To all of you considering reading along with me,
I am really excited about this book. You can get it at most Christian bookstores for a little over $18. Amazon has it for $15.63 but with shipping it will be about the same if not a little more. For those of you who listen to books, it is available on iTunes for $11.
For everyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, I suggested we read a book together. It is called “The Hole in the Gospel” by Richard Stearns. I know this isn’t for everyone. But for those who are interested, I think it may be a neat experience. I looked at the book last night and realized it is divided into 5 parts. Each part has a few chapters. So I think we may aim at discussing 1 part per week. I’m going to look quickly at the introduction today, share a bit of it with you, and maybe a question or two. Then we will be set up to look at Part One next week sometime. To give you a taste, this is the first paragraph of the Introduction:
“What does God expect of us? That’s what this book is about. It’s a simple question, really. But is the answer so simple? What is the Christian faith about? Going to church every Sunday, saying grace before meals, and avoiding the most serious sins – or does God expect more?”
Since you are probably here because you connected with my music in some way, I think most of you think God has more for our lives than what we have seen in most of modern Christianity. I think you may be willing to dig deeper. I think this book will challenge us in that direction.
Mr. Stearns asks a couple of very pointed questions: “…as Christians, are we really given the option of turning away from the world’s problems? Does God permit that?”
What do you think? Can we turn away from the world’s problems and be living as God intended? What problems does this include? Economic? Social? Health?
Mr. Stearns says we should not only have a personal faith, but we should make our faith public. How can you do that in your life?
Well, there’s a few questions to get you started thinking along these lines. I look forward to sharing in this with you.
Todd
I’m going to check at Hastings to see if they have it in stock. I think that I will some reading time in between classes this semester. This sounds like fun!
Thanks for the iTunes info. The entire book is now on my iPod, and I’ll start listening at work on Monday.
Question #1- What does God expect of us?
It is a simple question, and the answer is also simple. He wants us to surrender all of ourselves and lives to Him. Is that easy?? Absolutely not! I think it’s probably impossible. So we surrender, and then we fail, so we must surrender once more. This is called the Christian life. But this life is fleshed out differently for each person. When I surrender to God and when you surrender to God, it will look very different. But the heart should be the same, because it’s God’s heart living through each of us.
As for the more specific questions he asked, they’ll wait until I either take a nap or get something to eat, because all of the synapses don’t seem to be firing right now.
You have a wonderful Saturday with the family, and I’ll pray for tonight’s show.
What are the world’s problems? Everything that goes wrong in this world are symptoms of one problem–disconnection with God, replacing God with idols of our own making, and becoming a god unto ourselves. We are all affected by the consequences of our own sin and by the sin of others toward us.
Are we given the option of turning away from the world’s problems? Many people would argue they don’t have time or resources to deal with the problems of other people because they are trying to survive their own problems. But that kind of thinking just creates a myopic, selfish society. Jesus’ mission was to bring hope, freedom and healing to the broken, hurting people of the world. As His representatives, we have the same mission and mandate.
Does God permit us to turn away? Of course He gives us a free choice to help or turn away, but He expects us to respond to needs around us and globally with whatever means He has entrusted to us. If we do not have money to share, we have a voice with which to renounce evil and speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Most of us have food, clothes, and shelter which could be shared with others instead of being hoarded for ourselves.
Proverbs 24:11-12 says, “Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to death; don’t stand back and let them die. Don’t try to avoid responsibility by saying you didn’t know about it. For God knows all hearts and He sees you. He keeps watch over your soul, and He knows you knew! And He will judge all people according to what they have done.”
How do we make our faith public? By establishing relationships with people, getting involved in the messiness of their lives, taking time to develop friendships, disregarding cultural, religious, and financial differences in order to value others for their uniqueness, and sharing stories of our lives that tell how God’s love won our hearts and healed our sin and brokenness. By being real instead of religious, and by extending the mercy of God to others in the midst of their struggle.
My book is being shipped so I haven’t read it yet, but from my perspective the hole in our gospel is that we preach a love that we don’t really believe in or live out (which makes us pretenders and hypocrites), and we have distorted the good news of hope and redemption with the bad news that God is perpetually mad at us and wants to make our lives miserable unless we submit to the rules and regulations which have been made by human beings who have made God in their own image.
The question I keep asking myself is what is it in me that finds it easier to keep rules than build relationships? How can I say I love God but fail so much in loving my brother/sister well?
Can we turn away from the world’s problems? No. How can we possibly share God’s love if we turn our heads to those in despair? We would not be great witnesses if we only tended to our own.
I’m not very far into the book yet, but it is very interesting. I love the story of how God introduced him to this mission. It is one thing to support an organization like World Vision (and that is a wonderful thing to do), but when you actually go out there, and meet the kids personally, and see the lives they lead, it changes your world and your view of the world. I wish everyone could experience that.