LOVE IN A PIZZA BOX

Tim Bistline is the Senior Pastor of the Church of God of Landisville.  He has a deep love of Jesus and a heart for discipleship and his family is a great example of the idea of being missional. US AND COMPANY is his blog which is followed by718 people.  This recent post expresses the heart of what this blog, IMMEASURABLY MORE seeks to communicate to the 21st century church of Jesus Christ.

love and a pizza box

BY TIM BISTLINE
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matt. 22:37-40 (NLT)

My oldest daughter, Emily, spent a week of her Christmas college break on a mission trip to the Bowery Mission in New York City. Sixteen young adults went on an urban adventure to love God and love “their neighbor’s” in the Big Apple. Something amazing happened to my daughter which solidified the entire purpose of the trip; something so small that you and I might miss it, but my daughter “caught the God moment” with both hands and her heart. Here is her story…

On Tuesday, the team of college students were sent out to an area in the neighborhood known as Thompson Park to set up a “make-shift” food market where homeless people could come and shop for fresh food and produce. Along with the portable market, a food line was set up to distribute hot food for the taking. It was a cold, damp and rainy morning
Emily began serving soup in the food line; sandwiches were being served along with drinks. Other students moved crates of food out of a delivery truck o keep the portable market shelves filled with food for those who came to shop. The mission team kept busy despite the outside conditions growing worse.
Midway through the morning, Emily served a homeless man who was struggling to communicate with her as to what he wanted; there seemed to be a language barrier despite her efforts to speak Spanish to the man. He kept pointing down, looking under the table as if to point at her feet. She nodded, kept her composure and tried to remain polite but was confused by his actions and attempts to speak. After a short time, the man-made his way through the “soup line” and disappeared into the large crowd that had gathered for the food.

Time passed. Emily kept serving soup. A light rain turned into a slow drizzle of showers; more time passed. And then, out of no where, the man returned to the soup line with an empty pizza box. He made his way around the table, moving toward Emily; she felt some concern rising up in her, but did not panic. She did not feel as though he was posing any kind of threat. After all, he was only caring a pizza box. He stood beside her, gently pushed her to one side and put the pizza box on the ground where she had been standing. She watched the man in action; she began to notice that where she had been standing, a puddle of water had formed around her feet. She then began to realize that her feet felt cold and wet. The man motioned for her to step on to the pizza box; she did and once again, began serving soup. Then it “hit her”… the God moment.

In an effort to love and serve God by loving and serving her “neighbor”, Emily realized that the “neighbor”, with nothing more than some street smarts and ingenuity, returned a favor of love with the gift of a pizza box to keep her feet dry. (It is the wisdom on the street… to survive, you must stay warm and dry and it is very important to take extra care of the feet.) A simple, small, kind act of love from a stranger changed the heart of my daughter that day. The power of love through serving others can make a big difference in our lives and in the communities in which we live, and change our hearts. Let us ALL learn to lead with love!
For more info in the Bowery Mission, check out their website… http://www.bowery.org

GRACE

From Leonard Lee, an important Lenten reminder



Grace is scandalous.  Plain and simple, if we understood where grace trafficked we would gossip about it.  We would tell stories of the places grace went, who grace hung out with the way grace entered into the darkest and seediest places of the human soul.  If we understood grace we might get lost in its wake and end up upside down in our living.  Grace defeats more than we know and triumphs where will power and self discipline cannot stand.  Grace.  Wow, what a friend.

I grew up in the church by the way but this is not the grace I discovered.  The grace I grew up with was more like a gritty soap, getting stains off of mostly clean people.  We didn’t celebrate it as much more than a stringent cleaner, getting out the tough spot.

We used phrases like “easy believism” to describe the teaching of those who brought us scandalous grace.  We said that too much grace would be like giving people “a license to sin.”  We even said we had to be careful about teaching grace or “people will abuse it.”  Sadly, many of us never got grace, at least the scandalous kind.  Our brand of grace produced two kinds of people.

One kind is the person who slid from guilty to self righteous – which by the way is never what scandalous grace produces.  This is the person whose journey from death to life was never seen as that long a trip.  In reality it was more like a journey from a severe head cold to good health.   The other kind is the person who lived in the reality of spiritual poverty without ever finding freedom.  Interestingly enough, both of these persons spend a lot of time trying to do to their sin what only grace can.

When we get grace, truly get grace, it becomes like an unending onion and after we peel a layer off there is another layer and then another and another.  Each layer points us to a new level of love, humility and hope and holiness.  Wanna know a secret?  There has never been a person alive who did not abuse grace and if it cannot be abused, it is probably not grace.

Paul writes these words, “Therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access into this grace in which we now stand.”  Romans 5 Justified, Peace, Access, Grace, Stand.  WOW!  Take those words and understand them.  Dig into their richness and you will discover that if it cannot be abused, it probably is not grace.

If we dare fall into these words and splash around in them like a giant spring rain puddle, we will soon discover that each of us already had a license to sin and what grace offers is actually a license to live free from sin.  WOW, WOW, WOW!

Grace is not about God being good to sinners; it is about God raising the dead.  Grace is not about God cleaning us up; it is about God applying His own righteousness to our lives in such a way as to declare us once and for all NOT GUILTY!

For what it’s worth, I don’t have to feel like this is true in order for it to be true nor do I have to feel it to live it.  What I do have to do is get out of the way of myself and live as one whom God loves.  I do need to tell myself daily that I am saved by grace, kept by grace and taught by grace.

Here is how I know when I am getting the scandal of grace deep within my soul.  I love God enough to let him change me.  I live better not because it is how I measure myself but because I can.  Grace teaches me to grow.  Grace makes me generous.  Grace shifts the focus off of me and on to the generous and amazing Father.  It is good to be back, Off… we go now.

FORGIVENESS IS A CHOICE

I Choose to Forgive

by Rich Thornton on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 10:24am

Though the walls of my heart are broken
and the centre of my self is black-bruised
by the lash of the lies that you've spoken
and the wounds of the words that you've
      used,
though I huddle, a tear-trembling tragedy
stripped of the power to trust,
blocked off from all who might help me
by the guilt that came wrapped with your
      lust,
I choose to forgive.

And this act alone
breaks the cycle.
This act alone
rights the wrong.
This act alone
ends the evil.
This act alone
makes me strong,

heals blind hatred with soft sight,
kicks the darkness into light.

(by Gerard Kelly)

FORGIVENESS IS NOT A FEELING

Steve: I am re-posting this excellent post from Blake Coffee to help you in your daily discipleship.

Forgiveness is Not a Feeling

Isn’t it funny that an entire Spiritual revolution (the one called Christianity) can be founded upon the concept of forgiveness but the concept itself can be one of the most misunderstood concepts for those of us who are a part of the revolution? For so many in the Western church today, it may as well be written in Chinese (for those of you who actually read Chinese, my apologies, the illustration loses some punch with you).

Chinese symbol for forgiveness

Sometimes when I am counseling with someone about forgiveness, especially when it is someone who has been hurt deeply by another person, he/she will say something like this to me: “I know I need to forgive them, but I’m just not ready to forgive yet.” Most likely, what this hurting person is conveying with that comment is that he/she is not yet ready to start trusting that person again, because trust is a process and it takes time both to earn it and to give it. But I don’t think of forgiveness in that same way. As Christians, I think it is better for us to think of forgiveness as a promise. It is not something we wait to do, it is a commitment we make right up front, just as soon as the pain has occurred. That’s how God forgives us, and we are instructed to forgive others in the same way God has forgiven us (Ephesians 4:32).

I think too often we wait to forgive. We wait until it feels right to do so. But forgiveness (in the way the Bible describes it) is not a feeling at all. If we wait until we feel like forgiving, it will never happen.

Forgiveness is more about wiping away a debt. It is saying to a person, “You owe me nothing more…no money, no apology, no hugs, no sympathy cards, nothing…I really am no longer looking for any of that from you…you are released from any moral or ethical or legal obligations to me for this pain…as much as is possible, we are going to move forward now and I will not be holding this over you any longer, waiting to hit you on the head with it if you mess up again…I will not be keeping score because where I am concerned your slate is now wiped clean…I wish the very best for you and God’s blessings on you.” Forgiveness isn’t something we wait to feel, it is something we communicate to the person who hurt us irrespective of how we feel.

And it is hard to do. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. But it is not easy. This is why the very act of forgiveness tends to separate Christ’s church from the rest of the world. It is a distinguishing characteristic of Christ followers. We have been forgiven much, so we forgive.

So while trust may be a process, the promise of forgiveness is not. But though trust and forgiveness are two different things, there is a definite relationship between them. Making the promise of forgiveness is what triggers the beginning of the trust process. Without forgiveness, there can be no more trust. But once forgiveness is given, the process of trusting again begins. Forgiveness takes a broken relationship and places it back on track for the healing process to begin. It is the first step in the healing journey.

 © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com