Loving People to the Very End #HolyWeek
“Mom, I love you Four hundred-million-thousand!” My oldest son did this numbers game when he was younger. He tried to come up with the largest numbers his brain could imagine to describe the height, depth, breadth of his love for mom. (When asked about love for Dad, it was usually just a plain 100 or so. But I’m not bitter). Finally, one day he gave up trying to come up with larger and larger numbers and just proclaimed, “Mom, I love you to the very end!”
That reminded me of the Holy Week story in John 13. The Bible says about Jesus, “He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end” John 13:1 NLT. So what did He do? He “wrapped a towel around his waste, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet…” John 13:4-5 NLT.
This was just the beginning of a 24-36 hour period of loving them to the end that culminated with his brutal bloody death on the cross. How did Jesus demonstrate how to love to the end? Deep humility and serving others with no boundaries. Jesus’ love said, “I’ll do whatever it takes, without limitation or hesitation, because of my love for you.”
“Yea, that’s Jesus. He’s awesome!” Yes He is, but Jesus called us to this same kind of life. What!
John 13:14-15,
“since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.”
Philippians 2:5-8 ups the stakes even more:
“You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.”
God desires for us to live with an attitude of “I’ll do whatever it takes” in our relationships with Him and others. Letting go of perks, privileges, social norms, entitlements, and appearances. The opposite is to draw the line. “I’ll not go that far.” Jesus erased his line for us, and calls us to do the same.
Some questions I’m reflecting on:
- Where do I draw the line when it comes to humility, transparency, and serving others? Why?
- Do I allow real or imagined perks, privileges, social norms get in the way of loving people?
- Can I say my attitude toward others is Christ-like with this standard?
- Does my love for God and others have limitations? or is it to the very end?
Improvise, Adapt, Overcome
From a friend’s Email Signature:
“My job is to get things done. If I have the equipment, materials, and manpower to do it fine! If I don’t then I have to improvise, adapt to changing circumstances and overcome the problem to reach the objective.”
Blows a hole in all my excuse making this morning… Love it. And hate it. Such is the challenge of leadership.
Small Groups on Mission Together
Love what one Northshore church is doing to get their small groups On Mission For Others. FBC Mandeville is having each of their Life Groups choose a “NEAR Mission Project” to engage in together. They’ve started a blog to communicate local opportunities for mission. Check it out: http://fbcmandeville.blogspot.com/.
New Testament Discipleship included Relationships built around the Word of God AND the Mission of God (See my related post on Relationships + Mission and the New Old Way of Movement Making).
Imagine the possibilities for your Small Groups or Sunday School classes…
The Church Starts Here Podcast
Enjoyed spending some time with a great friend who’s been bit by the church planting bug. Mike Dean is part of a 
new church in northwest Louisiana and has started a great blog and podcast on church planting called The Church Starts Here. A few weeks ago on the podcast we talked challenges to church planting, changes in terminology, the role of the church planters wife, and more.
Check it out at HERE.
“7 Things to Pray for Your Children” and other links I liked and learned from this week:
From my delicious.com account:
- Seven Things to Pray for Your Children // desiringgod.org parenting, prayer
- 10 Time Management Rules That You Are Breaking // timemanagementninja.com TimeManagement
- 10 Things Your Son Needs From You // allprodad.com Fatherhood, Sons, Dads
- Starting Spiritual Conversations // loganleadership.com evangelism, conversations // “Sometimes people honestly have no idea how to answer a spiritual question. Modeling your own response first makes it easier for them by giving them a category for how to respond.”
- 12 Essentials of Powerful Church Communications // churchplants.com ChurchCommunication
- How to Keep Your Insecurity From Hurting Your Church // pastors.com leadership, insecurity // “Competitiveness, combativeness, and complaining do not have a place in the church of Jesus Christ, especially in the life of a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
- Disciple Being or Disciple Making? // loganleadership.com Discipleship // “Disciple-making requires making new disciples. Disciple-being involves only existing disciples.”
- 9 Leadership Acceleration Skills // visionroom.com leadership, personaldevelopment // “bad leaders, average leaders, and even good leaders can change their spots.”
Morning Prayers
Starting the day with surrender… 
- Lord, I exalt You as Lord and Master and King of my life.
- Lord, I place my life at your complete 100% disposal, today and forever.
- Lord, I humble myself under Your might hand (1 Peter 5:7).
- Lord, empty me of myself and fill me with Your Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).
- Lord Jesus, I desire to come after you today, denying myself, taking up my cross and following You (Luke 9:23).
- Lord, I crucify my flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24).
- Lord, I reckon myself dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).
- Lord, I present my body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) and as an instrument of Your righteousness (Romans 6:13).
- Create in me a pure heart, O God (Psalm 51:10), that I may see You (Matthew 5:8).
- In repentance, I ask for You to cleanse me of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
- I cry out for Your wisdom, knowing that my own is insufficient for this day (Proverbs 3:5-7).
- Lord, have your way with me.
- Lord, open my eyes to see where you’re working.
- Lord, give me the courage today & forever to walk through the doors you open.
- Lord, help me see as you see, hear as you hear, and speak as you speak today & forever.
- Lord, rule and reign in and through my life today, as you rule and reign over all creation.
- Lord, take this life for Your good and glory today and forever.
- Lord, I can do nothing apart from you (John 15:5).
- Lord, teach me, use me, change me today and forever.
- Lord, I am Your willing bond-slave (Luke 1:37).
- Lord, give me thick skin and a tender heart.
- Holy Spirit, be my teacher and guide today and forever.
25 Ways for Men to Be Servant Leaders… and other links I liked and learned from this week:
From my delicious.com account:
- The Real Definition of a Gospel-Centered Leader – excerpt from the book Creature of the Word by Matt Chandler, Eric Geiger, & Josh Patterson – churchleaders.com leadership
- EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey Kindle Edition just $1.99
- Leaders of Courageous Character: Why They’re Needed but Lacking– With Four Ways to Be One – edstetzer.com leadership, Courage
- 25 Ways for Men to be Servant Leaders – by Micah Carter, from the Men’s Fraternity Study Bible – hcsb.org Men, husbands, family
- The Science Behind Coffee and Why it’s Actually Good for Your Health – lifehacker.com – “Coffee isn’t just warm and energizing, it may also be extremely good for you. In recent years, scientists have studied the effects of coffee on various aspects of health and their results have been nothing short of amazing.”
- “Offering to Others the New Life He Has Given Me” – Great testimony of life change from NOBTS student Shaun Grunblatt – unlimitedpartnerships.org “Before receiving Christ at the age of twenty seven, my life had been devastated by the effects of my sin and foolish choices. I lost everything to drugs and alcohol. Then through a series of tragedies, I came to a place of humble brokenness before the Lord.”
- A Letter to the Church, from a Pastor – What’s your pastor thinking? ronedmondson.com pastors
- 10 Reasons Dads Should Have Date Night With Their Daughters – playgrounddad.com parenting, Daughters
Gospel: God Gets Explicit
Explicit lyrics in the 80’s, brought on the Parental Advisory labels for cassettes and then CD’s in the 90’s. So, I’ve always considered the word
explicit to mean naughty. Then while reading Matt Chandler’s 2012 book Explicit Gospel, I used my handy “look up in dictionary” feature on the Mac toolbar and learned the definition had little to do with potty words. Explicit is defined as “stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or doubt.” That’s actually a great adjective for the message of God. Though there is a lot of confusion about what Christianity, religion, the Gospel is all about (see my last post), God has laid it out where anyone can grasp his desire. So in an effort to be explicit this morning, here’s a few of my fav verses, definitions, links and resources to remove doubt and confusion and state it clearly and in detail. I’ll be adding to this post over the next few weeks as our church studies the Explicit Gospel. Get to know the Gospel!!!
- 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 – “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel… that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…”
- John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
- Romans 6:23 – “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
- Ephesians 2:1, 4-5 – “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins… But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”
Definitions:
- Gospel comes from the word “Evangel” which means Good News. “Evangel” was news of a great historical event that changed the listeners condition and required response. So the gospel is news of what God has done to accomplish salvation through Jesus Christ in history.
- Martin Luther: “The gospel is a story about Christ, God’s and David’s son, who died and was raised, and is established as Lord. This is the gospel in a nutshell.”
- Tim Keller: “Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.”
- John Piper: “The Gospel is the good news of our final and full enjoyment of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
- Ed Stetzer: “The gospel is the good news that God, who is more holy than we can imagine, looked upon with compassion, people, who are more sinful than we would possibly admit, and sent Jesus into history to establish his Kingdom and reconcile people and the world to himself. Jesus, whose love is more extravagant than we can measure, came to sacrificially die for us so that, by His death and resurrection, we might gain through His grace what the Bible defines as new and eternal life.”
- Tullian Tchividjian: ”The Gospel is the the good news that in and through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, God makes all things new.”
Links:
Gospel? Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That!
Though some churches are growing, we live in a day of declining church attendance. And beyond the pragmatistic solutions that we have to offer and conference about, we also must connect the dots to the reality that people are turning to other things for good news (substance, pleasure, people, false religions, etc.) and YEP, they’re saying to our Gospel, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” Now, there are eternal consequences to this. Devastating. Eternal. Consequences. Why and how MUST be priorities for Christians and churches concerned about the Gospel, the Great Commission, the glory of God, the lives and souls of people.
In our Lenten study called The Explicit Gospel, our church is currently focusing on What is the Gospel? How do we make it part of everyday life?
How do we share it in relevant ways to our friends? How do we allow the Gospel to influence how we do church? prepare for the future? etc.
There are good reasons to point to for the answer to the question, “Why are people turning to other things for Good News?” Why do p
1. It’s Spiritual. The Bible actually says that many people will not get it. Some people will never have time for that! That’s why Jesus often concluded truth statements with the phrase, “He who has ears to hear let him hear” (Matthew 11:15, Mark 4:9, Luke 8:8) knowing that some would not be able to comprehend the spiritual truth and respond to it. In the Parable of the Sower found in Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8, Jesus predicted that only one in four people that hear the word will respond with fruitfulness. The spiritual obstacles of Satan, suffering, and stuff can get in the way of us understanding and responding to the Gospel. See also 2 Corinthians 4:4.eople not have time for the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Here’s a few:
2. Compelling Counterfeits. Counterfeit Gospels scatter the landscape and many of them are compelling. A counterfeit gospel is anything that adds to or takes away from the Gospel or from Jesus’ work of defeating sin at the cross and death at the tomb. It’s + or – Jesus. Anything that we count on for hope, peace, salvation, security, significance outside of Jesus is a counterfeit. These can be substance, pleasure, possessions, people, or almost anything our heart goes after. It can also be something good. A compelling counterfeit can be found in church every Sunday with people who are trusting Jesus AND their religious activity to bring them salvation. The true Gospel is Jesus + or – nothing.
3. Failure to Communicate. We can’t blame ourselves for the Spiritual realities and counterfeits around us, but God put communication of the Gospel right on our to do list (Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8, Romans 10:14-17). The Apostle Paul asks the obvious and challenging questions in Romans 10:14-15, “how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent?” God’s plan for getting the Gospel to those around us is US. It’s our job to communicate it every way we can. We must be committed to telling, churches must be committed to sending. And we must be committed to living out the Gospel everyday. This includes applying the Gospel to our own lives as well. Our actions MUST line up with our message. Someone quipped about Christians, “Your actions speak so loudly that I can’t hear what you’re saying.” And “If it weren’t for Christians, there’d be more of us.” How are we communicating the Gospel must be a constant question?
Next, we’ll look at answers to the question, What is the Gospel? and What does it have to do with my everyday life?
Join Bridge Church on Sunday’s at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum in Madisonville as we continue this series and together seek to live out the Gospel In Christ, On Mission, 4 Others.
“Why Nice People Kill Churches” and other links I liked and learned from this week
From my delicious.com account:
1. Epic Quotes on Discipleship & Influence from Prof Howard Hendricks (1924-2013) willmancini.com quotes, howardhendricks, discipleship
- You can impress from a distance, but you can only impact up close.
- You teach what you know, but you reproduce what you are.
- Dusty Bibles lead to dirty lives.
2. Don’t Waste Your Wedding – Great Ideas for making your wedding distinctly Christian. catherinestrodeparks.com weddingplanning
3. 7 Common Energy and Time Wasters for Leaders ronedmondson.com TimeManagement, Leadership
4. The Fine Art of Delegation [Podcast] michaelhyatt.com delegation, Leadership
- Imperative #1: Admit that working non-stop is unsustainable.
- Imperative #2: Understand your unique calling
- Imperative #3: Select qualified leaders to assist you
- Imperative #4: Give these leaders responsibility and authority
- Imperative #5: Only do those things which others cannot do.
5. The Latest Pornography Statistics – Covenant Eyes Annual Report for 2013. covenanteyes.com Porn
6. Why Nice People Kill Churches paulalexanderblog.com Leadership, staff
“when being nice begins to trump being honest because you don’t want to experience the discomfort of a difficult conversation, that’s not nice…that’s selfish.”
7. Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America churchleaders.com churchgrowth, churchdecline
- Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church.
- American church attendance is steadily declining.
- Mid-sized churches are shrinking; only the smallest and largest are growing.
- The increase in churches thr0ugh planting and multiplication is only 1/4 what’s needed to keep up with population growth.
Lane Corley 