Perceptions & Truths About Christianity & Christians

The summer is upon us, and we just finished our sermon series in Genesis. As mentioned in a previous post, our messages this summer will be focused on questions, issues, criticisms, and concerns about Christianity and Christians that have come up in recent conversations.  

Below are the list of topics we’re covering from July 6 through August 24. We’ll definitely be continuing the conversation online.

What's the Word? - Much of the comments/conversations boil down to questioning the reliability of the Bible.

Before I'll Be a Slave, I'll Be Buried in My Grave - Christianity is viewed as restricting people from being free.

The Hypocrite Church - "The church is full of hypocrites, why would I want to be part of that?"

The Irrelevant Church - "The church lives in a Christian bubble and is out of touch with reality."

What's Love Got to Do With It? - Many folks say that they believe in a God of love, or they say, "love is my God". What does it mean that "God is love"?

Fanatic vs. Faithful, the Intolerant Christian - "All Christians care about are abortion and homosexuality, they could care less about the things that really matter."

How Wide is the Gate? - "Christianity is too exclusive. How can Jesus be the only way to God?"

Why Do I Have to Hurt? - "How could a good God allow suffering?" 

If you find yourself in the Columbia area this summer, come through and worship with City of Hope Church one (or two) Sunday evenings!

Pastor Irwyn

Dine With Sinners Like Us!

Jesus says to the indignant Pharisees when he dined with the “tax collectors and sinners”, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13)

Many of you know that I have this verse at the bottom of my emails. Why? One reason is that it helps me keep perspective of who I am before God. I am sick; I am weak; and I am a sinner. Yet the good news is that Jesus came, lived and died for me (and for you). He came to make me well, strong and righteous. He came to change me and to give me a new identity and a new view on life. This reality helps me understand that I am no better than the next person and the next person is no worse than me. All have the same equal standing before God. However, there is a problem facing Christians today. Most folks who claim not to be a Christian especially those between the ages of 16-29 see us as judgmental and hypocritical. They see Christians say one thing but live something entirely different. They don’t see us as transparent about our flaws; they don’t see us as people who realize that we are not better than others. In the book Unchristian, the author found the following: “among young outsiders, 84% say they personally know at least one committed Christian. Yet just 15% thought the lifestyles of those Christ followers were significantly different from the norm.” That is a huge and humbly gap! Friends, young people see that we talk a good game but our lives speak differently and moreover and I think at the heart of the matter, we as Christians don’t admit this reality. The young people want us to admit that we have flaws and we sin. They want to see that we may be different because we are Christians but we are not better than them.

Leroy Barber, President of Mission Year, states in Unchristian, “Young adults are turning away from a modern church that they see as nothing more than hypocritical. Standards and rules without sacrifice and solidarity is hypocrisy. Christian rhetoric without tangible acts of love is hypocrisy. Churches on every corner with hurting people outside is hypocrisy. A large building with little connection to the streets is essentially empty.”

Second reason for the verse on my email is that it reminds me to take Jesus and his message to others. Jesus came into to the world to save people from their sin and to make them new (as well as making his entire creation new but another Blog on another day). He has called us to take this message humble but boldly. We go as sinners; we go as new creations in Christ; we go as fellow sojourners; and we go broken and yet made whole. Jesus came to change the world and the amazing thing is that he has gladly chosen us to help him do it.

City of Hope, we need this perspective. God calls us to cultivate relationships and environments where others are deeply transformed by Jesus. We need to learn what people are thinking, learn how to love them, and encourage them to consider Jesus. Here are some ways we encourage you to take advantage of in the next few months:
(1) Every 3rd Sunday in our Adult Sunday School Class we will focus on relational and friendship evangelism training.
(2) Beginning in July, we begin our new series on “What non-Christians Are Asking About Christianity?” A great opportunity to invite friends.
(3) Beginning Thursday June 26, I will be hanging out at the Starbucks every Thursday at 7:00 PM at the Columbia Mall hoping to cultivate new friendships. Come and join me.
(4) Friday Open Forums – We hope to begin a regular monthly or bimonthly (every other month) open forum at Java Grande in Ellicott City. Much like our forum on race, we will attempt to discuss how the Christian faith affects how we view life issues and concerns (e.g., environment, the arts, music, etc.)
(5) Corporate Prayer – We need Jesus to help us love others well. We have a few opportunities: (a) Tom and Alison Miller have opened their homes every Sunday at 10:00 AM for prayer; and (b) Every Wednesday at 6:00 AM at the Laurel racetrack (see website for more info.) and (c) Concert of Prayer, Saturday June 21.

Are there other ways? Certainly! Let me hear them and let’s see what God does!

What is our motivation to do this? The love of Jesus! He is passionate for you, and he has shown it in his perfect obedient life, his rejection and humiliation, and sacrificial death on the cross for our deep embedded sins! Simple truth: Jesus loves you!

Warmly,
Pastor Jeff

(W)right or Wrong: Race Is Still An Issue

The Apostle Paul says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19).

We at City of Hope Church believe that God has called us to be a diverse community of worshippers who, gripped by the gospel of grace, consistently reach out to bring hope and freedom to the diverse people of the Columbia area and beyond. As part of this vision, we desire to impact all who come (skeptic, seeker, or follower, Black, White, Asian or Latino) to become free as they live as God's instrument of love, mercy, and justice.

To see this part of the vision fulfilled, we put a high value on reconciliation. In fact, we state as one of our five values the following:

“We will boldly pursue racial, cultural, gender, socioeconomic and generational reconciliation. For it is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we are thoroughly reconciled with God and with one another. Therefore, we will prioritize and invest our very lives to reconciliation that is empowered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ who has come to break down the dividing walls of all kinds of tensions and divisions.”

So with this is in mind, this Friday (May 30) at 7:00 PM we are holding an open forum discussion at a local coffee shop in Ellicott City (check out www.cityofhopechurch.net for directions). We have entitled it: (W)right or Wrong: Race is Still An Issue. Yes, we are playing on the recent controversy of Jeremiah Wright, a former pastor of Barack Obama, but the focus of our honest and open conversation will be on how the gospel impacts, challenges and changes the way we view and work with one another in our lives, communities, workplaces and churches.

Here are some of the questions we will be considering:
1. What is your hope that our country will live up to the stated belief “that all men are created equal”?
2. How does race factor into the decisions that you make socially, economically, politically and religiously?
3. How solvable is the racial divide in America?
4. Why do you think Sunday at 11:00 AM is the most segregated time of the week?
5. How has the church contributed to the racial divide? If the church has, what can we learn from her failures?
6. What role can the church play in solving the racial divide? What role can you play?

Come Friday and let us hear what you are thinking! If unable to make it, share your thoughts here.

Warmly,
Pastor Jeff

One of a Kind Marriage, Part 3

How can Jesus possibly desire and love a wife like us?

Because that is why he came and died. He died so that we could enter and experience a forever-covenantal love relationship with God—where our acceptance is not based on our performance, our beauty, and our reputation but on His perfect performance, his pure beauty, his faultless reputation and his voluntary and sacrificial death on the cross.

There is an ancient ceremony between two nomadic tribes when a father promises a boy to a girl in marriage. The fathers would slaughter a goat or another animal and cut the carcass in half. At sundown, each father would walk barefoot through the blood path. The slaughtered animals symbolized what would happen to either party if they violated the terms of the agreement—death!

Since we broke our covenantal commitment in marriage with God the Father someone had to die. Because our Father is eternally and thoroughly committed to us in this covenantal marriage, He chose His Son Jesus to die the death we deserved to die. Jesus was slaughtered for us so that our marriage with Him would flourish and last forever.

Since he is our Husband, his sufficient grace frees us from the tyranny of living for our false lovers. Jesus isn’t merely the godly means of finally feeling good about ourselves and he isn’t our “natural high”.

Jesus as our Husband enables us to remain pure and chaste. He enables us not to be “led astray from our sincere and pure devotion to Him.” Due to his persistent commitment to us even in the midst of our struggle with other lovers, He pursues us and makes us who we are in reality, His beloved Bride.

Because he loves us so, we are able to love him in return. Not perfectly but as we depend upon our One of a kind Lover, he will grow us in our love for him.

And as we grow in our love for Him because we are overwhelmed by His love for us, he enables us to move towards others in intimacy and service.

“To know and experience that we are fully and eternally accepted by God in Christ makes the false marketing of idols [false lovers] much less attractive. By nature, we are captive to our own self-worship [our number one false lover]. Only the power of the gospel can begin to totally reorient the direction of our hearts toward the worship of God and the service of others. As this happens, we begin to look less and less for idols [false lovers] with which to support our own deification. We begin to find more joy in living for the pleasure of Jesus and less for the approval of men. A primary sign of the diminishing rule of idols [false lovers] and addictions is seen in our increased joy in loving and serving others.” (Scotty Smith, Reign of Grace)

How deep is your love for Christ your husband? Better yet, may you be encouraged and motivated by His deep love for you! His love never fails, and perfects our ill attempts to love him and others. Enjoy your scared marriage to our One of a Kind Lover! He went to great lengths to secure it!


Because I care,

Pastor Jeff

One of a Kind Marriage, Part 2

In my last Blog, I encouraged you that Christ is your Husband and we are His Bride. Jesus pursues us actively securing a lasting intimate relationship with us. And yet even in God’s stubborn love for us in our marriage with Christ, we still struggle with other loves in our lives.

Here the Apostle Paul reminds in 2 Corinthian 11:3:

3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.


How do we struggle to desire and love Christ in this sacred marriage?

Paul fears and rightly so that the Corinthians will be seduced to unfaithfulness by other false loves. Their past has proven his concern. They had allowed other things (e.g., pride, sexual immorality, forsaking the poor) to lead them astray from a growing relationship with Jesus.

He reminds them of the Fall when Satan tempted Eve and she was deceived. When her heart desired the fruit more than God, she lost and left her first love and turned to other things to make her complete and satisfied. She began to doubt God’s goodness and truth and this led her to replace God with other things—to be like God, gain knowledge, and experience “true happiness.” You can see the affects of Eve leaving the Lover of her soul— she hides and blames others for her sin. She now gets her satisfaction from loving other things rather than God.

We do not have to stop with Eve. Throughout Biblical history God’s people have struggled to remain faithful, chaste, and pure to their covenant vows to God. Here these graphic descriptions of God’s people unfaithfulness to their marriage to Christ found in Scripture:

“If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her? Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 3:1)

15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore (were unfaithful) because of your renown and lavished your whorings (unfaithfulness) on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore (were unfaithful). The like has never been, nor ever shall be. (Ezekiel 16:15-16)

12 My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore. (Hosea 4:12)

In these passages, God is denouncing their unfaithfulness to Him as spiritual adultery. Paul warns the Corinthian church and us of a similar struggle in this passage. We will commit spiritual adultery.

In fact, we need to know what may lead our hearts astray. For we are tempted and often times give into the temptation of being unfaithful to God and committing spiritual adultery.

God knows that we can and will be deceived like Eve, and to love other things more than God. Often these other things drive us away from our marriage with Christ. Seeking comfort, peace, power and position are such competing lovers. Our obsession with our reputation, respect and approval interferes with our relationship with Jesus, and they become more meaningful to us than Jesus. Our pursuit of career, possessions, physical health, strength, and obedient children can also lead us astray from the One who loves us completely and thoroughly. Not that any of those things are evil or wrong in themselves. But when we allow ourselves to be ruled by them more than Jesus and his love, then we will become complacent and unmoved by our Husband and his pursuing and stubborn love.

Friends, I know that this is true. One such competing love in my relationship with Jesus is my obsession with order and respect. If the house doesn’t look a certain way and I am not resting in Jesus and his love for me, I can become angry with my wife and children and say things that are manipulating and hurtful to get my way. What’s going on? I fear that they are not respecting me when they don’t keep the house in order. Because I find more value and satisfaction in an ordered house than in Jesus and all that he has provided me in the gospel, I show what I am really loving, serving and worshipping—myself.

Every false love promises to free us so that we finally feel good about ourselves—about our place and performance in life. The substances we choose to provide us life—i.e., alcohol, money, spiritual performance, sexuality, knowledge, etc.—suck us into varying degrees of dependence and addiction. False loves promise a life of purpose, peace, control and affirmation, but they cannot deliver the goods. The only deceive and destroy. Our false loves either in religious or irreligious forms are just “a destructive mirage full of empty IOUs”, says Scotty Smith.

So God in this sacred marriage desires for you to come and to honestly confess the competing false loves in your life—to acknowledge your unfaithfulness and run to your Husband and find forgiveness and rest. He delights to provide it!

What are your false loves? Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to see what is leading your astray from your sincere and pure devotion with Jesus. He desires for you to find rest and freedom for your souls so that you can experience a growing intimacy and confidence with Him.

My next Blog, we will consider:
Even though we are unfaithful to Jesus as we struggle with our false loves, He is never unfaithful to us. Jesus is the end of our struggle to find life in our false loves.

Pastor Jeff

One of a Kind Marriage

I am thinking a lot about can I encourage you in your relationship with Jesus. One such amazing reality that we have as followers of Jesus and one in which I want to encourage you is that we are married to Jesus.

Have you ever thought of your relationship with God as a marriage? Some of us approach our Christian life as a business, a well-planned program or an educational pursuit. But Paul in the below passage reminds us that the Christian life is much more intimate, much more personal and much more relational. Paul is jealous that you understand and experience the deep rich love relationship that Jesus has with you. Let’s hear what he has to say.

2 Corinthians 11:1-3:
I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! 2 I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

Scotty Smith in his book Reign of Grace writes “As God’s image bearers, there is romance DNA written into every cell of our being. The craving to be championed and cherished shows up in our art, advertisements, arguments—anywhere you look.” John Eldredge, in his book Sacred Romance which depicts our love relationship with Christ, writes “The Romance has most often come to us in the form of two deep desires: the longing for adventure that requires something of us, and the desire for intimacy—to have someone truly know us for ourselves, while at the same time inviting us to know them in the naked and discovering way lovers come to know each other on the marriage bed.”

Amazingly, the more we immerse ourselves in God’s story of redemption found in Scripture, the more as Scotty Smith describes “we find ourselves revealed not as hopeless romantics finally getting asked to the ball, but as irresponsible prostitutes becoming the beloved queen of the King of glory, Jesus.” To say it another way, Cinderella is not the biblical version of the one of a kind sacred marriage with have with Christ. The biblical version of the one of a kind sacred marriage is if one of the ugly, envious, conniving stepsisters was being wanted, wooed, and won by the passionate affections and amazing sacrifice of the Great Prince. This is what Christ has done for us.

Paul gives us in this passage a beautiful metaphor of God’s faithful and jealous love towards us because we are married to Christ. Christ is our Husband, we are His Bride.

What does God want us to believe about our sacred marriage?
Paul is speaking with the affection of a father. He is jealous for the Corinthian’s purity of heart in relation to Christ. He passionately desires for them to believe that they have an intimate and sacred relationship with God that God brought about because of his love for them. As it is custom for the father to give his daughter in marriage to an approved bridegroom, so Paul, their spiritual father, had given them in betrothal to one husband, a Divine Husband—Jesus Christ. The betrothal of a maiden implies purity and faithfulness; she is committed to the one man to whom she is engaged to be married.

The ancient customs saw the betrothal not like we view engagement where either party can back out before the wedding and there no legal consequence of breaking an engagement. A betrothal was an ironclad contract that could be severed only by unfaithfulness or death. Though the couple might not celebrate and consummate their marriage for years, legally they were still considered married.

One commentator states, “by adding the word one Paul stresses the truth that, just as the marriage relationship is exclusive, so believers in Christ owe an exclusive loyalty to Him.”

Paul is looking future—as it is the father’s prerogative to present the bride to her husband on the wedding day: Paul anticipates with joy the presentation of his Corinthian believers as a faithful and undefiled virgin to Christ, when at Christ 2nd Coming, He takes His bride to Himself and brings her to that forever home which Christ has gone to prepare. It is then that the marriage of Christ with His Church will be celebrated amidst the rejoicing in heaven.

The OT frequently speaks of God’s people as the spouse of the LORD.

For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. (Isaiah 54:5)

For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5)

When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine.
(Ezekiel 16:8)

And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD. (Hosea. 2:19, 20)

These very words from God describe our relationship with Christ in very intimate terms—so intimate that it is almost embarrassing! But this is what is so amazing about the gospel. God reconciles sinners to himself through Christ and welcomes us into a relationship that is intensely personal. He does not simply tolerate us in this marriage; he brings us close to himself by giving Himself to us. This is covenantal language not some prenuptial agreement with conditions or escape clause but a lasting commitment and the penalty to breaking it was death.

Christ is our husband and we are his bride. We are married to Christ. We are the objects of his affections. And in turn, we are to make him the object of our affection sharing with nothing and no one else! That is why Paul speaks as a jealous father who wants nothing to disrupt, compromise or interfere with this relationship.

Friends, be encouraged in what God has accomplished for you. Jesus is pursuing you right now even in the midst of the messiness of your life to make you his holy and undefiled bride.

Do you believe it! Or is it awkward for you to see yourself married to Christ? It’s not a manly picture! Or is it because you are not presently experiencing an intimate and personal relationship with your spouse. So it makes it hard to believe that God would love you without conditions and accepts you just as you are. Or do you fear what would happen if you got close to God in this way? You might have to give up control and your devotion to other things.

My next Blog we will consider:
Even in God’s stubborn love for us in our marriage with Christ, we still struggle with other loves in our lives. What are those other loves?

Warmly,

Pastor Jeff

I've Moved!

My personal blog For the Healing of the Nations moved. You can find it here. In addition to the posts at this blog you can join me there for more conversation!

Pastor Irwyn

Dysfunction & God's Plan

It seems that we very readily label individuals or families as dysfunctional. By that label we mean to imply that the individual or family does not exhibit “normal” or “appropriate” behavior in one or many aspects of life. At the same time, since dysfunction is so prevalent maybe it should be labeled “normal”. I say that a bit tongue and cheek, but what is normal in this broken world is the sin at the root of our dysfunction. 

One of the things that you have to love about the Bible is the fact that God doesn’t hide the dysfunction in the lives of the people who we find there. For example, Genesis 27 reads like a soap opera. Intrigue, deception, and lying are the prominent features. Isaac, Esau, Rebekah, and Jacob are all scheming around one thing, God’s blessing. 

One commentator writes about Genesis 27 in this way:

From beginning to end, the concern for the blessing predominates. Isaac sought to bestow it, and Esau wanted it. Rebekah heard about it and ensured that Jacob got it. Isaac unwittingly gave it to Jacob, and Esau was furious over having lost it. 

If you haven’t read the chapter in a while, I commend it to you. We ought not be surprised that we find people scheming and manipulating others when we read the Bible. They’re just like we are! What is meant to shock us, however, is the fact that God worked out his plan of redemption through folk like that. His plan wasn’t somehow thwarted by messed up folks, as if we were able to trip God up. 

This fact meets us right where we are. For we are all dysfunctional. What do we do with the dysfunction around us and in us? How do we avoid just becoming cynical about everything, and throwing up our hands? Ultimately folks, in everything we rest in the sovereignty and goodness of God through Jesus Christ. He’s the one who is making all things new in spite of what it looks like all around us. His plan wasn’t thwarted in Genesis 27 and it won’t be thwarted now.

In Christ’s love,

Pastor Irwyn