The Relational Mission

In the church where I spent a large part of my childhood, it was common to hear that God wants us to have a personal relationship with him. By this, we meant that each person has the opportunity to a direct relationship with God, which meant that we did not need the church or a priest to serve as a go-between. We could go to God directly in a one-on-one way. Our talk about “relating” focused on how we related to God, not about how God related to us.   In the previous post, I wrote about the fact that God is not idea that is hidden, but that God in Jesus came out of hiding so that we could see him. God related to us. But this leads me to ask: What kind of relationship does he have with us? It was clear to me how I was supposed to relate to God when I was growing up in the church, but it was not very clear how God engages us. It was just not something we talked about.  I was puzzled by this fact in my first class on the Old Testament. I was 22 and I thought I had a pretty good...

"The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." —John 1:14 The stories of the Bible speak of a God who is inherently relational, not as a divine entity who sits in heaven at a distance. He is not hiding behind a wall, withholding secrets about his identity that only a special few can fathom. This begins in the very first stories with Adam and Eve, where we learned that God walked with them in the Garden. Then God approached them  after they ate off the tree, even though God said that it was off limits. God did not wait for Adam and Eve to ascend to a religious place and come to a special set apart zone where the divine nature resides. God came to them in their normal spaces of life. God related. This relational connectivity is demonstrated in story after story. God speaks, loves, gets frustrated, responds, and leads. These are all things that we do in our relationships on a day-to-day basis. The creation story says that God made us in the image of the divine nature. O...

“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” —Philippians 4:8 A good life grows out of good input. Our brains are remarkable. That little organ has been designed to constantly receive and process data, even when we are not trying to do so. Of course, we think about the fact that our brains taking in information when we are reading a book or sitting in a class while the teacher gives a lecture. This is a form of active learning where we intentionally engage our brains to learn something new. But there is also something that we might call passive learning. Passive learning occurs perpetually. It’s on auto-pilot and there is no off button. Most of the time we don’t even know what we are learning as we are learning it. It just happens as we go through the day. The most obvious example of this happens when we grow up...

To walk the journey of life well, you must learn to pivot. The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.—Proverbs 16:9 As we walk through life, we will face twists and turns, along with roadblocks and barriers. When I was in my twenties, I traveled from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on a train as a part of group visiting some house churches who were meeting illegally. I was traveling with a British citizen of Hong Kong (this was when it was still a British territory). He had been arrested, tied up, and beaten for practicing his faith. When his British passport fell out of his pocket, and Chinese police let him go. To say the least, this experience was not something he had put in his planner. In fact, it messed up a significant list of things that he was aiming to do.  This is a rather extreme example, but, nonetheless, it does illustrate that life never works as we plan. That does not make planning unimportant. In fact, having a plan for the steps you will take is helpful....

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin …” —Exodus 34:6-7 I grew up going to church. Back then, I would hear sermons at least two times per week. I went to Sunday School and attended an additional Bible study every week. There was a lot of sitting and listening to people talk about God and the Bible. This continued when I went to college. Then after getting married to Shawna, we were are part of a church where we listened to three sermons per week. To say the least, I’ve heard a lot of sermons. While I do not remember the details of each, I can honestly say that there was not one sermon given on this passage. This is a bit problematic since these verses serve as a foundational core to the Old Testament. They are like a thesis statement in a term paper, as they define how the Israelite people were meant to view who ...

The growth in knowledge of any object depends upon the encounter between someone who wants to know about that object and the object itself. This the only way to develop an understanding of any thing, of any animal, or of any person. The experience of a personal encounter is rudimentary. This claim may appear obvious when it comes to the knowledge of something like a rock, for instance, but understanding how we develop a battery of information about a rock can help us understand the way that God is understandable.  The character of a rock is effusive, that is it is self-showing. What I encounter when I pick up a rock and assess its characteristics is an actual manifestation or performance of the nature of what it means to be a rock. The rock’s “rockness” is shown through the encounter. In some ways, it’s like a dramatic performance. If you want to know the meaning of a play like Hamlet, you must look at the performance of the play itself. You will never understand Hamlet if you only...

"In the beginning God ..." (Gen 1:1) The Bible opens with God as the subject who acts in the course of history. God creates. God talks. God walks. God interjects. God intervenes. God protects. God leads. God corrects. God disciplines. God comes. God heals. God turns water into wine. God teaches. God eats. God raises another from the dead. God loves. God dies. God rises. God ascends. God empowers. God works. God, God, God. The Bible starts out with God as the subject. With the turning of each page, we read how the story unfolds with God as the primary actor. If we don't get this about the Bible's way of talking about God, it would be like watching Hamlet without a Hamlet, Forest Gump without anyone actually playing Forest Gump, or reading a DC Justice League comic without Superman. The story would be totally different in its very nature.  A different kind of story is exactly that many have experienced. When we go to church, God far too often not at the center. I...