February 23, 2012

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Christian Discipleship: Lent Is A Time To Receive

February 17, 2012 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

Christians think of Lent as a time of giving up something for Jesus. But God intends this to be a time for us to receive from his Son.

On that fateful Friday two thousand years ago, Jesus had been arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane and tried before the Sanhedrin, the high court of the Jews. They spit in his face, struck him, mocked and taunted him (Mt. 26:67-68). While the high priest and the officials were subjecting the Savior of the world to humiliation and physical abuse, Simon Peter was warming himself by the fire in the courtyard along with other servants of the high priest. This Simon Peter was the same disciple who not long ago had pledged unwavering loyalty to the point of death (Lk 22:33).

We approach Lent with the same kind of self-confidence: we give up sweets, ice cream, football, TV. video gaming, or pornography. This kind of self-denial arrests our appetites for excesses for a short time, only for them to re-surface after Easter with roaring vigor. And so each Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday come and go without any fundamental transformation. We “spend money on what is not bread, and [our] labor on what does not satisfy” (Isaiah 55:2). When the weather is right, we gather around the fire to warm ourselves, with more sweets, ice cream, football, TV, video gaming, or pornography.

On each Ash Wednesday, the priest in the liturgical churches uses the ashes, made by burning the palm branches of the previous year, to make the sign of the cross on the foreheads of the believers. This sign is a call to fasting, repentance, and mourning; it is also a symbol that reminds us we are dust and to dust we shall return (Gen 3:19).

Giving up something is an expression of fasting, but to divorce fasting from mourning is to miss the first Beatitude in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 5:3) Perhaps the place to begin isn’t what creature comforts, addictive appetites, or innocuous idolatries we choose to abstain from for a limited period of time. Perhaps the place to begin is to take to heart our spiritual bankruptcy, our propensity to love the little idols more than we love God, and our unbelief about the transformative power of God’s Spirit. When we begin with this, our hands will be pried open to receive what God has to give us. We will no longer approach God as the resourceful givers who bring the gift of abstinence. Instead we will approach him as beggars. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Mt. 5:4)

This above article will be part of a Lent series published on the Mustard Seed Associates blogsite of Godspace.

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Christian Discipleship: What Does Adoring God Mean?

February 10, 2012 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

To many Christians praying is an exercise of calling out to God the items on our laundry list. Christian leaders tried to teach Christ followers to pray by using the format ACTS.

A Adoration
C Confession
T Thanksgiving
S Supplication

Of these four items, Christians seem to struggle the most with adoration. Since most of us don’t really know what this is, we tend to begin to think God for the things that he has done for us, particularly for the times when he answered our prayers according to our will.

Adoration is not equivalent to Thanksgiving. While Thanksgiving is being grateful to God for what he has done for us, adoration is affirming and loving God for who he is. Recently, one of our pastors explained it like this, “God! You are ABC! And you are XYZ! I really like it!”

This sounds a bit like buttering up God. In fact it is our duty to butter him up because God is so much greater than we are. When we truly adore God for who he is, and not just for the things that he has done in our favor, our eyes are open to take in his greatness in his glory and at the same time we wake up to our own smallness.

When Isaiah saw the Lord in the temple, he immediately saw his own sinfulness and smallness. He said, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6). With that corrected perception of his own status and size before God, he also had a sense of being commissioned by this great God. When God asked, “Who will go?” Isaiah responded, “Here I am. Send me!”

How do you exercise “adoration” in your prayer life? How do you keep from turning adoration into Thanksgiving? What did you learn when you were able to the door God for who he is, and not for what he has done for you?

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Christian Discipleship: Why Small Group?

February 3, 2012 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

The Christian life is more than just attending religious events and activities. The Bible stresses how we must all grow up in Christ, but we cannot do this without being in relationship with one another.

Rick Warren, the founding pastor of the Saddleback Community Church, has been very instrumental in growing the importance of small groups among Christian communities in America. Warren is quoted, “The importance of helping members develop friendships within your church cannot be overemphasized. Relationships are the glue that holds a church together.”

My husband and I have been participating in and facilitating small groups for at least 30 years. Belonging to a small group has been such a big part of our Christian practice that we would not know who we are if we don’t along to a small community of believers. During these 30 years, we have nurtured other people’s faith even as others have nourished our spiritual development, supported others through the difficult times even as others have done the same for us, and have provided a sense of belonging even as we ourselves have been encouraged by belonging to a family group.

A few months ago, we started a new small group at our church that meets after Sunday morning worship. The group is made up of a very diverse mix of people: one Japanese, two Koreans, two Hong Kong Chinese, and four Caucasian Americans. Our ages range from mid-40s to late 70s. In spite of our differences, we bonded together quickly within a matter of a few weeks. One of the women in her 50s said, “I have been worshiping at this church for more than two years but I have not connected. This group has really become my family group. Now I feel I belong.”

This sentiment also echoes what best-selling authors, Les and Leslie Parrot, mean in their book Real Relationships.

By engaging in real relationships with one another, sharing our joys and sorrows, trials and triumphs, and successes and failures, we show each other how to walk with Jesus Christ. Rick Warren said, “Small groups can provide the personal care and attention every member deserves no matter how big the church becomes.”

Do you have a sense of belonging to a Christian community? What has been your experience in small groups? What have you learned about yourself and others by being engaged in real relationships? If you have never been involved in any small group before, what might you do to begin exploring small groups.

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Christian Spirituality: Dare To Be Honest With God

January 27, 2012 By Theresa Froehlich 2 Comments

When you are down and out, angry, anxious, or depressed, how do you communicate with God, if at all? Do you dare to be honest with him about where you are? Do you feel guilty about having these negative emotions? Do you feel it is wrong to burden God with these negative feelings? Do you wonder if God will love you less if you reveal your real feelings to him?

If I were to cut to the chase and answer your question, I would say that our God is big enough to handle any negative emotions you might have. He is also compassionate enough to care to hear about them, preferably directly from you.

In Isaiah 38:1-8, King Hezekiah was stricken with a terminal illness. He was very depressed about the prospect of dying, and he felt that his destiny was not one he deserved since he had walked before the Lord faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and had done what was good in God’s eyes (Isa. 38:2). He pleaded with God to remember how he had lived blamelessly. God answered his prayer and added 15 years to his life.

During my 30 some years of Christian walk, I have gone to God with complaints of injustice, outpourings of my deep anguish, as well as plain whining. Some Christians insist that it is wrong to go to God with these outpourings or outbursts. But God wants us to be real before him, even though we don’t want our relationship with God to be dominated by these outbursts and outpourings.

In Exodus 2:24, God heard the groaning of the Israelites and sent a deliverer to lead them out of Egypt. Our God is a God of mercy who acts in response to our cry, our groanings and moanings. He wants to hear from us when we are suffering.

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Christian Discipleship: God is Reliable But Not Predictable

January 20, 2012 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

God’s dealings with human beings are not as predictable as we think they should be. This is not to say that God is not dependable or reliable; this means that we cannot limit the way God works in our lives.

I have been a Christian for almost 35 years. I had unknowingly embraced the preconceived idea that if I do certain Christian things, then I will get certain results. When I was rearing my children I did all the Christian things: praying with them, sending them to Christian schools, and arranging play dates with Christian kids. I had expected our kids to become Christ-followers. Was I ever disappointed when the formula did not work the way I had expected! This is the unpredictability of God.

But God has not finished writing the final chapter of our children’s lives. He is still working in their hearts, even though I cannot see the end of the tunnel.

We often don’t know which destination is the best for us. We pray and ask God for certain things, believing that we want them or need them but we don’t realize that God may have better things for us. We are disappointed when he does not answer our prayers for those lesser things we plead for, and we accuse God of not loving us or not providing for us.

My friend Amy shared with me her job-hunting story. After she sold her business she was looking for a job in a very depressed market in 1994. She was applying for two jobs, one paying $6.50 per hour and the other $6.75 per hour. When she did not get either job, she was wondering what God was doing in her life. After she waited a few more months in agony and anxiety, she was given a job in finance in a big corporation. Today she is the senior vice president of the company. God is unpredictable but reliable.

What might be your experiences of God’s unpredictable dealings in your life? How might you remember that God is reliable even in the midst of unpleasant surprises?

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Christian Spirituality: What is Christian fellowship?

January 13, 2012 By Theresa Froehlich 1 Comment

Among Christian circles, fellowship is a word that triggers images of potluck dinners and Bible studies. In North America, where churches are highly segregated by gender and age, fellowship often means being in the same room with people who have similar backgrounds.

In the Bible, the word “fellowship” comes from the Greek word koinonia. This word was used to describe the breaking of the bread (communion) and intimate community. The word has such deep meanings that go far beyond sitting together in the same room and chitchatting with one another.

The First-Century church was made up of mostly house churches. Men and women of various ages and social status would get together to celebrate the Love Feast, the communion of the time. The wealthy often hosted these gatherings. This meant that the poorest of the poor were rubbing shoulders with the richest of the rich. Besides being in the same room together for that one meal, they were also doing life together in the intimate setting of a house church that met regularly. Fellowship in the biblical pattern of the first century was not nice and neat like it is today, when we can insulate ourselves from those who are different.

Imagine yourself as Bill Gates hosting a Love Feast and half of you guests are homeless people who have not had a shower for several weeks. When they come into your beautiful house, they bring in the mud from their tattered shoes. When food is being served, they are so hungry that they don’t know they need to wait till everybody has sat down. Similarly, the wealthy host does not know what to say to these homeless people. He feels sorry for them, but he is not sure if it was appropriate to show his pity.

Fellowship is and should be messy business. The Body of Christ cannot be neatly compartmentalized into homogeneous units. When we flock to the same people and rarely cross paths with those who are different, we miss the real meaning of koinonia. It is in our relationships with people who are vastly different that the Holy Spirit does the work of sanctification.

“Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16) “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” (1 Cor. 12:13)

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Christian Discipleship: God Uses Cracked Pots

January 6, 2012 By Theresa Froehlich 1 Comment

Women of Faith speaker Patsy Clairmont wrote a book called God Uses Cracked Pot to teach Christians how God uses broken people. Using this same concept, the very popular Joyce Meyer shows Christian women how we are to doing our best with what we have.

Christians have always been taught that we are sinners, that we are broken people, and that we cannot save ourselves. In reality do we believe in this?

I must admit that I may have believed this for the first 30 years of my Christian walk. But my belief was a form of intellectual assent. The veneer of head knowledge was stripped away when I came across life experiences that were beyond my control.

Until we come to the end of our rope, we don’t really grasp the truth that we are broken people. Until we come face to face with our own powerlessness, we don’t really know the grace of God in a personal and intimate way. During the last few years, because of a very difficult experience of launching our two children, I looked right into the face of my own powerlessness and helplessness. I watched, in horror, my children spiraling down, yet I could not rescue them. That was the first time I truly understood what it meant to be totally dependent on God.

In our productivity-driven society, even Christians live under the illusion that we are the engines that make things happen in our lives, our workplaces, and our communities. When we approach our faith-walk with this kind of perspective, we totally miss what the apostle Paul meant by grace being made sufficient in our weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9)

God is not looking for productive engines; he is looking for cracked pots yielded to his purpose and guidance.

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How Christians Can Use The New Year To Grow

December 30, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

Christians welcome the New Year that’s just around the corner! We’re excited about welcoming the new. But have we thought about the old we have to shed in order to welcome the new?

Most of us relish the thought that we are made new in Christ. We also look forward to a new year with hope that better things will come. Have we ever thought that the new is not just plastered outside the old? For us to be made into a truly new creature, the Spirit of God does the work in us to shed and scrape off the old.

Yesterday in our Women’s Intergenerational Fellowship group, Carrie shared with us how her husband’s unemployed status has been used by God to strip her. She can no longer find her identity in activity, productivity, position, achievement, and status. What’s left is just her core identity as “Child of God.” I could resonate with Carrie’s experience so well because God has also been stripping me during the last few years.

Stripping can be a rather painful and bloody process. Those veneers have been plastered on us as our outer skins for years, and stripping them will cause some raw spots. This is similar to how Eustace in the Chronicles of Narnia was handled by Aslan. He turned into a dragon because of his sinful and greedy choices. To turn him back into a boy, Aslan had to strip the tough skin and the hard scales off.

Imagine a Virginia black snake, a hermit crab, or a chrysalis going through the molting process of shedding their old skins and shells in order to make room for growth. Sometimes, these creatures have to rub against the hard surface to completely shed their old skins. Ouch!

This New Year, what are some things that God needs to strip from your life?

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Christian Discipleship: Waiting

December 23, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

Among Christians, “waiting” is probably one of the most unpopular words.

As Christ followers we are like little children who go on a road trip with parents. We keep asking our Heavenly Father, “Are we there yet?” Waiting is especially challenging and unpleasant if we are suffering from physical discomfort such as hunger, fatigue, and anxiety.

During our spiritual journey, there are periods of time when we feel we are in the center of God’s action. There are other periods of time when God is silent and appears to have gone out to lunch. Through our myopic eyes, we don’t see God’s hands moving or accomplishing anything. We seem to be just living an ordinary life in a sleepy town like Bethlehem. The Israelites had been waiting for 400 years for the Messiah to come. Four hundred years of silence when there was no prophetic word, when God seemed to have gone for a nap. Yet God was preparing and orchestrating everything needed for the arrival of the Savior of the world.

Waiting is extremely hard. I have experienced this kind of waiting at different times in my life. Even now I am waiting for God to clarify his direction for my life. While I’m waiting, God is shaping my soul and redirecting my focus on “being” rather than “doing.” My waiting is then not a passive, but an active and engaged waiting.

Waiting in faith is to believe God’s word when he said “he never sleeps nor slumbers” (Psalms 121:1).

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Christian Discipleship: Christmas Is About Coming To Jesus

December 16, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

Christmas is here! Jesus Christ has come, as we sing “Joy to the world! The Lord is come!”

At Christmas, we wait in anticipation and welcome in exhilaration the Savior of the world. We celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus, Immanuel, God with us.

But the Savior who has come has also invited us to come to him. This Christmas, he invites us to come to him, not only to accept him as our Savior, but also the Lord of our lives.

Coming to Jesus has significant implications! It will change our lives, our orientations, our relationships, our priorities, and our perspectives on everything. I came to Jesus 34 years ago and never looked back. Coming to Jesus didn’t eliminate all the problems from my life, but it provided me with an anchor, a center, a refuge, as well as a compass. If I were to replace these words with “people” words, I would say that coming to Jesus has set me in a big family, with God as my heavenly father, Jesus as my brother, and the entire community of faith as my brothers and sisters.

Welcoming Jesus is honorable, but Jesus wants to be more than just a VIP who comes as an annual guest. He wants us to come to him, to dine with him, to talk with him, and to listen to him.

Will you accept Jesus’ invitation to come to him?

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