Bruised Reeds

Matthew 12:20 A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out…

Let’s face it, life is difficult sometimes. After just a brief survey of the scriptures, any young disciple will quickly realize that trials are inevitable in anyone’s life, whether that person is a Christ-follower closely abiding or a vehement unbeliever dead in their sins. And it also becomes clear that we are to rejoice in the midst of trials because they are in our lives for a defined purpose that God will ultimately work for good, including our maturity and growth. There are seasons of sowing and seasons of reaping, and moments of pain and tears that sometimes make us forget the moments of laughter and peace and joy.

Jesus brings us comfort in tragedy and literally gives us His peace. This is not the peace that the world advertises. Worldly peace is usually either a forced cease-fire or simply ignoring all the terrors around us through a sideshow of entertainment and pleasure. But Jesus affords us true peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding and exceeds all human wisdom and doesn’t seem to be proportionate to our circumstances. He offers this peace to us everyday.

Jesus promises not to break a bruised reed. Every Sunday our chairs here at Calvary Chapel are filled with bruised reeds, people who have been beaten up all week by the world, their sin, shame, guilt, condemnation, temptations, fear, injustice, persecution, and hatred. God knows our vulnerability and our weakness. He promises to give us sufficient grace and even strength in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9) and to allow us to walk, run, and even soar in life without losing our spiritual vitality (Isaiah 40:30-31).

God also promises not to snuff out a smoldering wick. We’ve all gone to douse out a candle in the house, and sometimes we approach a barely-lit wick that is about to flicker out. That certainly describes life for some of us: where a brightly burning fire should be, there is just the faintest bit of combustion and one more bad day is all it will take to turn us to ashes! There are many whose passion for God is simply outward, going through the numb motions but lacking true intimacy and fervor because their hearts are far from Him (Matthew 15:8). Others get disillusioned and doubt their faith and their lamp is just a question away from being extinguished. But Jesus won’t quench the fire. He wants to fan it into a flame that will blaze with fervent heat as we rest in His grace and truth.

We as a church have an enormous opportunity during this difficult season to live what we’ve been exhorted to for so many years: to be a body that truly cares for one another and builds up those who are struggling and weary. Let’s model what Jesus gave the world as our commercial: that they would know we are His disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35).

Pilgrim

20 Questions

I picked up a "20Q" handheld game yesterday to try and stump the omniscient computer that can supposedly guess whatever you are thinking within 20 questions or less. I wasn't expecting to blog about what happened, but some of life's biggest surprises can come in moments of low expectations!

I decided to pick in my mind "the church", the gathering and scattering of God's chosen people bought by His blood and sent for His name to be salt and light on the earth (I figured that would be harder to guess than "Ketchup"). What blew my mind was the questions that 20Q began to ask:
"Can it be heard?"
"Do you find it in a house?"
"Is it comforting?"
"Do you use it in the dark?"
"Does it affect you?"
"Can it change size?"
"Is it worth money?"
And my favorite: "Is it colorful?"

At Question 21, after admitting defeat, the 20Q game didn't relent. It tried some last ditch questions:
"Does it move?"
"Is it a source of energy?"
And finally, 20Q's best guess was: "Is it a FIRE?" What an apt description of what the church SHOULD be. The scriptures tell us that 'our God is a consuming fire', and that our lives and bodies should be a living sacrifice, a burning offering given to Him for His glory and our good.

May our hearts burn within us as we spend time with Jesus, and may the church spread like wildfire in these dark days of apathy and confusion.

Pilgrim

Organic Evangelism

Extended Notes from Pilgrim's Teaching this week: Click Here

Weary of Intercession

Whenever we see tragedy or suffering or pain in the life of someone we care about, initially there should always be "spontaneous intercession". I am compelled to immediately turn to my heavenly Father when any overwhelming situation comes into the life of a friend or family member. But does this ever grow tiring?

In Jesus' parable of the persistent widow, He commends this woman for her example of stubborn persistence for mercy. We too should have the same relentless struggle as we wrestle in prayer for those around us bound in drugs, porn, pride, and selfishness. We should be in agony on our knees for marriages that are struggling, houses that are being lost to financial ruin, and diseases that are wreaking havoc on faithful saints. But too often we lose sight of the reality of long-suffering, and believe a simple prayer here or enough faith there will evoke relief, repentance, or a reversal of adversity.

Jesus was literally sweating drops of blood before facing the excruciating pain and torment of death by scourging and crucifixion. And He asked His disciples to stay alert nearby and pray with and for Him. Their response is no different than ours: they fell asleep. May we rise up from resting on our backs in sluggish spiritual posture, to falling hard on our knees as we bear one another's burdens in prayer.

Pilgrim

Extended Notes on "Racism"

Click Here for Notes on "God's Not White...So Stop Being Racist"

-Pastor Pilgrim

Have You Figured God Out Yet?

Why is it when we think we’ve mastered a skill or suppose we really know someone, there’s suddenly a curveball thrown our way that challenges all we thought we understood or had buttoned up so perfectly? This is my experience with walking with God. Whenever I’ve learned enough of His nature and character and leading to begin writing a book as an expert, He throws me three strikes and I’m back to falling on my face to worship His majesty and complexity.

Mark 6:45 “Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd.”

Just when it seems like the disciples were starting to get used to Jesus’s ministry methods, here in Mark 6 Jesus sends the disciples ahead of Him by way of boat, while He stayed behind. This would have been the event that shattered Peter’s training videos on “What Would Jesus Do?” or Philip’s book called “Step-by-Step with the Radical Rabbi”. How can Jesus send the disciples ahead without Him? This was an unorthodox move, but they quickly discovered that this is exactly how God prefers to work.

Jesus never really laid down a perfect pattern to be followed or a system to be capitalized and turned into a twelve-step process. Think of the inconsistencies! Anytime they approached a blind man, all bets were off. Sometimes Jesus touched their eyes (Matthew 9), other times He spit in the mud and rubbed it in their eyes (Mark 8) and still other times He simply told the blind man he was healed (Mark 10). When out on boats, sometimes Jesus would tell them to launch out into deep water to catch fish (Luke 5), and other times just to throw the net on the other side of the boat (John 21). In the same way, when the children of Israel were crossing large bodies of water, sometimes the staff went in the water (Exodus 14) and other times the leaders did (Joshua 3).

The point is that you may have been walking with God for any number of years and seem to know the way God works, the way God provides, leads, speaks, and directs. Though God is immutable and never changes (Malachi 3:6), He does work in a variety of ways and whenever we get puffed up in our experiential knowledge, He has to humble us so we rely and trust in Him. We are called to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7) and often God will work in ways we have not been acquainted with so we will trust not in our wisdom and understanding but watch the gloriously unique ways He can direct our paths!

Have you figured God out yet? His ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55), and whenever we assume we have become an expert, we like Job should humbly admit, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”(Job 42:3). His ways keep us watching, wondering, waiting, and trusting.

-Pilgrim

Church Reclaimed

When we think of 'church', many of us see a church steeple with a cross, ornate architecture, pews, and perhaps even icons and stained glass. Your tradition might lead your mind to a priest wearing a cassock, a reverend in a well-tailored 3-piece suit, or to a pastor in an unassuming t-shirt and jeans.

But to get a more accurate picture of the church, take a picture of yourself with your phone! We are the church. But if that's true, why not skip the formal gathering each week at the one location and just grab your friend, head to Starbucks and enjoy a latte together, and mention God. That's church, isn't it?

Today many are trying to redefine the church as simply Christians hanging out, and these same men denounce any organized meetings, painting church as a caricature: large anonymous pep-talks where you sit and listen to someone tell you how to live while you stare at the back of someone's head, and then go to lunch and forget all that was said.

This generation of Christ-followers needs to reclaim the true definition of church. The church is a gathering of believers in Jesus who have been called out of the culture to organize locally around the giftings given by God's Holy Spirit, to submit to spiritual leaders who are in turn submitted to the head pastor, Jesus. We meet together as the church gathered to be equipped for every good work in our faith until we all reach unity and are mature in Christ. We are sent out as the church scattered to be a light and witness for Christ in our culture: in our homes, our workplaces, the beach, the mall, the sports field, the streets.

The church is both too ludicrous and wonderful for men to have dreamed up. Only God would create something that at the same time brings the Father glory and the Son joy, gives the Spirit a people to bless and gift, offers the world a message of hope, and gives to itself a source of both discipline and grace. The church is less an organization and more like an organism. It's alive! Organizations are created and maintained by people. But Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it". The church was created and established and maintained and built and disciplined and protected by Jesus. And He's coming back for His own...soon.

Pilgrim

All Means ALL

I'm back from vacation and am already hitting the ground running. We've had an amazing 'stay-cation', which is defined as a vacation where instead of leaving to some exotic locale to spend time, money, energy, and memories, you stay home and play with your kids, sleep in, take walks, visit the beach and local restaurants, build forts with your son, read and sleep and sleep and read! One of my best friends called it a "poor-cation", and I have to agree:)

On my desk when I arrived back was an unexpected 'encouragement card' purchased from a Christian bookstore that applauded our efforts with the student ministries but also had some personal words of encouragement. I was humbled to read the words this parent wrote Jenn and I for our ministry to their children. But there was a verse at the bottom, printed as a post-script on the card. I read the verse and fell out of my chair.

2 Corinthians 9:8 "God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work". What an amazing encouragement from God's Word! For me this couldn't have been more timely and I know God used this at just the right moment to give me fresh wind in my sails and a new vigor in my step.

No matter what situation or circumstances you are enduring, you can rest in the promise that God is able to make ALL grace abound to you. You may feel that you have exhausted His grace because of your sin, that you are beyond the reaches of His grace. He wants you to experience the grace that is unmerited and undeserved and unending today.

The verse goes on to say that "in all things at all times, having all that you need..." What things are you struggling through today? What time is it in your life? Is it a tough season, a spiritual drought of disillusionment or confusion? Is it a time of growth and refining and sharpening and sacrifice? Is it a time of absolute abandonment and faith because your resources and options have come to an end, and you have to solely call upon God for even the strength to take the next breath? God says that in all things at all times, you will have all that you need.

The verse ends saying that 'you will abound in every good work'. He doesn't just promise that you will get by with a 'C' in your ministry. He doesn't suggest that you will do the bare minimum and get by with the skin of your teeth. He says that you will ABOUND, there will be an ABUNDANCE of fruit in your ministry, that we will reap a harvest of 30, 60, or one hundredfold IF we do not give up. Not only that, but God promises that we will abound in EVERY good work. No matter what we put our hand to, the Lord is faithful to bless it with His grace as we submit to Him by faith. Are you trusting Him today?

Pilgrim