Life in the Middle

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

I love the Olympics--more than is probably natural or perhaps even healthy. While I’ll watch pretty much any event, gymnastics, and in particular the balance beam, is one one of my favorites. As a kid, I even asked my dad to build me a (very low) balance beam, and I quickly discovered how difficult it really is. One slight misstep and I was flailing wildly or on the ground.

Finding contentment often feels much the same way. It’s easy to get caught in the mentality of “a little more.” We have a job that pays the bills, but what if we got paid a little more? The apartment or house is adequate, but what if we had a little more space? Our car is solid, but what if we had one with a little more class? Contentment seems ever-elusive--we may get close to it, but never fully grasp it.

In Proverbs 30:7-9, the writer is wise enough to realize how easily we can fall off the balance beam of contentment. Verses 7-9 read:

“Two things I ask of you, Lord; 

Photo Credit: Flickr User margiee329, Creative Commons

do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.”

The writer knows we are prone to forget God when things go well, and prone to resort to drastic measures when things are not going well. So instead, he asks for the kind of life that is lived on a balance beam--never falling into excess on one side or lack on the other. It’s not a life of striving after “a little more,” but taking stock of what we have for each day and seeing the goodness in that.

It’s about realizing that having comes with responsibility, because ultimately it all belongs to God.

With responsibility comes the opportunity to share what we have with others. It seems counterintuitive that by giving away what we have we may come to find contentment, but in the kingdom of God, things don’t always work the way we’re used to. When we give as an expression of gratitude for what we do have, even if what we have doesn’t feel like very much, we place ourselves in a spot to be reminded that we don’t stay on the balance beam of contentment through our own work, but by the grace of God.

If it was just up to us, we’d have a terrible time getting anywhere near contentment. The writer in Proverbs knows this, which is why he asks the Lord for only his daily bread, as a means to learn continued reliance on God. Our own work can’t make us content or willingly generous, but as we seek God and he draws us near to him, he graciously gives us gifts like contentment and generosity. We have to be willing to hear his call to accept these things and then obey, recognizing that a life lived in the middle can be a beautiful one.

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

Your Work Matters

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

The summer after I graduated from college, I had a part-time job that filled 20 hours of my week. Most of the rest of my time was spent sleeping, reading, or watching TV. It was not my finest time of life.

Up until that point, my identity had been that of “Student,” and I was comfortable with it. The Christian schools I attended did a good job of reminding us that being a student was work, and as such, we should approach it as a way to bring honor to God in the way that we learned and studied. Once that goal was gone, my 20 hours of work a week didn’t feel like much, and I was at a loss as to what to do with all my time (besides applying for jobs I was grossly underqualified for). I had lost sight of the fact that God cares about all of our work, whether physical, spiritual, or emotional work, whether it takes place in a classroom, an office, a living room, a backyard, or anywhere else.

Photo Credit: Flickr User Brick Wares, Creative Commons

We often get caught up in thinking God cares very much about what kind of work we’re doing. Sure, he likes it when students study hard, he likes people who work at churches and nonprofits, and he likes when parents read their kids Bible stories. But accounting or scooping ice cream? Filling out job applications and not getting call backs? Sometimes it feels like God probably doesn’t care much about those things.

I love the way The Message translation words Galatians 6:4-5 (emphasis added): “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”

We don’t all have the same work to do, but God cares about all the kinds—from the unglamorous tasks like cleaning bathrooms and taking the trash out, to moments that have glimpses of weightier purpose, like reading a bedtime story or bringing a meal to a sick friend. It might be the emotional work of having a difficult conversation, or spiritual work of making sure we’re regularly connecting with God and a Christian community. In God’s eyes, all of this work matters.  Each kind is different, but significant in its own way. He cares much less about the kind of work we do than how we do it.

The book of Proverbs warns us to not be like the sluggard who sits around all day, but to be like the ant who works diligently and prepares for what’s to come. Neglecting or refusing to work comes with very real consequences, whether it’s physically in the form of lack or resources, or spiritually or emotionally in the form of broken relationships or bad decisions. Full-time jobs are great for some people, but they’re not the only way of glorifying God through work.

Whether we recognize it or not, everyday moments of work are ripe with possibility to be holy moments. God’s grace is woven through all that we do. If I could redo the summer after I graduated from college, I would find much better, more productive things to do with my time—whether through volunteering, writing, or the messy work of thinking through how God made me and what that means for his calling on my life. Instead of allowing ourselves to become sluggards, any of those options and so many more can become powerful ways of glorifying God through our good work.

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

Rainforest

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

Ten minutes before I had to leave for the airport freshman year of college, the zipper ripped out of my suitcase. It was not a high quality bag, and I was trying to fit in everything I owned (I significantly violated the weight limit for checked baggage). I overestimated the strength and size of the bag, and in a last ditch effort my roommate sat on top to keep it shut while I zipped it. As soon as she got up, the zipper’s stitching burst open. (Duct tape quickly solved this problem, yet befuddled the TSA agents who decided to randomly search my bag – I hope they enjoyed the dirty laundry!)

Although I grew up in church, my concept of God was very small. I knew mainly four things about God - He was love, He sent His Son for me, He lived in heaven and He wrote the Bible. (Maybe I knew a few other things – I should give my Sunday school teachers more credit…but still, it was a skeleton understanding.) It all fit very nicely and neatly into my faith suitcase.

My world expanded as I grew older; I studied science in college and made new and interesting friends with novel opinions about everything. Instead of trying to figure out how God and my faith meshed with those new things, I ignored the dissonances for as long as I could. I tried to cram everything into my nice, neat faith suitcase. The older I got, the more frayed the edges became, and the harder it was to keep my view of God so small; the suitcase was going to burst open.

My own narrow knowledge and understanding restricted what I was willing to consider or accept about God and His character. We try to contain our understanding of God in neat little parameters of our own invention, but those are limits that God does not actually provide.

Eventually, I started reading my Bible (for real). And talking with other people who studied their Bibles. And reading books by people who had studied it longer. Talk about needing someone to sit on your suitcase to close it!

I wanted all of my life experiences and all of my Bible studying to fit nicely and neatly into my concept of God. Manageable and small, I wanted an answer to every question. No exploding zippers, no duct tape.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Vllseskogen, Creative Commons

Maybe knowing God isn’t like packing a suitcase at all. The longer I seek Him and desire to know Him, the more I get the sense that knowing God is more like exploring the rain forest. At first you notice a few key things: trees, rain, heat. But if you’re willing to search and seek, question and dig for answers, you will discover more and more: a gorgeous flower, a powerful waterfall, a fearsome panther, the way things work together. Curiosity will require more searching: How do all the dead leaves and bugs disappear? A microscope might provide a new perspective, and climbing through the trees would yield unexpected discoveries you may not have considered from the ground. The more you know, the more beautiful it is, and the more deeply you enjoy it. Even if you stayed and lived in the rain forest for a lifetime, you still would never search out all of its secrets, never know every niche and nuance. There’s no way you could pack a rain forest into a suitcase – anything that might fit would never represent the totality of it; an essay or even a book could not contain it. It’s just too much!

So it is with God. He is just too much!

Pastor Dirk’s encouragement this week is that when our world collides with our nice neat picture of God, we shouldn’t fight it and grow discouraged by the collision. Rather, that we should seek the scriptures to let God speak into the confusion, and let our minds be blown.

He is bigger and wilder, so much more than we can imagine. He is more generous, He loves more fiercely, His justice is greater and He is more powerful than our minds can comprehend. Discovering Him will take the careful study of a lifetime. When He speaks, He expands our expectations and deepens our love.

On this side of eternity, we won’t ever have all of the answers about God and how He moves and works in this world. Our knowing will always be partial, a poor reflection. For all of us who know and believe Him though, the day will come when we will know Him in full; we will know Him face to face!

The loose edges of my understanding of God are becoming more comfortable. I’m learning that He is so much more than I can imagine; to box Him in is to create a God in my image.

Like the Bereans in Acts 17, let’s search the Scriptures daily to know Him more and hear Him speak, all the more when our world collides with our understanding. I want God to speak into my small and squashed ideas about Him, and burst them wide open.

[Robin Bupp is married to Caleb, and they are from many places east of the Mississippi (but are calling Michigan home for the foreseeable future). A former high school science teacher, Robin is slowly turning the two Bupp kiddos into tiny nerds while they teach her lots of things, including humility and patience.]

When God Stops Speaking

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

Sitting down to read the Bible can be a daunting task. In one sense, it’s so simple—open it up, pick a section, and read the words on the page. Except because it’s the Bible, we know that’s not supposed to be all there is to it. The book of Hebrews calls the word of God “alive and active,” but when I read it, sometimes it feels like it’s become lifeless and lethargic. It can feel like the way I’m reading the Bible is broken, and unless I devote every waking hour of my entire life to studying Hebrew and Greek and reading every commentary I can find, I won’t be able to really understand what God is really saying through the Bible.

It’s like God knew people would continue to despair over trying to understand the Bible, because In Deuteronomy 30, Moses delivers a word to the people of Israel, telling them, “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach… No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it” (verses 11 and 14). The Israelites had recently left the land of Egypt where they were enslaved, and were on a journey to the land God had promised them—“a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Reading the Bible isn’t a journey in a physical sense, but it is a journey in other ways—a journey of discovery, a journey of transformation, a journey of learning about God and how he wants us to live. The task, like a trek to a new country, may seem daunting at times as we encounter passages of the Bible that seem to contradict each other, or that don’t make sense to us in today’s times, or that are worded in a way that seems fit only to confuse us. But as God worked to bring the Israelites out from their lives of bondage, he remains near to us today, actively working to bring us to him and to help us know him more. 

When we read the Bible, we’re not doing so in a vacuum, completely alone and abandoned—we read the Bible and God is with us as we do. It’s our job to read it and to use resources available to us to understand it, but the ultimate understanding and ability to apply it to our lives comes only from God. The more we spend time with the Bible, the more opportunities we’re opening up where God may speak to us. It may come in the form of a comforting passage found during personal devotions, or being convicted by a message from a pastor, or a conversation at a Bible study that brings newfound clarity. 

Of course, the opposite is true as well—if we continued to read the Bible for any length of time, there will inevitably be seasons where it truly feels like our way of reading it is broken, and that God seems to be sitting back and decidedly not helping us understand it any further. After Moses’ assurance that the Israelites were capable of carrying out the commandments he had laid out for them, the Israelites spent the next few hundred years proving him wrong. They broke, if not every single one of the commandments, most of them. Because they tried to be obedient out of their own strength instead of relying on God’s power to enable them to obey him, they were unable to fulfill what God told them to do.

Without God, we don’t have the ability to continue reading the Bible consistently and having it always speak to us in vibrant and applicable ways. Instead, we must remain faithful to the task without despairing when we stumble over difficult sections, trusting God to illuminate it for us in ways we cannot—and in ways we may not see for some time. But, because God is who he says he is and does what he says he will, we can know, even in those seasons where things aren’t making sense, that God is at work speaking into our lives and shaping us to look more like him.

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

Wrath and Chocolate

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]


While baking the other day, I licked some stray cocoa powder off my finger (I’m comfortable with my less-than-hygienic baking practices!). I was expecting the usual, all-together chocolate experience – the sweetness makes the bitterness just right - rich and complex. I was abruptly reminded that cocoa is unsweetened! Thanks to some quiet time in the Old Testament prophets, the cocoa incident made me think of God’s wrath. 

If someone asked me to describe God, I’d probably talk about His love and grace, His mercy, and His faithfulness. It’s not likely that I would burst out with, “God is so awesome! He avenges His foes, and will not leave guilty people unpunished!” Those things are very true, and in some circumstances they would be very comforting. But generally, God’s wrath makes us a bit uncomfortable, right? I want to describe God in the ways I would like people to describe me. My anger is not a good thing, and I’d rather not have it in the description. Sin always seems to be tangled up in my anger! My anger is selfish and prideful; it rises from out of the hidden impatience and jealousy that lurk in the still dark parts of my heart. God’s anger has none of those issues, because He is wholly good. “No one is good – except God alone.” (Mark 10:18) He is not like us (Psalm 50:21), He is perfect, completely without sin.

God’s wrath is nothing like mine.

Just prior to the cocoa incident, I had read the first chapter of Nahum. The first six verses are striking, a fog-horn-loud reminder of why we need God’s grace and mercy! Here’s a quick sampling: “…the LORD takes vengeance and is filled with wrath,” (v 2) “…the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished,” (v 3) and “Who can endure His fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him.” (v 6)

In my particular printing of the Bible, these verses nearly claim the entire first column of the book. One lone verse is set apart below: “The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble.” (Nahum 1:7) The first time I read through the verses, I skimmed over this verse – compared with the less-familiar terrain of God’s wrath, the declaration of His goodness seemed commonplace; but it’s not! Nahum is sharing about God’s jealous anger and His righteous vengeance. Then he is inspired to write, “the LORD is good.” All of the anger, vengeance and punishment discussed in these verses can be trusted in God’s hands, because He is good.

As I stood with my unpleasant tasting cocoa in my mouth, I thought of how without sugar, chocolate is hard to swallow. If I did not trust God’s goodness, His wrath would be hard to swallow. It’s the totality of God’s character that makes Him holy and righteous!

When Jesus is our Savior, we can rest knowing that God has a merciful plan for the wrath that we deserve (…and we do deserve wrath – check out Romans 3:9-20). Romans 3:24-25 (NIV) says, “[We] are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood…;” an alternative translation of verse 25 says, “God presented him [Jesus] as the one who would turn away God’s wrath.” In God’s goodness and love and justice, He sent Jesus to take the wrath we are due. God is so good!

Pastor Dirk mentioned this week that God’s wrath comes up more times in the Bible than His love, yet God’s wrath is never absent of His love. God’s wrath is never like unsweetened cocoa – bitter, divorced from His love, only wreaking havoc. His wrath is a part of His love. “God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) I can trust God’s wrath – even when I don’t understand it, or don’t have any idea what He’s working out – because He is good, He is light, and He is love!


[Robin Bupp is married to Caleb, and they are from many places east of the Mississippi (but are calling Michigan home for the foreseeable future). A former high school science teacher, Robin is slowly turning the two Bupp kiddos into tiny nerds while they teach her lots of things, including humility and patience.]

God's Love > My Love

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

Every day after school my grandfather let me have the tallest stack of Oreos. He would bring me fancy pastries from the bakery, and let me get ice cream when we went out to eat. On birthdays and Christmas, Grandpa always gave us cash, which is strangely cool when you’re eight (or eighteen). Once when I was older, he confessed that he never thought he would live to see his grandchildren, and he just loved to see me smile.

I loved my grandfather’s love  – he was wildly generous and never said no.

When I was young and unfamiliar with struggle and suffering, I pictured God’s love like my grandfather’s – that He just wanted me to smile, and so He would make my path all sunshine and rainbows.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Torben Hansen, Creative Commons

If I try to understand God’s love from my own human understanding and experience of love, I will miss it.  My love is so human – it’s often self-serving and self-protecting, usually reciprocal and measured; my love is careful and simple.

God’s love is so much more. God doesn’t love how I think He should or how I expect Him to – He loves according to His character, according to who He is. Certainly God’s love is sweet and tender, gentle and patient. His love is also furious and jealous, relentlessly seeking my holiness over my happiness; it’s fierce and overwhelming as often as it is tender and gentle. He loves me just as fiercely in the stormy seasons as in the rainbow-filled ones; the rain and the sunshine are both products of His grace.

The Bible often addresses God’s love directly: God’s love is so wide, long, deep and high, it surpasses all knowing (Ephesians 3:18-19). He loves us even though there is nothing about us that makes us love-worthy (Deuteronomy 7:6-8). Nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:37-39). He loves us when we are still sinners, completely unable to approach His holiness (Romans 5:8). He loves us so much that He made a way for us to come near and have a relationship with Him, and to live with Him eternally, through Jesus, His only Son, who paid the debt for our sin on the cross (John 3:16)! There are verses in Psalms that speak to the nature of God’s love: it is unfailing (13:5), it reaches to the heavens (36:5), it is priceless (36:7), it is better than life (63:3), His love is good (69:16), it delivers us (86:13), it stands firm (89:2) it supports us (94:18).

In other places, scripture speaks to God’s love descriptively, narrating stories that show and explain His love. The prophets spoke of God’s love for Israel in metaphors and pictures, like a bridegroom loving a bride (Isaiah), and like a husband tenaciously loving a wayward wife (Hosea). Jesus’ love is tangible when He heals the sick (for example, Luke 5:12-16), graces sinners with unimaginable favor (Luke 5:27-32, Luke 7:36-50), and brings the dead back to life (Luke 7:11-17, John 11:1-44). Jesus even explained His love using parables, like the stories of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the prodigal son (Luke 15).

The entirety of the Bible, the grand story from beginning to end, reveals God’s love: He desires to be with us, and though we push Him aside and attempt to go our own way, He knows we will be ultimately unfulfilled without Him. So He provides a way back at great cost to Himself. Though we live through stormy days, He is purifying our faith (1 Peter 1:6-7) while we wait for Him to come and claim His bride.

God’s love is entirely too much to be caught up in a few words, in one verse, one story, one book. Even if we search the entirety of His Word and live one hundred years walking with Him, we will only know of His love in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). It’s too much to be defined, nailed down, categorized, labeled, or charted. It’s unpredictable. It’s unexpected. It’s wild and untamed. He loves us to our benefit, He loves us sacrificially (John 3:16), He loves us knowing the whole story and our part in it (Ephesians 2:10, Romans 8:28), He loves us too much to leave us a mess (Hosea 14:4).

God’s love is not always comfortable; it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it’s gritty, and fiery and decidedly uncomfortable. But no other love will bring us to wholeness and maturity or offer any motivation to truly love others.

God’s love is so much greater than our love. As He shows us His love, let’s strive to love others with love like His.

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3:17

[Robin Bupp is married to Caleb, and they are from many places east of the Mississippi (but are calling Michigan home for the foreseeable future). A former high school science teacher, Robin is slowly turning the two Bupp kiddos into tiny nerds while they teach her lots of things, including humility and patience.]

Why You Shouldn't Volunteer at Church

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

Churches need volunteers. This isn’t exactly a secret. At Encounter, volunteers brew the coffee, play instruments and sing, teach children, host Bible studies, collect the offering, and so much more. Without the many people who do all these things, the day-to-day operations of Encounter would look very different—arguably, Encounter as we know it would cease to function. 

Photo Credit: Flickr User Anton Sim, Creative Commons

As crucial as volunteers are, though, I think there are some compelling reasons why you should not volunteer at Encounter:

1) You should not volunteer out of guilt.
2) You should not volunteer if you feel obligated to.
3) You should not volunteer if you’re trying to earn grace. 

Galatians 2 tells the story of when Paul and his companions Barnabas and Titus went to Jerusalem. Some false believers had infiltrated the ranks there, trying to, as Paul puts it, “spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.” These false believers were telling Gentile (non-Jewish) people that they had to be circumcised in order to follow Christ. They were stuck on the rules, and were trying to insist that others follow their rules as well. Paul goes on to rebuke the Galatians, saying, “After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”

The Galatians were coercing people to act out of obligation, guilt, and the false belief that they had to act in order to receive grace. In reality, the Christian faith is built on the idea that we are incapable of saving ourselves through anything we do, which is why we’re so in need of a Savior. 

What can be done is to freely give of our time and energy as a response to his grace. Outwardly, the actions may look exactly the same, but the inward attitude makes all the difference. If we’re continually serving only out of obligation or guilt, we’re not living into the grace God has freely given us. We’re taking a good gift and trying to pay it back—which we not only don’t have to do, we can’t do. There is no magic number of hours volunteered that will “pay God back” for grace. It can’t be done. God doesn’t want his people serving out of obligation and guilt, but out of freedom as respond to what he’s done.

This doesn’t mean there won’t be times when it feels like we’re serving for the wrong reason. After a stressful week, getting to church early may not be first on the list of things we want to do. But if it’s a persistent feeling of obligation, guilt, or (perhaps even subconsciously) trying to earn grace, it could be time to step back and re-evaluate. Hopefully, with some prayer and reflection, God will change our motivations to what they should be—a response to what he’s already done for us. 

So I don’t think all the volunteers at Encounter should send in their resignation this week. There are a lot of really wonderful reasons to volunteer at church. You should volunteer at Encounter if: 

1) You are looking to respond to the work God has done in your life by serving others.
2) You have gifts that can benefit the community and you want to share them.
3) You are thankful for the grace God has given and want to give back as an expression of that thankfulness.

What other reasons would you add?

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]