Refocus

Hebrews 12:2 • 2020 Vision

by Anne-Marie Matos - Pastor (instagram.com/annemariematos)

Psalm 23:4d • Challenge #9

by Matt Kladnik - Lead pastor, Vintage Faith Foursquare Church in Culver City, CA (Vffchurch.com)

I have a picture in my mind of the Church (the Bride of Christ) as we eventually and gradually emerge from this pandemic.

She’s not in a stunning white dress, a flowing veil, her hair styled, and her face made up to perfection.

She’s not wearing the usual bridal garb. But she does have a radiance about her like Paul talked about:

“…just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her … to present her to himself as a radiant church...” Ephesians 5:25-27

Her bridal “radiance” doesn’t depend on the externals like a wedding gown, perfect hair, and make up. She is radiant from God’s glory that exudes from her insides.

Instead of a pristine gown she’s dressed in work clothes. She looks more like Rosie the Riveter than Princess Diana on her wedding day.

Her hair is pinned back so she can move freely and instead of being made up like a movie star; her face is smudged from her hard day’s work. She’s not filthy or grimy, but looks like she just came off her shift at the factory.

This is how I am praying for the Church in America coming out of this global crisis. She emerges from it with “radiance” from within, a glow that doesn’t depend on contemporary church externals like impressive facilities, music, and sermons. She doesn’t care about impressing people but impacting them. It’s not her good looks but her “good works” (Matthew 5…) that people notice and are drawn to.

Dorothy Day who founded the Catholic Worker Movement used to say that “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do!”

We can’t very well do the hard work of the Kingdom in a bridal gown. We need work clothes.

We’re told to clothe ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience,” (Colossians 3:12), all of which add up to being “clothed with Christ” (Romans 13:14). We can’t very well do the work of Christ without being like him.

But there is another important piece of the worker’s wardrobe, the Holy Spirit. “Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high,” said Jesus in Luke 24:49.

We can’t do the work in our own strength. It’s the Spirit that does the heavy lifting, while we work alongside of him.

AW Tozer said, “Any tiny work that God has ever done through me dates back to that hour I was filled with the Spirit.”

The Spirit is no joke. He’s not easy to keep up with! We’ll get sweaty and dirty trying, but it will be worth it!

Jesus said: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be witnesses…” The term “witness” in the Greek is the word from which we get our word, “martyr.” I take from this that we should look and act so much like Jesus that they’ll want to do to us what they did to him.

If the first “witnesses” (the apostles) had not done what they did by “turning the world upside down” but instead stayed in their temperature-controlled sanctuaries, sang happy songs, and hugged one another until Jesus returns, they would never have been martyrs or witnesses for that matter.

So when he calls us “witnesses” he not just talking about “going witnessing” but living and acting in such a way as to get ourselves in trouble with the world!

That’s what I hope the post-shelter-in Church will look like. She comes home from a hard day’s work maybe looking a little battered and worse for wear, yet she’s beautiful in her own way. Her glow comes from within. Her work clothes: the character of Christ and the power of the Spirit are not for decorative purposes, but for doing the hard work of advancing the cause of her Groom!

If you don’t have any work clothes, better go out and get some.

I want to tell you a story: When our oldest daughter was in Junior High School, I took a huge leap of faith and decided to homeschool her. It was a little rocky, a little rough in the beginning, but honestly, it was the best thing I had ever done for our relationship. It bonded us together in a new way. It improved our communication skills. We had a lot of one on one time.

Honestly, my husband was a little jealous of all this one on one time I had with her. He decided that he would take over the tucking in time. He would take over that time of getting her into bed, having those last few words with her – which she would often drag out to thirty plus minutes of chatting. He didn’t mind; he wanted to hear her heart and he wanted to speak into her heart.

A lot of us didn’t grow up with fathers like that. A lot of us grew up with fathers who were too busy, too exhausted, who were that stereotypical strong and silent type, or who were just too caught up in their own thing to hear us well and to listen well.

That gives us a broken lens through which we see God – especially when it comes to hearing Him and Him hearing us.

Whether you’re on the beginning of your journey and just beginning to try to hear from the Lord and you’re struggling with that, or you’re down the road a ways and you’ve hit that place where you’ve lost connection and you can’t seem to tap in and hear the Lord, I want to troubleshoot with you for a couple of minutes what might be going on.

5 Things that Might be Going On When You’re Having Trouble Hearing the Lord (There may be more, but hopefully these are umbrellas that can cover most of the things.):

1. We need FAITH and EXPECTANCY. We need to have faith that God will speak to us! Hebrews 11:6 tells us that “without faith it is impossible to please [God], for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” We need to believe that when we draw near to God, He will reward us. What better to reward us with than with His voice, with clear direction from Him? Often those haunting fears from the way our fathers were cloud our hearing and make us feel that God is also too busy or doesn’t care or is too impersonal. It starts to get us into that mode where faith is gone from our prayers.

When that happens to me, this is what I do. I speak out loud prayers of faith. I say, “Heavenly Father, I thank You that You are here with me right now. I thank You that You want to speak to me even more than I want to hear! I thank You that You are a speaking God, that You have never stopped speaking to humankind. I thank You, Holy Spirit, for opening my ears to hear the words of my Heavenly Father.”

It is amazing what that change, that place of faith will do to our ears, opening them up and allowing us to hear from the Lord.

2. WILLINGNESS. We need willingness to hear whatever God is going to tell us. Oftentimes when we approach God, we come with two options. We kind of want one more than the other, so we are trying to sell it to God. That is really a difficult place to hear from. What we need to do is lay down our will before the Lord. It is when we come to that place where we say, “God, I will hear You no matter what You say, even if I don’t like it.” That is the place that brings clarity to our hearing.

3. OBEDIENCE. When we hear, will we actually obey? Matthew 25 tells us the Parable of the Talents and it tells us that when we are faithful with little, we are given more. This applies to our hearing from the Lord. When we are faithful to obey the little instructions that are set before us, we get more instructions. Oftentimes we can look back and say, “I didn’t obey the last thing, but I’m asking for the next instruction.” Go back and do the last thing God told you to do! If we aren’t listening, if we are repeatedly disobeying it will callous our hearts and our ears from hearing the Lord.

4. WORD PROFICIENCY. We need to be hiding the Word of God in our hearts (Psalm 119:11). We need to have enough Word, enough Scripture hidden in our hearts that when a word from the Lord comes to us, we can discern, “Is that the Lord? Or is that my flesh – or something worse?” We need to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word (James 1:22-25). And as we are doers of the written Word, we will be able to handle more and more of the spoken word of God.

5. TIMING. I often wrestle with God over this one! I often think that I need the answer right now. I plead with God, “Please tell me right now! I need to know!” One time the Lord said to me very clearly, not audibly, but very clearly, “You don’t need to know as much as you think you need to know!” I didn’t like that answer, but I knew that He was right. I know that if my heart is right and I’m willing to obey and I’m willing to lay my will down and I’m willing to plug into the Word daily and be filled up with Him, I know that He will be faithful to show me what I need to know when I need to know it.

So as I check my heart for these things – for being full of faith, being willing to hear, being willing to obey, and being proficient in His Word, I know that I can trust His timing – and so can you!

Romans 12:1-2 • Be Transformed

by Joel Gillman - Executive Pastor, Mission Hill Church in Chambersburg, PA (http://MissionHill.church)