Love

Rivers of Living Water

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Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"
—John 7:38 ESV

It's funny how synchronicity strikes at the most opportune times. I'd planned on writing about rivers of living water today, but never had any indication I'd experience it so personally.

During my hiatus, I lined up about a half dozen good topics to discuss when I got back to blogging. The first was the post on labels, the second being about John 7:38.

My son and I read that passage together during our mutual quiet time. We've set apart a few minutes in the morning to read the Bible together and pray for the day. No one sweats great drops of blood or tears down demonic strongholds; it's just a dad and son spending time before God.

While reading through Chapter 7 of John, I read v38 to my son and God hit me between the eyes.  I stopped at the end of the verse and let it sink in. I've heard the passage hundred of times in my life, but on reading it this time I started thinking. And I've not stopped.

Last night, my wife and I attended my 25th high school reunion. I'd originally not planned to go. My 10th had been a blast, I was out of town for the 15th, and was sick as a dog for my 20th (one I was dying to attend.) But for some reason I'd gotten in my head that the 20th had been a huge one and the 25th promised to be lightly attended. I'd not heard from any of the group I'd hung with concerning the reunion, so that only reinforced my assumption.

I'm one of those people who looks back on high school fondly. Though I was by no means a jock, I was popular, with high school being a sort of "glory days" time for me. My drumming opened up doors into sub-groups within the school, and I was fortunate in that I crossed into groups that ordinarily didn't converge. The jocks, band geeks, honor society, and stoner groups knew me and I knew them.

Some personal confession now: I've been down in recent months. A lot of dreams have died in the last year or so and uncertainty is our daily bread. Financial insecurity lurks in every electrical, water, and mortgage bill. (Just paying for the reunion and a babysitter gave me pause, one of the reasons I'd elected not to go to the reunion.) The sheer speed of life has left me drained, longing for some simpler time when I didn't stand in the middle of a room, thoughts surging, unable to figure out what I'm supposed to do next. The idea of attending my reunion discouraged me more.  

At night, when the house is quiet and shadows fill the crevices of my office, I wonder how I got off track. That whip-smart young man of 1981 witnessed a lot of promise go out the window for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. I'd sucked from the stream all through high school, but now those waters appeared dried up and so very long ago.

No one wants to be the "What ever happened to…" person people talk about at reunions. I didn't want to think that  people would join me in wondering how I'd missed the obvious glory road ahead of me.

But the Best Man from our wedding colluded with the girl I'd dated my senior year, and together they got me to change my mind, so my wife and I went. The evening was great fun. I connected with a lot of old friends. Finding out that people were doing well raised my spirits.

Toward the end of the evening, a classmate who'd grown up in my subdivision walked over. I'd been having trouble recognizing a few people all evening, and I didn't immediately put her face with a name. A stream in the desertThe second I saw her name tag, I did a mental brain slap (Duh! How did I not know right away?) and we started talking.

Donna told me right then that she'd been reading my bio in the reunion update. Her comment: "How wonderful your life has turned out for you, Dan. We always knew you would be someone important, a doctor, or someone who helps others. I'm so happy for you." Donna then pulled over another classmate, who agreed with what Donna had said.

I thought about my bio and wondered what Donna had read that I'd missed. I'd written the bio and it sure didn't sound as wonderful to me as it did Donna. But when she told me that she'd become a Christian since leaving high school and was now teaching Sunday School, it all made sense. 

You see, out of Donna came rivers of living water. God put Donna there with a healing word at a healing time. She spoke into the desert, and from that stream came life.

There was nothing fake about what Donna shared. She spoke with the love of Christ and meant what she said. She can't possibly know what a blessing her words were. They may not sound like anything extraordinary, but I needed to hear them. Later that night, driving the babysitter to her place, I spent the return trip home in tears, thanking God for all He's given me.

Are we speaking words of blessing into other people's lives? Are rivers of living water perpetually flowing out from us into the lives of people who are thirsty? 

How easy it should be for us to dispense grace! Yet for some of us, judgment and correctness fall off our lips faster than the Holy Spirit's life. How sad that we live in a culture longing for a drink of the Eternal, yet we turn on each other so quickly and without care for the death we inflict with our words and attitudes.

What does it mean for us who have the Wellspring of Life, the Zoe life of Jesus, living in us? How are our days different because we can offer drink to the thirsty that never fails to refresh?

Right now, people around us are dying for a drink of what we have welling up inside. In what ways would their lives be different if we broke down our internal dam that held back Living Water? What words of life can we speak into the dry desert that is a hurting person's daily existence? How can we be known as an oasis for the parched, whether they be lost or found?

I've met a few people in my life—only a few—who live each day as oases.  That's the kind of person I long to be. Maybe if we did a better job allowing more of Christ's living water to stream out of us, we'd mutually help each other to become the oases that Christ longs for us to be.

Be blessed. And be a blessing to others.

Our Obsession with Labels

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"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."

–Mark 9:38 NIV 

The phosphors weren't even dark on my monitor before someone challenged me to come out of my hiatus. In short turn, two more incidents cried out, begging me to post, taunting me to spurn my self-imposed break. Curiously, all three possessed a common thread: an obsession with labels.

Nathan Busenitz posted excerpts from an old interview in which the normally sane John MacArthur threw a rod and proudly declared that all Christians are dispensationalists. Just like he is. If they were truly honest with themselves, that is.

Hmm. I wonder how R.C. Sproul and Vern Poythress took that news.

Last time I checked, there wasn't a Darbyite bone in my body, but that's beside the point. MacArthur felt the need to assign a label to all of Protestantism that he uses to refer to himself. But like Lay's Potato Chips, you can't stop at one. "Dispensationalist" doesn't cover it all. Go ahead, put a label on it!In Johnny Mac's case, he's a Reformed Calvinist Cessationist Credobaptist Dispensationalist. I'm sure if we delved deeper we could determine if he's an Infra- or Supralapsarian. He probably supports the use of grape juice over wine, so add Teetotaling to the list of labels.

Boy, that's a lot of labels. 

The second confrontation with labels came inside Cerulean Sanctum, when my repost on homeschooling got a number of commenters hot and bothered. At issue was my innocent comment about homeschooling my son. "No," came the righteous response from a couple people, "you are most definitely NOT homeschooling your son. You're doing a public e-school at home, but that's not the same as homeschooling." 

Seems I can't even label myself correctly. Other people have to step in and do it for me.

Even if I should concede that the critics are correct on the jots and tittles of this particular letter of the law, still the issue of labels raised its ugly head. We have to know who's right and who's wrong. Judging by the vociferous (and verging on venomous) response my self-labeling received, "hellaciously wrong" was the correct answer.

And lastly, within hours of my final pre-hiatus post, a respected Godblogger took me to task for my hesitancy to toss labels around. He objected to the "About My Theology" portion of my "About Cerulean Sanctum" page, wherein I state the following:

I'm "Reformational," meaning I completely affirm what came out of the Reformation. Labels are difficult and I tend to eschew them, so I'm not "Totally Reformed" in the strict five-point Calvinist manner that many Godbloggers are, but I lean more toward the theology of Martin Luther.

My insistence that I don't like labels didn't sit well. The gist of this blogger's post channeled Lucy Van Pelt and labeled me the Charlie Brown of the Godblogosphere. You know, wishy washy. (Though I somehow got a few points for being honest about it!) 

What is it with the American Church's obsession with labels?

I find it nearly impossible to find much emphasis on labels in the New Testament, particularly the Gospels. Let's take a look at the disciples' attempts to label:

"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."

–Mark 9:38 NIV

Not one of us. That's a classic in the labeling community, isn't it? We use the "not one of us" label more than any other. We insist on dividing, creating schisms, and call our obsession "discernment."

But how did Jesus address John's labeling of this man?

"Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us."

—Mark 9:39-40

Jesus' response: Tactful rebuke coupled with a complete overhaul of terms. Better still, he narrowed the label further (which we'll discuss further down.)

I'm sure the disciples' labeling the man taxed Jesus' patience—at least a bit—since mere verses before the disciples engaged in another common labeling practice:

They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.

—Mark 9:33-34

Here we have the flip side of "not one of us," the "we're the best" label. Of course, with such a label, someone must fall into the category of "not the best," or as we more commonly see it enunciated, "scum of the earth."

Any guesses as to Jesus' response? Yes, tactful rebuke coupled with a complete overhaul of terms. Detect a pattern here?

In fact, the more one looks at the labeling practices of the people Jesus encounters in the New Testement, the more we see that people do a lousy job of godly labeling. The Roman centurion labeled himself "unworthy," but Jesus labeled him "faithful." The Pharisees were dying to label the man born blind or his parents "sinners." Jesus said no, "glory of God." Most people would label the priest and the Levite "godly," but Jesus reserves that label for the hated Samaritan who stops to help the man robbers left for dead.

Jesus repeatedly turned labeling on its head. While we have a penchant for a plethora of labels we use to determine who's greatest and who's one of us, plus all the subdivisions within those, Jesus stuck with only two:

  • For Us vs. Against Us
  • Sheep vs. Goats
  • Wheat vs. Tares
  • Found vs. Lost 
  • Saved vs. Unsaved
  • Faithful vs. Unfaithful 
  • Believers vs. Unbelievers 

If Jesus stuck to such simplified labeling, what about the Church He founded? 

If we examine the early Church, we WON'T find the apostles straining for a name for the burgeoning movement of Christ followers in Jerusalem. No one's angling for a label at Pentecost. It's not till Chapter 9 of Acts that we hear the label "the Way" applied. And it's in Antioch in Acts 11:26 that the movement gets a label that sticks, Christians. That label came in 45 BC, twelve years after the founding of the Church!

You see, the early Church had a job to do. They didn't have time to waste labeling themselves or others. As far as they were concerned, the labels Jesus used met their needs. Stick to the basics.

So why is it that Christians today feel compelled to resort to so many labels—and so obsessively?

I believe part of the problem lies in our modernistic tendency to condense everything we encounter into easily knowable parameters. We take comfort in thinking we comprehend what an item is by its labels. Unfortunately, we can attach all the labels in the world to someone or something and still miss the whole picture. For instance, we can label each part of a peacock—forehead, lore, beak, wings, primaries, secondaries, tertiaries, scapulars, coverlets, feet, etc.—but utterly miss the beauty and majesty of it.

If a family member died, would we be mortified if a Reformed Calvinist Cessationist Credobaptist Dispensationalist Supralapsarian Teetotaler knocked on our door and offered to grieve with us even though we were Arminian Pentecostal Holiness Lordship-Salvation Pedobaptists who drank a glass of wine for our stomach every day just like Paul advised Timothy? I doubt it.

Why all the fuss then?

I'm sick of labels, personally. I'm a Christian; that's the only label I wish to be known by. As to other labels, Jesus offers nothing but rebuke. The older I get, the more I understand that truth.

Time to stop the obsessive labeling. We're only hurting the cause of Jesus Christ by loving our labels more than each other.

My Hope for What the Church Will Be, Part 2

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Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
—1 Thessalonians 5:11 ESV

In part 1 of this two-parter, I outlined how a secular meeting carried in it all the hallmarks of real community, the kind that should power the Church. However, I don't believe that we understand how vital community is to the believer, therefore we tend to wander like lone rangers thinking "Christ is all I need," but forgetting that it is in the Body of Christ that He chooses to express Himself before He returns.

What would the Church in America look like if we took 1 Thessalonians 5:11 to heart and made it bedrock to our interactions within the Christian community?

I guarantee that not a single person reading this wakes up in the morning thinking, "How can I build up other believers?" I'm not sure even our pastors think that way. I don't think that way.

But what if we did?

We talk about service, but service is nothing more than putting aside my need to meet the need of someone else. The Bible that we read and study so that we can be equipped for every good work stays mere words unless we let the Holy Spirit change our minds about those good works within community. Christ gazing down at the throngsIf I'm not reading the Scriptures with a heart inclined toward service, then the word remains unfruitful in me. I may say that I want to be like Jesus, who came to serve and give Himself as a ransom, but that aspiration means nothing unless I die to self and take on His mantle of service to others.

Last year was a bad one for the Christian blogosphere. I can't ever remember so many horrible arguments paraded in public like I did some of the blog posts from 2005. Yet how slim were the words of encouragement! We had our proportions reversed and it showed in vitriolic commentary as foes arose where none were before.

This lack of up-building comes from daily repeating the world's mantra that I am all that is. Me. Myself. I. As much as we Americans like to think of ourselves as generous people (and we are to some extent), we still wear our self-centeredness on our sleeves. We've even made the Jesus who died for the sins of the world into a personal savior. Not his. Not hers. But mine.

I now understand that some Christians are requesting that their personal information be left out of church directories in order to protect their private lives! Listen, when we became Christians, we gave up all rights to a private life. People of the world dead in their sins have a private life, but the Christian doesn't. The Christian has a public, communal life. That community is key to everything the believer does and is! You can't build a temple to the Lord out of one stone, but with a quarry of them you can.

When each of us fixates so much on his or her own thing, is it any wonder that so many people have been burned by the Church? Worse yet, some people make spiritual excuses for that hurt. Earlier this year, I read a comment on another blog that excused hurting fellow believers by claiming that it's God's will for the hurt to happen. I thought, Then by all means, let's treat each other more savagely so that grace may abound! Let's be even MORE self-centered.

Benjamin Franklin, when confronted with the enormity of the independence he and his colleagues proposed, proclaimed, "We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately." How sad that so many of us in the Church in this country have chosen to hang separately. We let our brothers and sisters fend off the Enemy's attacks alone. Families fall to the ground and so few take it to heart, instead shaking heads and saying, "Thank God that wasn't us."

But time, and what comes with it, is fickle. One day, it might be us. What then? When we weren't there for others, how can we expect anyone to be there for us?

I get so many letters from people in dire straits who turned to their churches for help and got a door slammed in their faces. I could blog for the next year by doing nothing more than posting those e-mails from the very first day I started writing about these topics on this blog. Isn't that sad?

What will it take for us, when we're confronted with a need, for our first words to be, "How can I help?" Isn't that the character of Jesus Christ right there? Whenever He was confronted with a person's need, He didn't say, "Oh, I'll pray for you next time I draw away to a mountain top." No! He did something about that need right then and there. He met the needs of His community, the ones who lived in His region of Palestine so long ago. 

We need each other, folks. The Church that God blesses is the one that works like an athlete's finely-tuned body, not like a bunch of organs held together by sheer force of will and a set of gritted teeth. My hope for the Church would be the same one that Paul desires: that we encourage each other and build each other up. If I'm in pain, you're there for me. When you need money, I offer to help. Even if my contribution looks more like the widow's mite than the enormity of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I still give it, even if that means I have to give up something I crave like crazy to make it possible.

Paul wrote this to the Corinthians:

So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.
—1 Corinthians 14:12 ESV

If we ever want to see the Spirit take our churches to the next level, building each other up, whether spiritually or by meeting the physical needs of the brethren, is the catalyst for empowerment. If we watch each other's backs and truly hang together, I know we'll be better for it in ways we can only dream of.

That's my hope for what the Church in America 2006 (and beyond) will be.