Evil and the Radical Response Pt 4

This is part 4 of a 4 part series.

Application

Seeing the necessity of applying Jesus’ teachings to our lives, what are we to take away from this sermon? There are innumerable possible applications but let me humbly suggest three:

1.       Firstly, and most simply: use social media wisely. The measure of anonymity that the internet affords leads it become a place where people feel safe to express their opinions. This is a great thing however, as we all know, it also is a place to unleash all sorts of hatred with little threat of retribution. In our online (and offline) lives, when we have been wronged, attacked, or harassed, often our initial response is to lash out. The perceived anonymity of the internet makes it easy to respond in hatred to faceless people and nebulous social groups in ways we would never do in public. Please, as brothers and sisters in Christ, do not use social media to perpetuate hatred or return insults. This leads me to my next suggestion.

2.       Take time to meet your enemy. It is so easy to reduce a person or people group when you don’t know them. I’m not saying that it will easy or pleasant but how are we to love our enemies if we never see them or spend time with them? In addition, spending time around your enemies allows you to better understand their perspective and seek solutions. Their actions may still be misguided, hurtful, or evil but perhaps you can see how they got to he point they are at. Seek opportunities to take action and remedy issues. For example, if poverty or other economic issues seem to be leading to community discord, seek ways to help alleviate as many underlying issues as you can. Remember though that these efforts may never be appreciated by those you intend to help and that they alone cannot change a human heart --- only Christ can set men and women free from death.

3.       Lastly (and firstly), we can pray. This is what Jesus emphasizes most heavily. If our enemy’s primary actions are acts of evil, our primary objective is to pray for those who hate and persecute us. It is far too easy to write off those who do evil acts as unredeemable. This abjures us of responsibility to engage with and pray for them. We so quickly forget that we were once like them: lost and opposed to the Lord. By His mercy, God sought us out and brought us into His fold. We did nothing and can do nothing to deserve it. In the same way, we lift up our enemies, not for a speedy punishment, but that the Holy Spirit might enlighten their hearts that they may too become adopted into God’s family of saints, once rejected, now accepted. Prayer both inclines the ear of the Lord and tunes our heart to the beat of His. What we pray for, we care for.

Evil and the Radical Response Pt 3

This is part 3 of a 4 part essay. If you have missed the other parts, go back and read them first. It will make more sense that way (I hope).

Jesus’ Absurd Response

So if our response is not to be neither anger nor despair, then what should it be? I believe that if we revisit some familiar words of Jesus, we can find our answer. Gathered upon a hillside, Jesus laid out the heart of His kingdom. His sermon cut to the core of hypocrisy revealing the importance not of religious ritual but a redeemed heart. Motive, not mere repetition, is the defining characteristic of one’s faith, Jesus taught. He spoke to a mixed group of the committed and the curious. His audience was largely poor; though I’m sure some scribes and Pharisees inclined an ear to hear this new rabbi’s teachings. What was true of all was that they lived under Roman authority and had for the last 90 years. Their own ‘revolution’ story, the Maccabean revolt, was 200 years past (roughly as long ago as America’s) and had ended in eventual defeat. Though Rome afforded the Jewish ruling class a measure of autonomy, everyone knew that the governors and procurators held ultimate authority. The presence of Roman soldiers made sure of that. I say all that to say this: Jesus’ audience knew oppression. They know what it was like to be unjustly treated, by Rome and by their own people. The words He speaks are spoken (mainly) to the common man and the under-privileged; not to the powerful and wealthy.

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’³⁹ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. ⁴⁰ If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. ⁴¹ Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. ⁴² Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Jesus begins each of His two thoughts here with maxims long-held by the rabbinical authorities. He uses them to show how the coming of Christ fulfills the Mosaic Law and shifts the center of religious understanding from a place of absolute justice to one of grace.

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’³⁹ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. 

Right out of the gate, Jesus confounds the way justice worked in 1^st century Palestine and in 21^st century America. Our entire world is built upon the notion that we deserve the right to pay our enemies back for the wrongs done to us. Contemporary (and classic) literature, music, and film exude this justice. But what does Jesus say? “Do not resist an evil person.” Jesus calls us to voluntarily give up our demand for justice. In fact, He goes on to call us to give our oppressor that which they don’t deserve or even require of us.

⁴⁰ If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. ⁴¹ Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. ⁴² Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

Jesus’ second quotation speaks to the motive behind these radical responses.

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 

Not only does Jesus tell His audience not to seek retribution, He goes so far as to tell them to do the same to their enemy as they would their neighbor (which within the historical context meant a lot more than it does today). Instead of inspiring anger, grief, bitterness, or seeking retribution, Jesus intends prayer to be the response that characterizes His followers when they are oppressed. In fact, Jesus says that this very act will make one more like the Father in heaven. You are, Jesus tells His audience, to be the opposite of your enemies, responding to hatred with love, not with more hatred.

This is not an unfamiliar verse. This sermon does not lie hidden in the depths of some obscure biblical book such as Zephaniah or Jude. So why is Jesus’ teaching so rarely applied today? Why are Jesus’ commands to respond to evil with love, not more evil, something relegated to children’s Sunday school? Children’s Sunday school hits pretty close to the truth. “Turn the other cheek” is one of those platitudes we impart to our children but mostly neglect as adults.

First, I think we neglect the implications of the sermon because, frankly, it is hard. Our emotions get in the way. Our God-given desire for justice drives us in directions antithetical to Jesus’ teaching. We forget that “vengeance belongs to the Lord.” We have to fight back the feelings of anger when we have been wronged. Our natural desire is to strike back, to answer tooth for tooth ---- or worse. But we are not natural men and women anymore. We are new creations, created in God’s image for good works. How did Jesus respond when falsely accused? When tormented? When mocked? When murdered?

 ⁵ Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. ⁸ Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The second reason I believe that we neglect the implications of Jesus’ teachings here are because we have other options available to us. Jesus’ first audience was the oppressed and subjugated. The Jews of Jesus’ day knew that they were a subjugated people. Their options for resisting authority were A) take it and be bitter, B) personal armed rebellion, or C) Jesus’ radical command to love one’s enemy. Most of us in the western world don’t have to incite an armed rebellion against our oppressors. We have more options. We can counter-sue the person abusing us, we can call the police, and we can call upon our nation to go to war. As citizens of privilege, we have more rights and avenues afforded to us. Yet, simply having the legal right to strike back legally or militarily against our enemies does not negate Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek and to love those who hate us. Having the option does not mean that we should use it.

Jesus’ command is radical. Jesus’ command is absurd. Jesus’ command is a relinquishment of the right to be hateful, bitter, and to revenge. It is antithetical to every gut-level notion of self. Yet this s what we see modeled in the life of Jesus Himself. Jesus the Christ relinquished His rights: His rights before men as an innocent man falsely accused, and His rights before the Father.

Jesus chose not to strike when He could have.

He chose to forgive when He could have chosen bitterness.

He chose to love those who hated and mocked Him.

These commands of Jesus are not mere words; they are displayed by the actions that cost Him His very life.

Evil and the Radical Response Pt 2

This is part 2 of a 4 part essay on our response to evil. If you didn't read the previous section go back and read that first.

Response #1

We long to see the Kingdom of the Lord revealed in its totality. We long for the day when anger, hatred, war and strife will be done away with. However in the absence of that we have a tendency to respond in a couple of ways. The first way we respond is with hatred.

Before I go on, I want to emphasize that I don’t want to speak too harshly about these responses because they are completely understandable and natural. However we who follow Jesus are no longer natural men and women, we are new creations and we must constantly strive to put on that new identity.

By saying that we respond with hatred my aim is not necessarily to condemn us. When someone attacks us or our interests it is often our first response to answer back in kind. When someone talks negatively about us at work, we want to defend ourselves and rattle off their faults and failings. When someone maligns our child our gut-level response is to come out with fists flying. Often, even when the attack or oppressor is more abstract and less direct, we find ourselves leaping to the worst possible solution or to broad generalities that don’t speak to the truth of the situation.

I find that this is the case with situations in which we can paint someone as an “other”. It becomes far easier to fight back against an unseen or nebulous opponent. Our responses don’t have to be tempered by the humanity of the adversary or the troubled situation they are coming from.

I encountered this one day while I was in college. Nearly all of us have this story. The story of “where you were”. I am of course speaking of where you were when you heard about the attack on 9/11. It was the second day of class of the year. I overheard several classmates discussing some nameless tragedy in class before the professor came and dismissed us all. Unknowing, I joined the body of students walking back to the dorms only to find the reality of the situation on the TV when I got back. For me, one of the most remarkable and chilling experiences came later that day though. Eventually, after a few hours, all classes were cancelled. It was the beginning of the semester and every student, resident and commuter alike, were on campus, just milling about. Nobody knew quite what to do. Everything was rumor back then. We didn’t have well-produced websites and Twitter accounts for terrorists to claim responsibility for their deeds so all we had was vague conjecture about ‘Middle-Eastern terrorists’. I moved throughout the mass of people near one of the main buildings on campus and listened to the collective voice of the people, excerpted from passing conversations. The consensus? “We’ve got to get them back.” “We to bomb them back to the stone age”. And for me, one of the starkest comments I heard was more personal in descriptive: “We’ve got mow them down.”

It is completely natural for us to feel hurt when we have indeed been hurt. Too often, though, we fly off without considering the gravity and complexity of the situation, let alone the human angle.

I find the case of Europe to be particularly enlightening right now. Due largely to the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, many young (18-25) European Muslims are flying down and joining the war in the Middle East. Many of these men and women come from stable, loving homes; from a religious upbringing that we would not consider radicalized. But the emptiness of the human condition and the brokenness of man leads the to paths of hatred and violence. But consider their parents, who never imagined that their children would be capable of such hatred and evil acts. What if they were our neighbors? Would we view the attackers differently? Would we be quicker to offer consolation; to offer grace?

Just a few thoughts.

Response #2

The second response we tend to have to evil and violence in the world is depression or at the very least thoughts of despair. Again, these thoughts are born out of a yearning for God’s peace and justice to reign over His creation. They rise from the desire to live in a just and equitable world free from the hateful and selfish demands of men and women who seek to control the world in which they live by controlling the lives of others. These thoughts of despair cut out the heart of joy that is to define the Christ-follower. They rob us of the freedom in which we are to live in the Spirit.

So often the nightly news bothers me so much that I am tempted to draw back and disconnect from this hateful (and hurting) world. We know that this should not be, but the momentary emotions of our hearts lead us to abandon hope for despair.

How are we to do as Paul commends us when the oppression of the evil one weighs so heavily upon us?

Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

We know these commands to be true but in our pain and in our bitterness we sink deeper into the despair of the worn and beaten down.

As we saw, Jesus knew what kind of lives He was calling His followers to. He intended them to be aware of the cost of such discipleship. He afforded nothing for their safety or prosperity. In fact the only promise He made was that they would have trouble.

Peter wrote to a group of people embroiled in such trouble; people scattered across the Roman Empire suffering for the faith that had been called to. To these stalwart saints facing persecution and death he wrote:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, (1 Peter 1:3a-6)

Peter comforts these embattled saints by reminding them of the power of the Lord in calling them to salvation. They, who were once not a part of God’s family, had been drawn in by the power of His grace not by any machination of Man. In light of their temporal and real sufferings Peter draws their gaze to their inheritance (the fulfillment of salvation) which cannot be destroyed by clubs, or bombs, or flame. He speaks of their hope as one which will never fade into obscurity or be halted by death. While the powers of this world have dominion enough to choke and starve; to torture and kill, they lack the power to even touch that which the Lord has protected. Their hand only reaches as far as the Lord will allow. It can never touch our inheritance as beloved sons and daughters of God. These are the words of encouragement Peter writes to those believers living through the fire of persecution.

Who are we to doubt the power of God? If the Lord was able to preserve those who faced death at the hands of an ungodly empire, who are we to doubt His power to preserve us in the face of temptation, harassment, ridicule, and indeed physical attacks?

The answer is obvious. Though the emotions often drown out the truth of Scripture, we must fight to cling to the very words of God which encourage us to trust not on our own understanding but upon Him. When evil and oppression lay siege to our soul we must always rely upon the Word of Truth.

Evil and the Radical Response Pt 1

I've been working on this for a few weeks. To aid in reading, I wanted to break it up into four parts. Here is part 1.

Peace and love have taken a beating lately. Aside from the daily frustrations and injustices, Islamic terrorists executed attacks in Paris and Nigeria. Beyond all that, governments around the world have basically admitted that similar attacks are inevitable. Wars and rumors of wars trend online and the nightly news brings us little comfort. Here in Michigan, a wintery oppression has dropped a canopy of gray upon the earth. Bitter winds have closed schools and driven all but the hardy (or the foolhardy) into their homes. Hope has been a far distant light obscured by a curtain of despair. Joy has been remarkably absent.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find myself remarkably troubled by the evil and injustices of this world. A brief trip online (if that’s possible) leaves me dejected and despairing, both emotions that I know should not define my existence as a Christ-follower. Yet I find myself increasingly distressed by the ominous shadow cast over this planet.

The Problem

I know that I should not be surprised by the presence of evil in this world. Scripture recounts to us the degradation of humanity as far back as Noah’s time:

Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. (Genesis 6:11, 12)

My head knows that this is true, that I should not be surprised by the corrupted state of this world as if it were a new thing. There is nothing new under the sun and the evil acts of man are certainly no exception. Yet so often our hearts are troubled and left trembling and confused by the presence of evil. Many times we are tempted to doubt the goodness of God in light of the sinfulness of man.

As believers who were called out of evil and sinful lives, we often fall prey to the faulty assumption that our new life in Christ will be immune to the pervacious infection that plagues mankind. Of course we would never put it in such broad and expansive words but we react nonetheless when the hatred and evil rears its ugly head in our own lives. Someone hits our car and drives off without a note. A co-worker sets to passing hurtful gossip and opinions about us at work. Our Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of hateful and ungracious comments. I don’t know about you but I often recoil at those things and want to retreat into my own world (or in my case, into nature). These reactions only show that we harbor the roots of this faulty assumption about the expected affairs of the Christian.

Perhaps the first followers of Jesus had a similar expectation because Jesus took them aside to dispel such notions directly before He was to be betrayed by a corrupt and unjust justice system:

If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; (John 15:18-20a)

Jesus goes great lengths to make His disciples clear that they should not be expecting a rose-petal strewn path. Their fate was bound up in their Master’s, and so are ours. We should not expect the world to suddenly become a heavenly kingdom when it is populated by the lost and the lonely. The hurting population of this world yearns for reconciliation but in the absence of that, for distraction and power. The flesh craves lust and power and meaning from wherever it can be found. It should surprise none of us that those desperate desires would result in a swath of broken dreams, broken hearts, and (saddest of all) broken bodies.

When we are confronted by the harsh and bitter realities of a broken, fallen world we often have one of two responses.

Four Things I Learned from Watching Boyhood

Boyhood (up for best picture) is the story of the life of one boy from age 7 to 18. The film by Richard Linklater was shot throughout the actors’ lives every year. Less of a traditional plot and more of a portrait of a life and a process of growing up, the movie tries to capture the entirety and nuances of a single life. This is what I walked away from the movie with.

1.       Growing up is hard even without blaming anyone.

a.       Growing up is just hard. Even without any external influences, growing up is just plain difficult. There are hundreds of different influences (some of them biological) that make becoming an adult a painful experience.

2.       No one is without sin.

a.       Watching the movie I was painfully aware of the poor choices that the characters were making. It was hard for me to even watch at times. Whether it was Mason (the titular boy), his mother, or any of the other characters, the viewer watches the montage of decisions, good and bad that go into shaping a boy’s life. Boyhood paints a portrait of life without glossing over the mundane choices that ripple outward in effect. Watching these characters struggling and failing to do the right thing makes me fully aware of my own failures and frailties. Sometimes it’s hard to watch and no one is blameless.

3.       The battle to influence children/students is hard.

a.       Watching this movie made me very aware of the competing forces at play in shaping all of our lives. For someone who spends their time trying to influence students for Christ it was difficult to be exposed to the pain, hardship, and poor choices that are all part of teenager’s lives. It’s hard to see students in pain and to understand that we are supremely limited in our capability of healing them.

4.       The battle to influence children/students is worthwhile.

a.       At the end of the day though, what Boyhood communicates is the sacredness of the life of every child. Every student is a precious soul in transition; a ship trying to stay upright in a stormy sea. Every person is a collage of circumstances, pains, and influences good and bad. This might seem imposing and hopeless for some but it shows how valuable and worthwhile the fight is. Viewing Boyhood makes it impossible to see a child and not see how much the Lord loves them.

When God Destroyed Me

There are plenty of times that I don’t feel qualified for doing student ministry (most times if I’m honest). The longer I stick around working with students the older I feel, the less I know, and the more things I realize that I’m not any good at. I’m not just talking about Instagram or Twitter but simple stuff, like retreat registrations and emails. Sometimes I marvel at all the ways that I don’t fit the job description that I would write for myself.

And then…

There are days like today. As I was running this evening (all my best thoughts come while running or hiking) I was overcome by the prayer requests of one of my students. There were so many similarities between this student’s story and mine. I ached in prayer for the Lord to move in and reveal truth and heal hurts. My body physically hurt (probably helped by the fact I hadn’t run in a few days) with emotion. It was as if my entire being was crying out in prayer (minus actual words).

And I was reminded of something from years ago…

I have always had a strong empathetic reflex. Even before I became a Christ-follower I would often be struck by severe pangs of pain, sorrow, and joy over the concerns of others. I remember one such encounter that left me ruined. I was at a Halloween party and a friend’s house (I didn’t have many friends). I didn’t know anyone at the party besides the host and so I awkwardly mingled my way around, upstairs, downstairs, outside. I watched as the other guests watched The Lost Boys in the basement and I felt an overwhelming, palpable darkness and despair. I had to leave the room. I made my way outside (it was somewhat warm for October) into the backyard. The host’s mother had a converted school bus out back. To this day I remember watching the adolescent lust as couple after couple circled off in the backyard to give away parts of themselves they would never get back. I briefly entered the bus to find the seats nearly full with other teens. I remember the darkness. My chest felt like it was caving in. I sat down beside the bus and sobbed silent tears. I felt destroyed at the brokenness and despair of the strangers who surrounded me.

Perhaps, God was preparing me. Perhaps He has designed this reaction in me to keep me from being judgmental or distant. Perhaps His desire is to break me to the point where all I can do is to cry out to Him in prayer.

Most often, that’s I can do.

Why We Do What We Do

This is a talk I gave on why our youth ministry exists and how we should evaluate why we do the things we do.

For three years these people had followed Jesus. Many of them gave up their jobs, their families, and their normal lives. They gave them up to follow a preacher around. Maybe it was curiosity. They saw Him perform miracles; they heard him say some pretty inflammatory things to the important religious and political figures of the day. They heard him say things about the Lord and the Kingdom of God that made it seem real, like it was really something that was happening, after four hundred years of silence, this guy made it seem like it was happening NOW. So at some point, these people got invested they bought into Jesus. They listened to Him and tried to imitate Him, to be like Him. He sent them out with His power to heal and preach about the Kingdom of God and they saw amazing things.

And then He’s murdered. He’s put on trial on trumped up charges and put on trial by a coward judge who orders Him murdered rather than upsetting the crowd. And they themselves scatter. Each of them to a greater or lesser degree abandons Jesus. They have three days of guilt and confusion. Was all this a waste of my life? What was the point if this guy was just going to be murdered? Was this really the Kingdom after all?

Then there’s a knock at the door, and its Peter and John and they’re saying that the body of Jesus is gone, that He’s risen from the dead just like He said He would. Later Jesus Himself shows up. He shows the holes in His hands where they drove the nails to crucify Him. He eats with them. He teaches them. They are excited. Jesus is back and now something is really going to happen because people don’t just rise from the dead every day.

And then Jesus says: I’m leaving. Now it’s your turn.

It’s your turn to tell others about me, about the way in which the Lord wants them to live.

And then He’s gone. Disappears.

And there’s this moment of confusion, of bewilderment. What do we do now? He says that now we’re in charge, that we have the power to do the things He did. But I don’t feel powerful. I don’t know what to say. And each of them had to make a choice: to believe what Jesus said or to give up and go home. There was no Jesus there inviting them to come in and stay. I mean He was God of course we’ll stay around God. But He’s gone now. 

What do we do go home? This was their opportunity to go back to a normal life, to stop looking like weirdos by fanatics.

And yet in one little verse in the story of the early church it says: These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer.

This is the start of a new year. How many of you made New Year’s resolutions? Most of the time people don’t keep their resolutions but I think that evaluating your life is very helpful. One of the things that I often find myself drawn to asking is: why am I doing what I’m doing? It’s so easy to fall into patterns and routines. Don’t get me wrong, patterns and routines can be good things but we need to look at them honestly and ask: why am I doing this?

It is easy to get into a routine. Routines can be great things. They help us establish patterns of behavior. They can help us become the people that we want to be.

However, we have a tendency to continue routines and patterns long after they have fulfilled their usefulness. My daughter is 2 years old. Early in life she used a pacifier to comfort her. Now however she doesn’t NEED that pacifier anymore, but she still wants it, she still demands it, she still cries for it, but it no longer serves its purpose.

It’s like Newton’s first law of motion (for you math geeks): an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside source.

We tend to keep doing the thing we’re doing even after its purpose has ended.

For many of us, Church can be a routine. Youth group can become a pattern. We play dodgeball. We eat snacks. And I think sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves: why are we here? That’s what I want to do tonight: to talk about why we exist, because sometimes I think we get confused about why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Let me cut right to the chase: this is the goal of life: to know Jesus and make Him the center of our lives.

This should be at the heart of everything that we do in our lives.

The friends that we have – the core of those friendships should be Jesus.

The college we’re going to attend – the heart of that should be knowing and serving Jesus.

The boyfriend or girlfriend we want so badly – the heart of that should be knowing and serving Jesus.

But the reality is that we’re doing a pretty poor job at it. We get consumed by lust and envy and greed. We’re jealous and hateful. Even on our best days we’re horribly distracted by things that don’t make any difference and don’t bring us closer to Jesus.

Now the good news is that our standing before God doesn’t depend on us doing the “right” things or saying the “right” prayers. Our standing before God depends on Jesus’ death, his sacrifice to make us right before God. And that stays the same whether we’re having our best day or we’re having our worst day.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be striving to know Jesus more.

And that is what church is for, that is what youth group is for, they are tools to deepen the relationship between you and God.

And that’s what we’re here for. Strip away every single thing we do at youth group and that’s the core: to be a place to learn how to grow closer to God. Sometimes we get distracted and think it’s about games or food or about seeing our friends. Those are all fine things, good things, but they’re not the thing. If they were to suddenly disappear one week would things change? If one week we came here and there were no more games, would it matter? If you found out that your closest friends were never coming back to youth group, would you keep coming? If your parents suddenly said that they were never driving you to church again, how would it affect you?

I ask because I think about those first Christians that I told you about at the beginning. That’s the exact situation they were in.

(I know you were probably wondering why I told that story)

The early Christians (well they weren’t even that yet, they were just people who had followed Jesus) that had NO obligation to continue to meet together. In fact they had every reason to go home to their cities and their families and their jobs. Jesus was gone. The people who killed Him were still around (it’s only been 40 days, no one had forgotten yet). It would make perfect sense to lay low, at least for a while. Go home, become a fisherman again.

But they didn’t. They stayed.

They met together. They ate together. They prayed together.

They made an evaluation about what was rational, what was expedient, and what was faithful. They chose faith.

I’ll admit that sometimes in youth group it’s easy to get distracted and lose sight of the purpose. As someone who helps lead I have that problem. That’s why we need to periodically step back and strip away all of the “stuff” and really ask ourselves why we’re here, why we keep coming.

Are we here for the “stuff”?

Are we here because it’s a habit?

Are we here because we want to know Jesus?

I want to challenge you guys to ask that question of yourselves tonight.

Let me just say that the reason why we, as a ministry exist, is not to play games. It’s not to have food. It’s not to go to retreats. The reason we’re here is the same reason that the early Christians got together in those homes in Jerusalem --- they wanted to know Jesus and serve Him. All of the other “stuff” is fine so long as it does not distract us from Jesus.

When we chose the name A29 as the name of this ministry we did it deliberately because we wanted to follow in the footsteps of those early believers. There are 28 chapters in the book of Acts, but the history of Jesus working in this world goes on to this day. We want to be the 29^th chapter, the continuing chapter.

Think of this ministry as a tool in getting you closer to know Jesus.

Do any of you play sports?

I played baseball for 8 years when I was a kid (I stopped about 8^th grade (stupid decision, long story)) and I can remember all the practices that I would go to. If you play a sport, your ultimate aim is to get better at that sport. So to get better you practice, and you drill, and you watch. For me, the ways I got better at baseball were:

-         Practice (running laps)

-         Watching baseball on TV

-         Fielding grounders with my dad

-         Playing in games

Those were all different things that I did, but the purpose was the same: to become a better baseball player.

Wednesday nights, Sunday School, retreats they are all tools to help you know Jesus more and serve Him with your life. But they’re not the only tools, and they shouldn’t be. Reading your bible at home, listening to sermons, worshiping, following the examples of believers in your family. These are all other tools to get to where we want to be: close to Jesus.

I guess I’m saying two things:

-         The ultimate aim of the Christian is to know Christ and serve Him

-         Our purpose as a ministry is to help you do those two things.

So let me say this to you: you are like those early Christians. Nobody is forcing you to be here. I mean maybe your parents are to some extent but they can’t make you participate. They can’t make you engage. Only you are in control of your motives for being here. Those early Christians could have given up and gone home and I’m sure some of them did. But many didn’t. Many of them believe in the kingdom that Jesus told them about; they believed that Jesus was going to empower them to go out and do amazing things. Many of them chose to have faith in Jesus rather than what seemed to make sense for their lives. What are you going to do? What is going to be your motive for being here?

Let me promise you this: we, as leaders, are here for you. We don’t have to be. Nobody is making us, but we choose you. We choose to believe that Jesus wants to know you and that He has extraordinary plans for you. We believe that and we stake our time and our lives on that and we will continue to do everything in our limited power to help you grow closer to Christ. We are going to fail and we are going to get distracted with “stuff” but know that our goal is that you would know and serve Christ.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here’s the funny thing, those early Christians who got together, they had every reason to doubt, they had every reason to want to pack it up and go home. But they stayed together united in purpose after Jesus left because they believed it when He said that He would do extraordinary things with their lives, that He would give them power.

So they met in homes. They ate together. They prayed. They helped one another in whatever needs they had.

And one day, the Lord showed up.

He gave them the Holy Spirit and sent those ordinary people on a trajectory that would change the face of human history. Those weak and doubting men and women who had abandoned Jesus during His crucifixion, those were the people that Jesus chose to shape history, because they chose to remain when they didn’t have to.

You don’t have to be here.

But the Lord has amazing plans for you.