John is one of my heroes. Enough said.
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How do you know if someone is a follower of Jesus?
We live in a world that is tired of Christians with Christian bumper stickers, t-shirts, music, catch-phrases, building their own little subculture that does not reflect the Mission of Jesus in a broken world.
How do you know if someone is a follower of Jesus? They actually seek to do the things He lived to do. They seek to be with Him and then do what He said to do in a world that is full of pain and brokenness.
There’s no way to think of God’s story without thinking about the world He loved so much that He send His one and only Son.
Every story of every hurting and hungry child is the story of Jesus.
Jesus said however you respond to the little child, you respond to me. Whatever way you do not respond to them, you ignore me.
How can we ignore those words?
Am I willing to hear the story of this world? In all it’s pain, hunger, brokenness, darkness, disease, and atrocity. We want happy stories to surround us. Jesus calls us into the story of pain in this world.
If I were going to talk about my worse sin in a general way, i would say it is selfishness. I live in a world where I think it is about me and my story. Follow YOUR dreams! It’s all about the pursuit of my dream. I want to get into dream school, to get my dream job, to buy my dream house, to marry my dream spouse, to have my dream kids, to go on our dream vacation to get away from our dream kids, to have my dream 401k, to have my dream retirement, so i can have my dream death, in my dream plot of dirt.
We don’t live aware of that much. We use to teach kids to pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the LOrd my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake…”
That’s quite a load to drop on a kid at bedtime. Good night, honey. Sweet dreams.
We don’t talk about the end of that dream life.
Then, there is God. God becomes the genie who makes my dreams come true. God fits into my story. God fits in by accomplishing my dreams. If it doesn’t go that way, then I blamed God. Why aren’t you giving me my dream?
WE can’t give up dreams. We need dreams. But instead of asking God to fulfill my dream, I am being asked to join into God’s dream.
The dream of God: SHALOM
To us it’s a greeting card word. It get’s translated peace, but it’s much bigger than that. Shalom is where things are how God wants them to be.
The prophets dreamed God’s dreamed and changed the world with words. They used images and metaphors to change the world.
Tell us that story. The dream of God.
NO prophet ever says ,”Wouldn’t it be wonderful if…” It’s always, “In that day…”
In other words, SHALOM IS COMING!!
A billion live in hunger. A child dies from hunger every six seconds. Prophets say, Shalom is coming!
We live in the pain between the way things are now and the way they are suppose to be.
Jesus didn’t teach us to pray, “God get us out of this story. This bad story. Take us out of here.” He taught us to pray, “Let they Kingdom come! On earth as it is in Heaven. In my body. In my family. In our church. In every dark place on the planet.”
We give our lives, not to the fulfillment of our story, but to His story.
Die to your little story and come alive to God’s story. Embrace Jesus story.
Because “up there” is coming “down here.”
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