Time is Crap

A friend of mine responded to my last blog (did Jesus evangelise). He wrote:

“For Jesus sharing the love of His Father with lost people - up to His death on the cross - was the ultimate reason to come to earth as a man.
I agree therefore that Jesus did not "switch on" and "switch off" evangelism, but he did deliberately CHOOSE at times to walk away from the crowd and spend quality time with His Father - even for Him this seemed to be a condition for continuous effective outreach. This is the other side of the same coin.
Shouldn't we follow His example?”

If we don’t choose in life, we will do what comes natural and for many people that would be wasting time.

If we don’t choose and /or prioritize, how we spend our time reflects our true values. Some typical western values related to “waste”? By the way, isn’t it an appropriate term “wasting time”? Waste is garbage. It’s obsolete or unnecessary stuff that you throw out. I think you'd agree with me that time is the most valuable resource we have but still many treat time like crap!

• Sleeping heaps longer that our body needs. Six-Eight hours is enough for our bodies (okay there’s probably a few exceptions). Sleeping ten hours means that you have wasted at least two valuable hours. That’s a quarter book, exercise and prayer! Yes, that’s what I did while you were sleeping. It’s a choice. Time is valuable.
  The bible has some radical stuff to say. In Proverbs 6:9-11 we read: How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest- and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.
  
• It’s all about me and myself. Individualism is good in one sense. God has made me unique and is interested in me; wants me to walk with Him, interact with Him, get to know Him better and better. Yet life is more than just about me. It’s about God through me, blessing others. Blessed to be a blessing. Spending time with others, learning and living in community is a Kingdom value. Our houses are Gods houses, our tables are His tables, our time is His time. Spending to much time (who’s going to define “to much”) alone, is not good for us.
  
• Because I live in the kingdom of the World I tend to spend a lot of time on and in worldly things. Unless and until the Kingdom of God becomes real for me. If I am to “flesh out” the kingdom of God in this World. I need First of all to understand how the Kingdom of God operates and when this becomes real to me it will affect the way I spend my time and I will find myself choosing to spend time alone with the Father

Anyway, it’s a bit of a funny blog. It hardly makes sense. But I wanted to write it because I don’t do the Jesus stuff naturally. I need to spend time with Him first. And that’s how I get excited about doing life the way He did it. Then, I don’t spend time with the Father because it’s the right thing to do but because I realize that my whole life and everything I do and the way I do it depends on that very decision.

Jesus never evangelised, or did He?

I sat in the pew. On my right side a lady who read from her Hebrew-Dutch bible and on my left my youngest daughter with two of her friends. The, what people call "worship time", went on and on and, as usual my mind was drifting somewhere outside the building, boldly exploring places and spaces where no one has ever gone before (that's what I want to believe but usually someone has been there before I get there). I usually switch off after ten minutes and start thinking about the "after church service coffee" or go through my notes one more time before being given the pulpit where I usually forget about my notes altogether (why bother bringing notes?).

Anyway, a thought hit me. Did Jesus ever evangelise? And the answer also hit me: "No, He never did evangelise". Before I started giving my speech I asked the church how they would answer this question. The whole church believed that Jesus actually did evangelise. No one raised his or her hand when I asked "whom of you says that Jesus never evangelised"? I was the only one with my hand raised high in the sky (with great zeal and a sense of urgency and fresh revelation). I couldn't care less that I was the only one believing that Jesus never evangelised. The fact that no one believed it with me underlines the sad reality of what went wrong somewhere in our church history.

Let me explain: The "evangelion" was just fine until we changed it into a verb and turned it into an activity. It's not something you switch on and, after you're done evangelising, switch off. Yet, that is exactly what many people do!
Jesus never had to make a deliberate choice to put "two hours of evangelism" in and then, after those two hours everything would turn back to normal.
No! Jesus was so full of the presence of the father that He could not not speak about it. He breathed life wherever He came. He never had to overcome emotional, theological, personal or whatever obstacles before changing into the evangelism mode. He was the mode. He was, and still is the GOOD NEWS!

I want the church to return to being and living the Good News. Is it that we need activities because without these our lives and churches don’t stand out enough to make a real difference? Why is it that we have to tell people that we actually are different? Maybe because otherwise they would never see it, or notice it?

Jesus says, “You are the light of the world” and “You are the Salt of the Earth”. If He says so, there is only one appropriate response to this error of needing activities to “show” the world and that is repentance and begging God for a new and fresh baptism of His spirit that will radically change me into the person Jesus says I already am.

The Peevish Aura

Three people said three things to me last Sunday and they made me think a little bit about my non-verbal communication skills, or lack thereof. I walked into the room where we as a group of local followers of Christ meet on Sundays (some call it "worship-centre", other "the sanctuary", again others find other fancy names to refer to the place that I am referring to. One church in Bloomington, Ill., will not allow wedding feasts to be held in "the sanctuary". Just imagine that the floor will get dirty because somebody laughs so loud that she (probably) spills some punch, or apple-cider on the worship-centre-carpet...).

Anyway, a dear brother sees me, walks up to me and says: "you look unhappy today, what is wrong". I tell him nothing is wrong and think to myself, "yes, what's wrong with me"? After the service a young woman comes running to me (she always speeds her way through crowds and life in general) and says: "You look tired, what's wrong with you". I tell her nothing is wrong and the same time think to myself, "Yes, what is wrong with me". With doubt welling up from deep within I look at my wife for support and comfort. She just shrugs; not much help from the support side of my life this morning! Then, another dear sister, decides to casually mention that when looking at me during the service (which is a bad thing, she should have been looking at and/or to Jesus instead) that she noticed this "big, ugly, peevish aura" around me. With other words, I look terribly grumpy and I realise that all three of time were right. I knew it, I felt it, I showed it (my wife tells me that I am completely incapable to hide my true emotions and that my body language speaks volumes).
I had no excuse. I got caught. I felt and was grumpy and people noticed
Why?
I don't know. And that's the honest truth. I had enough sleep. My wife still loved me. We walked to church (which is a 70 minute hike) so I didn't really contribute to the pollution in general (although I must admit that I did breath a little and, thus, did pollute a little, but I think there's not much you can do about that type of pollution which makes me think that in general one could say: "Being Pollutes" (take that as a thought for the day)).
Some people call it a bad hair day. I looked but found nothing wrong with my hair except the graying process.
So I said to myself, "Jan, you are grumpy, admit it. You have no idea why and that's okay. God loves you anyhow and invites you to be grumpy in His presence. Maybe it goes away, maybe not."

We don't always have to analyse why we feel the way we feel. It is important to know that the presence of God is consistent. My awareness of it changes with moods, circumstances etc.. but I cannot undo His presence.
And that's so comforting and exciting that there's the danger that my grumpiness disappears just thinking about this reality....

"May the LORD our God be with us as he was with our fathers; may he never leave us nor forsake us". (1 Kings 8:57)