Hopefully my boss doesn’t read this. When I’m not being a pastor (who am I kidding? I’m always trying to be a pastor), I pay my bills by selling building materials. Every day at 3:30 am a report drops into my email inbox so I can measure exactly how close or far I am to hitting my sales goals. I get a lot of notes from my boss. “Any sales hitting today?” He sends a weekly report of “sales driving activities.” Job site visits, follow up phone calls, strategic planning, and the like. Sometimes I get so busy recording and documenting my sales driving activities, answering my boss’ email, I don’t actually have time to sell things!
Track with me for a minute. Sometimes as pastors and church people we also make the “activities” primary and the results secondary. Sunday’s sermon was about the UP in the Jesus Pattern of UP, IN and OUT. I introduced the idea that GOOD FRUIT is the new measure for success. You should know that this is what moves Cornerstone forward. We long to see God transforming lives. Not only that, we believe that God can use us to transform the entire community! And that necessarily has to start with the UP. We recognize that we are pretty much helpless on our own, but with God we are unstoppable. That’s the heart of Jesus’ message to his disciples in John 15. So, what does she mean by sometimes we make the activities primary and the results secondary? You might ask. Sometimes… not always!... but sometimes, we say that you just need to read your Bible and pray more. Which is actually 100% true. I was just thinking I need to push myself to read my Bible and pray more. I mean really, God is so cool! I just want to hang out with Him all the time. I hate that I get distracted from that sometimes. What if we longed for God’s presence like you long for ice cream on a hot day!? Here is a reminder of what John 15 says… “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.” Our purpose is to produce fruit. What is fruit? The natural expression of a life lived in Christ. And you can keep reading the gospel of John to give that definition more color. Here’s the point. Don’t spend time with God just to fix you. We are connected to God so that we can become part of the heart of God. That changes a person. Don’t sit down to read your Bible because it’s just another task on your to-do list today. Don’t pray because your pastor told you to. Seek God because together we want to see lives changed and whole communities transformed. Seek God because Jesus promised, “Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
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AuthorThe Pastors of Cornerstone Wesleyan Church Archives
July 2017
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