Month: February 2011

A Big Vision for a World in Need

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From time to time I get asked about my role at Northland. It is not one that fits in a typical slot at an average church. One aspect of that is the commitment we have as a church to be a catalyst for new, simply structured churches around the world. This includes helping other churches expand their ministry through the web and hands on training that can be multiplied and easily reproduced. Here is a link to a great blog by Greg Ligon and Leadership Network that does a wonderful job of capturing the vision and efforts of Northland.

http://leadnet.org/blog/post/multisite_internet_house_church_big_impact/

Hope you like it and would love to hear from any of you who might have a tug on your heart to get involved. Also if you know of someone who might be interested in partnering with us in the ministry, please let me know.

Dan

Blessed are the Merciful: The Irony of Angry Christians

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Matthew 5:7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
I continue to be perplexed at the anger and rejection that so many Christians heap on people whose sin is obvious and public. What befuddles me is that this is about as far from doing what Jesus did as you can get. I look at how Jesus treats the Samaritan woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery, or the drunks and prostitutes. What I see in Jesus is a savior who was completely committed to holiness and glorifying God in all he did. Yet, He did not allow that commitment on His part to result in condemnation of those who consistently wrestled with sin and lost. Rather Jesus showed great mercy to those people. He certainly called out their sin and challenged them to live a holy life. But at the same time He empathized with their weakness and sought to lift them to higher things. And He did this even though He never sinned and therefore never needed that kind of mercy.
In the beatitudes Jesus has made it clear that we are spiritually bankrupt and in desperate need of God’s grace and mercy. If you are a follower of Christ you have received that mercy, countless times over. Knowing that we have received such wonderful mercy, how can we do other than to pass that mercy on to others?
In Matthew 18 Jesus tells the story of the Unforgiving Servant. It is about a man who was forgiven a monstrous debt by his master. The debt was so large that it would take the average worker in Jesus day, 200,000 years to earn that much. He was forgiven something he could never pay. The servant later comes upon a fellow servant who owes him the equivalent of about three months wages. That fellow servant asks for time to pay the debt. The man refuses to give him time and in great anger, throws him in debtors prison along with his wife and children. Later, the master hears of this and in his just anger, throws the servant in prison for the rest of his days. Jesus makes the point that He is the master and we are the servants who, because of the cross and resurrection, have been forgiven a debt we could never pay. In light of that, how dare we spout vitriol and anger at people who have sinned against us in significantly smaller ways. How dare we not show mercy to a fellow debtor.
Giving people mercy simply means to not push on them the punishment that they deserve for what they have done. If you throw yourself on the “mercy of the court” you are saying, yes I am guilty but please do not punish me to the extent I deserve”. If you are a follower of Jesus, you have thrown yourself on the mercy of His cosmic court. And you have received mercy. Having freely received, we are to freely give. It doesn’t mean that we fail to call sin what it is. It means that we call it what it is, but we let a person know, we will not heap anger, rejection, punishment or suffering on them, because we have received a far great mercy from the Lord.
There is a symbiotic relationship at work here. We have received mercy from the Lord so we give mercy to others. When we do, we will continue to receive mercy. When we don’t give that mercy, we can be assured that we will not be receiving it. The unforgiving servant learned that sad lesson.

President Obama: Christian or Muslim?

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One thing you have to love about people, is the way we can refuse to let the facts get in the way of a good preconceived notion, conspiracy theory, or deeply held conviction. Depending on which poll you read in the past several months, anywhere from 18 to 24% of Americans still think that the President is a Muslim. When asked why they thought that, a significant number point to his name and say it sounds Muslim. Given that logic I guess my name, Lacich, makes me Croatian Eastern Orthodox.

Today at a prayer breakfast in the White House, President Obama spoke as clearly of his Christian faith as anyone could be expected to speak. In fact, he was more clear than a lot of people I have talked to who claimed to be Christians and are regular church goers. In an article in the Examiner, author Christine Priest Stiegemeyer, (hmm sounds like a Nazi name to me) details what the president said about his own faith and religious practice. He goes so far as to pinpoint the events that led to him embracing Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior twenty years ago. According to what I read in my Bible, that pretty much makes you a Christian, no matter what your name is. So if you are a Christian then I think it is time to recognize that the President is a brother in Christ, with you, me, and the Governor of Alabama. If you are wondering why I mention the governor then read this post from a few weeks ago. That means you need to treat the President with the same respect you would any other member of the family. After all, you just might find that you are seated across from him at the eternal banquet feast in Heaven. Talk about awkward!

But what if he was not a Christian. What if in fact he really was a Muslim? Then what? First, according to our Constitution, it is irrelevant what his faith is or is not. America was founded on lots of principles, one of them being that a person’s faith or lack there of, has no bearing on their rights as a citizen. Further more, if you are a Christian let me suggest that you are still required by Scripture to pray for him, to respect and honor him, as well as to love him so that one day he would come to faith in Christ. Christians can disagree with policy. We can express our opinions on issues. We can work, march, debate, and struggle for what we think is the right direction for the country. What we cannot do is attack the person who holds different views. We cannot raise the issue of their faith as being somehow the deciding factor of what is right or wrong.

But the fact is, the president has identified himself as a follower of Jesus Christ. Every morning he reads scripture and a devotional on that passage. He prays and asks the Lord to give him wisdom and strength as he seeks to lead. At night he prays again and asks the Lord to forgive him. Maybe we can all get past this silly notion that he is a Muslim and instead spend our time reading the Scriptures, praying for strength and wisdom and asking for forgiveness.