Cold Coffee

About this time last year I started the journey of intentionally trying to acquire a taste for coffee. That journey has led me to a point where I now enjoy/long for a cup of coffee or two throughout the day, but it's also taught me a lesson I'm referring to as "Cold Coffee." This concept came from having several cups of coffee brew from time to time that would end up getting cold because I'd get sidetracked or distracted. By the time I finally got to my coffee, it was too cold to drink, and I've discovered that at least for me it doesn't taste the same reheating it in the microwave

In some situations, it was a good choice to let my coffee get cold as I turned my attention toward something else. For example, our almost one year old often tries to destroy things, and He will also occasionally do what little brothers do and start bothering his 3 year old brother. In both of these situations, I've had to go "be the dad" and as a result, end up coming back to my coffee after it's dramatically cooler than I like. While disappointed my coffee was now cold, I think I obviously made the better choice.

However, there are other scenarios in which I've became frustrated by my cold coffee... Like when I get in my A.D.D. mode and completely forget that I have a cup of coffee waiting on me or when I get wrapped up in something not important like reading a blog about UT football. When I finally remember my coffee, it's too late; it's cold!

Ok. To my real point... As we go through life, we have to learn to recognize when we have allowed or should allow our coffee to get cold. However, in these situations, the coffee is merely symbolic to something much more meaningful.

Some of us may have things in our life that need to be ignored so we can pursue something better. For example, your "cold coffee" may be your addiction to Facebook, that if ignored, would free up more time to pray, read Scripture, or have substantial conversation with the people in your life.

Others of us may need to start taking advantage of our coffee while it's hot and stop letting it get cold. An example of this would be responding intentionally and immediately to the Holy Spirit's promptings regarding someone. Have you ever been in the middle of a task and all of sudden someone comes to your mind? This could very well be because God wants you to reach out to this person and be intentional about spending time with them. The key is to respond when prompted. Drink the coffee when it's hot because that's when it's best. All too often we wait, put it off, ignore it, and if/when we finally get around to touching base with that person, nothing comes of it. I have several personal examples of how this has played out both positively and negatively in my own life.

So, this is the concept of cold coffee... now you apply it to your situation!

No More Church On Sundays

In the church planting world I stepped into about 3 years ago, I, like many others, was determined to "change the way people think about church." Unfortunately though, in my initial efforts, I did like many others and only modified the worship service and atmosphere on Sunday mornings. I was honestly doing very little to help people experience an authentic, biblical church community. The shift for me was to finally realize that people must experience church beyond Sunday.

As Overflow Collective, we're defining AND practicing church through a biblical understanding that church is: Followers of Jesuswho experience authentic, transforming community in rhythm with each other as they're pursuing the mission of Jesus. Because of this, God has led us to form multiple churches who then simply view the Sunday gathering just as that... a gathering of the churches.

(If you want to read more about how we're doing all of this, feel free to follow this link and click on "churches" and "gatherings"... http://overflowcollective.org)

By the way, why does our American church culture exist with the idea that "church" happens on Sunday? This idea of church on Sundays via programs and services has become a cultural norm. As a result, we've actually restricted people from experiencing authentic, BIBLICAL church community and possibly even distorted what it means to truly follow Jesus. Take a look at Acts 2:46-47...

⁴⁶ Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple complex, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with a joyful and humble attitude, ⁴⁷ praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved.

At the same time, we can't ignore all the one anothers mentioned in Scripture. How many American-Christians are regularly experiencing these? Consider what David Platt says in his newest book "Follow Me"...

The Bible portrays the church as a community of Christians who care, love, host, receive, honor, serve, instruct, forgive, motivate, build up, encourage, comfort, pray for, confess sin to, esteem, edify, teach, show kindness to, give to, rejoice with, weep with, hurt with, and restore one another. All of these "one anothers" combined together paint a picture not of people who come to a building filled with customized programs but of people who have decided to lay down their lives to love one another.

If we've communicated church as primarily the service(s) and programs on Sunday (maybe Wednesday too), are we experiencing and practicing all of these on a regular basis? One more quote from the book "Follow Me"...

The New Testament envisions followers of Jesus living alongside one another for the sake of one another. Biblically, a church does not consist of people who simply park in the same parking lot and participate in services and programs alongside one another. Instead, the church is comprised of people who share the life of Christ with each other on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis.

Every follower of Jesus should be living in authentic, accountable, biblical church community. I don't think God excuses the fact that we've taken this clear call to community, which literally bleeds all throughout the New Testament, and turned it into an institutional model where "church" is merely a service or program that's primarily focused around someone's preaching, musical performances, and pre-packaged structure. Much of what we call "church" only fuels our culture of consumerism and is nothing more than our attempt to form a type of Christianity that fits our American preferences. 

As Overflow Collective, we'd love to help you experience a relationship with Jesus in the context of authentic, biblical church community. We're sold out to doing all we can to redefine how people view and experience church. We still have much to learn, but we won't stop learning and adjusting until Jesus takes His church to finally be with Him!

Freak Out Moment With Jesus

Spiders freak me out. Running out of hot water in the shower tends to create an emotional response from me. Seeing a UT sports team lose a game doesn't always go over well. But when it comes to Jesus... I wonder how many of us are like Peter and experience a freak out moment. Maybe what I'm about to say will be your freak out moment with Jesus.

In Mark 8:31-33, Jesus is telling His disciples how He must suffer many things, die, and then rise back to life after three days. Just think about this for a moment. The disciples have been following Jesus on a daily basis. They've seen what He can do. Their lives are consumed by following Jesus. They've even began to experience the power to do some of the things He's been doing. Then, He tells them He must suffer and die.

While we don't know how all of the disciples reacted, we do know how Peter reacted: He freaked out. So much so that Mark says Peter "Took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him." Seriously! Peter is now rebuking Jesus. Peter has actually just went way beyond freak out. He's now correcting the plan and will of God in Jesus' life. Nevertheless, Jesus responds by calling Peter "Satan" and putting him back in his place.

Okay, so we look at Peter and realize he had a freak out moment and overreacted, but let me ask all of us this question... Why did Peter freak out? Maybe in that moment Peter realized that...

• Jesus would no longer be there for him to physically depend on.
• If Jesus had to suffer and die, perhaps he would to
• Everything was about to get very intense and serious

I don't know exactly why Peter freaked out, but immediately after this exchange between Jesus and Peter, Jesus turns to the crowd and says, "If anyone wants to follow Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." I think it's safe to assume Peter knew that in order to truly follow Christ, he'd have to experience to some degree the same thing that Jesus was about to endure.

For us today, I think this freak out moment of realizing that we can't have things our way and still follow Jesus must happen in order for us to experience salvation. Again, I'm just going off what Jesus says. The call to follow Jesus is to surrender to a lifestyle that continually responds to His Lordship; this includes dying to everything we are. Jesus had to die because through His death He was able to bring life for us. The same principal plays out with us... Unless we are willing to truly die to ourselves, we'll never start to live for Him!

This is scary. Surrender is so difficult, yet it's so freeing at the same time. I can understand why Peter had a freak out moment. Any true follower of Jesus must face this same reality check of surrender. What I can't understand is how so many people can profess to follow Jesus but show no evidence of dying to themselves and living under the Lordship of Jesus. Maybe it's because we focus way to much on "avoiding Hell" in our comfortable Christian American culture by simply praying a prayer to "get out of Hell." Regardless of what we've heard taught from the pulpits on Sundays, this conversation between Jesus and Peter reminds us that we can't afford to continue presenting and believing a half-gospel that focuses primarily on life after death instead of dying to self and living surrendered to Christ on a daily basis.

The great debate ends at affection!

There has always been a tension between the thoughts of when, where, and how to share the gospel. Some believers think that in all situations, in all times we should be talking about Christ and sharing the gospel. This thought drives us to programming such as tracts, visitation and evangelistic training that is script driven and word heavy. The other side in it's worry of offending people, believes that it is simply a lifestyle of being kind and courteous that will lead people to an understanding of who Jesus is. It's funny that in the extremes of these two thoughts they both ironically become exactly what they are trying to avoid. In the all talk approach they are trying to be deep and serious yet they come across as shallow and almost laughable because there is no relational or lifestyle foundation to give their claims any credence. How can one talk to a complete stranger with no foundation of respect about the most important and intimate topic they will ever be engaged about.  On the other hand the camp that is all life and no talk try to show love and not offend when all that happens is they watch people without hope walk straight into an eternity apart from Christ, which is the most unloving, offensive thing they can do.   There is not a simple answer to this dilemma and the cop out would be to say it is both ways. That is true but is overly simplistic. The problem is that we let our own personalities and preferences make us lean into one side or the other and once we are there we must defend it biblically and experientially until death. We preach sermons and invent programs that take us down the road of one of these two extremes and then you can't turn back without admitting that you were wrong. This topic came up because of a funeral I am preaching of a gentleman who lived out correctly what the bible presents as the gospel and it's advancement. I was praying for a word that would describe this person and God laid the word "affection" on my heart. After looking it up in my concordance, the passage that I was drawn to was Romans 12:9-21. It is a passage that I have read before but from this day forward I will read it everyday and make it my goal in this life to live it out. The subtitle over it is "Marks of a true Christian" WOW! That alone should make us study this passage deeply. I will end this blog by saying if you can read that passage and it doesn't move you, challenge you, inspire and motivate you then you are not living for Christ. It outlines our attitude toward God, toward other believers and toward lost people. It speaks of the beautiful blend of living the gospel out by caring the way Christ cared and sharing your faith by talking about it. To put it simply, the key to sharing the gospel is to be open about your affection toward God and your affection toward people. Talk without care is worthless and care without talk is worthless. I will not live the rest of my life being worthless! Peace with God and peace with men.