The Big Diehl

I don’t think I’ve ever found a blog post that I thought was so good that I simply linked to it. Until today. Holy Crap — Perry Noble brought it today in his post about how he does NOT want “Nice Christians.” I found myself literally waving my hands and cheering to encourage Perry as I read it. Too bad he couldn’t see me, and luckily nobody else did because I probably looked like an idiot cheering out loud for a blog post. Go read it.

Sometimes when you’re dealing with spiritual things, you can’t define them — they can only be described. Worship, I believe is one of those things. The trinity is another. I’ve heard the trinity described several times in several different ways, but this morning I heard my pastor describe the trinity in a way that I’ve never heard before. I thought it was neat:

We serve one plural God.

What struck me was the irony of “one” and “plural.” God is plural - but not polytheistic. He’s three, but one.

Now that’s unity. We serve a God that is three distinct people, yet is so united that at the same time, He is one. God is united.

Imago Dei. We are made in the image of God. That means we should be an expression of God; in His image. If God is united with Himself in the Trinity, then Christians should be united with each other. This is especially true for the universal Church — the explicit Body of Christ. The Body of Christ should be united as one, as God’s example to us: the Trinity. Where there is disunity, there is no imago dei (image of God).

Hezekiah Walker’s song, “I Need You To Survive” says it best. You can watch the video here. There is no substitute for the communicational power of music and art, so I do encourage you to watch this video in spite of its length. I believe it will touch your heart. Below are the lyrics:

I need you, you need me. We’re all a part of God’s body.
Stand with me, agree with me. We’re all a part of God’s body.
It is His will that every need be supplied. You are important to me, I need you to survive.

I pray for you, You pray for me. I love you, I need you to survive.
I won’t harm you with words from my mouth. I love you, I need you to survive.
It is His will that every need be supplied. You are important to me, I need you to survive.

I Need You To Survive, By Hezekiah Walker

Let me tell you something — I’ve traveled to many places in the country. I’ve been in six other countries. In all my travels and experience, not once have I found an extra life. I’ve looked for extra lives — I can’t find them.

Can you imagine how cool it would be if you actually found and extra life! I mean if you’re ticked at someone on the freeway you could just get angry and flip your car or something. Who cares — you have an extra life, and you would die but then you’d come right back to life and respawn with your car on other freeway.

Yea, too bad life is not a video game.

Okay so maybe you’re stuck in a rut, like maybe porn (if you found this site while searching for porn — its because I wrote this blog post with you in mind and tagged it as such). If you want out of the sinful rut — you want rescued from it. That’s called “salvation.” I am “for” salvation. Please allow me to explain salvation from our sinful nature in four points:

We Are All Sinners. We are all born with a sinful nature. God’s plan for us was revealed to us in the Old Testament law (summarized in the Ten Commandments). We have all fallen short of God’s plan for us. God’s standard is absolute perfection, but no one meets that standard. (Romans 3:23).

The Penalty for Being a Sinner is Death. I’m talking about spiritual death here — eternal separation from God. So this sucks, eh? First I showed that we’re all sinners — and now I say that if you’re a sinner you deserve to die, so that means everyone deserves eternal separation from God — that sucks. Our sin leads to eternal death, and there are no exceptions. Doing good things and being a really nice guy cannot pay the penalty — the penalty is death (aka an eternity in Hell). That is exactly why at the beginning of this blog I said we needed rescued. We need someone to save us! (Romans 6:23).

Jesus Paid the Penalty. Okay so here’s the good news — God will send people to an eternity in Hell, but He doesn’t want to (2 Peter 3:9). God is a loving God — in fact, He loved us so much that He sent His son Jesus to come to the Earth as a man, live a sinless life, and then die. Since Jesus had no sin, he paid the penalty in our stead. Now that’s a loving God. He made a way for us to be saved. (Romans 5:8).

We Need to Take Action. Jesus’ payment for our sin is a free gift — but its not automatic. We have to accept it. Each of us need to believe in this plan of salvation and ask God to come into our lives. We need to call on God to save us and live our lives for Him. (Romans 10:13).

I’m “for” salvation through Jesus alone.

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I am “for” mentoring through relationship. I qualified the mentoring with the phrase “through relationship” because I’ve seen a lot of people try to mentor without a relationship. This works — I just don’t think it works very well. Without relationship — the mentor’s challenges will be ignored. Without relationship — corrections have no sting. Without relationship, there will be little to no transfer of “life knowledge.”

I tend to think of mentoring as allowing a mentee into your life; not just getting into theirs. I heard of one adult mentor who was meeting with his teenage mentee at his home when the mentor and his wife got into a fight. The mentee was going to leave to give them privacy, but the mentor (with the wife’s consent) encouraged his mentee to stay and observe how he and his wife worked out their problems. That’s mentoring through relationship and allowing the mentee into his life. That’s a mentoring relationship. Teaching is not effective mentoring, in my opinion.

Now you could easily pass this off as being something for only certain individuals. I think I can actually hear some of you thinking, “Eh, I’m not the ‘big brother’ type of person.” Phooey on that thought! (Yes, I did just say “phooey”). You are the best in the world at connecting with certain people. Maybe that’s children at your church’s sunday school. Maybe its your boss or co-worker. Our lives are surrounded by opportunities to mentor through relationship. It’s easy to be a teacher without relationship. It is very difficult to be an effective mentor without relationship. Read more about this in a previous post of mine where I described how mentoring through relationship is God’s plan for the Church. I am “for” mentoring through relationship.

I am “for” the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I’ve written a lot about the Holy Spirit in the past, so I won’t waste typing time, you can read all about it here in my “Holy Spirit” blog category.

One new point I would like to bring up: The Holy Spirit doesn’t always make sense. I’ve heard about certain “works of the Holy Spirit” that sound outrageous to me — people barking like dogs, cavity fillings turning to gold, gold dust or oil appearing on hands, etc. etc.

THOSE THINGS DON’T MAKE SENSE TO ME! Unfortunately, I think many of those outrageous-sounding “works of the Holy Spirit” are, well, outrageous. Sometimes there are counterfeits, but if you find counterfeit money — you don’t stop using money. Even the cow knows when to spit out the briers.

In Acts 3 there is an account of Peter and John healing a crippled beggar. The crippled man stood up and ran around telling everyone how he was healed. The people recognized him as the crippled man — “and they were filled with wonder and amazement” (verse 10).

That phrase jumped out at me — they were filled with wonder. To me, that says that not everything the Holy Spirit does is going to make sense. And if there is scripture to show that not everything the Holy Spirit does is going to make sense — then I will not condemn someone else’s outrageous spiritual encounter simply because it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not supposed to make sense — that’s kind of the whole point.

So many people are defined by what they are against, declaring how they are against this type of stuff. I don’t want to be defined by what I’m against — I am “for” the full ministry of the Holy Spirit.

I am “for” attitude and motive.

Revelation 20 is clear that everyone will be judged according to what they’ve done. As I’ve read through the teachings of Jesus (especially the entire Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5), I think its clear that we not only be judged according to what we have done — but by our attitudes and motives — our heart.

Matthew 5 gives an example that if a man looks at a woman lustfully in his heart, he has already committed adultery in God’s eyes. That’s being judged by attitude and motive.

I think this is extra “tricky.” I mean, its easy to eliminate the sins that everyone sees — but we’re supposed to eliminate the sins that nobody else knows about as well. I’m not sure who said it, but I once read, “true character is how you live when nobody else is looking” (or something like that).

Examine your attitude and motives!

I am “for” Church growth. I am speaking of the growth of the universal Church.

I am “for” church growth via these particular methods: church plants, numerical growth of individual local churches, satellite churches, video venues, itinerant ministries, para church organizations, mid-sized connection groups, attractional philosophies, missional philosophies, the underground church movement, Mega churches, Micro churches (I made that one up), and anything else you can come up with in order to grow the Church. I will never be against a particular method of honest Church growth. Unfortunately there are Christians who invest a lot of time in bashing another church’s Church growth strategy because its not the method that works for them or because it is not their conviction. When I hear that, I feel like the lawyer in this situation.

I am “for” Church Growth — by any means.

I am “for” honesty.

Okay so you’re probably thinking I would be talking about the opposite of lying. I already did that over here. I don’t want to re-say what I’ve already said, so go read that. There’s another aspect of honesty that I want to speak of here.

We each have our own perspective. No exceptions.

We also all have a huge problem - our problem is that our perspective limits us from knowing that we have a problem. Think about that… Your problem is that you don’t know you have a problem.

To obtain true honesty — about ourselves even — we need to get away from the selectivity of our own perception and see ourselves as others see us.

For example, I remember a principal in high school who had the main job of disciplining students. Of course students need disciplined and corrected — but “he” would BARK at them. Constantly. It was never done with love or concern (although I’m sure the love and concern was present — we just couldn’t see it). He emitted anger in nearly every command. “Don’t tip your chair!” “Where’s your hall pass?” and “Don’t throw your corn!” Students began to hate this principal and did things just to provoke him (even our teachers mocked the principle’s zealousness). He would have been so much more effective had he showed that he cared instead of constantly barking at us. Saying things like, “Hey tipping your chair can break the legs. Please don’t tip your chair,” or “Hey do you have a hall pass?” would have had a better result from the students.

Now this principal probably thought he did a fantastic job. He probably saw himself as the most committed employee at the school — who else deals with angry parents and students all day long like he does? Nobody. But he’s limited by his perspective. To see the true honesty about himself he needed to see himself how other people saw him.

I don’t want to be defined by what I’m against — I am “for” honesty. We should be honest and help others find honesty about themselves as well (a lie by omission is still a lie).

I am “for” budgets. I think a good synonym for “budget” is “plan.” I don’t need to talk about the need for planning our money - we all know that.

When we think of “budget” we usually think of money. But I think we need to budget all the areas of our lives — especially if its out of control; or “out of rhythm.” The most common thing for me that gets out of control is my time — but I gotta budget, and plan it out! If I don’t, then I don’t accomplish very much at all.

What’s “out of rythm” in your life - and how can you budget it better?