No place to hide

One of the most powerful and reoccurring themes of our Transforming the Marketplace Bible study on Wednesday nights is the call to live a boldly honest, deception-free life as a Christian. The reason for this is that the real power and presence of Christ in a life cannot function in any environment short of total honesty. It’s Christ’s real life as seen through our real life. For God to be God requires us to be human. Not superhuman as some imagine. Just human. So that when God shows up, He’s the “super,” not us.

Now this is bound to meet up with resistance from a pietistic tradition that propagates the notion of true spirituality as something that approximates sin-free perfection, if not well on the way to it. And sure enough, I never teach this where I don’t hear at some point the fact that there is a time and place for total honesty, hinting that most times and most places are inappropriate. We have to use discernment when we share about our struggles and sins. Wouldn’t want to air our dirty laundry with just anybody, now would we?

Normally I’ve agreed with these sentiments in the name of “balance,” but Wednesday night I suddenly saw this differently. I saw that leaving any exception to total honesty is an invitation to hide, and any excuse to hide makes us no longer vulnerable. Given the option of not telling, and letting people think all is well in our lives – that we are just shiny, happy Christians, and telling the whole truth about our fears, sins and struggles and trusting God to show up… we will choose the former every time. That way we stay in charge of our own spirituality.

Probably the most telling moment in our study Wednesday came when Joel shared that we don’t want to tell the whole truth about our lives because we are afraid of being judged by others. Strange, how quiet it got at that point. Suddenly we all realized that if we struggle at all with what we tell about ourselves, it has everything to do with what people will think of us. That is certainly true about how I write. I am constantly weighing how honest I want to be; after all, I have a reputation to maintain. (It makes me sick to have to say that but it’s true.)

Here is a true statement: Any excuse to hide puts up a barrier to seeing God in my life. When you hide yourself, you hide the power of God in your life. You cut off people’s access to God through you.

It comes down to whether we want to impress people, or give them Jesus. You can’t have it both ways.

Amazing grace

Every believer should be absolutely convinced of being the worst sinner on the face of the earth. And if this is not the case, if there is any inkling of a thought that somebody out there might be worse than I am, then there is reason to believe that I have not yet done adequate business with God about my own sin.

The great hymn writers thought this way. Their salvation continually amazed them. Our hymnals portray their amazement. Consider lines like, “Amazing love! How can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!” No, this is not merely “die for me,” as in a theological doctrine, this is “die for me,” as in wonder that out of all the people in the world, he would have included me, (in this case, Charles Wesley) the worst of the lot.

Phillip Bliss, another hymn writer, makes it even clearer when he concludes that “Jesus loves even me.” There’s a wealth of meaning in that one word “even.” Even me, the lowest, the least deserving, the worst. Or as Charles Wesley wrote, “‘Tis mercy all, immense and free, for, O my God, it found out me!” His implication is, “God’s mercy had to look really hard because I was a long way off!”

These hymn writers placed themselves in a camp with the world. Yes, they were saved out of the world, but they never left it and never forgot who they were without Christ. I believe this is what Paul meant when he said, “I am the worst of sinners”—present tense. He knew himself. He knew one thing separated him from the next guy: Jesus Christ and his death on Paul’s behalf. The next guy either didn’t know yet, or didn’t get it. Either way, Jesus was the only difference.

We need to give people a more realistic presentation of ourselves—we’ve been scaring them away for too long with self-imposed images of our saintliness. The world has always been more ready to hear the astonished witness of a saved sinner than the calculated piety of a holy saint. I rather like the Catholic way of looking at sainthood. It’s hard to get in—you have to die first. Whether you take that figuratively or literally, it’s a good point.

And from my smitten heart with tears,
Two wonders I confess—
The wonder of redeeming love
And my unworthiness.
- Elizabeth C. Clephane

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Call, while you still can

Sharon, one of our readers, took a cue from my regret that I can no longer pick up my phone and call Keith Miller due to his recent passing, and thanked me for the reminder to call the people we can now, while we can.

What a great idea! We don’t do this enough.

Make it an appreciation call. Don’t ask for anything. Don’t even do much talking; just appreciate. Maybe it’s a teacher who saw your potential… a coach who believed in you… a youth minister who inspired you…

I have a list of people I wish I could spend more time with, don’t you? It’s my favorite people list. It’s shorter now by one Keith Miller. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Make a list. Call someone. Do it today. You may not have another chance. And then get on the teleconference Bible study tonight and tell us about it.

Our Catch On teleconference Bible study is tonight at 7 pm PST, 10 pm EST! Don’t forget to email Marti <martifischer@mac.com> to get on our list for your free latest version of our study guide. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to join Marti and me and Catch readers from all over the country and Canada.
Conference number: 218-237-3840
Access code: 124393

New skins for new wine

The family has lost a true brother.

Today I learned of the passing, Sunday, of Keith Miller, author of the 1965 classic, The Taste of New Wine. He was 84, and a young 84 at that. He was in the midst of creating another project – a rather ambitious one – when he contracted pancreatic cancer. He was, of all things, a truth-teller.

He was one of the first to represent a frankness and honesty about struggling to find a meaningful faith in the face of the more prolific spiritual piety that characterized most Christian leaders in the ’50s and ’60s. Keith didn’t hold back. He wasn’t very careful either and was criticized for what some judged as sacrilege.

Keith was one of the honest ones. He didn’t fake anything, so what you saw of the Lord through him was truly the Lord. We will miss him dearly, for though we know he is happy, we are not. There is a great shortage of Christians like him in this world. His passing will leave a hole.

I know all the clichés… he’s with the Lord; he’s happier now; he’s having a great time up there… Well, fine for him, but I’m not. I’m missing his humanity. I’m missing his human perspective. I’m missing the fact that I can call him up and talk to him. Even though I didn’t do that much, I could, and that’s a long ways from knowing that I can’t. He was a fighter, a struggler, and a happy man in the midst of it.

There are so few leaders like him – so few who are willing to tell the whole truth about themselves. Here’s the point for all of us: that’s when you catch the fragrance of Christ on a person – when they are being honest before others and before God. You can’t get it any other way. If someone is hiding, you get the spray-on Christian fragrance, not Christ.

Find out more about the fragrance of Christ at our teleconference Bible study, Catch On, tomorrow night at 7 pm PST, 10 pm EST. Don’t forget to email Marti <martifischer@mac.com> to get on our list for your free latest version of our study guide. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to join Marti and me and others from all over the country and Canada.
Conference number: 218-237-3840
Access code: 124393

A Muslim Christmas wish

I ran across this Catch from last year and thought it would be good to run it again. As we approach an election, it seems animosity increases as each side has to prove it is 100% right. This does no one any good since it is not humanly possible in the first place. Examples like this woman and her conclusions about Christ’s encounter with a Samaritan are good examples of putting love and respect above being right.

A converted Muslim tells a remarkable story about how one December, she had four Muslim families come over to her house and wish her a Merry Christmas. The reason for this, she related, was that, as a gesture of friendship and respect, she had visited them on their important Muslim holy days, even after her conversion to Christianity. So impressed were they by what she had done, that they returned the gesture on her next Christmas as a Christian.

This was not her original approach. “For a time I tried to convert every Muslim I came across,” she wrote. But then she was studying the story in John 4 about Jesus and a Samaritan woman, and noticed how he treated her, coming from another culture. He respected her — He didn’t judge her — and He taught her something about God based on her own understanding of her culture and her religion. And even though he revealed to her that he knew all about her past sins, he did not reject her or condemn her, but spoke to her as to one whom he highly valued.

That’s when this converted Muslim realized that converting people was not as important a part of her job as showing them God’s love. So she is learning to love her Muslim friends — even engage in long discussions about God and His mercy with them, without having to convert them or correct every wrong thing they say.

This woman has already learned something as a new Christian that I am still learning as one who grew up believing — that you don’t have to make everyone relinquish everything they already believe in order to embrace Christ. Our mission is not to prove everyone wrong, but to share the love of Christ with everyone we meet through the reality of our own relationship with God. We are on a mission, not to shoot everybody down, or to straighten everybody out, but to simply love people and point them toward the truth.

“You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship,” Jesus told the woman at the well, “while we Jews know all about Him, for salvation comes through the Jews. But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way” (John 4:22-23).

Jesus completes the picture; he doesn’t erase what was there. He showed her how both their cultures worshiped, but then took her to a deeper place of worship that transcended them both. We can point anyone to Christ, confident that if they are truly seeking God, they will find Him in Jesus, regardless of where they might have been looking so far.

Profoundly simple

McNair told me that this week marks exactly 40 years since he first performed the Fifth Gospel. It was January 1972. I saw it for the first time sometime during that first year and I was hooked. That means it pre-dated Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar as the first time anyone had popularized the life of Christ by making it relevant to the human experience. For many it bordered on sacrilege: Jesus in a water fight with his disciples… Jesus at 15 nervous about inviting Elizabeth to the temple bazaar… Jesus answering his disciples who were fighting over who would be the Vice Son of God… and McNair got away with it by calling him not Jesus, but Howard, Son of God. That was to help rid the observer of pre-conceived notions of who Jesus was or wasn’t.

To me, that continues to be the value of this piece. It strips away all religious trappings and leaves you with the bare minimum: God became a man and lived among us. It’s the essence of the story. It’s profound, but profoundly simple. And it’s something none of us would have thought up. It’s just outside the realm of human invention.

And once again, the Isaiah House audience proved that this universal story touches everyone. As Marti pointed out yesterday, there was no way anyone could separate the homeless from the housed at this performance. All were equally involved and thoroughly entertained. For me, the picture I will take from this performance is watching the Women of Vision sitting next to Isaiah House women and watching their faces equally childlike, equally glowing. There we are, all of us.

The Fifth Gospel

Following are some of Marti’s notes on C. McNair Wilson’s performance of The Fifth Gospel at Isaiah House last night. Bundled up in the patio on a cold night, Wilson warmed the 60 women of Isaiah House and some 25 Women of Vision volunteers with his humorous and poignant retelling of the gospel story. What if God became a man and walked among us, what would that look like and feel like? We found out last night.

Tonight we entered more fully into the mystery that is God.

Tonight we stood together — the homeless and the housed — on the foundation of hope that proclaimed that the “What If’s” were “Of Course.” Not the kind of hope that would necessarily make our life better but the hope that makes us want to make life better for those around us.

Tonight we stood together — the homeless and the housed — on the hope that God did come to earth and walked among us; He does want life to continue in one form or another; that God does want us to return to Him, and that our life will change in death, but it will not be taken away.

Tonight we stood together — the homeless and the housed — and God did become visible as we evidenced in his interweaving of our lives, connecting us one to another.

Tonight we stood together — the homeless and the housed — on the hope that any act by one of us on behalf of all the rest of us — be it to move on an ideal, or to improve the lot of others, or to strike out against injustice — would cross each other from a million different ripples to crash down on and turn against the mightiest of currents of oppression and resistance.

Tonight we understood that in creating life, God wanted us; He wanted us to return to him … and, connected, we did.

Applause to C. McNair Wilson for his touching and engaging retelling of the gospel story.

Before McNair’s performance this evening it was nearly impossible to predict the Women of Vision and the Isaiah House Guest’s reactions.  If we were looking for change, The Fifth Gospel worked for most of us. If all we required was entertainment, clearly The Fifth Gospel came through. But for those of us who had to know the answer to “What if God really came to earth and walked among us?” the power of the Lord Jesus Christ worked on behalf of us all…

He did.

God on the go

God doesn’t desire more of our time sometimes; He desires more of our attention all the time.

Ever feel frustrated because you hear messages about getting closer to God and you definitely desire this for yourself, but you are inundated with so much to do already that this only makes you feel guilty because you are too busy for God? I think we all feel this at one time or another.

Some of you may need to carve some time out of your busy schedule for more specific time to be with God, but that isn’t necessarily the only answer to this question. Look at the following scriptures:

“I have set the Lord always before me.” (Psalm 16:8 NIV)

“My eyes are ever on the Lord.” (Psalms 25:15 NIV)

“I will extol the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips.” (Psalm 34:1 NIV)

Reading these words makes you wonder if these are the words of a monk who had nothing else to do but devote himself to God. Actually, they are the words of David, King of Israel, a great ruler and warrior. How did he manage to run a nation at war, and keep his eyes on the Lord at all times? The only conclusion is that he did this while he did everything else. It’s a continual awareness of God that we are talking about here, not necessarily more time devoted to spiritual pursuits.

I once saw a sign that read: “Your God is what you pay attention to.” You see, I believe you can pay attention to God while you are doing everything else. It’s all about doing everything for God and seeing God in everything we do. It’s about bringing God into the boardroom, the exercise room, the living room, and the bedroom. Now of course He’s already in all these places but we’re talking about being aware of His being there at all times. That’s what it means to set the Lord always before us.

Worship is a frame of mind that always has God in the picture. We don’t need church, or Bible study, or devotions to remind us about the Lord if we’re already aware of Him all the time. These opportunities then become more precious to us because we can devote all our attention to that which we have been aware of all along.

What if God was one of us?

If you ever wondered about the validity of your life – Why am I here? Do I count? Does anybody care? What is the reason for my existence? – there is one event that has settled the issue once and for all. It is the fact that God, the creator of all things, poured Himself fully into the form of a human being and became (and still is) one of us.

And if one human life is capable of taking on and expressing fully the character and presence of God, then every human life is potentially that valuable, and yours would certainly be no exception. You were made to take on God.

How does that feel? Does that feel awkward? Does it feel religious? Does it feel inappropriate… you taking on God? Audacious? Actually, it should be none of these, maybe slightly supernatural, but with the emphasis on natural. This is God invading our natural life with His Holy Spirit. This does not make us perfect, it makes us whole, holy, sacred to the extent that we are being put to our intended use. We make God smile.

In the 2 Corinthians passage we’ll be talking about tomorrow night, Paul says we are a fragrance of Christ to God. Christ, who dwells in us by faith, is a sweet aroma to God the Father. His Son has completed His work on the cross and the end result created a home for His Spirit in your heart, and this is first and foremost for God’s pleasure. That fragrance will have an effect on others in the world, but that is only secondary.

So even before you do anything, you are being who you were meant to be by having Christ in your heart by faith.

This amazing event – God pouring Himself into human flesh – is going to be the focus of a special live presentation at the Isaiah House tomorrow night. With the help of your generous gifts at Christmastime, we are pleased to be bringing C. McNair Wilson to perform his fast-paced, 28-character one-man play, The Fifth Gospel, a hilarious and poignant retelling of the gospel story. This one-hour play captures the reality of God becoming man like nothing I have ever experienced. The women of Isaiah House are in for a very special treat.

Immediately following the performance, I will be conducting our live teleconference Bible study once again from my car somewhere in Santa Ana. You won’t want to miss that! Email Marti at martifischer@mac.com if you’d like to download our study guide and plan to be with us!

Teleconference details:
Dial in number: 218-237-3840
Access code: 124393
Time: Wednesday night, 7 pm PST (10 pm EST)

Martin Luther King Day 2012

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he’s gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he’s gone.

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free
Some day soon, and it’s a-gonna be one day …

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.