The Father's Kingdom

I remember hearing a story about a Cambodian man who felt God’s call to minister to Cambodian peasants who had been pushed off their land and forced to live in camps outside of town.  These camps were in swamp land and lacked sanitation. The people had no access to healthcare and rarely found enough to eat. This missionary spent the first few years working to improve conditions.  He drained the swamp (literally!). He helped people build homes. He brought in doctors and dentists to provide medical care. When asked how he knew to do all of this, here was his reply: “In the age to come, people won’t live in swamps without roofs, medical care, or food.  So I just tried to make the camp more like God’s kingdom.”

This week we are praying for the Father’s Kingdom. We are praying, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Perhaps the best way to start is by imagining a challenge, obstacle, or struggle once heaven has been poured out over it. What is different for this person when God’s kingdom comes upon them?  How does this situation change when heaven floods into it? Jesus invites us to pray his glorious future into our difficult present. Click the button below for a short video explanation of how to pray for the Father’s Kingdom.

The Father's Character

In any conversation it’s crucial to know who we are talking to.  We talk differently to our friends than we do our spouse or our boss or our teacher.  It makes a difference! When we begin our prayer, Jesus wants us to be crystal clear about who it is that we’re praying to.  We are praying to our Father. Isn’t that amazing? Naturally, Jesus could claim God as his Father. But Jesus is not just telling us about his prayer life.  He is telling us how we should pray. We get to call God “Our Father.”

But Jesus also reminds us that he is a different kind of Father.  He is in heaven. Not only is he as close as a father, he fills the universe with his presence.  He is a Father who can do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. Don’t just spend time in prayer this week.  Spend some time this week reflecting on the amazing Father to whom you are praying. For a short video with a few more thoughts, click below.

Everybody's Job

We have to choose our battles in life.  It’s impossible for everyone to be good at everything.  In fact, it's impossible for anyone to be good at everything.  The same is true for organizations like FCC. Try as we might, it’s impossible for a church to do everything with complete excellence.  We have to choose what we’re called to focus on. At FCC, we have chosen to be a church that is excellent at welcoming guests and visitors.  We have decided that God is calling us to be great at letting people know that they are welcome and wanted here. And we’ve invested heavily into being great at it.

Over the last couple of years we have formalized the welcome process.  We have established teams of people who are trained and commissioned to greet people.  We recently held a welcome training workshop to equip people. We even have a new Welcome Center where guests can stop and receive a gift.  But let’s be crystal clear about this: welcoming people to FCC is everybody’s job.  That unfamiliar person standing in the Commons after the service is your responsibility.  The man or woman you don’t recognize isn’t waiting for a welcome team member to say hello.  That man or woman is waiting for you to say hello.  This job belongs to all of us.

From Samantha Francart

If you were at church yesterday, you probably heard about the upcoming changes. I’ve been accepted to squad lead a group of 18 to 20-year-olds on a program called World Race Gap Year. This is something that has been on my heart for a while, and as I began pursuing what this might look like for me, doors that I couldn’t open on my own began flying wide open. I will be leaving for this 9-month trip at the end of August. I plan on finishing out the school year here at FCC, and over the next couple of months, FCC will start the process of hiring a new Youth Director. 

 It’s hard to find the words to explain to you how thankful I am for the opportunity to have led the student ministries here at FCC for the past couple of years. I am so grateful to this church family for all of your encouragement and support!

 On this journey, as God has led me closer to His heart, what I’ve discovered more than anything is that it’s all about Him. Every breath, every thought, every word. He is worth everything. Every decision, every action, every step. He desires to guide; we simply must choose to trust, listen, and obey. I’m finishing out this year full of joy for what God has already done and full of hope - confident expectation - for what He will continue to do!

On Becoming a Gracifist

Yesterday in our worship service, Pastor Jeff Boersma invented a new word: Gracifist.  He was preaching about Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek. Jeff wondered out loud if following this teaching made him a pacifist.  Jeff suggested that rather than being a pacifist, he was a gracifist. I love this word! Let’s unpack the difference between a pacifist and a gracifist.

A pacifist is a person opposed to war under any circumstances.  A pacifist resists all physical violence. Pacifism refuses to get involved by being a conscientious objector.  A gracfist, on the other hand, may or may not choose to go to war. But in either case, a gracifist will love their enemies.  A gracifist will actually seek the good of their enemies. Not because the enemy deserves it, but precisely because they don’t.  That’s what makes it grace. Gracifists return insults and offenses with kindness and generosity. A gracifist will forgive you quickly and without condition.  But the most important thing about a gracifist is this: they can give grace freely because they have received grace freely. The grace of God that is ours in Jesus Christ is at work in our lives.  Gracifists have been forgiven, loved, and shown kindness by Jesus when we were his enemies. Jesus is the ultimate gracifist. And we are becoming like him. Guess what that makes us?

Looking for Heroes

Deep down, I believe all of us are looking for a hero.  We long for someone strong enough to rescue us, defend us, and be our champion.  We look for someone noble enough, virtuous enough, and consistent enough to rely on.  But our search for heroes leaves us with few, if any, options. We look to professional athletes and celebrities and find people who do some special things, even heroic things.  But there are no heroes on the field, court, or in Hollywood. We look to people in political leadership and find people caught up in a system that doesn’t allow them to be heroic.  There are no heroes in Washington DC or Lansing.

Teachers, mentors, coaches, and relatives can make a huge difference in our lives.  They are living examples of some of the best parts of humanity. But they still fall short of hero status.  My friend and Bible Scholar, Rev. Gerrit Koedoot, once said to me, “There is only one hero in the Bible.” It isn’t Abraham, Joseph, Paul, or even David.  In the search for heroes, Jesus stands alone. Only he can answer our hopes and fears. If you look for heroes anywhere besides Jesus, I promise you disappointment.  But look to Jesus and you will find the world’s one true hero.

Super Bowl Religion

Each year it seems the Super Bowl gets bigger.  It has become more of an event than a football game.  And not just in Miami or whatever city it is played in.  There is a Super Bowl party in every tenth household. For many people, this is the only football game they watch all year.  Except that they aren’t really watching the game. Mostly, people are catching up with old friends or making new ones. Perhaps the only time they bother to look at the TV is for the commercials and the halftime show.  More than a football game, it’s a chance to make the weekend last one more night.

I recognize that a life of faith can deteriorate into a Super Bowl Sunday.  Instead of making a relationship with Christ the main thing, we can get caught up in the fellowship, the music, or the positive environment.  In a free society like ours, there is a lot of icing on the cake of faith. We are free to enjoy the fringe benefits. But we must never mistake the commercials for the game.  The best parts of religion can never replace the best part - the new life we have in Jesus and the abiding relationship we have with him.

The Fruit of the Spirit: God’s Work, Not Ours

Yesterday during our worship service I challenged us to identify one fruit of the Spirit that stood out to you personally.  It may be a quality that you struggle with. It could be one that you are intrigued by or simply want more of it. We were encouraged to pray this week that God would develop that fruit in our lives more fully.  Here’s the list: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

I’m convinced that neither you nor I can generate any of these qualities within ourselves.  They’re called the fruit of the Spirit for a reason.  They’re not the fruit of you or me.  God produces these things in our lives.  Our job is to cooperate with God’s work. Our job is to pray and be open to how God will generate and develop this fruit.  It takes the pressure off, doesn’t it? Less pressure. More fruit.

Isaiah 26:8

During the service on Sunday, the group that went to Passion had an opportunity to share about our experience. The message from John Piper is what resonated the most with me during the conference. He focused on Isaiah 26:8, which says, “Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.” In this verse, the desire of our hearts is twofold: God’s name and His fame. One part of this is personal; the other part is global. As we walk in relationship with God, we are to desire a deeper personal relationship with the Lord. We are also to desire that He gets the fame – not us. John Piper said, “Our desires make clear what our God is.” Our desire for God should be the sustaining act that drives all other desires. Do you hunger for more of God in your life? Do you hunger for more of God in our world? Nothing is more important in your life than your desire for God. His name and his renown are the desire of our hearts!

What are you praying for in 2020?

If you’re into new year resolutions, you’ve probably made yours by now.  You’ve set your goals for a level of activity or a target for where you’ll tip the scale.  You’ve resolved to learn a new hobby or break an old habit. It’s great to have a goal that keeps us moving forward toward something positive.  At the same time, we need to recognize that 2020 isn’t ours to make happen. The most important things, the most life-changing things that happen this year are probably not the things you can generate or prevent.

This leads to another question: What are you praying for in 2020?  What are you asking God to do in your life, your family, your career?  In addition to my personal goals, there are things that only God can do.  So in addition to my resolutions, I will be asking God for some specific things this year.  Among them are two new LifeGroups, the parole of a prisoner I’ve visited and written, and that our church would grow in prayer.  What about you? What are you praying for in 2020? It may be that the things you pray for will end up being much more important than the resolutions you’ve made.

The Candle of Love

Yesterday we began our service by lighting the fourth candle of Advent - the candle of love.  Love is the most written about, sung about, talked about thing in the world. The word itself could refer to hundreds of different realities, feelings, or actions.  Even the Bible talks about love from several different perspectives. One biblical angle that has struck me recently is from 1 John 4: 18: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”  

I think what John is saying is that when we live in God’s love, there is really nothing to be afraid of.  If you are fired from your job, you don’t have to be afraid of losing your job anymore. If you’ve died to yourself and Christ lives in you, you don’t have to be afraid of dying anymore.  When you’ve got all the love you need in Christ, you don’t have to fear losing it in your relationships with others. It’s hard for us to understand how perfectly and completely Jesus loves us.  It is not just a love that we hold. It is a love that holds us, body and soul, in life and in death. The more we understand that love, the less afraid we become.

The Candle of Joy

Yesterday we lit the third candle of Advent - the candle of joy.  Joy is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Yet I think we miss the great weight of this word.  We easily mistake joy for happiness. If we feel happy or are excited about something, we call it joy.  If there are some things happening that feel positive to us, we call our response joy. But what we are really talking about is happiness.  Happiness rests on the circumstances and situations in our lives. Joy is anchored in something much deeper and much more solid.

It might help to think of this as two tracks that our lives run on.  The first track runs according to what happens to us. It is made up of our health, the state of our marriage, the grades on our finals, and the speeding ticket we got.  But the second track is not so much what happens to us, but rather what is true of us. This track is about who we are and to whom we belong. Joy is based on this second track.  So while our circumstances will change, sometimes dramatically, our God and our identity do not. Happiness is fleeting. Joy is permanent. Happiness changes with the circumstances of our lives.  Joy runs straight and true right through those circumstances. Joy is based on a Son who was born to us, a Son who died for us, a Son to whom we belong.

The Candle of Peace

Sometimes a word gets watered down to the point of losing its meaning.  I think the word “peace” is a classic example of this. Maybe it got co-opted by the flower children in the 1960s.  Maybe Ryan Seacrest stripped it of meaning by ending American Idol with “Peace out.”  This word has come to mean something pretty ordinary.  It means, “I hope things go well for you.” It means, “Our countries aren’t shooting at each other right now.”  This is the peace that we’ve settled for: a decent set of personal circumstances or the absence of active combat.

But when the Bible talks about peace it means something totally different.  On a personal level, it is a rock solid assurance that nothing can ever change the most important things in our lives.  On a broader scale it refers to something greater than a cease-fire. It speaks of nations working together in trust and friendship and respect.  This kind of peace is very rare. This is a peace only Jesus can bring. As we light the candle of peace, consider what a precious commodity peace is.  Remember that it has a single source: the baby that was born on Christmas.

The Candle of Hope

It’s been a busy week!  We gave thanks Wednesday night in church and on Thursday with our families.  If you get into the Black Friday thing, you were up early on Friday for that.  After all of those festivities we began the Advent season on Sunday by lighting the candle of hope.  Hope is a powerful thing. Hope will drive people to cross oceans to unknown worlds. Hope will pick a person back up after being knocked down for the hundredth time.  Because of hope, people will put themselves and their bodies through excruciating pain. Hope sees past current struggles to a glorious day that lies in the future.

As we light this first candle of hope, we are connecting with God’s Old Testament people who longed for the coming of the Messiah.  We connect with those who were in exile, away from their homeland. We connect with those longing for redemption, for a change of fortunes.  As we light this candle, let’s call to mind all that we deeply long for. Let’s remember that we now have what so many hoped for. A day is coming for us when every longing will be met, a day when we will finally be home.

Advent Fasting

It’s a longstanding Christian tradition to give up something during the season of Lent.  It might be meat on Fridays. It could be TV or other forms of entertainment. The options are endless.  Christians who choose to fast during Lent are making an effort to prepare themselves for a celebration of the resurrection.  For most of Christian history Advent was to Christmas what Lent is to Easter. Advent has traditionally also been a season of preparation.  People would fast in order to focus on the wonder of the incarnation. In recent years this Advent emphasis has been lost in a festive season that begins on November 1.

I’ve decided that this year I am going to fast during Advent.  I would encourage you to consider this as well. With all the things that tug at our attention during this season, with all the distractions of the holidays, an intentional fast can help us refocus on what’s really important.  I have decided that I am going to fast from the news. I’m not making that a recommendation, but rather an example of one way to fast. What can you remove from (or add to) your life this Advent that will help you stay focused on The Reason?

An Unlikely Choice

Acts 9:1-19

Saul of Tarsus. This highly educated man thought that Christianity was both wrong and deceptive. He was still waiting for the expected Messiah. So, in persecuting Christians, Saul thought he was serving God. While Saul was in the throes of his persecution, Jesus appeared to Saul and told him to stop persecuting Him. 

It’s here that Saul asks the right questions. He asks, “Who are You, Lord?” and “Lord, what do You want me to do?” Saul responded with two of the most important questions anyone can (and must) ask. 

“Who are You, Lord?” We must ask this question with a humble heart and ask it to God. Jesus showed us exactly who God is, and He can answer this question. 

“What do You want me to do?” Few dare to really ask God this question, but when we ask it, we must ask it with submission and determined obedience. 

When Saul is confronted by Jesus, he is obedient. He believes. He changes. He chose to leave his life of persecution and follow Jesus. 

Saul is an unlikely choice. If God were to choose anyone to share His message of love and hope, no one would expect that it would be Saul - the man who persecuted Christians. The man who wanted nothing to do with Jesus. 

This should give us hope for people who are far from God. Saul was as far away from following Jesus as anyone could be. Yet, God chose him. In our limited view, we sometimes dismiss people from being used by God. We think that they are so far from Him that there’s no way God could use them. The conversion of Saul reminds us of God’s ways being higher than ours. 

Saul’s transformation is remarkable and radical. Why should we not expect God to do big things in lives today?

Lessons from Israel: People

As you think about the most exciting and significant moments in your life, you will no doubt remember the places they happened.  You will picture the scenes, the landscape, and the things you learned and enjoyed. This was so true of our time in Israel. I will never forget looking out over the Sea of Galilee from the top of Mt. Arbel.  I will always remember the view from Masada and standing on the mountainside where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. To walk where Jesus walked will shape me for the rest of my life.

But this amazing experience was steeply augmented by the people who accompanied me on this trip.  My family, first and foremost, will stand out as I share these memories with them. Our leaders, Dan and Evan, will continue to impact me through their powerful and insightful teaching.  But all the people on this pilgrimage - the Kuyper College students and other adults - have made this amazing journey all the sweeter. Jesus’ life and ministry was always about people. He came to redeem all of creation, but especially people.  I will hold my fellow travelers in my heart as firmly as the sights and sounds. And to all my friends at FCC, thank you for making this possible. You were there as well - in my heart!

Lessons from Israel: Bethlehem

This photo was taken deep inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  It is traditionally the exact spot where Jesus came into this world. At the time, there was no ornate candle holders, expensive cloth, or marble floor.  On the day we visited this site there were long lines and crowds of people. People from all over the world had come to see the place where Jesus was born.  

There’s no debate that the incarnation was among the most powerful event in history.  The union of divinity and humanity is of greatest importance for us and our salvation.  But I fear it is far too easy to celebrate this event, and far too difficult to embrace its power.  A person can make a pilgrimage to this site and imagine that holy moment. A person can trim a Christmas tree and buy gifts for loved ones.  But a life that embraces the power of the incarnation is a deeper level of commitment. Jesus is looking for followers, not just celebrants. He requests a commitment to his kingdom, not just to the event that announced its coming.

Lessons from Israel: Herodian

Herod the Great was an extremely paranoid man.  He is famous for the elaborate and extensive building projects that he initiated.  But most of those building programs were born out of his paranoia. Masada, the great fortress near the Dead Sea, was created as a buttress against the threat of revolt.  Another place of escape was called Herodian. This was a mountain that Herod created. Yes, he built a mountain! Inside were all the luxuries of a four-star hotel. Herod would be protected in style.  From this lofty perch, Herod could see any enemies advancing against him. Yet under his nose, in plain view from Herodian, the King of the universe was born a few miles away in Bethlehem.

Governments and leaders and earthly regimes cannot interfere with God’s plans.  In fact, more often than not, they unwittingly cooperate with God’s purposes. As I look out at our nation and see the current political turmoil, I find great consolation here: the Messiah was born into a world whose rulers wanted him dead.  As I look out at our world and see wars, threats, and unrest, I am filled with hope by this: every effort to kill Jesus and his movement resulted in the spread of salvation and the Gospel. Therefore, I will choose hope and faith in the midst of frightening current events.  God’s plan has yet to be thwarted by human will or ambition.

Lessons from Israel: Bethesda

There was a pool on the outskirts of Jerusalem that was said to have healing powers.  A sick or disabled person could find healing if they were able to slip into the pool when there was a disturbance in the water.  One man had been sitting beside this pool for years, hoping to get into the waters at just the right time and cure his inability to walk.  It was like buying a lottery ticket every day and hoping eventually your numbers would come up. After years without success, Jesus happens by and asks this man, “Do you want to get well?”  It seemed like a silly question. Of course he did. He just needed someone to help him into the pool at the right time. Rather than wait for that right time, Jesus simply heals him on the spot.

Healing comes from God.  Whether it happens through prayer and the laying on of hands or a doctor’s skill or a pool on the outskirts of town, God is the one who heals.  This story also reminds us that healing is on God’s timetable, not ours. I can’t tell you why God let this man wait years before giving him the use of his legs.  But I can tell you that it was perfect. I can tell you that God achieved everything he wanted to achieve through the manner and timing of this healing. You may be waiting for healing in your life.  In the face of that wait, it is easy to grow discouraged. Let faith remind you of this: your healing will be perfect. It will come at a time and in a way that will accomplish more in your life and in the world than you can even imagine.