My blog is for Losers! The Conversion Investment part 3
When I was in Youth Ministry I came up with the tag line, “Making Losers More Than Conquerors.” Now depending upon how you read that phrase either the ministry was going to be about making Losers more than we make Conquerors, or the ministry was going to be about turning Losers into something more than a Conqueror. In reality, it meant both things.
The phrase is a marriage of Romans 8:37 and 2 Corinthians 12:10. It is the mysterious fusion of two opposites, conquerors and losers; strength and weakness. Life sucks, but yet it is glorious all at the same time.
It is imperative for someone to be converted to realize just how big of a Loser we are apart from Christ. We go about winning a lot of small meaningless battles without Him. We really bring Him nothing worth bragging about other than our brokenness, so that He can be glorified in putting us back together as He intended us to be while looking forward to the eventual finish of that work on the other side of death. It’s the death of Christ that makes us worthy. Without it we are worthless. It’s this admission of our Loserdom that keeps us from really being converted. It’s why time and relationship and truth and love and conflict is necessary to help people not only go from life to death, but to live in the reality of this new life.
Because it is also imperative to realize that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God shown to us through Jesus Christ in order to enjoy the converted life. Nothing can overcome His love. Even if we are led as sheep to the slaughter and it looks as if we should be pitied the reality is that our suffering can produce an immeasurable amount of joy and because of this we more than Conquer fear, failure, and death. In fact, those aren’t even battles for us to win anymore.
Weird, right?
But awesome!
So, what are your losses? Do you feel like sharing them here?
Have you found a way to rejoice in the midst of your loserdom?
“35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?36 As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
37
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
A new lens…”Suffer Well”
Often we see pain as a curse from God, but might it be His grace.
Might it be more cruel to live in a sin infected world without pain?
I follow a few folks that you may have heard of and if you haven’t then you should check them out. Not because I agree with every bit of their theology, but because each of them believe in a powerful, advancing, and beautiful Church led by Christ and gifted by God. If you wonder why we suffer, you are not alone. Why does God allow it? Is it possible to have hope in the midst of suffering?
Take the weekend and check each of these out. We have a great God!
Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in and around Dallas, is a 35 year old husband and father and unashamed Calvinist and Southern Baptist. I first heard him last year preach one of the most powerful sermons I have ever heard at a conference put on by Desiring God. Matt, over Thanksgiving 2009, had a seizure and was eventually diagnosed with brain cancer. His response to that uninvited interruption in his life gained national attention. His blog is worth checking out and his sermons are rich. I’m not a sold out Calvinist, nor am I a sold out Arminian, but I agree with Matt far more than I disagree and I love to be challenged and he does not fear telling it like it is.
Mark Driscoll, is a Catholic turned Calvinist and pastor of a multi-site church based in Seattle. He started a church without seminary training or another job in ministry. He has appeared on Nightline with Depak Chopra and with a converted stripper in order to discuss the reality of Satan. He is preaching through the book of Luke and this week was the story of raising the dead son of a widow from Nain. Two weeks ago his sister miscarried and last week his wife miscarried and he preached quite possibly the most thought provoking sermon on suffering I have ever heard.
Tony Morgan, a United Methodist turned Baptist executive pastor in Georgia shared on Twitter that his friend had just died and linked to this video. It turns out that New Spring Church showed it to their congregation, which was Zac’s congregation 12 weeks ago.
Try using pain as a new lens…NEVER doubt the purpose of your pain…NEVER!
The Conversion Investment – the problem with Church economics (Part 2)
How long does conversion take?
An instant?
A week?
Six weeks, after taking a class at a church?
I don’t think that there is an answer, but that it is different for every person. So, some exchange their allegiance for Jesus in an instant and some over a period of years and some somewhere in between.
The issue lies in the fact that in order to determine where people are in their journey we need to hear their story, and sometimes it takes a while before you hear the whole story. We almost just rubber stamp the whole thing as if God really didn’t want to use humans to help other humans come to faith. So, they come, we listen, they pray, we dunk, and they leave unchanged.
We aren’t willing to sit with someone for an hour or two in order to witness the intersection of God’s story with the story teller’s. It’s emotionally exhausting. It’s mentally exhausting. It’s a battle with unseen forces to help people exchange their story for His story, and we’d just rather there be a pill to prescribe.
So, I am convinced that…
there are far more people who prayed a prayer after someone than are actually converted.
there are far more people who are baptized than are actually converted.
there are far too few churches that see this as fraud.
there are far too many of us, especially in the South, who refuse to challenge someone’s “I believe in God” to substitute for a real allegiance to Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.
there are far fewer churches who are trying to change their “five minute, come speak to a pastor and before the song ends pray a prayer invitation approach” into bringing people to Christ so that they might be radically transformed by Him…who die and are raised to new life.
And so there are far less Converted People than we Church people might like to admit.