Mark 1:1-8 -- It's Not About You, It's About Jesus

I have a note on my computer monitor at church that chastises me on a daily basis: "Remember: it's not about you, it's about Jesus." I wrote that after a youth worker seminar a few years ago, during which I heard Phil Vischer, the guy who created VeggieTales, share his testimony about how he lost control over Big Ideas (the company behind VeggieTales) due to a lawsuit. It was devastating to him -- VeggieTales had been at the height of success and Big Ideas employed over 300 people. But God decided to take that away from him in the early 2000's, and during Phil's recuperation period, he realized that VeggieTales' success had taken his focus away from Christ and invested it into pride and self-satisfaction.

Phil Vischer, like me, and perhaps like you, was a disciple of Jesus -- and as such, had to learn the lesson that there's only room for one guy at the top, and it wasn't going to be him. Hit the rewind button to the first century and take a look at another disciple of Jesus.

John the Baptist -- who I affectionately call "J the B" when I teach about him in youth group -- was quite a character, a "card" as my mother likes to say. He wasn't a quiet, meek-mannered bookworm, but a scruffy survivalist who wasn't afraid of the rich or powerful, and upset just as many people as he attracted with his preaching. Every stereotype of a wild-eyed, manic-looking, rag-wearing preacher waving around signs that claim "THE END IS NEAR!" probably owes their inspiration to this guy. Except that for all of how John looked and acted, what with his locust-based diet, this wasn't a man who proclaimed "THE END IS NEAR!" so much as "THE CHRIST IS NEAR!"

His entire life and entire ministry served as a humble prologue to Jesus' arrival on earth. He was Jesus' PR guy, the guy on the loudspeaker who drives a beat-up car around a neighborhood blaring the news about something big about to happen. Or, if you like, John was a blue-collar road-layer, making "straight the paths" (1:3) in the Jewish community so that the people would be prepared and eager to receive Jesus.

In the years that he did ministry in the countryside, J the B was probably tempted to develop a big head. He was a big name of the time, a man who's words carried weight, and who's message drew followers who were baptized by him and dedicated their lives to following him. He could've easily fallen into the trap that Moses did, claiming that his popularity and success came from his own means -- in other words, that it WAS all about him. But he doesn't! Read his message in verses 7 and 8:

"After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

In John 3:30, J the B said it another way: "He must become greater; I must become less." This was humility in action, a man who wanted what God wanted, who desired what God desired, and couldn't stand the thought of people worshiping him over Christ.

Every time I preach in our church, the part that makes me the most nervous is at the end when I go to the back and shake hands of the congregation. It's a good thing to do -- to be accessible, to minister with a friendly word and touch -- but a lot of people tend to treat it as they would any public performance: to congratulate and praise you. Tell me that's not temptation, after you hear fifty or so people say "Wow, what a great sermon!" or "You did a great job!" or, on the bad Sundays, "You said I'm a sinner, so I might as well go let the air out of your tires." I don't want the attention to be on me after sharing God's Word -- I want it to be on God.

We each are tempted in different ways to accept the glory of successful ministry instead of passing it along to God, particularly when people praise or complement us, or attribute any success to our own efforts. It's not a bad thing to let a complement lift you up, but we should train ourselves to respond to that with "It's not me, it's Jesus. Praise God!"

Shaken Out Of Apathy

As evidenced by this blog's post schedule, I've fallen into a twin trap of busyness and apathy over the past few months. The more delightful things in my life are easier to focus on, while the harder yet necessary work has been like pulling teeth. I was reminded in a conversation yesterday that spiritual disciplines, such as worship, prayer, Bible reading or scripture memorization do not come naturally to a believer -- these are hard at times, requiring education and persistence and focus. And it's so much easier just to let them slide.

I let a lot of things slide in my life, to my shame. I sometimes fool myself that because I'm so busy and obviously doing things all the time, that I'm okay on the whole, it balances out the things I neglect that are more important. It's the tendrils of apathy clutching at me, urging me not to fight but just to give in. There's nothing Satan likes more in a Christian than one who just doesn't care to stay sharp.

The other day I signed back up with Weight Watchers, because I've been getting apathetic in my physical health, and that needs to be reversed. It's annoying to start a diet on WW, because you have to track everything you eat, make sure you have time in the day for exercise, and be confronted with your weight all the time instead of just comfortably ignoring it. However, in doing so a part of me has stirred to excitement that I'm finally taking action, and I look forward to a year from now when I'm going to lose a whole lot of weight and feel much better for it.

Likewise, I need to go back on a spiritual diet of disciplines and make more time for God in my life. The purpose of this blog, way back at the start of the year, was to hold me accountable for my daily spiritual walk with God -- prayer, scripture reading, journaling. As someone once told me, if I don't take care of my spiritual life, who will? And so I'm returning to it, a bit shamed but still excited. I've loved seminary this semester, and spending a day concentrating on God has become a true joy.

New Life

I don't know if anyone actually reads this blog, but it's good for me to keep writing even so. And so I shall.

This past week Joy and I unleashed the news to friends and our church about her pregnancy. It's a very exciting time, but also surreal and uncharted (for us, that is). Being able to tell her dad that he was going to be a grandfather for the very first time was one of the highlights of the past month.

Another one of the highlights is that my wife signed us up for a mailing list that gives us a weekly update on how our child is developing in her womb. It's a really cool e-mail, complete with a picture -- the little guy already has eyes, fingers and toes. In one week, the e-mail tells us, the baby will double its size and weight! And he/she has a tail, which will be good for the other kids to tease them about.

Psalm 139:14 says, "I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Human life is to be respected, honored and protected because it is the work of the hand of the Creator himself. We are not random choice, an accident, a bizarre one-in-a-hundred-million-trillion chance at sentient life, we are a one-in-one chance of a God making a person out of His own image.

I remember something my brother once said when he announced the impending birth of his first kid, and I asked if he couldn't wait to become a dad. "I'm already a dad," he said, which made me pause and nod.

Yeah, I'm a dad too, now. I might not be able to see my son or daughter, but I can still care for them, provide for them, by caring and providing for their mother. I can pray for them every day, that they turn out healthy and smarter than their dad. He or she is fearfully and wonderfully made, and I can't wait to meet my child next April.

Requiem for a Seminary

So two days ago I started back up with the fall semester at Michigan Theological Seminary. I felt quite torn on the prospect of going back:

On one hand, this was the last week of "summer" I had, the last week of preparation before the insane busyness of fall church programs began. I'd only had a month off between the summer (May-July) semester, and I was a bit grumpy feeling as though I'd been cheated out of a real summer. When I got to classes and received the mandatory 20-page syllabi, I immediately tallied up all of the reading and writing and other assignments that I'm going to have to shoehorn into the next few months. The all-too-familiar pressure of "good grades" descended on my shoulders, and the professors unleashed their typical day one "you're in grad school, so expect to work hard and not be coddled!" speeches intended to take the wind out of any good expectations you had for the course.

But another part of me couldn't wait to return. I know it sounds silly, just more work on top of the other work in my life, but for the first time in my life I'm attending a school to study what I'm genuinely interested in, what I actually do for a living. I might scorn all of the papers and truly insane reading assignments, but I love learning in classes. I have a pathological need to ask questions and be involved with what's being said. I have a thirst for the Bible, for the truth that hasn't been quenched yet. I know I'm not the smartest guy in the room, or the person with the most forceful, charismatic personality, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to learn all this to be able to use it.

It was great, too, to see many familiar friendly faces that I'd grown accustomed to over the past year. Seminary isn't exactly pure college environment, but there's a taste of what I used to love about college there -- people all there for a similar purpose, folks who don't mind stopping to chat, a little world carved out of a bigger one for me to visit once a week.

And I can't but be humbled with the knowledge that my church places such a priority on one of its pastors being properly educated in the Word that it sent me here. I might have to be concerned about homework, sure, but they took away any pressure about the finances. That is quite a blessing indeed.

My Life is the Pits

This is the article I just wrote for our church's September newsletter:

We all do it. And I just did it a few days ago. I got up to a not-particularly-fun sort of day, dealt with some minor yet negative news, and starting getting down on myself. Then it came: the self-pity party. The “woe is me and my problems!” as my mind started cataloguing all of the negatives in my life, dragging me down to a level where a cloud of apathy and grouchiness took over all. There’s a perverse pleasure in pitying yourself, and expecting that others will share that outlook (after all, misery does love company).

So as I’m sitting at home moaning to my wife about these things, God stung me with a clear prick of conscience. What right do I, ever, have to complain (the answer: I don’t)? How many ways has God blessed me (the answer: tremendously, and almost never-ceasing)? Why am I rolling around in my own worry and fretting and depression when I could be lifting these things up to God and asking Him to pull me back out of this funk (the answer: I have no idea)?

Earlier that day I received an e-mail from a good friend who just found out that she has a large mass – or perhaps a tumor – growing on her lung. As I write this, she’s going into the doctor for tests to see what it is and how they can take care of it. She’s also a single mother of two, she works at a gas station, and she recently had her entire house flooded earlier this year (in Wisconsin). If there’s anyone with a right to self-pity, it’s her, not me. And yet, I never hear a complaining word from her mouth when we talk on the phone.

Self-pity is not in God’s plan for your life. It’s connected to selfishness and worry, two things God abhors, because they draw attention away from Him and onto ourselves. Several Bible characters, including murderer Cain (Genesis 4:4-7) got into a funk of self-pity, and it never led them anywhere productive.

Our family used to live next door to a person we called the “Drama In Real Life Lady” (referencing those Reader’s Digest articles). Every day she’d come over with some new tale of woe, expecting us to take pity on her and let her drag us down emotionally to where she was. We eventually got sick of it, and tired of trying to point her to God and the joy that a Christian life provides. That’s not what I’d ever want to be.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 gives these instructions for the non-self-pitying life: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” Self-pity is not in God’s will; joy, prayer and thanks is. I needed to be reminded of that.

66 Books

One of the things I've become convicted of is that, at age 32 and a youth pastor of a church, I've yet to read the entire Bible cover to cover. I've certainly read large swaths of it, but past resolutions to read it entirely have gone unfulfilled.

Is August a bad time of the year to make a new resolution? Ah, well, why not?

I want to read through the entire Bible. Maybe in a year, maybe longer, but I'm going to start keeping track of which books I've finished, and try to knock them all out. No skimming, either; I want to really read and really absorb God's Word.

I was inspired by something I heard on the mission trip, where a girl said a dad in her church would buy a new Bible every time he and his wife had a kid. Then he would make a pact with himself to read that Bible cover to cover by the time that kid was 18, writing notes in the margins and underlining favorite verses. When the child came of age, his plan was to hand that Bible to him as a family heirloom, to read him or herself and continue writing in it and underlining great verses. I think that's a wonderful idea. The guy has four children, so he's got a steep task ahead of him, but how awesome would that be to receive that Bible from your dad the day you went off to college?

We'll see if I do that when I have kids, but I do need to read through the Bible on my own for my own spiritual nourishment and gratification (and God's glory).

The Wisdom Crutch

Tell me if this sounds familiar: a society that has fallen away from God and toward self-gratification and arrogance. A world-renown major metropolis that has an influx of every religion possible to the point where no one can point out the "right" belief without being labeled intolerant. A church in that city that, too, has fallen away from God, become corrupt with heresy and infighting and surrender to the same temptations that non-believers fell into. This could be any city in America today, but this particular example comes from first century Corinth, the town which Paul spent well over a year and a half building up a church, only to see it fall under attack from society and man's foolish wisdom.

This is one of the reasons why Paul writes 1 Corinthians, a letter of reprimand, instruction and encouragement to this floundering church. This was a church that started out great and strong, but dissolved into quite un-Christian-like practices: the Holier-Than-Thou crowd, people who were sinning just as bad as any nonbeliever and didn't care, lawsuits were being filed between believers, Paul himself was attacked verbally, and their theology was completely shaky. It was clear to Paul that they'd reverted to relying on man's wisdom as a crutch instead of God's supreme wisdom.

I was thinking about this a lot this past weekend, how we have yet again arrived in an age (maybe we never left it) where society seems so proud of how evolved and intelligent it's become that it's becoming bold in pronouncing itself emancipated from God -- after all, we have science! Philosophy! Our own streamlined, manipulated list of morals and values! And it's not just outside of the church walls, but inside as well. I think if Paul could look at our churches today, he'd write some of the same exact things he wrote to the Corinthian church, especially the section in 1:18-2:5, an entire passage on God's wisdom vs. the world's wisdom.

Verse 18: "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing" -- How true is this? People lost without God think that Jesus as a savior is one of the dumbest, most laughable thoughts possible. Jesus is belittled on TV and in movies, he is treated like an outdated cliché, and to those who aren't ready to really hear the message, it's just pure silliness to them.

Verse 20: "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" This topic was sparked by a friend of mine who was recommending the book The God Delusion, in which the author (an evolutionist atheist) pronounces for once and all that God is dead and useless, and proceeds to attempt to break us away from our dependence on God by irrefutable proof through science and society. Yet all I can think about is the sheer arrogance of humanity in this, how quickly we forget that we are not anywhere near an apex of human thought and wisdom, and yet we think we know enough to cast God aside for all time. If we have learned so much in the past few thousand years, then it stands to reason that there's going to be a whole lot more to learn in the next few thousand years and our current understanding and levels of wisdom have a long way to go. So how are we suddenly so smart as to eliminate God from the equation? I don't understand that.

Verse 27: "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." Once again, I see the theme of God hating arrogance so incredibly much that he would rather work through a "foolish" person or a "weak" guy to do his work than the mightiest, smartest man on the planet. Is it so surprising that so many of our most "intelligent" scientists have denounced God, whereas the humble man or woman still sees a need for the divine in our life? Paul even humbles himself in 2:3 -- he was weak, fearful and full of trembling, but he came to share the gospel and that he did.