The Legend of Legacy

Have you ever dreamed about how you would be remembered? How history would speak of you? I have. I’ve had tons of crazy and exciting ideas regarding the way generations down the road would perceive me in all my glory. When I first became a Christian, in my silly zeal I wanted to be a missionary somewhere dangerous with the hope of being martyred!

But we hear it all the time don’t we? ‘What’s going to be the legacy you leave behind?’ ‘How will you make an impact on the world?’ ‘Will your decedents be proud of who you were?’ But more awkward, if you are a Christian: ‘What will history say of your work for the cause of Christ?’ ‘How many people will greet you in Heaven who, if it were not for you, would not be there’ ‘How many people will you have discipled?’ ‘Will you have an -ism attached to your last name because of your scholastic or dynamic ministry?’

Oh the burden of building such a great legacy! You need to get workin on that yesterday! You need to do so many great things and impact so many important people who will then go on to influence a certain nation who has never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ before!

Unfortunately we have traded an act of love in for a a ragged, selfish and melting dream of meaning something in the world, of being someone, being known; we have tainted good charity for me-zeal.

As one pastor pointed out, ‘What was your great, great, great grandmothers name?’ You know what, if it wasn’t for ancestry.com you’d be unknown to your own great, great, great grandchildren, but even then they will, more than likely, not know you–who you are, what you were like, how you smiled, what made you tick.

It is hard to find people in the Bible who care about their legacy like we are so often told to do. And the guys and gals we do find in the Bible who are concerned about such things end up on the opposite side of God’s favor because they were worried about how they would be remembered, not how they loved their Maker and their fellow human beings.

Remember in the book of Esther, the idiot Haman was trying to promote himself and wanted all his friends and family and nation to worship him . . . but he ended up being hung on his own gallows. Remember Peter how he stuck his neck out when he said, ‘Lord, I’ll not forsake you’–he was saying, ‘look at me! I’ll be better than everyone else!’–but he too ran away when the possibility of persecution came. Or the king in Daniel who lost his marbles and lived like an animal so God would make him see that he was nothing. Or most pointedly the author of Ecclesiastes who taught that all things in this world, no matter how great you made them or influenced them, will be passed on to someone else who didn’t do a thing to deserve it.

You see, Christians are those who already know who they are. We are a people who do not have to prove ourselves. We are humbled beyond understanding simply because we are God’s children. We have no need of impressing others. We have no need of making sure we have left indelible impressions on hundreds by our speeches and acts. No, we Christians are more concerned about Jesus than ourselves; we are happy being described by the word mere. If someone wrote a book about most of the incredible followers of Jesus, we might be bored to tears because God looks at the heart not at all the sparkling achievements we're so use to applauding.

To understand that to be enveloped in Christ is what is most important is to understand everything with regard to this legacy making mess. You will be forgotten by the world and your family, it is the law of life. But you will never be forgotten by your Father. The mystery is that His legacy is yours.

Monday is for Morons (Thanksgiving Special): 11-21-2011

Thanksgiving is coming. Thanksgiving time can be incredible! You see family. You hang out with friends. You get relax and eat great food until you're queazy. Watch some football or parades. Go shopping with a bunch of angry people who refuse to go shopping until that notoriously dark Friday.

Yet for all the same reasons it can be the most troubling time. A few years back I experienced my worst Thanksgiving. I had to work a half-day on Wednesday and a full-day on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was cold. I was alone in my entire apartment complex. I had nothing to do. I was away from my family. And to make it more sad I had borrowed my cousins violin and so I played it outside, alone, in the cold, in the dark whaling the safest sounding notes I could figure out. It was pathetic! I started, as is normal in these situations, to feel sorry for myself. But I really was just sad I was in the state I as.

IT is times like these (and maybe the same for you coming up) that such a reminder of WHO we are and to WHOM we belong is a necessary and 'okay, I can keep going on and make it through' thing. The Apostle Paul in his book to the Colossians writes, 'You have died, your life is hidden with Christ in God.' (3.3) If you are a follower of Jesus you know that you do not deserve any kind thing from God--if you are not a follower of Jesus I hope you soon realize this. And therefore the words 'Your life is hidden with Christ in God' are amazing! You are seen by God the Father as Jesus is seen by God the Father. When God sees you he sees that you forgave your enemies, you persevered through temptation, you loved others, you felt compassion for the weak and helpless, you healed others. You are God's child just like Jesus. This is a ridiculous good deal that no Black Friday offer will come close to. AND IT IS FREE!!

Paul also remarks that 'You have died.' You're dead! You, the way you use to believe, the things you use the think could get you all you wanted, the law you lived by gonzo! You're a Christ follower now and you are hidden in Christ! The Gospel reminds us that we are Children of God, not merely acquaintances, not simply simply friends, not even just relatives, but God's children. And he is a good, the best, the supreme Father to us.

So go eat your turkey or ham and pies. Go and remember that the toughest difficulties you go through, no matter how hard you fall and how many times you sin in the worst kind of way, if you entrust yourself to Jesus you will never cease to be his brother and the Father's child whom he loves infinitely.

monday is for morons: 11-14-2011

Have you ever been trapped? Stuck somewhere, in something and you did not know if you were ever going to be able to escape? Maybe if you have ever gotten an MRI and you slide in that small space you freak out for a moment. I had a reoccurring dream where I was swimming in a long pool and there was a sea creature always coming to get me and I could never get away! (thankfully I always woke up before I died)

Sinning can make you feel like this. 'I did this sin again: I will never win!' Or maybe you just came to the realization that you sin a lot and you cannot handle it: 'how could God love me?' Or maybe you look around at the world and see how distraught and dysfunctional it is and lose all hope and want it all to be over. Either way, we can feel trapped by sin. We can feel like its avalanche has fallen on us and we are counting down our breathes underneath a city of snow.

The ironic thing is that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are trapped by God's love! You cannot escape IT. You are coffined in by it. You are drowned by it. Psalm 23 concludes with: goodness and mercy me are CHASING me. You're the Pac-man and God's grace is the little ghosts that will never stop--and they get you all the time. God's love is that avalanche, not sin.

You see, because of what Jesus has done in dying for you you are not guilty of your sin anymore! 'But you don't know me! I have dark sins that are huge that God cannot ever forgive if he had eternity to do so!' Maybe I don't know you and maybe you have some serious issues but God can and will forgive you if you'd just go to him. God not only created you but the entire world and universe, every galaxy. HE WILL FORGIVE YOU IF YOU GO TO HIM. Jesus became like us so that we could be with God again. He became human so we could be holy. He died so we could have eternal life. He loved so we could love. He suffered so we could be comforted in our suffering. He rose from death so we too could rise from death. He was counted and called 'CURSED!' so that he could BE US in death and ruin the effects of sin for us!

There is no sin too big, too hideous, too appalling, too odd and repeated that God cannot or will not forgive. How can this be? It is only because of Jesus' work for us. You're not going to be perfect . . . ever in this life. I sin a lot! Much more than I care to. Everyone sins a lot everyday. So let's go to our God and get some forgiveness today, for now our running is from God's mercy, not his wrath.

I can't stand some people . . .

You know what I can't stand? People who seem like they have no
problems. They are always smiling and laughing and . . . well I want
to go kick them in the shins but I'm afraid they would start laughing,
I would shrivel up into nothing and die! But it is the truth: these
people are messed up in the brain. I mean maybe like some people have
brown eyes God made some people to have a few wires loose upstairs so
that the glass is always full even when there is no glass! You know
the type of people I am talking about don't you? And if you don't, go
look in the mirror and try and frown--bet you can't do it because you
ARE one of them!

I cannot be around these people because I thought this is what it
meant to be a Christian. For one reason or another I thought that you
had to smile and say things like 'it is okay' or 'it could be worse'
when you just got diagnosed with cancer. I thought that you had to be
SO delighted with Jesus that you (not only shouldn't) but COULDN'T
appear to be unhappy lest you ruin your witness! I thought that you
had to act like everything was okay when your entire life looked like
a pile of . . . well something not good.

Boy was I happy when I discovered that Jesus suffered greatly and
wasn't smiling the whole time. I do not know where some people get
this idea that since there is fullness of joy in God we are oblivious
and immune to pain and suffering and the blues. But if I ever did find
out I'd go to that place and knock some heads around.

Listen, if you are a Christian it is okay to mourn--and not just over
your terrible sins! It is okay to feel annoyed when you have the flu;
it is okay to uncontrollably cry for a time when you have a
miscarriage; it is okay to feel really unhappy not eat a few days when your spouse dies;it is okay to feel glum when you just failed your test; it is okay to
feel bad and sad and even mad sometimes. You know why? Because Jesus
lets us. He was, the bible tells us, a man of SORROWS and ACQUAINTED
WITH MUCH GRIEF. You remember what Jesus was doing before he was
betrayed by one of his followers? He was grinding his teeth and
begging God for another way. He was so into it he was sweating drops
of blood instead of salty water. He was in agony. I guarantee you if
someone within a thousand miles of him tried to smile at that moment
they couldn't. He ground his teeth which means the agony within was so
real it made his outsides go yonkers.

If you're one of those whacks who thinks that when you're a Christian
you have to be happy all the time, you need to get your brain checked
or you're not a Christian because Christians are human. Life is hard
and sometimes unbearable Yea, there is
hope. Yes, there is joy. Of course, you can smile if you need to. But
don't go thinking that when you get hurt or harmed you have to 'put on
a happy face!' Go be sad for a little while and soon enough you will
remember that Jesus is there with you, being sad right along side with
you

he gives us so much

2 Peter 1.3 says, 'God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.'

I don't know if you have ever seen a fighter jet in flight. It is amazing. They move much faster and with more precision than anything else in the air. They make airline jets look like a flying snail. These fighter jets can do amazing things. They can only do amazing things though if they have a pilot guiding them who knows what these machines are capable of and ALSO how to properly use the great machine. If the pilot is useless the whole vessel is useless.

We have the fighter jet spiritually. God has given us everything we need. This comes through Jesus. As someone has said, we don't need to learn how to jump higher we need to fly and only the Gospel of Jesus dying on sinner's behalf, sinners like myself, can make us fly. We have the jet.

Why is it then that we seem to flounder around? We seem to keep doing the same sins over and over. We seem to not trust God. We become anxious. We think we are made for happiness only. We could go on. If 1 Peter 1.3 is true, why are these other things true?

It is NOT that the cockpit of the fighter jet is complex and confusing and we just need to learn more and more before we can fly. No. I think it is that we don't believe the jet. We don't believe the Gospel. It seems too good to be true. If the Bible means what it says . . . no, we have learned better: if something is too good to be true than it probably is [too good and not true].

I understand. But here is the deal: it is either real and seemingly too good or it is nothing. There is no between. You're either barrel rolling in an F-16 or trying to jump a few more inches.

No matter what your upbringing tells you, the Gospel is real. The Bible means what it says in ALL its fullness. No matter what your life has looked like in the past and no matter how you may fall in the future, if you go to Jesus, needing Jesus and trusting Jesus you are Jesus' brother, you are a child of the God who created the galaxies and the gardenias in the yard. It is all true.

So what do you say we step in the jet again and stop jumping?