Image Crafting

Do you want to know what is easy?

Crafting an image when you only see me for 20 minutes on a Sunday morning.

Do you want to know what is hard?

Crafting, managing, and controlling that image when my family sees me up close all day. Keep covered the under-sanctified places of my heart and life when I spend forty hours with my coworkers. Guarding my words (and therefore my heart) when I am in conversation with those who know me well.

In Isaiah 6:8, the prophet says ‘Here I am! Send me.’

In Romans 12:1, we are exhorted ‘…by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’

In Hebrews 4:16 we are invited to ‘…with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’

All of the disparate pieces of me are gathered up - the fragmented and the fake, the whole and the holy, the polished and the broken - to draw near in worship and obedience. Nothing needs to be kept at a distance, nothing must be hidden away or self-sanitized, but everything in me can together declare: “Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” Psalm 86:11

As we increasingly rest in our identity in Christ, our grip on our image-crafting is safe to fall away. The gap between perception and reality can lessen, and we are indeed united to fear the LORD - rather than man.

Identity

Questions of identity haunt the Christian and the non-Christian alike. I remember hearing Bono give an interview where he quipped that those who felt secure and received all they needed in childhood don’t find it necessary to stand on a stage with people screaming for you night after night. Very few people will find the level of attention and notoriety that has been true of U2 for the last four decades, but isn’t the longing the same? Do we not all desire to be seen, known, and celebrated? Do we not all desire to have work that feels fulfilling, that contributes meaningfully to the world, and that will outlast our time on earth? Don’t we all desire to feel that our identity is secure?

For followers of Jesus, Scripture assures us: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” - Colossians 3:3

As people who are prone to forget, what good news! What a comfort that our lives and identity are secure in, with, and because of Christ - not because of anything we have done or anything we have failed to do.

Although I do not believe that worship leaders struggle with questions of identity any more than others perhaps a complicating reality is the visibility of our role. People often believe they know us when really they know about us. And because our gifts are often exercised in such public ways, it can be easy for people to believe that we are our gifts. It can be easy for us to believe that we are our gifts. All of this can coalesce into an identity built on perception, built on things seen - rather than the hidden life, rooted in Jesus.

When my identity is built on my talent, I am left without value when my skill plateaus or fades. When my identity is built on being the best, I am scared of the gifts of others. When my identity is built on the praise of people, I will continually be chasing their admiration. To build an identity on anything apart from Christ is laying a foundation on sinking, shifting sand.

In my opinion, few contemporary writers have been able to articulate the trues (and the lies) of identity better than Henri Nouwen. So to wrap up this post, I wanted to leave with you a handful of my favorite quotes from Nouwen on identity:

The five lies of identity:

I am what I have.

I am what I do.

I am what other people say or think about me.

I am nothing more than my worst moment.

I am nothing less than my best moment.

Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are beloved daughters and sons of God.

To the degree that we embrace the truth that our identity is not rooted in our success, power, or popularity, but in God's infinite love, to that degree can we let go of our need to judge.

Identifying Church Culture

People are meaning-making, story-telling, culture-builders. We can identify cultural artifacts from surface observations and interactions like: does the congregation dress formally or casually? Do services begin on time, or is time more of a suggestion? Is the congregation warm and inviting, or quiet and stoic? But to truly understand the culture of our churches, we must be in relationship with the people of our church. Because it is people who make the culture.

In relationship we begin to understand and identify the values as well as the idols of the culture. These are things spoken and unspoken. The often hide just below the surface. These values and idols are exposed in our conversations, our thought process, and the way we spend our time and money. We see our culture exposed in what we fight to defend, in what we ignore, and what we cling to for life, value, significance, worth and identity. We study culture not to pander to peoples idols, but to show people how they have sought to find life outside of relationship with Christ.

Every country has a unique culture. Within a country each state and city have a unique culture. Within a city or state every community and church have a unique culture. Observe over time. Ask questions. Build relationships. Study the history and story of a community. These are the thing that will help us point our churches to a better, truer Kingdom.

September 19: Liturgy + Set List

• REVIVE US AGAIN

Call to worship:

To all who are weary and need rest

To all who mourn and long for comfort

To all who feel worthless and wonder if God cares

To all who fail and desire strength

To all who sin and need a Savior

This church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ, the Ally of

His enemies, the Defender of the guilty, the Justifier of the inexcusable, the

Friend of sinners, welcome.

• GREAT ARE YOU LORD

• PRAISE TO THE LORD, THE ALMIGHTY-GOOD GOOD FATHER

Sermon: Ephesians 2:18-22

There is a passage in Isaiah, where God, speaking of His people, Israel says, ‘This people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.’ I am struck every time I read that passage, every time I think of that passage how easy it is to do the right things, to think the right things, to say the right things, to behave in the right way, all the while having a heart that is far from God. Having a heart that is hardened and calloused toward God. If you and I are to display the invisible power of the Gospel to a watching world, that will never occur when we simply do or say or act the right way. We must be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit to look more like Christ, the One who has welcomed us to God the Father. We’re going to sing a song now that is a reminder of the new identity that we have in and through Christ. And what I hope this does for you, and for me is fuel in us a desire to walk in a manner worthy of the call of God. Walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel.

• Who You Say I Am

If you are here this morning as a follower of Jesus, every word that we just sung is true of You. Not because you have earned it, deserved it, or accomplished anything, but simply because God is kind, gracious and merciful to give you a new identity in and through Christ. We’re going to read responsively a passage of Scripture that we have referenced throughout our morning, a passage that reminds us who we were, who we are, and Who God has always been.

Responsive Reading:

LEADER:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you

once walked, following the course of this world,

following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is

now at work in the sons of disobedience—

ALL:

among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,

carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were

by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with

which he loved us, even when we were dead in our

trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—

LEADER:

by grace you have been saved—

ALL:

and raised us up with him and seated us with Him in the

heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages

he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace

in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

LEADER:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this

is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of

works, so that no one may boast.

ALL:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for

good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we

should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10)

• Raise Up The Crown (All Hail The Power)

August 3: Tuesday Refocus

‘If you know you are Beloved of God, you can live with an enormous amount of success and an enormous amount of failure without losing your identity, because your identity is that you are the Beloved.’ - Henri Nouwen

What is true for every follower of Christ, regardless of how visible or overlooked, how successful or forgotten:

You were dead, Christ has made you alive (Eph 2:5)

You are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17)

God has canceled the record of debt standing against us (Col 2:14).

You have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His marvelous light (Col 1:13).

God is for you (Rom 8:31).

You have peace with God (Rom 5:1).

You are sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13).

Christ has taken the punishment and death we rightfully deserve (Rom 6:23).

You have been set free, for freedom (Gal 5:1).

You are a child of God (1 Jn 3:1).

God has not left you as an orphan, He has come to you (Jn 14:18).

You are adopted into the family of God (Eph 1:5)

God is your father and Christ is your brother (1 Cor 8:6).

You are a coheir with Christ (Rom 8:17).

Nothing can separate you from the love of God (Rom 8:31).

Nothing can snatch you from His hand (Jn 10:28).

You are forgiven (Ex 34:6-7).

You are justified (Rom 5:1).

Christ has made you His own (Phil 3:12).

God has prepared good works for you to walk in (Eph 2:10).

God has never forsaken you (Heb 13:5).

You have been bought by a price (1 Cor 6:20).

Your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev 21:27).

All this and more.  In and through and because of Christ.  Hallelujah.

Lord, let me live like it is true, amen and amen.

Amen,

AB

3 OCTOBER: Tuesday Refocus

‘When the Word becomes flesh in me, my flesh becomes Word.’ – E. Stanley Jones

‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come [2 Cor 5:17].’  Before Christ we were not merely bad people, who were cleaned up and made a little better through Christ – we were dead people made alive in Him [Col 2:13].  In fact, our old nature was ‘…crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me [Gal 2:20].’   This is the Word becoming flesh in us. 

And as we learn to continually walk and live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us, the more clearly do we display the life of Christ in us – the hope of glory [Gal 2:20, Col 1:27].  This is my flesh becoming Word.

Brothers and sisters, live from your true identity this week – as those who have been made alive in Christ.  And serve as Christ has served you – by becoming Word among us. 

AB