Loving People and Chicken!

Today, I went to Chick-fil-a. I did not go out of hatred for anyone. I went because I support both Dan Cathy’s stated beliefs and his right to express those beliefs. Of course, I also went because they make a really great chicken sandwich. There are so many ways to talk about the recent controversy surrounding Chick-fil-a. However, there is one that is really burning in my heart. I want to spend a few minutes talking about our responsibility to those who struggle with the sin of homosexuality. I submit to you that in many ways we have failed these individuals. We have failed them by allowing this particular sin to be elevated into its own class of sin, while forgetting that all of us are sinners. Like all who struggle with homosexuality, I was born that way. I was born with a sin nature I inherited from our original parents, Adam and Eve. As I aged, I expressed that sin nature in all sorts of ways, even sexual immorality. While, I did not express my sin nature with homosexuality, I was every bit as guilty of unrepentant sexual sin and many other expressions of sin. I had desires and cravings which I selfishly fed. Paul put it well in Ephesians. He wrote, “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— 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” (Eph 2:1-3, ESV). You and I stood before God no less guilty than anyone who struggles with homosexuality. In fact, Jesus said that to even look with lust is to be guilty in the heart (Matt 5:28). I was born with a sin nature, as were you and everyone else. I believe we have also failed these people by insufficiently communicating the Gospel. You and I were born with a sin nature, and we need to be born again in Jesus Christ. Paul continued in Ephesians, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved” (Eph 2:4-5, ESV). That is glorious truth! Yet, being saved does not mean that one will cease to battle temptation. We struggle with various temptations everyday. Satan is a master at knowing our temptations. And he will tempt us in the areas he perceives we are weakest. Thus, a man who gives his life to Jesus Christ may struggle with homosexuality the rest of his life. That individual, like the rest of us, needs to understand that we need Christ to get us through every struggle, every temptation. That individual needs to know that we are all a bunch of messy individuals, all with various sorts of struggles; redeemed and pursuing holiness by the grace of God. Too often, we try to make people think we have it altogether, when the fact is we don’t. We are constantly in need of our Lord and His strength. That is the whole point of the Gospel. God knew that we were a mess. So, He sent His Son to redeem us. He also knew that after we were saved, we would be messy and in constant need of His empowering grace in order to have victory in a world of sin. Collectively, we as Christians, are a people who have been saved by grace and brought together into His family, the Church. We need one another in our daily battles. We also need to be more transparent about our struggles. We need to quit pretending we have it all together. And we need to lovingly communicate the Gospel in its fullness. Does God love the individual who struggles with the sin of homosexuality? Absolutely! Just like He loves the person who struggles with the sins of pornography, promiscuity, and adultery. The entire point of the cross was to demonstrate God’s loving, viscous, and relentless pursuit of fallen people. Jesus did not come to save people who were good and well (there aren’t any). He came to save people who are messed up! He came to save people who have broken His law and deserve judgment. Thankfully, He poured that judgment out on Jesus Christ, who willingly served as our substitute. He is our ever-present help in time of need. Only in Him can we have victory over our daily temptations with sin. And when we fail, He wants us to run to Him and not from Him. So, yes I went to Chick-fil-a today. And I plan to go again and again. But, its not because I hate anyone. I will spend the rest of my life here in this world, and all of eternity in the next, perpetually aware that I am only saved by His grace. I was a wretched mess when He saved me, and I will be messy until He brings me home. Until then, I will rest in His gracious hand and pursue holiness by His loving grace. And I will seek to love all people and tell them how they can also have victory in Jesus. And I will do so as I "eat mor chikin."

Rescued!

It is a scene forever etched in my mind. It haunts me. No matter how hard I try I cannot escape the sight. The scene is of a little orphan boy, bent down, and digging through the trash. He is dirty, not just playing in the sandbox dirty, but filthy. His clothing barely qualifies as sufficient covering and yet he is among the few that even have rags to drape over himself. He is dangerously skinny due to malnutrition. His body if filled with infected sores that remain unattended to. He is lonely, but cannot cry, his tears have basically dried up. When he did cry, no one came to his rescue anyway. So, he continues day after day, rummaging through trash looking for something that he can eat. At night he cuddles in a dark corner of lonesomeness, and there he goes to sleep. I cannot see his face. I only see the boy. His story one of multitudes.

I begin to wonder, “Why don’t somebody do something! Why does God not provide something for him?” Unfortunately, I bought into the lie of the American dream. My thought has always been that I am suppose to be successful, have a big house, drive nice cars, take regular vacations, maybe even have a vacation home, wear nice clothes, eat at nice restaurants, have huge, enormous flat screen televisions, iphones, ipads, and have lots of other super nice things. I could even be real spiritual about it and talk about how greatly God has blessed me with all my stuff. I could talk about how God has provided for me and how He desires for me to live a good life, which includes all my stuff. I could talk about how God had given me so much because He loves me so much. Surely, God wants me to have, have, have---you know---live the good life!

But, there he is bent down rummaging through the trash for something to eat. And there I am wondering why God doesn’t do something. Then it dawns on me that God has done something, and He has provided for him. God rescued, saved, redeemed the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ to be His hands and feet in the world. God cares for the poor and needy and imprisoned and stranger and widow and orphan. His plan for caring for them is for His Church to be His ambassadors, to do His work in the world. God has provided for these dear people. The problem is, he has given the resources to me and to you. While we continue to drink $4.00 lattes and make sure we keep our hair or golf appointments, there he sits digging through that trash.

Then God does something amazing. He brings that little dirty, smelly, diseased, orphan boy into a more clear view. Its almost as if someone is pushing the zoom button on a video recorder or camera. The little boy is still rummaging. Then a voice calls out, “I love you, come to me, I am here for you!” A hand reaches out toward the little boy. Finally, he turns so that I can see his face. And I am floored. Its my face! I am the little boy! The voice calling me is the Good Shepherd! He takes my hand, cleans me up, dresses me, and calls me His! No longer an orphan am I. He tells me that He is my everything, not stuff. And He supplies me, not so that I can live the American dream, not so that I can have, have, have. Rather, He desires for me to give, give, give. He desires that I do unto others, as He has done unto me. And so, I begin to think what a difference God could make through me if I began planning to live on less. What if I did not need a newer car, but drive an older one? What if I did not need to take regular exotic vacations? What if I did not need to eat at nice restaurants regularly? What if I did not need all of those clothes? What if I did not need a larger television, or even one at all? What if I really began to live as one that God has blessed so that I can be a blessing to others in His name. What if I intentionally lived lower so that others could live. That is what He did for us, is it not? (2 Cor 8:9
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich), ESV.

Fasting

In this post I will lay out a few basics of fasting. This is, by no means, exhaustive. It is very basic. For a very good and exhaustive study on fasting I highly recommend John Piper’s book "A Hunger For God." It can be downloaded for free here: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/online-books/a-hunger-for-god.

Let me begin with a few things fasting is not. First of all, fasting is not a means for manipulating God. Some folks believe that if they just fast, it will force God to take notice. But that is not fasting, it is really nothing more than a hunger strike. God is not interested in our hunger strikes. He will not be manipulated. Secondly, fasting is not to be a means for validating our righteousness. This is exactly the idea Jesus addressed in the Sermon on The Mount concerning the Pharisees. They would fast in public so that people could see how “godly” they were. But Christ informed them, and us, that they were displaying pseudo-piety that could be summed up with the word hypocrisy. Third, fasting is not a weight-loss routine, which is one of the only times fasting mentioned in our times. So what is fasting with the proper motive? Let me sum it up in three basic ideas.

1. To Draw Closer To God.

In his book Hunger For God John Piper wrote, “The birthplace of Christian fasting is homesickness for God.” Fasting is ultimately about God. This is the heart of fasting, not making sure that people see us fast, not to validate our righteousness. Fasting is all about drawing closer to God. It is about whole-heartedly seeking His will. In fasting we seek to draw close to the heart of God. It always centers on God. Luke spoke of the elderly woman Anna in Luke chapter 2 saying that “She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.” The key word in regards to fasting in that verse is the term worshiped. Fasting is an act of worship. Theologian John Wesley said of fasting, “First let it be done unto the Lord with our eye singly fixed in Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in heaven.”

2. To Increase Our Sense of Dependance upon God.

In our affluent society we often forget just how dependent we are on God. When we are hungry, we rarely ask God to give us food, we get in the car and go get it. Jesus says that we are to pray for our daily bread. Bread not only represents food but is symbolic of all of our needs. Fasting reveals to us just how weak we really are, and that without God’s constant provision in our lives, we would not hold together. Fasting forces us to rid ourselves of the things we crave and appropriate our craving toward God. In the Sermon of the Mount, Christ said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled” (Matt 5:6). Jesus said in John 6:48-51, “I am the bread of life. 49 Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread , he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." Jesus basically said, “Hunger for me for I am the bread of life.”

He also told us to thirst for Righteousness. In John 4:10 Jesus told the woman at the well, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water ." Then pointing toward the drinking water he said, in verses13-14, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Jesus basically said, “Thirst for me for I am the living water and in me you shall never thirst again.”

Fasting causes us to abstain temporarily from the things that temporarily sustain us and points us to the One who ultimately sustains us, and that One is our Father in Heaven. Fasting points us to our desperate need for God.

That is why you see folks in the Bible fasting during some of the most trying times in their lives. Here are a few instances: David fasted when God caused his child born to Bathsheba to become ill. The Bible says in 2 Sam 12:16 "David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground." When Nehemiah heard of the desolation of Jerusalem, he knew that this was a problem that only God could fix and the Bible says in Neh 1:4 "When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven." When Daniel contemplated from the Scriptures that Judgement was coming upon Jerusalem the Bible says, Dan 9:2-3, "I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes." Then perhaps the best known fasting passage in the New Testament occurred as Jesus went in the wilderness to prepare for his time of tempting by Satan. The Bible tells us, in essence, that he readied himself for that temptation by fasting. It says, "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, 'If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.' 4 Jesus answered, 'It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’" (Matt 4:1-4). Now, if fasting was an important part of Jesus’ relationship with the Father, demonstrating his reliance upon the Father, how much more are we dependent upon the Father and in need of practicing this spiritual discipline?

3. To Give More Attention To Prayer With God.

We can pray without fasting, but we cannot fast, biblically, without praying. In every biblical account of fasting, it is always accompanied with prayer. In fasting we devote special concentrated time to prayer. We pray when we would normally eat, as we seek the Lord’s heart and will. All of the great heroes of the faith have been folks who fasted and prayed with a great deal of intensity and determination as they sought the Lord’s will. Prayer was indeed their lifeline. Communication with the Lord is nourishment for the soul. Fasting expresses a special hunger for God, calling upon Him to be our nourishment.