Authority To Serve - How I realized I was insecure because of my pride.

The well's been a little dry, folks. I promise there have been three days between last week and this where I pulled up Blogger to write. All three times, I sat there looking at the cursor, thinking about Billy Crystal at the beginning of Throw Mama From The Train. "The night was... moist..."

Somewhere, at some time, I developed this idea of the Press as a serious source of theological thought. But the name of the blog itself should remind me I'm just a dude. 'Am-ha'aretz, ordinary and unlearned. Not every post is going to make you weep with its depth of sensitivity and thought. Sometimes I like to post Judas Priest videos.

And that's okay.

But sometimes I hang myself up on the thought of how much people like me. Of course I assume people like me less than they do in real life. But the idea, the thought, will drive me to do what I think will make you all like me more. Which probably makes me less likable in the end.

And, if you can believe it, I know this spiral happens because of my pride. I sit at the bar in my head talking to the Me I think I am and say, "People should see how great I am. You've got to do a better job letting them know."

Before the apostles were "the apostles", they were "the disciples". In Luke 9:1-2, Jesus gave his disciples authority to minister to people. This is pretty early in the book. The disciples sometimes found themselves in the same pride/insecurity cycle I've ridden all week. They argue over who is the greatest among them while they're walking next to God incarnate. Two of them want Jesus to guarantee places of honor and respect, so they have their mom ask him for it. I mean, really, would you have your mom ask your boss to give you a promotion?

But Jesus had given them authority to minister. He knew they were ordinary and flawed. So when they were proud, he reminded them greatness is found in serving people. Greatness is in humility. The cycle should rotate the other way. If we think we're great, our greatness should motivate us to minister to others. To serve them in their need.

By minister, I don't mean simply preaching or imparting wisdom (although that can certainly be a part of it). Luke 9:1-2 described it as healing people, releasing them from spiritual bondage, and telling people about the kingdom of God. In the next chapter, the disciples return and say, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" And Jesus tells them, "Hey guys, that's great, but don't rejoice in your authority. Pride caused Satan to fall. Rejoice in the fact you know me and have salvation." That was my paraphrase, but you get it.

Jesus gave the disciples authority, but they were proud screw ups. Did that mean he didn't want to them to keep ministering? Did they need a week of paralyzing self-doubt to get their heads straight? No, guys. That doesn't work for, like, anyone.

A friend of mine once said, "You don't have to have everything figured out in order to help other people. It's okay if you're only a step ahead of where they are. Help them make that next step."

So, my apologies for standing still. In the future, if we're going to stand around, we may as well watch some YouTube together.

Pray Quickly - Understanding how to bear one another's burdens effectively

Throughout my years as a Christian, I've participated in a lot of prayer circles. We gather around, share our requests, then pray for each other. Sometimes we call dibs on requests ("I'll pray for Tony's ear thing."), other times we pray as we're lead. If there's a recognized leader, he or she might dictate who opens and closes the time of prayer. Often, the leader chooses one of those spots. The point is, I've done this at least a thousand times in fifty different ways.

Recently, I've thought about one consistent element to prayer circles, and that's the person who unloads all of what they're going through as their request. Now, before you think me heartless, I should say how I really do care about the person's struggle. I feel compassion for their suffering. But my gut reaction says, "I don't need to hear this." When it comes to praying for others, I find my prayers don't much change even after I've been educated on the back-story of the request.

If I'm honest, though, my attitude has tipped toward never wanting to hear about a person's struggles. And I already know it's incorrect. Scripture talks about holding each other accountable. It also tells us to comfort each other. I especially think of Galatians 6:2, which says, "Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ."

My attitude developed slowly during years of prayer circles and other times of ministry. For example, when I was sixteen, I read somewhere that the Greek translation of Galatians 6:2 intended people to bear one another's burdens as if it were their backpack. Literally take on their struggles and give them a break for a while. At the time, I lead worship for six hundred teenagers a week, and some of them would talk to me as if I were their pastor. Seriously, I wish I had never heard some of those things. I remember telling one girl she didn't need the spiritual advice of a teenager, she needed to go to the police. But misunderstanding Galatians 6:2, I kept trying to carry more and more backpacks. One day, I found I couldn't walk with that weight anymore.

I've learned a few things since then. First, I was wrong to take on those burdens the way I had. In a sense, I was trying to be Jesus for those people. But Jesus has already taken on the price and the weight of that evil when he died on the cross. Those people didn't get much help from me in the long run and I ended up wearing myself out.

Second, I never balanced Galatians 6:2 with other verses like 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." Yes, I'm supposed to show compassion and care for people who are suffering, but not out of my own power. I need to first receive comfort from God so I can share it with people who need it.

All that said, I still think it best to pray quickly for people in the setting of a prayer circle. The faster we pray, the sooner we give the burden to God, the quicker we see His peace come into the situation. After that, we can listen to their story. It might even change the way they tell it.

A Simple Guide to Overdoing the Great Commission.

Whenever pastors talk about missions, they will almost certainly talk about the Great Commission. Jesus gave this last command to His disciples before ascending into Heaven. In Acts 1:8, He says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” And in Matthew 28:19-20, He adds, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Growing up hearing this from pastors most of my life, I could tell early on how much they liked preaching this sermon. It was easy. They could recite Jesus’ command, tap their finger on the page, and then point that finger at the congregation. “You are all missionaries,” they’d say. I liked that. The phrase “a missionary in your own backyard” had a snappy ring to it. It lit a fire in me to raise money for faceless, starving children. Raising money from the neighbors up and down my street helped the children and let the block know that I loved Jesus. I truly was a missionary in my own backyard. Once, I even stood up with a Bible in my first grade class when my teacher had mentioned a certain crisis that existed in the world.

And then I got my ass kicked for five years. Although some of the kids in my school were pretty ruthless, I don’t think they were actively persecuting me for my beliefs. I get the feeling that I pissed something off in the spiritual realm.

The first part of Acts 1:8 should demand our attention. Jesus told His disciples not to spread the gospel until they had received power from the Holy Spirit. Some people have told me that Jesus said to because the signs and wonders brought by the Holy Spirit would make God’s power evident to people hearing the gospel. I suppose that’s true. Paul said in 1 Corinthians the signs were used to show the message through God’s power and not human wisdom. I think there’s something else to it, though. They needed His guidance.

In Acts 16, Paul and his companions are out on one of their missionary journeys. In verses 6 and 7, “They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; and after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them.” If people stopped to think about this, they might find it outrageous. “What? Didn’t God want the gospel preached there as well?” I think so, but through others and at a different time. The people in Galatia formed a pretty significant church. Paul’s letter to them may be one of my favorite epistles.

But this wasn’t the kind of mission trip where kids all wear the same T-shirts and build schools for impoverished communities. A lot people wanted to kill Paul and his buddies. Even in the cities he did visit, he faced riots and imprisonment and attempts on his life. But God miraculously saved him every time. Why? Because Paul went exactly where the Holy Spirit led him to go. He went into large, influential cities (cities, I should mention, that had more local authority to keep villagers from skewering the apostles) and shared the gospel to as many people as possible. This allowed others to share the gospel in turn with a common language and mutual history. “Hey Pete. Did you hear about that riot in town? You’ll never guess what this guy was saying to the people.” Voila! Ministry time. God put Paul in specific places to set other people in motion. His job wasn’t to save the whole world. I’d imagine that job would be very exhausting. And it would not have allowed more leadership to rise in the church. But people think that is their job. Save the whole world one backyard at a time.

For any of us who want to spread the gospel through full-time ministry (I wonder what “part-time ministry” means), we should consider this pattern. As we seek to do God’s work, we should listen for His voice and follow the direction He gives us. Otherwise we might take on burdens that are not ours and in turn place those burdens on our families and loved ones. I’m not saying that ministry never involves pain or sacrifice or hard choices that affect others. I mean to say we would do better to have God show us who to reach and then help them reach others. That way we don’t end up in Bithynia wondering why nobody’s listening or why those people over there are picking up heavy rocks.

What Do You Mean "It's A Ministry"?

For the past few months, or maybe two weeks after I started this weblog, I've viewed my writing here as exercise. Between writing my new book and a graphic novel (you heard me), I write about something completely unrelated just to stay in shape, so to speak. Sometimes those other projects have peripheral subjects that inspire the posts, but are otherwise unrelated. The point is, I very rarely think about 'Am-ha'aretz Press as serious ministry.

This has begun to change, though. When I realized that my parents weren't the only people paying attention, I had a sudden understanding of my responsibility. Recently, I've received emails and phone calls from people in Chicago, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, and Finland all saying how God spoke to them through my weblog.

I want to take this a little more seriously. Not to say I'll be writing here every day. I can't promise that. But I'm inviting you into the process. Here's how. Many of my posts and other writings come as a result of questions raised in conversation. But I live around a lot of busy and driven people, so I spend much of my day alone. (You may have noticed that I don't have a lot of posts. I keep telling myself that quality trumps quantity.) If you have any questions or subjects that you would like me to address, please leave a comment. I'm almost certain that you don't need an account to do so. Adam did this once and it inspired one of my favorite posts.

That's all I wanted to say for now. God has been kicking my ass over a few things, and I'm sure I'll have more to say after we work through some of it. Until then, don't be afraid to tell me you love me.