blanket faith

Tonight I have been sitting around with my feet up on the computer desk, my guitar in hand lightly strumming as I send prayers up to my wonderful God in the candlelit little room that I call home. I started thinking about Paul. I love Paul. I think about him a lot... him watching from a distance at Stephen's stoning... that amazing moment on the road to Damascus, running straight into God in the flesh... the scales over his eyes... and the long journeys he made with his friends Barnabas, Timothy and the others. This evening I have been thinking about what a leap of faith it was for him to give up his comfortable existence to go follow Jesus and His radical message.

Remember, Paul wasn't joining the Christian Church... it didn't exist yet. The few believers that had rallied around Stephen were scattered and hopeless after his public murder at the hands of Paul's religious scholar buddies. The entering movement was little more than a few scattered men preaching a shocking message. Yet Paul gives up his path to power in their Jewish world anyway.

No Paul wasn't joining a church. He wasn't following a path that was easily followed. He was following a MAN. He was following Jesus. Our churches today are very different. Right when you walk in the door at most churches you are greeted by a volunteer that hands you a visitor's packet with a list of all the stuff that church can do for you. Some of it is very good like food pantries and other ministries... but most seem like social events, mix and meet event. The church has become so involved in every little thing in the community, bake sales, Christmas music concerts, piano recitals, even sillier mundane things.... all the while they lose sight of the purpose, the goal, the prize. Jesus. Paul stared straight at Him. We, too, should stay focused on Jesus.

It is easy today to join a church. You fil out the card and meet with the pastor, you pick which committee, which clubs or groups to join in that building. You buy into the package of activities that best suit your needs. You can see all the stuff that the church can and will do for you. Most join for the services and the show not for an image of Jesus. But Paul never did that. Paul's church was really simple... He loved Jesus so much that he wanted to tell others about him. And that he did his whole life.

Oh, let us gaze into His eyes. Let us stand before this humble carpenter and let His beauty knock down our defenses. And our pride. And control and shame and hesitancy. And let us run with him a wild race of truth and beauty and grace. Let us pour out our most treasured prizes upon Him, only Him.

Let us abandon all for Him. Let us no longer be couch-sitting Christians who are known more for our dogma than for the actions of our hands and feet. Let us become people of the Way. Jesus followers. The word Christian implies religion and dogma and sedentary intellectual assent to a belief system. Enough of that!

Let us throw off this heavy blanket of cultural Christianity and relearn how to run. How to repent. How to lose our lives instead of always trying to save them. How to be used by God. How to change this world.

Let us relearn how to stare, how to worship, how to study, how to kneel, how to touch, how to trust. Jesus is so rich. So full. So utterly captivating and beautiful and worth everything we have. We is all.

God in the Flesh
Don Everts
p. 153-4

I spent many years with scales over my eyes. For some of them I was even a pretty good member of the church. I was a terrible Christ-follower. I did everything I could to stay involved in activities so I couldn’t listen to what God was actually calling me to do... But once I actually opened my eyes and saw Jesus, stunning Jesus, beautiful Jesus, the same God-man that Paul saw, I could never be the same. I had to drop all the pretense and run after Him.

I see so much pretense. I see so much acting, and dancing and puffed up frosting that makes this church or that church look important... But really it just keeps them busy. These activities have become like a heavy blanket that is weighing them down. I pray that it is thrown off... and Christ be revealed in its stead.

Stained Glass Masquerade
Casting Crowns

Is there anyone who’s been there
Are there any hands to raise
Am I the only one who’s traded
In the altar for a stage

The performance is convincing
And we know every line by heart
Only when no one is watching
Can we really fall apart

But would it set me free
If I dared to let you see
The truth behind the person
That you imagine me to be

Would your arms be open
Or would you walk away
Would the love of Jesus
Be enough to make you stay

Are we happy plastic people
Under shiny plastic steeples
With walls around our weakness
And smiles to hide our pain
But if the invitation’s open
To every heart that has been broken
Maybe then we close the curtain
On our stained glass masquerade