DAY 190 - And You Call Yourself a Christian

John 7:16-18, 24 (NIV) ¹⁶ Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. ¹⁷ Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. ¹⁸ Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. ²⁴ Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”

I John 2:1-6 (NIV) ¹ My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. ² He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. ³⁴ Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. ⁵ But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: ⁶ Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.

“And you call yourself a Christian.” The remark digs deep. Is there any defense against the charge? We can try to dismiss the accusation by saying Christians are not perfect, only forgiven. But defenses seem to fall flat, for the truth is the charge is at least partly true. There is a gap between our profession and our performance. How do we close the gap?

Our most basic behavioral assignment is not to obey the Golden Rule nor is it even the command to love one another. We are to conform our life to the life of Jesus. Before we were called Christians we were called Followers of the Way. The work of the first disciples was not simply to study with Jesus or learn about Him, but to practice His life. The insight and inspiration they received from Jesus helped them find faithful answers to new problems and difficulties.

Walk in His way. Conform your life to Jesus. There are rules, but trying to obey them without the instruction and inspiration of Jesus is difficult and often confusing. Walk in His way. That is the assignment. By this we can be sure we abide in Him. Certainty about God becomes more solid as we walk in His way. God’s realness, God’s will, God’s work emerge from the shadows of wondering and doubt as we walk in His way. Many of us are fairly cautious people when it comes to action. We want to be absolutely sure before making a move, but if we act on whatever small glimmer of light we may have we will know more.

As we walk in His way we will sometimes succeed and will marvel that frail mortals such as we can in truth be remade and molded into the image of Jesus. Sometimes we will fail, but if Simon Peter is any example, there is still hope. For God works His will for us through our success and our failure.

“And you call yourself a Christian.” Yes. And thank you for reminding me.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 1993

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 189 - What is a Christian?

John 1:9-13 (NIV) ⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

From Ephesians 2 (NIV) But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace,  and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household,  built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

In the push and pull of life the understanding of what it means to be a Christian has a way of getting distorted. It is easy to drift away from a primary commitment in our life. There are crosscurrents we must battle to stay on course in our understanding of and commitment to being a Christian. The strength and genius of the Christian faith is not that we all agree or are always right, but that we are frequently corrected by that abiding Presence. Christianity is not a forced truth, but there is truth to what we believe that can be good for all people. 

Inwardly, a Christian is someone who has experienced a change in his or her relationship to God because of Jesus Christ. When the Scripture speaks basically about being a Christian it speaks about a basic change. Becoming a Christian is like moving from the orphanage into the home of God. Outwardly, a Christian is someone who expresses this change by a heartfelt commitment to Jesus Christ, to have an exclusive commitment to Jesus. It is a priority commitment that gives first place to Jesus and not to anyone or anything else. It rules out a commitment to the religion of money or to other religions.

Christianity is seen in our commitment to Jesus Christ who has bestowed upon us this gift. The channel God uses to reach us is different, but always there is the same truth that comes to us. It is the truth of God’s care and compassion and commitment to us seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 10, 1993

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 188 - How Soon We Forget

Deuteronomy 8:11-18 (NIV) ¹¹ Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. ¹² Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, ¹⁴¹⁵ He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. ¹⁶ He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. ¹⁷ You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” ¹⁸ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today. 

Psalm 103:2 (NIV) Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—

Most of us want to be grateful. Gratitude feels good. Gratitude lifts our spirits, lightens our load, enlarges our soul’s experience of the goodness of life. Gratitude brings us into harmony and love with other people. We ought to feel grateful. We want to feel grateful. But sometimes neither the command nor the desire is enough to stir the grandeur of gratitude within us. What is it that makes gratitude so hard for us today?

Our affluence is usually blamed as the culprit for a general lack of gratitude. We suffer from a kind of sensory overload that dulls our spirit of responsive gratitude. Affluence can make us grasping, greedy, and ungrateful. And if affluence is the culprit in making us ungrateful, then poverty ought to cure us. But, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Both affluence and poverty can wear away a grateful spirit, but neither seems to be the real culprit. The real culprit that steals gratitude from our heart is not as threatening as poverty nor as slick as affluence. The crook is plain old respectable forgetfulness.

In the final analysis gratitude dies not so much from abuse as from neglect. Our thoughts and our worries and our feelings about poverty or wealth simply crowd out any thought of gratitude. The Psalmist does not say “O Lord do not let me lose the spirit of gratitude,” but rather “forget not.”

If gratitude can so easily be lost by forgetfulness, then the good news is that it can be recovered by remembering. And notice that it is the act of gratitude that we are to remember to do. There is nothing about remembering to feel grateful. Just do it, and the feeling will follow. Remember. Gratitude resists the growth of a callous spirit during the good times, and allows us to thank God for the benefits that come to us in hard times. Remember. Remember all God’s benefits. 

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope November 22, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 187 - More For Your Money

From Deuteronomy 8  (NIV) He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.  Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years   a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills;  a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 

From Luke 16 (RSV) "There was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. And he called him and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.' And the steward said to himself, `What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that people may receive me into their houses when I am put out of the stewardship.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He said, `A hundred measures of oil.' And he said to him, `Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' Then he said to another, `And how much do you owe?' He said, `A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, `Take your bill, and write eighty.' The master commended the dishonest steward for his shrewdness; for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations. No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."

Money is powerful, and it can be a very destructive power until and unless we make friends with unrighteous mammon. We are to take money with all of its destructive power and bend it to a good use. We are to corral the might of money and make it into a servant. It takes a special kind of shrewdness to do this. Shrewdness is a special insight and is always profitable to the one who has it. The steward was shrewd. He used his master’s money to buy something that money could not buy. He bought some gratitude for canceling debt. He used the tangible to buy the intangible. Do we have that “shrewdness?” Do we know how to use the tangible to gain the intangible? 

Be shrewd … make friends with unrighteous mammon. Learn how to use and spend your money so that it brings kingdom living to your life. That is the heart and soul of this parable. Giving helps bring kingdom living into our life, but the parable is not about giving. It is about spending. The parable is a challenge for us to use all of our money to bring kingdom living into our life. God provided manna in the wilderness so that when the people entered the Promised Land they would be armed with the truth that God had provided. Most of us have had the same kind of teaching experience. We receive from unexpected sources and for unknown reasons and are gifted with the material things we need. Can we see through the myths so we can manage our money with Christian shrewdness?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope November 15, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 186 - From Recession to Recovery

Luke 12:15-23 (NIV) ¹⁵ Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” ¹⁶ And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ ¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ ²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’  ²¹ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” ²² Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. ²³ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.

II Corinthians 8:2-5 (NIV) ² In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. ³ For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, ⁴ they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people. ⁵ And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us.

The belief that brings poverty is called “covetousness.” There are two Greek words for covet. One means “to fix passion upon,” and the other means “to have more.” A fair definition of covetousness is “to fix our passions upon having more.” Covetousness believes that “more” will satisfy. We are kept in a life of perpetual poverty by this belief that life does consist in the abundance of our possessions, and by the demand that we somehow deserve that abundance. This dulls our mind to poverty we inflict on ourselves.

What can break that cycle so that we can see the truth and receive those things that meet our real needs and bring a measure of joy and happiness to our life? The cycle of poverty is broken by the grace of God. The life of poverty believes “I must have, and I deserve.” The life of grace believes “I have received and I can share.” Grace and giving go together like humor and laughter, like a back rub and the sigh of pleasure. Grace can prompt our giving, or giving can prompt our experience of God’s grace. Every time we give, we let go of the belief that we must have. We subdue the demanding spirit. We recover from our dull narcissism. Some part of us may still believe that life does consist in the abundance of possessions, but we act on the belief that we have been gifted with the goodness of life. Our giving keeps open the window so that the joy of grace can blow gently into our life.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope November 1, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 185 - Good and Happy

Romans 6:12-14 (NIV) ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. ¹³ Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Galatians 3:1-5 (NIV)  ¹ You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. ² I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? ³ Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? ⁴ Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? ⁵ So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

We can acknowledge our self-respecting flaws, but ego damaging faults are difficult to see and admit. Yet, when we find the courage to do so, it usually brings relief and helps build bridges between ourselves and others. As we begin to recognize our faults and desire to rid ourselves of them we often run into the frustration of finding we are powerless. We try and we fail. We become frustrated and fail some more. We fail until God touches our life with the gift of grace. Grace is the confidence that we are loved despite our faults.

Anyone who works with people over a period of time realizes that unaided human effort is not enough to defeat the problems and difficulties that defeat us. Grace is a gift we receive to help us and to equip us to deal with the falleness of our life. It is an event and an experience that happens. I do not know if we can “fall from grace” but I do know that we can have a relapse from this experience of God’s goodness and power, and when we do we strike out again on our own to make ourselves “good and happy.” This had happened to the Christians in Galatia.

Repeatedly we hear the groanings of those who have achieved what the world calls success. The mirage of success holds out its alluring promise and people still strive to achieve it. Most tragically, works of the flesh and of the law are efforts to earn what God desires to give.  The difference between the works of the flesh and the law and the work of grace is subtle but significant. Your life is no longer controlled by striving. It is directed by the gift of Christ within you. The graceful life is living in response to that gift.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 25, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 184 -Can I Have a Witness?

Jeremiah 1:4-9 (NIV)  ⁴ The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” ⁶ “Alas, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” ⁷⁸ Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD. ⁹ Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.

I Peter 3:13-16 (NIV) ¹³ Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? ¹⁴ But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” ¹⁵ But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, ¹⁶ keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

A witness is someone who tells what he or she has seen, heard, and personally experienced to be true. We are called to serve God by what we say to others. To say we only witness to God by the way we live is like trying to fly with only one wing. It takes two wings to take off – our works and our words. Both wings are important, but often it’s the word wing that is the most difficult to get off the ground. Jeremiah found this to be true, saying “I do not know how to speak. I am too young.” Jeremiah had his excuses, and we have ours. Beneath those excuses and reasons for silence may be a fear that if we were to speak there would be nothing to say. Do we remain silent because we feel we have nothing to share?

God has reasons for wanting us to speak. If we do not speak, God’s Word may not be heard, God’s life may not be found, and God’s truth may not be obeyed. God calls us to speak His Word. God has chosen us to be channels of God’s truth, grace, and love. If we do not speak, the Word people need to hear may not be heard.

To be a witness means we share with others what our faith has meant to us. If we are serving God and discovering a measure of freedom in that, we have the power to help others find that freedom as well. As we speak of God, our own faith is made more firm, more clear, more important. Let us never underestimate our own need to speak to others about what we have seen and heard of God. The pleasure of discovery comes only if and when we speak and share however much or little we have known of God’s presence and power and work in our life.

“LORD, I do not know how to speak.” “I have put my words in your mouth.” Which one will we listen to? Which one will we follow?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope September 27, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell