dancing cripples

Last week at Calvary we finished up our teaching series, “Come Thirsty.”  Really the whole series was all about being with God, life with God.  I offered two words that shape our pathway to life with God.  If we want to be with God, we need the right balance of Desperation and Expectation.

Last summer, I challenged Calvary to spend a day with God. The challenge came from David’s words in Psalm 84.  He starts in verses 1-2, with, “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”

David just wants to be with God.  He’s desperate for God.  How lovely is your dwelling — probably a better translation is “how loved is your dwelling…” It’s not just lovely; like, “Oh, God you have a lovely house.” It’s loved.  David would rather hang out with God than be at a Penn State football game. He would rather drink coffee with God than go camping, or shopping, or bar-hopping.  David just wants to be wherever God is.

It’s not limited to church, but honestly today David say, “I can’t wait to go to church. I long to go to church. My soul yearns for church. When I get to church, I don’t want to end. I don’t want to leave. No place I’d rather be than church. If we are honest, that sounds weird in our ears.  If someone said that to us, we might say, “You need to get a life!”

Last week 15-20 of us from Calvary and a few other congregations took an all day trip to Brooklyn Tabernacle in Brooklyn New York. During the day we attended sessions on prayer, but I’m certain that most of the people who went would say that the highlight was the prayer meeting.  It starts at 7pm, but sometimes people start lining up around 4pm to get a good seat. The doors open at 5pm and by 6pm it was getting pretty full (~4000 seats in the auditorium). Prayer is already going on. People are lining up for prayer.  And in the room, there is is this amazing mix of desperation and expectation.

They are desperate for God, and they have seen Him work so often that they are expectant for God.  I love what Jim Cymbala writes about church,

Too much of our religious life is made up of programs and human ideas, talents and strategies. While these have value, they pitifully fail to meet the need of the house. What is missing today is something from heaven itself, something from God the Holy Spirit that fills and floods our lives. This has always been God’s design for His church.

Do you understand what Cymbala is saying? He’s saying if church is boring, something is wrong. If you want to leave church early and come late, something’s missing. If you were given tickets to  a Taylor Swift concert (sorry Jake) or a seats on the 50 yard line to watch Penn State and Alabama and you can’t imagine trading those in for church, then somewhere along the line we’ve missed God’s design for the church.

In Psalm 84:10, David writes these words, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. This phrase, the “courts of the Lord,” is woven thru the Psalms. It’s simply another to say “with God.”  Being in the courts of the Lord is all about being with God.

David’s saying, “If I only had one day to live, I would live it with God.”  Better is one day with God than three years without God. Better is a month of days with God than a lifetime without God. I know it’s a psalm, perhaps a bit of creative license. But don’t miss the delight, and anticipation, the desperation and expecation of what the psalmist feels when he says, “I would exchange a lifetime anywhere else for a month of days in your place.”

How about you?  What is your best day?

Last weekend was CityServe 2012.  Calvary joined with 10 other local congregations for a weekend of community service.  In fact Calvary cancelled our worship gatherings to go out and be the church for the whole weekend.  What a great weekend!

As we prepped for CityServe the weekend prior, we looked at Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones resurrected. The resurrection was more than just personal rejuvenation it was for the purpose of God’s mission. The resurrected bones became a living breathing army of resurrection in the valley. Then I said something like this,

Resurrection has been unleashed throughout the world, not just so our thirst could be satisfied. Remember a couple of weeks ago I said, it’s not just about us. There is a world of thirsty people out there who need resurrection. I know some of you here this weekend are in need of your own personal resurrection…and I so deeply hope that this vision of Ezekiel will spur on your hope and lead you to listen to God and cry out to be filled with his Spirit.

But far too many of us settle for being objects of resurrection when God calls us to be agents of resurrection.

An army of resurrected people going out to do good and spread resurrection throughout the valley. I know it seems like raking a yard or painting a bathroom, or cleaning a toilet does not even begin to compare to resurrection. But you just don’t know what a resurrection-God can do with your act of service.

One project was that of a woman who lives in a trailer in Julian.  Her husband had died within the last few months.  Her trailer was significantly damaged and she had no one to fix it.  She said, “Everytime I see the holes in my trailer, all I can think about his what I lost.”  When Kendra said that we would be happy to come and help, the tears started coming down her cheeks and she said, “I can’t believe it, no church has ever been kind to me like this before.”

Last weekend the church of the Centre Region was kind to her.

Last weekend the church of the Centre Region — about 840 volunteers — was kind to about 120 different individuals and organizations.  Single moms, the elderly, people struggling with financial difficulties, nursing homes, firefighters, hospice workers and organizations like Stormbreak, the Pregnancy Resource Center, and Centre Peace experienced the kindness of the church of the Centre Region.  People were visited.  Parties were held.  Houses were painted.  Yards were raked.  Bushes were mulched.  Schools were cleaned. Trailers were fixed.  Decks were (or will be) stained.  I could go on and on.

Who knows what God will do with the seeds of kindness and hope that were planted.

But here is my challenge — don’t let it be a weekend event.  Go out and tend the seeds in the garden that God has given you.

Ken and C. J. are a Christian couple who live in Bodaga Bay, a little town north of San Francisco. They run a deli in a store up there. A few years ago, Bodaga Bay was big enough to have one homeless man, the town tramp was named Garland. Garland dressed poorly, acted a little strange and slept in the city park. Being Jesus-followers, Ken and C.J. befriended Garland; offered him food and kind words. When their store was broken into and robbed most people in town accused Garland.  Ken and C.J. — instead of accusing — prepared a very expensive gift basket for Garland and gave it to him.

The next morning the police showed up with Garland and the expensive gift basket; certain they had caught the burglar. To protect Garland from embarrassment Ken and C.J. said, “Oh, Garland! Thank you for bringing your basket back. We forgot to put some stuff in it we wanted to put in it. And by the way, here’s the change I forgot to give you.”

Ken made up a number — $38.67 — and in front of the police he opened the cash register and gave $38.67 to this homeless guy. The police let Garland go without saying a word. A few mornings later Garland died in the park in his sleep. Ken and C.J. were called to the attorney’s office. They were told that Garland had made them the sole heir in his will. He wrote, “The entire contents of my travel bag are entirely yours.”

Inside the bag was a bag of birdseed, a Bible and a bankbook. The names on the savings account were Garland and Ken and C.J. The last entry in the savings account was for $38.67 bringing the balance to well over three million dollars.

I’ve shared that story before but do you know what bothers me the most about that story? What bothers me the most is that the very first thought that came to my mind the very first time I heard it was something like, “Who would have ever guessed that that guy was worth so much!

What is the measure of the worth of a person? What is the measure of the worth of your neighbor? What is the measure of the worth of the people living in the margins of our community?

When I think about the cross and the empty tomb, I am reminded that Jesus values people so much that he was willing to wrap his arms around a cross.  I am reminded that Jesus love is so great that resurrection power is let loose in the world.  The cross and the tomb are living proof of a loving God.

Your neighborhood, the place where you work, your dorm, your apartment building, the softball diamonds where
your kids play…are filled with people who are the passion of Jesus heart.

There are times when God gives me just a little peak at the passion on his heart for people. I’ll be looking out over the
valley, or driving down 322, or walking through the grocery store, and my heart begins to fill up with emotion and tears come to my eyes, for people that I don’t even know.  And it doesn’t come from me, like you sometimes I struggle to love well the people I know…let alone people I don’t know, but I think God just wants to remind me of how much He values people.

That is why we are doing CityServe.  We are going to cancel church and go out into our communities to serve because when we serve we open our hearts to the passion of Jesus.  We are going to cancel church and go out into our communities to serve because we need to be where Jesus is and when you go out and serve you are going to find some people around him Jesus has thrown his arms. We are going to cancel church and go out into our communities to serve in hopes that we might be living proof of a loving God.

Come join us, sign up at www.sc-cityserve.org

I don’t know about you but I’m still hanging out in Easter.

As I think back over the last 18 years of Easters here at Calvary, it’s hard to remember too many where there was a bigger need for hope; on an individual level, and a national level, and of course right here on a community level. People struggling in marriages, struggling with cancer, struggling financially, and in so many other ways. On the national level, the issues facing our country sometimes seem to have no solution. All we get is politics.  And here locally we’ve gone through a difficult season, still in the midst of it. Who knows when things will get back to “normal” for our community after the events of the last few months.

When we pass through season like this, we find ourselves in need of hope, thirsty for hope, thirsty for something that will breathe life into our spirits. So many people, who a year or two ago felt like they were on solid ground, find themselves in circumstances that they never saw coming, and those circumstances bring worry, stress, even fear as we wrestle with decisions made or missed.

I’m fairly certain that none of us so value our seasons of difficulty that we schedule them in, right?   It’s not on my google calendar.  I schedule vacations not hope-draining times. But when they do come, one of the benefits is the way they make us pause and ponder questions like, “What can I count on? How will I make it through? Where can I find
hope? Am I building my life on something solid enough to make it through times that quake my soul?

That’s why we’ve been taking the time to walk thru this “Come Thirsty” series at Calvary. We are trying to answer those questions. Where do I go when where I’ve been going isn’t working? What we are really looking for is hope.  There’s something very powerful, very lifegiving about hope.  (In fact even the Hunger Games points this out, did you catch that momentary conversation about hope from Snow?)

That’s why I love Easter, it overflows with hope.  It’s like the tomb was opened and hope gushed out in a life-giving stream that transforms all it touches.

John Ortberg describes Easter hope this way…

There was a man named Jesus. He taught like nobody every taught. He lived like nobody ever lived. He loved like no one has ever loved. He especially had a heart for people who were on the margins (for the sick, for the sinners, for the forgotten poor, for the despised rich, for the disliked soldiers, for the excluded).  On Friday, His great courage got Him arrested. His great love led Him to the cross. His great heart stopped beating. On Friday, that which looked like a horribly tragic ending to such a wonderful life turned out to be the greatest sacrifice of love in the history of our
world.

On Saturday, there was a great silence, for the King was sleeping. Jesus entered into death and hell for you and me.

On Sunday, a stone got rolled away. On Sunday, death lost its sting. Grave lost its victory. On Sunday, hell was defeated. Death was dethroned. Darkness was derailed. The devil was de-motivated. On Sunday, the tomb was emptied and hope got fulfilled. On Sunday, faith was vindicated. The prophets were validated. The soldiers were aggravated. The disciples were animated. On Sunday, sin lost. Shame died. Hope soared. Love won.

On Sunday, you got something beyond yourself to live for, something beyond your life to die for, something beyond your death to hope in after you die. This is, therefore, the central proclamation of the greatest victory over the darkest enemy by the noblest hero for the loftiest cause in all of human history. If anything in this sorry, dark world is worthy of celebration, it is Jesus Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

In 23+ years of pastoring, I’ve never had this happen.  This week I sat beside two people — both living through the final stages of cancer — who wanted to plan their own memorial service.  Two women, one married and one whose husband recently died; both wonderful ladies with a long history at Calvary; both with family members surrounding them in what could be their final days, weeks or months; both with faith in Jesus.

They have both chosen different songs, different scriptures, different wishes, but some of the questions and the statements were the same.  Both of them had questions about heaven.  By the way, I’m convinced that most of our evangelical cartoons of heaven miss the mark.  It’s not puffy white clouds, harps and halos.  It’s not one insufferably long church service.  Imagine your best day on earth, it’s more like that…forever.  Heaven is more substantially real than earth, not less.  Most importantly if home is where you are loved the most, then heaven is home because no one loves you like Jesus.  Heaven is home.  Heaven is healing.  Heaven is adventure and growing and learning.  Heaven is glory.

Both of them had questions about heaven, but without knowing all of heaven’s details, both of them made this statement.  ”I’m ready.”  ”Dan I’m ready, when Jesus is ready to take me, I’m ready to go.”

Here is my question.  Are you ready?  Neither one of them would claim perfection, I’m sure both of them have a few regrets, few things undone, but both of them are ready.  Are you ready?  Some of us will make the transition from earth to heaven in an unforeseen moment, a tragic accident, a deadly slip on the soap in the bathroom, but most of us will have some time as we approach death to ask ourselves that question, “Am I ready?”

Of course I believe that the primary factor in answering that question involves Jesus.  Do I know Jesus?  Have I accepted his gracious gift of life, by accepting his sacrifice, believing in the resurrection and surrendering my heart to him.  This will give us a “yes-by-grace-I-am-ready” answer.  But having done that, being ready might involve a bit more.  It might involve questions like, “Have I forgiven completely?  Have I loved my neighbors, my friends, my family, well?  Have I taken risks to serve others? Have I done what God prepared me to do?”

If that is the case, then being ready… starts now.

What will you do today to be able to answer the “ready” question with a solid yes?