Pastor Scott’s Blog
After a couple of weeks of being haunted by some malicious malware, the Shoreline website is now back up and running. Sorry for an inconvenience, but things should be getting back to normal.
And when you see Abe Serrano make sure to give him some love…in the midst of an insane week he made the time to serve the church and all those who are currently looking for a church by working hard at solving this problem.
In Ephesians 4:11 certain leaders are viewed as gifts to the church, but actually this is true of all Christians. All have received grace and have a responsibility to build up the church. As the Spirit works through each person for the good of the community, each person is a gift to the church. We would do well to have less concern about identifying gifts and more concern about being a gift, that is, about how the Spirit functions through us to strengthen the body.
Klyne Snodgrass, Ephesians, 213,
Whether your spouse, your friends, or your family, it is easy to assume that you love a lot of different people. Love, however, is not simply an emotion or a concept whose definition is up fro grabs. Christ, through the Word of God, has defined it for us. And, Andy Naselli has done an excellent job of organizing Paul Tripp’s discussion on love in his book What Did You Expect? Although he talking specifically about marriage, it is equally applicable to any relationship where you say, “I love you.” It really is worth reading the whole thing…and make sure you get to the third point…understanding the gospel in the midst of this kind of definition is key.
1. What is love?
Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving.
2. What does love look like in marriage?
- Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.
- Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.
- Love is the daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.
- Love is being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity and love than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.
- Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.
- Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.
- Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.
- Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.
- Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.
- Love means being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the problems that you face as a couple, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.
- Love is always being willing to ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.
- Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.
- Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse’s character or assault his or her intelligence.
- Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want or doing something your way.
- Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.
- Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a husband or a wife.
- Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.
- Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn’t seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.
- Love is the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.
- Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.
- Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.
- Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God’s protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.
- Love is a specific commitment of the heart to a specific person that causes you to give yourself to a specific lifestyle of care that requires you to be willing to make sacrifices that have that person’s good in view.
3. What should this description of love do to us?
This realization should give you pause and then spur you to action: it is impossible for any of us to love as has been described. The bar is simply too high. The requirements are simply too great. None of us has what it takes to reach this standard. This description of love in action has left me humbled and grieved. It has faced me once again with my tendency to name as love things that are not love. It has forced me to admit how self-focused and self-absorbed I actually am. It has reminded me that when it comes to love, I am not an expert. No, I am poor, weak, and needy.
Jesus died not only so that we would have forgiveness for not loving as we should, but also so that we would have the desire, wisdom, and power to love as we should.
Jesus suffered in love so that in your struggle to love you would never, ever be alone. As you give yourself to love, he showers you with his love, so that you would never be without what you need to love.
Today is July 29th. My mom passed away three years ago today. So much of who I am is tied up in who she was, and I miss her as much today as I did that sad, but glorious day when my brothers and I gathered around her bed, and her empty “shell.”
My prayer continues to be that the legacy of her faith and love would be continued in our family. Three years later, I can still think of few words better than those that the Lord granted me on the day of her funeral.
If you knew her (or even if you didn’t) and would like to take a minute to praise God for her incredible life (and to pray that yours would one day be remembered likewise) you can listen to the eulogy here, read it here, or read thoughts from other friends and family here.
For the life and legacy of Patty Wipfli, God deserves all the praise!
As a follow up to yesterday’s sermon, here is a great quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together on the impact that confession (usually as a result of confrontation) has on Christian community (wow…that was a lot of “c’s”)
In confession there takes place a breakthrough to community. Sin wants to be alone with people. It takes them away from the community. The more lonely people become, the more destructive the power of sin over them. The more deeply they become entangled in it, the more unholy is their loneliness. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of what is left unsaid sin poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and closed isolation of the heart. Sin must be brought into the light. What is unspoken is said openly and confessed. All that is secret and hidden comes to light. It is a hard struggle until the sin crosses one’s lips in confession. But God breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron (Ps. 107:16) Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of another Christian, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders, giving up all evil, giving the sinner’s heart to God and finding the forgiveness of all one’s sin in the community of Jesus Christ and other Christians. Sin that has been spoken and confessed has lost all of its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear apart the community.
HT: Tim Chester
This is fundamental for you to understand about the church.
I’m going to do something a little weird, I’m going to quote (repost) an entire blog entry that contains another quote, because it’s all so good…and something that I believe you need to hear. I praise God for the number of you who are “plodding visionaries” at Shoreline. And for those of you who aren’t, I pray that the Lord will work through this encouragement.
In addition, you really should take the time to click here and listen to Kevin DeYoung’s whole message on the church. Here’s the post from C.J. Mahaney:
As the pastor of a local church for 27 years, I am deeply grateful for every person who, when they came to Covenant Life Church, remained for many years. Those who persevered through the years and were patient with me personally and patient with my deficiencies in preaching—it was these people who ultimately made the difference in the church and helped build the church. They demonstrated their love for the Savior through their enduring service.
That’s how local churches are built. Local churches are built when humble servants commit, and remain, and serve, and do so over a period of years. Local churches are built by those Kevin DeYoung identified as “plodding visionaries.” In his message at our Next conference in May, Kevin DeYoung made this compelling point.
He said:
It is easy to blast the church for all her failures. It is harder to live in the church day after day, year after year, with all of the ho hum, hum drum, and to slowly and consistently make a difference.
What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. We need to ask the right questions, we need to have the right expectations, and we need to establish the right vision.…
Here is my burden for our generation: along with all of the necessary pleas we have to be earnest and intense and radical and sold out. With all of that, I just also want to wave the banner from Zechariah 4:10, “Do not despise the days of small things.” That is what I mean by being plodding visionaries.
If you are a visionary, you don’t have your head in the sand. You are going somewhere. You are looking out. You are moving in a direction. But you are a plodder. One foot in front of the other.
Many of us are attracted to a Tasmanian Devil kind of Christianity…splattering, spinning around. You get fired up—praise God for that—and you spin out like the Tasmanian Devil ready to conquer the world for Christ and you blow up into a tree somewhere.
We need plodding visionaries.
When I wrote the book on the church I read nine books that called for a revolution. Every other day it seems like I read of a new manifesto. We may need to just simplify a little: Get on the right road and keep going.
Our generation in particular is prone to radicalism without follow-through. We want to change the world and we have never changed a diaper. You want to make a difference for Christ? Here is where you can start: this Sunday, volunteer for the nursery. Say, “Here I am, pastor. What can I do to serve?”
Without folks like this, Covenant Life Church would have never been built. No church can be built without plodding visionaries.
Kevin’s entire message, “The Church,” can be downloaded from the resource page at thisisnext.org.
This explains why Christ is sometimes not enough for us. If I stand before him as a cup waiting to be filled with psychological satisfaction, I will never feel quite full. Why? First, because my lusts are boundless; by their very nature, they can’t be filled. Second, because Jesus does not intend to satisfy my selfish desires. Instead he intends to break the cup of psychological need (lusts), not fill it.
Edward Welch, When People are Big and God is Small
After yesterday’s sermon on loneliness, someone asked me to provide some group discussion questions in order to facilitate conversation about loneliness, suffering and how we ought to respond in Christ. I figured I’d post them here in case any other groups could use some help getting the ball rolling.
In what ways have you suffered at the hands of others, the world, satan, that has led to you feeling lonely?
How have you reacted to suffering in that way in the past?
In what ways are suffering now that lead to you feeling lonely?
How can you be reminded that God is with you in the midst of that suffering?
What does 1 Peter 4:12-13 teach you about that suffering?
What does James 1:2-4 teach you about that suffering?
What does Romans 5:2-4 teach you about that suffering?
What does 1 Peter 1:3-9 teach you about that suffering?
Who do you need to offer forgiveness to for the ways they have caused that suffering??
In what ways are you tempted to love yourself instead of God in the midst of your loneliness?
In what ways are you tempted to love yourself instead of others in the midst of your loneliness?
How has your self-love (self-worship) increased your objective isolation?
How has your self-love (self-worship) increased your subjective experience of loneliness?
How does your sin in the midst of loneliness point to your self-worship?
What would it look like to repent of this self worship?
In what ways can you love God in the midst of your loneliness?
In what ways can you love others in the midst of your loneliness?
Look at Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane…what would it look like to follow his example?
For all you married folks, here’s some great thoughts reflecting God’s design for sex and how that works out practically in marriage.
I came across this quote from A.W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy. It is a great summary of the fundamental nature of sin.
The natural man is a sinner because and only because he challenges God’s selfhood in relation to his own…Yet so subtle is self that scarcely anyone is conscious of its presence. Because man is born a rebel, he is unaware that he is one. His constant assertion of self, as far as he thinks of it at all, appears to him a perfectly normal thing. He is willing to share himself, sometimes even to sacrifice himself for a desired end, but never to dethrone himself. No matter how far down the scale of social acceptance he may slide, he is still in his own eyes a king on a throne, and no one, not even God, can take that throne from him. Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, “I AM.” That is sin in its consecrated essence.
