I came [to a point of stillness], I saw [things to be grateful for]… Who’s up for some conquering?

In the Anderson household [Val is away in Atlanta this week] a variety of yellow post-its have suddenly appeared saying things like ‘No coffee’ and ‘Coffee fast’ as reminders to me of what i have committed myself to.

Who is up for a new challenge?

So by now if you’ve been following this blog you will know that tbV and i are leading a book study of Mark Scandrette’s book, ‘Free: Spending your Time and Money on what matters most’ and have been engaging in a variety of experiments which i have been inviting others to join in via this blog and the book of facings.

First up was the invitation to stop rushing and to be still and it was most excellent reading the feedback in the comments section of others who gave it a try with me [so thank you for that gift!]. Next up was the gratitude log, making a note of at least five things every day for ten days that you are thankful for [and the feedback post for that will be coming later this week].

This coming week the chapter we are looking at is titled, ‘Believe you have enough’ and the experiment we have been invited into looks like this:

‘EXPERIMENT: DISCIPLINES OF CONTENTMENT

‘We are challenged to believe that we live in a world of abundance and that our true happiness comes from receiving the lives we’ve been given. As with all of His teachings, Jesus’ instructions about money and wealth point to the heart and invite us into greater freedom. They are designed to help us see accurately that we live in a world where God provides all that we need.

Take a voluntary fast. To experience the freedom of enough requires us to take new risks of action and practice.

For thousands of years the discipline of fasting has helped earnest spiritual seekers to curb the desire for more and to distinguish between needs and wants. Jesus seemed to have assumed that His followers would fast [Matthew 6.16] A fast can also help to reveal our disordered attachments – those things we habitually go to that are not a true or lasting source of comfort. Many people find that abstaining from something they normally us as a coping mechanism brings them face to face with pain, worries or deeper wounds they have been avoiding. Dallas Willard suggests that fasting helps prepare us to do good, because it trains us to say no to bodily desires in favour of intentional choices of obedience.

What do your patterns of spending or consumption reveal about a potential disordered attachment? Is there something that you consume on a daily or regular basis that would be revealing for you to abstain from this week [snacks, coffee, alcohol, media, meat]? As an act of contentment commit to a seven-day fast from something you regularly enjoy… Remember, your fast is something between you and God. Jesus taught that fasting should be done discreetly, in a way that wouldn’t be obvious to others. [Matthew 6.16] 

You may also want to consider the potential benefits of a longer-term fast of some kind. Our friend Melanie has challenged herself to live on $1.50 a day for forty days, giving the money she saves on daily living expenses to an organisation that helps people get access to food or clean water. The next year she tried to live on $1 a day. Each year our friend Darin gives up something he enjoys and will miss as a reminder that his true happiness isn’t dependent on always having more or getting what he wants.  One year he might abstain from meat or caffeine; another year he might abstain from watching movies or buying books. Many people have found it helpful to fast from shopping or buying new clothes for a specified time. To make it more fun, people often make these commitments with a group of friends.’

THE CHALLENGE: 

So i am inviting you to join me in a week’s fasting of something you enjoy. I have chosen to abstain from coffee for the week. And I know there is the line about keeping fasting to yourself but I am going to invite you to share with us what you choose to fast from as a form of accountability. So don’t make it a status and let everyone else know, but if you choose to join us on this, then leave a comment telling us you’re in and letting us know what you will be choosing to abstain from for the next seven days [if you start this late just do seven days from when you begin]

As with the other challenges, i will do a follow up post later and you will also be invited to let us know how it went.

So is anyone with me and what is your thing?

[For the Final Part Summary and Conclusion and Invitation to you to get involved, click here]

If you are always in a rush, are you really following Jesus [who never was]?

pretty obvious statement, right? not something that needs to be proved.

felt like a bit of a throw-away line by the pastor [Albert Lee] at Re:Generation church which tbV and i are a part of, but it really connected with me.

Jesus was never in a rush. Ever. 

Or at least we don’t get any indication of Him being in a rush and if it was a part of His character or day to day then surely one of the four gospel writers would have given even the smallest glimpse of it.

But Jesus never seemed to be in a hurry. He never got stressed by anything [except maybe religious people not being loving or kind or particularly God following].

And, as a result of Jesus not being in a hurry, at least two people died before He got to them. [Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus]

Sure He raised both of them to life again, but i think the point is still valid. Even preventing a death from happening didn’t shake up Jesus’ schedule.

So i do need to reflect on that and wonder what it means for me.

If i am ALWAYS in a rush… then my life is not going to resemble Jesus’ life a whole lot.

If my life is categorised by rush, stress, reaction to… then again, i might need to stop and reflect and change things up a bit.

passages like psalm 46.10 come to mind:Be still and know that I am God.

it is by remaining in Jesus that we bear fruit [John 15], but how often do we leave Jesus behind when we rush off to do “Jesus stuff”?

so how are you doing in this? and is there something you can do to start resembling Him more? [or maybe something you can stop doing?]

[and really, take a minute on this at least before rushing to click the next tab or answer the next piece of mail – don’t nod and agree and the rush on cos that would be completely missing the point – if you agree with this take a moment to consider some form of change…]

if you are always in a rush, are you really following Jesus [who never was]? 

Mark, my words: Unless you become like a child…

The difference between child-ish and child-like is immense. One deals with never having really grown up and matured and the other deals with holding on to qualities that make being a child to incredible – things like trust and innocence and honesty and genuine belief and excitement and a whole lot more.

Let’s take a look at Jesus’ words on the topic of the importance of meeting Him with some kind of childlikeness to be able to fully appreciate and experience the kingdom of God in the way that it was intended:

 

[For the next passage looking at the interaction between Jesus and the Rich Young Ruler, click here]

Mark, my words: Jesus tackles divorce head on.

Let’s be honest – this is a passage i would rather skip over, and most people do. I can’t remember ever hearing someone preach on this. I don’t particularly want any of my friends who have been divorced to read or watch this.

But at the same time, can we afford to avoid it. And what makes this one really difficult is that it doesn’t seem like a lost-in-translation or easy-to-misinterpret passage. It is Jesus talking. And what He is saying seems pretty clear to me.

Let’s take a nervous look at Mark 10 from 1-12:

[For the next passage on becoming like a little child, click here]

Aslan Jesus: Part kicking some pharisaical butt

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” [The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: C.S.Lewis]

Continuing our look at how Jesus compares to Aslan [or is it the other way around?] in the C.S.Lewis Narnia series and the question of Him being good, but not necessarily safe or tame. Matthew 23 explodes this question right open.

There are three interesting things about this for me:

[1] Jesus is taking on the teachers of the law – the religious leaders of the day – the very people who were meant to be helping the average man and woman in the street to follow God well.

And He doesn’t take them on gently.

“Woe to you, blind guides!” [vs. 16]

“You blind fools!” [vs. 17]

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? [vs. 33]

Similiar to when Jesus sends the money lenders out of the temple grounds, we see passion and anger and strong language here. Jesus is serious about this. The lion is opening His mouth and letting out a gut-wrenching roar for all He is worth.

Paul reminds us in a more subtle way in 1 Thessalonians 5.21 that we must always test the spirits – hold on to the good and avoid every kind of evil. In our modern day setting it is vital that we compare what we hear from the preacher or what we read or watch with the words in the Bible and if they do not measure up, to feel free to discard them and let them fall away. We need to be correct handlers of Truth.

[2] Jesus is accusing them of not living out what they teach:

23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

[3] Jesus takes them on publically – none of this ‘just you and them business we always get pointed to in Matthew 18’

15 “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.’

And why not? Well maybe the key is in the first line where it says “sins against you” – what Jesus was taking on here was sin that affected the whole audience and so it needed to be dealt with publically. This can be a dangerous precedent to set [especially when it’s not Jesus doing the disciplining] but i believe there is a place for this [and have not found many who have vocally shared their agreement with me on this one]. My feeling is that if the preacher says something that is wrong and you deal with it with him alone, then everyone else has still heard the wrong thing and has no idea that it was wrong and so they will still take it on as truth. Perhaps this is why the Bible tells us there is a higher responsibility placed on those who preach/teach?

The audience needed to know that what the Pharisees were teaching and how they were living was not acceptable to God. 

As easy as it is to look down on the Pharisees and dismiss them, the primary objective of this story is for us to be reminded of the short distance between someone who follows Jesus and someone who becomes like them. I need to check my heart against the things that Jesus railed about in them and make sure that I do not fall into the same.

[To return to the beginning of this series to see the other posts, click here]

what makes Jesus sadder?

i preached a sermon in church last night about how to “correctly handle the word of truth” in terms of reading and knowing and trying to understand the Bible well and not just simply grabbing a verse here and there and using it to back up something we are trying to say.

the example i used as an extreme form of example was the Westboro Baptist church who i imagine most of us have heard or seen something of in the media – the ones who pitch up at gay pride marches with “God hates fags” on their signs [often with young children holding these signs and spewing the same kind of hatred their parents do] and who protest veterans funerals and all sorts of crazy things like that.

what i didn’t know when i asked Uncle Google to direct me to their website is that the church website is actually called Godhatesfags and can be found at Godhatesfags.com – that is their church website – it is unbelievable and makes me embarrassed to think that a lot of people might view them and me as pretty much the same because we both fall under some christian banner… [which is why personally i prefer to go under the Jesus-following banner if i need any kind of label ever because as christians it seems to have been pretty easy through the ages to get up to all kinds of crazy stuff, but as people who are truly seeking to follow Jesus it is impossible to end up as part of a group that uses “God hates fags” as a slogan, or a website address].

i mean Westboro makes it easy. there is not a lot of debate, or any, needed when looking at them and their actions and coming to the conclusion that this is not of God. Certainly not the God i am following. Or would want to follow.

…and i’m pretty sure the Bible commands us to call out that kind of garbage… and bring it to the light for what it is.

i imagine that ‘church’ and a lot of their actions make Jesus sad.

WHAT IS WORSE THAN SOMEONE LIVING ACTIVELY NOT-CHRIST?

as i sat outside our apartment earlier thinking about life and the kingdom of God and things that make Jesus sad while drinking coffee out of my Marvin the Martian mug [could that be one of them? i hope not. i wonder who made the mug. uh-oh.] i pondered to myself [while inviting the Holy Spirit to ponder back] what could be worse than someone living actively not-Christ? [although not in those words – them are just fancy blog words]

could the answer be someone not actively living Christ?

people whose christianity consists of believing the right thing, and going to the right place [church every sunday and maybe home group or cell on a wednesday night] and trying to not be too bad, but otherwise living for themselves.

i’m just not sure that’s enough.

at the same time, i’m not completely sure what the solution is because we can’t all stop human-trafficking or reach out to all of the homeless or visit everyone in hospital and prison and we can’t all be taking on racism at an institutional level or fighting sexism in the workplace or reaching out to victims of sexual abuse and rape and trying to find ways of addressing those two things that don’t make the victors feel like the guilty parties… we can’t do it all. absolutely sure about that one.

but i do strongly feel that we can all do something, or maybe somethings.

with our money. whether tithing it into a church where we know the money is going to greater things than simply buildings and salaries or putting it in programs like Common Change that help us to meet needs of people we know or committing to an organisation or a specific project like my photographer friends Bex and Bruce who came up with a plan to fund some wells in Africa with some of the money they bring in or assisting the woman who cleans your house or the man who takes care of your garden to find ways to get their children through school and into university. and  hundred thousand other great ideas.

with our time. whether baking some goodies or making a meal for a new family that moves into your street or complex or for the couple that have just had a new baby, or writing a postcard to someone in prison and building a relationship with them or visiting someone in hospital. volunteering at the local homeless shelter or seniors home. offering to babysit for a couple you know who have been finding it tough being parents of young children and just giving them a night [or a weekend] off. grabbing some friends and some gardening equipment and arriving at someone’s house who is too sick, tired, or old to get to the work that needs to be done and volunteer to do it for them.

with our creativity, education, knowledge, transport, cameras… the list goes on – there is someone who doesn’t have what we have and is not able to do what we can do and so drawing alongside them

[oh and yes books like ‘Toxic Charity’ and ‘When Helping Hurts’ and others have made the idea of helping other people very scary in many ways because what if we harm the very people we are trying to help because we are doing it the wrong way? You know what i think? Start with building some kind of significant relationship with the person you are trying to help and it will probably be a lot harder to get it horribly wrong. don’t let the fear of doing it wrong paralyse you from doing anything. just be better prepared maybe.]

so while the Godhatesfags ‘church’ makes God very sad, i imagine the people who profess Jesus with their mouths but don’t follow it up with their actions make Him sad too. [there is a lot of stuff about plants producing fruit and salt losing its saltiness in Matthew 7 and other places around the Bible, i’m not making this up]

WHAT WAS ALL THAT STUFF JESUS SAID ABOUT PLANKS AND THROWING THE FIRST STONE THEN?

which brings me to the third category and maybe the most significant one for me to be pondering on. because i doubt i can do a whole lot about the Westboro Baptist church and pretty much the majority of the people in the second category are not going to be the people who are going to be reading this and nodding and heading off to change anything [a quick ‘we’re not supposed to judge’ note in the comments section below perhaps] and so i will still continue to speak into and preach into that group of people when given the opportunities…

but it’s me. i mean that’s the answer right? the only person i can really change is myself, brett fish anderson [where fish seems to be proved more and more to be something i’m desperately aiming at as opposed to anything i hit regularly enough] and so that is really where i have to look.

and i do and i have and i am and a lot of it just leaves me with questions that i am struggling to answer.

and that is really the purpose of this post [and posts, cos i imagine there will be more, this is already getting a bit long] – not to point the finger or judge other people who are not getting it right. but to stand before the mirror [as i will stand before God one day] and really genuinely ask, what is the shape of your faith at the moment? of your life? where are you living out the message? where else do you need to be?

with the hope that there is someone else out there who maybe needed a little prod like this to sit alongside me and ask themselves the same question.

what i do know is that the end point of this exercise if not condemnation. i believe there is a very thin line between condemnation and conviction and for me the difference is in where you end up. condemnation leaves you in a weeping mess on the floor. whereas conviction inspires you and lifts you and propels you to action. the problem is that they can both feel the same. but only one is helpful. and i believe that only one is from God [if you’re not sure, it’s the second one!]

it is important though that we take and make times to look in the mirror, prepared to deal honestly and effectively with whatever we see when we look there. that is the place where i am trying to be right now. there is space on the floor next to me if anyone wants to join me.

 

[For more thoughts of a more me-focused nature in the post ‘What makes Jesus sadder too, click here]

Mark, my words: Figuring out the Trance

If you have never understood the Transfiguration of Jesus properly then I strongly encourage you to watch this clip. At the end of it you may not understand the Transfiguration any more, but you just might have a softer spot for Peter the disciple. Worth a shot, right?

Join us as we look at Mark chapter 9 from verse 2 to 13.

[For the next passage which looks at that great statement of “I BELIEVE! Help me overcome my disbelief.” click here]