Your mess is crazy … You drink beer and play cards; you go to movies; you smoke cigars; you work on Sundays; you wear lipstick; you dance; you play rock and roll music; you listen to jazz music; you use zippers instead of buttons; you have a TV; your skirts are too short; you drink wine at dinner; you wear makeup; you need to wear makeup. On and on and on it goes.

Years ago my Mother-in-law was criticized by some fellow church members about wearing make up and red lipstick. This was when my wife was a little girl. When my wife’s Grandfather heard that his daughter was being trashed, he was very upset and he commented, “What’s wrong with a little make up, every barn looks better with a fresh coat of paint on it.” I don’t think my Mother-in-law appreciated her Father comparing her to a barn…but his intentions were honorable.

There’s an endless list of things that can be included in what we might call – “debatable matters.” The church has traditionally had a hard time being able to settle lots of issues because of a misunderstanding of the principles that are set forth in Romans, Chapter 14.

What are the no-no’s of the Christian life? How much fellowship can you have with somebody who lives in a different way than you do, takes part in things you don’t take part in … who does things that you don’t approve of as a Christian? This is the challenge of Christian ethics, it’s the problem of what we call LEGALISM. And we’re right in the middle of the section where Paul deals with this in his letter to the Romans. What he’s really writing about, are the barriers that hinder us from “loving one another!” (Romans 13:8)

How do we learn to love other people, and still tolerate their views and behaviors? Just think for a moment, is there someone in your Christian circle with whom you regard as less enlightened than yourself. Think about whom that might be. Now listen to what Paul says to do about it – Romans 14:1: Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.

That’s plain enough, isn’t it? Don’t reject him; don’t ignore her; don’t treat those people as inferior to you. Accept them. Not for the purpose of arguing or debating with them in order to change them or fix them later – accept them now “without passing judgment on disputable matters.”

To accept someone means that regardless of what struggle we may have with that person, we realize that they’re brothers and sisters in the family of God. Neither you nor I made them part of the family – the Lord did. We accept them because they’re our brothers and sisters. And we’re not to accept them with the idea of immediately fixing them in the areas they are weakest.

I remember years ago when I was leading a Bible discussion about the gifts of the Spirit, and a couple of people said to me after the discussion, “You have it, don’t you?” I knew immediately what they were asking me. But I replied, “Have what?” And they said, “You know … the gift.” And I said, “Oh, well yes, I’ve been told that I may have the gift of teaching.” No, they whispered, not that gift … the other gift. I said no. I don’t think I do. And their faces dropped, and they told me that they would have to leave our fellowship. Well, we just kept on loving them, and we kept on reaching out to them and accepting them. But they separated from our fellowship anyway and I lost track of them. It can be so painful when followers of Jesus make certain issues … whether they’re differing interpretations of the Scriptures, or a list of rules and dos and don’ts … the basis for Christian fellowship.

Hey, the first thing we are charged with is to accept people, let them know that we see them as a brother or a sister. We establish the boundaries of our relationship with them so they don’t ever feel that we’re attacking them.

The phrase that Paul uses here is that we’re to accept them … “without attempting to settle doubtful points” – these are points that the Scriptures do not speak to directly.

Then Paul goes on to spell out the debate further in Romans 14:2: One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.

Hey! Vegetarians, did you hear that? From what Paul is saying here, all vegetarians have weak faith! Is that what he’s saying? NO! I believe this comment arises out of the background of the early church in which there was a real moral question about eating meat. Not only were there Jewish restrictions against certain forms of meat – Jews did not eat pork, and even beef and lamb had to be kosher – but the animal had to be killed in a certain way. So a Jew, or even one raised as a Jew, after he became a Christian, always had great emotional difficulty in eating meat.

Then there was also the problem in Rome and in other pagan Greek cities about the matter of eating meat that had been offered to idols. Some Christians said that if you did that it was the same as worshipping that idol. You were no different than the people who worshipped and believed in that idol. Other Christians said, “Oh, no. How can that be? Meat is meat. The fact that someone else thinks of it as offered to idols doesn’t mean that I have to think that way.” In these pagan cities the best meat was probably sold in the butcher shop next to the temple because that’s where the sacrifices were sold to the shoppers, who bought it without any question. And that was a real problem in the early church.

There were two basic viewpoints. There was a broad, liberal viewpoint that said it was perfectly all right to do this, and a narrow viewpoint that said it was wrong to do this. It really doesn’t make any difference what you’re arguing about if it’s in this area of debatable points – because you’ll always get these general two divisions – like, should you drink wine; should you go to the movies; should you dance; what about card-playing; what about working on Sunday?

Let’s be clear about these issues – when the Scriptures do speak to them, they aren’t debatable at all. It’s always wrong to be drunk. It’s always wrong to commit adultery or fornication. These things are clearly wrong. In both the Old and New Testaments, God has spoken about these areas and judged them. Christians are exhorted to rebuke and exhort and reprove one another, and, if necessary, even discipline one another according to patterns set out in the Scriptures. This is not judging each other in those areas. The Word of God has judged; it’s already declared what’s wrong.

But there are all those other areas that are left open by the Scriptures. Paul will not give a “yes” or “no” answer about some of these things because God doesn’t. These are areas where God wants to leave it up to you as an individual. And I believe he expects us to make decisions based on our own convictions. But my conviction is mine, not yours. And you conviction is yours, not mine.

It’s also crazy to notice that Paul calls the “broad group of people” strong in the faith, while the “narrow group” is regarded as being weak in the faith.

The NIV version incorrectly translates this passage: “accept him … whose faith is weak.” This has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of the individual’s faith. He’s not talking about someone whose faith is weak (we only need faith the size of a mustard seed, right?) … he’s talking about someone who is weak in the faith. This is a doctrinal problem.

Jesus said in John 8:31-32, “If anyone continue in my word, he will be my disciple indeed and he will know the truth and the truth will set him free.” The mark of understanding truth is freedom … it’s liberty. That’s why Paul calls the person who understands truth one who is strong in the faith, while those who do not understand truth are weak in the faith.

William Barclay handled this concept correctly. He wrote: Such a man is weak in the faith for 2 reasons:

First, he hasn’t yet discovered the meaning of Christian freedom; in his heart he’s still a legalist; he sees Christianity as a thing of rules and regulations. His whole aim is to govern his life by a series of laws and observances; he is indeed frightened of Christian freedom and Christian liberty.

And, secondly, he hasn’t yet liberated himself from a belief in trusting in his own works. In his heart he believes that he can gain God’s favor by doing certain things, while not doing other things. He’s still trying to earn favor with God. He hasn’t yet accepted the grace of God. He’s still thinking about what he can do for God, more than about what God has done for him.

That’s the problem here. It’s the problem of a Christian who does not yet understand fully the freedom that Christ has brought him, who struggles with these kinds of things, and who feels limited in his ability to use some of these things – while others feel free to do so. One is strong in the faith; the other is called weak in the faith. And every church has these people. We have them right here. Paul puts his finger precisely on the attitudes that we must avoid if we’re going to accept one another like he says we must.

Read Romans 14:3, The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.

This is so very important – the strong person must not reject the one who is still struggling, the one who is still weak. The phrase “look down” here is really a word that means, “push him out.” The strong must not push him out; they must not exclude him. They must not show contempt, and they must not look down on other people. Paul is saying, “The strong must not reject the weak, or think wrong things about her, or say wrong things about him.” There’s a tendency for some Christians to flaunt their freedom, and maybe think deep down about how those other Christians are not free because they’re weaklings. Well, they may be weak, but we’re supposed to accept one another anyway. The strong accept the weak, and the weak accept the strong! The responsibility swings both ways, according to Paul.

Someone has defined a legalist as a person who lives in mortal terror that someone, somewhere, is enjoying himself … and we’re not going to stand for that!

But maybe what legalists don’t understand is God’s grace. I find it interesting that the very thing a legalist most likely doesn’t understand, is the exact thing that Paul describes God doing here – he gives grace – he accepts both those who eat everything and those who don’t eat anything.

This rocks my world – we’re being asked here to be more like God is, and less like we are. No excluding people, no matter who they are – no forming little cliques within the church that shut people out of fellowship because they act or think differently then we do – no more segmenting people into the can do group or the can’t do group.

Paul clearly says, having nothing to do with another brother or sister in Christ for these reasons is wrong. In fact, he implies that if any of the so-called strong exclude weaker brothers, and treat them as though they are second-class Christians, they have simply proved that they’re just as weak in the faith as the ones they have denied. Strength in the faith means more than understanding truth. It means living in a loving way with those who are weak, and not putting down those who are still struggling.

Those who think it’s morally wrong for a Christian to drink wine, must not look down on those who feel free to do so. That phrase “must not condemn” actually means, “must not sit in judgment” on them at all. Here’s what this involves:

First, don’t criticize or censor other people. We’re not to go up to them and tell them, “I don’t see how you can be a Christian and do things like that.” That has nothing to do with being a Christian. Their Christianity is established on grounds other than those things.

Second, it means don’t put people in categories – don’t classify them as a certain kind of Christian … carnal or spiritual – don’t rebuke them. In these areas we have no rights to reprove or rebuke. The church has no authority in these areas.

Thirdly, it means no making up a bunch of rules – don’t impose one person’s behavioral standards on everybody else. The Scriptures say we must make up our own minds, and then we go along only with what we all agree to.

I’m not going to impose my code of conduct on you. If you’re looking for someone that’s going to read a bunch of rules to you that we all have to abide by, forget it. What’s happened too often in the church is that those who are weak in the faith – meaning those who do not fully understand their freedom in Christ – are making the rules for every other Christian in the church to abide by. That implies that you really can’t be a Christian unless you do these things or you don’t do those things.

All that stuff distorts Christianity in the eyes of the world. It produces the false idea that Christianity is a “do not do this bunch of rules” religion. And it really distorts the freedom that is the message of the gospel.

I believe that the “narrow party” has triumphed in way too many churches. And the result is that many people won’t touch the church with a 25-foot pole, even though they’re really interested in Jesus. When people hear the simple gospel message, that eternal life is a free gift – no strings attached – they’re blown away by how the gospel message is so not like the church. People outside the church see the church as having set up a list of rules of conduct and regulations that must be abided by, that have nothing to do with the Bible. And all of them are artificial regulations that the church has brought about.

The rest of this text in Romans 14 explains the reasoning behind the principle that Paul is trying to get across:

(4) Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. (5) One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. (6) He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. (7) For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. (8) If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. (9) For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. (10) You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. (11) It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’” (12) So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

The first reason why we must not look down on the weak or judge or condemn the strong is because it’s not our responsibility to fix someone else. That person is not our servant. That’s pretty plain, isn’t it? We don’t judge each other because we’re not responsible for each other’s conduct. And the reason why is because we don’t choose people to be members of God’s family, God does all the choosing and forgiving and redeeming and saving. And because he does, then he’s the one responsible to change every person into the person he wants them to become.

If I were choosing, there are a lot of people that would be left out. Maybe you wouldn’t choose me. But the good news is, since we didn’t do the choosing, we don’t have to do the changing.

I remember hearing the President of Asbury Seminary speak a number of years ago, and he said the most important thing he had learned after many years of ministry and a number of years as the president of Asbury was, “My responsibility is to love people, it’s God’s responsibility to change people. And whenever I get that mixed up and wrong, I make a mess of things.”

This passage convinces me that all men and women are under construction by God, and are being changed by God. Men and women are on their way to standing. Stand actually means that if we’re going the wrong direction, God will straighten us out, and it’s not up to anybody else to do it.

You’ve probably all seen the letters: PBPGINFWMY – they stand for “Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet.”  We’re all in the process of change. The Lord is doing it, and if we’ll just wait a little while we can see some of the changes. If the problem is someone doesn’t understand the truth of God’s Word, the solution is we probably need to teach the truth more plainly. As people hear it and understand it, they’ll experience God’s freedom of grace. But to try to force anyone into some kind of compliance with something they don’t understand is counterproductive. Therefore, let’s be patient. If someone you know needs to change, let the Lord change them – it’s his responsibility.

The big question is, do we believe that God is able to change people? Can he read the heart of a person and see something there you can’t see about them? Well, according to these verses, yes he can!

I’m very impressed with what Paul is saying here – he’s claiming that God can read hearts, and you and I can’t. The differences we may have as Christians arise out of honest convictions that God sees, and we can’t see. Just because somebody disagrees with you is not the point. He or she may be acting on the basis of what they feel is right, so give them the benefit of the doubt.

We have to trust that people are intending to be real before God, and true to him just as much as we are. If someone feels like they can participate in some things that you think are not right, then at least trust their motives; that they’re really trying to please God. He’ll change them if he sees they need to be changed. The principle here is to give everyone the freedom to have his or her own convictions. That’s why Paul writes in Verse 5, “Let everyone be fully convinced in his own heart.”

Tradition shouldn’t decide for us. God’s Word should be our guide on all these matters. God might even change your mind as he matures you, and makes you more like Jesus. What a thrilling possibility that presents to us.

Well, the next thing Paul says is that God sees both of these men and both of these viewpoints as honoring him. The one who thinks Sunday is a special day, and some things just shouldn’t be done on the Sabbath, is doing so as unto the Lord – so, respect that viewpoint. Someone else says that when we are in Christ, days don’t mean anything and I want to honor the Lord on every day. Let’s not get upset, these folks are doing so out of a deep conviction of their hearts. That’s wonderful.

One of my friends drinks beer and gives thanks to God for the refreshment of it and the taste of it, and it’s perfectly OK that he does so. But I say, “No. I don’t drink beer. I only drink coffee.” So I give thanks for the coffee. The coffee may do as much physical harm as the beer, but in either case, it’s not a moral question. It’s a question of what the heart is doing in the eyes of God.

I know about a woman who was a converted nightclub singer. She was asked to sing at a church meeting, and she wanted to do her very best for the Lord. So she dressed up the best way she knew how and she sang a song that expressed her faith in Christ. Somebody in that church came up to her afterwards and just ripped into her, “How can you sing a song like that and claim to be a Christian? God could never be happy with a Christian who dresses the way you do, and to sing in that kind of a nightclub style must be offensive to him.” The poor woman was shocked, and she broke into tears, and turned and ran down the hallway. It was a wrong and hurtful thing to do to her. Only God has the right to change her, if after looking in her heart he needs to. Why do we make distinctions where God doesn’t?

The last thing Paul says in this area is that our relationship with one another is more important than our lifestyle (Verses 7-8). Maybe at first the subjects of living and dying are confusing, but if we think about it we can understand what Paul is saying. I believe he’s simply defining living as liberty and dying as limitation. He’s not talking about funerals, and life and death in that sense. He’s talking about those who feel free to enjoy liberty to the fullest. They are living, while others, because of deep convictions of their own, limit themselves, and to that degree they are dying, because death is limitation.

But what’s important isn’t whether we live or die. The important thing is that we belong to the Lord. He understands. We belong to him. We’re brothers and sisters. We’re in relationship with each other, but we’re not servants of each other like we are to the Lord. We’re servants of the Lord and he has the right to change us.

The great governing principle of this passage is that only Jesus has won the right to judge us. Jesus has the right to judge each of us in all these areas because he has been involved in both death and life. He died, so he knows what ultimate and utter limitation is. He gave himself up to death and he deliberately restricted himself in many things so that he knows what that is like. And he lives, so he is free to do anything and everything that he desires, and he knows what that is like. Therefore, he alone has won the right to judge us. He understands all of us.

Can I encourage you with these words today – stop trying to take Jesus’ place with other people. Stop trying to be Christ to the rest of the church or play God to others. If I’m weak, why would I ever judge my brother? And if you’re strong, why would you ever look down on your sister? It’s wrong. When we do these things we’re trying to take Christ’s place in other people’s lives.

We don’t belong to each other like we belong to the Lord; we are brothers and sisters; we’re all struggling; we’re all in the process; we’re all subject to change; we’re all trying to understand truth more clearly as we go forward, and we’re all being freed by it. But on this journey, and in the process, the only one who has a right to do anything about it is the Lord. So stop judging each other in these areas.

So in these areas, as a family of brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, let’s adopt this pledge together…

•We’re not going to judge one another
•We’re not going to treat each other with contempt
•We’re not going to ridicule anyone behind their backs
•We’re not going to separate from one another
•We’re going to love one another and show it by accepting one another

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

He was in Corinth when he wrote this letter to the Romans, and that city also needed to learn about true love. Corinth was full of immoral sexual practices. In the midst of seeking after pleasure, the Corinthians needed to learn that true love looked a lot different then the love they were used to. And you want to know something else? – Love is what’s needed in Los Angeles, in Hollywood, in California, where you live, and everywhere else. The greatest need of people today is to learn the secret of how to love unconditionally, God’s way. That kind of love makes a lasting difference in people’s lives.

Read what Paul says to the Romans in Chapter 13, Verses 8-10:

(8) Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. (9) The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (10) Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Have you ever struggled to obey the Ten Commandments? Have you found it difficult to face up to obeying these demands not to murder (hate) or lie or steal or commit adultery (lust) or covet? Well, Paul says it’s really easy. All you have to do is love. If we’ll act in love toward other people, we won’t hurt them. We can’t. This is the solution to all the problems we struggle with. Just consider what would happen in this world if people could be taught how to love – and then they actually did it?

The first thing I can think of is that most of the impending divorces would be happily resolved and reversed. Couples ready to split up because love has left their marriage could go back together and learn how to work it out. It wouldn’t automatically solve all their problems, but it would make solutions possible. Just think what would happen if all the divorces America were facing today would suddenly cease to be, and homes and families would be secure. Ya think this would change America?

And if we could teach people how to love, we wouldn’t fight in wars. We wouldn’t have to worry about what to do with all the atom bombs and nuclear arsenals. What an amazing thing that would be! Think of how much energy and money is being expended by all the nations on this planet on security. Simply because we can’t trust people to love each other.

If we could love each other, there wouldn’t be any more crime. The streets of LA would be safe to walk down, day or night. If people would learn to love, we’d all feel safe and secure. And obviously, if there weren’t any crime, you wouldn’t need any prisons. All the money we spend on prisons and reformatories could be spent on something more useful. And you wouldn’t need as many courts of law, or police. We need all these things because we’re so incapable with this ability to love.

And think what would happen to our tax burden if we could get rid of all wars and crimes and police and courts! It would be reduced to practically nothing! All the wealth that’s poured into taxes today could be used to spread beauty and harmony and health care and food and clean water and sufficiency of living to everybody on earth. Our biggest problem is our lack of love, our inability to love one another. Everything we know in life revolves around this problem.

Paul is telling us that the ability to love – that and nothing less than that – is the radical force that Jesus Christ has turned loose in this world by his resurrection. Therefore it has the power to radically change the world.

He implies that this love movement must start with us. If we’re Christians, if we know Jesus Christ, we have the power to love. There’s no doubt about that. If you know him, then you have the power to love. You don’t have to ask for it; you’ve got it. If you have Christ, you have the ability to act in love, even though you’re tempted not to. That’s the whole issue.

Paul says that when you come up against people, when you rub shoulders with them, remember that your #1 obligation is to love them. Act in love. Show courtesy, kindness, patience, understanding, longsuffering – whatever it takes, whatever the situation demands, we can show love. It’s a debt we owe every person: “Owe no man anything but to love one another.” Make it your debt; make it your obligation … to love everyone.

I wonder what kind of radical things would start happening around here if we all started living this way. Every day, every person we meet, we would say to ourselves first, “I need to love this person. No matter what, I owe that to her or to him.”

Have you ever owed money to somebody? Isn’t it crazy that whenever we meet someone we owe money to, that that’s the first thing that comes to our minds? And I always wonder if that’s what they’re thinking about too. This is what Paul says we’re to do about love. We must remember that we have an obligation to love every person.

This obligation “IS” to everyone. We should be asking, “Who is our neighbor?” We think immediately of the people who live next door to us. They’re our neighbors. Why? Because we’re in contact with them. But when I hear the word neighbor, I just think of all the people who are around me. The people at school sitting next to us, the people we meet on the bus, the people we work with, the people in line at the grocery store. Wherever we are, the people we make contact with are living right beside us and they’re our neighbors for that moment. Since Jesus has given us the ability to love by coming into our lives, we’re to love every neighbor as ourselves. The people in charge of us, and even the people we’re in charge of – it doesn’t make any difference, they’re all our neighbors.

I meet with a group of men in the South Bay every month (that’s 30 miles from where I live). Ron is one of those men. We’ve been encouraging each other to find guys and love them with Christ’s love, whether they’re Christians or not. Well, a few months ago Ron found Steve, and they’ve been meeting together every week since. Steve made a commitment to Jesus Christ at a men’s breakfast, and started to become concerned about his cousin, Jacob, who lives near me. Steve asked Ron if he knew someone who would be willing to talk to Jacob, and Ron said he would find out and he called me. He asked me if it was OK for Steve to give Jacob my phone number, and I said, of course. So Ron gave Steve my phone number, and then Steve called me to make sure it was still OK. He then gave Jacob my phone number. Jacob called me and we talked over the phone a few times, and I then invited Jacob to another men’s breakfast. Jacob came and met the guys at Coco’s Restaurant in Pasadena at 6:00 am that next Wednesday morning. After breakfast, Jacob and I sat together for a while, and it was during that time that we prayed together and he discovered a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

This all happened because Ron loved Steve … Steve loved Jacob … God helped Jacob to have the courage to call me, a stranger he had never met … then God helped me to love Jacob when he called.

But, here’s the rest of the story … After we talked about the assurance of his salvation, which was challenging for Jacob, I asked him to read a few verses every day that would help him with his relationship with Jesus. I asked him to call me if he had any questions. That next Saturday morning, Jacob called me and I thought it was because he had some questions. But instead, Jacob had something to tell me. First he told me that he owns and manages a liquor store – that’s right – and I just listened – then he told me that that very morning one of his former customers, Clarke, a recovering alcoholic, came into his store and reminded him that he was still not drinking but he was really struggling. He thanked Jacob for helping him stay sober by not selling him any booze. Well, Jacob then began to tell Clarke what had happened to him at the men’s breakfast. And that maybe Jesus could help him to stay sober. Then Clarke got really excited about these men meeting together, and asked Jacob if he could come with him the following Wednesday. Jacob said, I don’t know, but let me call Paul and ask (I loved this). Jacob was calling me to ask permission if it was OK to bring Clarke with him to the men’s breakfast. You know what my answer was…

This is what happens when we love people. One life influences another life, and like dominoes starting to topple, people come to want what we have.

Paul says, when you love like this, you go above and beyond the Law. The Law says to all of us, “Don’t harm your neighbor.” You can do whatever you like with your own property, but that’s where it stops. You can’t do what you like with your neighbor’s property. If you do, you answer to the law.

You see love goes a step beyond the law. It doesn’t stop with the negative, the part that says, “Don’t injure your neighbor”; it goes on and says, “Do good to your neighbor.” Love him, reach out to him, listen to him, care for her, be kind to her, love everybody. It’s simply impossible to love our neighbor and hurt them at the same time. It’s impossible to reach out to our neighbors and, at the same time, cause them injury.

That’s why, as Paul says here, love will not sleep with your neighbor’s wife or husband; love won’t commit adultery. Love will not hate your neighbor, or poison his dog, or throw garbage into his back yard, or do anything harmful to him. Love won’t steal from your neighbor. Love won’t covet what your neighbor has; it won’t drool over his BMW, or stew about his new iPad. Love doesn’t want what your neighbor has, but instead rejoices with him over what he has. That’s love.

We don’t have to worry about keeping the Ten Commandments – when we love people. That’s all we have to worry about – acting in love, paying the debt we owe every man, woman, and child – every person we meet. If we pay people the debt of love we owe them, we’ll never injure them.

Now we could stop right there and go home. It couldn’t be any clearer. But Paul goes on and says in Romans 13, verses 11-14:

(11) And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. (12) The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. (13) Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy (you see, these are all the sins of Corinth where Paul was writing these words to the Romans from). (14) Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

WOW! The thing that strikes me about this paragraph is these opening words in Verse 11. Love your neighbor, Paul says, pay the debt you owe him by “understanding the day in which we live.” There’s something about today. We live today. And if we understand the day in which we live, we’ll be aware of what’s going on around us, and all the stuff going on around us will compel us, motivate us, drive us to love our neighbors. If we understand the times we live in, we’ll be able to love people.

Paul says, it’s time to get going: “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.” It’s time to wake up, time to get going, time to look around and see all the opportunities to love that exist around us.

I’m amazed by how many times in my own life I pass over the opportunity to love. I’m always looking for opportunities with other people way out there, you know, those further away. And yet I’m surrounded in my own life with close-up opportunities to show love. I’m always amazed by how easily I want to help somebody way over in Africa, and yet ignore people right around me.

For just a few moments, think about the people in your life that are right around you. Is there one person that comes to mind, whether you know their name or not? Paul is telling us to wake up and to look around, because every day holds opportunities for us to pay this debt of love to somebody who needs it. If we wake up we can begin to see them.

Now, we don’t have a lot of time to do this. The time is short. Paul puts it this way, “our salvation is nearer than when we first believed – the night is nearly over – the day is almost here.” I believe that has to do with the hope that is ours as Christians – that Jesus Christ is going to return any day – but I also believe that this refers to the fact that none of us know if we’ll even be alive in our bodies past today. On one occasion Jesus said in John 9:4, “I must work the works of my Father while it is day. The night is coming, when no man can work.” Jesus was aware of the urgency of the time, and the fact that he had to labor because the day was almost gone. Then he said in the next verse, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

When Jesus was first present on earth, it was daytime. But when he left us physically, when he was buried in the grave, the night came. And that night has been running on now for almost 2000 years. Paul wrote in Philippians 2:15, “We Christians are to be like lights shining in the darkness of the night.” The night is all around us, but the day is about to come. The night is nearly over; the day is at hand.

You may say, “Well, wait a minute. Paul wrote this letter 2000 years ago, and he said it was nearly over then. How can we say that it’s nearly over now? How could it be nearly over then, when 2000 years have gone by?” When you look at it from that point of view, it’s difficult to understand. But there’s a sense here in which these words are always true of every one of us. Regardless of whether or not this is the generation in which Jesus Christ returns to fulfill his promise, the truth is that the night is nearly over for every one of us. You could be hit by a car this afternoon, and your night would be over because you would instantly be with Jesus, the light of the world.

Our lives are fragile. Like the pastor I know back in Indiana, who is a couple years younger then me, found out just recently. A drunk driver slammed into John’s car, and in a moment he was with the Lord. None of us know when the night is nearly over for us, and we’re with the Lord a second later. If we’re ever going to love, it has to be now. We can’t wait any longer.

Many of you are young people. “How much time have you got left?” None of us knows. Maybe you’ve heard the words of George Bernard Shaw, “Youth is such a wonderful thing, it’s a shame to waste it on the young.” Well let me tell you something, in a way we’re all young because we only have today. None of us know how much time we have left on this earth. Who knows? We live on the edge of eternity.

A car crash – a brain aneurism – a drive-by shooting when we’re not even the target, we’re just passing by. The night may be nearly over for any one of us, no matter whether we’re old or young. So the argument Paul makes here is powerful. He’s saying, “If you’re going to love, now is the time to do it.” Now! We can’t wait for tomorrow. You can’t plan on doing this after you graduate from school, or when you retire. Start now. We must all begin to love one another today.

And in order for us to start loving people around us, we need to understand that it’s time to give up some things. Look at the things we should be giving up, Paul writes: “So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.” If we’re going to live to love, we’re going to have to let go of some things. There could be things in our lives that are incompatible with love, and you can’t do those things and love at the same time.

Paul says, “Don’t live for endless pleasures. Give up orgies and drunkenness.” That means don’t spend your life doing things over and over that you’ve planned for your own pleasure. Hey, it could mean more then just these sins of the flesh Paul describes here, it could be things like spending your life on good times, late night clubbing, endless parties, concerts, or sports events. or even watching television. We can’t love people and do stuff that closes us off from people. We’re wasting our lives on stuff that doesn’t amount to any benefit for any one of our neighbors. If we spend our moments in endless self-indulgence, we’ll never be able to live in love.

Obviously, Paul is saying here, “Don’t live for sex.” Sex is a powerful force that’s highly exploited today. We’re constantly surrounded by temptations to give ourselves to. A new affair, a new romance, a new sexual thing with a new person will satisfy us. We live on the border of Hollywood – isn’t that what the lifestyles of the rich and famous keep broadcasting to us? These people keep telling us that there’s no harm in it.

But Paul says there is. He says if you live for these things, you can’t fulfill what God wants you to fulfill. You’ll miss the excitement and the radical glory of loving people. You can’t love people and live for pleasure. Paul covers the whole range of immorality here. You can’t indulge in these things and love, because you’ll hurt people. You’ll hurt yourself. You’ll destroy others and destroy yourself. It happens all the time.

I like what C. S. Lewis says: We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Then Paul says something about our inner motives: “Don’t live for strife, causing dissension and jealousy.” It’s amazing to me how some people get their kicks out of being a pain in the rear end. They can’t seem to enjoy themselves unless they get people fighting, upset, and angry. And I’ve known some Christians who do this. What’s your effect upon people? Do you bring harmony into their lives? Do you make them happier because you’ve come along in their day? Or do you bring a bunch of junk along with you when you arrive in their lives? What’s my life doing? What’s your life doing? It should be obvious to all of us that if we’re with Jesus, we bring people together; if we’re against Jesus, we cause people to scatter.

So Paul comes up with the solution for all of this – That above everything, we’re to “clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Every single one of us put on our clothes this morning with the intention that they would be on our bodies all day. We wanted our clothes to go wherever we decided to go today. We all wanted our clothes to cover us and make us presentable to each other. That’s the purpose of clothes.

Well in the same way, the apostle Paul says: Put on the Lord Jesus Christ every day. Make plans for Jesus to go with you everywhere you go. Invite him to act through every moment of your day. Call on his resources. Live your life in Christ. That’s the way to love.

When we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re putting on a power to operate and change events and effect people’s lives that we don’t have otherwise. When we put on Jesus, we’re putting on the capacity to love. And isn’t that the best description of Jesus? He just loved people – he loved lepers – he loved a lost woman – he loved a blind man. And their lives were all radically changed as a result of his love.

He treated the lowly the same as he did the higher-ups. He loved people. When we put on Jesus, that’s what we’re putting on – the power to love. Christ came to deliver us, to set us free. And when we put on Christ, we have an amazing power to help others find freedom from the junk this world dumps on them.

So put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Count on his power to supply love when you begin to obey the command to love. When you start to pay the obligation to every neighbor in your life, he will supply the power to love that neighbor.

These words have been made famous by their connection with the conversion of a man by the name of Augustine, who lived in the 4th century. By today’s standards, Augustine was a wild guy. He lived a pleasure-seeking lifestyle, running around with the wrong people, and doing everything they were doing. Nothing stopped him – he went into anything and everything. And, as people still do today, he came to hate himself for it.

One day he was with his friend in a garden, and he walked around, bemoaning his inability to change: “How can I free myself from these terrible urges within me that drive me to the things that hurt me!” Suddenly he heard what he thought was the voice of a child – and the voice said, “Take and read, take and read.” He didn’t know what these words meant, but they stuck in his mind. Later he sat down at a table and found a copy of Paul’s letter to the Romans on the table. He began to read, and these were the words he first read:

“Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies, and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ”

Augustine said that at that moment he opened his life to Jesus. He had known about him, but had never surrendered to him. But that moment he did, and he felt the healing touch from Christ cleansing his life. He was never the same man again. He went on to become one of the greatest Christians of all time – Saint Augustine.

That’s what Jesus Christ is capable of doing. He gives us all the power to love. If we choose to exercise his power in the moment that needs it, we can release in this world a radical influence that has the power to change everything around us. It will change our homes, our lives, our communities, our nation, the world – because a risen Lord is available to us, to live through us.

That’s the way to love. That’s the way to live.

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

You can call it what you like – out of the tradition of your church, your denomination, your Bible study group, your fellowship group, or wherever you feel at home within the Christian tradition – you can call it being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, or becoming mature in Christ, or becoming more like Jesus, or sanctification, or even spiritual transformation. Here’s the bottom line purpose of God’s working in our lives – that God is at work conforming us into the image of his son! And it’s something I welcome, because, “I want to be like Him!”

I remember some years ago when the phrase that I borrowed for the title of this blog was being used in a slightly different way. You might remember the promotion that was going on at that time. Every guy I knew wanted to be the next best basketball player in the world. And they were all saying it, “Be Like Mike! Be Like Mike!” When anybody would watch any of these friends on the basketball court, and then comment, “WOW! He plays just like Mike!” that was the best thing that was said that day. Everybody knew exactly who was being talked about and the kind of basketball that was being played.

So I borrowed the same idea for this discussion, because the bottom-line issue that started percolating in my life was a desire to be like Jesus. I wanted to be like him. That’s what I wanted to happen in my Christian life. And at first it was just all about me trying to be like Jesus, in my own strength and in my own power. But when I realized that I didn’t have what it took to become like Jesus on my own, I started looking for help. Then I started realizing that God wanted me to become more like Jesus, and that he has all the power necessary to bring about that process in my life. He wants to do it for me.

I understand that the term “spiritual transformation” has been gaining momentum in recent years, but that the truth is people have been in the process of being spiritually transformed as long as God has been in the business of redeeming lost humanity. Still, the idea of spiritual transformation – or being conformed to be like Jesus – was elusive in my pragmatic, church context. But that’s not the way it is with God. He wants to work in our lives in power to bring about our transformation as followers of Jesus.

Just consider some of the Scriptural references that speak to this process. Jesus gave the primary command regarding this process in his final instructions to his disciples. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt 28:19-20) It’s the great commission of Jesus, and the clear mandate is to “go make disciples.” In other words, go and contribute to the process that God wants to oversee in all of our lives – he wants us to each have a personal relationship with him through his son, Jesus, and he wants us to forever after that become more like Jesus day after day.

The Apostle Paul wrote often about this transforming work of God in our lives. He told the Romans, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2a) Earlier he had instructed the Romans that, “he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” (Romans 8:27-29). [And please don’t misunderstand what I’m suggesting at this point – for years I quoted Romans 8:28 to people like it was kind of an answer that all the bad suffering and stuff that they were going through would eventually work out in their lives in order for them to be successful, prosperous, accomplished, or whatever. Yet in actuality, the Apostle answers the purpose for what God is using all the stuff that happens in our lives primarily for in Verse 29 – “to conform us into the likeness of his Son.”

Paul also wrote to other gathered groups of people in different cities along the same theme: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18), and, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…” (Gal. 4:19), and, “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature (perfect) in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” Col. 1:28-29). I can’t read these verses without realizing that the Apostle was convinced that the overriding purpose of God that he is committed to regarding all of our lives is that we are becoming more and more like his son every day, moment by moment. And that it’s a never-ending process.

And please don’t think that this is just for the long-time follower of Jesus. That maybe it’s not for me because I’m such a young Christian and I have so many questions and doubts that surely God can’t do his conforming work in my life until I measure up, or get myself in a better place. Paul wrote to the young Timothy – probably a teenager – and challenged this young guy to: “train yourself to be godly. Set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity . . . devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (I Timothy 4:7).

So you and I have to start by simply asking a few questions. How do I measure authentic spiritual transformation in my life? How do we pursue it ourselves, and how do we encourage it in others? How can it be both mysterious and intentional? And if we “go too far,” would we simply spin in circles while we become spiritual gadflies? You know – so spiritual that we’re no earthly good – Is that even possible?

So, I just keep wrestling with the big questions: Do I want to, BE LIKE HIM? Am I becoming more like Jesus? Do you want to, BE LIKE HIM? Are you becoming more like Jesus? In other words, what can we all do to become more like Jesus?

I think there are several things that we can start doing now that will open up our lives to the work that God wants to bring about in our lives. [These suggestions are not new, I’ve borrowed them from many pastors, teachers, and mentors of mine.]

First, I must start taking steps to learn more about what it means to love GOD as Lord of my life through Jesus Christ.

Moses pointed out that spirituality begins with intimacy with God that is recognizable – “You will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people! For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call on Him?’” (Deut. 4:6-7)

Spiritual transformation requires that we actively move to a place of deep listening to God’s Word, and a discerning response to the Spirit of God within us and among us. This means that as we practice being the community of God as believers, we allow space for God’s activity in our lives. So start by welcoming Jesus into the moments of your life every day. Welcome opportunities to love God by loving other people with actions, and welcome Jesus’ intervention and presence into your thinking and into your decision-making. As we take these steps I believe that we will experience a freedom to seek and live out God’s will in our lives, and in his church. When we abide and rest in God, he will do in our lives what he promises – bring about his transforming Christ-like makeover in you and me – and then we in turn thank him for what he’s doing.

I want transformation to happen fast. But quicker isn’t always better. It takes time to be transformed by God into the likeness of Jesus. That’s how God works – slowly and eternally. Transformation into Christlikeness takes time. It’s a process. I think for most of us, sanctification is a long battle with many defeats and uphill victories – stops and starts. The beauty is in the process of God working, and then we look back and marvel at what he has accomplished in our lives. The Lord seems content to work in our lives in terms of years; some spiritual revivals have taken decades to play out. God seems to enjoy the journey of what he is doing in history to bring about his purposes and plans.

God works to put things together concurrently: We as participating members of God’s Church must never give up the effort of developing progressive commitments to people. As we do, God works in and through us to bring a balance to our spiritual lives that produces unity in His Church. If we’re a spiritual family, we’re in each others living space – that’s hospitality! Right?

Secondly, I must learn to love and accept OTHERS where they are.

A friend of mine used to say that, “Community is the matrix of mission.” And I think what he meant by that is that a group of believers without community cannot fulfil its evangelistic mission, whatever else is done to worship, teach, exhort or train. Conversely, when a congregation is spiritually healthy – that is, committed to Jesus Christ and to each other and constrained by love to selfless concern of all men – evangelism will happen spontaneously, naturally, and many times effortlessly.

That’s actually what happened in the beginning days of the New Testament church. Stop for a moment and read through Acts 2:42-47. There you will see all the wonderful activities of a gathering of believers (that’s the church, right?), and the results of obeying and doing what God was calling them to obey and do. “And God added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

If it’s not happening like this in our churches today, maybe we need to dump all the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years in our institutional approach and get back to the simple activities of the early church described in the Acts of the Apostles.

Thirdly, as we learn to love and accept others, I think we’ll be well on the way to attracting others to the love of Jesus.

This is really part of the previous suggestion, and flows to the fourth suggestion. I’ve been learning recently that as we brothers and sisters learn to love others like this in our lives, not only will the life of our community attract the alienated and lonely to its accepting, reconciling warmth, but in dispersion we begin to radiate a redemptive love infectiously to the world. All of a sudden we begin discovering that there is a higher purpose for our getting out there in the streets where people live, work, and gather. I and my friends have been part of churches planted in parks, coffee shops, bakeries and restaurants, business conference rooms, and living rooms.

In reality, the ladder of success is a barrier to community! The church must work on the basis of love, acceptance, and forgiveness – including not excluding anyone – but it can’t work on the basis of the culture! Let’s bring the church back to the model Jesus suggests for community in Matthew 18, “Where two or three of you are gathering, I will be with you.” Am I being crazy here, or does it sound like Jesus’s promise here was simply giving us the place to start a church, and the number of people necessary to experience his presence as a church?

Do you want this? Do you desire personal revival, spiritual renewal – the transforming work of God’s power in your life? Do you want to become more like Jesus?

This is different then wanting to become a good church person as defined by the churches we’ve been part of in the past. If you want God’s transforming power to be at work in your life, here are some suggestions to consider and personalize (adapted from Matt Mitchell’s, “Slow And Steady”):

1. Start Today – If transformation takes a lot of time, it’s even more important to work on it right away. For you and me, that means not waiting for transformation to come over us like some kind of magic spiritual experience or trick, but to pray for, exhort, listen to, love and spur one another on right now. Start today; don’t wait until tomorrow. “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Hebrews 3:13).

2. Join Hands – John Piper has said that “sanctification is a community project.” I can’t do it alone. When I need encouragement in the uphill battle, I turn to my wife, my small group, and my accountability partners. They aren’t afraid to tell me the bad news about myself, but they never fail to tell me the good news about Jesus, either. I need them, and I need to hear both the good, the bad, and the ugly about my walk with Jesus so that I’ll know as early as possible what I need to do to get out of the way of the transforming work that God is trying to bring about in my life.

We really do need each other, because it’s important for the church to stick with people who haven’t changed as quickly as we would like. We must continue to say and believe – “The last chapter of this story isn’t written yet.” We need to hold out hope to each other and for each other.

3. Go Forward – At its best, spiritual victory looks like a Road Runner speeding along a desert trail. But most times it looks like the turtle overtaking the rabbit. That’s what we want! We want God’s timing to work out our becoming more like Jesus every day. So often for me, spiritual victory has been like the turtle plodding along an inch at a time – one foot in front of the other. And sometimes, the only spiritual victory I may be experiencing at any given time is just resolutely facing forward even if I can’t seem to go forward.

We have to be careful that in our following Jesus we start repeatedly looking for the new, the bombastic, the explosive, when most likely what following Jesus is all about is repeating the same steps faithfully as we just go forward – so that we “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)

4. Rejoice, and again I say Rejoice! – We need to celebrate together at even the smallest victories, especially as a body of believers. So let’s begin to throw “short parties” for anyone who makes strides in Christlikeness.”
• You forgave someone? Hooray!
• You were gracious with that person who gets on your nerves? Way to go!
• You sacrificed your time and money for that ministry? Three cheers!
• You reached out with kindness to a visitor in the worship service? Praise God!

We’re getting somewhere!

5. Look Up – Don’t get discouraged if you and the people around you are changing slowly. That’s normal. Be encouraged that you and the people around you “are changing.” Jesus has promised to build His church (Matt. 16:16). We are His church. He’s in charge. No matter how long it takes, He will not fail.

Remember, God’s purpose for you is to conform you into the image of his son, Jesus, every step of the way. So right now, I pray for anyone who will read through this blog entry, that “You will know that God loves you, that Jesus is your Lord and Saviour, that God is working in your life by the power of his Spirit to make you more like Jesus.

“Be Like Him!”

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

At length he talks about how they lived life rightly before God. How they were becoming people of faith, hope, and love (1:3) in the presence of God as their audience of One. And that Christ pervaded their lives, and in turn they saturated their culture with their lives.

Then he describes them in Chapter 2 Verse 13 … as people who had … “received from us the word of God’s message [and] accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.”

As a result, I’ve asked myself this question repeatedly:

“What kind of ministry produced a church community like the Thessalonian church?”

The first thing noticeable is that Paul uses over 30 plural pronouns in the second chapter to describe how his team came to the Thessalonian church and ministered to that fellowship of believers. He never once said “I” did this, or “I” accomplished this among you. What a clear picture this is of a “team” ministry.

It reminds me of an interview I heard many years ago with Coach Bear Bryant, one of the great college football coaches ever, when he was pushed to explain his philosophy of coaching: “There’s just three things I ever say [to my players] – if anything goes bad, then I did it, if anything goes semi-good, then we did it, but if anything goes real good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you. I can do that better than anybody.” It appears that Coach Bear Bryant was acknowledging what the Apostle Paul believed was crucial. A team wins football games together as a team, and a we-oriented, team-oriented ministry produces communities of faith like the Thessalonian church.  Local churches like this New Testament church are unique, and brought about by a team working together.

As a young man, Adam Clarke was an assistant in a dry-goods store, selling silks and satins to a cultured clientele. One day his employer suggested to him that he try stretching the silk as he measured it out; this would increase sales and profits and also increase Adam’s value to the company. Young Clarke straightened up from his work, faced his boss courageously, and said, “Sir, your silk may stretch, but my conscience won’t!” That’s courage! And what helped to produce the Thessalonian community of believers was a “courageous” ministry.

Paul describes how they had already faced suffering and mistreatment, yet in the face of opposition they chose to boldly share the Gospel of God with them. Their courage helped them to minister in spite of experiences of opposition, because God’s truth reigns and must be shared with others – without compromise, and with no interest in maintaining the status quo. A courageous ministry produces communities of faith like the Thessalonian church.

God honored Adam Clarke for his integrity by taking him from the dry-goods store and fitting him to write a famous commentary on the books of the Bible. Adam Clarke had principles forged by the work of God in his life. And a “principled” ministry is what helped to produce a Christian community like the one at Thessalonica.

In the second chapter of Thessalonians we read how open and transparent Paul, Silas, and Timothy’s ministry was in their midst – a ministry of right motives; pure, without deceit, self-enhancement or greed, – a ministry approved by God with a durable desire to please God only. A principled ministry produces communities of faith like the Thessalonian church.

Then Paul describes how he and his brothers in ministry conducted themselves among the people (2 Thess. 2:7-10). He pictures a devotion full of emotion – a passion to love people, to treat others with gentleness, tenderness and affection while working hard to give the people the Good News, and their lives with love and joy.  Such a “devoted” ministry is what helped to produce a community of believers like the one at Thessalonica.

In his book Dedication and Leadership, published in 1966, on why Communism had more apparent success than Christianity in reaching out to new areas, Douglas Hyde said: “If…the majority of members, from the leaders down, are characterized by their single-minded devotion to the cause, if it is quite clear that the majority are giving until it hurts … then those who consider joining will assume that this is what will be expected of them (as well). If they nonetheless make the decision to join they will come already conditioned to sacrifice till it hurts.” A devoted ministry produces communities of faith like the Thessalonian church.

There’s a story told about a man who was walking down the street when he passed a used-book store, and in the window he saw a book with the title “How to Hug.” He was taken by the title and, being of a somewhat romantic nature, went in to buy the book. To his chagrin, he discovered that it was the seventh volume of an encyclopaedia set which covered the subjects from “How” to “Hug”. We’ve all been told – haven’t we? – that the church is a gathered people among whom love ought to be manifested, and yet many people have “gone to church” hoping to find a demonstration of love only to discover an encyclopaedia on theology, or eclesiatical structure, or maintaining organizational purity.

But not so the Thessalonian church – they were a community of believers that caught the vision for becoming a “people-based” ministry because that’s what helped make their church what it was. And it’s interesting to remember that the Thessalonian church had no church building, just like all the other churches in the First Century.

Paul, Silas, and Timothy exhorted, encouraged, and implored them, as a mother tenderly cares and as a father treats his own children, “to walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls [them] into His own kingdom and glory.” Then he intimately addresses the people in as personal and thankful as it gets, “You are our glory and our joy” (2:19-20).

And they did walk that way, and they were that kind of blessing!

This is why I am convinced that my ministry focus must be people!

“At the heart of the universe is a Person, not natural forces, a Creator who reveals Himself to persons, who became a human Person in Christ, who seeks to redeem estranged, sinful persons back to Himself (1 Thess 1:9). Essentially, the church is not a building, nor an institution, an organization, or a program. Essentially the church is people . . . it is natural to describe the local church in terms of its activities, its work, as an institution; but everything the church does is for the sake of people. All programming and organization are means to the end of effecting changes in people. The focus must always be on people.” (LeBar, “Focus on People”, Pg 11)

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

However, for a number of years now, my convictions have deepened in regards to the Bible’s reliability and authenticity. For me, personally, I now believe in the plenary, verbal, inerrant, and infallible inspiration of the Scriptures. My personal convictions about the Bible have played a critical role in my ability to communicate the truth of Scripture to doubters and non-believers.

One of the events that contributed to this process for me, happened shortly after I completed my seminary training. I was serving in a ministry where university students continually and persistently asked me, “Can we trust the Bible in today’s modern world?” A number of these students let me know that my vague and unsure answers were less then helpful.

About that time I read an interview that took place with Dr. Harold Ockenga, the founding President of Fuller Theological Seminary, and the Senior Pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, MA. In the interview, he related the story of how he came to a point in his early ministry where he had, by faith, decided that he was going to trust God’s Word, the Bible, as the revealed revelation of God’s will, and his plan for the salvation of mankind through the giving of his only begotten son, Jesus Christ.

Dr. Ockenga explained that one of the foundational convictions that he had arrived at, was that he was going to give God the benefit of the doubt that the Scriptures were true and trustworthy. That by faith, he had come to the conviction that the Bible spoke about all that it spoke about truthfully, and without error. He also decided that he was not going to place external sources of the Bible on a higher plane as his frame of reference, with which to judge the Scriptures. Instead, he adopted the Bible as his frame of reference with which to judge all other sources.

There were many other contributors to the process I went through, and my journey ultimately led me to the conviction that “The Guide for Ministry is the Bible, and not Human Wisdom.” The Scriptures became for me, the final authority for my faith and practice.

One of the passages that helped contribute to my thinking along this journey was Isaiah 55:6-13:

“Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD’s renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.”

These words portray the challenge of Isaiah to his people to turn to the Lord, because God is merciful and forgiving. That God will accomplish his purposes and plans in our lives, whether we understand his process or not. I concluded that just because I don’t understand God’s message and his methods, doesn’t mean that he’s not speaking or moving. It was during this time that I came to view the Bible as more then just a book with a message to us from God; I also came to view the Bible as God’s methods for us to do ministry.

In simple terms, I came to see the Bible as God’s Message Book – about our faith … and also as God’s Method Book – about our practice of the Christian faith.

As a result, even while living in an emerging post-modern culture that was moving away from trusting in reason, I came to these two conclusions and convictions…

First, I came to a full trust in the Bible as God’s “Message Book” about my faith. That the Bible is the final authority for our Christian faith, and that it serves as the ultimate judge as to what we are to believe as truth. That all of our experiences must be interpreted in the light of what Scripture states.

Several verses contributed to this process. For example, Jesus declared clearly in John 16:13: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide (us) into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell (us) what is yet to come.”

And Peter writes in 2 Peter 1:20-21, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Some people have thought that “Scripture” here refers only to the OT Scriptures, but later Peter commented in 2 Peter 3:16 about the Apostle Paul’s writings, that “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Peter described Paul’s writings as “Scripture,” as though they had the same weight and authority as the Old Testament Scriptures, giving foundation to the early church’s understanding and conviction that writings by the Apostles – those who were with Jesus, or saw him in person – are the inspired Word of God.

When I say that the Bible is God’s “Message Book” … I’m saying that the Bible gives us the content of the “what” of the Christian life.

I remember taking a New Testament class on Ephesians in Seminary. And even though I had great respect for the professor, and his commentary on Ephesians – I still thought, from my perspective, that he had certain pre-suppositions that might frame his understanding of Scripture in a way as to cause others confusion. I wondered at the time if this was an important concern or not, so in class I commented on one point that I thought he had taken too far in criticizing the message of Ephesians, and I asked him, “That’s not what the passage says, aren’t you jumping to your own conclusions?” And he answered, “Well, yes, but they’re well thought out conclusions.”

Later on my journey, I remembered this incident. My response was that well-thought out or not, if we measure Scripture through the grid of our post-modern culture or our pre-suppositonal human reasonings, we may fail to remember Isaiah’s words, that, “God’s thoughts are higher then our thoughts.”

Secondly, I came to a full trust in the Bible as God’s “Method Book” concerning the practice of my faith. As Paul claims in 2 Cor. 1:12, “Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God’s grace.”

When we conclude that the Bible is the final authority for our Christian practices, then the Scriptures serve as the ultimate judge as to what principles should direct our methods of ministry. In other words, the “Method Book” of God gives us the process or the “how” of the Christian life. And our understanding of the implications of these principles in relationship to methods for ministry is critical for each one of us.

Methods may be expressed in terms of absolutes and non-absolutes, and we need to be able to distinguish the difference. For example, Hebrews 10:24-25 tells us that, “Christians should gather together”, and that is an absolute directive from Scripture which is a foundational principle that never varies with time or culture.

However, a non-absolute would be the specific application of this principle which may vary with time or culture – like for example, that “Christians should gather together at 11:00 a.m. on Sundays and sit in pews.” Since there were no church buildings until the end of the 4th Century, how could that application be an absolute? But yet there are some Christians who feel guilty if they don’t attend church on Sunday at a certain time, and sit in a certain style of seating, with an organ playing and a choir singing, and etc.

Absolutes are eternal and unchanging. On the other hand, we should have great freedom to change the non-absolutes depending on the need of a particular situation. For example, if John Wesley had not had this freedom to change how church was supposed to be done, he would not have organized people in to small “method” groups that met in homes all over England, to eat meals together, to study the Bible together, and to help one another become faithful followers of Jesus Christ together.

Isaiah understood the message and methods of God. He experienced God’s infinite mercy: “I give my Word, I cause it to be true, I will keep my promises” in Verses 6-11. He observed God’s gracious promises – that they were: “Sealed in space and time” in Verses 12-13. In these verses he was remembering God’s deliverance of the Jews from Egypt, and the assurance that God’s Kingdom deliverance will some day be completed for everyone.

As Christians today, our madate is to tell people that Jesus Christ is God’s answer for the emptyness and vacuum within every human heart. And even in light of the current post-modern reactions from our culture, we must not be afraid to keep on showing and telling people that God loves them, and that he wants to have a personal relationship with them through his only begotton son. This ministry is based on the book of God that tells us both the truth of what God wants to communicate to us, and also the way we can live life abundantly according to his will.

In the book, “The Death of Truth”, Dennis McCallum comments: “Unlike Darwinism, post-modernism isn’t a distinct set of doctrines or truth claims, it’s a mood—a view of the world characterized by a deep distrust of reason, not to mention a disdain for the knowledge Christians believe the Bible provides. Opponents of Christianity in the past charged it was a false religion. Now opponents argue that Christianity ought not be be believed because its followers claim it is true.”

Well, I believe that the Bible is our truth — that it’s our guide for doing ministry and it’s our guide for living by faith. I want to share the truth about God’s love with one more friend today. The Bible is my guide for doing just that, and I hope that the Bible is becoming that for you as well.

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

The first place in Scripture where I started to think in these terms was from what Jesus declares in Mark’s Gospel, in response to questions that the Pharisees were asking him:

Mark 7:6-8:  He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:  ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’  You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”

Jesus is clearly addressing the Pharisees about the importance of  “Measuring things by the backdrop of the nature of God, and not by our own experiences.”  In other words, we are to elevate God and his Word to the center of ministry, and we do not allow our activities to become the focus of our ministry.  When I as a Christian turn my eyes away from God and look at what I am doing as the standard … I begin to substitute trust in God with trust in myself.  The results, Jesus says, is that my worship gradually becomes vain and repetitious, leading to my service becoming self-directed and self-righteous.

A well-known minister was being interviewed on the Phil Donohue show a number of years ago.  In response to a question on that national television show, about what subjects the minister was willing to preach on, he quickly replied:  “Well, I can tell you this, I’ll never preach on adultery, because that’s not my problem!”  What he was saying was that it’s only by our own experiences that we know truth, and only by our own experiences that we can speak into the lives of others.  That approach marginalizes the Scriptures, and substitutes our experiences, even our traditions, as our guide for doing ministry.

That’s very much like the Pharisees, and how they dealt with the Talmudic Law – it was against the law to use a rope on the Sabbath because that was considered “work” – but that didn’t stop a Pharisee from tying their wife’s girdle to a bucket – an activity not considered work by the law – in order to lower that bucket into a well to retrieve water on the Sabbath.  It was all about cutting corners so as to give off the impression of keeping the law.

Authentic ministry only springs forth and takes place in our lives when we keep God in view, when we cultivate an intimacy with God.  Our personnal communion with God, with his Word guiding us, must be the underpinning for our consecration and ministry to and for God.  The writer of Psalm 84 describes it something like this:  “Sitting in God’s presence is more desirable then serving in God’s Kingdom.”

There are many examples that would illustrate how we stray from the principle that our ministry starts with God and not our activities.  Some Christians put greater value on those ministries that are large and popular, on churches that attract huge crowds, or on mega-church leaders who write books.  I remember one of my professors at Fuller Seminary describing a local church ministry she had previously been involved in where over 500 people were involved in small group Bible studies and prayer groups, in homes and coffee shops around the city.  But the Elders called her in and demanded that she do something about this immediately, because only 20 people were attending the mid-week prayer meeting in the church building on Wednesday evenings, and that didn’t look good in reports sent in to their denominational headquarters.

So here’s the first and most important question for us to ask about ministry:  What is God’s Part In Ministry?

In order to think about this question, lets read through 1 Corinthians 3:1-7:

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ.  I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?  Are you not acting like mere men?  For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?  What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task.   I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

I am convinced that God’s goals for each one of us as Christians are superhuman.  And I believe this because I have come to see that authentic Christian growth is totally beyond the realm of our human effort.  True ministry and spiritual growth are things that God does by means of his Holy Spirit.

Consider what Verse 6 actually says here.  Paul writes, “God made it grow” – this is a verb that’s in the imperfect tense in the Greek, which suggests that this growth happens as a continued, ongoing, always fresh and new gracious act of God!  That’s what Luke wrote about in Acts 2:42-47 – the New Testament Christians were worshiping, fellow-shipping, and studying the teachings of the Apostles together, and as they were moving forward in these disciplines and practices as the Body of Christ, Luke concludes by saying:  “…the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”  The Lord was doing it right now – He was saving people – without anyone else’s help and without a lot of fanfare, God was making growth happen!

Years ago there was a movement started by a radio talk show host called:  “The 50 Day God Hunt.”  It was a concerted effort to help people become more aware of God’s presence in their everyday activities.  It’s something that we still need to consider today – to intentionally search everyday for the presence of God in our lives, the moments when God shows up in our daily schedules, the growth he’s bringing about in our lives, and the growth he’s bringing about in the lives of others.

The second important question for us to ask and think about in this investigation is:  What is our part in ministry?

To consider this question, lets read on in 1 Corinthians 3:8-10:

The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.  For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.  By the grace (charis) God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds.

The wonderful thing about God’s grace being present in our lives, is that his grace gives us a part in the work and ministry of His Kingdom.  As a result, we are therefore able to minister effectively as he empowers us to do so.  But it’s only when we understand ministry from God’s perspective, and build on Christ, abide in Christ, and rely upon the Spirit of Christ to do ministry, that this becomes a Kingdom reality.

The best way for us to understand this truth is to look at Verse 6 more closely.  Paul uses two more verbs in Verse 6:  “planted” & “watered” – these verbs are in the aorist tense, which supports the idea that these efforts are definite acts at points in time.  So the three action verbs in this verse present a compelling picture of the relationship between God’s efforts – God makes things grow – and our efforts in ministry – we plant and we water.  God is giving growth out of his grace as his ongoing gracious gift  – and he just keeps giving and giving and giving – and all he asks from us is that when we are given opportunities to participate in Kingdom efforts, that we step out into the fields and plant and water.

There’s no great mystery to what God is asking us to do.  When an opportunity comes our way, we plant or we water – we give  – we share  – we serve  – we visit  – we listen – we love – we do ministry.  But all the while we’re being obedient in the planting and watering, it’s God who is the one who actually gives the growth through the presence of his grace-giving growth-producing activity.  As a result, we then are free to celebrate what God is doing by taking part in the ministry of harvesting the fruit.

When Jesus said, “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few…therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest” in Matt 9:37 and Luke 10:2, we can be certain that Jesus was calling for workers to go into the harvest fields and work – plant and water – and not calling for workers to go into the harvest fields and make plants grow!  Isn’t it safe, therefore, to conclude that harvests don’t begin in barns, harvests begin in the fields?   That God, first and foremost, meets his planters, waterers, and harvesters in the fields and not in the barns!

Let me tell you – Jesus was teaching that the body of Christ is all about field trips – that the power of God has been released to make the Kingdom grow, and what’s missing are the workers who will keep on going and planting and watering, and the workers who will gather up what God makes grow.

We all know people whose lives illustrate this ministry relationship with the God who makes things grow.  For a few moments, just write down the names of people that you are aware of in your life who have illustrated a willingness to plant and water, without fanfare and without seeking attention.  Let me tell you about a few people in my life who have modelled this obedient lifestyle for me:

Bill & Marge – for years they gave up their Summers with no pay to spend several months in New Zealand, planting churches, serving and ministering to people without fanfare and without acclaim.  As a result, there are many churches in New Zealand today because of their quiet Spirit-led ministry in the fields for over 30 years.

Cliffe – while in Seminary, Cliffe spent every Friday evening in the bars along Boston’s waterfronts, befriending the patrons in those bars, getting to know them, sharing his love for Jesus, and answering their questions about who Jesus is and why he loved them so much.  A Boston Globe reporter heard about Cliffe, and followed him around one Friday evening for a few hours, then asked him how many converts he had realized from these efforts week after week.  Cliffe said,  “None that I know about for sure.”  The reporter asked, “Then why do you keep on doing it?”  And Cliffe said, “Because God called me to obey him, and I want to serve him out in the fields with everything I’ve got.”

Ed – who was a friend of mine.  Ed would write encouragement notes to people, but before he would mail them out, he would pray over them, and he would mark the phrases in the notes with a yellow highlighter that he really believed would help the person he was writing the note to.  Recently, at Ed’s memorial service after he went to be with Jesus, his family passed out hundreds of yellow highlighters to the people attending, and everybody knew just what this meant because every person there had received encouragement notes from Ed.

Or my friend, Dana – who as a fairly young man was stricken with brain cancer.  But he continued to minister to students at a college in San Diego every day up to the very last week of his life on this earth.  He would say to each one of those students, just what he said the last week of his life when several men carried him on to the platform during a chapel service just before he died.  He could barely speak above a whisper, but on that day he said to those students one more time, “Everyday, find out what Jesus wants you to do and do it.”

The implications drawn from this principle for doing ministry provide us with the simple yet powerful characteristics of Kingdom growth that marked the lives of these planters and waterers:

1. Growth is hidden – God produces growth that we cannot measure.
2. Growth is mysterious – While we’re busy planting and watering, God is sovereignty causing growth.
3. Growth is God’s doing – We plant – God nurtures; we water – God changes people; we go and love, and God makes things grow.
4. Growth is gradual & progressive – Growth cries out for the ministries of planting and watering.
5. Growth will come – Because God is working – He alone makes people grow!

What a mystery this is – You and I are unqualified to minister to anyone – it’s as if we can say without hesitation:  “So without God, we cannot; without you and me, God will not!”

A long time ago I listened as the president of Asbury Seminary described how he had spent years in ministry trying to make people grow, and trying even harder to make churches grow.  But had only recently learned that all along his business was to love people, and it was God’s business to change and grow people.

That’s why I’m convinced that the starting point of ministry is God; not our busyness, not our activities, and certainly not our human-based efforts.

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

Sherm Douglas was raised in Oklahoma and educated in Texas. In terms of the Bible belt, his notch in life was near the buckle. His dad was a well-to-do hardware store owner in a suburb of Tulsa. His mom had no need to work but was quite involved in volunteer groups around town.

He was reared in a Sunday-go-to-meeting Baptist family. They never missed church. The family Bible was prominently displayed on the coffee table in the living room. Though rarely read, Shem’s mother dusted the Bible weekly without fail.

Sherm grew up believing in God. “After all, doesn’t everybody?” he would ask when questioned about his belief in a higher power. He knew, by heart, old-time hymns like “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art.” Often the family would gather around the piano in the den on a Sunday afternoon to sing church songs in four-part harmony. If the pastor and his wife were guests for Sunday dinner (a common occurrence), the hymn-sing was a given. The Douglas family was also big on singing the “Doxology” before every dinner. A plaque of the Lord’s Prayer hung in the entryway of their large colonial home.

Although church attendance was a guarded core value, the choices of Douglas family members were not necessarily consistent with sermons they heard their pastor preach. For example, Sherm’s dad failed to report on his income tax return the income he received in cash payments. The family liquor cabinet was stocked with whiskey, vodka, brandy, and wine, and it was not unusual for Mr. Douglas to have a hangover on Saturday mornings. Sherm’s sister got pregnant in junior high school and had an abortion. (Her daddy drove her to the clinic and paid the doctor bill.) And Sherm’s two brothers both chose not to marry but to live with their girl friends after graduating from college.

Sherm graduated with honors from Baylor University and proceeded to get his MBA at the University of Texas. It was during graduate school that he exchanged his nominal churchianity for a deeply personal Christianity after a campus ministry leader succeeded in getting Sherm to attend a weekly Bible study with sharp, intelligent grad students who loved the Lord. In this small group of CEOs in training, Sherm realized that Jesus was more than a cultural mascot.

Unlike the superficial religion to which his parents and siblings had subscribed, Sherm embraced the Word of God as his guide for life. Because he viewed the Scriptures as absolute truth inspired by the Creator, the lifestyle principles he discovered framed his views on managing his finances, compassion, interpersonal conflict, the use of alcohol, the stewardship of the environment, as well as the kind of commitment marital vows imply.

No longer did Sherm march to the cadence of what culture deemed appropriate. Instead, he began to consistently ask two diagnostic questions:

1. “What does the Bible say about this issue?”
2. “What would Jesus do?”

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:6-8)

Just before these verses the apostle says in Romans 12 Verse 4:  Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Most of us have grown up with various experiences in churches, and I’m sure all of us have a mental picture of what the church ought to be because too many of our pictures of what church has been aren’t pretty. And here’s where we need our thinking changed; where we need a new understanding of the church. God has told us that his church is like a human body. If you want a good course in what “Church” is all about, just stand in front of your mirror some morning without your clothes on and examine your body. That’s what the church is like.

The first thing that will impress you is that there’s only one body in that mirror. There’s only one church in all the world. All Christians belong to it, and it doesn’t make any difference whether they have a denominational label or not. If they’ve been born of the Spirit of God, they’re members of that church, and there’s only one church. So wherever the members meet one another, they already belong to each other. Whether you have your name on a church roll somewhere is of no significance whatsoever. There is only one church, one body, yet there are many members.

The second thing that will strike you as you look at your own body is that it has parts. It isn’t just a head, but it has arms and legs and feet and toes and fingers and eyes and ears, and a number of other interesting things that stick out. And they all have a purpose. They’re part of a body, they belong to the body. The church of Jesus Christ has many members, and they are different. I like this about Jesus’ church – I like the diversity of the church.

And please notice something else … nowhere on the body will you find a roof, or a basement, or an auditorium or a parking lot. There are no classrooms, hallways or gyms or kitchens. That’s why the Bible says that God does not dwell in houses made of stones. A building is not the church. People make up the church – God dwells in the hearts of his people!

The spirit of the world strives for uniformity. What’s the latest style? Everybody get tattoos. The world tries to pressure us into looking and acting and talking and thinking alike. You join a club and you have to dress like they dress, drive the same general class of car, or go to “church” in a certain kind of building that looks a certain way. You join another club and you have to change your ways. I don’t know why it is that we have this mentality that we have to Xerox everything. Even in the church, people want to turn out Christians that all look and act the same.

But that’s not God’s idea of the church. His idea is to have diversity within the church. There are many members, and they’re not to be alike. That’s the joy of it. They don’t come from the same class or the same race or the same color or the same language, and they don’t even have the same gifts. They have many gifts. A true church is one where people are diverse and that’s something to rejoice in.

I’ve been with Christian groups in which you could discern who the members were by the fact that they all carried the same Bible under their arms – the same version and even the same color.

That isn’t the way Jesus has designed his church. Paul says that the members do not all have the same function, yet each one belongs to all the others. That’s unique. No other organization in the world can say that about itself. In all other organizations the members are individually there for what each can get out of it. But in the church of Jesus Christ, we belong to one another. We share with one another. Paul says we are to have the same care for one another. How terrible it would be if all Christians were exactly the same.

A few years ago I fell and injured my elbow – it was fractured badly and it was ugly. Well, what happened was that the rest of my body felt so bad about it that it sat up all night to keep my elbow company. None of my body parts could sleep that night. That’s what the body of Christ is to do when one member is hurt. We are tied to one another, and when one hurts, all hurt. But also when one rejoices, we all rejoice.

Paul points out here in Verses 6-8 that we have gifts that determine our function within the body:  We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

And this is only a partial list of the gifts that God gives. There are many others mentioned in 1 Cor. 12, 1 Peter 4, and Eph. 4. Put them all together and you get the total list of gifts that are available to us. Paul zeroes in on the fact that God gives gifts. He calls them graces, and we have different gifts, according to the specific gift of grace that is given to us.

I like that term for gifts because it indicates something about them. Graces are graceful. Something graceful is a delight to watch in action. This is true about a spiritual gift. It’s an ability God has given you because he wants you to function in this way. It enables you to do this thing so naturally and smoothly and beautifully that others will take note of it, and ask you to do it, and enjoy watching you do it. And you will enjoy it too.

A spiritual gift is a fulfilling thing when you are using it. You enjoy doing it, and that’s why it’s called a grace that’s given to you. It’s not a hard, painful thing to do; it’s something you delight in doing. And you can improve in it as you do it. It’s one of the things that will make life interesting and fulfilling for you.  Imagine how hurt parents would be if they gave gifts to their children, wrapped them all up in beautiful packages and put them under the Christmas tree, and then handed them out to their children, and then each child just laid it aside and never bothered to open it or make any effort to find out what was in it?

Well then you can imagine how the Lord must feel when he has given gifts to us that he intends us to use and we never take the trouble to find out what they are, and never put them to work, and excuse ourselves by saying that we can’t do anything.  But the Word of God tells us there is not a single Christian who is left out in this matter of the distribution of gifts.  It’s clear from this account that the gifts Paul lists here are intended to be used. That’s what Paul stresses here.

The first gift Paul mentions is prophesying. In 1 Cor. 12 and 14 Paul tells us this is one of the best gifts of all. This is the gift you ought to covet earnestly to be manifest in your midst, because basically it is the gift of expounding Scripture, making Scripture come alive. It comes from a root word in Greek that means, “to cause to shine,” and it refers to the ability to take the Word of God and make it shine. Peter says in 2 Peter 1:19, “We have a more sure word of prophecy that shines as a light in a dark place.” Paul says if you have the gift – then use it. But use it according to the proportion of your faith. Stay with what you know. Don’t try to get into areas that you don’t yet understand. That will come later as you grow in the use of your gift. Start where you do understand Scripture, and help make it clear to people. That’s the gift of prophesying.

There are some who have the gift of serving. This is a very beautiful and common gift. Many people have it. I think it’s the same gift which is called “the gift of helps” in 1 Cor. 12:28. It’s the word from which we get our word deacon. It means to serve, or to provide for believers, or care for widows. It’s the ability to help people with such a cheerful spirit that they’re blessed by it. You know people like that. You’re thinking of somebody right now who has the gift of helps. You just love to have them around because they are so eager to serve and they do it so willingly and cheerfully that everybody is helped and blessed by it. What a tremendous gift that is! The church runs by those who have this gift. Many of you have it, so put it to work. “If your gift is serving, then we want to let you serve.”

Then there’s the gift of teaching. Teaching is the ability to impart knowledge and information, to instruct the mind. Teaching is the basis for much that comes from the Scriptures in terms of gifts, and is widely established in the body. I believe that a lot of people have the gift of teaching. If you have it, don’t wait for somebody to ask you to teach. The church didn’t give you the gift. The pastor didn’t give you the gift. God gives the gifts to us – so put your gift of teaching to work. Invite some friends or neighbors to join with you over a cup of coffee and use your teaching gift to explain God’s word to them. Don’t wait for somebody to come around and invite you to exercise your gift. That may happen, and be glad if it does, but you still have the responsibility to use the gift God has given you, whether anybody asks you to or not. Find the occasion. Find somebody who doesn’t know as much as you know and teach them, if you have the gift of teaching.

Then there is the gift of encouragement. That was the gift that Barnabas had. He was called “the son of encouragement,” which is what Barnabas means. His name was Joseph, but no one called him Joe; they called him Barney. In the stories of Barnabas in the Scriptures he is always found with his arm around somebody’s shoulder, exhorting him, encouraging him, comforting him, urging him on. This is a marvelous gift in the church. If you have the gift of encouragement, start anywhere and use it. God gave it to you, and you don’t need permission to use it.

Then there is the gift of contributing. Giving is a gift – did you know that? If you have this gift, I believe God will give you something to give, and then he will give you a desire to give it. If you have that gift, use it! It stands to reason that the more you use it, the more you will have to give. It’s part of the way you function in the body of Christ, and many can use that gift. Paul says, “Let him give generously.” The more accurate translation of what Paul is really saying is, “Let him give with simplicity.” It means giving without calling people’s attention to it. My friend, James, has this gift and I’ve seen him use it in action. Ask me sometime about Jim, and I’ll tell you his story. He won’t mind.

Someone told the story of a man who stood up in a meeting and said, “I want to give $100 … anonymously.” I know people that that. But you can’t give that way if you have the gift of giving – the gift of giving requires giving with simplicity, without making a big deal out of it. That’s what this gift is all about. It’s just giving as unto God, and then delighting in the opportunity to be used by him.

Then the gift of leadership is mentioned. It comes from a word that means, “to stand up before others.” If you have that gift, there are all kinds of meetings waiting to be led. There are all kinds of groups looking for leaders. And when you use it, Paul says, do it with diligence. That is, don’t wing it. Do it thoughtfully, think it through in advance. Make yourself ready for it, and use the meeting to its fullest purpose. The gift of leadership is a great gift.

Then, finally, Paul mentions the gift of showing mercy. I think we should delight in the people of God who have the gift of showing mercy. Just look around and see if you can catch anyone with this gift. Watch them and learn all about compassion, learn about showing concern for others, and learn about how to listen to people and not talk a lot.

Mercy helps those who are undeserving or neglected by others. The gift of showing mercy is a marvelous gift within the church, and many have it. If you have it, don’t wait for somebody to show you what to do – start doing it. Great and marvelous organizations have grown up out of a single person beginning to exercise this gift.

One example is how World Vision got started. In 1947, Bob Pierce met a teacher on a trip to China. Her name was Tena Hoelkedoer. She introduced Bob to a battered and abandoned child named White Jade she couldn’t take care of, and asked him, “What are you going to do about her?” Bob Pierce dug into his pocket and gave Tena his last $5, and promised to send the same amount each month to help her take care of the girl. And that’s how World Vision got started – and now there are 40,000 mercy showing WV staff members in over 100 countries around the world following in Bob Pierce’s footsteps. This is the way the church is supposed to function.

Now you might think that you’re small and insignificant. Maybe you even think when you look at your body in that mirror that all you are is a big toe in the body of Christ; you don’t think you can do anything, and you don’t amount to much of anything. Well all I can say to you is that you must have never had an in-grown toenail. Because one of those bad babies can cause your whole body to shut down and do a number on your brain!

God has given every one of us a gift-wrapped grace gift to use in serving him. All that matters today is that we unwrap his gift, and start putting the grace gift he has given each one of us into practice. And you don’t need my permission to get started. Just unwrap your gift.

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

Maybe you didn’t know this, but I’ve attended lots of church services. Quite possibly, I’ve even joined in with your church fellowship a time or two. It recently dawned on me at a workshop I was part of, however, that though I’ve attended many church meetings, been a member of many churches, been a leader in many churches, and been affiliated and connected to many churches, I had glossed over maybe the most basic question about church: “What is it?”

Oh sure, I studied church stuff in college and seminary, I’ve written articles about church and its’ stuff, and I’ve read many Many MANY books about church. But, what is a church anyway?

Some time ago a group of people gathered in my home and after eating dinner, and sharing our stories with each other and praying together, one of our friends said, “Wow, this is kinda like church, isn’t it?” And it dawned on me that she was right. But only “kinda” like a church, I thought.

Well, recently at a workshop I was participating in this question was asked, “What is the definition of a church?” And my ears perked up as I listened to the discussion carefully, and did it ever get the juices flowing. There were all kinds of answers, and they kind of all got shrunk down into these basic elements that the group decided must be present in order to have a church:

1. A group of believers gathering together regularly
2. The group considers their gathering a church
3. There are qualified elders in charge, and Bible trained teachers teaching
4. The practice of baptism and communion took place, as well as church discipline if needed (there were a variety of views on this, of course)
5. There should be a mutually agreed-on set of doctrines and beliefs, and a constitution or set of by-laws for doing the work of the church

I think the discussion might have gone on forever, except the facilitator finally asked the question that sort of stalled everything, “Well, is anything missing from our list?” And for a few moments there was silence. As I looked at the list I thought to myself that these are all good qualities for any church to have, and most churches I’ve been connected to would actually meet these standards. But WAS something missing?

And then out of the blue, one of the guys shouted, “Jesus is missing!”

It was as if somebody lit a match to our discussion, and we all tried to talk over each other to excuse or explain why our answers had not included Jesus. Then the facilitator told us a story of how one of his theological mentors had expounded to him once that Jesus is assumed in these definition lists because it’s believers who are gathered. His response to his mentor was simply, “Why would we assume Jesus’ presence but make sure that a qualified elder is present?”

Assumptions, we make them all the time. And I’ve come to believe that making this assumption demonstrates a serious problem. As my friend Neil Cole wrote, “The church is often more about what we bring to the table than what God does.”

Because when it comes to church, aren’t many of us asking the wrong questions? We ask people What church do you go to? How big is your church? Where is your church? What kind of music do you have at your church? What denomination is your church? Who is your pastor? and on and on. But when do we ask one another what we’re doing for Jesus, and whether he is even present in what we’re doing? Is Jesus in charge of our life? Is Jesus the Lord of our small groups, our wedding celebrations, our dinner engagements, our back-yard barbecues, our company’s conference room schedule?

Was it not the Lord himself who said to Peter that the church belonged to him – it’s his church – and that the church must be on the offense in the world: “I will build MY church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18b)? Who’s on the attack here? Gates are not offensive weapons, are they?

In Neil’s book, Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens, he counsels a young church planter with this admonition: “Don’t do anything until you are sure Jesus is with you. Like Moses, tell the Lord, ‘I’m not going to take one step forward unless you go first.’ … and, Be angry at the fact that the world can ignore Jesus without fear of consequence.”

There are people all around us that don’t want to enter into any church building, and in fact they don’t want to know anything about any church. They don’t care. But they might go with you to a Gathering of Men breakfast as your guest, or meet you for a cup of coffee to talk, or read the Bible with you and tell you what they think about it. All you have to do is ask Jesus to go before you go to invite them, ask him to be the Lord of your invitation on his behalf, and ask him to guide you in his love.

What church stuff matters to Jesus? Well, he said, “if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven” and “where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matt. 18:19, 20). This sounds like Jesus’ short list for answering the question, “What’s a church?”

Today, you and I can agree that we’re going to ask Jesus to lead us to someone to invite to join us in the adventure, and they’re going to possibly say “Yes!!!”

If we agree to ask, just maybe Jesus will have his Father make it happen today.

Because the only church that matters is that two of us agree on something in Jesus’ name, and two or three of us gather together in Jesus’ name.

That’s what we’re doing today.

Lets just do it!

by Paul Huddle

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!

It can be used in a sentence like this: “Ah, that Joe, he’ll hog all the coffee at the Gathering breakfasts….but he’s a good ol’ boy.”

Good ol’ boys do us favors. When we’re rushing into AM/PM they open the door for us, sometimes getting a quick “thanks” in return. And if we’re standing in line at Starbucks frustrated by something rattling around in our heads, a good ol’ boy might even jerk his chin and say, “Hey, man, how’s it going?”

Hundreds of years ago, long before the birth of Christ, King David – one of the greatest kings in Israel’s history – was sitting between his inner and outer gate, looking off in the distance. His buddy was standing on the roof of the gateway, looking intently in the same direction – one hand shading his eyes from the sun, anxious in the silence.
They were waiting for news.

Have you ever been so anxious that you literally sat at your front gate? Maybe you kept eyeballing the front door, listening for the mail carrier. Or maybe you lived through an entire day (or week) with your laptop glued to your lap. Waiting on that email, that message carrying the important news.

That’s how King David felt. David was waiting for word of Absalom, his son, a guy who’d basically betrayed his own father by threatening an uprising in his father’s kingdom. To deal with the situation, David gave Absalom the silent treatment. Now Absalom’s life was in danger. Yeah, David had reason to worry.

Well, let me end the suspense: Absalom was executed for treason while hanging by his hair from an oak tree, and that was the news coming to David. But David didn’t know it. How could he? He hadn’t even been speaking with his son on a regular basis.

Finally, the watchman sees a runner approaching in the distance, and he calls out, “Hey, that guy runs like Ahimaaz son of Zadok.” Upon hearing this, David says, “He’s a good man. He comes with good news.”

You know what David was saying? “He’s a good ol’ boy; he’ll tell me something good. He’ll tell me what I want to hear.”

As much as I love good ol’ boys, a good ol’ boy cannot change the message. The message is what it is. When David received the news that his son was dead, he climbed the gateway to a room away from everyone – isolating himself just as he had isolated himself from Absalom – and he cried and cried, “O my son Absalom! My son, my son…If only I had died instead of you…”

King David makes me sad. You know, he was a man’s man: a warrior, a rock star poet, and a king. He was handsome, athletic and powerful. And I think it’s tempting for guys like that to imagine that their gifts and success compensate for any personal shortcomings they may have as, say, fathers or husbands. Life as a King is a busy life. Life as a cultural icon is even busier.

But the bottom line is that as men empowered by Christ, the son of the Living God, we cannot good ol’ boy our way around relationships that matter most, no matter how important we think we are, as David may have done with his son, Absalom. We cannot good ol’ boy our church family, our wives or our children. The one-liners work when we’re out of town at conference and we need to give a new contact a good impression, but not when we’re at home and the people who love us need our full attention.

Now, remember Absalom. He was, in the language of our day, hot. He was a great warrior, handsome, athletic, powerful, the people loved him…

Ringing any bells?

Yeah, he was a lot like his father. Fathers, we have things in common with our children. But we cannot rely on those things to carry the relationship. Lines like, “Oh, she’s her daddy’s girl” or “he’s his father’s son” are good ol’ boy lines: they don’t build relationships with our children.

In his second letter to Corinth, Paul said, “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange – I speak as to my children – open wide your hearts also” (2 Corinthians 6:11-13, our emphasis).

In other words, Paul is saying, “Corinthians, you’re getting all we’ve got – our hearts are open wide – so stop good ol’ boyin’ us! It won’t cut it!” Then – did you catch this? – he speaks as if he was speaking to his children. That’s no insult; it’s a statement of love!

How is your relationship with your son? Your daughter? Are you asking questions? Are you creating space for significant communication? Or are you just relying on the patterns of life to carry the relationship?

Moses gives some awesome advice in Deuteronomy 6. He says, “In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?’ tell him: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.’”

Moses is saying that when our children ask us the major questions – questions of love, faith, redemption – the worst thing we can do is drill them with a religious lecture or good ol’ boy our way out of the conversation. The best thing we can do is tell them the story of how we met Jesus!

Do you remember that experience?

My son, my daughter, you want to know what Jesus did for me? Let me tell you the story. These moments will never be convenient. We have to be intentional, as Christ is intentional with us.

David, knowing his son was in trouble, waited for news of his death – waited behind his own gates! I don’t understand that. Maybe he was worried for his own life, maybe he trusted others to get the news. I’m not sure. By remaining behind his own gates, David allowed the world around him to dictate the pace in his relationship with his son. He allowed his role as King – his professional responsibilities – to get in the way of his relationship with his son.

So, what do you think? Isn’t it about time we step out from the comfortable and risk the stuff of this world that we work so hard for but won’t last past this life, for the people around us that mean so much to us?

by Paul Huddle & John Huddle

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Comments: Thank you for the thousands of comments we’ve received here at the BLKHM (Be Like Him) blog site. Some have been amazing, while others have been something else. We do not post comments received, although we appreciate every one of them. However, if you would like to express your appreciation for the BLKHM blog, the best way is to “Tweet” or “Share” or “Like” below. And something else that would be great is if you got together with several friends, and took some time to read and discus your Bibles together. Have a marvelous day. God Bless!