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Everything is Amazing and Nobody’s Happy

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I was talking with Nate a while back and he wanted to show me a video he saw on YouTube. It was a guy on a talk show discussing all the amazing things we have in our world and how we like to complain about them. His main amazing thing was the fact that we can fly from New York to Los Angeles in six hours, and yet we complain when our flight takes off late. What used to take years now takes hours, and we complain about our flight being late. He kept saying, “Everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.”

That got my mind thinking about how active God is in the world and how we sometimes don’t even recognize it. So many people in Christianity are asking the question “Where are You, God?” That is not the right question. The right question is, “Where are You not, God?”

“O LORD, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue You know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in—behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You. For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  Psalm 139:1-14

God is always with us. He will never leave us. Even when we feel like He is not there, He is there. There is nowhere we can go from the presence of our God. That is an amazing truth. We see that all over the Word of God, but we feel alone, as though He is not with us. We have an amazing God, and we forget it. We have a present God, and we complain when we fail to see Him work. Many times the reason we don’t see the works of God is because He is working in a way which we are not expecting or looking for.

In this season of celebrating the birth of Jesus, remember that God the Son came down to this earth and became human for us. He came to live a life worth following and emulating. He also came to die the death we deserved. He didn’t stay dead, but He rose again and is now in heaven, and He has not left us alone. We have His Spirit present in our life. We are never separated from His presence. We have an amazing God; we need to recognize it, and it needs to lead to joy and peace during our time on earth.

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Do We Really Care?

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By Brian Sharpe

Does eternity matter? Do we really care? I would think that we would say yes to both of these questions. However, the problem is that most of us care about image or offensiveness more than we care about others and their eternity.

Now I’m confessing to being a part of the problem. A couple weeks ago I preached on being peacemakers in our world. I also talked about how we need to just invite people to things like the men’s dinner. Well, last Saturday I was working in my backyard in my shed. My neighbor was in his backyard with his new wife. I’ve talked to my neighbor on several occasions. I knew men’s dinner was that night and I was trying to figure out how to bring it up. I asked my neighbor if he needed help, since he and his wife were taking down a tree. He said they had it. I continued to work in my backyard. When I was done my neighbor was still cutting up the tree. I didn’t end up inviting him to the men’s dinner. I felt bad. I didn’t have the opportunity. At least, that’s what I told myself.

Now I’m not saying we should be abrupt and forceful in most cases. But I’m also not saying we should wait until “the right time.” I need to be bolder. I need to care more about the people around me. I keep hearing that my actions show my belief. Can you tell I care about the people around me based on how I’m living? This makes me think of a song that came out several years ago by Brandon Heath. I need to see people as God sees them. I need to have the love for others that God has for them. I need to be a peacemaker. This is what God is laying on my heart. I pray that God will challenge you with it as well.

“Give Me Your Eyes”
By Brandon Heath

Looked down from a broken sky
Traced out by the city lights
My world from a mile high
Best seat in the house tonight
Touched down on the cold black top
Hold on for the sudden stop
Breath in the familiar shock
Of confusion and chaos
All those people going somewhere
Why have I never cared?

Chorus:
Give me Your eyes for just one second
Give me Your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me Your love for humanity
Give me Your arms for the brokenhearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me Your eyes so I can see

Step out on a busy street
See a girl and our eyes meet
Does her best to smile at me
To hide what’s underneath
There’s a man just to her right
Black suit and a bright red tie
Too ashamed to tell his wife
He’s out of work
He’s buying time
All those people going somewhere
Why have I never cared?

Chorus

I’ve been there a million times
A couple of million eyes
Just moving past me by
I swear I never thought that I was wrong
Well I want a second glance
So give me a second chance
To see the way You see the people all along

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Dash Between the Dates

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How old were you in 1977? How old are you now? How old will you be in 2043?
This Last Word is being written January 3, 2013. Life is a funny thing, because it seems to fly by so fast … yet we are in control of how we spend our time. I did a coaching assessment a while back and one of the exercises it had me do was to guess the age I would die. Then it asked me to map out what I would like to do between now and the time of death. It showed that in a perfect world my time on this earth is getting shorter and shorter. So how am I investing it?

I seem to be bad at investing. I too often allow myself to become unintentional and unproductive in the way that I am living for God. The enemy likes us to be unintentional and unproductive for God.

For me, it’s everyday life that gets me derailed from living for God. What derails you? It could be work, friends, sports, school, or even family. It could be that life is not what you thought it would be. God has never promised us an easy life, but in the midst of the good and bad of our life He has asked that we stay focused on Him, that we bring glory and honor to His name by being intentional and productive and living for Him.

Now, in my opinion, productivity is surrender. As we surrender our life and give it over to God, He uses us to bring glory to Himself. I like to get in the way and try to do it myself without surrendering.

As you look at 2013, ask yourself: “What is derailing me from fully surrendering my life to God? What is derailing me from bringing glory and honor to Him?” This is the time of year to reflect and refocus. Set some goals and get into community with others who will help you live as God has called you to live.

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Teachability

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by Brian Sharpe

Have you ever had an “Aha!” moment? It happens to me a lot. Most of the time it has to do with being convicted by something God is trying to teach me.

Conviction is a good thing. As a person and as a leader within the church it is important to be teachable. I am not always teachable. I remember two years ago at the Challenge conference, being convicted to not just bring students to learn, but to learn myself. I walked away from Challenge provoked to implement the beatitudes into my life. It was the first time in a long time that I remember being taught at a student conference. But it was also the first time in a long time that I was willing to listen to what the Spirit of God was trying to teach me.

As I teach others, I am convicted to not simply teach, but to myself follow the instruction that I am giving. Most recently I was teaching on living by the Spirit. I taught that material because I felt like the students needed to hear that message. When I was done teaching, I hoped that the students understood the importance of living by the Spirit. Then I moved on to the next subject.

This past week as I was going through life, I was feeling convicted that aspects of the fruit of the Spirit were not present in my life. Then God continued to teach me my need to allow the Spirit of God to change my actions while I was reading a book. The quote had something to do with the fact that many times leaders in the church are calling people to live by the power of the Spirit and let the fruit of the Spirit be present, but they don’t hold themselves to that same standard. That hit me between the eyes.

I want to be used by God. I love to teach, but the message of my life needs to align with the message God has given me. This brought me back to the place where I remembered I need to be teachable. I need to be willing to listen even when I am the teacher. I need to be a doer of the Word of God, and not just a hearer.

James 1:19-26 says:

My dear brothers and sisters, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Your anger can never make things right in God’s sight. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the message God has planted in your hearts, for it is strong enough to save your souls. And remember, it is a message to obey, not just to listen to. If you don’t obey, you are only fooling yourself. For if you just listen and don’t obey, it is like looking at your face in a mirror but doing nothing to improve your appearance. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you keep looking steadily into God’s perfect law — the law that sets you free — and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

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On the Gospel

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by Brian Sharpe

New Years always brings about great time for reflection. Stan preached on a passage last Sunday where we could reflect on the message that Paul brought to the Corinthians. This message was described as a message “of first importance.” Paul brought the people of Corinth back to the Gospel, helping them remember the message of the Gospel. What I would ask you to reflect on is: who brought the Gospel to you?

We can read biographies or autobiographies of great missionaries like Hudson Taylor or Jim Elliot, but what we fail to remember is that we had missionaries bringing Jesus to us. Missionaries are people who are sent with a message to share. God has made us all missionaries. We need to be on mission sharing the message we were given. This message may have been brought to by your parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles. It may have been friends or a pastor. It doesn’t matter who it was, it just matters that the message of the Gospel was brought to you. It was given as a gift from God to you.

Is the message that was brought by Paul to Corinth … the message that was brought to you by the missionary who taught it to you … as important to you as it should be? Is it a message that you live by and share or just a message that has helped and changed you? It is important to recognize that God built his church by word of mouth. He did not build it through large programs. He built it by his people loving him so much that all they could do is share him with everyone they knew. This is what we want to be about at Elim. We want to be a body that is so in love with Jesus that all we can do is by word and deed share Jesus with everyone in our sphere of influence.

This leads me to a couple of closing questions:

  1. Who shared Jesus with you … and what would your life look like if they had kept their mouth shut?
  2. How did they share Jesus with you?
  3. When was the last time you shared the Gospel with someone with your words?
  4. Who is in your sphere of influence that you can share Jesus with?
  5. What is stopping you?

Answer these questions and share your answers with someone. Elim is here to help people know God, grow together in Christ and go and serve South Hill and beyond. Join us on this Gospel journey and share Jesus with everyone you know!

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Ten reasons why youth are the strategic bullseye of our missional target

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by Brian Sharpe, with an article by Shane Stacey

Here is an article that I read recently that would be good for all of us to read. It was written by Shane Stacey, the National Director for Students Ministries in the Evangelical Free Church. He is highlighting the need for churches to focus on ages 12-22. I am grateful for how you all have supported student and young adult ministries through the years. It has been a focus for Elim and it needs to continue to be a focus.

Please be praying for Common Ground (our Jr. and Sr. High ministry) and Pulse (our young adults ministry) as we seek to work with these age groups, pointing them to Jesus.

“10 Reasons Why Youth Are the Strategic Bulls-Eye of our Missional Target”

by Shane Stacey

The “12-22 window” is quickly becoming the largest unreached people group in the world.  Young people, ages 12-22, must be a central priority of today’s Church.

In Hurt, Chap Clark writes that today’s adolescents operate within an environment in which adults have largely abdicated their responsibility to mold and shape teenagers’ everyday lives causing them to create an “adolescent underworld.”

Is the church contributing to this underworld?   Are we unintentionally abandoning our collective role in reaching and developing young people?  We must awaken to the opportunity before us, seeing youth as the most strategic missional focus of our day!

This is true for several reasons:

This is a “tipping point” generation. The Millennials/Gen Y is the largest generation in history (3 billion under 25 globally; 100 million and climbing in America).

Youth are treasured by God. The birth of every new generation is an expression of breadth of the work of the cross that extends to yet another generation. God calls himself the Father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5), enlisted young people into His redemptive story, and literally mandates the older generation to reach to the next (Psalm 78:3-7).

Youth are wired for passion; looking for a cause. As Kenda Creasy Dean says in Practicing Passion, “Students are looking for something worth dying for and, sadly, all too often we give them pizza.” It is the cause found in the story line of the Scripture that will move young people to live out their unique Ephesians 2:10 purpose in God’s epic story.

Youth are like new wineskins. Youth are incredibly moldable, having far less to unlearn than most adults. If they adopt a disciplemaking way of life in these early years, there is far greater likelihood they will live a lifestyle of multiplication over the next 50 years.

Youth are highly responsive to the gospel. The high majority of those who repent and surrender to Christ do so before their 20th birthday.

Youth are accessible. Nearly 25 million teens will pass through 67,000 middle and high schools before scattering into college campuses, the military and the market place. There is an incredible opportunity for any church that will take the time to collectively pray for, serve and support even just one of their local schools.

Youth are motivated by relationships. One of the core motivations of young people is the need for connection, relationships and community. On top of this, the social media revolution of our day has been invented and driven by young people. Both their motivation for connection and the social economy of the world creates a relationally rich environment through which the gospel can spread.

Youth are globally-connected. Youth are more informed of global news and events than in decades past. This “wired” culture has created a global youth culture that, according to McCann Worldgroup’s article entitled The Truth about Youth, share many of the same core motivations:  community, justice and authenticity. This has created a truly global youth culture.

Youth are kingdom contributors, now!  We need to believe that young people are empowered by the Holy Spirit, and because they have discretionary time and are indigenous to youth culture, they can be ministers in their own right today.

Jesus modeled it for us. If we are still not convinced, then all we need to do is to look at the strategy of Jesus. Most of Jesus’ disciples were teenagers. There is also good reason to believe that most of the 500 that Paul mentions in 1 Cor.14:6 were young people.

Read the full article (PDF).

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