14 What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? 15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, 16 and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?

James 2:14-19

         This past week at Hot-Spot we took a look at James 2:14-19.As much as I like to think of myself as a man of action, I embody these verses way to well. More often than not when somebody comes to me with a problem I find myself wanting to do the least amount of work possible to help them. In “Christian Bubble Land” we have a great excuse… “I’ll be praying for you.” This is a valid response so long as we actually pray. More often than not the phrase I’ll be praying for you” is “christianese” for “good luck.” James poses the question “What good does this do?” If someone is in need and we have the ability but do not help them, how will they ever see the love of Christ? The type of faith that does not respond to people in need is not going to be a faith that brings anyone else to salvation. As sure as I am that I have a relationship with Christ, I struggle to serve others in a way that will help bring them to a relationship with God. I think we all do this from time to time because serving that way can be inconvenient, our lives and our schedules are busy enough that it’s hard to imagine finding time to help someone else. It simply isn’t feasible to think we can meet every need of every person that comes to us with a problem. However, it is not a good representation of our faith to swing to the other side of the pendulum and do nothing but offer up our condolences. I think the first step to remedy this solution is to do exactly what we say we will do and pray for the people in need, and then in our prayers ask God what we can do to assist the person in need. By getting involved in other people’s lives we give God an opportunity to work, and we can show the compassion and love that Jesus has for them, in hopes that they will accept what he has to offer.

Last Thursday we took a break from our series on “Faith and Action” to help prep for our annual Community Day. I decided to take a break from the blog posts on faith to talk about an interesting interaction I had with a group of youth pastors. One topic we discussed that stuck with me was the idea that churches all over have spent years introducing people to religion and not to Christ. As the church we often do the very opposite of what we are supposed to be doing. We only accept people who seem to have it all together. The people who have open struggles or issues we often cast aside, because it can get messy and complicated, due to the fact that Christians want to present a nice clean cut version of Christianity. As a community of believers, we need to get past this ideal and realize that we are all in the same boat “everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” (Romans 3:23). With that in mind we need to be more concerned with pointing people to Christ instead of this superficial cleaned up version of Christianity. Christianity is not clean, it’s messy and uncomfortable, all we have to do is read the gospels and we will see Jesus spending his time not with those who looked the part but, with those who needed him and had a desire to be with him. I want to clarify what I am not saying, I am not saying it is okay to embrace your sins and simply give up and still expect to be put in leadership positions by the church. It is one thing to struggle with a sin it is another thing to completely give up on it and embrace it. I am not saying that any person can be used in any position in the church. That is just silly. We all have different gifts and talents and a healthy church is one who has people serving where they are best suited. What I am saying is that we need to get past the stigma that in order to be a Christian we need to have it all together and that we never struggle with anything. It is okay for us to be vulnerable, to admit we don’t have all the answers, to show people who we really are, to admit we struggle to live as we should, and allow God to work through us instead of us working for God.

In my post last week I stated that I felt people make decisions based primarily upon two things information and interaction.  A friend of mine said he disagreed stating that he felt most people made decisions based on emotions.   I think he is right that most of our decisions are based on emotions which tie into our interactions with someone or something. The problem we face is that too often we make decisions based on emotions without even looking at the information side.  This is bad for our faith.  If we rely on our emotions then our relationship with God will be up and down like a roller coaster, and that type of relationship will not lead to growth in our faith. Yes emotions can propel us to do good things with our faith. However, there will come a time where the good emotions fade and we become as just unmotivated towards our faith by our emotions as we were motivated for our faith by our emotions. To consistently grow in our faith we need to move beyond our emotions and deeply interact with God  and the Bible on a daily basis. We have become spoiled in our instant gratification society, we no longer have to work to find information or to even remember things because most things can be found at the push of a button.  Our faith however cannot be grown through a push of a button.  We must take time to intimately interact with the scriptures and with God on a daily basis.  Then we will grow both in knowledge and in closeness to our creator.

 

On thursday we just finished week two of our series focusing on faith and actions. This week we took a look at faith. One of the conclusions I came to while preparing for this lesson was that faith is not a destination, but an understanding that leads to action.  The reason that Christians have received the “hypocrite” label is because we either have no faith or we have allowed faith to be the final stopping point on our journey. This is what James is warning against when he writes that faith without works is dead. Faith is not destination of our belief system; faith is what should inspire us to action.  There are two factors that lead to faith and I believe they are interaction and information.  We typically make decisions on information. However, in our relationship with Christ knowledge will only take us so far.  At some point we have to go on faith that what we believe to be true is true.  This is how Hebrews 11:1-3 defines faith.

“Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. 2 Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation.3 By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.”

            What causes us to take that step to believe that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen? It is through interaction with our Creator that we are able to take that step past knowledge and information and step into faith. If you continue reading Hebrews 11, you will see things that people accomplished through faith. All of these people had deep interaction with God.  Regardless of where you stand in your relationship with God, ask yourself this question, “Have I truly encountered God?”  I believe that if we have, then like the ancients referred to in Hebrews, we will be able to do great things through faith.

This past week we started a series with our students that we are calling “The Faith Factor: Do Actions Matter?” The series is centered on James 2:14-26, where it says that faith without works is dead. One thing that I want to make clear is that I am not advocating that a person is saved by works, we are saved by faith in Christ alone. What I am challenging the students with is this question “If your faith does not produce good deeds then do you really have a faith or do you have something else?”  James asks the reader what value is there in having a faith that does not produce good works.   

                In the first week of this series we took a look at the where living by faith has gotten Christianity. To do that we looked at some research done by the Barna Group.  Through their studies they found that the lifestyle activities of Christians and Non-Christians were statistically equivalent to each other.[1] In a pole of Non-Christians, 84% said they personally know at least one committed Christian, yet only 15% said that the actions of the committed Christian they knew were significantly different from what everyone else does.[2] No wonder Christians have the label of hypocrite, the vast majority of us say one thing and do another.  The question James asks and I find myself asking is what good is our faith if we don’t back it up with actions?

                The goal of this series for is not to beat up or rip Christians for their lack of action, but instead to encourage them to match their actions with their faith, to get beyond simply saying with our lips that we believe in God, but to allow our actions to back up that claim.

Sunday's are a bit different for the family of a Pastor, but holidays that center around our faith are completely different. Easter is one of those holidays.  Like many churches in the Boyertown area, St. Andrew has a higher number of services during holy week than normal.  Because of this my wife found herself alone on the parental front more than normal this week. Yet she somehow managed to show up to service Easter morning with a smile on her face and looking great all dressed up for Easter,  along with my 6th month old daughter sitting pretty in her Easter dress.  I am always amazed that with all my wife does she still manages to plan special things for our family, and to do it with a smile on her face. As I sat listening to the Easter message knowing the plans my wife had to make a special meal for us, I couldn't help but draw a parallel from my relationship with my wife and my relationship with Jesus.   I know it’s a bit odd to relate the two, but bear with me.  There are two relationships in my life that I fail to show the proper gratitude for all they have done for me. Those relationships are with my wife and Jesus.  Despite my failures to properly acknowledge their efforts, they both continue to give, not because they have to but because they want to.  I’ve been around church for most of my life and I have always taken the stance of “Jesus had to die because it was God’s plan.” I rarely thought about the fact that Jesus wanted to offer the gift of salvation to us.  This adds another dimension to the sacrifice of Easter.  There is a big difference between Jesus being forced to die and his being willing to die because of his love for us. This takes the focus off of understanding the process that leads to our salvation and focuses on the love that Christ has for us. During this post Easter week, I encourage you to focus on that love that kept Christ on the cross for our sins.

"For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.  He gave up his life for her."                   

                                                              Ephesians 5:25 NLT

 

 

I am not a very emotional person.  I do not care for Valentine's Day, and I internally cringe with disgust  any time someone mentions love as the answer to a problem.  I assume that like most men, I think love is a stupid and girly emotion, and I'm less of a man if I have emotions.  In spite of my view of love,  Christ calls me to love others and to love my wife.  I struggle with how we can make church more "Manly" and yet still fulfill the command of showing the love of Christ to others.  I also struggle with how I can show my wife that I love her due to my discomfort with sharing my feelings or emotions and my failure to succeed at "opening up" when I do try to convey my feelings to my wife.   I believe the answer  for how we as men should love people and our wives is found in the life of Jesus.  Jesus had many interactions with people throughout his time on earth and I would say that one of his main priorities was to show people love.  I think Jesus was able to do that without turning into a Hallmark Channel special or a cheesy love song.  The reason for that was he not only talked about love, he displayed love through his actions.  The greatest display of course was laying down his life for us. James  says,  "Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works."  (James 2:26).  Actions speak louder than words, and if we are saying one thing with our mouth and doing another with our actions, we are not loving in the way that honors God.  We are taking the easy way out. Ephesians tells us to love our wives as Christ loved the church, which was sacrificially.  This may mean that even if the Lions are on TV I should put that aside and do the dishes in the sink not out of obligation or duty, but out of love for my wife.   I want to encourage the men of St. Andrew to love your wives sacrificially and to study the example of Jesus for how we can live out the command to love one another in not only our church but in the Boyertown area as well.  Christ did not just say he loved people, he showed them that he loved them.  I encourage the men of St. Andrew to not take the easy way out and offer up words, but instead to back up your words with action.

The end of one year and the beginning of another provides us with a natural time for making new commitments that we would like to carry out over the next year.  One of the key principles of goal setting is evaluation. At the end of December every T.V network and radio station out there has a countdown of the top “Something.”  The yearend countdown has infiltrated our culture to the point that a person could go insane from over exposure, and do something crazy like make up his own top ten list and force everyone to read it.

My Top Ten Moments from 2011

10. Finding Out Amanda Was Pregnant

• ·         Nine months is way longer than it sounds.

9.  Seeing my parents with their first grandchild

•    I think my mom would have stayed with us until Mallory graduated from high school if we let her.

8.  Suckering Pastor Robb into trying to drink a gallon of milk in an hour

• ·         This was followed by the much less satisfying… Listening to Pastor Robb try to convince himself he could do it if he did things a little differently next time even after he failed miserably.

7.   Making a toy chest from scratch for my daughter

• ·          I think the handyman gene skipped my generation…

6.  Watching the Yankees Lose to the Tigers in the ALDS

• ·         For one year I have bragging rights over all Yankee fans!

5. Witnessing the Lions and Eagles trading places in the NFC

• ·         I have bragging rights over Eagles fans too!

4. Hearing the Nurse say…. It’s a Girl

• ·         The next phrases out of my mouth were,  “Are you sure?”, and “I guess we need to buy a shotgun.”

3. Getting to the point where I could run three miles without stopping

• ·         Considering I couldn’t run to the end of the driveway when I started this was quite the achievement.

2. Watching the Lions play on Monday night for the first time.

• ·         Before this year I was begging to think the NFL would give the lions to another city… Pastor Robb constantly reassured me that nobody would want them, so I had nothing to worry about.

1. Witnessing the birth of my first Child.

• ·         Something I’ll never forget… Ever!

I hope you enjoyed my attempt at comedy. On a serious note, it is important that before we set new goals, and move on to the next year that we take time and evaluate the previous year. Think about what you did particularly well, where did you drop the ball, and how could you have done better. I would encourage you to not look back on just your family life or your professional life, but your spiritual life as well. I can think back to times this past year where I was really cruising along spiritually and times when I was struggling.  It is important that I look back on those times and figure out what I did right and what I need to work on. The Christian faith is a journey and in order to make sure we are progressing on that journey we need to sit down and honestly evaluate our spiritual lives, and then set new goals we would like to achieve spiritually over the next year.

September brings about quite a few emotions in us; some are excited for football, back to school, or the possibilities of a new beginning.  If you’re like me you are ecstatic because fall means cooler temperatures, new T.V episodes, and football.  For others, it brings about a bit of gloom, because temperatures drop, days get shorter, and they are forced to give up the carefree nature of summer for a more demanding schedule.  However these emotions are secondary to the new college student. September of their freshman year signifies an end to everything comfortable and familiar, an end to life as they know it. They are forced to make new relationships in a new environment with new expectations, all of which can leave them feeling alone, scared and frustrated.  As the college student progresses on they often make new relationships, they learn to rise to the new expectations, and they learn to adjust to their new surroundings, but even thought they adjust its still not quite the same as it was before.   If I were to sum up my college years into one statement it would be this, “never have I been surround by so many people yet felt so alone.”  I have come to realize that the reason for this was because I was missing the close connections I had created with my fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ at my church.  I became great at shallow relationships but was missing the connection with fellow believers.  Because I had two places to call home, both college and my parent’s house, I felt I couldn’t fully connect to a church body.  Luckily there were people from my congregation who would send me letters and cards and little care packages to let me know I was still cared for and a part of their family.  Those little gifts meant the world to me. 

                I say all this to inform you of a new program we are starting at St. Andrew.  We have more college age students, & recent college graduates than at any other time in my tenure hear at St. Andrew.  Up to this point I feel I have failed to help them stay connected to St. Andrew. This is why beginning this fall we will be starting a program called “College Connections.”  The program is designed to connect an adult or family from St. Andrew with a college age student or recent college graduate, with the intent to let them know they are loved, cared for, and still a valued part of this congregation.  If you would like to make an impact in the lives of a college age student please email me at deering.adam@gmail.com.  Also, If you know of a college age student or recent college graduate who has ties to St. Andrew please let me know.  I have a list of people but I could use help making sure we get to as many people as possible.

“ 11 Teach these things and insist that everyone learn them. 12 Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity. 13 Until I get there, focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them.”

1 Timothy 4:11-13

 

I can honestly say that I have been on both sides of this passage. I have been looked down upon in my younger years because of my age, and I have written off young people from doing certain tasks because of their age.  I know, I work with youth so I’m supposed to think the best of our teens. However, sometimes the more you know about an age group the more you allow the stereotypes to influence your thinking.  For every time I have been right about a stereotype of a young person, there are countless times I have been proven wrong. Unfortunately, there have been many times when students have not been given the opportunity to prove me wrong. Even worse yet I think we as adults contribute to the stereotypes because we do not provide them with opportunities to show us what they are capable of. If you’re like me, you like things done a certain way and it’s hard for you to give up control and let someone else do a job because you worry that it may not come out as polished as you would like or there is a greater risk of failure all together.  I find that every time I get over myself and provide a student with an opportunity to show me what they are capable of I am blown away by the results.   By not giving our youth opportunities, we are handicapping them from moving forward successfully into adulthood.  I can remember as a teen working on projects with my father in the garage, and my job was always to hold the flashlight.  I hardly received instructions on what we were doing, or an explanation as why we were doing it, so now as an adult I am left to figure things out for myself because my father felt it would have taken too long to teach me to do it or that I may have made the problem worse.  Admittedly, there were many times growing up that I tried to fix something on my own and made the problem worse, but that does not mean that the desire and drive to learn and to be productive was not there, I simply lacked the knowledge.

         I deal with youth on a daily basis, and one of the things I have to constantly remind myself of is that it is far more important for me to teach and guide a young person than it is to have something done my way. I want to encourage you to find your role in developing the young people of today. The amount of youth willing to help and to be productive members of our society far outweighs the number of people willing to teach and guide them.  It may be a little more trying and time consuming on the front end, but I can tell you that when you see a student whom you care about and spent time working with succeed on their own, the rewards are far greater than the upfront cost!