Did I Hear That Right?

by Worship Pastor Abby Dolbear

“Mommy, how do you make love?” This is not the question you want to hear coming from your 5 year old! My daughter and I were on our morning commute to where she attended daycare and I work, when she threw that question at me. The first thought that ran through my head was, “BOYS! (her two older brothers), What have they told her now!” Then it comes again, “Mommy, how do you make love?” My mind is still reeling for any kind of “Super Mom” wisdom to come to mind and nothing does. My jaw literally dropped! All I can think of is what she may have heard from others and now, how can I explain this to my 5 year old daughter. MY 5 YEAR OLD! I felt that this should not be happening yet. I wasn’t prepared for this question!

As we pulled onto the off ramp the question came again and now she’s growing irritated at my lack of response. “MOMMY! How do you make love?!” I decided I’d tell her that I would talk to her about it when we arrived at school in a couple of minutes. So while stopped on the off ramp, I turned around to look her in the eye and tell her what I decided. As I turn, I see she’s fiddling with her hands. Before I can say anything she says, “Mommy, how do you make love?” Then it all became clear, she was trying to “make love” in sign language! I let out a big sigh of relief and quickly showed her. She responded by holding up her hand in the way I showed her and said “Mommy, I love you”.

As you can imagine I was quite relieved. It was funny then, but even more so now! I was going in a totally different direction, and a wrong one at that because my perception was off. Has poor perception ever gotten the best of you? Many times there is a major difference in what we hear and what was actually said. When I think about what my response could have been to my daughter, mostly because I was too startled to speak, I’m delighted and greatly relieved that I didn’t say anything. Just thinking of the damage that could have been done by my misreading her innocent question bothers me! It only took a moment of insight to hear the REAL question being asked, not the question HEARD. Maybe a momentary pause between replies to difficult questions really is a good idea.

Relinquishing My Role As The Holy Spirit

by Alan Chambers

I had a dream last night that my wife, Leslie, and I were in a Life Group at church and a gay couple joined.  The two men were friends of mine from 20 years ago and had since adopted children.  They obviously knew me, how my story had evolved, and joined the group anyway.  During the group one of the members awkwardly blurted out, “Alan, tell the group about your ministry.”  I knew what the man was trying to do.  He was reacting in a way that most evangelicals often do.  We see a sinner and right away jump into “convert” mode with no thought of getting to know them or simply relating over common interests. Our default is to share our biblical conviction and immediately try to win them.  We allow our performance-oriented Christianity to impact the way we interact with unbelievers.  We approach them as projects to be managed and conquered instead of as people to be in relationship with.  We are uncomfortable with what appears to be messy and challenging and want to put it in some religious order as soon as possible.  We are ready for people modify their behavior before we have even introduced them to the One who died to change more than that behavior.

The question I ask myself a lot these days is, “What would Jesus do?”  followed by, “What would He have me do?”  They are not always one in the same.  The fact is we are not Jesus.  We have no power to heal or change anyone.  We can point to His life and ministry through the Bible and our own experiences, but we aren’t Him.  We are His representatives.  Sometimes I think we are actually guilty of trying to be Him, or at least the Holy Spirit.  It isn’t our job to bring conviction or judge.  We fail to trust the Holy Spirit to do His job well when we attempt to usurp that role. So, in the context of a situation like the one in my dream, what are we to do?

Let me finish telling you my dream.  When asked, I honestly cannot remember what I shared about my ministry.  That wasn’t the point of the dream.  I remember being uncomfortable with the direction of the “evangelism” and yet unwilling to be dishonest about my story. The group ended with all of us talking and planning for the next group.  I made a point to talk with the gay couple and eagerly introduced our children to one another.  I was thrilled they were there and encouraged them to come back. It wasn’t a dream about church leadership or ethics or anything like that.  It was a dream about unlikely people deciding to join an unlikely church. I woke up inspired.

God isn’t grey and neither is His truth, but life is.  People are.  It’s not all neat and tidy outside the Church and we shouldn’t pretend like it is inside the Church, either.  I want the church to be full of “pre-process”, “in-process” and “I don’t even know that there is a process” people.  Messy people.  People like you and me. People who need a Savior. What’s our answer for a gay couple that comes to church?  The same answer that we have for anyone seeking Christ and community – you can find both here.

What if the best thing for a gay couple with children isn’t to immediately end their relationship and split their family and confuse their kids?  Sometimes God’s plan for a messy situation is beyond our ability to understand and therefore we are simply to be on call for the time when He may choose to use us.  Until that time, we love and serve the people He brings to us.  Loving and serving might include honest conversations where you share your thoughts on sin.  But, remember, you aren’t exempt from struggle or sin and honestly and humbly sharing that reality can go a long way in building trust and authenticity with those new to your community.

Message 02-12-12 Living Generously

To pick up the current podcast URL’s click here for the main website feed or click here for the podcast only rss feed. This website is new so if you have used our old podcast streams please update your feeds (through iTunes and other podcast aggregators) to the above feeds accordingly. Enjoy and God Bless!

Moved By God Through Worship IN Christ – by Pastor Abby Dolbear

To begin with I don’t consider myself a writer.  In fact, I’d rather sing to you than write.  However, I’ve been moved to put in writing what I’m experiencing.  I’m moved by what God is doing in me and in Grace Church.  I’m moved by seeing people receive the promises that God has for them and how dramatically their lives are being changed as a result.

This past Sunday there was a comment made on our team about how great it is to come and worship knowing who we are in Christ.  Knowing that in order to experience and worship God we don’t have to be “sin conscious”, or grovel at the altar for hours, or burn candles, or run through a ritual of various confessions to somehow attempt to gain a sense of confidence to come before the presence of the Lord.  The truth is, if any of those religious efforts to please God were necessary to come before Him, we would never worship Him.  We couldn’t.  He wouldn’t be approachable!

But, because of the Finished Work of Jesus, we have been made complete, righteous, and holy before Him in love.  Wow!  To realize that Jesus has satisfied every requirement on our behalf before the Father, making us co-heirs with Him is amazing.  CO-HEIRS!  Think about that – all the promises that Jesus holds are promises made available to us!

I am persuaded that as we continue to receive and believe the fullness of His Grace for us, worship becomes a place of great fulfillment and joy, rather than a place where we fearfully and dutifully recount the sins of the week.   We come before the King of Kings without chains of bondage, but freely as sons.  We are, HERE and NOW, experiencing eternity on earth.

Hmmm … that makes me want to sing.

Awe Yeah! by Pastor Javin van Kaam

Snowboard in hand; I took a moment to take in the view. I was five thousand feet up and surrounded by breath-taking scenery. It was quiet. Snow rested on top of towering pine trees, the clouds were thick and grey, and the crest of the mountain above me commanded my respect. The Cascade Mountains filled me with an overwhelming sense of awe. It was just incredible.

What a unique feeling and experience the sense of awe is.

On a different occasion I was singing Christmas songs in a choir at Disney that retells the story of Christ’s life here on earth. I had sung these songs for years and always enjoyed the experience. However, this time things were different. Earlier that year I had accepted Jesus as my savior and He had radically changed my life. When we began to sing “O Holy Night” I once again was overwhelmed with a sense of awe and tears quickly streamed down my face. I couldn’t sing. I barely muttered the words:

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ’

Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.”

My soul had felt this worth! I was in love and overwhelmed at the grace that had transformed my life. I faked my way through the song while my heart cried out to the savior we were glorifying through song.

What a horrible tragedy that moments like that became fewer and far between over the years. The awe I once felt was replaced with guilt that sounded like, “God I’m sorry I don’t pray as much as I should…” and “Jesus please forgive me…” The sense of awe faded.

For years I thought the key to revitalizing my faith was to read the Bible more. Perhaps if I prayed more or attended church more often or found more time to worship that would do it. What it produced instead was moments of joy surrounded by days and weeks of disappointment as I couldn’t live up to my resolutions.

I am convinced that many Christians are in the same boat. We believe that the key to spiritual success is by doing more to maintain this relationship. In contrast, the early church didn’t have a Bible to read and yet their relationship with God looked like this:

Acts 2:43-45:

Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

These new converts continually felt this way! They had received God’s grace poured out through His Son Jesus and kept feeling a sense of awe. This is the way we feel when we understand and receive the love and grace that God poured out on the cross. Receiving is the key.

I didn’t regain my passion through being more diligent in my prayer life. I regained it by giving up. When I accepted the truth that Jesus had done it all on my behalf and realized there wasn’t anything I could do to be “closer” to God – the awe returned. That’s not to say that my understanding of Him can’t be deepened or that we shouldn’t spend time in prayer.  Instead, as my understanding of the message of grace has grown I find myself more and more in awe of His glory.

Ironically, the result of seeing even a glimpse of His glory is an increased desire to read more about Him, to pray more fervently, to worship passionately, and share His story with everyone I meet.

How awe-some it is to be a child of God!

This is the podcast of the sermon by Pastor Clark Whitten titled “Here and Beyond: Is Tithing Under the Law?” For February 5th 2012.

Message-02-05-12

To pick up the current podcast URL’s click here for the main website feed or click here for the podcast only rss feed. This website is new so if you have used our old podcast streams please update your feeds (through iTunes and other podcast aggregators) to the above feeds accordingly. Enjoy and God Bless!

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What God is For by Alan Chambers

The message of what God is for has been overshadowed by the Church’s obsession over what God is against.  It seems that our default message has been to lay out the laundry list of do’s and don’ts when talking about our faith.  Asked about God, most people parrot what they hear from the Church: recent boycotts on companies not promoting family values; political campaigns or initiatives being supported to enact or repeal this or that law.  Deeper than that, is the reality that most non-believers state they know Christians most by their anger over the things we oppose.

Let’s look at this from the relevant discussion surrounding homosexuality, the issue that my ministry, Exodus International, is daily focused on.  Most gay and lesbian people do not differentiate between behavior and identity. So, when Christians say we are opposed to homosexuality, due to our biblical beliefs, gay and lesbian people and most others listening, interpret our message and our God as anti-gay.  This mischaracterization is something that should deeply bother us as believers.

How do we clearly and truthfully share biblical truth while expressing the complete compassion, grace and love of Christ?  Start by digging deeply into the reality of who God is and how He feels about all people.  Romans 5:8 says, God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Our attitude, then, toward people must consistently be lovingly demonstrative.  And when they treat us with contempt and intolerance?  Romans 2:4 answers this well, Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? We must be kind, tolerant and patient.  None of those things require us to change our biblical positions but they do require that we change our dispositions. How you share your beliefs is as important as what you believe.

Are you so focused on what not to do as a Christian that you have lost the joy of your salvation forgetting all you actually gained by accepting Christ?  Daily, many Christians wake up feeling guilty because they don’t measure up and stay harnessed to the treadmill of penance, constantly seeking to “do better” to earn the forgiveness God’s already given to them.  We filter that into our evangelism opportunities and it’s no wonder that what people know of us is that we are against this, opposed to that, tethered to a list of what not to do.  Christ died to make us free from the bondage of performance-oriented religion.  We gained more when we came to Christ than we lost.  

Let’s dig deeper, as believers, in to what God is for, uncover the awesomeness of His matchless grace and in the process, begin to truly communicate that the Bible is full of really, really good news.   Employing this will transform our own walk with Christ and cause us to want to share the good news of salvation with others.

Martin Luther and John Calvin, the primary leaders of the Protestant Reformation, got it right concerning justification or how one is saved. ”The just shall live by faith” was the revelation Luther discovered and he and Calvin preached. In their break with Catholicism they correctly saw that no one is saved or justified by rule keeping, church attendance, or adherence to external behavioral standards. Salvation is by grace through faith. They got it right, and that Holy Spirit inspired revelation changed the world. But they missed it on sanctification or how one is perfected into the likeness of Christ.

Luther and Calvin both drew up rigid rules of conduct in their churches. Calvin, for example, had a catalogue of austere rules of morality including bans on swearing, gambling, and fornication. He forbade dancing even at weddings. Unexcused absences from worship services were severely penalized. Adultery and homosexuality could draw severe sentences, even death.

Luther’s view of Christians was that we are “piles of dung covered with snow”! I think he had a very low view of the miracle of the new birth and would agree with modern religious thinking that Christians are simply sinners saved by grace; a non Biblical but widely held view of salvation. This is the kind of legalistic leaven that has leavened the modern Church’s doctrine and caused Christians to have a low view of salvation themselves with tragic results. If you are a sinner, you have not been saved by grace!! If you have been saved by grace, you are not a sinner!! If you have been “saved by grace” you were a sinner but now you are something else entirely! Paul addresses Christians as Saints in many of his letters, and never uses the term sinner to identify Believers. We are talking about a state of being not an act or an action when we use the term sinner. We were born with a sin nature and that is precisely why we had to be born again. My new nature is not a sin nature but a sinless nature! I can sin but I am not a sinner. All of us are either in Adam (with a sin nature) or in Christ (with a sinless nature). There are no other categories! A STATE OF BEING! Saints or Sinners. Saints can sin but that sin does not undo the work of Christ and make a Saint a Sinner. A Sinner can do good works but good works do not make a Sinner a Saint. See?

The Church needs a reformation of thought concerning this truth and many others like it. Grace Church is called to be a part in this new Great Reformation that will change the world!

Clark Whitten