NEED #1

There is a grandmother in South Austin who is raising 14 grandkids by herself in a 500 sq ft trailer with no plumbing. The kids parents have either abonded them, or are in jail, and this grandmother is doing the best she can but the living conditions just aren’t acceptable. Can you help?

The first way you can help is to give money for a new trailer home to be purchased as well as plumbing. The second way you can help is to donate a space heater (they are cold). The third way you can help is to join me by working out at their house with clean-up, etc, once the new trailer is delivered.

We need to raise 5k dollars, get 2 space heaters, and some hard working volunteers….let’s do this!

NEED#2

There are twin 14 year old boys in the Austin area looking for a Christian family to adopt them. I have all their profile information, they look like great kids, and they need a family. Can you meet this need?

IF YOU CAN HELP MEET EITHER NEED PLEASE EMAIL ME! nate@austincitylife.org

I think we tend to read it like this:

“8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

When we may need to take a minute and read it like this:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So what is my point?

I see a tendency in myself and my friends to want to jump right to GOOD WORKS…..before we know WHO WE ARE.

*What do these verses tell us to do?

To walk in “good works” that God has prepared for us to do. So we do. We want to see our families, our neighborhoods, and our city changed. We want to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, start non-profits, end human trafficking, and change the world. So here we go………..WAIT!

What do these verses say about “who we are”?

Well we are saved, apart from anything we have ever done, or could ever do. And in Christ, God calls us his workmanship, his work of art, his masterpiece.

Now most people say “I want to follow Jesus so tell me what to do”!

Maybe we should be saying “I want to follow Jesus so tell me who I am”!

Here is the deal: I believe that if you really believe your Gospel Identity (that you are saved apart from anything you have ever done, or anything you could ever do, and God has called you his work of art, his masterpiece) then you will live out a life of Good Works because…..that is who you are!

On the other hand, if you just run around trying to change the world but have no idea who you really are, there may be all sorts of burnout in store…..

Good Works won’t give you Gospel Identity

Gospel Identity just may lead you to a life of Good Works

KNOW WHO YOU ARE! (Listen to the message HERE)

This has got me thinking again…

Is dreaming for everyone?

Is “changing the world” for all of us?

Or is it just for the super-talented, super-educated, and super-passionate among us?

Popular speaker and blogger Jon Acuff says it so well…

We as a culture put so much of our identity into what we do.

I am finding people saying “I am an accountant but I want to be an artist” or “I’m a teacher but I want to be an abolitionist”.

We feel pulled between what we are doing and what we feel called to be doing.

What I’ve found is that there are ways to have a full-time job and a full-time dream

There are ways to have an extraordinary life in the midst of an ordinary day.

Dreamers are a dime a dozen. A dream never changes the world alone. We’ve got to get to action.

Yes!

I want to be a part of a generation, a city, a church, and a community of dreamers AND doers.

I want to see this in ways that everyone will notice:

*the fight to end human trafficking

*radical sacrifice and work by the upper/middle class to deal with poverty

*human rights for the living and the unborn

*a day when no child has to go to bed hungry

*a night when no mentally ill alcoholic has to sleep outside under a bridge.

I also want to see this in ways that very few will notice:

*a dad who realizes providing for a family is more than a paycheck and chooses time with his wife and kids over the corporate ladder

*families with extra bedrooms that choose to adopt one of the many children in our world (and in our city) that have no parents

*stay at home moms who use the time when the kids are at school for more than workouts and grocery shopping, but volunteer with non-profits that are engaging the most broken and poverty-stricken people in our community.

May 2011 be a year where many of us move from talk to action, and from preaching to practice.

You can have a full-time job and a full-time dream!

What is your dream?

Maybe you are already asking “what is mission?“

The short answer is that many people who are Christians, or followers of Jesus, are beginning to take a serious look at Jesus two greatest commandments from the gospel of Matthew:

“37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

So when I say mission, I am talking about this idea that loving God, or following Jesus, will lead to a lifestyle of loving people. Some call this mission, or missional living.

The problem for many of us is that we grew up in a church culture that portrayed “mission” as something that was for preachers, singers,or people who would move their family to Africa and start churches.

Now that we are asking ourselves some big questions like “what does it mean to go to church?”, and “what does it mean to love people?”, or “how can I live on mission?”,  many of us don’t know where to begin.

So that is what my talk was about and I thought I would pass along the main points for those that may be interested in this..

THE INTRODUCTION

My intro had 2 main points (well 3 if you count my observation that “Christians love Chick-Fil-A and conferences”, but we will save that for another post)

1 MISSION IS FOR EVERYBODY

Mission is not just for pastors, super-Christians, or people who move their families to Africa. Mission is for every person who is following Jesus. Every soccer mom, every dad, every artist, and every college student. Mission is for the smart and the simple, for the ordinary folks like you and me.

2 LEAD BY DOING (NOT BY TALKING)

Many leaders ask “how can I motivate my people to live on mission?”. My short answer: You can’t, not if you are counting on a technique, a sermon series,or a new book. Although those things may help, ultimately people will follow what they “see you doing” well before they will follow “what you are saying”. If you want to lead others is missional living, let it start with you, in your home, in your neighborhood, in your workplace.

A PLACE TO BEGIN

The rest of the talk was some practical ways to begin living this way. These are based on ways that Meliss and I try(very imperfectly) to live in our neighborhood (Crestview), and the way many of our friends at Austin City Life are living.

1 LOVE ONE ANOTHER

A group of diverse people who follow Jesus, and are radically generous, loving, and forgiving towards one another,are the best apologetic of the Gospel.

2 GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS

Sad but true. Many people have lived in the same house for years without meeting the people who live on the same street. Get to know your neighbors. Get to know the people you work with. It is pretty hard to love somebody if you don’t even know them.

3 WHERE YOU ARE IS YOUR MISSION

Where do you live? Where do your kids go to school? Where do you work out? If you believe in the sovereignty of God then you have to believe that where you are is your mission.

4 BE A REGULAR

Don’t just bounce restaraunt to restaraunt, or coffeeshop to coffeeshop, be a regular. Get to know the people who work in and who own the places where you live. Again, it’s hard to love somebody that you don’t know.

5 OPEN UP YOUR HOME

We have traded big front porches for big back decks and tall privacy fences. Many people(yes even Christians), see their homes as a refuge to keep everybody out, rather than seeing them as a place to welcome our friends and our neighbors. Read 1 Timothy 3 and remind yourself that hospitality is an elder requirement. Open up your home.

6 OPEN UP YOUR LIFE

Don’t settle for inviting people to your “church service”, invite them into your life! How did Jesus call the disciples? Was it a “see you at the synagogue”.No.  Jesus said “come follow me”. Open up your life.

7 WHAT ARE YOU ALREADY PASSIONATE ABOUT?

Do you love music or art? Do you enjoy cooking or sewing? A big movie buff? Maybe you love golf or college football? To live missionally you don’t have to pretend to be somebody you are not, rather, ask how you can be on mission, how you can love people, through the things that you are already into.

8 BE A GOOD CITIZEN

Ever heard the saying “they are too heavenly minded to be any earthly good”. What if we were to “take Jesus so seriously that we actually did some earthly good!”. Care for the poor, volunteer with a local non-profit, visit the nursing home in your neighborhood. No matter where you live, be a good, responsible, caring, and concerned citizen.

9 TALK ABOUT JESUS

As Jeff Vanderstelt said recently, “if you are not talking about Jesus you are not on mission”. That doesn’t mean you should be getting into theological debates, or force feeding your beliefs onto your neighbors, friends, or co-workers. Just be who you are. If you are following Jesus,  if he is changing you, don’t be afraid to talk about it. My guess is that your friends and neighbors will respect you more if you are just real about who you are and what you believe, especially if they don’t just hear about the Gospel from you, but they see the Gospel in you.

I took Betsy Grace for a stroll this morning, still glowing from the big UW win last night (why does it feel so good to beat Nebraska?), and I was thinking about New Years. It reminded me of two things….

1) WE ALL WANT A NEW BEGINNING

Call it a fresh start, a do-over, a clean slate, a mulligan, or a second chance, New Years reminds us that we all want a new beginning. You may want to lose weight, finish your degree, spend more time with your kids, get out of debt, or grow spiritually, and for a few days it seems possible.

We want to put the past away, with all of it’s failures, broken relationships, and broken promises. Yes we are looking forward to a better, more productive, much easier life in 2011. We all want a new beginning.

2 OUR WILLPOWER IS WEAK

Is it just me or are this years resolutions the same as last? I still haven’t lost that weight, ran that half marathon, started that savings account, or knocked out that “read the Bible in one year” plan. You?

As much fun as it is to fantasize that 2011 is going to be tons different than 2010, the reality is that it won’t. By February we will be reminded that some of the things we really wanted to change are still the same. Life gets busy, old habits creep back in,we break a few promises, and we settle in for another year of the grind.

WELL HOW DEPRESSING IS THAT?

Sure this could be depressing….or it could be a moment of real change, a moment of sanity where we get honest with ourselves and acknowledge what we really need….

*I need a new beginning every day, and could also use some help dealing with the past.  I need the good news of Jesus that reconciles broken friendships, forgives broken promises, and gives me a new beginning every day of the year.

*I need more than a resolution, I need help! I cannot be the husband, father, employee, or friend  I want to by just trying harder, I need real change.  I need the good news of Jesus that makes me new, that gives me a new heart, a new way of living, and  a new way of loving.

Enough about  me, what do you need?

Here is the pic from our yearly Christmas Card by our good friend Jen Cota. We want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas (a few days late) and Happy New Year (a few days early).

One of my New Years resolutions (besides my yearly weight-loss plans that usually last till mid-January) is to start blogging…..and this is why.

I want to talk about CHRISTIAN LIVING in EVERYDAY LIFE.

Now I do think about a lot of things, incuding Jesus, family, college football, tex-mex, music, what is church?,community, philanthropy, failure, recovery,who is going to draft Jake Locker?, what happened to the Texas Longhorns?, and how in the world I am going to get out of debt before it is time to send the girls to college?

Although most of those things will certainly make it into this blog,  if I can contribute one thing to the conversation on the www my hope is that it would be…..

 
CHRISTIAN LIVING IN EVERYDAY LIFE.

In other words, what does it look like to follow Jesus….

 
in our homes?

in our neighborhoods?

in our workplaces?

into the bar at happy hour?

into living rooms?

into the poorest streets and neighborhoods in our city?

 
I will write not because I am an expert, but because by Gods grace (and sense of humor?) I am on this journey….