Civilwarrior's Ramblings: November 2004

Showtime
Certainly a long read here...but very worthwhile. Faith in action...

If you're like me, you believe the good news that Jesus Christ offers everyone. You want your friends to respond to Christ's invitation to eternal life. You live every day surrounded by people whom you genuinely care about but who really don't understand what your commitment to Jesus Christ means to you-or what it could mean to them. You're weary of Christian caricatures on television. You're tired of seeing people roll their eyes when someone mentions Jesus.

Let's face it. Our world is wary of words without deeds. While President Bush was flying around in Air Force 1 making statements immediately after the September 11th attacks, people criticized him. They picked at his words and parsed his phrases. No matter what he said, he couldn't get it right. But when he went to Ground Zero, grabbed a bullhorn, and stood amid the smoking rubble, surrounded by rescue workers and grieving family members, the whole country stopped to listen. It almost didn't matter what he said. The fact that the leader of the free world had come down to stand in the pain was comforting and inspiring. Simple words and consistent actions were what won the president respect that day.

And that same approach is what the world needs from the followers of Christ: simple words, consistent actions. Believers who proclaim with their lips and demonstrate with their lives the good news of God. Disciples who both show and tell the gospel. But as my friends Mick and Shari would insist, some of us should stop telling until our lives show the difference that Christ makes.

Making a Difference

A story circulated in Detroit about the early days of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. It concerned a machinist who over a period of years had "borrowed" tools from the plant. Although it was against company policy, everybody did it, and management did nothing about it.

One day, however, the machinist was converted. He was baptized and took his baptism seriously. The day after, he gathered all the tools he had collected over the years, loaded them into his pickup, took them to the plant, and presented them to the foreman with his confession and a request for forgiveness.

The foreman was so overcome by the man's honesty that he cabled Henry Ford himself, who was traveling in Europe. After the foreman explained the event in detail, the story goes, Ford cabled back. "Dam up the Detroit River," he said, "and baptize the entire plant."

The world is yearning to see the difference a true, effective, and fruitful faith can make. The world is longing to see the gospel demonstrated in our lives with as much passion and vigor as we proclaim it with our lips. The world needs to meet people like my friends Al and Enid.

Al and Enid are members of my church. After Al completed a successful career as president of a large real estate company in Southern California, they retired to a condo overlooking the ocean in our beach town. They had planned well and retired comfortably. They were in good health and were eager to travel. They had achieved the world's definition of success, and no one would have begrudged them a desire to spend their twilight years basking in their achievements and living in prosperity.

Now, Al and Enid have always been involved in ministry. Numerous pastors and missionaries serving throughout the world were once part of their youth group when they were sponsors. But it has been during their retirement years that they have truly made an impact. Though they easily could have chosen to spend the rest of their years enjoying worldly success, Al and Enid have touched many people by preaching the gospel with their lives.

Enid has been a mentor to many women, a trained caregiver to people in crisis, and a deacon bringing the love and care of the church to people in her neighborhood.

Al was part of the search committee that called me as pastor. After I settled into my new job, he came to me and said, "Tod, I have maybe ten good years left, and I want to make a difference for Christ." We talked over lunch one day, and he joined our church staff as an unpaid director of lay ministries. His job was to inspire and mobilize our congregation to service. And what a job he did. As a result of his efforts, over 90 percent of our congregation filled out gifts-discernment surveys and then through Al's leading found meaningful ways to serve. On our first lay-ministry appreciation celebration, over five hundred names were listed among those who had served during the year.

But Al and Enid didn't stop there. Putting his business acumen to work, Al taught our church staff how to be more efficient in strategic planning. Together, Al and Enid reinvigorated our church's prayer ministry, enlisting over six hundred people to pray every day for the church's staff and lay leadership, writing daily prayer devotionals for teachers in our church and reorganizing a telephone and email prayer chain. All the while, they kept caring for and encouraging a young minister who was in his first call as senior pastor.

Al and Enid have inspired the people in our church to serve with gusto and wisdom, and they have received a lot of recognition. But even our congregants don't know the half of it. After Easter, Al and Enid often take lilies left over from the service to shut-ins. When we had a building campaign, they sacrificed three years of fun vacations in order to give generously to the project. Enid leads a spiritual formation group for women and regularly visits an elderly invalid at least once a week.

Al takes ice cream to a neighbor in his nineties, also a shut-in, who had never professed faith. For months, while eating the treat Al brought, they watched the Jesus film together.

When another elderly man named Andy became invalid, AI became a daily source of support to him. Andy's wife had died a few months earlier, and he had no family to look after him. AI took over his affairs. He organized a crew of people to clean out his condominium, saw that it was sold for a fair price, paid all the bills, haggled with health-insurance companies, got Andy placed in a comfortable nursing home, and visited him every day until he finally died in peace, holding the
hand of a nurse who was a member of our church. For months afterward, Al took care of Andy's estate and saw that Andy's wishes were carried out. As Andy's pastor, I was stunned when I found out that this quiet little man had left over $150,000 to our church as a token of his appreciation for the care given to him by our church elder and his good friend Al.

When my own aunt Dorothy McPhillips died, my brother said about her, "If more people were Christians like her, more people would be Christians." That's the way that I feel about Al and Enid. I think Mick and Shari and all my other friends would want those very words said about them someday. I know I would. Don't we all? Ultimately, lives that effectively "preach the gospel at all times" are what faith is all about.

Frustrations in Faith and Fly-Fishing

A few years ago, my wife and I took our two children on a ten-day vacation in the Canadian Rockies. Some old friends joined us, and we tooled around in two rented RVs, looking for elk, bears, waterfalls, and glaciers. As we went, everyone put up with my penchant for seeking out fishing holes.
For me one of the trip's highlights was that I finally was able to use the fly rod that my staff had given to me as a gift for completing my Ph.D. Five-weight, fourpiece, great action-it's a beauty. My friend Rob and I got up early one morning, piled into one of the RVs, and headed out of Jasper National Park to the Fraser River below Mount Robson in British Columbia. There we met our guide, who had promised to turn us into fly-fishing fanatics. We looked forward to fulfilling the adage "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat dinner one night; teach him to fish, and he'll be late for dinner every night."

Our guide was an earnest young guy who had plenty of experience and was eager to show us his skill. He offered me a rod to borrow; I scoffed and pulled out my new bad boy. Trout beware.
But the first place we went, we struck out. (Even the guide!) So we decided to try a little lake. Two hours later, we had nothing but stories of the several that got away. We got hits; we even hooked a couple of pretty small ones-we just couldn't seem to reel them in. It was both fun and frustrating. I may have had a brand-new rod, but it was painfully obvious that I didn't know how to use it very well.
As we drove home, we realized that while our guide was a good guy, his youth probably made him intimidated by us. (Only more so, I think, when he found out that his two students were a pastor and a lawyer.) He was supportive and encouraging, but he didn't offer much in the way of instruction, correction, and teaching. He had tried really hard to impress us with his ability, but he hadn't really done all that much to improve ours.

I figured there must be about a thousand tips he didn't tell us. I found myself wishing we could have another day on the water with an old fisherman. You know, some old guy who has failed so much that he now rarely does, who's forgotten more than I'll ever know, isn't afraid to tell me what I am doing wrong, and, especially, could help me figure out how to make this brand-new rod really work.
I hate things that don't work. I know, hate is a strong word. But many of you will understand. Let's say you get a brand-new laptop computer. You are looking forward to new power, new speed, to surfing through the World Wide Web like a long-boarder on a deserted Hawaiian break. You can't wait for the ability to crunch numbers, generate a spreadsheet, fire off a memo, and order Chinese takeout all at the same time. You can really get to work.

You take it out of the box, set it up; it hums right along, the screen flickers, the words scroll across the screen. Ahh . . . some new gear. A new gizmo. You happily start putting it to good use, all the while laughing at the instructions sitting in the box, like you're in a present-day version of the Treasures of Sierra Madre: "Manuals? We don't need no stinking manuals!"

And all is going well until. . . a button sticks. The cursor doesn't respond. The program freezes. A message flashes on the screen: "Fatal Error, Fatal Error." "Argh!" you shriek. "Either something's wrong with this thing, or something's wrong with me."

For many of us, this kind of experience is similar to our experience of faith. It all started out so promisingly. We had such peace, such power, such a sense of having a direct line to God. Then, a glitch here, something gets stuck there. The same Bible that once seemed interesting now puts us to sleep. Our prayers bounce off the ceiling and crash down on our heads. We feel like we're talking into a void. Our patience is waning; we are tempted by old desires and overwhelmed by what feel like unconquerable struggles. Soon we are ready to compromise the very things we claim are most important. If we had a diagnostic tool, we fear it would say, "Fatal Error." We think to ourselves, Either something's wrong with this Christianity thing or something's wrong with me.

You deeply want a faith that helps you make a difference in the hurly-burly of everyday life. You especially want a faith that makes a noticeable difference-a difference that others will notice-but your faith seems ineffective at best, a downright disappointment at worst. After trying to do it on your own, perhaps you are now looking for a guide, a teacher, an old fisherman.
Let me introduce you to the apostle Peter.

Learning from an Old Fisherman

The book of 2 Peter is attributed to the chief disciple of Jesus, Simon, whom Jesus called Peter. By most scholarly accounts, this book was probably written for Peter by one of his disciples who edited his many teachings. Don't get me wrong. I believe Peter is the author. But Peter was a fisherman, a man of deeds, not words. Somebody wanted to write a tribute to the old fisherman and premier apostle that encapsulated his final teaching, so this person, this scribe, edited the teachings of Peter into something like his last words or a final testament of wisdom to be passed down to a new generation. The language of 2 Peter is that of a learned ghostwriter who was making sure that his mentor's effective real-world faith was communicated clearly. This was as common then as it is today, and the subtle message woven throughout the letter is indeed a tribute: "Peter didn't just teach this stuff; he lived it. His most powerful message was his life. And from him you can learn to live the faith."

This letter starts with greetings and a prologue that sets the stage, and then the main section of the first chapter, verses 5-7, features a list of character qualities. After the list is a summary of the benefits of having such qualities, followed by a warning and then an encouragement.

For this study, I will often refer to two different translations of 2 Peter 1 :3-11. One is the New Revised Standard Version:

His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins. Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.

But I also want to offer a translation of my own. Not unlike Peter's first-century scribe, I want to capture some of the nuances of the original phrases in contemporary language. As I have been mentored by Peter's teaching and life, I want my contemporaries to learn from him also. So compare my own paraphrase of this passage with the NRSV:

Because in Jesus Christ you have all the power you need to live well and in a manner worthy of God, and because through trusting in his promises you are freed from the polluting bondage that holds the world captive, you must use that godly power to produce from your faith everything that you need for life:

From your faith, produce virtue that is commendable
by the world's best standards.
From your virtue, produce a wisdom that can apply
that virtue in real-world situations.

From your wisdom, produce a self-control that can
enjoy freedom in Christ while knowing safe limits.
From that inner strength, produce endurance to face
whatever challenge arises before you.

Let this constancy of character reveal integrity of actions and beliefs, both in worship and in life, and especially in the Community of Faith, through loving vulnerability and generous mercy.

Last, let all that is produced through your faith lavishly and consistently overflow in redemptive love to everyone in your life.

If these traits are part of your walk and increasingly so, you will never be ineffective and unfruitful in knowing our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. But beware! If you neglect these things, you are walking blindly on the edge of a cliff, forgetting that only God's gracious forgiveness has brought you safely to this place in the journey. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, put your faith to work in the real world and demonstrate that it is indeed genuine. If you do this, you will never stumble as you live as a citizen of God's kingdom now and forever.

Faith and Love

As you can see, the center of this passage is a list of character qualities. Throughout history, people have made lists of virtues, as well as vices, for the sake of moral instruction. Such lists are prominent in the philosophy of Stoicism, which began under Zeno (340-265 BC) and was the dominant worldview in the first-century world that Peter addressed. Philosophers like Philo (ca. 20 BC-AD 50), Seneca (ca. 4 BC-AD 65), Epictetus (ca. AD 50-130), and Plutarch (AD 50-120) all made abundant use of these lists in their teaching. In American history, both Benjamin Franklin and George Washington worked their entire lives on well-known lists that they presumably used to stimulate their character development.
In most cases, the writings of the New Testament adopted and then adapted Greco-Roman lists to reflect Christian values. Thirteen lists of virtues appear in the New Testament, all but two of which are found in Epistles:

2 Corinthians 6:6-8
Galatians 5:22-23
Ephesians 4:32; 5:9
Philippians 4:8
Colossians 3: 12
1 Timothy 4:12; 6:11 2
Timothy 2:22; 3:10
James 3:17
1 Peter 3:8
2 Peter 1:5-72

If we were to diagram Peter's list, it might look like a set of stairs that starts in the lofty heights of faith and descends, with each virtue leading to the next, until the list ends in the down-to-earth expression of love:

Faith producing virtue
_ _ Virtue producing wisdom
_ Wisdom producing self-control
_ _ Self-control producing endurance
_ _ _ _ Endurance producing godliness
_ _ _ Godliness producing mutual affection
_ _ _ _ _ _ Mutual affection producing love

Note that in the ancient world, the first and last words in lists like this were the most important. Our list in 2 Peter begins with faith and ends with love. The writer is telling us that of all the items in this whole glorious list, we are to focus first on faith and last on love. Or in the words of St. Ignatius, "If you be perfect in your faith and love toward Jesus Christ, . . . these are the beginning and end of life-faith is the beginning and love is the end." Paul emphasizes this point even more clearly in Galatians 5:6 when he writes,

The only thing that counts is faith working through love.

Nothing New

If you read the whole letter of 2 Peter (and you could do so in one short sitting), you can almost hear the pathos, the pleading. It sounds like it was written by someone who saw many people excitedly make great confessions of faith but then end up stumbling so badly that they contradicted the faith they claimed. We read in 2 Peter 1 an admonition to "support your faith" by developing character, by cultivating virtue, by expressing with our lives the qualities that speak effectively to others. We are taught that faith is effective when character is being produced in our lives-when we are people who not only confess faith in Christ but also reflect Christ through virtue, wisdom, self-control, endurance, godliness, affection, and love.

This catalog of admirable qualities ends in a verse that seems to jump right off the page:

For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice that this is written to believers, those who have knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, a fact which becomes even clearer if you look at verse 2. But here the writer says that his intention is to help believers keep from being ineffective and unfruitful. In other words, this is written to Christians whose faith is not working like they know it should. It is written to those of us whose faith is not causing the good effects that Christian faith should inspire, who are not producing the fruit of godliness in their lives, whose lives are preaching a different gospel than their lips.

Ineffective. Unfruitful. Strong words. But perhaps they are accurate words for most of us. We are believers. We know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We have been baptized, we have confessed our faith, and we may even have had miraculous life-transforming moments. But something nags us:

Is this all there is?

If I have faith, why does it seem like I make so little difference in my family, my job, my community?

If Christianity is the truth that gives us life eternal and abundant, then why doesn't it seem to work the way I hoped it would?

Why don't people who are hurting seek me out?

Why don't friends who need hope ask me about my hope in Christ?

Why is my faith so . . . ineffective and unfruitful?

According to some recent statistics, there are two billion Christians in the world today. Fully one-third of the world's population confesses faith in Christ. So let me ask you, When you read the headlines of the Los Angeles Times or the Washington Post, do you see much evidence of that? Or how about this: 80 percent of the people in Orange County, California, where I live, claim to be Christians. Eighty percent! Maybe I just expect too much, but doesn't it seem like all this Christian faith in the world is "ineffective and unfruitful"?

Well, this isn't just a contemporary problem. Imagine, if you will, that you are living late in the first century. You are a disciple of Peter, and you can remember his martYr's death in Rome. You remember what it felt like when you heard that your mentor, the old fisherman, the great apostle, the all-too-human but oh-so-passionate Simon Peter, was dead. The Roman authorities sentenced him to die on a cross like the Lord he loved, but he declared he was not worthy to die like Jesus did and insisted on being crucified upside down.

Such commitment. Such passion. Such a witness to the power of trusting Christ. Just the way he lived inspired people to emulate him-even you. His faith was so relevant, so real.

Peter's life was a mixed bag, you remember. He first met Jesus on a boat, where Jesus outfished him with a miraculous catch, and he ended up face down, asking for mercy. He was the guy who confessed Jesus as Lord before anybody else did. And he was the one who failed miserably by denying Christ the night he was crucified. Peter had spent hours telling you and his other disciples all those stories. The story of his faith, the story of his failure. The story of confessing, the story of denying. Peter knew all about stumbling, about failing, about the frustration of knowing Christ and still not living faithfully to Christ. Yet in the end, because of his faith, he was faithful. His life was effective, and in you it had bourne fruit.

But when you take a look around, you see people who are taking the message of faith and turning it into a license to sin. They look at faith as a Get Out of Hell Free card that they stick in their pockets and forget about until they die. They are neglecting the life of discipleship, the joyful and narrow path of following Christ in daily life. Oh, many are confessing their faith, enamored by the message of grace displayed in the life of the Carpenter from Nazareth, but so few are living it like he did. And you see the cynicism of unbelievers who scoff at the idea that this new religion makes any difference at all.

So you pick up your quill and papyri and write a tribute, a collection of Peter's teachings, things you heard him say, with some light editing of your own. With the inspiration of the Spirit, you pass on Peter's teaching to Christians who are stumbling all around you. And you try to drive home a central thought: faith is not something you have; it's something you do.

Faith That Works

The purpose of faith is to let God's power and presence flow from God into your life and through your life into others. For faith to work, it must be put to work, and not just in churches and Bible studies but in boardrooms and classrooms, at kitchen tables and in police stations,
and in intimate family moments that no one else sees.

In Peter's letter, we learn about faith that makes a difference. Faith that is effective and fruitful. Faith that not only takes us to the mountaintop, giving us spiritual goose bumps and tears in our eyes, but also causes us to roll up our sleeves and return to the real world of human need. Faith that brings God's love, compassion, and truth to bear on the world around us.

To have that kind of faith-faith that works-we need to understand that (1) it depends on God's work and power, (2) it requires our trust, and (3) it results in our living it out. Let's look at each of these.

1. Faith that works depends on God's work and power. As we in California learned a few years ago during several long, statewide blackouts, you can have the best transmission lines in the world, but if energy stops coming from the source, blackouts follow. Everything starts with the power source. In the same way, all genuine virtue and change in life depend on God's work and power in our lives. In verse 3 we read, His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us (NRSV). In other words, showing and telling the Christian life is not the result of any virtue, talent, or ability of our own.

Instead, it is the public demonstration of what God has been doing in our lives since the moment he graciously gave us eternal life.

Note that "preaching the gospel with our lives" begins not with our lives but with the gospel. All effective faith must rest on and daily demonstrate our deep awareness that, left to ourselves, we would never live one effective Christ-displaying day ever. Left to ourselves, we would never seek God. Left to ourselves, we would never be transformed one bit. And all effective faith begins with that knowledge and rests and relies on God's grace and power in our lives, which leads to the second point.

2. Faith that works requires our trust. It may sound simplistic, but effective faith must be genuine trust, and genuine trust is living in complete and utter dependence on the grace and mercy of God every day. Effective faith is not about depending on God's grace for salvation and then doing the best we can on our own steam; it is faith that displays the trust we have in God's grace for our salvation by living it out. Effective faith demonstrates that we know that we have been "saved by grace through faith" (Eph. 2:8 NRSV) and then in awe-filled gratitude to God seeks to demonstrate the difference that that knowledge makes.

Second Peter 1:4 reads,

Thus he has given us . . . his precious and very great promises,
so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world.

Notice that we are transformed and faith works in us "through" trusting God's promises. Only through that trusting faith do we "escape from the corruption that is in the world." Only through faith are we saved and become believers. This trusting is what makes us different from the world. No matter how much we may focus on our efforts to display the Christian life, we can't leave behind the requirement of trusting God in Christ. All attempts to teach values or character devoid of faith fall short. If we want Christianity to make a difference in the world, each person who claims to be a Christian must in fact trust Christ for salvation and live each day demonstrating the difference genuine faith in Christ makes; this takes us to our last point.

3. Faith that works results in our living it out. For some of us, all this talk about work and faith gives us the theological heebie-jeebies. Isn't faith the opposite of works? Isn't the point of faith that our efforts are worthless, that we can't really do anything? Isn't that what Ephesians 2:8-9 means when it says we are saved by faith and not by works?

I once heard Dallas Willard make a helpful comment. He said, "Grace is opposed not to effort but to earning." We cannot earn our salvation through our works, but grace does inspire us to work. It inspires us to faith filled effort.

Which brings us to the crux of this passage.

Show Time

Verse 5 includes an interesting and often confusing sentence. It reads,

You must make every effort to support your faith with goodness.

At first glance, this seems to be saying, "Do all you can to add goodness to your faith." It seems to imply that faith, pure and simple, isn't really enough. A quick read through the passage may lead us to think that effective faith is really "faith plus a whole list of virtues." But that is not what is meant by the word for support here. It is not about adding to our faith; it is about providing evidence for our faith the way a courtroom witness "supports" the truth by testifying to it. It's about expressing the genuineness of our faith by living it out.

This meaning becomes even clearer when we consider that the word for support here is a word that was used of wealthy patrons who paid for an acting troupe's costumes and equipment. Picture a troupe that has been lavishly equipped with all they need to perform. This text tells us that God outfits and equips us with goodness and all the other character qualities in the same way that a patron equips a group of actors. Then God the patron demands that we put on a show that puts to use all that he has graciously provided. In other words, we are to make every effort to put on and put to use the very character of God that he has put into our lives.

This image of a patron equipping actors to display what he has given them is the central image of the text, the key metaphor. We are to "support" the veracity and reality of the faith we have in Christ by "showing" it through increasingly virtuous character. We are not trying to earn the approval or acceptance of God by doing so, but we are to express or demonstrate to a watching world that we have been graciously accepted by God.

From beginning to end, God is the one who provides the faith, and we believers are to put that faith on display like an acting troupe puts on a performance. Paul says something similar in Philippians 2:12-13:

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Or as one of my seminary professors once put it,

We work out what God has worked in us.

One More Word about Effort

G. K. Chesterton once said, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." And maybe in the final analysis that is why faith is so often ineffective and unfruitful. We really don't try it fully. We talk a good game, we accept the grace that God has poured into our lives, but we don't really commit ourselves to living out the gospel. We want to be people of character who are respected by others, but we don't dedicate ourselves to allowing God's transforming power to work in every area of our lives-because, frankly, that takes work.

I know that all this discussion about work and effort can be discouraging. It just feels, well, tiring. And most of us have plenty of work to do. We don't want to work. We want our faith in Christ to make our lives easier, less work. But let me help you think about this differently.

Yes, developing character is difficult work, and it takes effort, but it's not labor. It's art. Throughout ancient history, there always has been a strong tie between ethics and aesthetics. Historically, what was truly beautiful was also morally good. Increasing in godly character as this passage describes is not drudgery but passionate action. It is bringing forth and putting on display the beauty of God in the way we live.

Living out our faith is like being a musician who dedicates himself to notes and scales to express the song that has captured his heart. It's like being a painter who looks intently at color and light, disciplining her hand and eye to reveal the vision in her soul. It's like being a photographer who works at making a picture not just another snapshot but a poignant moment in this world. Or even a fly-fisherman creating the beauty of a fly rod moving between twelve and two in four-four time, casting the looping line into quietly moving water.

That's what first drew me to fly-fishing. The art of it. That's why I put in the effort to learn and grow as a fisherman. I wasn't inspired by a mental picture of me standing hip-deep in cold water, swatting mosquitoes while untangling my line from a tree. I was inspired by watching a man casting into the Madison River at Yellowstone as the sun went down and a herd of bison ambled by.

It is work, but it's inspired work, artistic work. Work that expresses something of the grace of God. To borrow the words that Malcolm Muggeridge used to describe Mother Teresa, it is the process of becoming "something beautiful for God."

In the classic fly-fishing story A River Runs through It, the narrator quotes his father, a fly-fishing Presbyterian pastor: "AIl good things-trout as well as eternal salvation-come by grace, and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Questions to Consider

1. How do you feel when something important to you doesn't work? How do you respond?

2. Think of a time when you felt like your faith didn't work. What did you feel? What did you do?

3. With two billion professing Christians in the world, why doesn't faith make a bigger difference
in the world?

4. Reread 2 Peter 1:3-11, especially verse 8. According to this passage, what do we need to be "effective and fruitful" in our knowledge of Jesus Christ?

5. What does it mean for you to "support" your faith (v. 5)? What do you need from God? What do you need to do to respond to God's power and promises?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This article has been adapted from the book Showtime by Tod Bolsinger, published by the Baker Publishing Group.
©2004 Tod Bolsinger

Civilwarrior's Ramblings

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Facts on Iraq

Monday, November 29, 2004

Thanksgiving

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

BUCKEYES WIN!!!

Monday, November 15, 2004

Discovery Channel Cycling

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

MERCYME - SPOKEN FOR LYRICS

Monday, November 08, 2004

Showtime

NeoCounter

Pandora Station List

Twitter Updates

Twitter Updates

Tweet Cloud

My Flickr Photos

Our Daily Bread.

Gettysburg Blog

Greyt Life Videozine

Followers

Blog Archive

About Me

Aquarium Clock