. You can only do what you can do. Taking on too much means you do everything poorly and stress yourself. Don’t. All you can do is what is in your hand. Too few Christians understand this, and one of the most toxic tricks a local church can pull is to guilt people “in the name of Jesus” into doing more than God expects.

God knows what you can and cannot do. Keep your eyes on Him. Learn to say no when He wants you to. Never feel guilty for saying no when it’s God leading you to say it.

If the contents of that open hand begin to overflow, get help anywhere you can. God rewards the resourceful, and admitting to being overwhelmed is no sin. Where humility is, Jesus is. You’re not a superhero, so don’t try to be. We are all dust; without God, we can do nothing.

In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the man going on a journey gave five talents to one servant, two to another, and one to a third. He didn’t give five to the servant who could handle two only. Similarly, he gave five to the one who could handle that many in the moment. When the talent dispenser returned to his servants, all he expected was to see what each servant had done with what each was given. Each was accountable solely for making something out of what the journeyman had placed in their hands. No more, no less.

Those Rest folks need to step up. Those Radical folks need to calm down.

Where are you?

Know that you can do only what God has placed in your hands at this time. A year from now, what is in your hands may be different, possibly more or perhaps less. Give your best to God for what you have before you now, and stop beating yourself up. If only one thing occupies your hands right now, do it for His glory. If God wants to add something, He will. Trust Him to get it right. And if it seems too much, trust that God will put people in your life to help. Ask for that help and keep asking until you get it.

Most of all, trust God. Pray over everything He puts in your hands and never stop offering it back to Him as you partner with Him to make it happen. In the end, it’s not really about you and how well you perform anyway. It’s about moving the whole Kingdom forward. And that happens one cupped-hand item at a time.

Is “Missional” Sending People to Hell?

American Church leaders love buzzwords. Toss a buzzword around long enough and you seem smarter, more with it. “He uses that word a lot. He must be an expert.”

Past buzzwords of note include these “winners”:

Visioncasting

Transformational

Impact

Best of breed

Leverage

Organic growth

Long tail

For the past five years or so, the American Church has fallen over itself to let potential local church members and disaffected believers looking for an “active” church know that it groks its mission to the world. The answer it offers is missional.

The word missional came from the title of a 1998 book assembled under the auspices of the World Council of Churches that sought to rediscover the true mission of the Church in the 21st century. It outlined de-emphasizing the Church as an institution and instead concentrating local church purposes on the “gospel mission,” doing the things the Bible depicts the Church doing in Acts.

All that sounds great—well, except for the World Council of Churches’ involvement.

Cerulean Sanctum exists to help Christians consider what it means to be New Testament believers living in 21st century America. When someone mentions the Book of Acts, my ears prick up. Missional appears to align perfectly with this blog’s intent.

But as I’ve watched churches scamper to redo their mission statements to include the word missional, even as church after church rejiggers its advertising to ensure people know it’s missional, I get a bad feeling about this swing to focusing on mission.

Missional church? Serving the poor is great. Healing the sick is a beautiful calling. Living simply is a must. Putting the mission of Jesus central in all we do is wonderful.

Or is it?

The problem with the massive move to missional in the Church is that Christians ARE doing a much better job of putting the gospel activities of the Church central. More and more churches are effective at being less institutional and more missional.

So how is that a problem?

Making the activities of Christian mission central is subtly distinct from making Christ Himself central.

In the midst of all this missional hubbub, I wonder if we have forgotten Jesus.

A couple weeks ago, a friend mentioned that he was seeing a massive shift in the local church ecosystem. Large churches known for their programs were banding together to be more aggressive in missional practice, uniting under the banner of a missional program known as 3DM.

On the surface, this sounds amazing. Never mind that unifying under something calls into question that something’s ultimate message, Christians have long seen a need to be both more ecumenical and more mission-focused. This looks like a possible answer.

But as my friend described what was actually playing out, it sounded to me like a lot of great work done, but without a lot of “being.” in other words, this missional thrust looks super as an action, but what is going on in the spiritual depths of the people doing all those missional activities?

One of the most startling verses in the Bible, spoken by Jesus:

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
—John 17:3 ESV

Jesus gives us the very definition of eternal life: Knowing God and knowing Jesus Himself.

Knowing.

Knowing is distinct from doing. It is possible to do and not to know. One can take part in activities that look and feel godly without knowing God. Fact is, this is what Protestants have accused Catholics of since the Reformation.

Is it possible to be missional and yet not know God and Jesus Christ whom God sent?

Sadly, I believe it is.

Consider the source of the word missional, a World Council of Churches book. Does a more doctrinally suspect organization exist? While that may be a “guilt by association” argument, researching the beliefs of those most ardent about missional uncovers compromises, usually with regard to traditional orthodoxy. The most missional-focused folks on the national stage often seem fuzzier about who Jesus is or what He says. They sometimes make statements that it’s OK to be a Muslim-Christian or a Buddhist-Christian. Or that the Church must embrace whatever the latest spirit of the age is to stay relevant. Relevance seems to be critical to being missional. As long as one stays relevant, one stays missional, so it doesn’t matter what happens to 2,000 years of Christian doctrine.

But if people who claim to know Jesus don’t track true to what His entire word says, in what way are they really following Him?

If a person does Gospel-looking activities but doesn’t adhere to everything in the Gospel, how can it be said that person is a Christian? How can the argument be made that such a person knows the real Jesus at all?

Jesus had a response to this:

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
—Luke 10:38-42 ESV

In many ways, missional is a reaction against a moribund Church that sat at Jesus’ feet and soaked up the goodness—without doing anything with what was soaked up. But like so much that happens in the American Church, fleeing to one polar extreme after dwelling at the other is not the way to achieve balance.

Christians can’t just do works that look Christian. We must know Jesus. We must sit at His feet and dwell there. It is as important to be as it is to do. In fact, as we see in the above passage from Luke, it may be MORE important.

We can do everything that looks like Christian mission and yet not know Jesus. The Muslim world has studied how Christian ministry works and now models many new Islamic charities off their Christian counterparts, which is winning converts to Islam. In short, missional success, just without Jesus.

Jesus is the difference. We must know Him. We must know what is truth. A Christianity that acts like the early Church but doesn’t know Jesus well—or at all—will fail because it is the arm of flesh and not the working of the Spirit.

How tragic to someday find yourself before the Lord and hear Him say He never knew you, despite all the missional things you did.

People are dying to know Jesus. Really, that’s all that matters. If our churches neglect to give Jesus to people in ample measure, all the missional in the universe will not save them.

Equipping the Saints: Leaders, Doers, and Community

This will be my final post in the Equipping the Saints series. I could probably write on Christian Education issues forever, but I have other things to say, so I’m going to wrap this up for now.

Strangely, one of the things I’ve been accused of during this series is failing to talk about educating Christians outside of mere Bible knowledge. Obviously, that accusation must come from people who don’t regularly read this blog. As I see it, I mostly write about Church issues that have little to do with teaching the Bible and everything to do with the practice of the faith. Cerulean Sanctum exists to talk about how we Christians can more effectively live out the faith in a practical way.

And that’s what today’s post is about.

I find this to be one of the most telling verses in the Bible:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
—Judges 17:6

What makes this verse even more intriguing is that it is duplicated later in Judges 21:25. You don’t see that too often in the Scriptures. The writer of Judges certainly has a point to make!

I’ve heard the latter portion of that verse quoted slightly out of context by teachers attempting to make a point about sin. Well, I can see that a little, but the modifier for that second sentence comes from the one that precedes it.

Israel, in the era of the judges, lacked consistent leadership. The nation had no direction. We see why here:

Now the young man Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.
—1 Samuel 3:1

And we see the outcome of that lack here:

Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
—Proverbs 29:18

Without visionary leadership plugged into what God is doing, a church simply cannot grow its people deeper in Christ. The success or failure of most churches rests on their leadership.

This is not to say that an anointed leader can’t be done in by external forces, such as church squabbles and other leaders seeking glory for themselves. But whether or not a church makes genuinely deep disciples who know Christ and minister Him through the power of the Gospel and the gifts of the Spirit rests largely on the leadership and its vision.

It worked for Jesus:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
—John 5:19

Jesus connected with the Father and grabbed the vision. So if Jesus is our model, how then can we excuse ourselves from imitating His lead of only doing what He sees the Father doing??

Yet how many leaders know the doings of God? They might know what they are doing, but if that doesn’t align with God’s direction, forget it; the whole enterprise will fail. (Or it might succeed ever so slightly in the flesh so that it becomes a norm that people equate with success, which results in a lowest common denominator measure of future successes that bears no resemblance to what God can make happen.)

This lack of leadership clued into God’s intent defines the state of Evangelicalism in the 21st century. But without God-directed leadership, making disciples will forever be a hit or miss proposition.

It simply doesn’t have to be that way.

As for the people in the seats, their role is doing. We assume leaders are doers, but are their charges?

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
—James 1:22

We can teach the Bible until we drop dead of exhaustion, but it will be for naught if the people who receive it do nothing with it. The Bible isn’t meant to exist in a vacuum, but some people make it so. I know in some parts of Evangelicalism, people treat the Bible like a Bible Bowl contest and even award kids for how much they know. Honestly, that’s worthless unless it’s paired with actually living what the Bible says.

One of the most abused verses in the Bible:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17

I think it’s abused because many Christians will go on and on about how Scripture is God’s word and we should know it, but they then neglect the purpose of God for knowing it: good works.

Folks, that’s the end goal of knowledge of the Bible. Everything you and I read in the Bible is intended to equip us to be doers. That’s why James’ admonition is so powerful. Absorbing Bible teaching after Bible teaching yet doing nothing with that teaching is wicked! It’s a lie we tell ourselves about our maturity, because we base that maturity solely on what we know, not on what we do because of what we know.

I am perpetually amazed by the martyr Stephen. Here he was whip smart in the Scriptures and filled with the Holy Spirit, yet his job ensured the people forgotten by the rest of his culture were waited on at table. And he didn’t discharge that waiting to some lesser; he did it himself.

In our day, we would call that a waste. But Stephen didn’t think so. Nor did the apostles who chose him for that role. All had caught the greater vision of knowing the Scriptures. And when time came for Stephen to die by the hands of those who hated him for what he practiced, what he knew came out in full force. So that even as he was dying, he was doing the work of an apologist and evangelist.

Doing ensures learning. Tell me something and I might retain some general knowledge. But let me do based on what I have learned, and I will grow deeper. That’s how it works. God intends for us to do what we know so that we put down spiritual roots and can take on even more responsibility in learning and doing.

Do we want revelation by the Holy Spirit in our lives? Rather than trying to snatch mystical revelations out of thin air, why not just do what the revelation of the Scriptures has already told us to do? How can anyone expect to hear the Holy Spirit speaks some charismatic revelation if that person fails to do what the in-hand revelation of the Holy Bible has already said to do?

Feed the poor. Visit the sick and dying. Minister grace to the prisoner. Share Christ with others. I can guarantee that if we do those things the Lord commanded in the Scriptures we will understand what the Bible means in a greater way. Doing is its own learning. It’s the on-the-job training that takes everything we know already from the Bible and sets the Spirit’s fire to it, making it real in the life of the believer. You and I simply cannot grow to understand the Bible, grow in grace, grow in knowledge of the voice of the Lord, and grow in spiritual giftings unless we do the things God has already taught us to do.

Leaders must lead based on the vision they have received from God. The congregation must know the Bible and do what it says to do.

The last piece of this is to blend it together in community. The more mature folks work alongside the less mature, helping them to see through service what it means to put the word of God into practice. Mentoring isn’t then reduced to a 1:1 relationship that only comes about through much wrangling, but it defines how the community lifeblood of the church flows, as it should always occur on a community scale. When the community of the local church then catches the vision of God given through the leadership, Christian Education finds its fulfillment. Great things happen. People grow deep in Christ. The local church blooms and prospers, as does the greater Church Universal.

So many times this ideal fails because we fail to understand that it must and always be a process that depends on everyone doing his or her part. Leaders must draw close to God enough to see what He is doing. The congregants must be willing to put what they learn in the Bible into practice. And the greater community, both leaders and nonleaders, must be working together toward a common goal.

We can have such a practice in our churches if we wished to. But I believe that too few of us do. Satisfied with a snack, we miss the feast. And worse, we come to believe that the snack is all there is.