Religion Complicates What God Made Simple

From Pete Wilson:

I continue to be amazed at how it always seems that religion complicates what God has made simple. I was reading in Matthew and was reminded at how often Jesus tried to expose the complexities of religion.

Matthew 23:1-4 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

I grew up in a system of religion that was very similar to this. The “demands” often left me feeling  crushed and wondering if God could ever accept and love me.  I discovered over time that religion and the rules that accompanied it really only produced two things: defeat, if you were honest, and hypocrisy, if you were not.

I spent years in hypocrisy which was fueled by my fear that I wasn’t “good enough.” I’ll be forever grateful that I eventually exchanged that system of religion in for a story of redemption. I’ll be forever grateful for discovering the meaning behind these beautiful words of Jesus…

Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

I love those words “and you will find rest for your souls.” The kind of rest that many of us need cannot be found by taking a nap for we are exhausted at the soul level. We need the kind of rest that only Jesus can bring.

Tired of trying? Need some rest?

Jesus In the Background of Christmas

By Pete Wilson
I read a blog post yesterday from my friend, Ian Cron, (when I grow up I want to be able to write like him).  It convicted me in so many ways and I just had to share a portion of it with you guys. He wrote…

A year ago Rob and I were sitting in a Starbucks in Connecticut, drinking lattes and catching up when he turned his gaze toward the ceiling.

“Do you hear that?” Rob said, his expression darkening.
“Hear what?” I said.
“Listen,” he said, glaring at the white speaker grilles above our heads. “Do you know that song?”

I closed my eyes and strained to hear the music over the hiss and gurgle of milk being steamed for someone’s cappuccino.
I shrugged. “Nope,” I said. “I can’t make it out.”

Rob threw his hands up in the air. “That’s a cut off Miles Davis’ record Kind of Blue,” he said, his voice rising with indignation.

“Alright,” I said. “Apparently this bothers you.”
“It’s MILES DAVIS!” he said, slapping the tabletop with his hand.

I’ve known Rob for 30 years. He’s talented. He’s smart. He’s not afraid to speak his mind.

“When brilliant compositions are used for background music it desensitizes people to their genius,” he continued.

I paused. “You mean familiarity breeds contempt?” I said.

“Precisely. If an amazing piece of music is constantly playing in the background your admiration for it doesn’t increase, it diminishes. It becomes no big deal,” Rob said, imitating someone trying to speak and yawn at the same time.

At the time I thought Rob’s remarks were insightful but overstated, and yet something about them rang true. They stuck with me.

Last week I was sitting in another Starbucks, this one two blocks from my home in Franklin, TN reading Max Picard’s The World of Silence and drinking coffee when I made a connection between what Rob had said and the world I live in.

Is Jesus becoming background music in my life?

No matter where I go someone is talking, singing, arguing, writing a book, blogging, putting on a conference, or making a record about…Jesus.

(Yes, I’m aware I’m guilty of doing this right now.)

Not a day goes by when I don’t see tee shirts with Bible verses printed on them or a tattoo of Jesus’ crucifixion inked on someone’s arm. Billboards with warnings about hell dot the highway. I can’t turn on the radio or television without someone talking at me about Jesus; he’s quoted (or misquoted) on bumper stickers, and recently while standing at a urinal in the men’s room at a restaurant I looked up and discovered a framed print of John 3:16 hanging on the wall in front of me. Some people don’t do subtle.

If Rob is right my experience of constant exposure to all things Jesus isn’t increasing my admiration or devotion for him, it’s diminishing it.

Read the entire post HERE

What a timely post. We’re getting ready to enter a season called Christmas that is really all about Jesus, yet it’s so easy for him to quickly become a sort of ambient background music.

I don’t know about you, but I refuse to allow the commercialization of Christmas, along with my self centered, ego-driven, materialistic desires to push Jesus from his rightful place.

So how do I combat this? It takes a lot of focused intentionality but let me give you one practical example.

Over the next four weeks you’re probably going to see hundreds and hundreds of nativity scenes.

One of my Christmas traditions is every time I see a nativity scene (as biblically incorrect as it might be) is to pause and say, “Wow! That really happened. That REALLY happened. God actually stepped into human history and gave us what we really needed, a Savior who bathed us in his life changing, soul shaping grace.”

It’s easy to allow all of these nativity scenes to get lumped into the same category as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy… but it was an actual event that changed everything!

How are you going to keep Jesus from becoming background noise this Christmas?

It’s A Gift, Not Punishment

By Pete Wilson

I think one of the first steps in embracing the Sabbath is you’ve got to get it out of the category of I “have” to do this and starting thinking about it as I “get” to do this.

It’s funny, but growing up I always thought the “Sabbath” was some legalistic rule that only Jews still followed. In fact, the neighborhood that I grew up in as a kid had a pretty high population of Orthodox Jews living there. I can remember on Saturday morning watching families walking to church and feeling sorry for them because they couldn’t drive their car. I had heard that they couldn’t even watch TV on the Sabbath. Sounded like a perpetual weekly grounding to me!

In my mind Sabbath was some sort of punishment.

In reality, the fourth commandment, to take a Sabbath, a day each week and not do any work was a gift from God to His people. In Egypt, the Israelites were forced to work every day without a break being treated as objects to be exploited, not people. Many people think part of the reason the Sabbath was commanded was to remind them that they aren’t in Egypt anymore, that their value doesn’t come from how much work they can produce.

Their significance comes from the God who rescued them, the God who loves them.

I think once again we need to be reminded of this truth. So many of us are virtual slaves to our culture mistakenly thinking our value is in what we can produce. So we work harder and harder. Sleep less and less. And we, in fact, produce a crazy amount of stuff, but the irony is this “full” lifestyle leaves us feeling quite empty.

Why?

Because God cares more about who you’re becoming than what you’re accomplishing.

Impatience Is An Enemy To Spiritual Growth

By Pete Wilson

I think all too often in Christian circles we view spiritual transformation as something that should always be charted up and to the right. While I wish this was true, the reality is it isn’t, is it?

I love to study the life of the apostle Peter. I’ve got way too much in common with that dude.

Matthew 16-23: “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

What a huge spiritual victory for Peter. You’ve been there.

You walked away from a certain temptation.
You loved someone you thought was unlovable.
You forgave someone you thought was unforgivable.
You had a moment of incredible generosity.

But just a few verses later we read…

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

 Listen, I don’t care where you are on your spiritual journey, when Jesus calls you “Satan” it’s a major set back. No matter how you look at it that’s a bad day.

Peter is a great reminder to me that this journey of having Christ formed in me is not an overnight deal. You can’t microwave spiritual formation.

And yet “impatience” which might be the most accepted sin in our culture today drives us to constantly want to speed up the process.

Can I encourage you today to slow down. Don’t beat yourself up if you’ve met recent spiritual failure or you just feel stuck. There are seasons to this spiritual growth process.

Today’s a new day full of new opportunities to connect to God’s grace in new ways.

Have you ever felt like Peter, up and down in your spiritual growth?

Do You Have a System to Earn God's Love?

By Pete Wilson

One of the things I’ve encountered while traveling and speaking throughout Mexico this week has been a deeply ingrained religion in the minds of many of the people. Now this is nothing new. The US has the exact same thing, we just hide it under cooler language.

The religious pattern I’ve picked up in many conversations with my new Mexican friends is this idea that somehow God withholds His love and you must submit to the “system” to earn that love.

By the thousands and thousands they buy into this idea because there are two things that are true, not only for them but for you:

1) We crave love.
 
2) We’re quite sure that all love has stipulations and conditions.
Ultimately this is why religion can so magnificently manipulate people, right? However, listen to how Romans 3 contradicts this idea.

Romans 3:22-26

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.  For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.  Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

This is huge because my new friends in Mexico have the same dilemma I do. As long as my heart is beating, I CRAVE love.

It’s true. We’ll do almost anything to belong to someone or to belong to something including, but certainly not limited to, committing to a tired old list of legalistic rules and laws.

I know you guys know this, but just pause to think about the implications of Romans 3.

What if today I walked in the truth that God is not in fact waiting for us to earn his love, but that he is passionately pursing us with His Love.

So how about you?

Do you think there can be such a thing as unconditional love? And if so, why do we always revert back to trying to earn God’s love?

I Am Not A Child Of Today

Pete Wilson quotes G. Campbell Morgan:

“You are to remember with the passion burning within you, that you are not the child of today, you are not of the earth, you are more than dust; you are the child of tomorrow, you are of the eternities, you are the offspring of Deity.

The measurements of your lives cannot be circumscribed by the point where blue sky kisses green earth. All the fact of your life cannot be encompassed in the one small sphere upon which you live. You belong to the infinite. If you make your fortune on the earth,– poor, sorry, silly soul,– you have made a fortune and stored it, in a place where you cannot hold it.

Make your fortune, but store it where it will greet you in the dawning of the new morning…. We cannot lay up our treasure on earth, it is not characteristic of those in His Kingdom. It was characteristic of the Pharisees. In a sense He was saying to them, “This is just another indication that you are not in My Kingdom no matter what you claim. People in My Kingdom don’t lay up treasure on earth.”

Where are you storing up treasure?

My Personal List of Sins (That Others Commit)

By Pete Wilson -- pastor at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN.

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10″Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee (religious Leader) and the other a tax collector (scum of the earth). 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.

This is a classic look at religion which is all about comparing and condemning.

Everyone creates a list just like this religious leader did. It’s a list of the sins you think are most appalling to God. And do you know what sins you think are most appalling to God? The ones you don’t struggle with, right?

This is what religious institutions have done for centuries. A bunch of power hungry religious leaders get in a room and figure out which group of sins they are least likely to struggle with and then they declare that “list” as the posterboard sins their denomination is going to boycott, picket and vote against.

Anne Lamott says, …

“You can tell you have made God in your image when it turns out He hates all the same people you do.”

Ever struggle with this “list”?

Final 2%

By Pete Wilson -- Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN.

I'm convinced that the majority of us live about 98% accountable. The problem with being 98% accountable is that it’s about as useless as not being accountable at all.

It might even be more dangerous.

You see, you go to your small group.
You meet with your accountability partner.
You even intentionally confess just enough to seem open and honest.

But you guard and conceal the 2% that is slowly gaining momentum in the dark.

Proverbs 28:13 says,

People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy.

Confess?

Even the 2%?

Especially the 2%.

Today I’m praying you have at least one relationship where you can be fully known and fully loved for it’s in that moment you find yourself coming fully alive.

How are you doing with the final 2%?

A God Who Specializes In Resurrections

By Pete Wilson -- Cross Point Church -Nashville

I think there is a natural tendency for us to want to skip ahead to Easter.

Easter is celebratory.

Easter is bright.

Easter is upbeat.

Nobody would argue Easter Sunday is a day of celebration. We celebrate that Jesus conquered death so we can have life. It doesn’t get any better than Easter Sunday, the third day.

But we don’t hear a lot about day one and two? After the crucifixion on day one and leading into day two it almost seems as if nothing is happening. It’s a period of questioning, doubting, wondering, and definitely waiting. It’s a season of helplessness and hopelessness.

And honestly, this is where some of you are right now. You’re in a season where you’ve begun to wonder if God is asleep at the wheel or simply powerless to do anything about your problems.

Is it possible, though, that this season is actually a time of preparation? Is it possible God’s getting ready to do his best work in you?

Because that’s exactly what was happening during this time between the crucifixion and the resurrection. While it appeared that nothing was happening we know, in fact, that God was engineering a resurrection.

You may currently be in the midst of a horrible, out-of-control situation. You feel as if God is not there, that there’s nothing that can be done.

But here is the message of the gospel for you while you’re stuck in your seemingly helpless, hopeless, season of waiting: God does his best work in hopeless situations.

We worship a God who specializes in resurrections. He specializes in hopeless situations. After all, he conquered death—the ultimate hopeless situation—so you could have life.

It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming.

Not what I wish were in me....

Pete Wilson on his blog:

I’m finishing up John Ortbergs latest book The Me I Want to Be and he’s got a great chapter on prayer. He says this,

When I pray, I end up praying about things I think I should be concerned about: missionaries, world peace and global warming. But my mind keeps wandering toward stuff I am genuinely concerned about. The way to let my talking flow into praying is this: I must pray what is in me, not what I wish were in me.

I love that. I might have discovered a prayer breakthrough.

Deceptively Good

Is Pete Wilson right in this post? Are "good things" taking us away from God? The beach, the lake, little league, dance recitals, etc?

We’re in a series at Cross Point entitled “Seriously” where we’re looking at some of the tough teachings of Jesus. This past Sunday (you can watch the message HERE) we talked about Luke 14 where Jesus says…

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

Now clearly Jesus is not condoning hating those closest to you. He’s purposefully using hyperbole to help us understand that we must love everything else less. Following Him must be our number one priority. We can’t allow good things (even family) to become ultimate things.

As I meditated on this passage last week I felt God impressing this on me:

Your greatest temptation will not be to chase after what is ridiculously evil, but what is deceptively good.

I have a tendency to allow good things (money, success, family, ministry, etc.) to become ultimate things.

How about you. Where are you tempted to take something that is good and make it ultimate?