Ask the witnesses, dummy!

I re-read Hebrews 12:1 in a different version this morning and got hammered:

Such a large crowd of witnesses is all around us! So we must get rid of everything that slows us down, especially the sin that just won't let go. And we must be determined to run the race that is ahead of us.

I was asking the question "what is it that is slowing me down?" when it hit me "Ask the witnesses dummy!" The scripture says that there is a "large crowd of witnesses all around us!" The witnesses include those who have already finished their race, but there are also a lot of witnesses who are running alongside us right now. They haven't finished their races yet, but they witness my life. I'm pretty sure that if I ask them they will be able to point out some of the things that are slowing me down in the race of faith. All I have to do is ask.

I could ask Dennis, Steve, Pastor Jorge, Pastor Ruel, Kevin, and Ione. They will tell me what is slowing me down. I might not like their answers, but they will speak the truth in love. The truth is "we don't see ourselves very objectively". We lie to ourselves all the time. We need friends who will speak truth into our lives. If you want to run well, find some mature Christians, some witnesses to speak truth into your life on a regular basis. You will be a witness for them as they are witnesses for you. They won't be looking for faults, they will also tell you where you are running well, and they will encourage you.

Here's the big question: Are you serious? Do you really want to know? Ouch!

Losing Weight

       

Hebrews 12: 1
we must get rid of every weight 

              and the sin that clings so closely, 

    and run with endurance the race set out for us, 

When I was young my parents sent us for swimming lessons every summer. We would go down to the Kennewick public pool and, for an hour, we would learn to swim. The lessons usually lasted for 2 weeks every summer, but mom and dad sometimes allowed my to take back to back lessons. I quickly progressed and by age 15 I had my life-saving certificate. In life-saving class one of the things we learned is that if you fall into the water you need to get your clothes OFF. Water soaked clothes will sap your energy and drag you under. Like Houdini bound tightly in a straight-jacket, we had to learn how to quickly disrobe once in the water. It was life or death.

   Likewise, the runners in a Marathon wear only the barest minimum of clothes and the lightest running shoes imaginable. They get rid of every weight. My question then is simple "What is weighing me down?" "What is weighing you down?" Things that weigh us down are not necessarily sin (though they can be). The author of Hebrews mentions weight and then later "sin that clings closely to us". What keeps me from running well? Here are a few things on my list:

• too busy to read and meditate on the Bible
• entertainment: online or on TV
• facebook 
• email, most of it unimportant
• phone messages (the notification tone sounds urgent, but the message is inane like "lol" or "omg". I lose my focus for that? 
• worry

What's on your list? 

The strategy for dealing with things that weigh us down is "get rid of them". Lay them aside. Put them down. Leave them behind. STOP! What suggestions do you have? What are you going to "get rid of" so that you can run well? How will you do that? 

I think someone is watching me

Many of the helpers who work for Hong Kong families spend their days worrying about whether someone is watching them. You see, many Hong Kong families have web cams installed so that working parents can check in on their children and check up on their helpers. 

Does having a webcam in the home help you do a better job? I recently read an article about webcams describing one that had 2 way audio. The article said that if a parent saw their child misbehaving they could address it immediately "Johny, stop hitting your sister and do your homework!" Many of us imagine God to be this way, always watching us so he can ZAP us if we do something wrong. 

Hebrews 12:1 in the Contemporary English Version says "Such a large crowd of witnesses is all around us!"

Are we being watched? Maybe. The scripture calls them "witnesses". A witness is someone who sees or experiences something. They may be witnessing to us about the grace of God they have experienced OR they may be witnessing how God's grace plays out in our lives OR both. Who are these witnesses? The last 2 verses of chapter 11 identify them:

39All of them pleased God because of their faith! But still they died without being given what had been promised. 40This was because God had something better in store for us. And he did not want them to reach the goal of their faith without us.

They are the believers, the faithful who have gone before us. They are runners who have finished their race and they are waiting for you and me to finish ours. Last weekend was the Hong Kong Marathon. The runners who finished first were greeted with prizes and lots of media attention. Those who finished last were greeted by a few friends and the clean up crews picking up the garbage left by the spectators. That is not how it works in the race of faith. In the race of faith, nobody gets their prize until everyone has finished. In the race of faith, the other runners are not competing against you, but with you. We are like a cross country team, and the whole team has to cross the line before the prizes are given out. So they wait, and perhaps they watch, but if they watch - it is not with condemnation, but concern. They want us to run well. They want us to win. When we stumble their groans are the groans of the home team's fans. When we successfully jump a hurdle, their cheers are the cheers of teammates. They care about us, and want us to win. 

Their watching is the watching of a big brother or sister who has experienced what we are facing and want us to do well, to do better than they did. God's watching is the watching of a parent as their child takes their first steps, rides their first bike, graduates from university. It is the watching of love, of hope, of faith. 

Are we being watched? Yes, but those watching love us and want us to run well. How has your race been so far? My race has had some awful falls and stumbles, but I'm still running, and they are still waiting, hoping and cheering for me. 

Leaking into heaven

My friend has Alzheimer's, and she loves Jesus.
She raised her kids, taught piano, all the while loving Jesus.
Now she is leaking into heaven
Every day a bit more there, a bit less here,
Drip by drip she's been leaving us,
Gradually moving into her new digs,
It seems natural for her to do it this way
After all, her hearts been there already a very long time.
Now she's pretty much all there. I wonder do they say
"but dear, your body. " I can hear her answer now. She'd laugh, smile and say "oh don't worry about that old thing,  it'll be along soon enough."
She's leaking into heaven and now she's rarely here.
My friend has Alzheimer's, and she loves Jesus.

Parental pain and puzzlement

We put others through a lot of pain and suffering when we walk away from the Lord. We hurt those closest to us because our actions become self centered instead of Christ or other centered. We also hurt those who led us to Christ and taught us how to follow him.

In Galatians 4:19-20 Paul writes

"My children, I am in terrible pain until Christ may be seen living in you. I wish I were with you now. Then I would not have to talk this way. You really have me puzzled. "

Who introduced you to Jesus? They are your spiritual parents. When you walk away from God they feel great pain and sadness. When you continue on in your walk with Jesus, (no matter how bumpy the road) their hearts are filled with parental pride and joy.

Sometimes we break their hearts, and often they feel great pride in us, but always- always they love us. If your spiritual parents could see you right now, how do you think they would feel?

When better is worse

Everyone wants to be good at something, but what if you are good at being bad? Paul says he was cruel to God's church, but he was a much better Jew than anyone else his age.  Before I became a Christian, I was good at being bad too, but I didn't call my bad "good". Here is what Paul said:

"You know how I used to live as a Jew. I was cruel to God's church and even tried to destroy it.  I was a much better Jew than anyone else my own age, and I obeyed every law our ancestors had given us.  But even before I was born, God had chosen me by his gift of undeserved grace and had decided to show me his Son, so I would announce his message to the Gentiles. I didn't talk this over with anyone. " Galatians 1:13-16 CEVDCUS06

Religious people call their bad "good". The murder others and say they are "serving God". They burn down houses and drive people of other faiths from their towns and villages and say they are "cleansing evil from their midst". They burn the sacred writings of other faiths and say they are "serving God." The most horrible thing about religious people is how they cloak their evil and relabel it as "good." It's not good. It's evil. There is not much hope for religious people because they think they are "good". Well there's not much hope for any of us, unless the Lord intervenes.

Paul also says that "before I was born, God had chosen me". He acknowledges that in spite of his religious evil God, in his sovereign plan, had chosen him for something special. It wasn't because of his religion, his being good at being bad, or his being good at being good, but rather God chose him based on God's undeserved grace alone.

We imagine that God chooses us because of something He sees in us. Maybe that is so, but the Bible doesn't say that. The Bible says that God chooses people for His own reasons and purposes that we may or may not ever understand. It's not about us, but about God. In this case God chose Paul to take the good news about Jesus to the non Jewish peoples of the earth. Perhaps his religious bigotry and zealotry prepared him for this task. I think it did, especially since he ended up on the other side of the bigotry - the receiving end - and was able to endure it graciously. Still the main thing is that God chose him before he was even born. Wow, talk about destiny.

I wonder how Paul would describe his motivation before and after meeting Jesus. He was highly pro-active and dedicated before and after meeting Jesus, but at the same time, he experienced a heart transformation. Before he was motivated by religious hate cloaked as zealousness. Afterwards he was motivated by love and compassion. Both of these fundamental motivations were powerful, but one enslaved and other freed people. One controlled through fear, the other gave up the goal of controlling others, and depended on the Holy Spirit to do that through love. One drove out those who disagreed, the other served them and sacrificed for them. One shrunk the heart of man, the other enlarged it.

You can go to hell

I'm sure that, at some time in my life, I told someone to "go to hell". For a Christian who believes in eternity and final judgement, it's a pretty bad thing to say to someone. Granted, if I said that to someone, the last thing on my mind was God & eternal destinies. At the time I was probably just ticked off and not at all concerned with spiritual things.

Paul, on the other hand, is quite earnest when he tells the Galatians that the false teachers who have messed them up can "go to hell." Here is what he says,

Galatians 1:6-10 GNTD
"I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ, and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no “other gospel,” but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell! We have said it before, and now I say it again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel that is different from the one you accepted, may he be condemned to hell!  Does this sound as if I am trying to win human approval? No indeed! What I want is God's approval! Am I trying to be popular with people? If I were still trying to do so, I would not be a servant of Christ."

Paul is pretty riled up and blasts the Christians at Galatia with both barrels. He says if anyone is preaching a different gospel, different from the gospel of salvation by grace that I (Paul) preached to you, that person can "go to hell", the real hell.

What do you get ticked off at? I get ticked off at people who take cuts in line ahead of me, miss appointments without so much as a phone call to say "sorry I can't come", plastic packaging that has to be open with a box knife. A lot of the stuff I get ticked about is trivial and unimportant. There aren't that many recorded instances of Paul getting angry. He was persecuted, starved, falesly imprisoned and misunderstood. He had some kind of chronic medical problem that bothered him constantly, yet we never hear him complain or get angry over these things. But he gets really pissed off over these false teachers, because they are striking at the heart of the gospel, telling people they have to "be good" in order to "get right" with God. In fact he gets so mad, he says "they can go to hell" - really - really go to hell over this.

I think I care too much about things that don't matter, and don't care enough about the things that really matter. One of the things that really matters is the good news that Jesus died for my sins, rose again and offers forgiveness and new life to anyone who wants it, freely. You can't pay for it, you can't perform for it; all you can do is accept it with thanks.

Lord help me to care more about the things you are passionate about, especially the gospel of Jesus. Amen.