Chris Howlett

Time

“Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters.” – Margaret Peters  

Time works wonders for us.  With the passage of times comes perspective and clarity.  We grow older and hopefully wiser.  However, there can be a cruel twist with time. 

Some of us only discover what is truly important with the passage of time, and, unfortunately, it  can be too late to do anything meaningful about it.  How many people discover that what they’ve worked so long and hard for was not worth the effort, while things they neglected were what really mattered?

So, time can work wonders, but it can also rob us of what is most precious: time.  Time to do what’s important.  Time to spend with people we love.  Time to live our God-given calling.  Time to make a real difference in a hurting world.

Paul instructs us: "Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:15-16 NRSV).

Don’t waste time on less-than-important tasks.  Make time for your family, your faith, your purpose.

 

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Little Christs

“The church exists for nothing else but to draw men unto Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.” – C.S. Lewis

Little Christs. This is what the Church is supposed to be producing. Persons who emulate Christ. People who ask “What would Jesus do?” and then actually go out and do it. The question is: Is this what churches are doing? 

Christian author, Bill Hull, writes that “People cannot be formed in Christ in a culture that is dominated by a consumer mentality.” Churches who are mostly concerned with multiplying ministries to meet people’s needs, adopting a culturally driven marketing model of attracting people with various “Christian” goods and services, primarily seeing themselves in competition with other churches, find it very difficult, indeed, to produce little Christs. The Church is called to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Our competition is not other churches, but Satan.

In the world, your principal identity is consumer. You are trained, encouraged, and educated to take up your place in the professional world so that you can be a good consumer. This is who you are. The Church offers a completely different identity, your true identity: child of God. Person, created in the image of God, of infinite value and eternal worth. You are not your net worth. You are not your retirement savings. You are not your purchasing power. You are more, higher, and greater.

The unbelievable lie so many believe, is that consumption leads to happiness. Then why is there always a need to consume more? Why don’t the things we consume satisfy? We get the new deal home and the next thing we know, we just have to have the next new thing.

Only in Christ can people discover their own true value, only in Christ can we know our own amazing selves and experience lasting meaning and fulfillment. I hope more churches jump off the consumer bandwagon and onto the disciple-making path, and see more and more little Christs make an eternal difference in our dying world.

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We're On A Mission From God

“Mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God.” – David Bosch

I would take this quote one step further: Mission is not merely an attribute of God, one among many things that God is… God is holy, God is omnipotent, God is omniscient… but that mission is God’s heart, God’s core, God’s constant motivation. Mission is a function of the love of God. God is love. Love is what and who God is. He is One who extends outside of himself to offer communion with his creatures. God is relationship. Mission is the outward expression of the love that exists within the community of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God is a missionary God. God the Father sends Himself. God the Father sends the Son. God the Father and God the Son send the Church in the Power and Presence of God the Holy Spirit. God is a sending God.

So, if God is a sending, missionary God, then we are a sent, missionary people. We are a people on the move. We are a people with an outward focus. We are not merely a people with a mission, we are the mission, God’s mission.

At its heart, our mission is communal, is relational, and is loving. We are extending the communion God has offered us to all people. Just think about it. Every single person you see today. Every one! Every person is created in the image of God and for communion with God. Period. This is the highest calling, to be in relationship with God. Jesus Christ came to make that relationship possible. There is no person you will see today on whom God has given up. No matter who they are or what they are about, God’s desire for them is a life of fullness, of wholeness, and of peace. God’s heart for them, and for you, is a life of blessing. He has gone on an all-out mission to help them turn to him and experience his love.

So, if we are connected to God, if we are in communion with God, then we are a part of this mission of making his love known to and experienced by all. What are we doing about it?

Dependence Day

“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded not by religionists, but  by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.” – Patrick Henry

In 1776 the founders of our nation signed a “Declaration of Independence.” The independence we then proclaimed was independence from Britain.  At the same time and in the same document, we declared our Dependence on our Creator for the basic human rights and dignities of which we had been deprived the King and Parliament of Britain.  It’s amazing that today we are very happy to continue to declare our Independence without acknowledging, as a nation, our Dependence on our Creator.

We can acknowledge it or we can deny it, but we can’t alter reality.  We are dependent on God for our life our liberty and our happiness.  Without God there is no life, liberty, or happiness… there is the pursuit of happiness without God, that happens everywhere, every day, but it is never found without God.

I hope your Independence Day was enjoyable.  Today, it’s back to work!  But go about your work and your life recalling and acknowledging your Dependence on our Gracious God.

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