Taking Advantage of The Lift
by Pastor Ben Pitney

Maybe you’re a little like me in that you’re not going to shed many tears while waving goodbye to 2009. It’s not that is was all bad, but the economic downturn caused quite a bit of grief in my life. What equity? What 401k? Oh yeah, the Yankees won the World Series and Adam Lambert - he’s a real winner! Family and friends all around me have lost jobs and homes and it just tops it all off for me to see the world’s greatest golfer do a giant face-plant with his marriage.

Our lives are like boats in the stormy wind of changes and uncertainty that we have all faced in 2009. This past year I felt like I was in some real turbulence. At times the world's events blew me in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. Maybe you felt a little blown off course as well. Whether you did or didn’t I think there is a lot to learn from 2009.

A good sailor will tell you that a triangle-shaped sail instead of a square one and the physics of "lift" can enable you to sail a boat into the wind. It would be so great if we could set the sails of our lives in a way that we could sail into the wind of life's difficult events.

I think all of our personal experience, outlook, and commitment make up the sail that takes advantage of the "lift" of faith in Christ. So we have a choice to make. We can either use a square sail (our natural way to be victims of life's difficulties) and accept that we will be swept away in whatever direction life's winds blow us. Or we can choose a triangular sail (a positive, persevering commitment that embraces our experiences, enabling us to see the opportunities as well as the challenges in the world) and take advantage of the "lift" (our faith) - and so sail in the direction we were created to go regardless of where the wind is blowing.

I think God’s grand design is that everything that happens in life is to teach us lessons and prepare us to live out our purpose. This is the structure and fabric of our sail.

Life is not really about us! We should not be living simply for ourselves. We are here on planet Earth for a much more significant purpose than that. We have been bought with a price: the blood of our Creator and God of the universe. We are called by God to obey His commands, to love others, and to tell others how much He loves and cares for them. The God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, has commissioned us to help take His gospel to the ends of the Earth. If we intend to be effective in this journey, then we have to pay attention to the shape of our sail.

The Problem With Christianity
by Chris McLaughlin

It occurs to me that Christianity as we perceive it today is in real danger of extinction. We live in a world that views the gospel message as being judgmental and irrelevant, while veterans of the faith feel powerless to effect any change to this perception.

I want to suggest that the “Christianity” most Christians hold to is not the faith Jesus taught, but rather a watered-down version which is very self-focused and love-less. Run it over in your mind for a moment. What is the gospel as most people understand it? Jesus died for your sins so that you can go to heaven. We should then feel gratitude and “be good” until the day we die or Jesus returns to take us to heaven. Is this the whole gospel? Is this really why Jesus died? This gospel is painfully inadequate and we desperately need to revisit the teachings of Jesus to see the truth.

We must examine the problem of Sin (capitol “S”), not sins. Scripture teaches that sins are the symptoms of the larger disease of Sin. Romans 7:21-24 reads:

So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Paul understood that living “under sin” meant that there is this poison in the spirit of all humanity that is called “Sin” and it causes each person to become unrighteous and essentially worthless. We see the evidence of this in our self-centered culture. Since the fall, “Sin” has been brewing in the spirit of humanity and is leading our world to its own destruction.

To date, every social order that has existed on this planet, from capitalism to communism to dictatorships, has tirelessly worked to improve humanity through a method of imposing a moral code on a group of people who by their very nature—sin nature—lack the ability to follow that code. Jesus’ focus was not to impose a moral code. Rather Jesus came to free us from Sin and to institute a new world order called the Kingdom of God. This is a system that is focused on renewing the individual from the inside-out by eradicating Sin from the person and transforming him/her into a walking example of the Jesus himself. The mission of advancing the Kingdom of God becomes the focus of our very existence. This is authentic Christianity - a Christianity that is attractive, others-centered and filled with love.

For more on this topic, check out our recommended resource unChristian.