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Tag: Jesus (Page 1 of 4)

One Group’s Attempt to Live Like Jesus

September 28, 2021 /

Friends,

Last week I started reading Shane Claiborne’s book, The Irresistible Revolution, Updated and Expanded: Living as an Ordinary Radical. I started the book after hearing another pastor speak of reading the book and how it has been transformative for him. The book is an early memoir of a community that has sought to live the words of Jesus. 

“If you find yourself climbing the ladder of success, be careful or else on your way up you might pass Jesus on his way down" (p. 40)

I am currently four chapters, twenty-five percent, of my way through the book (I know it is a little crazy to suggest a book so early on, but I am doing it anyway).  As one who has never been at home in the consumer-driven American church, struggling to find a place to fit in, whose questions were not welcome, and feeling pushed to the margins I found Shane’s book both hopeful and challenging. I highly recommend the book to anyone searching for hope in these complex times.

"We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor" (p. 99)

I know that Shane is a bit of an enigma in the church world. A man who lived and worked with Mother Theresa but also spent time working at Willow Creek. Two church worlds that could hardly be farther from each other. His views are often controversial but they are spoken with such love and compassion it is hard to turn away and dismiss him. John Wesley once said, “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.” I think, perhaps, this is a community seeking to live this out in our present day. There is hope in the margins.

"My friends and I had a hunch that there is more to life than what we had been told to pursue. We knew that the world cannot afford the American dream and that the good news is that there is another dream. We looked to the early church and to the Scriptures and to the poor to find it" (p. 104).

Blessings,
Stephen

 

Going on a Journey

February 16, 2021 /

Dear Friends,

What if I told you that in roughly six weeks you are going to get to take a much-needed vacation to another country (bear with me, we are just going to pretend we are not in the midst of a global pandemic)? Where are you going? Let’s pick someplace warm and sunny. How about Iceland? Okay, I know that doesn’t sound warm, but the people there have warm dispositions. You have six weeks to get ready to go. What are you going to do between now and then to get ready? Oh, I forgot to mention one little detail, you are going to be there for seven months.

After we look up on Google Maps where Iceland is, the next thing we might do is make sure our passport has not expired. Next comes the planning, buying clothes, deciding who will feed the cat while you are gone, figuring out what suitcases to take, and the list goes on and on. I am sure you would spend time looking up key phrases in whatever language it is they speak there. You might even study some Icelandic culture and history. As you ponder the next seven months your thoughts might turn toward the people you are leaving behind. Who do you need to take out to coffee before you go? After all, it is going to be a long time before you are back. Maybe there is even someone you need to mend the bridge with in case you get trampled by a caribou while you are there. You certainly want to have your house in order before you go.

Seeing as I am a preacher you have probably figured out this message is not really about traveling to Iceland and avoiding getting eaten by polar bears. On Easter Sunday we are going on a journey. Easter is a day set aside in the church to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. It is also a day for the sending out of the church into the world in the power of the resurrection of Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit which we remember at Pentecost fifty days after Easter.

Before the church is sent at Easter and Pentecost we get ready for the journey. The season of getting ready is the time of Lent. Lent is the forty days, starting with Ash Wednesday (February 17th), before Easter. This is a time to prepare to go. It is a season set apart for confession, repentance, preparation, and listening. It is like being one of the disciples following Jesus around for the three years as he ministered on this earth. For three years the most important thing you would do is listen to and watch Jesus. As one of the disciples, you may not fully understand what Jesus is doing and why but you would still listen, learn, and wonder.

In this season of Lent we, at Hope, are going to listen and watch Jesus. We will do so first by daily reading together from the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and the book of Acts. Attached to this message you will find a daily Bible reading plan. I invite you, as you read to listen and watch Jesus and his disciples. To ask questions and wonder. How might you have reacted if you had been in the crowd? Why do you think Jesus did what he did? What do you think God could be up to? How did Jesus express God’s love for humanity? We will also take this time to listen to our community. We know that God is already at work in the life of every person drawing them to himself and inviting them to experience his love. Take this time to listen and look with anticipation for where God is at work.

We will also listen to God, each other, and scripture by gathering together online each Wednesday morning and evening at 7:00 AM and PM for guided prayer. This will start tomorrow morning with a special Ash Wednesday service on Facebook Live that will be repeated in the evening. This service will end with communion.

Plan to join together with your Hope family in this season of getting ready to go on a journey of a lifetime following Jesus together as his people in the next season of ministry at Hope.

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Praying at 7

April 14, 2020 /

The habits we practice give us strength in uncertain times.

Each morning we at Hope are meeting online via Facebook Live on Hope’s Facebook page to pray together for our day, community, nation, and world. All are welcome to join us.

Daily prayer guides are available for each day and may be downloaded from this page. Return here each morning to follow along as we pray.

Monday Morning Prayer (7/20)Download
Tuesday Morning Prayer (7/21)Download
Wednesday Morning Prayer (7/22)Download

Thursday Morning Prayer (7/23)

Friday Morning Prayer (7/24)Download
Sunday Morning Prayer (7/26)Download

Praying Together

April 5, 2020 /

Dear Friends,

As we journey through Holy Week at Hope we are meeting online via Facebook Live on Hope’s Facebook page. To pray together for our day, community, nation, and world. All are welcome to join as we:

Pray Together on the Sevens

7:00 AM CDT
7:00 PM CDT

The recordings of these prayer times will also be posted for those who are not able to join us in person. If you have any specific prayer requests or celebrations please send them to me at stephen@galesburghope.org

Additionally, please download the daily prayer guides to participate together in this time of prayer.

Return to this page each day to download and use them in our times of morning and evening prayer.

Looking for the latest prayer guides?

They have been moved here.

Praying on the Sevens

April 3, 2020 /

Dear Friends,

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:3-6, NIV)

In his workbook, Intercessory Life, Maxie Dunham says there are two overarching principles to our understanding of prayer. First, God is good. Second, communication with God is possible. I would add, not only is communication with God possible, he desires and invites us to pray and commune with him.

As we prepare to enter into the week we call Holy Week in the church. At Hope, we will be gathering together each day of the week to pray together. We will be praying together each morning at 7:00 am CDT and 7:00 pm CDT. 

I invite you to join us in prayer.

These prayer times will be broadcast live via Facebook live on our church’s page as well as the recordings made available for those who might have missed the prayer times.

Guides to these daily prayer times will be coming out so that we may participate together. You may also, in this time of prayer, submit your own prayer needs. Information on how to do that will be with the guides as well.

Let us come together to pray.

Stephen

Changing the Paradigm

March 26, 2020 /

love

Dear Friends,

As I practice my social distancing I have been reading and thinking a great deal about what is next for the church. In my reading I came across this quote I want to share with you:

For years, the mission of the church in the United States was largely defined in terms of offering attractive programs to retain its members, building appealing structures and services to draw new members, and participating in some type of benevolent pursuit to appease the conscience of the few individuals looking to make a difference in the world . . . recent developments have contributed to a rediscovery that the mission and purpose of the church do not stem from charting institutional health through traditional quantifiable metrics. Rather, the Church ought to understand its role primarily as a partner and co-participant in the mission of God, whose desire is to redeem humanity, restore creation, heal brokenness, and invite Christians everywhere to embrace their true identity in Christ. (Twibell 82)

Years ago I was at a church event where the host church was celebrating their opening of a children’s play area. They proudly announced how many kids in the community had come onto their turf in the last year. I commend the church for its desire to do something for the community. As I drove around the community I could not help but wonder, “Is this really what the community needed? Did they need it most on the church’s turf? What could the impact have been if they had built in another part of town and resisted the temptation to brand it with the church’s brand? What if it had been about the community rather than the church?”

I know these are hard questions, and some might even say unfair, but as a pastor, I see regularly that people are tired of our efforts to attract them to come to our events. We have lost people’s trust. They are onto our games.

And now we, the Church, have been given a great gift. We have nothing to invite them to. Our buildings are closed, our programs suspended. All we have to offer is ourselves, our love, our compassion, our concern, our generosity. We have nothing to offer but Jesus who, when saying why he came, quoted from the prophet Isaiah and said:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
(Luke 4:18-19, NIV)

I am concerned whether we are learning from the lessons this time is teaching us. What if, when we are finally released to “life as normal” we don’t go back to our old ways? What if, instead of expecting people to come to us on our terms, we went to them on theirs? What if we continued to live outside our walls seeking to find new and ever more ways to love and serve our community joining in the mission of God to “redeem humanity, restore creation, heal brokenness, and invite Christians everywhere to embrace their true identity in Christ?”

What if?

Blessings,
Stephen

SOURCE:
Twibell, Simone Mulieri. “Missional Act in Spiritual Formation: Moving Beyond Mission Trips into the Realm of Missional Living.” Missional Disciple-Making, edited by Michael J. Breen and David M. Gustafson, 3DM Publishing, 2019, pp. 82–104.

Faith Over Fear

March 24, 2020 /

A note to those who receive The Milk Can but are not part of Hope:
As we seek to understand and find the best platforms to support the people of Hope, the church Laura and I pastor, through this very unique time in our country, I have made the decision to make use of The Milk Can as a place to share and post our regular updates to our congregation. With that said, please know you will start to receive more “in house” messages than in the past, and more frequent ones. If you feel like your inbox is getting clogged please know it is okay to unsubscribe. At the bottom of every message are the instructions. Stay safe, stay well, never lose hope in the Kingdom of God. – Stephen

===

Dear Friends,

In Joshua 3 and 4 the people of Israel, after forty years of wandering in the desert, walk across the Jordan River on dry ground into the Promised Land for the first time as a nation. Before the waters returned to their flow Joshua chose twelve men to each go into the center of the river and carry out a large rock. These stones were set up as a memorial to future generations of God’s faithfulness to his people. Faith is not an abstract wish or unfounded hope that things will become better. Faith is founded in experience. When future generations were tempted to question if God really cared about his people they could always look back to the twelve stones to remind them that their faith in God had a solid foundation. At least that was the plan. We know that in a short while the people lost their memory of God and turned to their own ways. They doubt the God who delivered them and placed their dependence in other nations, other gods, and themselves.

Daily we hear the message that these are unprecedented times for our nation. I do believe these are unprecedented times for these generations, but they are not unprecedented times for our nation and for humanity. We have faced times of scarcity in the past. We have felt the weariness and tension of extended anxiety. We have felt helpless before. We have faced sickness and death. We have known darkness, fear, and doubt. And we have experienced hope and light on the other side. We have known that God is good and loving. 

I believe, part of the challenge we are facing today, as a nation, is that we have lost the collective memory of the faithfulness of God. The twelve stones have become worn with time and their story forgotten that God is faithful in the days, weeks, months, and years of waiting. I know we all want to get back to normal. I believe we are only just beginning this journey through darkness. There are those, though, who can teach us how to walk it. Some around us have stories to tell us. To give us hope. Many refugees know what it is like to suffer long and experience the provision of God. Families who have sent their sons and daughters off to war know the unrelenting anxiety and worry waiting for that which they dread the most. They can teach us the experience of joy in the morning and God’s mercy in loss. And there are others who can teach us. Perhaps even you have a story you would be willing to share with others of faith in the darkest of times?

Before I close this message I want to suggest one book to you to read. The book is The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. It is a story of hard faith in the long dark days of WWII.

Blessings,
Stephen

Keeping Our Balance

March 17, 2020 /

 

Have you noticed we live in a world of outrage? Each one of us is tempted by the pull to say we are right and that the other person is wrong. I can easily let my mind fill with frustration. Particularly when it involves things of the church.

Over the past few weeks, I have been making use of a practice the church has used since the 5th century. Praying a simple prayer of centering and meditation. When I am frustrated, when I do not have the answer, when I feel like my rights are being ignored, when I feel wronged and when I feel stressed I pray this prayer over and over:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

It is called “The Jesus Prayer,” and it reminds me that Jesus is my source and my presence in his kingdom is not because of my wisdom or self-righteousness but because of his mercy. And because he has been merciful to me maybe I can be merciful towards others.

Right now, many of us are feeling overwhelmed and without answers. I invite to you pray this prayer with me:

That’s what I have been doing…praying for you

March 10, 2020 /
blue door

“Lord, teach us to pray . . .”

Something about the way Jesus prayed was different. His disciples had ever heard anyone pray as he prayed. They wanted to pray like that.

Jesus answers his disciples’ question by teaching them the prayer we today call The Lord’s Prayer. At the end of the prayer, his teaching continues:

“So I say to you:
     Ask and it will be given to you;
     Seek and you will find;
     Knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Luke 11:9-10).

I am tempted to want to read these three statements as a “how-to to get what you want from God strategy” and miss that Jesus is telling me about how to be in relationship with the father. Jesus prays like no one else because he is in relationship with the father like no one else and he invites us to join him. He tells us when we pray to ask, to seek, to knock.

Ask. Why don’t we ask? We are worried that we might ask for the wrong thing or ask in the wrong way. When I put my request before God I do so knowing he is a good father. He will not turn my request for bread into a scorpion nor will he give me that which I do not need or is harmful to me, even if I ask for it. Allow me to illustrate what I mean. Your young child may ask for a drink of the hot tea you just brewed for yourself. The request itself is a good request, but as the parent, you know the scalding water will burn their mouth. So what do you do? You pour a little into a glass and add an ice cube, or you give them something else to drink entirely. Jesus says, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:13). I am tempted to point out that the Holy Spirit is not what I asked for but then I see that He may not be what I asked for but he is what I need.

Seek. When I want something I can spend hundreds of hours searching the crevices of the world to find just the right item. But when it comes to God I cannot be bothered to read my bible, to pray, and to look for his work in my life and the lives of those around me. I often do not see God because I am not seeking him. Seek, he is to be found.

Knock. In his autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton describes the night he came to the Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky to stay:

Then I saw that high familiar spire. I rang the bell at the gate. It let fall a dull, unresonant note inside the empty court . . . Nobody came. I could hear somebody moving around inside the Gatehouse. I did not ring again. Presently, the window opened, and Brother Matthew looked out between the bars, with his clear eyes and greying beard. “Hullo, Brother,” I said. He recognized me, glanced at the suitcase and said: “This time have you come to stay?” “Yes, Brother, if you’ll pray for me,” I said. Brother nodded, and raised his hand to close the window.

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, “praying for you.”

We are surprised to hear that our good father is waiting on the other side of the door. He is not like the neighbor who would be angry with us for waking him at 3 am, rather he is waiting with bread baked and the table set eagerly anticipating our knock and to welcome us in.

When I come to the table of communion each week, I am reminded that he is a good father who desires for us to come and stay in his house, in his kingdom. So I ask, I seek, I knock, and I experience his welcome.

Blessings,
Stephen.

NOTES:

  • Merton, Thomas. The Seven Storey Mountain (pp. 407-408). HMH Books. Kindle Edition.
  • Giving Credit: The basic concept for this post is inspired by the “Listen to Him” Lenton resources from Seedbed Publishing.

Are we listening?

March 3, 2020 /

Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter would answer, “God’s Messiah.” About eight days later Jesus would take Peter, James, and John with him to the top of a mountain. While there Jesus would be transfigured by the glory of God and the voice of God would say, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him” (Luke 9:35). The answer to the question of who Jesus is is answered by God the father. He is the beloved son of God, and because of this, he is worthy of being listened to and followed. The story draws us into the question Jesus asked his disciples “Who do you say that I am?” How would you answer the question? How we answer the question will determine whether we will listen to Jesus and in what areas of our life we consider him to be an authority.

Is Jesus your eternal life insurance policy? When the time of your death comes you pull him out of the safe and submit the paperwork to Peter at the gate to get in.

Is Jesus your first responder? Whenever there is a crisis, someone is sick, you give him a call and he comes running with lights flashing and sirens blaring to rescue you.

Is Jesus your defense lawyer? When you have messed up, gotten caught, you give him a call to come and make things right with the judge and hopefully get you off, even if it means a little backroom deal is made with the judge.

Is he Jesus Prime? The one go online to whenever you need something. You place your order and within twenty-four hours your new 105″ tv arrives.

Is Jesus your lord and savior? Is he the one who spoke creation into being and holds everything together by his will. Is he the source and sustainer of life?

How we answer this question will determine in what areas of our life we will listen to Jesus and follow him as he says. Let me try to illustrate this. We would all take a little investing advice from Warren Buffett, but we would never think to ask him to tell us how to throw a football. Of course, if Payton Manning offered us some tips we would listen intently, though we might not care too much about what he has to say about index mutual funds.

Every one of us are tempted to compartmentalize Jesus in the same way. When we do so, we decide what areas of life Jesus has wisdom and authority in and what areas are outside of his knowledge. If Jesus is our first responder we may call to him when we are sick or in a crisis, but when he calls us to a new way of being, a new life of holiness following him, we will say, “Jesus, stay in your lane.” Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you” and we are tempted to question what he really knows about relationships in today’s digital age. He says, “Do not worry about tomorrow, do not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy.” and we say “What do you know about 401k accounts and do you not know the new iPhone that just came out?” Jesus says, “Follow me.” And we say, “could I please have the itinerary of my life in advance so that I can review it and make any necessary changes to ensure the purpose you have for me will give me fulfillment?”

When Jesus says that he is the “way, the truth, and the life . . . ” (John 14:6) he is saying more than he is the means by which we get into heaven. He is saying he is the way to live and be in every area of life. Jesus says he and his way is the authority. He is our example, and he says to each one of us “Come and follow me.” If he is our example for life, then it would be good to listen to what he has to say. If we are going to listen to Jesus, we have to hear him. If we are going to hear him we must eliminate the distractions and noises in our life that keep us from hearing him. The season of Lent is a time for each one of us to examine our lives and to strip away the noises we have allowed in our life that keep us from hearing Jesus. What is it that is keeping you from hearing Jesus?

Blessings,
Stephen


Giving Credit: The basic concept for this post is inspired by the “Listen to Him” Lenton resources from Seedbed Publishing.

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