Mark Scholten

Albert Camus in his one act play No Exit famously said that ‘Hell is other people.’  Forever bound to other fallen people who all want to be in control and therefore ignite perpetual conflict is mental torture. So, other people can seem like hell. Perhaps. But hell is also loneliness. Having no vital connection with anyone, being all alone in a dark and fright-filled world can be excruciating.  We, as God’s image bearers, are made for communion with other image bearers.  We are to know others and be known by them.  To be in fellowship with each other. We  hunger for deep, intimate, interpersonal relationship with others.

Speech connects us to other people. Words convey our heart and mind  Verbal communication can minister to others. It can help them to understand themselves and to navigate through their journey.  Journey where?  Their journey back to God.

We are all lost and trying to do the best that we can, In our fallen world.  We are all seeking directions with our temptations, weaknesses, brokenness without a map. We are empty and confused. As we flail amidst the great waves, we tend to drag other underneath the water with us. But, the gospel is a life jacket. It provides us the map, the solution. It leads us to Jesus in whom is life and that life is the light of men (John 1:4).

We can share the life jacket. So, other people can point to heaven! Knowing these people, those sanctified by the grace of God and living the heavenly life now, can be a taste of heaven. Our words should  minister grace to each other. “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths,  but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).

It is true that our words can carry the power of death, and often have. “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell” (James 3:6).” Words can be a scourge.  We are painfully aware of the lash of biting and hateful words.  It is hell!

But life is also in the power of the tongue.  Wise, compassionate, gracious words bring healing. “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (Proverbs 16:24).  Can you think of a conversation that breathed life into your soul?

How do you use your words? Do that bring life, help, healing, grace – heaven? Or do they tend toward death?  To you build deep, lasting friendships with your words, or do you burn bridges?

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21). He a slice of heaven to other people.

“(T)he Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). We are made in the image and likeness of God and God exists in a community of persons. We are created for community and it is painful to be alone. Fred Rogers invited everyone to be his neighbor and his friend.

“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood

A beautiful day for a neighbor

Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

“Neighbors are people who are close to us

And friends are people who are close to our hearts

I like to think of you as my neighbor and my friend.”

Sin separates us from God but our rebellion also divides us from each other. Guilt and shame so control us that we cower behind relational barriers for self-protection. For we fear understandable rejection if we are truly known.  We build our walls and nurture our loneliness and feed our fear of being fully known and completely rejected. We often settle for mere acquaintances or virtual likes and painfully struggle to build true friendships. We can exist with mere casual kindness and therefore not risk being more fully known and rejected.

The grace based community that God builds draws us out from behind our lonely walls.  In true Christian fellowship we are known, warts and all, and still loved and accepted by grace. Knowing this divine, unmerited favor we gradually invest in true, grace-driven friendships We are rescued, nurtured, discipled, and befriended by grace in the church community.  But, that is where most of us stop. We enjoy friendship and acceptance within the church – our guilt, shame, and loneliness are healed, but we do not invite others to join us and to venture out from behind their walls of guilt and shame.

Church growth is really the expansion of the grace community. It is growing our fellowship by inviting neighbors and friends to enter in.

How can I invite friends and neighbor to my church community? First, have friends, and know your neighbors. Be friendly, help a neighbor, invite them to dinner. Get to know them. Allow them to get to know you. Start open-ended spiritual conversations. “I love my church; where do you worship?” “The grace and kindness of God has held me through so many trials.” “My pastor is the best. Isn’t it great to have pastor?” “Have you heard the good news?”

Invite them closer to you. Build trust. Offer a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. Make plans to have your lives increasingly overlap. Deepen the friendship. Then, invite them to a church event – a fellowship meal, a questions dinner, a Bible study, a small group, a worship service, a prayer meeting. Talk them through it beforehand, hold their hand through it, and debrief with them afterward. Calm their fears. Answer their questions. Bear their burdens.  The closer they grow to you the more of Christ they should see in you. I call this the grace/friendship offensive of hospitality! It is simply the Great Commission in personal terms. Fred Rogers was right, it is a beautiful day for a neighbor.

Who am I? We are the only creatures asking that question and our Creator is the only one who can answers it. Rabbits, Robins, and Redfish do not question who they might be. They simply live as Rabbits, Robins and Redfish.  And they glorify their creator God by being what they were created to be. Simple. But we, the fallen sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, have made it complicated.  We refuse to joyfully live as dependent creatures needing a word from God to define and fulfill us.  We now seek to change our created identity and become as God.

Who am I? We now try to answer that question with the broken and insufficient tools of our fallen, limited reason. We do not accept our Creator’s answer. We seek to “find” ourselves. We think, self must be fulfilled and my desires satisfied. We choose our own path and re-invent our created selves. 

Justin Anthony Kennedy once claimed, wrongly, “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence.”  That was Satan’s successful strategy in the Garden of Eden. “Don’t be content with what God says you are. Go your own way! Make your own rules!” Today, that that focus  constitutes a false gospel. “Be true to yourself.” “Look within for answers.” “Follow your heart.” “Be uniquely you – however you might define it.” If you listen closely, you can hear the tempter’s voice: “don’t let anyone tell you what to believe, or what to do, or limit who you are.” “Follow me, heed me, submit to me, conform to my voice and be independent. Be authentically you!” And so we deny reality and run from our created glory.

Have you seen toddlers who think they are birds? They jump off the picnic table fully expecting to fly! But facts are stubborn things and reality teaches them a painful lesson. 

Who are we really? God says we are made in His image, fallen in Adam, redeemed in Christ. We are dependent servants, safe in His hands, guided by His purpose, and becoming more like Jesus.

“I would rather be 

What God chose to make me, 

Than the most glorious creature 

That I could think of.

For to have been thought about— 

Born in God’s thoughts— 

And then made by God,

Is the dearest, 

Grandest, 

Most precious thing 

In all thinking.” 

― George MacDonald, Essential Poems*

When you commit to walking with God through faith in Jesus Christ he promises to give you a hard time. “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). But I don’t want to be  persecuted!. “Share in suffering as a good solider of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). But I don’t want to suffer! 

Why does God sent the hard into our lives? Why are trials, sickness, heartbreak on the menu in God’s restaurant and why must I eat there? “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). 

Francis Schaeffer said the the modern church want personal peace and affluence. We want to go to heaven “on flowery beds of ease.” But God’s pathway to paradise takes us through difficult twists and painful turns.  Why? 

Many reasons could be given. God allows pain and suffering to confront us with our sin, or to strengthen our faith in God’s provision and comfort, or to equip us to comfort others when they suffer with the comfort that we ourselves have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), to name but a few. I will narrow the focus on two reasons: it strengthens our faith and makes us more like Jesus. 

One essential target in the Christian life is become more like Jesus Christ. Suffering shapes us. Trusting the Father in the hard of life makes us look like Jesus. Trusting God when there is no known answer and no immediate relief is pure, undiluted faith.  “In this (salvation) you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith … may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).  God is present in your trials, proving, to you, the strength of and reality of your object of faith. Job trusted God in the hard until the questions and confusion overwhelmed him. But then God spoke to him, restored and comforted him. God is helpfully with you in the hard.

Our suffering is both informative and formative – it teach us the strength and power of true faith, and it can form Christ in us. Even our Jesus was made complete through suffering. “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10).

We do not desire the hard, but we should envy the result. A purified and strengthened  faith and a likeness to Jesus. Embrace the hard, trust the Lord, and God will make you shine.

 

Has God given us one message or two? Do we have one story to tell unbelievers and another to believers? Is the gospel intended for them or for us?

I recently read a radical thought from John Leonard in “Get Real.” We should disciple unbelievers and evangelize believers. Now that seems backwards. And it certainly is against conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom is only good at conventions.

God has given us one message for all mankind. It is the Good news of what God has done for us in Christ. We all must embrace the grace and wisdom given to us in Jesus.  We assume that Evangelism, with its 5 or 6 isolated texts, is for those outside the church, and discipleship – learning or training – targets those inside the church. Evangelism is for unbelievers and discipleship is for believers.  Yes, that is true as far as it goes. But, it doesn’t go far enough.

In Matthew 28 we are commanded to make disciples of all nations. We are to disciple the unbelieving nations. We must teach them to walk with God in God’s world. In the United States, a basic, Christian understanding of the world, of marriage, of right and wrong, could be assumed 70 years ago. Not anymore.  The unbelieving world needs to be taught the basics to even understand the gospel.  They no longer think in Christian Categories. They need to be discipled, and taught.

Believers, too, never grow beyond the good news. We go deeper into it; we value it more and treasure what God has done for us. But we never mature beyond the simple gospel. Perhaps we have been taught to see the gospel as our ticket into the church, but once in, we can throw away the ticket.  Not so.  If you picture your growth in sanctification as so many rooms in the house of your salvation that must now be cleaned; the gospel is the key that unlocks every room. The law is the light that allows you to see the dust bunnies, and the gospel is the duster.

We must be reminded of who we are in Christ and the power at work within us. The gospel is not only good news once, it is good news for us every day, and as we seek to clean every room. Believers, and unbelievers, need discipleship through the gospel.

It is a brand new year! Everything is fresh, unspoiled and the possibilities are endless.  This is a time for new beginnings – a time to make some needed changes! Or, so we think. Is the New Year really a great time to make personal improvements? Yes, and no. Last year is not really any different from this year. The earth merely completed another orbit around the sun. You basic convictions have not changed. The major influences in your life are not altered. Are they?  

If I were to ask you who is the major influence in your life what would you say?  You might say “Jesus,” or “The Bible,” because I am a pastor and that is the expected answer.  But think about it for a minute. Really think. Perhaps you might mention an author that you read, a parent or grandparent that really loved you, or a friend, etc.  But, I think that answer lies closer to home. You are you own greatest influencer.  Your ‘self-talk’ determines your choices in life as well as if you will ever change for the better.

There is something of a slogan in Biblical Counseling circles. “What is your problem? You are. And that means there is hope.” In more directly Biblical terms, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts,… envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23). You are your own worst enemy. And yet, you can become your own best friend.

Have you examined your self-talk lately? What do you say to yourself doubt God and yourself? What you really believe about you – your weaknesses, abilities, limitations, or vast potential – largely determines the course and trajectory of your life. “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).

You are in a continuous conversation with yourself, analyzing and interpreting past events, your present circumstances, and determining what you should do, or say, next.  Your self-talk is the command and control center of your life.  So, how do you talk to yourself?  Do you spend your thought-life defending and excusing your past behavior and generating excuses for your future failures? Or, do you speak truth, and then grace to yourself? What do you tell yourself about God, the others around you, and your present circumstances? Is your conversation grace-based, God-centered, and gospel infused? Do you regularly remind yourself of the beauty and loving kindness of your God and your need of and delight in Him? Do you include Him in on your conversations?

Put God back in the center of your thinking. Have Him as the substance of your self-conversation. Romans 12:2 commands, “be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.” Do that, and you will have a Happy New Year!

Exodus 10:21 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.”

Darkness often symbolizes fear, lostness, evil. Think pitch black, or the black of night, or ‘and it was night’.  But, here we have darkness so dread that you can sense it. Thick tangible frightening darkness. Have you ever felt the darkness?  Perhaps your mind travels to some troubling tragic past event. To you, that was darkness. It was sad, and depressing, scary; almost evil.  That is what we think of as felt darkness.

Darkness, in a nutshell, describes life in a fallen world. Sin and darkness ride tandem and we are moving fast and descending continually.  We live in a dark, sin filled world. But ….

Jesus announced in John 8:12, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  As we follow Jesus we forsake the darkness and so walk in the light.  We no longer stumble in the dark.

Jesus is the light of the world. He enlightens every man. John 1:8, “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.”  Take a guided tour of the mysterious caves of Kentucky. Once in the deepest, darkest section they will turn off the lights so you can experience true darkness. After a minute you are disorientated and cannot see your hand in front of your face. The lights go on and the darkness flees. 

We live in moral and spiritual darkness.  Violence, greed, self-righteousness, racism, and evil are everywhere. We are all part of the problem, suffer from it, and we can do nothing to fix it.  We need the light of the world to enlighten us. Jesus is the light of the world and he has given us light to dispel the darkness.

Into a dark world walks Jesus as a lighted candle. Everyone’s attention is drawn irresistibly to the his light.  Jesus lights the candle of one, then another. More light. Then they pass the light to the next and so on. Soon, the world is filling with light and all can now see.  This growing brightness dispels the lingering darkness. In his light, we see light.

Now we, believers, are the light of the world. Matthew 5:14, 16, “You are the light of the world… let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” So share the light. Enlighten others with the message of Christmas. Behold the night is over, the light has come. Praise God!