DIY Instructions for Living

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”

Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

(Literally Romans 12 MSG word for word. Worth reading and letting it shape our thinking and our living.)

People of the Spirit: Fruitful and Gifted

All sorts of ideas capture our imaginations when we hear the word church. This series of posts is written to help us reimagine Church based on how it is imagined and described throughout the New Testament.

The Bible envisions the Church as a people of the Spirit. However, this means different things to different people. For many, “spiritual” brings to mind moving experiences in dark, crowded rooms amidst exquisite lighting, music, and speaking. Others imagine personal growth and development taking place on a picturesque mountainside. But, the New Testament imagines something much different – a spiritual life that is primarily relational rather than individual.

Fruitfulness. Fruitfulness is a major concept in the New Testament. Jesus can hardly get away from it. Paul repeatedly reminds his readers that we will all stand before God one day and be judged based on our fruit – how we lived our lives (2 Corinthians 5:10). In his letter to the Galatians, Paul describes what that fruit can look like and what we can expect as the Holy Spirit works in and through us:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…

Galatians 5:22-23 (ESV)

In other words, the Holy Spirit intersects our lives as we relate to each other. Spiritual life isn’t about emotional experiences, personal development, or heightened morality. A genuine spiritual life is about living in relationship with others marked by these spiritual characteristics.

Giftedness. A number of passages in the New Testament also address the ways that the Holy Spirit “transcends human ability and transforms human inability” (Scot McKnight, Open to the Spirit). In other words, as a people of the Spirit, we are gifted beyond our natural abilities as we learn to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestations of the Spirit for the common good.

1 Corinthians 12:4-7

Again in this passage, the spiritual life is imagined not as an individual matter, but a life together and on behalf of one another in which we are empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Reimagining Church. The Church is neither a building, a program, an organization, nor individual spiritual persons. The Church is people living in relationship to one another that is characterized and empowered by the Holy Spirit for the common good.