“Your Mission Should You Choose To Accept It…”

Weekly Devotion – October 9, 2011 a Mission

Theme/Title:   “Your Mission Should You Choose To Accept It…”

Scripture:  Exodus 32: 1-14; Luke 14: 28-33; & Matthew 5: 13-16

Media:  YouTube video “Following the Leader (Disneyland Fun)”

Reflections:

Jesus makes a great point when he talks about discipleship and uses the example of someone planning to build a tower needing to estimate costs before beginning construction in order to know it can be finished.  This is called planning ahead.  This is knowing your mission and how you plan to complete it.

The story of Moses calling God to task and reminding God of the mission they are on together shows how important it is to take a long view and to understand where you came from what you have done and why you are doing what you are doing.  A mission takes commitment, time and sometimes while in the middle of accomplishing it you wonder if the effort is worth it and need to be reminded that it is.

When we look to what it is we are to be about as the church and as faithful children of God, we see that we are embarked upon a mission – we are to flavor the world, to shine a light on the world, and to guide the world to a place God desires it and us to be.  How can we do anything without knowing what it is we are to be doing as faithful people of God?  A mission defines our purpose and ultimate destination and guides us as we move ahead to live faithfully and fulfill our covenant with God.

A mission is that statement or phrase that we look to for guidance and inspiration as we move forward.  It is the concept that we are trying to make real, the target we are shooting for, the result of our actions and activities.  President John Kennedy had a mission for our nation, put humans on the moon by the end of the 1960s.  This mission then informed and guided all the efforts by industry, the scientific community, the military, the government, and countless other individuals and groups each with various goals but all focused upon accomplishing the mission.  Or how about on Star Trek: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”  This is the mission that all the crew focused upon and worked toward accomplishing.  To get anything done, to get anywhere you need a target – a mission.

“Boldly Shaping Partners of God for the Transformation of the World” is our God given mission.  The words could be different but the idea is the same – we are to be about helping others know God, deepen their relationship with God and as faithful people working together with God we are to change the world and help move it closer to what God dreams it will be while loving and serving others. 

Meditation:

Reflect on a time when you were involved in something big, something that had a clear mission and you played a role in fulfilling that mission.  Remember a situation where a mission was not stated or clearly defined.  How do these two experiences differ?  How did you feel?  What happened?

Prayer:

Offer thanks for the missions that you have helped to complete and the accomplishments they achieved.  Pray for our church as we embark upon our mission.  Pray for yourself and how you will be involved in the successful completion of the mission we have been given.



Weekly Devotion – October 2, 2011 Biblical Values Part 3

Theme/Title: Called and Sent

Scripture:  Matthew 28: 18-20; Luke 24: 44-48 & Acts 1:8

Media: 

 "First Contact" by Moviemomentsdotorg

Reflections

We are to care for others, work for justice; spend quality time with those less fortunate then us.  Love is the prime value and motivator for our lives and relationship, especially love for God and others.  These are the values we learn from the Bible.  These are the values we know come from God.  These are the values that Jesus taught, lived, died for and calls us to emulate in our lives.  These are the values that caused John Wesley to challenge the Church of England and to develop a new faith community.  These are the values that provide the foundation of the United Methodist Church.

But there is one more “value,” if you well, that is Biblical and essential for people of faith and lives of faith.  That value, is witnessing, sharing, living as a faithful child of God – the belief that what you have found is so critical to you and your life that you cannot help but want to share it with others.

As Jesus came to help us understand what God calls us to so now we are sent out to share that knowledge and that call.  Jesus directly and specifically commands us to teach, to forgive, and to witness at home, in the surrounding area, throughout the nation and the entire world.  We cannot deny that this is our call and our commission.  But this isn’t some kind of evangelist tour sort of sharing and witnessing.  This is a living and loving witness; it is who we are shows what we are.  The value here is one that admits to the tremendous gift we receive when we accept God’s grace and love, when we seek to put love into action and when we invest fully in our relationship with God, self and others.

This value of sharing and witnessing is based upon one premise: those who we share with must have their basic needs met.  How can we talk about God, forgiveness, teach about God’s way, or expect others to love God and other people if every part of their being is trapped in a life or death struggle for survival?  Our first, best witness is to live out the values of God by seeing to the basic needs of all people everywhere.  As their needs are met, as they move from survival to living, people will have the opportunity to come to know God in the ways we know God.

Witnessing, showing the world who we are and whose we are is a Biblical value and is a value God desires for our lives.  The people of Israel were to be a light unto the nations; Christians are to teach the world about love; we are to share – to witness – with all we say, all we do, all we support, how we use our time and talents, and what we challenge and oppose.  Jesus said, “you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth."

Meditation: How is it you witness to your faith?  How do you show love to the world?  Can you risk comfort, acceptance, and anonymity to live out God’s values?

Prayer: Pray for those who place themselves in difficult situations as they witness to their faith and live out the command to love.  Pray for those who need strength to show their love to the world.

Weekly Devotion – September 25, 2011 Biblical Values Part 2

Theme/Title: Jesus’ 411 God’s Values

Scripture: Leviticus 19: 17-18; Matthew 22: 34-40

Media: YouTube “The Youngbloods - Get Together”

Reflection:

So what more do we need to know about God’s values and Biblical values? Well, we who are United Methodist and Christian claim to follow this renegade carpenter from Nazareth who decided that the Jewish religious authorities of his day had sucked the life from there tradition and its true meaning and significance and so he begins to ask questions, challenge their interpretations and all around speak a word that shook the very foundations of their institution and even that of the Roman Empire.

People liked what this Jesus had to say and they felt in their hearts that he was on the right path, that something about what he said made sense in a primal and deep way. So they asked him to explain things, to help them find the truth he knew and to aid them in their efforts to understand God and God’s desire for humankind and creation. And what he said, what he did, and the stories he told got the attention of those in power and they too wanted to know what he was about, only their motive was to try and find a slip-up so they could discredit Jesus and his understanding of God’s values.

So a lawyer questions him about the greatest commandment – Jesus answers correctly from the institution’s point of view: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This commandment is the foundational commandment of the Jewish faith because it expresses their monotheism and The Shema (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5) is the supreme summary of this expression.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there, in the same breath he adds the Leviticus commandment about loving your neighbor and makes the declaratory statement that “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The lawyer had no answer for this. He couldn’t challenge Jesus’ statement because it was a vital teaching of Judaism this loving your neighbor. He couldn’t fault him on his tying the two commandments together because the rabbis and teachers had done so. But Jesus had made a bold declaration that any other law or prophetic word was contained within these two commandments and that was way beyond anything anyone had said before. And the lawyer didn’t have a response – he hadn’t thought about it in those terms and he was caught up short.

Weekly Devotions - September 18, 2011 Biblical Values Part 1

Theme/Title:      Knowing God’s Heart

Scriptures:        Psalm 146; Isaiah 58: 6-8; and Micah 6: 6-8

Media:                YouTube video “Our Caring” by Johnson & Johnson health channel

Reflection

As persons of faith we naturally wonder: “What is it that God cares about?”  We search for meaning and we look for direction as we journey the path of faithful living.  In this crazy world where so many people and faith groups clamor for our support and try to show us the path of faithful living we need some guidance, some map to follow, sign posts that point the way God wants us to go.

What we seek most of all is to know God’s heart.  To be able to know with some certainty what it is that God would have us be and do and the dream God has for creation.  We wish God would call us on our cell-phones, send us a text, or e-mail us a message or YouTube link where we could hear from God what it is God wishes for us and creation.

Sometimes we forget that for millenniums God has been in deep, intimate relationship with people and that through these relationships God has let us know the values that God treasurers and wishes her children would treasure too.  Over 4 billion people follow the teachings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and all three of these faiths share a deep and unequivocal understanding of the values God desires we live out in our world.  A billion others follow other faith traditions but they too share a clear understanding of how it is we are to live.

Simply put, 5 billion faithful people believe that “what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”  I can only speak with confidence about Judaism and Christianity but I think I can safely say that God has made it pretty clear what it is God values: “This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. (Isaiah 58:6-8 The Message).  God values compassion, sharing, justice, fairness, and living rightly.  God calls us to value the same things.

Meditation: Read Psalm 146 and reflect on what it tells you about the things God values.

Prayer: Pray for all those who need justice and do justice, for those who need kindness and who practice kindness, and for those who walk alone and those who walk with God.