How Would Spending 3 Years With Jesus Change Your Life?

What if you had just spent the last three years of your life with Jesus, as one of his first disciples? You've spent every day watching Jesus reach out to the outcast sinners and forgive them, heal the sick, teach about the kingdom of God, and challenge your thinking with parable. You've worshiped with him, worried about his clashes with the religious establishment, and wondered just what kind of Rabbi or Messiah he really is. Then, just when you think you have it figured out, Jesus is arrested, tried, and crucified. But before you write off the disappointment as a lost dream, Jesus once again turns everything you thought you knew inside out when he reappears alive – after his dead, battered body had been placed in a tomb.

How would spending those three years with Jesus change your life? How could it not change your life?

The late Michael Spencer asked this question on Internet Monk several years ago. He warned that this might not be for everybody, but it’s a good way of exploring how to incorporate the Gospel into our every-day living. 

“The key to this exercise is the idea of seeing the integration of life, ministry, teaching, priorities, worship and relationships in the life of Jesus…. [It’s] not what conclusions would I draw, but HOW WOULD I BE DIFFERENT? What would I see differently? How would I conceive of life, priorities and the continuing Jesus movement?”

At the time I first wrestled with the question (I revisit it regularly), I was beginning the third year of reading the Bible from beginning to end. It made me pay even more attention to the accounts of Jesus in the Gospels – not a romanticized, sanitized, or otherwise edited Jesus, but the unadulterated Jesus with his acts of love and forgiveness, hard sayings and genuine, non-hypocritical living and all. I realized there were a lot of things I'd grown too comfortable in accepting. 

I'm continually re-discovering the Jesus who attracted me back to church after I had left as a young adult because I thought it was too hypocritical and not particularly relevant to my life. “Continually re-discovering” is a polite way of saying I keep finding myself becoming a little too comfortable with things that should be disturbing me if I’m truly a disciple of Jesus.

In her book Evolving in Monkey Town, Rachel Held Evans described her experiences re-reading the Gospels after struggling with some hard questions she didn't find good answers for:  

The most startling thing I noticed as I grew more acquainted with the Gospels was that Jesus had a very different view of faith than the one to which I was accustomed…. 

I encountered a different Jesus, a Jesus who requires more from me than intellectual assent and emotional allegiance; a Jesus who associated with sinners and infuriated the religious; a Jesus who broke the rules and refused to cast the first stone; a Jesus who gravitated toward sick people and crazy people, homeless people and hopeless people; a Jesus who preferred story to exposition and metaphor to syllogism; a Jesus who answered questions with more questions, and demands for proof with demands for faith…a Jesus who healed each person differently and saved each person differently; a Jesus who had no list of beliefs to check off, no doctrinal statements to sign, no surefire way to tell who was “in” and who was “out”; a Jesus who loved after being betrayed, healed after being hurt, and forgave while being nailed to a tree; a Jesus who asked his disciples to do the same…

This radical Jesus wanted to live not only in my heart and in my head but also in my hands, as I fed the hungry, reached out to my enemies, healed the sick, and comforted the lonely. Being a Christian, it seemed, isn't about agreeing to a certain way; it is about embodying a certain way. It is about living as an incarnation of Jesus, as Jesus lived as an incarnation of God. It is about being Jesus. 

Jesus has a way of pulling us out of our complacency, challenging us to live the Gospel, not just acknowledge it or put it up on the wall to save for some future judgment day. 

So, if you had just spent the last three years of your life with Jesus, how would that change your life? How would you be different?

If you had just spent your life witnessing Jesus’ ministry among the marginalized (the sinners) and hearing Jesus speak of the kingdom of God, how would that affect your priorities in life?

How would that change the way you see the political and social hot-button issues of today?

Happy Easter!

Jesus Creed Question for the Week, March 24 (Palm Sunday)

We're moving into the sixth AND FINAL week of our Lenten study based on Scot McKnight's The Jesus Creed. Our middle and high school youth are using The Jesus Creed for Students while the adults are using 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed.

Before we get to the questions to ponder this week, HERE'S A REMINDER FOR NEXT SUNDAY (EASTER):

On Easter Sunday, youth and adults will meet in the Family Room to share breakfast and talk about our experiences in studying the Jesus Creed. 

Here are some questions we might talk about:
What did you enjoy most in this study?
What did you find the most challenging?
What does it mean to you to love God with ALL your mind, heart, soul, strength?
What does it mean to love our neighbors? Who are they?
What do you want to take from this study into your everyday life?

We hope you can all make it on Sunday. But if you can't, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

And now, here are This Week’s Questions for Discussion:
(Things to talk about with your family)

• How does it feel to know that you are what others see of Jesus in this world?
• How does that affect the way you live each day?

This Week’s Suggested Follow-up Activities: 
(Additional actions you can try if you feel led)

• Recite the Jesus Creed and the Lord’s prayer daily.
• Make a list of ways you can be a part of God’s work on earth (ministry) right now. 
• Pick something from that list and talk about how you can start doing that now.

Why would God send Jesus as a sacrifice to die for our sins?

This begins Holy Week. Many of us would prefer to fast forward from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday) to his resurrection on Easter Sunday, skipping the parts in between where Jesus is captured, mocked, whipped, brutalized, and nailed to a cross. But if we stop and linger, some tough questions arise, the kind that tend to pop up the first time someone really stops to think about the events leading up to Easter. 

Why would God send Jesus as a sacrifice to die for our sins? If God is indeed all-loving and all-powerful, why not just offer grace and forgiveness without the sacrifice? Why would God choose to sacrifice the one who embodied God among us, the one who led a sinless life?

The answer often falls along these lines: We all have sinned – every human from Adam and Eve on down. On our own, we fall short of God’s holiness and righteousness. In order to overcome the barrier of sin that separates us from God, we need either a sacrifice (pointing to the laws in Leviticus that call for sacrifices for various sins) or a mediator (the priest who offers the sacrifice). God sent Jesus to be the ultimate sacrifice for all of our sins. Jesus carried all of our sins with him on the cross in his death. And then he defeated the forces of sin and death in his resurrection. 

There’s a theological term for that: substitutionary atonement. There are variations on the theme (which you can find by searching the term or the question “why did Jesus have to die for our sins”), but they all boil down to the same thing: Jesus had to die for our sins if we are to escape the righteous judgment of God.  

I didn’t know the term “substitutionary atonement” existed until a couple of years ago, even though I’ve heard “Jesus died for our sins” for as long as I can remember. Many branches of Christianity see it as the central meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross. 

Key passages used to support the theology that Jesus died for our sins include:

• Isaiah 52:13-53:12 – Isaiah talks of the suffering servant who died because “it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer… [to make] his life an offering for sin.”
• 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 – Paul writes that Jesus “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” and that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
• Luke 4:16-22 – Jesus says the prophesies of Isaiah are fulfilled in him, although the passage he reads here is about proclaiming the good news to the poor, healing the blind, and freeing the oppressed, not dying for our sins.
• 1 Peter 2:21-25 and 1 Peter 3:13-22 – Peter writes that Jesus died for our sins so we might die from sins, be healed, and live in righteousness.

This theology is not without controversy because it emphasizes the demand for reparation or punishment for violating the law (sin), rather than love, as driving force in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It also raises questions about our view of God as all-loving and all-powerful. Does a loving God really insist on the sacrifice of an innocent person (albeit God in the flesh) to fulfill the laws God made? Why is an all-powerful God tied to the laws God created? 

I found another perspective in Christian Piatt’s book Banned Questions About Jesus, a follow-up to Banned Questions About the Bible. The responses to three related questions(1) contend that Jesus died because of human sins, not to take the place of our sins. 

Jarrod McKenna suggests that the question has it backwards. 

“The gospel is not that some deity takes out its rage on an innocent victim so he doesn’t have to take it out on all of us eternally…. God doesn’t need blood. God doesn’t need a mediator. We do!”

“…The lamb of God is NOT offered to God by humanity but is God offered to us to enable a new humanity. God is reconciling the world… through Christ by knowingly becoming our victim, exposing this idolatrous system that promises order, safety, peace, and protection in exchange for victims.” [p. 4]

The argument is that God seeks repentance, not reparation or punishment, from us. “Thus the loving example of Jesus effects a change in the heart of humankind, bringing about such repentance.” [Lee Camp, p. 3]

Jesus’ ministry was about more than becoming a sacrifice on the cross. Jesus forgave people for their sins while he was still alive and he preached the gospel while he was still alive. Rather than dying as “some kind of punishment or restitution”, David Lose says “Jesus suffered because the love and forgiveness he offered was just too comprehensible and terrifying for us to accept.” He concludes:

“From this point of view, Jesus didn’t ‘have to’ suffer and die, but he did so anyway in order to show us just how much God loves us. He suffered because he proclaimed God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness, and until you’ve lost everything, there’s nothing more terrifying to hear.” [p. 21]

Here are some questions, based on Banned Questions About Jesus, to ponder:
Do you believe God required Jesus' sacrifice in order for God to forgive sin?
Which do you think is more consistent with the gospel as you know it: a system of justice, where every sin must be counted and punished, or a system of love, where God forgives us because God loves us and we forgive each other because we love each other?
Is it possible to have love without justice?


(1) Why would God send Jesus as the sacrificial lamb…? [p. 2-8]
Why did Jesus have to suffer so much before he died? [p. 21-24]
How could Jesus forgive people for their sins before he died if he had to die for our sins? [p. 156-158]

Jesus Creed Question for the Week, March 17

We're moving into the fifth week of our Lenten study based on Scot McKnight's The Jesus Creed. Our middle and high school youth are using The Jesus Creed for Students while the adults are using 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed.

When Jesus was asked, "What is the greatest commandment?", he said:

"‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” [Mark 12:29-31]

Scot McKnight calls that "The Jesus Creed" and we've been exploring what it means to live these out in our lives. Before I get to the discussion questions and activities of the week, I'd like you to  think about the command to love your neighbor as yourself. We can live this out on a personal level in the ways we treat those who live around us, sit next to us in church, and work with us. We've experienced times when that's easy to do and times when that's not so easy. 

We've explored a lot of questions in the first four weeks: 
What does it mean to love God and how do we do that?
What does it mean to love others like ourselves?
What difference does following Jesus make in our lives?
What does it mean when we say the Lord's Prayer?
What do we value most and what do those things say about us?
How can we become better neighbors?


Here are This Week’s Questions for Discussion:
(Things to talk about with your family)

• Who do you think Jesus is?
• In what ways is Jesus calling you to follow him?

This Week’s Suggested Follow-up Activities: 
(Additional actions you can try if you feel led)

• Recite the Jesus Creed and the Lord’s prayer daily.
• Read the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) together. 
• Share with each other how you think you are more like Mary or Martha and why.

Looking Ahead: On Easter Sunday, youth and adults will share breakfast together. Start thinking about how the Jesus Creed has affected you. What do you want to take from this study?

Why do we have such a hard time with grace?

I recently came across a speech Francis Su, a mathematics professor from Harvey Mudd College, gave after receiving a prestigious teaching award. He used his acceptance speech to talk about how the lesson of grace has helped him as a teacher:

“Your accomplishments are NOT what make you a worthy human being.You learn this lesson when someone shows you GRACE: good things you didn't earn or deserve, but you're getting them anyway.I have to learn this lesson over and over again.  You can have worthiness apart from your performance.  You can have dignity independent of achievements.  Your identity does not have to be rooted in accomplishments.  You can be loved for who you are, not for what you’ve done---somebody just has to show you grace.”

Here’s the link to The Lesson of Grace in Teaching. It’s a little long, but worth reading. When I had to talk to my oldest son this week about his school challenges, it reminded me that he might need grace more than a lecture on applying himself. 

Grace is the foundation of the good news Jesus brought us. Our accomplishments are NOT what make us worthy to God. God loves us for who we are, not what we've done, or even what we will do. 

I think most of us want to embrace that in our hearts, but we struggle with the implications in our minds because it’s so counter to today’s culture. We live in a society that measures worthiness by where we live, what we do, how much we earn, and what we accomplished. We embrace the image of the “self-made” person who rose to the top, presumably with no assistance from anyone and no privilege based on birth or circumstances. And we've bought the converse that the poor or needy are that way only because they haven’t put in the effort. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” is used to justify building barriers between the privileged and the needy. 

But that’s not the grace Jesus brings to us. Many of us have problems with the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like the landowner who hired workers for his vineyard. He hired some early in the morning, some later in the day, some near the end of the day. Then he paid them all the same wages. When the morning workers grumbled because they were paid the same as those who only worked an hour, the landowner said, “I am not being unfair to you, friend…. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

That’s not the American way. But that’s God’s way. 

The late Michael Spencer, known as the Internet Monk, called grace “dangerous stuff.” In Our Problem With Grace, he argues that “the Bible is incomprehensible apart from grace,” which brings “salvation for all people.” The problem many have with this promise of grace is the lack of strings God attaches to it. What’s the motivation for being good if grace is as good as it seems? Why should the workers put in a whole day if the ones who only come at the end of the day get the same reward? 

People worried about “cheap grace” try to add a “but…” to grace. Grace, but you have to obey the commandments… but you have to serve in the church… but you have to behave accordingly. Spencer says that’s putting the emphasis in the wrong place. Obedience doesn't create grace. That’s the legalism trap. Instead, our desire to follow God’s commands is a response to grace. Grace points to God, not to us. We may not be perfect – nobody is – but God doesn't give up on us. Spencer writes: 

“Grace loves so unconditionally that it will not abandon a person to his own rebellion and waywardness without a fight….Grace doesn't approve [of our outrageous behaviors]. Grace just refuses to give up on us.”

If it’s all about God, where does that leave us? How do we live out this life of grace? I liked the last part of Francis Su's speech, where he acknowledges “Jesus as the ultimate giver and source of grace, endowing all human beings with worth and dignity that they don’t have to earn.” He suggests several ways grace can shape our lives.

• Because grace affirms our dignity, we can affirm the dignity of others by getting to know them by name, spending time with them, and sharing our joy with them.
• Since our performance doesn’t define us, we are free to try things without fear about failing. In fact, we can fail without worrying what others think.
• Because we often learn our most meaningful lessons when we struggle, we can share those lessons with others. We can help affirm the struggles of others, letting them know they’re not alone.
• We can share our weaknesses without fear of what others think because our worthiness is not in our accomplishments… and our worth is not diminished by our failures. 

What do you think?
Do you believe grace is as simple as "God loves you based solely on who you are and not what you have done (or not done)"? 
Is grace truly unconditional?
Some people practice spiritual disciplines as a way of becoming more obedient and faithful. Michael Spencer said that grace doesn't grow from obedience, but that obedience can grow out of faith. Do you think that’s true? Why or why not?
What are some ways God’s grace has freed you from worrying about what others think?
How do you share that grace with others?

On breaking the cycle of unlove and barriers to loving neighbors

This started out as a comment to the March 10 Jesus Creed Questions of the Week and spilled over into How do we become better neighbors? And then it got bigger than comment-length and practically demanded its own post (well, at least that’s the story I’m going with). 

I've been reading Scot McKnight’s 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed for Lent. The discussions we've had around that study, along with other events in my life, inspired the post on how we, as a church, can become better neighbors. 

Two of the daily reflections from the book – First Move of Love and Boundary-breaking Love – provided more food for thought on how we might become better neighbors.

McKnight talks about cycles of "unlove" that can get in the way of loving one another and the challenges of breaking that cycle. I thought about cycles of unlove I need to break (there are a few) and cycles we might need to tackle in our neighborhoods. Living in a suburb of Washington, DC, I’m also acutely aware of a glaring cycle of unlove in the way this country has become so polarized politically. Many of us are directly in that crossfire. 

The issues facing this country have been buried in name-calling and vilification of the “other side.” Those with differing views are seen as the enemies of truth, justice, and the American way and are portrayed with caricatures that suck the humanity out of them. There’s no room for a reasoned debate, much less dialogue exploring options or, God forbid, a constructive compromise. That's not likely to change until enough people get fed up enough to want it to change. 

I suspect we all have neighbors who feel so strongly for one side or the other that conversations on the subject are difficult (at best). In light of the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves, how do we bridge those differences to become better neighbors? 

McKnight's reflection on boundary-breaking love offers a different way of thinking on this. He uses the story of Peter’s encounter with Cornelius in Acts 10 to illustrate ways God's love can break through the boundaries to separate us:

1. Other people are also listening for God: “The God who loves us also loves everyone else… we may love others less, but God loves them the same.” It’s hard to consider that God loves someone you consider an enemy as much as God loves you. On the other hand, it may also be hard to continue to view somebody as abhorrent if you know that God also loves them.
2. It’s natural to resist crossing our own boundaries, but we need to realize, as Peter did, that God is at work outside of our boundaries.
3. “God shows no partiality.” Peter recognized that the work of the Holy Spirit was not confined to Jews like him who followed Jesus. God broke down the notion of “privilege” Peter thought was reserved for the Jewish people.
4. God breaks down boundaries rather than creating them. The Holy Spirit was not confined to Peter’s notions. “God loves you; God loves me; God loves everyone.”

My initial thoughts are that, if both sides would understand that, we might see some constructive movement beyond the current impasses. But what if one or more sides don’t buy into this? Is it possible for one person (or one side) to break down the barriers if the other side(s) don’t want to see the barriers come down… or don’t even recognize the barriers in place? 

How can we, as followers of Jesus, break down the existing “boundaries of privilege” in order to extend God’s love and grace for others?

Jesus Creed Question for the Week, March 10

Hard to believe we're now in the fourth week of our Lenten study based on Scot McKnight's The Jesus Creed. Our middle and high school youth are using The Jesus Creed for Students while the adults are using 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. 

When Jesus was asked, "What is the greatest commandment?", he said:

"‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” [Mark 12:29-31]

Scot McKnight calls that "The Jesus Creed" and we've been exploring what it means to live these out in our lives. Before I get to the discussion questions and activities of the week, I'd like you to  think about the command to love your neighbor as yourself. We can live this out on a personal level in the ways we treat those who live around us, sit next to us in church, and work with us. We've experienced times when that's easy to do and times when that's not so easy. 

How do we live this commandment out as a church? That's a question we're exploring in companion post How do we become better neighbors? I invite you to click on the link and offer your ideas on how we, at Grace Presbyterian in Springfield, can be better neighbors with those who live right around us. What would that look like? What are we doing now and what can we do better? I look forward to hearing (or seeing?) your thoughts!

And now, here are this week’s Questions for Discussion:
(Things to talk about with your family)

• What are the four things you value most?
• How do they compare with what your school/work/ community values most?
• What do your possessions reveal about you and where your heart is?

This Week’s Suggested Follow-up Activities:

(Additional actions you can try if you feel led)

• Recite the Jesus Creed and the Lord’s prayer daily.
• Practice the Golden Rule at home, work, and school. 
• Focus on someone you are having difficulties getting along with.
• Go to How do we become better neighbors? and offer your suggestions on how we can be better neighbors

How do we become better neighbors?

First, there’s this. A group of pastors asked their local mayor how they could help address the problems of their community. The mayor told them that the majority of the problems “could be drastically reduced if we would just become a community of good neighbors.” Take a look.

Then there’s this comment from the city manager: “There’s not a lot of difference between the way Christians and non-Christians neighbor.” 

Think about that for a minute. How well do we, here in the Northern Virginia suburbs, know our neighbors? I know some folks who know their neighbors well. While I know some of my neighbors well, I don't know all of them. 

Now look around our church neighborhood. How well do we know the neighbors who live around our church? I sure don’t know very many of the people who live around Grace. Most of them don’t go to our church. Fewer of us live in the immediate neighborhood around Grace anymore. 

We've been studying what Jesus called the greatest commandments – love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself – for Lent. This is what Scot McKnight calls The Jesus Creed. I found the video on his Jesus Creed blog. McKnight followed that with a post in which he said maybe the question isn't “Who’s my neighbor?” but “What is the art of neighboring?” The folks who made the video wrote a book and have a web site dedicated to offering advice on the art of neighboring. 

They’re taking the command to love our neighbors as ourselves to heart and are seeking ways to do just that. 

Recently our youth came back from a ski trip retreat excited after hearing the guest speaker, Ray Garcia, talk about the Philadelphia Project. Area churches are reaching out to their neighbors, getting to know them, and seeking ways to help them meet their “physical, spiritual, emotional, and social needs.” 

Grace has a tradition of being involved in the Springfield area through ECHO, tutoring, nurturing parents, and other service activities. While the neighborhood around our church has changed and many of us would be hard-pressed to name many of the church’s neighbors, we’re not coming at this completely cold. 

So, this week, I’m combining the weekly question about the Bible with our Jesus Creed study. 

Do you think the comment that most problems could be “drastically reduced if we would just become a community of good neighbors” also applies here in northern Virginia?

More importantly, how do we live out the commandment to love our neighbor?
What does it mean to be a neighbor as a church?
How can we practice the art of neighboring here in Springfield?
What are some things we can do as individuals and as a church?

I know a lot more people read this blog than comment on it (and that’s okay). I hope this week you will break that tendency and offer your ideas (there’s even an option to post anonymously if you’re shy). You might just inspire the rest of us to do something we hadn’t thought of doing before. I’m looking forward to your comments!

Jesus Creed Question for the Week, March 3

Welcome to the third week of our Lenten study based on Scot McKnight's The Jesus Creed. Our middle and high school youth are using The Jesus Creed for Students while the adults are using 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. 

When Jesus was asked, "What is the greatest commandment?", he said:

"‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” [Mark 12:29-31]

Scot McKnight calls that "The Jesus Creed." One of activities for the first week was to recite the Jesus Creed each day throughout the day and take note on whether this has made a difference in the way you go through your day. Last week's questions focused on whether following Jesus makes a difference in our lives and ways we can come closer to Jesus. I hope you've found these questions not only helpful in starting conversations with your family and friends but also helpful in growing in your faith.


This week the youth will talk about the Lord's Prayer and add that to the Jesus Creed as part of their daily routine. Those who are following in the 40 Days book will find a discussion about praying as part of spiritual disciplines on the devotion for Day 19.

Here are this week’s Questions for Discussion:
(Things to talk about with your family)

• Why do we pray?
• Do you see the Lord’s prayer as a daily opportunity or as a routine?
• Pray each line slowly. What does it mean to you?
• How does each line express either love for God or love for others?

And here are this Week’s Suggested Follow-up Activities: 
(Additional actions you can try if you feel led… or adventuresome)

• Continue reciting the Jesus Creed each day.
• Add the Lord’s Prayer to your daily routine. 
• Find a time to pray it together as a family.
• Pray for someone who has wronged you.

Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below. 

How do we know it’s God’s will?

How do we know the inspiration, idea, or “next great thing” that just popped into our head is God-inspired and not our own wishful thinking or someone else's manipulations? How do we discern God’s leading from our own? 

We at Grace are in the process of discerning what God may be calling us to do with the Wester gift, but this is a question that’s as old as, well, as old as seeking and following God. What is God calling us to do in the world? And, with all the competing (and conflicting) claims we hear from self-proclaimed “prophets,” how do we know what’s God’s will and what’s somebody else’s (or our own) agenda?

Last week, Pastor Jay talked about discerning God’s will for the church. These are the main points he made, along with my brief notes (which may be different from what others heard):

1. The Church IS God’s mission to proclaim the Good News of Jesus: We think about going out and “doing mission,” but we ourselves are a mission. The Good News is that, through Jesus, we have hope.
2. To bring people into a life-giving relationship with Jesus as Lord and Savior: There’s a transforming power in the Gospel that makes people better, more like Jesus.
3. As we joyfully serve God – filled with God’s Holy Spirit – to our life’s end… and beyond: Our chief aim is to know and enjoy God forever.

I appreciate what Jay said because it focuses on God’s work among us. First and foremost, we are God’s people. Too often, we hear someone begin with, “God spoke to me…” and then go into something that’s more about their interests (or their group’s interest) than about God. 

Here are some things I’ve found helpful in discerning where or what God may be calling me or the church (whether it’s the neighborhood church or the church universal) to serve. It also helps me filter through the “God said to do this” claims of others. 

The basis is in love, not hate or fear. When John writes “God is love”, when Jesus distills the commandments down to “Love God.. love your neighbor,” and tells his disciples, “they will know you by your love,” it seems to me that love for God, for people, and for all of God’s creation should be at the heart of whatever we do.

It is constructive, not destructive. Paul tells us to use our gifts to build up and encourage all. Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to save it. If we are seeking to follow Jesus, then our focus should be creative and encouraging. 

Our actions should point to God and Jesus, not to us. This is where I have to remind my ego to get out of the way. Jay’s thoughts above make this point better than I can.

Most likely, it’s going to pull me out of my comfort zone. Maybe this doesn't apply to everyone, but it’s a reality I've learned to expect. Jesus may meet me where I am, but Jesus doesn't say, “okay, kick back, get comfortable, and stay there.” Growing in Christ means going places I wouldn't go, doing things I wouldn't necessarily do on my own. I planned to teach at a university and write books, not live in the D.C. suburbs and work for a government agency. But this path I believe God led me down opened more possibilities. I didn't dream of working with youth. When someone told me they could see me being a youth leader one day, I shook my head. College-age, yes. But younger, I couldn't see it. Little did I know that a couple of years later, I would reluctantly help with a youth event (because they couldn't get anyone else to help), and more than a decade later, I’m still working with youth and loving it. God must be smiling.

It passes God’s “laugh test”. For me, that means testing the idea against scripture. Not searching the Bible until I find a passage that can be interpreted as support, but looking for broader context, beginning with the Gospels and considering the broader narrative of God’s relationship with us. It also means not just being open to the ideas of others but actively seeking out their opinions. There’s a synergy that comes out of community because God has given each of us different gifts that, together, can turn into greater things than any of us could do alone. Maybe my idea won’t hold up, or maybe it transforms into something even better with the help of others.  

These things work for me, but they may not be for everyone. What about you?

How do you discern God’s will in your life or in the life of the church?
How do you separate God’s call from your own wishful thinking?
How do you distinguish God’s voice from the noisy proclamations of others?