What Have I Been Missing?

What if you discovered that there was something to the Christian life that you may have been missing; something that means the difference between authentic or fake Christianity?

I hope your reaction would be something like this: “Whoa! If there is something I am missing please, tell me what it is! I need to know who God wants me to be!”

All too often, though, it seems that many are reluctant to really examine their lives to see that they are who God wants them to be.

Who does God want us to be?

Is it different for each, individual Christian?

Well, God certainly has a plan for each one of you, but there are also commonalities, things that should look the same from one Christian life to the next.

One of those commonalities is that each of us should be a person of peace, willing to do what it takes to make sure the relationships in our lives, as much as it depends on us, are healthy and peaceful, and remain in tact.

Look at what Paul told the Corinthian church about how we should handle relationships (we are going deeper on this on Sunday nights for a while):

2 Corinthians 5:11–21 NRSV

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

What does it take for us to “become the righteousness of God?”

Well first, it took Jesus becoming sin for us, even though he never sinned.

He did this to clear the way for us to become the ambassadors of God in this world to reconcile ALL people of the world to one another, and then to God (or to God, then to one another; both will happen if we are in Christ).

You see, the way that we demonstrate to the world that we belong to Jesus may not be what you think.

You might think the way the world identifies us as one of God’s is by the fish emblem on our cars.

(Illus.) My daughter, Zoe, when only five, asked my wife a couple of questions when we were on our way home from a camp meeting, or a convention, or something (in the summer they all kind of run together). She said, “Mommy, are we Christians?”

Susan wife replied, “Yes.”

Zoe continued, “Then why don’t we have a fish on our car?”

She thought, at the tender age of 5, that what made one a Christian was having a Jesus-fish emblem on their car.

Very simple; very succinct; easy to do.

But…no.

You may think that to be a Christian means you wear the t-shirts with Christian sayings on them, or the ones you get at a Christina concert from Toby Mac, or Chris Tomlin, or The Chuck Wagon Gang (if you are old-school among us).

But, no; wrong again!

How about going to church?

Good thing to do, but not the true mark.

How about making sure I only watch G-rated movies, or better yet, no movies at all?

Nope! Not really.

So what is it?

What makes me identifiable as Jesus’ follower?

God’s word says there are some things that are pretty good indicators that you are a real God-person. Paul told the church at Galatia this:

Galatians 5:22–26 NRSV

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

These are internal things, things that demonstrate who one is on the inside.

Jesus emblems, t-shirts, and all that other stuff, those are things that are on the outside.

They are meaningless unless the inside contains the attributes that Paul described to the Galatians.

In the same way Paul is telling the Corinthians in chapter 5:11-21 that we are no longer humans in the same way that we were before.

We are humans on the outside, the place that looks the same as everyone else and is not what matters most, but on the inside we are truly different.

We are new, regarding each one better than ourselves, and willing to go to great lengths to be a people of peace and reconciliation.

Everything that God has ever done has been to reconcile Himself to his creation!

To fix the damage that was done in the garden when Adam and Eve chose to break the relationship they had with him.

When God called David to defeat the giant, Goliath, in that valley, it was so the nations of the world would see who God was, to draw them closer.

God called Abraham to be a great nation not so they could be a special people who got special perks by being the Creator’s pets.

But so they could participate in a ministry of reconciliation, so they could be God’s missionaries to the entire world, drawing them closer to God.

We are the continuation of that;

We are God’s missionaries, His emissaries, living a called life to show the world who God is, and that he wants to be reconciled to each and every one.

We know the word missionary, but what about Emissary: a person sent on a special mission, usually as a diplomatic representative.

Every person who has ever answered God’s call has been called to help God in fixing the brokenness of the world he created; broken, by the way, not by His choice, but ours.

He didn’t create a broken world, WE BROKE IT!

God is calling us to be his diplomatic agents to help him fix it.

So what does that mean, exactly?

It means that a part of the life God has called you to is a life where you do not tolerate brokenness around you.

You are sickened by broken relationships.

You are no longer satisfied saying, “Oh well, not everyone can get along. I guess there are just some people who I can’t connect with.”

We are certainly not a people who find reasons to separate from each other and then try to justify it.

“Well, I know we are both Christians, but my wife and I, we just grew apart. We are different people than when we got married.”

One woman actually told me, “God has told me I need to be married to this particular man.”

She told me this while she was married to another man, and while they were both, supposedly, Christians.

We can no longer be satisfied with broken relationships in our own lives!

But we are also challenged to be a people who are proactive in helping to fix the brokenness we see all around us in this world.

It’s not enough to not be a racist, we must be proactively involved in mending those deep, horrific wounds of the past.

It’s not enough to just maintain our own relationships; we must be willing to challenge each other, and to hold each other accountable for the relationships in our lives.

Don’t let your cousin, who claims to be a Christian, skate by when she tells you she thinks it’s best to end her marriage because she’s not in love with her husband any more.

Hold her accountable!

But it goes even beyond all of that: we have a responsibility to promote peace and reconciliation among all people, nations, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic classes in this world.

It is our calling!

We cannot call ourselves God’s and be content with racist attitudes in our family, town, or area of influence.

We are not God’s if we promote war over peace as a means by which to solve crises.

We are not God’s if we engage in political antics that defame others, forsaking our calling to be a people of unity and love, even if the people involved don’t believe the way you do, politically.

(Illus.) We are very much like the child on Christmas morning that, after given a really cool new toy, tosses it aside in favor of playing with the box it came in.

There’s a much better experience to be had with the gift itself!

Church, or churchgoing, is the like the package, or the box this life comes in; the real experience is out there, making a difference it he world!

The Christian life is an adventure; a life that is impactful, dangerous, even.

But it is not simply a one-on-one encounter with God to be held so closely that it means nothing to the world at large.

We are called to make a difference in the world around us, to make life better, not more complicated or chaotic.

Many, though, have tossed aside the real life in favor of the stoic little life of a churchgoer who never impacts the world around them.

Your activity inside the church building IS NOT THE LIFE GOD CALLED YOU TO!

The church building is the place that the pep-rally takes place.

We get excited for what’s to come!

The real game, if you will, is out there in the world, being salt and light to a broken world.

Let me leave you with a what if proposition today:

What if each and every person who calls Christ their Lord was as concerned about their own personal ministry of reconciliation as they were about wondering what Heaven is going to be like when they get there?

Would this world look different if we ALL were concerned with fixing the brokenness in this world?

I think the answer is a resounding YES!

I’m glad you think you have a personal relationship with Jesus, but I am telling you that unless you are concerned about the broken world around you that relationship may not be what you think it is.

People who know Jesus know his heart, and his heart is for repairing busted relationships.

He is calling us to a relationship with him, sure.

But the purpose of that relationship is not so you can rest on your laurels while the world crumbles around you.

It is so that you can be an agent of change, one who operates within the power of the Holy Spirit to bring reconciliation to the world.

And it begins within the context of your own life.

What are the relationships that you need to attend to?

“But I didn’t cause the brokenness!”

It doesn’t matter.

You are still God’s agent for change, for repair.

I know what the world is telling you.

The world lies and says, “Don’t worry about those people you have left in your wake. They are losers anyhow! You need to take care of number one!”

But there’s the rub, you see, the world teaches that the most important person in your life is you.

Jesus teaches us that the most important one is God, and then others, and then you fall somewhere down on that list.

If we can’t be a people of reconciliation and peace then we can’t be God’s people, pure and simple.

Why is it important for Christians to embrace the ministry of reconciliation?

Because...

Without integrity in relationships we have no credibility with the world.

Jesus prayed to His Heavenly Father on our behalf in John 17,...

John 17:21 NRSV

that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

There are many good reasons that we should be about fixing the broken relationships in our lives.

But the best reason is so that the world will believe us when we tell them about Jesus.

If we, as Christians, cannot maintain meaningful, healthy relationships, then the world simply will not believe us when we tell them about Jesus.

This was His whole reason for coming, to reconcile relationships!

Between the Father and His created, between people with one another, and between people groups, as well.

If we cannot accomplish relational reconciliation then the message of the cross simply will not be believed.

Will you participate in the ministry of Biblical reconciliation, this oft overlooked aspect of the Christian walk?

I hope you will consider being God’s ambassador for reconciliation.

But first, be reconciled to Him!

Let us pray…