Jesus Christ Blog

We’ve all heard the story before, or perhaps it even happened to you.

You receive a visit from a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. You are overjoyed at the reunion and honored that your friend would see the relationship worth cultivating and would actually seek you out. Or it might be a person you are just starting to get to know, and there are encouraging signs of a potential friendship.

In the course of a pleasant conversation, with the talk shifting randomly from one subject to another, you suddenly find you are discussing the virtues of various vacuum cleaners. Your friend brightens at the topic because he’s recently had some great results with an amazing new machine that he extols with great pleasure. You are so taken by his excitement that you find yourself wanting to know where you might find one of these amazing vacuum cleaners since your old model has paled in comparison to his vivid description, and you’ve been thinking about looking into a new one anyway. It’s then that your new friend offers to solve all your problems by selling you one on the spot at a “one-time only, low, low price of $69.95.”

Suddenly, you feel an awful knot in the pit of your stomach. It’s not unlike the feeling you had when you came home one day to find your house had been burglarized. You feel violated, used. And you feel stupid for trusting this person and making yourself vulnerable to his schemes. He’s not after a friendship; he’s after a sale.

A believer’s mission to share Christ with people is one of the five great purposes for which we exist. But without the other four to balance it, we can end up peddling Christ with similar results. Even laying hold of a conversation with the intent of steering it in a particular direction can feel manipulative to a person.

If I listen to the other purposes in this light, I remember that God is in control of everyone’s own road to discovery. I don’t make anyone see the truth, I am only witness to what I have seen and heard. My relationship with people is an end in itself, regardless of whether or not they are Christian or Muslim or Jewish or atheists. My purpose is to serve people, not sell them something. And maturity tells me that the Holy Spirit is my guide as to what to say and when, so as to not even worry about this or be overly conscious of my role in someone’s life as providing anything other than love and support.

“We don’t take God’s Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets to sell it cheap. We stand in Christ’s presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. We get what we say straight from God and say it as honestly as we can.” (2 Corinthians 2:17 MSG)

This movie was even better than we had expected.

By John Fischer

Evangelicals often put being saved and going to heaven in the same sentence, as if heaven were the only goal of our salvation. But the truth is, we are saved to serve. Heaven is important, but heaven can wait. God saves us because he has a job for us to do in his Kingdom here on earth. If heaven is the whole point of our salvation, then what do we do while we wait? Change the channel on our Christian entertainment?

It’s amazing how many of our own problems dissipate when we begin caring about other people’s problems instead of focusing on our own. We’ve picked up some very bad habits from our culture. We have a tendency to be preoccupied with our own needs and constantly trying to fulfill them. Advertising plays into this self-indulgence, promising that one more product will be the thing that will finally satisfy us. The truth of the matter is: Getting will never come close to the satisfaction that giving affords.

Think of someone you know who is truly happy and I venture to guess you will find  that someone busy serving others. If, in fact, our troubles will never go away (and I don’t believe they ever will in this life), then to focus on them and try to solve them is going to be nothing but a broken record. Make one problem go away, and watch another one crop up immediately. To give ourselves to the task of attending to the problems of those around us may not make our own problems go away, but it will make them less of a drag. Focusing on our own problems can lead to anxiety, frustration, and even depression. Focusing on other people’s problems leads to usefulness and a greater sense of health.

So today, when we are tempted to look in, to our own needs, let’s look out, instead, to the needs of those around us and see if our own needs diminish by comparison. Who knows, we may even forget about ourselves in the process.

Jesus hung on a cross and thought of those who were putting him there, and even pleaded their case before his Father, because he knew they didn’t realize the full impact of what they were doing. Can you imagine having even a fleeting thought about someone else if you were in that much pain yourself? But that’s just the thing about Jesus: He was always thinking of someone else.

By John Fischer

“You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

 What does it mean to not belong to myself? I can think of a few things. 

It means that I should probably do a lot of consulting with my new owner. There is more to consider than just me and what I want to do; there is God and what he wants me to do.

If you’re anything like me, this makes sense until you begin to wonder over what he wants you to do in certain circumstances. It isn’t always clear.

For this we have Scripture and gifted members of the fellowship to consult, but in all instances it is the attitude of the heart that is most important. It is a submissive attitude toward God that he is looking for – what the Old Testament calls a broken and contrite heart. It’s being always open and teachable because I realize my new owner has a different way of looking at things than what comes natural for me. In fact, over time I begin to realize what comes natural for me is often my biggest problem.

Instead of “how much can I get away with here,” God is looking for an attitude that says, “Even if I’m not sure, what do I think God would want me to do here.” God is not going to lead astray a humble person who is seeking to do his will.

Our new ownership also means there will be inner conflict. It used to be just me. Now I have me and the Spirit and we may not always be in sync.

In Roman 7, Paul concludes that an inner battle over right and wrong is a good thing because it proves at least that something good is going on. “But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good.” (Romans 7:16) Or in other words, he may have done the wrong thing, but at least he knew it was wrong.

Consider even the Son of God whose joy was always to do the will of his Father in heaven, who in the
garden of Gethsemane cried out after sweating blood over it, “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (Luke 22:42)

It used to be easier. It used to be just me left to the whim of my desires. But all that has changed. I am not my own anymore; I have been bought by God at a high price – the blood of Jesus – and he has a plan and a purpose for me as my new owner.

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By John Fischer

Why do we all have different passions? So everything that’s supposed to get done will get done.

Sometimes we get overwhelmed because we are constantly exposed to people with various passions for service, and when they represent their cause, they are so committed to that which has captured them that we feel guilty for not sharing their zeal. We seem indifferent in comparison.

When I was in college, we had chapel every day and almost every day we heard a message from someone who had a passion for some particular ministry. They were usually in some ways recruiting us for service, whether it was in missions, or in the church, or in society, or among the poor. It was overwhelming, and often frustrating, because everyone made every concern sound like the only thing any caring person would support.

The same thing happens in our churches. Sometimes we feel guilt because we don’t have the same passion as the last person who talked about missions, or abortion, or the homeless, or marriage, or singleness, or men’s ministry, or AIDS prevention, or prisons, or evangelism, or the military. What we forget is that there are so many needs because there are so many of us to meet them. We aren’t supposed to get our bell rung by every appeal that comes by. We are a body made up of different parts and different hearts; we don’t have to all be moved by the same issues and needs.

This is where the concept and the practical nature of spiritual gifts come in. There are a variety of gifts and there are a variety of ministries, but the same Lord working in all and through all. No one has to do everything; no one can. It is up to us to find out where we fit and what God put us here to do. Soon you will be just as passionate about something because it’s your thing. This is the way it’s supposed to be. We only get frustrated when we forget this and try and take on everything or get so overwhelmed that we take on nothing at all.

All of this should just make us marvel at the wisdom of God even more. He’s designed us all with different abilities and different interests so that we are not only good at what we do, we do not have to be frustrated or depressed over what we aren’t good at. When we all do our part in the Body of Christ, everyone gets a job, everyone gets honored, and everyone’s important. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.