Restored to Restore Others

I have been studying Isaiah 58 all week. Wow, God was not too happy with Israel in that chapter. They had a form of religion based on a form of God, but it lacked depth and reality. They had created a comfortable religion and God that allowed them to stay self-focused. They knew little of their need for restoration and were oblivious to the needs of others.

God is doing a new/old thing in the church today. According to my friend Eric Swanson, the last 150 years the church has preached Ephesians 2:8-9 that we are saved by grace. We have not preached Ephesians 2:10, that we are made for good works that God has especially prepared for each person and each church.

God is inviting Restoration to not only restore people and our city spiritually, emotionally, physically, relationally, but to also restore the church to the fullness of the gospel of God's Kingdom. How fun is that?

You can't know God by yourself

We are still deep in the midst of this belief that our spirituality, our knowing God, is something we do by ourselves. It is our ongoing enlightenment hangover. We have our quiet times and read our Bibles and go to church (where we often sit by ourselves), we listen to Christian music in our cars, alone. We do all of this and we wonder why we do not feel closer to God.

The Bible teaches that we bare the image of God. This is our vocation. It is what we were made to do. To show each other what God is like through how we live and love. The Bible also teaches that that image, in us, is broken. At Restoration our vision is to see the image of God restored.

If God is Triune, one being with three person's, then to bare his image means we do it in relationship. When he created man and woman in this image, it was a relational image. He did not create man in his image and then woman in his image, he created them together in his image.

The implications are huge! If we are going to be restored to the image of God it can only happen in relationships. The over-emphasis on individual spiritual growth is, ironically, keeping us from growing.

In October we will launch ten transformational communities. They will be experiments in how to encourage one another to grow spiritually. They will focus on practices that open us up to the transformational grace of God. If you go to Restoration, of if you are looking for relationships that will really help you grow, I hope you will join one. We need each other to bare the image!

Also, this will be our topic this Saturday night at Restoration. I hope to see you there.

Restorative Hedonism

This week at Restoration we start a new series titled, "Falling Into Friendship." We will talk about the three environments we create as a church that help us connect with each other and God. This week we are talking about our worship environments.

I have been thinking all week about why God wants our worship. There are a lot of answers to that question but it strikes me that he seems to want our worship more for what it does for us than what it does for Him. This is consistent with the love and other-centeredness of God.

When we truly worship it has the potential to satisfy our souls like nothing else. John Piper, in his book Desiring God, goes into great detail describing how our chief end is to be Christian hedonists who find our deepest pleasure in God. You could consider worship the ultimate positive addiction.

My kids often ask me what the best part of my day is. More often than not, if I have connected with God in worship, I tell them that that was the best part of my day. I say this not because I am a pastor or that I feel it is the right thing to say or that it is even noble. I tell them this because it is true. I am happiest when I am worshiping Jesus. What or who else can satisfy our hearts like he can?