GPS Highlights–1st Exploration

I am alarmed in my own experience of church leadership however, to see the propensity of congregations to reject change. Values are shifting, cultural diversity is growing fast and the communities around us face significant challenges. In the middle of what seems to be a wave of opportunity for the church to do some scrambling ourselves and really make a difference and build in-roads into peoples’ lives and families, many congregations are favourable to the extent that it does not upset the status quo. They are prepared to do what they can as long as it doesn’t rock their boats. We seem so satisfied that things are good the way they are that we seem numb to the reality of change and feel no sense of urgency to rise up to the challenge…

We need the GPS focus – God’s Personal Strategy check in. We seem dangerously recognizable as a series of country clubs with varying levels of membership and entry points, depending on what suits your religious appetite and interests. It’s time to consider what it means to be the Church and rise up to the challenge to live on purpose.

1. Explore your spiritual “Global Positioning System” (GPS) with the following verses by focusing on two questions:

a. What do these verses teach me about my relationship to God?

b. What do they say to me about my relationship to the world?

Isaiah 43:1; Isaiah 49:16; Jeremiah 1:5; John 3:16

2. Change generally has negative connotations. Explore how 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 changed your life.

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GPS–Highlights

I just finished adding a study guide to my book God’s Personal Strategy: Being Church, Living on Purpose. It came as a result of my small group wanting to use it as a study guide for our times together.

I want to provide for you a quote or two from each chapter, with one or two of the questions included in the study guide. Also, I’ll add one item from the Action Plan section of the book. These are added to the end of each study guide and is intended for people who want to put arms and legs to the lesson.

Each posted item will be GPS – theme here.

Hope this helps you in your journey and encourages you to get your copy!

Blessings on your journey!

Dale

Phil3:12

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A Light Came - 4

Yes, God put skin on.

The plan to change things around, to get things back to where they were intended to be, was radical. Actually it was downright contemporary.

The idea of God becoming flesh is hard to grasp. Probably one of the best analogies to bring the idea ‘down to earth’ so that we can appreciate the significance of God’s actions is to visit the Royal Family. Even this example falls apart because it doesn’t come close to what really took place; but it’s the best analogy we have.

Imagine Prince Charles, with his pomp and prestige, making the conscious decision to leave Buckingham Palace (or any number of the other Palaces in which they reside). He will live next door to you. He will work a twelve hour day like you do, shovel his driveway as you do, and mow his own lawn. He’ll stand in line at the grocery store, picking up his own groceries which he’s never done in his lifetime. He will be annoyed waiting at the doctor’s office because in your world there is no private physicians to come when you decide you want them.

Now that he’s driving himself around – maybe he’ll drive a foreign, just to have a little taste of home – he is subject to road rage. It’s a new experience because he’s been use to an entourage with police escort.

Things get more bizarre. In addition to all these sacrifices Prince Charles ends up in Court and decides to do the time for everyone incarcerated. He pays all our parking fines and assumes all our debts. He thinks we’re worth it. People have a redeeming quality that’s worth focusing on.

Now, the big question is, why did Prince Charles decide to do all this? There’s only one reason. It was the only way to reconnect with us “the Family”. By becoming “one of us” and taking our crimes and flaws on himself, he will pave the way for us to become members of the Royal Family. This adoption will give us equal share to the inheritance that he enjoyed before becoming one of us.

I know. This is simply wacky; preposterous; absurd as I hear the side-splitting laughter.

I get it why the whole God-becoming-man-thing is for a lot of people, a stretch. It is just too ridiculous and outlandish to swallow.

But he did. The King, Jesus, became one of us. Royalty wrapped in a blanket; human; wrinkled skin and screeching for formula and diaper-change. He went through troublesome twos (which was about the time the Wise Men showed up and bowed before him with rare, exotic gifts). Into childhood, adolescence, manhood and so the story goes of life.

And he agreed to all of this in exchange for a Cross and a gruelling crucifixion. It’s the best plan God had to change things around and pay the penalties that belong to us for misbehaviour. Let’s use the ugly word – SIN. We don’t like that word. It’s too “in your face”.

Crucifixion was the only way to restore us to “the Family”; through adoption so we could inherit what he always intended we have.

Stayed tuned for the rest of the story!…

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