Mick's Minute

Water is a very good thing. We are all made up largely of water, we need to drink lots of it, and everything that we eat needs to drink lots of it, so it’s a good thing when good water is easy to come by. 

But no matter how good the water is, and no matter how much of it we drink, we will always need more. 

With that in mind, one day a long time ago, Jesus was sitting by a well in the hottest part of a very hot day on the outskirts of a town where people did not like Him very much. And as He was sitting there, a lady that people also did not like very much came out to get some water.

She and Jesus started talking about water and arguing about life, and in the midst of that conversation, Jesus made her a profound offer. He said to her,

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Then a minute later, He said, “Everyone who drinks [regular] water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The lady Jesus was talking to began to understand that something important was happening, so she said to Jesus,

“Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to get water.”

And before it was all said and done, Jesus did exactly that. He gave something to this lady, and lots of other people in that town full of people who did not like him, something that is literally even more precious than water in the desert.

It was a fascinating moment in history and I would encourage you to read about it today in the Book of John, Chapter 4 in the Bible because the offer that Jesus made to this lady and her whole town is the same offer that He makes to everybody.

He wants us to believe in Him so He can can set us free from the inside out in a way that lasts forever. 

It’s not every day that we come across a deal that is more important than water, but this is one.

Real life with Jesus is a real thing. It never runs out, and anybody can have it. 

My hope for all of us today is that the next time we get thirsty, we will be reminded of Jesus and the living water that we need most of all.

For years my life revolved around this thing that we call church. My office was at the church, people called me at the church, and I spent bunches of time planning for church. But here's where it gets weird:

Church is one of the most misused words in the English language. 

When we talk about church we say things like, “I’m on my way to church,” or “What time is church?", things like that.  

But here’s the problem: the word “church,” not surprisingly, comes from the Bible. In fact, it’s used something like 113 times in the Bible. But the word "church" is never used even one time in the ways that we use the word. 

Half of the time when we talk about church, we are talking about a building. A place with a sign out front and a cross inside, and we call that place a church. That’s what we mean when we say things like, "I just drove past the church."

And the other half of the time when we talk about church, we are usually talking about an event. A church service where people sing some songs and shake hands and listen to a sermon. That’s what we mean when we say things like, "How was church today?"

For us, when we think about church and when we talk about church, the word "church" almost always means either a place or an event. 

But in the Bible where the word "church" comes from, the word is never used even one time to describe a building or an event. To the contrary. 

Every single time that the word "church" is used in the Bible, it refers to a group of people.

In the Bible, church is a community—a group of people who may be totally different from each other in about every conceivable way, except that they are all connected together because they are all connected to God through faith in Jesus.

So church, technically speaking, is not a building and it’s not an event, it’s people.

And that’s important because words shape how we think. 

If we think that church is important and church is a building, then we care about a building. And if we think that church is important and church is an event, then we care about an event. But if church is important, and church is people, then we should care about people.

And when we do that, a really cool thing happens. We find ourselves caring about the thing that God cares about.

if you acknowledge the fact that Jesus came and died for your sins to save you, and you have accepted that gift, you are a part of God’s church. And He is building you, and me, and all of us, into something beautiful. So go out and be the church today. 

And if that’s not you yet, then I have great news for you. 

God cares about you. People are God’s favorite thing that He ever made, and that includes you. 

Maybe it’s time for you to accept that, and trust God to work in you and on you in some really great ways.

I am living through some crazy days right now. 

I am following God out of a pastoral ministry that God has blessed me with for the last 12 years. I'm following Him into a whole new thing, and some moments, my world feels like it’s turning upside down.

As I end my time as the Senior Pastor of a church that I love dearly and that dearly loves me, I'm walking into the unknown of starting a brand new ministry of writing and radio.

My passion is to help people to know in their bones that life with God is a radical adventure, and then to help people find the radical adventure that God has planned just for you.

This ministry is a part of my radical adventure and, as such, a certain passage of Scripture from the Book of Acts Chapter 16 is especially dear to me during this season. 

In the passage God has sent a man named Paul on a long trip that will change the course of world history as we know it. But Paul doesn't know that. In addition to everything else that Paul is, he's just a guy walking on foot across the entire country of modern day Turkey. And this is how it plays out in Acts Chapter 16 starting in verse 6:

“Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.”

I read that passage and, rather than getting lost in the barrage of unfamiliar places, I take great comfort in the fact that Paul clearly had no idea where he was supposed to go. And yet God knew exactly where He was guiding Paul the whole time.

Literally every direction Paul turns, God stops him from going there. 

So over a period of time that had to last several weeks or even months, Paul and his team eventually stumble across an entire country, always thinking they are headed to a place that they ultimately do not get to go. 

And during that entire time, they do not know how things are going to turn out.

They do not know that every direction they try to go, God is going to say no.

They do not know that they are eventually going to stumble exhausted into Troas, the last town in Turkey with nowhere else to walk because they have run into a huge body of water.

They do not know that from there God is finally going to give them a message of somewhat clear direction for the first time on their entire trip.

And they also do not know that God is going to inspire entire books of the Bible to be written to the churches they are starting in the towns to which He is guiding their steps.

They don't know any of that. All they know is that Jesus is the Savior and that they want the whole world to know it.

And for me, as a person who does not know a lot of things that I would like to know today, I take tremendous comfort from this passage of Scripture and the confident knowledge that God guides the steps of His people as we walk faithfully for Him.

So what about your steps today? Where are you walking these days, and why?

My hope for you (and for me) is that wherever we're walking today, we're walking faithfully. Because here is what I do know:

I know that If we're walking faithfully, God is going to guide us to the place He has for us, even if that place is not where we expected it to be.

And I know that if we are walking after things that are not from God, we're wasting our steps.

May God guide our steps as we walk with Him.

One of the great things about being a Christian is that every single day comes with a built-in, life-shaping question.

The question goes like this:

If Jesus is Jesus... who should I be?

The big story of life is that God has created every single person, including us, in His image. That makes people the most important thing God ever made.

And then on top of that, God custom-built every single person, including us, to be exactly the person that He wanted in exactly the life that He planned for us.

And since we have all messed up our God-given life by being sinners, God sent His one and only Son Jesus into the world to save us from our sins now and forever.

So every single morning, we all wake up in a world in which God has:

1. made us amazing,

2. custom-designed us for life, and

3. rescued us from our own sin through Jesus.

And so, every morning brings us the same glorious question...

If Jesus is Jesus, who should I be??

In some ways, the answer to that question is the same for everybody. 

For all of us, because Jesus is Jesus, we should be people who radically surrender our lives to Him. 

In fact, if you have not done that, stop reading while driving or whatever you are doing right now, because I promise you, this is more important. Right now. Close your eyes and open your heart to God and surrender your whole life to Him. Just trust Him and tell Him so. I promise you it will be the best decision you ever made.

Seriously.

After you do that, another really cool thing happens. Just as surely as the first part of the answer to that question is the same for everybody, the next part is different for everybody.

God has custom-designed every single person, including us, for the unique life that He has planned for us. And even though we have wrecked our lives with sin, in Christ our uniqueness remains.  

We have different gifts and different experiences, and God has a life reserved for us that is different than anybody else's because it is our custom-built way to serve Him.

For me, for the last 12 years when I asked the question, "If Jesus is Jesus, who should I  be?", one of the unique ways that God gave me to answer that question was by being the Senior Pastor of the Ainsworth Evangelical Free Church in north-central Nebraska. A church that I love and a church that loves me.

But guess what? Over the last several months, God has been changing my answer to the question. So much so, in fact, that I'm about to do something that I thought I would never do.

In a few weeks I am going to conclude my time in traditional pastoral ministry and pursue a full-time ministry in writing and radio.

That is actually happening.

God continues to move in me as I seek daily to answer this question. Over time, some parts of the answer have changed and I am being given the privilege to serve my Jesus in a new way.

And today, when I ask myself the question "If Jesus is Jesus, who should I be?", I discover that the answer to that question for me is that I should be a guy who serves Jesus by doing this.

Pray for me and us as God affects this very big transition in our lives. And check out the rest of the website for more of the story. And as you do that, take a minute and ask this question for yourself: 

If Jesus is Jesus, who should I be?

You may discover that as God moves in your heart to answer that question, He has plans for you that are glorious and scary and that are going to propel you into a life with Him that is like nothing you could have imagined. 

It’s happening to people all over the world right now and it’s happening to me.

My hope with this ministry is that God will grant me the privilege of serving Him by helping all of you answer this glorious question in your own life.

If Jesus is Jesus, who should you be?

I am Pastor Mick from micksminute.com.

God's answer to that question for you is waiting for you.

And you are going to be so excited when you find it.

It’s funny to me how things work out sometimes. 

It seems to me like there are times in life where people basically mess everything up, and yet everything works out. And there are other times in life where people basically do everything right, and yet everything falls apart.

As I ponder that, it occurs to me that if I were a person who believed that my life depended on me making things work, I would be so frustrated by that. I think I’d just want to give up and live in the woods because I would feel totally powerless.

But, thankfully I don’t believe that. And that’s good, because I think we all know that I wouldn't last long in the woods.

Here’s what I do believe:

I believe that, in spite of how life turns out sometimes, how we live matters very much. And that’s important, because there are many days in which it does not feel that way. To the contrary, there are many days in which it feels like the choices we make don't matter because we can’t win anyway.

But I believe that life is bigger than that. Our choices on any given day are much bigger than either getting what we want that day or not getting what we want that day. That’s true because regardless of all the million things that might be going on around us, our choices are nothing more or less than the outflow of our whole selves.

I believe that we do the things we do ultimately because we believe the things that we believe, and through what we believe, we are deeply connected to either truth or deception.

When we are grounded in truth, we live out truthful things. And when we are grounded in falsehood, we live out false things. And that matters every day and in every moment because I believe that all our lives matter because all of us matter to God. 

He invented us. He keeps us alive and going. And even though this world is a mess, I believe that God sent His Son Jesus to save us, and that God has a part for all of us to play in His big plans.

And ultimately, I believe that as we choose to accept and elevate Jesus in our lives, we win.

We win the little battles that come in all our little moments, and we win the big battle of being the people that we were designed to be, and living lives of meaning and purpose, lives that matter almost as much as we do.

Consider this really cool passage of Scripture from the book of Ephesians Chapter 3 verses 20 and 21 that says:

“Now to [GOD] who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

There is a word that plays a surprisingly important role in my life these days, and that word is hypocrite.

Nobody likes to think of themselves or anybody they like as a hypocrite, but in conversations about Christianity this word seems to come up all the time.

For example, If you are a person who does not particularly like Christianity and thinks it’s a bunch of baloney, there is a really good chance that when you talk about Christians, or talk about church, or talk about people like me, you say something like this--“Those people are a bunch of hypocrites.”

And what you might mean when you say that is that people like me are phonies--that Christians might love to look a certain way at church, but then when we go home, not only are we just as rotten as anybody else, in some ways we might be even more so.

And you know what? I think that in some ways you are absolutely right.

In some ways, Christians might be the most hypocritical people alive on planet earth today. There is very often a HUGE gap between the kind of things Christians like to say and the kind of lives Christians actually live.

And I'll tell you what I wish. I wish that I could give you some kind of grand and obvious argument showing how that’s actually not true. But I can't.

The claim that Christians talk about this perfect God who rescues people from sin and calls those people to live holy and transformed lives is true.

And the claim that Christians fail at that, and sometimes miserably fail at that... is also true.

So today I want to tell you what it’s like for me to be a hypocrite.

First off, to understand me as a hypocrite you have to understand that all the stuff I say about God and how great He is and how He is our only hope... I absolutely believe that stuff. I live for it, and I would die for it.

But here’s my problem. God is perfect and the life that He has called me to is amazing, but most days I do not feel very amazing.

To the contrary, I am and always have been a very normal person.

I am passionate about following Jesus, but I also get tired, sad, and depressed just as much or more than other people, and in the midst of all that I don't think I ever really represent Jesus in the world as well as I want to. So, as a result, even on my very best of days I am, in some way or other, a hypocrite.

And worse still, I’m not the only one. Every passionate Christian I know is like that, and every Christian in the Bible was like that.

For example, there was a guy in the Bible named Paul who was so amazing that almost half of the New Testament is either about him or written by him, but this is what he said about himself regarding this same problem:

In the Book of Romans, Chapter 7 in the Bible, Paul says,

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. "

I have this memory from years ago of being young and struggling with life and going to a church where people were kind of hypocrites sometimes, and really wanting to know what Christianity was really about.

And I remember one night reading that passage, and feeling like in two sentences that this whole thing that we call Christianity just came to life for me, because it felt like those were the two most honest sentences I had ever read.

Here was a Christian IN THE BIBLE, and instead of pretending like they were better than they actually were, here they were struggling with the very honest reality of hypocrisy.

There are a lot of words in the Bible, but these two sentences opened my eyes like no other.

The passage goes on for a little while talking about the complexity and complication of being a Christian hypocrite, and then it ends with these words. It says,

"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Because here is the thing about Jesus that changes everything. Regardless of what we are, Jesus is no hypocrite. He was perfect, and honest, and amazing, and He still is.

The honest truth is that we are all hypocrites. And Jesus is our only hope. But, man, is he a good one.

Be it a questionable call in a football game, a famous person getting into trouble with the law, or just hearing two random strangers arguing at the grocery store, people love controversy.

We’re drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and often with the same result.

But in addition to all of the meaningless little controversies that occupy our lives, there are also some very important controversies in life that, sooner or later, every person must weigh in on.

Who forgot to put the milk in the refrigerator? It may be a controversy, but it’s not a big deal.

But try some of these on for size--

When does life really begin?

Who gets to say what is right and what is wrong?

When is it right to break the law?

Questions like these, how we answer them, and how we live with people who answer them differently than we do are some of the great defining factors of our lives.

And the very greatest controversy of all, in my humble opinion, is this one--

Who. is. Jesus??

This question has, in my opinion, created more controversy in the the world than any other. All over the world for two millennia people have debated and often battled over their answers to this question.

AND even when Jesus was in the midst of His life and ministry, the controversy was already happening.

The Book of John, Chapter 9 in the Bible tells the story of one of those controversies.

The big picture is that as Jesus was out and about he had found this guy begging for money on the side of the road. The man was born blind, and never in his life had he been able to see.

And Jesus, being Jesus, performs a miracle and heals him.

Oddly enough, at that point is when the controversy really started.

A group of people who didn’t like Jesus heard about the miracle, and so they actually hauled the guy who got healed—AND his parent even—into court.

Then, and as a part of that fiasco, they tell the healed man that they believe that Jesus is an awful evil sinful person, and they demand that this man, who had just experienced a life-changing miracle from Jesus, agree with them about that.

You have to read this story for yourself today in the Book of John, Chapter 9, but in verse 25 the man responds in the most amazing way to Jesus' enemies who are threatening him and his family.

Instead of picking a side and jumping into the fight about if Jesus is a good guy or a bad buy, he simply says--

“Whether [Jesus] is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

The controversy continued on that day, and 2,000 years later, the controversy about Jesus continues still. Some people say He is the Savior of the world and that anybody can put their faith in Him and find real life forever. Other people say that He is a phony. And still other people say that whatever He was then, it does not matter today.

As for me, I believe that Jesus was for real, I believe that He still is, and I believe that every person's decision to trust Jesus or not is the most important decision that they will ever make.

So what do you believe? Who do you say that Jesus is? And what difference is your answer making in your life today?

I don't know what your answer is to those questions. But I know this. In a very real sense, I once was blind, but now I see.

And my hope for you today is that God will do for you what He has done for me.

Be it a questionable call in a football game, a famous person getting into trouble with the law, or just hearing two random strangers arguing at the grocery store, people love controversy.

We’re drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and often with the same result.

But in addition to all of the meaningless little controversies that occupy our lives, there are also some very important controversies in life that, sooner or later, every person must weigh in on.

Who forgot to put the milk in the refrigerator? It may be a controversy, but it’s not a big deal.

But try some of these on for size--

When does life really begin?

Who gets to say what is right and what is wrong?

When is it right to break the law?

Questions like these, how we answer them, and how we live with people who answer them differently than we do are some of the great defining factors of our lives.

And the very greatest controversy of all, in my humble opinion, is this one--

Who. is. Jesus??

This question has, in my opinion, created more controversy in the the world than any other. All over the world for two millennia people have debated and often battled over their answers to this question.

AND even when Jesus was in the midst of His life and ministry, the controversy was already happening.

The Book of John, Chapter 9 in the Bible tells the story of one of those controversies.

The big picture is that as Jesus was out and about he had found this guy begging for money on the side of the road. The man was born blind, and never in his life had he been able to see.

And Jesus, being Jesus, performs a miracle and heals him.

Oddly enough, at that point is when the controversy really started.

A group of people who didn’t like Jesus heard about the miracle, and so they actually hauled the guy who got healed—AND his parent even—into court.

Then, and as a part of that fiasco, they tell the healed man that they believe that Jesus is an awful evil sinful person, and they demand that this man, who had just experienced a life-changing miracle from Jesus, agree with them about that.

You have to read this story for yourself today in the Book of John, Chapter 9, but in verse 25 the man responds in the most amazing way to Jesus' enemies who are threatening him and his family.

Instead of picking a side and jumping into the fight about if Jesus is a good guy or a bad buy, he simply says--

“Whether [Jesus] is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

The controversy continued on that day, and 2,000 years later, the controversy about Jesus continues still. Some people say He is the Savior of the world and that anybody can put their faith in Him and find real life forever. Other people say that He is a phony. And still other people say that whatever He was then, it does not matter today.

As for me, I believe that Jesus was for real, I believe that He still is, and I believe that every person's decision to trust Jesus or not is the most important decision that they will ever make.

So what do you believe? Who do you say that Jesus is? And what difference is your answer making in your life today?

I don't know what your answer is to those questions. But I know this. In a very real sense, I once was blind, but now I see.

And my hope for you today is that God will do for you what He has done for me.

Right now you are being supported by something. Maybe you are riding in your car being supported by a seat on a frame with wheels. maybe you are at home or at work sitting in a chair that is resting on a floor made of wood or concrete. maybe you are standing with your own two feet planted directly on a corn field. Wherever you are, your physical body is being supported right now by…SOMETHING.

And not only that, your heart and mind and soul are all being supported also by this foundational network of beliefs that make you YOU, and define how you see the world.

Here's where it gets interesting though. We are all of us right now acutely aware of the trustworthiness of the things that are supporting our bodies. If you are in a rickety car or a rickety chair or standing on a rickety old floor, you KNOW it, and you care. And if you believed that the thing supporting you was about to crumble, you would do something about it and QUICK.

But when it comes to the foundational stuff on the inside of us, even though it dominates our ENTIRE LIVES we very often don't pay any attention to how sturdy and trusworthy it is.

But the foundational beliefs of our lives shape everything else in our lives. We are all a lot like houses in the sense that a firm foundation allows us to stand tall and strong in life, and a weak foundation can literally destroy us.

So that kind of makes you wonder... if we are so automatically concerned with having firm foundations on the outside of us, what qualifies as a firm foundation on the inside of us?

How do you test the trustworthyness of a belief or a way of life in the same sense that you would test the trustworthiness of a chair or a ladder?

A long time ago Jesus stood on the side of a mountain and spoke some of the most profound words of wisdom ever spoken. And at the end of His sermon, he said these words.

In the book of Matthew Chapter seven he said

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

I don’t know about you, but I have discovered in my life Jesus is the answer to the trustworthiness question. When I trust Jesus and live my life in a way that is true to who HE is, my life basically works, and even in the hardest of times I feel the safety and security of a firm foundation.

And I have also discovered in my life that when I just do my own thing, everything gets weird and hard and even on the good days I just spend my time worrying about the next bad day.

According to Jesus, the only firm foundation a person can ever find is Him, and His words. And I believe Him. How about you?