Come Unto Me

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food” (Isaiah 55:1-2).

You invite us to come just as we are.
There’s nothing we need to bring.
Our best efforts are filthy rags,
You provide everything.

You invite us to come with empty hands.
Come and drink and eat.
Partake of Christ, the Bread of Life,
and Living Water for free.

You invite us to come with all our sin,
and lay it down at the cross.
Leaving it there in His nail-scarred hands,
and donning His righteousness.

You invite us to come as daughters and sons,
fully part of Your family.
We’re accepted in the Beloved One.
Once bound, but now set free.

You invite us to come for every good gift,
sent down from our Father above.
All we truly need for life,
given to us by Your love.

You invite us to come, letting go of all else,
everything that does not satisfy.
Humbly receiving Your perfect gift
of eternal life with Christ.

Lord, may we be quick to turn to You and receive all that You graciously give, forsaking all else, and clinging to You alone!

See also: Isaiah 61:10, 64:6; John 4:10, 6:35, 7:38; Ephesians 1:6; James 1:17; 2 Peter 1:3

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Inside Out

In his address “The Inner Ring,” C.S. Lewis noted, “I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.” We probably all remember the cliques in high school and other settings, and the practically universal desire to be seen as part of a special group with some status or power. As adults, we don’t necessarily call them cliques, but they still exist—political parties, classes, industries, and even churches and denominations. Whoever “we” are, there’s often a sense of “us vs. them.”

Dane Ortlund in Surprised by Jesus describes the book of Luke as “The surprise of outsiders as insiders.” He lists many of the outsiders who were invited into relationship with Jesus. Shepherds in Bethlehem, tax collectors, children, prostitutes, Gentiles, and sinners are “in,” while the religious elite and socially respected are “out” when it comes to the kingdom of God. How?

“Jesus went ‘outside the camp’ (Heb. 13:11-13)... Jesus became unclean... for us. He went outside the camp so that you and I, who are unclean outsiders, can immediately gain access inside — inside the only inner ring that matters: favor with God.”

As I’ve dabbled in psychology over the years, I’ve noted the many ways in which we feel “othered” by people. We have different thought processes, interests, abilities, habits, relational and cultural traits. We’ve created labels for every type of variation. Whether intentional or not, whether good or bad, each label describes who is in and who is out.

We often lose sight of the fact that God has invited everyone to belong to His inner ring. In Christ “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Paul wasn’t saying that we should throw away all those designations, but that all are of equal value in God’s eyes. As the KJV puts it, “He hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Eph. 1:6).

At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus said He was sent “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:19). We receive God’s favor and blessing, not because we belong to some select group that lives up to His perfect standard, but simply because God chose us and we accepted His invitation into the Inner Ring. We did nothing to deserve being adopted into His family, and no one else can deserve it either. The invitation goes out to all who recognize that they don’t fit in or measure up.

May we be quick to give thanks for God’s unilateral grace and unconditional love, and may we extend that same love and grace to others who are on the outside looking in.

“But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Eph. 4:7).

 

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

True Community

For Thanksgiving weekend I was away from home visiting family members who have not attended church for a few years for health reasons. They watch services online each Sunday. Together we watched the service at Parkside Church with Alistair Begg, and he made a brief comment about how online gatherings can never replace the gathered Body of Christ in sharing life together.

Wiktionary notes in the definition of the word community that it comes from prefix con meaning ‘bringing together several objects’ and munus meaning ‘service, burden, duty, obligation.’ So by definition, community cannot occur where people are physically separated. We can have temporary substitutes to communicate with other people, though that too requires ‘bringing together’ and not just ‘talking at’ one another that often happens on social media.

Also implicit in the definition of community is the duty we bear for one another in the local Body of Christ. Church is not just about hearing a sermon and singing a few songs together. It includes bearing one another’s burdens, praying for and with one another, encouraging one another, giving thanks to and for one another. All of that requires actually spending time with one another and talking about the things that are on our hearts and minds.

It is true that thanks to technology we don’t always have to be in the same room quite as frequently as we used to, but that in no way negates the need for regular in-person gatherings with fellow believers. There are some folks (you know who you are) that I wish lived closer so we could see each other more frequently. And there are some other Christians I’ve been seeing more frequently and enjoying getting to know. But at the same time I don’t want to give up my relationships with my local church family.

After moving between states many times when I was growing up, and never having any fellow believers to connect with long term, I highly value the stability and connections gained through more than two decades in one place. And I have to say that I don’t understand why anyone would willing move away from their faith community if they didn’t have to, though I realize there are many circumstances that can impact such a decision.

In 1 Corinthians the Apostle Paul points out that each believer is given spiritual gifts “for the common good” (12:7). I have to wonder how many gifts are being neglected because individuals are not regularly gathering with other believers in a local church. We are all needed to play our assigned roles in the community known as the Body of Christ, and we need to be with one another on a regular basis.

“And all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:44).

© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Who's Your Father?

In recent months I’ve had to deal with paperwork for a foreign bank account. The most recent documentation asked for parents’ names and qualifications, as if my own qualifications are dependent on what my parents did. As you might guess, this is not a Western country we’re dealing with, and the documentation probably has a lot to do with the caste system. We in the West are so individualistic that such requests for information seem almost insulting. Can you imagine filling out a bank or job application and having to provide your father’s resume in addition to your own?

But we have some weird traditions and assumptions of our own. After I moved to the Southern U.S. I encountered the question, “Whose is he?” The person wanted to know who this person was related to and where they fit in the family tree. From my experience, it is far more common in the South for six or seven generations to live within 20 miles of the “home place.” None of the places I lived in the North were like that, aside from Amish neighbors in Pennsylvania.

I bring this up because there has historically been a trend in U.S. churches for people to identify as Christian simply because their parents called themselves Christian. People were members of churches because that was the center of social activity in small towns. Now church membership and attendance are declining, and some have speculated that this has come largely from nominal “Christians” deciding there is no longer any reason or necessity for church membership. The faith of their fathers is not something they wish to claim. In one sense, I would say that’s actually a good thing for church statistics. We need to know who actually is not Christian and how large the mission field really is, and we need to know those who truly belong to Christ so we can feed them as disciples.

We also need to know who truly belongs to our family. If God is our Father, then we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we need to be willing to claim one another and care for one another as our own. I think most churches struggle in this area. We are often not inclined to go out of our way to connect with others and support others outside of regularly scheduled church gatherings. Our Western culture has negatively influenced us in this regard. Each one’s home is his castle and we don’t dare invade another’s space or ask them to come into ours.

But those things are tangential to what I started out to say. As Christians, our identity does come from our Father and from Jesus Christ the Son of God. He has made us new creations, adopted us as children, and put us into the Body of Christ with a role to play.

• When we’re tempted to sin, we can point to Jesus and say “I’m with Him.” 
• When we feel ashamed or guilty, we can remember that our Father does not condemn us. 
• When are lonely, our Father is always present with us. 
• When we want to serve in the church, our Father has given us gifts and abilities to do so. 
• When we think we’re lacking something, our Father owns everything.

Take some time today to think about every good and perfect gift our Father has given us (James 1:17), since “He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25).

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ… And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 1:3, 4:6).

© 2022 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

One Eternal Family

Sometimes you run across theological assertions that are just plain bizarre. In James A. Nichols, Jr.’s book Christian Doctrines, the last chapter states:

“Death will be abolished, and all children will grow up to know the Lord from infancy free from Satan’s temptations. This means that saved people of flesh and blood will always exist on this earth begetting children and adding forever to the increase of the eternal kingdom… [Ezekiel 37 predicts His] subjects will dwell in this land, ‘they, and their children, and their children’s children, for ever’ —a clear implication that this is to be a continually growing kingdom with God’s ‘sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.’” (302, 304).

Nichols may have been highly influential among Berkshire College students while he was a professor, but not all of his theology was biblically sound. (He also had a comment that when the earth gets full, there’s a whole universe of planets to fill!) His statement bothered me for several reasons.

1) He seems to confuse temporal and eternal fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy. A much more logical interpretation of this Scripture is that the children of the nation of Israel (and subsequently Christians), born prior to the final Judgment Day, will enjoy the new heavens and new earth for eternity (2 Pet. 3:13). It’s not the childbearing that is eternal, but the dwelling in the land. This would actually be more consistent with Nichols’ view on annihilation of the wicked as well: it’s not the punishing that is eternal, but the resulting death.

2) He ignores Jesus’ own words in Matthew 22:30, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” If there is no marriage, how can there be legitimate childbearing?

3) He downplays the relationship between Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride of Christ (Matt. 9:15, Rev. 19:7). There will only be one marriage in the end. That final marriage is the one to which all earthly marriages now point (Eph. 5:23-32).

4) He puts too much emphasis on human marriage and childbirth as a primary way in which God receives glory. The Apostle Paul had a different view: “For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife” (1 Cor. 7:31b-33). Those who are unmarried or childless are no less valuable to the kingdom and no less able to give God glory through their lives of trusting obedience.

I have written before about some of the misconceptions of marriage and singleness that Christians hold, and I’m indebted to Sam Allberry’s books and articles. “Is Celibacy Cruel?” posted on TGC today was a refreshing reminder to me of a more biblical view than Nichols held. If Nichols were correct, then those of us who remain single and childless would forever be a different class of believers. (Not entirely unlike the Mormons!) But if marriage and childbirth will come to an end, then we all need to consider how we can be building eternal relationships within the Church that supersede biological families. We need to focus more on what we have in common in Christ now than in life-stage commonalities that will end.

“Now you are the Body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27 emphasis added).

© 2021 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

The Gift of a Pastor

After the Israelites left Egypt and were wandering in the wilderness, God gave instructions for the construction and use of the Tabernacle. Aaron’s family were put in charge of the sanctuary and its activities. God told Aaron, “And behold, I have taken your brothers the Levites from among the people of Israel. They are a gift to you, given to the Lord, to do the service of the tent of meeting” (Numbers 18:5).

Although pastors aren’t exactly analogous to the priests and Levites of the Old Testament, they are still God’s gift to His Church.

“And I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15).

“And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-12).

“Every good gift and perfect and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).

The question is, do we recognize that pastors are a gift from a gracious God, and do we treat them as such? They aren’t perfect, but neither are we. Like any good gift, we ought to take care of them to the best of our ability. I know of pastors who’ve been worn down by petty bickering in their churches. Others struggle to make ends meet because church members don’t give regularly, much less tithe. Many pastors feel like they are alone in ministry and have no one they can talk to.

But many churches love their pastors well. They pray for them, encourage them, support them through their regular attendance and financial giving, and make sure they have the people and tools they need to lead the church well.

The author of Hebrews wrote, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Heb. 13:17). We all have days of groaning, but I don’t think any of us want to be the cause of groaning for the people we love. If we contribute to the joy of our pastors, they multiply our joy as well.

As I was writing this I did a quick internet search and stumbled across an article that said “Your pastor is not your friend.” I understand that there are limits to what a pastor can share with an individual church member, but my gut reaction was “How sad!” I would not want to attend a church where I knew the pastor would never be a friend, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be a pastor if he had to keep himself distant from everyone. Jesus told His disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). God-incarnate called men His friends!

The modern world has an anemic view of friendship anyway. The Apostle Paul told Timothy, “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Tim. 5:1). We in the church should be closer than friends, because we are siblings in the family of God.

The pastor is not the CEO of a corporation, nor a hired servant, but a brother in Christ. “And this commandment we have from [God]: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:21). All the “one another” commands of Scripture apply just as much to our spiritual siblings who are pastors as to anyone else. We are to love them, honor them, pray for them, encourage them, live in harmony with them, be kind to them, forgive them, serve them, show hospitality to them, and spur them on to love and good deeds.

Let’s not wait for Pastor Appreciation month to do so!

“For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you” (Philemon 1:7).

© 2021 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Growing Up Together

In his book, Why We Need the Church to Become More Like Jesus, Joseph H. Hellerman paraphrases author Bruce Malina’s description of a “strong-group” mindset:

“The individual person is embedded in the [church family] and is free to do what he or she feels right and necessary only if in accord with [church family] norms and only if the action is in the [church family’s] best interest” (ch. 3).

I suspect that in many churches if a pastor made that assertion this Sunday, he would be labeled as “cultist” and would soon be shown the door. In our individualistic Western culture, we don’t trust those who claim that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one” (to borrow a phrase from Star Trek). Yet isn’t that what Scripture consistently teaches?

“So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church” (1 Cor. 14:12).

“…to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:12-13).

Hellerman goes on:

“It is not hard to see how (1) the anthropocentric approach to evangelism found in gospel tracts like The Four Spiritual Laws, (2) the framing of spiritual gifts in terms of personal fulfillment, and (3) the felt-needs focus of the seeker-sensitive movement contributed significantly to the seismic shift from ‘us’ to ‘me’ that occurred during the latter half of the twentieth century among American evangelicals” (ch. 5).

Is it any wonder that in the twenty first century we struggle to get people to darken the doors of the church with any kind of regularity? If the church is all about me, then I can choose my own path. But if it is about the wellbeing of the local body of believers, then my church family needs me and I need my church family.

“The church is a family, not a business. It is an organism, not an organization… The commitment to which Jesus calls us is a relational commitment, not an institutional commitment... To become a follower of Jesus is to become loyal to the people of God, not to a pastor’s vision or to the demands of a large church’s calendar of programs” (ch. 2).

Where the rubber meets the road for many of us in church leadership is in discerning how we can build that relational connection and commitment to the body either through the programs of the church or apart from such programs. Are the events on the calendar facilitating the growth of the church family or are they leftovers from a different era? Are we connecting people to one another or only introducing them to God? Are church members committed to each other’s growth or just checking off one more obligation?

“We grow in our faith as individual Christians to the degree that we are deeply rooted relationally in a local church community that is passionately playing its part in God’s grand story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration” (preface).

Or as my pastor put it, “We grow together or we don’t grow at all.”

“We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which is it equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:15b-16).

© 2020 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Friends or Friended?

Recently I had the experience of feeling more kinship on a particular issue with someone who lives 4,000 miles away than I do with people within a 4-mile radius. While it is true that the Body of Christ transcends national, cultural, and language barriers, it is also true that local churches often fail to create a sense of true community. Rosaria Butterfield has commented that church members are often on a “starvation diet” of fellowship, assuming that an hour or two per week is all that is needed. A recent article on Christianity Today states:

“Technology affords us the opportunity to become involved in multiple communities… groups with a feeling of exclusivity create an illusion of infinite belonging and opportunity for cooperation… These groups reflect a powerful truth in a world that often is shaped by a lack of understanding: You are not alone. In fact, our sense of loneliness, especially in the presence of others, is often due to ignorance. We struggle to invest in the kind of face-to-face conversations that can help us truly know each other. Such conversations require time and psychological effort, and entail not a little discomfort.”

However, this is not a new problem. The following quotes come from Henri Nouwen in personal letters he wrote nearly 40 years ago:

“Mostly we are so afraid of our weaknesses that we hide them at all cost and thus make them unavailable to others but also often to ourselves. And, in this way, we end up living double lives even against our own desires: one life in which we present ourselves to the world, to ourselves and to God as a person who is in control and another life in which we feel insecure, doubtful, confused and anxious and totally out of control… It is amazing in my own life that true friendship and community became possible to the degree that I was able to share my weaknesses with others. Often I became aware of the fact that in the sharing of my weaknesses with others, the real depths of my human brokenness and weakness and sinfulness started to reveal itself to me, not as a source of despair but as a source of hope. As long as I try to convince myself or others of my independence a lot of my energy is invested in building up my own false self. But once I am able to truly confess my most profound dependence on others and on God, I can come in touch with my true self and a real community can develop” (Love, Henri, 46).

“I myself experienced some real affectionate, caring acceptance from my friends during a difficult time in my own life. It was this human acceptance that helped me see God in a new way and allowed me to have a better experiential knowledge of what it means that God’s love is deeper and stronger than any love that humans can give to one another; but without the experience of human love, the experience of God’s love is very hard to come by” (50).

I would question whether we are truly able to fulfill Jesus’s command to “Love one another” if we are merely acquaintances who see each other once a week in the church building. How can we bear one another’s burdens if we don’t know what those burdens are? Can we exhort, encourage, stir up, and pray for one another when we are all keeping our true selves hidden behind a mask? 

I confess this is a constant frustration for me in a culture where the nuclear family has far surpassed the Christian family in people’s priorities. There is little or no recognition that biological families are temporary, but God’s family is eternal. And we don’t even realize that we’re missing out on our calling to be brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers for one another (Mark 10:29-30).

“So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8 ESV).

© 2017 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.