Power Sources

When you are starting your car, it is completely electric. The power from the battery turns the starter motor and tells the fuel injectors to spray fuel and powers the spark plugs to spark and cause a little explosion. That little explosion pushes the pistons which drive the crank which is connected to your transmission and your alternator. When that explosion causes the alternator to spin, a radical change occurs. The alternator takes over the electrical side of things. It powers the fuel injectors and the spark plugs and starts to recharge the battery. From this moment on your car is no longer powered by the battery, it is powered by little gasoline explosions. (Unless you have a hybrid, which means this transition happens only on the highway.)

After the little automotive lesson, there is a good chance you are asking, So What?

Much like the car, the source of power for things in our life changes. There are times when we are electric and times when we are gas powered. There are things in our life that only have power because we give it to them. Without the battery (or some pushing and clutch-poping), that gasoline engine is worthless.

In 1 Cor 10 Paul writes about food sacrificed to idols. He points out that idols are nothing. They are powerless. Unless we give them power.

All of the idols in our world sit idle (pun!) like that internal-combustion engine until we give them power. We give them attention, we give them effort, we give them life by diverting our attention from where it should be. Little by little we let them grow and consume us, becoming more and more important to how we see ourselves, what we think will make us happy, where we hope to find contentment.

Paul writes, "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons." Our attention, our focus, our devotion must be only on God, since he is, after all, the source of our power. While we may think we have successfully compartmentalized our lives and found a place for God and a place for work and a place for family and a place for hobbies, we've really just excluded God. He doesn't want a place; He's too big for that. He doesn't want part; He demands all.

"Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than he?"

Practicality

One thing that people can't say about the Bible is that it is boring. Okay, people CAN say that, but if they do it is usually a good indication that they haven't really read it. No other book (that I've read) can take one pericope and in it include a history lesson, an encouragement, practical advice and supernatural promise.

Paul writes to the Corinthians about the past sins of the Israelites (1 Cor 10:1-13). He first affirms that the stories of the Israelites in the OT are true - they really happened, they aren't just myth or metaphor. Their status as historical fact does not take away from their value as lessons or examples for the people of Paul's day (and ours). In fact, they added to the practicality of the example. These were real people who responded in real ways. They weren't just made-up examples.

Paul parlays this idea into some practical teaching of his own. He warns his audience not to get too comfortable in where they are, not to become complacent or assumptive. Once you assume that you have something figured out, pinned down or conquered, that is when you are most vulnerable. If we assume that we can handle something, then we probably can't. If we think we've beaten something, then it has already beaten us. If we stop working on getting better, we are already getting worse. Our enemy is relentless and our task is of utmost importance.

When the battle seems un-winnable, Paul delivers the best, most practical, yet most supernatural piece of information. God only lets us get what we can take. He won't let us be overwhelmed. He won't let us find ourselves in an impossible situation. Instead, he'll provide a way out, a means for us to stand up, a way to conquer.

Too bad we still try to do it alone. Too bad we don't listen.

My Job, Our Calling

I am paid to be a minister or pastor or preacher or whatever you want to call it. Since I've started down this path one of my big fears has been that this occupation would become just another job - that I would start to dread going into work like I did in the secular world. I've given a great deal of thought to what my job is and what my calling is and what the difference is between those two.

In 1 Corinthians 9 Paul seems to be having a tangentially similar struggle. People are questioning if he should be paid for his missionary work. Is what he was doing a job? He goes into a bit of a rant about how he deserves his wages and that he is proud to be able to preach without need of them.

The thing that makes the differentiation difficult is not what the Bible says about the work of the clergy, the thing that makes keeping what I spend my days doing from becoming just a job is history. For years we've seen the minister's job as one of going out and rounding up people - of "evangelizing" and "leading people to Christ." I shudder at the thought of this becoming just a job for me. Thankfully, that's not my job.

That calling belongs to all of us.

My job, which Paul describes in Ephesians 4:12 is "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ can be built up." According to Paul, the main focus of my workday isn't to share Jesus with people - it is to prepare others to share Jesus with people. It is to create the environments where life change can happen. It is to teach people how relationship matters. It is to help people find their next step and to help them help others find their next step. It is to take a background, supporting role and empower others to fight on the front lines. It is to bandage wounds and re-arm those who've been taken out of the fight. It is not so much to love as to prepare others to love.

Loving isn't my job - that's my calling. I'm called to fight and to be on the front lines and to get wounded and hurt as well - but thankfully I share that calling with everyone else.

The weaker brother

Over and over again I've heard the argument of the "weaker brother" from 1 Corinthians 8. Honestly, most of the time it has been in the context of drinking. It takes some kind of form like, "I never drink because a weaker brother (read 'recovering alcoholic or alcoholic-in-waiting') may see me and think it is okay for them to drink too."

BTW, calling (out loud or in your head) someone who is fighting through recovery 'weaker' is foolish and disrespectful. You probably couldn't lift their shoes, nevertheless walk 12 steps in them.

Where does the weaker brother argument fall in terms of relational discipleship? If we take Jesus' command to make disciples seriously, shouldn't we be strengthening these brothers instead of sheltering them? It is our job to walk with them, engage them, help them move toward being a mature disciple who makes disciples. This doesn't mean that there are never times to protect them, but it should only be for a season, not a lifetime.

Todays Idols

"An idol (in this case a statue or representation of another god) is nothing at all in the world and there is no god but one." Paul makes a pretty solid, simple case for that. But that doesn't really fix the problem.

While some groups work diligently to keep it alive, the creation of little household statues for personal worship has certainly diminished over the centuries. The heart of the problem has is still alive and kicking, however.

An idol was something that was set up in place of God. It was something that took away from the worship of YHWH and placed it somewhere else. In ancient times this was normally another god - whether a powerful bull or a fertile goddess or a golden calf. These gods took all shapes and sizes and they all promised things to their worshippers - success, power, riches, happiness, fertility.

When Jesus came, he took the law of Moses and applied it to the heart. He took things that had been considered matters of the outside life and made them part of people's inner life. Idols have gone the same way. Power doesn't need a little Baal to represent it anymore - we can worship naked power just by our constant pursuit of it. Fertility doesn't need an Asherah pole to place outside our house - TV constantly brings its presence inside.

Idols of today are the same as they were before - anything that takes our worship away from YHWH. It might not impact our dinner plate like the Corinthians Paul wrote to, but it impacts our bank accounts and our calendars and our hearts just as much.

Knowing v. Being Known

Think back to High School. I know, its painful, but give it a try.

Now, think about those people that you knew, but didn't really know - you know?

At least for me, there were people whose names I knew, but as far as I know they didn't even know who I was. Maybe you were way cooler than me at that age, but for me it there was a huge group of people whose names I knew who I'm pretty sure had no idea who I was. (Okay, these were mostly students in the grades ahead of me. And okay, they were mostly girls. It comes with the age.)

There is a huge difference between knowing someone's name and someone knowing yours. There's something about someone saying your name from memory that lets you know that you matter (at least a little bit) in their world.

The same thing is true with God. We can know all about Him, we can know his name and his likes and dislikes and the names of his friends, but does He know us? We can read all about him and think that we know what he's all about, we can think we have a firm understanding of theology, but if we think we have God figured out, it is a pretty good indicator that we have no idea.

"The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." - 1 Cor 8:2-3

We're not talking about a God who is concerned with knowledge.

He's a God who cannot even be known. (But that doesn't stop us from trying.)

We're talking about a God who is concerned with Love.

He's a God who will know our name if we love Him. (And that means loving others.)

First!

Who or what is first in your life? No, for real. When you get up in the morning, what is the first thing you think of? Is it yourself? Is it your family or spouse? Is it work, is it play, is it breakfast?

Our culture has clearly given their answer and it is: "me."

We look at ourselves first, second and third, then if we happen to take a fourth glance, we might look at others. This has created huge problems in our society. One of these problems is divorce. It sucks for everyone involved (except for maybe attorneys).

What are "irreconcilable differences" anyway? Is that just a nicer way to say, "inability to compromise" which is just a nicer way to say, "we're too stuck on ourselves to care about each other anymore"?

Marriage is supposed to be the ultimate sign of commitment, of sacrifice, of love. And in some cases it is. This love isn't easy, it isn't cheap, it doesn't happen every day. There are beautiful examples of it all around us if we choose to look. But, it seems to be less and less common; or maybe it is just drowned out by so many poor examples.

Paul spends all of 1 Corinthians 7 talking about marriage - actually talking people out of marriage. His reasoning? Marriage gets in the way of our relationship with God. He clearly makes the case that God should be first in our lives and having a marriage relationship gets dangerously close to being in the way of that. He says that marriage is a concession for those who cannot get by without it.

What a contrast to today! We focus more and more on ourselves, we live together but don't get married because of our focus on self. We get married, but then want out because of our focus on self. All the while our focus should be on God.

Recently I overheard a snippet of a conversation between a man celebrating his 18th wedding anniversary and a newlywed man. The newlywed asked, "What advice would you give to a newlywed so we have a happy marriage?" The veteran's response: "Take your wife to church."

The newlywed left dejected. He was looking for a secret to finding his happiness with his wife. He should have been looking for God's happiness along with his wife.

That's Paul's message too. A marriage isn't the source of unselfish love. It isn't the place where love is found or worked out or discovered. A marriage is the place where love is applied - love only comes from God. Without that source, we'll constantly revery to making ourselves first.