The Phil Files

My heart is in the Dominican Republic tonight! I know all the focus here in the U.S. will be on the elections on Tuesday — and I do challenge us to prayer and fasting about this in my Heartlight.org post this week. However, a group of Compassion bloggers left for the Dominican Republic Sunday and that is where my focus is tonight. During our prayers tonight, Donna not only prayed for our Compassion Children we sponsor, she also remembered to pray for those headed to D.R.

I was blessed to go on the trip to Uganda, Africa, in February of this year. It was the first Compassion Bloggers trip and it was truly a life changing experience. So those traveling to D.R. are in my prayers and I will have to say, I am a bit envious of them. They are traveling with great people — thanks Brian, Keeley, and Shaun — and traveling to help folks know more about a noble cause. In addition, we are in focus on this trip because on our sponsored children is from D.R.

Blessings to all going on this trip and my prayer is that you touch many folks with the opportunity they have to make a difference in the lives of families and help in the mission of “realeasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name.” I encourage you to keep up with the trip on the Compassion bloggers website!

I stress the unique claim of Jesus on our hearts in my Heartlight.org article this week, Isn’t Jesus Enough?

Sometimes, maybe most of the time, a simple truth is better expressed simply than with a lot of words. The video that accompanies the article says it clearly … simply … and accurately!

Paul said it this way:

My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything (Colossians 2:6-10 The Message).

The Gatorade commercials lately have a tag line, “Is it in you?” It goes with high profile athletes who have accomplished much in their sport shown in action in black in white. However, their sweat is the color of Gatorade — thus the tag line!

Recently, a friend shared the following video that builds off the Colossians 1:27, Christ in you, the hope of glory. I love it. You take a look and see what you think!

What’s so powerful to me is that I’m sure something like Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” must be sung by Heaven’s angels when we come to Christ and are born into God’s family. So the real question for us today is pretty simple: if someone could really hear your spiritual heart, what would they be able to hear?

Is He in you?

Last Updated 10.22.2008

Colossians #12: For 11/9 “Hope’s Horizon” (Colossians 3:1-4)

Notice first the Message translation:

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ — that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life — even though invisible to spectators — is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too — the real you, the glorious you. (Colossians 3:1-4 MSG)

What is the basis for our hope for the future? Here are some basics of these four verses:

• Vs. 1-2: We have been raised from death to life with Christ!

o This is tied to the reference on baptism where we are buried and raised with Christ through our faith in the power of God (Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:1-14)

o Our continued focus, daily setting our hearts and minds on Christ and focusing on things above (cf. Luke 9:23 – daily), must be our commitment – if we are “serious about living this new resurrection life.”

• Vs. 3: His future is our future!
Because of this new birth, and the death of our old life, we are now joined to Jesus and His exalted position at God’s right hand. Above fate, above the rulers and authorities, our life is kept safe in the very presence of Jesus. His life is our life. His future is our future.
• Vs. 4: Glory awaits us!

Our future is secure because Christ is our life. Because His future is triumphant, and we are tied to Him, our future is triumphant! (cf. Psalm 37:4)

But the real issue for us is this: Where is our treasure? What is our life? Is it really Jesus?

Jesus himself reminded us that where our treasure is, that’s where our heart will be (Matthew 6:18-24). Jesus challenged us to ask ourselves the following questions:

What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul? (Matthew 16:26)

Much of this all boils down to believing Jesus when He says:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)

The call from Jesus is to see this gift of new life, this Kingdom way of living (cf. Colossians 1:13-14), as worth everything we have:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:44-46)

That’s why Jesus called us to seek first His Kingdom and trust God for the rest (Matthew 6:33).

So our key to grabbing onto this message would be to focus on our treasure and where we really think life can be found. What is the treasure we seek? What is the treasure we hold? This is especially powerful since we face the big economic challenges.

Two illustrations right now speak to me about this:

[Our house flooded by sewage right before Thanksgiving. Eating Thanksgiving dinner in a hotel and having a great day. I don’t remember who won the football games, but I do remember our family joy and thanksgiving. We saved our pictures and we were all okay!]
[McDonalds son Tim hiding under the bed during the fire. Lost their new pick up truck that wasn’t insured, but were so thankful to not have lost a son.]

It was just stuff! But how hard it is to really learn this without having to lose so much!

And there is a deeper promise in Colossians 3:1-4.

There are big things, hard losses, where we do lose those we love to accident, tragedy, and death. We still have the pick up truck but not the child. We have the pictures, but not the people. We walk away from the cemetery broken and alone. And this is where a life joined to Jesus means everything.

I’d love to sing the great old hymn, “Heaven Holds All to Me” at this point and ask this key question: is it true? (Two issues.)

We try to make heaven here. We want to guarantee our security for the future. We want to provide our own little heaven here on earth. We’ve been bumped up against the harsh reality that nobody can guarantee these things here. Not a presidential candidate, not the federal government, not the International Monetary Fund. No one. And it’s only our greed or our willful ignorance that would make us think differently. Those who lived through the depression know. I remember dad talking about a prayer session where they hadn’t had meat in a long time and were trying to decide whether to keep the milk cow or slaughter her for meat – they needed meat and weren’t sure they could feed the cow.

I know at funerals there is this great pressure to put everyone into heaven regardless of their trust and surrender to the Lordship of Jesus. So pretty soon, heaven becomes watered down and meaningless because it doesn’t really matter whether a person’s life was really joined to Jesus. But I can assure you, when Jesus was the consuming passion of that person, folks know. Heaven is not Santa Claus and Easter Bunny talk. It is reality. It is assurance. It is hope. And this hope only is given to those whose lives are joined to Jesus.

So the real question is whether our lives are joined to Jesus and whether our hope is in Him or in what is not secure.

All this sounds harsh. At first blush, this doesn’t sound like good news. But it really is IF we hear the call of Jesus to follow Him and be joined to Him. When our lives are joined to Jesus, when He is our life, then the incredible promises of Romans 8 are ours!

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, whol have been called according to his purpose. … Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:28, 35, 37-39)

Another old hymn to consider is “Jesus is All the World to Me.”

I’d love a testimony video of someone from Carrollton Avenue that lost everything and stayed because they wanted to help the church make an impact on the city. This could be a compilation of video we already have with commentary from our folks that know the person!

Daybreak

Refresh

Sundown
Focus on Jesus’ parable of the “Pearl of Great Price” and the “Treasure Hidden in the Field” and call us to Matthew 6:33.

LIFE Questions

In my Heartlight.org article this week, I challenge us to read Colossians 1:27-29 and Matthew 28:18-20 and write out our own personal mission statement. I encourage you to read the article and these Scriptures.

I’d especially love for you to share your own life’s mission statement based on the Great Commission with the rest of us in the response section below!

On Monday, I let folks weigh in on their take on what Jesus would do with the desperate housewife who came to a church for the first time looking for answers from God but didn’t know the unwritten rules for church “decorum” and caused a stir. You can see the post and the response through the following two links:

1. Post Link
2. Response Link

I promised that if I got some responses, I would share my own, at best tenous, response as well. So here goes.

Rather than just shoot from the hip and blow something up, I did go back this morning and read through the story of Jesus — I used a neat little harmony of the gospels (okay, I know this is hard for those of us of the rhetorical studies bunch to even hear, but I actually found it quite wonderful to read the harmony in one sitting). There are a bunch of answers I would be tempted to share. What would Jesus say to this searching and seeking mom? Hmm.

Several of the responses to the post were really on target in my opinion. Jesus stirred up trouble pretty much every time he showed up at Synagogue or Temple because He wasn’t content to let Sabbath be a day of rules that ran over people. He blasted religious leaders for weighing folks down instead of lightening people’s burdens. He clearly identified with those who were unclean — physically like the woman with the flow of blood and the leper, or spiritually like Zaccheaus, the woman at the well, and Matthew’s buddies who knew how to party big time.

So I feel like Jesus would have felt very comfortable in talking to the woman and she would have been comfortable asking him questions. In fact, I’m pretty sure the Lord would have loved the interruption of “normal church” by a seeking outsider determined to find God in the middle of her own mess — remember the sinful woman from the city in Luke 7!

So for me, Jesus’ response to her questions would have been a combination of a beginning of a real answer (the principles of Matthew 5:45; Luke 13:1-5; and John 3:17), communication of genuine concern (Luke 7:13), and an authentic invitation to find out more and learn just who HE (Jesus) really is (Matthew 11:28-30 and John 4). So here’s my bumbling set of responses from things Jesus said using the TNIV:

When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her … (Luke 7:13)

“[Because of His love, my Father] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45)  … Do you think that these … were worse sinners … because they suffered this way … or those who died … do you think they were more guilty than all the others … ? I tell you no!” (Luke 13:2-5) … “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:17).
[But] “Come to Me, … you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul[s]. For My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Now here’s the same thing using the Message and melded with the story into a smoother form:

When Jesus saw Lynette in church with all her confusion and struggles, His heart broke for her. Jesus welcomed her and said, “Lynette, this is what God does. He gives his best — the sun to warm and the rain to nourish — He gives it to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. Do you think those who suffer are worse sinners than others who don’t? Do you think think that those who had awful accidents were worse citizens than those who weren’t invovled? Not at all! That’s not how God works. But it is important that you have turned your heart toward Him and want to know His answers. So please know this: God loves you and even though some things are confusing, you can count on one things for certain. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending Me, His Son — His best — merely to point an accusing finger, telling you and the world how bad you are. No He sent Me to help, to put the world right again and help you find real life.

Now you may never know completely how all tragedy and accident stuff works — prophets, philosophers, and preachers have been working on that one for a long time! But if you are tired or worn out or burned out on religion, please come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. You see, If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking Me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water and I would give light that would light up the dark places in your life and real food that nourishes your soul.”