Redundant Innovation

The wise teacher Solomon write in Ecclesiastes, "There is no new thing under the sun." This is true. Yet, so many young people my age, younger, and older are striving to make a name for themselves by being "innovative for Jesus" so to speak. Why is it that we are so naive to believe that if the wisest man to ever live said that there is nothing to be done that is not going to be a repeat of something else already done we can still find some kind of "new thing" to discuss that will bring the fame. 

The truth is there is no new thing under the sun. So our fight to be innovative should not be to find new things to say, but rather new innovative ways to say them. Therefore, the principles never change, but the methods in which we portray and communicate these principles should be ever evolving with our culture. 

With a culture as fast-paced as ours, a person can easily fall prey to doing the old way because the old way works and neglecting the fact that the old way works for the  old crowd but the old crowd is gone. We must conserve the timeless message of Jesus, on the cross, in our place, for our sins. We must contend for the ancient text. We must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience and proclaim it from the rooftops. Yet, we must never let our message die with our methods. Methods grow old. The message of the gospel never grows old. It is always relevant. Always cutting edge.

In an attempt to stay innovative and create ingenuity, many young men and women have strayed from faithful, foundational truth and began to compromise the message for the sake of contextualization. Rather than standing behind the text and proclaiming it boldly, they have succumbed to culture and appeased the desires of our guilty consciences by either avoiding the cold, hard truth of the gospel all together, or simply denying basic tenants of the truth in the name of tolerance, acceptance, and love. Blatantly denying the gravity and severity of sin and God's hatred towards it and sometimes even meriting that sin and condoning it as acceptable all under the excuse of not wanting to be judgmental or the idea of relative truth.

The harsh reality is that we are slowly but surely abandoning orthodoxy and sound teaching. The fact that doctrine and theology are like curse words to many young Christians today scares me. Why have we become so indignant towards these things. When did we become so arrogant to believe that we have the answers and it just so happens that we are the first to ever know the right ones. As if God was upset with the last 2,000 years and he has just recently become pleased with our righteousness. So much so, that he has given us personal revelation beyond that of scripture. Or we simply use the scripture as a means to get our point across, while never allowing scripture to get its point across to us.

We must realize that there truly is no new thing under the sun. We must preach and proclaim the old truths. The ancient truths. The truths that have withstood time. The gospel must be preached. The more we realize that this message was not given to us to revise and rewrite, but rather to simply deliver, the easier it will be to flee from the temptation to become redundant although we feel innovative.

Silence

Silence is difficult. There is no way around it. In our culture noise is king. From the moment we wake up until the moment we lay our head to rest we are inundated with noise. We wake up in the morning, turn on the radio, television, or itunes usually and get dressed. For the less disciplined crowd, we don't have time to get dressed because we just slept straight through our alarm clock, so we run out of the house with our hair resembling that or a roosters and our breath bad enough to kill a baby chipmunk, praying that maybe a strong cup of joe will cure all of these ailments. All of us hop in the car and head to our destination, jamming our favorite music or talk radio. Once we reach our destination, our day is filled with phone calls, emails, text messages, conversations, lunch meetings, staff meetings, personal meetings, and meetings about meetings. We then presume to hop back in our car, head to our house while jamming our favorite music or talk radio, and consider what the rest of the night holds for us. Depending upon your age, marital status, and overall lifestyle we choose different things. Some may change clothes and head out for the night. Only to head to more places with more noise. Others will choose to stay home, only to play with the kids, or watch the news, or surf the web, or cook dinner, all the while filling their lives and ears with more noise. Everyone usually finds their way to some sort of resting place for the night, and then it starts all over again; and on and on the cycle continues. Some may say, "What's the issue? I can't have fun or take care of my responsibilities?" The answer is of course you can. Yet, if you're not careful you may lose your soul in the process.

One of the most prominent confrontations that Jesus came across during His earthly ministry concerned Sabbath. Religious leaders of the time had become so traditional and self-righteous that they had forgotten that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Yet, I don't think that Jesus was arguing that one should not observe Sabbath, or that it should not be kept holy, as the Commandments of the law guide us, but rather that the Pharisees had missed the point of Sabbath so to speak.

Countless times in the gospels Jesus turns wakes up early in the morning and prays alone while it is still dark. We find Jesus turning away sick people to get alone and sit in silence with the Father. We see Jesus, when the disciples get back from healing the sick and making the blind see, retreating to a desolate place and commanding His disciples to do the same. We find Jesus, the night before he is to be crucified, getting alone in the Garden to pray and listen to the Father and angels. Jesus modeled this for us perfectly and we have lost it.

As human beings we are very prone to neglect the state of our own soul. It is so much easier to listen, watch, play, sing, etc than it is to sit, be still and listen to our soul. See, if we were honest with ourselves, the truth is that we are all wicked and depraved. We all look out for our own well being before others and we all worship God's stuff before we worship Him. This is pride and idolatry. Yet, if we simply never intentionally address the issue, then it will never really come to the surface because we are, as Romans 1 says, always willing to suppress the truth rather than confront our sin.

So what's the rub?

When we don't take time to examine our own soul, we run the risk of losing it piece by piece. Every day the enemy is willing us to neglect the state of ourselves. He is willing us to fill ourselves with anything that will appease us or entertain us until we are lulled into a spiritual coma. The more and more that we consume ourselves with transient fleeting noise and things, the less and less we pay attention to our soul and the less and less sensitive we are to the prodding of God at our hearts. We wonder many times why we don't feel God like we used to. Well, perhaps it is because we are entirely satisfied with ourselves and with His stuff. The truth is we may say we need him, but at the end of the day our lifestyles call us liars. The reason we never like to be alone, and never like to sit in silence, is because we know that is we do our soul would be crying out and reminding us that we truly are liars and that we truly need the mercy and grace of Christ. Not just lip service, but real heart throbbing devotion. Not just good Christian verbage, but real broken adoration.

In the life and ministry of Christ we find silence, solitude, and prayer woven intricately in. In the beginning, the glorious Godhead wove into creation the beautiful idea of Sabbath. God did not need rest. God never needs. To say that God was tired and in need of a break is near blasphemy. He has never needed. He is all consuming, all powerful, all knowing, and self-sufficient. He has blessed us with a great opportunity to take time, enjoy His presence and reflect on His goodness in His mercy to us. We have been given a chance to get sinked up and in rhythm with the God of all things. A chance to be acquainted with our own soul, the depravity thereof, and the grace and infinite mercy of our God.

Silence is difficult. There is no way around it. Yet, for a Christian.... it is not an option.

God's Infinite Glory

How incredible is our God that He would give himself for us in the most brutal death imaginable to save us from the most horrific eternity fathomable. I heard once from a pastor that the fires of hell are a memorial to the greatness and majesty of our God. We, of course, by nature are incredibly repulsed by the thought of hell, as we should be. Yet, this reaction leads us many times to complete neglect that such a place even exists, despite the obvious scriptures that would point to the contrary. Our response to a place like hell should be awe. We should be in awe of a God that is so mighty and so majestic and so infinitely valuable that the fires of hell are the only just response to the belittlement of His name. That brings me to both my knees in fear, and to tears in joy that Christ is a mediator.

With this in mind, how incredibly important is it to preach this to our people? How irreplaceable is this among our conversation? It would be a great tragedy to go about our everyday lives and not consider the majesty and infinite glory of our God! So much of our thinking, talking, considering, pondering, and essentially living is spent on things that are finite and transient. So fleeting  are the conversations of the children of God these days. So minute and impotent are the sermons of the men of God these days. We must fight to preach, proclaim, and herald the Glory of our God from the mountaintops lest we slip slowly but surely into a life of dishonoring Him day after day, by our own lack of reverence. 

May the glory of our God be heard through the words of our pastors, the lives of our congregations, the voices of our children, the books of our theologians, and the breath of His bride together. May we not offend Him, but rather be eager and thankful recipients of His grace, therefore honoring Him in His infinite, self-sustaining glory, forever!

"Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgements and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord and who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen."" 

- Romans 11:33-36