Relationship and Not Rules

Relationship and Not Rules

 

Dear Champions,

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the scripture is Matthew 4:19   "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will send you out to fish for people."

 

I don't want to pastor a church and I don't want to attend a church that is all about believing and behaving the right way and forget that we have been called to call the sick and the sinners and those who need a Savior.  The church that is content simply to believe and behave right eventually becomes judgmental.  They become Pharisees.  They come to you and say, "As soon as you change, you can be a part of us."  In fact, that was the Pharisees' message.  "Change and then you can join us."  Jesus came along and turned it upside down and said, "No, join us and you will change.  Just follow me!"

 

The invitation to follow is purely an invitation to relationship.  It's not an invitation to the Ten Commandments.  It's not even an invitation to obedience.  Let me tell you why this is important.  If you were married to someone who obeyed all of the marriage rules, and you obeyed all of the marriage rules, you would not necessarily have a good relationship.  Rules don't make a relationship.  It's actually God's kindness that leads to repentance.  It is not fear.  To experience someone's kindness you have to be in a relationship of some sort with them.  The thing that leads to repentance which leads to change is not the fear of Hell, but it's God's kindness, especially as demonstrated through Christ. 

 

Following Jesus forces me to focus on where I am rather than on where you are not.  When I wake up every day my goal is not to keep 10 things and four things and never and always, but it is to do the best that I can to simply follow Jesus.  Then I become so aware of my responsibility that I don't have time to judge you.

 

The question is not what do I know, how well do I pray, how consistently do I attend church, how much Scripture do I know, how obedient am I, or have I prayed a prayer.  The question is.  "Am I following? "  Am I actively intentionally engaged in the process of following Jesus?

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

The Evidence For The Resurrection

The Evidence For The Resurrection

 

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the scripture is 1 Corinthians 15:14 If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

 

Paul is talking 15 years after the fact, and he is saying to Agrippa in Acts 25 & 26, “Produce the body -- go ahead and try.”  You have to remember that all the Roman officials and religious leaders of Judea desperately would have liked to stop the spread of Christianity.  Nobody had more motivation than the leaders of the religion and the government of Judea to stop this thing, and they couldn’t stop it!   You have the female disciples who claimed to see Jesus raised from the dead on Easter morning.  Then you have the disciples who claimed to have seen Jesus a number of times over the next 40 days.  You also have the disciples on the road to Emmaus.  Paul also talks in I Corinthians 15 about 500 people who saw Jesus Christ risen speaking to them all at once.  This is the way he preached the Gospel saying, “Most of the people who saw Him are still alive.  Go talk to them and check them out!” 

 

Back then the evidence for the resurrection was much stronger.  It was easier for the individual to go check out the evidence.  You could talk to eyewitnesses.  You could look at the tomb.  The message was spreading all over the world, and there was nothing the people could do about it.  Paul had that kind of confidence!  What does Agrippa say?  He doesn’t say anything.  He can’t say anything. 

 

The first eyewitnesses of the resurrection were women!  Women were of such low estate in society and culture in those days that their testimony was not admissible in court?  Therefore, if you’re going to make up a story to try to show that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead, you would never have had women as the first eyewitnesses.  So why do all the documents say that women were the first people whom Jesus appeared to?  Because it’s true!    There is nothing about the gospels that looks like fabrication.  Not only that, but it’s also hard to believe that if there were ringleaders for this hoax that they all would have died for the hoax.  The evidence is mighty overwhelming! 

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

 

Easter

EASTER

 

Dear Champions,

 

The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the scripture is 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,  and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.   After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time,

 

Christianity is completely and totally based on a historical fact—a miracle, the Resurrection.  No other religion does that.  If the resurrection is not true, everything about Christianity makes no sense.

 

The whole Christian message can be summed up in one phrase.  The son of God came to earth, and He died on the Cross to pay for our sins so that we could come to know our Father.  The resurrection proves that He wasn’t just a human being, but that He was the son of God. 

 

Other religions say that their founders were prophets and that the way to get to God is to try to live a good life.  Christianity says, “Nobody is good enough!”  Christianity says our founder isn’t just pointing the way to God but that He is God.  Christianity says, “Our religion doesn’t tell you how to find God by your efforts, but how Jesus came and did it all for you.”  Jesus died for your sins.  He was your substitute.  He brings you to God. 

 

Paul is talking in 1 Corinthians 15 years after the fact about 500 people who saw Jesus Christ risen, speaking to them all at once.  How are you going to explain an hallucination that happens to 500 people at once?

 

Some of you don’t believe in the resurrection.  Watch out.  Doubt your doubts.  Be skeptical about you skepticism.  Spend the time.  You have gambled everything on it not being true.  You better be sure.  Look at the evidence.  Do the exploration. 

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Wisdom Leads to Humility

Wisdom Leads to Humility

 

Dear Champions,

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley and the scripture is in the excerpts.

 

The idea is that in marriage two people submit and serve one another as they submit to the authority of their heavenly Father.   They are ultimately accountable to God.  When I got married I understood that Sandra was always going to be more committed to her heavenly Father than to me.  She was hoping that I would always be more committed to my heavenly Father than I was to her.  This is what a Christian marriage looks like under God’s authority.  This is the ideal and the model marriage.

 

If you are dating someone, and he’s a Christian, that is not enough.  What you want is a Christian that understands that he or she operates their lives under the authority of God.  This isn’t about leveraging something for yourself, but it is about serving someone under the authority of God. 

 

For this to work it requires massive doses of humility, and this does not come naturally.  Self preservation, defending myself, guarding my wounds and insecurities comes naturally, but not humility.  When we see a humble person we find that person attractive.  When we see an arrogant person we find that person repulsive.  Yet there is something in me and in most of you and definitely in most of us men that wants to guard our place, defend our opinions, never be wrong, always be right, always win the argument and always push back.  We do this either overtly, or we become passive aggressive.  There is something in us that is very difficult to defer or to submit ourselves to other people because that requires humility.  To have an incredible relationship requires massive doses of humility. 

 

Wisdom leads to humility which leads to great wisdom (a paraphrase of James 3:13).   The only way to gain wisdom is to be open to new things and to be open to the fact that you might be wrong.  You have to hold your assumptions about all things in an open hand.  Here is what I believe and have always thought, but I’m always open to learning something new.  Humility leads to wisdom, but wisdom requires humility. 

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Submitting

Submitting

 

Dear Champions,

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the scripture is in the excerpt.

 

Mutual submission is the most powerful relational dynamic that there is.  It means, “I’m here for you, and you’re here for me.  I want to defer to you your happiness and to what you need, and you want to defer to me and my happiness and to what I need.  I want to submit my authority, power, resources and time to the happiness for my partner, and she wants to do the same for me.”  Both people are submitting to each other. 

 

Jesus modeled this, and his disciples wrote about this after he left.  Ephesians 5: 21 says Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  This is actually his set up for his talk on how Christian marriage works.  Then he gets into specifics which get people into trouble when taken out of context.  He gives wives a specific, and he gives husbands a specific. 

 

Ephesians 5:22 says Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  Husbands love this verse.  The problem is that it was written to wives.  So whenever a man brings this verse up, I tell him that it was not written to him.  He goes on and speaks to husbands.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.  That’s a really high standard because Jesus died for the church.  Wives love this verse, but it’s not written to them. 

 

When husbands and wives go to back to the previous verse where they are to submit to each other, when they understand that the goal isn’t to power up, this is the most powerful relationship dynamic.  Mutual submission is to take my time, resources, and talent and to submit to my partner, and she to me.

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining