Your Lord's Day Might Be Someone Else's Way of Escape

Article by Rosaria Butterfield

Radically ordinary hospitality begins when we remember that God uses us as living epistles—and that the openness or inaccessibility of our homes and hearts stands between life and death, victory and defeat, and grace or shame for most people.

Consider with me the tension of 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This passage speaks to the intensity, the loneliness, and the danger of temptation. It also speaks to the lived tension of applying faith to our trials and then waiting for that way of escape to present itself.

Have you ever thought that you, your house, and your time are not your own but rather God’s ordained way of escape for someone?

REMEMBERING THE LORD’S DAY

I think about this every Lord’s Day morning as I’m preparing food for two meals: one weekly fellowship meal at church and one meal at home with neighbors and friends and folks from church. I pray as I prepare food, remembering how the Lord’s Day was a special day of temptation for me when I was a new believer. You see, beyond its wholesome surface, it is a day of warfare in toto. Perhaps you’ve not noticed this, but the Lord’s Day is a terrible day of temptation and sin for many people. Without the moorings of worship, a vital church community, and meaningful fellowship, it’s nearly impossible to actually honor the fourth commandment— the commandment that reminds us to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8)

How do we “remember” this, what we now call the “Lord’s Day”? The best way to remember anything is to do it collectively. God is calling me to remember the Lord’s Day not just for myself, for my own personal holiness, but also to live in such a way that I enable others to do so as well. I am called to create a place at the table for others, to be available to the hurting and the lost.

We keep the Lord’s Day in this communal way by sharing the ordinary means of grace that God has given to us. The Lord’s Day is not a “family day” or a “just us day.” If you preserve this day in that way, you steal glory from God and unwittingly cause others to stumble. Remember 1 Corinthians 10:13? You just might be the way of escape.

LIVING IN COMMUNITY

Living in community is not just pleasant; it’s life-saving. In Life Together Bonhoeffer comments:

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more extractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.[1]

Sin demands isolation. While community does not inoculate us against sin, godly community is a sweet balm of safety. It gives us a place and a season where we are safe with ourselves and safe with others.

My favorite day of the week is the Lord’s Day, and I want to share that day with others. Kent and I open our home after worship to anyone who will come. We must. We remember what it is like to be a new Christian, to be single, to have secrets that get you alone and torment you, and to have no place to go after worship, the odd tearing apart of the body of Christ as each retreats to her own corner or clique while the benediction still rings in the air. It is an act of violence and cruelty to people in your church who routinely have no place to belong, no place to need and be needed, after worship. Worship leaves us full and raw, and we need one another.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS NOT A PERFORMANCE

We live in a world that highly values functionality. But there’s such a thing as being too functional. When we are too functional, we forget that the Christian life is a calling, not a performance. Hospitality is necessary whether you have cat hair on the couch or not. People will die of chronic loneliness sooner than they will cat hair in the soup.

Know that someone is spared another spiral binge of pornography because he is instead playing Connect Four with you or walking the dogs or jumping on the trampoline. Know that these small things that you may take for granted have been the Lord’s appointed way of escape for a brother or sister. Know that someone is spared the fear and darkness of depression because she is needed at your house, always on the Lord’s Day, the day she is never alone but instead safely in community where her place at the table is needed and necessary and relied upon.

Know that someone is drawn into Christ’s love because the Bible reading and singing that come at the close of the meal include everyone, and it reminds us that no one is scapegoated in this Christ-bearing community.

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Editor’s note: This article has been taken from The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World by Rosaria Butterfield, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 112.

By Rosaria Butterfield

Do You Want to Be Happy?

Article by Rick Thomas

Show me a happy person. Are they generous? Probably. Show me a discontented person? Are they selfish? Probably. There is a circular Bible logic that goes like this: God loves happy givers, and if God loves on a giver, the giver is happy.

It does not matter where you jump into that circular sentence, all of the words connect to each other: God-Love-Happy-Giver. There is a reason for this: when we give generously we are living out who we are in Christ–we are emulating the Lord.

Because God is a generous giver, as the gospel implies, it only makes sense that Christians want to be generous too. Being generous is more than giving your money away. It is giving your life away, which is the gospel. Jesus Christ gave His life away. Happiness comes when we model the self-sacrifice of the Savior by giving our lives away.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. – 2 Corinthians 8:9

How generous are you? How do you proactively think about and plan to give your life away? Here is a short list of things generous people give away.

• They give away their money.

• They give their love away.

• They give their encouragement away.

• They give their Christian example away.

• They give their joy away.

• They give their kind words away.

• They give their time away.

• They give their homes away (hospitality).

The Point Is – “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” – 2 Corinthians 9:6-7

Flow-Through

In our organization, we use the term “flow-through” to describe the process of being a middleman or distributor of what others give to us. For example, each Friday evening we go to our local Panera Bread (sandwich shop) and pick up all of their leftover bread.

Each year we receive more than $30,000 (retail value) of bread products. We bring the bread home, separate it, and distribute it to various people or organizations. We’ve been doing this since 2010. The reason for our bread distribution is multi-faceted. For example,

• We do it because we can.

• We do it to model the generosity of our Savior.

• We do it to put the gospel on display in as many places as possible.

• We do it to emulate for our children the giving of time, effort, and bread.

• We do it to feed those who need God’s kindness through the provision of food.

The bread is an example of what “flow-through” means. Someone gives to us and we, in turn, give to others. We’re merely the coupler or the connector that joins the giver (Panera) with the receiver (those in need).

We trust that Panera Bread will give us bread each Friday evening. Panera Bread believes that we will do what we said we would do–give it to others. This concept is analogous to the Christian life.

• You trust God that He will provide for you (Matthew 6:33).

• God believes that you will give away what He gives to you (Luke 6:38).

This worldview is not a romantic Hollywood pay-it-forward notion. This idea is about incarnating the Savior before a dying world who need examples of the practical gospel in action. It is about receiving to give so the name of God can be made famous.

God Loves Generous Givers

The Father is asking you to trust Him by giving your life away. If you believe Him this way, He will bless you–not so you can have more for yourself, but so you will have more to give away. Will you trust Him by sharing what He has given to you?

These promises are not about the prosperity gospel, but about God blessing us so we can bless others. You give a lot. He provides a lot. It’s not about personal gain. You are the coupler, the “flow-through principle.” What are you giving away?

• Your time, money, wisdom, care, joy?

• What are you exporting to others, to your spouse, to your children, to your church, to your neighborhood, to your world?

God gives to generous givers so they will have more to export to others. Christians are in the import/export business. We receive it so we can give it to others. This worldview has always been the case in God’s mind.

Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you. – Deuteronomy 16:17

Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. – Proverbs 3:9-10

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. – Proverbs 11:24

Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor. – Proverbs 22:9

Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse. – Proverbs 28:27

Bring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. – Malachi 3:10

Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you. – Luke 6:38

He blesses generosity by personally enriching you so you can meet the needs of others so they will glorify Him. Test yourself on this matter.

• Do you give generously?

• Do you give willingly?

• Do you give cheerfully?

• Do you give carefully?

• Do you give in a premeditative way?

Do Not Be Anxious: It’s the Gospel

Did you know that God cares more about you than about birds (Matthew 6:26)? No, really, did you know this? If so, let me ask you this question:

• Do you become anxious about giving?

• Is there a low-level fear-factor going on in your heart when it comes to giving?

If so, you may be aware that God cares more about you than birds, but you don’t believe it at the functional level of your thinking. It is one thing to know something, but another thing to practice it. Bible knowledge only has value when it becomes a practice in our lives primarily.

Will you trust God in the matter of giving yourself and your things away for the glory of His name? Don’t be anxious about your life. God cares more for you than the birds that fly over your head. Live like sons and daughters of your heavenly Father. Trust Him. It is through your giving that God is glorified. Let me ask you this: What is your first thought when it comes to giving?

• What will it cost me?

• How will it help others?

If you’re thinking like a gospelized-individual, your eye is on what your giving will do, not what it will cost. As far as God is concerned, giving is not about the thing offered, but about helping people in need. Giving is the most explicit way we can model the gospel in our lives, and when we do this, you are putting God on display.

And You Benefit, Too

In Philippians, we learn about a man who gave His all for the good of others, and in the end, He was highly exalted because of His generous giving.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. – Philippians 2:9-11

Quite simply, this is how the gospel works. I’ve already shared Luke 6:38:  “For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” But you say, “I don’t give to get.”

That’s fine, but that does not stop God from blessing you for your generosity toward others. You might not jump into the air just so you can come back down to the ground, but that does not matter. If you jump into the air, you will return to earth. It’s a law. If you give, you will receive. It is a promise from God.

I’m glad that you’re trying to be humble about your generosity, but the fact remains that God loves a generous giver and if you are liberal in your giving, expect the love of God to shower you.

This response from the Lord is how it works. One of the sadder commentaries about selfish people is that they spend their entire lives trying to satisfy themselves and never come to understand this Bible truth: if you give, you will get.

I tell selfish husbands this regularly. I try to explain to them that if they would give kindness, communication, love, affection, repentance, confession, forgiveness, or the other cheek to their wives, that they will get what they want. (And the same applies for wives.)

What do they want? They want a loving wife who respects them. It’s as easy as pie: you give, and it will return to you. (And if she does not give, the Lord will bless you because you’re honoring Him regardless of how she responds.) It’s not complicated folks. Trust God. Give your life away and watch God bless you in ways that you could have never imagined, even if the “return” is different from what you expected.

Plan to Receive from God

If your motive is to give your life away, you will be a happy person. If your motivation is to get, you will never be satisfied. The gospel is not unidirectional, as though all you do is give. The generous giver is lavished upon by the Lord–the giver becomes a receiver by default. But you must remember the order: you give first and then you receive.

Christ gave and then He received. Two people were blessed–Christ and others, but the divine order was to provide something before you benefit from the Lord’s favor. I like the way Paul said it in Philippians. Other than Christ, he was one of the most outrageous and generous givers in the Bible.

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. – Philippians 4:11-13

The secret to happiness is to give your life away. The secret to misery is to hoard what was given to you, while seeking more ways to gain more, for self-serving and self-promoting purposes.

You will be more blessed if you choose to give as the first call to action, rather than wanting to receive (Acts 20:35). The reason for this is because God loves a generous giver. In what ways do you need to be more generous in your giving?

• Do you need to give more money away?

• Do you need to give more time away?

• Do you need to give more repentance away?

• Do you need to give more forgiveness away?

• Do you need to give more wisdom away?

• Do you need to give more (fill in the blank)?

What is it that you are holding onto because you’re afraid to let it go? Whatever that is, I appeal to you to become a cheerful giver. Lay it down for the glory of God and the benefit of others. Do you want to be happy? There is only one way: you must give up your life in the specific way in which God is speaking to you right now.

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. – Mark 10:45

Why are you living? What is your purpose in life? Do you wanna be happy? The gospelized individual is here to serve others. Blessed is the man who chooses to give his life away generously.

Posted at: https://rickthomas.net/do-you-wanna-be-happy/

The God Who Is Generous

By Tim Keller

Excerpt from “The Prodigal Prophet”

God’s compassion is not something abstract but con­crete. It plays out not just in his attitude but in his actions toward human beings. It is intriguing that he speaks of these violent, sinful pagans as people “who do not know their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11). That is an exceedingly generous way to look at Nineveh! It’s a figure of speech that means they are spiritually blind, they have lost their way, and they haven’t the first clue as to the source of their prob­lems or what to do about them. Obviously, God’s threat to destroy Nineveh shows that this blindness and ignorance is ultimately no excuse for the evil they have done, but it shows remarkable sympathy and understanding.

There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, nor have they any guide to tell right from wrong. God looks down at people in that kind of spiritual fog, that spiritual stupidity, and he doesn’t say, “You idi­ots.” When we look at people who have brought trou­ble into their lives by their own foolishness, we say things like “Serves them right” or we mock them on social media: “What kind of imbecile says something like this?” When we see people of the other political party defeated, we just gloat. This is all a way of de­taching ourselves from them. We distance ourselves from them partly out of pride and partly because we don’t want their unhappiness to be ours. God doesn’t do that. Real compassion, the voluntary attachment of our heart to others, means the sadness of their con­dition makes us sad; it affects us. That is deeply un­comfortable, but it is the character of compassion.

There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, nor have they any guide to tell right from wrong.

God’s evident generosity of spirit toward the city could not be a greater indictment of Jonah’s ungenerous narrowness, what John Calvin calls his greatest sin, namely that he was “very inhuman” in his attitude to­ward Nineveh.

“They Don’t Know What They Are Doing”

If you are acquainted at all with the New Testament, it is impossible to read about this generous God with­out remembering Jesus. God is saying to Jonah, “I am weeping and grieving over this city — why aren’t you? If you are my prophet, why don’t you have my compas­sion?” Jonah did not weep over the city, but Jesus, the true prophet, did.

Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on the last week of his life. He knew he would suffer at the hands of the leaders and the mob of this city, but instead of being full of wrath or absorbed with self-pity, like Jonah, when he “saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes . . . because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you’” (Luke 19:41– 2:44). “Jerusa­lem, Jerusalem . . . how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).

On the cross, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” (Luke 23:34). Jesus is saying, “Father, they are torturing and killing me. They are denying and betraying me. But none of them, not even the Pharisees, really completely understand what they are doing.” We can only look in wonder on such a heart. He does not say they are not guilty of wrongdoing. They are — that is why they need forgiveness. Yet Jesus is also remembering that they are confused, somewhat clueless, and not really able to recognize the horror of what they are doing. Here is a perfect heart — perfect in generous love — not excusing, not harshly condemning. He is the weeping God of Jonah 4 in human form.

Over a century ago the great Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield wrote a remarkable scholarly essay called “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” where he considered every recorded instance in the gospels that described the emotions of Christ. He concluded that by far the most typical statement of Jesus’s emotional life was the phrase “he was moved with compassion,” a Greek phrase that literally means he was moved from the depths of his being. The Bible records Jesus Christ weeping twenty times for every one time it notes that he laughs. He was a man of sorrows, and not because he was naturally depressive. No, he had enormous joy in the Holy Spirit and in his Father (cf. Luke 10:21), and yet he grieved far more than he laughed because his compassion connected him with us. Our sadness makes him sad; our pain brings him pain.

By far the most typical statement of Jesus’s emotional life was the phrase “he was moved with compassion.”

Jesus is the prophet Jonah should have been. Yet, of course, he is infinitely more than that. Jesus did not merely weep for us; he died for us. Jonah went outside the city, hoping to witness its condemnation, but Jesus Christ went outside the city to die on a cross to ac­complish its salvation.

Here God says he is grieving over Nineveh, which means he is letting the evil of the city weigh on him. In some mysterious sense, he is suffering because of its sin. When God came into the world in Jesus Christ and went to the cross, however, he didn’t experience only emotional pain but every kind of pain in un­imaginable dimensions. The agonizing physical pain of the crucifixion included torture, slow suffocation, and excruciating death. Even beyond that, when Jesus hung on the cross, he underwent the infinite and most unfathomable pain of all — separation from God and all love, eternal alienation, the wages of sin. He did it all for us, out of his unimaginable compassion.

Reprinted from THE PRODIGAL PROPHET: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, by Timothy Keller. Published on October 2, 2018 by Viking, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Timothy Keller, 2018.

Posted at: https://medium.com/redeemer-city-to-city/the-god-who-is-generous-7e83d26406f1