Building Strong Churches with Weak Bricks

In Mexico one year, my friend, Phil, and I were cutting cement blocks for the church we were helping to build. It was hot. We ached all over from lugging heavy bricks and buckets and tools. We were absolutely filthy from the cement "sawdust" that swirled around us and stuck to our sweaty clothes and bodies, making us look a bit like living statues. Ahh, good times.

Anyway, most bricks cut just fine. But, there were some that, before we even cut them, we could tell that they were apt to just crumble. In fact, there were some we would pick up with one hand, and the brick would fall apart under its own weight.

But, we used every brick. Each was a valuable commodity, and there was no room for waste on the job site. The ones we could tell were weak we cut gently and mortared into the walls along with the stronger bricks. Even, the bricks that fell apart were still useful, either by using the broken pieces as filler or using the larger chunks for odd sections of walls (around pipes, doorways, windows, etc.).

At one point, I asked Phil, "So, can you preach a lesson on 'Building Strong Churches with Weak Bricks'?"

I could tell it got his mental wheels turning. I never heard the sermon, if he did it. I assume it would have been along the lines of the bricks representing Christians, and God is the mortar that gives us stability, purpose, strength, community, form, etc. Even though some bricks are weak, they find their strength and purpose when they are mortared into a wall of other bricks, and the whole being stronger than the weakest brick (as opposed to the "weakest link" comparison), etc. The symbolism is pretty clear, and could probably be expanded quite a bit.

I know I'm a weak brick. So, it's reassuring that, as a weak brick, that I have a purpose that can be realized when I am integrated with my brothers and sisters and connected to them by the love of God.

What Does God Need With a Star Ship?

In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the star ship Enterprise traveled to a place that was supposedly Heaven. There, they met a being who claimed to be God. This “God” demanded that the landing party give him the star ship Enterprise so that he could leave that place. (The being didn't explain why he would want to leave Heaven, but oh well.) Kirk politely challenged “God” by asking, “What does God need with a star ship?” Well, for that, he earned himself a jolt of lightning to the chest which he, of course, survived. Spock seconded the question and was also zapped with lightning from “God.”

The scene was intended to out this entity as being something other than God. After all, God wouldn't need a spaceship to escape from Heaven. But, it does bring up some interesting questions and ideas when it comes to rendering unto God.

If we can ask, “What does God need with a star ship?” couldn't we also ask, “What does God need with cash?” (Can we ask that without fearing a jolt of lightning?) We often include, “…as we give back to God a portion of what He has given to us,” in our offering prayers. So, clearly, our intended recipient of these funds…is God. As such, we might ask during the collection of the offering what God needs with money, and the obvious answer is that he does not need our money.

The Old Testament folks may have asked, “What does God need with an ox?” “What does God need with a burning goat?” “What does God need with a sheaf of wheat?” “What does God need with Abraham’s son Isaac killed on an altar?”

A broader perspective is required, I think. We can’t just “follow the money” in this case. Instead, we must follow the heart. Though the church receives our cash, God receives his portion, too. He receives our obedience; our faith and trust; and, our love for the church and for others.

Cain learned that an improper offering garnered no respect or favor from God. So, if God has no use for burned-up goats and wheat and oxen, if he has no need for cash or star ships, but doesn't respect us if we don’t offer up these things, then the conclusion must be that God simply wants us to give an offering that He (not we) finds acceptable. The thing we offer to God is useless to God per se, and yet it is very significant.

So, what does God want from us? What do you get for the the guy who has everything?

What God wants from us is our obedience, our faith and our love, and the offering of our possessions demonstrates that obedience, faith and love for God and for his church. We can't demonstrate those attributes of our faith with paltry offerings, or with offerings of our "budget leftovers."

So, maybe God does need a star ship. He doesn't need it for transportation purposes, but for demonstration purposes. He needs it as a demonstration of our obedience, faith and love. (If God were born on Earth, he would have been born in Missouri...the "Show-me" state, where Willard Vandiver declared, "...frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.") And, to come full-circle, the catchy phrase, "...as we give back to God a portion of what he has given us," is also probably very apropos. God has demonstrated his faithfulness and love for us immeasurably. When we give back to Him in obedience, faith and love, it is truly a portion of what he has given us.

Ichthys

I always wanted to put one of those Christian fish symbols (ichthys) on my car. But, I wanted to put it on my dashboard where I would see it. I figured it would be more useful as a reminder to me of who I am when I'm cut off in traffic by a maniac than as a sign announcing to the drivers behind me, "Christian on Board."  After all, shouldn't my driving habits tell people around me that I'm a Christian without them having to look for a little plastic fish on my bumper?

So, I'm going to study on (and try to put into practice) this idea of demonstrating my relationship with God to those around me, not because they deserve it, but because I don't either.

DIY and Tying the Temptation to the Exodus

Aaron Walling preached a sermon in March 2012 at Cinco Ranch Church of Christ. The lesson talked about Americans' DIY nature, and our desire to fix things ourselves and to secure our futures in our accumulated wealth rather than relying the daily sustenance by faith through God's grace.

These are my thoughts on the lesson.

DIY

We Americans have a DIY nature that can be in conflict with our reliance on God's creative, life-giving word. We try to be strong and solve our own problems like stress and sin; relying on someone else is a sign of weakness, after all, right?

But, God chooses the weakest and meekest to exhibit His strength (Gideon's army, David v. Goliath, even fish & loaves). By doing so, He makes plain the fact that we aren't doing it ourselves, but that He is doing these things through us.

Tying the temptation to the exodus

We could really go from the stones-to-bread temptation to the manna from heaven and then to the Lord's Prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread" ties back to the manna, too, I think. God gave the Israelites one day's rations every day. He did not allow them to stockpile any of it. In this way, He forced them to rely solely on Him. They couldn't ever say, "I don't need God tomorrow. I saved up enough manna to carry me through a couple of days." In this and many other ways, God was training them--forcing them--to go to Him for everything every day.

Now, when we jump to the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says that our prayer should include, "Give us this day our daily bread." I think it means more than, "God, please give me what I need every day." I think it could mean more: "God, don't give me more than I need today because I don't want to be tempted to depend on my surplus tomorrow. I want to depend only on you every day, and having stores of provisions may 'lead me into temptation'."

If that's the case, it makes looking at accumulated wealth as something that could be a risk rather than necessarily a blessing. Do we count on our bank accounts? Do we rely on our retirement plans? Do we put our trust in our pensions? Is our faith in our 401K? Is our assurance found in our insurance?

I read that owning things is okay, as long as you're not owned by them. You can accumulate wealth as long is your focus isn't on the wealth, but on God. Abraham proved to God that what he loved the most, even more than his own dear son, was God. Therefore, he was blessed by God and ultimately owned many things, but was not owned by those things. They didn't have control of him.

So, this was a really good look at Faith and the Word of God.

Inscrutably Blessed

I had occasion a while back to consider the possible intersection of three disjointed stories. Two of the stories are true while the other is a familiar internet parable.

The first story is true, and it happened 4 or 5 years ago.

I left work for lunch one day to run errands and stopped in at Quizno’s for a sandwich. At the table in front of me were a man and his two sons, one high school aged and the other in college. The older son had his left leg in a rather impressive looking contraption. Steel bars, elastic straps and metal pins penetrating the skin held his leg in a semi-extended position resting on a chair in the aisle.

I sat and watched the family. They interacted like most father/son/son families—sometimes sometimes talking about school or sports, but mostly concentrating on eating. A little while later, two men entered the restaurant, one pushing the other in a wheelchair. The man in the wheelchair wore a baseball cap, khakis and a plaid button down. He recognized the family in front of me, and his friend pushed him to their table, then went and stood in line to order. By their conversation, I could tell they were more like acquaintances than close friends. The man in the wheelchair talked mostly to the older son, and they spoke at length about the football game in which the boy received his knee injury. The man in the wheelchair had seen the game on TV, and they talked about play after play in that game until they eventually talked about the play that caused the knee injury. "When you went down, I knew you were hurt," he said. They talked about the surgeries that ensued and the rehab.

That’s when the man smiled and said, "But, at least yours will heal." At that, still smiling, he raised his ball cap off of his head and showed them a large depression in his skull. There was a football-shaped crater in the man's head probably 6 inches across, and it was clear that a portion of the man's skull and brain were just missing.

He put his cap back on, still smiling, and said, "Just one of God's inscrutable blessings."
I thought, “Are you kidding? A blessing? A big chunk of your head is missing, and you call that a blessing? Have you lost your mind?”

Then, I remembered: He called it an inscrutable blessing, and that’s when I realized…I needed a dictionary.

It turns out that inscrutable means that something is unfathomable, incomprehensible, inexplicable or enigmatic. It’s something that can’t be explained.

So, this man who has suffered a traumatic head injury that apparently left him wheelchair bound sees the crater in his head as a blessing, though he can’t explain why it’s a blessing. He was able to take what most people would call a debilitating tragedy and instead, see it as a blessing, and then actually praise God for it where most might blame God for it. It was truly awesome to witness such faith. And, it must be faith because he called it inscrutable. Basically, he knew it was a blessing from God, but he didn't fully understand it. He had to accept without evidence that this was a blessing from God.

Could I have enough faith to say, "God, thank you for my cranial crater that's left me wheelchair bound?" Could I see the loss of a limb or even a job as a blessing? To be honest, I'd rather not have to find out. I prefer my blessings to be of the apparent or obvious variety.

Now, here is the second disjointed story.

I sometimes tell my daughter, Sarah, to 'freeze' for no apparent reason. When I yell 'freeze' or 'stop', she's expected to stop dead in her tracks and not move. We might be walking down the sidewalk or a running on the playground, and I'll call for her to freeze. Sometimes she stops; sometimes she takes a couple of extra steps. But, hey, she's a kid.

My wife asked me once why I do that, and I told her, "I'm training her. Right now, it's a game to her. I say 'freeze' and she freezes. But, if there is ever a reason she needs to stop on a dime—either a car is racing toward her or a piano is falling from the sky or there's a snake in her path or whatever—I need to know that she will do what I say reflexively."

Now, hold that thought. On to the third story.

There was a story passed around the internet about a man who decided to give himself completely to God and become His servant. God showed him a large boulder in the road and told him to push it. The man pushed and pushed all day, but it didn't move an inch. The next day, he pushed more and still the boulder didn't move. He continued pushing for many months, and still the boulder didn't budge. God appeared to him again, and the man fell on his face saying, "I've failed you, Lord. You asked me to push this boulder, and I've failed to move it even an inch."

The Lord replied, "I asked you to push the boulder. I didn't ask you to move it." The man looked up, and the Lord continued, "When you came to me you were weak, thin and pale. You weren’t strong enough to do the work I have for you. Now, look at yourself. Your arms are strong, your back is powerful, and your legs are like oak trees. Your skin is tanned against the sun. By faith, you have become capable to do my work. NOW, you are ready to serve Me."


So, putting all this together, my daughter is in training—she plays a silly game with me without apparent purpose so I'll know she'll be ready if the day comes when 'freeze' is important. The man in the parable was in training—doing a task that was without apparent purpose so that when the time came, he would be ready to serve the Lord. I saw that man in the wheelchair and I think he must have been in training a long time, because his faith was so strong that, when the time came, he believed by faith that God's hand was woven into his tragedy/blessing, though he could not explain it.

So now, I’m working through the mental gyrations to a new perspective of faith. I used to see it as a choice. I choose to believe in God, and that all good things come from him. Now, I’m starting to think that faith is more like a muscle that needs to be exercised to be strengthened.

Maybe God throws things at us that we first view as a curse/tragedy (miscarriage, congenital hearing loss, diabetes, etc.). And at first, we bemoan the event; we see it as a curse. We think, how could God do this? It reminds me of the Israelites escaping from Egypt into the desert and complaining to Moses, “Why have you led us into the desert to die? We could have stayed in Egypt and died there, and it would’ve been a lot less trouble.”

Our first instinct is to take a tragedy and see the curse in it. But, maybe the more we see the blessings in our tragedies, the more we are able to strengthen our faithius maximus muscle so that one day, by faith alone, we see (or maybe seek) the blessings in everything.

Whether it's a screaming child that we can't calm down, a traumatic head injury, the loss of a loved one, a promotion, winning the lottery, sunsets or thunderstorms, if we see through the veil of the apparent curse and have faith that it’s part of God’s plan, then maybe we can look at our own personal tragedies, smile and say, "Just one of God's inscrutable blessings."

P U S H

A man was sleeping at night in his cabin when suddenly his room filled with light, and God appeared. The Lord told the man he had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of his cabin.

The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might. So, this the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock, pushing with all of his might. Each night the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain.

Since the man was showing discouragement, the Adversary (Satan) decided to enter the picture by placing thoughts into the weary mind: "You have been pushing against that rock for a long time, and it hasn't moved." Thus, he gave the man the impression that the task was impossible and that he was a failure. These thoughts discourage0d and disheartened the man. Satan said, "Why kill yourself over this? Just put in your time, giving just the minimum effort; and that will be good enough." That's what the weary man planned to do, but decided to make it a matter of prayer and to take his troubled thoughts to the Lord.

"Lord," he said, "I have labored long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which you have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even budged that rock by half a millimeter. What is wrong? Why am I failing?"

The Lord responded compassionately, "My friend, when I asked you to serve Me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all of your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. Your task was to push. And now you come to Me with your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But, is that really so? Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled, your back sinewy and brown; your hands are callused from constant pressure, your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much, and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have.

"True, you haven't moved the rock. But your calling was to be obedient and to push and to exercise your faith and trust in My wisdom. That you have done. Now I, my friend, will move the rock."


At times, when we hear a word from God, we tend to use our own intellect to decipher what He wants, when actually what God wants is just a simple obedience and faith in Him. By all means, exercise the faith that moves mountains, but know that it is still God who moves mountains.

When everything seems to go wrong .. just P. U. S. H.!
When the job gets you down .. just P. U. S. H.!
When people don't react the way you think they should .. just P. U. S. H
When your money is "gone" and the bills are due.. just P. U. S. H!
When people just don't understand you ... just P. U. S. H.

P = Pray U = Until S = Something H = Happens

Chicken Necks

My dad made great barbecued chicken. On so many Sundays, Mom would bring home a chicken from the grocery store and quarter it. She would make the barbecue sauce, and from there, my dad took over.

He would pull out the barbecue pit, which was once a 55-gallon drum, and brush down the grill. Then, he would pour briquettes into the barbecue pit, soak them in lighter fluid and light them. Once the flames died down and the coals turned white, he went to work slathering the barbecue sauce on the chicken, flipping the pieces at just the right time, and cooking it to perfection.

When everything was ready, we would sit at the table, say the blessing and start passing food. Dad would always call dibs on the chicken neck and back. He said those were his favorite pieces, which was fine for us since we liked drumsticks, thighs, breasts and wings. In fact, we thought Dad was a little strange for liking those parts, but we also knew he was "very old," and that, growing up in the depression, he must have acquired a taste for the stringy, less-than-succulent meat. After all, his tastes were quite strange for many foods.

He also seemed to have a penchant for the flavor of burnt foods. When Mom overcooked a few of the biscuits, for instance, those are the ones he would grab. He said he liked them because "when you eat them, they'll make your hair black." Dad already had black hair, so I couldn't understand why the biscuits were necessary. On the other hand, though he ate black bottom biscuits routinely, his hair was becoming a lighter shade of black each year. I'm sure that if we would have challenged him with, "Gee, Dad. Your hair is turning gray no matter how many black bottom biscuits you eat," he would reply, "Just imagine how gray I'd be if I weren't eating those biscuits."

So, growing up in the depression altered my dad's taste in a very convenient way. What we didn't like, he seemed to love.

We were a rural family, and didn't have a lot of money, so eating out was a rare treat. I remember going to KFC one time. I dreaded it. I fully expected my dad to order for himself, "2 chicken necks, a back, and do you have any burnt biscuits? To drink, I'll just have water, so long as it's rust colored."

When he got to the counter, to my surprise, he ordered a breast! "My dad eats white meat?" I just didn't get it. Then I realized, KFC doesn't sell necks and backs. He was just settling for what was on the menu. He suffered through his big, juicy, meaty pieces of chicken without complaining once.

One of the many blessings I've received since being married is the insight I've gained into my father's mind. He loved to joke and laugh, and he wore his frustrations on his sleeve. Yet, he kept a lot inside, too. What a marvelous gift he gave me in chicken necks.

I know now that dad didn't really like chicken necks or backs or black bottom biscuits. He preferred exactly what he ordered at KFC - juicy white meat, fluffy biscuits and a soda. These are the things he sacrificed so that his family could have the best parts of the chicken, the un-burnt biscuits, and the last bit of soda out of the bottle.

At first, I felt sorry for him having to suffer through stringy bits of meat and pungent biscuits. How was he able to tolerate picking little bits of dry meat off of tiny bones knowing that he was the one who made the money that bought the chicken in the first place. How sad that he quietly nibbled the necks, backs and blackened biscuits without complaining. What a sacrifice he made for his family.

Then I realized something about my dad - something I could only understand once I got married and became a dad myself. Necks and backs were not his favorite parts of the chicken. They were his least favorite. Burnt biscuits tasted as bad to him as they do to anyone. But, as he sat at the head of the table, nibbling the stringy neck and back meat, he watched my older brothers enjoying thighs, my mom eating a breast, me eating drumsticks and my younger brother eating wings. How satisfying must that have been for him seeing his family enjoying their meals. Necks & backs must have been ambrosia to him. How sweet must those black bottom biscuits have been to him knowing his family was enjoying the best parts of the meal. If he had taken a breast and left the neck for one of us, he would have gagged on it.

Almost two decades after my dad's passing, he's still teaching me life lessons. I've always thought of sacrifice as having to tolerate the least, the worst, and the dregs so that others could enjoy the first, the most, and the best. It always had a negative connotation to me. Now, I understand that sacrifice is sweet, sacrifice is succulent, sacrifice is satisfying. Sacrifice is giving the best of what you have to the ones you love the most.

This realization makes me wonder about God's sacrifice of His own Son. Surely, He gave His best to the ones He loves the most. My dad sacrificed thighs and breasts by feasting on necks and black-bottom biscuits. Surely, he delighted in every bite knowing his family was benefiting from his sacrifice. How did God feel as He watched His Son being tortured, pierced and humiliated? Was it agony to see His Son killed by the people for whom He was being sacrificed, or was it ecstasy to Him? Was God's sacrifice of His only Son as sweet to Him as chicken necks were to my dad?

It was to me.