Author Archives: jonathanvinke

Reflections on Gathering

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Tonight our church will gather for a special event commemorating 25 years of God’s faithful work in our midst. In times like this am mindful, as I’m sure you are, of the many who have gone before and made a way for us. It is a privilege to be where we are today, and we stand ready to reap a harvest that we did not plant. That should make us very grateful.

When the Church gathers, it becomes something unique and powerful. The Church is the continuation of Christ’s work on the earth, the present and ongoing reality of the incarnation. God became man in Christ to accomplish victory over death and sin and the Devil. The Church is the incarnation of Christ’s work to carry out that victory. Through the Church, his body, Christ accomplishes his redemptive work to reconcile all things to himself (Col. 1:20).

We are one body with many members, a vine with many branches. A bunch of branches that are separate don’t make a vine, they make firewood. We are meant to be what we are together. Apart from Christ we can do nothing (John 15:5). But if he is the vine and we are the branches, we are just as much members of each other as we are members of him. Many members, but the same body (1 Cor. 12).

And so when we gather together, not just in the mystical/spiritual union that we share, but in a physical place, whether it’s on Sunday or a Friday, in a church or a Jazzercise, we become something that is impossible in any other circumstance. We become the Bride. When we join our voices together as well as our hearts, we look around and see before our eyes a visible representation of a spiritual reality. We witness the incarnation of God’s presence, the manifestation of his promise to make us one in him (John 17:22).

Tonight I anticipate a wonderful experience of worship, not just as we look back at what God has done in the past, but as we get a glimpse of what he will do in the future. These are uncertain times, but they are also exciting times, and there is no better place to be than in God’s house with God’s people following his plan for his Kingdom.

So remember as you gather, wherever you are, you are the church.

Preparation vs. Fulfillment

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It’s funny how God tends to drop little nuggets of wisdom on you from unexpected places. I was reading a book for a project on a very specific subject (baptism in church history) when the author’s phrase hit me like a ton of bricks:

“The degree of fulfillment in something is directly related to the degree of preparation that went into it.”
(my paraphrase)

His context was that preparation for baptismal rites used to last one to two years, and that the level of the preparation served to increase the impact, both personally and corporately, of the sacred act of baptism. But when I read that I realized that it has implications for almost every area of life.

Have you ever tried to run a marathon? Or have you ever tried to run…at all? Your enjoyment of running a race will be directly related to how much you have prepared for it. No preparation and you will likely be miserable. Preparation and you will feel like you know how to fly. Preparation makes all the difference.

Or how about this example. Have you ever gone on vacation…and failed to prepare? Whether you didn’t have enough money, didn’t know where to go, or didn’t know that the ski slopes aren’t open in August, your enjoyment of leisure has everything to do with your preparation for it. This even counts for your day off. How you prepare can make it or break it.

This concept seemed counterintuitive to me because I naturally think of rest (doing nothing) and preparation (work) as being opposed to one another. But these two are inseparably related, one doesn’t work without the other. Preparation is what allows important things (like rest or exercise) to actually do what they are supposed to do, to make the most impact. Spontaneous enjoyment is the exception not the rule, despite what the popular culture wants us to believe. Intentionality and preparation lead the mature to their greatest delights.

This rule applies to worship as well. Your level of fulfillment in worship, whether it’s a corporate gathering or private worship, will be determined by how you have prepared your heart for engagement with God. It would be difficult for me to overstate how important worship is in daily life. And it makes the weekend gathering exponentially better.

So don’t be discouraged if the things in your life aren’t working, and don’t just wait for them to get better. Put your best foot forward to get the most out of today no matter what you’re doing. Don’t be a victim of what comes your way, rather take control to get what you want from every endeavor. You have that power! Today is all we have!

Pressure: How do you handle it?

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Everybody’s got it, but not everybody knows what to do with it. No, I’m not talking about that Christmas gift from your Aunt Laverne, I’m talking about pressure.

Every person knows what it’s like to be under pressure, to deal with stress, to feel the demands of a deadline or a to-do list that seems impossible. The question is, how do you deal with your pressure?

I think there are two ways to handle pressure. The first way is what happens to a volcano when the pressure builds for enough centuries: eruption. This happens all at once and it’s noticeable to everyone. Eruptions can be seen for miles. If we don’t deal with pressure, eventually we will blow up and likely cause a lot of damage. No one can stuff in their emotions forever. Eventually something has to give.

The alternative is to find ways to relieve pressure that are safe and effective. Think of an overflow drain in a sink, if the level gets too high, it’s there to let the water out. Often these come in small doses throughout the day and week. Finding small breaths in the middle of the chaos can help us stay sane and avoid a blowout.

Maybe the reason we don’t take advantage of these little breaths is that we don’t think they will work. Sometimes the pressure we feel is so great we think that a little break won’t even scratch the surface of what we need. But it’s like they say with exercise, “Something is better than nothing.” A 5-minute nap is better than no nap.

Or maybe we don’t take time to refresh because we don’t know what we need. We can get to going so fast that we don’t know ourselves well enough to know what will bring us a smile. Lately I have found great comfort in this process of finding out (again) what I like and putting those little habits into practice. Take a walk, see a movie, go for a drive. I have been surprised at how much better I feel when I intentionally do things that bring me joy.

Maybe you could take some time today to find an oasis in the middle of your desert.
I promise it will be worth the effort.

Action Is The Only Answer

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One of the irritating things about exercise is that calories are easy to earn and hard to burn. You don’t have to try very hard to consume calories, in fact it’s almost automatic. But it takes lots of work to burn them. Can you imagine if the situation were reversed? What if you lost weight by eating and gained it by exercise? I’d be in terrific shape!

This concept for exercise is simple yet powerful. Staying in shape requires a constant, proactive stance against the natural inclination of a body that is well fed and at rest. Unfortunately, last week’s workout doesn’t cover today’s piece of cake. Or two. To make matters worse, if you are on the go a lot and eat at restaurants, chances are your caloric intake is…more than sufficient to your body’s needs. If you want to stay healthy, you have to take preventative action.

I find that this same principle is at work in our spiritual life. A seventeenth-century Puritan preacher and writer named John Owen coined a phrase that has stuck with me ever since I heard it:

“Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.”

In other words, if you don’t take an active stance against sin in your life, it will eventually take you out. Maybe “sin” is too vague and doesn’t land with much force unless you make it personal. This statement recently became much clearer to me when I thought about specific sins that always seem to rear their ugly heads from time to time in my life. The deadly trio that I often deal with (I’m guessing I’m not the only one) are pride, fear, and lust. If you look to the root of most things you do that you shouldn’t (or don’t do that you should), it’s likely that one (or more) of these three is the culprit. If you aren’t constantly vigilant against these enemies of your soul, they will bite you. Hard.

If you’re like me, consistency is difficult because I like things to be finished. Done. Over. When I wash the car, I know when I’m finished because it’s clean. But washing a car is just  one step in the process of caring for a car, and that process goes on for the entire time you own it. It’s the same with my sins. I don’t think I’ll ever “arrive” and never have to deal with being prideful, lustful or afraid. This is difficult to take if you tend towards perfectionism. If I am praying to be humbled and then I get humbled, I’m hoping that I’ll be humble forever and I can move on to other things. Why do I have to learn the same thing over and over?

But “once and done” isn’t how it works. While I’m breathing, I have to keep learning to be like Christ. And judging by my progress, it’s going to take a while. If I don’t actively fight against my pride I will eventually grow calloused and fall. This is true for any besetting sin. Sin doesn’t give up after you win a skirmish or learn a lesson. In fact, I’m pretty sure the devil actually retreats, regroups, and comes at you again with a vengeance. That’s why we have to stay alert, like Peter tells us:

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
1 Peter 5:8-9

The fight to stay healthy doesn’t end after one trip to the gym. Every day counts, and it is the cumulative result of all your days that will ultimately determine your health. I hope you’ll choose to fight another day by God’s grace, knowing that his power is at work in you to make you more like him.

Choose Your Own Reality

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Do you remember those books, “Choose Your Own Adventure”? They were books that put “you” as the main character and allowed you to make choices along the way that would determine the outcome. If you came to a door of a scary old house it would say “If you knock on the door turn to page 98. If you run home and hide under your bed turn to page 52.” I used to love to get those from the library and feel like I was really a part of the story. Plus, who wouldn’t love to opportunity to see how two choices play out and then choose the one with the happy ending? “You knock on the door and get eaten by a monster. The end.” Well, guess I’m turning back to page 52…

Choosing your own adventure is all fun when you’re a kid and it’s a fictional book, but things can get pretty dangerous when we try to manufacture the truth in our own lives.

Now I’m not trying to say that we have no choice in our story. Much of our life is determined by the choices we make or don’t make. No, what I’m talking about is what I consider to be one of the most dangerous human tendencies: Trying to create your own reality. You might call this self-deception, self-justification, or good old fashioned lying.

What comes to mind is the story of Aaron in the Old Testament. While Moses is away meeting with God and receiving instruction for how the people of Israel are supposed to live, the people complain to Aaron (Moses left him in charge) that Moses is surely never coming back because he’s been gone so long (Really? Apparently four hundred years waiting to be delivered from their Egyptian oppressors hadn’t taught them any patience). They ask Aaron to make a god for them that they may worship. Aaron complies without any resistance and makes a golden calf with his own two hands and some tools. When Moses gets back from the mountain (really ticked off), he asks Aaron what happened. Aaron says, “Uh, well, you were gone for quite a while…and you know these people are really evil people…they demanded a god so I told them to give me their gold…I threw it in the fire and…Bam! Out came this golden calf” (my paraphrase of course). Aaron thought it would really help the situation if he made his own story of what happened (for the real thing check out Exodus 32). Of course that didn’t work out too well.

But don’t we do the same thing? If someone honks at me in traffic I convince myself that it is because they are a jerk, not that I cut them off. We make mistakes but completely deny responsibility. We can spend so much time and energy trying to convince ourselves that what we have done isn’t wrong, when we deep down we know the truth.

Ultimately hiding the truth will do the same thing it did to the Israelites. At the very least it will make you sick (drinking water mixed with ground up gold dust), or at the very worst it will end up destroying you (lots of people died that day).

The Truth is a real thing. It isn’t something we can change at our own convenience. That’s why keeping yourself close to measured standards (friends who will hold you accountable, the Truth of the Bible to guide you) is so important. These are what keep us grounded. Without them we’d have ourselves convinced that the sky is green and down is up.

Your Jesus Is Too Personal – Part 2

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I want to follow up on last week’s post with some things I didn’t have time to get to.

When I say “your” Jesus being too personal, what I mean is that a subjective interpretation of the real person of Jesus must not be allowed to take the place in our hearts that belongs to the person of Jesus. Jesus isn’t open to change based on my interpretation. He is who he is, and I should seek to know him, not define him. Think about your spouse or your best friend. Do you spend time with that person meticulously writing down facts or trying to summarize who they are? Of course not. We spend time with those we love to know them better.

Another reason the “my Jesus” language hits me the wrong way is because it represents a supremely individualistic mindset that is tragically prevalent in the West. As Westerners, and especially as Americans, we tend to filter everything in our world in a very personal way. Each person has his own car, her own phone number, blog, wardrobe, bank account, you name it. We view ourselves as the master of our own domain, the reigning sovereign of our own kingdom. What follows is that when we confess/accept/receive the Lordship of Jesus, it is often lordship over this kingdom, our own personal one, that we have primarily in our minds (for example, “accepting Jesus as your personal savior”).

But Jesus isn’t simply the Lord of the people who accept him, he is Lord of all. If I have an over-emphasis on the personal aspect of Christ’s saving work, I will undoubtedly lose the more cosmic or global understanding of salvation. Listen to what Paul says concerning salvation:

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

(Colossians 2:13-15 ESV)

If you’re like me, you’ve even read that passage with a strong emphasis on the “you” and the “us,” and we aren’t wrong to rejoice in Christ’s victory and how it applies to us personally. But let’s not miss the comic implications of our Savior who has triumphed over ALL the rulers and authorities in the universe. The triumph goes beyond my experience into the cosmic reality. He has defeated not just my own personal demons, but ALL of the demons.

In the saving work of Jesus God was reconciling all things to himself (Col. 1:20). All things. That’s a lot of things. And “all” is definitely bigger than “me.”

Your Jesus Is Too Personal

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The other day I was stopped at a stoplight and saw a car in front of me sporting a bumper sticker which read, “Let me tell you about My Jesus.” Do I even need to say that this didn’t sit well with me? What is implied by this phrase, that this person somehow knows the “real” Jesus that everyone else has missed? Maybe I’m overreacting to a simple bumper sticker… or maybe not.

There is a great misunderstanding when it comes to Jesus as our “personal Savior,” a phrase you won’t find anywhere in the Bible. Maybe it’s a Western tendency to individualize and personalize everything, including faith, to an extreme degree. But there is certainly danger in this kind of thinking.

If you study American religious history, you will find it to be characterized by a myriad of denominational splits through the years. A handful of denominations existed in the early colonization of America, but disagreements birthed new slices of the Christianity pie and left us today with upwards of 1500 different denominations. It seems that it is the American way to pursue life, liberty, and whatever denominational expression of Christianity seems right to us.

Don’t get me wrong, variety is good and I believe God loves it. It is one of the evidences of grace that there are so many different styles and types of worship. Isn’t this what it means to be a body? We are all members of one another, some of us are hands while others are elbows. We run into trouble when we start to say hands are better than arms.

The problem with an overly personal Jesus is that it inherently places more emphasis on subjectivity than objectivity. Opinion starts to replace reality. To be honest, I don’t really want to know your Jesus, I want to know the Jesus. Jesus is a real person with real attributes who really did miracles and really died and really is still alive today. Your interpretation, my interpretation, or even your favorite podcast host’s interpretation of who Jesus is isn’t more real than Jesus himself. We’re all grasping at straws when it comes to describing the massive and infinite Son of God. No one has the market cornered on Jesus.

Now I’m not saying no one can know Jesus. That road leads to relativism. We know Jesus through the Word of God, and by the Spirit he has given to us (Matt. 16:17, Rev. 19:10) and yes, as the body, our perspectives on who he is can help others grow and know him better. But we have to understand that he is bigger than our interpretation of him. As humans, our best efforts to understand and explain him are bound to fall short in one way or another. As John writes in his gospel, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)

Let me encourage you to humbly expand your horizon of who Jesus is. He reaches far beyond your own experience, beyond American culture, beyond human language and beyond our limited understanding. Our best response to who he is simply to worship him and know that we are dust (Ps. 103:14).

Walking in Enemy Territory

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Perception is everything. You’ve undoubtedly heard that one before. In fact, you may have heard it enough times that you forget how true it really it.

In the past week I have had several meetings that I went in to with a lot of
concerns and uncertainties. Have you ever built something up in your mind in theBusinessmen fighting name of preparation, but it didn’t seem to help? I sometimes try to be prepared for everything, but no matter how much I prepare and think it through I still don’t know how it’s going to go. I go into conversation feeling uncertain, but how will I feel afterward? Victorious? Superior? …Whipped?

Well, in each of my conversations, I walked out not in triumph but enlightened.
Instead of taking the gloves off, I asked some questions. And you know what? 100% of the time I didn’t fully understand the other person’s point of view until they told me.

If there is one thing that’s true about human beings, it’s that we are NOT good mind readers. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have people calling me all the time asking me to “channel” some kind of answer for life’s biggest questions. The best way for me to understand other people (and I know this may be shocking) is by talking to them. Questions are your best friends in tricky situations. Assumptions, well you know what they say about those…

A good way to think about perspective is to picture yourself as a spy working spy-6undercover. I’m not sure what spies do on their day off, but I have a feeling they are more laid back than when they’re on the job. They aren’t looking around every corner in an effort to prevent being caught or exposed. People act differently when they believe they are in enemy territory than when they’re on friendly soil. Our whole perspective changes. This is especially true in every relationship that experiences conflicts (which, as it turns out, is all of them).

If I walk into any conversation thinking I’m engaging the enemy, I’m only going to come out swinging. But friends are different. Friends are given the benefit of the doubt. Friends are your friends because you tell each other the truth. So before I do anything I need to remember who I’m dealing with.

I’ve been learning again that if I hold back the truth in any valuable relationship, whether what’s true is that I’m scared, skeptical, angry, happy or hurt, then I am cheating that relationship of its full potential, and I can’t blame anyone but myself.

If I am unwilling to trust my colleague, spouse or friend enough to tell them the truth, I am simply allowing a sad game of charades to take the place of real relationship. (Inherent in this is the underlying assumption that I know how they are going to respond, which is why I choose to hold back. I blame the other person for the response I assume they will make, not upon reality. And we’re back to assuming…)

So give it a try. You’re not required to agree with everyone, but if you don’t agree, learn how to tell others your views. That’s actually the reason you have differing views, because we are not all the same. That would be an incredibly boring world to live in. Our differences make us better, but only if we let them.

We’re connected to what we make (A plea for Investment)

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Have you ever made something special for someone as a gift? When I was dating my wife, one year for her birthday I gave her a piece of “art” (the use of that term is questionable) – a wooden box with little pictures and bits of paper glued to the inside that had meaning for us in our relationship. It’s not much to look at, but it is very special to us and sits on our dresser to this day.

When she opened that present, she loved it immediately, but the looks I got from the other people in the room were quite interesting. Some had a look that said “What is that?” while others were just plain confused. Even though it didn’t make a lot of sense to others, it was very special to her. Why? Because I made it, and it was made of things places that we’d been, notes we’d written to each other, and things we had seen together. We had a connection to it and it only strengthened our connection to each other.

I was thinking about this recently in preparation for our first baby that will arrive in the summer. It takes time to grow and develop, and all the months of preparation culminate together with the arrival of the little addition to your family. AND, once your child arrives, there are years of teaching, training, feeding, loving and investing in that life – role that really never ends. Our hearts are bonded to what we create, and the things that mean the most take the most time to grow.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to realize that the best thing that I can leave behind is the legacy of investment I make in other people. Yes it’s important that I lead with zeal and passion and faithfulness to the Truth of the gospel, especially as a worship leader. But once a Sunday is over, it’s over. I have a hard time remembering the songs we sang three weeks ago, and I sang them at least six times that week. How much less the people who hear them only once? What people remember more is the way I care for them, remember their name, and help them grow in Christ.

Of course all of this comes from God. God moves in our lives so that he can move through us, all for his glory. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:7, “we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

So my plea to you is this: invest yourself in others. You have so much to offer them and I promise you the reward will be great. Perhaps the reason you don’t feel connected to your work, to your ministry, or to your neighbors (even your family!) is because you aren’t investing fully in them. Maybe you’re just showing up, wondering why things feel so disconnected. The investment of yourself connects you to others, because you are giving them yourself. So give yourself away. I promise you it’s the best you have to offer to the world.

 

Worship and Grieving

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I’m sure many of us feel the same way when we hear about disaster in the news. It’s a confused conflagration of emotions that seem to swoosh around our insides all at once. We may feel saddened, distant, angry or indifferent. Regardless of how we respond, I think the important question that comes from it is How does it affect our worship?

I believe that worship is the central activity to all human beings, specifically to the Christian.flat,550x550,075,f Everything we do has implications for worship, and this includes how we respond to terrible tragedy.

When we grieve, our confusion can lead us away from God. I don’t know about you, but my thinking is usually something like this: “God, I believe you are all-powerful; you could have done something to stop this; you didn’t; Why not?” It’s almost as if we start to question if God can really be trusted when bad things happen. I don’t think this is a bad thing, as long as we can get back on the right track. Doubt reveals to me that I may be wrong in what I believe about God. It’s times like these that help me to wake up and remember the truths I so quickly forget.

1. God’s goodness isn’t contingent on my physical safety or comfort. I know we don’t like this one, but I’d challenge you to find a place in scripture that promises you won’t ever lose your possessions, comfort, or your life as a Christian. It seems to be the opposite. 2 Timothy 3:12 says that all Christians will suffer in some way. This can be clearly seen in the world around us, but it isn’t meant to be depressing or discouraging. Rather it is meant to show the surpassing value of Christ apart from the life and comforts we have here on earth. His love is better than life (Psalm 63:3).

2. The evil of sin is more evil than I believe. I tend to trivialize sin and make it something less that what it is. I can easily forget that this is a fallen world that is under the crushing weight of sin. But the reality is that the curse is still in effect. This isn’t a game. Sin and Satan are real and not to be taken lightly. Our pastor once gave an illustration with a rubber snake. He held it up, wrapped it around his hand, put it right near his face, all the time saying “Shouldn’t I be afraid?” Of course not. He then had a professional animal 45796878.GreatBasinRattlesnake07_05_05specialist come onto the stage with live rattlesnake. He wouldn’t get within ten feet of the venomous creature. After the snake was gone he picked up the rubber snake again and said, “This is how we deal with deadly sin. We treat it like it’s a toy when it will kill us.” It reminds me of what the puritans used to say: “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.”

3. The power of God is greater than the power of evil. No matter how powerful sin seems to be, God’s power is greater. While it’s important not to trivialize grief, loss or pain, it is important to know that God’s power is greater than all evil. In the Cross, Jesus defeated sin and death forever. We have a priest who can sympathize with our weakness because he has experienced all the pain and loss imaginable. This gives us great hope and comfort. Where else can we go? He alone has the words of eternal life (John 6:68).

Whether it is by storms, sickness, waves or bullets, death will rear its ugly head in this fallen world. But my prayer is that it would cause us to cling even more tightly to the One who reigns above death and above disaster; the One who is the source of life on earth and life eternal. Pray for those who suffer, not just for comfort now but that we may all know and treasure Christ forever.