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Love of Money and Spiritual Power

I love how Eugene Peterson translates Paul’s words to the Ephesians elders in Acts 20: “I’ve never had a taste for wealth and fashion…that’s why I’ve told you to always hold on to what Jesus said, ‘You’ll be much happier giving than getting.’”

The reason that arrests me is that sometimes I do seem prone to a "taste for wealth and fashion." And because of that I often think that it’s more blessed to get than to give.

Once your basic needs are met, money has a directly inverse relationship with happiness. After your needs are met, money will begin to compete with the things that really should be giving you happiness: enjoyment of your family, friends, your job, and God. (I'm reading a great novel right now called A Man in Full by one of America's shrewdest cultural analysts, Tom Wolfe, that basically demonstrates that in all too painful clarity.)

When my mind idles, it goes to the things I delight in… when I have spent my money on things (a new car, new clothes), I sit around and delight in those things. Thinking about those things is not near as fulfilling as thinking about others whom I have helped, God and the spread of the Gospel, etc. If I have spent my money there, then that’s where my heart will go when it’s idling. As Jesus said, “Where your treasure goes, your heart will follow.”

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that competes for the place of God in our hearts like money. It is what keeps us from real passion for God; it's what keeps ministers of the Gospel from real power. When concern for money takes over your heart, God and His power retreat. Jesus said it, "You cannot love both God and money."

The pope once complained of John Calvin, "That heretic gets all his power by utter disregard for money."

Dont mean to spoil anybody's enjoyment of their Christmas gifts. I got some nice ones, too (smile).

Closed for Christmas

Spending time with my family... quit reading blogs and go do the same... (smile)

See you around New Years.

Our Christmas Gift...

Each year around Christmas we challenge every person that calls the Summit Church home to consider how they should sacrifice to see the Gospel advance around the world. Our Christmas Missions Offering allows us to come together as followers of Christ and collectively give back a portion of what God has so generously lavished upon us. At the time of year where our culture overflows with materialism this is our chance to remind ourselves of the gift that Christ has given to us.

This year our goal is $200,000. You have already given over $130,000! We are so close to reaching our goal, but we still need your help. Please consider what you can do to help us reach our goal. Our goal this year is broken into three levels. Level #1 - the first $120,000 goes to supporting international church planting. Level #2 - $160,000 allows us to give $40,000 to build our 3rd home with Habitat for Humanity of Durham. Level #3 - $200,000 allows us to accomplish the first 2 levels plus support 4 new church planters in North America.

This is your chance to be a part of our Christmas gift from the Summit to the world! Please consider how you can be a part. You can give during the worship services until the end of 2007 or you can give online.

This is a note from one of our international church planters that we just received this morning:

"Dear family and friends,

Very warm (yes we mean that quite literally, y’all!) wishes to all of you for a very wonderful Christmas as you celebrate the greatest gift ever given to each of us.

We hope that you will forgive our having to send an “e-card” again this year. Even though we are on opposite ends of the world now, we wanted to personally say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!

This also seems like a good time to thank YOU for the precious gifts of love, encouragement and support shown to us as we have continued this new life overseas. Thank you. We couldn’t have done this without you. We thank God for the privilege of living in this place, for His purpose, at this time.

As we near the end of the year and the celebration of the birth of our Savior, please also remember that it takes a lot to make this and all the work around the world happen. For those of you who contribute to the Christmas Missions Offering, that time is here. Remember that none of us in this work asks for or has to raise individual support. It is through Christmas Missions Offerings that our efforts are financed. Please ask for guidance as you decide how you will respond to the Christmas Missions Offering this year.

May God richly bless you and your families as you follow Him wherever He leads you."

Looking Forward to Sunday/Monday

Baby Ryah, Veronica, Kharis, Leia and myself are doing great. Thanks so much for the many notes and cards you have sent.

This Sunday/Monday (Dec 23-24) is an important 2 days in the life of our church. I'll be speaking on Sunday morning about the quest for happiness (the original message I had planned for last Sunday). There's something about Christmas that highlights for many of us that we haven't found that "one thing" that makes life complete. I hope you'll bring somebody this Sunday... as I've often told you, surveys consistently show that if you invite  a person not in church to come with you around Christmas time, there's a 60% chance they'll say yes. That's pretty good odds. Don't miss out on a great chance to make an eternal difference in somebody's life. Stop reading this blog right now and jot an email to somebody inviting them.

Did you do it? Seriously: do it now.

On Monday, Christmas Eve, we'll have two services at the Brier Creek campus only. The first, at 4:00 is "kid-friendly." It will be a hoot. At the 5:30 service, we'll be remembering Christ's birth and death through the Lord's table, and then I'll be talking about why most people "miss" the one thing about Jesus we're supposed to know. The brief service will involve communion, some great music, some to-the-point teaching, and some drama. It will also be a great time to bring somebody.

Hope to see you there!

Baby

At 4:15 on Sunday morning, my wife woke me up to tell me that she was having some minor contractions. Based on our past two children, I figured that that meant that in about 8 hours she'd go into labor, and about 8 hours after that, she'd give birth. I even thought I'd probably still be preaching at our church that morning with plenty of time to take her to the hospital, maybe even catch a flick before...

At 4:45 the contractions were coming, still light, about 3 minutes apart. No big deal...we called the doctor and she said to come on in. Veronica and I got up, took showers, packed bags, meandered about, etc, and started the 10 minute drive to the hospital.

Somewhere during that drive she went into "hard labor." By the time I got her in the emergency room, she was yelling like some kind of Irish thug at a soccer game. They threw her, literally, onto a bed, and 10 minutes later I was holding my baby. The hospital recorded us checking in at 5:45, I was holding my baby at 5:55. No drugs. No epidural. My wife is a stud.

The doctor at the end of the bed looked more to me like a quarterback lining up in shotgun formation, doing that leg lift thing to signal the snap, than she did an actual doctor. My wife helped further this image by actually hiking the baby to her...

6 lbs, 8 oz. Her name is "Ryah," which means "rejoice" in Indonesian. (Indonesian spelling is 'raya', but pronounced 'ryah'.) Brown hair. (where did that come from?)

Extremely pretty, I think. Looks like me.

Praise God for my precious new little girl. I love being a daddy. Below is my mom and Ryah's two older sisters, Kharis and Alethia. More pictures here .

Psalm 86

God has been leading me to pray Psalm 86 for myself and our church. I'd love for you to join me:

• V. 8: God is utterly different from all other “gods”, worldviews and ways of living. This is primarily shown through the Gospel. “God, help us to show that to RDU.”
• V. 9: God is committed to showing His glory among all nations. “God, give us a church planting church.”
• V. 10, 17: David knows God will show His glory ON EARTH, through David. As Jim Cymbala says, “I despaired at the thought of going throughout my life and not seeing God move mightily on my behalf.”
• V. 11: David knows the above is what he wants to be committed to, but that his own heart is 'divided;' he needs God to teach him His way. “God, I know my own heart is divided in my motives, so teach me your way and help me committed ONLY to your passion for the glory of your name and your compassion on the peoples of RDU and the world.”

Psalm 27: ONE thing I ask

David's "fearlessness" was rooted in the fact that the "one thing" he wanted was to "dwell in God's house." Jesus was for Him something better than anything else life could give or death could take away.

Here's the two stories from the message last week.

JIM ELLIOT AND THE AUCA 5
The night before Jim Elliott and his four friends were killed on a beach in Equador, they sang together they hymn, We Rest On Thee Our Shield and our Defender. The next morning, they were brutally speared to death.

So you ask, “Did it not work? Was God not their shield and defender?" Yes, it worked. Because if you are "gazing upon" and desiring the beauty of God (Psalm 27:4), then when a spear is thrown through your heart, you are able to see God in a way that you have never seen Him before.

Listen to the rest of the hymn, “We rest on thee our Shield and Defender, thine is the battle, thine shall be the praise; when passing through the gates of splendor, victors, we rest with thee through endless days.” Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what He cannot keep to gain that which He cannot lose.” His one thing that death could not take away was Jesus.

ALAN GARDNER
English missionary Alan Gardner was shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of South America en route to start a new mission on the continent of South America. They tried to stick it out and wait for somebody to come and rescue them, but no one came, and finally, they died of starvation. 

Several months later, when the 'rescuers' finally found them, they discovered the body of Gardner with his personal journal underneath. The last thing inscribed in it was Psalm 34:10, "Even the young lions suffer want, but those that seek the Lord lack no good thing.” Underneath that verse was this final phrase, “I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God.”

Goodness? How could he talk about the goodness of God? Wouldn’t you expect him to be scared? Angry? "God, why have you forsaken me?" He could say that because he had his ONE thing.

What are the Biggest Challenges to the Gospel in RDU?

I have made it a point to "study" the things I love. I am a student of my wife. I want to learn how she thinks, what she likes, and what makes her react the way she does in certain situations.

I also want to be that way with the city in which God has planted me to minister. It says in Acts 17 that Paul "saw the idolatry of Athens," was provoked by it and then spoke out against it. Being an effective witness to the Gospel in the area in which we've been planted means understanding the "idols" that our culture holds on to.

Knowing our particular city is crucially important. Mark Twain once remarked that if you live in NYC, the question is "How much do you make?," if you live in Boston it is, "How much do you know?," and if you live in Philadelphia it is "What family are you from?" In other words, the idols of NYC, Boston, and Philadelphia are money, knowledge and pedigree, respectively.

What are they in RDU? I do my best to read local periodicals and stay as up as I can with RDU culture, but I think you probably have some perspective I don't. What do you see? What are the biggest obstacles to the Gospel?

So far, I think the biggest three are:

• "busy-ness": people are just too into doing junk and are so distracted with toys, sports, and entertainment that they just don't have time to think through life's most important matters. That's an all-over-America phenomena, but it seems especially bad in RDU.
• "upward mobility": that seems to be what is underlying a lot of business and career in this area. It is a common theme in commercials.
• "knowledge": we seem particularly impressed with academic pedigrees and looking sophisticated.

What else do you see?

Liberal Theology, Fads, and Historic Gospel Truth

I think we as "the church" should be willing to learn from culture. There are sometimes they get stuff right that we get wrong. All truth is God's truth, and I am still a fallible human being so I can't expect to get it all right.

Sometimes the "secular" world will raise awareness on an issue of injustice, intregrity or hypocrisy (even within the church) and though it is too our shame that we did not see it before, we should be grateful for that. I have some non-Christian friends who have taught me a lot.

However, much of what is vogue right now in a lot of pulpits and on a lot of blogs simply reveals Christians following culture rather than countering it. When somebody speaks with passion about a living wage or racism, or sex trafficking (all things we need to speak out about) but is silent about the holocaust of abortion, the problem of egregious human rights violation in Communist and totalitarian regimes, or the destructiveness of homosexuality and extramarital sex, I can't help but thinking that the person trumpeting the vogue virtues is more in tune with CNN than they are with Scripture.

"Liberal" theology," which unfortunately still dominates the landscape of much of "popular" Christian theology, has a propensity to crave the affirmation of the world rather than the affirmation of God. Thus, it is susceptible to cultural 'fads'. J.I. Packer remarks:

"Liberal theology as such knows nothing about a God who uses written language to tell us things, or about the reality of sin in the human system, which makes redemption necessary and new birth urgent. Liberal theology posits, rather, a natural religiosity in man (reverence, that is, for a higher power) and a natural capacity for goodwill towards others, and sees Christianity as a force for cherishing and developing these qualities. They are fanned into flame and kept burning in the church, which in each generation must articulate itself by concessive dialogue with the culture pressures, processes and prejudices that surround it. In other words, the church must ever play catch-up to the culture, taking on board whatever is the "in thing" at the moment; otherwise, so it is thought, Christianity will lose all relevance to life. The church will inevitably leave the Bible behind at point after point, but since on this view the Bible is the word of fallible men rather than of the infallible God, leaving it behind is no great loss."

God is giving us our dream...

The dream of this church has never been specifically about buildings or budgets or even audience sizes... but seeing people who don't know Christ at all experience radical change through an encounter with Him.

We have prayed and believed God for that. We believe that His compassion for the people of this area is unlimited, as is His willingness to glorify His name here.

This past week, I have experienced again just how willing God is to do that among us. I have met with 3 different men coming to our church--from business and academic backgrounds--all of whom coming from a context where they had no substantive belief in God at all, all of whom interested in Christ. Two of them have already come to Christ in our church. One of them talked to me about going on a mission trip next year.

Atheist to missionary. That's the dream.

On a completely unrelated note, a friend sent me some disturbing pictures from a place I was speaking  where I had to wear a suit the other day. I've decided that I'm just not a pretty man when I'm speaking. Whatever did Veronica see in me?