"For Wherever Two Or Three Are Gathered..."

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

Perhaps it’s because Christians see it as a moral duty to suffer in silence, or maybe Christians just don’t want to cause a row. Whatever the reason, Christians have become a decidedly passive, and increasingly passive-aggressive group. When it comes to the relationships that are close to our hearts, we tend to avoid confrontation at all costs.

Your neighbor borrows your weed whacker and returns it without any trimmer line? No problem. You’ll just buy some more at the store. Your neighbor borrows your car and returns it on “E”? No problem. You’ll just leave a bit early for work tomorrow and get gas on your way in. Your neighbor borrows eggs…and then batteries…and then…your iphone charger? Well, ok. You can have oatmeal for breakfast and you’ll replace the batteries in the remote control later (it’s good exercise to walk up to the TV to change the channel anyway) and you were spending far too much time Instagramming from your phone. But eventually, over time, you can’t help but harbor a simmering bitterness towards your neighbor. A little trimmer line here or a few eggs there morphs into just one tiny, little complaint to a mutual friend. Then the gas and the batteries become just a little gossip a backyard BBQ. But over the course of a few months, you lose control of the bitterness and it creeps onto facebook. Then it becomes #slander on Twitter. And suddenly, one Friday morning, as you find yourself endorsing your neighbor for “5 finger discounting” and “Scam-mongering” on Linkedin, you realize that this conflict has evolved into something beyond your control.

So what does Jesus have to say about dealing with conflict? Well, Jesus says exactly what the modern day Christian would expect. Jesus tells his disciples to confront the person privately and to work out the disagreement quietly and discreetly. And if the wrongdoer refuses to listen, then Jesus suggests that one or two other trusted, reliable, wise Christians should be consulted. And if the neighbor still won’t listen, then Jesus says, well, to treat the neighbor like a “pagan or a tax collector.” When Jesus’ listeners heard this, they understood that Jesus was giving them permission to treat the neighbor contemptuously. But of course, Jesus’ words turn that understanding upside down. Rather than writing the wrongdoer off as a lost cause or a reckless crook, Jesus tells his listeners to pursue that neighbor in the same way that God pursues each of us. He commands his followers to gather round the one at fault and to continuously correct him out of love and concern, “For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them” (Matt. 18:20).

[Kristin vanEyk attends Encounter Church and teaches English in Grand Rapids, MI.]

The Root of Want

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

What do you want?

Right now, wherever you’re sitting or standing or crouching while you’re reading this, what do you want?

Maybe it’s a cup of coffee, a nap, a new car, a vacation, or a bigger paycheck. Or maybe your want is intangible, complex, or difficult to admit. Peace. Relationships. Healing. Love. Forgiveness.

We can all think of something we want.

In I Timothy 6, Paul writes specifically about how the love of money can become a problem. Yet, as Pastor Dirk pointed out, it’s only partly about the money itself--more importantly, it’s about the condition of our hearts and the root of our wanting. 

While many people have misread this passage to say that money is the root of evil, the true root of evil is the condition of the heart. There are ways of wanting things--coffee, vacations, paychecks, relationships, peace--that are not bad. God desires to give his children good gifts, and, in their proper context, all of these and more are very good gifts. Vacations can be fun, paychecks allow for different opportunities, relationships enrich our lives, peace allows us to experience life without anxiety. 

Yet if we want these good things for the wrong reasons, they can become bad things that ultimately lead to our own destruction. Paul reminds us of the danger of loving things we’re not supposed to, and more than that, of the value of contentment. The difference between want that is good and want that is bad is whether we can learn be content with or without it.

Contentment is not a quick fix, nor is it something we learn once and are set for the rest of our lives. Just as each stage of our lives brings us different joys and sorrows, opportunities and closed doors, each stage of life brings different ways to learn contentment. It may be learning to be content with fewer material goods than we’d like, or being content at a different school or job than we imagined, or being content with relationships that look different than we’d envisioned. 

It’s not that God expects us to never want anything--sometimes wanting things spurs us to good, healthy action. The difference is in how we approach what we want, and whether we can learn to be content whether we get what we want or not.

Whatever it is that you want right now, maybe it’s time to examine the reason you want it, the true root of the want, and to look at what the condition of your heart is in the midst of your wanting.

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]

Dig in and Take Hold

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


It seems to me that there are a few themes in the Bible that run so deep they simply can’t be overlooked, and yet, somehow, I managed to do just that. We have been meditating on some of these deeply embedded themes recently at Encounter Church, and I was surprised to find that I had somehow overlooked much of the story of Israel for many years. As we’ve been living in both the Old Testament stories of Israel’s unfaithfulness and the New Testament grace of Jesus Christ, God has continued to bring us a word about about idolatry and repentance, filling this earth, and the grace of God that can only be found through Jesus Christ.

Much of what happens in the Old Testament revolves around God urging his people to leave behind their idolatrous ways and to trust him only as the one true God. It makes sense that the Israelites would want to worship a variety of gods--the sun god and the water god and the gods of crops or fertility or health--and it takes more trust in Yahweh that many of us muster on a daily basis to trust that only one God could look after our many needs. Still, God warns his people time and time again to repent and to turn away from their idols, for if they would refuse, then they knowingly choose defeat, capture, and torture at the hands of Babylon. No nation was to be feared more that Babylon; no captor promised a more agonizing obliteration than Babylon. And yet, despite God’s warnings and reminders that he would keep his promises to carry the people into exile, the people chose captivity and idol worship over freedom in God. The destruction and captivity of Israel by Babylon very nearly wiped the people off the face of the earth, but after 70 years, still a remnant remained to return to Jerusalem. After all, God had promised that the remnant would persist (Jer. 29: 14).

In the book of Revelation, Babylon reappears, this time as prostitute riding upon a scarlet beast. Revelation 17:5 records, “The name written upon her forehead was a mystery. BABYLON THE GREAT/THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES/AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” One chapter later in Revelation, Babylon falls, and with her the “dwelling for demons” and “haunt for every impure spirit” (Rev. 18:2). The word of the Lord is pretty clear on this: idolatry will captivate our hearts and steal away our lives until we find our salvation in the promises of God, which are fulfilled through Jesus Christ.

Perhaps this is why it became popular for a while to say that Christians are to be “in the world but not of the world.” Christians recognized that we are here on this earth to build the kingdom, but over time the spirit of the wary pilgrim surfaced, the spirit of one passing through this earth who had put on the armor of God to beat back any earthly temptations. Christians were told to long for the renewing of this earth, and not to get too comfortable while here in the physical realm. The image of the Christian pilgrim is popular still today, and perhaps, rightly so.

But as I read the Bible, I find that God continuously leads me back to the commands to “be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it,” or to stories like the Tower of Babel where God scatters people across the earth so that they’ll really dig in to this life (Gen. 1:28; Gen. 11). Even the Great Commission, it seems, includes an imperative to fill the earth, subdue it, and to really grab ahold of it (Matt. 28:16-20).

So when I read a story like the one in Jeremiah 29, where the people Israel have finally been exiled from Jerusalem into Babylon and God commands that they “build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease”, it seems to me that he is once again urging his people to dig into this place; to really grab ahold of it.

One of the most well loved (and misused!) passages from the Bible comes from this same story about exile into Babylon found in Jeremiah 29. God has just ushered his people into exile for their idolatrous and spiritually adulterous ways, but even there, God leads with grace. He says, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you a hope and a future.” It appears that God’s plans include exile. The ultimate plan necessitates Jesus, of course, but our instructions for our day-to-day plans for prosperity and hope include filling the earth, making disciples, and waiting for the return of the King.

The instructions are practical: “build houses, settle down, [and] plant gardens” (Jer. 29: 5).  So while we may feel like sojourners passing through, God reminds us that because of our sinfulness we live as in exile, but under his promise he will collect us back at the appointed time. In the meantime, we dig in.

[Kristin vanEyk attends Encounter Church and teaches English in Grand Rapids, MI. She passes most of her time reading, laughing, and playing with her kids.]

Saying No to Checklist Christianity

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

Checklists are my friend. Whether it’s a list of what I need to do at work that day, a list of errands I need to run, or a list of what I need to pack for a trip, I like to see what needs to be done and check them off as I accomplish them.

Pastor Dirk told us that in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, there are 66 imperative statements--66 things to not do or to check off the list to do. Yet in his introduction, known as the Beatitudes, Jesus uses a different approach. Instead of directly telling his listeners what to do, he tells them ways of being. He tells them of being poor in spirit, of mourning, of being meek, of hungering and thirsting for righteousness, of being merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted because of righteousness.

The Beatitudes are not a list of tasks to accomplish, they’re ways of living that are to shape our lives.

This doesn’t mean that the imperative statements found elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount are bad; they are guidance for how to handle certain situations and create a framework for the Christian life. But as good as those things are, ultimately Jesus isn’t asking us to make a checklist of How to be a Good Christian and tick all the boxes. As Pastor Dirk put it so clearly, “Jesus isn’t asking us to be better people, he’s asking us to find our righteousness in him.” Because no checklist will ever get us closer to God.

What it comes down to is what we at Encounter talk about so often--grace. It’s pure grace that frees us to say no checklist Christianity and to live as an expression of gratitude for what God has done for us. No amount of money given to church, hours of time poured into ministries, or people we’ve told about Christ is enough to earn us a spot in eternity. It’s only when we realize our own incapability to save ourselves that we are freed to embrace the one who can save us. Jesus.

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]

Which Ruts Will You Choose?

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

This winter, my street has not gotten plowed nearly as often as I would have liked. As the snow got packed down by cars driving over it, ruts began to form--often just one down the middle of the street, making two-way traffic difficult. While veering from the well-worn ruts could be hazardous as the unpacked snow threatened to ensnare vehicles in its snowy grip, at least the ruts carved a path to drive on.

In Judges 10 and 11, the Israelites had gotten pulled into the practices of the culture around them by serving other gods. Yet when they cried out to God, he sent Jephthah, a mighty warrior chosen by God to deliver the Israelites from the oppression of the nations around them. Before going into battle, Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

This wasn’t something God commanded. Just a verse before, we read that “the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah.” He already had everything he needed to defeat the Ammonites. So why this last-minute vow? Because this is what Jephthah learned from the culture around him. The people groups around the Israelites offered sacrifices to their false gods, and Jephthah had seen that. When things got tough, Jephthah returned to the ruts of the culture around him. Instead of believing in a God who offers free grace, he believed in a God who demanded something in return.

I wonder what the ruts are that we fall into when we don’t know what to do. Our culture doesn’t have practices as drastic as human sacrifice, but it tells us other things--that our value comes from what we do, that we always have to have the latest and greatest stuff, that we have to have a certain GPA or title on our business card to amount to anything. These ways of thinking can become ruts that affect our actions--perhaps especially the split-section reactions that seem to happen before we even fully think them through.

Jephthah likely didn’t think he was giving in to cultural pressure when he made that vow to God. He probably didn’t think about the ruts of thinking and acting that had slowly crept in.

So what are the cultural patterns we’re entrenching ourselves in? What are the ruts we’re creating, possibly without even knowing it? We can easily turn to what the world tells us is important, or we can turn to God and what he says is important. It’s the ruts we create in the everyday moments that turn into the ones we go back to when the going gets rough.

Which ruts will you choose?

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]

Contemporary Idolatry

Midweek Encounter 2.9.14

Contemporary Idolatry

Imagine that you recently made a new friend, and he or she invites you over on Friday night. You show up at 7:00 and pull into the driveway and notice that your friend has two enormous graven images parked in the garage. A bit weird, but perhaps this friend is an artist. You enter the house, and everywhere you look you see polished and stacked stones, golden figures, and ornate woodcarvings. Your 21^st century brain requires a few minutes to reconcile what you see with what you know, but as you look about, there can be no mistake: your friend’s house is full of idols.

Now imagine that you and I are friends and I invite you over for dinner. And by “dinner”, I mean that I invite you over for Hot-n-Readys. Not such a stretch, probably. Imagine that you pull into my driveway and you see two newish cars parked in the garage. Maybe two “prudent” choices that announce to the world that we’re not rich but we’re not sacrificing too much, either. I greet you at the door and you notice a sizable shoe collection in the wicker bins to your right. These are my kids’ shoes. Mine are stashed in several closets of several rooms and I have to change them out seasonally because my foyer can’t store them all. You step into the living room. Nothing really seems out of the ordinary—photos of the kids adorn nearly every vertical space in the house, thirty or fifty toys might be strewn about, the kids’ bookshelf is literally overflowing. Nothing in my house is particularly fetching, but nothing is in as state of disrepair, either. Well, the railing along the stairs was broken for a bit, but my step-brother-in-law, Ben, screwed it back into the studs one day when he was babysitting my kids. Not bad for $10/hour.

Modern day idolatry is a bit slippery. Because although I would doubt that you have a golden calf or an Asherah pole on your mantel, you might have some lovely photos of your family, or perhaps 60” of HD entertainment. And don’t worry, that might be 100% ok. Your heart knows the answer.

There’s this story about the Israelites in the book of Gideon. The Israelites “did evil in the eyes of the Lord”, which they loved to do, apparently, and for seven years they suffered at the hands of the Midianites. The Israelites had nothing, and whatever they tried to have was utterly destroyed by the Midianites. Eventually, after their homes and farms and wealth were oppressed year after year after year, Israel finally cried out to the Lord. The story records these events very carefully: “The Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian.” Not because they were repentant over making their homes, their wealth, or their farms their idols, and not because they were repentant for worshipping Baal, but because someone else kept taking their stuff. They cried out, “Lord, the Midianites keep taking all of my things. Do something!” And God responded, of course, that he was doing something. He’s always doing something. He was teaching them to rely on Him, to make him their only priority, and they were having none of it. So year after year, their oppression continued. 

Eventually, an angel of the Lord comes to Gideon and tells him that it’s time for deliverance, but first, God demands obedience. Gideon was told to cut down his father’s alter to Baal and to build an alter to Yaweh on top of it. He does so, at pretty great peril to himself.

Sometimes, when I look around my house, I wonder if God is going to send a messenger to tell me to tear down the photos of my family from my walls and to burn them on an alter of the Lord. How many times do we young families skip out on church obligations or service in God’s kingdom and use the excuse of our families? For me, the family is the easiest idol to create and maintain. A close contender for many modern day Christians is probably work or possessions or reputation or popularity. It wouldn’t be pretty, but imagine if God demanded us to sacrifice our idols to him—our promotions or reputations or vacations. Of course he does demand that we maintain no idols, but he extends to us a whole lot of grace, which is to say time, to figure out how to put the first things first. And most importantly, of course, he sacrificed himself as atonement for all of our unfaithfulness and idolatry.

This Is Not The End

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

We’ve all had situations that turned out differently than we thought they would. Maybe we got stuck, perhaps in a physical sense (snow bank, anyone?), or maybe a metaphorical sense, in a bad job or relationship. Maybe we made a wrong choice, and ended up where we knew we shouldn’t have gone. Or maybe circumstances beyond our control got us to a point where we never thought we’d be, desperate and looking for something, anything, to save us.

In Judges 4, Barak and the Israelite army went to battle against the Canaanite army, which was commanded by Sisera. The prophetess Deborah had warned Barak that the glory would not go to him, but that the Lord would deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman. Yet as the Israelites defeated the Cannanites, Sisera ran away. When Barak realized what happened, he was probably confused. After all, God had promised they would defeat Sisera—or, more accurately, that a woman would. With Sisera gone, how was that possible?  


As I listened to KJ’s sermon on Sunday, the lyrics of Gungor’s song “This is Not the End” sprang to mind. It goes like this:

This is not the end
This is not the end of this
We will open our eyes wide, wider

This is not our last
This is not our last breath
We will open our mouths wide, wider

And you know you’ll be alright
Oh and you know you’ll be alright

This is not the end
This is not the end of us
We will shine like the stars bright, brighter


So though Barak was likely confused, frustrated, and angry that Sisera had gotten away, it was not the end of the story.

Enter Jael, a woman who wasn’t even an Israelite. She welcomed Sisera into her tent…and then proceeded to drive a tent peg through his head. It’s one of the more gruesome stories we read in the Bible, and definitely not one that gets featured in many children’s storybooks. Yet this shocking act, performed by a woman who wasn’t a member of God’s chosen people, was the way God chose to accomplish his plan. It’s an unexpected plot twist that Barak could not have seen coming. When he may have thought the story was over, God had something else in mind.

I don’t know what your story is right now. Maybe it feels like the end, and you’re starting to despair. Maybe you’re in a messy middle, and you don’t see how God could possibly pull you through. Maybe you don’t even know what story you’re supposed to be in, and you’re trying to find it. Whatever your story looks like right now, it is not the end. We have a God of unexpected plot twists, who knows just what we need and gives it to us at exactly the right time—even if it sometimes feels like he’s acting too early, too little, or too late. 

I hope the words of this song play on repeat throughout your week, month, and year for whenever you need the reminder most:  This is not the end.

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]