from the Todd

Well here is a great word on this week's topic for sermon and life group - hypocrisy. Todd wrote a great blog on it. Take a moment to check it out. Todd's blog is always a good read, but I really liked this one. http://toddblount.blogspot.com/2009/05/futility-of-hypocrisy.html

Influential Influence

We challenge the people of our church to live lives of influence right where God has put them. We each have circles of influence that God has given us. We have our families, our friends, our classmates, our coworkers, our teammates, our neighbors, etc. We all have lots of people that we have the opportunity to influence.

There are also many people who have the opportunity to influence us. We must choose to live our lives in such a way that we are influenced by the right people and the right things. I made a choice to go to a conference in Alpharetta, GA last week. It was at Northpoint Community Church pastured by Andy Stanley.

I was great influenced by what I heard and saw. Andy is a great pastor and leader. He is humble and teaches from his heart. His vision and passion is one I really relate to. His vision for Northpoint is so much like what my heart for Fellowship to become.

One of the things that really hit me was his teaching about how they reach new people. The church never advertises. Its advertisement is its people. If you have been around Fellowship for a while you might know that I relate to that concept. I want to see our church reach more people through the lives of the individuals that make up the church.

I was influenced by him during those few days. One thing that influenced me was their way of teaching people to be an influence. I loved it. It is simple and it is straightforward. So here it is… Invest and Invite.

I think I will use that as my new definition of influence.

Invest in the lives of others. Influence them for Jesus by investing in their life. Investment requires just that – an investment. Investments take time, resources, money, and concern. Go and invest in someone today that needs to know Jesus as their Savior and Lord.

Invite them.

#1. Invite them to Jesus. Invite them to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord.
#2. Invite them to church this Sunday.

The numbers are just to let you know there are 2 invites, you can use whatever order the Spirit leads you to, but why not start with just asking them to come church this Sunday. It is a simple step towards Christ.

So to influence people we invest and invite. I have been influenced and I am trying to influence. Just today I invited someone I have been investing in for two years. They have not come yet, but they will. When they get there they will find a church that is excited and fired up and being changed.

So, Fellowshippers, I challenge you to invest and invite this week. May 24 and 31 are going to be Sunday you really, really, really don’t want to miss and that you really, really, really want to bring someone who need Jesus to.

Today’s Thought

This morning I was reading out 1 Kings 6 and 7 and saw a couple things that really grabbed my heart and mind. I thought I would simply share what God is saying to me today and maybe it will speak to you too.

The first was as the temple was being built by Solomon God gave him a promise with an expectation. It is found in 1 Kings 6:11-13. Basically God tells Solomon that if he and the Israelites will do everything he has said and obey all his commands they will be blessed by his presence in that temple. I realized how many people still see a relationship with Christ like that. We must realize that God’s grace in Jesus Christ has changed the requirement of the Law in our life. It has not changed the Law, the Law has simply been fulfilled completely in Jesus Christ. Our righteousness is not our own. It is the righteousness of Christ. I am so grateful for such grace.

Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting with a new believer at our church. Their questions were awesome. We talked about all kinds of stuff. Their denominational background is very different than ours. They had been taught that God’s grace is administered through the Church. They were told they could not go to Christ on their own but only through the church. This person shared with me that at the age of 17, while going through the religious training of their old denomination, they had questioned that. They knew it was not quite right but did not know why. Now they do. Do not turn your faith in Christ into the Old Temple experience of works. The death and resurrection of Christ changed everything, let it change you too.

It was great for me to hear this morning, too. I need to realize that all my “getting it right” is not what God honors. God’s “getting me right” is what he honors. That thought really came alive with my next realization.

The first verse in 1 Kings 7 says that it took Solomon 13 years to build his palace. Well chapter 6 told us it took 7 to build the temple. The palace was almost twice as big as the temple, too. How much are our lives like Solomon’s? Here is a man that was given the ability to ask for anything from God and he asked for wisdom. God gave it to him. The odd thing is when you examine his life, he knew the wisdom, but was not devoted to it.

Solomon’s life is not one purely built on wisdom, it was a life that was able to speak wisdom. There is a difference. I think the difference is devotion. What are you devoted to? Was Solomon more devoted to God or to self? I mean he gave 7 years to the work of the Temple and did not even weigh the metals being used to make it beautiful. He gave much to that work. Yet, at the same time, he spent twice as long on his own dwelling place and built it twice as big.

It seems Solomon was really devoted to Solomon. This thought hit me. I can do all kinds of good things but that does not mean I am correctly devoted. I read an interesting blog yesterday from Steven Furtick about devotion that came to my mind as I pondered this. (It is short. You can read it here. http://www.stevenfurtick.com/uncategorized/they-devoted-themselves/.) The new believers in Acts were devoted to the right things. They did not expect others to be devoted to them as much as they devoted themselves.

Are you devoted? Are you surrendered over? Is you kingdom bigger or smaller than God’s in your life? Is your house bigger than God’s in your world? We can be devoted to too many things and basically not really be devoted to anything. Do you look at the things that are a part of devoted to the apostles’ teachings as more important or less important than the other things you do in life?

Many would say, “but look at the majesty of the temple Solomon built, how can you question his devotion?” We can give God a lot of stuff and never give him ourselves. We can have a lot of things in life, but does God have more from our life?

So basically God encouraged me with the truth of his grace and then challenged me with the truth about my devotion. That is a great morning with God. A word of encouragement and a word of correction. God used the His Word, His Spirit, other believers, and the activities of my everyday life to speak into my life. I thought sharing how God works and speak is my life in the regular day to day interaction might help you have some insight in how he intends to do that in your life too.

Amazing Moments

There are so many amazing moments in life. We miss too many of them. Too often we fail to see them for what they are when they are. We might realize some time later it was an amazing moment but in the midst of it we seem to miss it.

I believe this truth can be found in chapter one of Ecclesiastes. Which is, perhaps, the most depressing portion of the Bible. Basically it says that all is vanity and that life just keeps on rolling. The sun comes up and goes down. The rivers roll to the sea yet the sea is never full.

Many people read this and never get the rest of the book. That there is a time for everything under the sun. In the midst of it all being temporary, it is still worth doing. The problem is that we too often just see the water rolling toward the sea and forget to stop and enjoy the majesty of the trickling brook or the wonder of the waterfall. We can get focused on the fact that as the sun goes down it is just going to come back and forget to stand in awe of the sunset and sunrise.

Life is busy. Life rolls on. The world does not stop just because you do and because of that we can get consumed with keeping up instead of living it up. I think followers of Christ ought to be living it up. We should be the people enjoying this life the most. We have the promise of not only life but life to its fullest. We have been set free from the drudgery of the next day and given the freedom to be amazed in this one.

But are you taking the time to do it?

A life to the fullest is probably not as full. A life to the fullest is not one slam-full of junk and stuff and commitments that never end. Life to the fullest is not filled by us but filled by God. A life filled by God is completely full, but with totally different things – or – maybe some of the same things but with a totally different perspective of them.

So, here are some amazing moments recently in the life of Kirk Jones…
1. Hearing my son Daniel pray a precious prayer of faith accepting Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord while lying on a cot with me while on his first mission trip…Priceless!
2. Hearing my daughter Melanie tell me about forgiveness and that God cleans us inside and out because we learned it in a lesson in a life group in our home by cleaning out a cup while praying.
3. Seeing my daughter Kara sing songs to worship the Lord all out although she does not fully get them.
4. Sitting with my family in the midst of a busy restaurant and realizing how precious that one moment is.
5. Staying up late regularly talking about God and the work of his Kingdom with my awesome wife, just like we did when I was in seminary and it was all just theory. The cool thing is for us to still have the same heart and passion and drive. And realizing God had renewed it in me. And that he used her to help do it.
6. Watching my son take a soccer ball in the gut and do his best to shake it off and celebrate that the goal scored was because of his sacrifice.
7. Baptizing 8 people on Easter Sunday in a church that is only 7 years old and has two services in its own building and is growing. Realizing that one’s life work is not really your life’s work, but the work of Christ in your life and not regretting one sacrifice you ever made for it.
8. Sitting with a church member who has had a problem with you or something you did and seeing forgiveness and openness and love that only Christ can give in unity.
9. Sitting in a meeting with your staff and disagreeing and agreeing and remembering back to when you were doing it alone. A great argument for Jesus is worth the battle to fight for the right way and the cause of Christ and it’s a blessing to have great men to serve the Lord with.
10. Sitting with my girls playing barbies and not having a clue what you are supposed to do with them and them not caring one bit because you are sitting there.

Amazing moments happen all the time. Are you seeing them? Do you get it?

Don’t get your life full…get full of life.

The People Path Problem

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7:13-14

Understanding the reality of this passage is not as easy as being able to memorize it and quote it. It flies in the face of everything our world says spiritually. Our culture is one of wide-road thought. As our culture is more diverse there is a push for pluralism. It is often cloaked in the terminology of tolerance. True tolerance is to allow another to hold their belief without prejudice against them even though you disagree with them. Pluralism is to take every belief and make it no different than other beliefs.

I always find it interesting when someone tells me that Jesus is simply only one way to God out of many. The reason that is interesting to me is that is not true – according to Jesus. It is not tolerant to say all beliefs are equal because that disrespects every belief. That is not tolerance – that is weakness.

I think that is why our world is crying out for someone to speak truth. It is a recent change in our culture. People would rather disagree with you than hear you say nothing. I love seeing this cultural change. It is not yet what is coming across the airwaves on Oprah, the View, or other such shows, but is something growing in the younger generations. They do not want to hear a weak acceptance of everything. They would rather tell you that you are wrong and risk the wrong path than to hear the lie that all paths are the same. Why? They know better than that. If all paths are all the same then they would all be the same. It is illogical to say that God made many paths the same path.

This belief has for too long infected the church in America. Few people who are evangelical believe the many path theology, but they live like they do. This is seen in some wrong thoughts and beliefs about where the wide road leads. Too seldom are we willing to say that without Christ you perish, but without Christ you perish. We too seldom want to be the people who say there is only one gate, but there is only one gate. I believe this is the main reason why America is the only nation in the world where Christianity is on the decline. It is why over 70% of American churches are plataued or declining.

This is how it has infected us. We like to say things like “I am just helping people along their path to God.” I was in a meeting the other day and heard someone use the term “pre-Christian.” We like to think that people all want what is right and if we do what is right in front of them they will get there on their own.

It is not true. The path of life and the path of destruction are two completely different paths. People are not on a path to God, they are on a path of destruction. The two paths have many intersections but never run parallel. We are the intersections. There are no such thing as pre-Christians. People who are dead in their transgression are dead. Our world is not headed toward God. They are headed away from him.

You must be willing to speak the truth of Christ. We must speak up and declare here is the path you really need. Here is the gate that will change your life and there is no other gate. We must not allow the lies of the world around us to shape our actions. We too often say we believe one thing and live like we believe another.

What will you do this week to call someone to the path to life and the gate of Christ? You are not a direction sign along the good path they are already on. You are person on a mission causing the path of life to intersect the path of destruction. Do not take the call lightly. Realize that we as Christians in America have for too long weakened our response to the world by saying we believe one thing but not really living like we do.

The world around you wants (and needs ) to hear the truth whether they agree or not. There is no need to beat their head in the gate, but do not lower the truth of the gate to make them feel better about their path. They need someone to speak the truth in love. Do you love them enough to speak the truth?

By the way, if you are not on the Jesus path having entered through the Jesus gate, I hope you will take this call to the followers of Jesus as a letter of love to you, too. I love you enough to not lower what I believe to make you feel good about what you believe. I truly believe that without Jesus as your Savior and Lord you will die and go to hell. I love you enough to tell you that whether you agree with me or not. I respect your right to disagree, but I will not put your right to disagree above my call to tell you the truth. We can tolerate each other's beliefs but we can not make them the same or then neither of us would really have any beliefs.