June Caller

June Caller

I recently had two emails that came on the same day, and went together so well, I decided to share them both with you.

What God Is Doing

“I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without Me.” John 15:5 Your challenge each day is to find out what God is doing in the part of the world where you live, and join Him in doing whatever that is. How can your personal thoughts and actions, even attitudes, relate to the activity of God? How is God moving today in the place where you are? “God had made us what we are. In Christ Jesus, God made us to do good works, which God planned in advance for us to live our lives doing.” Ephesians 2:10 You know what God is doing by looking around you for evidence of His activity. You see God involved in institutions that care for people. He is obvious in causes that promote good values and strong principles. Be aware of where God is working, and join Him there. Discern the divine in everyday life, and join forces with God in what He is doing. Give yourself to God’s work.  “Dear God, show me what You are doing so I can help accomplish Your will in the world. Amen”

Our Place in this World

Take the time to read John 17, a prayer of Jesus.  Throughout the chapter, Jesus repeatedly differentiates his disciples from what he calls “the world.” The difference, Jesus maintains, is one of belonging. The disciples are different because they belong to Jesus, not the world, and therefore strive to not conform to the world’s values. Even though Christians do in fact conform to the world’s values sometimes is beside the point. In the eyes of Jesus, what makes his disciples different is not first and foremost how they live (though it is very important), it’s to whom they belong. Another way of saying this is that Christian identity is always positive; we’re defined by what we are – people who find their identity in Christ – not by what we are not. This positive way of framing the difference between Christians and non-Christians is a helpful reminder that we are to have a positive influence on the world and not have a passive, ‘I don’t care’ attitude and seclude ourselves from the world.  New Testament scholar, Richard Bauckham, summarizes this approach: “The way of Jesus’ followers is the way of Jesus himself – the Jesus of the Gospels who moved freely wherever his love was needed, compromising himself in the eyes of the holier-than-thou, but disturbing and attracting precisely by being so positively different from the ordinary way of the world. To belong to Jesus requires the courage to be different, to be like Jesus, actually for the sake of the world. And to belong to Jesus sets us free to be in the world, where people need us, where God needs us, without succumbing to the false gods to whom too many in our societies are enslaved.”  Summarizing these thoughts I believe our mission can simply put this way:

We are to –

Seek, See, and Be Jesus; Here, There, and Everywhere.

Love in Christ,

Pastor Dan

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