Brett Morey

I have been thinking a lot lately about some of the celebrity mess ups that have been the talk of the news.

The beginning of the football season saw the reemergence of Micheal Vick. Micheal went to prison a couple of years ago on criminal charges for promoting dog fighting.

A couple nights ago, Kanye West committed a crime of his own. Maybe it wasn’t one worthy of jail time but he has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Even the President Obama referred to him as a “jack*ss.” When you are called a name like that by the President you’ve performed a major mess-up.

And I have heard judgmental statements about both of them come out of my mouth and the mouths of many professing Christians. But God has convicted me about that and has used both situations to remind me of something huge.

As God’s people, we are to be agents of redemption. It is not our place to push people down after they’ve tripped. We are the ones called to lift people up. We are to desire the best for people. We are to seek the best for people. Even the Micheal Vicks and Kanye Wests of the world. We are called to love them.

What does that love look like from a Biblical perspective?

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It is not rude,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.

But what does that look like practically? I think the best question is this:

Would you be more excited to see Micheal Vick go to the Super Bowl or jail cell?
Would you rather see Kanye at the Grammy’s or in the gutter?

More than anything I would like to see both men transformed by God and seeking Jesus… but… your answers to the questions above will say much more about the state of your own heart than the guilt of their actions.

I thought this article was too good not to share. Please read and think deeply.

_____________________________________________________

The Life-Giving Voice of the Son of God
By: David Mathis

Let’s talk about your resurrection from the dead. If Jesus doesn’t come back before your die, then you will be raised someday—believer or non-believer—by Jesus from the dead, either to eternal joy or to eternal misery.

At least six observations about the final judgment can be made from John 5:25-29:

1. Jesus raises all the dead. Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy will be raised from the dead. And Julius Caesar, Judas Iscariot, Isaiah the prophet, Michelangelo, Johann Sebastian Bach, Adolf Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, and Princess Diana. All the dead who have ever lived will be raised from the dead by Jesus. Millions of Chinese and Nigerians and Indonesians and Germans. And you too.
2. Jesus raises all the dead by his mighty voice. He upholds the universe by his mere word and one day will raise the dead just by speaking.
3. In a sense, the hour of the resurrection has come. Jesus raised Lazarus as a foretaste of the resurrection he will bring about in its fullness someday.
4. The power of the Son of God to raise the dead originates in himself as God. It’s not that the Father is a source and the Son is a channel. The Son has life in himself just like the Father has life in himself. Life comes from the Son, not just through the Son.
5. Nevertheless, it is crucial that this Son of God also be human<a son of man<in order to be qualified for his role in the judgment. God deems it fitting that human beings be judged by one who knows what it’s like to be human. And not just human, but one who suffered to deliver the rest of us from judgment. There is something suitable that the one who sentences men to heaven or to hell will be a suffering Savior. The judge of all men will be able to look into every eye and say, “I too was tempted. I too suffered.”
6. Finally, eternal life and eternal judgment at the last day will be in accord with our deeds—good or evil. Not ‘based on’ our deeds but ‘in accord with’ our deeds. If we are justified by faith, our faith will produce good works. And our good deeds will be the evidence, the confirmation, the verification at the judgment that we were justified by faith alone.

Someday we all will be raised.

We have been talking a lot over the past few weeks about moving from 2 Sunday worship services on Sundays to 3. I have to be honest and say that I am excited about this. This change is not based on the hopes that God will do something. This change is in response to what God is already doing. That excites me. To know that God has chosen to work in and around us is a huge blessing.

I also have to be honest about something else. I’m not real excited about the personal changes that I’ll have to make to adjust to the church changes. We all have comfort zones. We all have schedules and experiences that we do not want to do differently. I know that there are people in the church that don’t like the schedule changes. There are some that don’t like that they will have to attend at a different time or be part of a different Link Group or even serve in their ministry at a different time.

I can understand. I’m not crazy about some of the schedule changes it will create for me. It is going to stretch my comfort zone. It’s going to inconvenience me. But I must remember that God’s goal for me and for us is not convenience – it’s commitment. All of us have made comfort such a high priority that we forget that most of the world’s Christians have very different challenges than we do. When we are inconvenienced by changes in service times other believers face being killed for meeting together in the middle of the night.

Sometimes I need to shake myself up to get a proper perspective. Have you been shaken today?