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Mary’s World

By Jeremy Myers
4 Comments

In recent years, when we look at our elected officials in government offices, it is easy to get  jaded as it seems that no matter who gets into office, no problems are fixed and things just keep getting worse.

I am not saying we should stay out of politics or throw up our hands in despair. But maybe we are losing hope because our hope was misplaced to begin with. As Christians, we should not be hoping in politicians and governments.

And no, I am NOT saying that instead, we should put our hope in Jesus. This is true, of course, but it’s too easy to say, and much harder to apply. How do you “put your hope in Jesus” for millions of unemployed people? How do you “put your hope in Jesus” for millions of people without food and homes?

As I was walking through a parking lot yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker which read, “Jesus is the answer.” But that depends on the question. There are lots of questions where “Jesus” is not the answer. There are lots of issues where “Jesus” is not the solution. At least, not quite so easily as that.

Let me explain. Rather, let Mary explain.

In my commentary on Luke 1:46-55, I write about the song Mary sings after she is told she will give birth to the Messiah. Mostly, the song is about the Messiah. But I argue briefly that the center of the song seems to be 1:50, that from generation to generation, God’s mercy will be on those who fear Him. It’s a hinge verse, where verses 46-49 are about how God has used her, and verses 51-55 are about how He can use anyone else in a similar way.

As she expands and explains this concept in the rest of her song, Mary shows over and over that God does not work through the rich, powerful, and elite, but through the poor, humble, and hungry. And this is not just true in her own generation with the coming of the Messiah, but for every generation. That includes ours.

So the song is really about how God gets things done in this world. And the answer is that he does not primarily use presidents, senators, investment bankers, and movie stars, but WalMart checkers, stay-at-home moms, construction workers, mail carriers, farmers, and McDonald’s hamburger flippers. Anybody who fears God (i.e., respectfully obeys Him) can be used by God to turn this world upside down. Yes, bankers and senators can be part of that, but that’s not the point. The point is this: WE can help feed and clothe people. WE can help teach people. WE can help people live better, healthy lives. WE can provide clean water. It’s not THEIR job. It’s OUR job. If we fear God, if we want to obey Him, it is what WE will do.

Don’t put such things off on Jesus, especially when He has told US to do it. And definitely don’t put it off on politicians.

Mary saw a world, led by Jesus, where everybody worked to feed the poor, heal the sick, clothe the naked, touch the brokenhearted, and love the unlovable. That’s what she sang about. That’s what she longed for.  No matter who is in political office, let’s work together to make Mary’s world a reality.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Commentary on Luke, Bible Study, Discipleship

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Maybe Everything is a Miracle

By Jeremy Myers
2 Comments

When you watch a movie, do you watch it just for entertainment value? Let me suggest a different way: As you watch, be asking yourself, “What does this movie say about humans and our needs, about God, about religion, about the meaning of life?” Doing so really allows you to get more out of a movie than ever before.

In the churches I am part of, one of the things I try to do on occasion, is host a movie study. I pick a movie, and open it up with some discussion questions to watch for during the movie. Then we watch it. Afterwards, we discuss the movie, and some of the questions. Here is one such study I did recently on the movie “Henry Poole is Here.” If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest you rent it, and watch it while asking yourself some of the questions below.

Henry Poole is HereIs your life a miracle or a mistake?

Quote: “Do you ever feel like things happen for no reason? Like you’re just along for the ride?”

Quote:“All that either of us have is right now.”

Discussion Questions:

What do you think of some people’s tendency to see apparition of Jesus (or Mary) in strange places – like a lava lamp, a Cheeto, a piece of toast, or a water stain on a wall? Are these miracles, or just mistakes?
  
What do you think of healing, especially when it happens to people who believe differently than you do? Are such healings from God, from Satan, or just mere coincidence? What do you think they believe about your claims of healing? What do you think atheists believe about all such claims?

What does the movie say about people’s greatest desire, as seen through Henry, Esperanza, Patience, Millie, and Dawn? How about the film director (Mark Pellington) himself? Four years ago, he lost his wife unexpectedly to a ruptured spleen, and was left to take care of his 2 ½ year-old daughter, Isabella. He says that many times he wanted to end it all, but Isabella and others gave him the hope to go on.

How does water play a role in the move? (Henry’s name. Trying to wash the wall. The balloon fight: “I surrender.” The river walk.) What does it symbolize? What role does water play in the life of the believer, and what does it symbolize?

Why does Henry want to check under the bridge for what he wrote as a child? Why does he post the picture of his family on his wall, and write “Henry Pool was here” underneath?

Can people see the face of Christ in you? Are you a source of hope to those in pain? When you encounter people who are filled with depression and despair, who, or what, do you point them to? Is this a reliable source of hope?

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW

What is it that all people want? We could say, “Money” or “fame” or “health” but really, these are pointing to something else, something hidden, that people want: HOPE. Hope for the future. Hope for something better. This life is full of disappointment and despair, but hope keeps us going.

Henry Poole needs hope. Upon moving into his home, the first person to welcome him to the neighborhood is a woman named Esperanza, which in Spanish, means “hope.” And like hope, she is unrelenting. Patience patiently works with Henry. And Dawn is the light. Upon meeting Dawn, he begins to feel hope.
    
And yet, Henry Poole is a man without hope. His situation is so desperate, his life has been so full of fear and failure, that he cannot bring himself to hope. He cannot bring himself to touch the face of Jesus on his wall. Why not? For fear it “won’t work.” For fear of another failure.

In the end, Henry discovers he is not sick. Was he healed, or was it a misdiagnosis? As with the other healings, the movie leaves such questions unanswered. But whether the physical healing occurred or not, Henry is still healed, because he now has hope.

How can you be a voice of hope to those around you? How can you be the face of Christ?

How do you view your life? As one big mistake, or one big miracle? Henry Poole has problems seeing a miracle in the stain on his wall. What he realizes by the end is that whether it is just a stain or actually a miracle, it still caused a miracle in his life. Regardless of whether he was truly healed or simply misdiagnosed, he found the miracle of love and hope for the future, he found that his life could actually be lived with significance.

I thought this was a great movie, full of insight and humor. You can get it at Amazon.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship

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Mission Shift

By Jeremy Myers
19 Comments

Mission Shift

Over the past several years, I have experienced a huge paradigm shift in my thinking about life and ministry. As a result, I have watched with interest how this shift has affected my theology and my ministry practice.

Below is a brief explanation of the shift that has occurred, and a few of the resultant ramifications.

shift

The Shift

I no longer view myself as pastor, or church planter, but as a missionary…and not just any missionary, but a missionary to a cross-cultural, unreached people group. In plain English, I view myself as a person who wants to introduce Jesus to a group of people who don’t know much (if anything) about Him, and as far as they are concerned, don’t really care to know Him.

The Ramifications:

There are many changes I’ve gone through, but here are four examples:

1. A Shift in “ministry” time.

While a pastor primarily does ministry among the people of his church, a missionary focuses on the people who are not yet part of a church. He immerses himself among them and learns their culture, their language, their issues, their needs, and their concerns. He lives life with them and among them.

Practically, while in the past, I have spent most of my pastoral time in the church office and with church people, in the future, I want to spend most of my time out of the church office, and with the people of the community.

2. A Shift in Vocation.

changeA pastor wants to get paid by the people of the church so he can free himself up to do “ministry.” This is not bad, but a missionary will often get a job in the community so he or she can live and work among the people, and be seen as one of them.

I don’t yet know what I’m going to do, and maybe some of my income will come from the “church budget” but ideally, I want to be living and working among the community. This also has the added benefit of freeing up as much money as possible to actually serve the community.

Many churches are handcuffed by pastoral salaries and building mortgages. Imagine what the church could do in the community and around the world if it didn’t have to pay for pastors or buildings!

3. A Shift in Bible translation. (This one I can hardly believe.)

As a pastor who focused primarily on preaching and teaching believers, I wanted a Bible-translation that was as close to the Greek and Hebrew as possible. Now, I want to use a Bible that is as close as possible to the language of the people I am working among.

When Wycliffe goes into a community to translate the Bible, they don’t try to make a translation that is hard to read but instead, while trying to maintain accuracy, try to get a translation that is as close as possible to the vernacular. So, while I used the NASB and the NKJV, I now think I’m going to switch to the NLT.

4. A Shift in how Truth meets life.

I used to be a professional theologian-pastor. All I did was read, write, think, talk, and teach about the Bible and theology.

I now believe that while doing so is valuable and important, if it does not result in loving and serving others (especially those who are not followers of Jesus), then I don’t really know the truth I talk so much about. While some pastors can afford to live and work in an ivory tower, missionaries must get down and dirty. Theology must come to grips with life.

I have discovered that as I try to live with and love other people (especially those who are not like me and don’t believe the way I do), a lot of what I thought and taught becomes much less important. Knowing the various views of the rapture are not that important when you are talking to a drug addict who is facing divorce.

Truth, I believe, is both tested and forged on the anvil of relationships.

If you are undergoing similar shifts, please let me know in the comments below. Maybe I will add more as I think of them.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, evangelism, ministry, missional

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I’m a Co-Author

By Jeremy Myers
7 Comments

I’m a Co-Author

writing a novel author

I’ve been invited to co-author a story with one of the best selling novelists ever! He’s sold more books than Tim LaHaye! It is quite an honor. I can hardly believe it!

I have already seen an outline for about the first half of the story, and from what I can tell, it’s going to be amazing. It’s basically the true life story of someone who is very similar to me, which I suppose is why I was chosen. It ultimately is a story about a man who constantly searches for truth, and he spends all his time and money in this search. Yet every time the end of his search seems near, and truth seems within his grasp, something happens which makes him realize he has been asking the wrong questions all along.

There are twists and tragedies in the plot that seem almost excessive. Just when it seems that the author has developed a pattern for the main character, everything changes. I talked to the main author about this, and he assures me that this is the way it happened in real life, and that all these turns must happen because they are preparing the man for something that will occur later in the story. I don’t know what that is, since I’ve only seen about half of the story so far. The author tells me that though he’s written the first half, he wants me to help author the second half. I’m not sure I’m up to it, but if he thinks I am, I’ll give it a shot.

Who is this author? It’s God. He is the best-selling author of all time.

And what’s the story we’re writing together? It’s my life.

I’m reading a book right now called To Be Told by Dan Allender and it has really helped me view my life as a coherent whole that is going someplace (I don’t exactly know where) rather than just a string of events while I’m in a holding pattern for heaven.

Furthermore, it helps me see that I can help God write my future. I can make choices and decisions that make my life more of an adventure romance full of tragedy, risk, and triumph than a mind-numbingly dull home video of a dog playing in the grass.

Such a perspective also helps me view the frustrations of life with a little more significance. The frustrations are not just bad and annoying things that happen, but are actually twists and turns in the plot of my life story which build the conflict and will eventually lead to the climax of wherever this story is headed.

And where is my story headed? Well, God hasn’t let me see the end of the story yet, but He is letting me make decisions about how the main character of my story responds to the trials and frustrations of life in the story. These decisions will help determine where the rest of the story goes.

It is true what someone once told me: First we make our decisions, and then our decisions make us.

So sometimes I purposefully make decisions that will make for “a better story.” I don’t want my story to be about how I watched thousands of hours of TV and lived to tell about it…

calvin and hobbes writing a novel

Oh, and by the way, this co-authorship opportunity isn’t a special privilege reserved for me only. You are writing the story of your life along with God. So how are you doing in writing the screenplay of your life? Is it going to be a blockbuster?

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: author, Books by Jeremy Myers, Discipleship, following Jesus, life, writing

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Simple Church by Thom Rainer

By Jeremy Myers
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Simple Church by Thom Rainer

Simple Church Thom RainerOne of the books I read this week was Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. Though I was excited to read it, and agree in principle with the “Simple Church” concept, that every church needs to drastically simplify what it is doing so that it can do a better job of making disciples, I was a tiny bit disappointed with some of the approaches used by the authors.

The book is based on a survey of hundreds of growing churches across the country which experienced at least 5% numerical growth each year for at least three years. They surveyed these churches on what they were doing and how they were doing it. Here are my complaints with Thom Rainer’s Simple Church approach:

First, it does not appear that they asked the growing churches they surveyed where their “growth” was coming from. Much of it could have been transfer growth. I don’t mind “transfer growth” if Christians are leaving sick churches to attend healthy ones, but that is not the reason most Christians transfer. Most just want to go where they get the best show.

Second, it seems they only surveyed larger churches (of 300 or more) and churches with buildings. This is odd since about 90% of the 485,000 US churches are under 80 people. Also, the most “simple” churches in the country are house churches (of 30 or less). It would be interesting to see if his stats fit with house churches.

Third, I am so tired with people thinking that numerical growth equals church growth. It doesn’t!

Church growth is when believers grow and develop into Christlike maturity. This can occur even if the number of people in a particular group is decreasing. Thom Rainer’s survey reinforces the terrible and misleading idea about what constitutes “church growth” and thus, his whole study is skewed.

Finally, it seems that there is a real breakdown in the ability of the churches that were surveyed to get their people into community service (mission). Though the people may be progressing through the simplified discipleship track, few make it to the goal of mission involvement. I wonder if this isn’t because Mission should be placed first, as suggested by other books on the market (e.g. The Forgotten Ways).

Of course, despite these “complaints” of mine, I do think it is a really good book since most churches desperately need simplification.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Books I'm Reading, church growth, Theology of the Church, Thom Rainer

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