We Get to Carry the Freight!

A couple of weeks ago I helped lead a funeral service.  It was a tragic situation; a woman had died in a house fire.  I co-officiated at her service with a pastor of a new churh start in our area who is doing an awesome job bringing people into the arms of Jesus.  I did not known the woman who died.  I know her mother and my colleague in pastoral ministry knows her son.  A funeral is a unique situation in that a church pastor may or may not know anything about the family members and friends who attend, and he/she may have no awareness of the state of anyone's relationship with Jesus.  Somewhere, somehow, leaders in the Body of Christ have the opportunity and responsibility to offer a central word of concrete hope in and through the crucified and risen One, even in the midst of pain, loss, and tragedy.  It's not a time to opportunize a vulnerable human situation.  Still it's an exciting chance to point to Jesus before folks who might not hear about him or experience him in any other setting.

Coming to that point in my message that day, this thought surged to the front of my awareness and almost overwhelmed me as I spoke:  "You get to carry the freight!".  Here is a chance to open the door to the heart of God for people in need, and I get the opportunity to deliver the goods.  I mean I've known this all these years that I've been doing my particular ministry, but it was like I realized the amazing depth of it all for the first time.  I get to do it.  Me; the last person who should be doing it.  Painfully shy, perfectionistic, sometimes rigidly obsessive.  Someone who had once turned his back on God and the church and who least deserved to be even considered to be an ambassador for Jesus.  The myriad reasons I should not be doing what I'm doing literally drown out the few anemic reasons that I should.  But it's not about how unqualified and unworthy I am, though I am.  It's about how mighty and how deep in unbelievable grace my God is.  I get the carry the freight...ME, for heaven's sake!  If that's not a sign of the grace of God in Jesus the Christ, I don't know what is.

Followers of Jesus, WE get to carry the freight. WE do; messed up as we are.  And it's not just about speaking at a funeral or being a church leader.  Every day the opportunity is given to us.  As my friend Keith Colley always reminds me, God doesn't call the equipped (because none of us are); God equips the called.  I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Focus on the Water and the Fish, Not on the Tackle

I am blessed with many good friends who are both wise in the wisdom which comes from God and passionate for the cause of leading people in new life with Jesus.  One of those is my friend Jim; a great outdoorsman, theologian, ambassador for Jesus, and humble servant of the crucified and risen one.  Jim has a remarkable way of making things crystal clear, while unapologeticly Jesus-centered.  Recently he shared with me this:  "You like to fish...We have never caught a fish by watching our rod, reel, lure or arm, have we?  It's only by watching our target that we can pitch a worm in the brush where a fish is at.  If our eye is off the target we get hung up, have backlashes, and don't catch that bass.  That's just like following Jesus.". Sometimes we confuse the tools we use with the purpose for which the tools exist.  In my line of work,  the aim is not just to build up and maintain a church.  The aim is to strengthen a church for the purpose of joining with Jesus in the cause of changing lives and transforming the world.  Focusing on ourselves is like watching the rod and reel, instead of watching the water to see where it is directing us to the likeliest habitat for the fish.

By the grace of God alone I am involved in a church full of people who get this, Jim being amongst those of great God-given vision.  We all pray we continue to grow and improve in our focus on the target and not our own power alone.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.