“Oh Lord, while I live make this life worthwhile. Keep me in your will, and seal it with a smile!”

Poem by Don Weeks

First Order of Business

Ask yourself, is the Bible true or not? Do I need to take it serious, or is it just a compilation of nice stories and good suggestions? And don’t give me the higher-critical intellectual smokescreen that believes the Bible is subject to each person’s own private interpretation. The majority of the Bible is clear as crystal. The main problem is that people just don’t read it, nor do they want to live by it. 

So what say you? Is Paul telling us the truth when he says in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives”?

If your answer is “yes” I want to ask you to consider today what you are going to be held accountable for when you finally meet Jesus face to face on the last day. And trust me, you will meet him. If your answer is “no” have a good day and go on your merry way justifying the opinions and behaviors that sound good to you, feeling like you are wise in your own eyes, because in your life of independent thinking you have become your own god. Have fun, but I must warn you, Jesus comes when we least expect him.

So for those of you who are willing to face the clear Biblical responsibilities that have been laid out for us in Scripture, I want to bring your attention to 2 Corinthians 5:10-21. Please, take the time to read it on your own and follow Paul’s thinking as I try to summarize it in a few obvious points – ones we have to someday be accountable for. 

Full Disclosure

The reason I am writing this is because I personally have been wrestling with some heavy thoughts as of late. I want to know with certainty what God expects of me – both in my thinking and behavior –  as I live in this crazy world. And it is crazy, blood-moon, locust swarm, murder hornet, crazy! Living a peaceful and easy life is extremely hard to come by these days, but regardless, I must keep trying to live. So I continually debate with myself: Should I stop caring? Should I post online? Should I not? Should I share my opinion as I walk and talk with people on this earth, or should I just keep my mouth shut? Should I even be a pastor anymore – which requires me to get involved in the messy parts of people’s lives – or should I quit, move to a far away island, and stop trying? Because I have found over the years of working with hundreds and hundreds of people, relationships hurt.

I have been asking these questions because I can tell from the body language of everyone around me and from the posts they leave on-line, people are tired. They are exhausted, and they are ready to be completely done with 2020, even though it is only half-way over. So I can see and feel the impatience people have for others bubbling-up around me, people want to isolate, pack up their things, jump in the car with just their family, and leave the world behind. It sounds so nice, living a Jeremiah Johnson life, but is that what God wants?

So I must take this bagful of confusing sentiment, expose it under the light of Scripture and let it correct my thoughts. That is what David did when he wrote Psalm 119, especially verse 133 when he says, “Guide my steps by your word, so I will not be overcome by evil.” And it seems like the tide of evil is rising high like the waters of Lake Michigan these days.

Lessons from 2 Corinthians 5

(1) I will have to give an account to Jesus personally (10). I don’t know how that sits with you, but for me, I tremble just thinking about it. Psalm 2 says, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry.” Jesus has tremendous gravitas. I guess, more than anything, the truth of his Kingship puts into perspective just how little power and authority I have over my life. In the large scheme of things I control nothing. Zero. We are taught the exact opposite living in America, I have the right to craft reality as I want it. To chose what I want, the way I want it, and engage with people always on my terms. 

Honestly, I don’t think people have any fear of Jesus whatsoever. His name has become nothing more than a good luck charm, or of course, a swear word to express my frustration when I hit my finger with a hammer. Christ is not understood as the title of a Magnificent King as it was intended to be. We have more adoration for Aragorn and Harry Potter than we do Jesus of Nazareth. “Why worry about Jesus when we can ride Harleys, vape nicotine, and get tattoos?” Well, because Jesus made the mountains with the breath of his mouth, and tossed out the stars in the sky with the palm of his hand. That seems pretty impressive to me.

(2) We Are Responsible (11). Jesus has given us a job to do, and the job is more than clear from the rest of the verse, “to persuade others.” Let me give you the definition of persuade so you can be sure about what Paul is saying.

Persuade: cause (someone) to believe something, especially after a sustained effort; convince.

You and I are responsible to engage people with conversation, trying to convince them – with sustained effort – to get them to see life in a new and certain way. If you actually believe the Bible, you have to come to grips with the fact that God wants you to engage with people for the purpose of persuasion. This means if you chose to remain isolated and leave the rest of the world behind because you had enough of their silly shenanigans, you are abdicating your responsibility. We are meant to convince. But in our world people do not like this, they don’t like ideas when they conflict, or a chance for a heated argument, debate, or awkward conversation at all. 

In 2 Corinthians 5:13, Paul realizes that people may think you are crazy if you try to convince and engage them in persuasion. So the Christian – a person who actually says they believe in and follows Christ – who decides to remain disengaged, aloof, and independent from others for fear of looking crazy is ignoring their responsibility. They aren’t taking King Jesus seriously…at all.

Paul actually gives Christians a title in verse 20, “ambassadors”, we are representatives of heaven. Our job is to convince people of it’s existence and communicate to others the qualifications for entrance. An ambassador cannot live for himself, he lives for the one who sends him. And this role is a royal privilege. 

(3) Reconciliation is our Message (18-21). “Come back to God!” In this plea to come back, there is a hint that the person who must come back has left. What does this even mean? It is very simple, people have sinned and everyone has “like a sheep gone astray” and “left God’s paths to follow their own.” People are doing their own thing and our job is to call them back to allegiance to the King.

Do you know how hard that is? People do not like to be told they are wrong. People do not like you getting into their business. People do not like to feel like their judged. So, of course, in your work of persuasion you may tick some people off. I know I have over the years. I have been called ‘judgmental,’ ‘close minded,’ and ‘confrontational.’ And that is hard to process for a guy who likes to be liked.

A Piece of Soggy Toast

Let me tell you about myself before I bowed my knee to Jesus. I was the nicest guy you could ever meet. In fact, all I ever wanted was to live and let live. Do you know how easy it is to be easy going and isolated? We think people are hero’s when they go their own way, live their own life, and never judge. But after awhile, a person like this is like a piece of soggy toast, a limp noodle, a non-entity. I know this because that was me. I can remember when I lived in a house of seven guys on college campus and they would often do some of the most debased things, and because I wanted to be liked, I said nothing. I wanted to be left alone, so I left my roommates alone and kept my mouth shut.

One night in particular three of my roommates wanted free pizza, so they ordered some pepperoni pizza delivered giving the delivery boy the address to another house. So they went to the house, they hid in the bushes, and when the pizza delivery boy showed up with the pizzas, they tackled him and stole his pizzas bringing them back to our house a block away in the cover of the night laughing up a storm. While they enjoyed their free pizzas, I said nothing. 

It is easy to say nothing. Especially when you like to be liked.

But how can you be a Christian, knowing the Eternal King is coming back, who is going to judge people for their sins, and not say a word about it? Listen to how clear Paul is in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:

“Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Hundreds of people you walk by during any given week are stuck in these very sins. They are slaves to them. And most of the time they are miserable acting like they have the world by the tail. And yet what is easier as God’s representative: let them think that God is okay with this behavior or tell them to come back to him or they will not inherit heaven? Do you say, “I want to be seen as a peacemaker, so I will let people just do as they please. See how nice I am?” or, “Come back to God!”

My problem with choosing the response of peace for myself is that I fail to communicate the incredible implications from the end of 9:10-11. If I am able to persuade people that they are trapped by the evil of sin, and help them change their behavior, I am giving them a chance to be “cleansed” and made “right” with God himself. Don’t you want to help people be made right with a holy God? And if your answer is “no”, that means you don’t really understand why Jesus died in the first place on the cross. In your intention to isolate, and be a nice guy, you are not really being faithful to the one who sent you here in the first place. You might as well hand in your “ambassador” badge, because in heaven, niceness isn’t rewarded.

True Woke!

The reason I entered the ministry is because I was sick of my passivity. I was tired of being nice. I was terrified of the day I would have to stand before Christ. Before I decided to seriously commit to Jesus, my life was good, it was peaceful, I was living in complete harmony with my parents, siblings, and friends. We had great times, we did fun things, we shared. But it began to dawn on me, that didn’t make us good.

When Jesus woke me up I started to see that eternity is what actually mattered, not a life of temporary ease on the fading green grass of this broken earth. I decided that heaven was worth the embarrassment of not being understood when trying to persuade. And I also began to quickly see how people were ruining their lives when they just did as they please. 

I still am a nice guy, but sometimes the Holy Spirit in me is not. He has come to “convict the world of sin.” And when he moves me to speak, I have no other choice but to act. I write this because I know people think I share my opinion far too much on-line. I take things too serious sometimes. And I hold to a rather tight Biblical line.

But I just can’t help it; I am tired of soggy toast.