God's Agenda: Religion, Spirituality or Serenity?

Posted on March 6, 2009

Tim Chester‘s book You Can Change is refreshingly simple, biblical, and practical. In it he shows us God’s agenda for change in us through Jesus, an agenda that is far from duty-driven religion, detached spirituality, or placid serenity:

Jesus shows us God’s agenda for change. God isn’t interested in making us religous. Think of Jesus, who was hated by religious people. God isn’t interested in making us ‘spiritual’ if by spiritual we mean detached: Jesus was God getting stuck in. God isn’t interested in making us self-absorbed; Jesus was self-giving personified. God isn’t interested in serenity: Jesus was passionate for God, angry at sin, wept for the city.

Tim explains that God’s agenda for us isn’t religion, spirituality, or serenity but the good and holy life. Noting that we often mistake holiness for joyless moral conformity, he says that “holiness is always good news.” What is holiness?

For Jesus holiness didn’t mean being set apart from the world, but being consecrated in the world…Jesus isnt’ just good for us. He is good itself. The secret of gospel change is being convinced that Jesus is the good life and the fountain of all joy.

Do you believe this good news, that Jesus is the good life and the fountain of all joy? Or is something else competing for your joy today? Look to Christ who not only offers us the good life but also his life, his death, for our joyless living and life-stealing choices. Ask him to change your heart, to show you that he is the fountain of all joy.

New Books

Posted on March 6, 2009

I got a U.K shipment today with some great titles:

  1. You Can Change, Tim Chester
  2. The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness, Chester
  3. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, N. T. Wright
  4. Clusters: Creative Mid-sized Missional Communities, Hopkins and Breen

Money and Mission

Posted on March 5, 2009

As I prepare for Sunday’s sermon on money and mission, I found several good resources and quotes:

  • “Money follows mission… focus on mission will shift the language of the conversation from “fundraising” to identity and creativity. The irony is that mission can become clearer in a crisis, and undiscovered resources emerge to fulfill that mission.” – from Rendering Unto God

  • “You Philippians did not, because you were entrusted with one city, he says, care for that city only, but you leave nothing undone to be partners of my labours, being everywhere at hand, and working with me, as if taking part in my preaching.” – Homilies on Philippians, no.1
  • But there is something uniquely American about our craving to be told what to do, at least if the number of TV shows and radio programs and books and magazines devoted to doing just that are any indication. We’re a people who like to maximize – our wealth and our connections and our potential – and in recent years the message has been delivered, ever more loudly and clearly, from more and more sources, that if we buy X or do Y or follow the example of Z, then maximum happiness will indeed be ours. – Joe Lovell, “The bottom line? Non of the financial experts know what to do either”

U2, "Crazy" Live on Letterman

Posted on March 5, 2009

Despite the trite chorus, this song is jam-packed with meaningful lyrics that chart a course of moving through life with joy, sacrifice, and mission as we move up, “not a hill but a mountain” which requires that we “believe not doubt.”

Bono points us toward the light in a life that can be difficult and dark, a place where we have to “shout in the darkness” to keep out sanity and to God to “still our soul.”

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