Waking Up!

Text: Acts 8:26-38

Focus: Church & Baptism

Function: To help people realize and make their commitment to Christ Jesus.

Form: Story, with teaching at end.

Intro: How did you wake up this morning?

Did you wake up with a jolt, freshly invigorated, grab a cup of coffee, go out on the deck, or sit gazing at the window ready to face the day because you had hit the floor running? Or, did you hit the snooze several times, drag yourself to the coffee pot and hopefully it is already going, slowly clear your mind, stretch and after several minutes or even an hour, did you feel like getting anything accomplished?

Rarely do I wake up like the first scenario, most often, the process of waking up is slow and deliberate as the night's fog clears my head.

People come to faith in both ways. Some “wake up” quickly and others slowly. I visited with a preacher in England who was talking about the experience of being born again. His story made me think a lot about this.

Because, a few times, while I was growing up, I heard sermons that stated that if I could not mark a specific day on my calendar when I became a Christian, then I wasn't really saved.

Now, as it turns out, I can mark that day, it was July 4^th, 1961. But so what? In 1979 I was literally doing a street ministry on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ. We printed up gospel tracts that explained the way of salvation and then asked people as we gave them the tracts if they were saved. Most people ignored me, but a few people would sincerely engage me. I noticed something that happened a lot with the Roman Catholics who would take the time to talk to me. They would say: “What does it mean to be saved?”

And I would say, “you know. Have you asked Jesus into your heart?” I asked that as if everyone knew exactly what I was talking about.

And always the answer was “yes! Many times!” Now, my theological view was narrowed by my own limited experience, which was real, genuine, miraculous and powerful. But it was always confused at that response because I had learned that once you ask Jesus in, He stays there. So why did they have to keep on doing it?

And the question is: At what point does a person become a believer?

Last week we learned that we are not born into it, God has no Grandchildren.

But when are we there? Most people, most often, wake up slowly.

This English preacher told me the story of a woman who attended the Church's Alpha course. It is a very basic introduction to Christianity that has caused tremendous growth, a real live revival, in the Church of England.

This woman told the preacher time and time again that “although she attended the class, she remained an atheist.”

Yet she kept coming back. She attended the classes several times. He asked why and she said that it was because of the sense of community and belonging that she experienced there. The Church is a community.

Then one day, the Church did an outreach in a poor neighborhood where they were providing food and school supplies. Someone started arguing with them, they were questioning and even mocking the fantastic claims of the bible like Creation, its miracles, and the resurrection and this woman began to defend Christianity. The pastor said to her: “I thought you were an atheist?”

She replied that she just then realized that she was a believer. This was a Christian who woke up -to Christianity- slowly.

If a person falls asleep on a train in Ohio and wakes up in Illinois, they crossed the border. They may not know when they arrived in Illinois, but they know they are there.

This morning's text is the story of a man who woke up quickly.

Imagine the scene: There are several miracles. Philip is told by God to go down to the road that this official traveling back to Ethiopia was on. That must have been odd. Just standing there.

And then the Chariot comes by and the Holy Spirit tells Philip to run along beside it. That must have been really weird. It may have looked like a Chariot-jacking.

But God was at work. The man just happened to be reading Isaiah 53, the passage we read every year on Maundy Thursday while we are doing Love Feast. It is a great prophecy about the Redeemer coming, coming meek and lowly, suffering and eventually dying for the sins of His people.

The official is confused because the Redeemer, the Messiah, the Christ is supposed to be this mighty conqueror who delivers God's people from bondage. And yet, the prophecy describes Jesus in two ways that we even we are uncomfortable with. First, He is described as ugly -a face that we really want to turn our heads away from. And second, He is described as a suffering servant, not a great conqueror. Most of the Jews couldn't imagine that the suffering servant and the conqueror were one and the same person. They wanted a right and proper powerful, regal King to deliver them from their bondage.

Philip explains that is the guilt and bondage of sin the for which Jesus dies. He explains that God is not as interested in human kingdoms as He is in building the family of God that will come and help Him heal the world. First by inviting people back into God's family through faith in Jesus and second, but being God's agents to help Him turn the face of evil and oppression back to the right.

And for some reason, immediately the official believes. He wakes up.

I believe in relational evangelism. This year we are doing the Easter Egg hunt and the leadership has made clear instructions to me: 10 minutes, no more, for the program. And I am thrilled about those instructions. The program is to be short, very short. Instead of a one time shot of preaching the gospel to kids who are more interested in prizes and the candy they are going to get. We are going to invite them into a relationship with us.

Saving people without a relationship is not as wholesome as inviting people to journey along with us as we seek the family of God.

But that didn't happen here.

I doubt if Philip and this official ever saw each other again.

This man decided to believe. He choose to trust in Jesus. He choose to admit his own brokenness and turn his life to Christ.

It goes to show me that my way of doing things only limits the power and the majesty of God.

And when this man believes, there is really only one thing he does to demonstrate his belief.

By now, Philip has been invited into the chariot. Maybe he was the first Christian hitch-hiker. But the official sees a pool of water and asks to be baptized.

Now at this point, we realize that maybe God has been working on this man a long time. Maybe he “woke up” slower than we think.

There are many questions to indicate this: Why would a non-Jew be reading the scriptures? For that matter, why was he even in Jerusalem in the first place? Apparently he was on a religious pilgrimage. I believe that God creates an hunger inside the heart, the soul, the spirit of a person to seek and find Him. It seems to me that everywhere I go, people are seeking spiritual meaning. Just as this man was.

So, what is the one thing the man is compelled to do?

The official was also aware of the practice of Baptism. He requests it. It is his only request.

Why baptism. What does it mean? I am going to do a little bible study on this.

1. It is our confession of faith:

In Matthew 10: 35 Jesus said that if we confess Him before men, He will confess us before God and the angels.

If we claim Him as Brother, Savior and Lord, He will claim us as family. Remember, we believe and that is why be belong.

Baptism is that confession.

And for the people living in Israel, baptism was an odd practice. One of Claudius, the emperor of Rome, called the practice a ritual of a “Jewish cult” that was sweeping the Roman Empire. We call that “cult” Christianity.

Baptism shook up the culture at the time.

It started with John the Baptist. And John the Baptist began a year or so before Jesus. He looked strange. He wore a leather girdle and a vest of Camel's hair. He didn't cut his hair. And along with his novel appearance, there was something compelling about his preaching. People left the comfort of their homes and traveled into the desert just to hear him preach.

And he started baptizing the people. It was symbolic. The people were turning away from sin and the baptism represented that indeed, their sins were being washed away.

There is no command for it in the OT law. It was a new, and highly controversial religious practice. And this official, though not yet a believer, must have been searching for spiritual meaning and was investigating these things.

And, in a moment, a God moment, he choose Jesus and was baptized.

So, it is a confession of trust in Christ. Remember, if you confess me before men, I will confess you before the Father and the Angels. And Second:

2. It describes how we will live our our lives.

In Romans 6:3-5 we read: ³Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. ⁵For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,

I don't know if the official understood exactly what he was getting into when this happened.

I don't know if knew Jesus teaching that those who follow Jesus must take up their own crosses and follow Him (Luke 9:23).

I don't know what he knew at this point. We typically wait to do baptism because we empathize that a person should count well the cost of discipleship.

Because discipleship is a change of life. We are buried with Him. We have died to ourselves and are alive, born again, into a new life. We have a new last name, Christian, and it means that we remain here, on planet earth, to be a part of bringing about God's kingdom.

When we join God's family. Now remember, in and through the Church, not man's institution, but the Ethereal family of God, the present and the future come together. Heaven and earth come together. And we start praying for God's will to be done.

We wake up to do God's work: setting the world back to the right, being a catalyst for God's love, whether that is working to overcome racism, and other forms of ignorance, working to heal by medicine, education, or striving to excel through whatever vocation God has given us to earn our incomes from, we are placed here to be the slow and subtle agent of change for the good.

God's will is that the world be healed through him. And it becomes a new vocation for us in whatever employment we have. One great follower of Christ said it like this: I have died to myself and yet I am alive, I am alive to serve Jesus (Galatians 2:20).

So, perhaps that day that is set in stone is indeed our baptism, I know many people who experienced a change, a touch in their heart that transformed them when they were baptized. Mine happened years before. God isn't in a box. But it does fulfill the confession of who we trust for salvation. It is important. And it testifies as to how we will live our lives.

Believing and Belonging

 

Text: Ephesians 4: 7-8, 11-16

Focus: The Church

Function: To help people commit to our ministry.

Form: Allegorical analogy

Taken directly from N.T. Wright: Simply Christian, ppg 199-204

Intro:

Well, we have looked at the importance of worship. We have looked at the power of prayer. We have looked at the power of giving. We have looked at the power of God's Word. And this morning, we are going to look at the power of the Church.

You are here, so it isn't a bad word. But out there, many people have serious doubts about the purpose and nature of the Church.

What is the Church? Who belongs to it, and how? Equally to the point, what is the Church for?

Our text from today explains it pretty well. Verses 7,8, everyone of us is given a gift to be used in the Church. We are all a part and we are all important to Jesus, the Redeemer.

Verses 11-13. He gifts some organization to this group. And the point is that we are all charged with its success. The leaders work to equip people and everybody works to build the Church.

We pass through Chattanooga, OH on the way to get the grandkids. In that area, the towns are either Catholic or Lutheran. Chattanooga is Lutheran and for a year now, their sign keeps on saying: “We are the Church!”

God has placed us in the Church and given it some form of Spiritual leadership.

And some people say, So what?

Why is the growth of the Church so important?

Is it there to bring people back into the family of God, or is it there to prove which brand of Christianity is more correct?

Is it about our success, or is it about our love for Jesus?

N.T. Wright uses the image of a river and a tree as being opposites, and yet both describe the Church.

The river starts in many places, springs, creeks, lakes, other rivers and from all over converge into one single stream, “from diversity gives way to unity,” he puts it.

The tree starts from one small seed, to a trunk to branches to limbs, twigs and finally to thousands of individual leaves. Unity generates diversity.

What is the Church? Who belongs to it, and how? Equally to the point, what is the Church for?

Want the big answer? The one you won't grasp even if I repeat it two to three times?

Here it is: The Church is the single, multi-ethnic family promised by the Creator God to Abraham. It was brought into being through Israel's Messiah, Jesus; it was energized by God's Spirit; and it was called to bring the transformative news of God's rescuing justice to the whole creation.

N.T. Wright tells us that every bit of that definition matters.

Well, that is too many thoughts for me to hold in my head at the same time.

So let us go back to the river and the tree to break it down.

In no particular order, first, let us look at the church as the river formed of thousands of tributaries, scattered across the land coming to one single point.

In the OT, the “church” was primarily made up of one family, the Jews. It had room for others, some important ones, like Ruth and Rahab.

And once Jesus did what He did, that inclusion became the new normal. People from every race, every geographical, cultural and economic background, every shape, sort and size were called and welcomed into this new family.

And secondly, the Church is the many branched tree that was planted by God. It started with Abraham: it is the tree whose single trunk is Jesus and whose many branches, leaves, twigs, leaves and so on are the millions of Christian communities and billion+ of Christian individuals around the world.

A central way to consider this is to back to our text and in verse 12 where the reference is to the Body of Christ. It is one central body in which every community is a limb and an organ and every cell and individual.

From Diversity, unity and from unity, diversity, both are happening at the same time.

But the reference in this passage is more than a symbol of unity -we are all one, and diversity -we have different functions. No, the image is a way of saying that we are all called to do the work of Christ, to be the means of Jesus' action in and for the world.

The image is the Church is Jesus, literally. It is the only way that Jesus can bring people back into the redemption of God.

In both of these ideas, the river and the tree, the word family is not too far off. But it is important that we keep it in context. Brothers and sisters can fight, can grow up to be two completely different individuals. But the Bible often refers to us as brothers and sisters. We have the same Creator, the same Father and Mother.

The early Church practiced that familial care for each other very well. They even lived together in an extended community and shared physical resources. When they talked about “love” the main thing they meant: living as a single family, a mutually supporting community. The Church must never forget that calling. It went as far as this: If any man had any possession, it belonged to all of them (Acts 4:32-22). They were serious about their commitment to being the body of Christ, His agents for healing the world around them.

But at the same time, the idea of family can take us in the wrong direction. Even Billy Graham has said something important: “God has no grandchildren.”

And it is illustrated in one of the first conflicts the Church had to endure. The first Church was primarily Jewish. And they practiced all the Jewish laws, they wouldn't eat pork, worship was on Saturday instead of Sunday, they couldn't eat a medium rare steak, they circumcised their sons and they were no allowed to eat with Non Jewish people.

So, how could they be a family when they couldn't eat together? They had a problem to solve. And their reasons were not based on prejudice, but based on what they felt their religion taught them to do.

So they all got together to talk about whether or not they should eat separately, and the answer they came up with was a resounding NO! God welcomes Jews and Non Jews and doesn't require the Non Jews to become Jewish with all of their laws.

Big deal so far except this. At the same time, they decided that Jewish ancestry did not automatically bring them into the renewed family which God was creating though Jesus.

At the same time, a person does not belong to Jesus and His people, His body, simply because they were born into a Christian family.

Family plays an huge part as to whether or not a person chooses to be a part of the body of Christ. Kids get introduced to Jesus at a young age, through family, the Church, Sunday School and other activities that we do. But we all know that it is perfectly possible for someone to grow up in a Christian household and turn their back on the faith and life.

Many branches fall of the tree, and many streams come together into the single river. Being born into a particular human family does not determine whether or not you will be come a member of the family of God.

You have to choose for yourselves.

What it truly means to be a part of this family, to be a branch on this tree, to be part of the current flowing in this great big river seems to be lost in the emphasis of individualism in Western culture.

In our culture, we almost worship individualism. In individualism, we are tempted to base our decision about where we worship on what “meets my needs,” or what makes me feel good. But our decision is based on the calling God has placed before us.

I know this, it is never going to be perfect, and since I am involved, the people are not going to be perfect.

Sometimes, being in a family means that we have stress about certain differences in personality or style. In family, we have to work it out. But if it is based on individualism, we do not get the discipline in love, we just leave.

But our Western culture causes us to focus only on ourselves as if we are individuals who have no need for each other. The concept of belonging to each other: as a real-live family, or even deeper: as part of a singular body seems foreign to us when we realize that it just might cost us. Individualism tells us that the only cost it has on us are the ones that are convenient. But if a single body loses a hand, or a foot, or eyesight, that pain and loss is never convenient.

We are interdependent.

Now, as we mentioned, each of us must respond to God on an personal, or individual, level. You can hide in the shadows in the back of the church for a while, but sooner or later, you are going to have to decide whether or not this is for you.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul tells us that the body is made of different parts. There are feet, hands, eyes and etc. The foot is no less a member than the hand, the hand no less than the eye. And if they are all there, the body works much better than having to suffer through life without an individual component. No one member should deem itself more important than another. They are all needed. All.

Turn to the person next to you and tell them: “I need you.” “You help complete my Christian life.” (I was going to say “you complete me,” but Valentines day is past.)

At the same time, if the foot, hand, eye or whatever, decided that it doesn't need the rest of the body and is cut off, it dies.

So, turn to the person next to you and say: “you are vital to my Christian life.”

Cutting ourselves off would deny the very purpose for which the Church was called into being. According to the early Christians, The church doesn't exist in order to provide a place where people can pursue their private spiritual agendas and develop their own spiritual potential. Nor dies it exist in order to provide a safe heaven in which people can hide from the wicked world and ensure that they themselves arrive safely at an otherworldly destination. Private spiritual growth and ultimate salvation come rather as the by products of the main, central, overarching purpose for which God has and is calling us.

This purpose is clear. Through the church, God will announce to the wider world hat he is indeed its wise, loving, and just Creator; that through Jesus he has defeated the powers that corrupt and enslave it; and that by His Spirit, He is at work to heal and renew it.

The Church exists for its Mission. To announce to the Word that Jesus is the Redeemer. The gospel changes and transforms. We are partners with God putting the world to the rights.

Preachers think to highly of themselves. They think that they can create growth. Indeed, this passage tells us that God gave them as Catalysts to the growth. But Growth isn't the responsibility of the preacher. We grow, when we are on the Mission.

We are partners with God to do God's work. But the message of those who have adapted that individualism mindset is the other way around, they think that God is partner with us to fulfill our lives. Sometimes I wonder if that is why people flock to the mega-churches. Have they successfully converted Christianity into a consumer commodity that is a resource for them to realize their own wants, desires and dreams.

Now, I promise you that serving Jesus is an invitation to a great adventure that will give your life eternal meaning. I promise that. It is biblical, Jesus said our lives would be lived to the full and out of us would flow rivers of living water that will indeed change the world.

Western Individualism has subtly changed the message to this: God is partner, or more than likely, servant to us in order for us to reach our full potential.

We will reach full potential, but only in the context of what we learned in prayer, “God's will be done (not ours) in earth as it is in heaven.”

We are Christ's body, doing Christ's work.

So, God has no grandchildren. The choice to believe, to join is not forced on any person. It isn't something that we inherit because we live in a predominately Christian nation, or came from Christian families. It is an personal choice we make. We believe. And then we belong. And belonging takes up our being.

The Story and the Task

Text: Deut 6:4-12, Mark 12:28-44

Focus: Bible Study

Function: To get people excited about Bible study

Form: GOK

Intro:

The Scriptures are alive! They are a part of our living faith! As we embrace God they become more real to us. As we embrace them, God becomes more real to us.

The Scriptures came alive to me for the first time when I was assigned the task, as an 8^th grade student of teaching the second graders for a summer. We studied the story of David and all of a sudden it become much more than a boy with 5 stones and a who whirled one round and round and round and round and the giant came tumbling down.

In the bible stories, we picture ourselves facing giants, bears, lions, mad kings, old prophets and etc. We picture ourselves, with faith in God and utter reliance on Him, doing our own version of Kingdom of God work.

I fell away from Christ, briefly, during my Junior and Senior year of High School. And when I came back, I was obsessed with understanding all the mysteries of the prophecies in Revelation, Matthew 24, Ezekiel, 1^st and 2^nd Peter and Daniel.

God's Word compelled me to come back to Him. It was exciting doing that study and realizing that in one way or another, I could predict the future. Not that I had any special psychic ability, but I had the plan written out right there in front of me.

It was fascinating. In the early 80's. Gorbachev was President in Russia, and at that time, instead of either Iran or Iraq, the current “enemy” of the US, or Germany, the enemy of the US when my dad heard biblical prophecy explained and Hitler was the antichrist since the Jewish people were tattooed on their wrists (close enough to the back of the hand, isn't it?), we were sure that it was Russia and Gorbachev. I mean, John saw the Antichrist and he had what looked like a fatal wound on his head, but he was alive. And didn't Gorbachev's birthmark on his head look nasty? Could that be what John was describing?

And it turned out that Hitler wasn't the Antichrist, and Gorbachev wasn't the Antichrist after all. But still all that study got me into God's word, and that is good.

Because, in those studies, I also read to “turn the other cheek” to “bless those who curse us.” Right after the passage in Matthew 24 where Jesus describes the destruction of the temple, and days so hard that it would be much easier not to have small children, I read how God expects us, in Matthew 25, to always be ready for his coming. He expects us to be busy working for His kingdom NOW and he describes it by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, setting captives free.

And I bring all that up to describe what happens to us when we get into God's Word. Because initially, I was thinking only of the Kingdom to Come and the end of the ages.

But through that study, I learned something incredibly important about God's Kingdom. God's Kingdom is already here. It is both present and future. Just as prayer places us right at the spot where the thin veil between heaven and earth begins to part, God's word describes His kingdom both here, and the kingdom to come.

Heaven and earth are right there together in Christian worship and prayer. Present and future are right there in Christian worship, prayer and Bible study.

There was nothing wrong with studying the future, as long as we don't forget that God's plan for the future depends on what we are doing right here, right now, in the present.

Without any mockery or satire, I have to confess to you a real dilemma that I had when thinking about circumstances that might lead to a future revelation of the Antichrist.

I asked myself, why were told to fear ATM cards, which could lead to a cashless society and pave the way for the Mark of the Beast as the only way to buy and sell? Or, the UN because it appears that a one world government is something the Antichrist will create? And I kept wondering, but if it brings about the end times, and the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, why are we fighting it?

And again, I am not trying to mock this but I want to set the stage for what this morning's biblical texts are all about.

The Bible, which we heard last week that we can trust, is the story of God's love for Humanity. It is the Story that we find ourselves in.

So look again at our passage from Deuteronomy: Let me read if from “The Message”

There is a progression here. It starts with loving God. You know, when I began to love God and accept the fact that God is God and I am not, it made a huge difference in the way I approached scripture.

I rebelled my faith a few years.

When I came back to God, I was still pretty critical until someone said to me: “Phil, don't read scripture to judge God or what is said. Instead, embrace scripture and ask God to speak to you.”

I was transformed. What Karen spoke of last week about how the Holy Spirit does a miraculous thing in us when we embrace scripture was proven to me to be true by my own experience as well.

And then Moses speaks to us of how, in the love of God, we use His scriptures to draw us close to Him. Moses gives us a “live, eat, and breathe it” command.

Write it on your hands, bind it to your foreheads, staple it to your door posts. Talk about it when you are eating, working and spending time with your families. Get it inside of you and get it inside your children.

So, love God. And learn to love Him by getting to know His word and then, tell its story.

The command, to keep the faith alive, is to remember its story, its stories.

He commands them to keep on repeating the story. He warns them, you will get fat and sassy, you will inherit homes, vineyards, crops and luxury, and you will be tempted to think that you did all by yourself. So remember the story, repeat the story. That way, you will know that it is God who has blessed your lives.

This book is the story of God's love.

And it is true. I believe it. I believe the miracles, I believe that these men and women accomplished great things with simple acts of faith. I believe that the red sea parted, 10 plagues afflicted the Egyptians, Abraham had Isaac at 99 years old, the world was destroyed by a flood, the sun stood still for a day and most importantly, that Jesus rose from the dead.

But I also know it is true because of the many mistakes and sins that the principle characters, even the heroes of the faith, committed. The story doesn't shrink back as if it was some sort of propaganda writing. It tells it all. And in all those stories, it tells of the wonderful grace of God.

I believe its prophecies. Sometimes, as I mentioned, it predicted the future and it was spot on. Other prophets were change agents who spoke out against the religious culture of their day and they promised them God's discipline of they refused to obey and care for the poor.

It is not just an ancient story of ancient people with stories that were exaggerated into miracles by superstitious ancients. Sure, some of it is symbolic and its interpretation is literal, it even tells us that at times.

But all in all, it is the story of God's creation, mankind's fall, God's passion to get people to love one another again, God's punishment for those who refused and finally, after all attempts were made to get people to do it on their own, it is God's story of God coming to earth, suffering abuse and shame, dying in our place and putting to rest the punishment for our failures by raising from the dead.

And then, in the book of Acts, the story continues as to how this story got told, retold and retold again until it became the largest faith on the face of the planet.

That is another miraculous story. The story of how 12 to 120 men and women who lived in a country that was no more important than modern day, Haiti, or Mexico or Iran compared to the world's powers. And how this small group of people had no political clout among this nation with no clout, how they changed the entire world.

All of it was proof that History is HIS story, His story of His redemption.

And Moses tells them, you are charged with this story, because hanging on to this story will keep us from forgetting that we are here now to continue to tell the story.

From the beginning to the end, it is God's story of His care for humanity. And we are here to tell it some more.

When we became Christians, we got a new last name, and therefore this story has now become our story.

The Bible is the story of the gospel and telling it is our task.

How do we do that? Well first, we have to know it.

I suggest that we learn it not to master it, but to involve ourselves in its story as well.

I heard many great sermons about the importance of “quiet time.”

And today, it wouldn't be a day for me without my morning meditation in scripture. I read the Bible through at least once a year, every year. I just finished the story of Genesis, and am now reading the story of the Exodus. It is pretty amazing stuff.

But I was surprised to learn, as I grew in my faith, that quiet time wasn't just for evangelicals. St. Benedict and other ancient writers write extensively of Lectio Divina, Divine reading. From the Carmelite Nun website: ...describes a way of reading the Scriptures whereby we gradually let go of our own agenda and open ourselves to what God wants to say to us.

Divine reading included the practice of reading the story from scripture and then picturing oneself as the major participant in that story and feeling, seeing how the Holy Spirit did its work in the life of that person. It becomes alive and, it is fun!

Stop a minute. In your bulletin is a sheet for you to participate with. Take a moment to do this exercise. Be quick about it, but let it happen.

The story brings it to reality.

That is what preaching is. Preachers have sought to understand what the scriptures were saying in their original concept and to convey to their hearers what it might mean in our modern context.

So, here is the Bible. We trust it. Now, let us be careful how we use it.

Because the Bible is God's story of His love for us.

A pastor friend of mine, he pastors the largest Church of the Brethren posted this on his facebook wall last week. Apparently, he was stuck with the profound nature of this quote. He wrote a quote from Eugene Peterson, that man who paraphrased the Bible version, The Message. He said:

The biblical way is not...a moral code...[dictating] 'Live up to this'...[it's a holy story, beckoning] 'Live into this'" - Eugene Peterson

We use the Scripture, we treat it as holy, we love it and adore it because it is a story beckoning us to live into God's way of life.

It was never intended for us to use as a way of judging another believer. God is the one who convicts people of sin, not us.

It was never intended for us to justify ourselves as better than someone else. It was given for us to live into God's family.

Hearing God's voice in scripture isn't simply a matter of precise, technical expertise. It is a matter of love. Because we are in this love relationship with God, as Father, brother, friend and in the sense that God is neither male or female, a nurturer, -a mother image, because God calls Himself, in scripture: El Shaddai the literal translation is God, the many breasted one.

In that love relationship with God, where God intends to bridge the gap between heaven and earth, in Christian worship, prayer and study our hopes and fears are closely bound to Him.

We love Him and trust Him. And then, we hear God's voice. We hear God's voice as we read. And because we are brothers and sisters together, we hear God's voice as we read and study it together. Our understanding always needs testing by reference to other believers.

That is common sense, Listening to God's voice in scripture does not put us in a position of having infallible, or perfect, opinions. No. It puts us where Jesus put himself. We are placed in possession of a calling. A life-long calling. God's word changes us.

Since God speaks to us in scripture, He speaks in order to communicate tasks, the same kinds of tasks that Jesus did during His three years of ministry on earth.

Does that mean we too will do all those miracles? Not necessarily. But we will indeed be the agents, with pretty clear commands, to bring about the changes that the heavenly Kingdom, the one we pray for in the Lord's prayer: “Your kingdom Come, Your will be done...”

So, the story doesn't place us “in the know” over other people. The story places in partnership with God, doing the works of Jesus among a world that needs to be put back to right. Remember Jesus, He looked at His city and He wept over it, wishing that it could be healed.

When we are transformed by God's word, we join the story.0

In God's word, we find ourselves in partnership with Him.

And that story isn't about being able to quote chapter and verse, but it is about relating with others the story of God's redemption.

Let these stories fill your minds, it will change the way you react to trials.