Month: May 2016

Jesus Hung Out With The Wrong People

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 12, 2016

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Jesus “hung out” with the wrong people! And it is Luke that seems to have noticed this more than any of the other gospel writers. In Luke 5, after Jesus had called Levi, the tax collector, to leave everything and follow him, Levi prepared an incredible feast and asked Jesus to attend. Many other tax collectors were at the party which disturbed the Pharisees so they asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

In Luke 7, Jesus is invited to a dinner at the home of a Pharisee. As Jesus took his place at the table, a woman who did not have the best reputation in town, stood behind Jesus at his feet and “wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.” When the Pharisee saw this he was aghast that Jesus would allow such a sinful woman near him. If Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known this woman was an outcast. Jesus should have sent her away.

As Jesus was leaving Jericho in Luke 19, he encountered a man by the name of Zacchaeus, a tax collector. Though it looked as though Jesus was going to leave Jericho without taking time to enjoy a meal, his encounter with Zacchaeus led to dinner at his home that evening. When the news got around that Jesus was going to eat with Zacchaeus, some grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”

In Jesus’s day, there was much hostility between the religious and the people of the land. The religious were those who took the law seriously. They were trained in religious law and stuck to a religious code. This caused them to not associate with those who did not take the law as serious. Specifically, there were food laws which meant Pharisees had to be careful as to what they ate and to whom they ate with. Table fellowship was a critical symbol of identity. And yet there was Jesus, eating with all those “tax collectors and sinners.”

But not only was Jesus going to the “religious outsiders,” they were also coming to him. Luke points this out when he writes that tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him (Luke 15:1). And as to be expected, this disturbed the Pharisees. And it is this hard-heartedness of the religious leaders that prompted Jesus to tell the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. He came to rescue and restore. But the Pharisees didn’t get it.

I write all this above to ask ourselves this question: If we follow Jesus, who will we be drawn to and who will be drawn to us? Consider what Tim Keller writes:

Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

Did not Jesus ask Simon and Andrew to follow Him and as they did, he would make them “fishers of men?” (Mt. 4:19). Did not Jesus also tell all His disciples that “as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn 20:21). So let’s ask ourselves once again, if we follow Jesus, who will we be drawn to and who will be drawn to us?

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What Do We Show The World?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 10, 2016

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As followers of Christ, we know what we should tell the world. Or at least I hope we do. We must proclaim the gospel. We must speak of the grace and mercy of God. Others need to know that with Christ, there is now hope in this life and the next. Paul reminds us of “how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Rom 10:15). The news of what Christ has done is too good to keep hidden. It must be known.

But I wonder what we show the world? We tell others of their need for Christ, but I wonder if they see in us how much we need Him as well? In his book Get Real: Sharing Your Everyday Faith Every Day, Justin Leonard writes, “we want people to see Jesus in us when it would be so much better if they instead saw someone in need of Jesus.”

I don’t take Leonard’s words to mean that we should abandon Christlikeness. After all, Scripture is clear that we should be conformed to His image (see Rom. 8:29; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; 1 Jn 2:6). However, if we are not careful, we can appear as though we have no problems, no worries, or no hassles. And who can live up to that? Could it be that we sometimes try to become “too Christian?”

There is a lot of talk today about authenticity. “You gotta keep it real!” So maybe the world needs to see how human and needy we really are. Do your neighbors know that you struggle sometimes in your marriage? Do those you work with know that you, like that rest of the world, struggle with identity?

In Get Real, Leonard tells a story about a lady who is wanting her sister to become a believer in Christ. Though she continues to witness to her, it appears she never listens. So Leonards asks: “Have you ever considered that the way you present yourself as a Christian might be part of the reason your sister doesn’t believe?” In other words, he writes, “Instead of being a help to your sister, you may be her biggest obstacle to belief because she can never imagine herself believing like the person you want her to believe you are.”

Let’s not stop telling others about Jesus. But let’s also show them our need for Him as well. In humility, let’s be real. And let’s point people to the one in whom we trust to save us from the mess we have made of ourselves.

Quote Of The Week

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 6, 2016

I wondered if when we take Christian theology out of the context of its narrative, when we ignore the poetry in which it is presented, when we turn it into formulas to help us achieve the American dream, we lose its meaning entirely, and the ideas become fodder for the head but have no impact on the way we live our lives or think about God. This is, perhaps, why people are so hostile toward religion.

-Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What, p. 58-59.

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5 Thoughts About Evangelism In Everyday Life

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 5, 2016

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We know we are to “make disciples who make disciples.” In fact, I believe when we go deeper into understanding the heart of God, we will be compelled to do so. But we still wonder how we should go about sharing the gospel with others, especially in our ordinary, everyday lives. I pray these few thoughts below will be of some help as we wrestle with what it looks like to share the gospel within our daily routines.

Be aware of who is around you.

Are you aware of those around you? We need to think about where God has already placed us. Sharing the gospel is not always about adding new people into your life, but becoming aware of who is already around you and where you do life.

Consider doing a mental walk-through of your day. Write down some names or descriptions of people you encounter. Are they sometimes the same people? Where do you buy coffee, lunch, gas, and groceries? Are you in a study or work group? What about where you work or or where you exercise or where you walk your dog? This is your mission field.

Be interested in others.

Do you find people interesting? You should. Behind every face is a story. Therefore, spend some time getting to know the stories of those around you.

So how do you do this? Well, begin by saying” Hello” or asking “How’s your day? Also, get to know people’s names. If you are bad at names like I am, write them down or play a name association game. Do whatever works.

Also, learn to ask good questions. And by all means, don’t try to “top” someone else’s story. We need to get rid of the sin of one up-man-ship!

Learn to listen.

Learning to listen is directly related to being interested in others. When you ask someone “How ya doing?” ask it in a way that shows you really want to know. This means getting off your cell phone and paying attention. Sherry Turkle aptly writes in regards to our digital age that “we let digital devices dictate our daily life at a great cost. They are an assault on compassion.” We must not let our smart phone cause us to become unaware of people who are starving for someone to listen to them.

We are often told to pray for someone to talk to about Jesus, and by the way, I think this is good. But maybe we should also pray for someone in whom to listen. I know we are busy people and listening takes time, but I sometimes wonder why we are in such a hurry to get from point A to point B?

Learn to walk in another’s shoes

The old saying goes that we should never criticize a person until we have walked a mile in his or her shoes. In other words, don’t be so quick to judge. There is a reason people do what they do. The person who is rude to you while checking out at Wal-Mart probably doesn’t have a personal vendetta against you. You don’t know what kind of day he or she has had or for that matter, what kind of life he or she might be having to endure.

How do you begin to “walk in another’s shoes?” To start, learn to listen. I know we just mentioned listening above, but I don’t think we can escape it in learning to understand others. Jonathan Dodson records that Francis Schaeffer was asked what he’d do if he had an hour to share the gospel with someone. He responded by saying he’d listen for 55 minutes and then, in the last 5 minutes, have something meaningful to say.

Know the Gospel!

It’s imperative that we know the gospel story. And we must know it not just to share it with others as some sort of information piece, but also so that we can internalize it. The gospel story needs to rewrite our stories and replot our identity. For when it does so, we are doing more than just acting out a script, but telling the news of what God has done for us.

Remember, our announcement of good news is one of bringing life.

The Human Question

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 3, 2016

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The question “Who am I?” is as old as time. It’s not just a question found in an introductory philosophy course or book. It’a question every man and woman encounters . We can’t escape it. As theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes, “A cow is simply a cow. It does not ask, ‘What is a cow? Who am I?’ Only man asks such questions, and indeed clearly has to ask them about himself and his being. This is his question.”

This human question, however, is not always easy to answer. We seem to be in a crisis in finding an answer. In 2015, according to New York Times Magazine writer Wesley Morris, our wrestling match with who we are and what we are to be was at an all time high. Morris’ article is appropriately titled “The Year We Obsessed Over Identity.” He writes that “2015’s headlines and cultural events have confronted us with the malleability of racial, gender, sexual and repetitional lines. Who do we think we are?”

“For more than a decade,” writes Morris, “we’ve lived with personal technologies—video games and social-media platforms—that have helped us create alternate or auxiliary personae.” We are also amidst the every growing “makeover shows, in which a team of experts transforms your personal style, your home, your body, your spouse.” But Miller writes that though “our reinventions feel gleeful and liberating — and tied to an essentially American optimism,” not all seems to be at peace. Something still seems to be wrong.

Why are we in such a crisis? Why is it so hard for us to figure out who we are? How is it that many can’t seem to find what they are looking for? I wonder if the problem we have in discovering who we are is due to where we are lured to look for answers. Consider today’s media. They suck us in. They compellingly show us that to be complete you need to acquire the best education, secure the perfect job, marry your soul mate, raise intelligent kids, wear trendy clothes, eat healthy, exercise daily, never grow old (or at least look young since you can’t avoid aging), drink hip coffee or green tea, travel the world, and by all means, live authentically and be happy, even if it means abandoning all the above.

Today, “our identities,” writes Mark Sayers, “have been replaced with images.” And these images are “disposable images of the media landscape.” The frustration is that there is no one picture which helps us “complete the puzzle of our identity; instead, it merely offers us a jumbled mess of puzzle pieces, which we constantly configure, reconfigure, and then deconstruct.” As philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.”

So what are we to do? C.S. Lewis wrote that “the first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is—what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used” (taken from Mere Humanity). If we take a tip from Lewis, it appears we need to go back to Genesis 1 and 2.

It is in the first chapters of Genesis that we see that God is center stage. It all revolves around Him as He is the creator of all things. And we as humanity, are seen to be the culmination of His creation, created in His image. We are made in His love and to be loved by Him. We are also created to mirror God upon this earth. The bottom line is that we are made to relate to and reflect our creator. This is our identity. This is where meaning in life is found.

Unfortunately, however, it is in the third of chapter of Genesis that we see the wheels come off the bus. As a result, life becomes tricky for us humans. The conscious decision to move away from the love, protection, provision, and instruction of God begins a series of calamities of which our first parents never dreamed. From that point forward, we lost focus as to who we were. But we never stopped looking for meaning. We just began looking in all the wrong places. And it has not turned out well.

Therefore, we must “look to the morning of creation and try to hear the first words that God spoke to [us] and [our] father Adam,” writes Helmut Thielicke, “if we want to know who [we] really are and what God intended [us] to be.” Otherwise, we will never find true identity for which we are searching. It’s only in understanding ourselves as created by God and in His image that our identity and meaning in life is to be grounded. To find who you are in anything else is like trusting in a current fad to never change.

Could it be that one of the greatest Biblical and theological tasks for us is to rediscover who we are as being created in the image of God? In a world of many images, do we not need to refocus on our true image? If not, where will we look that provides a stable answer to our “human question.”